[lit-ideas] Re: Sraffa's Gesture
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 18:10:39 +0000 (UTC)
Sorry but Grice is not the starting point for understanding Wittgenstein and
Grice belongs in a tradition that, for W, is blind to the "limits of language".
There are other points where the later W rejects Gricean strictures:
b) it has to be compositional (and Sraffa's gesture is not: it is not composed
of more basic 'units' alla Alan
Danto), (c) this more basic elements of which lingo is composed have to have
'sense' of their own, and Sraffa's gesture does not display this feature>
Why should this be so? When the later W turned away from the kind of "logical
atomism" of the TLP he also turned away from thinking sense must be determined
by compositional units. If we replace "I need to go to the bathroom" with
"Bathroom" as a single word, must we then say the sense of this "Bathroom" is
parasitic on the longer compositional form? Not necessarily. It is conceivable
that in a primitive society a single word, like "Wee wee", might have the sense
of "I need to urinate" (as well as perhaps having other senses) without that
language having any further elaboration - and W does not think the sense of
language, like "Wee wee", must depends on some unstated but stateable
compositional structure of a more elaborate kind that underpins what we
actually say. It may depend so, but it need not.
DL
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