[lit-ideas] Re: EP has left the building (Was: Saying an EP)
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 19:44:32 +0100 (BST)
I had asked you:
> Are you claiming that that a name like "cat" that
can be analysed in terms
>of other names (eg. leg, head, tooth) can be an EP?
That any name that be so
> broken down can at the same time be "elementary"?
It appears, if I understand you right in your reply, that your answer is that
such a name/element can function as one of the elements in an EP whose every
element corresponds to an object/situation in the world.
It also appears to me that you are implying that
the fact the object or situation might be differently described
in terms of some other proposition, does not preclude as being an EP _any_
proposition whose elements each correspond to the object or situation being
described. (Or is your claim more restrictive?)
Of course, I am uncertain I understand you right. Perhaps we should clarify
this
before proceeding any further?
__________________________________
Some other comments:-
1. You make a number of adverse comments re P&M.
I am not an expert to judge but on a quick reading what
you say seems reasonable. In particular, P&M's
"2.13 In a picture objects have the elements of the
picture corresponding to them."
seems to me quite atrocious English.
As to your alternative suggestion,
"2.13* In the picture the elements of the picture
correspond to the objects.
[In the picture [of a face] the elements of the
picture correspond to the
face. In the picture [of a city] the elements of the
picture correspond to
the city."
This is much clearer. But English is so slippery that this might
be taken to suggest that the correspondence between pictorial
elements and objects happens "in the picture"; so why not just say
"The elements of the picture correspond to the objects",
or "Each element of the picture corresponds to an object"?
As to your suggestion:
"2.1* We make ourselves pictures of the facts. [just
a suggestion]"
Why not just forget "ourselves" and say "We make/create pictures
of the facts"? Otherwise the way it is written might suggest we turn
"ourselves"
into pictures. [just a suggestion]
The praise from Mind is hardly surprising, it being the
in-house periodical of the Oxbridge view of philosophy
of which P&M are themselves representatives [and Popper is not,
Mind rejected Pp's 'Poverty of Historicism' for publication; each to his
own].
One might be more intrigued by such puffery,
and more inclined to accept it must have something to it, if it were
being offered by the Catholic Herald for a marxist-leninist
translation of the Bible.
You ask:
<In what way can an object *have* an element of a picture, in
particular one "corresponding to them"? Does Mona Lisa's smile *have*
the painted smile in Da Vinci's painting "corresponding to" it?>
These questions do have an element of teasing ambiguity, perhaps leading to
confusion.
I can see it is an error to think that the oily paint on the Mona Lisa's
picture corresponds to the face pictured because that face is made of oily
paint etc. Although, this kind of error does not, I think, mean it is
necessarily an error
to think that the oily paint can only correspond to the face because it can
be arranged
in a structure that corresponds to the structure of the face in some way.
However, the error and poor translations you identify are not, I think,
really responsible for whatever difficulties I have with understanding W's
EPs.
So I disagree with the suggestion, whatever mess they made, that:-
"Perhaps if Pears and McGuinness had not made such a
mess of this sentence
people like Donal would not have had so much trouble
accepting that in the
proposition/picture "The dot at the bottom of this
window between 'www' and
'andreas' is blue" is an elementary proposition and
all the elements of this
proposition/picture correspond to the objects
named/described in it."
As to this final suggestion:-
"By the way, not you, but maybe some others might be
thinking that because
"atomic fact" and "atomic proposition" were
Wittgenstein's and Russell's
alternative names for these structures that that would
indicate that we're
not there yet if we haven't resolved every element in
them to atomic and
subatomic particles. Not you, but others should not
think that."
It is not that pictorial elements need correspond to particles
in the sense of physics but rather whether they need to correspond with
objects of a kind that cannot be analysed further into _logically_ smaller
elements - in order that the proposition be regarded as an EP rather than a
non-EP.
You seem to say this is not necessary, whereas I for the meantime am
exploring
the view that this is necessary. Hence the question at the outset.
After all, not every p is an EP, is it?
Donal
London
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