The Logic of Sense - Three
Pretty straight forward chapter. Deleuze starts with discussing the elements of a propositional statement which he takes to be denotation (reference and indexicals), manifestation (desires and beliefs) and signification (logical implications such as if/then).
He then discusses whether any of these elements can act as a ground for the others and determines that none can do that work. By ground i take it that he is implying that it is the type of thing about which on ecan say "true" or "false".
"Sense" (as in the "sense of the statment" or "the idea expressed by the statment") is then brought out as a 4th element to ground the proposition and the other 3 elements. It is the sense of the statment that is either true or false.
"Sense is both the expressible or the expressed of the proposition, and the attribute of the state of affairs."
"But it does not merge with the proposition which expresses it any more than with the state of affairs or the quality of the proposition it denotes"
In agree with Deleuze on his end point, that the statement or proposition is the carrier of truth. I don't know that i like his conception of "sense" so much. It is a posited entity type that seems to do nothing more than fill the space that needs to be filled. That is, there is an apparent need to ground statments, okay. But the move is merely to then posit that something does this, and then afixing the label "sense" to that posit. I would prefer that he just say that some thing, we'll call it "Y", grounds the statement. Now let us look at what Y is. Instead, Deleuze has taken a term that already has meaning, sense, and affixed it into this usage. It makes me worry about a linguistic sleight-of-hand.
Still, as i mentioned (and Deleuze references it too in this chapter) that Meinong posits a similar notion of sense and our willingness to allow Meinong's "sense" to stand in as a black box until we learn more about it ... we will grant the same allowance to Deleuze. So far he has only determined a few of the things it is not.
Now, Russell attacked Meinong on similar grounds that i might go after him, that the notion of "sense" isn't really doing any work. Russell contends, however, that the proposition can be grounded by one of the proposition's internal elements ... the denotation. This is in some sense the Logical Positivist claim in a nutshell. The claim fails. It does not fail per the reason of regress that Deleuze mentions in chapter three, but it does fail.
It does not follow, though, that sense Russell was wrong that Meinong was right and that "sense" is a properly posited entity. What element of a statement is true or false? It's sense. What is sense? Sense is the meta-statement entity that grounds the statement as true or false vis-a-vis the real world. (I don't think Deleuze will use the sense of the real world as such, at all ... but we'll cache that out later.) It's a bit cicular, in the bad way.
Quine's neo-positivist notion of what is ("To be is to be the value of a bound variable") is going to allow a lot more possibilities than the Logical Positivist approach to the world. In the end, though, it may not be the case that "truth" is definable in the formal system (Tarski's theory) and, if that is the case ... nothing more than the posit of a ground for truth may be possible. There may be an unreducible place-holder where Deleuze is using the term "sense", but why not call it something like Statement-T and leave out the conflation necessayr is using a pre-existing term like "sense".
Ah ... but let us grant all for now and move forward.
Deleuze also equates it to events, as earlier described in Chapter 2.
I'll definitely have to work back through chapter 2 to see if i can find an explicit notion of what is the event. I would say "the probabilities [albeit forward and back in time] that subsist about real things [being]".
More work on this later, but the importance here is that there is a positive claim to look at, and we will do that in future chapters presumably.
The next chapter is about dualities.
He then discusses whether any of these elements can act as a ground for the others and determines that none can do that work. By ground i take it that he is implying that it is the type of thing about which on ecan say "true" or "false".
"Sense" (as in the "sense of the statment" or "the idea expressed by the statment") is then brought out as a 4th element to ground the proposition and the other 3 elements. It is the sense of the statment that is either true or false.
"Sense is both the expressible or the expressed of the proposition, and the attribute of the state of affairs."
"But it does not merge with the proposition which expresses it any more than with the state of affairs or the quality of the proposition it denotes"
In agree with Deleuze on his end point, that the statement or proposition is the carrier of truth. I don't know that i like his conception of "sense" so much. It is a posited entity type that seems to do nothing more than fill the space that needs to be filled. That is, there is an apparent need to ground statments, okay. But the move is merely to then posit that something does this, and then afixing the label "sense" to that posit. I would prefer that he just say that some thing, we'll call it "Y", grounds the statement. Now let us look at what Y is. Instead, Deleuze has taken a term that already has meaning, sense, and affixed it into this usage. It makes me worry about a linguistic sleight-of-hand.
Still, as i mentioned (and Deleuze references it too in this chapter) that Meinong posits a similar notion of sense and our willingness to allow Meinong's "sense" to stand in as a black box until we learn more about it ... we will grant the same allowance to Deleuze. So far he has only determined a few of the things it is not.
Now, Russell attacked Meinong on similar grounds that i might go after him, that the notion of "sense" isn't really doing any work. Russell contends, however, that the proposition can be grounded by one of the proposition's internal elements ... the denotation. This is in some sense the Logical Positivist claim in a nutshell. The claim fails. It does not fail per the reason of regress that Deleuze mentions in chapter three, but it does fail.
It does not follow, though, that sense Russell was wrong that Meinong was right and that "sense" is a properly posited entity. What element of a statement is true or false? It's sense. What is sense? Sense is the meta-statement entity that grounds the statement as true or false vis-a-vis the real world. (I don't think Deleuze will use the sense of the real world as such, at all ... but we'll cache that out later.) It's a bit cicular, in the bad way.
Quine's neo-positivist notion of what is ("To be is to be the value of a bound variable") is going to allow a lot more possibilities than the Logical Positivist approach to the world. In the end, though, it may not be the case that "truth" is definable in the formal system (Tarski's theory) and, if that is the case ... nothing more than the posit of a ground for truth may be possible. There may be an unreducible place-holder where Deleuze is using the term "sense", but why not call it something like Statement-T and leave out the conflation necessayr is using a pre-existing term like "sense".
Ah ... but let us grant all for now and move forward.
Deleuze also equates it to events, as earlier described in Chapter 2.
I'll definitely have to work back through chapter 2 to see if i can find an explicit notion of what is the event. I would say "the probabilities [albeit forward and back in time] that subsist about real things [being]".
More work on this later, but the importance here is that there is a positive claim to look at, and we will do that in future chapters presumably.
The next chapter is about dualities.
posted by Thomas F. Schminke at 6:35 PM
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