really? he basically said... 'the process of naming reduces
information burden and through that opens up spaces for other
information to be gathered and transformed' which is generally held
to be true isn't it? naming and categorization are used to make it
easier for us to understand things. Once we have named and put
things in their little boxes, we start looking at the little boxes and
the names and seeing other things... That's modernity isn't it?
naming things is not how 'we begin' at least not phenomenologically
and certainly never in your own experience or your children's
experiences if you have children. Naming things comes quite late in
the game and really naming and reference is hugely problematic as most
of 20th century analytic philosophy has shown that. Quine, Kripke,
Wittgenstein and many many more have pointed out that... naming...
follows conceptualization and some concepts wittgenstein admits cannot
be named.
as for objectifying things before action, I have to say... I've never
seen that or experienced it. But then I've never seen or experienced
'intention' either... or 'will' or any number of conceptual entities
that seem to indicate something about how my preference structures are
ordered and i act upon them. Generally, that conceptual schema seems
a bit worrisome when i can't find the references to the
nominalizations in my life nor really see it in others. I do hear
people making claims about 'will' and 'intent' like... I never
intended to do x, yet they did x, though sometimes the doctrine of
double effect, and related concerns intervene, granted.
anyway, here i am avoiding grading again...
On Jul 23, 2009, at 11:48 AM, Charles Burnette wrote:
> On Jul 22, 2009, at 9:10 PM, Terence Love wrote:
>
>> As always, nominalization reduces information and sensitivity of any
>> representation and increases the opportunity for us to wrangle the
>> meaning
>> to whatever we want it to mean.
>
> Do excuse meTerry, but this statement along with the rest of your
> posted comment is reactive hogwash ie truly weird reasoning! I
> don't buy any of it!
>
> Naming things is how we begin to apprehend their meaning. It allows
> the mind to objectify something to be sensitive to and define. It
> enables the information associated with the name to be interpreted
> to a situation or prior knowledge and to expand information to
> whatever extent that the named entity can support. But this does
> not in itself imply the distortion you imply with the phrase "to
> wrangle the meaning to whatever we want it to mean". In my view
> that depends on how the attributes and properties of a nominal
> entity are related in conceptual models that suit the purposes of
> the thinker. It is the intention of the thinker that is responsible
> not the nominal entity. Verbs may well put into action nominal
> entities that have not been appropriately defined or related to
> their context with positive intent. Naming, and ordering things is
> in my view how we begin to think. We must objectify and have
> intention toward a situation before we can structure, express or act.
>
> Warm regards anyway,
> Chuck
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