From: PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: Expression
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 16:07:35 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
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>From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)

>>>Well, I find the distinction between describing and expressing
>>>*itself* to be bereft of cognitive value.  Does this mean that Gibbard
>>>is doing expressivist philosophy?  Or does it mean that I simply don't
>>>care for his brand of vacuous verbigeration?  You be the judge.
>
>J:
>>I don't know what it means. I decline to judge.
>
>A wise choice.  Or is it an apt feeling?

The former. An apt feeling is that I am proud of myself for declining.

>>If I say, "All Jews should be exterminated," I am expressing
>>a hatred for Jews. But I am not describing it. If my statement
>>is false, it does not follow that I have described my hatred
>>incorrectly.
>
>Context, please.  If you say "All Jews should be exterminated," you
>are expressing your hatred for Jews, and _eo ipso_, expressing your
>state of mind.  Indeed, you are not describing either your hatred, or
>your state of mind; however you are describing nature, -- that is,
>your nature, -- to the extent that your expression is properly and
>naturally a consequence of your personal constitution and makeup.

And so it emerges that you CAN distinguish between expressing
and describing. For what I would have expressed is different
from what I would have described.

>As to the questions of truth and falsehood, they depend on the
>semantical analysis.  If your statement is analyzed as synonymous with
>"I believe that in the best of all possible worlds, all Jews will have
>been exterminated", then it is true iff you are sincerely asserting
>it; on the other hand, what you are saying is synonymous with "In the
>best of all possible worlds, all Jews will have been exterminated",
>which may or may not be true, independently of your state of mind, iff
>the Jews constitute a pernicious parasite, feeding off the innocent
>Aryan mankind.

Yes, that is all quite sound. But I'm afraid I've lost you. I don't
know why you wrote it.

>J:
>>So you have a choice: either abandon your respect for de Finetti,
>>or examine your rejection of the cognitive value of expressivism.
>>
>>(You might also choose to doubt my report, but I will if
>>pressed provide a quotation.)

MZ:
>You are getting too aggressive for your own good.

I doubt it. I don't think my good has suffered for my aggression.

> Expressivism, as
>exposed above, sounds like a crock of shit; furthermore, I am resigned
>to the fact that mathematicians make for bad philosophers.

I have answered your questions about Expressivism as well as I can,
which I think turned out to be pretty well. I have supported
the relevant distinctions. If it still sounds to you like a crock
of shit, I absolve myself of blame.

However, I agree that mathematicians seem to make bad philosophers.
And I also agree that de Finetti was incorrect about Expressivism.

Indeed, I can think of no interesting example in which Expressivism
is correct. Nevertheless I think it is coherent. I think it COULD
be a correct account of certain chunks of language, though I think
it happens not to be a correct account of much of ours. But my
original point was that for an area, actual or possible, of
language for which Expressivism is correct, there would apparently
be meaningful predicates which express no property.

I'll leave it at that, and accept Mikhail's facial gloss.

Jamie
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech