[lit-ideas] Re: Defining the length of a meter with reference to time [was Re: Censorship]

  • From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 11:43:50 -0700

The reference to the standard meter is in Philosophical Investigations §50, and Richard and I—and perhaps some others—have discussed this passage before:

There is _one_ thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is one metre long*, and that is the standard metre in Paris.—But this is not to ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language game of measuring with a metre-rule. [my asterisk]

Richard Henninge now writes:

This is why I have such problems with Kripke's fast-and-loose location of this identical meter in other possible worlds, even despite and counter to Wittgenstein's apothegm according to which one cannot measure the meter in Paris. In a way, thís
French-based *conférence* is still in its revolution around its navel and is
still trying to get others to join it--for the good of mankind! Bien...

*Several years ago, Richard and I had a riff (an enlightening one, I must add) about the German rendered as 'one can say neither…, etc.

Man kann von _einer_ ding nicht aussagen…'

Richard objected, I believe, to Anscombe's bland rendering of aussagen as 'say,' on the grounds that the word had some stronger, or a more special force. (I forget his candidates.) In light of what Wittgenstein says in the next sentence though perhaps this was much ado about not much; the possibility of measuring the standard meter against itself (as opposed to measuring 'ordinary' meter rods against it, is what makes us unable to say meaningfully that the standard meter is itself either one meter long or not one meter long. One cannot meaningfully say it because the practice of measuring a thing against itself to see if it fit would be incoherent. This is how I see it now, although I don't think that's the way I saw it then.

I'm glad to learn that all is well at Mainz.

Robert Paul
The Reed Institute
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