[lit-ideas] "Kick The Bucket": Philosophers Analyse 'Death'

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:45:57 EST

In a message dated 11/18/2009 8:31:38 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx refers to Popper's conception of the 'third world' 
and  
writes:

No one  goes there when they die.
 
---- You see, grammar tricks you. As Geary notes, "Philosophy is language  
on holidays".
 
This reminds me of Tara Parkinson, the social columnist writer in the Daily 
 Telegraph
 
   "Tara is on holidays"
 
-- the newspaper published one day. Soon came a letter from a disgusted  
reader, in Tunbridge Wells,
 
           "as opposed to  what?"
 
---
 
>No one goes there when they die.
 
You see, grammar tricks you. And I don't mean the pluralisation of 'one'  
(into 'they' -- with the correct form being,
 
    No one goes there when one dies
 
---- I have just seen "Love in a cold climate" and Cedric Hampton, a dandy, 
 keeps using 'one' to mean 'myself'
 
      "Is she prettier than one" -- he'd say. I  found the use engaging.
 
>no  one goes there when they die.
 
Echoes of "all good childern go to heaven".
 
>no one goes there when they die.
 
Supposing a co-referentiality in "one" and "they", I claim that, regardless 
 of McEvoy's 'solecisms' -- he called Grice's views 'imbecile', so I can 
react,  can't I? --, the utterance
 
     "they die"
 
is _ungrammatical_ on logical grounds. For consider Witters,
 
    "To die is not to live -- or leave -- that's why I  say
       -- Death is not a part of Life, not  even
       a tiny little bit thereof"
 
>they die.
 
Suppose we name the person, "Bing Crosby"
 
   "Bing Crosby dies"
 
-- This is different from, and VERY different, I claim, from
 
    "Bing Crosby _sings_."
 
Surely that was Witters point. Singing is an experience in Bing Crosby's  
life; dying isn't.
 
The reasons are logical form. Suppose we use quantificational logic:
 
    There is an x such that he bing-crosbies (cf. Quine,  'pegasises') and 
sings.
 
There is no such analysis, correlative, for 'and dies'. For the domain of  
the bound variable, 'x' is no longer. Now, McEvoy may be using 'x' in an  
unbounded way -- a 'free' variable. But then, how can he _bind_ the 'one' of 
'no  one goes there' to the 'they' of 'they die'?
 
Thus, Q. E. D.
 
-- As for Popper's "materialized objects" of the third world: there is a  
whole industry of death, and McEvoy should be aware of that. "Fairy tales of 
New  York" by Dillinger, is all about that. Funerals, coffins, wakes, tombs, 
etc.  Those are only the 'materialised' objects of 'dying' -- but they 
cannot capture  the essence of dying, which remains a mystery for most men.
 
Wittgenstein was into something very true. "Language expresses experience;  
but death is NOT an experience; hence the inability of the lingo to deal 
with  this 'fact', if not of life, of _things_: Kick the bucket my bollocks".
 
J. L. Speranza, Bordighera
[lit-ideas] "Kick The Bucket": Philosophers Analyse 'Death'

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