Re: deprogramming language

Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Mon, 25 Oct 1999 19:04:02 -0500 

Steven Gabriel wrote:
 
> Euclidean geometry (the stuff you study in high school) can be defined
> using only 5 axioms (rules).  These five rules are enough to generate any
> rule in all of Euclidean geometry (rules like -- the angles of a triangle
> add up to 180 degrees).  With simpler rules you wouldn't be able to
> generate all the things that you would like to generate.  My point was not
> that the definition of language you give demonstrates that language is
> devoid of information (though I rather said it that way), it's that the
> rules are too simple to generate any system of processing at all
> equivalent to that of cognition.  I want to say it's like trying to
> generate a context free grammar with regular expressions but ... that
> probably won't make sense to anyone.  You want to say that simple naming
> and differentiation leads to more complex linguistic relations, and that's
> what I'm challenging.  I think that to do that you will need to add more
> rules and these rules will be very important and necessary, and not just
> naming and differentiation.

An absolutely fascinating response!  I find the geometry example
genuinely intriguing.  I think it will allow for us to meet on common
ground.  Let me request that you elaborate on the context-free
grammar/regular expression comment; it may indeed not make sense to
me, but it may be the very example that explains, in different terms,
what I've been trying at since this thread started.  

In the meantime:  surely there must be a single, basic principle from
which those five axioms proceed?  Or, to put it more particulalarly, a
single basic principle that makes possible phenomena the particulars
of which can be contained in 5 basic axioms?  In order to develop
axioms, there must be some generative principle that creates the
things for which we develop axioms.  Like carbon at the root of "life"
or 1's and 0's in computer languages?  Perhaps computer operations are
a good example.  They are possible only because of the difference
between 1 and 0...between presence and absence.  A single difference
is at the root of it all.  And from that single difference, we create
an enormous and vastly complex system of signification. 

Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson have done a good amount of
quite serious--and quite, uh, scientific--work on language and
meaning.  They are distinct from folks like Derrida (and Freud, I
suppose) in that they aren't as interested in style and sophistry and
being clever as they are in objective inquiry.  Language study has its
share of hardcore scientists.   

Finally, I continue to argue with Sean because he is countering what
he percieves as my prententious discussion with what I perceive as his
pretentious righteousness.  It sounds to me like theory-bashing of the
"quiet those hammers and picks, you critics!  the noise disturbs my
appreciation of undissected beauty" type.  I could be wrong, but Sean
hasn't said so yet.  On the other hand, I insist my participation in
this discussion isn't pretentious.  It has never been my purpose to
prove to this list how much theory I've read or how lofty and erudite
my being is.  My psyche is as muddled as everyone else's, and I'm sure
everythign I do has a peculiar motivation I'm partly unaware of, but
at the moment, I'm mostly just discussing language.     
 

-- 
Nothing to Prove    mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu