[lit-ideas] מוֹשִׁית
- From: palma <palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 07:28:49 +0200
this is getting real deep, a relation between the name and the bearer....
I got 4 names, do I get to pick which relation I like on MWF, and the other
days speranza makes choice?
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 6:23 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There is a modern Israeli female name "Moshit", i.e. "Mosesa." I once
> knew a pretty girl with that name, but I kind of didn't like the name.
>
> As to how "Fido" names Fido, I would suggest that it names him by virtue
> of the fact that we (Fido included) think that it does. There is no
> objective relation between the word "Fido" and the physical Fido.
>
> O.K.
>
>
> On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx for
> DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> A friend of mine once found a cat amidst a storm. He named the cat
>> "Moses".
>> It turned out to be a female cat, and he was wondering if "Moses", in
>> Hebrew, has a feminine counterpart -- although "Mosesa" did pretty well.
>> Oddly
>> "Moses" is one name that Witters discusses as he proposes something like
>> a
>> 'general' criterion, however, fuzzy -- for why introduce a general
>> variable
>> for 'name' (Wittgenstein's capital "N"), if not -- in Section 79 of his
>> posthumous Philosophical Investigations.
>>
>> But it may be different with dogs.
>>
>> The naming of cats is a difficult matter, Eliot, after all argued. His
>> implicature seems to be that the Queen's naming her first corgi "Susan" by
>> contrast was, figuratively, a 'piece of cake'.
>>
>> 'Fido'-Fido
>>
>> McEvoy is considering Wittgenstein's 'say'/'show' distinction as it
>> applies
>> to 'names'. MceEvoy defends a continuity in Wittgenstein's thought and
>> chooses 'names' as an example. The challenge is to provide a 'criterion'
>> (I
>> think McEvoy calls it) for 'naming', which is lacking as something SAID
>> in
>> Wittgenstein, if not as something 'shown'.
>>
>> I was reminded of Ryle's 'Fido'-Fido (first proposed in "The theory of
>> meaning", in C. A. Mace, "British philosophy in the mid century", 1957),
>> and
>> McEvoy proposes three nice scenarios:
>>
>> i. Fido!
>>
>> as uttered by the owner of Fido.
>>
>> ii. Fido.
>>
>> as a reply to ("What's the name of your dog?")
>>
>> and
>>
>> iii. I name this [ship] the 'Fido'.
>>
>> as uttered by the Queen. The better expressed phrasing by McEvoy appended
>> below. McEvoy wants to give priority to (iii). It is in scenarios like
>> (iii)
>> that one can speak of an Utterer (to use Grice's parlance) -- the Queen
>> --
>> NAMING. And of course, I would agree (with the Queen) that the priority
>> is
>> on NAMING, not NAMES.
>>
>> (i), with 'Fido' as vocative is not naming Fido, while it is a phrase
>> intended to _call_ Fido. While (ii), expanded as "The dog's name is Fido'
>> seems
>> to REPORT a naming that has occurred in the past, even if one may argue
>> that one names a thing N every time one uses the expression N, and not
>> the
>> 'baptismal' fixation (to use Witters's and Kripke's wording).
>>
>> On top of that, the discussion then turned to Augustine, so I double
>> checked Witters' quotation -- now in the Loeb Classical Library --:
>>
>> Augustine says:
>>
>> "Cum majores homines APPELLABANT rem aliquam
>> et cum secundum earn vocem corpus ad aliquid movebant, videbam
>> et tenebam hoc ab eis VOCARI rem illam, quod SONABANT
>> cum earn vellent ostendere
>> hoc autem eos veile ex motu corporis aperiebatur: tamquam VERBIS
>> naturalibus omnium gentium
>> quae fiunt vultu et nutu oculorum
>> ceterorumque membrorum actu
>> & sonitu vocis indicante affectionem animi in petendis
>> habendis, rejiciendis, fugiendisve rebus
>> ita VERBA in variis SENTENTIIS locis suis posita
>> & crebro audita quarum rerum SIGNA essent
>> paulatim colligebam
>> measque jam voluntates
>> edomito in eis SIGNIS ore
>> per haec enuntiabam.
>> ---- Augustinus, Conf. I. 8.
>>
>> I don't think Witters cared to provide a translation for this, but the
>> current edition of Philosophical Investigations does, and it involves so
>> much
>> more than merely 'pointing at things' via ostension, while 'ostendere' IS
>> used. The translation in the current edition of Philosophical
>> Investigation
>> goes as per below, where I capitalised some of the notions -- other than
>> NAMING -- that Augustine relies on:
>>
>> "When my elders NAMED some object & accordingly moved towards something,
>> I
>> saw this and I grasped that the thing was CALLED by the sound they
>> UTTERED
>> when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their
>> bodily
>> movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression
>> of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the
>> body,
>> and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking,
>> having,
>> rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard WORDS repeatedly used
>> in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to
>> understand what objects they SIGNIFIED; and after I had trained my mouth
>> to form
>> these signs, I used them to express my own desires."
>>
>> ---- It seems to evoke what Colin McGinn called a telementational (that he
>> also applies to Grice) theory of communication. Note that Augustine
>> focuses
>> on "DESIRES" and "INTENTIONS", alla Grice, and allows for various
>> 'things'
>> to be 'called' this or that. It is a 'genetic' account of how Augustine
>> got to learn Latin (in the North of Africa, as I recall), first by being
>> an
>> addressee, and ultimately becoming an utterer.
>>
>> ---- The Stanford Encyclopedia for 'names' gives a nice reference to a
>> later section of Philosophical Investigations (McEvoy claims that
>> Witters's
>> point about he (Witters) not being able to provide by something that HE
>> SAYS a
>> theory of naming applies to the first sections) where something like a
>> Kripkean 'criterion' is provided. In any case it strongly reminded me of
>> Grice
>> in "Vacuous Names". Grice goes on to provide some technicism, notably the
>> idea of a
>>
>> DOSSIER.
>>
>> So the idea is that
>>
>> 'Fido'
>>
>> gets attached to a 'dossier', which may include:
>>
>> 'Ryle's dog'.
>>
>> Have you seen Ryle's dog?
>>
>> Have you seen Fido?
>>
>> Have you seen the loud poodle that lives up Banbury lane?
>>
>> Have you seen the canis familiaris that belongs to the Waynflete professor
>> of Metaphysical Philosophy?
>>
>> and so on. It is according to circumstances that one will choose one or
>> another item in one's dossier for 'Fido'.
>>
>> There seems to be a CRITERION behind all this. Grice is into a
>> formalisation of this.
>>
>> Df
>>
>> Fido is a dog.
>>
>> Where 'D' is a PREDICATE, and 'f' is a singular name -- that Quine
>> rejects. Usually, 'Fido' involves
>>
>> {f}
>>
>> the singleton -- or one-member class. 'Dog' doesn't. Extensionally
>> defined,
>> it points to Fido and the Queen's corgis for example, such as "Susan".
>>
>> Cs
>>
>> Susan is a corgi.
>>
>> 'Corgi', like 'Dog', is a predicate. 'Susan' is a name.
>>
>> (Outside Wales, corgis have been made popular by Queen Elizabeth II who
>> has
>> at least four in her retinue at all times. Her first corgi was called
>> Susan. She currently keeps two corgis and two Dorgis (corgi/dachshund
>> cross).
>> Some portraits of Queen Elizabeth II include a corgi. Some don't).
>>
>> We are considering Wittgenstein on
>>
>> 'naming'.
>>
>> The passage from the Stanford Encyclopedia on Names that led me to the
>> Wittgenstein quote is as follows:
>>
>> Aristotle's mother might have used the name ‘Aristotle’ with a different
>> semantic value (corresponding to a different (cluster-)description) to a
>> present-day Aristotle scholar. Frege (1952, 1956) and Russell seem to have
>> held the context-sensitive view. Wittgenstein is often cited as a
>> proponent of
>> the cluster view, but attention to the text (1953, section 79) reveals
>> that he is advocating context-sensitivity.
>>
>> So let us revise this section. It should be a later section than the
>> sections McEvoy having in mind as EVIDENCE that Witters is trying to show
>> that
>> one cannot try to express in words ('say') what 'naming' is, only 'show',
>> for
>> lack of 'criteria'.
>>
>> In Section 79 Wittgenstein writes:
>>
>> "If one says
>>
>> i. Moses did not exist.
>>
>> this may MEAN various things."
>>
>> "It may mean:
>>
>> ii. The Israelites did not have a single leader when they withdrew from
>> Egypt——or:
>>
>> iii. The Israelite's leader was NOT called Moses——-or:
>>
>> iv. There cannot have been anyone who accomplished all that the Bible
>> relates of Moses——or:
>>
>> v. etc. etc.
>>
>> "We may say, following Russell: the NAME "Moses" can be defined by means
>> of
>> various descriptions."
>>
>> "For example, as
>>
>> vi. "Moses" names the man who led the Israelites through the wilderness.
>>
>> vii. "Moses" names the man who lived at that time and place and was then
>> called 'Moses'.
>>
>> viii. "Moses" names the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by
>> Pharaoh's daughter.
>>
>> and so on.
>>
>> "And according as we assume one definition or another the proposition, our
>> original utterance
>>
>> i. Moses did not exist.
>>
>> acquires a different SENSE, and so does every other proposition about
>> Moses."
>>
>> "And if we are told, in general
>>
>> ib. "N did not exist"
>>
>> we do ask: "What do you mean? Do you want to say . . . . . . or . . . . .
>> .
>> etc.?"
>>
>> "When I make a statement about Moses,— am I always ready to substitute
>> some
>> one of these descriptions for "Moses"?"
>>
>> "I shall perhaps say as follows."
>>
>> "By "Moses" I understand the man who did what the Bible relates of Moses,
>> or at any rate a good deal of it."
>>
>> "But how much?"
>>
>> "Have I decided how much must be proved false for me to give up my
>> proposition as false?"
>>
>> "Has the NAME "Moses" got a fixed and unequivocal use for me in all
>> possible cases?
>>
>> "Is it not the case that I have, so to speak, a whole series of props in
>> readiness, and am ready to lean on one if another should be taken from
>> under
>> me and vice versa?"
>>
>> "Consider another case."
>>
>> "When I say
>>
>> B. N is dead.
>>
>> something like the following may hold for the meaning of the NAME "N":
>>
>> I believe that a human being has lived, whom I
>>
>> (1) have seen in such-and-such places, who
>> (2) looked like this (pictures)
>> (3) has done such-and-such things, and
>> Crucially:
>>
>> (4) N bore the name "N" in social life.
>>
>> Asked what I understand by "N", I should enumerate all or some of these
>> points, and different ones
>> on different occasions.
>>
>> So my DEFINITION of "N" would perhaps be
>>
>> B2. N is the man of whom all this is true.
>>
>> But if some point now proves false?
>>
>> Shall I be prepared to declare the proposition
>>
>> B. N is dead.
>>
>> false—even if it is only something which strikes me as incidental that has
>> turned out false?
>>
>> But where are the bounds of the incidental?
>>
>> If I had given a definition of the name N in such a case, I should now be
>> ready to alter it.
>>
>> And this can be expressed like this:
>>
>> I use the name "N" without a fixed meaning.
>>
>> But that detracts as little from its usefulness, as it detracts from that
>> of a table that it stands on four legs instead of three and so sometimes
>> wobbles.
>>
>> Should it be said that I am using a word whose meaning I don't know, and
>> so
>> am talking nonsense?
>>
>> Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the
>> facts.
>>
>> And when you see them there is a good deal that you will NOT say.
>>
>> "The fluctuation of scientific definitions: what to-day counts as an
>> observed concomitant of a phenomenon will to-morrow be used to DEFINE [or
>> name]
>> it."
>>
>> It seems to me that Witters IS offering something like a 'criterion' (and
>> I
>> should double check what other word McEvoy uses here) for 'naming'. It
>> may
>> be a 'fuzzy' criterion, or a multifarious one, to reflect the
>> multifarious
>> 'pragmatics' of names -- and not just the rather simple semantics alla
>>
>> {f}
>>
>> {s}
>>
>> Philosophers who look at logic as an auxiliary to provide, in a
>> metalanguage, for criteria for their original puzzles are redeemed.
>> Wittgenstein
>> seems to display, rather, an a priori, as it were, opposition to
>> formalisation
>> (or metalinguistic approaches) of any kind.
>>
>> Once the 'semantics' of names is more or less fixed or settled, one CAN
>> give room for a more fluid 'pragmatics' of names -- "She was a Garbo", for
>> example, we can say of someone -- other than Garbo -- who displays some
>> sort
>> of the elegance that Garbo displayed, and so on. And while most
>> discussions
>> of Grice's 'Vacuous Names' have focuses on the vacuity issue, what he
>> says
>> about identificatory and no-identificatory uses, dossiers, and such,
>> applies, of course, to FULL names, too -- and not just vacuous like
>> "Pegasus" and
>> "Bellerophon" (that Quine had made famous in his rejection of names in
>> "What there is" -- Pegasus exists = something pegasusises) or "Marmaduke
>> Bloggs", Grice's own invention: the Lancashire geographer who climbed Mt
>> Everest
>> on hands and knees but who turns out to be the journalists's invention).
>>
>> Grice wrote 'Vacuous Names' in the heat of Donnellan's recent invention of
>> an attributive/referential uses of 'names' and 'descriptions', that Grice
>> rejects, and replaces for 'identificatory' and 'non-identificatory' uses
>> of
>> 'the' and related 'referential' expressions, and he is at his best in
>> identifying implicatures (NEVER SENSES) that attend his favourite
>> scenario on
>> which he expands in the final sections of that essay:
>>
>> "Jones's butler got the hats and coats mixed up"
>>
>> where Grice distinguishes a non-identificatory use from a fully
>> identificatory use of "Jones' butler". An application to the simpler
>> Ryle's 'Fido'
>> may be in order.
>>
>> "So, the whole point is that Fido, whoever he is, should not be allowed to
>> do as he pleases."
>>
>> Grice notes that the use of 'whoever he is' indicates that the name has
>> only been introduced by the 'stroke of a pen', rather than, say, via
>> acquaintance.
>>
>> Ryle laughed at all that. His idea of 'Fido'-Fido was to show the early
>> Wittgenstein wrong. And he explores Plato's confusions. Plato had only one
>> word to his disposal: 'onoma', which can stand for 'name', 'noun' -- and
>> WORD.
>> The English language has richer distinctions, and 'noun' should be used
>> instead of 'name' as good style dictates. I'm not sure how delicate in
>> his
>> choice of words Witters is. It seems his use of "N" (his general term for
>> 'name') is pretty vague. For one, quotations may seem in order in cases
>> where
>> he doesn't use them -- ""N" is N's name," for example.
>>
>> Ryle called 'Fido'-Fido a 'grotesque' THEORY and Carnap is right in
>> correcting Ryle here: you may call it 'grotesque' but, Carnap notes, is
>> more of a
>> theoretical decision on how to deal with 'names' in one's system rather
>> than a 'theory' proper.
>>
>> And so on.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Speranza
>>
>> In a message dated 5/8/2014 12:31:48 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
>> donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
>> the view that 'Fido' names the dog Fido if it is used as a name of Fido:
>> but this does not explain how 'Fido' names Fido (it no more does this
>> than
>> saying "'The snow is white' is true iff the snow is white" explains how
>> the
>> linguistic statement can refer to a non-linguistic reality). To give
>> examples where names name is not to give an explanation of the
>> naming-relation
>> but merely to illustrate it: what the challenge asks is to provide an
>> explanation so that the relation is captured in language, perhaps by way
>> of some
>> "theory" or "criterion" by which we can determine that a word is being
>> used
>> as a name and not otherwise. Consider the difference between a dog owner
>> uttering 'Fido' when (a) asked the name of his dog (b) shouting at Fido -
>> (b)
>> is not a use of 'Fido' to name Fido in the same sense as (a), or perhaps
>> at
>> all (and even in (a) 'Fido' may report Fido's name rather than 'name'
>> Fido
>> in some other sense, as when (c) the Queen names a ship 'Fido').
>>
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>
>
--
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palma
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