RE: virus: Altruism, Empathy, the Superorganism, and the Priso ner's

Wright, James 7929 (Jwright@phelpsd.com)
Thu, 24 Apr 97 08:40:00 EDT


Robin wrote:
>James wrote:
>David wrote:
>>In order to refer to a game you must refer to something that exists
>outside the
>>game, or it wouldn't be a game. -David<
>
>>Exactly.[JW]

>OK, I see where this is leading. (I'm "pushing the envelope"
>a little just now and probably didn't read the original properly.)
>What's outside the game, on the Wittgensteinian view, is not
>objective reality but a meta-game.<

It can lead in several other directions at once as well:
a) It's not a game, really; Wittgenstein could be using language to
describe itself, and uses a "game" metaphor to avoid endless recursion;
b) It's a game, and referring to itself is a part of the game, sort of a
refutation of David's assertion above;
c) David may have the polarity reversed; the "game of meaning" and
"theories of meaning" could well exist *inside* the "domain of language"
instead of outside it. As I said, I haven't read Wittgenstein either, but
his original post did not seem to rule out this possibility.
d) Richard brings up the possibility that it is a paradox, and
unresolvable.
Do paradox and inherent contradiction denote the existence of a Godel
fault in a language system at a given statement (given paradox)?
Cheers!
james