There is a fundamental connection between any work of fiction and philosophy. Philosophical questions are not empirical but conceptual. Concepts are not sensory but linguistic. Fiction is words.
We are humanized through language. Therefore, the speech centre of the brain continues to function internally, incessantly and involuntarily, telling stories, revising and rehearsing conversations, addressing an imaginary audience or imaginary beings, responding to forces of nature or to chance events as if they were superhuman persons. I spontaneously address the personified source of all things as "Lord" after the immemorial custom of my ancestors, having been initiated into their linguistic community, unlike a feral child brought up by animals.
Wittgenstein analyzed language. Anderson and Stirling work with language. There is a very close connection between philosophy and fiction.
(Is the linguistic error within the copied image deliberate?)
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, I believe God is a real PERSON, as you know.
Poul Anderson touched on the feral child theme in "Earthman, Beware." How horrible, a child living and raised among animals. That can't help but make it impossible, if not rescued in time, for such a child to have any hope of a reasonably normal life as a HUMAN being.
Re Wittgenstein, I there should have been an apostrophe in "In Wittgenstein'S [note the upper case] breakthrough book,..." Is this what you had in mind?
In the second bullet point in the imaged text do you mean the needless "is" in "Is fuzziness of ordinary language a is problem?".
Sean
Sean,
UR right about the " 's " which I missed.
I meant the extra "is."
Paul.
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