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Delvin -> RE: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (11/6/2005 6:48:50 AM)
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Thank you A/all for joining in this discussion and for those who will be after this response.
I would like to add to this chain of thought with an example of "Rules", taken from Wittgenstein as he starts to dismantle a question.
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One of the issues most associated with the later Wittgenstein is that of rule-following. Rising out of the considerations above, it becomes another central point of discussion in the question of what it is that can apply to all the uses of a word. The same dogmatic stance as before has it that a rule is an abstract entity -- transcending all of its particular applications; knowing the rule involves grasping that abstract entity and thereby knowing how to use it.
Wittgenstein begins his exposition by introducing an example: " ... we get [a] pupil to continue a series (say + 2) beyond 1000 -- and he writes 1000, 1004, 1008, 1012 (PI 185)". What do we do, and what does it mean, when the student, upon being corrected, answers "But I went on in the same way"? Wittgenstein proceeds (mainly in PI 185-243, but also elsewhere) to dismantle the cluster of attendant questions: How do we learn rules? How do we follow them? Wherefrom the standards which decide if a rule is followed correctly? Are they in the mind, along with a mental representation of the rule? Do we appeal to intuition in their application? Are they socially and publicly taught and enforced?
In typical Wittgensteinian fashion, the answers are not pursued positively; rather, the very formulation of the questions as legitimate questions with coherent content is put to the test. For indeed, it is both the Platonistic and mentalistic pictures which underlie asking questions of this type, and Wittgenstein is intent on freeing us from their bewitchment. Such liberation involves elimination of the need to posit any sort of external or internal authority beyond the actual applications of the rule.
These considerations lead to (PI 201), often considered the climax of the issue: "This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. The answer was: if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict." Wittgenstein's formulation of the problem, now at the point of being a "paradox", has given rise to a wealth of interpretation and debate since it is clear to all that this is the crux of the general issue of meaning, and of understanding and using a language. One of the influential readings of the problem of following a rule has been the skeptical interpretation, according to which Wittgenstein is here voicing a skeptical paradox and offering a skeptical solution. This avenue of reading Wittgenstein commits one to a solution which, often enough, is a skeptical solution put in terms of "there is no fact of the matter" determining the right application of the rule. Whether this answer is indeed a skeptical one is also a point at issue. If it identifies the rule and its application, that is, if we proceed to explicate the way we, or the student, do follow the rule -- for instance, by appealing to conventional social behavior -- then such explication is not necessarily skeptical.
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The main reason I brought this up was the overwhemling use of terms to identify this lifestyle within each of our own realities, and then attempting to communicate those words to others. We see it all the time, sub vs. slave, limits vs. boundries, et. al
"Okay, This is what I heard you say, this is what I think it means, is what you said to me what I heard and what I heard is what you mean"?
Have a great day
D
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