[lit-ideas] Ostension and Criterion in Wittgenstein and Grice
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- Date: Sat, 10 May 2014 07:06:42 -0400 (EDT)
We are considering various claims, notably related to Witters, but since I
tend to interpret what Witters is after alla Grice, I added him 'into the
bargain'.
The claim concerns aspects of language. While Omar K. thinks
self-referentiality is as issue, and while it may, in most cases, I think
Witters's
concern is a broader one, with meta-language as such. L1 used to speak about
L2
need not be self-referential. Yet Witters does not seem to allow for
'metalinguistic' explanation of linguistic phenomena -- We are mainly dealing
with the interpretation of Witters's doctrine as propounded by McEvoy.
One of the 'paradigms' was 'naming' -- but this issue should apply to any
aspect of communication, meaning, or language -- however vague these terms
are.
The show/say distinction appears largely in TLP, and while the distinctions
have been identified, it should be pointed out that these extremes in the
distinction SHARE a few features too. McEvoy is concerned with the object
of what is allegedly being said and the object of what is shown as being
'sense'. So, for one, the alleged object of these two activities (to say and
to show) is a common one. It is true that Witters is alleging that the sense
cannot be said. This impossibility is described as being 'a priori' or
'analytic': a conceptual impossibility, as it were, rather, than, as the
author of 'Definitions' in the Stanford Encyclopedia notes, a mere
'difficulty'.
So, we have two 'propositional attitudes', involved in 'saying' and
'showing' that share an alleged object (the sense). With these common aspects
in
mind, we now turn to the idea of 'criterion'.
Criteria are NOT used by Witters with regard to the say/show distinction,
but my point was that they can. Criteria _show_ and criteria _say_, we say,
the alleged _sense_. McEvoy should have no problem with criteria SHOWING.
How can I demonstrate or provide evidence that criteria _say_?
McEvoy is right that Witters was perhaps casual in his use of 'criterion',
and it's only interpreters (notably Albritton, but also Wellman) who have
tried to make sense of this term. For example, it has been noted that
Witters sometimes uses 'outward criterion', as being the correct phrase, and
Wellman wonders if this IMPLICATES that Witters allows for inward criteria
(Albritton's example: I may have an inward criterion for my having a
toothache,
i.e. for my personal use of "Ouch!", say). Wellman concedes that the use
of 'outward' in 'outward criteria' may be rhetorical, rather than
substantive.
But the point emphasised by Witters is that criteria are public, and
shared, by alla Grice, U and A, utterer and addressee.
Criteria are notably DEFEASIBLE, Witters seems to be saying. Baker has
expanded on how 'defeasibility' applies to meaning notably in the theories of
H. L. A. Hart, and indeed Grice has also stressed this 'ceteris paribus'
aspect of 'communication' and 'meaning'.
The reductio for Witters would be to admit that criteria (which allegedly
SHOW sense) themselves can only be _shown_ rather than formulated
explicitly. Implicit criteria for the 'appropriate' use of this or that.
It was this vagueness that Grice set to criticise some 10 years after the
"Investigations" were published, in the William James lectures. He notes
that what we may feel is some deep scepticism (if that's the word) behind
Witters's campaign (but formulated by 'meaning = use') is best challenged by
detailed analysis. Indeed, Grice claims that the fashion by 1967, given the
fuzziness with which notions like 'meaning' and 'use' are employed, should
be that meaning ≠ use.
I propose 'ostension' as a term for Witters's 'show'. McEvoy is right that
in the translation provided in Philosophical Investigations for the
Augustine passage 'show' (indeed 'shewn') is used, but 'ostension' may do for
most
cases. Ostension need NOT be related to 'definition' (as in 'ostensive
definition') although meaning is usually involved. And ostension should
perhaps be distinguished from DEIXIS and self-referentiality. Thus, 'this' as
in
'this king of France is bald' is DEICTIC. And 'This!' with finger pointing
in the direction of a rat may be an ostensive definition of 'rat'. As Gupta
notes, philosophers are usually NOT interested in, say, an ostension (or
ostensive definition) of things like 'know'. "You what to know what 'know'
means? It means THIS' -- how can you _show_ the meaning of 'know'?
Piero Straffa was an aristocrat (almost) and Palma seems to minimise that
factor, although it is true that the gesture he used did show SOMETHING to
Witters (he is credited in the Preface to the PI that Witters wrote and was
only posthumously published). It is not that kind of gestures that _show_
stuff that Witters is into, though. He is into, it seems, the activity of
the professional philosopher (as Witters was -- Straffa was an economist)
including 'showing'. It would be the role of the philosopher or philosophical
linguist to _show_ things rather than _say_ things -- perhaps even to show
senses, too.
There is a broader interpretation, where Witters may be claiming that
'showing' is all-pervasive among communicators themselves. It is communicators
who rely on showing rather than saying. Witters's problem seems to be that
every time communicators aim or purport or set to _SAY_, say, the 'sense' of
this or that, they find themselves in what Plato (or Kant) would call an
'aporia' and they are left with nothing but showing, which, Witters seems to
think, ends up being PRETTY effective, if not VERY effective, or _AS_
effective as it can.
Or stuff.
In a message dated 5/9/2014 3:54:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
The explanation may be that it is not a 'technicism' as far as
Wittgenstein is concerned, given the purposes for which he deploys it, but it
becomes
one in the hands of some commentators. As I understand it, Wittgenstein is
not using the notion of 'criterion' in the strict sense in which we might
say the positivist 'verificationist theory of meaning' is offered as a
strict criterion of "sense" - that is, a definitive (rather than partial and
defeasible) yardstick. In Investigations Wittgenstein's sense of 'criterion'
is looser: more elastic and flexible, as it is deployed to reflect the
sometime elasticity and flexibility of many different uses of language.
Well, but one may grant that there is a way out in the former claim then:
McEvoy:
"This post may help explain why I do not find what W writes about
criteria
(mentioned in a previous post by JLS) to be at all incompatible with the
interpretation I am suggesting."
That post did perhaps attempt to SHOW that, though.
BUT:
It may be counter-argued that we COULD (and perhaps should) make use of
the idea of 'criteria' _sic_ in the plural. Or even in the singular.
Witters may not have had something technical or 'jargo-technical' or
'krypto-technical' (as I think Grice's word is) when he said 'criterion',
but...
I would grant that there's no use of having one word only in the plural.
If Witters does speak of 'criteria' sometimes _sic_ in the plural, we should
not be prohibited from using 'criterion' in the singular. I propose the
capital "C" to represent "Criterion".
The 'grammar' of 'criterion' is a difficult one. I propose to relate it to
'utterance' tokens, symbolised by 'u'. Then we have an Utterer and an
Addressee.
By uttering u, U makes himself understood if he uses x according to
Criterion C, which, to echo Omar K., is one shared or recognised by the
addressee
A.
----
The idea would be that a 'criterion' is good, and good enough, and, a
criterion is something that may be included in what Aristotle would call 'ta
legomena', or 'ton legomenon': what IS SAID.
So, if there is a criterion, which can be made explicit, on occasion, and
upon request, in something that is being said (a dictum), then, we would
have a general 'theory' according to Witters that would shed light on things
like 'naming', etc.
There would be a criterion C for name N -- and it is concordance with this
criterion that marks the appropriate use of "N".
---
For the record, here is
Gupta, Anil, "Definitions", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/definitions/>.
on 'ostensive' DEFINITION.
This, Gupta says, "occurs with ostensive definitions."
"We can teach a boy a term, say ‘meter’, by giving the ostensive
definition “This stick is one meter long,” while showing the boy a meter
stick."
"There is a mystery here, too."
"Before the definition is given, the boy does not understand the sentence
‘This stick is one meter long’."
"Yet, by using the sentence in a particular way, the boy is brought to
understand one of the constituents of the sentence and the sentence itself."
"How can a sentence that lacks meaning for the boy impart to him an
understanding of a term and, at the same time, an understanding of itself?"
It is THEN that the reference to Witters is given:
"Ostensive definitions look simple but, as Ludwig Wittgenstein observed,
they are effective only because a complex linguistic and conceptual capacity
is operative in the background. It is not easy to provide an account of
this capacity."
Perhaps one problem is with 'definition', and another with 'philosopher'.
Gupta goes on:
"Definitions sought by philosophers [are not of the ostensive kind]."
He gives an example that we have discussed profusely in Lit-Ideas:
on knowing what is false.
Gupta writes:
"When an epistemologist seeks a definition of “knowledge,” she is not
seeking a good way of teaching young children the word ‘know’."
He concludes the section:
"The philosophical quest for definition can sometimes fruitfully be
characterized as a search for an explanation of meaning. But the sense of ‘
explanation of meaning’ here is very different from the sense in which a
dictionary or an ostensive definition explains the meaning of a word."
The entry provides two Gupta references:
Gupta, A., 1988/89, “Remarks on Definitions and the Concept of Truth,”
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 89: 227–246.
–––, 2006, “Finite Circular Definitions,” in Self-Reference, edited by
T. Bolander, V. F. Hendricks, and S. A. Andersen, Stanford: CSLI
Publications, pp. 79–93.
Gupta, A. and Belnap, N., 1993, The Revision Theory of Truth, Cambridge
MA: MIT Press.
Cheers,
Speranza
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