Tag: categorization

Writegenstein #2: Philosophy of Psychology 205 (Seeing-As)

Britton William FrostLeave a comment

‘How does one play the game: “It could also be this”?

[…] “I see (a) as (b)” might still mean very different things.

Here is a game played by children: they say of a chest, for example, that it is now a house; and thereupon it is interpreted as a house in every detail. A piece of fancy is woven around it.‘

— aphorism 205 of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Philosophy of Psychology” from Philosophical Investigations

It could be this and I see (a) as (b) point to different ways in which one could interpret a material object. That object alone has limited value, if any at all. In a sense, the material aspects of the object are arbitrary compared to the conceptualization of the object on the whole. What is conceptualized of it, i.e. how it is understood, depends on its place in its environment – what use it is to its environment. When children are playing house, they are playing a game. They see a chest as something to use in a game which mimics the game the child sees its parents playing daily and of which they are a part. They do not see it as something with material, mechanical parts as the builder might see it (that is what it would mean simply to see, though the builder may see the bigger picture as well.) They ask “What can we do with this?” and understand the chest to be a house, having already established, and taken for granted, the rules for what constitutes a house.

It does not end there. Playing the game of house is itself a very sophisticated perceptual process. Our ability to formulate and make use of abstraction is perhaps what separates human perception from the perception of other animals – not in terms of form, importantly, but in terms of degree. A cat, for example, will definitely see the chest as something other than a bundle of wood and nails assembled in a particular way. It will almost certainly see it as a scratching post or a place on which or in which to sit or sleep (depending on whether the chest is open or closed and on how tired the cat is), but the cat lacks the ability to conceptualize the chest as anything more than that with which it is afforded these very basic “cativities”, if you will. The reason for this, from an evolutionary standpoint, is that these cativities are all the cat needs to achieve its potential. So, the cat’s abstraction is of the same sort but of a much lower degree than that of the child. The cat’s abstraction is more like that of an infant’s than the young child’s, for an infant, like the cat, only seeks in objects the fulfillment of very basic needs. The only difference between the cat and the infant is the potential of growth and development.

One still might ask “what objective or quantifiable relation is there between a chest and a house?” One should see now, unless one is blinded by a materialist view of reality, that this question now becomes arbitrary because one cannot speak of perception in this example without qualifying the individual subjects’ understanding of it. Perception as we experience it does not seem to be a mere material process. One does not need to understand anything about brain matter to understand something. In fact, it is that understanding that is indeed the goal. One could say that in the cat’s mind there is very little understanding taking place at all, while in the child’s mind there is no limit, especially since the child’s capability for abstract thought will continue to develop. The child understands much more than the cat does. To understand an object, I should say, is to make an abstraction of it – an abstraction that has utility in the greater context of its environment – to allow one to be successful at a game. To see-as, then, is to understand, and vise versa.

On the Categorization of Terms

Britton William FrostLeave a comment

It seems that, since he characterizes language as a whole rather than dealing with the nature of individual words, later-Wittgenstein denies the existence of classes of objects, and thus our accuracy in creating language about them. For example, instead of recognizing the chair as a chair, we would simply recognize the chair as that chair. If his view is accurate, then I think categorization would be better suited for proper nouns rather than objects such as a chair, because reference accuracy in these cases is naturally much more clear, i.e. apply names to named individuals (e.g. Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein). There are many different forms that something we call a chair can take. Of course, as Wittgenstein would agree, there is an endless realm of possible connotations of ‘chair’, but there are certainly objects that we could exclude from the class of ‘chair’, such as a baseball, so there are some current methods of usage by which we must abide when speaking of a chair. However, with the exception of those cases that we can very obviously include and exclude from being connoted by ‘chair’, there are plenty other cases (e.g. a “chair” nailed upside down to the ceiling of an art gallery) that are not so obvious, despite their form or function. At least with individual persons, we know exactly what one is referring to when he mentions ‘Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein’, and we know that he is excluding everything that is not Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein. The line is more clear with proper names. With everything else, not so much. Therefore, categories are irrelevant from a philosophical standpoint and need not exist at all. They only exist within a specific context.

However, more generally, if we apply the word ‘chair’ to a baseball, and if the majority of language-users, after using the term ‘chair’ to refer to a baseball by way of its constant usage in that context, eventually came to use ‘chair’ to connote a baseball (out of unconscious social habit, not conscious agreement), then this would have become an acceptable definition, or use, of ‘chair’. For now, this is not the case. If we used ‘chair’ to connote a baseball, we would not be adhering to chair’s current method of usage, and that usage would be rejected in a social and definitive light and thus in this philosophical one. Though, after much such usage, very gradually, and not at any one particular moment, ‘chair’ could certainly come to connote a baseball. It would, at that point, have become a collective social habit and therefore semantically correct.

Syntax = Semantics

Current Methods of Usage can be applied to both syntactical and semantic rules. In fact, it has deeper implications that there is very little difference, if any at all, between the functions of syntax and semantics.

We traditionally think of syntax as being the grammatical rules of language: punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, etc. Such rules formalize language so our expressions are precise and easily understood. Semantics, on the other hand, is supposed to deal with reference and connotation. The forms, but only the forms, of syntax and semantics are different. However, their functions (which is to say ‘their purpose’) point to the same thing: communication. One can arguably not exist without the other if effective communication is to occur. Syntax and semantics are dependent upon one another like two sides to the same coin. One side is not worth more than the other (as Tractatus would argue that syntax would carry more weight, and semantics is simply incidental). They are both necessary for communication, and therefore, equal in value, especially in spoken language. They are like categories, as described above, and therefore have no philosophical value per se.