[lit-ideas] Re: TLP1: Elements and their relations in giving the sense of 'p'
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:40:15 -0800
Donal has some worries about an earlier discussion.
'This post takes up some points discussed last year and may suffer from
memory lapses since some of this is ‘afair’. Delay in replying is partly
because, reading the ‘TLP’, I can understand why Frege sought more and
more clarifications because “the content is too unclear to me”.
(Un)fortunately, I am past the stage where I assume this is my fault and
tend to suppose it is the writer’s. ...
'... A key dispute is whether, as Phil Enns claimed [affair], W’s TLP
offers the view that the sense of a proposition is determined only by
the relations between the elements of the proposition; or whether, as I
maintain(ed), the sense of ‘p’ also depends on the character or content
of the elements.'
If this is what Phil claimed, then he was mistaken in claiming it. The
sense of a proposition is, roughly, what would be the case if it were
true. (False sentence have a sense; their falsity could not be
determined otherwise.) As Wittgenstein nowhere puts it exactly this way,
let me try to explain. The sense of a sentence could not be determined
entirely by 'the relations' between the elements of a proposition, for
there is nothing in the mere 'relations' among its elements to give a
proposition its—necessary—determinate sense.
A proposition, as we know by now, is a picture, and apparently it's a
picture in a non-metaphorical sense. It isn't merely 'like' a picture:
it is one. As a picture, it depicts 'how things are,' and in order to do
this its elements must reach right down to the world in such a way that
if there are precisely as many elements in the picture as there are in
the world—in a state of affairs—and if the elements of the picture are
able to pick out—to 'touch'—the elements of the state of affairs, with
nothing left out and nothing left over, it depicts 'the world'
correctly, and the proposition is true. One way of understanding how a
false proposition can have a sense is to imagine what would be the case
if things in the world were disposed exactly as they are depicted by it.
We cannot imagine illogical things: thoughts have the same logical and
pictorial form as propositions.
'There are griffins gamboling on the quad,' has sense. 'There are quad
gamboling,' hasn't.
Donal continues
'If the former view is correct it would appear that the sense of ‘The
cat is on the mat’ is the same as the sense of "The mat is on the
cat" '.
...
I don't see why Phil would be forced to this odd conclusion. Without
getting all flustered about what he means (I trust Donal's
interpretation of Phil), it seems to me that as a famous philosopher
once said, 'this conclusion is in nowise necessary.' The relation here
is 'on.'; it holds between the cat and the mat. 'On' is not a
symmetrical relation. The grammatical order of the sentence shows which
thing is on another thing. I really don't understand this criticism of
Phil. Mine was only that his alleged view was incomplete.
Donal explains
'... on the latter view, these propositions have quite different senses
because while the relation between the elements of both ‘p’s is that one
is “on” the other, the character of the objects so related are switched.
On the latter view, ‘The dog is on the mat’ has a different sense to
‘The cat is on the mat’ because, crucially, the character of one of the
elements of these ‘p’s has changed – and that is enough to change their
sense.'
To say that the 'character' of the elements of a proposition in this
case have changed because in one case a dog is named and in the other,
a cat, is unilluminating, insofar as the elements of a proposition are
fundamentally names. They're not the ultimately simple names, whose
winkling out is the goal of 'complete' analysis, but as ordinary
language is perfectly in order just as it is, they'll do.
Donal continues
'The latter view might appear to be supported by 3.25: “A proposition
has one and only one complete analysis.”. The particularity of the
unique sense of ‘p’ cannot be obtained merely by analysing the relations
it asserts nor merely the “elements” it asserts, since these relations
and “elements” may separately feature in other ‘p’s, and so neither
those relations nor the elements are by themselves sufficient to give
the sense of ‘p’.'
This is, I think, a solution looking for a problem. Donal's unified
theory of sense points out only that pictures have elements in certain
relations—pictorial and logical relations—to one another. And this is
true, as far as it goes. Nevertheless, a proposition does not 'assert'
its 'elements,' anymore than it 'asserts' the relations between them.
The requirement for the 'complete analysis of a proposition' is that if
there were no such thing, propositions would never 'make contact with'
the objects which make up the substance of the world. A completely
analyzed proposition is one in which names, genuine names, which pick
out logically simple objects stand in immediate combination.
Wittgenstein never gave an account of what such ultimately simple
objects were. And a good thing, too.
Thanks to Donal for waking me up, but I must rest some more.
Robert Paul,
waiting for something,
somewhere south of Reed College
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