1 There is something awkward about this formulation, which stems from trying to m ove from talk o f ‘judgements’ in the first five steps, to talk o f ‘understanding’ in the last, as Moore might seem to want to. Moore certainly begins with judgem ents (in steps (1) and (2) above). So, Moore writes that, on the austere view, ‘the judgement that som ething is nonsense is always a judgement about the actual history, to date, o f some particular sign ’ ( ‘Ineffability and N onsense’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LXXVII (2003), 169-193 (p. 186)). And Moore also seem s to suggest that steps (3) and (4) deal in judgements: ‘the discussion above suggests that the judgement that something is nonsense is sometimes
none o f these things [i.e. neither empirical, nor provisional, nor metalinguistic]. It suggests that the judgement is som etim es arrived at by reflection on concepts’ (p. 186).
Moore also talks in this context o f ‘recognition’: ‘So reflection on those concepts is required to recognise the illusions as illusions’ (p. 187). And he talks also o f a ‘capacity to recognise as nonsense’ certain illusions o f sense. So too, M oore very clearly wants to end up with a notion o f ineffable
understanding, understanding o f W ittgenstein, the utterer o f nonsense. Equally clearly, given his rejection o f ineffable truths (p. 175), M oore does not want to end up with a notion o f ineffable judgements, since judgements are generally taken to be truth-apt. How, then, do these terms relate in M oore’s paper, such
that he can m ove from the idea o f judgem ents, to that o f understanding? I think, like this:
For Moore, w e have an understanding o f how to use concepts and o f how not to use concepts. Our understanding o f how not to use som e concept itself issues in an ‘associated capacity’ to recognise illusions o f sense involving apparent uses o f that concept as illusions. That recognition will result in the judgement that certain concepts w ill not serve to g iv e sense to such-and-such a string o f signs and, ultimately, if no other relevant concepts are forthcoming, that the string o f signs lacks a sense. I think that, for Moore, even in the case o f the kind o f illusion o f sense that might attach to the sentence, ‘The world exists as a limited whole’, the first o f these tw o types o f judgem ent will be expressible in w ays such as that presented in Chapter Four. What M oore takes to resist expression here is not that judgement, but the understanding o f the general phenomenon behind this kind o f illusion, and which issues in the capacity to recognise these kinds o f utterances as illusions, thereby providing what is needed to make that judgement.
If that is correct, what it suggests is that my previous response to Moore is not question-begging in the sense that it focuses on a very pedestrian kind o f illusion, but that it m isses entirely the force o f Moore’s argument, by equating judgem ents and understanding in a way that M oore’s paper does not permit. I hope that this postscript goes som e w ay to making clear what M oore’s argument is, and to addressing this aspect o f Moore’s paper, by w ay o f the alternative response developed here.
2 Moore, ‘Ineffability and N on sen se’, p.187.
3 Moore’s responses are given on pp. 187-8. He follow s them with the words: ‘I shall not try to arbitrate between these responses. N or shall I speculate on what others may be available’.
4 Moore, ‘Ineffability and N on sen se’, p. 188. 5 Moore, ‘Ineffability and N on sen se’, p. 189.
6 For the argument, or som ething very much like it, is in M oore’s paper. 7 Moore, ‘Ineffability and N on sen se’, p. 189.
8 Moore, ‘Ineffability and N on sen se’, pp. 189-190. The reference in the final sentence is to TLP, preface. 9 Here I am agreeing to som e extent with Peter Sullivan, who writes that ‘it is no accident - it is part o f the way these paragraphs [ o f the preface] are written’ that one will read or try to read Wittgenstein as saying that the limit to thought cannot be drawn in one way but can in another; that ‘the lim it’ on both occasions in the preface refers to the lim it to thought (and so that drawing the limit to the expression o f thoughts just amounts to drawing the lim it to thought). Thus, Sullivan continues: ‘So, if one were to say that these paragraphs belong to a “frame” in which Wittgenstein offers instructions for reading the book, then that ought to com e with a warning that the instructions will be tricky to follow straight o f f . Peter Sullivan, ‘Ineffability and N on sen se’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LXXVII (2003), 195-223.
10 Moore, ‘Ineffability and N on sen se’, pp. 184-5. Moore here talks o f ‘knowledge’ rather than
understanding are states o f know ledge’ (though see note 35 o f M oore’s paper for a qualification to that claim).
11 Quoted in A psley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World (London: Picador, 1994), p.521. (Wilson is, o f course, referring to the South, not the North, Pole.)
121 want to comment here briefly on how what I say here fits with the follow ing remark o f Wittgenstein’s from the Philosophical Investigations:
“But if I suppose that som eone has a pain, then I am simply supposing that he has just the same as I have so often had.” - That gets us no further. It is as if I were to say: “Y ou surely know what ‘It is 5 o ’clock here’ means; so you also know what ‘It’s 5 o ’clock on the sun’ means. It means simply that it is just the sam e tim e there as it is here when it is 5 o ’clock.” - The explanation by means o f identity does not work here. For I know w ell enough that one can call 5 o ’clock here and 5 o ’clock there “the sam e tim e”, but what I do not know is in what cases one is to speak o f its being the same tim e here and there.
In exactly the sam e w ay it is no explanation to say: the supposition that he has a pain is simply the supposition that he has the same as I. For that part o f the grammar is quite clear to me: that is, that one w ill say that the stove has the same experience as I, if one says, it is in pain and I am in pain. {PI §350.)
J.L. Mackie, in his ‘Five O ’C lock on the Sun’ (Analysis, 41:3 (1981), 113-114), argues that the suggested parallel here, between the difficulty o f understanding the sentence ‘it is five o ’clock on the sun’ and (e.g.) ‘He has a pain’, will not work, just because w e can specify contexts which w ill give the former sentence a clear sense. And it m ight look too as i f the third concept illustrated above might itself be used to give a sense to the remark ‘it is five o ’clock on the sun’, in line with one o f M ackie’s suggestions: e.g., that ‘It is 5 o ’clock on the sun by GMT [Greenwich Mean Time] just when it is 5 o ’clock by GMT in Oxford or in Tokyo or anywhere e lse ’ or, alternatively, that ‘it w ill be 5 o ’clock on the sun by GMT when some disturbance occurs there w hich is seen from the earth ... at 8 minutes past 5 by GMT’ (p .l 13).
I am not at all sure that such statements do give a clear sense to statements purporting to be about the time on the sun, but at the sam e time, I want to suggest that the explanation o f the sense o f the remark ‘It is five o ’clock at the North P o le’ by w ay o f the third o f these concepts is not simply (what Wittgenstein above says will not suffice in the case o f the sun) an explanation by means o f identity. That is, it does not simply say that w e w ill say that it is the sam e tim e here (Cardiff) and there (the North Pole) if one says five o ’clock here and five o ’clock there, but specifies a sense in which one might say that it is five o ’clock here and five o ’clock there. That that sense may be such that it w ill always (by sim ple stipulation) be five o ’clock there if it is five o ’clock here does not mean that the explanation o f the sense is as in Wittgenstein’s example purely by m eans o f identity. Hence, were this explanation to give a sense to Wittgenstein’s example ( ‘It is 5 o ’clock on the sun’) it would not, I think, conflict with his point there.
13 Moore, ‘Ineffability and N on sen se’, p. 184. The quotation in the final sentence is from TLP 6.53. 14 Discussed in Chapter One, above, pp.68-70.
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