The leaf and the flower

-- by J. L. Speranza
---- for the Grice Club.

(with gratitude to R. Paul, of Reed).

In WoW:i, Grice speaks of a leaf and a flower. He is waxing poetic on Wittgenstein's (or 'Witters'', as he'd prefer) "Philosophical Investigations:

Grice's point:

"[P]resumably the thought [is] [in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, section 122] that, if a pair of objects plainly ARE [emphasis Grice's] a knife and a fork, then while it MIGHT [emphasis Grice's] be correct to speak of someone as seeing them as something different (perhaps as a leaf and a flower), it would be always (except possibly in very special circumstances) be incorrect (false, out of order, devoid of sense) to speak of seeing an x as an x [...]"

Grice at his best. Note that if you are trying to be kind to Witters -- as R. Paul, at Reed, on occasion is -- and look for the source, it won't pay!

Paul relies on Hacker's translation -- co-translation, really -- with J. Schulte - which Hacker (who succeeded Baker who had succeeded Grice as fellow as the ONLY college in Oxford that should survive should something very bad happen to that cathedral of learning -- St. John's --) thinks it supersedes Anscombe's -- and it does!

(Grice, alas, could only read Anscombe's translation).

This is Hacker/Schulte below:

---- Wittgenstein:

"122. It would have made as little sense
for me to say “Now I see it as…” as to
say at the sight of a knife and fork “Now I see
this as a knife and fork”. This utterance would
not be understood. Any more than: “Now it is a
fork for me” or “It can be a fork too”."

"123. One doesn’t ‘take’ [Man ‘hält auch nicht…] what
one knows to be the cutlery at a meal for cutlery, any
more than one ordinarily tries to move one’s mouth
as one eats, or strives to move it."

--- Clear as mud, right?

-- Anyway, I have elaborated elsewhere on the details of this -- lit-ideas, if you must, files available online and publicly so -- so now you KNOW, if you care to quote. The boring acknowledgement goes to R. Paul! Love him!