[lit-ideas] Wittgenstein's Plants
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 09:36:49 EDT
More Ways of Killing A Cat (Was: Wittgenstein)
Re: Wittgenstein, upon his return to his Cambridge digs, to someone he had
left in care of the plants for a few days:
"I can see that you know absolutely nothing about plants"
-- seeing that the plants were dead. I quoted:
>`In winter, when the fields are white, I sing this
>song for your delight -- "Only I don't sing it,' he added,
>as an explanation. 'I see you don't,' said Alice. `If you
>can see whether I'm singing or not, you've sharper eyes than
>most,'
----
R. Paul comments:
>Thanks for Carroll's nice little philosophical
>joke.
You're welcome. I notice that there is a slight divergence between Humpty
Dumpty and Wittgenstein, making the case more strongly _for_ Humpty Dumpty,
obviously. Humpty Dumpty is contrasting _seeing_ with _hearing_ -- both
_sensing_, and each involving a different _object of the senses_ --. Seeing and
hearing are both, in my terminology, 'physiological'. It's not the song that
actually can see. The most she can do is _hear_ it.
On second thoughts, one may say Humpty Dumpty _is_ playing with the abstract
idea of proposition. While there is this contrast between seeing and hearing
("I sing a song" '-- "I don't hear you sing it"), the grammar involves
'that-' clauses, like Wittgenstein: "I see you don't [sing the song]". "If you
can
see whether I'm singing or not, you've sharper eyes than most." -- The
implicature being: What you can do as to whether I'm singing or not is _hear_,
not
see. Humpty Dumpty wants Alice's reply to be: "I _hear_ you don't." -- but
unfortunately this phrase is used in English for reporting rumour ("I hear it
will be raining in Connecticut this weekend").
Back to Wittgenstein. He sees the dead plants. He says to Malcolm: "I can
see that you know absolutely nothing about plants." There is no contrast
between
two physiological activities here -- so the situation is more subtle and not
aimed at a joke. Ultimately, Wittgenstein _was_ a 'behaviourist', so he
possibly thought that the dead plants (he saw) were all the evidence he needed
to
say he had the ability (could) _see_ (in the same sense of 'see the dead
plants') that Malcolm _knew_ absolutely nothing about keeping a plant alive."
(I
make a little change in the ending of the phrase: "know nothing about
keeping a plant alive", since there are more ways of killing a cat than
choking it
in butter).
Cheers,
JL
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] Wittgenstein's Plants
