[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Matt Kundert]

Arlo,

Arlo said:
Matt, I think you are correct in your assessment that language is not 
something that can get us closer or further away from an external "reality". 
What I would like to quickly comment on, however, is the idea of language as 
mediator in another sense. Within socio-cultural theory (to risk broad 
generalizations) the idea that experience is "linguistically mediated" 
emphasizes a reciprocity in structuring between "language" and "being". That 
is, humans use language as a tool, but in so doing are fundamentally 
oriented towards the saliency of the linguistic structures they create. 
While this is true of all tools, including a hammer, it is perhaps most true 
of language, as language is a near pervasive, ubiquitous part of our 
existence. Thus, tools are not simply objects by which we act on an external 
world, but create "us" as much as they create "things". This may be what 
you're getting at when you say that language IS the static world, but I 
think this co-relation (the idea of Vygotsky's "mediated being") is 
important to emphasize.

Matt:
Yep, that is correct.  I think it is still important to discourage 
"mediation" metaphors, but the sentiment is definitely right here.  What we 
need to still avoid is the idea that language provides a scheme on which we 
place on top of a the content of the world, what Hilary Putnam ridiculed as 
the "cookie-cutter view."  Form and content are unavoidably intertwined.  
Donald Davidson put this point with his view of triangulation between 
person-community-world.  We can't seperate out any of those parts and ask 
what they are really like, or which of the parts truth arises out of.  Truth 
arises out of the triangulation of the three parts, which all effect each 
other.  As you said, there is a reciprocity.

Matt

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