We are considering Witters's passage in the PI where he describes a shopkeeper,
and asked as to where explanations must stop, he (Witters, not the shopkeeper)
implicates that they stop at the point when we describe the way the shopkeeper
_acts_ (Witters's word in Anscombe's translation).
Yet, McEvoy notes:
"W[itters] is not [a behaviourist]. And neither is Ryle a behaviourist in
several important senses, though Ryle once admitted his position might be
stigmatised as behaviourism "harmlessly enough"."
Beautiful quote. I suppose 'behaviourism' would be thought by Ryle to be too
un-Oxonian a term to be labelled with! Cfr. Cole Porter, "Let's misbehave". In
Oxonian parlance, the implicature of "Let's misbehave" is "Let's behave", since
'misbehaviour' is part (and parcel if you mustn't) of 'behaviour'.
McEvoy goes on:
"As to Ryle, he is an anti-Cartesian in that he opposes the Cartesian version
of the split of mind and body. It is less clear what Ryle offers as a
replacement. What Ryle offers does put forward the importance of outward,
observable behaviour as a measure of inner states, but does it amount to
radical behaviourism of the sort that denies there are inner states of a sort
that are not constituted by behaviour? Almost certainly not: Ryle is alert to
the existence of all kinds of mental events and does not posit that these are
constituted by accompanying behaviours. Does Ryle even claim that the
accompanying behaviours provide the only logical criterion for the existence of
the inner states - would Ryle deny that I could feel a sudden pain in my chest
and yet outwardly behave (because I am on television) as I would if I had felt
no such pain? My guess is not: what Ryle might do is fudge the issues while
providing a framework with a thrust that emphasises the role of outward,
observable behaviour in judging inner states (rather than constituting inner
states). Among the valuable points made by Popper in TSAIB: Ryle's
anti-Cartesianism is understandable given the untenable character of the
Cartesian account of the mind-body split but, on close examination, it fudges
the issue of whether there is nevertheless a mind-body split and if so what is
its character."
Well, when H. P. Grice was President of the American Philosophical Association
(he was formerly a don at St. John's, in the Old World), he was fascinated by
D. K. Lewis's functionalism. But the first part of his presidential address to
the American Philosophical Association ("From the banal to the bizarre") he
spends considering how behaviourist Ryle can get. There's a Witters echo, too,
later in that lecture, where Grice considers something like Anscombe's adage
(after Witters): 'no psychological predicates without the manifested behavior."
But I will re-read in due time McEvoy's interpretation of Ryle's case, since
it's part of the world (the world is all that is the case and the case for
Ryle's behaviourism, if not lack thereof, should be then part of the world).
McEvoy then turns to Witters:
"Regarding W, W is in my view even less of a behaviourist than Ryle (depending
what we mean by behaviourist). There is a massive difference between (1)
emphasising the role of outward behaviours in giving us measures of inner
states and (2) claiming inner states are reducible to outward behaviours etc.
There is also a massive difference between (1) trying to show that we could
never say 'what constitutes an inner state' independent of any measures of such
states in behaviourial terms and (2) claiming that the inner state is
constituted by its behaviourial expression. The later W is not offering any
theory of the relation of mind and body, indeed W makes clear there are no
theses in his philosophy: the later W is offering a therapeutic approach to
disentangling conceptual confusions that may arise from the commingling of
language concerning 'mental entities' and 'physical entities', but without
offering a metaphysical thesis as to the distinction between such entities.
This, I suggest, is because W views this distinction as something that cannot
be said (in general terms) but only shown (on a case by case basis). Perhaps we
should address this further. My suggestion is that Popper is right in TSAIB to
argue on the basis that, despite what many philosophers may have suggested, the
mind-body problem remains unsolved - and undissolved by linguistic analysis. In
my view, W can be interpreted in a way that is consistent with this: W does not
claim to dissolve the metaphysical mind-body problem but to offer a therapy to
avoid philosophical confusions thrown up by this problem. W leaves actual
metaphysical problems untouched because, in W's view, it is beyond our limited
language to solve them: the metaphysical realm creates a background against
which we are provoked philosophically to try to say things by way of solution
to metaphysical problems but what we do is end up talking nonsense - what W
wants to do is fight against this nonsense but he does not claim (1) this fight
amounts to providing solutions to actual metaphysical problems (2) that the
metaphysical realm is a fiction. As to (2), W does not think the metaphysical
realm is a fiction (i.e. non-existent, a la Logical Positivism) - it is simply
that it is realm about which we cannot express the truth given the limits of
language. Despite these limits of language (which render positive "theses"
senseless, so that "There are no theses in philosophy"), later W does think we
can show the truth or that the truth is shown through the sense of our
language. To understand all this better we have to understand that we still in
a period of hangover from Hume and Kant, and that W's approach is very
attractive to those who want a position that embodies a measure of
anti-metaphysical positivism (as to what can philosophy can achieve, or 'say
with sense') as well as Kantian sense of the depths of the metaphysical realm.
A large part of W's story is, however, how his philosophy has been repeatedly
hijacked by academic philosophers inclined to anti-metaphysical positivism - a
story that began with the Logical Positivist misreading the TLP and continues
with the 'behaviourist' misreading of the later W and even to the so-called
"New Wittgensteinians". The problem is that many of the "Old Wittgensteinians"
aren't much better, and much of what they put forward is elaborate fudge."
Well, it may do to revisit the PI passage then -- and see how behaviouristic it
can get:
"[Think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping."
By acting, in the way of issuing an order:
"Go to the shop!"
Witters:
"I give him a slip marked 'five red apples'."
There's no telepathy here. Not even verbal communication in its oral format.
This someone (whom Anscombe assumes it's a 'he') has to carry a piece of
physical evidence, to the effect that Witters DESIRES 'five red apples' be
brought back to him.
Oddly he does not mention that he (Witters) gives him (this someone) the
_money_ to buy them. The implicature seems to be that Witters thinks he (this
someone) will _pay_ (a type of acting, or behaviour) for the five red apples
himself.
(Odd that Witters does not mention Urmson, "On Grading". There are red apples
and red apples. Some are more expensive than others. Witters gives some freedom
to this someone to act -- to choose _ANY_ red apple. Urmson's "On Grading" is
all about how the Department of Agriculture _grades_ red apples -- never mind
'five'.
Witters goes on:
"He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked 'apples',"
This seems obtuse or clumsy. Surely fruit-vendors display apples in wooden
boxes, rather than keep them in drawers. But this is perhaps a very humble
fruit shop on the outskirts of Cambridge.
"Then the shopkeeper looks up the word 'red' in a table and finds a colour
sample opposite it;"
Witters is taking the open mikey, as they say. Surely, "red" is a sense-datum
and to think that the shopkeeper has to act in the way described by the
'non-behaviourist' Witters seems clumsy and obtuse.
I know that if _I_ were to sell apples and sell them by checking the colour of
their skin from a colour sample, I would have many things to ask to the
customer ("What shade of 'red' are you looking for? I have 35 varieties in this
sample.")
Witters goes on:
"Then the shopkeeper says the series of cardinal numbers—I assume that he
knows them by heart—up to the word 'five'"
The "I assume he knows them by heart" is Witters's attempt at humour. "By
heart" is a Latinism translating Cicero. Peano's grandfather sold fruit, and he
never had to memorise cardinals ("I owe a lot to my grandfather, who first
taught me about cardinal numbers -- or rather the function of the unity and the
function of the succession". For Peano's grandfather we have:
1
1 + 1
1 + 1 + 1
1 + 1 + 1 + 1
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1
If Witters were to be an Ancient Roman, the slip would have red:
iiiii [Latin for red apples].
Cicero found "iiiii" obtuse and replaced it by "v," for no obvious reason --
but obvious implicature (Cicero is abiding by Grice's conversational maxim, "be
brief").
Witters goes on:
"and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of
the drawer.—It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words—"But
how does he KNOW where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is
to do with the word 'five'?""
This, I assume, was Anscombe's question. Anscombe loved the word 'know'. Surely
a more correct answer would have been, "Oh, he doesn't, you know."
Witters, the non-behaviourist, allegedly, rather goes:
"Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end
somewhere.—But what is the meaning of the word 'five'? No such thing was in
question here, only how the word 'five' is used."
Note the "I assume," i.e. never "I know". Witters assumes and has his
interlocutor (Lizzie Anscombe) wonder about claims to knowledge.
If Witters is trying to give an illustration about the 'meaning' and
'implicatures' of the cardinals, he sort of fails. "What is the meaning of
'five'?" may not have occurred in the mental slate of the shopkeeper, because
he merely needs to _count_, to act, and we assume that by some sort of
'conditioned' behaviour, he has learned to 'count' "by heart". (Note that the
behaviourists reject talk of 'mind' or 'soul' -- but 'heart' seems okay -- For
Aristotle, the site of the soul was the heart, incidentally but then he was
hot-blooded. For Plato it was the brain. For Cartesius the pineal gland.)
The non-occurrence of the VERY ARTIFICIAL ('strawman's') question, "What is the
meaning of 'five', has little to do as to what the shopkeeper means.
By displaying five apples we may assume that he intends his customer to BUY
these five (rather than four, or six) apples. Grice gives a similar example in
the Fifth William James lecture. He goes to his tobacconist, and just displays
on the counter the amount he wants to invest on tobacco. "Surely I don't need
to _say_ anything. Explicatures must stop somewhere; implicatures don't."
Grice's point is that the customer MEANS that the shopkeeper is to sell him
some tobacco (I have not counted the herbs). The money displays indicates the
weight of the tobacco the customer means that the shopkeeper is to sell him.
But for Grice, there are intentions here. Displaying money on a counter is not
"acting" unless it's well grounded on the "utterer"'s intentions to get the
shopkeeper come to believe that he has to get some tobacco for the customer,
and further the "utterer"'s intention that the shopkeeper FORMS the _volition_
to send that certain amount of tobacco to the customer.
If Grice sees Ryle and Witters as behaviourists, he rather sees himself as an
'intentionalist,' where 'belief,' 'desire', and 'intention', become
_theoretical terms_ (alla Ramsey, in the famous "Ramsey sentence"), which are
linked to observational terms (what the utterer utters and what his addressee
is intended to do as a counterpart 'conversational' move).
But I will re-examine what McEvoy explores re: Ryle and Witters.
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
