[lit-ideas] Re: Slabs, bricks, prompts and prayers
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:11:15 -0400 (EDT)
PROMPTER (to Hamlet): "To be or not to be, that is the question".
HAMLET: "To be or not to be that is the question".
--- The distinction between a slab and a brick may be more Wittgensteinian
than we thought it wasn't.
----
slab (n.) Look up slab at Dictionary.comlate 13c., "large, flat mass," of
unknown origin, possibly related to Old French escalpe "thin fragment of
wood," which seems to be a Gaulish loan word (cf. Breton scolp, Welsh ysgolp
"splinter, chip"). But OED rejects this on formal grounds. Meaning
"rectangular block of pre-cast concrete used in building" is from 1927.
Note that if we allow temporal subscripts (cfr. McEvoy below of 'meaning'
yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the use of 'slab' by Witters cannot predate
1927, and so must be 'latter Witters'.
brick (n.) Look up brick at Dictionary.comearly 15c., from Old French
briche "brick," probably from a Germanic source akin to Middle Dutch bricke "a
tile," literally "a broken piece," from the verbal root of break (v.).
Meaning "a good, honest fellow" is from 1840, probably on notion of squareness
(e.g. fair and square) though most extended senses of brick (and square)
applied to persons in English are not meant to be complimentary. Brick wall in
the figurative sense of "impenetrable barrier" is from 1886.
For the illocutionary logic of 'pray' and 'prompt' vide Vanderveken,
"Foundations of illocutionary logic", or read it, rather. (What do people mean,
"see" when they mean "read"? For how can we see a reference without reading
it?)
In a message dated 4/19/2013 8:17:44 A.M. UTC-02,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
the same encodement ‘1,2,3,4…10’ may have a different sense [or ‘
decodement’] depending on whether a child is uttering it in response to a
teacher’
s request for the correct numerical sequence or rattling it out at the
beginning of a game of ‘hide and seek’, but that this difference may only be
shown and does not lie in the identical ‘what is said’.
-- So why not claim the distinction is in "implicature" only? After all,
Grice's innovation was to create a distincdtion, "never made by Witters --
and indeed often ignored by Austin hisself".
"Likewise, in observing that the Augustinian ‘picture’ given at the
beginning of Philosophical Investigations may show to us a name-object sense of
language, but this is because we are familiar with being shown the
name-object sense in the way Augustine pictures (rather than being shown to
pray
this way) and it is not because that ‘picture’ says how words have the
name-object sense [for this name-object sense is not something said in
language
but is something that can only be shown]."
Oddly, the Austinian view of language is HARDLY Augustinian (but "Austin"
is vulgar for "Augustine").
"Strange as it might seem, and as is amplified below, we could imagine a ‘
form of life’ where beings learnt to do what we call ‘praying’ in a way
that conformed with Augustine’s ‘picture’: where those beings are shown how
to pray in ways that resemble how we are taught the names of objects; and
such beings might naturally take Augustine’s ‘picture’ as conveying the
sense of language where it is prayer. As Wittgenstein remarks early on in PI
[6]: “With different training the same ostensive teaching of these words
would have effected a quite different understanding.”"
I believe the PRAGMATICS of prayer are pretty complicated, and may need
further elaboration. I learned a lot about this from W. Warner in his essay on
implicature and religious language.
"Take the builder and his assistant. We observe them for a day. The
assistant says nothing but responds to the only two words uttered by the
builder –
‘Slab’ and ‘Brick’. When the builder utters ‘Slab’, the assistant
fetches what we would call a slab. When the builder utters ‘Brick’, the
assistant fetches what we would call a brick. After a day of this, it might
seem
plain that the builder is using ‘Slab’ as a command or request to ‘Fetch
me a slab’; and, likewise, is using ‘Brick’ as a command or request to ‘
Fetch me a brick’."
---why not, "I KNOW a brick/slab will be made existant here" (Implicating:
"See to that"). I.e. In formal symbols, where S is slab and B is brick, the
logical form is
(Ex) Sx
and
(Ex) Bx
where the 'imperative' force is merely implicated. Cfr. cancellation:
A: Brick
B remains motionless.
A: Didn't you hear me?
B: What?
A: I said "Brick". Surely I meant, "Fetch me a brick".
B: I love to ignore your disimplicatures.
----
"And this may appear so plain that we might also think it plain that this
sense – the sense of requesting or commanding that a named item be fetched –
is said by what is said. [We might indeed feel certain that ‘what is said’
is not prayer of any sort.]"
I fail to follow how prayer fits in here.
"But that the sense here is not said by ‘what is said’ becomes clear if
we reflect that ‘what is said’, and everything else in that day’s
observations, is compatible with the words uttered having a different sense.
We
might note at the outset that we can distinguish a command from a request."
I don't THINK there is much of a distinction. Both are imperative in tone.
It's only via a sort of 'persuasion' that a command may be _read_ (as per
implicature) as a request.
Usually, it's in the tone:
"Will you stop it?" (request)
"Stop it!" (order).
Strictly, Holdcroft, in "Problems in the theory of speech acts" analyses
this alla Grice. It's a different _REASON_ on the part of the addressee that
the utterer is appealing to. In the case of a command, there is a reason
based on the utterer's AUTHORITY (usually self-proclaimed).
"but which of these is the appropriate sense to the words uttered is not
something said by the words uttered, for otherwise we could tell which is
their appropriate sense merely from knowing the words used. But that the sense
of ‘what is said’ is not said by ‘what is said’ goes much deeper than
that. For our interpretation of ‘what is said’ might be altered if we
observed the following day and found that there was no longer the same
correlation between what was uttered and what the assistant did: whenever
‘Slab’ or ‘
Brick’ was uttered, the assistant always brought an object – but
sometimes when ‘Slab’ was called the assistant brought a brick, and sometimes
when
‘Brick’ was called the assistant brought a slab."
---- While this may be contingent, I cannot see how this can be generalised
into a theory. It's different with 'snow' in Eskimo (they had so many
words for it). Usually, if there is a distinction in what McEvoy calls a name,
there is a distinction in what McEvoy calls a name item.
It's different with malaprops which are analysed alla Grice by Davidson.
Thus, Malaprop may mean that that was a nice arrangement of epithets, when
she clumsily uttered, "a nice derangement of epitaphs". Similarly, someone
familiar with her malaprop will KNOW that when Malaprop utters "epitaph" she
MEANS "epithet". Re-read this as "brick" misused to mean "slab" and vice
versa.
----
"And in none of these cases did the builder’s response indicate the
assistant was bringing the wrong object or otherwise responding incorrectly. We
might wonder whether the sense of the utterances today was the same as their
sense yesterday."
And we may wonder if Humpty Dumpty was right when he thought, yesterday,
that by uttering,
"There's glory for you!"
he meant that there was, yesterday, a nice knock-down argument for Alice,
but merely a different name item tomorrow.
"But imagine we pursue the idea that, whatever their sense, the utterances
had a similar sense yesterday as today."
-- and cfr. Tomorrow -- For Meaning Lies Between Yesterday and Tomorrow. As
in "Sideways", the film:
A: I'm writing a novel.
B: What's the title?
A: The day after yesterday.
B: That's today, no?
Strictly, "Oh, you mean 'today'?"
---
"What we want is a “perspicuous” or “surveyable representation” in order
to grasp this similar sense – by the way, we shall also want such an
overview if we are seeking to grasp or understand the possible dissimilarity
of
sense here. There are many conceivable possibilities that might be explored.
Suppose closer observation shows to us that the assistant knows, say by
observation of what the builder is doing, whether to bring a slab or a brick –
and so it is not that the assistant is taking ‘what is said’ as a
command to fetch the object named but merely to fetch the next appropriate
object. Closer observation might likewise show that, on the odd occasion, the
assistant brings the next appropriate object though – for whatever reason,
perhaps tiredness – the builder has issued no request or command: the
assistant simply responds in such cases having observed what is needed next.
We
could have many variations on this simple set-up and many varieties of sense
attaching to same simple words ‘Slab’ and ‘Brick’ - depending on what is
shown when we consider the use not in isolation but in terms of a “
surveyable representation”. In one conceivable variation, we might regard the
sense
of the builder’s utterance as a prompt – the assistant might pre-empt this
prompt or act when there is no prompt given. And this would make the sense
distinct from a set-up where the assistant acts ‘wrongly’ if they act
pre-emptively – that is, acts ‘wrongly’ unless they act only in response to a
request or command or prompt. Likewise it would render the sense of ‘what
is said’ distinct from a set-up where the assistant acts ‘wrongly’ unless
they bring the named object [‘wrongly’ even if the named object turns out
not to be the next appropriate object (“I realise now that I needed a slab
next, but still - what I told you to fetch was a brick”)]"
---- This may relate to 'sefl-deception', or plain error. Or again,
SPOONERISM (to contrast it with Malaprop).
"And we may also imagine a sense to the utterances in such a set-up that
is far removed from using ‘Slab’ or ‘Brick’ as commands or requests or
prompts or where these terms bear any direct relation to their use to name
objects. Say we observed there was a regularity to what the builder uttered –
a pattern where the builder alternated always between ‘Slab’ and ‘Brick’
:- so that, after every uttered‘Slab’, the next utterance was ‘Brick’;
and, after every ‘Brick’, the next utterance was ‘Slab’ (and when perhaps,
very occasionally, the builder did not alternate as per this sequence, the
builder would correct himself, thereby showing the correct sequence). Yet
throughout all this we observed that the assistant did not bring the
seemingly named object but rather what the assistant could observe was the
next
appropriate object. The use here might be puzzling. But we might still assume
the use of these terms ‘Brick’ and ‘Slab’ bore some relation to their use
as commands etc. in relation to objects also named by those terms."
---- It is because of the use of "use" in contexts like that, that Grice
proposed, abruptly:
"The precept that one should be careful NOT to confuse MEANING and USE is
perhaps on the way toward being as handy a philosophical vade-mecum as once
was the [old Wittersian] precept that one should be careful to identify
them."
Logic and Conversation, Way of Words, Harvard U. P., p. 4
"But this assumption is not validated by anything said and might be shown
to be mistaken, as follows:- the builder subsequently explains to us that a
co-worker had been killed on site a few months ago and that co-worker was
known for his distinctive way of always shouting out ‘Slab’ and ‘Brick’
(even when there was no need, as the assistant often could act without
prompt, request or command), and that this person typically shouted out in the
alternate given the way bricks and slabs were usually combined in the walls
they built. And so the sense of the builder’s utterances – even if they
might also occasionally function as a prompt when the assistant was dawdling –
was as a ‘tribute’ of sorts to this dead colleague."
I must say I like the scenario. Will think over it.
"Or if not a tribute, then their sense was as a solemn reminder of that
colleague – or even an affectionate joke. But now imagine that it was
explained that the dying colleague asked that he be prayed for, and asked that
the
prayer take the form of uttering to the heavens some characteristic phrase
of his that would remind God of him: now we might understand that the sense
of the utterance was indeed a prayer of sorts. Nor is it beyond
possibility that these distinct senses might be combined: that the builder’s
utterances could be part-prompt, part-memento mori, part-joke and part-prayer.
We
might note that the ‘sense’ of language that concerns the later
Wittgenstein is here the actual sense of language as it is used and not, as he
came to
view his earlier approach in the Tractatus, some ‘sense’ attributed to
language in the light of a stipulative philosophical theory as to how
language has sense."
Although perhaps we are 'craving for generality' as Witters would say, when
we allow things like
"the sense of language".
Note that it is usually, and best, 'the sense of a word'.
Grice even had doubts about this. Take the truth-functional connectives,
like "or", or a preposition like "to". Do they have senses? He allowed for
'or' having one, "if only to please Quine and other mathematically oriented
philosophers":
"This point is particulary strong in connection with
a suggestion that "or" possesses a derivative sense;
for we are NOT PARTICULARLY at home" [he was
lecturing in Harvard] "with the application of notions such
as "meaning" and "sense" to words so nondescriptive
as "or". The difficulty we should encounter here are perhaps
similar to, although not as severe as, the difficulties we
should encounter if asked to specify the meaning or
meanings of a preposition like "to" or "in""
----- (Harvard U.P., op. cit., p. 47)
"In all these conceivable cases, the sense of ‘what is said’ is something
that is never said by ‘what is said’ but is something which may only be
shown"
or as I prefer IMPLICATED -- or 'disimplicated', as the case may be
("Disimplicature is the opposite of implicature" "We don't mean MORE than we
say,
we mean LESS")
"– as becomes clear if we imagine varieties of the same set-up and what may
be shown by a deeper and wider “surveyable representation” of the use. As
language never says its own sense and as its sense cannot be said in
language (because of the “limits of language”), so the sense of language lies
beyond language: it always lies beyond what can be said but it is a ‘sense’
which nevertheless may be shown. This, for Wittgenstein, is fundamental."
True, but it's not usually LANGUAGE that is deemed to 'say its own sense'.
It's usually people who say. Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
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