Matt, the example in the Margolis quote is exactly what i doubt.
I can only give you some anecdotal evidence to make my point clear. When i build my house i watched how the carpenter and his apprentice interacted. They did not speak. The carpenter just took the tool out of the apprentice' hand and showed him how to do it. How they interacted would have even worked if they spoken different languages. I also often try to observe myself when thinking about something. Especially to see how much language is involved. When i think about scientific things there is always language involved. The result is always a visualization like a sketch/map/diagram where visual elements are labeled. But i wondered if i could think about something without such labels. A long time i couldn't find an example for this, an example which is a pure visual inner dialogue. It just happened in the last few weeks that i could see me thinking that way when i build a table saw from scratch with just the motor and a arbor at hand. Constructing the saw was just moving arround its elements in my head. I didn't have to name them while thinking about the construction. After that i realized this was a natural way of thinking for me as child, because i played most of the day with lego or i was in my dads workshop. Now, it would be foolish to deny that all interaction between carpenter and apprentice wouldn't involve language. It would also be foolish to deny that language isn't involved in becoming a scientist or DIY-guy. But i do not believe that everything we think or muse about, learn or do presupposes linguistic competence to think, learn or do exactly this one thing. Certainly language is the dominant and most important sign system and is therefore involved in many things. But just the fact that we spoke before we thought, learned or did something without language isn't really presuppostion, it is just temporal order. Making language a presupposition to everything we do or think is a kind of linguistic holism and form of linguistic foundationalism i would reject. To use Venns metaphor you used: In my opinion there are other sign systems which can be used as scaffolding. Best Stefan Am 13. Oktober 2015 02:35:13 MESZ, schrieb Matt Faunce <mattfau...@gmail.com>: >Hi Stefan, > >Regarding /language/, I think the crux of the debate is whether >thinking >in images and diagrams presupposes linguistic competence, as Joseph >Margolis says in The Unraveling of Scientism, pg. 22: > > "Thinking is an activity we engage in deliberately; and where we do, > we do so linguistically or (as I would add) "lingually" (as in > composing at the piano or choreographing a dance, which presupposes > linguistic competence but is not itself an exercise of speech)." > > >Matt > > >On 10/12/15 6:14 PM, sb wrote: >> Matt, Clark, >> >> thanks for your interesting exchange! >> >> I have only two points. 1) I found the language fetishism of some >social scientists and philosophers always strange. I personally am >thinking in images and diagrams and that's why i was exited about >Peirce whenni started reading him. Therefore i share Clarks doubts at >some degree. But i also do believe that the signs we have limit >strongly our ability to experience things. Just think about how long it >took astronomers to see saturn. Galileo at first saw three planets: >> >> "I discovered another very strange wonder, which I should like to >make known to their Highnesses . . . , keeping it secret, however, >until the time when my work is published . . . . the star of Saturn is >not a single star, but is a compsite of three, which almost touch each >other, never change or move relative to each other, and are arranged in >a row along the zodiac, the middle one being three times larger than >the lateral ones, and they are situated in this form: oOo." >> >> In this context we should not forget that Kuhn distanced himself from >the strong programme of laboratory constructivism. Adding him to the >language cage fraction thus seems to me a bit unfair. >> >> My 2.) point is about the "ontology" of social things Searle >describes in his "Construction of social Reality". According to him >there are social things that exist only because we as society believe >them to be. Such things are marriage, property, markets etc.. Such >things produce outcomes that are not within our personal reach but >within the reach of society as a whole. They are independent of what i >think about them, but they are not independent of what all individuals >in a society think of them. To deal with social things Peirce realism >is not a great help, but his doubt-believe-habit-scheme is. I raised >this second point just because i believe it is important to dive deeper >into the Margolis stuff. >> >> Best >> Stefan -- Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Mobiltelefon mit K-9 Mail gesendet.
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