By Schubert Ogden
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Ever since I first read them I've been fascinated by the following statements of Whitehead's concerning speech (AI: 187 f.):
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To speak of anything, is to speak of something which, by reason of that very speech, is in some way a component in that act of experience. In some sense or other, it is thereby known to exist. This is what Plato pointed out when he wrote, Non-being is itself a sort of being. Speech consists of noises, or visible shapes, which elicit an experience of things other than themselves. In so far as vocables fail to elicit a stable coordination of sound-character, or shape-character, to meaning, those vocables fail to function as speech. And in so far as some meaning is not in some sense directly experienced, there is no meaning conveyed. To |
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point at nothing is not to point. |
October 2000