Methods of Projection

Wittgenstein on Rules and Nature

2009-07-20T09:51:00.002-05:00

NDPR review by Lars Hertzberg of Keith Dromm's Wittgenstein on Rules and Nature.

Paradigms and Certainty

2009-07-06T12:58:00.001-05:00

In short, one might say that Wittgenstein's fundamental critcism of Moore's method was that he was wrong in believing that he could refute the skeptic by elucidating a series of propositions that were indubitable, known, and certain. In doing this Moore misused the word "know," since the way these propositions usually function is as paradigms for propositions which we can be said to know or not to know. Qua paradigms they do not themselves enter (directly) into the "known-is not known" language game. Doubt ends somewhere, and where it ends is not in propositions of which we are certain, or which we know, but in propositions A) which we do not doubt, because B) they do not enter directly into the language-game of doubting and knowing, but rather C) function as yardsticks or standards according to which such language-games are played. (C. G. Luckhardt, "Beyond Knowledge: Paradigms in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy," p. 248.)

David Pears, 1921-2009

2009-07-04T20:21:00.008-05:00

David Francis Pears, eminent Wittgenstein scholar, has passed away. Obituary here.

Together with Brian McGuinness, Pears translated the Tractatus. He authored several books on Wittgenstein: Ludwig Wittgenstein; False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein's Philosophy, Vols. 1 & 2; and Paradox and Platitude in Wittgenstein's Philosophy. And his many articles on Wittgenstein include "The Relation Between Wittgenstein's Picture Theory of Propositions and Russell's Theory of Judgment," "Literalism and Imagination: Wittgenstein's Deconstruction of Traditional Philosophy," and "Wittgenstein's Account of Rule-Following."

Google's German to English Translator

2009-06-27T14:18:00.006-05:00

Language Log has had several posts on the adequacy of Google's Farsi to English translator, so I decided to see what the German to English translator is capable of. Below is the German of §1 of the Philosophical Investigations (in red) followed by Anscombe's translation (in blue) and Google's (in green). The Google translation isn't terrible.

In diesen Worten erhalten wir, so scheint es mir, ein bestimmtes Bild von dem Wesen der menschlichen Sprache. Nämlich dieses: Die Wörter der Sprache benennen Gegenstände—Sätze sind Verbindungen von solchen Benennungen.—In diesem Bild von der Sprache finden wir die Wurzeln der Idee: Jedes Wort hat eine Bedeutung. Diese Bedeutung ist dem Wort zugeordnet. Sie ist der Gegenstand, für welchen das Wort steht.

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects—sentences are combinations of such names.—In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands.

In these words we get, it seems to me a picture of the nature of human language. Namely, this: The words of the language name objects—sentences are combinations of such appointments.—In this picture of language we find the roots of the idea: Every word has a meaning. This importance is assigned to the word. It is the purpose for which the word stands.

Von einem Unterschied der Wortarten spricht Augustinus nicht. Wer das Lernen der Sprache so beschreibt, denkt, so möchte ich glauben, zunächst an Hauptwörter, wie »Tisch«, »Stuhl«, »Brot«, und die Namen bon Personen, erst in zweiter Linie an die Namen gewisser Tätigkeiten und Eigenschaften, und an die übrigen Wortarten als etwas, was sich finden wird.

Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of word. If you describe the learning of language in this way you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like "table", "chair", "bread", and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as something that will take care of itself.

From a difference of word types Augustine saith not. Those who learn the language it describes, is, I believe, first of all nouns, like "table", "chair", "bread", bon, and the names of persons, only secondarily to the names of certain activities and characteristics, and to other word types rather than what is expected.

Denke nun an diese Verwendung der Sprache: Ich schicke jemand einkaufen. Ich gebe ihm einen Zettel, auf diesem stehen die Zeichen: »fünf rote Apfel«. Er trägt den Zettel zum Kaufmann; der öffnet die Lade, auf welcher das Zeichen »Apfel« steht; dann sucht er in einer Tabelle das Wort »rot« auf und findet ihm gegenüber ein Farbmuster; nun sagt er die Reihe der Grundzahlwörter—ich nehme an, er weiß sie auswendig - bis zum Worte »fünf« und bei jedem Zahlwort nimmt er einen Apfel aus der Lade, der die Farbe des Musters hat.—So, und ähnlich, operiert man mit Worten.—»Wie weiß er aber, wo und wie er das Wort »rot« nachschlagen soll und was er mit dem Wort »fünf« anzufangen hat?«—Nun, ich nehme an, er handelt, wie ich es beschrieben habe. Die Erklärungen haben irgendwo ein Ende.—Was ist aber die Bedeutung des Wortes »fünf«?—Von einer solchen war hier garnicht die Rede; nur davon, wie das Wort »fünf« gebraucht wird.

Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked "five red apples". He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked "apples"; then he looks up the word "red" in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers—I assume that he knows them by heart—up to the word "five" and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.—It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words.—"But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?"—Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere.—But what is the meaning of the word "five"?—No such thing was in question here, only how the word "five" is used.

Think now of this use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a piece of paper on this, the signs are: "Five red apples". He wears the label to the merchant and the opens the ark on which the sign "apple" is, then it looks for a table in the word "red" and found him a sample of a color, now he says the number of the basic number words—I suppose that he knows them by heart—until the words "Five" and every word of an apple, he made the ark, the color of the pattern has.—Sun, and similarly, one operates with words.—"How he knows where and how he made the word" red "should look and what to do with the word" Five "has started?"—Well, I suppose, he acts as I have described. The declarations have an end somewhere.—What is the meaning of the word "Five"?—From this it was not at the speech, only how the word "Five" is needed.

Wittgenstein Conference in Brazil

2009-06-25T15:54:00.008-05:00

The 3rd International Wittgenstein Colloquium (September 23-25 at the State University of Campinas, UNICAMP, in São Paulo, Brazil) is titled "Certainty?":

Wittgenstein carefully thought over what engages our conviction – from the mathematical convictions up to those of the common sense. In all cases, our certainties are condensed in drops of grammar: the propositions that are beyond truth and falsity, those that Wittgenstein called grammatical propositions. One cannot question such propositions, they are not subjected to doubt. Metaphysical questions, however, have their birth and development in environments benign to no doubting – from the point of view of language, and specifically from the philosophical therapy proposed by Wittgenstein.

Strawson on Interpretation

2009-06-12T10:36:00.002-05:00

No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thoughts in his own contemporary terms; and it is characteristic of the very great philosophers, like Kant and Aristotle, that they, more than any others, repay this effort of re-thinking. (Peter Strawson, Individuals, pp. 10-11)

Quote of the Day

2009-06-10T08:11:00.002-05:00

We say that grammar determines which combinations of words have sense and which do not; but on the other hand also, that grammar is not answerable to any reality, that it is in a certain sense arbitrary. Hence if a rule forbids me to construct a certain combination of words, then I have only to abrogate this rule, as is my prerogative, and this combination would thereby acquire a sense. Let us take as an example the rule: 'A distance cannot be at the same time both one and two metres long'. Hence we say that it is as we choose whether to abrogate this prohibition and to admit as meaningful the statement that the distance is simultaneously both one and two metres long. Against this, however, our intellect immediately objects and says that this is unthinkable. But what does that mean? Let us substitute the expression of a thought for thinking. Then one can in any case not say 'It is unsayable' for we have just said it. What then is still lacking? Evidently further calculation with this statement. How then is this calculation to look? Well, that is as we choose. For just as our original language did not yet have this proposition, so too it had not yet laid down how to calculate with it. Let us take a particular case of calculating with this proposition, namely the transition from this proposition to an image or from it to a drawing. Here one will say, and we have indeed said, that the distance is simultaneously one and two metres long, but we cannot imagine this, or, what here comes down to the same thing, we cannot draw this. But what then stops our drawing this if we only knew what we should draw? For we have as yet arrived at no determination about this. We should now arrive at one, and we are free to make any determination we please. This would be a simple solution to our difficulty. But we also have the feeling that in relation to this determination we are already committed. Let us put it like this: nobody would be surprised that the word-combination 'chair has and' is senseless. We will not say that we cannot draw this state of affairs, but rather there is in this case nothing yet to draw. But this word-combination is not more nonsensical than the combination 'the distance is both one and two metres long'. (On the other hand, we can also make a drawing of the word-combination 'Chair has and' if we have first arrived at a stipulation about this.) What is problematic about the first case arises then from the analogy of the novel word-combination with readily available propositions of our language. But this analogy does not relieve us of the necessity to make novel determinations about the use of the novel mode of expression. By the analogy with verbal expressions it is not at all determined what kind of analogy there will be between the new rules and the old ones. There is the further question whether this novel analogy-based calculus has any practical value. We can then very easily imagine that a distance is both one and two metres long and give a life-size representation of this distance if it is first laid down according to what principle the proposition ought to be transferred to the image or to the drawing. But it is not thought that the newly constructed part of our language will have any practical significance for us. We could, e.g., perfectly well imagine a system of arithmetic in which the series of natural numbers does not contain five. We could even work with this system of arithmetic in everyday life, only all our reflections would become extremely and unnecessarily complicated. But a realm of experience can surely be described in which this system of arithmetic seemed to us to be the most convenient, just as convenient as Euclidean geometry for our actual world of experience. ("Dictation for Schlick," in Voices of Wittgenstein, pp. 39-43)

Yet More Quine Video

2009-06-07T09:09:00.003-05:00

Quine answering questions from Warren Goldfarb, Paul Horwich, and Martin Davies (here), and Quine answering questions from Robert Fogelin, Paul Horwich, and Martin Davies (here).

Ramsey and Resolute Readings

2009-06-06T10:27:00.006-05:00

In September of 1923, F. P. Ramsey travelled to Austria to visit Wittgenstein. He stayed for a couple of weeks and spent several hours a day with Wittgenstein going over the Tractatus line by line. In a letter to J. M. Keynes, Ramsey wrote "He is prepared to give 4 or 5 hours a day explaining his book. I have had two days and got through 7 (+ incidental forward references) out of 80 pages."

In a letter to Wittgenstein (sent in February of 1924), Ramsey criticized Russell's revision of Principia Mathematica:

There are no fundamental changes, identity just as it used to be. I felt he was too old: he seemed to understand and say "yes" to each separate thing, but it made no impression so that 3 minutes afterwards he talked on his old lines. Of all your work he seems now to accept only this: that it is nonsense to put an adjective where a substantive ought to be which helps in his theory of types. (Ludwig Wittgenstein: Cambridge Letters, p. 197)

White on the Tractatus

2009-05-29T09:50:00.002-05:00

NDPR review by Fraser MacBride of Roger White's Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Hacker on Davidson

2009-05-28T12:35:00.005-05:00

Hacker's "On Davidson’s Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" (The Philosophical Quarterly 46, 1996, pp. 289-307) is an excellent criticism of Davidson from a Wittgensteinian perspective. I'll be drawing on it in my upcoming post (hopefully, to appear next week), but I highly recommend the whole article to anyone interested in the questions that Davidson is concerned with.

By the way, Davidson's article is available online (here).

van der Burg on Davidson

2009-05-21T13:46:00.003-05:00

There's an interesting account of Davidson's argument in "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" by Floris van der Burg in Davidson and Spinoza: Mind, Matter and Morality. All but the last page of the relevant sections is available on Google (here). I wonder whether it is a good account.

Coffa on Wittgenstein

2009-05-17T08:53:00.009-05:00

I've set out to read Alberto Coffa's The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap a couple of times. Until last night, I'd never made it past the first chapter of Part II. Last night I finished Chapter 14, "a priori knowledge and the constitution of meaning." It's a brilliant discussion of Wittgenstein's view of 'grammatical propositions.' Though I find some of his treatment of Wittgenstein inadequate (Chapters 8, "A logico-philosophical treatise," and 13, "Return of Ludwig Wittgenstein," are of uneven value), Coffa's appreciation of 'grammar' is excellent.

We may surely disagree on whether John is tall without thereby disagreeing on the meaning of negation. But may we agree on that meaning and disagree about the law of double negation? Wittgenstein thought not. If not, then it looks as if negation is somehow "there" regardless of what we do about 'John is tall', but also as if its being there is not independent of what we do with the law of double negation. Indeed, it looks as if a priori statements are involved with meanings even more intimately than the way in which true claims relate to what makes them true. The meaning of negation does not make the law of double negation true in the sense in which Cicero makes some claims about him true. Rather, that logical law determines the meaning. Better yet, the acceptance of the law of double negation is part of what is involved in the recognition and adoption of the classical notion of negation, so that the law could be said to contribute to the definition or constitution of a meaning of negation.

There cannot be a question whether these or other rules are the correct ones for the use of 'not' (that is, whether they accord with its meaning). For without these rules the word has as yet no meaning; and if we change the rules, it now has another meaning (or none), and in that case we may just as well change the word too. (Philosophical Grammar, p. 184)

Wittgenstein had turned the problem of the a priori on its head, postulating it as a solution to the problem of indefinables. (p. 264)

Student's Guide to the Tractatus

2009-05-15T15:24:00.005-05:00

Based on the translation and commentary from his blog, Tractatus Blogico-Philosophicus, Duncan Richter has written Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A Student's Edition (the linked draft is free).

Davidson Question

2009-05-07T11:24:00.003-05:00

Several recent discussions have been coming together in my head. I'm trying to synthesize these and work them into a post centered around a second look at Davidson's "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme." But before I do, I have a question. In the last paragraph of that article, Davidson writes,

In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth—quite the contrary. Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and reality, we get conceptual relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board. Of course truth of sentences remains relative to language, but that is as objective as can be. In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false.

This (I think) is a conclusion I want to embrace (though I have some reservations about the argument Davidson uses to get there; more on that in the upcoming post). But what is the difference between truths relative to a conceptual scheme and truths relative to a language?

Wittgenstein's Form of Life

2009-05-06T08:39:00.001-05:00

NDPR review by Newton Garver of David Kishik's Wittgenstein's Form of Life.

Rules and Truth

2009-05-04T08:19:00.015-05:00

I've been thinking about the discussion I recently had with Mark Lance over at Leiter Reports. It seems to me that we were talking past one another on the relation between grammatical propositions and empirical facts. In this post, I'll attempt to spell out my position a bit more. I take as my starting point the following passage from Hans-Johann Glock’s "Necessary Truth and Grammatical Propositions":

Like the logical positivists, Wittgenstein seeks to preserve a connection between (1) ['All bachelors are unmarried'] and the meaning of the word 'bachelor'. Verifying (1) requires attendance not to the marital status of men, but to the meaning of 'bachelor' and 'unmarried'. By the same token, rejection of (1) betokens linguistic misunderstanding rather than factual ignorance. Unlike the logical positivists, Wittgenstein denies that (1) follows from the meaning of its constituents; instead he maintains that (1) is partly constitutive of that meaning. According to Wittgenstein, (1) is a 'grammatical proposition'. That is to say, it standardly expresses a rule for the correct use of at least one of those constituents (what Wittgenstein also calls a 'norm of representation'), and thereby determines their meaning instead of following from it. By the same token, (1) has a normative status: it can be used to explain 'bachelor', and to criticize or justify one’s use of that term. It also draws a line between meaningful uses of that term and nonsense like 'There is a married bachelor at the party'.

For Wittgenstein, this normative role of (1) explains its necessity. (1) cannot possibly be refuted by the facts, simply because no sentence contradicting it counts as a meaningful description of reality which is even in the running for stating a fact. In English, no combination of words which contravenes (1) is truth-apt, i.e. counts as a statement or proposition that is even in the running for being true. At the same time, according to Wittgenstein language is 'autonomous' and grammatical rules like (1) are 'arbitrary'. They do not mirror putative essences in reality, but constitute what might be called the essence or nature of bachelors. By the same token, they have the status of conventions. Although it is not up to individuals to alter grammatical rules, and although there can be reasons for adopting one grammar rather than another, we can in principle adopt different rules, and thereby accord a necessary alias normative status on different propositions.

Wittgenstein’s normativist account of necessity faces an immediate objection first formulated by Waismann: unlike necessary propositions, grammatical rules cannot be true or false. As it stands, however, this objection is not compelling. We do predicate truth of paradigmatic expressions of rules such as

(2) The chess-king moves one square at a time

But this means no more than that the rule to move the chess king one square at a time is in force. (pp. 7-8)

I think this is a good account of Wittgenstein's position. The only concern I have is the (apparent) suggestion that grammatical rules, such as 'Bachelors are unmarried men,' can be verified. My concern has to do with the sense in which grammatical rules can be said to be 'true.'

Consider a paradigmatic example of an analytic truth: 'Bachelors are unmarried men.' This is supposed to be true in virtue of the meanings of its terms. That is, 'bachelor' has an antecedent meaning (i.e., antecedent to 'bachelor' being a term in 'Bachelors are unmarried men'), and 'unmarried man' has an antecedent meaning, and because these antecedent meanings are the same, 'Bachelors are unmarried men' is true. We verify the statement by attending to the antecedent meanings of 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man.'

Against this, Wittgenstein holds that statements such as 'Bachelors are unmarried men' are definitions. 'Bachelors are unmarried men' constitutes the meaning of 'bachelor.' Consequently, we cannot verify the statement by attending to the the antecedent meanings of 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man'—'bachelor' doesn't have an antecedent meaning. Thus, as Waismann observes, we cannot say that it is true (or false) that bachelors are unmarried men.

Consider a similar example: 'Fluncibles are unmarried men.' If this is an analytic truth, it is verified by attending to the antecedent meanings of 'fluncible' and 'unmarried man.' But 'fluncible' doesn't have an antecedent meaning. Therefore, the statement cannot be verified by attending to the antecedent meanings of its terms. On the other hand, if the statement is a definition, it constitutes the meaning of 'fluncible.'

Can definitions be verified by attending to the meanings of their terms? Perhaps someone will answer: If 'fluncible' is defined as 'unmarried man,' then surely it has the same meaning as 'unmarried man'; therefore, it is analytically true that fluncibles are unmarried men. Quine says something along these lines in "Two Dogmas":

There does, however, remain an extreme sort of definition which does not hark back to prior synonymies at all; viz., the explicitly conventional introduction of novel notations for purposes of sheer abbreviation. Here the definiendum becomes synonymous with the definiens simply because it has been created expressly for the purpose of being synonymous with the definiens. Here we have a really transparent case of synonymy created by definition; would that all species of synonymy were as intelligible.

Presumably, 'Fluncibles are unmarried men' is such a definition, and therefore, 'Fluncibles are unmarried men' is analytically true. This is confused.

Glock points out that, while we do intelligibly ascribe 'truth' to grammatical rules, "this means no more than that the rule [e.g.] to move the chess king one square at a time is in force." Similarly, the claim that 'Fluncibles are unmarried men' is true does not mean that we verify it. It means that we follow this rule. 'True' is equivocal.

Quine thinks that this sort of definition is rare. Wittgenstein thinks it is ubiquitous. Quine asks, "But how do we find that 'bachelor' is defined as 'unmarried man'? Who defined it thus, and when?" Wittgenstein answers, 'We find that "bachelor" is defined as "unmarried man" by being given this definition'; 'Many people define it thus, whenever they explain the use of "bachelor" in this way.' For Wittgenstein, explanations of rules have the character of stipulative definitions (so long as we understand that definitions are neither true nor false).

If grammatical rules or systems of rules are not verifiable, if they "cannot possibly be refuted by the facts, simply because no sentence contradicting [them] counts as a meaningful description of reality," then it makes no sense to say, as Quine does, that a 'part' of our conceptual scheme "impinges on experience." All experience is already conceptual, i.e., there is no conceptually neutral given.

Linguistic Idealism

2009-05-03T05:25:00.003-05:00

Over at The Space of Reasons, there's an an interesting post on Wittgenstein's 'linguistic idealism.'

Hacker on Williamson's The Philosophy of Philosophy

2009-05-01T16:31:00.004-05:00

Over at Leiter Reports, there's an interesting discussion of Peter Hacker's review of Timothy Williamson's The Philosophy of Philosophy.

Wittgenstein on 'Reddish-Green'

2009-04-29T01:57:00.009-05:00

I've been thinking about about an experiment which purports to establish that there is such a color as 'reddish-green' (see this post). Here's what Wittgenstein has to say on 'reddish-green':

Philosophical Remarks

39. The colour octahedron is grammar, since it says that you can speak of a reddish blue but not of a reddish green, etc.

Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics

39. The proposition 'a = a', '[if] p [then] p', "The word 'Bismarck' has 8 letters", "There is no such thing as reddish-green", are all obvious and are propositions about essence: what have they in common? They are evidently each of a different kind and differently used. The last but one is the most like an empirical proposition. And it can understandably be called a synthetic a priori proposition. It can be said: unless you put the series of numbers and the series of letters side by side, you cannot know how many letters the word has.

Zettel

346. "There is no such thing as a reddish green" is akin to the sentences that we use as axioms in mathematics.

361. And here it is important that e.g. with grey one will get "black and white" for answer, with purple "blue and red", with pink "red and white", but with olive green one will not get "red and green."

362. These people are acquainted with reddish green—"But there is no such thing!"—What an extraordinary sentence.—(How do you know?)

Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, II

422. If I had taught someone to use the names of the six primary colours, and the suffix "ish" then I could give him orders such as "Paint a greenish white here!"—But now I say to him "Paint a reddish green!" I observe his reaction. Maybe he will mix green and red and not be satisfied with the result; finally he may say "There's no such thing as a reddish green."—Analogously I could have gotten him to tell me: "There's no such thing as a regular biangle!", or "There's no such thing as the square root of -25."

428. It is obvious at a glance that we aren't willing to acknowledge anything as a colour intermediate between red and green. (Nor does it matter whether this is always obvious to people, or whether it took experience and education to make it so.) What would we think of people who were acquainted with 'reddish-green' (e.g., who called olive-green by that name)? And what does this mean: "Then they have a different concept of colour altogether"? As if they wanted to say: "Well, then it wouldn't be this but a different concept of colour"—all the while pointing to our own. As if there were an object to which the concept belonged unequivocally.

429. These people are acquainted with reddish green. "But there is no such thing!"--What an extraordinary sentence.—(How do you know?)

Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, I

"Nothing is as common as the colour reddish-green; for nothing is more common than the transition of leaves from green to red." (p. 59)

Remarks on Color

9. Even if green is not an intermediary colour between yellow and blue, couldn't there be people for whom there is bluish-yellow, reddish-green? I.e. people whose colour concepts deviate from ours—because, after all; the colour concepts of colour-blind people too deviate from those of normal people, and not every deviation from the norm must be a blindness, a defect.

10. Someone who has learnt to find or to mix a shade of colour that is more yellowish, more whitish or more reddish, etc., than a given shade of colour, i.e. who knows the concept of intermediary colours, is (now) asked to show us a reddish-green. He may simply not understand this order and perhaps react as though he had first been asked to point out regular four-, five-, and six-angled plane figures, and then were asked to point out a regular one-angled plane figure. But what if he unhesitatingly pointed to a colour sample (say, to one that we would call a blackish brown)?

11. Someone who is familiar with reddish-green should be in a position to produce a colour series which starts with red and ends with green and which perhaps even for us constitutes a continuous transition between the two. We would then discover that at the point where we always see the same shade, e.g. of brown, this person sometimes sees brown and sometimes reddish-green. It may be, for example, that he can differentiate between the colours of two chemical compounds that seem to us to be the same colour and he calls one brown and the other reddish-green.

14. But even if there were also people for whom it was natural to use the expressions "reddish-green" or "yellowish-blue" in a consistent manner and who perhaps also exhibit abilities which we lack, we would still not be forced to recognize that they see colours which we do not see. There is, after all, no commonly accepted criterion for what is a colour, unless it is one of our colours.

21. Runge: "If we were to think of a bluish-orange, a reddish-green, or a yellowish-violet, we would have the same feeling as in the case of a southwesterly northwind.... Both white and Black are opaque or solid.... White water which is pure is as inconceivable as clear milk."

78. There could be people who didn't understand our way of saying that orange is a rather reddish-yellow, and who would only be inclined to say something like that in cases where a transition from yellow through orange to red took place before their eyes. And for such people the expression "reddish-green" need present no difficulties.

30. Ask this question: Do you know what "reddish" means? And how do you show that you know it? Language-games: "Point to a reddish yellow (white, blue, brown)—"Point to an even more reddish one"--"A less reddish one" etc.

Now that you've mastered this game you will be told "Point to a somewhat reddish green" Assume there are two cases: Either you do point to a colour (and always the same one), perhaps to an olive green—or you say, "I don't know what that means," or "There's no such thing." We might be inclined to say that the one person had a different colour concept from the other; or a different concept of '... ish.'

122. How can I describe to someone how we use the word "tomorrow"? I can teach it to a child; but this does not mean I'm describing its use to him. But can I describe the practice of people who have a concept, e.g. 'reddish-green', that we don't possess?—In any case I certainly can't teach this practice to anyone.

123. Can I then only say: "These people call this (brown, for example) reddish green"? Wouldn't it then just be another word for something that I have a word for? If they really have a different concept than I do, this must be shown by the fact that I can't quite figure out their use of words.

What's Red and Green All Over?

2009-04-27T08:58:00.001-05:00

Something, apparently. Follow the link.

Under Hidden Lock and Key

2009-04-26T16:01:00.004-05:00

For if a book has been written for only a few readers that will be clear just from the fact that only a few understand it. The book must automatically separate those who understand it & those who do not. The foreword too is written just for such as understand the book.

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it. (That so often happens with someone you love.)

If you do not want certain people to get into a room, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But it is senseless to talk with them about it, unless you want them all the same to admire the room from outside! The decent thing to do is: put a lock on the doors that attracts only those who are able to open it & is not noticed by the rest. (Culture and Value, p. 10; from November of 1930)

New Wittgenstein Blog

2009-04-26T08:21:00.002-05:00

Ákos Polgárdi has a new blog titled "The View From Inside: Notes on Wittgenstein."

Kripke on the Standard Meter

2009-04-22T15:11:00.006-05:00

In Naming and Necessity, Kripke discusses Wittgenstein's example of the standard meter in Paris:

Another sort of example in the literature is that one meter is to be the length of S where S is a certain stick or bar in Paris. [...]

Wittgenstein says something very puzzling about this. He says: 'There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one meter long, nor that it is not one meter long, and that is the standard meter in Paris. But this is, of course, not to ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language-game of measuring with a meter-rule.' This seems to be a very 'extraordinary property', actually, for any stick to have. I think he must be wrong. [...] Anyway, let's suppose that he is wrong and that the stick is one meter long. Part of the problem which is bothering Wittgenstein is, of course, that the stick serves as a standard of length and so we can't attribute length to it. Be this as it may (well, it may not be), is the statement 'stick S is one meter long', a necessary truth? Of course its length might vary in time. We could make the definition more precise by stipulating that one meter is to be the length of S at a fixed time t. Is it then a necessary truth that stick S is one meter long at time t? Someone who thinks that everything one knows a priori is necessary might think: 'This is the definition of a meter. By definition, stick S is one meter long at t. That's a necessary truth.' But there seems to me to be no reason so to conclude, even for a man who uses the stated definition 'one meter'. For he's using this definition not to give the meaning of what he called the 'meter', but to fix the reference. (For such an abstract thing as a unit of length, the notion of reference may be unclear. But let's suppose it's clear enough for present purposes.) He uses it to fix a reference. There is a certain length which he wants to mark out. He marks it out by an accidental property, namely that there is a stick of that length. Someone else might mark out the same reference by another accidental property. But in any case, even though he uses this to fix the reference of his standard length, a meter, he can still say, 'if heat had been applied to this stick S at t, then at t stick S would not have been one meter long.'

Even if this is the only standard of length that he uses, there is an intuitive difference between the phrase 'one meter' and 'the length of S at t'. The first phrase is meant to designate rigidly a certain length in all possible worlds, which in the actual world happens to be the length of stick S at t. On the other hand, 'the length of S at t' does not designate anything rigidly. In some counterfactual situations the stick might have been longer and in some shorter, if various stresses and strains had been applied to it. So we can say of this stick, the same way as we would of any other of the same substance and length, that if heat of a given quantity had been applied to it, it would have expanded to such and such a length. Such a counterfactual statement, being true of other sitcks with identical physical properties, will also be true of this stick. There is no conflict between the counterfactual statement and the definition 'one meter' as 'the length of S at t', because the 'definition', properly interpreted, does not say that the phrase 'one meter' is to be synonymous (even when talking about counterfactual situations) with the phrase 'the length of S at t', but rather that we have determined the reference of the phrase 'one meter' by stipulating that 'one meter' is to be a rigid designator of the length which is in fact the length of S at t. So this does not make it a necessary truth that S is one meter long at t. In fact, under certain circumstances, S would not have been one meter long. The reason is that one designator ('one meter') is rigid and the other designator ('the length of S at t') is not.

What then, is the epistemological status of the statement 'Stick S is one meter long at t', for someone who has fixed the metric system by reference to stick S? It would seem that he knows it a priori. For if he used stick S to fix the ference of the term 'one meter', then as a result of this kind of 'definition' (which is not an abbreviation or synonymous definition), he knows automatically, without any further investigation, that S is one meter long. [...] So in this sense, there are contingent a priori truths. (pp.54-6)

Notice that Kripke simply ignores Wittgenstein's point, namely, that the stick is neither one meter long nor not one meter long because it is itself the standard by which we determine whether something is or is not one meter long. Kripke supposes that it is a meter long, and then proceeds to argue that its being a meter long is an a priori contingent truth. This supposition is based on a confusion about what serves as the standard of measurement. For Wittgenstein, the bar in Paris is the standard. For Kripke, a certain length (which the bar happens to have) is the standard.

The confusion is nicely illustrated by Cora Diamond (in her "How Long is the Standard Meter in Paris?"). Diamond imagines an example involving the present height of Susan. It is possible to compare Susan's present height with her future height. It is also possible to compare Susan's present height with how tall she would have been at present if she had taken her vitamins (i.e., she would have been taller than she is, if she had taken her vitamins). One way to do this is to use Susan's present height as the standard of measurement. If we call this standard the 'Susan-meter,' we can say that, if she had taken her vitamins, she would have been taller than a Susan-meter. Equipped with this unit of measurement, we may be tempted to also say that Susan is presently a Susan-meter tall. This is likely to mislead us:

[T]he representation of Susan's actual situation could be misleading. It is an example of the kind of representation Wittgenstein speaks of as 'reflexive'. We are considering Susan's height, but not, in this picture, considering it in comparison with anything else; but we nevertheless regard it as a special case of a comparison. We are not comparing her height with that of another child, or with what her height will be, or with what it might have been; we are, as it were, reading her height off her, and seeing her as fitting it: she is just that height. We compare her with her height; they fit exactly. (p. 119)

Wittgenstein mentions a similar example in the Philosophical Investigations:

Imagine someone saying: "But I know how tall I am!" and laying his hand on top of his head to prove it. (§279)

Diamond comments,

The case is not changed if the person who says this also says that his height defines a new unit of length, the W, and that he is exactly one W tall. This match between him and the length one W is not the result of a comparison made within some practice of comparing the heights of people with that of other people and with other things. Kripke's idea of the a priori knowability of the statement that stick S is one meter long at t is parallel to the a priori knowability of the boy's being one W tall, and that case is like the absurd case of laying one's hand on top of one's head to give one's height. (pp. 119-20)

For Kripke, it is a priori (though contingent) that the stick is one meter long. This is significant. Kripke does not hold that there is a certain length (one that we have in mind beforehand) which we compare with the stick to see if it is that length. If he did, he could not hold that we know a priori that the stick is one meter long. We know a priori that the stick is one meter long because one meter is, by definition, the length that the stick has. In other words, we know a priori that the stick has the length it has. But this is an empty attribution of length. There is no such thing as the length of a stick being measured by its own length. The claim that the stick is one meter long is confused.

Quote of the Day

2009-04-20T14:05:00.007-05:00

In much contemporary philosophy of language, 'reflexive' examples are treated as if they were not themselves possible indications of philosophical fishiness. By "Schnee," we say, the Germans mean snow, by "snow" we mean snow. A transitive use is put first to make our intransitive use appear like a special case of the transitive use. Or we have: "Schnee ist weiss" is true-in-German if and only if snow is white. My argument in this part of the paper has been that we should bethink ourselves of the similarity between saying "I know what the sentence 'Snow is white' means, it means that snow is white" and saying "I know how tall I am, this tall!" while laying one's hand on one's head [cf. Philosophical Investigations, §279]. The emphasis on "this tall" doesn't make the words and gesture give one's knowledge of one's height; mental concentration on white snow (or something else) doesn't make the words "It means that snow is white" state something about meaning that one knows. My height can be used to give you someone else's height, an English sentence to give you the meaning of a German one, or of another English sentence, but repeating a sentence and taking its quotes off is putting your hand on your own head. (Cora Diamond, "How Long Is the Standard Meter in Paris?" in Wittgenstein in America, pp. 131-2)