Grice on Adaptiveness

--- By J. L. S.

Some crucial passages, I hope -- well, nothing is crucial, as Jesus Christ often reminds us -- from Grice as they relate to "Pirotologica". He (Jesus Grice Almighty, that is) notes the credits to Aristotle. He REJECTS simplistic PHYSIOLOGICAL (mechanical) explanations. The foundation for the rejection: ADAPTIVENESS.

Grice writes:

"[T]he adaptiveness of organisms

may well be such as to make it very much

in the cards that

different specimens

of the

same species even may,

under different environmental pressures,
develop different sub-systems

-- even different sub-systems
at different times --

as the physiological under-lay

of the same set of

psychological instantiables,

and that a given physiological property

may be the correlate in one sub-system
of a particular psychological
instantiable,

while in another it is correlated
with

a different psychological instantiable, or
with none at all."

This relates to Kramer, "How should _we_ know" -- (vide his "Selfish Memes?")(If I understood he alright).

Grice continues:

"Such a possibility would mean
that a

physiological

property which was, for a
particular specimen at a particular time
correlated with a particular psychological
instantiable, would be

neither a NECESSARY

nor a

sufficient condition for that

instantiable."

To sum up:

A living thing is an operant thing (Socrates is thus, an ex-operant, but cfr. this post in this blog on 'death' and the 'immortality of the soul').

Grice defines indeed, 'operate' (cfr. looser uses of 'behave' -- and note that even here 'operate' applies to the specimen-level of a specific (sic) organism, or pirot):

"An operant may be for present purposes to

be taken to be an organism [or pirot] for which

there is a certain set of operations

requiring expenditure of energy

stored in the operant, a sufficient

frequency of each operation in the set

being necessary to maintain the operant

in a condition to perform any in the

set (i.e. to avoid becoming an ex-operant)."



-- or 'die', in the vernacular (one use of 'die', in fact).


Grice continues:


"Specific differences within such sets will determine
different types of operant [vis a vis] their
survival (continued operancy)."

"If a specimen
is not survival-oriented, there is no basis for
supposing it to exist at all."

--- and this is 1975, before Dawkins had written anything of publicity importance! :)

(Grice, p. 37)

Grice continues:

"Some operants, because the sources are

not CONSTANTLY ABUNDANT, have to locate

those sources -- and probably a good deal later in the

sequence we'll have

OPERANTS which are MAXIMALLY equipped

to COPE with an INDEFINITE variety of

physiologically TOLERABLE environments."

(p. 38).



It's here that Grice cares to quote from Aristotle on the 'developing series' for which I have not been able to find the Greek. (I will be flabergasted if Aritotle knew the Greek for 'dawkins').

For Aristotle it was an alternative to definition per genus et differentia specifica.

The 'soul', Aristotle said, is VEGETAL-ANIMAL-HUMAN -- where each
refers to a 'developing series' as per natural numbers -- and NOT as species of
the same genus.

On p. 39 he notes that what philosophers mean by

TELEOLOGICAL (final cause)

could very well ("in a more positivistic vein", he says) be called

"SURVIVAL-UTILITY" (p. 39).

(Kramer WILL HAVE to like that!)

Then he deals with what the Camus conflict -- only Camus said it in French:

"Why go on surviving?"

Grice notes, optimistically, that the 'pirots' which are operants like
that,

"will see themselves with a view to their own survival"

-- not just in a merely perhaps Dawkinsian selfish way, but then meme the meme --

"In virtue of the operant's rational
capacities and dispositions
each specimen of the species
will have both the capacity
and the desire to raise the
further question,

'Why go on surviving?'

"and (I hope) will be able to
JUSTIFY his continued existence
by endorsing (in virtue of the
afore-mentioned rational
capacities and dispositions) a set
of criteria for evaluating ends."

"Such ends will not be

necessarily

restricted to concerns for himself."

--- For Grice, the balance should not worry much:

It's 50% -- self-love

and

50% -- benevolence

-- vide "Self-Love and Benevolence" by yours truly, in S. R. Bayne's Hist-anal.

(His was at the time a 'dualist' model -- he turned monistically rationalistic at a later stage: couple years afterwards and only to impress the Harvardites).

Grice continues:

"The justification
of the pursuit of some system of ends
would, in its turn, provide
a justification for his continued existence."

He does mention 'reproduction' at one point, and not just perhaps metaphorically,

"If an operant is not survival-oriented, there
is no basis for supposing it to exist al all.
If operants are to have the staying power
(and other endowments) required for
specimen (re)production, the specimen being
of the same type, must be given the same
attributes, some provision for the continuation
of the type is implicit."

-- in google.books ("Conception of Value").

Regarding communication, Grice goes on:


"It would be advantageous to pirots if they

could have judgings and willings which

relate to the judgings or willings of other pirots".



"To minimise the waste of effort ..."

they will have privileged access to their

judgings."



"There will be room for counter-examples: in
self deception, for example".

He reaches the 'talking pirot' on p. 48 (cfr. the chattering classes!) But he is VERY CONCERNED with pirot-physiology, which is the topic of the ENGINEER. Indeed, he has a polemic between the ENGINEER and the GENITOR (or designer) -- who'd better keep an eye on the real world -- who wants his designs to be futile, he says. But the ENGINEER may think he is _God_, and criticise the Genitor:

The Genitor Delusion -- No Such!


"You are the last gasp of Primitive Animism: the attempted

perpetuation of the myth that animals are animate!"

Grice considers plants -- living things indeed, but no psychology needed.
Just physiology. This don't move. Then we have pirots who adopt 'postures' (some 'plants') indeed, then movable pirots, etc. In her notes, Chapman (Grice, Macmillan 2005) notes that Grice was obsessed with physiological processes, or rather the point of them:

"breathe -- why?", "excretion"

(I'm pleased he didn't write, 'why?' -- I mean, there ARE limits for philosophical wonderment).

--- he wrote on a little card while travelling from London (coming from
the British Academy Lecture) back to his house in the Bay Area (Berkeley).

So next: the adaptiveness of the toilet.