Subject: SW again at last

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 21:34:49 EDT

pc:
Ah, it's nice to see S-W turning up again; it's been a while! 
But to make the discussion work, we have to be very
careful of how we speak about the various things involved: words,
external reality, our perceptions, and so on, for it is the interplay of
these that is the topic of the hypothesis. Thus, to call words that
refer to sensory properties, for examples, "adjectives" if they are
not gramatically different from words that refer to physical
activities is to undercut the kinds of distinctions that are essential in
the formulations of the hypothesis. For the hypothesis claims that a
person in a language in which a color is treated in the same
grammatical way as an activity will have a different sense of color
from one in a language in which these two are treated differently
(and a different sense of activity, too). 
Words like "color" and "activity" are here taken loosely for
the moment -- they too need to be examined closely in the same
way. Mr. Park does try with this latter move, while falling
occasionally into the earlier trap a bit. But the attempts to deal
with the object/activity/property distinction sees set to fail, since he
claims that every language has something like this at some level or
other. 
This raises the question of what level is the relevant one (or
-s are -s). To be sure, every langauge deals with the world and so
deal with what we see in the worldand thus with objects, activities
and properties. But the interesting question is whether they deal
with these AS objects, activities and properties -- and, if they do,
whether they deal with the same things in the same way or divide
the world differently in this respect (dealing with many of our
objects as activities say, but maybe some of our properties as
objects). Clearly, many languages do not have these distinctions in
their grammars -- and other have many more distinctions -- but
does this lack (or surplus) carry over to the semantics or the
metaphysics of the speakers?
The other question with these categories is how to
formulate them in a relatively neutral way (or how to adapt them to
the diverse biases of different languages). To talk of a persistent or
recurring bundle of properties is already to adopt a certain attitude
about these entities, a different one from that of a substantialist or
of a particularly careful Buddhist, to wander off in two opposite
directions. The justification for this formulation seems to be
radically empiricist, but when that is put into language it inevitably
collapses, since langauge presupposes an external referential world
in its origins (it is a SOCIAL activity after all, there must be at least
two things) and, in particular, the objects (a term of convenience)
cannot be constructed from properties (ditto) because the
properties can only be known by analysis from the objects (Mad
Ludwig's "Describe the smell of coffee" -- the end of
phenomenalism and "bracketting"). The fractionalist psychology
does not work for speaking creatures -- nor, for practical reasons,
which Park cites, for non-linguistic creatues either. And so
espitemological metaphysics, as opposed to linguistic metaphysics,
seems a dead end, so far as the S-W hypothesis goes. And
linguistic metaphysics makes S-W a tautology. So some more
neutral form is needed.