I was fascinated once (as I now am) by an account (in Ridout, "English Proverbs Explained") to the effect that all English proverbs are to be taken literally: rolling stone gathers no moss, too many cooks spoil the broth, and etc. So I was taking seriously the adverb 'literally' as per E. F.'s post: "you knew that. It goes on the say: J. Fenimore Cooper derived it from the green-room, whence actors go on the boards and literally 'face the music.'" where my focus was on 'literally'. So, following Davidson on "Metaphor", I was looking for a context: i. He faced the music. to be taken LITERALLY. It seemed to me that the most literal sense I can think of is an individual, say, Beethoven (only he was deaf) is 'facing', i.e. pointing his face, to some piece of music -- his Ninth, say. This reminded me of McEvoy's distinction in 'music' between 'music' qua W1, W2, and W3. In a message dated 1/22/2015 5:28:02 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: "Not so fast. For example, we may see or hear W3 content via physical W1 sense organs - the key for Popper is that where W1 sense experience gives us access to W3 it does so only via W2. So we might consciously have to face the music in whatever "literal" sense - in which case, the correct account of this may involve the interaction of W1, W2 and W3 contents." Granted. Perhaps a most literal version would be: ii. He faced the SOURCE of the music. which then, following H. P. G. ("Be brief!"), becomes the familiar idiom (literal), (i) to be used _metaphorically_, and thus involving some kind of category mistake, or categorial falsity, as when 'he faced the music' is uttered when no music was even _heard_ by him, facing or turning his back to it. The issue is more general, and while it applies to H. P. G., it may have a more general interest. For we are dealing with an alleged distinction between 'lit.' and 'fig.'. Suppose we consider the title to Hillary Clinton's latest book, "Hard choices". I think I read in a book on Locke's semantic theory (Longman Linguistics Library) that since 17th century-theories of metaphor, 'hard' (or any other adjective with a lit. and a fig. 'sense' -- no such thing for HPG, merely 'uses'), it's the PHYSICAL 'sense' that is primary ('do not multiply senses beyond necessity'). A surface is hard. A choice is _hard_ not in a literal sense, but that does not mean that 'hard' has TWO senses. It has a literal sense and a figurative extension (or metaphorical extension), and I thought Popper's W1 idea (which I had thought he had first used for his issues with the mind-body problem) would be apt to apply. McEvoy says much interesting stuff in reply to Omar, which I also address. McEvoy expands: "The distinction between the W1, W2 and W3 aspects are not often observed in ordinary language because it is not usually necessary to draw the distinctions - if I say "I heard my brother say yesterday that he was going to the dentist" what I intend to convey by this need not be encumbered by distinguishing the various W1, W2 or W3 aspects that underpin my statement." This may need some implicatural expansion: i. I heard my brother say yesterday that he was going to the dentist. Indeed, the report is about a w1 experience: the utterer is reporting that his ears suffered some input to the effect that his brother had said, the day before to the utterance, that he was going to the dentist. i. can be simplified to ii. My brother said yesterday that he was going to the dentist. which, ceteris paribus, implicates the utterer into having _heard_ it -- hence 'hearsay'. The w2 aspect is indeed the BELIEF by the utterer that he BELIEVES he heard his brother say the day before that he was going to the dentist. And some w3 element seems to be involved in the proposition, qua abstract entity, of someone going to the dentist, timelessly put, as it were. McEvoy is considering the 'circumstances' (to echo Omar's phrase) relating the utterance of i. I heard my brother say yesterday that he was going to the dentist. Omar asks for 'circumstances' for distinguishing between the 'physical', the 'psychological', and the 'abstract', rather than the reasons. McEvoy writes of different circumstances, as per below, and there are perhaps even more to consider. The utterer's brother may have a romantic liasion (or affair -- the French are good at this) with the dentist for reasons other than his caries. And it may have become a 'code' in the utterer's brother to refer to the utterer's brother's lover (who happens to be a dentist) as "the dentist", to avoid the more impolite and impertinent iii. I heard my brother say yesterday that he was going to see his lover. McEvoy writes of "the circumstance, for example, in which we were discussing whether the institution of dentistry is merely a W1 entity or actually a W3 entity" -- and in particular whehter Dr. Roberts (or Dr. Millie Roberts, doctor in dentistry) is the utterer's brother's lover. "or discussing whether my brother's _knowledge_ (that he can visit the dentist to address his toothache) is only a physical brain state [W1] or whether it involves conscious mental states [W2] (that are not reducible to or identical with mere W1 physical brain states)" McEvoy and I disagree on 'know': he allows for utterances (discussed previously -- like "he knew she would try to kill him", even if this turns to be false, and that she never tried to kill him", or "Ptolemy knew the sun rotated around the earth"). That's why I referred to 'belief' in the above. Granted, we should distinguish between the brother's common knowledge that he CAN visit the dentist (most people can) and that he WILL, which is a harder (fig.) prediction to make. The "consciousness" that McEvoy also used in his reply to my "Facing the Music" applies then not just to the utterer's consciousness that he has personal identity (cfr. Grice on the use of "I" in "I heard my brother say something" -- Grice's example, "I heard a noise", where he is into the analysis of personal identity, "Personal identity", Mind, 1941 -- is "I" an expression whose reference is physical ("I was hit by a cricket ball", "I fell from the stairs" -- equivalent to "My body fell from the stairs") or mental ("I intend to join the army soon") or both ("I love Lucy"). McEvoy goes on: "and also knowledge of "dentistry" as a W3 institution (and so is knowledge that is W3-dependent [unlike say his 'knowledge' of his tooth caries through the pain it causes, which may not be W3 dependent])." This is an excellent point in that the brother's knowledge of his tooth caries (versus his love for Millie Roberts, say, aka 'the dentist') seems surely NOT W3, and a Popperian attempt to replicate in W3 sensations or sense data that best belong in W1 or W2 seems to incur in the malapropism against "do not not multiply worlds beyond necessity"). McEvoy generalises. The circumstances when the physical and the psychological and the abstract arise, "more generally, when we reflect on the possible different categorical characters of things that may be simply lumped together in the same sentences in ordinary language (because our ordinary use of language is unreflective of many possible different categorical characters). And then there's the implicatures, or conversational implicatures, which best arise in conversation. A: Where is Tom? B: I heard my brother say yesterday that he was going to the dentist. A: I didn't know Tom was your brother. B: Yes, and I heard Tom say, yesterday, that he was going to the dentist. A: And you believe that, and assume that is the reason for Tom's absence when he is on jury duty? B: He is not! A: Ah well, I hope it's nothing serious. A caries? B: Actually, he is having an affair with the dentist, Millie Roberts (you must know her -- she presides the local annual cat show). And they can't find a place to meet other than her office, if you believe that. A: But did he say he was going to the dentist TODAY? B: Well, his utterance was, yesterday, "I'm going to the dentist". Granted, he didn't qualify his utterance temporally. A: And don't you think it was a rush inference of yours to take that to mean "tomorrow", that is, today? B: Well, he said yesterday that he was going to the dentist, and I don't know if he did see the dentist YESTERDAY itself, but since he is not here TODAY (as my answer to this question of yours that initiated the conversation implicated) I assume he is still _with the dentist_. A: That is a 'intense' affair, if I may speak figuratively. Cheers, Speranza ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html