Nul Context

[R.W. (Bob) Erickson]

Communication is about context

Sometimes the context is so obvious that the frame is nearly invisible, 
sometimes the context is so subtle that indications of obvious 
significance can only be detected after much study.

Language and meaning involve sharing of contexts.

This is obvious, what is less obvious is the way that communication 
implicates a context one might call, A Theory of Mind

What does this mean? Well a lot of it is hidden in what we call common 
sense, or folk psychology. You know what I mean because I'm behaving 
conventionally in my choice of words, and saying stuff that makes sense.

When we use language conventionally, we talk about things that are 
happening and what people are thinking. When we talk about things that 
matter we wonder what others think. We think about what other people are 
thinking, all the time.

Its a common enough usage of language, and quite comprehensible. Which 
makes it all the more peculiar that for a long time science had a weird 
rule that said that unempirical terms like intention and purpose, not to 
mention perception and comprehension were "metaphysical nonsense".

Science has come a long way since the logical positivists held sway. Its 
not that they were wrong, the problem was they couldnt be right. The 
original proof that they were wrong was at hand for most of the 20th 
century, in the interference pattern between the works of Wittgenstein 
and Gvdel,

As recently as the middle of the last century, back when Chomsky was 
doing his seminal work in deep structures, psychology was firmly stuck 
with Pavlovian Reflexes and Skinner Boxes and vigorously opposed 
adopting any working theory of mind. Stimulus Response Theory just cant 
handle task of explaining what an artist does. Into this context, Modern 
Linguistics was born.