--- for the Grice Club.
SO PERHAPS GRICEIANS are just being GRECIAN when sticking to "αρχή" (as in Cooperative PRINCIPLE). This is from the wiki,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arche
""αρχή" is a Greek word with primary senses 'beginning', 'origin' or 'first cause' and 'power', 'sovereigny', 'domination' as extended meanings.[1]"
Quite one primary sense too many, if you ask me!
"This list is extended to 'ultimate underlying substance' and 'ultimate undemonstrable principle'.[2]"
As if it (the list) were not extended enough!
"In the language of the archaic period (8th-6th century BC)"
It is amusing that the period be so-called!
"arche (or archai) designates the source, origin or root of things that exist. If a thing is to be well established or founded, its arche or starting point must be secure, and the most secure foundations are those provided by the gods-the indestructible, immutable and eternal ordering of things."
Odd how the Greeks or Grecians liked to complicate things! Surely a start is a start, primarily. Why this need for abstraction?
Wiki continues:
"In the ancient Greek Philosophy, Aristotle for[e]grounded the meaning of "arche" as the element or principle of a thing, which although undemonstrable and intangible in itself,provides the conditions of the possibility of that thing.[3]"
--- The important thing in Aristotle, and perhaps Kant -- but surely not Grice! -- is that it is indemonstrable. But of course I disagree, for it follows from itself!
---
Wiki continues:
"[But the phrase is imbued with Mythical cosmogonies connotations]. In the mythical Greek cosmogony of Hesiod (8th-7th century BC) the origin (arche) of the world is Chaos,"
Amusing and very clever of R. B. Jones to mention the chaos from which everything emanates as if by magic. Grecian at heart!
"an unlimited void considered as a divine primordial condition, from which everything else appeared."
The archy of the anarcho-capitalist!
"This is described as a large gap without bottom (yawning abyss)
where are the roots and the ends of the earth, sky, sea and Tartarus.[4]."
The 'apeiron' that fascinated Aristotle, too.
"In the Orphic cosmogony the unageing Chronos produced Aither and Chaos and made in divine Aither a silvery egg, from which everything else appeared.[5]"
But philosophers of the Silly School are still wondering if the Hen was not created before it!
"In the mythological cosmogonies of Near East, the universe is formless and empty and the only existing thing prior to creation was the water abyss."
I agree: water is basic.
"In the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish the primordial world is described as a watery chaos from which everything else appeared."
Indeed. The chaos must be watery.
"Something similar is described in Book of Genesis where the spirit of the God is moving upon the dark face of the waters.[6]"
In the beginning was the Humid.
"In the Hindu cosmology which is similar to the Vedic cosmology in the beginning there was nothing in the Universe but only darkness. The self-manifested being created the primordial waters and established his seed into it. This turned to a golden egg (Hiranyagarbha) from which everything else appeared.[7]"
Notably a chick.
Then there's "Arche in ancient Greek Philosophy"
Wiki goes on:
"The heritage of Greek mythology already
embodied the desire to articulate reality as
a whole and this univeralizing"
so Kantian
"impulse was fundamendal for the first projects of speculative theorizing."
-- what Grice calls a single supreme principle (Strand 6, p. 370)
Wiki goes on:
"It appears that the order of 'being' was first imaginatevely visualized before it was abstractly thought.[8]"
Pretty much as in French anarchist artistic avant-garde!
"In the ancient Greek philosophy, arche is the
element and the first principle of existing things."
VERY informative! (Irony there). If there is one thing I hated of Grecian philosophy when I had to pass those courses is the irritatingly abstract nature of it. This sentence above makes so little sense that it is too informative to be true, almost!
Wiki goes on:
"This is considered as a permanent substance or nature (physis) either one or more which is conserved in the generation of rest of it. From this all things first come to be and into this they are resolved in a final state."
Right. So we have a start (arche, principium) and a finish (telos, finis). Great profundity of thought!
Wiki:
"This source of entity is always preserved".
At this stage, wiki quotes from
Aristotle, Metaph.A, 983, b6ff.
Wiki goes on:
"Anaximander was the first philosopher that used "arche" for that which writers from Aristotle ownwards called 'the substratum" (Simplicius Phys. 150, 22)[9]."
So here we need Aristotle to distinguish "uses" of 'arkhe'. For surely when we say that metaphysics is the science of first principles we don't mean it in THAT way.
Wiki goes on:
"The Greek philosophers ascribed to "arche" divine attributes. It is the divine horizon of substance that encompasses and values all things."
and which makes them in-valuable! Another vacuous claim! Wiki should SIGN the entries!
"Thales of Miletus (7th-6th century BC), the father of philosophy, claimed that the first principle of all things is water,[10]"
We've been there.
"and considered it as a substance that contains in it motion and change. His theory was supported by the observation of moisture throughout the world and coincided with his theory that the earth floated on water."
In the beginning was the moist.
"His ideas were influenced by the Near-Eastern mythological cosmogony and probably by the Homeric statement that the surrounding Oceanus (ocean) is the source of all springs and rivers.[11]"
Or else because all he saw when he woke up in the coastal place where he resided -- he was a solecist -- was ... water.
"Thales' theory was refuted by his successor and esteemed pupil, Anaximander. Anaximander noted that water could not be the arche because it could not give rise to its opposite, fire."
But then fire does not easily yield to water, either.
"Anaximander claimed that none of the elements (earth, fire, air, water) could be arche for the same reason." Good point.
"Instead, he proposed the existence of the apeiron, an indefinite substance from which all things are born and to which all things will return.[12]"
It's good he used another word for this.
"Apeiron (endless or boundless) is something completely indefinite and Anaximander was probably influenced by the original chaos of Hesiod (yawning abyss)."
cfr. the chaos from which all emanates as if by magic of Jones.
"He probably intended it to mean primarily 'indefinite in kind' but assumed it also to be 'of unlimited extent and duration'.[13]"
Some start!
"The notion of temporal infinity was familiar to the Greek mind from remote antiquity in the rel[i]gious conception of immortality and Anaximander's description was in terms appropriate to this conception."
If it's immortal it surely does not have an arche!
"This arche is called "eternal and ageless". (Hippolitus I,6,I;DK B2)[14]"
Or timeless as Grice would prefer!
"Anaximenes, Anaximander's pupil, advanced yet another theory. He returns to the elemental theory, but this time posits air, rather than water, as the arche and ascribes to it divine attributes."
But there is water in air! (In the beginning was humidity).
"He was the first recorded philosopher who provided a theory of change and supported it with observation. Using two contrary processes of rarefaction and condensation (thinning or thickening) he explains how air is part of a series of changes."
Why this is called philosophy is beyond me.
"Rarefied air becomes fire, condensed it becomes first wind, then cloud, water, earth, and stone in order.[15][16] The arche is technically what underlies all of reality/appearances."
But this leaves us totally in the dark as to the moral use of "principle" which is the only one we should be discussing!
Wiki adds:
"See also
Material monism
Quantum chromodynamics soup
Apeiron."
And includes as References
Lidell and Scott Lexicon
Peters Lexicon:1967:23
Barry Sandywell (1996). Presocratic Philosophy.Vol 3. Routledge New York. http://www.books.google.com/books?id=k561uXI-uPgC&printsec. p142-144
The Theogony of Hesiod. Translation H.G.Evelyn White(1914): 116, 736-744 online
G.S.Kirk,J.E.Raven and M.Schofield (2003). The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge University Press. http://www.books.google.com/books?id=kFpd86J8PLsC&printsec. p.24
William Keith Chambers Guthrie (2000). A History of greek Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=ogUR3V9wbbIC&pg. p 58, 59
Matsya Purana (2.25-30)online; The creation
Barry Sandywell (1996). Precocratic Philosophy vol.3. Routledge New York. http://www.books.google.com/books?id=k561uXI-uPgC&printsec. p.28,42
William Keith Chambers Guthrie (2000). A History of Greek Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=ogUR3V9wbbIC&pg. p 55, 77
^
G.S.Kirk, J.E.Raven and M.Schofield (2003). The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=kFpd86J8PLsC&pg. p 89, 93, 94
Simplicius, Comments on Aristotle's Physics (24, 13).
G.S.Kirk, J.E.Raven and M.Schofield (2003). The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=kFpd86J8PLsC&pg. p 110
William Keith Chambers Guthrie (2000). A History of Greek Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=ogUR3V9wbbIC&pg. p 83
Daniel.W.Graham. The internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Anaximenesonline.
C.S.Kirk, J.E.Raven and M.Schofield (2003). The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=kFpd86J8PLsC&pg. p 144
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