But isn't this precisely what Nick and Eric's rendition of Peirce (NEP) is 
arguing *against*?  By analogy, if we take a schematic structure like "if p, 
then q", it literally does not matter what p or q is bound to, what values they 
may or may not take on.  (In NEP, we're talking more about statistical patterns 
than logical schema.  But that shouldn't matter.)

So, if a lion suddenly spoke logic and could say "if boogle, then pinkle", NEP 
tells us there is *something* in that expression we can expect to converge over 
time.  And the human, hearing it can be completely ignorant of what boogle and 
pinkle mean, yet still grok the implication.  If that's NOT the case, then the 
lion isn't actually speaking logic.

Now, if we take a stance that language is embodied-situated and is directly 
derived from human physiology, evo-devo, fingers/toes, bipedal locomotion, etc. 
Then a lion speaking English would, literally, imply that the lion was 
instantly transformed into a human, including all their semantic bindings ... 
so you'd simply have 2 humans speaking English together.

Another tack against the conclusion Wittgenstein draws lies in the (relative) 
success of Eddington typewriters like Deep Blue and Watson.  Based on the 
structure by which inferences are made, we can build machines that reason 
successfully, even though they have no semantic grounding (no concrete 
experience of the atoms boogle or pinkle, but definitely have concrete 
experience of *inferring* pinkle from boogle).

On 1/8/19 10:07 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:
> This seems to be an issue of Wittgenstein's Lion 
> <http://existentialcomics.com/comic/245>

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ

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