dear speranza, the origins of the word appear to be in hope.
it is of utmost importance that in order to render more fluid the creamy
paste of the fagioli borlotti one culetto di prosciutto in added prior to
serving.
the size and diameter of the funnel can then be increased rendering the
process smooth
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 4:34 AM, Redacted sender jlsperanza for DMARC <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
But "Moore's MY man," he goes on.
McEvoy was expanding on his reading of who he calls "MM" (no, that is not
Marilyn Monroe, as "BB" is Brigitte Bardot, but Marie McGinn, who teaches
at York).
Unlike "MM" (that's Marie McGinn, not Marilyn Monroe), McEvoy provides
loads of quotes from what McEvoy calls "PI" (no, that's not the
mathematical concept, but short for the English for Witters's book,
"Philosophical Investigations").
While McEvoy focuses on 'jokes' (and Attalardo has shown that ALL jokes
are flouts to Grice's cooperative principle) and other qutoes by Witters on
'nonsense'. But how does this relate to the alleged continuity in Witters's
"thought" (as MM calls it), and the relevance of the say/show distinction.
It's different for Grice. For Grice, 'to say' is pretty easy to analyse.
He spends some time in analyzing 'say' in "WoW" (Way of Words", "Logic and
Conversation," lecture V -- a segment that was not published in the
original reprint of that lecture).
Basically, of course, Grice distinguishes "to say" from "to implicate".
But we don't have to go there.
For Witters, the distinction is between 'to say' and 'to show', not, as in
Grice, between 'to say' and 'to implicate'.
Witters, as Russell shows in the Intro to the Tractatus, for some reason,
denies the object-language/meta-language distinction. This leads Witters to
broaden the concept of 'show'. If you deny to language users the ability to
use language to refer to their utterances, it seems obvious that 'show'
will play a role.
Suppose I were able to say that a certain expression is an insult in a
language L. If I am endowed with a meta-language, I can very well say,
"Expression E is an insult".
Since Witters denies this ability of language to refer to itself (what
Russell calls the object-language and the meta-language), it's obvious that
Witters will conclude that that "E" is an insult can only be _shown_.
But there are big differences, I feel, between MM's account of 'show' and
McEvoy's. For MM 'show's is not a mystifying concept. She is presupposing,
perhaps rightly, that those who read Witters know either English or German
or whatever lingo Witters's essays are translated to.
Therefore, MM's point is that a proficient language user will note when an
expression is NONSENSE. So the 'nonsensical' side to the utterance will the
"SHOWN" in the actual practice. MM's point is that it is otiose (or futile,
or doomed to fail) to look for a 'theoretical basis' for this: there is no
philosophical doctrine, only 'use', and language users who read Witters
realize when an utterance is nonsensical.
MM focuses on 'nonsensical' utterances in both the Tractatus and On
Certainty: "I know this is a hand". At one point she quotes from "PI": why
is it, Witters wonders, that we say that we do say, "We don't say, "I don't
know this is a hand", but not "I know this is a hand"?
MM concludes that it is this basis on the actual practice of those who use
language, and their underlying mastery (which is not equivalent to any
theoretical knowledge) that proves the continuity of the say/show
distinction in
Witters.
It seems to McEvoy, the say/show distinction amounts to something else.
Ethics, for example, can be shown, but not 'told' or 'said'.
MM and McEvoy seem to agree that the say/show distinction marks the
'limits' of language, whatever that means. When you allow a succession of
languages, notably an object language L1 and a meta-language L2 to SAY
what's wrong with L1, the concept of the 'limit' of language becomes
otiose, in that, as Russell notes, there is an 'ad infinitum' progressus
from L1 to L2 and from L2 to L3, and so on.
It may be argued that L1 and L2 are different languages, but they are not:
English can be object-language and meta-language. Witters thinks that
things like, to use MM's example from the Tractatus,
"A is an object"
are nonsensical. In a framework that allows for a L1/L2 distinction, the
alleged nonsensical nature of that utterance may be due to something
Aristotelian. Like Aristotle, as MM notes (but she wouldn't quote
Aristotle), Witters is into the categorial framework of lingo, and Witters
and MM think that _within language_ one cannot provide this structure.
Language would be unable (if I may use an abstraction such as "Language")
to provide for its own categorial structure. But language has this ability
to refer to itself (in what Russell called a 'meta-language). And in this
'mention' (rather than 'use') function of language, what Witters found
where the limits of lingo that only could be shown but not said seem to
vanish.
Or not, of course.
It is apt that MM ends her note with an account of Witters's rather hasty
treatment of Moore. MM is into trying to prove that Witters thinks Moore is
a realist attacking an idealist. But MM and Witters are implicating that
both realism and idealism, being metaphysical doctrines, are nonsensical.
From a Griceian perspective, however, that McGinn does not really develop
(but Colin McGinn does in a number of publications -- I love his
description of Grice as a telementationalist), Moore wins. For
i. This is a hand
-----
ii. Plus, it is hardly hurtful to say that I am _CERTAIN_ that this is a
hand.
MM, like Witters, focuses on 'certain,' rather than 'know', which is a
mistake. Famously Moore, who delivered that proof an an external world at
Emerson Hall, Cambridge, uttered:
iii. I am certain that behind those curtains, there is a window.
As it happens, there wasn't. So he didn't know. But since he is focusing
on "Certain", he can still be certain. As Ayer noted in his book on the
"Problems of Knowledge," there is a world of difference between 'being
certain' and 'knowing'. One can very well certain about something which is
false.
Pre-Gettierians, and post-Gettierians, for that matter, dropped
'certainty' out of the proper analysis of knowledge as justified true
belef. To know is just to have a belief which happens to be true and for
which one can provide this or that reason. Nothing about 'certain' need
enter the picture.
In conclusion, the conception of 'show' in McEvoy seems to be broader than
that of MM. For MM, utterances 'put on show' (I think that's the expression
she uses) in actual practice. I think she refers to LINGUISTIC practice,
and presupposing a mastery of, say, L1. So, anyone proficient with L1 would
conclude that Moore cannot speak English. But he can't. In fact, better
than Witters. Does this prove Witters wrong.
Matter of history, "Some people like Witters, but Moore's my man" carries
at least three implicatures:
-- "people" is otiose. We cannot be referring to dogs, can we?
-- It's not (c) Grice, but (c) Austin.
-- Other.
Since "show" and Witters's piece of jargon are cognate, it may do to
revise the etymology.
The English left Angeln in English so desert that apparently no human
being was seen in Angeln for years. They took with them words like 'show'.
Old English sceawian is best rendered as "to show", i.e. "to look at,
see, gaze, behold, observe; inspect, examine; look for, choose".
It's all from Proto-Germanic *skauwojan (source also of Old Saxon skauwon "to
look at," Old Frisian skawia, Dutch schouwen, Old High German scouwon "to
look at").
And this is all from Proto-Germanic root *skau- "behold, look at".
And this is from Proto-Indo-European *skou-, variant of root *skeue- "to
pay attention, perceive" (see caveat
<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=caveat&allowed_in_frame=0>, and
compare sheen
<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sheen&allowed_in_frame=0>).
As in "Caveat canem". This is usually rendered as "Beware of the dog". It
would be otiose to translate it as "show the dog", since the dog is showing
himself. "Sheen" is nice in that it's cognate with 'shine' as in in
'shoe-shine'
The causal meaning "let be seen; put in sight, make known" evolved c.
1200 for unknown reasons and is UNIQUE to English (German schauen still
means "look at" -- that is why Anscombe sometimes uses 'shew' just to show
off that she has learned Austrian more or less properly).
The spelling shew, popular 18c. and surviving into early 19c., represents
obsolete pronunciation (rhymes with view).
It may be that Anscombe heard Witters mispronouncing 'show,' and instead
of correcting him (she was just a tutee), she preferred to misspell one of
the most basic (if misunderstood) concepts of Witters's philosophy.
Incidentally, for those who attend Ascot, the horse racing sense is from
1903, perhaps from an earlier sense in card-playing. Or perhaps not, of
course!
"Say" is not free from implicatures. A film with Gracie Fields, I think,
was entitled, Say it with flowers. The impicature is that the 'it' is "I
love you". I.e. instead of utting the phatic-rhetic-phonic act (to use J.
L. Austin's apt terminology), one can just get hold of a bunch of daisies
which will display what H. P. Grice calls the same 'dictive' content. Note
that we cannot 'say' (figuratively, and thus, via implicature) "I hate
you" with fresh daisies, though (except under very special circumstances --
when you know your sweetheart really HATES fresh daisies, perhaps not if
your sweetheart is a pig).
Cheers,
Speranza
