display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 9591 | The human intellect has not been, and cannot be, fully formalized [Nagel/Newman] |
| Full Idea: The resources of the human intellect have not been, and cannot be, fully formalized. | |
| From: E Nagel / JR Newman (Gödel's Proof [1958], VIII) | |
| A reaction: This conclusion derives from Gödel's Theorem. Some people (e.g. Penrose) get over-excited by this discovery, and conclude that the human mind is supernatural. Imagination is the key - it is a feature of rationality that escapes mechanization. |
| 23475 | The form of a proposition must show why nonsense is unjudgeable [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The correct explanation of the form of the proposition 'A judges p' must show that it is impossible to judge a nonsense. (Russell's theory does not satisfy this condition). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5422) | |
| A reaction: In Notebooks p.96 LW gives the example 'this table penholders the book'. I take it Russell wanted judgement to impose unified meaning on sentences, but LW shows that assembling meaning must precede judgement. LW is right. |
| 7715 | Mentalese isn't a language, because it isn't conventional, or a means of public communication [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: 'Mentalese' would be neither conventional nor a means of public communication so that even to call it a language is seriously misleading. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: It is, however, supposed to contain symbolic representations which are then used as tokens for computation, so it seems close to a language, if (for example) symbolic logic or mathematics were accepted as languages. But who understands it? |
| 7084 | What can be said is what can be thought, so language shows the limits of thought [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: In Wittgenstein's view, what can be said is the same as what can be thought; so that once one has grasped the nature of language, one has shown the limit beyond which language and thought become nonsense. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by A.C. Grayling - Wittgenstein Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: I just don't believe that what is thinkable is limited to what is expressible. A lot of philosophy is the struggle to find expression for thoughts which are just beyond the edge of current language. See Idea 6870. |