[lit-ideas] A Shaggy Dog
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2012 13:40:18 -0400 (EDT)
Or Grice's Shaggy Dog's Story
-- and Witters on what cannot be said (plus how wrong he (Witters) was.
Etc.
In a message dated 6/23/2012 12:14:01 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
In my view, 'what cannot be said' for W is not words, or language, or
items of language [like sentences, or exclamations or questions] - for these
can all be said. It is the sense of words, language and items of language
that W thinks cannot be said - not the words or other such items of language
themselves. In other words, for W, language may have sense and language may
be said but its sense can only be shown not said.
This in discussion of an online essay on an apparent 'contradiction' by
Witters (Gendlin is PARAPHRASING what Witters said can never be said but only
shown -- and plus Gendlin shows that Wittgenstein DID SAY what he (Witters)
said could not be said).
McEvoy's exegesis is based on the idea of "sense".
Recall that "sense" can be a confusing thing:
The sense of "Fido" -- is it Fido? Not for Frege. But cfr. Alice, "My name
is Alice". "Mmm. What does it mean?" "Must a name mean anything?" For Lewis
Carroll proper names do have sense.
The sense of "dog" on the other hand is another issue. Extensionalists
define the sense of 'dog' as the class comprising Fido, etc.
THEN there is the (alleged) sense of, to use Grice's example in "Logic and
Conversation" ("A shaggy dog story"):
"Fido is shaggy"
or
"The dog is shaggy"
----
So, to simplify, we have _sense_ for _predicates_ ('dog', 'shaggy') and
utterances that ARTICULATE these; for surely it would be a very primitive
lingo if all we can say is "Shaggy", "Dog", or "Fido" -- surely we can
articulate our thoughts and speech so as to say articulate things like,
"Smith's
dog, which Smith christened Fido, is a shaggy sort of a dog". "Shaggy?" --
"The hair, you know -- I trust you know the _sense_ [meaning] of 'shaggy'".
----
Rephrasing McEvoy's claim in this more analytic terms:
"In my view, 'what cannot be said' for W is not words, or language, or
items of language [like sentences, or exclamations or questions] - for these
can all be said. It is the sense of words, language and items of language
that W thinks cannot be said - not the words or other such items of language
themselves. In other words, for W, language may have sense and language may
be said but its sense can only be shown not said."
------ I should try to reconstruct Grice's point in his shaggy-dog story
(elsewhere). It is indeed a complication how a thing like 'shaggy' acquires
something of a sense.
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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