Pragmatism & Representation
Round 2
Sydney July 2009
Philosophical (Carnap external)
What’s the function served by us working (and well) in
these terms (e.g. space, time, causality, substance,
self, justice, values,….)?
Truth, truth conditions,
reception, referents, truth
makers, analysis…
metaphysics
Instrumentalism,
expressivism, creation,
imagination, utility, fiction, noncognitivism,projectivism,
constructivism…
Representationalism
Pragmatism
Philosophical (Carnap: external)
What is the function served by us working in these
terms (space, causality, substance, self, justice,
values,….?)
Because it’s
healthy/adaptive/useful
The world requires those
descriptions of us. If we
didn’t give them we
would be missing things
Pragmatism 2
Tp
Satanic forces at work making pragmatism invisible
1. Deflationism (both). Can seem to
suggest a ‘world without isms’
2. Hostility to philosophical ‘theory’
(both)
3. Nothing much beyond science &
a bit of logic (Quine). Nothing much
beyond the everyday (Wittgenstein)
I shan’t talk so much about Quine. But the
view that ontology is settled by first
regimenting a theory and then seeing what
are the values of the bound variables - and
that settles all decent questions - is
certainly a wet blanket here.
E.g. “in your best ethics you talk of
rights/duties. The you’re ontologically etc.
Q. What about the impact of deflationism?
Ans. Deflationism implies that where you
have assertibility you also can talk of truth,
fact, description, representation and the
rest. But it does not imply that these are
the best terms in which to gain the best
picture of what the language game is, or
what is the ‘stream of life’ in which it is
embedded. Nor did W. think that it did
imply this.
Q. What about W’s hostility to philosophical
explanations?
Ans. Wittgenstein may have been hostile to
‘explanation’. But he was not hostile to
attempting to get an “Übersichtliche Darstellung”
or perspicuous representation of the working
of parts of language. He thought of this as
hard to do. (‘We are working on granite’). We
can put the Carnapian question in those
terms if we prefer.
Let us remember that in mathematics
we are convinced of grammatical
propositions; so the expression, the
result, of our being convinced is that we
accept a rule.
Nothing is more likely than that the
verbal expression of the result of a
mathematical proof is calculated to
delude us with a myth. (Remarks, p. 77,
Pt. II, 26).
Why do you want always to consider
mathematics under the aspect of discovering
and not of doing? If must influence us a great
deal that in calculating we use the words
“correct” and “true” and “false” and the form of
statements. (Shaking and nodding one’s
head)… There is no doubt at all that in certain
language games mathematical propositions play
the part of rules of description, as opposed to
descriptive propositions.
But that is not to say that this contrast does not
shade of in all directions. And that in turn is not
to say that the contrast is not of the greatest
importance. (p. 163 Pt. V, 6)
We say: “If you really follow the rule in
multiplying, it must come out the same” Now
when this is merely the slightly hysterical style
of university talk, we have no need to be
particularly interested. It is however the
expression of an attitude towards the technique
of multiplying, which comes out everywhere in
our lives. The emphasis of the “must”
corresponds only to the inexorability of this
attitude, not merely towards the technique of
calculating, but also towards innumerable
related practices. (Zettel, *299)
Q. What about W’s emphasis on
intermingling of description and whatever
else is on offer? His contextualism?
Ans. It need not undermine the insight gained
by a pragmatist direction that several
functions are in play together. They will need
teasing out for a perspicuous representation
to be possible.
Q. What about the r-f considerations, and
the ubiquitous trail of the human serpent?
Ans. Doubtless the active mind is always
involved in coming to think anything. But
we can still draw contrasts: sometimes
things to which we literally respond are
involved as well; sometimes not.
Sometimes the marvellous mental machinery
is at the service of tracking the things talked
of: isolating them in attention, discerning
their boundaries, following their movements,
registering their visual or other sensory
properties. And
Sometimes it ain’t.
Q. But if we say this, aren’t we going to
reinflate reference and eventually reinflate
truth?
Ans. Not necessarily. Explanations are not
in the first instance conducted in terms of
semantic notions. We can see ourselves
as deliberately putting ourselves in the way
of tracking things, and as being held
responsible for doing so, without yet talking
of semantics.
Q. Wittgenstein’s conception of language
was thoroughly social. But isn’t
expressivism, for instance, individual rather
than social? (A fact about your mind that
you somehow make external?)
Ans. The pragmatist route, even if called
‘expressivism’ can also be thoroughly social.
Insisting, e.g. on a boundary to conduct is a
social act. Philippa Foot thought that
approving of things required a social status;
maybe so. No problem there.
Q. W. often shows impatience with anyone who
introduces ‘truth’, ‘fact’, etc. as somehow
containing the key to, or constraining the key to,
the language game. So isn’t it better to see him
as a non-contrastive global pragmatist, thinking
that representation never does any
philosophical work?
Ans: But he himself often contrasts
‘describing’ with other things, e.g. laying
down a rule, and ‘although the contrast
shades off in all directions it is of the utmost
importance’
The question was: Can a functional story
about the place of those assertions with their
particular content, be given without drawing
upon their referents, values of their bound
variables, etc.?
Reason for answering “no” in some
cases.
It is mandatory to accept explanations
from inshore waters of science,
common sense.
Those explanations will themselves
make use of the object-language
resources
E.G. What is (a perspicuous representation
of) the function of talk about distance?
Getting right the distance objects stand in
relation to each other. What is the function
of talking about gold/butter/the Sydney
harbour bridge…
Best explanation is going to mention the very
things we appear to talk about. But these
explanations do not encourage metaphysics
Q. But could we undercut that - see the
objects of everyday observations as
themselves ‘constructs’, ‘fictions’, mental
representations & so forth?
Ans. You could try. But that way lies Kant, and
the explanatory priority of the inner. You would
be walking away from Wittgenstein, Sellars,
Rorty, and the better parts of Quine. We have
instead to recognize what Robert Kraut calls
the “No Exit” problem.
Too
right
Holy S**t
A global anti
A global
representationalist
Q. (By Huw) But isn’t this just the old
‘eleatic’ criterion? And haven’t we got
beyond that?
Ans: (1) Yes!
(2) No!
But this is not always so.
What is the most perspicuous representation
of our talking in terms of possible worlds or
conditionals or obligations & values or
beauty or abstracta?
To me it is highly credible that it doesn’t use
mention of these things, because doing so
does involve metaphysics.
Q. How should pragmatism best carry
through a semantic program? How far is
it allowed to piggy back on insights from
classical semantic theory?
Q. Is the device of distinguishing
explanation from semantic terms just a
stalling operation? Can we really inject
m.s.d.g. into the explanation of perception
based sayings and doings without
reinflating reference to them?
Ans: Jobs for the Boys and Girls!!
Robert Kraut: any explanatory predeliction
is itself a posture of the mind or stance! To
which my response is a big:
YES!