[lit-ideas] Re: Grice's Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 22:06:57 +0200
Well, I don't see much to disagree with here. I think that I was suggesting
that Popper was beating the Logical Positivists with their own stick, i.e.
by showing that the question about meaning that they were so concerned with
was every bit as much a metaphysical question as those that they were
disposed to dismiss as 'pseudo/issues.' The Logical positivist theory of
meaning doesn't make any sense anyway, for if we haven't got some
understanding of what a statement means then we cannot also say whether it
is 'verifiable' or not. On the other hand, Popper wasn't opposed to all
metaphysics, so I am not sure that he would necessarily dismiss any kind of
inquiry into meaning.
I have some other complaints about linguistic philosophy, but these aren't
necessarily linked to Popper so I will leave it for another post.
O.K.
On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 9:53 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
> >If the question is "What is meaning as such ?" then the question is
> metaphysical and subject to the objections that the Logical Positivists
> were putting to metaphysics. (Popper's comment was mainly directed against
> the Positivist verificationist theory of meaning.)>
>
> There are a number of things that might be doubted here.
>
> The question of "What is meaning as such?" may be metaphysical but this
> was not a question that was "subject to...objections" by the Logical
> Positivists: on the contrary, the LPs took themselves as having answered
> the question - their answer being that meaning equated to the method of
> (empirical) verification. This answer means (i.e. has the consequence) that
> unverifiable terms/assertions are meaningless (because they lack any method
> for their verification).
>
> This answer suited the LPs insofar as it provided a stick to lambast all
> metaphysics as meaningless (because all metaphysical terms and claims lack
> a method for their verification empirically). But an unwanted consequence
> of this answer is that the 'principle of verifiability' (i.e. the claim
> that meaning equates to verifiability) must be itself meaningless (at least
> according to its own strictures, for there is no 'method of verification'
> for a 'principle of verifiability'): and if it is meaningless, it cannot be
> true.
>
> This consequence caused the LPs no end of difficulty as it makes their
> position self-refuting.
>
> Here we may contrast their position with that in the Tractatus, a text
> that greatly influenced the LPs but which Wittgenstein maintained they
> fundamentally misunderstood - particularly on this very point. Wittgenstein
> aims to defend something akin to a 'principle of verifiability' in the
> Tractatus, whereby only the statements of the natural sciences have
> sense. But in Wittgenstein's approach there is a fundamental distinction
> between 'saying' and 'showing', and this distinction is used to avoid the
> 'principle of verifiability' becoming self-refuting. In Tractarian terms,
> to state a 'principle of verifiability' is to say nothing with sense
> (hence such a principle, as with the rest of the contents of the Tractatus,
> is admitted to be nonsense) yet it shows the truth: so the 'nonsense' of
> the Tractatus is nonsense only because of "limits of language" as to what
> can be said in language; yet while the Tractarian pseudo-propositions are
> nonsense, in that they say nothing with sense, these nonsensical
> pseudo-propositions show the truth. In this way Wittgenstein seeks to avoid
> the normal conclusion as to a 'meaningless' statement - that being
> 'meaningless' it is neither true nor false: given a say-show distinction,
> we may avoid this conclusion by admitting that a pseudo-proposition may
> show the truth though it says nothing with sense. (According to early W
> then, the LPs were making the typical philosophical mistake of trying to
> say what cannot be said but which can only be shown.)
>
> Popper found neither W's say/show answer nor the LPs answer convincing:
> but at least W has a POV where his position may be true even though it
> cannot be said with sense. The LPs 'principle of verifiability' is
> meaningless according to its own strictures in a way that means it cannot
> be true (for being meaningless it can be neither true nor false).
>
> What Popper has to say against the LPs is more than a "comment", and
> extends to a critique of the inductivism that must underpin any notion of
> 'verifiability': Popper develops a position that discards any notion of
> 'verifiability' in inductive terms for a characterisation of 'empirical
> systems of propositions' [like the 'natural sciences'] in terms of the
> notion of falsifiability [Popper's LdF is an attempt to show the notion
> of 'falsifiability' is both necessary and sufficient for characterising
> science (and thus demarcating science from unfalsifiable metaphysics)].
>
> But Popper's opposition is to any philosophy that adopts a 'criterion of
> meaning', not merely that self-refuting version of a 'criterion of meaning'
> that is a 'principle of verifiability'. His critique of the LPs is thus
> merely an example of his much wider opposition to meaning-based philosophy,
> rather than being the sole object of his opposition to meaning-based
> philosophy.
>
> Dnl
> Ldn
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, 29 April 2014, 19:51, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <
> dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> My last post today!
>
> Furiously sleep ideas green colourless.
>
> In "Syntactic Structures" Chomsky thought he was being witty (and he was)
> and coined a sentence:
>
> Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
>
> He compared it to:
>
> Furiously sleep ideas green colourless.
>
> which Reeve has yet to include in a quatrain.
>
> In a message dated 4/29/2014 12:55:32 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
> am sorry that I am not impressed. To point out that a poet is being
> ambiguous is kind like pointing out that a driver is using a wheel to
> steer the
> car in the direction he wants it to go.
>
> Well, I guess it all started when McEvoy thinks we were (meaning I was)
> being stipulative, or that philosophers tend to be stipulative when it
> comes
> to sense/nonsense.
>
> My views on literature, etc., relate to my views on aesthetics. I see
> literature as a branch of art!
>
> I would have nothing against the perhaps (or I'm sure) Griceian view that
> both METAPHOR and, why not, AMBIGUITY, play a crucial role in all forms
> of
> literature.
>
> Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
>
> was meant by Chomksy as ungrammatical. One may wonder if an utterer can
> mean this or that by it (as we do) and conclude that yes, he or she can.
>
> McEvoy seems to be emphasising the 'sense' of the 'expression' itself,
> which is referred to as a 'piece of nonsense' (or 'nonsense of sorts', I
> forget
> the exact wording -- I actually think he grants Reeve conveys to the thing
> some 'sense of sorts' -- or 'sort of sense').
>
> Now, if we have "U" to represent utterer, and 'x' to represent the
> expression, we can then grant that x need not be meaningful for U to mean
> something by x. It is a different, and more interesting, to my mind,
> point, to go
> on with Grice and try to REDUCE the meaning of an expression (the
> occasional
> meaning or the 'timeless' meaning) to the utterer's meaning.
>
> All this, Grice says, Witters ignored. But then, as a Wittgenstein
> commentator once remarked, "Ignorance is bliss" (*)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
> *
> To each his sufferings: all are men,
> Condemned alike to groan;
> The tender for another's pain,
> The unfeeling for his own.
> Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
> Since sorrow never comes too late,
> And happiness too swiftly flies.
> Thought would destroy their paradise.
> No more; where ignorance is bliss,
> 'Tis folly to be wise.
>
>
>
>
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