[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Experience
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:14:24 -0800
"to die" is an odd verb to refer to an experience.
Never mind 'death'.
"I'm dying", said the sailor -- as he was drowning.
But of course, he cannot utter, "I am dying" unless he is NOT dying.
i.e. unless he is alive.
I am dying, Egypt, dying:
Give me some wine, and let me speak a little.
[...]
"I die" being in a non-continuous tense, is perhaps more to the point, but
again, Descartes's cogito plays against it:
If utterer utters "I die" he is alive, i.e. he is expressing something
false.
Oh, lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
For Grice, to save the face of the conversationalists, he recommends the
use of the future (however mediate):
"I will die".
Surely, the past is closed as well, "I died".
Only "I will die" or "I shall die" (as Grice preferred) can express a true
judgement.
And who is Grice (well, I actually know WHO he is) to tell ordinary
people how they can or cannot speak? The argument here seems to be
pretty much like Malcolm's, in Dreaming [1959], that one cannot truly,
or meaningfully, say,
'I am asleep,' although Malcolm at least gives an argument, as opposed
to merely stipulating how words are used: for that seems to be what's
at issue here, the use of words, and not the possibility of experience.
A man alone in the wilderness is struck by a large rock which severs
his femoral artery. He is pinned under it in a way that prevents him
from moving to try to stop the rapid bleeding. (He is a physician, and
knows what is happening.) He can though reach his cell phone and with
it he manages to call his brother in Minnesota. 'Max,' he says, 'I've
been hit by a rock, and I'm dying, I just wanted to ask you...'
His brother, a philosophy, interrupts. 'Nonsense, André, You can't
intelligibly say that you're dying. You might say, "I shall die," or,
"I will die," but not...' However, André can no longer hear him, and
our story ends.
Robert Paul
The Reed Institute
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