Category: Chauncey Riddle

April 1987

1.   If a right is not:

• a.   A natural process that would happen anyway.
  Example: Growing old.
• b.   A social requirement inflicted on someone no matter what his will.
  Example: Income taxes.

2.   Then perhaps a right is a freedom granted to a person by another person or group of persons.

3.   The people of the United States grant rights to individuals such as:

• a.   The right to or not to vote.
• b.   The right to or not to leave the country.
• c.   The right to or not to sue.
• d.   The right to or not to kill unborn babies.
• e.   The right to or not to have an attorney when charged with a crime.

4.   Parents sometimes grant rights to their children, such as:

• a.   The right to or not to take the family automobile.
• b.   The right to or not to attend church.
• c.   The right to or not to keep a messy room.

5.   God grants only one right to His children:

• a.   The right to label good and evil.
• b.   The ability to choose and to do good or evil is not a right. No one has a right to do evil before God.

6.   Observations about rights:

• a.   A right is worth only the power invested by the granting agency to guarantee that right.
  Example: If the government does not assure that you can vote when you get to the polls, your “right to vote” is worthless.
• b.   Rights may be withdrawn by the granting agency.
  Example: Martial law suspends many individual rights.
• c.   There is and can be no “right to life,” for no one can guarantee it. What government presently guarantees is freedom from government harassment if one aborts one’s child. But in a recent court case it was decided that mother’s do not have the right to abuse their unborn children with drugs and then give birth to them.
• d.   There is no right to health, for no one can guarantee it.
• e.   There is no right to education, for no one can guarantee it. But some societies guarantee a right to schooling.
• f.    There is no right to be free from racial discrimination, for no one can enforce it. But there is a right to sue and obtain damages for racial discrimination in specific contexts (e.g., hiring) if such can be proved in a court of law.
• g.   Who has rights to the public treasury? Only those who have legal entitlements. Do AIDS victims have a right to research money to find a cure for the disease quickly? Only if some government body passes a law to that effect.
• h.   God wills that men grant each other the rights to protection of life, freedom of conscience, and the right to control of property. Any society that grants its citizens these rights must be upheld by citizens if they are servants of God. Otherwise, God holds them blameless if, under His direction, they overthrow those governments.

March 1987

Definition of “language”: A language is the public patterned expressions of an individual which have been established and normed in and relative to a physical and social context. Thus:

Thinking is not a language, though it may use language.

Physical motions may be a language, if patterned and socially normed.

Parrot talk may use a language, but only in the same sense that a tape-recorder does.

To be “established and normed” in a physical context means that the definitions are shared in some community.

Postulates of this system of thinking about language:

1.   All meaning is personal. (Symbols or actions do not mean anything. Only people mean things through symbols or actions.)

Thus symbols have modal usages but no literal meaning.

2.   All meaning is total. (To elicit a total understanding of what any person means by a given symbolic usage, the entire contents of his mind would need to be understood.)

3.   No symbol usage should be considered to be self-referential. (To avoid Russell’s paradox.)

4.   All meaning is abstract. (Neither a part nor the total of phenomenal particularity is ever “meant” by a person. We think only in terms of universals. All so-called “particulars” of thought are actually a kind of universal, including proper names.)

5.   There are two basic kinds of languages:

• a.   In vernacular languages, words represent concept universals which have only a “family resemblance” meaning pattern in common.
• b.   In technical languages, words represent concepts which have a common essence. (Thus only technical languages can successfully and fully use logic, for there the problem of excluded middle is taken care of.)

6.   The general purpose of language is to assist the individual mind to become adequate to reality, to inform the mind so that the person can act more intelligently.

The unit of language is the assertion. An assertion is a patterned action by which an individual expresses itself agentively. Every assertion may be (must be) analyzed into four parts to be understood by a given observer:

1. A speaker intention must be hypothesized.
2. The patterned expression must be identified. (The actual words.)
3. A meaning pattern must be hypothesized. (Hearer supposes what the speaker intends his words to mean.)
4. A relevance or truth-function must be hypothesized.

This four-part meaning pattern is seen in watching an archer. To understand the archer one must put four pieces of information together:

1. one must decide what the intent of the archer is, to aim at a target, as in target practice, or to aim at people. Is he friend or foe?
2. one must have some sense of what the archer is shooting. Is he shooting wavering reeds or steel-tipped war arrows?
3. one must note at what the archer is aiming. If he is aiming at me, I need to get the message, the meaning.
4. I must have some sense of what will result if his arrow strikes me: serious wound and death?

Meaning is always the relating of universals (patterns). To say “this arrow is poison-tipped” is to overlay the target pattern (this arrow) with another pattern (poison-tipped) in an affirmative relationship. The logic of meaning is simple: it is simply either the overlay of a secondary pattern on target pattern (affirmation); or it is the blocking of overlay of secondary pattern on target pattern (denial: negation or subtraction).

In a modified Zemb frame this would mean that thema is the target pattern or universal, rhema is the secondary or overlay pattern, and the phema is the signaling of addition or non-addition of patterns (which includes both subtraction and simple blocking of addition).

Meaning does not exhaust the assertion, however. Meaning establishes only the possibility for concept formation which the speaker wishes to emphasize. How that asserted concept formation is to be related to the universe must next be described.

There are three kinds of assertions:

1. Disclosures: Revelation of personal thoughts and feelings by a speaker.
2. Directives: Attempts by a speaker to produce specific actions in a hearer.
3. Descriptions: Attempts by a speaker to enable the hearer to conceptualize a reality external to both the speaker and the hearer (either in the absence or the presence of the thing being talked about).

When a hearer attempts to understand a speaker, in addition to forming a meaning for the symbols used, the hearer must decide whether the speaker is using language in the disclosure mode, the directive mode or the descriptive mode. If the hearer selects the disclosure mode, he cannot look for a referent, but will look to see if the actions of the speaker are consistent with his professed disclosure. If the hearer selects the directive mode, he will act or not act, as he thinks appropriate, and then watch to see what the subsequent reaction of the speaker will be. If the hearer selects the description mode, then the hearer will look to the universe, to the referent if possible, to see if the speaker spoke truthfully.

In all interpretation, the hearer must judge the relevance of the speaker’s assertion to something in the context which the speaker and hearer have in common, which must include relevance in space and time. This establishment of the relevance of the meaning of the assertion is a fourth element. In terms of Zemb’s analysis, I would call this the schema, the hearer’s perception as to how the assertion relates to the universe.

The crux of the matter is the addition of schema to the thema-phema-rhema may remain constant while the schema varies. It may mean a disclosure of anger and impatience: I have told you a thousand times where the book is. It may be a directive: Don’t ask me; look it up for yourself in the book on the table. Or it may be description: The book is not in its normal place because I just put it on the table.

Thus there is a minimum of four things which must be established to complete an assertion: target class (thema), overlay class (rhema), addition or non-addition of the overlay class (phema), and the time, place and respect in which the thema-phema-rhema is to apply to the universe (schema).

I agree with Zemb that the logic of assertions is separate from the syntax of the language. Syntax is patterned expression which varies from culture to culture. Assertions are independent of cultural expression as relationships among speaker-hearer-universe.

March 1987

1.   There are two aspects to the logic of language:

• a.   The logic of micro-language, of kernel sentences, which are the units of meaning in language.
• b.   The logic of macro-language, of complex sentences, which are the units of truth-value in language.

2.   Micro-language functions to create meaning units by the addition and subtraction of meaning patterns in kernel sentences, which are semantically incomplete sentences of the language.

3.   There are four parts to a kernel sentence:

• a.   A designator, pointing to the particularity of the subject pattern (class).
• b.   A pattern name, designating the universality of the subject pattern (class).
• c.   A copula, asserting the relationship between the subject pattern (class) and the predicate pattern (class).
• d.   A pattern name, designating the universal aspect of the predicate class.

4.   In a kernel sentence, a designated particular instance (pointed to by the designator) of a class, the subject (which is the class being operated upon) has added to or subtracted from it (the operation performed by the copula) another class or pattern (the predicate, or that which is added to or subtracted from the subject).

Examples:

• a.   That ball is red.
• b.   That ball is not red. (For this to be a kernel sentence, the subject “ball” must already have as part of its meaning or pattern the pattern of being red. The “red” aspect of the pattern is then subtracted in that kernel sentence.)

Though these sample sentences are grammatically complete, they are not yet semantically complete. Every well-formed kernel sentence must be grammatically complete.

5.   A kernel sentence of the micro-language is changed into a sentence of the macro-language by the addition of three variables that make it semantically complete:

• a.   Designation of the truth or falsity of the meaning of the kernel sentence.
• b.   Designation of the spatial context in which the meaning of the kernel sentence is true or false.
• c.   Designation of the temporal context in which the meaning of the kernel sentence is true or false. (If we humans develop a useful space-time continuum in which everything can be given unique space-time coordinates, then b. and c. above would collapse into a single variable.

Examples

• a.   Kernel: This he is a liar.
• b.   Truth-value: Default position: assertion of truth.
• c.   Spatial limits: Here in this room.
• d.   Temporal limits: Last five minutes.
• e.   Translation: He just told a lie to me, and unless he repents, he will be and remain a liar henceforth, wherever he is.

6.   Most human logical systems such as logic, class logic, propositional logic, etc., are operations upon kernel units of meaning taken as lumps. Sentences that use such logic are thus macro-language operations. Macro-language transactions are truth transaction, whereas micro-language transactions are meaning transactions. Aristotelian logic is a primitive micro-logic, or logic of meaning.

March 1987

One. Suppose that someone says, “I have and use successfully a private language.” We ask: “Is this language made up of rules? (Standard patterns of symbol usage).” He will probably reply, “Indeed it is.” And we say: “How are you sure that your language does not drift, that you use it consistently through time?” He might say, “It is a genuine language. It has regularity. It is not just my whim as to how I use it.” Then we come to the point: “What is the evidence that you use this private language you have consistently, other than your own testimony?” If intelligent, he will likely say, “My private language is a technical language. Every term is carefully defined according to the essence involved. When I use a term, I can check all the essential items to be sure that I am using the term consistently and correctly.” We counter: “Are there any undefined, primitive terms in your language?” Being an honest person he admits, “Yes there are, since every language must have undefined primitives.” We add: “So you cannot then be sure that the meaning of these primitives does not drift?” He retorts, carefully, “While it is true that I cannot be sure that the definitions of my primitive terms do not drift, I am sure that my private language system is sound and does not drift because I am able to do things with it in the real world. Nature responds to my formulae. I am justified in saying that I have a genuine private language because it works.” Then we reach for the clincher: “And how are you assured that it works?” He proudly responds, thinking he has won the argument, “Because nature produces for me exactly what I want when I use my fomulae on it. Thus my private language constitutes a genuine private language, because no other human being knows it and I can use it to accomplish just what I desire to accomplish.”

For all of his intelligence and good will, our friend does not see two things. First, he does not see that his desires may be shifting, and that nature gives him what he desires because he has come to desire what nature gives him. He cannot produce any evidence except his own word that his desires have not changed. Second, if nature does respond to his formulae and give him desired results, that means that he and nature have a successful communication going. He communicates to nature what he desires, and nature communicates back, filling those desires. That is not a private language; it is only private relative to other human beings, but public in relation to himself and nature, the two together seen as a community. So there is no private language as yet.

Suppose our friend pulls out his last resort and says, “But I do have a private language with God. I have made up my own terminology and syntax, and I write and speak to God in that language which is completely unknown to any other human being.” We need only inquire: “And does God then speak back to you in that language, and using that language does he enable you to foreknow the future and to accomplish that which you could not do by your own power?”

If he says, “No. God never speaks to me.” He has a problem. He then thinks he has “a language,” but cannot assure himself or anyone else that he is using it consistently. Thus no private language, only private mumblings. If he says, “Yes. All of those things happen and more,” then he has given his case away again. For if he speaks to God and God speaks back to him through that process, he learns things he did not before, knows and does things he could not before do, then his language is not private but public, defining the community to which this language is not private but public, defining the community to which this language is public to be himself and God. Only where there is a community that serves as a check and balance on our language can we know that what we are doing is using a language. Otherwise what we say or do is meaningless babble. Thus, there is no private language.

March 1987

The following arguments are attempts to show that private language is impossible, as inspired by the Philosophical Investigations of Ludvig Wittgenstein.

Argument I.

1.   All language in use tends to drift (change meaning), because:

• a.   People apply old language in new contexts, therefore definitions change.
• b.   Cultures meet and meld (change, accommodate) at their intersections.
• c.   Atypicality is deliberately employed.

(Each of the above is a sufficient condition for change. The categories are not cleanly discrete.)

2.   Drift in language both enhances and limits its utility.

Drift enhances the utility of language in meeting new situations.

Drift limits ability to communicate with others: contemporaries, forebears, descendants.

3.   One of the devices which thwarts drift in language is to make them rule-based, establishing standards of correct and incorrect usage.

4.   A rule is a social norm, norms are socially defined. No one person can establish a social norm.

5.   Therefore, language cannot be based on the actions and judgments of a single individual. (There can be no private language.)

Argument II.

1.   Language is a rule-based system. The rules are social norms.

2.   In a rule-based system, I either abide the rule or I do not.

3.   Thinking that I abide the rule and abiding the rule are not the same thing. I do make mistakes.

4.   Only the testimony of others can assure me that I actually am keeping a given rule when I think I am doing so. (This is one reason why we have judges, umpires, etc.)

5.   If I think I am keeping a rule, and those around me say that I am not keeping that rule, there is no infallible internal evidence to which I can turn to prove either to myself of to others that I really did keep the rule. I must look for, find, and proffer external evidence (a photograph, circumstantial evidence, the testimony of additional persons, etc.) to assure that I kept the rule.

6.   The search for external evidence to prove that I kept the rule is done to prove to others that I really did what I think I did. Therefore, others are the basis for being sure I abide the rule.

7.   Therefore, there is no private language (no linguistic structure wherein I make up the rules, use the rules, judge that I use the rules, and have a right to be absolutely sure that all that is done correctly).

February 1987

1.   Meaning is a function of people, not of things such as signs, signals and symbols.

2.   People express themselves to “mean” through what they do and don’t do, often using signs, signals and symbols.

3.   There are four parameters of meaning when someone communicates with another:

• a.   Purpose or intent, reflecting the desires of the heart. Known to self only, hypothesized by all other humans.
• b.   Assertion, the idea content of a message, reflecting the mind. Known to self, must be hypothesized by others. Also, contains the support or backup elaboration of meaning reflected in clarification, verification, understanding, evaluation and application content of the message.
• c.   Physical action of the person in signing, signaling or symbolizing the message. This is the strength aspect of a message. These are normally the sentences uttered.
• d.   Relevance of the message. The effect it has or will have, including what will happen next if the message is reacted to and reflected in the actions of the hearer(s) or not. This is the might aspect of the message.

4.   Hypothesizing a person’s meaning (desire, assertion/support, and relevance) as attached to a signal structure (sentence), we may call “capture.” (Normal capture puts support in the place of the signal structure for convenience sake, but the original aspect of capture must be kept in mind, thus separating what a person “says” from what we hypothesized him to “mean.”)

5.   A capture is analysis of a time-slice of a person. We can capture an eternal existence, a mortal lifetime, a career, a term of office, a year, a month, a day, a minute, or an instant.

6.   A person who has integrity is easier to capture than one who doesn’t. For one who has integrity of heart, might, mind and strength, every capture is very much the same (same desires, typical message and support, typical relevance).

7.   But:

• a.   Few persons are integrated.
• b.   Some persons who are integrated become disintegrated.
• c.   Some persons who are disintegrated become integrated.
• d.   Most people are simply guessing when they capture, anyway.

So unless one has a sure-fire method of knowing the truth about metaphysical matters, every capture must remain a hypothesizing, a guess.

8.   Quality of capture improves as the following variables increase:

• a.   The integrity of the capturer.
• b.   The possession of an epistemology which delivers truth to the capturer.
• c.   The more truth the capturer already has in his or her mind about the universe.
• d.   The length of the time-slice of the person being captured being considered by the capturer.
• e.   The integrity of the person being captured.

Thus, the ultimate in capture is a god understanding God (seeing as we are seen, knowing as we are known).

February 1987

1.   History of universals:

Plato: There is a general ideal entity (the true) which is named. Materially instantiated particulars have their being in being like the general.

Aristotle: Recurring identities are noticed in the comparison of particulars, affirmed by the mind.

Locke: Selected identities (concepts) are built up out of comparison of empirical patterns.

Hume: Concepts are resemblances noticed in empirical observation.

Wittgenstein: There are ranges of overlapping family resemblances.

2.   Existence is particularity. (There must be opposition (difference) for something to be separate, and thus to exist.

3.   Language is universality. (Language always deals with patterns, with types. It is rule based.)

4.   Particularity is initially and ultimately revealed in sensation.

5.   Particularity as realized (revealed) in sensation is amorphous, irregular, anomalous. It can never be trusted or dealt with. It is an asymptote never grasped by human beings.

6.   Universality is always realized (created) in the mind.

7.   Universality is fictive convenience, at least as much bound by desire, the inside universe (mentality), as by the outside universe (supposed reality).

8.   Universality and particularity are both universals and relate only to universals.

9.   The mind considers and uses only universals.

10. All thinking is comparison of universals (pairing of patterns).

11. If two patterns are paired by a thinker, and that thinker chooses to emphasize their difference, one is called a particular vis-a-vis the other.

12. If two patterns are paired and the thinker chooses to emphasize their similarity, that similarity is called a universal.

13. But each pattern in the mind is already a universal. Where does the original universal come from? It is a hypothesis (guess) imposed upon phenomena by the thinker in self-defense, to simplify the unknowable welter of particularity in phenomena.

14. Knowledge consists of universals which are patterns used successfully in dealing with the universe. That success can be personal (heart, performative, satisfying), or mental (mind, coherence), or physical (strength, empirical), or enabling (might, pragmatic), or any combination of the above.

15. There are three main “enabling” realms:

• a.   Nature (technology)
• b.   Ideas (mathematics, logic, philosophy)
• c.   People (society, politics)

16. Particularity and universality are thus relational terms. Some universals when paired are seen as different, so one is called a particular. Some universals are seen to be alive, so they are united by the creation of a more general universal.

17. Thus is created a hierarchy of universals, culminating in The Universal. But The Universal has existence and significance only as a particular.

18. Language is of two types:

• a.   Ordinary: universality is family resemblance, which means that logic is not strictly usable. (Law of excluded middle does not hold.)
• b.   Technical: Universality is a common essence, which makes strict logical entailment possible, because the law of excluded middle does hold.

19. Law of Excluded Middle: Either A is true or not true. Logic can be used only when the terms are identical in each usage.

20. Questions:

• a.   Is ordinary language simply sloppy language?
• b.   Can “good” poetry be written in a technical language?
• c.   Can good thinking be done in ordinary language?
• d.   Can a person ever be saved if he knows only ordinary language?