Re: investigation, definitions & logic
- From: "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:38:33 -0500 (EST)
MESSAGE SEVEN
Please forgive message six for focusing on more than one specific point. No
point in these messages exists unto itself alone; but one can be FOCUSED on,
and others which BY NECESSITY impact and/or are impacted by it, can be kept
as quiet as possible. Shall try harder to do that.
And now, as promised early in Message Six, let's focus on the issue of
"definition vs. designation."
BACKGROUND
PLEASE UNDERSTAND that this old layman's purpose in offering these messages
is NOT to rehash all the enormous number of observations and thoughts of
philosophers such as Plato and others who (according to Alfred North
Whitehead) have but written footnotes to Plato's observations (which, though
it have a grain of validity, also has made a many a naive and shallow
perceive himself to have something wise to offer to even the most astute
conversation). This old layman seeks to share by designating some of the
roots of issues you and I and ALL may see for ourselves, or disagree with as
much as we choose. The purpose of these messages is to communicate the best
efforts out of his life and thoughts, so far, to MAKE SENSE of some things
that seem to him both profound AND seemingly simple and obvious, and which
he believes YOU TOO will identify with in many particulars, if you think
about them. FOR PURPOSES OF these purposes here, I beg you to explore not
what thought Plato or Descartes or Immanuel Kant or any other, but what do
YOU think, WHEN you focus on some of the roots of things those philosophical
geniuses were up against -- as surely as you and I -- an NO HUMAN can prove
or disprove. This old layman CONCURS with the observation of Nobel Laureate
John F. Nash in his opinionation that it is better (sometimes) to do
something with one's OWN mind, rather than going to classes and memorizing
and regurgitating what others have done with THEIRS. This is not to say we
should not go to classes and learn. It is to say, also, let us THINK
TOGETHER, and THINK IN PRIVATE and hence be not merely "recorders and
players back" of the ideas of others... but PARTICIPANTS in reasoning, as
well..
And now let us focus together the flashlight of our thinking on the
difference between "definitions and designations."
First we need to lay on the table of our thinking some things that, while
not the primary focus in THIS message, were focused on earlier and IMPACT
AND/OR ARE IMPACTED BY what we will focus on "definitions vs designations."
If you have not read and thought deeply about some of the seemingly simple
and obvious points made prior to this message, you may not recognize them in
the following form:
1. Without some COMMONALITY of sensory experience with some common empirical
consistencies therein, no human would have any "cognitive reference" from
which to EXTRAPOLATE and thence "reason" or "communicate with another
concerning" any *FIRST PRINCIPLES*, nor any first cause, nor even an absence
of first cause. And what is more, without any concept of *FIRST PRINCIPLES*,
or first cause, there could be no *PURE REASON" to be imagined -- much less
applied -- as applicable or inapplicable to anything... nor any "thing"
imaginable as having the potential to exist. For where there were no
experience, there would be no
concept of it, and thence no significance to attach to "number," nor to
"comparative number," nor to "value," nor to "comparative value;" nor to any
"operation" whereby one "thing" might be deemed as being other in its to
relation to another thing different prior to manifestation of that
"operation" than before it, by virtue of
said operation. Nor would any cause be assignable, by virtue of any First
Principle or "a priori condition" whereby any change or motion might be
possible nor even imaginable. And what the foregoing add up to, is that man
has no reason but by virtue of experience. We may refer FOR PURPOSES OF
present examination of "logic" that it is not in the least invented by the
human mind, but INDUCED by human sensory experience.
2. But, unfortunately, human "experience" is at best partial in space and
time (that is, no man can be in all places at all times and observing all
things from all sides similtaneously). Neither is the mind of a human
capable of grasping even the paltry few little things and events that he is
privy to in a single hour or less of his lifetime. (A good reader can read a
lot of names and addresses in a telephone directory in minutes. But few, if
any, could close the directory and recite them. And it should not be
necessary to consider all the events of change and motion which have
occurred on Earth during that small span of time, nor much less in the
appariverse.
And with those two points in mind (I hope) we can zoom in on the difference
between "designation" on the one hand
and "definition" on the other. (And PLEASE do not accuse this old man of
proposing we do away with the word "definition." The purpose here is to lay
on the table of your communication with me, and my communication with you,
some understanding of WHAT ALL IS INVOLVED in defining or designating things
when we share ideas about them.
To designate is to refer to something which already is in one's own mind
and/or in the mind of another... by way of
common experience. For example, if I mention to you a "hypotenuse" I am
referring to something that coexists in your head and with mine by way of
some rather complex associations of things PROBABLY cueing up some similar
pictures of right triangles. If I say to you something regarding "the
hypotenuse of a 30-degree angle" you probably are going to
discern, as I do, that I have proffered an oxymoron. "Only a RIGHT triangle
has a hypotenuse," you might very well object.
And if I were to ask why you would say that, I expect you might reply to the
effect that it is by "definition."
Then we may look at "a" definition of hypotenuse in a source book we
mutually agree is "authoritative."
For instant purposes let us see what the Houghton-Mifflin eReference offers
us on it:
" hypotenuse -- n. The side of a right triangle opposite the right angle."
Now let me say that I "designated" something in your mind, which is held (if
not exactly the same, at least in ways that might be sufficient FOR PURPOSES
OF whatever point I would wish to get at here. I did not "define" it by
simply speaking a word that triggered a certain appropriate image, or set of
images, or whatever it triggered in your head.
So far, so good.
NOW, take a look at the would-be "definition" offered by Houghton-Mifflin.
Is that a "definition?"
My stance is that, if it were, then we could find ourselves a bright young
child who never heard of a hypotenuse, nor a right angle, nor a right
triangle and voice the alleged definition, and bingo... Into that child's
head would pop all that the definition provides.
The P0INT in this message is not to DEFINE "DEFINE." It is to clarify
between you and me FOR PURPOSES OF
our communicating meaningfully about definitions some seemingly simple and
obvious differences between what are
definitive acts as opposed to designative acts, when we communicate.
And not another POINT we need to COLLIDE with that one is this:
What IS is what IS, and not what we humans PERCEIVE it to be...
notwithstanding how accurate or how inaccurate that may be.
And now let us take it to a higher philosophical level and say that a
definition is not the thing defined. It is an ARTIFACT.
Let me repeat for emphasis and close this message here, because this is a
point which some very, very smart people sometimes -- per this old layman's
experience -- TEND TO FORGET.
ALL DEFINITIONS ARE ARTIFACTS. And, hence, it is NAIVE of any two of us to
debate any such frivolous thing as what "the" definition of something IS,
such as "the" definition of evolution, or "the" definition of space, or
"the" definition of time, or "the" definition of morality, or "the"
definition even of something so intuitive as "the" definition of a
hypotenuse.
ALL our attempts at defining are little more than attempts to call up in our
own individual minds what in blazes we wish to contemplate, and hoping to
call up in the mind of another some experiential references in his mind that
are sufficient FOR PURPOSES OF whatever it is we would like to contemplate
TOGETHER... or, if ego is one of our monsters... to bludgeon the other's
mind with our perceived corner on the market of understanding.
So ends Message Seven. In the next message, which probably will be Message
Eight, I shall share with you some points this old layman perceives to be
ENORMOUSLY important to you (and also to me) concerning the significance of
what is meant by "FOR PURPOSES OF." Simply and obvious. Right? Well.... let's
not be too sure until we look a little deeper. Okay?
(:>)
g
.
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