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You are here: Flying Aardvark's website -> Rants -> Rant #03
Wittgenstein is my friend; I take him with me as I swim about in the sea of language/mind/matter. Here is a quote from p2 of the Philosophical Investigations...
Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked 'five red apples'. He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the draw marked 'apples'; then he looks up the word 'red' in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers - I assume he knows them by heart - up to the word 'five' and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the draw. --- It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words. ---'But how does ne know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?' --- Well, I assume he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere. - But what is the meaning of the word 'five' ? - No such thing was in question here, only how the word 'five' is used.
My magpie mind - here are a couple of Einstein quotes I stumbled across whilst working in a Buddhist gift shop...
Reality is merely an illusion. Albeit a very persistent one.
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something seperated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prision for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
