{"id":65883,"date":"2024-09-08T06:12:15","date_gmt":"2024-09-08T11:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=65883"},"modified":"2024-09-09T09:46:24","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T14:46:24","slug":"x-lets-say-y","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=65883","title":{"rendered":"\"…X, let's say Y…\""},"content":{"rendered":"

Justin Weinberg, \"Analytic Philosophy's Best Unintentional (?) Self-Parodying<\/a>\", Daily Nous 9\/6\/2024:<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone, let\u2019s say a baby, is born; his parents call him by a certain name.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That line\u2013recently circulated on social media by Eric Winsberg<\/a> (South Florida \/ Cambridge) as \u201cthe funniest sentence in the history of philosophy\u201d\u2014is from Saul Kripke<\/a>\u2018s Naming and Necessity<\/a><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure its the funniest sentence in the history of philosophy, but it is<\/em> pure poetry.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Justin Weinberg added:<\/p>\n

*UPDATE<\/strong>: Some are suggesting Kripke\u2019s line was meant to be funny, in which case I suppose we should broaden the request for suggestions to include\u00a0intentional<\/em>\u00a0self-parodies by analytic philosophers.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the comments, Eric Winsberg responded<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think he\u2019s joking. You have to remember this is the transcript of a talk. He\u2019s just throwing in very standard though [sic] experiment language. Compare \u201ca number of people, say five, are tied to a railroad track\u201d. You\u2019re just signaling that the number 5 is only important in that it\u2019s more than one. But in Kripke\u2019s case, the whole point of the example is that there\u2019s nothing distinctive about the person at all except the ensuing baptism. So he\u2019s going \u201csomeone is born\u201d and he\u2019s brain goes \u201cwe need a \u201csay\u201d clause, and ends up making the funniest sentence ever.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kenny Easwaran<\/a> added:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always interpreted this line as a clear self-parody. When he\u2019s trying to stay object-level, he has no trouble coming up with specifics, like naming his pet aardvark Napoleon, or any example involving, say, Nixon. In this case, I think he\u2019s observing the need to include \u201csay X\u201d afterwards, and then filling it in with the one thing that actually adds nothing, rather than \u201csomeone, let\u2019s say, the future teacher of Aristotle, is born\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

FWIW, Eric Winsberg's comment about \"standard thought experiment language\" seems persuasive to me.<\/p>\n

In (the transcribed and edited text of) Naming and Necessity<\/em>, \"let's say\" is used 18 times as a rhetorical device to introduce a specific but arbitrary assumption for the purposes of the current argument, e.g. on p. 80:<\/p>\n

Let's see if Thesis (2) is true. It seems, in some a priori<\/em> way, that it's got to be true, because if you don't think that the properties you have in mind pick out anyone uniquely — let's say<\/strong> they're all satisfied by two people — then how can you say which one of them you're talking about? There seem to be no grounds for saying you're talking about the one rather than about the other.<\/p>\n

He also uses plain \"say\" for the same rhetorical purpose, e.g. on p. 17:<\/p>\n

Nor, when we regard such qualitatively identical states as (A, 6; B, 5) and (A, 5 ; B, 6) as distinct, need we suppose that A and B are qualitatively distinguishable in some other respect, say<\/strong>, color. On the contrary, for the purposes of the probability problem, the numerical face shown is thought of as if it were the only property of each die.<\/p>\n

And on p. 87, he uses \"let's say\" to introduce an assumption arguendo<\/em> that's vague nearly to the point of emptiness, probably because he didn't care to come up with anything more specific:<\/p>\n

What's going on here? Can we rescue the theory? First, one may try and vary these descriptions — not think of the famous achievements of a man but, let's say<\/strong>, of something else, and try and use that as our description. Maybe by enough futzing around someone might eventually get something out of this; however, most of the attempts that one tries are open to counterexamples or other objections.<\/p>\n

It might still be true that Kripke was intentionally parodying this device when he said \"Someone, let's say a baby, is born\" — but Eric Winsberg's hypothesis is consistent with Kripke's overall patterns of usage.<\/p>\n

As an aside, it's worth noting that Kripke refers to the baby with the male pronouns \"his\" and \"him\", probably because that was a common prescription<\/a> for generic third-person singular pronouns in 1970 when the lectures were delivered.<\/a><\/p>\n

Update —<\/strong> in a comment<\/a> on Justin Weinberg's post, Brian Rabern provides the audio for the passage in question:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It's relevant that there's a significant pause — about 385 msec — between \"say\" and \"a baby\".<\/p>\n

It's also maybe relevant that the published paper's wording is different. The audio:<\/p>\n

someone, let's say<\/span>
\na baby is born, he is called by his parents by a certain name, right.<\/span>
\nthey talk about him to their friends, other people meet him<\/span><\/p>\n

The paper:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The passive \"he is called by his parents by a certain name\" is turned active, \"his parents call him by a certain name\". And the tag \"right\" is omitted.<\/p>\n

So the oddly empty arguendo<\/em> could have been fixed, e.g. by specifying the gender:<\/p>\n

Someone, let's say a baby boy, is born;<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Weinberg, \"Analytic Philosophy's Best Unintentional (?) Self-Parodying\", Daily Nous 9\/6\/2024: \u201cSomeone, let\u2019s say a baby, is born; his parents call him by a certain name.\u201d That line\u2013recently circulated on social media by Eric Winsberg (South Florida \/ Cambridge) as \u201cthe funniest sentence in the history of philosophy\u201d\u2014is from Saul Kripke\u2018s Naming and Necessity. I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-rhetoric"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65883"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65926,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65883\/revisions\/65926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}