[lit-ideas] Re: The Order of Aurality ratification of fiction
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:05:56 +0000 (GMT)
________________________________
From: Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
>As we're beginning week 9 of a 12 week term, I don't have the luxury of
following this interesting thread very carefully. But I'm wondering whether the
following idea may be helpful: For Witters, all creatures capable of symbolic
language (not simply a language of signs) share a common "form of life."
"Symbolic language" here refers to such things as Hungarian, chess, Romantic
poetry, curling and table tennis, sexual politics and classical music. All
symbolic languages are translatable into each other in that their respective
semantic and syntactic features are in principle universally intelligible. This
excludes the lion. Were he to speak, we would not understand him because we
would fail to see how his speech coheres with chess, curling, etc.. My 2 kopeks
worth.>
I would bet my money differently. Let us say that there is a "language of
chess", for example. It may be that another creature, with a different "form of
life" to ours in many respects, can nevertheless understand that "language of
chess", with its 'rules', much as we understand it. In W's terms that means
their "form of life" is sufficiently similar to ours insofar as a certain
shared "form of life" is necessary to understand the "language of chess". And
we might flesh out how a "form of life" must be for the "language of chess" to
be comprehensible: it would perhaps be a "form of life" where 'logic' as we
know it played a role, and where symbolic pieces [as in chess] could be
assigned different roles [in a sense, logical capacities] and the game would
involve 'winning' while moving these pieces consistent with their assigned
roles or logical capacities. All of this "language of chess" would also reflect
its 'rules'. It is because the "language of
chess" has this kind of character that a computer can be programmed to process
in this language i.e. to perform chess thinking, by way of calculations.
But we can also imagine another creature whose "form of life" allows it to
understand the "language of chess" as we understand it yet this creature cannot
understand our "language of morals" - for perhaps within that creature's "form
of life" there is no role or scope for moral choice, moral evaluation etc., and
this is lacking to the extent that our "language of morals" would
be incomprehensible to them i.e. they just would understand it when one human
said "All humans must be treated with respect and not like they are simply a
disposable piece of machinery", or the role of some such claim within our "form
of life". It is because our "language of morals" has its special kind of
character that a computer _cannot_ be programmed to process in this language
i.e. to 'perform moral thought' as we do it, which does not work merely by way
of calculations.
In other words, the way in which to 'imagine a language is to imagine a certain
"form of life"' is relative to the specific kind of language in question and
thus to specific aspects of a "form of life" insofar as they pertain to
understanding that specific language. Hence two creatures might mutually
understand one kind of language or language-game but find another is one that
one understands but the other cannot. In such a case we would, in W's terms,
say that their form of life is similar insofar as it must be so that they can
mutually understand a certain kind of language-use or language-game, but
dissimilar insofar as this explains why one cannot comprehend a language-game
that is comprehensible to the other.
It occurred to me yesterday that the idea that 'to imagine a language, or to
understand specific meaning, is to imagine a "form of life"' may be more or
less fine-grained - in other words, the more fine-grained our understanding of
certain specific meanings the more we are showing a fine-grained understanding
of the specific aspects of the "form of life" with which they are inextricably
linked. Whether this is so, or important, we may discuss.
We must get rid of the idea that, for W, access or understanding to one kind of
language means access to or understanding of (even "in principle") all the
kinds of langauge that there might be. [see Phil's misapplication of the PLA
for an example of this kind of error in Wittgensteinian 'exegesis']. Walter
also seems to wrongly attribute this idea to W when Walter writes: "All
symbolic languages are translatable into each other in that their respective
semantic and syntactic features are in principle universally intelligible."
This is emphatically not W's view and would exemplify for him the errors that
can arise from a misplaced 'craving for generality'. We might say, using the
theological way of talking Einstein sometimes liked to use, that only to God
[some Being that transcends any "form of life" for Its understanding] are all
languages "in principle universally intelligible".
Donal
Breakfasting near Pluto
Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
> Donal wrote
>
> > We might perhaps admit that "For Wittgenstein, any language is, in
> > principle, open to understanding by any language user who shares a
> > sufficiently similar 'form of life'" but not that, without that 'form
> > of life' qualification, "For Wittgenstein, any language is, in
> > principle, open to understanding by any language user (irrespective of
> > whether their kind of language and 'form of life' bear any similarity
> > to the language in question)".
>
> I wrote, with a certain referential opacity,
>
> > I don't understand the sentence in quotes. It seems just mistaken. The
> > reason it's mistaken is epitomized at 327 in 'Philosophy of
> > Psychology—A Fragment,' [Hacker and Schulte's revised translation of
> > the /Investigations/]: 'If a lion could talk, we wouldn't be able to
> > understand it.'>
>
> I meant to refer only to the last sentence in quotes, which ends with an
> italicized clause, that begins '/irrespective of whether/...' My
> objection to this is that Wittgenstein nowhere says this, nor does
> anything else he says imply it. I read the last quote-enclosed sentence
> as saying that one can understand any 'language' whatsoever, independently
> of whether or not the 'language' in question is used by persons,
> non-human animals, or intelligent mushrooms whose forms of life are
> /completely/ different from our own. What's meant by 'completely
> different' may border on circularity, but Wittgenstein apparently
> thought that there were some more or less clear cases, e.g., that of the
> talking lion.
>
> > I don't quite understand what Robert does not understand here. There
> > aretwo sentences in quotes, and they represent two incompatible
> > claims. They are attempts to reframe Phil's unqualified claim that
> > "For Wittgenstein, any language is, in principle, open to
> > understanding by any language user" in terms of whether or not this
> > claim must be qualified by the additional words "who shares a
> > sufficiently similar 'form of life".
>
> The first sentence might be close to what Wittgenstein's views would
> look like after having been run through a Cuisinart, but the second,
> which appears to detach languages
> from forms of life would not come close to anything Wittgenstein says,
> even if it were engraved in platinum. At §19, he says 'It is easy to
> imagine a language consisting
> only of orders and reports in battle—Or a language consisting only of
> questions and expressions for answering Yes or No—and countless other
> things.—And to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.'
>
> What troubles me is the generality of the two sentences in quotes. It's
> as if 'scholars,' or 'philosophers' had pretty much agreed that there
> are some main theses or doctrines in
> the /Investigations/, but were quarreling over just what they were and
> what form they should take. Let me suggest that this is not a fruitful
> way to approach the /Investigations/.
> The book is neither a collection of aphorisms, nor an extended
> philosophical argument concerning one or two clearly defined positions;
> such arguments having pretty much the
> the form of philosophical treatises which are full of therefors and
> hences and thus-we-may-concludes. Wittgenstein sketches out what a
> reader should expect to find in the /PI/, in his /Preface/. What she
> should not expect to find is anything resembling Hume's first Treatise, e.g.
>
> A warning of where philosophers go wrong can be found in the /Blue
> Book/, where he calls attention to their 'craving for generality,' and
> their 'contempt for the particular
> case' (something he accuses Socrates of). He resists that craving, and
> scorns such contempt, in his later writings. 'Don't think, but look,' he
> says, admonishing Socrates'
> ghost. Enough. I am not made for a discussion of Wittgenstein's theses
> or principles, so I will withdraw, and leave the subject matter to those
> who are.
>
> > Also I don't understand how "If a lion etc." at all shows how the
> > first of these sentences in quotes is mistaken; nor is it, of course,
> > an argument that the second of the sentences in quotes is mistaken, so
> > much as a way of 'epitomizing' that it is mistaken [because 'Aslan'
> > would not share our 'form of life'].
>
> I think Aslan was a follower of Grice.
>
> Robert Paul,
> sometime student of Mordant College, Oxon.
>
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