(June 13, 2012 at 3:26 pm)whateverist Wrote: I'm not sure if you're missing my point or avoiding it. My claim is that people can be expert speakers of their native language without having formally learned the parts of speech and the rules for their use. Your retort seems to be "how can they be experts if they never had any formal training." (What am I missing?)
You are missing the fact that being an expert would require specific and explicit knowledge of parts of speech and rules of the use, so that any mistake may be pointed out immediately. And how do you think they'd acquire that knowledge without learning it?
(June 13, 2012 at 3:26 pm)whateverist Wrote: Again you are missing or avoiding my point. My claim is that someone can 'hear' that gooder is wrong usage without being able to tell you what rule of correct usage it violates.
Actually, you can't 'hear' that the usage is wrong. You can 'hear' that people use a different word in its place and you can 'hear' that several different words may convey the same meaning. Unless it is pointed put to you, you cannot 'hear' that the word you are using is in fact wrong.
(June 13, 2012 at 3:26 pm)whateverist Wrote: If you stop and think about it, you will realize that people must have evolved and used languages for many, many generations before anyone would ever have thought to analyze the rules for usage. When they did, they really just recorded the usage that already existed. There was no logic or structure that was deliberately built into language use. What logic there is was discovered, not designed. So of course, correct usage can continue without formal, analytic understanding of the structure and logic of the language, except in an intuitive sense.
What makes you think that any usage before the said codifications and discovery of the said rules and logic could be considered "correct". It might very well be the case that people then used language without any consideration for a for structure or grammar, leading to the need of codification. Either way, we'll never know which was the case.
(June 13, 2012 at 3:26 pm)whateverist Wrote:(June 13, 2012 at 11:09 am)whateverist Wrote: A more interesting question for me is what role a formal, analytic understanding should play in our actual use of language or moral choice once we have matured into expert practitioners ourselves. Surely thinking incessantly about the formal structure of what you are saying would be a great distraction in communicating what you have to say. In the end one would like to benefit from expert usage for the sake of effective communication, not for the sake of show casing the manner of speech. Perhaps the situation is parallel for morality. In the end I want to conduct myself in a way that is respectful of everyone, but myself included. I wouldn't wish for a world in which everyone was continually engrossed by the possible ramifications of every action. I would wish for them -and so too myself- some degree of spontaneity and playfulness. So perhaps it is best if moral thinking too becomes transparent in the end.
That statement is like saying "what role does high-school biology play once you have become a doctor?". The reason an expert in any field has to undergo formal training is to internalize the knowledge that training imparts. The reason why show-casing the manner of speech is considered the mark of an expert is because it shows the capacity of the expert to communicate the idea in many different forms. And once he has that capacity, he has the option of choosing the most effective form, according to the situation, without having to strain himself.
The point of internalizing all that knowledge is to be able to use it almost intuitively. The same goes for morality. Once you have internalized the basic concepts, you can judge an action to be right or wrong almost intuitively. Remember, it isn't actual intuition, since the knowledge is not automatic, but learned. It seems intuitive simply because of the ease by which you can access and process it.
I think you may have missed an argument here.
