[Serious Phil] Wittgenstein, Kripke and Names

[SWM]

--- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "walto" <Philscimind at ...> wrote:
 
> --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "seanwilsonorg" <whoooo26505@> wrote:
> >
> 
> > That doesn't mean it gets harder to talk; it means it gets easier. This feature actually helps us talk. This is what those who wanted a perfect language could not see.
> > 
> 
> 
> That's wrong.  Advocates of ideal languages weren't under any illusions about ease of use.  In fact, most of them realized the impossibility of ever either creating or using one.  They weren't concerned with ease of use, but, mostly, with disambiguation.
> 
> W
> 


Actually that doesn't strike me as right. As I remember my Russell (Logical Atomism) he was very much interested in developing a scientifically reliable way of talking that cleaned out all the ambiguities and fuzzinesses of ordinary language. No, he wasn't proposing that we replace ordinary language in ordinary life with an ideal language but he thought that, for the purposes of science, having a scientifically cleaned up language (an ideal language) would make the work easier. Wittgenstein's desertion of the Russellian ideal language project was reflective of his recognition that ordinary language, in all its natural fuzziness, was richer and more basic than the distilled language Russell envisioned. -- SWM