Home

Aval be'ota tkufa catavti cam et ze, she ani maarich le-avodati hachi mutsleqet; tetargem oto?

1.Wittgenstein's theme of language as a city/maze What about the names of the streets?
Notice that some names of streets are known exclusively as names of streets - the original bearer of that name has long been forgotten.

2.The grammar of "He suffers because of a serotonine deficit" is different from "He suffers because of having one foot amputated". If sufference is indeed lack of serotonine, noone can suffer on the ground that he has a serotonine deficit.

3.A great effort is needed in order to act randomly.

4.How is it possible to be sure you remember something, yet to fail to bring it before your minds' eye?
Someone utters the name of Brahms' fourth symphony. I answer: "I am sure I wouldn't be able to play it, but I am sure that, if i heard it, i would recognize it".
This could perhaps be translated as "If I hummed it, I would hum it falsely; yet I would hum it"

5.To recognize something implies being able to ascribe it the accepted name. But of course you can recognize a piece of music without remembering its name, if you are able to hum it in the correct way.

6. Forgiving as a limit-case of morality: the sincere wish to be forgiven excludes any consideration concerning your happinness.

7.Probability and induction; of course much was written on this. Probability --> chaos; Induction -->uniformity.
Does induction grounds probability, or vice versa? (I have seen many times the black ball after the white ball, therefore...)

8.Any kind of pain is mental pain, if feeling any kind of pain implies comparing it with other pains - mineor other people's pains.

9.Wittgensteinian critique of DE RE modality: no property is essential to an object. Why do philosophers who believe in DE RE give mathematical examples? Because in the case of numbers the intuition that there are essential properties is stronger.
"The number of the apostles is necessarily divisible by 3" Wittgenstein would have said this is a disguised rule: this is how the concept of division is to be understood.

Other critique of DE RE necessity: all sentences expressing DE RE necessity are reducible to DE DICTO. "It is necessary that the number of apostles, as it is in this world, should be divisible by 3 and 4".

10.Can one do the evil knowingly? The example of the loser, the cursed, who wanted to do the good; it turns out evil. (He really did the evil, since he was so stupid that did not realize the bad effects of his actions) -->whenever he chose the good, it turned out to be evil.
Probabilistically, a good decision would be to choose to do the evil.

11.The rejection of deep structure - it should be replaced by translation. The idea of empirical limits of a language.(i.e., translate "of whose" to French) Any linguist thought of these?

12.To wait for everything is to do nothing but wait.

13.A perfect maze is one from which you have no more chances to exit "rationally" (because you want so and check your position) than to simply walk along the corridories, waiting to reach the way out.
Then where is the difference between trying to get out and waiting to find yourself out? It cannot be located in the behaviour.

14.It would obviously be a mistake to say that the primitive knows how to find his way into the forest, while the civilized man who needs a map knows that. For the primitive has the same relation with the forest as the civilized man with the map.

15.What is the musical analogon of Daltonian photograph? (Play the typical, average Brahms; not any particular work he wrote, but the average between all his works).

16.We do have counterfactual intuitions about language - for example, bad translations. (*?Que piensas tu a?). Explanation of mistakes - explanation of counterfactual intuitions about language. ("If that sentence were literally translated to that language, it should have this form")
Even intuitions about the degrees of closeness to the right translation, or to the literal traslation.
Perfect translation - for which there are rules so that it goes both ways. (Reversibility is the norm)

17. Dirty hands argument: it is strange that I believe this to be not an argument for allowing certain actions, but for requiring them. If I am sure someone will do a bad thing, then I should do it myself - I exonerate him from the burden of remorse.
Counter-argument: this is the lazy fallacy. Your very decision to refrain from doing that evil thing may prevent other people from doing it.

18."The faculty of recognizing human faces". Perhaps someone can easily recall some traits of human faces that we usually don't pay attention to - e.g., traits that change rapidly.
Is a human face the totality of its traits?

19.Asking for forgiveness as a tactic to avoid unpredicted revenge.

20.What is astonishing is not never changing one's mind, but forgetting one changed one's mind immediately after one did so.

21. How is it possible relativism about categories of grammar? (Linguistic imperialism). Categories of grammar are ways of classigying things. It's like saying "There is no unique classification of the ways of classifying things". Then there is no reason to doubt here.
2002: cred ca e o intuitie buna, dar nu stiu ce am vrut sa spun cu asta

22. Losing an object is forgetting its place --> losing reducible to forgetting.
This is not always true: a person unable to forget anything can still lose things (if they are moved).

24. (Meno) What is the difference between finding and stumbling on? Looking for something = maximizing the probability that it will jump into your eyes. But this can be a work on myself, not on the things. (Trying to remember something you forgot).

25. Kuhn: theories are identified a la Saussure, by their differences. (Never give up a theory until you can replace it)

26. Remember Eco's idea about Kuhn: new theories must explain not only more facts than the old theories, but also why old theories were believed. (More facts = facts&words). Does this have a Wittgensteinian flavour? ("cannot doubt facts without doubting words")

27.We can lose things because we are finite <--> if we lived eternally, we would have enough free time to find any object we lost. (Assuming we don't forget it, and it does not disappear).

28.Memory" "If I can utter a sentence in any circumstance, then I read it from my mind. If I can't utter it unless i read it from a piece of paper, then I don't remember it". Someone can be able to recall the number of his bank account if and only if he sees the bank building. Does he remember it or not? (Is the number of his account in his mind?)
Or: someone who answers the number of his bank account whenever is asked to utter any number (for example a phone number). Does he remember the number of his bank account or not?
To remember something and to remember as something.

29. One cannot be simultaneously a part of a whole and make decisions about that whole. (Not even the decision to let oneself go with the flow).

30. A reverse form of Kripke's puzzle about belief. Someone believes Dreyfus was a French officer and believes that Dreyfus is a professor at Berkeley, therefore he believes a French officer is a professor at Berkeley.
Again: identifying intensions is a matter of expanding the context.

31. Recently I wanted to remember what is the German for "ear" and the (correct) answer "Ohr" came to my mind, but I was convinced I was wrong and should look for another answer.

32. "You should sacrifice short-term pleasures for long-term satisfaction". Now, the one who believes this principle should not feel satisfied whenever he refuses a short-term pleasure for a long-term one.

33. What is the metalinguistic version of indeterminacy of radical translation?
You assist (from the outside) at a class of foreign language-teaching where only that language is spoken. How do you realize there is a class of foreign language-teaching, and not merely people talking in that language?

34. What does "imitating yourself" mean?

35. Chomsky wants to ground rationalism and innate ideas empirically. This only proves that there is no innate theory about the hypothesis of innate ideas. If it were, we wouldnt need empirical research to confirm Chomsky's ideas. 2002- cred ca asta a fost o idee buna

36. "I am here now" is indeed a priori true; yet we can ask questions such as "Where am I here?" or say "I dont know where I am here".

37. Thinking of and thinking through. Do I think of Jordan when I think of the king of Jordan?

38. I am tempted to say: thinking of N. = seeing the reality under the aspect of N. Any mental occurrence (i.e. thinking of something) as a controlled hallucination.

39. What is the difference between "auditive hallucination" and "i can't help humming that song in my mind" ?

40. To look for something = to train yourself to recognize it if you stumble on it, if it jumps into your eyes, if it appears "from itself". Looking for = voluntary bringing about an involuntary disposition.
But this does not solve Meno's puzzle. For that disposition needs to be intentional - the disposition to find that very object. Thus, you cannot look anything unless you've already found it.

41. Can I fail to look for something?

42. Can there be a teaching/training of how to look for things, different from how to find things? (Such a teaching should ensure that we know exactly what we are looking for).

43. You hear the news and are asked to tell what they were about. You are able to communicate the meaning, but use different words. I mean, you forgot the words but remember their meaning.

44. (This was a mental or real experiment? In philosophical experiments you don't need to look for the conditions. The fact that it happens proves that it could have happenned, and thus your lazy mind is lucky to be helped).

45. Can we ever know we remember the actual past event, and not the last time we thought we remembered it? How does the past event act at distance?
A proof that we remember the actual past event would be: whenever i remember something, I remember that I never remembered it during the timespan between its occurrence and now. (Or, if I remembered it during this timespan, i forgot the fact-that-i-remembered-it).

46. Surprise at being familiar with something. ("Oh, I've just thought about you" when you come accross an acquaintance on the street). As it were, the mind's eye closes and the real eye suddenly opens; how similar are their images!

47. 9.10.2000
Yesterday the Arabs occuppied Joseph's tomb near Nablus. But it seems Joseph from the Bible wasnt burried there. Then "Joseph's tomb" is a proper name. How can experience decide whether an expression is a proper name or a description?

48. "Hyper-induction": trying to predict that a certain event will occur exactly when I won't expect it

49. chomsky would obviously consider language is taught if learning (growth) took a longer time, involved a (conscious) process of trial and error.
Notice that "trial and error" is a far from obvious concept. It involves memory (what if someone forgets past applications of the rule?). Of course, it is compatible with something like "expanding the amplitude between trials" (i.e., a trial is representative for many possible trials). Therefore, altering (expanding) the domain from which future trials are chosen is refined during learning.

50. Chomsky probably accepts foreign languages are taught. Then, there is an unbridgeable gap between learning foreign versus your own language. Of course, this idea is coarse: only some components of a language - native or foreign - are taught.

51. Imagine that most people cannot recall a past event and then immediately recall an event that happened before that event - something like 5 minutes are needed to reverse the arrow of memory, so to speak. Only the super-intelligent ones can do this quicker. Often when we try to remember something, we find the memory of something that happenned shortly before it, then let our memory, so to speak, to reach freely the point we wanted.

52. Images(sentences) as maps (TLP). The compass is implicit in a map. In Wittgenstein's intermediary philosophy, the compass is outside the map.

53. The applications of a rule are a family resemblance. The instances of knowing other person applies a rule are another family-resemblance.

54. Escaping self-reference is the red thread in Wittgenstein.

55. Indeed, Why can't i say hesitatingly "I am hesitating" ?

56. Putnam: meaning is not what it seemed to be, as gold is not what it seemed to be.

57. Uniformity is important for Chomsky's poverty-of-stimulus argument. Don't forget that.

58. What is disturbing about Chomsky (and disqualifies him as a philosopher) is that he approximates. From approximations to radical distinctions.

59. "Why, in some natural language, there are certain grammar categories and the meta-words to describe them?". This sounds indeed as an empirical study.

60. The law of great numbers is opposed to the monadological-fractal model. 2002 - nu mai inteleg ce am vrut sa zic cu asta, chiar deloc

61. Who can show where a monad ends and another one begins? (You need to know the whole universe to show this).

62. Catafora: "As a result or ITS extreme rarity and secretive behaviour, little is known about the snow leopard".

63. In the future some things identical to those that happenned in the past can happen. Then can we remember the future? (What makes the difference is the "feeling of past/future" - bleah)

64. (Didactic): Dan ve ishto; Dan ve ishto shel yosi.

65. (Didactic): what is the definition of "scope" ?

66. Can ignorance be wanted?

67. Losing reducible to forgetting: you put it somewhere then you forgot the place. As if were, you lost the attention to its place.
We feel that something must disappear completely, even when the lost object is thought to exist. This something must be mental.

68. If it is true (and i have no doubt it is true) that forgetting does not mean that some memories are deleted, but that some memories are hidden by other memories, then to find something must mean hiding what hides; inhibiting what inhibited what is found.
Finding something = losing the habit to stumble upon certain things; the tendency that other things jump into your eyes.

69. To look for something means more than training yourself to stumble upon it. It means training yourself to avoid stumbling upon objects that do not interest you. Or to cause those objects not to jump into your eyes.

70. Is looking for something a work on yourself or on the real things?

71. Something may get lost precisely because you look too much for it, i.e. you disturb the order of things.

72. We can forget "outer" and "inner" things as well.

73. I can lose an object even if it remains in the same place where i put it, in the hope that I would easy find it.

74. Causation is extensional: whenever A is the cause of B, but not under the description (name) B, an intermediate cause B can be postulated so that A is the cause of C and C the cause of B.

75. Immediately after leaving home, I thought I had forgot my watch home. I returned, looked for it and did not find it, then saw it on my wrist. Question: In the timespan between the occurence of the thought that I had lost my watch and the moment of finding it on my hand, did I lost it or not?

76. "I forgot completely having been to Japan. But I remember perfectly Japanese, language that I learnt in Japan". Does it make sense?

77. "Philosophy does not make discoveries". Well, what about "inner" discoveries? Discovering a plan that I had abandoned.

78. My belief that I forgot some things is a prediction about my future memories.

79. How can I believe that I forgot anything? How can I see the empty spaces in my own mind?

80. My expectances about my future memories determine what I forgot and what I remember.

81. To forget partly/to forget completely. To forget partly=what is forgotten has few chances of coming back to my mind.
To forget completely=what is forgotten lost any hope of being back into my mind.

82. The problem of criterion of money(papers). It cannot be very public, nor very private either.

83. (linguistics) what is the parsing of "He is smarter than he thinks he is"

84. (linguistics) "The Americans condemn the Palestinians more than the Israelis for the bombings". (ambiguita)

85. The fact that Chomsky sees structure-dependent rules when it was more intuitive to see other rules is fascinating. (What he does is evolutionary wrong; yet how did our evolution forget to force us to see the simplest rules, yet tempt us to see them?)
The complexity of language has no purpose: finalist explanations must be done away with.

86. The feeling of linguistic incompletness. In hebrew there are 7 diatheses, but only few verbs can be conjugated at all diatheses. But we know how a verb would look like at a diathesis where it is not employed. Longuistic counterfactuals.
Counterfactual judgments are, obviously, grounded in analogy. 2002 -nu stiu ce am meant cu asta, poate e prostie liszqot ->nifa'l --> lehiszaqot. Daca "eu inot" ar avea pasiv, acesta nu ar putea fi decat "sunt inotat".
In unele cazuri, forma care lipseste (diateza prin care nu poate fi trecut verbul cu pricina) lipseste pentru ca nu ar avea sens. In altera cazuri, ar avea sens, dar sensul ala e exprimat prin alta forma. In alia cazuri, ar avea sens, realmente exista o forma corespunzatoare, dar ea inseamna altceva. (lehaabed-lehitaabed; a uita-a se uita). Coreleaza cu Yobu-koree
Cauzalitate si surpriza.

87. Why only one reflexive diathesis in hebrew?

88. "I cannot know myself except by knowing other people". Obviously, since most of my thots , if not all, involve reference to other people.
Here the problem of vicious circle
I am tempted to understand the principle of hermeneutic circle as successive actualization of dispositions which refer one to another 2002 nu inteleg ce am vrut sa zic The problem of intentionality of dispositions.

89. Hermeneutic circle and rational reconstruction. (?)

90. Memory The problem of defferred recalling. seen by some as evidence against the box-model for memory. Is this a decisive argument?
The feeling "Oh yes, I do remember it, but I cannot recall it right now, let me wait...".
Does Such a feeling of defferral have to be recognized as such?
If the correct answer to a question such as "what is the capital of Malaysia?" arised suddenly, then would this be an evidence for the box-model of memory?

5.12.2000
91. Retine o remarca cruciala pentru mine, triviala pentru specialisti. Paradoxul lui Kripke este important DDO, nu DRE, pt ca DRE nu este nimic paradoxal/contradictoriu in a avea 2 beliefsuri kdictorii g uac obiect (= velatul, zic eu, ar fi un meta-paradox DRE). 2002 nu mai inteleg ce am vrut sa zic
Passim: whether the veiled paradox can be solved saying that it should be formalized DRE and not DDO. London is veiled as "London" or as "Londres".

92. causation. Nu uita ca Russell vrea eliminarea cauzation in favor of boundary cdtions (tnai-gvul)