Universals

Noel Rude nrude at ucinet.com
Fri Mar 12 19:07:19 UTC 1999


Greetings,

        Well I thought that "universals"--at least the kind that we've been
used to--imply a grammar.  Grammar thus lives on two levels.  There is
the semantic-discourse-pragmatic level which is pretty universal, and
then there is its automated instantiation (dare "I" use such a word?) in
individual grammars.

        As for the formalist vs. Platonist debate in mathematics and physics,
what those folks over there are faced with is a seeming hierarchy to
reality in which the laws of physics reside at a lower level than
mathematics.  Physicists, for example, study other possible worlds, for
as they say, "even God cannot defy logic".  The idea is that things that
"could be no other way" are real--they somehow exist.  Now I'm no
committed Platonist, but I wonder--could some form of propositional
logic "exist"--universally--in all possible worlds?

        Agreeing that the better metaphor for language is to be found in the
elasticity of biology as opposed to the absolutism of the laws of
physics.  But this does not mean that we can learn nothing from the
mathematicians and physicists.  It doesn't mean that it is ALL
pragmatics.  Why canÕt we have both pragmatics and Plato?

        If it turns out that there is an awful lot of commonality in all
information systems (natural language, mathematica, computer language,
DNA), then maybe this is where we validate the notion of propositional
sturcture.  If itÕs not hardwired--but simply the only way to accomplish
the task--then the neurologists just might miss it.  But that wouldnÕt
mean it wasn't "real".

        OK, I'm a heretic worthy of being impaled up-side-down.  But what do I
got to lose!  Let's keep this interesting.

        Noel



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