Dear XXXXX,

Okay, so we got to electrons existing or not existing due to something called historical causality I can work with it; Feynmans a rockstar, and I like the inference about Einsteins atomic technology in Jonahs god-whale. I even like the injected implication that no one is the inventor of something due to a larger scope of consciousness being a moving force, (but did that really help Oppenheimer sleep at night?). But, somewhere along the way you got me to agree that language should correspond with reality, and this troubled me for a moment because there was really no room for discussion about what reality might be. Because of this I was compelled to sit down, drink some wine, and map out my thoughts on the matter in relation to class lectures and why these theories just dont jive with me. Prior to this analysis of last month, your last example was still about the issue of empty names, which I find much more interesting from an ontological viewpoint rather than the strictly semantic. As I fully admitted, my semantics and ontological analyses are braided like a Scottish plaid. Unweaving one from the other would lose function, aesthetics and identity. And this is what I perceive from this Philosophy of Language tradition (how did they trump the whole category??) it is ugly theory. It is very much like the exquisite beauty of Gdel being renamed Schmidt! (and claiming reality is so terse that Schmidt never would have voiced his objections). It doesnt work well, and it is totally void of relationship to the larger realities of both philosophy and language. You say that analytics chose to focus on use v. meaning to analyze, but isnt that the first thing Russell really throws out as criteria? Just because he comes up with a recipe for a hopefully tasty cookie doesnt separate him from all the other kooks that want to have their ways with language uses and false delusions about how language fits into a logical (dare I say teleological?) structure. And yet, we dont (yet) call him thoroughly demented. Why is this? Im still hoping to find redeeming features. I have a fairly recent commitment to trying to evaluate and do philosophy without being an asshol.e But trying to keep an open mind so far isnt working too well with this class, book, etc. &, yes, you did warn us this class wouldnt be fun, but if I dont send this rambling to you now, I will be compelled to try to do it in the 50 minute exam time which I do understand is not what is called for then. Taking your still Frege/Russell embedded class example of True Love does not exist as an empty name with search instructions leading to a set of zero, I too wondered where one would begin to look for reference and attributes historically, and questioned what if all assumed attributes were incorrect. But instead of assuming that the search instructions are correct in describing the route to find that which may actually require certain levels of wisdom or initiation or training to perceive, it is useful to question the assumed predicate of the subject of Russells definite description. Its not that its useless, just blind! It isnt about what one is looking for to exist its about how one looks for it. If we are to go seeking for language to have some seeming real correspondence to the external world/reality, then an analysis of how the external world works is not out of the field of vision. One can go on 10 job

interviews with an adherence to a particular understanding of what type of job one wants to do/can do, and fail to be hired. Does the possibility of getting hired not exist? Or does one just have unrealistic or incorrect descriptions of what one is seeking? And so it goes for True Love is it a marketed commodity or some idealized past quest? Perhaps its proper search instructions are more of a concept of creative (preserving, destroying?) force not born from individual narcissistic acquisition politics of identity? An agapastic force of evolution which is non-personal? Could we even know if what we falsely describe is empirically verifiable without accurate maps? This is especially true of the field of physics, and sciences in general. New Worlds are discovered all the time which map quite precisely onto ancient mythological primitive understandings. But, unlike the electron, a lot of the mapping of new ideas onto old language concepts are of similar identity, not historicity of human-embedded language development. Its the rediscovery of aspects of an understanding of reality, not a progressive causality. I.E. In seeking whether a proper name was truly empty, the problem would be that the testimony from historical speakers/seekers embedded in i.n.a.p.i. (for short) one-sidedness may not be able to provide a theoretical/technical definition of T.L. And theoretical speculation may be embedded in avoidance of ontological surrender in temporal potentiality and lack actual experience. But it is possible that both types of testimony include actual experience of T.L. existing = (not an empty set) one felt, but not known, the other known but not experienced. If the Proper Name relies on concepts not regulated by True/False duality (polar opposites) of experiential being, but transcends/does not rend into value statements, or exists on a gradient scale between the polar dualities of T/F, then the interpretation of vague or ambiguous terms reflects the conditions of reality/external world and not a problem of langue or parole. Reference in this way is always motivated and unpackable but not in a logical (or even conscious) way. Meaning unfolds. The conscious mind that perceives T/F duality is part of the parcel, but not the language maker & often not even the reference maker (Freud touches this in a nave way). Language is productive not only in forms of proposition, but because words are symbolic signs not so ambiguous as many-sided, complex, manyleveled w/in historicity of time-space being. They can be expanded or contracted (reference) through sense, both intentionally and unintentionally. The reader/hearers interpretation depends on the consciousness/conscience of the expansion and contraction of these symbols and this is informed by the reader/hearers web of interpretation of symbolic references which construct that individuals current reality. In this way, language does correspond to reality, but also informs it, shapes it There are polar extremes of T/F testable and empirical types which change and shift according to the subjective interpretation of what or how to empirically test and what the meaning/reference assigned to the results will be. The position between literalness (fixed, unchanging) and interwoven participatory meaning (dynamic, unfolding) is itself always in flux in individuals and societies. Being uses the language of conceptual dualism of comparison (langue in De Saussures terms) to produce testimony of comparative relation to produce identity coordinates (parole) to interpret the

conscious awareness of undifferentiated stream of input/output flow, which creates perception = (identity/value + focus/awareness) coordinates which modify and enhance comparative relation in an embedded interaction with parole testimony, modifying both cogito/ergo via paroles self-identifications (time-space situation relatedness) into available langue potentialities. The speaker/thinker/perceiver co-creates meaning and perception of identified symbolic reality within a range between False/Absent v. True/Present absolutes but generally plays the color spectrum, not black v. white. At least that is my take on it for the moment. Given my current (and likely extending deeply spiraling into the future) reality coordinates, can you tell me if there is anything in Philosophy of Lang. that looks like that which I can talk with, or do I need to put it on my academic hitlist of things to annihilate?

Sincerely, Heather