Distillation

Sometimes you just have to wonder how people get published. I am reading a psycholinguistic book right now and came across a quote and a reference to the following by a cognitive linguist, Fodor. It's truly unbelievable that the journal Cognition picked the article up at all. The quotation is dealing with the argument that the meanings of words are innate and that people can develop about a 50,000 word vocabulary and that's all.

"The basic idea is that what makes a doorknob is just: being the kind of thing from experience with which our kind of mind readily acquires the concept DOORKNOB. And conversely, what makes something the concept of DOORKNOB is just: expressing the property that our kinds of minds lock to from experience with good examples of instantiated doorknobhood.... what I want to say is that doorknobhood is the property that one gets locked to when experience with typical doorknobs causes the locking and does so in virtue of the properties they have qua typical doorknobs."

This really is from a 1998 article in the journal, Cognition. I get it all right. Fodor wants everyone to know that we develop meanings of words from the experience of dealing with an object. We form certain property categories in our minds for the meaning of the words we come into contact with. But, my goodness, what a circuitous way to say it! (Now maybe my ability to produce 15 words utterances can be better understood by those who know that I have had my head in this kind of reading [ha ha]). But, Fodor is wrong. Research through the first decade of 2000 has shown that the mind works with malleable categories that get reshaped as words are derived from context rather than having word properties stored in the brain.

The point I would like to make is not linguistic in nature. It centers around convolution. I would like to say that life throws so much convolution into its mix as we go through it, that it is easy to get cuaght up trying to find meaning in all of its meanderings. But, I think its like the meaning of words. We are born with malleable categories to recognize life with. We have the ability, thus the permission or right, to reshape life as we establish, continue investigating, or renege on our essential values. (Values and essential values will be the subject of another blog someday).

Life comes in malleable categories because life has many contexts. I didn't know that when I was 20, had a high school diploma to my name, was about to get my bachelor's degree, and thought I had the world by the tail. Well, it was a tiger's tail I was swinging, and several bites (years, too) later, I decided to let go of it. Now, knowing what has the most meaning in life and who, really, stands head and shoulders above all others does not appear in a convoluted mix. It's been distilled from the mix. I rest more easily at nights knowing this and smile more often.