[lit-ideas] Re: Feline Implicature
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 04:52:41 EDT
In a message dated 6/29/2011 7:59:18 P.M. ], jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx
writes:
Cats are killers
This to contradict Wittgenstein who asks:
Was ist der natürliche Ausdruck einer Absicht?
Wittgenstein does not answer the question directly but by way of
implicature:
Sieh eine Katze an, wenn sie sich an einen Vogel heranschleicht;
oder ein Tser, wenn es entfliehen will.
-----
So, the idea, for us who know German, is that
a cat, when stalking ('heranschleichen')
a bird ('fowl', strictly -- 'vogel')
constitutes a 'natural expression' of an 'intention'.
I would not think 'Absicht' translates "intention" directly --. There are
possibly alternate translations at play here, by Anscombe, the original,
and by P. M. S. Hacker -- who has now retired as Tutorial Fellow at St.
John's, Oxford -- the post held by Grice for YEARS.
--- But it _is_ getting there. Thanks to R. Paul for the quote.
If Geary and Stone are right, the cat stalks the bird but the cat is not a
killer. So, how do we analyse the 'natural expression' of the intention. It
has been said that a pet cat who kills a mouse, since she is not hungry,
only does it _for play_ ('a form of life', a 'language game'). And so on. By
the same token, if we examine Lord Huntington as he stalks a 'fowl' in his
hunting estate, is that the natural expression of an intention. Intention
to do what? Oftentimes, the cook would say, "Fowl again? We had that
yesterday? I was thinking of having caviar and fish today." Once the fowl was
killed the fowl had to be eaten or at least embalmed, and so on.
A beast trying to escape is perhaps an easier scenario. The problem is that
they seldom know where to go, as my darling goldfish in the bowl.
---- I'm not sure if the Wittgensteinan word for 'beast' translates,
cognately, to English, or other languages (Indo-European).
--- Thanks to Phatic for lovely poem, "Cats sleep anywhere", and to V.
Calley for comparison with dogs.
Cheers,
Speranza
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