So perhaps we shoud take 'jar' more seriously.
And I would speak of jarring implicatures.
jar, v. 1520s, "to make a harsh, grating sound," usually said to be
echoic or imitative, but no one explains how, or of what. Figurative usage of
"have an unpleasant effect on" is from 1530s; that of "cause to vibrate or
shake" is from 1560s. Related: Jarred; jarring.
In a message dated 5/15/2015 4:09:59 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"It is not correct to assert that whether a combination of sounds is
[experienced as] "jarring" or "non-jarring" results from some "arbitrary,
dogmatic teaching of unjustifiable rules": e.g. many people, without any
musical
training or much musical sense nevermind any "theory", can wince when they
experience sounds that are "jarring". A child can wince at jarring sounds
when it is the first time they have experienced any such sounds - and
obviously without having been instructed in any "arbitrary, dogmatic teaching
of
unjustifiable rules" about what constitutes "jarring" sounds. It is not
correct to describe such responses to sounds (experienced as "jarring") as
"arbitrary". [Witters], I suggest, would accept all that is set out [above].
One of the things [Witters] is getting at ... is one of the running-themes of
his later philosophy - that "justifications" run out ... we sooner or
later "hit bedrock" and our "spade is turned", as he elsewhere puts it. That
means, a theory-based account may run dry very quickly because the
"justifications" on which it is based may run dry very quickly. It is against
this
background that [Witters] can contend that "a harmony theory of colorus ...
would, like [a] harmony theory [of sounds], not justify its rules". But
absence of such "justification" would not render such "rules" arbitrary or
dogmatic - or should I say merely arbitrary or merely dogmatic - and it is
wrong to suggest they would or to suggest Wittgenstein is saying they would.
Nor would it mean Wittgenstein is suggesting our responses are governed by
taught "rules" (anymore than a child wincing at "jarring" sounds does so
because they are so "taught") - for this does not follow from contending that
whatever "rules" are taught on "harmony" they will soon run dry of
"justification" in a theoretical way."
Wittgenstein’s views on rules of grammar during his middle period may be
exemplified in the case of colour statements.
Some think the notion of system of propositions help us better understand
that a colour statement like
i. This sweater is red and green all over.
is better understood as a "measure" statement, a la par with a statement
like
ii. She is 5.8 feet tall.
On the other hand, a colour statement like
iii. A red sweater is more similar colour-wise to an orange one than to a
green one.
is best understood as a grammatical statement similar to
iv. People who are 5.8 feet tall are taller than those that are 5 feet
tall. (analytic)
It is alleged that colours played a central role in the DOWNFALL of
Witters's Tractarian project, but there are only a few indications of the role
colour played in the Tractatus itself, and we may need to go back to this.
Names of colours for Witters, for example, are subject to logical
restrictions which are not present in any epistemological analysis of
experience.
The infamous "colour exclusion problem" -- To answer
v. No.
to the question
vi. Can a sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed.
-- is the touchstone to probe any attempt to reach logically proper names
in the realm of colours. Husserl knew this, and so did Ramsey. And Schlick
thought that Witters 'No' reply was a yes-yes to refute Husserl's defense of
the Kantian synthetic a priori.
The only way to deal with this problem is to take names of colours as given
in a coordinate system inside which the conjunction of incompatible
ascriptions could be analysed as logical contradictions.
Thus, Witters's analysis of the impossibility of
vii. This sweater is a reddish green.
and
viii. This sweater is a transparent white
- constitutes a conceptual analysis if ever there was one, even if it
involves the allegedly synthetic a priori.
Indeed, the bridge linking the Witters of the Tractatus and the Witters of
the Philosophical Investigations (and Remarks on Colour) has among its
very cornerstone not only the complex concept of "the logical structure of
colour" (T 6.3751) but "the logic of colour concepts" (Remarks on Colour I,
22), and ultimately "eine Harmonielehre der Farben" (badly translated as "a
theory of colour harmony", Remarks on Colour I, 74):
"If there were a theory of colour harmony,
perhaps it would begin by dividing the colours
into groups and forbidding certain mixtures or combinations
and allowing others. And, as in harmony,
its rules would be given no justification."
We should seriously use the concept of "harmony" to describe Witters's
philosophising here. Why is Witters denying justification to such rules?
The importance of the "colour-exclusion problem" (the "No" to "Can a
sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed") is widely recognised
for
the changes that ocurred in Witters’s thought in his return to
philosophical activity.
And this includes a most important feature: a modification of the very
concept of "conceptual analysis"
Little is known, however, about the relation between the logical analysis
of colour statements (untertaken by Witters as soon as he start to work in
1929) and the changes that occur in the notion of "generality" in contrast
to the Tractarian approach.
On inspection, there is a close relation between the analysis of statements
about chromatic patches in visual space and the abandonment of one of the
main characteristic features of Tractarian elementary propositions, namely
the fact that they do not leave room for manoeuvre to the world.
Indeed, the introduction of “incomplete elementary propositions”, in
chapter IX of "Philosophical Remarks", argues for the need to introduce
propositions which, though elementary, would yet contain, in their very
"senses",
a vagueness or indeterminacy.
At the time of the Tractatus, this vagueness was symbolized by a general,
non-elementary proposition: the scope of this generality was highlighted by
a logical prototype.
But in "Philosophical Remarks", he uses the notions of "elementary" and
"general" propositions that can no longer be opposed, which necessarily leads
to a new conception of generality.
This new theory of generality was conceived to be BEFORE the
colour-exclusion problem (the "No" to the answer "Can a sweater be red and
green all
over? No stripes allowed") a kind of solution to keep the logical independence
of elementary propositions, and it was a result of a decision about the
simplicity of chromatic patches on visual space.
This solution was kept in the text of "Philosophical Remarks" despite the
recognition that there are, inevitably (due to the colour-exclusion
problem), logical conceptual relations between elementary propositions.
In fact, Witters was inspired here, as it were, by Ramsey (1923:473): the
impossibility of a visual speck of two colours simultaneously all over (as
if we were to answer "Yes" to "Can a sweater be red and green all over?") –
boils down to a formal contradiction (cf. Wittgenstein 1922: 6.375 &
4.464).
Ramsey’s doubt is taken on board by Wittgenstein’s 1929 paper, where it
turns out that an expression like
vi. This sweater is red and green all over.
exhibits a "mutual exclusion", which yet cannot be analyzed into a formal
contradiction -- and it would not be analytically false but the
synthetically false, even if a priori.
No wonder Schlick promptly used of Wittgenstein’s 1929 approach to the
"colour exclusion problem" to object to the viability of phenomenology, which
Schlick takes to be intimately connected by Husserl to the viability of the
notion of synthetic a priori (Schlick 1930-1931).
Schlick goes on to conceive an expressions of colour exclusion, as in
ix. This sweater is NOT red and green all over.
as amounting to a tautology, and this surely compares to Witters's
Tractatus conception of utterances of colour simultaneity, as in
vi. This sweater is red and green all over.
as amounting to a contradiction (analytic and false).
Wittgenstein agrees in conversation with Schlick that expressions of colour
exclusion -- as in
ix. This sweater is NOT red and green all over.
are thus NOT synthetic a priori (Waismann 1967: 67-8).
Wittgenstein’s later view is that expressions of colour EXCLUSION, however,
rather exhibit logico-grammatical RULES in their own right.
Expressions of colour SIMULTANEITY (however jarring) on the other hand are
nonsensical.
Let us be reminded that for Husserl, an assertion such as
ix. This sweater is NOT red and green all over
is universal and necessary and a priori, for Husserl is accepting Kant’s
characterization of the a priori by the features of necessity and
universality).
But yet, and on the other hand, they are not, in Husserl's use of this
favourite term, "analytic" (that is, truth-value invariant under arbitrary
substitutions of material content).
So, for Husserl, truths of this kind are synthetic a priori; that is, they
have a determinate material content, one belonging to a specific
ontological domain (colours in perceptual space in our example), and their
truth is
grounded in the essential legality presiding over this domain.
The Husserlian synthetic a priori simply articulates the intrinsic sense of
ontological regions such as colours in perceptual space.
x. A colour cannot exist without something coloured.
for example, merely expresses the necessary fact that colours are
ontologically dependent entities.
They are not independent parts of physical bodies, but non-independent
aspects or moments of them, and this is not a matter of fact, but necessity,
which holds universally.
Husser's colour exclusion "problem" is the first great challenge for
Witters’s Tractatus and some argue a legitimate philosophical motivation for a
systematic mutilation of truth tables.
We may even apply Witter’s distinction between showing and saying to this
questions – with the priority of showing over saying.
Wittgenstein seems to be realising that the assumption of logically
independent colour-propositions is wrong but also a merely classificatory
understanding of one-place predicates or concepts altogether.
In any case, Goethe’s Theory of Colours (1810) which includes in Part V a
discussion of its relationship to other fields, among them Philosophy (§§
716-721), Mathematics (§§ 722-9) and Natural History (§§ 735-6). influenced
Wittgenstein’s conception of grammar as philosophical methodology, and this
influence is not limited to Wittgenstein’s "Remarks on Colour" but has much
deeper roots in his attempt to explain, inter alia the logic of belief.
Cheers,
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
