[lit-ideas] Re: Whistling

  • From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 17:01:47 +0000 (GMT)

"I like the idea

metaphysics = grammar

that McEvoy is playing with."

That there is this equation seems to be part of Hacker's view of the later 
Wittgenstein (and he is not alone in this). 


But the question raised by my post is how we should unpack such an equation. 
For example, there would appear to be a signficant difference between the 
following unpackings:
(a) there is no more to metaphysical reality than "grammar" (and the idea there 
is more than "grammar" is a delusion);
(b) the most we can show about metaphysical reality is set by what is shown by 
"grammar" - to attempt to say/show more than this is to seek to go beyond what 
can be said/shown with sense given the "limits of language". 

Hacker seems to interpret the later Wittgenstein in terms of (a), and together 
with this he sees W as repudiating the saying/showing distinction.

I am suggesting (b) is closer to it and that W never did repudiate the 
saying/showing distinction but used it implicitly.

A main point in favour of (b) is that W never clearly repudiated the 
distinction in any of his writings (which I am partly inferring on the basis 
that, if W had, then Hacker would adduce this as his best evidence). 


There is also W's attitude to ethics and religion which was not hostile as it 
would likely be if W were a 'metaphysics-denier', as per (a) - rather than 
someone who merely asserts the limits of talking about metaphysics with sense, 
as per (b).


>I would go on to specify this as "philosophical grammar". >

Yes: and this must be distinguished from normal grammar of the sort we are 
taught at school. It is a "depth" grammar that reflects not merely the bounds 
of what actually makes sense in a given language [given its grammatical rules] 
but perhaps what makes sense in any equivalent language. To say "My thought 
flew out the window and then back into my head" may not violate any normal 
grammar in English but it may violate "philosophical grammar": and it will 
violate "philosophical grammar" even if translated in Spanish etc.


Btw, I doubt Wittgenstein's depth or philosophical grammar equates to Carnap's 
syntax, and do not understand why JLS suggests this.


Dnl






On Sunday, 15 December 2013, 14:27, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> 
wrote:
 
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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