ELEPHANT TO JON:
> ELEPHANT:
> Yes, I do think language precedes the world of particular objects - that
> would be one good way of identifying me as a "Platonist" - although all that
> this thesis so far amounts to is that *something* of language precedes all
> the world, and what this *something* is, I haven't yet said.
>
>>
>> JON:
>> I'm curious, what this *something* is?
>
ELEPHANT:
Good question. So am I. Actually I think that the fact that it is hard to
say anything positive about *what* it is may, in this case, be a vital clue.
Look, if I'm saying that "language" is our name for what precedes the world
of particulars, then, self evidently, what I think of as language isn't
going to be some particular.
And if I'm saying that "language" is our name for that activity of
synthesising, then, self evidently, there can be no synthetic truths about
what I think of as language.
So what, and what kind of truth, does that actually leave us with in our
discussion of Language?
It leaves us with:
(1) Universals
(2) Analysis
Putting these two together, we get a classic Platonic picture emerging of
what knowledge is, this time directed at language.
We get the notion that the a-priority of language might amount to the
a-priority of certain necessary *universal* terms such as "good". ("Good as
a noun... Of course, the ultimate Quality isn't a noun or an adjective or
anything else definable, but if you had to reduce the whole Metaphysics of
Quality to a single sentence, that would be it.")
We get the notion that the way to establish whether or not this is the case,
and that on a case by case basis, is to engage in analysis of the universals
and of the competing philosophical pictures about what their status is.
And, surprise surprise, this is exactly what Plato does.
It is, also, what we are all doing here at moq.org ....I'd assume.
What we're looking for is the flaw in the picture, a telling incoherence.
Something that doesn't fit right. If we can be absolutely sure that
something just doesn't add up, then we can say that it's false, or
"codswallop", or something of the kind, and, rejecting that, reconsider the
alternatives.
I might like to compare this with the engineer with a laptop analysing data
frpm sensors and looking for weaknesses in the engines of jumbo jets, as a
reason to ground them. But truth be told the railway man tapping wheels
does the same job. The image that would apply from Plato's times is giving
a knock on the ceramic vessel to hear either a ringing tone of confidence or
a dull thud of a hidden flaw. The image is particularly good in that case,
because, besides flawlessness, the other thing that gets tested in
pot-tapping is whether there's actually anything in it. Water, Olive Oil,
Wine, Beer, Whisky, or.... Nowt.
I pause before repeating the metaphor and delphic truism oft repeated
(according to tale) by my carpenter Grandfather, that 'the empty barrels
make the most noise'.
One last thing before I go looking for full-barrel silence:
Besides Universals and our analytic looking for some names for them, such as
"good" (and "bad"), you might also thing about grammar itself, that is to
say the distinction between the universal and the merely general, the
universal and the particular, the synthesised and the elements of the
synthesis...
Indeed the whole apparatus by which things are conjoined, disjoined,
related, and so on. I wouldn't say that English is a priori, because it
isn't, and I'm not an idiot. But there are features of English, and Greek,
and Sanskrit, and Spanish and Signing and Creoles and what have you, which
are held in common. These languages do things differently: but the
interesting fact that ought not to escape our notice, and which has not
escaped Chomsky's notice, is that these things they do differently are the
same things.
Ponder that.
Elephant
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