A Featherless Pirot

------- By J. L. Speranza, for the Grice Club.
-------------- Dedicated to Ian Cargan.


I has been suggested to me by Ian Cargan, of CHORA, and elsewhere, that each _stage_, in pirotological ascent, should be given a proper label. Till we reach the pirot sapiens, which _happens_ to be 'featherless' and 'laughable' (where it does not take two pirots to laugh at a pirot). For aren't 'scientists' _obsessed_ with the 'proper' terminology, or as I prefer _taxonomy_? (Scientists should stick with _explananda_, and leave _descripta_ to the common folk, some pirots object). Also that 'de-volution', or the 'degeneracy' of this or that trait, should also be taken into consideration -- especially in connection with the latest brands of 'pirots' --as we reach the apocalypse, as my grandmother is prone of saying.

I recall with cherrish my professor in ethics (for a seminar, actually). A girl was saying, "Surely Mother Theresa embodies all the virtues that we need in today's society". He replied, bluntly (his name is Osvaldo Guariglia): "She didn't know what she is doing". For many, supererogatory duties are indeed immoral. So when Dawkins speaks of the selfish gene, surely R. B. Jones, who brought in the pickiness (I love him!), adding: "Surely your nun is also selfish if she's got the selfish gene") should reconsider: Mother Theresa was _not_ selfish! (She was immoral, too, but that's another matter).

Cargan also suggested that I stick to the continuum. Rather than number stages, 1, 2, 3, etc. to speak rather of 1.1.2, 3.4.5.5. so that I have _more freedom_, and no necessity to be back for errata. Actually it's just one big jump or leap, from 0. to 1.

So we may consider for our Stages in the lower regions.

Stage 0.

This stage Cargan proposes we call "Apodeictic".

Surely in the realm of inorganitc chemistry it is all a matter of 'necessary implication'. "You mix the wrong substances, and POOOF!, it's an explosion. Nature is 'wise' (if a gene is selfish, Nature is wise). There _are_ natural explosions on earth, etc., and this may not have been all necessary. Oddly, the Big Bang _was_ possibly a necessary explosion, since it created _us_ and the pirot.

Stage 0.1

We are in the vertix of 'vita', as the Romance speakers have it: neither fish nor fowl. Or rather, either plant or animal. In this sense, we have reached 'mustard' alright. I'm sticking with the Duchess's meaning postulate in the Alice books, that mustard is best treated as if it were a mineral. We arrive at something that Cargan proposes we call "aisthesics", or things with "sense". A 'bacteria', for example.
Surely they can _feel_ and thus they should *enjoy* feeling, too.

Stage 0.2

Once the 'pirots' grow _legs_ and thus become 'animal', we reach the level of the so-called 'instinct' or Drive (Traub) that fascinated the Germans, etc. Ian Cargan suggested that I call this stage, for instinct-driven systems, "eikasics", and I will. This applies to one type of zoon only: the "lopho-trocho-zoon", or animal driven by instinct, in Aristotelian parlance. But then mostly all animals are instinctive, notably the male deer (cfr. studies in the ruts of words).

Stage 0.3

I'm skipping some stages because here I'm only concerned in Paleo-zoic Oxoniensis. After all I have to reach _Grice_, not Confucius, right? Some of the wing-endowed insects (ecdyso-zoon) display some sort of a rudimentary version of (if we may thus interpolate) 'human' _choice_ (Aristotle's pro-hairesis). Butter-the-fleas, for example. Thus we postulate this level as "pro-egmenic". This is, admittedly, an 'all or nothing' choice as I hope you noted that butterfleas don't really _decide_ where to drop-dead (or else they do).

Stage 0.4

This stage would be the "pro-hairetic", proper, where full, defeasible choice as we find in middle-order vertebrates. E.g. the eegle that Grice examines. She will
choose, as she is about to kill the squarrel, between killing the big squarrel or the little squarrel, or both, or none. At this stage the proper nomenclature is a bonus. 'Avian' pirot is the correct nomenclature here. This is also the realm of 'felis' that Grice adored.

Stage 0.5

A higher pirot (who is not a hermit) will _not_, caeteris paribus, live a solitary life ("It's not good that a pirot should live alone", writes the Pirot-Maker). They 'gaggle' and _socialise_ and not, as eegles do (I'm simplifying here to the Devon Eegle) just for the mating. This level Cargan proposes should be labeled "pith-anotic", from a Greek word meaning 'learn' (or 'teach,' I forget). We need only be concerned with only a few higher stages before we reach Grice, the highest pirot (at the peak of evolutionarily self-reflected perfection).

Stage 0.6

Cargan suggested to me that I label this higher stage the "hypo-lepsic". These are social, but still wild, animals (the leo inmanseatus of the Romans): they can be very dangerous beasts, as Christians and antelopes know, and will do _anything_ to survive -- (blame their selfish genes) and the worst of it is that most of them are carnivores, only -- they judge a pirot by its 'cloth'. And thus we (and other 'fleshly' types) supply them with their food, if we may use a zeugma. Also they seem to be almost always hungry (Females specially).

Stage 0.7

At this point the more peaceful 'pirots' descent from the trees, which allows for the development of the brain (or frons, in Latin) that ensues. These are what Linneaus, who _knew_, called 'the primates' from the Latin, primus inter pares. In a way they are the latest, but we KNOW what he was thinking. This stage can be appropriately called the "phronimic", after the Greek for 'brains' ('phronesis'), or more exactly, prudence.

Stage 0.8

We reach a "grice", a movable featherless biped who will karulise elatically for (we hope) years. After Aristotle, and as a tribute to "Hum-anism" (as per the Renaissance -- and Grice _was_ a Renaissance Man -- we reach, Cargan suggests, "spoudaics"'s the word, as per Aristotle's name for the virtue of the 'humane' human, and which, with Lockean certitude, applies to what we call "a very intelligent rational pirot".

As Grice notes, Locke wrote 'parot', but it could well have been a typo.