[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein's Whistle
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 14:41:12 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 7/8/2012 12:25:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
The point about "whistling it" is that, as an expression (with a kind of
sense that is common in certain kinds of intellectual culture), it offers
some everyday notion to explicate something that here goes beyond the
everyday [compare Einstein's determinism explained in terms of a God who
doesn't
play dice: does God play anything?
---
I'll re-read McEvoy's contribution. But I'd like to point out that in the
original quote, by F. R. Ramsey:
in
'General Propositions and Causality’,
in his (posthumous), "The Foundations of Mathematics", Routledge, 1931, p.
238 -- perhaps we can get an earlier citation? --:
is:
"But what we can’t say, we can’t say, and we can’t whistle it either."
The first part of the utterance reminds me -- and indeed Grice -- of John
Cook Wilson. This was a great figure in the Wykeham chair of logic at
Oxford. YET, what Grice mainly learned from Cook Wilson (we have to add "Cook"
since Wilson is a rather too spread surname in England) was:
What we know we know.
or, as Grice has it, perhaps ungrammatically:
What we know, we know.
Ramsey:
What we can't say we can't say.
Or more ungrammatically, as Ramsey has it:
What we can't say, we can't say.
YET, Ramsey goes on to add:
"and we can't whistle it either".
This shows that the logical form of Ramsey's utterance is:
WHAT-WE-CAN'T-SAY = WHAT-WE-CAN'T-SAY
&
WE CAN'T WHISTLE this: WHAT-WE-CAN'T-SAY.
This is a better reading than my previous one, where I suggested that the
'it' in
"we can't whistle IT, either"
means 'nonsense'.
For surely Witters can whistle a part of Bethoveen's 7th symphony and yet
it would be odd to require Witters to say it.
Cheers,
Speranza
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