But "Moore's MY man," he goes on.
McEvoy was expanding on his reading of who he calls "MM" (no, that is not
Marilyn Monroe, as "BB" is Brigitte Bardot, but Marie McGinn, who teaches at
York).
Unlike "MM" (that's Marie McGinn, not Marilyn Monroe), McEvoy provides loads of
quotes from what McEvoy calls "PI" (no, that's not the mathematical concept,
but short for the English for Witters's book, "Philosophical Investigations").
While McEvoy focuses on 'jokes' (and Attalardo has shown that ALL jokes are
flouts to Grice's cooperative principle) and other qutoes by Witters on
'nonsense'. But how does this relate to the alleged continuity in Witters's
"thought" (as MM calls it), and the relevance of the say/show distinction.
It's different for Grice. For Grice, 'to say' is pretty easy to analyse. He
spends some time in analyzing 'say' in "WoW" (Way of Words", "Logic and
Conversation," lecture V -- a segment that was not published in the original
reprint of that lecture).
Basically, of course, Grice distinguishes "to say" from "to implicate". But we
don't have to go there.
For Witters, the distinction is between 'to say' and 'to show', not, as in
Grice, between 'to say' and 'to implicate'.
Witters, as Russell shows in the Intro to the Tractatus, for some reason,
denies the object-language/meta-language distinction. This leads Witters to
broaden the concept of 'show'. If you deny to language users the ability to use
language to refer to their utterances, it seems obvious that 'show' will play a
role.
Suppose I were able to say that a certain expression is an insult in a language
L. If I am endowed with a meta-language, I can very well say,
"Expression E is an insult".
Since Witters denies this ability of language to refer to itself (what Russell
calls the object-language and the meta-language), it's obvious that Witters
will conclude that that "E" is an insult can only be _shown_.
But there are big differences, I feel, between MM's account of 'show' and
McEvoy's. For MM 'show's is not a mystifying concept. She is presupposing,
perhaps rightly, that those who read Witters know either English or German or
whatever lingo Witters's essays are translated to.
Therefore, MM's point is that a proficient language user will note when an
expression is NONSENSE. So the 'nonsensical' side to the utterance will the
"SHOWN" in the actual practice. MM's point is that it is otiose (or futile, or
doomed to fail) to look for a 'theoretical basis' for this: there is no
philosophical doctrine, only 'use', and language users who read Witters realize
when an utterance is nonsensical.
MM focuses on 'nonsensical' utterances in both the Tractatus and On Certainty:
"I know this is a hand". At one point she quotes from "PI": why is it, Witters
wonders, that we say that we do say, "We don't say, "I don't know this is a
hand", but not "I know this is a hand"?
MM concludes that it is this basis on the actual practice of those who use
language, and their underlying mastery (which is not equivalent to any
theoretical knowledge) that proves the continuity of the say/show distinction
in
Witters.
It seems to McEvoy, the say/show distinction amounts to something else. Ethics,
for example, can be shown, but not 'told' or 'said'.
MM and McEvoy seem to agree that the say/show distinction marks the 'limits' of
language, whatever that means. When you allow a succession of languages,
notably an object language L1 and a meta-language L2 to SAY what's wrong with
L1, the concept of the 'limit' of language becomes otiose, in that, as Russell
notes, there is an 'ad infinitum' progressus from L1 to L2 and from L2 to L3,
and so on.
It may be argued that L1 and L2 are different languages, but they are not:
English can be object-language and meta-language. Witters thinks that things
like, to use MM's example from the Tractatus,
"A is an object"
are nonsensical. In a framework that allows for a L1/L2 distinction, the
alleged nonsensical nature of that utterance may be due to something
Aristotelian. Like Aristotle, as MM notes (but she wouldn't quote Aristotle),
Witters is into the categorial framework of lingo, and Witters and MM think
that _within language_ one cannot provide this structure. Language would be
unable (if I may use an abstraction such as "Language") to provide for its own
categorial structure. But language has this ability to refer to itself (in what
Russell called a 'meta-language). And in this 'mention' (rather than 'use')
function of language, what Witters found where the limits of lingo that only
could be shown but not said seem to vanish.
Or not, of course.
It is apt that MM ends her note with an account of Witters's rather hasty
treatment of Moore. MM is into trying to prove that Witters thinks Moore is a
realist attacking an idealist. But MM and Witters are implicating that both
realism and idealism, being metaphysical doctrines, are nonsensical.
From a Griceian perspective, however, that McGinn does not really develop (but
Colin McGinn does in a number of publications -- I love his description of
Grice as a telementationalist), Moore wins. For
i. This is a hand
-----
ii. Plus, it is hardly hurtful to say that I am _CERTAIN_ that this is a hand.
MM, like Witters, focuses on 'certain,' rather than 'know', which is a mistake.
Famously Moore, who delivered that proof an an external world at Emerson Hall,
Cambridge, uttered:
iii. I am certain that behind those curtains, there is a window.
As it happens, there wasn't. So he didn't know. But since he is focusing on
"Certain", he can still be certain. As Ayer noted in his book on the "Problems
of Knowledge," there is a world of difference between 'being certain' and
'knowing'. One can very well certain about something which is false.
Pre-Gettierians, and post-Gettierians, for that matter, dropped 'certainty' out
of the proper analysis of knowledge as justified true belef. To know is just to
have a belief which happens to be true and for which one can provide this or
that reason. Nothing about 'certain' need enter the picture.
In conclusion, the conception of 'show' in McEvoy seems to be broader than that
of MM. For MM, utterances 'put on show' (I think that's the expression she
uses) in actual practice. I think she refers to LINGUISTIC practice, and
presupposing a mastery of, say, L1. So, anyone proficient with L1 would
conclude that Moore cannot speak English. But he can't. In fact, better than
Witters. Does this prove Witters wrong.
Matter of history, "Some people like Witters, but Moore's my man" carries at
least three implicatures:
-- "people" is otiose. We cannot be referring to dogs, can we?
-- It's not (c) Grice, but (c) Austin.
-- Other.
Since "show" and Witters's piece of jargon are cognate, it may do to revise the
etymology.
The English left Angeln in English so desert that apparently no human being was
seen in Angeln for years. They took with them words like 'show'.
Old English sceawian is best rendered as "to show", i.e. "to look at, see,
gaze, behold, observe; inspect, examine; look for, choose".
It's all from Proto-Germanic *skauwojan (source also of Old Saxon skauwon "to
look at," Old Frisian skawia, Dutch schouwen, Old High German scouwon "to look
at").
And this is all from Proto-Germanic root *skau- "behold, look at".
And this is from Proto-Indo-European *skou-, variant of root *skeue- "to pay
attention, perceive" (see caveat, and compare sheen).
As in "Caveat canem". This is usually rendered as "Beware of the dog". It would
be otiose to translate it as "show the dog", since the dog is showing himself.
"Sheen" is nice in that it's cognate with 'shine' as in in 'shoe-shine'
The causal meaning "let be seen; put in sight, make known" evolved c. 1200 for
unknown reasons and is UNIQUE to English (German schauen still means "look at"
-- that is why Anscombe sometimes uses 'shew' just to show off that she has
learned Austrian more or less properly).
The spelling shew, popular 18c. and surviving into early 19c., represents
obsolete pronunciation (rhymes with view).
It may be that Anscombe heard Witters mispronouncing 'show,' and instead of
correcting him (she was just a tutee), she preferred to misspell one of the
most basic (if misunderstood) concepts of Witters's philosophy.
Incidentally, for those who attend Ascot, the horse racing sense is from 1903,
perhaps from an earlier sense in card-playing. Or perhaps not, of course!
"Say" is not free from implicatures. A film with Gracie Fields, I think, was
entitled, Say it with flowers. The impicature is that the 'it' is "I love you".
I.e. instead of utting the phatic-rhetic-phonic act (to use J. L. Austin's apt
terminology), one can just get hold of a bunch of daisies which will display
what H. P. Grice calls the same 'dictive' content. Note that we cannot 'say'
(figuratively, and thus, via implicature) "I hate you" with fresh daisies,
though (except under very special circumstances -- when you know your
sweetheart really HATES fresh daisies, perhaps not if your sweetheart is a
pig).
Cheers,
Speranza
