Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

all being books

Today, I cite John Ellis’ third and final misstep in theories of language:

The last initial misstep which we must consider is the asusmption that linguistic categories group like things together. Here we face an old paradox: if we look at the books on our bookshelves, we see immediately that they are all different in content, size, coloring, length, and so on. They are then not the same, but we still say that they are like each other. How are they similar? They are similar in all being books; and yet they are all still dissimilar. Categorization is the most fundamental operation performed by a language. To describe how it works means using ideas such as “similar” and “dissimilar” very carefully indeed, so that they are assigned their correct place in the understanding of categorization. This crucial matter [...] has prevented those who have taken it from understanding how categorization works. Categorization, it will be seen, will remain a mystery as long as we see it as grouping together of like things; we grasp the essence of the process of categorization only when we see it as the grouping together of things that are not the same in order that they will count as the same.

[Ellis, Language, Thought, and Logic, pp.24f.]

And, so ends his second chapter. I looking forwarding to reading this thin book with its extremely strange linguistic premises. To see if Ellis can hold up his provocations.