on certainty 455

29.3

455. Every language game is based on words ‘and objects’ being recognized again. We learn with the same inexorability that this is a chair as that 2 x 2 = 4.

 recognition is an exercise in uncertainty –

in any act of recognition –

you are faced with question of how to describe –

you may have a description that you think will be useful –

but there is no certainty there –

always you have to decide – which description – if any –

of any number of possible descriptions –

best fits the circumstances – will be most useful –

and in a final sense – you  don’t know with any certainty –

what will and will not work –

but you take a stab – you proceed –

in uncertainty

‘this is a chair’ – is one possible description of a sate of affairs –

a state of affairs that without description – is unknown

if it’s a useful description –

it is likely that you will consider using it again

2 x 2 = 4 – is a language game of substitution –

and if you learn how to play the game –

you can play it any number of times –

what we are talking about here is repetition –

not inexorability

© greg t. charlton. 2010.