Re: fort - da: an appropriation
Steven Gabriel (sgabriel@willamette.edu)
Tue, 19 Oct 1999 16:12:51 -0700 (PDT)
I think you are trivializing the idea of language by using a definition of
it that implies that any possibly information containing object is
language. I think language requires possibility of communication and buy
Wittgenstein's arguments that there is no such thing as a private language
That implies that internalized ideas are not language but something
altogether different. It further implies that language in mental
going-ons is actually borrowed from this outside realm of social
communication and is not native to the mind.
As for Freud being the root of all psychology, I think the reverse is
true. Freud's name is fun to invoke, and he had some interesting ideas
certainly, but he was a man very good at detecting some surface features
of a subject that is much too deep to be taken in by one man from one
perspective. He was not a prophet, just a guy with some interesting
observations.
A few other quick words. I think it a common but silly mistake to put too
much importance into language when dealing with mental processes. I
believe that most modern cognitive scientists would agree that the talking
going on in one's head is best analyzed as speech without using the mouth.
I for one find this best revealed by the fact that I most often conduct my
mental mutterings in the context of fictitious conversation. Another good
example, is that of early readers who found themselves unable to read a
text without uttering the reading aloud. When these readers learned to
internalize that which they were reading, it was a case of stopping their
mouths and not of any profound shift from a physical action to a mental
process.
Many might think the biochemical processes that really lay at the bottom
of cognition to be very unromantic. I find them to be very much so. Mere
language is both obscure and arbitrary and cannot compare to the vast
complexities that really produce mind.
I have about eight (perhaps 9) other things to say on the subject but as
I can't be very certain that anyone but myself cares I'll keep them to
myself for now. Sorry about the length of this all but my "work" involves
delving into Phil of Mind and Phil of Language quite often and it's
impossible to pass up an audience (and so much more fun than parsing
through papers).
=)
S.
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: Steven Gabriel -- sgabriel@willamette.edu :
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