Re: the Maligned Art

At 10:45 AM -0400 11/8/98, Logical Language Group wrote:
>>David wrote concerning the "social activity" of a language as being
>>neces>>In other words, are our hardware stores populated by
>>"hammer-looking" objects
>>that have yet to "earn" their "hammerhood" by being bought and used?
>
>This is indeed a philosophicval point.
>
>The counterargument is simople in this case.  We don't know all the properties
>of "real languages", and hence cannot be sure something is a "real language"
>until it is used successfully in all the ways that "real languages" are.
>This is especially hard when people don't even agree as to what the
>properties of "real languages" are, even among what is actually known
>about them (i.e. which properties are 'necessary' for languagehood as opposed
>to things that we have observed in a few or many languages).
The question is whether languages are like hammers. Since they are abstract
objects (i.e. if they're "objects" at all they're not made of matter), they
differ in a key way. On the other hand, they do both have a _function_
designed in the case of hammers, designed or evolved in the case of
languages.

The term language is not a pre-existing fact whose "correct" meaning  we
need to discover. The term "real" language begs the question, by assuming
that there's a precise definition that _isn't_ satisfied by some things
that are "language-like" enough to be called languages, but that actually
aren't.

If you don't accept that premise, the counterargument isn't even an argument.

  -- David
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David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        \  Sr. Analyst
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/   \  Dynamic Diagrams
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