Brian McAndrews wrote:
>
> Brad,
> Have you read Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein?
I have not. (So many books, so little time....)
What does he say about LW's mental breakdown before WWI
and how LW related to students when he was a school teacher?
I did read a fascinating book about LW's single
venture as an architect -- Aspergers' probably;
genius probably too. LW spent 2 years finding a
foundery to cast the heating radiators for the house....
I do now recall that the other Asperger's candidate
was Bela Bartok. Ref. lost, sorry, so you don't have to give
it any credence.
> Stephen Toulmin gave it
> rave reviews. He was a student of Wittgenstein and I think I recall you
> mentioning his 'Cosmopolis' on this list. I have no idea where you came up
> with the Asperger's syndrome stuff.
(I have no idols, if that's the question....)
I am still trying to improve my "audit trail" skills,
but having been childreared not to notice what's happening to me,
often I remember something was interesting after where I found
it is gone, and I fail to find it again. But I do think
my oral and my written discourse are at least not
altogether shameful in their bibliographical underpinnings,
andf I promise to redouble my efforts over the redoubling I
was already intending anyway....
> Scientists do play their own language games, so do all the disciplines.
> Isn't that what first year 101 courses are all about? Learning the
> languages (&superstars)of economics, poli sc, psych, physics...
I would have had no problem had LW talked
about quote-language games-unquote,
like Erving Goffman might have done. Goffman was a student of the
way the surface semiotic moves and counters in social
life covertly deploy all manner of unacknowledged
"hidden agenda". Did LW deal with the
hidden agenda "behind the words"? He did not explore the
"hidden curriculum" (Lawrence Kohlberg), or did he?
*Please* give me the references where Wittgenstein
explored both the Freudian unconscious of repression and
the "poisitive social unconscious of permissions"
described in Alain Resians' film "Mon Oncle d'Ameriqua,
and Edward Hall's "The Silent Language?
We can imagine a language simpler than ours,
in which there are words for the various
materials on a construction site, and words
for telling a person what to do with these materials.
"Bring brick". All language can be understood
as being elaborated on this base (presumably
like all mathematics can be constructed
from the null set).
That is my understanding of LW's philosophy in a nutshell.
And it certainly beats looking for sense data or
atomic facts!
How about, instead, starting off with the
Winnicottean notion that the infant's first word
expresses the whole world [as the infant
understand it...]?
Of course, we, like LW's building construction site
crew, quickly train the infant
to use words denotatively (or rather: we truncdate
the infant's world to various materials on a
construction site and words for telling the person
what to do with them. We call this "education",
although a real construction worker might call it
schlepping.
Hammurabi's children made their house
of slavery's bricks imprimatured
by some mad priest's imagined good.
The good is gone, the priest stamps on....
(George Delury)
\brad mccormick
> Brian
>
> At 08:08 PM 2/2/2002 -0500, Brad wrote:
>
> >Sorry, I didn't see this last point.
> >
> >Wittgenstein seems likely to have had Asperger's(sp?)
> >syndrome [mild autism]. Did he love
> >anybody? Who but an autistic could come
> >up with the conceptualization that the forms of social
> >life are:
> >
> > language games
> >
> >?
> >
> >Wouldn't
> >a person who was dissociated but also a genius be likely to
> >think about whether a person could be
> >"meaning blind"?
> >
> >Sounds like autism to me -- but then I am
> >making interpretations "beyond the basic rule" (ref. Freud),
> >so they are merely speculative.
> >
> >\brad mccormick
> >
> >--
> > Let your light so shine before men,
> > that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
> >
> > Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
> >
> ><![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >-----------------------------------------------------------------
> > Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
