[lit-ideas] Wittgenstein's child II

  • From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:58:26 +0000 (GMT)

(contd. from I)


To some, this might seem to go without saying (or showing).
But, for Wittgenstein, it is something philosophers are apt to overlook and, as
a result, to adopt a misleading picture of language; and this misleading
picture of language may lead to a vain kind of philosophising. As with the
ambiguity of ‘what is said’ noted above, we can obscure the truth – viz. that 
all code stands in need of
decoding – by thinking of the code in terms where its decoding is already 
given:– so it might seem as if
the sense of the code – the way it is decoded, or interpreted – is given by the 
code as encoded. It might
seem as if the code expresses its own
sense: but this is only true if we take it as already decoded – as un-decoded 
code, the code expresses no sense.
So this appearance is a mirage: in truth, any code stands in need of being
decoded because there is nothing intrinsic to it as ‘encodement’ that determines
how it is to be decoded. This mirage may become clear if we consider a code –
like hieroglyphics – with which we are unfamiliar: where we can know the
‘encodement’ without knowing its ‘decodement’. It is perhaps our deep
familiarity with certain codes that helps produce the mirage that the code
expresses, says or contains its own decoded sense. 
                   
A great deal of PI seeks
to show this mirage for what it is. Wittgenstein does so by stating points that 
show this, but also by trying to get
us to reconsider familiar ‘code’ in some unfamiliar setting or to consider some
unfamiliar ‘code’ in some familiar setting. For Wittgenstein, this mirage is
perhaps central to the illusions of philosophers who may delude themselves that
they have found a point within language to say something (e.g. by way of the 
explication of the
meaning of terms or of a ‘concept’) that in
truth cannot be said because it goes beyond what can be shown about the
sense of such terms as they feature in our language. 
 
In PI, Wittgenstein
clearly recognises that we must take ‘what is said’ in its sense of ‘un-decoded
code’ when he makes clear, for example, that we can know and communicate what
is encoded without knowing how to decode what is encoded – we may learn a
formula, for example, as code but without further understanding its sense as
code i.e. what the formula means. And
what is true of a formula here is true of anything else in language, for all
language is code – I might tell my friend that in a foreign country I heard a
man exclaim ‘Scraba lacka’, knowing this encoded a message of some sort, though
I do not know how it is to be decoded. As to ‘what is said’ here, there is a
sense in which I understand ‘what is said’ in that I correctly understand that 
‘what is said’ is ‘Scraba lacka’ [as
opposed, say, to ‘Wacka dacka’ etc.],
but also a sense in which I do not understand ‘what is said’ because I do not
understand what ‘Scraba lacka’ means.
This difference in my understanding of ‘what is said’ corresponds, as per the 
ambiguity noted, to the
difference between ‘what is said’ as something merely encoded or in code and
‘what is said’ when decoded. 
 
Given that no code contains or states its own decoding, we can
see that (as all language is code of some sort) so no language contains or
states its own sense – where the sense of language always lies in
language decoded. Language, when
considered simply as mere un-decoded code, cannot be considered to have any 
sense – its sense depends on it being
considered as decoded code. 
 
But what about the possibility that, even if no code
intrinsically contains or states its own decoding, the decoding of any code is
something that may be said or expressed or contained in some other code? 
Perhaps in some ‘meta-code’? Wittgenstein takes the view that this possibility 
is
just a version of same mirage noted above: for imagine we consider that, in
this way, we might say how a code is
to be decoded:- what we say in the
‘meta-code’ must either be treated as decoded code, which means we have assumed 
it has a sense that it does not itself say; or, if taken as un-decoded code, it
simply lacks sense. In other words, there is no Archimedean point within 
language where we may take some ‘code’
as saying the sense of some other ‘code’
– either the ‘meta-code’ is taken as un-decoded code, in which case it lacks
sense and cannot perform this function; or the ‘meta-code’ has sense, but then
this is only because we have treated it as decoded code, in which case its own 
decoding
or sense is never something said by it.**
 
**Here is the gist as to why Wittgenstein was not taken with
Godelian or Tarskian developments as validating a meta-linguistic alternative
to the search for an Archimedean point within language from which to resolve
issues of sense. For the meta-language approach would merely shift the issue of
sense to another layer within language, when this issue cannot be resolved 
within language given the “limits of
language”. Wittgenstein would not seek to prove such a meta-linguistic approach 
was mistaken – rather he thinks that his own (correct)
view can only be shown in a way that
can only be grasped by someone alert to what W seeks to show given the “limits
of language”. 
 
This post might have taken a different tack and tried to
work to Wittgenstein’s POV through examples of what a child might say and how
its sense should be understood. 
 
Here are two examples to consider:-
 
(a). Grandparent (on phone): “Hello Tom”
      Child (aged two):
“Hello Do-no”.
      Grandparent:
“I’m sitting here with Tinka the cat.”
      Child: “Hello
Tinka.”
      Grandparent:
“We’re both sitting by the fire.”
      Child: “Hello fire.”
How do we explain the sense of “Hello fire” here (from the
POV of the later Wittgenstein)? Is it merely nonsense? (Of course not – even if
it contains a ‘mistake’, from a more adult perspective, as to how “Hello” is to
be used.)
 
(b) Child: “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten.”
Might this same ‘encodement’ have a different sense if the
child were 
(i) reciting the sequence in response to a request from a
teacher to give the sequence in order;
(ii) hurriedly reciting the sequence at the start of a game
of ‘hide-and-seek’, where the sequence is followed by “Ready or not here I
come”?
(Of course. We might see the difference in sense because in
the second case the order of the sequence may not matter to the use. But, for
Wittgenstein, this difference in sense is not said by ‘what is said’ but is
something that can only be shown here.)


Donal
Examining near prostate
London

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