[lit-ideas] Re: Interpretation and Elision
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 21:09:17 -0800
Phil Ens wrote:
Robert Paul wrote:
"So, maybe those who think that it's interpretations all the way down
are right, for something like the reasons Hume gives when he argues that
no amount of propositions about the past entails any proposition about
the future, and that no amount of propositions about what is entails
anything about what ought to be."
So, stopping for a stop sign is an interpretation? Of what? The
physical sign? Traffic rules? Culture? When I stub my toe against a
rock and say 'Ow!', is that an interpretation? Of what? The rock? My
toe? The pain? I just don't get what it means to say that it's
interpretations all the way down.
Indeed, stopping for a stop sign is an interpretation—not the stopping,
of course, but the prior mental act of taking that configuration of
shapes and colors affixed to a pole (usually) at an intersection (real
stop signs are seldom placed alongside uninterrupted stretches of road)
to be a stop sign in vivo. Stop signs in the stop sign shop require no
action on a touring motorist's part.
I don't really know why Phil flings around possible things that the
interpretation of (in this case that configuration, etc.), as a stop
sign—might be interpretations of in such a breathless way. My
interpretation of what Phil meant to say is a shaky as any other
interpretation: strictly speaking, the interpretation' in his own
example would be of the act of stopping at a putative stop sign, which
act might or might not require an understanding of traffic rules (as it
surely does) or of the surrounding 'culture.'
My modest claim is that there is no entailment from 'that thing, that
octagonally shaped concatenation of colors and shapes, painted and on a
pole, set there by the appropriate authorities, whose intentions will be
investigated in a separate paper, etc., etc., to the stopping of a motor
vehicle or a bicycle or a pushcart by anybody. Nor do these things cause
anybody to stop, except in the loose way that philosophers, and others,
use 'cause' to mean 'reason,' and vice versa.
I have no idea what the candidate for interpretation is in the case of
Phil's stubbing his Johnsonian toe on an Ontarian rock. That it was a
rock his toe struck, and that the pain followed from this might be
called into question; but usually people who believe that various things
are susceptible to interpretation do not fasten on examples like this,
although they could and might.
It's really no fun to discuss things with someone who ignores the
original examples provided and immediately, with no clear motivation, at
least none clearly visible, produces frivolous examples of his own,
without bothering to say what they're examples of, or how they fit into
any larger picture.
But Phil is at least brief, so he has the better of me there.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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