We are exploring an essay by McGinn on the say-show distinction in Witters
(link provided in previous notes). (This is Marie McGinn, not Colin McGinn).
It occurs to me that we may also explore truth-conditional semantics, since
McEvoy, in the exegesis quoted below, makes a connection (or disconnection,
rather) between meaning and truth. His final sentence, in that exegesis, ends
with a use of "or" so we may expand on this.
It is assumed, by Griceians, that when we use "or" we mean 'v' (rather than
'w'): inclusive rather than exclusive. They have different truth-tables.
So now suppose that we have an utterance of the form
"p v q"
which is deemed to be a picture. The picture is correct if
p v q
obtains.
In the Tarski-jargon adopted by Davidson we would have:
"p v q" is true iff p v q.
So while meaning and truth ARE distinct, perhaps Witters, and thus perhaps
McGinn, are playing with this: where correctness may be said to be related to
issues of meaning and truth. Or not, of course.
The idea would be that the truth-conditions capture the _sense_ of the
'picture'. Anything outside that would fall within the implicature. Thus, "My
wife is in the garden or in the kitchen" (to use an example by Grice) just
MEANS what it _says_. But the use of 'or' may IMPLICATE (or its utterer
implicate by uttering it) that, e.g. he does not know where his wife is. It
may also be postulated that if the kitchen has a door to the garden, and
Grice's wife is lying on that passage, it may also be true that a reading "My
wife is in the garden or in the kitchen, or both" is apt -- Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
References:
Evans/McDowell, "Meaning and Truth", eds. Oxford: Clarendon.
McEvoy quotes from McGinn: "This internal relation expresses itself in the fact
that what is the case if the picture is correct is precisely what the picture
pictures:
the correctness of the picture is not something to which we can point
independently of the picture."
McEvoy comments: "The assertion after the colon seems implausible, both as a
matter of its truth and of the correct interpretation of TLP: surely “the
correctness of the picture” depends on whether the relevant state of affairs
exists as depicted - but whether this is so would seem independent of the
picture, and also something we can (and must) decide “independently of the
picture”?
Perhaps MM means to say that “what it would mean for the picture to be correct”
is not something independent “of the picture” (and/or not independent of the
“internal relation” between the picture and what the “picture pictures”) - but
this is not what she writes. Had she written it, it might seem to amount to
only the banal observation that the ‘meaning’ of the picture cannot be given
“independently of the (meaning of the) picture”.
But truth and meaning are surely distinct or at least distinguishable, both in
a correct philosophy and in the TLP; and “correctness” (as in “the correctness
of the picture”) would seem a matter of its truth rather than its mere meaning
e.g. a picture with clear meaning could lack “correctness”.
MM here appears confused - in either her expression or (underlying) thought, or
both.
Trying to discern where my view agrees and disagrees with MM's is not
straightforward, as this above example may indicate. It is not the only example
where MM writes in a way that is either badly expressed or implausible or both."
