[lit-ideas] Re: Witters & Sons - does meaning equal use? What does this mean?
- From: "Donal McEvoy" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "donalmcevoyuk" for DMARC)
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2017 20:33:47 +0000 (UTC)
JLS misinterprets W, in a typically Gricean way, when he writes
In this way, it may be argued that Witters is too hasty to conclude that
because philosophical explanations have to stop somewhere, meaning = usage. He
should have considered general features of discourse, but then he would have
been Grice, and we don't like that!>
Let's consider a few things W writes, and their likely point.
PI "43. For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we
employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a
word is its use in the language.
And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its
bearer."
This is a rather different 'thesis' (if it may be referred to as a 'thesis' at
all) to saying 'meaning = usage'. And also different to 'meaning = use' (if a
distinction between 'use' and 'usage' were thought important in this regard).
Roughly what W writes is to this effect: 'how the words are used' gives us
their meaning in a large class of classes but not all. So the equivalence is
not complete.
But, then, how are they used in that large class of cases? How can we establish
'how they are used' without knowing the meaning of the words? It might seem W
must be getting into a logical twist here. But this is, I think, to
misinterpret his intentions and his pov - according to that pov, looking at
'how words are used' usually turns out to be more useful to understand their
meaning than, say, treating words as having meaning by virtue of what they
signify (see below, re what W says about 'signifying' in an earlier section of
PI).
In a way, in a sense, W proposes that we look at what words are doing or being
used to do - we should not begin as if the words themselves provide the key to
their meaning. W does not think this is obscure rather than everyday wisdom,
but W does think it is something we tend to forget when we start to examine
language for its meaning in a philosophical way (we don't tend to forget it in
everyday contexts).
Later-W nowhere claims that he knows 'how we use words' in any deeper sense
(of, say, explanation) than might be given by anyone who understands 'how we
use words' in everyday terms (or in the terms relevant to the language-game in
which those words are used). Indeed one of W's central points in PI is to show
that there is no way of expressing 'meaning' or 'how we use words' in any such
deeper sense. But W doesn't say this - he tries to show this. [Central to this
are what are sometimes called, though not by W, the "rule-following
considerations".]
Another question, for that large class, is what kind of 'equivalence' is it?
One of identity etc.? If W had a philosophical theory or thesis here, PI would
surely present it somewhere. But it is not an equivalence of a theoretical
kind, or defended/expounded as such: it is much more practical and
non-theoretical an 'equivalence' - for that large class, establishing 'how
words are being used' will also amount to establishing 'the meaning of the
words used'. But, again, how do we establish how words are being used? Well, W
shows that we may 'establish' their meaning in many, many ways - but in none
that amount to a 'theory of meaning', or which provide undefeasible criteria
for meaning, or which provide a proper basis for any of the kinds of
intellectualised account that might be thought to be to the purview of the
philosopher (of language, or of meaning).
We should perhaps remember what W says earlier about 'signifying', and about
the idea that meaning is established or explained in terms of how words
signify. What he there says, shows how the idea that "Every word in language
signifies something" hardly explains anything or gives even the slightest
genuine explanation in general terms (though it might have some 'use' if we
apply it by way of contrast to words in Lewis Carroll).
The same may be said about the alleged equivalence of meaning and use/usage -
this equivalence does not explain 'use' or 'meaning' in any further sense (or
in the sense in which bacteria might 'explain' bacterial infection, or gravity
the path of the moon): even where the equivalence holds, it is not that use
explains meaning or meaning explains use, or that the general equivalence of
meaning and use provide an explanation for the actual specific meaning and use.
The Donal-interpretation of W is this: for W, the specifics of actual meaning
and actual use are shown by how we use language but are not expressed or said
by anything (including the language used). For W, there is no way 'to say the
sense of language' in language - only to show it - so there cannot be a 'theory
of meaning' that expresses how language has sense. And W's equivalence of
meaning with use, for a large class of cases, cannot properly be understood as
offering any such 'theory of meaning' or even the beginnings of one - rather it
is part of a pov from which such a 'theory of meaning' is a chimera.
Here is what W earlier says in PI about 'signifying' (in terms of it being a
purported explanation).
PI:-
"13. When we say: "Every word in language signifies something"
we have so far said nothing whatever; unless we have explained
exactly what distinction we wish to make. (It might be, of course, that
we wanted to distinguish the words of language (8) from words 'without
meaning' such as occur in Lewis Carroll's poems, or words like
"Lilliburlero" in songs.)
14. Imagine someone's saying: "All tools serve to modify something.
Thus the hammer modifies the position of the nail, the saw the
shape of the board, and so on."—And what is modified by the rule, the
glue-pot, the nails?—"Our knowledge of a thing's length, the temperature
of the glue, and the solidity of the box."——Would anything be
gained by this assimilation of expressions?—
15. The word "to signify" is perhaps used in the most straightforward
way when the object signified is marked with the sign. Suppose
that the tools A uses in building bear certain marks. When A shews his
assistant such a mark, he brings the tool that has that mark on it.
It is in this and more or less similar ways that a name means and is
given to a thing.—It will often prove useful in philosophy to say to
ourselves: naming something is like attaching a label to a thing."
Now this is so easy to misread. When W gets to the end of 15 we could misread
him as endorsing how useful it is in philosophy to treat naming as a form of
labelling: but this is not his pov at all and his example in 15 (of tools with
marks) parallels the absurdity of the shopkeeper with his apple-tables. The key
to the sense of the "certain marks"' is that "When A shews..." those "certain
marks" then the assistant brings the relevant tool: but it would be a
misinterpretation to think W is suggesting this shows that those "certain
marks" on the tool, and those shown to the assistant, provide a correlation
that explains the meaning - on the contrary, it is the meaning shown that
explains the sense of the correlation rather than the correlation that shows
that meaning. How is the meaning shown? For example, by the way "When A
shews..." then the assistant brings the relevant tool.
When W speaks of what proves "useful in philosophy to say to ourselves" the
sense of phrasing should not be overlooked (as JLS rightly picks up on the
conversational use of "Well..." in the passage about apple-tables): it is
something we "say to ourselves" as if it helps - but of course to say naming is
like labelling does not explain naming in terms of labelling or labelling in
terms of naming (no more that 'meaning equals use' explains meaning by use or
use by meaning).
W's fundamental pov is this (though this may only gradually emerge, especially
after the 'rule-following considerations'): the actual specifics, of how
"certain marks" on the tools may be connected in meaning to "certain marks"
shown the assistant, is not expressed by the marks themselves but is shown by
various things - including that "When A shews..." the "certain marks" then the
assistant brings the relevant tool.
DWho is obviously beating on a dead horse.L
From: "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, 19 February 2017, 17:02
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Witters & Sons
McEvoy was quoting a passage from Witters's "PI", which ends -- the passage,
not the whole "PI":
"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."
This reminds me of ... Grice.
In "Prolegomena to Logic and Conversation," Grice does quote from Witters's
"PI," but does not elaborate. Grice is concerned with Witters on
i. A horse can look like a horse.
Grice's point is that, for Witters, regardless of whether (i) is true or false,
or gappy, 'look like' is, to echo McEvoy's passage above, "is NOT used" like
that.
For Grice, truth is more important than use (or usage). And surely (i) is
_true_.
Why is it _odd_, or _misleading_ (and thus not 'used' much)? "Well," to echo
Witters (note that he starts that part of the quote with the very English
sentential opener, "Well, ..." which triggers its own implicatures), (i) is not
used much, unless you are a philosopher (recall Witters/Moore conversations, "I
know that's a tree") because it flouts a couple of what Grice conversational
maxims or in "Prolegomena" (and earlier in "Causal Theory of Perception" --
excursus --) "general features of discourse", of cooperative discourse, as it
were.
In this way, it may be argued that Witters is too hasty to conclude that
because philosophical explanations have to stop somewhere, meaning = usage. He
should have considered general features of discourse, but then he would have
been Grice, and we don't like that!
(i) compares with
ii. A: That horse looks like a horse.
B: It _is_ a horse.
A: I never said it wasn't.
For Witters, it seems, "looks like" is used when we have "A" and "B", so we can
say:
iii. The Mona Lisa looks like a woman I once met in Rome.
It would be uninformative for a Louvre visitor guide to tell the spectator that
the Mona Lisa looks like the Mona Lisa. But museum guides ain't philosophers,
not even Griceian ones!
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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