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Private Language, Amanda claims

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Private Language, Amanda claims

Dunamis
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Posted 02/22/07 - 06:27 AM: Subject: Private Language, Amanda claims	#1
Wittgenstein argued, in a rather slick and convincing way, that there is no such thing as a "Private Language". He argued that logically the kinds of internal, untranslatable rule followings that anyone might do privately, can only be at most the impression of following rules, and only become, or are called language when we are able to translate them. When we are able to say, yes that is following a rule, it is then that we grant language status. Amanda, who is autistic, claims to have a Language of her Own, one that is not symbolic, and contains having conversations with water or sounds. She scolds others for having to wait for her to learn their language, before they granted her personhood. Is her Language a Language? Or is she just one more conceptually confused Cartesian? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

Ron Harvey
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Posted 02/22/07 - 06:48 AM:	#2
"Pattern-recognition is a throwing away of information. Any device that can lose information can generalize." ---(W Ross Ashby). Language is pattern recognition, a limited set of common denominators. The issue thus arises of how low the denominator needs to be to communicate commonly. To communicate widely, dumb down. The progress beyond the limit of languge the communality of it must rather be abandoned.

Dunamis
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Posted 02/22/07 - 06:55 AM:	#3
Ron Harvey wrote: The progress beyond the limit of languge the communality of it must rather be abandoned. She initimates that her language indeed can be "learned", so it there is a question as to whether is it logically private, which is really Wittgenstein's point. The regularities (rule followings) that for her constitute a "conversation with water" are they therefore shareable with others, in otherwords, can there be a three-way conversation with water?
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

Ron Harvey
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Posted 02/22/07 - 07:36 AM:	#4
Dunamis wrote: She initimates that her language indeed can be "learned", so it there is a question as to whether is it logically private, which is really Wittgenstein's point. The regularities (rule followings) that for her constitute a "conversation with water" are they therefore shareable with others, in otherwords, can there be a three-way conversation with water? I am convinced that it is possible to converse with water, in that what is ordinarily supposed to be inanimate does respond, that the conversation is on occasion two way and may thus be immediately so, but to convince anybody else of that is another matter, and where the communality problem arises. There is an intrinsic shyness to such a private conversation. It flees in fear from sceptical observation, sensitive to hostility. Of necessity the confirmation is therefore private. In full public view water stubbornly refuses to confess to anything of the sort.

LegendLength
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Posted 02/22/07 - 07:49 AM:	#5
Dunamis wrote: Amanda, who is autistic, claims to have a Language of her Own, one that is not symbolic, and contains having conversations with water or sounds. One approach may be to point out that language can be purely one-way. For instance a book communicates meaning from the page to the reader, without the reader saying anything back. It might be argued that the book's author needed to share a common vocabulary with the reader, but a counter-argument could claim that the text was created randomly by a non-human (for instance a single word being carved out in the sand by wind). It does not matter that the text creator has no understanding of common language, all that matters is that the receiver understands it within their own processing system / brain. Water does communicate some level of meaning to us. It can communicate a periodic beat if it has waves flowing across it, or other types of information. They may not be terribly meaningful but it depends entirely on the brain and the meaning they give to certain symbols. It is also possible to communicate with water. By speaking for instance, you are moving the air particles slightly near the surface, which physically affects the water. That being said this woman is clearly mad and is looking for attention (a typical autistic trait as far as I'm concerned).

Ron Harvey
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Posted 02/22/07 - 08:10 AM:	#6
LegendLength wrote: One approach may be to point out that language can be purely one-way. For instance a book communicates meaning from the page to the reader, without the reader saying anything back. For as long as there is a choice in the comprehension, and an immediate perception of the reader, the communication is two way. If somebody from 300 years before us landed straight into the 21st century they'd be forgiven to think it mad to be staring at a bright screen while tapping awy at a box on a table as if this were some sort of communication. The meaning of water would depend on what it knows.

jdrw
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Posted 02/22/07 - 10:00 AM:	#7
LegendLength wrote: Water does communicate some level of meaning to us. It can communicate a periodic beat if it has waves flowing across it, or other types of information. They may not be terribly meaningful but it depends entirely on the brain and the meaning they give to certain symbols. It is also possible to communicate with water. By speaking for instance, you are moving the air particles slightly near the surface, which physically affects the water. Indeed we can interact with water, but not all interaction is 'communication.' 'Communication' is a particular kind of interaction. Just a guess: One possible way to distinguish communication from other interactions is to stipulate that it involve: 1) an intentional agent and 2) another consciousness capable of interpreting the intended communication. Thus a human and an inanimate object can be said to interact, but not to communicate. Even animal calls are not necessarily ‘communication’ so much as mere stimulus-response behaviors devoid of intention. We cannot determine that a screaching bird intends other birds to understand that they’d better not approach his territory, and that other birds do interpret his screaching thusly—we can only deermine that the stimulus-response interaction of the screaching works. Indeed there is a stimulus-response component to communication, too, but we can differentiate communication from other stimulus-response interactions by the intentionality of the agent originating the communication. When we communicate with Sparky, saying for instance, “Here Sparky!” We are the intentional agent, and Sparky is the other consciousness capable of interpreting the communication. We intend that Sparky come to where we are, and Sparky interprets our call, at least at a level of discriminating it from “Stay” or “roll over” etc. and of performing the associated behavior of coming over to us. Likewise, when Sparky goes to the door and whines, he can be said to be communicating with us. He is the intentional agent (intending that we open the door and let him out), and we are the consciousness that interprets his standing at the door and whining. Communication between people, of course, also involves an intentional agent and an interpreter. Much more sophisticated intentions and interpretations are possible, especially via language. The Amanda scenario strikes me as using the words/concepts ‘language’ and ‘communication’ in non-standard ways. Perhaps there is some weak analogy or stretched metaphorical insights possible in the Amanda usage, but what she is doing surely is not what we ordinarily mean by ‘language’ and ‘communication.’ Dunamis wrote: She initimates that her language indeed can be "learned", so it there is a question as to whether is it logically private, which is really Wittgenstein's point. The regularities (rule followings) that for her constitute a "conversation with water" are they therefore shareable with others, in otherwords, can there be a three-way conversation with water? Perhaps she could teach others how to interact with water in the patterns that she does, but to construe any possible such interactions as 'language’ strikes me as using that term/concept in a sense not used by the rest of us.
OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

dimka
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Posted 02/22/07 - 10:46 AM:	#8
I don't see how whatever she does in the video could be considered as "language". It's all some sort of brain neuronal activity gone amok. Hasn't it been researched? I'm sure it can be explained scientifically without actually calling it communication because, frankly, I wouldn't want to learn her language (let's say it is indeed one) either way, even though I would acknowledge her point regarding society as being correct.

jdrw
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Posted 02/22/07 - 12:32 PM:	#9
Dunamis wrote: Wittgenstein argued, in a rather slick and convincing way, that there is no such thing as a "Private Language". He argued that logically the kinds of internal, untranslatable rule followings that anyone might do privately, can only be at most the impression of following rules, and only become, or are called language when we are able to translate them. When we are able to say, yes that is following a rule, it is then that we grant language status. I’d be very grateful if you (or anyone) would explain or direct me to where I could find out what W’s larger point about ‘private language’ is. That is, what are the consequences or implications of whether ‘private language’ is or is not possible? I am missing the larger point, I don’t understand why this is such an important issue. I don’t understand how it matters to philosophy one way or the other. If private language is impossible, then … what??? BTW, isn’t a research scientist making radical breakthroughs or a mathematician who devises fundamentally new math engaged in ‘private language’ (new concepts, new terms, new relationships, new cognitive constructions, and paradigm shifts) before communicating their insights to others? Hadn’t Newton engaged in private language when he privately devised his calculus and left it in a drawer all those years?
OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

Banno
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Posted 02/22/07 - 12:41 PM:	#10
I think this the most interesting post I've seen here for a long time. Well done. My first reaction is that what Amanda is doing counts as a language, but is not Private - after all, she scolds us for not learning it; therefore she thinks it shareable.
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing...

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