[lit-ideas] Re: Linguistic Botany
- From: Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2015 05:17:31 +0000
Cantiamo tutti in coro T’ADORIAM OSTIA DIVINAAAAAAAAAAA
Did anybody notice that nobody who is not utterly demented buys this shit of
linguistic behaviour?
Did you ever read susan carey?
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Donal McEvoy
Sent: 29 March 2015 23:13
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Linguistic Botany
[Blocked from Hartiana thread]
JLS offers the following by way of interpretation:
>However, Witters claims, the meaning is not within the rule or its
expression anymore than, to use another of his examples, the rules of chess are
determined by the intention to sit down and play a game of chess.
Witters rather suggests that it is the pupil's training--the fact that he
has been told to perform function x2 (rather than 2x) when he sees the
formula "x!2" that indicates that the pupil correctly uses what the teacher has
meant by uttering the formula.>
Wittgenstein does not explicitly make these "claims": and, though these
"claims" are not perhaps false from W's pov, it is a kind of misinterpretation
to extract them from PI as "claims".
Instead of "claims" or theses, what we have in PI is W attempting to show what
he thinks can only be shown. This is the central and running theme of PI.
Thus at 190 in PI, W writes (corrected from the pdf Robert referenced):
>190. It may now be said: "The way the formula is meant determines
which steps are to be taken". What is the criterion for the way the
formula is meant? It is, for example, the kind of way we always use it,
the way we are taught to use it.
We say, for instance, to someone who uses a sign unknown to us:
"If by 'x!2' you mean x2, then you get this value for y, if you mean
2X, that one."—Now ask yourself: how does one mean the one thing or
the other by"x!2"?
That will be how meaning it can determine the steps in advance.>
The fundamental point of that "That" is that it is a "That" by which the
meaning is shown, not said.*
*(Likewise, the difference between "this value" and "that one" is a difference
in meaning that is shown in the difference of the values arrived at for y - it
is not a difference in meaning said by those different values). [Further, and
likewise, the difference in meaning between "x2" and "2X" is also shown by the
way these are used differently etc. and is not a difference said by their
expression].
For W in PI, what he is writing constitutes not a general theory of meaning [in
contrast to the Tractatus, though even in the Tractatus its general theory of
meaning involves a crucial distinction between what can be said and what can
only be shown, and it turns out its general theory of meaning cannot be said
but only shown]; what W writes in PI offers examples of how meaning is shown,
without W ever saying how meaning is shown in any sense that takes us beyond
what is shown by the examples.
W never says how meaning is shown in any such further sense because it is his
view that this is beyond the "limits of language" i.e. the "limits of language"
are such that it is not possible to say in language how meaning is shown by
language.
Hence W answers the question "What is the criterion for the way the formula is
meant?" not by giving some general account of any such "criterion" but by
referring to examples by which the meaning of a specific formula may be shown:
"It is, for example, the kind of way we always use it, the way we are taught to
use it." In teaching someone the use of words we show their sense; in using the
words in accordance with this teaching we show their sense.
>Now ask yourself: how does one mean the one thing or
the other by "x!2"?
That will be how meaning it can determine the steps in advance.>
What W is getting at here could be rephrased as follows: "Now ask yourself, how
is it shown that one means the one thing or the other by "x!2"? How it is shown
may be, for example, by the kind of way we always use it, by the way we are
taught to use it. How it is shown will reveal the sense in which meaning it can
determine the steps in advance."
Donal
On Sunday, 29 March 2015, 13:12,
"dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
My last post today!
Geary was philosophising about what Grice calls a 'thought-experiment'
(after Husserl). What would happen if we could hold a conversation with a
cockroach?
Geary: "The crucial, defining attribute, as i see it, differentiating
us-kind-of-creatures and all others is language. If roaches had language this
might just as likely have been roach-written."
(Geary drops the cock in cockroach, because he is a compositionalist and
assumes that to assert that a cockroach is a cockroach is to assert that it
is a cock AND a roach).
Linguistic botany is ...
A metaphor, no doubt, but one that J. L. Austin favoured, and Grice took
SERIOUSLY. The idea, which was not perhaps Popper's, is that the philosopher,
as he is engaged in conceptual analysis, has to start with 'the many' and
proceed to 'the wise', and 'the many' speak 'ordinary language'.
Thus, J. L. Austin advised we start with 'linguistic botanising'. In this
Austin and Grice and Hart (with his oblige-obligate distinction) are
following Epicurus in his letter to Herodotus.
The letter starts transparently enough:
"Greetings!", Epicurus writes.
'Ἐπίκουρος Ἡροδότῳ χαίρειν.
"Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τὰ ὑποτεταγμένα τοῖς φθόγγοις, ὦ
Ἡρόδοτε,
δεῖ εἰληφέναι, ὅπως ἂν τὰ δοξαζόμενα ἢ ζητούμενα ἢ
ἀπορούμενα
ἔχωμεν εἰς ταῦτα ἀναγαγόντες ἐπικρίνειν, καὶ μὴ
ἄκριτα πάντα
ἡμῖν ᾖ εἰς ἄπειρον ἀποδεικνύουσιν ἢ κενοὺς φθόγγους
ἔχωμεν.
ἀνάγκη γὰρ τὸ πρῶτον ἐννόημα καθ' ἕκαστον φθόγγον
βλέπεσθαι
καὶ μηθὲν ἀποδείξεως προσδεῖσθαι, εἴπερ ἕξομεν τὸ
ζητούμενον
ἢ ἀπορούμενον καὶ δοξαζόμενον ἐφ' ὃ ἀνάξομεν.
"In the first place, Herodotus, you must understand what it is that words
denote, in order that by reference to this we may be in a position to test
opinions, inquiries, or problems, so that our proofs may not run on untested
ad infinitum, nor the terms we use be empty of meaning."
"For the primary signification of every term employed must be clearly seen,
and ought to need no proving; this being necessary, if we are to have
something to which the point at issue or the problem or the opinion before us
can be referred."
Epicurus's parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, were both Athenian-born, and
his father a citizen, had emigrated to the Athenian settlement on the
Aegean island of Samos about ten years before Epicurus's birth in February 341
BC.As a boy, he studied philosophy for four years under the Platonist
teacher Pamphilus.
So we can see Epicurus as a member of the Athenian dialectic that Grice
contrasted to the Oxonian dialectic, and let us be reminded that when H. L. A.
Hart felt like sending a thank-you note to Morty White in Harvard, and
referring to the forthcoming William James lecturer at Harvard, Grice, Hart
described Grice as a 'marvellous dialectician, far better than anyone of us
here' -- and he was writing from Oxford!
Cheers,
Speranza
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