Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 23:23:19 +0100
Subject: What is being said


It sure seems that a lot of people have a lot of things to say on the
initial question, "what do H-ians mean by Language?"

But with this plethora of views having come to hand, I think that we
might do well to ask some of the participants "what do you mean by ...?"
where the ellipses are filled by their various comments.

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.


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? Even though the
problem which many "foundationalist" faced, at least those of the
phenomenalist variety (note the word: it is NOT "phenomenologist"), was
that they could accord only a "mentalistic" nature to such items as
chairs. Or is this even meant as either a characterization of or a
caricature of "ein Seiendes"?  

Or what is "metaphysically based thought," or "calculative thinking,"
and whatever their meaning, in what sense is one an expression for the
other, as another participant's use of "eo ipso," suggested? For
example, are a customer's calculating a tip, or my calculating how much
change I have to return to a customer -- something of which I enjoy an
abundance of practice -- examples of "metaphysically based Thought"? Or
consider calculating in math, even. Sure in the lower reaches of math
there is some calculating (calculative thinking, for the sake of
argument), but is it metaphysically based thought? When Goedel started
arguing that an adequate math epistemology must countenance a genuine
Platonic ontology of math objects, his views were widely criticized.
Indeed, historically, the philosophical tendency has been to provide
maths with a "basis/foundation" which is bereft of such metaphysical
views as Plato's or Goedel's. If, on the other hand, all of these
varieties of 'calculative thinking' are "m based" because they invoke
concepts of identity and sameness, then so also is such type of thinking
as underlies our greeting a friend on the street who we haven't seen for
a while, or our telling a friend to help herself to the last beer in the
fridge, or our asking whether some essay is the same article as appeared
in the papers. In short, if invoking identity and sameness is
characteristic of "metaphysically based" thought, then all thought is so
based, and so also is the thought that: because "Das Mitdasein" delivers
so many of my un-expressly thought "thoughts," you and I may suffer many
of the same thoughts.

My point is simply that in our conversations about H's views (early or
later), or in communicating our thoughts for which H's views are a
vehicle, shouldn't exceptional care be exercised in language, such care
as H's subtlety demands. Else wise, it seems that we may be susceptible
to the kind of bewitchment against which Wittgenstein was so wont to
warn us. 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.
Cheers,
jim


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