Kate described her notion of 'ontology':
"An ontology is-the formal representations within a domain and the
relationships within the domain. I would suggest that cheerskep is insisting on
defining
the individuals of the domain before the domain itself has been tentatively
defined."
I judged it basically defective because it assumes as "given" many of the
very elements that someone like me would reject.
To which William responded:
"And what about the "notion behind the word"? How can there be a notion (I
assume that's an image shaped by word association) without words?"
I have for a long time repeated that my notion of "notion" is, in effect,
everything in my flow of conscious. I have noted that this idea leaves out any
consideration of "unconscious" notion, or
notion-as-neural-disposition-and-activity.
Notice: Though a lister may claim this disagrees with his idea of "notion",
or with some "authority's" idea of it, this does not prove my idea of it is
"wrong". My more general philosophy takes the position that -- except for
arbitrary stipulation -- there is no "THE correct meaning" of any
word/phrase/gesture
etc, and I think I've made this position serviceably clear for a long time
now.
In this context, I take "image" to be a mental "vision", as distinguished
from, say, an aural notion. But it's also distinguished from feelings -- such
as
pain or hunger -- which I also take to be notion. And, say I, we all entertain
much notion in the form of indeterminate, indefinite, multiplex and
transitory (IIMT) ideas that are not visual, aural, or sensational. And not
"verbal".
As an implication of my position, I reject Hannah Arendt's assertion that all
"thinking" is in words, "wordless thought cannot exist".
I'm entertaining much IIMT notion right now as I'm writing. "Abstract ideas"
tend to be non-visual, non-aural, and wordless -- such as the idea of
"implication". Our notion of "implication" is not itself the word
'implication'; it's
more multiplex than that. Same with the every polysyllabic word I use in this
posting, and even short words like 'tend' and 'apt'. The notions behind them
aren't visual, nor are they identical with the words themselves.
Consider your notion of "probability". It's a very complex idea, so
indeterminate and indefinite as to seem chaotic. The fact that an idea-notion
is
muddled -- or even "wrong" in the sense that the answer most people confidently
give
to the famous Monty Hall probability problem is wrong -- would not persuade
me to say there was no notion in the speaker's mind.
We grope for words to "express" some ideas -- which I take as effectively
clear evidence that the idea itself is not mere words. Writers will often go to
the thesaurus not to find a synonym, but to search for apt words to convey a
fairly precise idea they have but can't "put into words". If all thinking is in
words, how could we ever misspeak ourselves?
To go back to William's question: I wouldn't say Kate's idea of "ontology"
was "an image shaped by word association". As I hope I've conveyed, I wouldn't
call her idea an "image" at all -- though I realize it's very possible at some
point Kate actually visualized in her mind's eye the word 'ontology'.
I agree with William's suspicion that often words may be said to "shape"
ideas. But that's the subject for another piece.
**************
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