[Wittrs] Re: Games with Logic and Bachelor
- From: "J D" <ubersicht@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:02:31 -0000
SW,
First, a general remark. "Family resemblance" is a useful simile. So too is
the comparison with tools. And while it is entirely possible to turn a screw
with the blade of a knife, you may also damage the knife, damage the screw, or
cut yourself.
I also note that you haven't addressed or so much as acknowledged my point
about Wittgenstein's revisions and his laboring over choosing precisely the
right word or the right phrasing as that point stands in relation to your own
pretense that it is somehow more "Wittgensteinian" to just talk about "family
resemblances" to show a causal disregard for standards of correctness.
Note: I am not trying to play "more Wittgensteinian than thou," which I
consider an utterly asinine form of argument. But I am asking how you
reconcile these two things in your claim to be oh-so-Wittgensteinian.
"3. I can't agree with several things you have said about what analytic
philosophers do with statements like 'If Tiger is married, he is not a
bachelor.'"
Are you disagreeing with my contention that they make such arguments as I
presented? If so, I can offer citations, but since you then refer to "analytic
philosophy of this sort", it appears you acknowledge that after all. But then
it would appear that you just wish to express your disagreement with such
arguments. Well, since I presented conflicting arguments, it should be obvious
that I disagree with at least some of them as well.
"In fact, this is exactly what the fallacy of analytic philosophy of this sort
is. It pretends as though the statement is not governed by culture and
cognition, and that it presents a question that should be resolved mimicking
science or mathematics."
No doubt that is the case in some cases. But broad generalizations like that
aren't very helpful. In fact, they're quite empty. "(A)nalytic philosophy of
this sort..." What sort? Well, the sort that does that sort of thing.
And for those who like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing they like.
One particular argument I presented, the only one I would personally be
inclined to actually defend, was very much connected to culture. Namely, the
role that that concepts like "bachelor", "marriage", "fidelity", "voews", and
so forth play in people's lives. How you could say that such an argument as a
denial of the role culture plays is quite beyond me.
"For the truth of the matter is, that the statement is only governed by sense
of the expression, and that once the sense is shared, there is no other issue
other than informational (what Tiger did, what his 'marriage' is like)."
Questions I would include, "Shared by whom? In what contexts? On what
occasions?"
I have not acknowledged the usage, only pointed out that it is a sort of joke.
Note that Wittgenstein also observes departures from normal usage that make
sense as jokes. Metaphor, irony, and various other uses of language are
parasitic upon literal usage. That's different from saying that it's all just
"family resemblance", but it doesn't deny the variety in our usage.
"If we would treat married and bachelors only as predicate-calculators, we
would have precluded any counter-examples from being shown by virtue of the
language game being used. We would have shut them out."
If you re-read my remarks, you'll see that I was actually calling you to task
for that.
"You seem to think that logic has some status over language. I sense this in
you. You must be a philosophy professor who teaches symbolic logic. Let me help
you with this: 'I release you.' (You like Lord of the Rings?)"
I've been accused of far worse and on better evidence. In any case, it would
depend on what you mean by "logic". If you mean the subject taught in courses
in symbolic logic, then certainly not! In a wider, Wittgensteinian sense of
"logic" - a concern with those rules that are constitutive of sense - then I
wouldn't call it a "status over language". That would be a very misleading way
of putting it.
I am more of an SF fan but Tolkein is good. Have you watched Caprica?
"Here's what I think you aren't getting. Definitions don't prescribe the use of
words, behavior does."
Dictionaries both describe and prescribe. People regularly treat dictionary
definitions prescriptively. In education, in scholarship, in Scrabble
tournaments... And these activities are of course behaviors. Marks on paper by
themselves neither prescribe nor describe but being a dictionary is also about
being used in various ways and in various activities. And some of these uses
are prescriptive.
The fact that language users are also creative and that language evolves shows
that dictionaries are not always treated as rule books that keep language in a
"frozen" condition. But that is not to say that dictionaries are not used
prescriptively!
"What are commonly called definitions in dictionaries are nothing but accounts
of these uses."
Recall the remark I'd shared about the judge and treating statutes as
anthropological descriptions or as guides to how he should rule. You seemed
enthused about the quote but perhaps you missed the point!
"Sort of like a newspaper for the language game. No one I know of would
credibly say that if a use was meaningfully understood that it couldn't be made
because the dictionary didn't yet have it."
Being understood and being correct are not the same thing. But that was a
clever seduction on your part. I depreciated it!
I've already acknowledged non-literal uses. I also do not deny that language
evolves. Nor yet do I deny the existence of slang and idioms shared among
small communities. To deny any of those would be exceedingly foolish. But no
less foolish would be to ignore the perfectly ordinary distinctions we
regularly make between correct and incorrect, between standard and nonstandard,
and between literal and nonliteral usages, and to treat rule as exception and
exception as rule.
"And so, for the idea of calling Tiger a 'bachelor' to be a joke can only be
true IN A SENSE OF TALKING."
What does that even mean? What is an example of a true statement that is true
in some other way than in the particular senses of the words used?
"You are observing a fence again. You use the word 'bachelor' and 'marriage'
with a fence in both yards. That's fine. You're allowed. Many people do. Your
point is taken. But what you don't understand is that if people use these words
without such fences, they too are allowed whatever goals they score"
Your condesension notwithstanding, the idea of what people are "allowed" to do
is not a concern of mine. I am concerned with what makes sense and with
distinctions between different kinds of making sense, not with telling people
what they are or are not "allowed" to say - as if they would listen to me
anyway!
It may be that some of my prior remarks came across as some sort of hysterical
prediction of sociology-cum-religious-conservatism, viz. "If we allow people to
call Tiger Woods a bachelor, then the institution of marriage will be
destroyed, the favric of society will be torn apart, it will be anarchy!" But
my remarks were not sociological or anthropological: they were grammatical. I
was pointing out connections between the concept of bachelorhood and concepts
of marriage, fidelity, and so forth, and how treating a non-standard usage as
standard breaks those connections.
What we mustn't overlook with the Tiger Woods example is that Tiger's marital
status and infidelity are both common knowledge, thanks to our sensationalistic
media. Given this shared background, "Tiger Woods is a bachelor" could not be
meant to tell us about either: his marriage and his cheating are known to just
about anyone who would recognize his name. So the sense of the utterance would
be an ironic remark on Tiger's behavior: he may be married but he sure doesn't
act accordingly. hence, a joke.
But suppose we're talking about someone less famous. A traveling salesman (to
reference a vast body of humor) who is married says that he's a bachelor. Now,
perhaps he says this to people who know him or who see his wedding band and
know his profession. And with further enquiry, he offers something like, "This
week, I might as well be a bachelor," or "When I am on the road, I live as I
did when I was a bachelor." (And this need involve nothing untoward. Perhaps
he just means that he eats Chinese take out standing over the kitchen sink in
his motel room and falls asleep watching TV on the sofa in his underwear.)
Calling himself a bachelor is then a humorous commentary on his life. A joke.
But suppose he removes his wedding band and tells people who don't know him
that he's a bachelor, including women he seeks to bed. Is he just making a
joke? Or is he a damned liar! Suppose in a court of law, he testifies that
he's a bachelor. You're an attorney: tell me how that goes? Tell me how it
works out for him if his wife in another state is discovered and he says, "I
was just using 'bachelor' in a different sense"? And any married people: tell
me how it goes over with his wife when she hears about it.
"Aww, Pookie! I was just using the word in a different sense, y'see.
Sweet'ums, you're insisting on drawing fences around words, but language
doesn't really work that way. It's about 'family resemblances', y'see. Yeah,
and dictionaries just describe how people sometimes use words but they don't
really prescribe anything. I was just using 'bachelor' in my own personal way.
There was no deception, honestly!"
Tell me how things work out for the attorney who is discovered to have advised
her married client, "Say you're a bachelor. After all, in a certain sense you
are."
(I'm not about allowing or disallowing people's choice of words. But other
people just might be!)
"E.g., Being married to yourself is a meaningful idea. So is being married to
work, an expression which is widely in play in the language game. (I myself am
married to my ideas)."
Yes, there are other uses of the word "marriage". I would not deny that.
Though I would need some further elaboration to make sense of "married to
oneself". However, since you've now acknowledged that calling an isolated word
(rather than its definition) a tautology makes no sense (would have to be
understood as some sort of shorthand way of putting it), then the point of my
remark about marriage to oneself has already been made.
However, note that I took your parenthetical quotation, "Marriage is between a
man and a woman," as an allusion to controversies over homosexual marriage. In
that context, the fact that we speak of someone being married to her work is
quite irrelevant. It is a question of legal recognition, of changing the legal
definition. Saying that Richard is married to his partner Phil just as I am
married to my work and Joan is married to her political cause would be
completely missing the point!
"So, the next time you put the Tiger sentence up and call it 'logic,' you may
want to replace that with sense of expression."
Senses are a concern of logic, in both the technical sense and the wider,
Wittgensteinian sense. Do you know who originated the distinction between
sense and reference (though there were related precursors)? The logician,
Frege.
"Once again, the right analysis is this:"
(I find it exceedingly odd that someone who insists on accusing others of a
dogmatic reliance on formal logic would so casually speak of "the right
analysis". And what follows is not "once again". You changed what you'd
written before, without acknowledging the changes and without answering my
questions about the previous "analysis". That's fine but to say "once again"
is simply dishonest.)
"1. If the bearer called TIGER is married (in a sense of that word), he is not
a bachelor (in a sense of that word). [IT DOESN'T FOLLOW]."
Of course, he could be a Bachelor of Arts. No one is denying that words have
different senses. I am only urging that we keep these senses clear. I am
pointing out distinctions. If it's a different sense, then it's not a
counter-example to the received definition.
"The Pope example that you exempt..."
I didn't "exempt" it. But I do consider it a more significant counter-example
to the standard analysis. That said, I also think that one could say, "the
Pope is married... to the Church," or one could say, "Strange as it may sound,
the Pope is a bachelor." And I don't insist on either being "correct", though
for some particular purpose, one might have reasons to favor one or the other.
"...is of the same sort of thing as Tiger."
That rather depends on how one fills in "sort of thing".
"Here is the key to the riddle: the point of 'bachelor' in the language game is
to denote 'dating eligibility.'"
That is one point. There are others.
"That's what the idea does in the game, which is all tha matters."
If I were to grant that there were a single point, it would be "eligibility for
first marriage", not "dating eligibility". 13 year old boys are eligible to
date, parents permitting, but they aren't bachelors. Men in cultures where
marriages are arranged may not be eligible to date, but are bachelors.
Divorcees are eligible to date but aren't bachelors.
"Question: Did Tiger have a bachelor pad? Answer: he probably did. Does the
Pope have a bachelor pad? Answer: no. What's the difference? One is eligible to
date, the other isn't."
One has various means to facilitate dating and the other does not. And an
adult man who has never married and lives with room mates or in his parent's
basement may also lack the facilities but that doesn't make him any less a
bachelor.
"Asking whether Tiger is a 'bachelor' is a language game every bit the same as
asking whether a penguin is a bird or a scorpion a bug or a large living-room
bean bag a chair."
Each of these examples is different. "Bird" has a zoological definition as
well as ordinary usage. "Bug" does not, though "insect" and "arachnid" do.
"Chair" has no definition in any natural science but large bean bags are
commonly called "chairs", albeit not prototypical chairs. These question are
not "the same".
(Wittgenstein, quoting Kent in Shakespeare's _King_Lear_, considered as a
motto, "I'll teach you differences.")
"In this language game, the funcion of the idea is present (eligibility to
date) but the format isn't right (is married). This language game transposes
form and function. The Pope is the opposite: he is not eligible to date but is
not married. He has the format of bachelor but not its function. Many family
resemblance games do this."
Gibberish.
"Imagine someone asking inside Tiger's female circle whether Tiger was a
'bachelor.' What would the inside person say? They'd probably be unsure of what
to say. They might say, 'he is and he isn't.' Or, he is IN A SENSE. Tiger is a
family member who you have fenced off with a sharp boundary."
My guess:
First, they would wonder where you had been the past several months not to have
heard all about it. Then, if they knew you were informed of the circumstances,
they would wonder what your point was in asking such a question. Finally,
they'd probably think you were attempting to make a joke in very bad taste,
perhaps at their expense, and might be inclined to slap you. Or worse.
I do not get the impression that you have anything like the kind of mad skillz
to talk to women that way. Your black belt Wittgensteinianism and linguistic
acumen notwithstanding.
"And by way, calling Tiger a bachelor would not upset anything in the culture
or the language game. It would overturn nothing. It would simply be another
case of mix-and-match."
No, it wouldn't upset anything. But using "bachelor" to mean "anyone who dates
a lot" and treating that as the standard rather than as some special usage
would sever a lot of connections to other concepts. Of course, we would work
around it, just as we work around "gay" now meaning "homosexual" and "sex" now
meaning "copulation". It's a source of muddles but we manage.
One last thing. I find it odd that after previously insisting that "bachelor"
was a "tautology" or a "predicate-calculation" or whatever, that you're now
insisting on complete flexibility in the word's deployment, even to the point
of apparently denying distinctions one might draw between different usages.
it's fine if you change your mind, but you may want to acknowledge the change.
JPDeMouy
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