Anyone can state whatever they like - no
one is stopping them. For me it matters not
whether they are satisfied that what they
say is ontologically meaningful to themselves
only ( see: private language - Wittgenstein ) or meaningful to
the majority of other members of the language
community, or is restricted in its significance
to only a minority of the other members of
the language community.
What interests me is establishing on the
one hand what exists in the world and on the other,
what is merely THOUGHT by some to exist,
but in fact is no more than what is said
about what some believe to exist in the world.
This ontological dichotomy is sometimes described
as:
What exists in the world and what
is the case about that which exists in the
world.
Outside of the normal social contraints against
using language which is offessive to other
members of one's societal group, nobody needs
any permission to speak in one way or another - we do not
(yet) live in some Orwellian world of speech-control
or linguistic restriction in spite of what
some religions and some other forms of oppressive
political transcendentalisms (Nazism - Communism
etc.) would prefer.
When we as linguists analyse the intricacies
of the syntax and the semantics of human
speech we do not do so in a spirit of prescription,
but rather purely as part of a descriptive
analysis. However, when we approach the same
task as philosophers (ontologists) working
in a philosophic milieu, which for thousands
of years has remained split right down the
middle into (basically) two irreconcilable
warring camps of transcendentalists (realists
etc.) versus materialists, it is to
be expected that sometimes impatience kicks-in
and rhetoric creeps in to the discourse.
In the sense of the primacy and importance
of language, characterised by Heidegger as:
The house of being, etc., we eliminativist linguistic philosophers
consider language just as important, if not
more important than the erstwhile rector
of Freiburg University ever did (at least
I do ) and we examine linguistic structures
and any prescriptive usages which are attached
to them as being a reflection of the continuing
ontological division and disunity which manifests
itself in certain prescriptive malpractices
concerned with what one camp or the other
consider to be the norms of or rules for
correct usage.
For my part - I am not being prescriptive
and never have been, nor do I have any agenda
for altering or eliminating any of the lexicon
of the language I love. I seek to draw attention
to the fact that certain linguistic formulations
AFFECT THE WAY WE THINK and distort our conception
of reality. For me all of us in our daily
lives the brain computes and decides upon
actions using a few `deictic' variables pointing
to objects. Parallels exist between such
non-linguistic variables and the linguistic
deictic devices we encounter in written sentences
and aural reception.
The automatic cerebral instantiation of antecedally
indexed subjects (The Tower of London - My Mother, etc) and the conceptual referencing of such
sentential foci have both linguistic
and
non-linguistic (e. g. visual) versions,
sharing
the concept of attentive brain-grabbing
engrossment
as our neurology links such deictic
variables
with our compendium of semantic information
(our memory cache) about the objects
to which
we attach our corresponding predicates
concerning
more selective aspects of the existential
modalities of the instantiated subject
which
we want to communicate to others.
Any cerebrated particularisation or assumed
existence of a conceptualised subjectival
entity (an IDEA) of a real or fictionalised
object) which is automatically neurologically
instantiated, either aurally or textually
visualised it is ALWAYS conceptually collocated
(is inclusive of ) with some antecedal knowledge
as to the nature of that object, otherwise
it is IMPOSSIBLE for a complete conceptual
instantiation to take place:
Some examples:
1. THE SUBJECTIVAL INSTANTIATION OF A REAL
OBJECT
(i. e. of a designatum with an
actual nominatum) |
The Tower of London is a favourite
venue for visiting tourists.
Immediately the brain extracts the meaning
of the words: The Tower of London as scanned and transmitted by the eyes,
certain personal prior knowledge of the existential
modalities of the object are conceptualised.
The nominatum is conceptualised as existing
in the modality of being tower-like or turreted,
it is known to stand or exist in a locality
labelled by humans as: London, blah, blah, blah.
In contradistinction, the human nominal linguistic
attributions: The Tower of London and being tower-like, or being located in London, DO NOT BELONG to the pile of stones that
constitute The Tower of London - they are not the PROPERTIES of The Tower of London, for those human-attributed ontologically
inauthentic properties
(like the authentically termed and expressed
existential modalities) do not exist. Only the structure of stones
and those humans who assign homo-centric
attributions to those stones exist.
It is the humans who conceptualise and label
the pile of stones that physically constitute:
The Tower of London as: The Tower of London who exist - the non-proprietorial, non-property-owning,
existential compendium of modalities we call:
The Tower of London stands there and simply exists as it exists
and does not HAVE or OWN the property of
existing as the Tower of London.
The real or sentential (ideative) extantal
subject is that which equates or corresponds
with the entitative object (the nominatum)
named by the signifier - the name or noun
by which it is identified. The real or sentential
entity that corresponds to the definite article
and signifier: The Tower of London. is the assemblage, or conglomerate of existential
components in their ever-changing (never
stative) becoming states and modifying modalities.
That which the philosophical tradition calls
"essence or is-ness" is an ontological impossibility, for NO
OBJECT in the cosmos exists as a stative
object, but on the contrary exists intrinsically
and extrinsically as an ever-changing seething
similitude of physical, event-based somatic
equivalences that occur to the quantum-based,
component mini-entities of which the entity
consists as it continually changes into new
versions of itself.
The ongoing internal and external interactions
and the totality of their dynamic somatic
events and processes inhere to that physical
entireness - the named existent subject entity
- The Tower of London In short - phrased in your outdated terminology
-
entities never: are - they are always becoming changed versions of themselves.
There are no ontological interstices (like the sequential frames of a cine-film)
or: ontologically impossible freeze-framed still-states of being the continuously changing object
in question.
The Tower of London's natural, chemico-physical responses and
reactions to the inherent dynamic of its
own internal and external aggregate of structural
conflicts and processes, and the impingements
and effects of the London environment, constitute
the de facto, perpetually existentially accommodating,
material architecture of the entity.
This existential modalic concordance is so
absolute, concrete and consummate, that the
sum internal and external processes of the
active entity called: The Tower of London indistinguishably incorporate and constitute
the entity itself. The linguistically expedient
'naming' of the perceived material 'stasis'
of a human entity as: 'Bill' or: 'The Tower of London also equals the sum of its existential -
essential activities. The indicant pointing
symbol 'IS' (the BE-word) indicated and draws
attention to the predicate, which allows
us to sententially discriminate and descriptively
sequestrate (pick out or select) certain
perceived or conceived so-called states and
modalities from the totality that is the
subject, in order to make statements or challengeable
propositions concerning the statements of
others.
2. THE SUBJECTIVAL INSTANTIATION OF A IRREAL
OBJECT
(i. e. of a fictive or pseudo-subjectival
designatum with no actual nominatum) |
Here immediately in the case of an adult
the brain interprets the meaning of the words
scanned by the eyes, certain prior knowledge
of the non-existence of the conceptually
instantiated fictive object is raised and
the fact that historically it is an abstraction
conceptualised as concrete representation
for purposes of entertainment. The instantiated
concept of Mickey Mouse is therefore not one of a real entity itself
existing in specific or non-specific existential
modes, but our instantiative conceptual attention
is transferred to the existential modes of
the men/women and materials - the drawings,
computer generated visualisations, films,
books, cartoons and other materials by which
the representation of such a fictive character
is societally presented. In the case of many
younger children who may believe that Mickey Mouse is a real animated being rather than an
imagined one, they continue to attribute
many of the existential modalities of 1.
to 2. until they become aware the actual
ontological truth of the situation
3. PREDICATE-DEPENDANT SUBJECTIVAL
NON-OR-PARTIAL-INSTANTIATION
The Blergulboop scooped up the food and thrust
it down its throat. |
In sentences or statements where the subject
is completely unknown and the predicate provides
no clues as to it existential or fictive
nature - no instantiation can take place.
In a case of partial or vague instantiation,
where a subject term appears to be deliberately
or obviously fabricated, the reader/hearer
is totally dependent upon the information
provided by the predicate for any clues which
help provide hooks upon which to hang antecedally
conceptualised existential modalities which
might appear to be instantiatively appropriate
and fit the bill.
Thus in the absence of any prior knowledge
of the term: Blergulboop, the brain searches for modalities which
match items recorded in the brain's compendium
of formerly conceptualised existential modalities.
Words such as: scooped, food, thrust and throat are earmarked indicate a living organism
with manipulable appendages and prehensile
extremities of the superior limb suitable
for taking up nourishment into a passage
possibly leading to a stomach.
I do not wish (although I am always available)
to go into the historical development and
religio-grammatical reasons why the development
of covert, implied, antecedally assumed,
hidden or entailed predication took place.
The ontological damage ( underlined with
every inter-transcendentalist explosion or
massacre that takes place daily) and the
ontological misunderstandings and misinterpretations
that the resultant orphanic copula syndrome has helped wrought upon western
thinking and behaviour is plain to see.
For me the role of the copula (in addition
to its sentential confirmation of tense and
number) is to indicate (point to as a symbol)
the predicate.
In a standard subject-predicate sentence
the predicate is there to be pointed at, whilst in a case of copula ophanism, (God is.) the addressor expects the addressee to fill in the predication
himself from previous knowledge.
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." <-- fill in your
own predication here