[lit-ideas] Grice's Wittgenstein
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2013 06:13:01 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 12/15/2013 4:16:09 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"The interpretation of the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein is a field or
forest in which it is easy to get lost and to lose others..."
Well put. McEvoy goes on to consider Peter Michael Stephan Hacker's
"Wittgenstein", as he compares with McEvoy's "Wittgenstein". I was reading the
obituary to Gordon Park Baker, author of another: Gordon Park Baker's
"Wittgenstein".
Then there's Grice's Wittgenstein, and Strawson's Wittgenstein (Strawson
reviewed Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations).
If Grice and Strawson collaborated in "Defense of a Dogma", so did Baker
and Hacker -- to the point we can speak of Baker's and Hacker's Wittgenstein.
It is "Baker's and Haker's" Wittgenstein that is the focus of the obituary
of Baker.
Baker is described as an "upper middle class Easterner", which to me,
IMPLICATES that the obituary writer ain't (nobody who is upper middle class
never mind Easterner -- from Englewood, NJ -- would describe the subject of his
or her obituary as "upper middle class")
The obituary, at
http://www.harvard60.org/baker.html
goes on:
"With Peter [Michael Stephan] Hacker, [Gordon Park] Baker set about a
massive scholarly project to unveil the philosophy of Wittgenstein in as clear
and faithful a manner as possible. Wittgenstein revised and refined his
reflections into thousands of paragraphs, and the product is so tightly woven
that misunderstandings were rife. They began unpacking the condensed and
subtle paragraphs into definitive readings. This involved notonly exegesis but
also a thorough exploration of the history of the stages by which
Wittgenstein reached the versions that we know. "Baker and Hacker" is a
collaboration of first-rate importance in the history of philosophy."
Now, the following paragraph struck me as interesting:
"In 1990 the Baker and Hacker partnership began to dissolve, largely over
the question as to how far Wittgenstein's writings expressed definite
philosophical theses" -- which nicely connects with McEvoy's "Wittgenstein"
above:
"The interpretation of the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein is a field or
forest in which it is easy to get lost and to lose others."
-- Especially when the bibliography by Hacker that McEvoy is pointing our
attention to (the 'whistle' essays) rely, to some degree, on this joint
endeavour by Hacker with Baker.
----
So, to the point of disagreement:
"The partnernship began to dissolve": sad, seeing that they were both
Fellows of Grice's college, St. John's, but then as Grice would say, "Do
fellows
of a college need to collaborate?". While Strawson WAS a _student_ --
never a Fellow -- at St. John's, and did collaborate with Grice, Mabbott --
the
OTHER philosophy don at St. John's during Grice's time -- never (but he
called Grice an 'excellent philosopher' in his "Oxford Memoirs").
"The partnership began to dissolve", Baker's obituary goes on, "LARGELY"
(as opposed to pettily) "over the question" (never the answer) as to:
"How far do Witter's writings express definite philosophical theses?"
I would think that while Baker expressed that they didn't, Hacker disagreed
(Geary prefers to take the opposite view).
In the essays McEvoy is discussing, McEvoy does it with mainly one point in
mind: to check the say-show distinction, which McEvoy sees as crucial in
Witters -- and how Hacker views it. McEvoy disagrees with Hacker on this.
For Hacker is saying that Witters underwent what McEvoy aptly describes as a ‘
volte face’ (dismissing the say-show distinction in the end) while McEvoy
can't find any evidence for this.
A side effect is a consideration of philosophical grammar, and how it
connects with the say-show distinction.
Of course, Witters held different views on grammar over the years. McEvoy
gives one example, upon my request for clarification on the issue:
McEvoy's example of 'depth grammar' at trouble:
i. My thought flew out the window and then back into my head.
My own example, from Gric
ii. You're the cream in my coffee.
Grice's first complain with Witters -- 'former or latter', no need for fine
distinctions here -- is that Witters never was serious about a few
keywords in the philosopher's lexicon: '... means...' and '... implies...' (or
'... implicates...') as Grice prefers.
Witters's approach to 'depth grammar' is casuistic. And Hacker provides a
few other examples:
iii. a = a
(A thing is identical with itself).
This Hacker calls a 'degenerate' thing to say -- a breach of 'depth
grammar'. But then, apparently,
iv. Cambridge blue is lighter than Oxford blue
or
v. Blue is a colour
become breaches of depth grammar, too.
Witters's approach to grammar is deflationary. He wants to say that terms
like 'tautology' and 'valid', have 'uses which may be as humble' as "chair"
and "table" -- and he proceeds to use the 'negation' test. One argument
for the decline in respect of the say-show distinction has to do with, to echo
Ramsey,
"What we can't say we can't say"
-- or whistle.
Wittgenstein feels that if philosophical grammar can only be _shown_ in its
workings -- but NOT 'formulated' or said, for the simple reason that for
any proposition, 'p', there is room for its negation, ~p, and it would be a
breach of depth grammar to allow that a rule of philosophical grammar
allows for its negation. Thus,
"Write down five cardinal numbers"
is depth-grammatically alright, but
"Don't write down five cardinal numbers, or rather, write ALL cardinal
numbers" is not. (The example is not too apt, but is one Hacker plays with).
In "Logic and Conversation", Grice proposes to tackle's Witter's witty
dictum:
"Don't look for the meaning, look for the use". If before we were
considering
depth grammar = metaphysics
we may now consider
meaning = use
Grice thinks the equation is overrated, and finds that 'use' is much more
ambiguous, and less philosophically interesting, than 'meaning', hence his
work on the field.
In later years, Grice went on to discuss what he called the categorial
grammar, which can help us explore not just 'the seas of language', but
language 'at its most shallow berths', if that was the expression.
Witters had a big complication with the fact that he did seem to undergo a
'volte face', as to what language is best suited for -- unlike Grice who
was a firm proponent of 'ordinary language philosophy' and held conversation
as the basis for all talk.
For the early Witters, it's all about denying the validity of Russell's
Theory of Types, understood as a linguistic theory -- in depth grammar -- that
relied on a isomorphism between language types and reality. Instead, he
proposed a syntax-cum-semantics approach to language, which has its
complications. One example by Hacker:
"The ball is red and the ball is green"
Seeing that "nothing can be red and green all over", the above needs to
eliminate the TT (true true) line in the truth-table, since it is a breach of
depth grammar. Yet, it differs from things like
~(p & ~p)
another example by Hacker, where there is a more evident algorithm to
demontrate its incorrect deepth grammar on which it is founded. I.e. for
Witters, breaches of depth-grammar SUPERSEDE mere contradictions where
truth-functors are at play.
The SECOND Witters (Hacker writes that the 'middle Witters' should require
a book of its own) held a different view of language's operations and its
depth grammar. We should look for the particular cases, and aks for the
'use', and even the 'form of life' it is meant to represent.
What would the point be of uttering
a = a
A thing is identical with itself. This is a degenerate, Hacker claims,
self-application of replacement, or words to the same effect. Usually, at this
point we may bring in Grice's caveat with 'implicature'. While
a = a
MAY look or sound _odd_, at the face of it (since it triggers the wrong
'implicature') it is still a perfectly 'true' if boring thing to say. Or not.
So, we may revise Hacker's other examples in McEvoy's references to Hacker,
notably
http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/docs/Was%20he%20trying%20to%20whistle%20
it.pdf
Was he trying to whistle it?
and
http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/docs/The%20Whistling%20had%20to%20stop.p
df
The whistling had to stop
and look for the implicatures that perhaps went, metaphorically, if not
depth-grammatically incorrect, over Witters's head.
Cheers,
Speranza
---- "Some like Witters, but Moore's MY man" -- J. L. Austin, cited by
Grice.
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