[lit-ideas] Re: FAO Phil/Here we go again
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:30:08 +0000 (GMT)
I am grateful for Phil's reply which does not resile from his earliest thoughts
(though he did later resile imo). Before returning (later) to the underlying
issue (which I take to be, roughly, 'what gives a proposition its sense?', one
point for now.
--- On Fri, 17/4/09, Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: FAO Phil/Here we go again
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Friday, 17 April, 2009, 1:09 AM
> Donal McEvoy wrote:
>
> "Also my claim about the TLP assuming that a proposition
> has sense in
> virtue of its elements and their relations is, at the
> least, a 'kind
> of textual analysis'."
>
> No, it isn't. It is a claim about TLP. The
> textual analysis bit
> would be when you provide the relevant texts and then show
> how those
> texts support your claim about TLP.
Point: Phil has previously conceded that his own view is not supported by any
explicit statement by W in TLP. According to his own strictures then, his views
are not the result of any "textual analysis". If so, it seems somewhat
hypocritical to make this demand of others.
>For Wittgenstein, sense is produced by the
> correspondence
> between relations of elements within a proposition and
> relations
> between things.
No "textual analysis" supports this. (Which claim anyway, as I have previously
pointed out, is _crucially_ ambiguous).
>We cannot know things in themselves
> and elements in
> propositions only mark where things stand. So, it is
> relations all
> the way down.
No "textual analysis" supports this. (And how and why can we know "relations"
in themselves, it might be asked?).
>What Donal does not do is show how
> Wittgenstein says
> something different
But Phil does not show how W says what Phil says he "says" - certainly he
doesn't do so by any "textual analysis" as he describes it, because W does not
_say_ what Phil says he meant. And Phil, afair, earlier conceded this.
> Donal:
>
> "In the second claim Phil is seen to say (and I quote) that
> 'elements
> do not contribute to the sense of the picture'."
>
> Correct. They provide no content. They function
> as markers that are
> intended to grab hold on to things, like dots on a
> map. The sense
> lies in their relations to each other on the map and then
> how those
> relations correspond to the way things are in the
> world. Like a map,
> a proposition produces a sense that is either true or
> false. The true
> or false bit lies in whether the proposition maps on to
> things
> accurately.
No "textual analysis" supports this.
> Perhaps Donal is fixated on elements. Again, it isn't
> clear what
> Donal thinks so I am guessing as to the nature of his
> objection.
> Elements are the stuff of proposition, but for Wittgenstein
> they are
> signs of things. Those things are what allow our
> proposition to grab
> hold of the world and produce propositions that are either
> true or
> false. However, we cannot know those things, in
> themselves, only
> their relations to each other.
No "textual analysis" supports this.
The story that W was inspired by a court room model of an accident suggests to
me it is not merely "relations" but the character of the "elements" (i.e. which
vehicle-element is where) that determines the 'sense' of the model; and that
this applies also to the sense of a proposition conceived as a model-picture of
reality. So I do not wish to give up my POV, however simple-minded, just yet -
and certainly not simply because of a barrage of question-begging assertions
that are unsupported by "textual analysis".
Donal
Salop
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