necessary recursivity in language
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Originally Posted by JustMovement
I recommend Dreyfus' critique of AI: "What Computers Can't Do",

Haven't found it in the internet, but this paper, Can computers think like humans, by Setargew Kenaw Fantaw, that refers to it, seems quite to the point. I would particularly underline this:

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Originally Posted by Fantaw
The third feature we need to consider is context-dependent ambiguity reduction. This means the human brain, unlike computers, interprets things on the basis of information that the context of perception provides. When using language or performing any task, we do it within a context. When we hear a certain sentence, we capture its meaning because it is uttered in certain context. Otherwise, were we to hear them free of any context there would always be ambiguities. Sentences are heard

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Originally Posted by Dreyfus
in the appropriate way because the context organizes the perception; and since sentences are not perceived except in context they are always perceived with the narrow range of meanings the context confers.
(all emphases mine)

Which reinforces what I have written in the other thread:

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Originally Posted by Luís Henrique
To take Wittgenstein's insight of "language games" seriously, the problem with logic classes is that they completely remove "propositions" from any actual context.

I don't think "X is tall" where X is the name of a human being is a common kind of sentence in common discourse. It seems ackward in any living context that I can imagine. Of course, sentences such as, "Phil is the tallest of them", "Phil is taller than Mark", "The suspect is a tall man", "Phil is tall for his age", etc., are common sentences, and they may imply the idea that Phil is tall. But a sentence like "Phil is tall" seems to only belong in two not too "ordinary" "language games": the one that is played in English language classes for foreigners, and the one that is played in Logic classes.

Again, if we stick with Wittgenstein, there is a problem with the game that is played in Logic classes: it mistakenly assumes that removing sentences from their usual context, or "language games" is a neutral operation, that has no effect on their meaning.

If Wittgenstein is right, such assumption is not only false, but it accounts for many of the problems with philosophy. If he is right, Logic classes are like a kind of morgue for sentences, where they are subjected to procedures that are analogue to forensic anatomy procedures. But while coroners understand that they are analysing corpses, not living people, logicians fail to make the distinction.

Or you could think of Wittgenstein's insight as the linguistic equivalent to quantum physics: when you observe a sentence, just like when you observe a particle, observation itself affects the observed item (but this in turn requires a much more careful use of words than his "look how words are used").


"A self-referential sentence G's meaning cannot be determined until each of its constituent's meaning is determined; one of G's constituent is G itself, thus G's meaning cannot be determined because G contains a vicious circle." - The problem with this is that it supposes that the "meaning" of a sentence does not imply the whole language in which it is expressed. But it does; a sentence in English implies the whole language, and so there is no possibility that it is not, on some level, metalinguistic.


Again, if we stick with Wittgenstein, there is a problem with the game that is played in Logic classes: it mistakenly assumes that removing sentences from their usual context, or "language games" is a neutral operation, that has no effect on their meaning.

If Wittgenstein is right, such assumption is not only false, but it accounts for many of the problems with philosophy. If he is right, Logic classes are like a kind of morgue for sentences, where they are subjected to procedures that are analogue to forensic anatomy procedures. But while coroners understand that they are analysing corpses, not living people, logicians fail to make the distinction.

Or you could think of Wittgenstein's insight as the linguistic equivalent to quantum physics: when you observe a sentence, just like when you observe a particle, observation itself affects the observed item (but this in turn requires a much more careful use of words than his "look how words are used").

Of course, restablishing the notion that sentences, far from being complete in and of themselves, are part of a greater system - that of language, or of human communication, etc. - in itself brings back what Mr. Natural, in the other thread, has been calling "philosophy of internal relations", ie, dialectics. It also puts the lie to the notion that "Phil is tall" (or any other sentence, of course) is a "simple proposition": there are no simple propositions; each proposition implies the whole language. Wittgenstein as Jakob Boehme, or are we misunderstanding something here?

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