[Ham] This semiotics nonsense throws a monkeywrench into any logical premise or philosophical postulate. If reality is nothing but words and symbols, there are no original thoughts, just an infinite variety of symbolic configurations.
[Arlo] Oh, good god. Not those damnable nihilists again! But if you took the time to read Eco, Sebok, or any number of those who write about semiotics, you'd see that this is simply ridiculous. Not sure what value it has for me to explain it to you, and I doubt it'd matter if I did, since I actually did preempt this in another post. [Ham] All man has to do is arrange them in an order that pleases him, but he gets no credit for idea origination. [Arlo] Nope. None. None whatsover. No credit for you. In fact, individuals don't exist. There is no such thing. Just us Borg. Join us. Resistance is futile. Everyone belongs in a gulag. Freedom sucks. (There, that should about sum up the potential for this conversation). [Ham] Boyle's Law can be expressed in English, German, Russian, French, or any other language, as well as the language of mathematical equations. [Arlo] Can it be expressed without language? [Ham] But that doesn't make the principle a "grammatical expression". [Arlo] Oh yes it does. Besides, haven't you heard of the field "symbolic logic"? [Ham] It's the concept that: at a constant temperature the volume of a confined gas varies inversely with its pressure. [Arlo] Wow. That sounds like a lot of words following the laws of grammar. Go figure. [Ham] Robert Boyle didn't sit down one day and play with the words Volume, Pressure, and Temperature to come up with this idea. [Arlo] Nope, you are right. First he had to assimilate a collective language system. [Ham] He experimented with gas jets, containers, and barometers until the relationship between pressure and volume dawned on him. [Arlo] And he thought all the time in words. He thought via the words of his cultural and historical birth, words that gave him a structurated trajectory of activity. Its why A Sioux indian at the time or a person 100 years before him could not have thought of this. There were no words that made it possible. [Ham] Only then did he put his concept into words and numbers so that his scientific peers could benefit from it. [Arlo] That's too ridiculous for me to comment. [Ham] The thoughts of inventors, authors, artists, engineers, philosophers, and the woman next door are not "constrained by language"; we all use words, symbols, and images to convey our ideas to others. [Arlo] And hence are constrained by language. As I said, its not so bad, language lets us think as well as constrains that thought. [Ham] All thought is proprietary to the individual. All intellection is performed by individuals. Knowledge and intelligence is what is apprehended by the individual, and language is only the instrument of communication. [Arlo] All thought is both social and proprietary. All intellection is performed by individuals in the context of collective activity. Knowledge and intelligence is what is negotiated by the individuals within a society, and language makes it all possible. [Ham] In my ontology... [Arlo] Yeah. I don't care about your ontology. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
