[Wittrs] Re: Games with Logic and Bachelor
- From: "waveletter" <wavelets@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:15:43 -0000
Hi Sean:
Some follow-up comments.
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Ron.
>
> Regarding 242: "If language is to be a means of communication there must be
> agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in
> judgments. This seems to abolish logic, but does not do so.--It is one thing
> to describe methods of measurement, and another to obtain and state results
> of measurement. But what we call 'measuring' is partly determined by a
> certain constancy in results of measurement."
>
> 1. I would take 242 as being directed toward the private language argument. I
> would also think what it really says it this: to understand (and navigate)
> sense, one must share the operations of language. No one would take the
> position that this excludes logic, because the language of logic generates
> meaning the same as, e.g., the language of art. That's the key. What brains
> do with language and how they come to understand meaning.
>
(rla) I agree that it's about the PLA and understanding the sense of linguistic
forms requires a shared set of operations. One of the behaviors language users
engage in is making definitions, such as "a bachelor is an unmarried man".
(N.B. Earlier I think someone said that a bachelor is an unmarried male, and
this is a mistake, but one I've seen in philosophy texts.) The definition is
rule and to follow the rule is to use it to say things like
(a) Tiger is married to Elin, so he's not a bachelor.
but not
(b) Tiger is married to Elin, and he's still a bachelor.
(rla) The person that says things like (b) is breaking the rule, the definition
of the word, and engaging in behavior divergent from the linguistic community
to which we belong, but there may be nothing we can do to stop that person. He
may insist that he's following the rule; maybe it's the sense he has of Tiger's
adventures. Fine, but to think one is following the rule is not to follow the
rule. That is the point of PI 202.
> (Note also that for two people to use the school-boy sense of bachelor, they
> would both need to know definitions.)
>
> 2. My disagreement is over the value of using symbolic logic statements as
> though they establish some kind of universal proof. As though they amount to
> some kind of geometry. Witttgensteinians understand that the sentence, "If
> Tiger is married, he cannot be a bachelor," is determined by the sense of the
> words in the language game (including the logical if-then). The languaging
> culture (and what the brain does in the cognition of words) is
> what fundamentally determines "bachelor" and "married." And therefore, if
> you force the logic statement to recognize family resemblance, the statement
> breaks down on its own terms.
(rla) Of course, logic does not constitute some kind of universal proof.
Neither does geometry. Both are part of our language, not some transcendent
toolkit for finalizing justifications. Dummett argued famously that logical
deduction could be justified, but I have my doubts about this. Also, I'm pretty
damn sure that JD did not argue and does not hold that symbolic logic is useful
for establishing universal proofs. Definitions and logical deduction, when
codified in our practice of making rules for them--to continue the metrological
analogy of PI 242--describe how we make measurements (i.e. connotations and
denotations, senses and references) and are quite different from actually
achieving a measurement (i.e. a connoting or denoting speech act).
(rla) I thought in your reply to JD that you were taking a subjectivist jag.
>
> CF: "If Tiger is any sense of "married," he cannot be any sense of "bachelor."
>
(rla) Well, this ^ isn't correct, and it doesn't follow from our linguistic
community's adherence to a rule to the effect that a bachelor is an unmarried
man.
> Note also that for Wittgenstein to have reached the idea that dissolving
> sense dissolves all philosophic controversies, is to say that the achievement
> of sense-agreement makes disputes become informational. When we know the
> sense of "bachelor" and of "married," all that is left is either
> the performance of the logic (if-then) or the gathering of information about
> what Tiger does in his private life. When sense is resolved, there are no
> more traffic accidents.
>
> That's what true philosophy really is: someone directing the language
> traffic so that there are no accidents.
(rla) Symbolic logic, including the deviants, like modal and temporal logic,
is, I would agree, a set of rules of the road for avoiding linguistic potholes
(the Liar Paradox), accidents ("he's a two-month old bachelor, but he's a
married woman"), and congestion (metaphor: "Tiger is a married bachelor").
>
> 3. I didn't take my message as a "flame" of our friend J. "I release you"
> was Ghandalf helping Theoden from his spell. It's metaphor and theatrics. The
> point could really be expressed thusly: a full-blooded Wittgensteinian
> having a say about the methodology of a three-quarter-blooded one (or
> whatever fraction it is). See point 2. The goal is over the method and
> approach to "propositions."
>
(rla) I was trying to match your theatrics with some faux umbrage, but I guess
I need practice. Eh, not sure who's 75% here--certainly not me! I don't even
have ambitions toward the low 50s.
Thanks!
--Ron
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