[lit-ideas] Re: Language, Justice and Social Practices (long)

  • From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 14:05:19 -0700

Phil Enns wrote:

Robert Paul wrote:

"One could still have the concept _pawn_ without having any name for the
chess piece called in English 'pawn,' (and in other languages, something
else, 'Bauer,' e.g.). I might teach someone 'this piece moves in such
and such ways, etc.' without giving the piece in question any name at
all."

And what do you mean by 'this piece'?  You can't be referring to that
particular piece because there is more than one pawn.

I've rarely met a person so dedicated to misunderstanding plain speech. Would you accept '…these pieces,' 'the pieces in this row,' etc.? Moreover, I could have the requisite concept even if I've forgotten the name 'pawn.' Surely, Phil is not insisting that the word 'pawn' must be currently present in one's mind in order for one to have the concept—? 'Well, you must have known the name at one time!'


'What is the name of that little thing sort of below the stomach and above the left colic flexure? It produces digestive enzymes.' 'Oh, it doesn't really have a name. Some people call it 'organ X,' but most of us just point to it.'

You can't be referring to its shape because there is no reason why a pawn has to have any particular shape. In reality, what we have is a trick of using the
word 'this' as though it were a name. (cf Wittgenstein PI § 38) One
might teach someone moves in chess without giving the piece in question
any name but one could not have rules for the playing of chess, and
therefore the game itself, without names. In particular, without names
there would be no way of identifying a mistake since any move might or
might not be a way this piece moves.

There is no 'trick' here. In §38 (and more succinctly at §410), Wittgenstein does say, correctly, that the indexical, 'this,' is not a name:


' "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.'

In §38, he is mainly addressing his former self in the course of undoing the view that 'names name simples.' He's also getting in a dig at Russell, who said (Lectures on Logical Atomism) that when you get right down to it, the only proper names are 'this,' and 'that.'

Wittgenstein himself uses 'this' in a perfectly ordinary way throughout the Investigations, and elsewhere. He does not, for example, deny that the instructions I give to someone who is helping me put an assemble-it-yourself piece of furniture together, 'This goes there' (where it is understood that neither of us have names for the thing so denoted), make sense. One might think too of what people who are putting a crossword puzzle together say to each other, along the same lines.

Back to the issue. The novice, having learned to play passably with pawns of a certain shape, might wonder if pawns (as we say) shaped like rampan lions behaved as the pieces he was familiar with. 'Are these like those others?' That it is no doubt unduly cumbersome to try to teach chess without naming the pieces does not show that it it would be logically or 'conceptually' impossible to do so.

Phil's last sentence in the quoted paragraph above, insofar as I understand it, would appear to be simply false.

Robert Paul
Reed College
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