Frances -- Many thanks for taking the time to describe the faults you feel
you see in what I wrote. You express with courtesy and thoughtfulness
many, many considerable points about what you believe my "theorem" DOESN'T do.
The non-notional, non-material "existence" of an alleged third kind of
ontic entity -- a kind that includes such "abstract things" as "facts" and
mathematical and scientific "truths" -- is a gnarlish subject that I admit I
did
not try to elaborate on in my posting. Believe it: I could elaborate for a
long tedious time on irrational and "absurd" implications of the mistaken
position that the likes of "meanings, relations, facts, opinions, truths,
theories et al" are non-notional, non-material, "entities" of a third kind.
But I'd be even more grateful if you would directly address some of the
assertions that I DID make. For example, I maintained that sounds and
scribbles
do not "have" "meanings". I maintained that sounds and scribbles do not
themselves "act" -- they don't "mean", "designate", "signify". They are
"occasions" for actions by a remembering, retrieving, and reconfiguring mind.
A
speaker can send a sound but not a notion. Why doesn't the sound "salt"
occasion in the mind of a Tibetan the same notion it occasions in the mind of
an
American -- if the "word" itself does the "meaning"?
Three requests: One, don't work solely to find something wrong in what
you just heard. Two, yes, present as evidence what I don't say, but also
address what I specifically do say. Three: to paraphrase Andri Gide: 'Please
don't "understand" me too quickly.'
***Cheerskep wrote:
Kate and William are far beyond me in realizing and
articulating the evolving styles in visual art. As usual, in my
efforts to be a philosopher of language and related ontology, I'm
deeply interested in the way aestheticians' language REIFIES
things.
What do I have in mind with 'reify' there? Think of it
this way. When William writes, "The History of Art in its most
recognized use denotes an academic discipline..." his phrasing is
in effect assuming the > existence of three different "entities":
A "The History", a "discipline", and the action-entity
"denoting". We'd all recognize the distinction between a TERM
and a THING it's often used to label. Where I balk is at the
assumption that a term actually DOES anything. It's our MINDS
that are acting, not the term. We label; the term does not. If
someone says "salt" to you, all that initially enters your mind
is a sound. What follows in your consciousness is then a function
of your memory inventory, your retrieving mechanism, and your
mosaicking mind. Say "salt" to a Tibetan, and he'll receive the
same sound you would. But everything thereafter that arises in
the Tibetan's mind will be different from what arises in yours.
We assume the printed scription 'salt' carries out an action we
call "means". But word-sounds never "mean", ever. The act of
"meaning" that we attribute to sounds, and scribbles and gestures
and ruins, is imaginary, a delusion.
In aesthetics, this mistaken assumption that sounds and
scribbles "mean" wreaks a befuddling effect beginning with the
scription 'art', coupled with 'is'. See William's phrases
(below), "one did not need to know what was art but simply...",
and "If the form fit, it's art, even if it was recognized in
something previously unclassified as art." That's simply
Winkleman's fiat about when to use the sound "art". But I could
utter comparable fiats about the sounds "miracle", "sins",
"souls", the hexing of "curses", the ongoing activity of a "lucky
man's" "luck". That doesn't mean there are any such "real world"
entities -- only notional ones.
My position is that the sound-scribble 'art' does not
DENOTE anything. I claim Kripke is harmfully wrong in his belief
that a sound can carry out an action of denoting, referring,
meaning, designating, picking out. All such alleged activity is
by our various brains, and what arises in a given brain depends
on the person's experience, memorizing apparatus, and personal
reconfiguring. Think of sounds as the OCCASIONS but not the
intrinsic CAUSES of what finally arises in a given person's
consciousness.
