Comrades! I Think I may understand the whole language as the intellectual
level now.
See my philosophy studies has now brought me to Derrida and Davidson and
their philosophising around truth and language. Some of you may remember
that I have talked about Truth as the core value of the intellectual level,
and the quest for truth as defining of the intellectual level - yes? Well,
as we all know, no one really knows what truth is, philosophers and
scientists and mystics and a whole lot of other people have been looking for
truth through the centuries - and as much as they have been looking for
truth they have been looking for what Truth _IS_ but, well, it hasn't been
going all that well has it?
Anyway. Derrida's thoughts about language, as I understand it, is in
contrast to the positivists and other since he says that language doesn't
necessarily represent anything in the objective world, like Russell said for
example (words representing sense-data, and thus being able to carry truth
and building logic) but if something is true or not is determined by how it
corresponds to the structure of the language. Inner coherence and all that.
According to him, language isn't determined or given meaning by
intersubjectivism, but has meaning in itself because of it's nature. Well,
anyway-
Davidson in turn says that there is three types of knowledge, knowledge of
the "I", of "the world" and knowledge of others (others minds I suppose).
According to Davidson, these three areas of knowledge cannot independent of
one another give rise to knowledge. You know, if you take Descartes "cogito"
for example, Davidson would argue that the only way that becomes True is if
there is other people that can verify it by putting it into context with
what they have agreed that they know about the world.
(This is probably a very unfair presentation of Davidson's philosophy,
partly that's because I am translating spontaneously from Swedish, and
partly it's because I'm not all that good.)
Communication and interpretation is the basis of Truth, and if you put
Derrida and Davidson together - even thoug one of them says that language is
decided intersubjectively and the other that this is not the case, if we
look at the big picture in relation to Pirsigs statement about language
(actually it was symbol manipulation, right? never mind) as the intellectual
level, it makes sense if you look at it like this:
Humans create a language, and that language then becomes larger than the sum
of it's parts (the humans) and it's nature decides one very crucial thing:
what truth is. Thus truth doesn't exist for any being that doesn't have a
developed language, because it is only with advanced communication and
interpretation among individuals that the concept of truth can arise: and
without the concept of Truth there can be no intellectual level in the MOQ.
This is all very sloppy, but are any of you following me here? What have I
missed?
Regards
chris
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