[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein's Whistle
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 15:08:08 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 7/8/2012 12:25:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"The point about "whistling it" is that, as an expression (with a kind of
sense that is common in certain kinds of intellectual culture), it offers
some everyday notion to explicate something that here goes beyond the
everyday [compare Einstein's determinism explained in terms of a God who
doesn't
play dice: does God play anything? Or is this a loaded way of suggesting
God would not allow chance-like events?]. Is "whistling it" not just a loaded
way of conveying dissatisfaction with a saying-showing distinction?"
Well, it may do to formalise the 'we' and the 'can't' and the 'it' in
Ramsey's rather obscure original wording (ungrammatical, too, in terms of an
unnecessary comma):
[W]hat we can’t say, we can’t say, and we can’t whistle it either.
----
>a dissatisfaction with a saying-showing distinction?
Don't think so, in that Witters's use of "zeigen" (German for 'show',
indeed cognate with 'show' apparently), in spite of what his interpreters have
suggested (or implicated), is a rather limited one, and Ramsey makes no
mention of it.
McEvoy:
"But it is best to stick to "showing" - for clearly in any literal sense W
was not "whistling it": and it is hard to see in what non-literal sense W
was "whistling it" either."
Good point. I think Ramsey must have meant 'whistle' LITERALLY.
What things can we whistle?
Note that he starts his dictum with a tautonym, almost:
What we can't say we can't say.
-- And we can't whistle what we can't say, either.
No mention of a tune -- like a part of Beethoven's 7th Symphony -- that
Witters was wont of whistling. Note incidentally, that unlike a fourt-part
fugue, as R. Paul mention, is more of a task to whistle, that R. Paul leaves
to his favourite philosopher, H. P. Grice.
For what Witters whistled was the MELODY line (for the second fiddle) in
the segment A67-A78 in the Beethoven's score of the "Symphonie VIII" as per
von Reichenbach's transcription. Malcolm knew this, and agreed that the
whistling came out as rather 'accurate and expressive'.
---- (The Wittgensteins were a musical noticeable family -- cfr.
Wittgenstein the one-hand pianist). (And I wouldn't be surprised if there is a
score, somewhere, for a one-hand pianist and a whistler -- or with "whistling"
(fischio) obligato.
McEvoy:
"Ramsey's reaction may be thought to reflect a kind of philosophical
prejudice. And by "whistling it" we are trying to say something that lacks
literal or non-literal sense in terms of what is said about what W puts forward
- we are perhaps merely trying to show, and with a pejorative sense, that
there is something wrong in an account of language which uses a notion of
what is shown but not said by language."
--- Well, yes. But I think that's reading too much into 'whistling'. For
what does one SHOW by whistling?
Malcolm:
"Wittgensteins was in very good spirits. We talked about music, and that
he whistled for me, with striking accuracy and expressiveness, some parts of
Beethoven's 7th Symphony."
At this point, we may need a 'musical illustration' segment. It's different
from,
"He whistled Dixie to me".
Or
he whistled, "Oh Susanna, I come from Alabanna"
or "O Susamma, I come from Alabama"
---- (Does Susannah RHYME with "Alabama"?)
---- Again, while there are four-part barbershop quartettes, it is more
confusing to harmonise in whistiling. So whistling is best applied to where it
best applies to. And so on.
(In some circles, whistling is considered low-class -- but in some other
circles it is a work-related activity. Sailors whistle for a wind, for
example).
McEvoy:
"The problem may be partly how something can be conveyed in a way that is
not contained in language: this strikes some as a stretch; whereas for
others it may seem obvious that the sense of language is not generally [or
even
ever] contained in language. For these others, it may seem obvious that
language conveys much more than language: it conveys sense, and while sense
may be expressed by language that does not mean it is reducible to something
stateable in linguistic terms. [Compare: paint may express a sense - as in
a painting - but that sense need not be reducible to something stateable in
terms of paint simpliciter.]"
Well, I think Grice is into something when he speaks of ICONIC
representation.
A painting of a pipe, with the addition, "This is a pipie", is an iconic
representation. What Aristotle called "mimesis". So what a painting (or
iconic representation) _shows_ is its representee. Strawson objected that
Grice
wanted to regard the logical connectives as REPRESENTING aspects of the
state of the affair mentioned in the logical form. But Strawson thought it
best to follow Hilbert and regard the logical connectives as bits of
'non-representational' language -- as a painting by Pollock, say. In which
case,
'and' does not provide an iconic representation for a conjunction of events or
aspects of the description of an event, say ("She married and had a
child", "She had a child and married").
McEvoy:
"For these others, it may seem obvious that a squint or a tone [or a
whistle, or 'pah-pah'] may convey some sense without using language, unless of
course we extend the application of the term 'language' to such cases in a
way that renders it vacuous. And that when language has sense it has sense
because of its role as a tool much as a squint or a tone can be taken up as
tools."
Well, a whistle obviously COMMUNICATES:
Malcolm expresses it nicely, "Witters whistled FOR ME some parts of
Beethoven's 7th Symphony". I wonder if he paused between parts, or made it like
a
whistle-along.
----
In "Whistle and I'll be there", by Housman, the meaning is again that a
whistle communicates.
---- It may well be that the origin of language is in whistling (the
pooh-pooh theory of language).
McEvoy:
"W's say-show distinction is probably problematic for anyone who conceives
that the analysis for language must be in language and must be in language
in a way that the analysis does not depend on anything that transcends
linguistic terms."
Especially when Witters seems to have something VERY STRONG against a
'hierarchy' of lingo: L1, L2, L3. Because Russell's solution to the
whistle-problem is that what can't be said in L1 may well be said (and not just
shown)
in L2. And so on.
McEvoy:
"But it may be doubted that W found the idea that the sense of language was
not contained in language was particularly problematic - and it may be
doubted that the view that it is problematic is anything much more than a
philosophical prejudice (indeed, a 'positivistic' one?)."
I think 'positivistic' is overused. I restrict the term to Comte. If it's
Vienna Circle (the 'rednecks' as Grice calls them in "Actions and Events"
(Pacific Philosophical Quarterly), that's LOGICAL positivism we are meaning.
A different beast, metaphorically.
McEvoy:
"There is doubtless something problematic in the TLP but it is not simply
that it uses a say-show distinction, for even if we admit any such
distinction is somewhat 'problematic' that would not mean it was any more
problematic that any approach that tried to avoid drawing any such distinction
- and
so it would not constitute an argument against it. Again: is it more than
philosophical prejudice to think that any approach that tried to avoid
drawing any such distinction would be less problematic? We may ask how it is
that certain things are shown and find that this cannot be answered beyond a
point of trying to show that they are shown: the manifest is manifest, and
we cannot look behind it to see how or why it is manifest. We cannot look
behind because we would be seeking to go beyond certain inescapable limits,
including the "limits of language". This may be unsatisfactory, particularly
because it limits the kind of explanation we might obtain, but it is not
obviously false for that. And its unsatisfactory character in this way
should not be mistaken for an argument that it is be dismissed as an untenable
position. This is to merely to whistle against such a position."
Well, in Ramsey, the distinction is not so much between say/show but
between
say/whistle.
The say-whistle distinction in Ramsey -- rather.
The very few occasions where Witters use 'zeigen' do not really justify for
this grand thing that interpreters have as the 'say/show' distinction. To
requote from Read and Deans:
They note:
"The notion of showing [zeigen] is NEVER used in reference to nonsense
[Unsinn] but only in reference to
legitimate, well-formed propositions."
They go on to quote "two central Tractarian remarks on showing"
Wittgenstein:
"Propositions cannot represent logical form. Logical form is mirrored in
propositions. What mirrors itself in language, language cannot represent.
What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by language."
The first use of 'zeigen' comes in 4.121, where he uses 'display' (in
German):
"Propositions SHOW the logical
form of reality. They display it (4.121)."
and it's as a corollary to that, in 4.1212 that he adds:
"What can be shown cannot be said" (4.1212).
what cannot be said.
---- It is after that that Ramsey adds a trichotomy:
what can be shown
what can be said
what can be whistled
with variations in the negative
What can be said can be said.
What can't be said can't be said.
What can't be said can't be whistled.
And so on.
---- If Read and Deans are right, neither in the TLP nor the PI is anything
shown (they entitle their brilliant essay, which covers both TLP and PI as
"Nothing is Shown".
or whistled, regardless of that tripette from the airport to Ithaca.
Note that a lot has been SAID though.
Cheers,
Speranza
From: "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, 8 July 2012, 3:19
Subject: [lit-ideas] Wittgenstein's Whistle
Whistle and I'll be there -- A. E. Housman
We are discussing Frank Plumpton Ramsey's counterexample (alleged), to
Witters, as per R. Paul, in "Re: The Philosopher's Show" and
P. M. S. Hacker,
"Was he trying to whistle it?" at
http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/docs/Was%20he%20trying%20to%20whistle%20
it.pdf
Hacker indeed quotes from 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."
Hacker comments: "So can one whistle what one cannot think, i.e. can one
apprehend truths which one cannot even think?" Later, in dealing with a
quotation by Max Black,
"Black’s suggestion is in effect that Wittgenstein was, as Ramsey
had suggested, trying to whistle what he held one could not say."
Hacker adds: "In recent years a quite different defence of Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus has gained popularity, particularly in the United States. On
this
view, Wittgenstein was not trying to whistle it."
"[T]he question," Hacker goes on, "is whether Ramsey is right in thinking
that
Wittgenstein was trying to whistle it, or whether Diamond is
right that he was not.Diamond and Conant, like
Ramsey, argue (rightly) that if you can’t say it,
you can’t say it, and you can’t whistle it either."
"Unlike Ramsey, they think that Wittgenstein was not trying to whistle
it."
"Nevertheless, Ramsey retained the impression that Wittgenstein was ‘
trying to whistle it’."
Indeed, "[w]hat one means when one tries to state these insights is
perfectly correct, but the endeavour must unavoidably fail. For the
ineffable
manifests itself, and cannot be said. He was indeed, as Ramsey claimed,
trying to whistle it."
One problem with Hacker's account is the _oratio obliqua_ of 'whistle'. I
read from Etymology Online:
"whistle",
from "O.E. hwistlian, from P.Gmc. *khwis-, of imitative origin. Used also
in Middle English of the hissing of serpents. Related: Whistled;
whistling.
To whistle for (with small prospect of getting) is probably from nautical
whistling for a wind. To whistle "Dixie" is from 1940."
R. Paul quotes from N. Malcolm:
"[h]e whistled for me, with striking accuracy
and expressiveness, some parts of Beethoven's 7th Symphony."
To simplify, I'll refer to Witters having whistled _one_ part of
Beethoven's 7th symphony. And now I go back to the Hacker quotes. KEYWORD:
WHISTLING
"Was he trying to whistle it?" at
http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/docs/Was%20he%20trying%20to%20whistle%20
it.pdf
Was he trying to whistle it.
Mrs. Malcolm: Was he trying to whistle a part of Beethoven's 7th Symphony?
Mr. Malcolm: And successfully, too. (??)
Ramsey, who obviously beared with Witters's whistling (for why even
mention it otherwise?) has it simply by using the "it" -- postphoric,
rather than
anaphoric -- cfr. Cole Porter: Let's do _it_: let's fall in love.
Ramsey:
"But what we can’t say, we can’t say, and we can’t whistle it either."
Fill, in the above, the 'it' with "a part of Beethoven's 7th Symphony"
Ramsey:
"We can't _say_ a part of Beethoven's 7th Symphony." YET: "We _can_
whistle (it)."
---
Hacker then adds:
"So can one whistle what one cannot think, i.e. can one apprehend truths
which one cannot even think?"
Again, having 'a part of Beethoven's 7th Symphony' in mind, the above
becomes:
The question is whether one is justified to extend the meaning of
'whistle' (as in "he whistled a part of Beethoven's 7th Symphony") to
mean
"apprehend a truth" (and even one that cannot even be thought).
"Black’s suggestion is in effect that Wittgenstein was, as Ramsey
had suggested, trying to whistle what he held one could not say."
--- At this point, it is clear that by 'it', Ramsey meant 'nonsense'.
It's
nonsense that one cannot apparently _whistle_ (according to Ramsey).
"In recent years", Hacker notes, "a quite different defence of
Wittgenstein
’s Tractatus has gained popularity, particularly in the United States. On
this view, Wittgenstein was not trying to whistle it."
-- where 'it' is again nonsense, rather than, say 'a part of Beethoven's
7th symphony'.
"[T]he question," Hacker goes on, "is whether Ramsey is right in thinking
that
Wittgenstein was trying to whistle it, or whether Diamond is
right that he was not. Diamond and Conant, like
Ramsey, argue (rightly) that if you can’t say it,
you can’t say it, and you can’t whistle it either."
---- In fact, this relates to a further cliam: can you whistle _AND_ say
it?
"Unlike Ramsey, they think that Wittgenstein was not trying to whistle
it."
-- even if he could. Note that while Wittgenstein could allegedly whistle
"a part of Beethoven's 7th Symphony", it becomes rather a conceptual
issue
whether Witters could whistle "nonsense".
"Nevertheless, Ramsey retained the impression that Wittgenstein was ‘
trying to whistle it’." -- If we exemplify with a piece of nonsense,
represented
in logical form by "p" -- the issue is whether "whistle" behaves like
"say" (or "show") in 'reported' oratio obliqua claims.
Indeed, "[w]hat one means when one tries to state these insights is
perfectly correct, but the endeavour must unavoidably fail. For the
ineffable
manifests itself, and cannot be said. He was indeed, as Ramsey claimed,
trying to whistle it."
----- The issue then becomes whether Ramsey's point is conceptual: can we
define, a priori, the class of things that cannot be _whistled_?
The Etymology Online notes that
"to whistle for", "with small prospect of getting" is probably from
nautical "whistling for a wind" -- as in:
"He whistled for a wind"
But hardly, "he whistled that he wanted a wind" --. The implicature about
the 'small prospect of getting' surely adds weight to Ramsey's proposal
that even if Witters MEANT to whistle nonsense (unlike whisting a part of
Beethoven's 7th symphony) he did not succeed.
Cheers,
Speranza
In a message dated 7/7/2012 5:44:31 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
he whistled for me, with striking accuracy
and expressiveness, some parts of Beethoven's 7th Symphony.'
—Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: a Memoir, 1958, p.84.
There are a number of other comments on Wittgenstein's whistling
talent. I'm sure there are some in Monk's biography.
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