I remarked on how easily we suppress inconvenient questions that arise in our
minds. To Geoff, a psychologist, this is a commonplace.
More remarkable is how much philosophers have assumed non-notional entities
-- including actions -- seemingly without ever questioning that the things
"exist".
Perhaps the most indefensible and unquestioned assumed "real" -- i.e. not
simply notional -- entity is: "relations".. Philosophers since Plato's time
have
accepted that each relation is a "thing" -- somehow "out there", in the
non-mental world. Consider: Every "thing" is related one way or another to
every
other thing. And each of those "relations" is a "thing". Which means that every
relation is related to every other relation. And each of THOSE
relations-to-other-relations is a thing that is related to . . . It's a madness
that has never
been thought through. Relations are solely funny notions.
A comparable -- and equally chimerical -- entity is: "sets".
"But didn't you right there assume the existence of something you can't prove
-- a non-mental world?" Yes, but not without questioning the assumption a
great deal, and, more to my current point, with an awareness that I'm assuming
the entity.
Right now the one that's most on my mind is the seemingly universal
acceptance of the idea that words DO such things as referring, signifying,
naming,
denoting, meaning. I need to make clear that at the moment my focus is not on
whether or not words (and paintings, and dances, and plays, etc) DO mean etc.
(I
don't believe that.) It's on this: The belief that noun-words denote, names
name, and all words mean ENTAILS THAT THEY ACT.
I parody the notion by saying the idea that I have hundreds of millions of
words on the many shelves in my home, all of them one way or another throbbing
with the action of signifying, meaning, etc, makes me fear for the stability of
my bookcases.
The first response likely to come is that they only mean when someone is
looking at them. And why would that be? That they are quiescent until someone
looks at them, like musicians in the king's castle who only spring to playing
when
the king enters the room? (Besides, consider: the erroneous assumption
entails the words must SIGNIFY 24/7, no?)
I claim that the objection to this erroneous notion is not trivial or "merely
verbal". Throughout philosophy, for millennia, thinkers have built
elaborate theories in philosophies of language, mind, ontology and even
aesthetics
based on the delusion that inert objects act.
I wish our list were broader, with more professional philosophers who might
be able to cite thinkers I've never encountered who have discussed this.
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