In a message dated 6/27/2012 12:06:26 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: it seems v doubtful to me that W is concerned with the following kind of "play" or with making the kind of objection his 'character' in the "play" makes:-... I suggest that such a (foolish) objection would not reflect any g rammatical point that W would care to make. For the record, here below the longer excerpts kindly provided by R. Paul. It may do as an exercise to provide "better" conversational exchanges than the one Witters cares to give. It seems obvious Witters (like Grice) is concerned with the 'conversational game' and its possible 'moves'. But, whereas Grice knew the answer (an 'implicature' never affects the 'sense' of an expression), Witters was so confused that he thought that conversational multiplicities shed light on the wrong dictum that meaning _was_ use. Or something. I intend to refer to McEvoy's reference to 'naming' in another post. Cheers, Speranza ---- 403. If I were to reserve the word "pain" solely for what I had hitherto called "my pain", and others "L.W.'s pain", I should do other people no injustice, so long as a notation were provided in which the loss of the word "pain" in other connexions were somehow supplied. Other people would still be pitied, treated by doctors and so on. It would, of course, be no objection to this mode of expression to say: "But look here, other people have just the same as you!" But what should I gain from this new kind of account? Nothing. But after all neither does the solipsist want any practical advantage when he advances his view! 404. "When I say 'I am in pain', I do not point to a person who is in pain, since in a certain sense I have no idea who is." And this can be given a justification. For the main point is: I did not say that such-and such a person was in pain, but "I am . . . . . " Now in saying this I don't name any person. Just as I don't name anyone when I groan with pain. Though someone else sees who is in pain from the groaning. What does it mean to know who is in pain? It means, for example, to know which man in this room is in pain: for instance, that it is the one who is sitting over there, or the one who is standing in that corner, the tall one over there with the fair hair, and so on.—What am I getting at? At the fact that there is a great variety of criteria for personal 'identity'''.Now which of them determines my saying that '/' am in pain? None. 405. "But at any rate when you say 'I am in pain', you want to draw the attention of others to a particular person."—The answer might be: No, I want to draw their attention to myself.— 406. "But surely what you want to do with the words 'I am. . . .' is to distinguish between yourself and other people."—Can this be said in every case? Even when I merely groan? And even if I do 'want to distinguish' between myself and other people—do I want to distinguish between the person L.W. and the person N.N.? 407. It would be possible to imagine someone groaning out: "Someone is in pain—I don't know who!"—and our then hurrying to help him, the one who groaned. "Someone is in pain—I don't know who!"—and our then hurrying to help him, the one who groaned. 408. "But you aren't in doubt whether it is you or someone else who has the pain!"—The proposition "I don't know whether I or someone else is in pain" would be a logical product, and one of its factors would be: "I don't know whether I am in pain or not"— and that is not a significant proposition. 409. Imagine several people standing in a ring, and me among them. One of us, sometimes this one, sometimes that, is connected to the poles of an electrical machine without our being able to see this. I observe the faces of the others and try to see which of us has just been electrified.—Then I say: "Now I know who it is; for it's myself." In this sense I could also say: "Now I know who is getting the shocks; it is myself." This would be a rather queer way of speaking.—But if I make the supposition that I can feel the shock even when someone else is electrified, then the expression "Now I know who . . . ." becomes quite unsuitable. It does not belong to this game. 410. "I" is not the name of a person, nor "here" of a place, and "this" is not a name. But they are connected with names. Names are explained by means of them. It is also true that it is characteristic of physics not to use these words. ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html