Raymond Tallis shows that the gesture is not so obvious.
My pointing something out to you is a request for
joint visual attention to the same object. It is
based on a highly explicit general sense of the
kind of creature you are: unlike other creatures,
(most) humans have an unequivocal sense that
others have minds. On top of this, there is a
specific sense of your knowledge being defective
compared with mine, based on my observation of
your (literal) point of view. We are reminded
just how remarkable this is when we encounter
human beings who lack this sense: people with
autism who have no integrated sense of
themselves, and no sense of other's sense of
themselves. A poignant early sign of autism is
the failure to point â a gesture which usually
appears towards the end of the first year of
life, before the emergence of language. Pointing,
in short, is a potent testimony to the infant's
sense (again unique to human beings) of living in
a shared, common world, a public reality, and of its communicative urge.
Pointing is pre-linguistic, but it is important
not to exaggerate the sense in which it is
proto-linguistic. Individual words belong to
systems of signs and make sense only as part of
such systems as loci in semanttic fields
stitched together by grammar. By contrast, the
field of pointing is the visual field, and its
grammar is almost non-existent. St Augustine's
notion that parents teach their children to speak
by pointing at objects and uttering their names
was brilliantly criticised by Wittgenstein in the
opening pages of Philosophical Investigations,
and led to some of his most famous theories about
language. Reflecting on the modest role played by
pointing as a bridge from babbling to speech
awakens one's sense of the mysterious nature of
language. Investigating the scope and limits of
ostensive definition defining words by
literally pointing out their objects (eeg "That's
'vermilion'") casts an interesting light on the
nature of linguistic reference, of universals,
and of the very complex relationship between the
arrays of material objects that surround us and
the world as it is captured in spoken and written discourse.
<http://philosophynow.org/issue70/70tallis.htm>Link
--
Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/01/some-points-about-pointing.htm>monochrom
at 1/19/2009 09:26:00 AM
