I enjoyed this post very much and am glad to have caught it. I was interested in each of these three points and was especially struck by the Wittgenstein point. Thank you for sharing! (And I hope to go back through your previous posts as soon as I get a chance!)
Your studying your own condition reminds me of "metacognition" and other terms writers have used to point out the recursive, Escher-like quality of this phenomena. Neuroscientists have brains in which they seek to understand the nature of the brain: is there some sort of huge gap that will ensue from such a thing? If fish study fish, would they ever be able to "joots" (Jumping Outside Of The System: D. Hofstadter) and see that they're in water and other thinking beings are not? Etc.
Following from your Wittgenstein stuff: I was heavily influenced by the similar but now marginalized discourse of General Semantics. Its formulator, Alfred Korzybski, argued that "the map is not the territory." The menu is not the meal. You can't bit your own teeth, etc. One of his acolytes took him at his word and argued there's a bug in the structure of Indo-European languages: the copula and its forms, esp "is." (am/is/are/was/were/be): we especially get into trouble when we use "is" as an identity:
EX: "Robert is boring." I might "be" boring to you, but I "am" also other very many other "things" to other people, and myself. Robert and some of his utterances have STRUCTURE that can be delineated mathematically, and that's all that Korzybski took for knowledge: something that can be characterized in math with structure. He sought to mathematize our conscious use of language. (He ran into a lot of problems but I find his magnum opus, Science and Sanity [1933] cranky, repetitive, and marvelous. He's really great about amorphous nouns like God, freedom, democracy, etc: Be much more specific, please!)
I loved how Wittgenstein radically pivoted in 1953 with his Philosophical Investigations. His Tractatus was the ur-text for Analytical Philosophy, then he abandoned it. My favorite philosophers - like Rorty - think the "linguistic turn" harmed Philosophy, and I agree.
I look forward to your multivarious investigations into autism, Ms. Moore, and I hate to break it to ya, but you're a writer. And a good one!
Yes! I enjoy those metacognition-type theories when I encounter them, although I only remember vague outlines. As you can see I've been studying lately Wittgenstein, and he also has a take about our limits to understand mental processes, given that we're seeking to understand them within the limits of the processes themselves. But I also find that my brain gets scrunched trying to follow such arguments and I can only dip into them for so long before I need a break. Perhaps attesting to their truth?
You always turn up the best references and connections! I'm going to look up Korzybski, I'm intrigued by what you've written.
I enjoyed this post very much and am glad to have caught it. I was interested in each of these three points and was especially struck by the Wittgenstein point. Thank you for sharing! (And I hope to go back through your previous posts as soon as I get a chance!)
Thank you Anna! And thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate it!
Your studying your own condition reminds me of "metacognition" and other terms writers have used to point out the recursive, Escher-like quality of this phenomena. Neuroscientists have brains in which they seek to understand the nature of the brain: is there some sort of huge gap that will ensue from such a thing? If fish study fish, would they ever be able to "joots" (Jumping Outside Of The System: D. Hofstadter) and see that they're in water and other thinking beings are not? Etc.
Following from your Wittgenstein stuff: I was heavily influenced by the similar but now marginalized discourse of General Semantics. Its formulator, Alfred Korzybski, argued that "the map is not the territory." The menu is not the meal. You can't bit your own teeth, etc. One of his acolytes took him at his word and argued there's a bug in the structure of Indo-European languages: the copula and its forms, esp "is." (am/is/are/was/were/be): we especially get into trouble when we use "is" as an identity:
EX: "Robert is boring." I might "be" boring to you, but I "am" also other very many other "things" to other people, and myself. Robert and some of his utterances have STRUCTURE that can be delineated mathematically, and that's all that Korzybski took for knowledge: something that can be characterized in math with structure. He sought to mathematize our conscious use of language. (He ran into a lot of problems but I find his magnum opus, Science and Sanity [1933] cranky, repetitive, and marvelous. He's really great about amorphous nouns like God, freedom, democracy, etc: Be much more specific, please!)
I loved how Wittgenstein radically pivoted in 1953 with his Philosophical Investigations. His Tractatus was the ur-text for Analytical Philosophy, then he abandoned it. My favorite philosophers - like Rorty - think the "linguistic turn" harmed Philosophy, and I agree.
I look forward to your multivarious investigations into autism, Ms. Moore, and I hate to break it to ya, but you're a writer. And a good one!
Yes! I enjoy those metacognition-type theories when I encounter them, although I only remember vague outlines. As you can see I've been studying lately Wittgenstein, and he also has a take about our limits to understand mental processes, given that we're seeking to understand them within the limits of the processes themselves. But I also find that my brain gets scrunched trying to follow such arguments and I can only dip into them for so long before I need a break. Perhaps attesting to their truth?
You always turn up the best references and connections! I'm going to look up Korzybski, I'm intrigued by what you've written.
Also... thank you! I appreciate that!