Donal McEvoy wrote, re a passage in Ramsey's paper, 'General Propositions and Causality' (1929)
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? Or is this a loaded way of suggesting God would not allow chance-like events?]. Is "whistling it" not just a loaded way of conveying dissatisfaction with a saying-showing distinction?
Ramsey was not addressing himself to anything Wittgenstein had said, butto the view that (x) Fx was a conjunction. (Where I have an F, Ramsey uses the Greek letter phi, which I'm unable to reproduce in this font.)
For a sketch of Ramsey's association with Wittgenstein (he produced the first English translation of the Tractatus), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_P._Ramsey
But it is best to stick to "showing" - for clearly in any literal sense W was not "whistling it": and it is hard to see in what non-literal sense W was "whistling it" either. Ramsey's reaction may be thought to reflect a kind of philosophical prejudice.
Given the topic of the paper, I hardly think so. Robert Paul ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
