[lit-ideas] Re: The Philosopher's Show
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 10:27:34 -0400 (EDT)
I'm glad D. P. P. McEvoy was able to read P. M. S. Hacker's essay on the
say/show distinction.
"I'll show you something"
surely carries a different implicature from (or 'than' as they say in New
Zealand):
"I'll say something to you".
Note that 'show' and 'say' are not always (contra St. Augustine, "De
magistro") ALL-ways interchangeable:
"It only goes to show"
is a cliché, while:
"It only goes to say"
sounds stupid -- even if said by some 'authority'.
But Hacker says more than this, and re-considers all of McEvoy's
observations.
Hacker, using Grice's terminology -- they taught -- at different times --
in the same little room up the steep flight of stairs in the "Philosopher's
Room" at St. John's college, Oxford -- the richest college in Oxford --
after Christ Church -- distinguishes between:
By uttering x, U(tterer) meant that p.
By uttering x, U showed that p.
By uttering x, U said that p.
--- This distinction (trichotomy, Hacker calls it) is unexistent in Witters
("does not exist").
The addition of 'mean' is 'crucial'. For Hacker wants to say, with Grice --
but not Witters - that, what Mr. Solipsist (one of Witters's silly
examples) MEANS makes sense, even if they cannot say it (but only show it).
Namely, "I am the only existing thing in the world".
Hacker notes that, by Witters's standards, "This is a Cambridge blue shade
of blue" is yet another thing that can only be shown rather than said --
which looks, on the face of Witters's philosophy (if true) as ridiculous.
Ergo: what Witters means cannot be what he claimed to say truthfully.
P. M. S. Hacker's problem is Cora Diamond. Cora Diamond, who has a
beautiful surname (and a meaningful one, too) possibly could use abbreviations,
such as C. P. ("Patricia"?).
Hacker entitles his conclusion to his refutation of C. Diamond (and by
extension, L J J Wittgenstein) as follows:
"The Tractatus — trying to say what can only be shown".
Note the 'try'. Grice notes that the idea that
"I tried"
implicates "I failed"
is not a generalised one. ("Surely I can try to make that stone wall FALL,
even if I know I won't. I only do it to exercise my muscles").
Hacker writes:
"Cora Diamond and [insert first name initial here] Conant, like Frank
Plumpton Ramsey, argue (rightly) that if you can’t say it, you can’t say
it, and you can’t whistle it either."
Ramsey has to be credited with the addition of the whistle. Ramsey is
quoting A E Housman, who said,
"Whistle -- and I'll be there".
"The use of 'and' in "Whistle and I'll be there" is not conjunctional but
subordinate counterfactual, even" -- Grice remarks.
"Touch the beast and it will bite you".
"Surely, 'and' cannot mean what P. F. Strawson says it means. The logical
form of the above is
p --> q
and NOT
p & q
(Witters, by saying that an expression SHOWS its logical form hardly helps
here, because we are the AUTHORS of our own logical forms -- we take an
ACTIVE role in the generation of our linguistic structures, rather than, as he
always did his whole sad life, feel a PRISONER of them).
Hacker goes on:
"Unlike Frank Plumpton Ramsey (best known for his redundance theory of
'... is true' -- "Delete "-- is true" and you delete nothing important),
Diamond and Conant think that Wittgenstein was NOT trying to whistle it."
One thing is for certain. Witters did NOT whistle.
Oddly, while Darwin (like me, initially) regarded "whistling" as genetic
(we don't LEARN to do it), some people in Austria are not natural whistlers.
This may explain Witter's inability to yet again "whistle that p".
Hacker continues:
"On Diamond's and Conant's interpretation, there is NOTHING that the
nonsensical pseudo-propositions
-- like "I like Cambridge blue" -- of the Tractatus are trying to say,
for one cannot mean something that
cannot be said."
It seems ridiculous -- but true -- that Cora Dimanod and Conant blatantly
ignore H. P. Grice's seminal essay on "Meaning" (1948), which while not
given during a seminar (hence 'seminal' is metaphorical) was given at The
Philosophical Association in Oxford -- back in the day.
"But is this what Wittgenstein thought?"
Hacker asks, rhetorically. Cfr.:
"Is the Pope catholic?"
The answer: NO.
---
The refutation proceeds step by step:
"Since Diamond and Conant allow reference to the ‘nonsensical’ remarks of
TLP 4.126 - 4.1272, 5.473 and 5.4733, it is presumably equally legitimate
to refer to related passages in the attempt to fathom Wittgenstein’s
intentions."
Note that 're-mark' (as in "non-sensical" re-mark) is short for "p & -p",
a contradiction yet without 'sense', in that it uses philosophical jargon
in the use rather than mention format ("This is an object" -- or "There are
objects", rather than "I step onto a black object this morning").
Hacker:
"But If we do so, it is immediately evident that Wittgenstein did think
that one CAN *mean* something [that p, q, etc] that can NOT be said".
One simply "expresses [it] in a _different_ way".
As in
He whistled that p & - p.
---
Hacker adds:
"Moreover, Wittgenstein insisted, we -- qua philosophers -- can
apprehend, indeed, can see some things
which are thus *meant* but cannot be said."
This needs to be carefully distinguished from Grice's more casual remarks
on 'the unsaid'.
A: I've run out of fuel.
B: There's a garage round the corner.
--- unsaid: which is selling fuel, and therefore open.
Surely, while B has NOT _said_ that the garage is open and with fuel to go,
and we can claim he MEANT it, he can always go on and CANCEL the 'unsaid':
A: It was closed!
B: I never SAID it was open and with fuel to go.
The cancellability of the unsaid is never a feature for Witters who FEARED
the unsaid.
---
Hacker:
"As noted, Wittgenstein asserted that what B. A. W. Russell’s axiom of
infinity was meant to
say, would (if true) be shown by the existence of infinitely many names
with different meanings (TLP
5.535).'
Here "mean to" is yet a subtle idiom used by Hacker and Grice, but not by
Witters (there's no idiomatic use of 'Meinen' in the rather less plastic
lingo that German is -- to English speakers):
"mean to"
What Russell MEANT to say.
What Russell meant.
What Russell said.
What Russell meant to show.
What Russell show.
What Russell meant to show.
Here the jargon is "infinite"
Russell formulated the axiom of infinity.
What Russell means to say is SHOWN by the existence of infinitely many
names.
Note the slight redundancy: 'infinitely many':
What Russell meant is SHOWN by the existence of infinite names.
--- While the example is genial, Hacker provides a second one, similarly
genial:
"Similarly, what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be
said, but makes itself manifest (TLP 5.62)."
Witters is not clear as to what he means by "Korrekt".
But again,
"Only I exist", he said.
He said that only he existed.
He showed that only he existed.
He meant that only he existed.
--- Formulate the differences.
--- The third example is one that touches Grice:
MODUS PONENS -- rules of inference:
"We cannot say that ‘q’ follows from ‘p’ and ‘p --> q’, for this is an
internal relation between propositions. But it is shown by the tautology ‘
(p --> q). (p):-->:(q)’ (TLP
6.1201)."
Grice was obsessed with 'therefore'. The particle that we use when we say
p
p -->
----
.
.. q
"He is an Englishman, and all Englishmen are brave; he is, therefore,
brave."
This complex utterance Grice spends some time with.
Grice dismisses any sort of 'dictiveness' to that nevertheless silly
particle, "there-fore". Grice says that 'therefore' does not SAY anything.
Rather, by uttering the above -- "Jack is an Englishman, and all Englishmen
are brave; Jack is, therefore, brave" -- the utterer IMPLICATES (albeit
conventionally, rather than conversationally) that "Jack is brave" FOLLOWS
from "Jack is an Englishman and all Englishmen are brave". It woud be
ridiculous to think that the utterer SAID that -- he only implicated. Since,
as
Hacker and Grice knows, Witters' ignores -- to his failure -- the brilliant
concept of 'implicature' (a nonlogical implication) what can you expect?
(incidentally -- that above is a good example of a mixed illocutionary
force utterance: "Since it's raining, why are you bothering?")
Hacker quotes from Witters -- he surely has read this author -- he keeps
quoting him in a bad English translation, when we know that Witters could and
would not articulate his thoughts in Shakespeare's language):
"We can recognize that a proposition of logic is true from the symbol
alone — indeed, that is a characteristic mark (hence an internal
property) of a
proposition of logic (TLP
6.113)."
"We can see that the truth of one proposition follows from the truth of
another, although that is an internal relation that cannot be described
(TLP
6.1221)."
-- 'described' is used as 'stated' -- but cfr. 'prescribed'.
"In complicated cases it is difficult to see these internal relations,
hence we need a mechanical expedient to facilitate their recognition —
viz. a
proof (TLP 6.1262), which enables us to recognize something that cannot
be
said."
I.e. to recognise something that IS MEANT and shown, if not, strictly, SAID
-- but "IMPLICATED" by it.
Note similarly, that a whistle can implicate.
"He whistled"
"He meant, "I'm here"".
"He implicated, "Come where I am -- rather I go where you are".
---
Hacker:
"In the True/False notation of the Tractatus, we can recognize such
formal
properties of propositions as being tautologous by mere inspection of the
propositions themselves (TLP 6.122)."
A tautology gains its force via implicature:
"It's raining or it isn't". Surely the implicature: 'why bother?'
A contradiction, rather, resembles more those pieces which Witters found
nonsensical:
"I am the only existing thing here" (in logical form, p & -p).
Again, a contradiction, via implicature (irony) implies a truth:
"The Pope is not Catholic" -- (since perhaps he is a Lutheran at heart,
being German-born).
Hacker concludes:
"So there are, according to the author of the Tractatus, ineffable truths
that can be apprehended. Indeed, in some cases, they can literally be
perceived — for one can see that dark blue is darker than light blue,
even
though, being an internal relation
between colours, this cannot be said."
----
Dark blue is darker than light blue.
--- Therefore, light blue is lighter than dark blue.
("We were philosophising all afternoon," Cora Diamond reported to her
mother). ("Did you conclude anything?" she asked).
Hacker quotes from the EARLIEST Witters -- the Witters in the trenches --
and how he was already
obsessed with the show/say/whistle distinction.
Hacker comments that while TLP would regard
"x is an object"
as a piece of blatant nonsense, it would come out as a "rule" in
Philosophical Investigations (where the idea of 'rule' gets undefined), so what
Hacker writes may relate to the idea by McEvoy that the 'key tenet' holds for
TLP and PI -- if broadly understood rather than with the details, I suppose.
In correspondence, the early Witters would say that a poem can say things
and can show things, and can mean things. Interestingly, Hacker notes that
these first ideas were exchanged with a 'literary critic' of sorts, rather
than a 'philosopher' which may indicate that Witters was trying to express
in a philosophical way (that irritated Russell) something that belongs to
metaphilosophy (if there is, as T. Williamson and I don't think, such a
thing). And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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