[lit-ideas] Gendlin's Wittgenstein
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2012 17:13:19 +0100 (BST)
JLS urled Gendlin's article, which appears to take seriously the idea that "He
[W] said he could not say, only show. He was convinced that what he showed
could not be talked about."
But it would be wrong to infer that Gendlin's view is otherwise close to what I
have suggested as the 'key tenet' and its putative implications. In particular,
Gendlin seems blind to what it is that W thinks can only be shown and not said.
In my view, 'what cannot be said' for W is not words, or language, or items of
language [like sentences, or exclamations or questions] - for these can all be
said. It is the sense of words, language and items of language that W thinks
cannot be said - not the words or other such items of language themselves. In
other words, for W, language may have sense and language may be said but its
sense can only be shown not said.
Yet Gendlin begins:
"Wittgenstein insisted that rules cannot govern speech, because they are
formulated only
from the practice of speaking, and only by it. He also rejected observational
reports as a
basis for understanding language. It has long been an open question, just where
Wittgenstein is speaking from."
Now, others may explain where W "insisted" any of this. It is not my suggestion
that W did so insist.
Take Gendlin's first claim re rules: my suggestion is that what W seeks to show
is quite different to what Gendlin suggests. My suggestion is that W seeks to
show that, insofar as we might seek to explain the sense of language in terms
of "rules", the sense of such rules cannot be said. N.b. It is not therefore
that we cannot say a "rule" but that we cannot say the sense of a rule. What we
say when we say a "rule" does not say the sense of the "rule": such a stated
"rule" stands in need of "something more" in order for us to have the sense of
the "rule", and that "something more" cannot be said but can only be shown.
[And I have suggested that this is the point that lies of the back of W
discussing teaching the sense of a series of numbers or of a formula to someone
who did not understand their sense as we did].
This is not, pace Gendlin, to claim that "rules cannot govern speech" but to
make a very different point.
Nor is it W's view that the problem here is because rules "are formulated only
from the practice of speaking, and only by it." Rather the problem for W is
about the "limits of language"; and what W seeks to show is that language is
not a self-contained system where the sense of 'what is said' is contained in
'what is said' in that the sense is said by 'what is said'. That is, we cannot
say the sense of language in language (or at all, for how we could we say the
sense without language?).
Against this, Gendlin characterizes W's problem as follows: "We can ask why
Wittgenstein was so opposed to speaking about language. Then we can see if we
are making the mistake he warned against. It was that the attempt would ignore
the fact that words about language are themselves dependent on the very
practice they pretend to explain." But why would it necessarily be a problem
that x is "dependent" on what it explains? And clearly W himself spends much of
his work "speaking about language", so Gendlin can hardly be right in his
interpretation here.
W is not against "speaking about language". What W opposes is trying to say the
sense of language or trying to say 'what can only be shown' - and W shows his
opposition by not ever trying to say the sense of language but writing so as to
show, for example, that the sense of language is not said in language.
Gendlin's central claim is that, "It is not true that what Wittgenstein showed
cannot be said. It seem so because it cannot be said as a substitution in a
theoretical language." [Gendlin's emphasis]. But Gendlin does not grasp that
the "what" W thinks "cannot be said" is the sense of language - not language
itself, which is "said" everytime it is used. And Gendlin 'says' nothing that
shows - as against what W shows in PI re the sense of a series of numbers or of
a formula - that the sense of 'what is said' may be said. Put bluntly, there is
not a single example in Gendlin's paper of a 'what-is-said' where its sense may
be said; bearing in mind, of course, that any attempt to say the sense fails if
that attempt does not say its own sense, which W maintains it cannot.
Others may decide if Gendlin's W is much of an advance on Ayer's W.
Donal
Who must depart to cook supper
Salop
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