From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jim Choate To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu In-Reply-To: <20010702133239.35889199E3@mail.cse.psu.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: [9fans] Re: Plan 9 (in)security Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 08:52:32 -0500 Topicbox-Message-UUID: c2be7a96-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 On Mon, 2 Jul 2001 forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk wrote: > >> Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. > >> > >> Ludwig Wittgenstein > > Anderson: Ah .... I would only like to offer Professor Stone the > observation that language is not the only level of human communication, Language is a mechanism, not a level. > and perhaps not the most important level. Reality is observer dependent, what is important to you may be irrelevant to me. > Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we are by no means silent. Duh. > Verbal language is a technical refinement of our capacity for communication, > rather than the fons et origo of that capacity. That is certainly one way to look at it, universal it is not. > The likelihood is that language develops in an ad hoc way, so there is no > reason to expect its development to be logical. Duh. Of course 'ad hoc' does represent one form of 'logic'. > [A thought strikes him.] The importance of language is overrated. When did you discover you had direct thought transfer? Have you seen a shrink for this delusion? > It allows me and Professor Stone to show > off a bit, and it is very useful for communicating detail -- but the > important truths are simple and monolithic. There are no 'truths', important or otherwise. Only viewpoints. There are 'facts', they however are not 1-to-1 with the concept of 'truth'. > The essentials of a given > situation speak for themselves, and language is as capable of obscuring the > truth as of revealing it. ... You confuse mechanism and motivation, language is a coding mechanism and has no goals in and of itself. As to my use of the quote, I'm not the first to point out that Wittgenstein himself certainly wrote a lot about stuff he claimed couldn't be spoken of. The obvious implication of a statement is not always the correct one. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Ludwig Wittgenstein The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------