Grice's Nous

From:

http://lsv.uky.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0812A&L=CLASSICS-L&P=R566&I=-3

I have to thank to M. Davidson for his comments and links. He writes:

"any physicist knows that."

I never understood the logic of 'any'. I guess Davidson means _every_. Confessedly, I have never spoken to _any_!

I find physicists to be very problematic in their speech -- Where I grew up, to study theoretical physics you had indeed to attend the Department of Physics and Mathematics, I think it was called. While I was, obviously, in the Faculty of Humanities.

Anyway, here some reflections on 'noetic'. My favourite OED quote has to be this one ascribed to who knows who (I hate the OED editorial policies -- so snipping). It goes:

"I spent a lot of time in libraries over that word [sc. noetics] and found
Aristotle's passage and several translations... I think noetics and noology
are bound to come into use.

And it was published in the American Sociological Review for 1947,

(12.712) [< ancient Gr. noetikos intellectual < "noetos", mental (< noein, to
see, perceive, understand (see NOESIS n.). This below is a more or less
chronological board:

1661 G. RUST Let. conc. Origen in Phenix (1721) I. 19 There are Moral
Axioms Noematically true, as well as Geometrical.

H. More replied to that and talked of an 'axiom' being 'noematically
true'. It's precise in being ascribed to _axioms_. I suppose the Law of
Contradiction (sic) would be noematically _false_!

1682 H. MORE Annot. Lux Orientalis 253. If we distinguish those two
Attributes in God, namely, of Wisdom and Knowledge; as if the one were Noematical,
the other Dianoetical.

I wish the writer in Journal of Sociology had spent some time in
dianoetical, too. It looks Gricean to me. But of course, the 'dia-' apparently
just means plain 'thorough':

1677 GALE Crt. Gentiles II. III. 92 Dianoetic Philosophie, which is the
assent to conclusions by discourse from first principes.

1732 BERKELEY Alciphr. VII. §34
A Dianoetic Academy, or seminary for free-thinkers.

1829 SIR W. HAMILTON Discuss. (1852) 4 The dianoetic or discursive
faculty..the faculty of relations or comparison.

1885 J. MARTINEAU Types Eth. Th. II. II. iii. §1. 518 The theories of the
dianoetic moralists.

1836-7 SIR W. HAMILTON Metaph. (1877) II. xxxviii. 350, I would employ the
word noetic..to express all those cognitions that originate in the mind itself,
dianoetic to denote the operations of the Discursive, Elaborative, or
Comparative Faculty.

*****************************
1570 DEE Math. Pref. 2 The Mercurial fruite of Dianoeticall discourse.
*****************************
1588 FRAUNCE Lawiers Log. II. ix. 97
The disposition dianoeticall is when one axiome by reason is inferred of
another.

1682 H. MORE Annot. Glanvill's Lux O. 253
As if the one were Noematical, the other Dianoetical.

1822 T. TAYLOR Apuleius 365 The Demiurgus..is said to energize
dianoëtically, and to reason.

Term proposed by Sir W. Hamilton for: That portion of logic which deals with
dianoetic or demonstrative propositions. So also dianoialogical a.

1846 SIR W. HAMILTON Dissert. in Reid's Wks. 770.

This quote by Hamilton is pretty interesting -- unfortunately, to study
Scots philosophy where I come from, you need a special post-graduate seminar!

1856 W. HAMILTON Lect. Metaphysics (1859) II. xxi. 33
That the sensible or ectypal world..stands to the noetic or archetypal
world..in the same relation.

Then there are two qutoes by Grote which are of a lot of interest to me,
since, indeed in a seminar I had to _endure_ on "Phenomenology and the Social
Sciences", I did play a bit on the -ema family:

1866 J. GROTE in Jrnl. Philol. (1872) 4 55

It will be necessary for me to make use of one or two new-coined words,
which I will begin by defining as accurately as I can... When I mean words as
thought I shall use the term noem.

1866 J. GROTE in Jrnl. Philol. (1872) 4 55,

I shall use the adjectives phonal and noematic; and I shall give the name of
phonal or noematic schematisms to modifications of the primary noems and
phones.

This one by Hill is ... _so_ English!

1875 T. HILL True Order Stud. 1
Gymnastics, or care of the body; noetics, or training of the mind.

These few below refer to a very _Oxonian_ phenomenon. I loved the one
where the "Enlightened" are deemed to be totally in obscuritas as to what's
cooking in Europe!

1882 T. MOZLEY Reminisc. Oriel I. iii. 19

The new Oriel [College, Oxford] sect was declared to be Noetic, whatever
that may mean.
1885 M. PATTISON Mem. 78

The Noetics knew nothing of the philosophical movement which was taking
place on the continent.

1893 Month Dec. 563 It is the noetic school of Whately which is really
responsible for this evil.
This one below is of interest, but fails in not providing a good context for
'philosophy'. I particularly don't think the word _refers_; since one has to
specify what _branch_ of philosophy we are talking about:
1897 Philos. Rev. 6 372
This essential difference may be defined by saying that Wundt's position is
primarily psychological and noetical, while philosophy in the ordinary
acceptance of the term is more cosmological and ontological.
-- But yes, Wundt we all know because of his creation of so-called
_experimental_ psychology (or the death of Psukhe and Eros).
The next couple of quotes deal with Husserl. In a way, I found this in
connection with Grice. When he coined 'implicature', he also coined (as it were),
"implicatum", so I'm familiar with the distinction between act/activity.
Indeed, his book, "The CONCEPTION of Value" plays on the ambiguity: our
conceiving value and the conceptus of value:
But unless you do get a philosophical education of sorts you are bound to
find the prose pedantic:
1914 Mind 23 590
The insight into the ‘acts’ by which the grades and structures of actual
(reell) consciousness (noetic) build up correlative grades and structures of
intentional objects (noematic) from single objects of sense-perception to things
and values of every complexity.
1914 Mind New Ser. 23 590
The climax and main emphasis of the present [sc. Husserl] essay lies in the
relations of noesis and noema.
1929 Encycl. Brit. XVII. 700/2
The phenomenological description will comprise two parts, description of the
‘noetic’ (nóen) or ‘experiencing’ and description of the ‘noematic’
(vóema) or the ‘experienced’.
1931 W. R. B. GIBSON tr. E. Husserl Ideas IV. i. 377
We are to describe, noeticaly and noematically, all the connexions of
consciousness which render necessary a plain object..precisely in its character as
real.
1932 Jrnl. Philos. 29 526
The idea that noetic principles of implication..should be formulated as
premises in order to make the inferences presupposing them rigorously valid..is
tantamount to a denial of the existence of necessary logical truths.
1943 M. FARBER Found. Phenomenol. xvi. 526
This applies to the noetic side (‘I think’, ‘I experience’, etc.) as well
as to the noematic side.

This was taken up by Sartre and that was the end of it! Anyway, I close with
this, rather populist quote (there are many more populist ones, under
noegenesis, or 'creative intelligence'!) which turns us back to 'mathematics' and
displays a nice schoolerism that strikes me as Aquinianian:

The noêma or intentio intenta or pensée pensée, illustrated by the lower
contexts, P, Q, R,..and by the upper context that is Gödel's theorem.

B. Lonergan, "Insight" (1957, p. xxv).

And there's more.

My favourite anti-Gricean essay has to be Wilson, "Grice's ultimate counterxample", in Nous.