[lit-ideas] Re: (Was: Wittgenstein)
- From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 30 Mar 2004 20:57:41 PST
>It seems to me that in order to have 'This sentence is short'
appear to be self-referential it must likewise operate without a
specific context. <
This seems sensible. But you don't want to make the notion of a context
question-begging. E.g., someone might _introduce_ the idea of self-reference
(self-referentiality?) by saying, 'Look, here are some sentences. Some of them
refer to each other and some do not,' whereupon she writes, 'This sentence is
short,' etc. Students do grasp this, i.e., can sort 'self-referential' and
'non-self-referential' sentences into the intuitively appropriate groups.
The other side of what Phil quotes is that Wittgenstein, in the later writings
is reluctant to rule _anything_ out of order without trying to determine why it
is said and under what circumstances and by whom. So that if he found Kurt
Grelling explaining his paradox, he might listen to the explanation before
wondering for what purposes words were being assigned to the categories
'autological' and 'heterological.' (There doesn't seem to be any point to it
except to illustrate something about self-reference. So this really gets _this_
discussion nowhere.)
I'll be in Monterey until next Sunday, and won't have email, so this will give
Phil time to recover from whatever has him in its grip.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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