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Re: What do you think is necessary in order to have an excellentcomposition?
Wow! I leave for a business trip and come back to see that Stefan has
carried the torch on. Excellent. I'll just read here and not respond in
detail. I've already taken this offline with Andy because the strings have
become overally technical for the list. Interesting topic.
Wittgenstein...oh yes, some of my favorite readings (The Investigations,
Blue Book, Brown Book, etc)....the real originator of logical atomism and
language games in my opinion. For him X is Red is also a logical atom,
but
the confusion from subjectivity is eliminated by what he called an
"ostensive definition". So basically, all this fuzziness is worked on in
human evolution of language. Don't know what I mean by "red"? Here, let
me
point at this particular patch of red...."THIS is red"...and I do this
over
and over again with different shade of what I think of as red. Eventually,
we can communicate, without observing the exact same thing, and without
having to posit any objective data. It's worked out based on subjective
sensory perceptions and our common "wiring". Whether we see slightly
different shades is irrelevant. Our brains our designed so that we
eventually establish a common understand and language, so that if I tell
someone to go to the store and buy me a red t-shirt, chances are they will
come back with a shirt I consider red. It may not be my favorite shade,
but
chances are I will agree it is red. Human beings would have perished a
long
time ago if we didn't have this built in ability to generalize our
language.
Wittgenstein uses this interesting examples with the slab of wood...he
starts with this really primitive, cave man style of language to
illustrate
how we build our language and understanding of terms like "red". I point
at
the slab and grunt, "Slab!!!". Do I mean the color, the object, the shape?
It takes a while to determine this based on the process of elimination.
Eventually we build up this complex language based on sense data...and
eventually, in my opinion, an abuse of the language in some areas, such as
the term "Beauty".
Some philosophers have designated this usage as a fallacy, sometimes
called
the fallacy of false substantiation. It is when we assume just because
there
is a word that is a general noun, that it must somehow denote an actual
entity. In other words, folks use the term "beauty", but doing so doesn't
mean there is an actual thing out there we could say is beauty...unless we
are Platonists. It turns out that many modern philosophers and linguists
agree that these terms don't have any object associated with them, but are
constructed to be truncated version of many other terms and observations.
It is an abbreviated way of saying something else. Imagine if everything
time I said something was beautiful, I had to qualify exactly what I meant
down the specific logical atoms that denoted my owen sensory data or
memories of sensory data. It would take hours and we'd never be able to
communicate. It's easier to just use the word and assume we have a common
understand in absence of there being an actual "Thing" out there called
beauty.
Anyone remember the remake of the Planet of the Apes, where the head ape
pries open Taylor's mouth and ask where is his soul? Very similar
topic....albeit a very controversial one.
Kris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Tiedje" <Stefan-Tiedje@addcom.de>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 5:09 AM
Subject: Re: What do you think is necessary in order to have an
excellentcomposition?
> Krispen Hartung wrote:
>> "X is red" and "X is Good" are entirely different. One we can verify,
>the
>> other is empty.
>
> Unfortunately language is sometimes used in an unprecise way. Depending
>on
> the context "X is good" can imply an empty meaningles statement, or is
> just short for "I like X and think its good, look at it, you might come
>to
> the same conclusion". If Krispens says "X is good" (Which he would only
>do
> in a context where the other part can't missunderstand it) I would
>replace
> it with the long sentence. If a virtuoso guitar teacher says Al DiMeola
>is
> a better guitar player than me adding "Thats what I call a good
> guitarist", I'd understand it as a comparison of technical skills etc...
> And if you listen to the collection of "Thats what I call music", you
>know
> that statement is just meaningless bullshit, though its stated as a
> personal view of things --- its obviously not...
>
> Yes Krispen I totally agree to your view, I just added some examplesof
>how
> all the confusion can come up...
> I'd consider Wittgenstein a good reading on the topic as well...
>
> Stefan
>
> --
> Stefan Tiedje------------x-------
> --_____-----------|--------------
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> ----------()--------www.ccmix.com
>
>