[lit-ideas] Re: "In Philosophical Investigations"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 20:34:30 EDT
I propose to write only three posts today, already 5/20, at most. This
below vis a vis the fact that in my previous I refer to Paul, "Is there a
problem about sense data?" and I would like to thank Paul for quoting directly
from Hacker, to prove that I _care_.
Thanks to R. Paul, then, for the quote from Grice's successor's successor
at St. John's -- Peter Michael Stephan Hacker.
Grice was succeeded as Full Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at St. John's by
American Gordon P. Baker (who was unaccepted for Lit. Hum, because he
lacked Greek -- bless him! -), back in 1967, and Hacker became on Baker's
death
the only Tutor at St. John's in things that matter.
In a message dated 5/19/2010 8:09:07 P.M., rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
"122. It would have made as little sense for me to say “Now I see it as…”
as to say at the sight of a knife and fork “Now I see this as a knife and
fork”. This utterance would not be understood. Any more than: “Now it is a
fork for me” or “It can be a fork too”.
123. One doesn’t ‘take’ [Man ‘hält auch nicht…] what one knows to be the
cutlery at a meal for cutlery, any more than one ordinarily tries to move
one’s mouth as one eats, or strives to move it.
Here, 122 is a comment on the earlier discussion, in xi, of ‘seeing as,’
seeing an aspect of something, interpreting a figure, etc. It’s here that
the infamous Duck-Rabbit makes its appearance; 123 is just a rhetorical
flourish."
------
Not so sure it's mere rhetorical flourish. But then ALL in Witters is!
You have to admit that the conjunction,
"knife and fork" IS odd, so 'cutlery' sums the conjuncts nicely.
----
But back to Witters's obscurity. No wonder Grice did not need to expand on
it. Grice is clear enough on p. 5 of WoW:5.
The trick is in the 'as' (German "als" -- cfr. "like" -- as in WoW:128 --
and my analysis of "Bleach smells like bleach" from "Million Dollar Baby":
Grice WoW:128:
"some system of communication which
U has devised but which has never been put into operation
(like the new highway code which I invent one day
while lying in my bath)."
----
Note the loose use of "like"
---- a system of communication SUCH AS the new highway code.
(THIS ABOVE is the correct use)
Grice's use is intentionally loose:
--- "a system of communication LIKE the new highway code which I invent..."
----
Similarly,
"seeing an x as an x"
Grice could be genial in looking for variables for constants that Witters
deals with.
He writes on that p. 5 leading to p. 6:
""Seeing ... as," then, is SEEMINGLY
represented as involving at least some
element of some kind of
imaginative construction or
supplementation."
---- which would be absurd (to think) if anyone had
paid the proper due to Paul, "Is there a problem about sense data"
--- cfr. my previous post on this thread.
---
So let us reconsider the quotes that Paul kindly provides:
We have the whole of 122, and thanks to Paul for letting us know how
Hacker improved on Anscombe so -- due in part to his German colleague I trust,
but I'm never sure about the Stephan.
----- "It would have made as little sense
for me to say
[(i)] Now I see it as ...
AS [empahsis mine. JLS]
to say at the sight of a knife and fork
[(ii) Now I see this as a knife and fork.
Witters adds:
"This utterance would not be understood."
I expect he means the former, i, rather than the latter. But perhaps he
means the latter. In which case, Witters is going stronger than in the worse
of Grice's nightmares. He is claiming a perfectly true and trite sentence is
UNINTELLIGIBLE! -- Perhaps in _German_!
"Any more than:
[(iii)] Now it is a fork for me.
or
[(iv) It can be a fork too."
-----
("One doesn’t ‘take’ [Man ‘hält auch nicht…] what one knows to be the
cutlery at a meal for cutlery, any more than one ordinarily tries to move one’
s mouth as one eats, or strives to move it."
The uses of comparative expressions like 'als' (English 'as', 'any more
than...' etc.) are particularly irritating in Witters's style. Note that if
you drop the clause following "cutlery":
"One doesn't 'take' what one knows to be cutlery at a meal for cutlery"
i.e. "any more than..."
the claim is VACUOUS, since one DOES take cutlery for cutlery. (Witters,
being an anti-conventionalist, disregarded cutlery, most likely).
R. Paul hyperbolically puts it:
"These paragraphs obviously make no sense on their own."
----
And again, it was Grice's genius to bring in, for a change, a Cantab.
'minor figure', as he calls Wittgenstein (in the volume to which Baker
contributed with "Alternative Mind Styles" -- there's new Oxford compromise
forya!
-- Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends) vis
a vis the people he really cared for: in order of merit:
J. L. Austin -- who had said some absurdities regarding 'intentionally' --
"No modification witthout aberration"
Grice's own former self -- Grice is honest enough to consider his former
views in "Causal Theory of Perception" (1961) when revising the thing in
WoW:6). b. 1913.
Hart, on 'accidentally' (b. 1914)
Hare (on 'good' as 'be praised'), b. 1919
and
Strawson (in "Intro to Logical Theory"), b. 1919.
Grice was identifying a 'manoeuvre' in a type of doing philosophy which he
identified as Oxonian, and he'll add Pears, Urmson, Warnock, and Paul, to
the picture. Genius! -- The vagaries of Witters and his translators belong
elsewhere!
McEvoy was questioning
"seeing an x as an x"
vis a vis
x = x
which McEvoy and I agree is true. Elsewhere, revising, I think, identity
with the OED, I note that we can go indeed further than that. Contra Witters,
we can say that
an x is LIKE an x.
Here, the connection is made with that trick of the particle I started the
post with, "like" (as in Grice, "like the highway code", best phrased as
"such as") and "als" or "as".
Why Witters thought elsewise may well have to do with the inabilities of
the German language to see things which are clearly seen in English? (Or
something).
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
--- for the Grice Club,
------ Bordighera, etc.
(I propose before too long to contribute with the Hacker/... tr. to Grice
Club soon, I hope, crediting Paul, and he knows he can do it himself, since
he can author there).
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