[lit-ideas] Re: Philosophical Investigations - text and comments
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:58:37 +0100 (BST)
The list is not perhaps a place for close line-by-line
examination of the text of Philosophical
Investigations. But some excerpts and comments may be useful to indicate
how the text reflects the POV ascribed to W in my posts: in particular, the POV
that the sense of ‘what is said’ is not
_said_ in ‘what is said’, the sense of ‘what is said’ may only be _shown_. This
POV is not said but is shown in PI: and my aim in this thread is
to show how this POV throws light on the text, and, by throwing light, to show
how this POV is shown in the text. I
am indebted to Robert Paul for access to an on-line copy for these excerpts.
At the beginning W takes a particular picture of language
drawn in a quotation from Augustine. In this picture [or account] the items of
language are ‘names’ and these items name objects. [It is an account of language
with similarities to the account of propositional language in W’s earlier TLP].
It is quite easy for us to gather the sense of such a language. The interesting
question is how we gather that sense?
Previously I have claimed that, “To understand the sense of
a "rule", whether in a computer or on a blackboard or uttered by a
human, we need to understand more than what is _said_ in any of these cases.
This is key for W.” We can further generalise this – from something like a
“rule”
to ‘whatever is said’: to understand
the sense of ‘what is said’ we need to understand more than ‘what is said’.
This is because the sense of “what is said” is never _said_ in “what is said”.
That this is key is quickly apparent in PI. For a key point W
makes is that the Augustinian picture [of words that are names of objects] only
makes sense as such because we understand more than ‘what is said’ by the users
of this language. W is very clear on this:-
S6 “But if the ostensive teaching has this effect,—am
I to say that it effects
an understanding of the word? Don't you understand the
call "Slab!"
if you act upon it in such-and-such a way?—Doubtless
the ostensive
teaching helped to bring this about; but only together
with a particular
training. With different training the same ostensive
teaching of these
words would have effected a quite different understanding.”
And
if it effected “a quite different understanding”, it may have also affected or
changed the sense of “these words”. To amplify: a ‘language-game’ where calling
out ‘Slab!’ functions to instruct another to fetch a certain object [a “slab”]
is a language where “Slab!” may have the sense ‘Bring me a slab’ – but to
understand that “Slab!” has that sense we need to understand more than ‘what is
said’ i.e. that someone has
uttered “Slab!”. For that same utterance [that same ‘what is said’] could have
quite a different sense if it were used differently or if we were trained to
use it differently. The sense of ‘what is said’ is therefore not said by or in
‘what is said’. The sense
of ‘what is said’ may only be shown:
for example, it may be shown by
pointing to the way we “act upon it”, or how we are trained to “use” it, and so
on.
The
sense of ‘what is said’ may depend on a great variety of things beyond ‘what is
said’: in addition to the training or practice we have in relation to the use
of ‘what is said’ within particular ‘language-games’, W mentions many other
things that may affect the sense of ‘what is said’:- these include “grammatical
forms” like the imperative rather than interrogative, but also “intonations” of
voice and even “the look with which [words] are uttered”.
If we
recognise that W’s POV is that the sense of language can only be shown not
said, we will see that W is not trying to give a theory of how these various
things may affect sense – that is, he is not trying to say how they affect
sense. And this is because how they affect
sense is not something that can be said but can only be shown – shown in
relation to actual cases.
So
when we read:-
S43: For a large class
of cases—though not for all—in which we
employ the word "meaning" it can be defined
thus: the meaning of a
word is its use in the language.
And the meaning of a name is sometimes
explained by pointing to its
bearer.
W is pointing
us to look at the obvious – at how the word is used. But all of these uses
involve matters where sense can only be shown not said. For example, the use of
words as names – the fact a word may have the sense of a name [and so “the
meaning of a name is sometimes explained by
pointing to its bearer”]
– depends on much more than ‘what is said’ when we use a word as name: for ‘what
is said’ is compatible always with the word being used in some other sense.
So it is not that the Augustinian picture is
not appropriate to how we use language but that it is misleading if we think
the sense of language is _said_ by way of such a picture [or any such picture].
For the ‘name-object’ picture of language is appropriate because certain uses
of language have the sense of ‘name-object’, but their having that sense
depends on more than is stated in the ‘name-object’ picture of language – their
having that sense depends on matters that are not said in ‘what is said’
[when we use language in the sense of ‘name-object’] but which can only be
shown.
Donal
Salop
Other related posts:
