Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 14:17:10 -0400
From: Daniel McGrady <dMcGrady-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: What is being said


Jim writes,

>To be perfectly frank, I don't understand many of these comments. Take
>just one example:

>i say that a "thing" is very rigidly "defined."
>i can bring about evidence to support it.
>i can validate it.
>it is self-consistent.
>it is calculated.

Point taken Jim.  But ...

>C'mon, man. Take a "medium-sized dry good," like a chair. Is it rigidly
>defined? What's it mean: that you can bring evidence to support a chair,
>that you can validate a chair, that a chair is self-consistent, that a
>chair is calculated? Is this meant as some kind of endorsement of what
>another participant called "foundationalist" thinking?

Surely this is just a case of confusing facts for things.   I thought your
reference to 'medium-sized dry good' was a reference to Austin.   And thus
Austin's distinction between facts and objects, in that while you can trip
over carpets, and spill coffee on tables, you cannot trip over facts or
spill your coffee on them.   Is this because facts are propositions?    And
that would be why it is nonsense to talk about validating chairs or
confirming them or looking for things to be self-consistent, or rigidly
defining things.     For these are only things you do with language.   They
are inappropriately applied, but have nothing to do or say about
metaphysical thought, or foundationalist thinking.  I am taking your word
for it that that is what some people said.

> What is more, we may be guilty of committing the same blunder
>of which Wittgenstein accused the tradition: taking language on holiday;
>and on holiday, language don't work.

Or is it rather an ab-use of language?

Daniel



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