[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein's Lion
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2015 08:22:46 +0000 (UTC)
In other words, Witters's aphorism can always welcome the question "Why?".
Therefore, it should always welcome the answer "Because". But he does not
provide it. It might be said that he does implicate it:
v. If a lion could talk, we could not understand him, because we don't
share his form of life.
There's something question-begging here: 'form of life' has then to be
analysed in terms OTHER than meaning and understanding>
First, exgeticists might object to bringing in "form of life" here. (No matter,
as Robert Paul might say.) We can make W's point without using the notion of
"form of life": it is one of those points made many times (tacitly) in PI. It
is that there is always a "background" - usually of practice and action -
against which words have their sense: strip that background away and the words
no longer have that sense. In the case of a lion in the wild roaring "Take a
photo", we are imagining a situation where the kind of background where it
would make sense for a human to make this utterance is entirely stripped away.
We understand "Take a photo" as words because we have a supply of "background"
within which these words make sense, but we do not understand "the lion" saying
them because "the lion" has no such "background" to its utterance. [Hence W
isn't saying we could not understand Aslan, for in that case we are given a
fictional world where the "background" for a lion talking is in place.]
Second, W is typically condensed and oblique in his language. He doesn't much
try to clarify by expansion. But then he may say the work in totality is clear,
as it consists of the "same or similar points" repeatedly illustrated in
different ways. So W does not explicitly expand his aphorism into "v. If a lion
could talk, we could not understand him, because we don't share his form of
life"; he also does not expand the aphorism along the lines - "If a lion could
talk, we might understand the words if they corresponded to sounds in human
language, and we might attempt to explain why the lion talks etc., but we would
not understand the lion as we would understand each other - even if the lion
were using the exact same words." Some may be relieved at that. I suggest the
main defence lies in W being clear enough when his work is considered as a
whole. But it seems to me W could have been clearer, both in the Tractatus and
in Investigations (e.g. in what way does "the world" consist of "facts"?**).
But W was very, very deliberate in his formulations and was obsessed with
achieving clarity - a large part of the story here is that W is using language
that he thinks is the clearest means of showing what cannot be expressed by
language. And this leads onto the next point.
Third, there is no theory and no analysis to get us to an answer to "Why?" . We
cannot say or express "the background" by which lanaguage has sense, we can
only show it. Part of W's point is to show we can easily delude ourselves that
we have said 'what it is' that gives language its sense, but we can never do
this.* On W's pov, there is no theory or analysis because we run up against the
"limits of language", and where we cannot say or express then we cannot
theorize or analysize.
Donal*Two key examples: (a) try to say, express, theorize, analyse the
"naming-relation" (i.e. using words to name objects (this example is drawn from
the very opening of PI); (b) try to say, express, theorize, analyse how we
teach someone a simple "rule" (e.g. a rule of counting by continually adding
one): here W seeks to show that language is powerless to say/express the sense
of the "rule" in a way that conveys that sense to someone who fails to
understand that sense.
**It turns out (if we follow the strictures of the Tractatus) that we cannot
say: we can only show that it does.
On Thursday, 11 June 2015, 1:11, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If a lion could talk, we could not understand him. "Wenn ein Löwe sprechen
könnte, wir könnten ihn nicht verstehen."
In a message dated 6/10/2015 4:17:20 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Truth-Functional Interpretation
A B A ⊃ B
T T T
T F F
F T T
.F F T
A famous non-truth-functional interpretation came from Strawson's
Introduction to Logical Theory. His theory of "if" was very much criticised.
But
Witters's dictum seems to fit the truth-functional reading.
There is still room for variation:
i. If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.
ii. Wenn ein Löwe sprechen könnte, wir könnten ihn nicht verstehen.
Does that mean (iii)?
iii. If a lion could talk, we would MISunderstand him.
(After all, misunderstanding is a form of non-understanding). But Witters
seems to be saying that neither understanding nor misunderstanding applies
here. This may bring a trick to a sensical reading of the truth-functional
reading (which is what most logicians accept for 'if').
Then there are the Strawsonian variants (and he does think there are such
things as truth-value gaps):
iv. If a lion could MEAN, we would still misunderstand him.
In other words, Witters's aphorism can always welcome the question "Why?".
Therefore, it should always welcome the answer "Because". But he does not
provide it. It might be said that he does implicate it:
v. If a lion could talk, we could not understand him, because we don't
share his form of life.
There's something question-begging here: 'form of life' has then to be
analysed in terms OTHER than meaning and understanding. Suppose we symbolise
'l', lion, and 'w', Witters. Then we have a dyadic predicate "M", for
meaning, and one for understanding "U".
We then assume that the standard scenario holds, contra Witters: The lion
means that p, and Witters understands the lion:
M(l, p) & U(l, w).
Here we are working with a grammar of understanding where
vi. Witters understands the lion.
(Witters denies this -- there is no need to generalise to all, as he does,
with "we').
The 'reason', in terms of 'forms of life', that Witters provide for his
aphorism to hold true, may be more difficult to symbolise.
We may turn this into an argument:
Witters and the lion share no form of life
---
Therefore, Witters can't understand a lion.
Regardless of whether the lion talks or not. The lyrebird scenario proposed
by McEvoy is interesting in that Witters may be into Dilthey's distinction
(later reworked by Hintikka) into sciences of explanation (nature) and
sciences of humanities (understanding). The argument would be similar:
Witters and the lyrebird share no form of life.
--- Therefore, Witters can't understand a lyrebird.
Witters can though EXPLAIN the lyrebird's behaviour (mimicry) and this
explanation is ruled out, for some reason, in the case of the lion.
Cheers,
Speranza
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