In a message dated 12/11/12 4:38:02 PM, [email protected] writes:
> On Dec 11, 2012, at 4:05 PM, [email protected] wrote: > > > Some sleepy, pre-nap thoughts. All these alleged "categories", "parts of > > speech", are solely mental concoctions, notional entities, the product > of a > > mind's stipulation. They have no mind-independent status, and even in a > mind > > their notional status is solely a function of stipulation. > > And ...? > I'm not sure if Michael is saying the posting he received from me abruptly stopped there, or that he did receive all of it but questions whether or not I had a general point my meanderings were intended to advance. The rest of my original posting immediately follows: [For trivial openers, you'll find lots of grammarians who will assert there "are" eight parts of speech. A great number of words are "classified" by someone or another in many different "categories". Philosophers of language in ther last century have found yet other "categories" they might argue "deserve" to be called "parts of speech". For example, "indexicals". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose reference shifts from context to context: some paradigm examples are "I, here, now, today, he, she, and that". Two speakers who utter a single sentence that contains an indexical may say different things. For instance, Fred and Wilma say different things when they utter the sentence "I am a female."" I, Cheerskep, went on: The often-cited adjectival quality "true" can run into rough surf with indexicals. Imagine a man in New York saying, "I am here." Now imagine him standing in New York and pointing at Paris on a big wall map. Now imagine him in New York as a friend asks him, "Where are you now in the travelogue you're writing about your round-the-world trip?" and he answers, "I'm in London." Then he adds, "I am in Rome beginning Thursday." Philosophers can argue over whether to classify certain of his statements as "true" or "false". "Intention" seems to come into it. Uneasiness seeps into the room...] Back to current time: My not very useful general point is that philosophy of language (and mind, and consequent ontologies) to this day still is complicated, primitive and incomplete. The leading figure of the past generation has been Saul Kripke, and, for many reasons, I find him inadequate to the job he volunteers for. In the second and third quarter of the 20th century, it was Ludwig Wittgenstein -- a huge, dominant figure, and yet deeply lacking, I feel. William cites Roland Barthes as the "go to guy" in "interpretation" of texts, but I find him faulty (as a philosopher and as a pretentious man perhaps purposely bent on throwing people off his trail) in damn near every sentence. But in truth to detail my objections to the likes of Barthes is an immensely tedious, tiresome job. A few days ago I wrote that William's last paragraph in a long posting was effectively incomphensible, so I wouldn't try to address it. William, quite understandably, was annoyed by a dismissal like that. So, when in a subsequent posting he was writing about "interpretations" in an obscure way, I decided to try to make myself spell out why his lines were inevitably confusing to an attentive reader. Such work is very non-nourishing. When I started to write why I think Barthes is beneath consideration, I found myself writing five or ten lines of criticism of each single line Barthes wrote. "What the hell am I doing?" I asked myself. I'm putting hours into saying why Barthes isn't worth ten minutes? (As I read Barthes' THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR, I found parts of it infernally balled up. Then I discovered a pertinent fact. His regular translator into English is Richard Howard. It turns out Howard translated that essay more than once. Howard's rendering of the most glaringly balled up stuff is radically altered from one translation-version to the next. Even Howard was evidently baffled. ((For what it's worth, I give Howard bad marks for publishing the earliest version. It was painfully muddled, and either Howard didn't grasp that fact, or he did grasp it but decided to just complete the assignment and get on to something else, so he handed in balderdash.))). In sum, I feel the awkwardness of my dismissing certain "thinkers" without my specifying my objections, but I feel wretched investing time into saying so-and-so is worth no time at all.
