[lit-ideas] Re: Grice's Pain In The Neck
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 11:04:55 -0500
A Dentist's Refutation of Cartesian Solipsism.
I have toothache; therefore, I exist.
Wittgenstein:
"The difficulty lies in the grammar of "having toothache"."
"Nonsense is produced by trying to express in a proposition something which
belongs to the grammar of our language."
"By "I can't feel Moore's toothache" is meant that I can't try."
"It is the character of the logical cannot that one can't try."
"Of course this doesn't get you far, as you can ask whether you can try to
try. In the arguments of idealists and realists somewhere there always
occur the words "can", "cannot", "must"."
-- cfr. Grice: CAN I have a pain in my tail?
In a message dated 1/26/2015 9:00:41 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
The mouth is mine *because* it is this mouth I feel pain in and not some
other mouth. More broadly, I am not currently interested in what gives
'sense' to my statement that I have a toothache, nor in the verifiability of
the
same.
But it might be argued that Popper's w1-w2-w3 distinction provides an
answer to such an interest, should it exist.
w1 -- the physical basis for the experience of a toothache -- in the brain.
Central Nervous System and connection with tooth.
w2 -- What Witters seems to be interested: the psychology behind "I have a
toothache" versus "Moore has a toothache".
w3 -- what the dentists supposedly know about toothaches. Now, the next
step is to find what the dentist's equivalent for "Gray's anatomy" is (We
know Grice's neck pain is included in the latter).
(The picture is more complicated, as McEvoy knows, in that elements of w2
processing an item of w3 -- knowing that one's ache in one's tooth is
easily curable may decrease the actual ache -- that our nervous system locates
in the tooth, with the basis of the experience 'residing' in the brain.)
Back to Witters:
Wittgenstein: "The difficulty lies in the grammar of "having toothache".
Nonsense is produced by trying to express in a proposition something which
belongs to the grammar of our language. By "I can't feel Moore's toothache"
is meant that I can't try. It is the character of the logical cannot that on
e can't try. Of course this doesn't get you far, as you can ask whether you
can try to try. In the arguments of idealists and realists somewhere there
always occur the words "can", "cannot", "must"."
And that's why Grice uses 'can' in "CAN I have a pain in my tail?"
(presupposing: someone -- Warnock? -- said he couldn't).
Cheers,
Speranza
Refs.:
Grice, "Can I Have A Pain In My Tail?"
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