thank you for your interest

and appreciation

I consider myself skeptical, as long as the study of language is concerned, since I prefer not to believe nice but unproven theories (such as some ideas from contemporary syntactic analysis)

and I consider myself materialist since I don't believe in any irrational and unnecessary assumption made in Historical lingusitics

for example, I am against the phonetic reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European

and so on

I love the work on proto-Indo-European but get attacked when I point out the issue of incomplete information in regards to game theory and complexity theory

I'm skeptical of the certainty, but I appreciate the effort

(possibly because my focus is on applied arts and sciences)

Unfortunately I know almost nothing about game theory and complexity theory, but the weak point in the IE reconstruction are too obvious to pretend everything is ok

*weak points

Basically, incomplete information means there cannot be certainty, only estimation

The greater the volume of the unknown information, the more difficult it is to make an optimal determination

It's the idea that optimal decision making in a condition of (mathematical or computational) intractability is, by definition, subjective

thus, the idea that the efforts to reconstruct are anything but interesting speculation is not mathematically supportable

(academics may use slightly different terminology, but the concept is quite basic in the field)

the comparison of genetically related languages is still a statistically sound approach

calculations have been made by Donald Ringe

but then the reconstruction is much more subjective

Can I ask what you think about Robert Graves' ideas about artistic insight, with the caveat that the scope is confined to art and literature?

i studied under a very fine Ancient Greek scholar who suggested Graves' take on Greek names, for instance, is worthwhile

Never heard about him but what I read from the Wikipedia makes me totally agree with his critics (concerning the Greek mythology thing)

this is exactly what I mean by materialism in the science of language: I don't take into consideration any kind of subjective and impressionistic thoughts on language and its manifestations (among which there are the myths)

Part of his idea regarding the meaning of names is, in cases where the meaning is unclear, the narrative elements can provide insight

I very much agree with your position from a scientific standpoint

But different rules potentially apply in creation of art

but art is not a prove for language

you can imagine whatever you want, but this won't ever replace the linguistic analysis

and when a meaning of a name is unclear, it will stand unclear, there is nothing we can do

I can't disagree, except from the standpoint of "creating meaning", which is counter to the intent of linguistic analysis

In terms of contemporary syntactic analysis, is this the Chomsky school?

please expand on this, I am not understanding so far

Well, what Graves was partly saying is that artistic insight is valid, and in some cases, may be more profound than strictly rational insight. (that's kind of a reduction, but he felt academic analysis was not ideal in every case. However, he was more of a creative artist and mythographer than purely a scholar.)

Most of the critique related to the influence of Frazer on his commentary

but Frazer was extraordinarily influential in literature, TS Eliot for instance

Ok, this is everything I hate the most :)

But Frazer becomes valid as invented mythology because you need him to understand Eliot

The scope is artistic

maybe, but I'd do that separately from my science

(And can I just say, you are a saint for humoring me. This is very useful!)

I noticed a few weeks ago that Philip K. Dick wrote about Evolutionary Game Theory about 5 years before the field was formalized. I don't know what to make of that. It's an important book philosophically

Narrative treatments of philosophy are quite influential

(half of America is obsessed with Ayn Rand;)

sorry I must go to bed now, it's late here

Thank you for taking the time!

not at all