Hi elephant, all
> ANDREA WRITES:
> > from merriam-webster (online):
> > continuous: marked by uninterrupted extension in space, time, or sequence.
> > discrete: noncontinuous
> >
> > I was not saying that the discrete/continuous distinction is metaphorical in
> > se, just that applying continuous to "reality" and discrete to "language" is
> > metaphorical. Looks like a physical metaphor to me.
>
> ELEPHANT:
> It cannot, in this case, be a "physical metaphor", since in order for their
> to be the "discrete" stuff in physics that you claim to be the basis of the
> metaphor, discrete language itself must be used to create it.
> Yours is thus a picture of a snake eating itself.
Thanks elephant, your interesting post (and others around it) put me before a very
large doubt. Let me "think aloud".
I would be of the opinion that if you are going to say that language is all
metaphorical, there too goes a snake eating itself. When you say that "What does the
manipulation of symbols show us? It shows us what it leaves out"... then I get a
strange feeling, like wondering what metaphysics is after all.
I will enlarge the subject another bit, just because I feel this is the most
important path from here, rather than because it is most pertinent to the original
subject. On and on I read messages where some kind of reasoning is rejected because
it ends up, one way or another, into a snake eating itself. You seemingly did this
with Chris' points (which I myself am not sure about what they are, so I'm not
taking his position...) Well: if we are looking for what the symbols leave out,
shouldn't we be ready to accept snake that eat themselves as answers to our
question. Talking about the Zen?
What will we get from a snake that eats itself? Can there be any information? Just
bewteen the lines. Just, to steal a metaphor from Chris, in the (emotional) waves
that language creates in the pool. Is this metaphysics? And then, to get back to the
subject, anything about reality, you will only be able to express metaphorically.
Two choices here: first, metaphysics is about everything we can know *and* can be
expressed in language - then according to what you yourself say, the important stuff
is exactly what's left out of metaphysics, at its best. That actually seems to be:
metaphysics *is* about language. Because all we know, we know through language. If
you want to use language properly and kill all self-eating snakes, well, language
itself has all the answers already there. The Library of Babylon has it all, black
on white. And - we are not after reality, unless you believe language=reality, which
I don't think you or anyone else in this board believes. Not even Wittgenstein
believed that!
Second option, metaphysics is about everything we can know, period. Then we should
be ready to accept every meaning that can be conveyed by even the most distorted use
of language, because anyway we won't be interested in the literal meaning of what we
say, but only in what it does allude to. But maybe this isn't metaphysics, it is
Zen/spiritualism/ something else of pertinence to the left brain... Here I feel a
strong attraction to spiritualism...
> I take this to be a sign that the discrete/continous distiction is apriori
> and not metaphorical in origin at all. This is in fact born out by the
> dictionary citation which does not limit the distinction to spatio-temporal
> sequence, but applies it *universally*.
Hmmm, looks like a step back. I never said the distinction was metaphorical; its
application to the forementioned concepts is: dynamic quality and language. Even if
you honestly tell me you're not thinking in 3 or 4 dimension when you spell the word
"continuous" (and I will trust your word), still I'm not sure I can you feel so
comfortable with "sequence" either. Is sequence anything that is related to reality?
We discretize, we put in sequence, what is continuous and has no sequence and is in
no sequence. Continuous and discrete are not metaphors only if you are stating that
we are not talking about reality but our conceptualizations thereof (language). Then
we should again agree that we use metaphors, because by conceptualizing we also
metaphorize (is this english?)
Finally, thus, my view is that an answer to the question if we can do metaphysics
w/out metaphors requires *both* to understand what a metaphor is, and to agree on
what is the subject of metaphysics. Is it the process of conceptualizing? Is it
concepts? Is it reality?
> ELEPHANT:
> I am aware of the thought and I do puzzle over it myself. There is
> something right in what you say. But remember that what Zen might call
> "right thinking" isn't exactly "reasoning" in the pragmatic sense. Still,
> value, the good, is very present in this "emptiness". Indeed I would say
> that it's reality is *indicated* by the right kind of emptiness. The
> hollowness, the *strain* of language attempting to only speak the truth, is
> perhaps the only way to indicate the reality which it would otherwise
> falsify.
Exactly. But Zen's right thinking is not metaphysics, is it? My point was about if
you would still have the feeling to be doing meaningful metaphysics if you were
manipulating words whose referent is outside of the realm of what you can conceive -
which is - if you had no metaphor either. Would that "feel good"?
Very puzzled (interested too, a bit on the edge of New Age too...)
Andrea
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