[lit-ideas] Re: Grice's Shaggy Dog Story
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2012 11:56:08 -0230
Ah, a humble philosophy teacher challenges the "real" philosophers. This should
be good. (Although I wouldn't constrict permissible answers by the philosophers
to John's narrow pragmatist criterion of sense and/or cogency.)
Running to make popcorn ...
Walter O
Teaching through the summer ... again. And The Rock is having a glorious
summer! Cruise ships are arriving weekly in St. John's and children are
swimming in the harbour with the whales and dolphins.
Quoting John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> At the risk of sounding like a Tennessean, I just can't follow any of
> this thread, going back now for several weeks. I'm a paid philosophy
> teacher (if not a real philosopher), but I can't for the life of me see
> what the real issue is in "saying" or "showing" something, at least in
> the abstract. Can somebody give me a real example of how this makes some
> difference in our lives?
>
> I have been trying to make sense of this discussion by thinking about
> the beginning of the Tao Teh Ching, where the thesis statement about Tao
> is that you can't put Tao into words. A book about something that can't
> be put into words. At least this makes for an interesting starting point
> in trying to read something, and it MIGHT be a way of starting a
> discussion of why nouns, which can always have opposites, can't be used
> about that which has no opposite, Tao. Maybe the book's trying to point
> to Tao? Maybe it's "showing" Tao without "saying" Tao?
>
> Or am I on the wrong track entirely here?
>
> Or should I just go back to watching the baby robins outside the window?
>
> Donal McEvoy wrote:
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > *From:* "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
> > **
> > >I am expanding on McEvoy's claim that it's _sense_ that cannot be
> > said for
> > Witters, but only _shown_. I concentrate on the meaning of 'shaggy'.
> > "What is "shaggy""? "Hairy-coated".
> > So, the _sense_ of "shaggy" is 'hairy-coated'.
> > This enough should be a refutation for McEvoy and Witters.>
> >
> >
> > Of course, it isn't enough. It is quite hopeless a "refutation". It
> > may well be that "the _sense_ of "shaggy" is 'hairy-coated'". But that
> > does not mean the words quoted say the(ir) sense.
> >
> > So this example does not work as an example of "a statement that
> > states its own sense", "signs that sign their own sense", "a
> > 'what-is-said' that says its own sense" etc.
> >
> > The claim that somehow in saying "shaggy" we have said that "shaggy"
> > has the sense of "hairy-coated" is nowhere sustained in JLS' post.
> >
> > Even if we (rightly) say that, "The _sense_ of "shaggy" is
> > 'hairy-coated'", we have not thereby said the sense of 'what we have
> > said' by saying this: the sense of 'what we have said' depends on more
> > than 'what we have said'. If W were Irish he might have amplified this
> > thus - "a feck of a lot more".
> >
> > But this has been explained like a zillion-trillion times.
> >
> > W's view was 'shown' in lengthyish posts on why, for example, stating
> > the numbers '0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.', or stating the instruction 'From n
> > continually add 2', are not statements that state their own sense.
> > [Perhaps JLS' rush-job "refutation" might have been slowed by properly
> > considering these posts, which sought to explain what W seeks to show
> > in PI by discussing teaching such a series or formula to another who
> > did not understand their sense as we do].
> >
> > Nor, for W, can their sense otherwise be stated: because any attempt
> > to state their sense fails unless that attempt states its own sense,
> > and this it cannot do.
> >
> > (I admit: that last point has only be explained like a billion-million
> > times.)
>
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