Posted by zeugma on October 9, 2005, at 14:46:33
In reply to Re: The albatross, posted by alexandra_k on October 5, 2005, at 22:40:16
Meaning is an artifact of mind / language
There is no meaning apart from mind / language>>
what do you think of Russell's distinction between acquiantance and description? That our descriptive powers enable us to talk about things that aren't real (however you want to parse that), but that acquiantance is something along the lines of an 'encounter', in which there must be a second party present (i.e. an aspect of reality, however you want to parse that)?
Reality is mind- and language- independent, in Russell's formulation. Thus it is a 'realist' formulation.
What is mind-dependent is the amount of reality we can acquiant ourselves with. What is language-dependent is fuzzy, because we have vague predicates, terms whose referents we don't know, etc. Acquiantance itself? well, as someone who has shut himself in for a good part of a decade with Evans' works, I would say that we are acquianted with something if we can subject its usage to the Generality Constraint. Thus, if I am acquianted with (and i really am!) this cup of coffee, this one from the coffee shop down the street, then I can understand such statements as that this cup of coffee has a reasonable milk-to-coffee ratio, that it could be poured into a mug from this styrofoam cup, and that putting it in the microwave would make it too hot for me to tolerate, what with my tender mouth (of course, I would put the coffee in a microwave-safe mug first). This is because I am acquianted with the putative 'universals' that go into each statements (e.g. I know what a reasonable milk-to coffee ratio is, at least relativized to me and further specificied as applying to matters of taste rather than chemical composition- presumably the universal needs to be specified in such a way as to make it immune to twin Earth type objections, or I could not have acquiantance with the universal in question).
As an albatross-related digression, there is an excellent biography of Russell, "Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude", whose title comes from the subtitle of Shelley's poem "Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitude." Russell was a great admirer of Shelley's work. Shelley's poem contains references that appear to be to Wordsworth and Coleridge:
It is a woe too "deep for tears," when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity...Shelley regarded Wordsworth as an example of a poet who sank into "cold tranquillity," becoming a servile friend of a corrupt government, while Coleridge had given way to "pale despair;" reading Coleridge's biography, "Coleridge: Darker Visions" (again, an excellent work) shows how accurate Shelley's characterization was.
End of albatross-related digression.
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:561840
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050910/msgs/564895.html