----- By J. L. Speranza, Fellow of the Royal Society (failed), &c.
--------- For the Grice Club.
IN HIS AS-ALWAYS, WITTY, commentary -- in this case to "A Griceian Taxonomic", Ian Cargan Dengler -- my favourite Standfordite -- writes:
Anarcho-verbalism(the really private-
language argument)? That would be when
you hoot at the dictionary of your own
PNA/RNA/DNA. In the derivation of species
that would be a stage in the
dismemberment process of apoptosis."
Too true -- don't you hate that word, 'true'? (How can something be too true? ("Then," you will object, 'what you object is 'too', not 'true'". Whatever).
But seriously, I once read J. Bennett's thing, "Meaning-Nominalism". It is pretty jargonistic, and the sad of it is he doesn't care to refer to it in his later "Linguistic Behaviour", so do not be damned if someone quotes it! It's a "Foundations of Language" piece. At the same time, I was reading: Flew, who said Humpty Dumpty was an anarchist. At the same time, I was writing my chapter 1 of my thesis: "The History of Grice" (I had, by law almost, include some stuff from a Modern-Philosophy PhD seminar I was attending -- on Locke!). So I thought,
"hocus pocus".
-- When revising Locke's secondary bibliography, I come across this bit by, of all people, Bennett. He says,
(words):
"Locke is NOT an anarchist when it comes to _meaning_. It's NOT every idea you please. You cannot say, 'glory' and mean 'a nice knockdown argument'"
But yet, Bennett says, and I think he does quote this passage, but in any case, it is in R. B. Jones's online version of the Essay (1690):
"a man has an INVIOLABLE LIBERTY
to have his words stand for
any idea he pleases"
-- surely he is the founder of Liberalism alright!
So I entitled Grice's thing not just a meaning-nominalism (as he was NOT endorsing, contra Bennett), nor a meaning-naturalism (as I thought he was proposing, and I still do) but a meaning-liberalism.
I never really studied political philosophy (does it show? -- and I'm from Evita Peron's Country -- a shame) but S. R. Bayne did (and he helps me out). So there are basically three types: Singer, Grice and me. Singer is this man I met at Buenos Aires. He was a 'moralist'. He talked and talked and talked about 'institutional ethics'. It was an international philosophy conference at Buenos Aires where I was presenting my example, "Have you been mugged yet?: Implicatures Overheard"" -- which got published. Singer, on the other hand, the liberal American, was lecturing _us_ on liberties. So he had a leaflet (how else would I have followed his rather monotonic but charming piece!). I read the leaflet, and on the way out from the hall I approached him.
"In this leaflet here you write "Examples of Institutions: Language". Explain what you mean!" He couldn't! Instead he gave me his card! Marcus Singer. (I do love him -- a charmer). Or perhaps he had "Institution: The Dictionary". In any case, I said, "That's a bit too much, ain't it?! Language as The Institution! Next thing you'll deem a solecism a 'crime'". "And a crime it is -- to the Language, and sometimes," he added, "to my ear (the right one)."
Ah well. So here we have
---------- AUTHORITY
no ------------- author------Institution
authority ------ liberty---- The Common Good
Humpty ----------Grice-------Singer,
Dumpty---------- Grice-------Marcus
'glory'---------Deutero-Esperanto--The OED
----
So when Dengler accuses me of 'verbo-anarchism', I protest!
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accusmatico? really? what's wrong with anarcho-verbalism? that's an opportunity of spelling: self-determination of judgment in dialogue! besides: that wasn't a final go, only a view of the field of stony placements. i am considering:
ReplyDeleteit would seem that 2/3rds of professional philosophy is dictionary rambles. ah. i've the sin on myself as well.
You are right. There's nothing wrong with verbo-anarchism. I protest my protestation. You have the ability to change my mind too soon (if I have one!).
ReplyDeleteIndeed, Jorge-Luis Borges, my mentor, would ALWAYS say to local journalists:
"My father -- he was an anarchist."
The journalists would look at him aghast.
"... of the Herbert Spencer variety", he would softly go on.
Borges's father detested all forms of government. When Borges died, he being a national Argentine hero, everybody wanted to have him interred in Buenos Aires. Instead, he is decomposing in, of all places, Geneva. "I love Geneva", he would say, -- having attended high school and spring awakening there --, "my sort of country: Switzerland: nobody can tell you the name of their president, if indeed they have one."
Ah well.
The problem with 'anarchism' is perhaps that it's not too Aristotelian. For Aristotle, it's always principles, principles and more principles. Some of them are so principal, that he calls 'principal principles' or first, i.e. princical, principles. In Greek, of course, arkhe. So the anarchist is litearally, the principle-less man (or woman, as the case may be). Etc.
Well there we are again: dictionary rambles! Anarchism could be any \/ OR, and I could refer to anarchons as taxon/sortals in a matrix/frame of anarbedding.
ReplyDeleteI reflect perhaps the hopes of another greatly forgotten English philosopher, Ralph Lever of the Renaissance, who, in his Arte of Reason rightly termed Witcraft, teaching a perfect way to argue and dispute (1573), not only wrote in English, but used words of English derivation in place of the traditional terminology—
foreset and backset for “subject” and “predicate,”
inholder and inbeer for “substance” and “accident,”
saywhat for “definition”,
category as “storehouse”,
proposition as “saying” and so on.
This anarcho-glossemia had to wait for Joyce; and in fact a considerable time had to elapse before English phrases became happy occasions mixed into books on logic. Lever thought
Logica should become "Witcraft,"
conclusio "Endsay,"
and accidens "Inbeer."
A source:
witcraft = A word invented--or pretended to be invented by a writer of the 16th century [Ralph
Lever, about 1573] to signify logic. That this word has not been adopted is partly owing
to the multitude of fantastic and affected words which he introduced. . .and its close
resemblance to witchcraft, which might cause confusion .---Nares's Glossary, 1859
I LOVE Lever! My kind of logician. I have studied him thoroughly. Watts followed suit in a way. And Lever IS discussed by Kneale and Kneale (Martha and her husband).
ReplyDeleteYou are right about Joyce, &c. Incidentally, I'm having a Finnegan's Wake Party next Wednesday, 17th!).
But seriously, I think anarchism is too easy a position to adopt. In Argentina, it is associated with Guy Fawkes's bonfires, and explosions in the Parliament. Not my cup of char.
For Bennett and perhaps Grice, a Liberal, on the other hand, requires, when it comes to communication, not verbo-anarchism (I say X and you should understand what I mean). No, rather we require something subtler, along Ovidian lines (Ars Amandi). I say X and you, addressee, will get to know what I mean by you recognising that my intention in uttering X is that you come to believe that I believe X. This is NOT Humpty Dumpty's anarchism. It's not, either the Communist Ideal that 'glory' means 'common name, abstract feminine, the quality of being glorious'. There is a mid-way, "Glory" _can_ turn to mean 'a nice knockdown argument'. Humpty, however seems to deny the suggestion that he hoped his communicative intention would be recognised ("I don't know what you mean by 'glory'", Alice protests, "Of course you don't, until I tell you"). But for Grice, an intention to communicate which is NOT grounded on a belief that such an intention be fulfilled is a contradictio in terminis. It is a desire to communicate but not an intention to communicate. And the standard Grice-ian is too wedded to the notion of intention. Armstrong discusses Humpty Dumpty along Gricean lines in his Nous article. Etc.
well now pieced?
ReplyDeletewhat's the deal with mr humpty?
when editor Sam Johnson makes his appeal or painter Oroczo places his tuna cans that's ok..but the significance of intention seems largely assumed here. Grice's condition would be fulfilled sufficiently in definition by the act of having a communication. Carroll's intention is of course Joycean, but there's the (here unstated?)
What about the respondent? There's another entitlement. To be master of the moment (Carroll) requires that the reasoning process itself come to an agreement within the hearer's mind. Recursively, perhaps, as perduration of meaning. A film critic must be nodding somewhere: "aye." Each may pursue the Humpty argument, merely restating the common of intra-dialogue?
Yes, Humpty Dumpty does not really count, because, as you say, he occurs within the larger Joycean context of Carroll (or Dodgson). As Gardner notes in his Annotated Alice, Humpty is the epitome of the don (think Grice) that Dodgson was well aquainted with at Christ Church, Oxford. To generalise Humpty without (i.e. outside) the Oxford context seems brave. In real life, there are no Humpty Dumptys (that I ever encountered). His 'There's glory for you' is too much of a structured thing. Yet, I tell you, it's the example chosen by A. G. N. Flew, who should have known better, in his intro to the influential, "Language and Logic" Blackwell series, in the late 1950s, and early 1960s, when Oxford was becoming a world centre of philosophy (read: attracting Americans with Rhodes Scholarships -- that will come back to the New World citing Austin, Grice, and, perhaps Strawson, and of course Ryle). The inescrutability of 'intention' as you say is also a problem for the 'radical' interpreter (if you overhear 'gavagai' in the fields, say). So one has to be careful. By 'liberalism', I merely mean that the utterer has a liberty within limits. It's an inviolable liberty, as Locke has it. You can (if you may not on occasion) make any word by any idea you please, but if you are going to mean something by it, the very idea of 'mean' requires that you 'make believe': you aim at making believe your addressee (even a potential one, even yourself, even Humpty meaning 'glory' to or for Humpty, rather than Alice) that you are thinking 'a nice knockdown argument' or whatever it was that you decided, freely (i.e. liberally) to make that word stand for that idea? (I end up with a Valley Girlism).
ReplyDeleteAha! Humpty! Last year the BBC children's channel CBeebies featured a singalong feature in which, instead of being unable to "put Humpty together again", all the King's Horses "made Humpty happy again", while Little Miss Muffet ended with a Facebook friending rather than flight in fright. Words drift, the concept becomes the arbiter--liberally IMPLICATURATED!
ReplyDeleteIndeed, that nursery cryme is _cruel_! (vide Genesis). Humpty does have personality problems and his belt looks like a cravatte. He is supposed, Gardner says, to represent the moralisation of Hubris of the Greeks: the pride of it all. The original nursery escapes me. I trust the Opies have studied all the psycho-babble Freudianisms behind it. I don't even recall who played him in the BBC black-and-white classic -- now on DVD, I have it. I do remember my cousin dressed up as him, D. Ghersi, in my fancy-dress party when I was playing the Hatter. I had given my cousin all of Humpty's lines, but he was most interesting in dancing (with Alice, too). He lightened from the wall soon enough, and no omelette. Etc. But his exegesis by the original Humpty of "Jabberwocky" is a lesson in Grice Studies that we should examine with some care. "I can see", says Alice, "that, in rather general lines, "something did something very bad to someone, or the other way round."
ReplyDelete