[lit-ideas] Griceian Dictiveness
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2012 20:23:37 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 6/16/2012 5:00:21 P.M. UTC-02, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx
writes:
Unfortunately, JLS' posts (rightly or wrongly, but probably wrongly) stray
from my posts in ways that make it harder to match them up for discussion.
Nevertheless...
Thanks for engaging.
We are considering Ayer's wording:
“It would be wrong…to say he was being shown numbers in the way he was
being shown specimens of building materials.”
This when MASON 1 says to MASON 2
"Three yellow bricks here! Hold them!"
To expand on Ayer. Ayer seems to be saying that what the addressee of the
utterance is shown is yellow bricks, three to wit. BUT not "numbers" -- or
not the number "three", if you must. Ayer seems to be saying then that the
TOPIC of the utterance is 'bricks', which happen to be yellow and three. The
TOPIC is never "three". Hence my expansion on aboutness -- what the
utterance is about.
On the other hand,
"3 is my favourite number" -- or "my lucky number," as the case may be --
is about a number. And so in that utterance, the addressee, presumably, for
Ayer, is Being Shown Numbers (i.e. the number three) -- in whichever
contrived way that we can say that an utterance about a rose SHOWS a rose (it
doesn't).
McEvoy:
"This is (unfortunately) JLS' interpolation - this "about" - i.e. it is
JLS who translated what I quoted from Ayer into Ayer saying that "Bring three
apples" is "about apples and about three". Ayer didn't say this; and I am
unsure how this 'translation' at all helps. So JLS introduces it and then
accuses Ayer of "being simplistic" in using it, when Ayer didn't, JLS did.
And it is no excuse in my view that JLS adds "if he does" - JLS should not
waste time introducing misconceived paraphrase."
Well, to go back to Ayer's wording and his criticism of Witters:
Ayer assumes that in
"Three yellow bricks here, hold them!"
Witters would say that one is being shown BOTH bricks and 'three'. I.e.
that in some VERY contrived way, a silly game like that may be the way people
learn the meaning of 'three' (being asked to hold three yellow bricks).
Ayer finds that simplistic or over-general, and thinks that there is a
distinction between the noun, "brick", and the adjective, "three":
“It would be wrong…to say he was being shown numbers in the way he was
being shown specimens of building materials.”
Ayer is trading on the show/say distinction, which complicates things. For
he must work with these as "terms of art" for Witters. What is being shown
-- what is being said. As I said (and perhaps shown),
"This rose smells lovely"
does not show a rose -- So, one is not sure what the paraphrase by Ayer is
supposed to provide an exegesis for. Witters must be thinking of OSTENSIVE
definitions:
"three yellow bricks" (as utterer SHOWS them). "Here they go, hold them!"
---
An utterance, with the accompanying act of throwing three yellow bricks may
add to what the utterer is SHOWING rather than merely saying. But I
wouldn't know.
McEvoy:
"It is remarkable (to me anyway) how often JLS cannot stick to the point.
(If he were a lawyer, the judge would be tearing his hair out), The
original point gets lost in some tenuous translation and then the translation
sprouts a whole series of other points, some so far removed from what was
initially at stake that it [is magical]. Somehow we have got from my post,
which
did not bring up "aboutness" at all, to "Aboutness is a rather technical
term in pragmatics.." This, I suggest, is not my fault."
Well, it may do to consider the different categorial status, then, that
Ayer is claiming holds between:
'brick'
and
'three'
---- a Brick is a Building Material.
---- Three is a number.
What an utterance, which includes both 'brick' and 'three' SHOWS something
about the referent of 'brick', and the extension of 'three' -- and so on.
In other words, to show and to say are perhaps vague enough, and we may need
to specify the ways in which what-is-said GETS displayed.
Since Ayer denies that an utterance, "Three yellow bricks here, hold them"
does NOT show the number 'three', he must be having in mind OTHER
utterances where the number three gets shown. These would be what I would
think are
"mathematical statements" like "3 X 3 = 9", which can be said to be about
'three'. And so on.
>>I haven't checked philosophies of number to see if Ayer's criticism, or
>>Witters' main point, figure.>
>>Well, gee. So?
Well, at this point, Ayer's playing with a casual reference by Witters on
'number words' should motivate the philosopher to doublecheck if what they
said _made history_ in the relevant fields. We know, for example, that J. L.
Austin (Grice's favourite philosopher) cared to read Frege extensively and
he even translated his Arithmetic (published by Blackwell). So, I was
wondering about the broader context of Witters's philosophy of mathematics --
since I don't think Ayer displayed any, other than this casual commentary on
a passage in Witters's PI.
McEvoy:
"Now we come to what may be an important point"
"No, it is not how historians consider his views that matters (this smacks
of daft historicism) - what matters is the merits of W's views."
Well, I was thinking of Hacker and Baker who possibly went beyond the
limits of language, even, to place Witters in the historical context. A minor
point.
McEvoy:
"Nor do I think we can easily say the worst metaphysics is
anti-metaphysics: the metaphysics that lies behind the rise of fascism, for
example, [a
series of metaphysical beliefs including 'historicism', 'ethical positivism',
'biological/racial determinism', and Hegelian reification of the state]
surely did much more damage than anti-metaphysics such as Hume's kind of
positivism?
That leaves one important claim:- that "to deny a metaphysical claim is to
HOLD one". Now, this may be correct - and I think Popper would agree it is
correct: i.e. an anti-metaphysical position is itself a kind of
metaphysical position (in Popper's approach any claim that is not testable by
observation is 'metaphysical'). But this does not refute all forms of
anti-metaphysical stance - which are as old, we might say, as any metaphysical
stance
(the debate about the worth of philosophy is as old as philosophical
debate). And while Popper abandoned as mistaken his early view that only
scientific discussion could be "rational", the "rationality" of metaphysical
discussion may be thought as being of a much, more limited order than the
rationality of science.
There are certain possibly self-refuting kinds of anti-metaphysical
stance. The view that ''only the propositions of natural science may be true"
is
not a proposition of natural science and so cannot be true (according to
itself). The view that ''only the propositions of natural science have sense"
is not a proposition of natural science and so cannot have sense
(according to itself). If not actually self-refuting there is something
obviously v
problematic about this kind of stance.
But if we view the later W in terms of the 'key tenet' his
anti-metaphysical stance is not of this obviously v problematic type. For W's
opposition
is not to 'metaphysics' per se but to attempts to say 'what is the case'
metaphysically, since W takes the view these attempts are misconceived because
they are trying to say a 'what-is-the-case' that cannot be said in
language but where the truth may only be shown."
The Ineffable and the Mystic.
Keywords: Witters, METAPHYSICS, Ineffable, MYSTIC. What can be more
metaphysical than the cliam,
"this cannot be said in language but its truth can only be shown."
---- What did Witters teach you?
"Well, not much. But he taught me things -- things which cannot be said in
language, but whose truth can only be shown".
"WOW! Some metaphysician, eh?!"
---
McEvoy:
"And this 'key tenet' is the fundamental point of continuity between the W
of the Tractatus and of the Investigations. W is not denying there is a
metaphysical world but is denying we can say much about it: and what we may
show, in the later W's view, does not constitute a theory or thesis about
this metaphysical world.
Of course, we may say this position - that what metaphysics tries to say
strays beyond what can be said with sense - is itself a metaphysical
position. But it escapes the character of being self-refuting if we accept
that
this position is not put forward as something said or that can be said, but
as a position that may be only be shown."
The SAYABLE, the UNsayable.
---- In which case, Witters would need to provide a PROOF, for some alleged
x, that x cannot be said. It smacks of Buddhism.
It may relate to the digital-analog dimension. I would hold that some
ANALOG content is perhaps NOT reducible to a DIGITAL content. So we may need
examples of "SHOWN items" that get paradoxical or impossible reflects when
rendered into "SAID items". And we should of course broaden the use of 'say'
to cover what English speakers mean by 'say' -- not Witters!
---
McEvoy:
"And the very form of presentation that W uses in Investigations is to put
his position forward as one that may be shown - not as something said: so
the 'key tenet' itself is left implicit or as shown by what is said. This is
also why W is so adamant he is not presenting a theory or thesis - i.e.
saying anything metaphysical - for of course this would undermine his
anti-metaphysical stance. Instead his work is a kind of therapy on certain
kinds
of metaphysical 'illnesses' that arise when we try to go beyond what can be
said with sense.
It is clear enough that in Investigations we find a W who thinks a
logicist programme [such as perhaps JLS finds in Grice] is but another
misconceived to say what cannot be said."
Well, it only goes to show differences of temperament. Grice fought for
YEARS to go beyond 'the said' -- or what is said. But he reached the
IMPLICATURE. Indeed, in "Reply to Richards", he notes that the fault in Austin
is
SELDOM to have recognised the distinction between what-is-said (meaning), and
IMPLICATION, "a distinction thoroughly ignored by Witters". I should
doublecheck the exact wording by Grice, but he is noting that we never find in
Wittgenstein a thorough analysis of the ways we use such verbs as "mean",
"say", and "imply".
---
McEvoy:
"That this view is as easily dismissed as JLS thinks, seems to me a
mistake. It is a mistake not to take seriously that there are "limits to
language" and that these "limits" may have vital implications for philosophy
and in
particular any programme that seeks to put philosophy on a logicist
footing. These "limits" may put many dreamt-up programmes for philosophy into
a
category of futile attempts to say what goes beyond what can be said with
sense."
Well, there's say and there's say. I elaborated this with T. Wharton and
others elsewhere.
"Say it with flowers" -- for example.
I think 'say', qua verb, is OVERrated. I think the first to provide a
thorough, yet, common-sense analysis of 'say' is Grice in a section which he
published almost 'posthumously'. I quote from WoW:
I refer to the section I, entitled, "Saying And Meaning", WoW: Logic and
Conversation, Lecture 5:
Grice writes:
"My main efforts have been directed" to various issues.
"A lot of unanswered questions remain."
"First, the reliance, without much exposition, on a FAVOURED
notion of 'saying' needs to be further elucidated."
---
"I shall, in the first instance, try to pursue the first question."
---
"What follows is a SKETCH of direction, rather than
a formulation of a thesis, with regard to the notion
of SAYING-THAT-P (in my favoured sense of 'say')"
Grice had spent a few terms in Oxford with seminars on "Saying".
-----
Grice writes:
"I want to say that "Utterer SAID that p" entails "Utterer did something x
by which U meant that p."
"But of course many things are examples of the conditions specified in
"Utterer did something x by which U meant that p" which are NOT cases of
saying."
"For example, a man in a car, by refraining from turning on his lights,
MEANS that I should go first, and he will wait for me."
-----
He then substitutes,
"Utterer did something x by which U meant that p"
for
"Utterer did something x (a) by which U meant that p, and (b) which is of a
type which means "p" "(that is, x has for some person or other an
ESTABLISHED standard or conventional meaning)."
----
"There is a convenient laxity of formulation here," Grice notes: "quite
apart from troubles about the quoted variable "p", will be in direct speech
and so cannot be a quotation of a clause following "U meant that". "Again,
many things satisfy the condition mentioned in this examlple which are NOT
cases of SAYING, such as hand-signalling a left turn."
"We want doing x to be a LINGUISTIC act; with hideous oversimplification we
might try the formulation:"
"U did something x"
(a) by which U meant that p
(b) which is an occurrence of an utterance type S (sentence) such that
(c) S means p
(d) S consists of a sequence of elements (such as words) ordered in a way
licensed by a system of rules (syntactical rules)
(e) S means 'p' in virtue of the particular meanings of the elements of S,
their order, and their syntactical character.
This is still too wide.
"U's doing x might be his uttering the sentence" (an example by Frege):
"She was poor BUT she was honest."
---- (and his parents were the same, till she met a city feller and she
lost her honest name).
"What U .meant, and what the sentence means, with BOTH contain something
contributed by the word "but", and I do not want this contribution to appear
in an account of what, in my favoured sense, U SAID."
For U is not saying ANYTHING about an alleged contrast between povery and
honesty. The logical form is
p & q
----
This charming paragraph is also by Grice, now in the Bancroft Library:
The lecture is entitled,
"Saying: Week 1"
Grice writes:
"Although the official title of this class is 'Saying', let me
say at once that we are unlikely to reach any direct
discussion of the notion of saying for several weeks,
and in the likely event of our failing to make any
substantial inroads on the title topic this term,
my present intention is to continue the class into
next term."
"Logic and conversation (notes 1964)"
The Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley.
And so on.
In later lectures, Grice preferred the Latin, 'dictive' to refer to what is
said. In a way, he was following Hare, who had previously used dictor and
dictum (before turning to the Hellenisms of phrastic and neustic, and so
on).
Dictiveness is introduced in WoW, p. 360:
"A special centrality (of meaning) should be attributed
to those instances of signification in which what is
signified either is, or forms part of, or is specially
and appropriately connected with what the signifying
expression (or its user) SAYS [emphasis Grice's] as
distinct from implies, suggests, hints, or in some other
less than fully direct manner conveys. We might
perhaps summarily express this suggestion as
being that special centrality attaches to those
instances of signification in which what is signified
is or is part of the "dictive" content of the signifying
expression."
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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