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Sunday, June 27, 2010

"Every event has a cause": Kant, Pears, and Grice on the synthetic a priori

By JLS
for the GC

We are discussing aspects of 'scientific revolutions' with J. I was challenged by J to prove that there is some ontological or cosmological factor behind a scientific revolution -- hence the Griceian key -- and not just 'politics' -- and we were discussing classical mechanics which led us to Kant on the synthetic a priori. As J has expanded on the particular truism,

"Every event has a cause"

we were wondering!

There is an essay by Pears in Strawson's "Philosophical Logic" (a symposium with the Aristotelian Society, as it happens). Pears practises 'linguistic analysis'. But can it "prove" the synthetic a priori? We don't think such an analysis can! It boils down to what H. L. A. Hart, referring to Baron Quinton's theory of punishment ("If we say he punished HER then she deserved it") as a 'definitional' stop.

Grice meant to include a discussion of the synthetic a priori in the Retrospective Epilogue to Way of Words -- the mimeos are in the Grice Collection at Berkeley. There is ONE example he quotes. Not, alas, the 'every event has a cause', but

"Nothing can be red and green all over"

Chapman notes that Grice had been interested in this since the early 50s, and I was fascinated to learn he would question his children's playmates about the truth of the truism: Can a sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed (Recollection by Mrs. Grice to Chapman, 2006).

Perhaps that's the way to go -- because the synthetic a priori, if built about our congition, must depend on our 'cognitive capacities'. (I write this when I was reading only yesterday that scientists have 'proved' that a foetus prior to 24 weeks can feel no pain!).

I was once fascinated to learn of the list of truisms that Nigel Morley Bunker used in his Master's dissertation at Lancaster, as cited by Sampson in his "Making sense". His approach is, again, survey-based -- but his informants are different. Morley Bunker explicitly AVOIDED philosophers: they had to be undergraduate in areas OTHER than philosophy, and they were treated to pieces of trivial pursuit like

Summer follows Spring.

---

Morley Bunker is considering the 'analytic', rather than the 'synthetic', but hey, this is all blurred!

---

The Griceian paradigm does not solve things too easily. There is a sense in which, if an analytic judgement is truly analytic it would be reducible to a "patent tautology", S is S, as in "Women are women" or "War is War" --. The exercise then, for those propounding that the synthetic a priori reduces to the analytic (on the one hand) OR the 'synthetic a posteriori' (the boring common-or-garden empirical things we say), is to proceed case-by-case.

"Every event has a cause".

----

First, how to symbolise it. What sort of quantification are we using? Substitutional, I gather. "Every (known) event has a cause". What is the logical form of "x causes y".

Quinton, oddly, worked on this. He was obsessed with complicating Strawson's and Grice's cosmologies. His "Times and Spaces", for example, argues that 'time' and 'space' are INDIVIDUALS ("That was some lovely time at the beach, no?"). Similarly, he has an address to the Aristotelian Society on "Objects and Events". It's OBJECTS AND events which exist -- he says predating Davidson.

Grice was never so sure. In his own "Actions and Events" he indeed goes on to mention people, atoms, electrons, and quarks as things which exist. But why add, with Davidson, 'events'? Grice notices that Davidson's 'diagnostic realism', based on scientific hypothesis rather than metaphysics hypostasis, will not be enough.

Grice argues that the logical form of things like "Every event has a cause" cannot ranger OVER events. We need the components of the event: the substantial types. It's the substantial types that 'embody' the causal powers. In the case of 'events' that matter to Grice ("actions") the issue is clear enough: it's the WILL that has the causal power. There is the substantial, "Human", with an embodied 'will' and it is the 'will' that causes the action. As he notes, 'cause' is indeed an analogical notion created out of the 'power of the will'. While 'cause-because' is ubiquitous, it is 'cause-to' that matters: final causality. As when we say, "A rebel WITHOUT a cause", i.e. without a cause to rebel.

It's less clear what sense of 'cause' can justify, 'every event has a cause'. In an early essay reprinted in "Way of Words" Grice laughed at the pre-Humean conception of cause. Hume, who was labelled the funniest philosopher before Quinton (by O'Grady, Quinton's obituarist in the Guardian) noted that

x causes y

involves

x wills y

and that's animism galore. Grice proposes to elucidate this with a sample of historical wisdom:

What caused the death of King Charles I?

Surely his decapitation!

But surely it is similarly nonsensical to add that "Charles I's decapitation willed his death".

So what are we talking here?

Grandy and Warner were very right when they summed up Grice's philosophy in the acronym

P
G
R
I
C
E

For it's all about the

PHILSOPHICAL
grounds
or
Rationality

as they flourish in three concepts, and it's the middle one that deals with the 'alleged' synthetic a priori:

the
intention (or will)
the category
and
the end (final cause).

It all relates!

24 comments:

  1. It occurs to me that we may need two axioms in regard to events, things, processes, actions, ideas, and so on.

    1. The "Unfinished Axiom" (named after Schubert's Unfinished Symphony), namely, "No list of objects or elements and so on is closed unless explicitly stated to be so, or in other words we can always add more later."

    2. The "Beginning Axiom": Begin anything (well, almost anything) by attempting to translate it approximately from simple English (or comparable Natural Language) to simple Mathematics or vice versa, and keep doing this almost all the time.

    The word "approximately" may cause problems for some people, but I am content to rely on educated people's intuitions unless otherwise found, in regard to "approximately".

    Does anyone have a guess as to how rapidly the above Axioms used in alternation could exceed the philosophical wisdom of Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, Born, Bohr, De Brodglie, Bohm, Mach, and so on? Modesty forbids me from stating my guess because I proposed the question and because I do not intend to minimize the remarkable brains of the above researchers. Perhaps I will figure out a way to state my guess later.

    Osher Doctorow

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  2. I would do the same for "Causation". Grice liked Bayesian Conditional Probability if I recall, and I like Probable Causation/Influence which roughly speaking replaces division by subtraction in the former, but let us also consider the Ancients, the Less Ancient, and so on. Let us throw in the Logical Conditional, Material Implication, Entailment, Action at a Distance, Mechanical Force (push, pull, etc.), Aristotle's views, Hume's views, compare them, and not rush to erase any of them until we know what we are erasing. There is an axiom: "Thou shalt not Erase," at least not prematurely (which hopefully can be figured out or approximated).

    Osher Doctorow

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  3. Thanks, Osher. Good three points. I mean, the first point of the first axiom. The second point of the second axiom, and the "Do not erase" of the second comment. One by one:

    the unfinished axiom. I liked the idea of titling it after a piece of music. In particular, I would like a discussion of something like a symbol I would use in the past: it was a combination of the horseshoe of the "if" calculus ("p ) q") but with a caeteris paribus built to it. I also formalised it elsewhere as:

    p --cp--> q

    I.e. if p, caeteris paribus q. I find that statement sort of incredibly interesting. In nonmonotonic logics, a twisted arrow is sometimes used, and the example most used, as I recall, "Tweety is a bird; therefore, Tweety flies" (unless of course, Tweety is an ostrich).

    Re the second, I liked it, and also in connection with that idiom Grice referred to often: "Bootstrap"! -- pull yourself by your own bootstraps. He means English as a metalanguage. Or rather, the idea that whatever you say, you better say it in a way that won't contradict the idea that you should be able to refer to it in English (or a good substitute thereof!).

    The "do not erase" I like and compare it to Grice's motto: "Try to treat those who are dead but great as if they were great and living". In a way, it is anti-parsimony. Grice did defend parsimony (or Occam's razor) elsewhere, notably in his motto, "Do not multiply SENSES beyond necessity" -- i.e. erase senses, if you can (I wonder if razor and erasure are cognate). But in the case Osher is using he just means respect for what others have said on this or that. To the sublime list, I'd add "backward causation" -- just for the fun of it ("the effect may precede the cause").

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  4. Kant's point on synthetic a priori cause related to classical physics and works fine with ...billiard ball-like motions. He's objecting to Hume's skeptical subjectivism, and upholding Newtonian mechanics and in some sense, I ..agree. The billiard balls will not fly up (tho' another reading of Hume says he was just talking about the provisional "laws" of physics, not nature itself). The trajectories of falling objects, say shuttles or baseballs are regular and orderly, even if not completely predictable. The Brooklyn bridge won't be warping into snake heads (unless ...a bomb hits it). But that's not to say Kant..proves it. We assume planets moved, or boulders rolled down hills a few million years ago like they do now (even Aristotle would insist on that), but....rather difficult to prove. Kant was an early steady state theorist as well, wasn't he? So it's like...an infinity of ordered causes, motions, events...

    But ...Heisenberg, quantum theory addresses reality at the subatomic level. So a different kettle of phish, and the billiard-ball order and causality of Newton insufficient. Won't work with say radioactive isotopes. That seemed to be Heisenberg's central point, but there's more to it (against Kant's own...subjective aspects as well, but in a sense ..claiming the observer effect had a Kantian aspect).

    The philosopher follows the physicist on the cause questions, at least in regard to nature. I don't think most academic phil. people know enough about QM to offer definitive statements, on say the apparent randomness of some decaying isotope. It's not going to fit in a conditional; another of Heisenberg's points. Formal logic works at a Newtonian level as well, if you are trying to do induction (or not, if probability involved). Logic might apply to say circuitry. Not the weather or ocean waves.

    The freedom/determinism in regard to human actions is a bit different. I think philosophers can discuss that, but im tempted to say it ultimately relates to brain functions, and again that becomes rather specialized rather quickly.

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  5. J -- I love you! You amuse me in a good way. Apparently, academic philosophers kant talk diddly! I mean: brain waves? ocean waves? Give them a break!

    I was re-reading your blog post on the 'synthetic a priori', and your example, there is, 'you stick a knife and you get a shock'. Indeed, that seems to be all that there is to Hume: 'transitional sequence', I think he called it. p happened, q happened. Never try to figure out if p CAUSED q. That's a metaphysical excrescence!

    I love Heisenberg on observation-influence. I mean: I see a woman walking in the street, and apparently, MY GAZE influences her walking -- So I wouldn't think the same should NOT hold for 'electrons'.

    In your blog post you mention that for Kant there is nothing in the word, 'event', that presupposes 'cause'. I'm not sure 'event' is the right word, even! I mean, surely Kant could NOT speak of 'events'. His Scots left a lot to be desired, and I'm not sure Hume spoke of 'events'. The metaphysical vocabulary in those days was pretty poor!

    An 'event' is, for me, usually, a party!

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  6. "Every event has a cause".

    I.e. parties should be charity tombolas.

    Oddly, this reminds me of Eva Peron!

    "The chorus girl hasn't learned the lines you'd like to hear. She won't go scrambling over the backs of the poor to be accepted
    By making donations just large enough to the correct charity. She won't be president of your wonderful societies of philanthropy
    Even if you asked her to be
    As you should have asked her to be. The actress hasn't learned the lines you'd like to hear. She won't join your clubs, she won't dance in your halls. She won't help the hungry once a month at your tombolas. She'll simply take control as you disappear!"

    Popper would say that

    "Every event has a cause" is irrefutable, thus metaphysical. Incidentally J's post has it as "Every event MUST have a cause", which is possibly a better translation of Kant's thought.

    I prefer, "Every event HAS a cause" -- but then I may not!

    In a way, to add the 'must' is doubly analytic. As when Nelson said,

    "Kiss me, Hardy!"

    --- No. I mean, when he said,

    "Every man must do his duty".

    -- and then it turns out that 'duty' is what every man must do!

    -- (I think he said Englishman, but then hey Grice was an Englishman, and so is Gott!).

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  7. Don't get any ...strange ideas JL. bitte.

    Gott? AS in gothic, the peoples of Gott, Gottlob (and initially, say the times of Theodoric that meant neither the roman-greek pantheon, or semitic JHVH..tho' perhaps related to Zeus, etc)-. Not anglo, JL. Neither is "Amadeus" for that matter (Gottlob Mozart? He actually used that when in german areas; Amadeus when with italianos. Many austrians did that).

    Kant was a Lutheran as well, at least nominally. Quite different than the anglo-calvinist Being (or catholic...tho' there are some parallels)

    Actually you may be correct that a Popperian falsification criteria might apply to much of Kant (not to say metaphysics...).
    Yet....falsi. really makes a great deal of thought impossible, philosophy especially (thinking of Peirce's abduction as well). And so much for History, or anything like...process, ethics as well. Popper detested psychology too. Popperism, at least of the early sort was a type of crypto-positivism (and verification), really.

    OK, return to Popper's minimal program then--but Popper himself made use of Kant at times did he not.

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  8. Yes. But let's go bit by bit, and with some concern for D. F. Pears. The man died last year and nobody NOTICED. I SHARED the obit. with the most important philo mailing list (sort of --, well, discussion list, CHORA). And he was a GENIUS. Aune was surprised that Pears had an essay on that.

    Kant was a continental: Pears and Grice were not. Popper was also a Continental. So we have to play with 'falsification' only to the extent that it amuses us.

    "Every event has a cause". Try to falsify that.

    There ARE, for a Kantian, falsification instances? Only we wouldn't know them. Or rather, the subject of apperception, the "I think", wouldn't know them -- for he is so embodied and Kant think outside the box!

    On the other hand, since 'cause', or 'cause-1', to use Grice's lingo, can apply to mostly anything (as opposed to cause-2, the cause-2 that matters -- the intention), surely every event has a cause. It may be the event itself. The scholastics spoke of causa sui. God as cause of himself or his self for example.

    Call me anti-Kantian, but I cannot make sense of Kant's idea of the synthetic a priori about every event having a cause when I think of that American actor, James Dean, and his "rebel without a cause". What an event that film was!

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  9. When discussing the 'Every event has a cause' you'll have to analyse Pears's "Incompatibility of colours" -- HIS example -- and remember Warnock!

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  10. I think Kant's points on cause (if not the syn. a priori, space-time, categories, etc) were intended to overcome Humean skepticism. Whether or not he succeeded is another matter--or might ask whether such justification was needed (for germans it was). Aren't students say in a basic science course--say Physics 101, chemistry--told these laws always hold? Will the freezing point for H20 change too, Dr Hume?

    Kant was attempting a philosophical justification for the ...necessity of Newtonian mechanics, however primitive that may sound. F=ma doesn't like change . Heisenberg may have been correct that Kant's system was a bit outmoded for subatomic physics, thermodynamics, etc. but on a macro-level still applies, if a bit mundane.


    Causality in the legal or moral sense--ie, whodunit, motiviation, intention, etc-- poses a slightly different issue, somewhat quotidian--tho' I think philosophasters might have something to say on it; or rather, how to reconcile a mechanistic realm (even "every event has a cause") with apparent freedom (Kant too had something to say on that). I still admire William James' writing on freedom/determinism (and he often veers close to a..strict deterministic position). Most of the ord-language people, and yr St Grice held to Kantian views of Freedom actually (or incompatibilism as they say) did they not. Both plebes and princes object to Fatalism

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  11. Yes. One shouldn't overestimate the influence of Kant over Grice -- because, hey, this should be the Kant Club. Some people say (who? God knows) that all that Grice says had been said by Kant!

    You are right that Kant on freedom is a hoot. I think Grice found himself teaching Kant's pure critique while in Oxford (although he did seem to have leave the heavy courseload on that to Strawson), and teaching Kant's MORAL theory in Berkeley!

    The stuff he left on his courses on Kant's ethics (at the Berkeley library) fill folders and folders! (I hope he did not keep the grades he gave to his students, or their papers!).

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  12. Anyway, the correction then was that "Every event has a cause" is a paper by Warnock, not Pears! -- Pears, rather, wrote on "Incompatibilities of colour". Both Warnock's and Pears's essays appeared in Flew's connection. So I feel slightly guilty commening on a thread on the "Every event has a cause" ascribing the view to Pears, when the man only said that one thing cannot be red and green all over! Anyway, could be worse!

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  13. So we better start a new thread -- it cannot be about "Events" and Pears!

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  14. The Cal Berkeley professors' version of Kant has little relation to Kant's philosophy, whether in terms of the pure Reason, or practical reason. In terms of the metaphysics, it's merely a theoretical chore, I suspect, as in "wouldn't this be nice" (Dreyfus is an overrated, corporate windbag; even Searle's ...boring quotidian analysis stuff superior). In terms of the ethics, the CI, the "kingdom of ends" (or Rawls' update), Cal people (links oder rechts) simply don't get it, and couldn't care less.

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  15. Yes. I often wonder about Berkeley. I suppose by the time Grice GOT there -- in 1967, things were different. Apparently, he fell in love with the house, first -- up in the hills -- and later he tried to sort of maybe perhaps instill some sort of 'Oxonian' tutorial onto the proceedings -- but the panorama does not help. For one, there are no Meadows of Christ Church! The Moses Hall is a bit too grandiose and in general, the type of students he got were NOT the Oxonian types. For one, they lacked the classics, as he complained. Notably the Greek. In the USA, to learn Greek for a degree in philosophy is sort of unheard of. Grice would complain to his wife about this (reported by Chapman). Indeed, the point is poignant. Mrs. Grice would recall Grice complianing about this in a mild way -- and looking for the bright thing about it. He felt this strongly when teaching Aristotle's Metaphysics in Ackrill's translation. Mrs. Grice makes the point that he would not have tolerated the fact back in Oxford -- if he was dealing with a Lit. Hum. type -- recall the Philosophy-Politics-Economics types have no classical requirements. Kant may even be different!

    But anway, the 1960s Berkeley was the Berkeley of the anti-Vietnam thing and stuff. Oddly, this had two effects on Grice: at one point he embraced the 'new American ethos', on the other his essays became more and more populated with typically English 'characters' -- as if to assert his (somehow) 'transferred' or translocated identity. But surely Oxford-Berkeley is a NATURAL transference. It's not like Ukraine-Berkeley which was George Myro's, or Bombay-Berkeley, which was Steven Yablo ( Muenchen-Berkeley -- Feyerabend's -- and Amsterdam-Berkeley -- Staal -- are still different animals).

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  16. Too true. Recall that this is 1967 Berkeley -- the Berkeley of the anti-Vietnam thing! Not the corporate thing most see today!

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  17. Yes. I often wonder about Berkeley. I suppose by the time Grice GOT there -- in 1967, things were different. Apparently, he fell in love with the house, first -- up in the hills -- and later he tried to sort of maybe perhaps instill some sort of 'Oxonian' tutorial onto the proceedings -- but the panorama does not help. For one, there are no Meadows of Christ Church! The Moses Hall is a bit too grandiose and in general, the type of students he got were NOT the Oxonian types. For one, they lacked the classics, as he complained. Notably the Greek. In the USA, to learn Greek for a degree in philosophy is sort of unheard of. Grice would complain to his wife about this (reported by Chapman). Indeed, the point is poignant. Mrs. Grice would recall Grice complianing about this in a mild way -- and looking for the bright thing about it. He felt this strongly when teaching Aristotle's Metaphysics in Ackrill's translation. Mrs. Grice makes the point that he would not have tolerated the fact back in Oxford -- if he was dealing with a Lit. Hum. type -- recall the Philosophy-Politics-Economics types have no classical requirements. Kant may even be different!

    But anway, the 1960s Berkeley was the Berkeley of the anti-Vietnam thing and stuff. Oddly, this had two effects on Grice: at one point he embraced the 'new American ethos', on the other his essays became more and more populated with typically English 'characters' -- as if to assert his (somehow) 'transferred' or translocated identity. But surely Oxford-Berkeley is a NATURAL transference. It's not like Ukraine-Berkeley which was George Myro's, or Bombay-Berkeley, which was Steven Yablo ( Muenchen-Berkeley -- Feyerabend's -- and Amsterdam-Berkeley -- Staal -- are still different animals).

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  18. when Feyerabend was around and a few others, Cal was a different place, but the supposed radicalness may have been exaggerated--at least in philosophy (there were some real radicals. I think they moved 'em to UC Santa Cruz). Chiharua was also a powerful analytical thinker ala Frege and Russell, but ....not so political (but I ...mostly oppose his nominalism, and those in his school. Excitement!).

    Searle doesn't just run the dept. (or he did) he owns a bunch of properties in Berk. "On Landlordism."

    As far as knowledge of classical languages goes, you are correct--but that's for all students. Abysmal. Little Latin, less greek here. Then most American students-- philosophy, literature, sciences, etc-- don't know a modern romance tongue or German either. What latin I've picked up has been due to studying espanol and some frances (tho' I read, say, Cicero type latin with some work, and my wheellock). I saw a video of Searle giving a lecture in crisp French. I was nearly impressed. The continental types usually know languages. ZIZEK for example, knows his slavic/russian tongue, but also hoch deutsch, english (with heavy Boris accent, however), french, italian, etc. Fairly typical in europe. In the US you're lucky to find a university dweeb (or dweebette) who could read a paragraph of basic french...je swee...

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  19. Dunno. I'm currently studying Latin pronunciation by English types. Latin was NEVER Grice's forte, and I guess he would say,

    "Ceecero" to pronounce Cicero, even when reading Cicero -- who according to Mr. Chipps in "Goodbye, Mr. Chipps" should be read, "Kickero". Ah well.

    He got his Greek fine at Clifton, a boring town in Bristol (environs) -- yes, the suspension bridge fame.

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  20. Not exactly sure how the C or K game works. Keltics, or Seltics? K there. Kaeser, or Caesar, See-zur? C is an s-sound for most latin, unless followed by o. The K for C germanic. But not always. Who knows what it was spoken--perhaps italian like (vulgate latin not that of pax romana either).

    the Greek alphabet is a beauteous thing. Koine, like biblethumper greek I can make out a bit, at least obvious words--theos. But the athenians...not there. Many people forget that greek was sort of the lingua franca circa...JC. Latin more like the soldiers...maybe courts. But all med. people spoke greek...ergo St Augie was probably correct that new testament was all greek, originally (with aramaic the semite tongue; hebrew not even a "language" per se) Schopenhauer was on to that issue (as was Ez Pound).

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  21. Yes, feel free to contribute to post blogs on Greek and Latin I'm entering. It should not be on Pears on an essay he never wrote, "Every event has a cause"!

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  22. I think the 'c' of Old Latin was ALWAYS /k/. Note that in Greek it's always 'kappa', too. Greek has one sigma too many (@ and $, i.e. to graphemes -- one final, for the sake of it).

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  23. This is so fascinating that I downloaded part of "Immanuel Kant" (Michael Rohlf, rohlf@cua.edu), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Thu May 20, 2010. I am a beginner in Kant, but after 72 years (I may make it 73 in November), and thanks to The Grice Club, Kant is beginning to look very wise to me.

    Whatever one wants to name it, there does seem to be some "experience" and yet "a priori" nature in things like "2 + 2 = 4". I take that to be also applicable to probability, which is roughly speaking a fraction or an approximation to a fraction like 2/3, or in other words 1+1 = 2and 2+1 = 3, the first divided by the second.

    This appears to underlie my latest results on probabilistic oscillations in the universe in Quantum Gravity 450.7 in sci.physics (usenet online).

    Cheers,

    Osher Doctorow

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  24. What lovely words, O. D.: "Thanks to the Grice Club, Kant is beginning to look very wise to me!". I may use that somewhere else -- in a special post to the club, even!

    Also, cfr. "Thanks to Grice, Kantotle is beginning to look very wise." Recall that for Grice, Kant is sort of insufficient (for things), as Aristotle is. Kantotle, or Aristant, was Grice's pet.

    I agree about the 2 + 2 = 4, and the connection with probability, and the whole problem of the analytic a priori. I think philosophers of Grice's generation were obsessed with this because Ayer had simplified things too much (R. B. Jones may agree). He had made the anti-Kantian point of dismissing the synthetic a priori, where "Every event has a cause" may belong.

    I'm not saying Grice provided an excellent solution. But he was also influenced, oddly, by one of his students (I don't know of any OTHER philosopher who's been influenced so much by his younger -- not his elder): Strawson. And Strawson had made points about Kant's synthetic-a-priori in his book of lectures, "The bounds of sense".

    While Ayer was into 'formal' or mathematical languages, Strawson brought ordinary English to the picture. What would it mean to say, "Every event, I'm sorry to say, does NOT have a cause". By 1956, Strawson and Grice were collaborating in "In defense of a dogma", and while this example does not feature, it should.

    In conversation to Grice's biographer, Grice's wife recalls how Grice would approach the playground companion to his two children, and ask things like "Can a sweater be red and green all over. No stripes allowed". For years, he was interested in Kantotelian issues like that. Is it a matter of the ONTOLOGY (as Aristotle wants) that we Kant have that, or is it a matter of 'transcendental' cognition?

    In his later writings, some in unpublished format, deposited at the Grice Collection, at the Bancroft Library in the Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley, Grice considers THIS and many other fascinating stuff.

    So thanks for great input!

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