[lit-ideas] Re: Whistling
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 09:26:56 -0500 (EST)
McEvoy:
"Hacker’s title [Was he [Witters] trying to whistle it?] expresses that,
though W believed in “limits of language” such that his philosophy was
dealing with things that could be not be expressed in language, nevertheless W
was “trying to whistle it”. There is something unfortunate about this way
of putting it, which is better put by saying that nevertheless W was ‘
seeking to show’. W never claimed he was trying to whistle anything (we owe
this
claim to Ramsey)."
For the record then:
Hacker:
"Black’s suggestion is in effect that Wittgenstein was, as Ramsey
had suggested, trying to whistle what he held one could not say."
Locus classicus:
F. R. Ramsey,
’General Propositions and Causality’,
in R.B. Braithwaite ed. F.P. Ramsey: The Foundations of
Mathematics (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1931), p.238:
"But what we can’t say, we can’t say, and we can’t whistle it either."
---- This seems appropriate, because there are further ambiguities in the
titles involved:
x. Was Ramsey trying to whistle it?
Implicature: No, because he _said_ that what we can't say we can't say [or
show] and we can't whistle it either. This clarifies the content of the
proposition 'p' that is assumed to be whistled. It's not just a
common-or-garden proposition like, "come here" -- as in
By whistling, Geary meant that his addressee came there.
Rather 'p' expresses the proposition, "Something can't be said". Or rather:
"What can't we say we can't say".
I would NOT use a comma where Ramsey does. This is what I call the
Cambridge comma.
"What we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it either".
Replacing, in clearer grammar:
"We can't whistle what we can't say".
----
In any case, if Witters did admire the metaphysicians of the past -- and
Ramsey --, perhaps this should be a reminder that
-- was he trying to whistle?
as applied to different people, may be opportune. As also it may be
opportune to specify the subject in things like:
xi. Ramsey's whistling had to stop.
----
I like the idea
metaphysics = grammar
that McEvoy is playing with. I would go on to specify this as
"philosophical grammar". Most likely, Witters's views on grammar were
old-fashioned and
too Teutonic to be taken seriously by anglophone philosophers. He possibly
just meant _syntax_, alla Carnap.
The identification of grammar with metaphysics is time-honoured. Grice
spent his professional life giving semianr on metaphysics (with Strawson) on
Aristotle's _metaphysics_ (a metaphysical reading of Aristotle's logical
writings on Categoriae and De Interpretatione) which are essays in
philosophical ... er ... grammar.
One example by Grice:
"If I say, Peter is between Paul and Richard", the meaning of 'between'
does not _change_ if we speak in physical or moral terms". Another example
concerns subject-position for property-talk, like "Banbury's kindness is in
the room".
Surely these things are too subtle for a mere whistle.
Or not.
Did Popper ever whistle?
McEvoy describes P. M. S. Hacker as a distinguished Witters scholar. He is
more than that. E.g., he is the successor of Grice in the post of 'philo
don' at St. John's, the most elligible college in Oxford. Or not. (Strictly,
G. P. Baker succeeded Grice, when Grice left for UC/Berkeley, but Hacker
soon joined in, and was left alone when Baker passed).
Baker refers to Grice in his history of Twentieth-Century Philosophy
(Blackwell).
----
Cheers,
Speranza
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