From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Fri 01 Nov 2002 - 09:33:16 GMT
>
> On Thursday, October 31, 2002, at 05:00 , joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
> > Language categorizes the objects and processes of the world
> > according to common descriptions. These descriptions are
> > type-descriptions, and each is apploed to many tokens of that type.
> > You can ask Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Fodor, Benveniste, Lakoff, and
> > any number of differing (on other issues) linguists and language
> > philosophers; this is one they agree upon.
>
> These are descriptions, yes, but are they what language is actually
> _doing_?
>
They are how languages are constructed, and in the absence of such
construction they could not _do_ anything.
>
> > It is a different behavior to look at or speak of a different tree,
> > so they cannot collectively be called trees any more
>
> It _is_ a different behavior- each behavior across time _is_ a
> different behavior- no-one or nothing can do in the next moment what
> they did a moment ago. That moment, as well as the conditions of that
> moment, are passed. And of course all trees can all be called trees.
> They _are_ all trees. (But, call them anything you like, the tree
> remains.) Just as all behaviors _are_ all behaviors.
>
That is to acknowledge that they are all tokens of a type, and to
establish a similarity between them. But the similarities are closer.
Pine trees are more closely related to each other than they are to oaks,
and instances of humming '"Stairway to Heaven" are closer to each
other than they are to instances of Tae Bo workouts (or even to
instances of humming "Somewhere over the Rainbow".
>
> I ask again, what do _names_ have to do with something? At all?
> Period? The name of something _is_ a type/token object, yes, but it is
> not the thing itself.
>
Language works because it reasonably represents the reality it purports
to stand for. The DNA of pine tree A is more closely related to the DNA
of pine tree B, I'll wager, than it is to the DNA of any oak tree you can
find.
>
> I fail to see what the categories of names has to do with the actual
> process of the way language is physically happening in the brain.
>
You fail to see a lot. The brain is a categorizer. If it had to deal with
every object and action sui generis, without placing them in similarity
sets, we'd have to trundle our brains around in wheelbarrows for them
to work at all.
>
> "The name of the song is 'Haddock's Eyes', but the song actually is
> 'Sitting on a Gate'."
>
The description you are giving is 'beme', but its actual identity is 'meme-
generated behavior.'
>
> - Wade
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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