Reflections on Grammaticalization, Epiphenomena, etc....

[Mark P. Line]

Rob Freeman wrote:
> Just an aside, Mark.
>
> I thought this earlier comment worked rather well on several levels:
>
> On Thursday 16 March 2006 08:28, Mark P. Line wrote:
>> ...Making reality intelligible does have
>> the common *side-effect* of blinding us to and protecting us from the
>> reality (or lack thereof) we ostensibly understand...
>
> Did you intend to point out that intellectual blindness, as a
> side-effect, would thus be by some definitions itself an epiphenomenon?

Not particularly, since I wanted to stay out of the discussion of
epiphenomena -- mostly because the term means too many different things to
different people. If I'd jumped into that one, I'd've wanted to take it
into the ontology of emergence. But emergence means too many different
things to different people, too, so I'm not sure anything would be gained.


> What makes this observation really great is that this kind of blindness,
> and an epiphenomenon at that, seems indeed to be what is at the root of
> cognition.

Mm hmm. All modelling involves being blind in one eye. Cognition is
modelling in the wild.


-- Mark

Mark P. Line
Polymathix
San Antonio, TX