Davidson and Meaning

Davidson's "The Social Aspect of Language" is required reading for anyone trying to get a handle on "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs." After reading the two together, I am fairly convinced that Davidson's central thesis in these papers—that a shared 'language' is neither neccessary nor sufficient for linguistic communication—is correct. (It should be noted that the correctness of this thesis in no way impairs Wittgensteinian/Rylean/Hackerian-style conceptual analysis; it's still possible to make category mistakes, and consequently, to speak nonsense.) However, there are other issues in SAL that give me pause (and I am not sure how these relate to the 'central thesis'). Primarily, I am concerned with Davidson's view of meaning. I'll voice my concerns by considering Davidson's comments (in SAL) about Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty Dumpty says to Alice, "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." Apparently, Dummett accused Davidson of having Humpty Dumpty's theory of meaning. Davidson responds,

What should we say of the many cases in which a speaker expects, or hopes, to be understood in a certain way but isn't? I can't see that it matters. If we bear in mind that the notion of meaning is a theoretical concept which can't explain communication but depends on it, we can harmlessly relate it to successful communication in whatever ways we find convenient. So, if a speaker reasonably believes he will be interpreted in a certain way, and speaks with the intention of being so understood, we may choose to say he means what (in the primary sense) he would have meant if he had been understood as he expected and intended. Reasonable belief is itself such a flexible concept that we may want to add that there must be people who would understand the speaker as he intends, and the speaker reasonably believes he is speaking to such a person. Further refinements suggest themselves. But the point remains; the concept of meaning would have no application if there were not endless cases of successful communication, and any further use we give to the notion of meaning depends on the existence of such cases. These remarks should make plain why Dummett's accusation, that I endorse a variety of Humpty Dumpty's thoery that meaning depends only on intention, does not find its target.

(1) The notion of meaning is a theoretical concept which can't explain communication but depends on it.

What is being communicated if not the speaker's meaning? His utterance doesn't wait on successful communication to acquire meaning. It is already meaningful, and communication occurs if the hearer understands its meaning. So it's not clear to me in what sense meaning depends on communication.

(2) If a speaker reasonably believes he will be interpreted in a certain way, and speaks with the intention of being so understood, we may choose to say he means what (in the primary sense) he would have meant if he had been understood as he expected and intended.

If the meaning of an utterance is dependent on successful communication, does failure to communicate deprive the speaker's utterance of meaning? Davidson's remark appears to be an answer to this question. The answer: A speaker's utterance has meaning "in the primary sense" only if communication occurs. If communication does not occur, a speaker's utterance can have meaning only in some other derivative sense. Davidson explains the latter by saying that he 'means' what he would have meant if communication had occurred.

Daniel doesn't think this is the correct reading of Davidson's remark:

I don't think this is quite right. As your scare-quotes indicate, where a speaker isn't understood the "meaning" attributed to his utterance isn't his meaning at all; what is attributed to the utterance is something it doesn't mean. It's not what he meant secondarily; it's a "meaning" that just is not what he was trying to get across at all. [...] Whether or not an utterance is understood doesn't change its meaning, but only changes what its hearers take to be its meaning. But when an utterance is understood, what its hearers take its meaning to be is just the meaning that it has. So where a speaker is not understood, the meaning of his utterance can only be given by an interpreter who understands him, but it's just the meaning that it is whether or not it's understood. So I don't think your gloss on the passage is quite right, and I kinda wish Davidson hadn't added that parenthetical, since I don't think it actually makes his point clearer.

I agree that the hearer's misunderstanding doesn't change the original meaning of the speaker's utterance. But I don't think this is to the point. The question which Davidson is answering is: Does the speaker's utterance have any meaning if communication doesn't occur (i.e., if it's misunderstood or not understood at all). And his answer is: Sort of. It has meaning in a derivative sense. This is puzzling.

(3) Reasonable belief is itself such a flexible concept that we may want to add that there must be people who would understand the speaker as he intends, and the speaker reasonably believes he is speaking to such a person.

Here's where Humpty Dumpty comes in. Humpty Dumpty claimed to have meant "There's a nice knock-down argument for you" by his utterance "There's glory for you." His utterance wasn't understood, but that in itself isn't enough to rule out that he did in fact 'mean' (in the secondary sense) the former by the latter. What rules this out, according to Davidson, is that he did not (or could not) reasonably believe that Alice would interpret him to mean the former by the latter. In other words, if he had reasonably believed that Alice would so interpret his utterance, then even if communication had not occurred, he would still have 'meant' the former by the latter.

After pondering it a bit, I think Davidson's appropriation of Donnellan is correct. So there's no problem with Humpty Dumpty; as Davidson says, he's out. What interests me is Davidson's comments about meaning. I don't really know what to make of them, but my intuition is that something is amiss here.

Harré on Baker

In his review of Wittgenstein and His Interpreters, Rom Harré (Georgetown) writes,

By way of halting the slide among commentators toward the Bakerian position Peter Hacker systematically dismantles the grounds that Baker offered over the years for denying that Wittgenstein had an interest in philosophical arguments that would be of general significance. Some of Hacker's strictures turn on ways that Baker misunderstood and misinterpreted Frederick Waismann. Having known Waismann pretty well and having attended his classes during 1954-56 I can confirm from first hand how far Waismann was from the 'therapy only' position. More directly Hacker demolishes the claim that Wittgenstein was creating a kind of intellectualist parallel to Freudian psychotherapy. There simply is no evidence for it. Another and perhaps more significant point for those of us who teach Wittgenstein's philosophy to psychologists is Baker's extraordinary claim that Wittgenstein was not interested in displaying category mistakes of the kind Ryle identified in such a telling way. Of course Wittgenstein was! There can be no doubt that 'logical geography' was a large part of his technique. Baker came into the Oxford scene after the heyday of 'Oxford Philosophy' and somehow slipped into a familiar misunderstanding — ordinary language was not the touchstone of philosophical clarity — but it was the manifestation of conceptual systems that were actually put to work. Neither Austin nor Ryle, any more than Wittgenstein, had any pretensions to a 'theory of meaning'.

Of course, I couldn't agree more.

Philosophy Video

Our friend over at YouTube has been busy. He's recently added video of

Michael Ayers on Locke and Berkeley
Antony Quinton on Spinoza and Leibniz
John Passmore on Hume
Geoffrey Warnock on Kant
Peter Singer on Hegel and Marx
J. P. Stern on Nietzsche
Hubert Dreyfus on Husserl and Heidegger
and an interview of Jacques Derrida

These join video of

Frederick Copleston on Schopenhauer
Sidney Morgenbesser on the American Pragmatists
A. J. Ayer on Frege and Russell
A. J. Ayer on Logical Positivism
Antony Quinton on Wittgenstein
John Searle on Wittgenstein
Hilary Putnam on the Philosophy of Science
John Searle on the Philosophy of Language
and an interview with W. V. O. Quine

Book Reviews

2008 Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews reviews of books on Wittgenstein:

The Early Wittgenstein on Religion

Paradox and Platitude in Wittgenstein's Philosophy

Thought's Footing: A Theme in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

Wittgenstein's Apprenticeship with Russell

Wittgenstein and Ethical Inquiry: A Defense of Ethics as Clarification

Wittgenstein and His Interpreters

Another Wittgenstein(ish) Blog

Anderson Brown's Philosophy Blog. Anderson Brown is a philosophy professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez.

Dinner and Davidson

I'm still pondering "The Social Aspect of Language" (There's a lot to ponder. Davidson explicitly responds to Investigations §202. I've been thinking about how he would respond to §508. I'm also puzzled by his distinction between meaning in the primary and secondary senses; he doesn't actually mention meaning in the secondary sense, but it's implied by his mention of meaning in the primary sense. Finally, I'm concerned about his talk of a "mental act or state" in connection with interpretation.) But a question just occurred to me at the dinner table that I wanted to pose: What about my two-year-old?

I have a very precocious two-year-old. He has the language skills of an average three-year-old. He knows his colors, letters, animals, artifacts, a few songs, etc. He speaks (incessantly) in complete sentences: giving descriptions, asking questions, giving orders, etc. Nevertheless, I'm quite certain that, as a speaker, he doesn't have multiple prior theories (that are audience specific). His language skills aren't that sophisticated. He talks the same way for all audiences (whereas, my five-year-old will sometimes talk like a 'baby' to toddlers, for example). Furthermore, I'm pretty convinced that he doesn't have a prior theory at all. That is, he has no beliefs whatsoever about how his utterances will be understood. He simply speaks.

If that's right, what consequences (if any) does this have for Davidson's account? Well, we would have an instance of linguistic communication that, for one of the participants, doesn't involve interpretation (I remember Davidson saying that the speaker is also an interpreter). It also seems to me that, if we can't talk about prior theories, it makes no sense to talk about passing theories.

So what is going on with my two-year-old? I think the only explanation we can give here is in terms of convention. He has mastered a technique for various simple language-games. And his words have meaning because they are regularly used in the context of such practices. Communication only occurs because he shares those linguistic practices with his parents. And here, it seems, convention cannot be removed. A child cannot learn a language ex nihilo. It must be taught, and the language it learns will be the language of its teacher(s). Thus, a speaker necessarily (for humans, anyway) shares a language with its teacher(s). And a young child has nothing to rely on but convention until it has reached a fairly advanced level of linguistic sophistication.

Just throwing this against the wall to see if anything sticks.

[Addendum: We can make the example more pointed by imagining a conversation between two such two-year-olds, twins.]

Quote of the Week

241. "So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?"—It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.

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. (Philosophical Investigations)

More Davidson

I started to read "The Social Aspect of Language," and immediately recognized that this should be read with "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs," and before attempting to criticize the latter. I was able to glean that from the first four pages, and then, sadly, Google decided to start skipping pages (if anyone has this in .pdf, I wouldn't mind receiving a copy in my e-mail).

Then it occurred to me that, while I'm at it, I should just go ahead and get a handle on a good chunk of Davidson. So, over the Summer, in addition to the usual Wittgenstein-related content (which, no doubt, there will be a little less of), I'll be posting frequently on Davidson. I will start with "The Social Aspect of Language," and then I was thinking about taking a look at the articles Duck mentioned:

"In Defense of Convention T," "Radical Interpretation," and "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," taken together, on the one hand, and "Three Varieties of Knowledge," "The Myth of the Subjective," and "Meaning, Truth, and Evidence" (ditto) on the other.

If there is a more advisable path, I'm open to suggestions. Incidentally, of the 13 articles by Davidson on JSTOR, and the five in the Martinich anthology, none of those six are among them.

New Blog

The title appears to be "Frames/sing." Some interesting content. The author writes of his blog: "It is hard to describe what is going on here. I am a novelist, (and a poet), who takes philosophy very seriously." His philosophical interests "began out of a love of Deleuze and Guattari" which lead to

a variety of footnote tracing studies which has gone quite far from their source. An engagement with Lacan, deep readings in Continental Feminist philosophy, and a concurrent reading European literature followed; and then came Spinoza–it is hard to trace the full lineage of a thought–whose philosophy has subsumed the entire project of discovery: and I stand on both sides of the Spinoza aisle, reading richly both those of the Della Rocca and the Negri strain. To this Spinozism, came a love (and criticism) of Wittgenstein, an appreciation of American Pragmatism, and lastly, the recognition of how the philosophy of Donald Davidson gives a contemporary grammar for the concerns and metaphysics that Spinoza engaged, bringing the Analytic and Continental schools into communication. Rorty was an initial guide in this. All this is combined with an over-riding love for the study of Ancient Greek language, philosophy and literature, and seems to have produced a comprehensive and sociological view of metaphysics, one that not only maintains a Social Theory and critique, but also Autopoietic, cybernetic conceptions of life.

Davidson's "Derangement"

One of my favorite movies from my youth is The Princess Bride. And one of my favorite scenes from that movie involves Vizzini's use of the word 'inconceivable'.

Vizzini: He didn't fall? Inconceivable.
Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Having read Donald Davidson's "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs," it seems that Inigo was just a poor interpreter. Had he made better adjustments to his passing theory instead of wrongly supposing that the word 'inconceivable' has a meaning about which Vizzini could be mistaken, there might have been a successful linguistic exchange.

Davidson concludes his essay with the provocative conclusion that

there is no such thing as a language, not if language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.

What is this view of 'language' that many philosophers and linguists have supposed to be correct and that Davidson rejects? It is the view that the literal meaning of a speaker's utterance (what Davidson calls the "primary" meaning, i.e., the meaning that a speaker intends his utterance to have) is constrained by the linguistic convention(s) (conventional meaning) of the language community to which he belongs. Davidson spells this out by considering three "plausible principles concerning first meaning in language":

(1) First meaning is systematic. A competent speaker or interpreter is able to interpret utterances, his own or those of others, on the basis of the semantic properties of the parts, or words, in the utterance, and the structure of the utterance. For this to be possible there must be systematic relations between the meanings of utterances.
(2) First meanings are shared. For speaker and interpreter to communicate successfully and regularly, there, they must share a method of interpretation of the sort described in (1).
(3) First meanings are governed by learned conventions or regularities. The systematic knowledge or competence of the speaker or interpreter is learned in advance of occasions of interpretation and is conventional in character.

Davidson doesn't seem to have any significant objections to (1) or (2); "it is only when they are combined with principle (3) that there is trouble." Davidson argues that (3) is neither necessary nor sufficient for succesful verbal communication, and therefore, should be rejected. He arrives at this conclusion by considering examples in which we do understand what a speaker means even though he (the speaker) uses words in an unconventional way. One such example is the title of the essay: 'A nice derangement of epitaphs.' This line is uttered by Mrs. Malaprop in the play, The Rivals. In Act III, Scene iii, she says to Captain Absolute:

There, sir, an attack upon my language! what do you think of that?—an aspersion upon my parts of speech! was ever such a brute! Sure, if I reprehend any thing in this world it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!

Davidson takes examples like this one to show that literal meaning and conventional meaning, though they are often coextensive, are nevertheless distinct. The conventional meaning of 'a nice derangement of epitaphs' is 'a nice derangement of epitaphs.' The literal meaning, the meaning that Mrs. Malaprop intends, is 'a nice arrangement of epithets.' The fact that we are able to understand Mrs. Malaprop's literal meaning "without difficulty" shows that shared conventions are not necessary for understanding.

Davidson wants to distinguish Mrs. Malaprop's utterance from another kind exemplified by a line from Humpty Dumpty's conversation with Alice (in Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 5):

'I mean, what is an un-birthday present?'
'A present given when it isn't your birthday, of course.'
Alice considered a little. 'I like birthday presents best,' she said at last.
'You don't know what you're talking about!' cried Humpty Dumpty. 'How many days are there in a year?'
'Three hundred and sixty-five,' said Alice.
'And how many birthdays have you?'
'One.'
'And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five what remains?'
'Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.'
Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. 'I'd rather see that done on paper,' he said.
Alice couldn't help smiling as she took out her memorandum book, and worked the sum for him:
Humpty Dumpty took the book and looked at it carefully. 'That seems to be done right—' he began.
'You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted.
'To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily as she turned it round for him. 'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—'
'Certainly,' said Alice.
'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'

Humpty Dumpty is claiming that his utterance "There's glory for you" literally means 'There's a nice knock-down argument for you.' Davidson disagrees. Following Donnellan ("Putting Humpty Dumpty Together Again"), he holds that "intentions are connected with expectations and that you cannot intend to accomplish something by a certain means unless you believe or expect that the means will, or at least could, lead to the desired outcome. A speaker cannot, therefore, intend to mean something by what he says unless he believes his audience will interpret his words as he intends." Thus,

Humpty Dumpty is out of it. He cannot mean what he says because he knows that 'There's glory for you' cannot be interpreted by Alice as meaning 'There's a nice knockdown argument for you'. We know he knows this because Alice says 'I don't know what you mean by "glory"', and Humpty Dumpty retorts, 'Of course you don't—til I tell you'.

Davidson is not concerned with Humpty-Dumpty-like deviations from convention. Rather, he's concerned with deviations (whether by accident or on purpose) that can be understood by the audience.

Let's consider an intentionally unconventional use of words. Later in this post, after I finish describing Davidson's position, I will venture a few objections. Suppose, in the comments, someone argues against my objections. Further suppose that I present a counter-argument, and then end my reply with the sentence "There's glory for you" (Donnellen does this to MacKay in the linked article). Davidson would say of me,

not only he, but his words, are correctly interpreted as meaning 'There's a nice knock-down argument for you'. That's how he intends us to interpret his words, and we know this since we have, and he knows we have, and we know he knows we have (etc.), the background needed to provide the interpretation.

What, according to Davidson, is going on here? At this point, we need to introduce his distinction between prior and passing theory:

For the hearer, the prior theory expresses how he is prepared to in advance to interpret an utterance of the speaker, while the passing theory is how he does interpret the utterance. For the speaker, the prior theory is what he believes the interpreter's prior theory to be, while his passing theory is the theory he intends the interpreter to use.

So, suppose that you've never read Lewis Carroll or heard of Humpty Dumpty's conversation with Alice. You are prepared to interpret an occurrence of the word 'glory' as meaning what it ordinarily does. This fact about your disposition concerning the word 'glory' (along with a whole lot of other dispositions concerning other words) constitutes your prior theory. Of course, as you read the conversation between Humpty Dumpty and Alice, you revise your prior theory accordingly. And when I say to someone in the comments "There's glory for you," you will interpret me as saying that I've just presented a knock-down argument. The revised theory is your passing theory. Davidson summarizes the process as follows:

The interpreter comes to the occasion of utterance armed with a thoery that tells him (or so he believes) what an arbitrary utterance of the speaker means. The speaker then says something with the intention that it will be interpreted in a certain way, and the expectation that it will be so interpreted. In fact this way is not provided for by the interpreter's theory. But the speaker is nevertheless understood; the interpreter adjusts his theory so it yields the speaker's intended interpretation.

What is both necessary and sufficient for communication is that speaker and hearer share, not their prior theories, but their passing theories. And given that passing theories are unconventional, linguistic conventions cannot be necessary or sufficient for communication. Therefore, if language is a shared system of conventions that is necessary and sufficient for communication, "there is no such thing as a language." (Of course, Davidson thinks there is also a great deal of divergence between people's prior theories, e.g., Mrs. Malaprop and I have different dispositions concering the word 'glory'; this further undermines the philosopher's and linguist's view of language).

As I've been thinking about this, a few objections and concerns have occurred to me:

(1) (a) Despite the disclaimers, the use of 'theory' bothers me. (b) I'm also wary of 'intention.' I'm sure Davidson has much more to say about intentionality, but nothing is hinted at in "Derangement." There it could easily be mistaken for the idea that a special sort of mental act were the source of meaning. And Davidson's answer to Humpty Dumpty doesn't seem to help (see below).

(2) For Davidson, is some interpretation unconscious? If not, then I think his position is manifestly false. I hardly ever interpret utterances to discover what they mean. I simply understand them. Or is 'interpretation' like 'theory,' i.e., it can be replaced by talk of dispositions.

(3) (a) Humpty Dumpty claims that his words mean whatever he chooses. Davidson replies that Humpty Dumpty's words mean what he chooses only if he believes that his audience will or could interpret them as he intends. Is it belief or justified belief that's required? What if Humpty Dumpty is really bad at figuring out what's needed for another to catch his meaning? Thus, he may be mistaken in his belief that they will or could interpret his words as he intends. (b) And what sort of possibility is required? Is it enough if it's logically possible that the hearer interprets his words as he intends? (c) Consider the following counter-example of Dummett's (in "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs: Some Comments on Davidson and Hacking"; quoted in Catherine Talmage, "Davidson and Humpty Dumpty"):

In Top Hat, the character played by Eric Blore addresses a string of insults in English to an Italian policeman, and is dismayed to find that he has been understood.

Davidson replies to Dummett's example (in "The Structure and Content of Truth"; also quoted in Talmage):

Someone may say something that would normally be offensive or insulting in a language he believes his hearers do not understand; but in this case his audience for the purpose of interpretation is obviously just the speaker himself.

I think the notion that I interpret my own utterances is confused. It also seems that, when I (and no one else) am my own audience, I can mean anything by any utterance because there isn't any possibility that I won't correctly interpret myself. Here intention does start to look like a special mental act.

(4) Davidson writes,

But the passing theory cannot in general correspond to an interpreter's linguistic competence. [...] Nor could such a language, if we want to call it that, be said to have been learned, or to be governed by conventions. Of course things previously learned were essential to arriving at the passing theory, but what was learned could not have been the passing theory.

[...] when a word or phrase temporarily or locally takes over the role of some other word or phrase (as treated in a prior theory, perhaps), the entire burden of that role, wit all its implications for logical relations to other words, phrases, and sentences, must be carried along by the passing theory. Someone who grasps the fact that Mrs. Malaprop means 'epithet' when she says 'epitaph' must give 'epithet' [sic] all the powers 'epitaph' [sic] has for many other people.

As an aside, I don't know if the 'typo' ('epithet' and 'epitaph' should be reversed) is in the original or just in my reprint. It would be brilliant if it were in the original (either accidentally or intentionally).

I'm not quite sure, but these statements seem to undermine Davidson's claim that linguistic conventions aren't necessary and sufficient for communication. First, it seems that Davidson (like Quine) is too taken with the kind of communication that the field linguist engages in. It is not at all obvious to me that the kind of communication that occurs between me and my brother is different from radical interpretation by degree and not by kind. Obviously, conventions aren't necessary for all communication; otherwise, radically new langauge could not be understood, and children would never learn to speak. But, for the most part, speaking with another English speaker doesn't involve interpretation.

Second, if a (mostly) shared prior theory is essential for reaching a shared passing theory, isn't that because we understand the latter in terms of the former? Consider the following example from the Blue Book:

What if the diviner tells us that when he holds the rod he feels that the water is five feet under the ground? or that he feels that a mixture of copper and gold is five feet under the ground? Suppose that to our doubts he answered: "You can estimate a length when you see it. Why shouldn't I have a different way of estimating it?"

If we understand the idea of such an estimation, we shall get clear about the nature of our doubts about the statements of the diviner, and of the man who said he felt the visual image behind the bridge of his nose.

[...] To the statement "I feel in my hand that the water is three feet under the ground" we should like to answer: "I don't know what this means". But the diviner would say: "Surely you know what it means. You know what 'three feet under the ground' means, and you know what 'I feel' means!" But I should answer him: I know what a word means in certain contexts. Thus I understand the phrase, "three feet under the ground", say, in the connections "The measurement has shown that the water runs three feet under the ground", "If we dig three feet deep we are going to strike water", "The depth of the water is three feet by the eye". But the use of the expression "a feeling in my hands of water being three feet under the ground" has yet to be explained to me.

We could ask the diviner "how did you learn the meaning of the word 'three feet'? We suppose by being shown such lengths, by having measured them and such like. Were you also taught to talk of a feeling of water being three feet under the ground, a feeling, say, in your hands? For if not, what made you connect the word 'three feet' with a feeling in your hand?" Supposing we had been estimating lengths by the eye, but had never spanned a length. How could we estimate a length in inches by spanning it? I.e., how could we interpret the experience of spanning in inches? The question is: what connection is there between, say, a tactual sensation and the experience of measuring a thing by means of a yard rod? This connection will show us what it means to 'feel that a thing is six inches long'. Supposing the diviner said "I have never learnt to correlate depth of water under the ground with feelings in my hand, but when I have a certain feeling of tension in my hands, the words 'three feet' spring up in my mind." We should answer "This is a perfectly good explanation of what you mean by 'feeling the depth to be three feet', and the statement that you feel this will have neither more, nor less, meaning than your explanation has given it. And if experience shows that the actual depth of the water always agrees with the words 'n feet' which come into your mind, your experience will be very useful for determining the depth of water".—But you see that the meaning of thewords "I feel the depth of the water to be n feet" had to be explained; it was not known when the meaning of the words "n feet" in the ordinary sense (i.e. in the ordinary contexts) was known.—We don't say that the man who tells us he feels the visual image two inches behind the bridge of his nose is telling a lie or talking nonsense. But we say that we don't understand the meaning of such a phrase. It combines well-known words, but combines them in a way we don't yet understand. The grammar of this phrase has yet to be explained to us.

Here's a similar comment from the Philosophical Remarks:

It cannot be proved that it is nonsense to say of a colour that it is a semitone higher than another. I can only say 'If anyone uses words with the meanings that I do, then he can connect no sense with this combination. If it makes sense to him, he must understand something different by these words from what I do.'

We would understand, if the person explained that he meant 'shade' be 'semitone' and 'brighter' by 'higher', as we understood Humpty Dumpty when he said he meant 'knock-down argument' by 'glory.' Notice that it is explanations in terms of words that have their conventional meanings which brings us to understand the unconventional uses. This seems to be supported by Davidson's claim (in the second quotation) that Mrs. Malaprop's use of 'epitaph' takes over the role of a word with its ordinary meaning, i.e., it assumes it's logial properties.

*There's a lot more to be said about this last point (and what I've said so far, may not be that clear), but I'm getting tired and losing focus. Rather than wait until later, I'll go ahead and post this now. I can hash out the remaining details in the comments.

Lepore on Davidson and Dummett

I'm working on a post on Davidson's "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" which should be done today or tomorrow. In connection with this, I've been reading a bit of the secondary literature on "Nice Derangement" (including an interesting article by Catherine Talmage, "Davidson and Humpty Dumpty"). The most helpful has been Ernest Lepore's "The Reality of Language," which discusses the exchange between Davidson and Dummett. Lepore also has a few other articles on Davidson posted on his webpage.

Alterman Reviews Rosenthal's "Consciousness and Mind"

I was reading reviews on Amazon and came across this one of David Rosenthal's Consciousness and Mind by Anton Alterman of Brain Scam. Hopefully, this is an omen of Anton's return to the blogosphere.

Quote of the Week

"Primary colour" and "colour" are pseudo-concepts. It is nonsense to say "Red is a colour," and to say "There are four primary colours" is the same as to say "There are red, blue, green, and yellow." The pseudo-concept (colour) draws a boundary of language, the concept proper (red) draws a boundary in language.

To all this it may be objected "But you are talking about colour (and similar terms) all the time." To this objection the answer is that what we are doing is giving the grammatical rules and conventions applying to colour, etc. To which it may be further objected, "Are you then talking of 'mere convention', of mere convention in the sense that the rules of chess or any other game are 'mere convention'?" Grammar is certainly not merely the conventions of a game in this sense, the game of language. What distinguishes language from a game in this sense is its application to reality. This application is not shown in grammar; the application of the signs is outside the signs, the picture does not contain its own application. Language is connected with reality by picturing it, but that connection cannot be made in language, explained by language. (Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1930-1932: From the Notes of John King and Desmond Lee, p. 12; these notes are from Wittgenstein's class on March 3, 1930)

My New Blog

Well, I'm just going to assume that it's O.K. to quote and translate MS 105 until someone tells me otherwise. Instead of adding to the clutter here, I've decided to make a new blog, Philosophische Bemerkungen. I've put a link to it in the "Wittgenstein(ish) Blogs" section.

Fair Use

I've been thinking about posting translations of MS 105 (the first notebook that Wittgenstein wrote after returning to Cambridge in 1929) both to work on my German and to get a better idea of what Wittgenstein's concerns were at that time. I thought I might translate a notebook entry every other day, and then post them (so as to receive corrections on the translation and comments on the philosophy). However, I don't know whether I'm permitted to do this. First, the German I'd be posting would be copied from the Bergen Electronic Edition of Wittgenstein's Nachlass. Second, I'd be 'publishing' a translation of MS 105. I think that any publication of a translation of part of Wittgenstein's Nachlass has to be approved by the 'descendents' of Wittgenstein's literary executors (I don't know what they're called, but the group consists of Hacker, Schulte, McGuinness, and someone else who I can't remember).

Question: if I were to comment on the translations that I post, would that remove these obstacles?

Wittgenstein Conference in Italy

Found out about this one late. The conference is titled "Wittgensteinian Uncertainties," and is being held at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and the University of Bologna this Friday and Saturday, respectively. Here's the program:

Friday the 9th

10.15-11.45 ­– Hans-Johan Glock (Zurich)
"Meaning and concepts in On Certainty"

12-00-13.30 ­– Paolo Leonardi (Bologna)
"Knowledge and Justification"

15.00-16.30 ­– Duncan Pritchard (Edinburgh)
"The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism. What Wittgenstein Saw and Austin Missed"

17.00-18.30­ – Annalisa Coliva (Modena)
"Was Wittgenstein an Epistemic Relativist?"

Saturday the 10th

10.15-11.45 ­– Alberto Voltolini (Reggio Emilia)
"Wittgenstein's Naturalism?"

12.00-13.30 ­– Daniele Moyal-Sharrock (Hertfordshire)
"Wittgenstein's Hinges"

Not including the sessions at the Pacific APA and the postgraduate conference at UEA, that brings the total of Wittgenstein conferences in 2008 to twelve.

Two New Blogs

Well, it's really one new blog and one kind of new blog.

The latter is David Price's Language Games. It's moved back to its previous address, so update your readers.

The former is Making Sense of Wittgenstein. It's run by Neil Clarke, a graduate student at the University of Leeds who's writing on Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein's Influence

A few days ago I read an article criticizing someone I'd never heard of because he had criticized Andrew Sullivan, someone I had heard of but don't care much about. After a couple of relevant comments on the article, the conversation suddenly and inexplicably turned to the question of Wittgenstein's influence on past and present analytic philosophy. A commentor claimed that Wittgenstein, through his "baleful" influence on analytic philosophy, had replaced "real philosophy" with "wallowing" in "arid" language-games. The article's author responded

To the extent that Wittgenstein ever exerted a significant influence over the direction of analytic philosophy, it was the Tractatus, not the Philosophical Investigations that exerted that influence. But not even TLP was all that influential in the development of analytic philosophy. For the most part Wittgenstein was and is regarded as a brilliant anomaly whose work has not guided other philosophers' research. (The one notable exception is itself a very odd case.)"

The notable exception was later said to be Kripke's discussion of rule-following. This sweeping dismissal of Wittgenstein's influence received some minor qualification a few comments down:

I don't deny for a moment that Wittgenstein has stimulated a fair amount of fruitful philosophical work (TLP much more than PI), but if you were to examine the development of analytic philosophy over the 20th century to the present, Wittgensteinian thought, either Tractarian or Investigative, would look like a narrow branch off the main road.

This qualification was prompted by a comment pointing out that the TLP had been influential on the logical positivists, and the PI had been influential on figures such as Anscombe and Malcolm (both Wittgenstein's students). It's not clear how logical positivism could have been a "narrow branch off the main road" given that Quine's highly influential philosophy emerged as a response to logical positivism (in particular, Carnap's). Apparently, the author thinks that logical positivism is a "narrow branch off the main road" because it is a "dead project."

At this point, a couple of philosophy professors get involved. Bryan Frances (Fordham) responded to the author:

I can't agree with some of what you said about analytic philosophy and W's influence on it. [...] W's PI was, in my opinion, quite influential in analytic philosophy of language, although the influence is indirect. Colin McGinn's Wittgenstein book is helpful on this matter. The emphasis on context is enormous now, and nearly everyone is vigilant in checking to see if they are being hoodwinked by various grammatical constructions and patterns. As I understand it, these developments owe much to the PI.
I say these things as a Fordham professor specializing in core analytic philosophy!

Fortunately for the author, Jason Stanley (Rutgers) came to his defense:

Except for debates about rule-following, which occupy a rather small corner of the philosophy of language, PI has had a much smaller impact on analytic philosophy than non-philosophers think. For example, I'm a contemporary analytic philosopher at a pretty good department, and almost none of the work of my colleagues has been influenced by PI (perhaps none). And a lot of the influence of PI has [...] been due to Kripke's book.

This was getting interesting, so I decided to throw my two cents in. I pointed out that the TLP was in fact highly influential on two significant movements in analytic philosophy — Cambridge analysis (e.g., Ramsey, Braithwaite, Wisdom, and Russell himself) and logical positivism (e.g., Schlick, Waismann, Carnap) — and that the PI was highly influential on another significant movement in analytic philosophy, so-called 'ordinary language' philosophy (e.g., Ryle, Strawson). In light of these influences, I claimed that Wittgenstein's influence on analytic philosophy was "second to none." I also pointed out that Wittgenstein's present influence extends beyond discussions of rule-following (e.g., McDowell, Brandom).

The author was incredulous. Could I really be claiming that Wittgenstein's influence on analytic philosophy has been at least equal to that of Frege, Russell, Quine, Kripke, and Lewis? Even if my answer was 'yes,' I was clearly mistaken. After all, Jason Stanley had just said that Wittgenstein wasn't that influential. Surely I wouldn't disagree with a professor who works in analytic philosophy.

Shortly thereafter, Jason Stanley returned to explain that, aside from Kripke and those influenced by Kripke on rule-following, current analytic philosophers who have been influenced by Wittgenstein are all scholarly types who are "devoted to explaining his project" (e.g., Diamond, Conant, Hacker). Apparently, McDowell and Brandom don't count because they were also influenced by Kant and Hegel. Stanley finished up his comment with

I think it's fair to say that on current debates [Wittgenstein] has figured less prominently than metaphysicians such as David Lewis or Saul Kripke, not to mention Frege and Russell.

To which I responded,

I don't diasagree with this. I've been making two points: (1) Wittgenstein's influence on the last century of analytic philosophy is "second to none": two major movements in analytic philosophy — logical positivism, and "ordinary language" philosophy — are direct offshoots of Wittgenstein's thought; and (2) the current influence of Wittgensteinian ideas is not confined to debates about rule-following. There are prominent philosophers (Putnum, McDowell, Brandom) in current analytic philosophy who are not primarily interested in commenting on Wittgenstein but nonetheless rely (in some instances, heavily) on Wittgensteinian ideas. I take it you wouldn't disagree with either point.

I also do not deny that the vast majority of current philosophy of language either rejects or ignores Wittgensteinian ideas. Personally, I think this is a failing of current philosophy of language, but that's a different discussion.

Stanley didn't reply to my comment, but he did have more to say about Wittgenstein:

Those who are now attracted to Wittgenstein are people who never saw the sense or interest in traditional philosophical questions. Since those are the questions that professional philosophers have always pursued, in the United States and elsewhere, many people attracted to Wittgenstein do not see the interest in the discipline of philosophy. But none of this has anything to do with America, or some supposed pretend distinction between analytic philosophy some other kind of philosophy. It just has to do with philosophy. Many people find it too boring or too hard, and see a vindication of their attitude in Wittgenstein.

Another commentor took issue with this:

Now this, like the preceding nonsense about "nonsense," is simply a perverse equivocation on "traditional" (would you say the same of Kant's rejection of "traditional" philosophy?!), and ends up very close to a slur. If you're not interested in Wittgenstein or the issues he raises about philosophy, fine. No one's forcing you to think about such things. But this characterization of the issue isn't any better than the Anonymous rant that started us off. As our indulgent hosts might say: feh.

There was a bit more exchange between the author and some others who had joined in, but then, sadly, the discussion drew to a close.

I've been reflecting on all of this the last few days. How is this view of the history of analytic philosophy possible? I'm reminded of something Michael Kremer wrote about Soames's history of analytic philosophy:

The books are uneven in many ways, reflecting Soames's varying level of expertise. This comes out in the lists of suggested additional readings appended to the twelve major parts of the two volumes. For example, the suggestions for Volume 1, Part Three, "Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus," consist of one book and three articles. While the one book, by Robert Fogelin, is a standard secondary source, the other pieces all discuss a fine point concerning the expressive capacity of Wittgenstein's logic — an issue first raised in Fogelin's book. In contrast, the list of additional readings for Volume 2, Part Seven, "Saul Kripke on Naming and Necessity," includes 9 books and 36 articles. The difference between these lists does not reflect the relative sizes of the two literatures, or the quality of the work. One is left to suppose that it reflects the state of Soames's own expertise.