From: Marc Geddes (marc_geddes@yahoo.co.nz)
Date: Wed Mar 16 2005 - 23:43:34 MST
>Some people have said that human thinking is
>*precisely* this, but I
>think that's false. I think there is indeed a
>difference between
>thinking and speaking. Your description of metaphors
>being formed
>through some interaction of a normative system (I
>dislike using
>morality/value because it doesn't seem to me to be
>describing what you
>are saying) and some kind of laws-of-physics
>rationality seems to be
>similar to language games and idea-creation. From our
>existing
>metaphors (equated henceforth with the language games
>we understand)
>and experience, we acquire knowledge of the world,
>either
>understanding facts in terms of existing metaphors,
>or sometimes
>building new ones.
I'm no fan of Wittgenstein and I certainly don't think
that thinking is all language games and idea creation.
His ides influenced the logical positivists and were
apparently the beginning the post-modern disease. He
seemed to think that language had no meaning outside
it's social context (it's only a small step from there
is the idea that 'everything is a social construct').
The difference between me and him is probably that I
think that is an objective reality out there which our
metaphors can approximate. We have to start with some
initial metaphors but these get modified as we acquire
new knowledge and eventually everyone's metaphors will
start to converge. The internal metaphors and
external knowlegde are not independent of each other.
There will have to be a convergence to objective
reality outside the initial language games.
Perhaps in place of the word metaphor I should have
used the more general term 'analogy'. And I should
have said that my theory consists of the interactions
of two systems but both of them are *reasoning*
systems: one is a system for reasoning about
morals/values/agents, the other a system for reasoning
about physics/inanimate things.
--- THE BRAIN is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will include With ease, and you beside. -Emily Dickinson 'The brain is wider than the sky' http://www.bartleby.com/113/1126.html --- Please visit my web-site: Mathematics, Mind and Matter http://www.riemannai.org/ --- Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies. http://au.movies.yahoo.com
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