KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA 32 (Herbert Müller)

Commentary 27 (Response to A.v.d.Meijden’s C19)

( WORDS AND CONCEPTS )
by Ernst von Glasersfeld
16 March 2001, posted 3 April 2001

<1>
I am not sure what v.d.M. intends by saying that (dictionary) definitions that are not understood "have to be somehow correlated to HM’s coupling". Is there more to it than that, in order to be ‘understood’, words must be linked to re-presentable experiences? The point I was making in C14,<1> was simply that, in the kind of comparative language analysis I did for many years, it was necessary to make a distinction between word-meanings and conceptual structures apart from the semantic connection to a word they might have. Without this distinction it would be difficult to explain for instance the difference between the English words "to insulate" and "to isolate" to a German-speaker, for whom they both fall under one and the same word; or why he needs half a dozen different verbs to translate the English "to hit" in the various contexts in which it might occur (hit a target; hit his wife; hit a pedestrian; hit the bottom; etc.).

<2>
Some of the things v.d.M. says about visualization are interesting and no doubt profound, but I was concerned with something much simpler. Let me try again. Among the people I have met, there is a number of individuals whose appearance I can re-present to myself sufficiently to imagine them coming into the room, sitting at a table, or walking in the street; and there is a larger number of individuals with whom I am unable to do this, although I do recognize them as acquaintances when I see them in the street. Of course the boundary between the two groups is fuzzy! So are the boundaries between many classes - but this does not mean that the distinction is useless.

<3>
By "spontaneous re-presentability" I meant precisely this ability to produce a re-presentation of something that is not in one’s perceptual field at the moment.

The comparison with one’s vocabulary is a good one; linguists speak of an "active" and a "passive" vocabulary. The items in the first one are constantly available to the speaker, those in the second are recognized only when heard or read. And there, too, the boundary is of course fuzzy.

<4>
I would love to accompany v.d.M. on one of his sniff-shopping trips, provided he would let me choose the wine. And I am intrigued by his notion of learning foreign languages "by inventing chats with imaginary friends". I’m afraid I had to learn my languages in a more prosaic way - mostly by making mistakes.

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Ernst von Glasersfeld