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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------- > --_____-----------|-------------- > --(_|_ ----|\-----|-----()------- > -- _|_)----|-----()-------------- > ----------()--------www.ccmix.com > >