J is considering 'meaning sans reference', where 'sans' is a French word (J likes all things French) meaning 'without'.
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In a way, it's like Mill:
Humpty Dumpty (to Alice): So -- what does your name mean?
Alice: Must a name mean anything?
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For Mill, indeed, they shouldn't.
So, I think that Grice's focus on the 'name' thing in his essay on 'vacuous names' is misleading. He should have stuck with definite descriptions or descriptive phrases, because as Roger Jones reminds us -- in his online pdf document, "Grice on vacuous names" --, it all started with Russell on the 'incomplete symbol' account to both definite and indefinite descriptive phrases.
--- "... is a flying horse"
is a better focus.
I never saw a real flying horse. Kilgariff mentions that, according to the Longman (dictionary -- for which he worked until he got bored up), 'horse' has TWO senses: 'quadruped mammal'; 'representation of a horse' (as per a painting by Stubbs).
So, in Some sense, there are reprsentations of flying horses, including, if you must, Pegasus.
The Greeks, while their imagination was florid, lacked bits of it. They were unable to imagine something totally unconceivable. Rather, their idea of imagination was the clumsy one of MIXING things up:
Take 'centaur': a stupid idea of a man and a horse with two members too many (I mean, if a horse is a quadruped, a centaur should have the HEAD of a male only, not complete with upper arms, which makes the thing a six-ped thing -- not a quadru-ped thing).
Take 'unicorn'. Another silly description for a one-horn.
Take 'flying horse'. Apparently, Pegasus, should it exist, would NOT be a horse, since a horse (equus caballus) has a DNA (natural kind) such that wings would be useless in such an animal.
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When Grice discusses daughters of English queens and popes in "Reply to Richards" he notes that it's best to boil that down to 'existent' things: such as "daughters", "English queens" and "Popes".
Similarly with the denotatum of 'Pegasus'. Flying thing, and horse-thing.
It is a contingent matter that the intersection of that set is empty.
------- Although for some people, contintent matter like genetic stuff is all that counts.
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So, when it comes to the way of DEFINING or describing "Pegasus" we must do with meaningful segments.
It's not like 'Pegasus' is vacuous in the sense that 'mf3k1h hrhl21lll%@87 sswhs@' fails to have a 'sense' in English.
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Or something.
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(J likes all things French)
ReplyDeleteMerci boo-coo. Not really--I'm not with the PoMo posse--tho' ...Descartes had a certain je ne sais kwah that Locke & Co don't. While that might sound like usual GC non-sequitur it may have some bearing re your existence chats...does a Res cogitans hold...or not? (who's qualified to answer). If a Res C. (or even Fregean accounts of "abstract entities") did hold, then a Quinean or Russellian approach to naming/reference descriptions--which seem to depend on a sort of monistic naturalism, for the ism-of the day--yada yada would seem to be mistaken. Does Russell suggest he knows...Infinity? Maybe horses fly or ...angels and demons do battle.. in some distant corner of the Universe . It's not really significant for our work-a-day world...but philosophy's ultimately sub species aeternum (even..."there exists")
How certain can a 'je ne sais quoi' be?
ReplyDeleteYes -- SOME corner of the universe. I read that Zeus honoured Pegasus by making him a constellation.
ReplyDeleteHow certain can a 'je ne sais quoi' be?
ReplyDeleteNot very, c'est vraiment. Just a figure of speech in that instance--intensifier or something. Probably best left out, but you yourself JL at times verge on...belle-lettres.
Frege blessed St. Descartes at one point didn't he. Gottlob Frogge? At least...in terms of the metaphysical realism (or is it rationalism...or some...non-empirical ism)