Pirotologica

----- By J. L. S.


--- In his "The Egoless Gene", Kramer introduced explicitly the interesting topic of the Dawkins/Grice connection.

Since the comments on that thread are growing enormously, I start his with further quotes.

We stick to Grice's pirotological project.

Grice says Aristotle uses concepts to define the 'chain of being' and that 'soul', or 'life' (like 'natural number') requires a whole 'series' to be understood -- rather than 'defined' via genus and differentia specifica.

Grice came across the 'pirot' when studying Carnap -- in Grice's lectures on formal semantics, Grice expands on Carnap's term, 'pirots karulise elatically' (Carnap's pre-Chomskyan, colourless green ideas sleep furiously). Grice felt that his lecture could well be titled, How Pirots Carulise Elatically: Some Simple Ways. He wants to use 'nonsense strings' to provide hermeneutical brainstorm onto 'evolution':

"A pirot can be said to potch of some obble x as fang or feng; also to cotch of x, or some obble o, as fang or feng; or to cotch of one obble o and another obble o' as being fid to one another"

(Pirots need objects, because sense-data don't 'nourish or threaten': objects only do -- things do).

"Pirots inhabit a (fantasy) world of obbles. To potch is something like to perceive and to cotch something like to thing. Feng and fang are possible descriptions, much like our adjectives. Fid is a possible relation between obbles."

"It is when the behaviour of talking pirots is considered, when a group of pirots in a particular gaggle interact together, that something like the notion of reference becomes important")

---

ODDLY it is in Chapman's prose that I only find the word, "EVOLUTION".
On p. 153 she writes that pirotology allows Grice NOT TO COMMIT to a specific BIOLOGICAL theory.

"It allows Grice to IMPLY but not say that our mental capacities MIGHT BE
****EVOLUTIONARILY**** DERIVED, without having to commmit to this
or any other biological theory."

Why he should be so careful escapes me! Anyway, Chapman does well in tracing the 'pirotologica' to "Some reflections about ends and happiness". In Warner's terse criticism:

if we are to pursue Grice's strategy ... of replacing
Aristotle's 'activity in conformity with virtue' with
'SUITABILITY FOR THE DIRECTION OF LIFE'... The DESIGNER (Or Pirot-Maker as I prefer -- although Grice does distinguish between the DESIGNer and the ENGINEer)
"would have to endow pirots in order to make them MAXIMALLY VIALBE in pirot-living conditions, that is, in the widest manageable range of different environments"

"The goal is the continuation of self (specimen of pirot)(or of 'species')."And such changes 'advance'[Grice's word]. "Well, because of DECREASED VULNERABILITY
to vicissitudes of [the fantasy world]" "The chief end of ALL life forms [not just pirots-3] is to ensure their own continued survival of the species to which they belong"

Chapman notes the similarity with Locke, who "posited a hierarchy of living beings, with the identity of beings at EACH STAGE depending on the fulfillment of functions NECESSARY to the continued existence of that being"

Chapman's "ladder of existence" is Lovejoy's "chain of being". Read 'useful' always as "at least in terms of survival". The pirot-3 (human being rather than mere living being) needs survival benefits. For creatures living in COMPLEX, changing
environments, it is more beneficial to have the capacity to REASON about their environment and choose a strategy for survival, than to be endowed with a series of separate, and necessarily finite, reflex responses"

While Grice wrote on his note, "Read Selfish Gene" he should also have a look now at "BIOLOGICAL EXHUBERANCE". Eating for example, is 'basic survival'. But there's more to life than eating. And the point looms large: "What is the point of the pirot-3's own continued survival?" GRICE'S RATIONALISM:

"The pirot-3's capacity to reason is exactly the property to help it survive the question." "Rather than persuading the pirot-3 to GIVE UP The struggle (for survival), the capacity of reasoning is UTILISED to produce a set of criteria"
--- which "will provide the pirot-3 with justification for its continued existence."
"Thus the capacity of rationality both RISES and ANSWERS the question, 'why go on surviving?'"

Finally Chapman quotes from Conception of Value googlebooks lecture iii
"Every living pirot possesses a set of capacitieis, the fulfillment of each of which is a necessasry condition for the CONTINUED possession of that capacity. -- _Read_ "Selfish Gene", "chimp" lit". "Mandatory functions' include, in Grice's list, and any schoolboy's list, "reproduction ingestion digestion excretion repair
breath (why?) [perception. I add. JLS] cognition -- I add marginally, next to excretion: 'Skatology' -- which Chapman uses for what Grice calls "eschatology")
While a tiger just tigerises, the human humanizes. Grice seems to note that the 'survival-utility' is a simplification in the pirotological programme. It's a methodological restriction. The Pirot-Maker has AT LEAST to design the pirots
with a view to their survival". (Grice p. 37). And adds, "In order to achieve ECONOMY in assumptions, we shall suppose the Pirot-Maker to be concerned ONLY to optimise survival chances". Etc.

JLS