[lit-ideas] Re: Ryle's Fido
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 9 May 2014 18:23:04 +0200
There is a modern Israeli female name "Moshit", i.e. "Mosesa." I once knew
a pretty girl with that name, but I kind of didn't like the name.
As to how "Fido" names Fido, I would suggest that it names him by virtue of
the fact that we (Fido included) think that it does. There is no objective
relation between the word "Fido" and the physical Fido.
O.K.
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx for
DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> A friend of mine once found a cat amidst a storm. He named the cat "Moses".
> It turned out to be a female cat, and he was wondering if "Moses", in
> Hebrew, has a feminine counterpart -- although "Mosesa" did pretty well.
> Oddly
> "Moses" is one name that Witters discusses as he proposes something like a
> 'general' criterion, however, fuzzy -- for why introduce a general
> variable
> for 'name' (Wittgenstein's capital "N"), if not -- in Section 79 of his
> posthumous Philosophical Investigations.
>
> But it may be different with dogs.
>
> The naming of cats is a difficult matter, Eliot, after all argued. His
> implicature seems to be that the Queen's naming her first corgi "Susan" by
> contrast was, figuratively, a 'piece of cake'.
>
> 'Fido'-Fido
>
> McEvoy is considering Wittgenstein's 'say'/'show' distinction as it applies
> to 'names'. MceEvoy defends a continuity in Wittgenstein's thought and
> chooses 'names' as an example. The challenge is to provide a 'criterion'
> (I
> think McEvoy calls it) for 'naming', which is lacking as something SAID in
> Wittgenstein, if not as something 'shown'.
>
> I was reminded of Ryle's 'Fido'-Fido (first proposed in "The theory of
> meaning", in C. A. Mace, "British philosophy in the mid century", 1957),
> and
> McEvoy proposes three nice scenarios:
>
> i. Fido!
>
> as uttered by the owner of Fido.
>
> ii. Fido.
>
> as a reply to ("What's the name of your dog?")
>
> and
>
> iii. I name this [ship] the 'Fido'.
>
> as uttered by the Queen. The better expressed phrasing by McEvoy appended
> below. McEvoy wants to give priority to (iii). It is in scenarios like
> (iii)
> that one can speak of an Utterer (to use Grice's parlance) -- the Queen --
> NAMING. And of course, I would agree (with the Queen) that the priority is
> on NAMING, not NAMES.
>
> (i), with 'Fido' as vocative is not naming Fido, while it is a phrase
> intended to _call_ Fido. While (ii), expanded as "The dog's name is Fido'
> seems
> to REPORT a naming that has occurred in the past, even if one may argue
> that one names a thing N every time one uses the expression N, and not the
> 'baptismal' fixation (to use Witters's and Kripke's wording).
>
> On top of that, the discussion then turned to Augustine, so I double
> checked Witters' quotation -- now in the Loeb Classical Library --:
>
> Augustine says:
>
> "Cum majores homines APPELLABANT rem aliquam
> et cum secundum earn vocem corpus ad aliquid movebant, videbam
> et tenebam hoc ab eis VOCARI rem illam, quod SONABANT
> cum earn vellent ostendere
> hoc autem eos veile ex motu corporis aperiebatur: tamquam VERBIS
> naturalibus omnium gentium
> quae fiunt vultu et nutu oculorum
> ceterorumque membrorum actu
> & sonitu vocis indicante affectionem animi in petendis
> habendis, rejiciendis, fugiendisve rebus
> ita VERBA in variis SENTENTIIS locis suis posita
> & crebro audita quarum rerum SIGNA essent
> paulatim colligebam
> measque jam voluntates
> edomito in eis SIGNIS ore
> per haec enuntiabam.
> ---- Augustinus, Conf. I. 8.
>
> I don't think Witters cared to provide a translation for this, but the
> current edition of Philosophical Investigations does, and it involves so
> much
> more than merely 'pointing at things' via ostension, while 'ostendere' IS
> used. The translation in the current edition of Philosophical
> Investigation
> goes as per below, where I capitalised some of the notions -- other than
> NAMING -- that Augustine relies on:
>
> "When my elders NAMED some object & accordingly moved towards something, I
> saw this and I grasped that the thing was CALLED by the sound they UTTERED
> when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily
> movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression
> of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body,
> and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking,
> having,
> rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard WORDS repeatedly used
> in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to
> understand what objects they SIGNIFIED; and after I had trained my mouth
> to form
> these signs, I used them to express my own desires."
>
> ---- It seems to evoke what Colin McGinn called a telementational (that he
> also applies to Grice) theory of communication. Note that Augustine focuses
> on "DESIRES" and "INTENTIONS", alla Grice, and allows for various 'things'
> to be 'called' this or that. It is a 'genetic' account of how Augustine
> got to learn Latin (in the North of Africa, as I recall), first by being
> an
> addressee, and ultimately becoming an utterer.
>
> ---- The Stanford Encyclopedia for 'names' gives a nice reference to a
> later section of Philosophical Investigations (McEvoy claims that Witters's
> point about he (Witters) not being able to provide by something that HE
> SAYS a
> theory of naming applies to the first sections) where something like a
> Kripkean 'criterion' is provided. In any case it strongly reminded me of
> Grice
> in "Vacuous Names". Grice goes on to provide some technicism, notably the
> idea of a
>
> DOSSIER.
>
> So the idea is that
>
> 'Fido'
>
> gets attached to a 'dossier', which may include:
>
> 'Ryle's dog'.
>
> Have you seen Ryle's dog?
>
> Have you seen Fido?
>
> Have you seen the loud poodle that lives up Banbury lane?
>
> Have you seen the canis familiaris that belongs to the Waynflete professor
> of Metaphysical Philosophy?
>
> and so on. It is according to circumstances that one will choose one or
> another item in one's dossier for 'Fido'.
>
> There seems to be a CRITERION behind all this. Grice is into a
> formalisation of this.
>
> Df
>
> Fido is a dog.
>
> Where 'D' is a PREDICATE, and 'f' is a singular name -- that Quine
> rejects. Usually, 'Fido' involves
>
> {f}
>
> the singleton -- or one-member class. 'Dog' doesn't. Extensionally defined,
> it points to Fido and the Queen's corgis for example, such as "Susan".
>
> Cs
>
> Susan is a corgi.
>
> 'Corgi', like 'Dog', is a predicate. 'Susan' is a name.
>
> (Outside Wales, corgis have been made popular by Queen Elizabeth II who has
> at least four in her retinue at all times. Her first corgi was called
> Susan. She currently keeps two corgis and two Dorgis (corgi/dachshund
> cross).
> Some portraits of Queen Elizabeth II include a corgi. Some don't).
>
> We are considering Wittgenstein on
>
> 'naming'.
>
> The passage from the Stanford Encyclopedia on Names that led me to the
> Wittgenstein quote is as follows:
>
> Aristotle's mother might have used the name ‘Aristotle’ with a different
> semantic value (corresponding to a different (cluster-)description) to a
> present-day Aristotle scholar. Frege (1952, 1956) and Russell seem to have
> held the context-sensitive view. Wittgenstein is often cited as a
> proponent of
> the cluster view, but attention to the text (1953, section 79) reveals
> that he is advocating context-sensitivity.
>
> So let us revise this section. It should be a later section than the
> sections McEvoy having in mind as EVIDENCE that Witters is trying to show
> that
> one cannot try to express in words ('say') what 'naming' is, only 'show',
> for
> lack of 'criteria'.
>
> In Section 79 Wittgenstein writes:
>
> "If one says
>
> i. Moses did not exist.
>
> this may MEAN various things."
>
> "It may mean:
>
> ii. The Israelites did not have a single leader when they withdrew from
> Egypt——or:
>
> iii. The Israelite's leader was NOT called Moses——-or:
>
> iv. There cannot have been anyone who accomplished all that the Bible
> relates of Moses——or:
>
> v. etc. etc.
>
> "We may say, following Russell: the NAME "Moses" can be defined by means of
> various descriptions."
>
> "For example, as
>
> vi. "Moses" names the man who led the Israelites through the wilderness.
>
> vii. "Moses" names the man who lived at that time and place and was then
> called 'Moses'.
>
> viii. "Moses" names the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by
> Pharaoh's daughter.
>
> and so on.
>
> "And according as we assume one definition or another the proposition, our
> original utterance
>
> i. Moses did not exist.
>
> acquires a different SENSE, and so does every other proposition about
> Moses."
>
> "And if we are told, in general
>
> ib. "N did not exist"
>
> we do ask: "What do you mean? Do you want to say . . . . . . or . . . . . .
> etc.?"
>
> "When I make a statement about Moses,— am I always ready to substitute some
> one of these descriptions for "Moses"?"
>
> "I shall perhaps say as follows."
>
> "By "Moses" I understand the man who did what the Bible relates of Moses,
> or at any rate a good deal of it."
>
> "But how much?"
>
> "Have I decided how much must be proved false for me to give up my
> proposition as false?"
>
> "Has the NAME "Moses" got a fixed and unequivocal use for me in all
> possible cases?
>
> "Is it not the case that I have, so to speak, a whole series of props in
> readiness, and am ready to lean on one if another should be taken from
> under
> me and vice versa?"
>
> "Consider another case."
>
> "When I say
>
> B. N is dead.
>
> something like the following may hold for the meaning of the NAME "N":
>
> I believe that a human being has lived, whom I
>
> (1) have seen in such-and-such places, who
> (2) looked like this (pictures)
> (3) has done such-and-such things, and
> Crucially:
>
> (4) N bore the name "N" in social life.
>
> Asked what I understand by "N", I should enumerate all or some of these
> points, and different ones
> on different occasions.
>
> So my DEFINITION of "N" would perhaps be
>
> B2. N is the man of whom all this is true.
>
> But if some point now proves false?
>
> Shall I be prepared to declare the proposition
>
> B. N is dead.
>
> false—even if it is only something which strikes me as incidental that has
> turned out false?
>
> But where are the bounds of the incidental?
>
> If I had given a definition of the name N in such a case, I should now be
> ready to alter it.
>
> And this can be expressed like this:
>
> I use the name "N" without a fixed meaning.
>
> But that detracts as little from its usefulness, as it detracts from that
> of a table that it stands on four legs instead of three and so sometimes
> wobbles.
>
> Should it be said that I am using a word whose meaning I don't know, and so
> am talking nonsense?
>
> Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the
> facts.
>
> And when you see them there is a good deal that you will NOT say.
>
> "The fluctuation of scientific definitions: what to-day counts as an
> observed concomitant of a phenomenon will to-morrow be used to DEFINE [or
> name]
> it."
>
> It seems to me that Witters IS offering something like a 'criterion' (and I
> should double check what other word McEvoy uses here) for 'naming'. It may
> be a 'fuzzy' criterion, or a multifarious one, to reflect the multifarious
> 'pragmatics' of names -- and not just the rather simple semantics alla
>
> {f}
>
> {s}
>
> Philosophers who look at logic as an auxiliary to provide, in a
> metalanguage, for criteria for their original puzzles are redeemed.
> Wittgenstein
> seems to display, rather, an a priori, as it were, opposition to
> formalisation
> (or metalinguistic approaches) of any kind.
>
> Once the 'semantics' of names is more or less fixed or settled, one CAN
> give room for a more fluid 'pragmatics' of names -- "She was a Garbo", for
> example, we can say of someone -- other than Garbo -- who displays some
> sort
> of the elegance that Garbo displayed, and so on. And while most
> discussions
> of Grice's 'Vacuous Names' have focuses on the vacuity issue, what he says
> about identificatory and no-identificatory uses, dossiers, and such,
> applies, of course, to FULL names, too -- and not just vacuous like
> "Pegasus" and
> "Bellerophon" (that Quine had made famous in his rejection of names in
> "What there is" -- Pegasus exists = something pegasusises) or "Marmaduke
> Bloggs", Grice's own invention: the Lancashire geographer who climbed Mt
> Everest
> on hands and knees but who turns out to be the journalists's invention).
>
> Grice wrote 'Vacuous Names' in the heat of Donnellan's recent invention of
> an attributive/referential uses of 'names' and 'descriptions', that Grice
> rejects, and replaces for 'identificatory' and 'non-identificatory' uses of
> 'the' and related 'referential' expressions, and he is at his best in
> identifying implicatures (NEVER SENSES) that attend his favourite scenario
> on
> which he expands in the final sections of that essay:
>
> "Jones's butler got the hats and coats mixed up"
>
> where Grice distinguishes a non-identificatory use from a fully
> identificatory use of "Jones' butler". An application to the simpler
> Ryle's 'Fido'
> may be in order.
>
> "So, the whole point is that Fido, whoever he is, should not be allowed to
> do as he pleases."
>
> Grice notes that the use of 'whoever he is' indicates that the name has
> only been introduced by the 'stroke of a pen', rather than, say, via
> acquaintance.
>
> Ryle laughed at all that. His idea of 'Fido'-Fido was to show the early
> Wittgenstein wrong. And he explores Plato's confusions. Plato had only one
> word to his disposal: 'onoma', which can stand for 'name', 'noun' -- and
> WORD.
> The English language has richer distinctions, and 'noun' should be used
> instead of 'name' as good style dictates. I'm not sure how delicate in his
> choice of words Witters is. It seems his use of "N" (his general term for
> 'name') is pretty vague. For one, quotations may seem in order in cases
> where
> he doesn't use them -- ""N" is N's name," for example.
>
> Ryle called 'Fido'-Fido a 'grotesque' THEORY and Carnap is right in
> correcting Ryle here: you may call it 'grotesque' but, Carnap notes, is
> more of a
> theoretical decision on how to deal with 'names' in one's system rather
> than a 'theory' proper.
>
> And so on.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
> In a message dated 5/8/2014 12:31:48 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> the view that 'Fido' names the dog Fido if it is used as a name of Fido:
> but this does not explain how 'Fido' names Fido (it no more does this than
> saying "'The snow is white' is true iff the snow is white" explains how
> the
> linguistic statement can refer to a non-linguistic reality). To give
> examples where names name is not to give an explanation of the
> naming-relation
> but merely to illustrate it: what the challenge asks is to provide an
> explanation so that the relation is captured in language, perhaps by way
> of some
> "theory" or "criterion" by which we can determine that a word is being
> used
> as a name and not otherwise. Consider the difference between a dog owner
> uttering 'Fido' when (a) asked the name of his dog (b) shouting at Fido -
> (b)
> is not a use of 'Fido' to name Fido in the same sense as (a), or perhaps at
> all (and even in (a) 'Fido' may report Fido's name rather than 'name' Fido
> in some other sense, as when (c) the Queen names a ship 'Fido').
>
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