Broken_Erika
Play with me.
The early bird gets the worm, but look what happens to the early worm.
Aphorisms You Might Have Heard
- Thread starter Lemon Merchant
- Start date
Some discussion of proverbs (and other stuff) as categories.
I don't agree with his view that proverbs such as the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing are typically acting from the bottom up (by forming a tie to the cases when one, say as a child, heard of them used, and never really looking at them analytically -or rather so purely analytically that the case-tied influence is negated- to replace that instance-tied use). Hofstadter seems to be arguing that the residue from instances (forgotten or not) where such phrases were used, is playing a crucial role in how you use them, but this may not be true.
At any rate, this particular phrase comes from the new testament, iirc (?). It just means that there is a blind spot or gap of information flow, leading to parts acting without any knowledge of what the counterpart is doing. If one would have heard this phrase, for example, about a disorganized military campaign, why would he be unable to distinguish (to a degree which can become conscious, anyway) between the military use and the overall use, OR (which seems to be closer to what Hofstadter claims) why would he need to use any instances where the proverb was used so as to get to an assessment of its general use?
To use a parallel, if your first sense of death is tied to some parental advice to not get too close to the edge of the balcony, would that mean that "death" for you has perpetually elements which are tangled with balconies and height and fall? Maybe it does, but not to any conscious degree, since at the moment it would become conscious it would be pushed aside. Still, even if we assume it is there and never to become conscious, what is there to differentiate it from the use of death by someone who lacked a high balcony in their childhood home?
Arguing that such tangled unconscious foundations are indirectly manifested in how you use language, has the issue of not being provable either way. Intuitively it seems to me that it is rather categories themselves as notions that ultimately lead to a stable use of any phrase or term or... category.
I don't agree with his view that proverbs such as the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing are typically acting from the bottom up (by forming a tie to the cases when one, say as a child, heard of them used, and never really looking at them analytically -or rather so purely analytically that the case-tied influence is negated- to replace that instance-tied use). Hofstadter seems to be arguing that the residue from instances (forgotten or not) where such phrases were used, is playing a crucial role in how you use them, but this may not be true.
At any rate, this particular phrase comes from the new testament, iirc (?). It just means that there is a blind spot or gap of information flow, leading to parts acting without any knowledge of what the counterpart is doing. If one would have heard this phrase, for example, about a disorganized military campaign, why would he be unable to distinguish (to a degree which can become conscious, anyway) between the military use and the overall use, OR (which seems to be closer to what Hofstadter claims) why would he need to use any instances where the proverb was used so as to get to an assessment of its general use?
To use a parallel, if your first sense of death is tied to some parental advice to not get too close to the edge of the balcony, would that mean that "death" for you has perpetually elements which are tangled with balconies and height and fall? Maybe it does, but not to any conscious degree, since at the moment it would become conscious it would be pushed aside. Still, even if we assume it is there and never to become conscious, what is there to differentiate it from the use of death by someone who lacked a high balcony in their childhood home?
Arguing that such tangled unconscious foundations are indirectly manifested in how you use language, has the issue of not being provable either way. Intuitively it seems to me that it is rather categories themselves as notions that ultimately lead to a stable use of any phrase or term or... category.
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Gödel, Escher, Bach is genius. I love that Hofstadter was a mathematician. It's sort of necessary to understand Gödel's work, but still it's unusual for intellectual/philosophical work to come out of the field. The practitioners tend to be too abstract for the task.
J
J
I think there is an issue when one tries to mix something mathematical with something more abstract, and even Hoftstadter does it a few times in his GEB - which indeed is a very nice book
Although the Godel theorem - speaking about the incompleteness one - doesn't require much mathematics to understand, which is also why it is a popular topic in philosophy as well (not just philosophy of math).
My impression has been, from reading GEB, that it is certainly highly valuable in helping one form a view about Godel's formal system theorems. Other books on the subject I have seen tend to be hugely more austere, which can create problems for non-mathematicians. In fact my only (and that very slight) annoyance with GEB was that he could have talked about Godel even more, instead of going on various tangents (mostly biology and possibility of AI - the latter is a different type of tangent, since he doesn't focus as much on Godel-Church-Turing there).
GinandTonic
Saphire w/ Schweps + Lime
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- May 25, 2005
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Inside every fat book there is a thin book trying to get out.
