Hi Elephant, if you're not too tired of this... Here's the points:
> ELEPHANT:
> A prioriness excludes something being a metaphor because a metaphor is a
> description in terms of something else, while aprioriness is irreducibility. If
> something is prior to all the "something else" in question it cannot be described
> in terms of "something else". Metaphor occurs when we see one thing, and then
> afterwards (a posteriori, if you like) see another and use the image of the first
> in our minds to understand the second. Hence metaphorical use of words is always
> a posteriori, after the encountering of discrete objects, and since the existence
> of disrete objects depends on our imposition of the discrete onto the continuous,
> "discrete" cannot be metaphorical.
I see, now. We disagree on what is a metaphor, Q.E.D. I thought the essence of a
metaphor is that you apply to B a concept that usually applies to some A<>B. Whether
the concept is apriori or aposteriori with respect to A is not relevant. The point
is that you apply it to something *else* than the usual thing.
The acknowledgement of this difference leads us... nowhere. You probably think the
association language-discreteness is irreducible, and so is reality-continuity,
which is weird since you'll never find hints of this in any dictionary, I suppose. I
take the more conservative view of seeing discreteness and continuity as irreducibly
connected to perception of the physical world (apriori concepts in our perception of
objects), while they are not intrinsically bound to reality and language. That seems
a dead end track in our discussion: how can we debate on associations that we think
need not / cannot be explained/justified because they are a priori? We seem to have
different apriori's! How strange.
> ANDREA (previously):
> > I never said the domain of language is intuition, never at all. I said: the
> > domain of language (taken literally) is discrete. We have intuition that is
> > something which seems to be less discrete than language (I mentioned that this
> > needed more development, it still does). And that we bridge the gap by using
> > language in improper (not literal) ways. What you call "creative" use of
> > language seems to me something that is opposed to "literal" use.
>
> ELEPHANT:
> Yes. And that's why literal truths are only those truths about the forms,
> and their corrolaries. I'm sorry about my reading you as saying that the domain of
> language is
> intuition. It occured as part of an effort to make sense of your idea that
> the domain of language is somehow continuous. This is something which, now
> you remove my paraphrase, I cannot understand at all. "Domain": place where
> someone or something is in power - area of operations. Language is not in
> power over the continuous, nor is it's area of operations the continuous,
> since nothing of the continuous is changed or moved around by language.
> That being so I have failed to understand your "somehow" in "somehow
> continuous". A second attempt. Perhaps you simply mean that language is somthing
> that
> comes about because of intuitions of Dynamic Quality. That's true. But it
> doesn't (not even "somehow") make DQ language's *domain*.
Amazing. I keep rereading what I wrote and still can't figure out what's going on in
this misunderstanding. Possibly a consequence of different aprioris :)
I still never said that the domain of language is continuous, even less that it is
*the* continuous, I actually said the *opposite* - that it is discrete. One comm
problem may be related to the word "domain", which I may be using in a
computer-science-engineering-biased sense, that I now explain:
"the domain of (a language) A is B" does not mean that A controls B, or changes B,
or moves around things in B. It means (I meant) that A describes things in B.
Eg, the domain of programming languages are automated procedures. The domain of
geophysical jargon is geophysics. Etc.
I keep saying that the domain of language is discrete. Not that it is *the*
discrete, if this means anything - that it is discrete. Trivial, almost the same as
saying that language is discrete, but then, also slightly different - while
finiteness of alphabet/vocabulary/individual-sentences yields discreteness of
language (the set of all sentences), it does yield, per se, that the world of all
the literal meanings of all possible sentences is discrete. Or maybe it does. But
that's not the relevant point.
The point is that the world of all possible meanings that can be conveyed by
*non-literal* uses of language is continuous (footnote: yes, I originally said
"somehow" continuous. I'll delete that part - just think that any sentence may have
infinite non-literal meanings - I think this yields continuity. A bit of underlying
mathematics here.). The price we pay in non-literal use is, nevertheless, that you
can never be sure of how your intended meaning actually reaches the other side (the
recipient of communication), unless that is yourself.
You cannot be sure, but you can have some degree of confidence that it arrived to
the other side, or that something similar arrived to the other side. Everything gets
fuzzy, but not necessarily out of control. For example, if the recipient replies and
uses words in a non-literal way that closely resembles how you would have used them
in a non-literal way to express your feeling, etc... then the degree of confidence
that the message "got through" increases. (You are 90% sure he understood you at at
least 80%...)
And after all this leads us back to the old rusty "nail in my head" (italian saying)
about language approximating truth rather then expressing truth (meaning, continuous
truth). Of course this does not apply to truth about the forms. You say that truth
about forms is expressed by literal language. I would assume each sentence has (at
most) *one* literal meaning - that makes the collection of all literally-expressed
truth discrete. So the domain of literally-interpreted sentences (domain is in the
sense above) is *not* (continuous) reality. Any false steps in this line of
reasoning?
> ANDREA:
> > And I lost you again on your argument that words mean whatever you want them to
> mean - is
> > that Humpty Dumpty?
>
> ELEPHANT:
> I think it is. Humpty-Dumptiness I take to be the point of the "one hand
> clapping" koan. Even physics undergoes this, since there is nothing in
> *experience* strictly speaking which corresponds to the discrete entities
> described in physics. Those entities are what physicists agree to call them -
> there is nothing else. There is Dynamic Quality - but that is not a thing.
Through the Looking Glass' character, Humpty Dumpty, thought he could attach *any*
meaning to *any* word, provided words got enough money as a reward. By doing this he
extended language to the continuous - he was in fact free to coin new words, too,
eg, "mimsy were the borogoves". Unfortunately, this had the consequences that only
*he* understood the meaning *he* would find in any sentence.
And, remember you have to unsuscribe, elephant. It is also perfectly good etiquette
to raise hands up and say: "too bored!" even prior to unsubscribing. :)
All good wishes to you too
Andrea
--
Andrea Sosio
RIM/PSPM/PPITMN
Tel. (8)9006
mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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