tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4718931137844429374.post1979471969024010498..comments2023-04-06T03:04:29.318-05:00Comments on The Bounds of Cognition: Menary on the Harbour BridgeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08539727534751588479noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4718931137844429374.post-24043586835705940082011-01-10T15:43:05.786-06:002011-01-10T15:43:05.786-06:00Your non-acceptance of the PLA drove me back to Sc...Your non-acceptance of the PLA drove me back to Scruton's discussion of it in "Modern Phil". And although I stick with the conclusion I remembered (no PL), I discovered that I had missed the more important (and, I think, relevant here) conclusions. Plus, I now see possible connections between EPM, PLA, and DD's triangulation, connections I have felt all along had to be there.<br /><br />First, the PLA conclusions:<br /><br />C1, There can be no private language. <br />C2. A public language can't refer (Fregean sense) to a private object. <br />C3. A word mistakenly taken to be a name for a private object can nonetheless have use in a public language.<br /><br />The connections:<br /><br />W's argument for C1 is essentially the inability to triangulate ala DD.<br /><br />C2 is captured in W's quote about the "beetles" in their boxes: "A nothing would do as well as a something about which nothing can be said".<br /><br />Sellars' mythical genius Jones teaches the Ryleans (via his overt speech model) how to augment their language ala C3 to enable speech about "thoughts" while not suggesting that the words have referents other than in the model.<br /><br />So, I recant my previous take on the meaning of thoughts and now submit that:<br /><br />1. Whatever a "thought" is (or isn't), it's currently private, hence can't be a referent in contemporary speech.<br />2. Nonetheless,"thought words" are used in our public language, so we are Post-Jonesians who have taken his teaching to heart.<br />3. Predicating "thought" does not currently produce a truth bearing sentence, eg, "Thought has content X" or "My thought is Y."<br /><br />So, one can say "My thought is that Harbor Bridge is beautiful this AM", but that doesn't define the content of an entity named "thought" as being the sentence following "that", since "thought" has no referent which could be a vehicle for content.<br /><br />Of course, any or all of this could be wrong (or worse!), but if it happens to hang together, you still appear to be OK.<br /><br />My position du jour on unvocalized sentences is: <br /><br />The verbal mental image of a sentence is a "virtual activation" (an undefined concept) of a neural entity that can be activated to effect vocalization of the sentence. To whatever extent (if any) an unvocalized but vocalizable sentence has "meaning", it's meaning is the same as that of the vocalized sentence per the relevant community. But this no longer seems to me relevant to the issue at hand.Charles T. Wolvertonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12309746685166449683noreply@blogger.com