[lit-ideas] Re: Grice, Sraffa, and Geary: "What is the logical form of *that*?"

  • From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 13:33:18 +0000 (UTC)

Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans
as meaning something like disgust or
contempt, of brushing the underneath
of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips
of one hand. And he asked: 'What is
the logical form of that?'"

The sad thing is that Witters never replied*.

Cheers,

Speranza

* Unless, with McEvoy, we interpret the whole of "Philosophical 
Investigations" as an answer to the IMPLICATURE behind Sraffa's non-rhetorical 
question!>
Unless indeed. Why wouldn't we follow "McEvoy" on this interpretation (on which
after all McE merely claims to be following Wittgenstein)? What other
interpretation makes anything like as much sense of what Wittgenstein writes in
his PI (and makes sense of its continuity as well as discontinuity with TLP)?
It's not that Wittgenstein hides the point (however, W prefers to show it, by a
gesture as it were, than say it - for reasons explained at length in my posts).
It's there, blatantly, in the Preface. "Even more than to [Ramsey's]—always
certain and forcible—criticism I am indebted to that which a teacher of this
university, Mr. P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly practised on my thoughts.
I am indebted to this stimulus for the most consequential ideas of this book."
That "this" is a verbal means to show what cannot said - just as it also
alludes to Sraffa's point being that the sense of the gesture cannot be
captured in language ["logical form"].

Sraffa refers to "logical form" but W takes the point wider, than any narrow
view of "logical form", to be a point about anything connected with "the logic
of our language" i.e. what determines its sense. Among "the most consequential
ideas of this book" are therefore two ideas that PI repeatedly tries to show
(show because they cannot be said): (1) Language never says its own sense (2)
The sense of language cannot be said in (other) language (but may be shown).

I have yet to see on this list, or elsewhere, a serious or substantial
criticism that reveals any flaw in this interpretation - which btw dovetails
with what is set out by Monk in his biography of Wittgenstein. Also this
interpretation dovetails with what is the correct interpretation of TLP (in
line with what Hacker explains as to the role of 'unsayability' in an article
JLS urled): it is the only interpretation that makes proper sense of W saying
that 'what is not in' TLP is much more important than 'what is in' it. This
remark by W makes little sense, and invites the question 'Why not write a book
with the much more important stuff in it?', until we realise W's pov is that
the much more important stuff cannot be put in any book because it cannot be
expressed, and that what W is getting at is that what is "expressed" in TLP is
far less important that what is shown but cannot be expressed, and that the
point of TLP is to show what cannot be said in terms of the "logic of our
language".
My view is that not following "McEvoy" on this interpretation is not to follow
Wittgenstein.

Should we heed the dissenting voices of so-called "Wittgensteinians"? - It is
clear enough that not all so-called "Wittgensteinians" can be properly
following Wittgenstein, for they diverge too much between themselves. Most
importantly, many of them miss the whole point by trying to extract "theses"
and sayable analyses from Wittgenstein's writings, even though this is
disavowed by Wittgenstein in the clearest of terms.
DL








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