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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Alcohol-Free

J makes very good points about 'willing' (free will) in the commentary on "philosophical psychology" and how it 'evolved' from Ryle to Grice.

I agree with J that the ISSUE is in 'deciding'.

Oddly, very few philosophers of Grice's group dwelt on that. Perhaps P. H. Nowell-Smith -- a minor genius, who died last year. And D. F. Pears, another minor genius, who ALSO died last year.

Smith (the Nowell- is artistic) did write on 'free will' early in his career, and his "Ethics" is a gem. Antedating Grice in so many respects. Nowell-Smith would invite us to reconsider talk on 'choosing'.

As J writes, Sue cannot choose between being hungry or not. A taco or a burger maybe. So we need to analyse different types of 'choosing' and the 'mechanist' monster, as it were (i.e. how to make 'choosing' compatible with 'determinism' of some sort -- if at all).

Pears did write on 'predicting and deciding' in his British Academy Lecture, which predated Grice's explorations on this in his "Intention and Uncertainty" (another British Academy Lecture).

Yet, it seems there is a lot of 'behaviourism' in our talk on 'choices'.

"Sophie's Choice". Choice to think? More like choice to act. The idea that I do NOT choose to believe that it is raining (when it is) seems pretty otiose.

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My sort of defense of behaviourism was meant to show J that I do take behaviourism seriously. Not so much the American variety Watson through Skinner, but Ryle -- which as I say, is the immediate antecessor of the Oxonian group to which Grice belonged.

Let us recall that Grice's group ('the play group') was led by Austin, born in 1911. Nobody could be older than Austin. Ryle, having been born in 1900, did not qualify. So it is EASY to speak of 'schools of Oxford thought' in this regard.

For some reason, Oxford holds a Wilde Readership in the Philosophy of Mind, which has been quite influential for the development of 'philosophical psychology'.

I don't know of any Oxonian cartesian, though. It seems that nobody wanted to dwell on the ghost in the machine.

Let's recall that whatever we find of philosophical substance in cogn-sci comes from the sort of Oxford school -- Dennett was Ryle's student at Oxford, -- and of course Searle was even a younger Rhodes scholar who had Strawson (Grice's tutee) as DPhil supervisor.

So whatever Searle, Dennett, and most American philosophers of mind got, they got from the so-called "School of Ordinary Language Philosophy".

Stich and the Churchlands tried to impose their own different tradition, but I'm not sure they succeeded.

When it comes to Ontology, it is good to be reminded of what Grice calls "Ontological Marxism" (online). "If they work, they exist". He means entities. Odd that this is a stretch from Occam's razor. But not quite. So, he is willing to say that we can transmogrify the correlatum of a psychological predicate (like '... willing that ...'). Grice proposes two variants -- as ways of introducing such entities: Ramsified Naming and Ramsified Descriptions.

So, while not rehabilitating 'dualism', at all, he is playing with the idea of not to be too afraid about postulating entities which are correlata to our psychological talk.

The issue may be 'explanatory'. Do willings and choices EXPLAIN action? We hope so.

Sophie's choice.

She chose between a taco and a burger. She chose the taco.

Her choosing EXPLAINS her eating the taco.

What are the behavioural output of her choosing the taco? Her eating the taco. What are the antecedents of her choosing the taco? Her perceiving that the taco looked more appetising.

Yet, there is a world of difference between saying that all we have is Sophie's perceptual input and her behavioural output, and Grice's functionalist picture (Block, in is influential collection of essays in the philosophy of mind agrees the caracterisation offered here of Grice as a functionalist).

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The difference is a matter of what is within the scope of an existential quantifier. There is a 'choice' by Sophie. It is this 'choice' or willing that bridges Sophie's perception ('the taco is more appetising than the burger') and behaviour (she eats the taco).

Etc.

8 comments:

  1. The title refers to a note made by Grice (in the Grice Collection, Bancroft) to the effect that an analysis of 'freedom' would involve the study of phrases like 'sugar-free', 'alcohol-free', and so on. Loved that.

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  3. Grazi, I guess. Pro-filosophe Im not but did a few years ago rekindle an interest in the freewill/determinism issue (was a somewhat hot topic on garden of forking paths for a few nanoseconds). Honderich's site also provided some clues--as did Wm James' classic on free-will/determinism (still quite cool, I believe). So, yes I hold for some type of compatibilism...tho I sort of understand the appeal of the strict determinist's agenda (and ergo the possibility of...illusionism, as per Doc James). But just obvious...facts about human life such as decisions and deliberation (not to say education, skills, agency, accountability) do suggest something like volition, and limited freedom in a sense. And the morali-tay issue also pertinent (tho many naive skeptics say otherwise). It seems quite weird that we could imprison people if they had no real control over actions, or couldn't have made a better decision (tho many decisions are obviously compelled). But to be honest I haven't completely decided on the issue--tho Im quite convinced a pure libertarianism does not suffice.

    Here's something I scrawled on Bricmontian mechanism a few moons back

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  4. Many thanks, and for the link. I may start a blog post on the alcohol-free for real. Maybe J gets convinced that 'free' is overrated!

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  6. Yes. I should re-read the excellent Bricmont post. Great quotes. And good quotes and mentions of Dennett and Searle -- and the rest of them.
    And I liked your definition of 'empiricism' as the scientist's default philosophy.

    I think Sophie's choice is overrated.

    YOU set constraints on her. I can't see why she Kant choose NOT to be hungry. For one.

    ----

    I actually not sure I KNOW what a taco is -- but I can distinguish many varieties of burgers. So I'm not sure if

    'choose between a burger and a taco' holds.

    'choose among a variety of burgers'

    Here we would need a scale:

    is a cheeseburger a burger?

    Is a triple mac the combo of three simple macs. Burgers can be quite a task.

    Horn entitled one of his essays, "Hamburgers and truth", after quote by Grice, online.

    ----

    (Don't eat more than you can chew).

    Grice's favourite example of psychological description and explanation is a squirrel devouring nuts. As J. D., online, said, "The most sophisticated philosophical analysis of 'eating' I have encountered. I may have dropped the info at the club. If one uses the search engine for 'squarrel'. For Toby is a squarrel not a squirrel.

    Besides the problem of uncertainty about antecedent conditions, Grice's approach has been criticised for using 'ceteris paribus'.

    When I said that Sophie thought the burger looked more appetising, I guess I was being zany. Surely 'appetising' is a dispositional thing, and vacuous in nature. It's like the phlogiston, or the virtus dormitiva. I mean, surely if x looks more appetising you'll eat it.

    To look appetising means you'll eat it (counterfactually).

    I can't see why we would say that a mechanist is a wicked one if he explains Sophie's choice mechanically.

    What Grice seems to be suggesting as per quotes in "free for lunch" is that some sophisticated systems create their own volitions such that they (the critters) are 'self-caused', as it were. It's an internal sort of causation.

    So if Sophie wants a big Mac, she'll have it.

    She is FREE to choose it.

    --------- Because in her system, the desire, "I want a big Mac" is internal to her. There is really no big external cause (other than propaganda, or a fear for this or that flatulence) that will block her from we being able to DEEM her 'free to choose'.

    And she IS free for lunch, too.

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  7. (wasn't completely pleased with post..so deleted. scuzi)


    the freedom-determinism issue seems to be one of a few genuine enigmas where the mere mortal might agree with St Ludwig (temporarily at least): "whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent”. A definitive answer would I think require a sort of polymath mind--one skilled in brain science, neurology as well as the related metaphysical and logical puzzles (a reincarnation of Wm James!). Alas most of the usual blog-types (see the Garden of FP) tend to be either the reductionist bottlewashers, OR they are the witchdoctor Kantians and theists. Searle sort of tried...

    FIN

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