[lit-ideas] Re: Winch on Grice
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 15:32:10 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Wed, 19/5/10, jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Thanks for misunderstanding me.
>
> No.
Shouldn't that be "Not!" Thanks for writing in a way they, taken literally,
promoted misunderstanding.
> "The pillar box seems red"
>
> while True, is otiose, since the pillar box IS red. But
> Wittgenstein had argued that if something is POINTLESS it is
> also FALSE. Grice and Winch know better than that!
Did Wittgenstein say it was false or rather nonsense?
> For Witters,
>
> "a horse cannot look like a horse".
>
> Grice comments: "The idea behind this cryptic remark by
> Witters is not made clear in the passage where it occurs.
> But it would seem that Witters is thinking that while a
> knife can look like a leaf and a spon can look like a
> flower, it would be odd -- and he´d add, FALSE, to say that
> a knife looks like a knife and a spoon looks like a spoon."
Does W say this in terms? If so, where? The comment discussed seems parallel
with W's criticism of the claim "A thing is identical with itself", which afair
he criticises as nonsense rather than false.
My feeling is that a horse does, in truth, look like a horse and that a thing
is identical with itself [and with nothing else if we include numerical
identity here]. These claims may be pointless in that they convey very little
of value or insight; but they do make sense [otherwise how could we be
discussing them?] and are in fact true, even if trite.
>Nancy Cartwright contributed to the
> Grice festschrift with the relevant chapter of her VERY
> witty, "How the laws of physics LIE", for he learned from
> Grice that Einstein is not really speaking truthfully when
> he brings in metaphors, similes, and tropes that only he and
> his colleagues at Princeton understood.
Leaving aside, in the interests of not misunderstanding, the apparent
sex-change Nancy undergoes in the course of this sentence: the laws of physics
cannot lie. Our description of the laws of physics may be false or misleading -
but they do not falsely or misleadingly describe themselves. The truth-value of
a metaphor or simile is a difficult issue; it may be said they are not
representations that are true or false but rather representations that do (or
do not, if they are 'bad') convey a useful way of seeing or understanding. "God
does not play dice" is not meant to convey His abhorrence of gambling or
preference for the Lottery but a deterministic POV; but whether this POV is
true or false would not undermine the expression as a way of conveying the
deterministic POV.
Donal
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
