From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jul 05 2003 - 03:56:32 BST
Sam said:
my view, derived from my Wittgenstein studies, is that language is social,
not either intellectual or even 'thinking'. ...it predates thinking, and
thinking is derivative from it. ...The thing is, I can't imagine a society
that could exist without language - indeed, I think language pretty much
defines a society in some ways - but I can easily imagine a society with a
language that didn't have level 4 of the MoQ; that's precisely what I think
most human societies in history were.
dmb says:
Exactly. I couldn't agree with you more. This is a tough nut to crack
because it defies common assumptions we all grew up with. Its commons sense
to believe that talking is something like thinking out loud, but its more
like language is what we use to think. Its more like the way we need legs
before we can walk. Running on fins just doesn't work, you know? This point
has to be grasped, I think, before one can clearly see the distinction
between Pirsig's third and fourth levels. I might add that this same kind of
difference applies to the distinction between ritual as a SYMBOLIC act and
as an ACTUAL act. As Pirsig says it...
"If ritual ALWAYS comes FIRST, and intellectual principles ALWAYS COME
LATER, then ritual cannot ALWAYS be a decadent corruption of intellect.
Their sequence in history suggests that PRINCIPLES EMERGE FROM RITUAL, not
the other way around. That is, we don't perform religious rituals because we
believe in God. We believe in God because we perform religious ritual."
Which is also expressed as....
"Philosophers usually present their ideas as sprung from 'nature' or
sometimes from 'God,' but phaedrus thought neither of these was completely
accurate. The logical order of things which philosophers study is DERIVED
from the 'mythos'. The mythos is the social culture and the rhetoric which
the culture must invent before philosophy becomes possible. Most of this old
religious talk is nonsense, of course, but nonsense or not it is the PARENT
of our modern scientific talk."
To hear the same song in a third voice, I turn once again to my trusty
Oxford Companion to Philsophy...
"Contrary to the dominant tradition, Wittgenstein argued that language is
misrepresented as a vehicle for the communication of language-independent
thoughts. Speaking is not a matter of translating wordless thoughts into
language, and understanding is not a matter of interpreting - transforming
dead signs into living thoughts. The limits of thought are determined by the
limits of the expression of thoughts. ... It is not thought that breathes
life into the signs of a language, but the use of signs in the stream of
human life."
Thanks,
DMB
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