[lit-ideas] Re: Philosophical Investigations - text and comments II A
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:01:28 +0100 (BST)
As this post seems too large to get through, it is being
split into an II A and II B and II C:-
Though I am indebted to Robert Paul for access to an on-line
copy for excerpts from PI, there are errors – sometimes quite serious errors –
in this on-line edition, which I have sought to correct in what is set out
below. (Btw, ‘x2’ means ‘x squared’, and ‘2x’ means ‘x plus x’). For the fifth
time today may I also wish that Robert’s hand
gets better.
In
the first offering in this thread, we looked at the beginning of PI and the
Augustinian account of language in terms of the items of language being names
of objects. It was indicated that W accepts this account is appropriate where
words are being used in the sense of ‘name-object’ [3: “Augustine, we might
say, does describe a system of communication; only
not everything that we call language is this system. And one
has to say this in many cases where the question
arises "Is this an appropriate description or not?" The answer is:
"Yes, it is appropriate, but only for this narrowly circumscribed region,
not for the whole of what you were claiming to describe”]. But thefundamental
point, or ‘key tenet’, that continually underlies W’s discussion is that the
sense of any such language is not said in ‘what is said’ in that language.
This
‘key tenet’ is, I suggest, illustrated through-out the text and is one of its
two most central points.* It is implicit in what W ‘shows’. By showing how this
‘key tenet’ is implicit in what W writes, we may help those who do not
recognise this ‘key tenet’ in PI to recognise it.
[*The
other aspect of PI that might be described as similarly fundamental is that W
seeks to show that this ‘key tenet’ gives rise to a way to ‘dissolve’
philosophical problems by showing how they ‘disappear’ when we have an utterly
clear grasp of the sense of language. But it may be noted that we might accept
W’s view, that the sense of ‘what is said’ is not said in ‘what is said’,
without accepting his views as to how achieving complete clarity in
understanding the sense of language leads to philosophical problems being
dissolved. It might, for example, lead to the dissolution of those problems of
philosophy that arise only because of some conceptual confusion or lack of
clarity in understanding the sense of certain propositions or claims. But it
may be thought that, even if those such problems may be dissolved, there are
substantive problems or issues in philosophy that cannot be dissolved simply by
achieving clarity in the sense of language (this was the issue Popper tried to
raise with W when they met at the ‘Moral Sciences Club’)].
In a
related thread we have discussed whether a “rule” can be stated so its sense is
given in that statement. This cannot be done, according to W, because the sense
of ‘what is said’ [be it a “rule” or a command or an exclamation or a joke] is
never said in ‘what is said’. And
this is true, for W, ‘whatever is
said’.
Against
W’s POV, a tempting thought is that, while perhaps the sense of certain
statements is not said in their statement, there are certain statements whose
sense is said in their statement. We might intuit that the sense of a joke may
depend on much more than ‘what is said’. But other kinds of statement might
seem to state their sense in ‘what is said’. For example, a “rule” of
calculation
[or formula] might seem to contain within its statement the sense of how it is
applied – even onto infinity [“189. "But are the steps then not determined by
the algebraic formula?"—The
question contains a mistake.”]. Richard suggested an example of such a
“rule”, whose sense is said in its statement:- a “rule” such as ‘Take a number
n, add 2, then take that ‘(n + 2)’ as n and add 2, and so on’. But it is W’s
POV that it is simply a kind
of ‘optical illusion’ to think that the sense of such a “rule” [or of any kind
of statement] is stated [or said] in
its statement. And he tries to show this in relation to giving a mathematical
instruction of Richard’s type, in passages considered below.
contd. at II B.
Other related posts:
