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NL-KR Digest Volume 02 No. 54
NL-KR Digest (6/12/87 06:43:32) Volume 2 Number 54
Today's Topics:
(Philosophy)
Re: Natural Languages: They're about the World
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Date: Thu, 4 Jun 87 16:01 EDT
From: wex@milano.UUCP
Subject: Re: Natural Languages: They're about the World
In article <6792@mimsy.UUCP>, mangoe@mimsy.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes:
> Let me take CS Lewis's example:
> he wrote that whenever he thought of London he tended to have an image of
> Euston Station. In the sense that one can think anything about London, it
> is rather unlikely to be true in relationship to an image of London as
> Euston Station. In this wise, it is hard for me to agree that the
> intentionality of Lewis's thoughts about London were directed at the image
> of the station.
This is not a problem, I think. The intentionality of his thoughts
about London is just London, the real, physical city. That he has a
particular image of the station is not a problem. He may have
thoughts about that station (which thoughts are directed at the
station) or about his mental image (intentionality == image).
However, thoughts about London are just that, thoughts about London.
Not about images of London (though I do not deny that we may have such
images). This is not the same problem as the horse - see below.
> I think that an image of a "no-horse-in-particular" horse is therefore not
> the target of intentionality; if it becomes the target, it is really now a
> particular imaginary horse. My feeling is that, if it avoids this, the
> image is the objectification of "horseness", or if you prefer, the
> objectification of what the commonality is in the class of horses.
No. To create a mental image of a horse is not to objectify anything.
In fact, that image may be highly atypical - not at all what is common
to horses. Further, having an image of a particular imaginary horse
is not the same as having thoughts about "horses" in general. Nor
does the latter lead to the former.
--
Alan Wexelblat
ARPA: WEX@MCC.COM
UUCP: {seismo, harvard, gatech, pyramid, &c.}!sally!im4u!milano!wex
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 87 16:09 EDT
From: wex@milano.UUCP
Subject: Re: Natural Languages: They're about the World
In article <2199@hoptoad.uucp>, laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton) writes:
> What do you mean by ``self-referential levels of intentionality''?
> Can a thought refer to itself?
Yes, it can. In fact, it's inevitable that thoughts have some
component of self-directedness. That is, I am having *this* thought
about the keyboard. Which is different from *this* thought about the
keyboard.
There is a fine line between self-reference, self-directedness, and
self-awareness. In fact, this chain was followed by philosophers who
came after Brentano, including Husserl and eventually Sartre (who
developed the self-awareness component to what he saw as its logical
extention).
To recap the main point: the intentionality of a thought is not only
the object at which it is directed. It also includes a component of
self-reference.
--
Alan Wexelblat
ARPA: WEX@MCC.COM
UUCP: {seismo, harvard, gatech, pyramid, &c.}!sally!im4u!milano!wex
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 87 21:50 EDT
From: Frank Adams <franka@mmintl.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Natural Languages: They're about the World
In article <4652@milano.UUCP| wex@milano.UUCP writes:
|In article <6792@mimsy.UUCP|, mangoe@mimsy.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes:
|| Let me take CS Lewis's example:
|| he wrote that whenever he thought of London he tended to have an image of
|| Euston Station.
|
|This is not a problem, I think. The intentionality of his thoughts
|about London is just London, the real, physical city. That he has a
|particular image of the station is not a problem. He may have
|thoughts about that station (which thoughts are directed at the
|station) or about his mental image (intentionality == image).
|However, thoughts about London are just that, thoughts about London.
All right, but suppose we replace London by an imaginary city: Gondor[1].
Suppose my mental image of Gondor, what I visualize when I think of it, is
that of Denethor burning. Certainly this does not make the intentionality
of my thoughts be that image! Yet there is no real Gondor to be the image,
either.
[1] I am assuming familiarity with Tolkien's _Lord_of_the_Rings here. The
argument should be intelligable to one who has not read that work, however.
--
Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 87 12:28 EDT
From: wex@milano.UUCP
Subject: Re: Natural Languages: They're about the World
In article <2168@mmintl.UUCP>, franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
> All right, but suppose we replace London by an imaginary city: Gondor[1].
> Suppose my mental image of Gondor, what I visualize when I think of it, is
> that of Denethor burning. Certainly this does not make the intentionality
> of my thoughts be that image! Yet there is no real Gondor to be the image,
> either.
I don't see why this is supposed to be a problem. If you have a
mental image of a place you are thinking about, that doesn't
contradict the notion that you are thinking about the place. Try
this:
If you think about Gondor and have image A, and I think about Gondor
and have image B, both our thoughts are directed at the same city
(even though it is not-real). If we were to converse about these
thoughts, we would readily agree that they were about the same city.
This is not the same as Laura's horse example (which is what got us
here). If we both think about "a horse" (with images A1 and B1), it
would seem that there is no way we can say we are thinking about the
same horse.
To take one step farther back, we can now see that thoughts about
Gondor (or London) are R-class, whereas thoughts about "a horse" are
I-class. This is why I put quotes around `real' and `imaginary' in my
original article about R- and I-class thoughts. The concepts real and
imaginary are taken with respect to the preconceptions of the thinker
(what he knows at the time of his thinking).
Is this helping?
--
Alan Wexelblat
ARPA: WEX@MCC.COM
UUCP: {seismo, harvard, gatech, pyramid, &c.}!sally!im4u!milano!wex
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 87 12:02 EDT
From: M.BRILLIANT <marty1@houdi.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Natural Languages: They're about the World
In article <4676@milano.UUCP>, wex@milano.UUCP writes:
>
> If you think about Gondor and have image A, and I think about Gondor
> and have image B, both our thoughts are directed at the same city
> (even though it is not-real). If we were to converse about these
> thoughts, we would readily agree that they were about the same city.
I'm not sure we would, but I'll let that pass.
> This is not the same as Laura's horse example (which is what got us
> here). If we both think about "a horse" (with images A1 and B1), it
> would seem that there is no way we can say we are thinking about the
> same horse.
>
> To take one step farther back, we can now see that thoughts about
> Gondor (or London) are R-class, whereas thoughts about "a horse" are
> I-class. This is why I put quotes around `real' and `imaginary' in my
> original article about R- and I-class thoughts. The concepts real and
> imaginary are taken with respect to the preconceptions of the thinker
> (what he knows at the time of his thinking).
I think the basic distinction is not between real and imaginary, but
between particular and categorical. If you think about Gondor (or
London), with different images, you are thinking about different
aspects of the same particular city. If you both think about "a horse"
you are thinking about different members of the same category, but you
are still thinking about the same category. Analogous with Gondor
would be thinking about the great horse Silver ("the Lone Ranger rides
again"). Even if you have different images of Silver, derived from
different movies in which different real horses represented Silver, you
are thinking about the same (imaginary) Silver.
However, the individual Silver is less particular than the individual
Citation. The reality on which Silver is based is a composite of many
real representations, whereas the reality of Citation rests on a real
horse, even though known to some only through representations. So we
have a hierarchy: (1) real individuals, (2) implicit (imaginary)
individuals consisting of a category of realities, (3) other categories
of real individuals not tagged by a concept of an imaginary individual,
and (4) categories of imaginary individuals (categories of categories).
M. B. Brilliant Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520 (201)-949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733 ihnp4!houdi!marty1
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 87 14:33 EDT
From: wex@milano.UUCP
Subject: Re: Natural Languages: They're about the World
In article <3999@sdcc3.ucsd.EDU>, ma188saa@sdcc3.ucsd.EDU (Steve Bloch) writes:
> I object to equating "real" with "physical".
You are correct to do so. It's a fault of my use of the English
language, not a philosophical position I hold. See my recent article
about Gondor.
> Would someone be so kind as to post the original definition of
> "intentionality", by Brandon or whatever the name was?
The philosopher's name was Brentano, though his definition is used by
the phenomenologists that followed him (notably Husserl). The
intentionality of a thought is the name given to its (complex)
"directedness" property. That is, when I think thoughts those
thoughts seem to be "about" something.
--
Alan Wexelblat
ARPA: WEX@MCC.COM
UUCP: {seismo, harvard, gatech, pyramid, &c.}!sally!im4u!milano!wex
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End of NL-KR Digest
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