[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Experience
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 19:35:35 EST
In a message dated 11/9/2009 4:14:44 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
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 philosoph[er], 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.
And the sad thing is that Max was a Wittgensteinian:
A: ... And surely according to the early Wittgenstein, "death is
not an event of life", as P. S. M. Hacker suggests in a broader
perspective in his Insight and illusion: Wittgenstein and the
metaphysics of experience, where along Gricean lines it's
the Hamletian extension of Malcolm's argument in Dreaming,
-- with "To die", "to sleep, perchance to dream".
To R. Paul's good poetic examples, I'll add the Stanley (Jason Stanley)
point of contextualism re: Rupert Brooke.
If I should die, think only this of me:
that there is forever England.
Gricean analysis:
"If I should die" -- tautological.
To be expanded: "If I should die SOON".
So, "I shall die" gets a communicative value only when the logical form can
be expanded alla contextualist lines of Jason Stanley.
Cheers,
JLS
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