> I think this review article is worth quoting in full, because that first
> paragraph doesn't quite get across how interesting this is. It gets better
> and better as it goes on, and what starts with a contorted example ends up
> as a surprisingly sharp distinction. And one more reason to call them The
> Bushits.
>
> Michael
>
> =========
[snip]
> Frankfurt asks
> us to consider an anecdote told about Ludwig Wittgenstein wherein the
> great philosopher phones a friend named Fania Pascal who's just had
> her tonsils removed. How are you, Wittgenstein asks. Like a dog that's
> been run over, Pascal answers. Wittgenstein then replies testily, "You
> don't know what a dog that has been run over feels like." In effect,
> Frankfurt argues, Wittgenstein is suggesting that Pascal is spouting
> bullshit. (A more reasonable person, Frankfurt concedes, would reach
> the charitable conclusion that Wittgenstein's friend is merely
> expressing herself through the use of allusive or at worst hyperbolic
> language.) Wittgenstein's grumpy outburst seems so absurd that very
> possibly the real bullshit here is the anecdote itself. But Frankfurt
> asks us to assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that the
> anecdote is true and that Wittgenstein's objection is rational and
> sincere.
-------------------------------------
Why, given the well known grumpiness of W., should we *give him* the rhetorical privilege of having a more rational objection when, according to the article, *reasonable people* would be more than willing to *allow* that Pascal is using allusive/hyperbolic speech? Pain just isn't something expressible in a vocabulary [first person narrative] that can meet a cantakerous epistemologist's desiderata of truth. And why can't we allow that a cantankerous epistemologist/philosopher of mind/[insert contentious philosopical subdiscipline here] might not be interested in *truth* in all communicative contexts either????????
Methinks the lie/bullshit/truth triad is amenable to sorites analyses that has the potential to end up in a brawl; imagine Frankfurt, Roy Sorenson, Ruth Millikan and Richard Rorty after sharing a bottle of whiskey or two, for instance....
Just a thought.