Speranza
Commentary on the OED.
3. Chiefly N. Amer. A large, migratory thrush, Turdus migratorius (family Turdidae), which has brick red underparts and a dark head, widespread and common in North America. Also more fully American robin. Also (with distinguishing word): any of several similar American thrushes.Earlier in robin redbreast (see robin redbreast n. 2a).
1703 S. Sewall Diary 16 Mar. (1973) I. 483 The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn.
1750 J. Birket Voy. N. Amer. (1916) 13 They have‥a bird like our field fare with a red brest which they call a Robin that sings delightfully.
1808 A. Wilson Amer. Ornithol. I. 37 The Robin is one of our earliest songsters.
1858 H. W. Longfellow Miles Standish iii. 3 Into the tranquil woods, where blue-birds and robins were building.
1888 G. H. Kingsley in Field 16 June 869/2 In America I shoot robins and find them thrushes.
1931 Times Lit. Suppl. 5 Nov. 859/3 A lovely little bird hardly as large as an American robin.
1966 Vancouver Province 19 Nov. 1/5 The robin had been sitting in a mountain ash tree in his front yard.
1987 Field Guide Birds N. Amer. (National Geographic Soc.) (ed. 2) 330 Rufous-backed Robin. Turdus rufopalliatus.‥ Clay-colored Robin. Turdus grayi.
1992 J. Osborne Cardinal i. 19 Some songbirds occasionally sing from the ground. The American Robin is one of these.
1703—1992(Hide quotations)
4.
Categories »
a. Chiefly N. Amer. Any of various unrelated songbirds that resemble the European or American robin, esp. in having reddish or orange colour on the breast or underside. Usu. with distinguishing word.blue, golden, ground, Pekin, swamp robin, etc.: see the first element.
1769 R. Smith Jrnl. 18 May in Tour Four Great Rivers (1906) 41 The lively Note of the Swamp Robin, the Red Bird and other Birds from the earliest Dawn is entertaining.
1794 Philos. Soc. Trans. 4 110 This bird was the chewink, or ground robin.
1855 Orr's Circle Sci., Org. Nat. III. 265 One of the commonest species, the Baltimore Oriole,‥has received the name of fire-bird.‥ It is also called the Golden Robin.
1884 Harper's Mag. Mar. 610/1 Our New England forefathers call him the ‘blue robin’.
1905 Newark (Ohio) Advocate 2 June 4/3 The Japanese nightingale, or Pekin robin, is becoming naturalized in the parks of London.
1955 Sci. News Let. 23 Apr. 271 The towhee is a bird of many aliases. ‘Ground robin’ is a popular name, and justified by his deceptively robin-like appearance.
2004 T. Wheeler Falklands & S. Georgia 62 It's easy to see why the meadowlark, with its bright red breast, is known locally as the ‘robin’ or ‘military starling’.
---
The OED has this as
"3."
i.e. Use 3. To speak of "SENSE" 3 would beg the question (as Frege would have it).
"Chiefly North American: a large, migratory thrush, Turdus migratorius (family Turdidae), which has brick red underparts and a dark head, widespread and common in North America."
"Also more fully American robin."
The retronym then becomes the Old-World robin.
---
"Also (with distinguishing word): any of several similar American thrushes."
The interesting point is:
"Earlier in "robin redbreast" (see "robin redbreast" n. 2a)."
---- So, it's the "robin-redbreast" (description?) we should be aiming at.
CITES:
1703 S. Sewall Diary 16 Mar. (1973) I. 483 The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn.
---- We have analysed this. Sewall was born in Hampshire, England. So we expect he had seen European robins.
"The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
----- Most likely, he was aware of the earlier use, "robin redbreast". Seeing that the Turdus migratorius, like the European robin, both have redbreasts, he felt like shortening 'robin-redbreast' into 'robin'.
----- The ONLY philosophical point I was considering here was whether the utterer THOUGHT that what he had seen was a specimen of the same class as the European robin redbreast. Most likely, not. He just thought that 'Robbin' would be a good appellative.
---
Further quotes:
1750 J. Birket Voy. N. Amer. (1916) 13
"They have ... a bird like our field fare with a red brest which they call a Robin that sings delightfully."
This above is very complex. "They" call a robin. One wonders if the implicature is that "they" are wrong.
----
In any case, Birket NEVER explains WHY "they" call "a bird like our field fare with a red breast, too", 'a robin'. Most likely because it resembled the European robin.
--- At this point one wants to know the dates of the introduction of the scientific names (or not).
THIRD QUOTE:
1808 A. Wilson Amer. Ornithol. I. 37
"The Robin is one of our earliest songsters."
Here, alla Grice, to say, "The American Robin is one of our earliest songsters" would be too informative (redundant, even).
FOURTH QUOTE:
1858 H. W. Longfellow Miles Standish iii. 3
"Into the tranquil woods, where blue-birds and robins were building."
Odd that he would use 'blue-birds' but 'robins' rather than 'robin-redbreasts'.
---
FIFTH QUOTE:
1888 G. H. Kingsley in Field 16 June 869/2
"In America I shoot robins and find them thrushes."
Since Kingsley was English, I guess the implicature is that 'robin', qua American robin, is a misnomer. In England robins are NOT shot. So the mistake on the part of Kingsley is to shoot a robin. He should shoot a thrush and find a robin?
---
SIXTH quote:
1931 Times Lit. Suppl. 5 Nov. 859/3
"A lovely little bird hardly as large as an American robin."
--- not an ostrich, then.
SEVENTH quote:
1966 Vancouver Province 19 Nov. 1/5
"The robin had been sitting in a mountain ash tree in his front yard."
---- This is so late one wonders why the OED cares to quote it. Is it, like we are surprised people are STILL using 'robin' to mean the American thing?
EIGHTH quote:
1987 Field Guide Birds N. Amer. (National Geographic Soc.) (ed. 2) 330
Rufous-backed Robin. Turdus rufopalliatus.‥ Clay-colored Robin. Turdus grayi.
--- Interesting. We see that 'robin' then applies to 'turdus' per se. Interesting, this turns the 'redbreast' into an accidental rather than essential feature, in that we expect that neither the rufous-backed robin nor the clay-colored robin have redbreasts.
NINTH QUOTE:
1992 J. Osborne Cardinal i. 19
Some songbirds occasionally sing from the ground. The American Robin is one of these.
----- When is "The American robin" NOT a redundancy?
Then comes
USAGE 4.
a. Chiefly N. Amer.
"Any of various unrelated songbirds that resemble the European or American robin, esp. in having reddish or orange colour on the breast or underside."
"Usu. with distinguishing word.
blue, golden, ground, Pekin, swamp robin, etc.: see the first element.
So this gives:
blue robin
golden robin
ground robin
Pekin robin
swamp robin.
for which one is invited to check with 'blue', 'golden', etc.
Quotes:
1769 R. Smith Jrnl. 18 May in Tour Four Great Rivers (1906) 41
"The lively Note of the Swamp Robin, the Red Bird and other Birds from the earliest Dawn is entertaining."
1794 Philos. Soc. Trans. 4 110
"This bird was the chewink, or ground robin."
1855 Orr's Circle Sci., Org. Nat. III. 265
"One of the commonest species, the Baltimore Oriole,‥has received the name of fire-bird.‥ It is also called the Golden Robin."
1884 Harper's Mag. Mar. 610/1
"Our New England forefathers call him the ‘blue robin’."
1905 Newark (Ohio) Advocate 2 June 4/3
"The Japanese nightingale, or Pekin robin, is becoming naturalized in the parks of London."
1955 Sci. News Let. 23 Apr. 271
"The towhee is a bird of many aliases. ‘Ground robin’ is a popular name, and justified by his deceptively robin-like appearance."
---- THIS ABOVE IS INTERESTING. For my point is that Sewall was perhaps ALSO DECEIVED by the deceptive European-robin-like appearance of the North-American robin. Or not.
2004 T. Wheeler Falklands & S. Georgia 62
It's easy to see why the meadowlark, with its bright red breast, is known locally as the ‘robin’ or ‘military starling’.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
A robin is a robin is a robin
Speranza
From the OED below.
Cheers.
---
3. Chiefly N. Amer. A large, migratory thrush, Turdus migratorius (family Turdidae), which has brick red underparts and a dark head, widespread and common in North America. Also more fully American robin. Also (with distinguishing word): any of several similar American thrushes.Earlier in robin redbreast (see robin redbreast n. 2a).
1703 S. Sewall Diary 16 Mar. (1973) I. 483 The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn.
1750 J. Birket Voy. N. Amer. (1916) 13 They have‥a bird like our field fare with a red brest which they call a Robin that sings delightfully.
1808 A. Wilson Amer. Ornithol. I. 37 The Robin is one of our earliest songsters.
1858 H. W. Longfellow Miles Standish iii. 3 Into the tranquil woods, where blue-birds and robins were building.
1888 G. H. Kingsley in Field 16 June 869/2 In America I shoot robins and find them thrushes.
1931 Times Lit. Suppl. 5 Nov. 859/3 A lovely little bird hardly as large as an American robin.
1966 Vancouver Province 19 Nov. 1/5 The robin had been sitting in a mountain ash tree in his front yard.
1987 Field Guide Birds N. Amer. (National Geographic Soc.) (ed. 2) 330 Rufous-backed Robin. Turdus rufopalliatus.‥ Clay-colored Robin. Turdus grayi.
1992 J. Osborne Cardinal i. 19 Some songbirds occasionally sing from the ground. The American Robin is one of these.
1703—1992(Hide quotations)
4.
Categories »
a. Chiefly N. Amer. Any of various unrelated songbirds that resemble the European or American robin, esp. in having reddish or orange colour on the breast or underside. Usu. with distinguishing word.blue, golden, ground, Pekin, swamp robin, etc.: see the first element.
1769 R. Smith Jrnl. 18 May in Tour Four Great Rivers (1906) 41 The lively Note of the Swamp Robin, the Red Bird and other Birds from the earliest Dawn is entertaining.
1794 Philos. Soc. Trans. 4 110 This bird was the chewink, or ground robin.
1855 Orr's Circle Sci., Org. Nat. III. 265 One of the commonest species, the Baltimore Oriole,‥has received the name of fire-bird.‥ It is also called the Golden Robin.
1884 Harper's Mag. Mar. 610/1 Our New England forefathers call him the ‘blue robin’.
1905 Newark (Ohio) Advocate 2 June 4/3 The Japanese nightingale, or Pekin robin, is becoming naturalized in the parks of London.
1955 Sci. News Let. 23 Apr. 271 The towhee is a bird of many aliases. ‘Ground robin’ is a popular name, and justified by his deceptively robin-like appearance.
2004 T. Wheeler Falklands & S. Georgia 62 It's easy to see why the meadowlark, with its bright red breast, is known locally as the ‘robin’ or ‘military starling’.
From the OED below.
Cheers.
---
3. Chiefly N. Amer. A large, migratory thrush, Turdus migratorius (family Turdidae), which has brick red underparts and a dark head, widespread and common in North America. Also more fully American robin. Also (with distinguishing word): any of several similar American thrushes.Earlier in robin redbreast (see robin redbreast n. 2a).
1703 S. Sewall Diary 16 Mar. (1973) I. 483 The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn.
1750 J. Birket Voy. N. Amer. (1916) 13 They have‥a bird like our field fare with a red brest which they call a Robin that sings delightfully.
1808 A. Wilson Amer. Ornithol. I. 37 The Robin is one of our earliest songsters.
1858 H. W. Longfellow Miles Standish iii. 3 Into the tranquil woods, where blue-birds and robins were building.
1888 G. H. Kingsley in Field 16 June 869/2 In America I shoot robins and find them thrushes.
1931 Times Lit. Suppl. 5 Nov. 859/3 A lovely little bird hardly as large as an American robin.
1966 Vancouver Province 19 Nov. 1/5 The robin had been sitting in a mountain ash tree in his front yard.
1987 Field Guide Birds N. Amer. (National Geographic Soc.) (ed. 2) 330 Rufous-backed Robin. Turdus rufopalliatus.‥ Clay-colored Robin. Turdus grayi.
1992 J. Osborne Cardinal i. 19 Some songbirds occasionally sing from the ground. The American Robin is one of these.
1703—1992(Hide quotations)
4.
Categories »
a. Chiefly N. Amer. Any of various unrelated songbirds that resemble the European or American robin, esp. in having reddish or orange colour on the breast or underside. Usu. with distinguishing word.blue, golden, ground, Pekin, swamp robin, etc.: see the first element.
1769 R. Smith Jrnl. 18 May in Tour Four Great Rivers (1906) 41 The lively Note of the Swamp Robin, the Red Bird and other Birds from the earliest Dawn is entertaining.
1794 Philos. Soc. Trans. 4 110 This bird was the chewink, or ground robin.
1855 Orr's Circle Sci., Org. Nat. III. 265 One of the commonest species, the Baltimore Oriole,‥has received the name of fire-bird.‥ It is also called the Golden Robin.
1884 Harper's Mag. Mar. 610/1 Our New England forefathers call him the ‘blue robin’.
1905 Newark (Ohio) Advocate 2 June 4/3 The Japanese nightingale, or Pekin robin, is becoming naturalized in the parks of London.
1955 Sci. News Let. 23 Apr. 271 The towhee is a bird of many aliases. ‘Ground robin’ is a popular name, and justified by his deceptively robin-like appearance.
2004 T. Wheeler Falklands & S. Georgia 62 It's easy to see why the meadowlark, with its bright red breast, is known locally as the ‘robin’ or ‘military starling’.
Robbin Gets Baptised
Speranza
On top of that, there's Kripke.
So that morn of March 16, 1703,
Sewall said,
"The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
He was _naming_ the Turdus migratorius "Robbin" (now spelt "Robin") and he *knew* it.
---
It is still different with Chaucer:
C. Riggs:
"I found a 1374 Chaucerian reference for Robin in my OED. I'll get more
detail if you like, but now it is time for tea."
-- For the use of 'Robin' to mean the Old World (as I prefer) thing (Erithacus rubecula, if you mustn'nt) is fanciful in nature (or something).
On top of that, there's Kripke.
So that morn of March 16, 1703,
Sewall said,
"The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
He was _naming_ the Turdus migratorius "Robbin" (now spelt "Robin") and he *knew* it.
---
It is still different with Chaucer:
C. Riggs:
"I found a 1374 Chaucerian reference for Robin in my OED. I'll get more
detail if you like, but now it is time for tea."
-- For the use of 'Robin' to mean the Old World (as I prefer) thing (Erithacus rubecula, if you mustn'nt) is fanciful in nature (or something).
A robin is a robin is a robin
Speranza
Putnam would speak of division of labour.
J. Friedman notes that there is one use of "robin" for the American bird from 1792. This is in /The American Geography/, by Jedidiah Morse.
http://books.google.com/books?id=PUcMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA59
Friedman comments:
"Morse is not what you'd call reliable on natural history."
---- And one wonders if he was quoting Sewall. He couldn't. Because Sewall's Diary only got published in the 1800s.
So, there are two paths to consider here. Or not. Or more.
Putnam would speak of division of labour.
J. Friedman notes that there is one use of "robin" for the American bird from 1792. This is in /The American Geography/, by Jedidiah Morse.
http://books.google.com/books?id=PUcMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA59
Friedman comments:
"Morse is not what you'd call reliable on natural history."
---- And one wonders if he was quoting Sewall. He couldn't. Because Sewall's Diary only got published in the 1800s.
So, there are two paths to consider here. Or not. Or more.
"The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn" -- Samuel Sewall, "Diary" -- March 16, 1703.
Speranza
---
Sewall, Samuel. Born: 1652 AD. Died: 1730 AD, at 77 years of age. Nationality: American Categories: Abolitionist. 1652 - Born at Hampshire, England on the 28th of March. 1661 - He emigrated from England to the Massachusetts colony. 1692 - He also entered local politics, and was elevated to the judiciary that judged the people in Salem accused of witchcraft. 1730 - Died in Boston, Massachusetts on the 1st of January.
1703 S. SEWALL Diary 16 Mar. (1879) II. 75
The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn.
Seeing that Sewall was Hampshire (rather than New Hampshire) born, I would think that he perhaps thought that the 'robbins' that he heard as "cheerfully uttering their notes" that morn of March 16, 1703 -- when he was:
1703
- 1652
---
at age 51
He was 51.
He heard, rather than saw the things, and said, to his diary (cfr. Grice on 'utterer's meaning in the absence of an audience" -- diary writing):
"The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
We can assume that he was familiar with
robin = Eritacus rubecula.
(Possibly, Sewall would spell that 'robbin').
So, for Sewall there's
'robbin'---> the "Erithacus rubecula"
and
"the Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
---- He could NOT have thought that those were specimens of Eritacus rubecula. So perhaps he was wrong.
---
Sewall, Samuel. Born: 1652 AD. Died: 1730 AD, at 77 years of age. Nationality: American Categories: Abolitionist. 1652 - Born at Hampshire, England on the 28th of March. 1661 - He emigrated from England to the Massachusetts colony. 1692 - He also entered local politics, and was elevated to the judiciary that judged the people in Salem accused of witchcraft. 1730 - Died in Boston, Massachusetts on the 1st of January.
1703 S. SEWALL Diary 16 Mar. (1879) II. 75
The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn.
Seeing that Sewall was Hampshire (rather than New Hampshire) born, I would think that he perhaps thought that the 'robbins' that he heard as "cheerfully uttering their notes" that morn of March 16, 1703 -- when he was:
1703
- 1652
---
at age 51
He was 51.
He heard, rather than saw the things, and said, to his diary (cfr. Grice on 'utterer's meaning in the absence of an audience" -- diary writing):
"The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
We can assume that he was familiar with
robin = Eritacus rubecula.
(Possibly, Sewall would spell that 'robbin').
So, for Sewall there's
'robbin'---> the "Erithacus rubecula"
and
"the Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
---- He could NOT have thought that those were specimens of Eritacus rubecula. So perhaps he was wrong.
A robin is a robin is a robin -- Sewall 1703
Speranza
The sources expanded:
OED antedating for "robin" (American bird)
From: trio@xxxxxxxxxx (Donna Richoux)
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:30:35 +0100
Peter Duncanson (BrE) wrote:
On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:24:25 -0800 (PST), "jerry_friedman@xxxxxxxxx"
wrote:
Me again. "Chickadee" led me to "robin" -- the real one, not that tiny
Rightpondian impostor.
Does anyone feel like checking whether the OED on line or other sources has anything before 1798?
OED:
Robin
1
3. N. Amer. The red-breasted thrush, Turdus migratorius.
FIRST CITE:
1703
S. SEWALL
"Diary" 16 Mar. (published in 1879)
II. 75
"The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
---
NEXT QUOTE:
1798 Monthly Mag. May 331/2
"The American robin, larger than ours."
The "Dictionary of American English", vol. 4 (Chicago, 1944) defines
"robin" as "a large-red-breasted thrush, Turdus (syn. Merula)
migratorius."
Citations begin with the Sewall 1703, then Fithian 1774
and Wilson 1808.
So the order here should be:
Sewall 1703 "The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
Fithian 1774
1798 -- "The American robin, larger than ours."
A separate quotation refers to the practice of hunting
and eating robins, beginning with:
1759 Essex Inst. Coll.
"Supped on Robens which my Chum and Wingate killed."
[Followed by 1775, 1805, and more.]
"Do I see a serious attempt to force the OED to document all American
usage?"
"They have a rather patchy track-record there." (Donna Richoux).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
•From: "jerry_friedman@xxxxxxxxx"
•Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:54:47 -0800 (PST)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Nov 25, 9:30 am, t...@xxxxxxxxxx (Donna Richoux) wrote:
Peter Duncanson (BrE) wrote:
I've just discovered that there's one of those in a library about
half a mile from my house.
The Am. Dict. defines
"robin" as "a large-red-breasted thrush, Turdus (syn. Merula)
migratorius." Citations begin with the Sewall 1703, then Fithian 1774
and Wilson 1808. A separate quotation refers to the practice of hunting
and eating robins, beginning with:
1759 Essex Inst. Coll. Supped on Robens which my Chum and Wingate
killed. [Followed by 1775, 1805, and more.]
....
Jerry Friedman:
"Thanks to both! So much for antedating this time. If it's of any interest, none of the citations above are in Goo Boo."
"There are two uses of "robin" for the American bird from 1792."
"One is in "The American Geography", by Jedidiah Morse.
http://books.google.com/books?id=PUcMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA59
Morse is not what you'd call reliable on natural history.
The other is "The History of New-Hampshire", volume III, by Jeremy
Belknap.
http://books.google.com/books?id=rzIBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA172
"Some of his vernacular names are charming:
"hang bird" (Orchard Oriole, which builds a hanging nest?), "little hang-bird" (Northern
Parula, ditto?), "tom teet" (Black-capped Chickadee), and my favorite,
"humility" (Ruddy Turnstone?)."
"But the earliest one is from 1789: "Cultivation of the Vine", by
Edward Antill, from /Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society."
http://books.google.com/books?id=LbgAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA230
"I think I checked all the earlier hits on "robin" at Goo Boo, but I
might have been careless, or they might have an OCR error."
Jerry Friedman:
"I'm not going to search for "robbin" right at the moment."
"I checked to see whether S. Sewall was writing from an American perspective
and found:
http://www.s9.com/Biography/Sewall-Samuel
Sewall, Samuel
Born: 1652 AD
Died: 1730 AD, at 77 years of age.
Nationality: American
Categories: Abolitionist
1652 - Born at Hampshire, England on the 28th of March.
1661 - He emigrated from England to the Massachusetts colony.
1692 - He also entered local politics, and was elevated to the judiciary
that judged the people in Salem accused of witchcraft.
1730 - Died in Boston, Massachusetts on the 1st of January.
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
The sources expanded:
OED antedating for "robin" (American bird)
From: trio@xxxxxxxxxx (Donna Richoux)
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:30:35 +0100
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:24:25 -0800 (PST), "jerry_friedman@xxxxxxxxx"
Me again. "Chickadee" led me to "robin" -- the real one, not that tiny
Rightpondian impostor.
Does anyone feel like checking whether the OED on line or other sources has anything before 1798?
OED:
Robin
1
3. N. Amer. The red-breasted thrush, Turdus migratorius.
FIRST CITE:
1703
S. SEWALL
"Diary" 16 Mar. (published in 1879)
II. 75
"The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
---
NEXT QUOTE:
1798 Monthly Mag. May 331/2
"The American robin, larger than ours."
The "Dictionary of American English", vol. 4 (Chicago, 1944) defines
"robin" as "a large-red-breasted thrush, Turdus (syn. Merula)
migratorius."
Citations begin with the Sewall 1703, then Fithian 1774
and Wilson 1808.
So the order here should be:
Sewall 1703 "The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn."
Fithian 1774
1798 -- "The American robin, larger than ours."
A separate quotation refers to the practice of hunting
and eating robins, beginning with:
1759 Essex Inst. Coll.
"Supped on Robens which my Chum and Wingate killed."
[Followed by 1775, 1805, and more.]
"Do I see a serious attempt to force the OED to document all American
usage?"
"They have a rather patchy track-record there." (Donna Richoux).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
•From: "jerry_friedman@xxxxxxxxx"
•Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:54:47 -0800 (PST)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Nov 25, 9:30 am, t...@xxxxxxxxxx (Donna Richoux) wrote:
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
I've just discovered that there's one of those in a library about
half a mile from my house.
The Am. Dict. defines
"robin" as "a large-red-breasted thrush, Turdus (syn. Merula)
migratorius." Citations begin with the Sewall 1703, then Fithian 1774
and Wilson 1808. A separate quotation refers to the practice of hunting
and eating robins, beginning with:
1759 Essex Inst. Coll. Supped on Robens which my Chum and Wingate
killed. [Followed by 1775, 1805, and more.]
....
Jerry Friedman:
"Thanks to both! So much for antedating this time. If it's of any interest, none of the citations above are in Goo Boo."
"There are two uses of "robin" for the American bird from 1792."
"One is in "The American Geography", by Jedidiah Morse.
http://books.google.com/books?id=PUcMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA59
Morse is not what you'd call reliable on natural history.
The other is "The History of New-Hampshire", volume III, by Jeremy
Belknap.
http://books.google.com/books?id=rzIBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA172
"Some of his vernacular names are charming:
"hang bird" (Orchard Oriole, which builds a hanging nest?), "little hang-bird" (Northern
Parula, ditto?), "tom teet" (Black-capped Chickadee), and my favorite,
"humility" (Ruddy Turnstone?)."
"But the earliest one is from 1789: "Cultivation of the Vine", by
Edward Antill, from /Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society."
http://books.google.com/books?id=LbgAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA230
"I think I checked all the earlier hits on "robin" at Goo Boo, but I
might have been careless, or they might have an OCR error."
Jerry Friedman:
"I'm not going to search for "robbin" right at the moment."
"I checked to see whether S. Sewall was writing from an American perspective
and found:
http://www.s9.com/Biography/Sewall-Samuel
Sewall, Samuel
Born: 1652 AD
Died: 1730 AD, at 77 years of age.
Nationality: American
Categories: Abolitionist
1652 - Born at Hampshire, England on the 28th of March.
1661 - He emigrated from England to the Massachusetts colony.
1692 - He also entered local politics, and was elevated to the judiciary
that judged the people in Salem accused of witchcraft.
1730 - Died in Boston, Massachusetts on the 1st of January.
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
OED antedating for robin
A robin is a robin is a robin.
Two online links:
Re: OED antedating for "robin" (American bird) - Derkeiler.comnewsgroups.derkeiler.com › ... › 2008-11En caché - Traducir esta página
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25 Nov 2008 – The red-breasted thrush, Turdus migratorius. ... May 331/2 The American robin, ... ... Citations begin with the Sewall 1703, then Fithian 1774 ...
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25 Nov 2008 – The red-breasted thrush, Turdus migratorius. 1703 S. SEWALL Diary 16 Mar. ( 1879) II. 75 The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn. ...
Two online links:
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25 Nov 2008 – The red-breasted thrush, Turdus migratorius. ... May 331/2 The American robin, ... ... Citations begin with the Sewall 1703, then Fithian 1774 ...
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Haz hecho público que te gusta. Deshacer
25 Nov 2008 – The red-breasted thrush, Turdus migratorius. 1703 S. SEWALL Diary 16 Mar. ( 1879) II. 75 The Robbins cheerfully utter their Notes this morn. ...
A robin is a robin is a robin: 1703 and beyond
Speranza
---
From another online source:
"In N.Amer., the name was applied to the red-breasted
thrush by 1703."
The above is slightly interesting in that 'red-breasted thrush' sounds like a more technical thing.
Note that 'robin' is for "Robert", which for Frege, but not Mill, would have no sense, but just reference. (Cfr. Alice, "Must a name mean anything? -- this club and beyond).
---
From another online source:
"In N.Amer., the name was applied to the red-breasted
thrush by 1703."
The above is slightly interesting in that 'red-breasted thrush' sounds like a more technical thing.
Note that 'robin' is for "Robert", which for Frege, but not Mill, would have no sense, but just reference. (Cfr. Alice, "Must a name mean anything? -- this club and beyond).
A robin is a robin is a robin
Speranza
---
From wiki:
"The term 'robin' for this species has been recorded since at least 1703. Simpson, E. Weiner (eds), ed (1989). "Robin". Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-861186-2.
---
From wiki:
"The term 'robin' for this species has been recorded since at least 1703. Simpson, E. Weiner (eds), ed (1989). "Robin". Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-861186-2.
"A robin": a tribute to Michael Dummett
Speranza
The illustration above, which I extracted from
http://media-3.web.britannica.com/eb-media/05/25905-004-E47C9B39.jpg
shows, as per the caption:
>scarlet robin: scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin
Strictly, a better caption, below the figure, reads:
"(Top) Scarlet robin (Petroica multicolor), (middle) European robin (Erithacus rubecula), (bottom) American robin (Turdus migratorius).
--- and there's quite a bit as to how to cite this.
INTERLUDE. How to cite this.
-- begin quoted text:
Credit Murrell Butler/EB Inc.
Links
•American robin (bird)
•European robin (bird)
•robin (bird)
•scarlet robin (bird)
Citations
MLA style:
scarlet robin: scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin. Art. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Web. 31 Jan. 2012..
APA style:
scarlet robin: scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin. [Art]. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/7156/Scarlet-robin-European-robin-American-robin
Harvard style:
scarlet robin: scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin. [Art]. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 31 January 2012, from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/7156/Scarlet-robin-European-robin-American-robin
Chicago Manual of Style:
scarlet robin: scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin, Art, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online, accessed January 31, 2012, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/7156/Scarlet-robin-European-robin-American-robin
--- end cited text. I'll stick with:
scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin.
To credit Frege, I would go with this other caption, too:
"European robin (Erithacus rubecula), ... American robin (Turdus migratorius)."
----
A Griceian scenario.
What I was wondering, seeing that the birds (the European, so-called, robin) and the American (so-called) robin, are pretty different...
The first spotter of an American robin must have said:
"A robin!"
----
My point -- Griceian -- is that he (the utterer) did think that this was a robin.
Indeed, it is.
Yet, it is not a
Erithacus-rubecula, but a Turdus-migratorius.
It is best to approach
"Erithacus-rubecula" and "Turdus-migratorius"
as complex names, alla Frege. Surely, 'robin' is _also_ a name, yet less complex (but cfr. "Robin Hood", now a complex name).
So, the scenarios are different:
A Linneaus-type genealogist, travelling to America: "That is a bird which I will refer to as 'a robin'. Not because it is a robin, in the _Fregean_ sense of "Erithacus-rubecula" but because, ... well, just because."
----
If the utterer did think that the Turdus-migratorius was an Erithacus-rubecula, surely the correct thing for him to say, under the circumstances, was:
"That's a robin".
---- Since he perhaps did not spot a big difference. Note that the complete name is "robin redbreast". And both the Erithacus-rubecula and the Turdus-migratorius have a red-breast (And since 'robin' is so fancy, why kant the name be used, with a different sense (and of course, reference) to two birds?).
And so on.
----
Next would be to doublecheck sources for this. Or not!
---
Cheers!
The illustration above, which I extracted from
http://media-3.web.britannica.com/eb-media/05/25905-004-E47C9B39.jpg
shows, as per the caption:
>scarlet robin: scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin
Strictly, a better caption, below the figure, reads:
"(Top) Scarlet robin (Petroica multicolor), (middle) European robin (Erithacus rubecula), (bottom) American robin (Turdus migratorius).
--- and there's quite a bit as to how to cite this.
INTERLUDE. How to cite this.
-- begin quoted text:
Credit Murrell Butler/EB Inc.
Links
•American robin (bird)
•European robin (bird)
•robin (bird)
•scarlet robin (bird)
Citations
MLA style:
scarlet robin: scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin. Art. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Web. 31 Jan. 2012.
APA style:
scarlet robin: scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin. [Art]. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/7156/Scarlet-robin-European-robin-American-robin
Harvard style:
scarlet robin: scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin. [Art]. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 31 January 2012, from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/7156/Scarlet-robin-European-robin-American-robin
Chicago Manual of Style:
scarlet robin: scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin, Art, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online, accessed January 31, 2012, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/7156/Scarlet-robin-European-robin-American-robin
--- end cited text. I'll stick with:
scarlet robin, European robin, and American robin.
To credit Frege, I would go with this other caption, too:
"European robin (Erithacus rubecula), ... American robin (Turdus migratorius)."
----
A Griceian scenario.
What I was wondering, seeing that the birds (the European, so-called, robin) and the American (so-called) robin, are pretty different...
The first spotter of an American robin must have said:
"A robin!"
----
My point -- Griceian -- is that he (the utterer) did think that this was a robin.
Indeed, it is.
Yet, it is not a
Erithacus-rubecula, but a Turdus-migratorius.
It is best to approach
"Erithacus-rubecula" and "Turdus-migratorius"
as complex names, alla Frege. Surely, 'robin' is _also_ a name, yet less complex (but cfr. "Robin Hood", now a complex name).
So, the scenarios are different:
A Linneaus-type genealogist, travelling to America: "That is a bird which I will refer to as 'a robin'. Not because it is a robin, in the _Fregean_ sense of "Erithacus-rubecula" but because, ... well, just because."
----
If the utterer did think that the Turdus-migratorius was an Erithacus-rubecula, surely the correct thing for him to say, under the circumstances, was:
"That's a robin".
---- Since he perhaps did not spot a big difference. Note that the complete name is "robin redbreast". And both the Erithacus-rubecula and the Turdus-migratorius have a red-breast (And since 'robin' is so fancy, why kant the name be used, with a different sense (and of course, reference) to two birds?).
And so on.
----
Next would be to doublecheck sources for this. Or not!
---
Cheers!
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Izz and the Hazz, the Deep and the Shallow
Speranza
Jones was sharing some material in phil-logic, which I quote below.
Jones is interested in the
necessary-contingent distinction
as it parallels the
analytic-synthetic distinction
and how this touches on
Grice's izz-hazz distinction.
On top of that, I brought Kripke into the picture, with Kripke's examples of
Socrates
Socrates is
Socrates is called "Socrates"
and so on.
Kripke jokes:
"See how high the seas of language can rise. And
at the lowest points, too."
----
The "lowest points" I identified with what Grice calls the 'shallow' almost, "BERTHS" of language -- the Grice manuscript reads, "deep berths". For Grice there are deep berths and shallow berths. If he mentions Long. and Lat. elsewhere, here he mentions depth. He was a sailor at heart.
----
I would suggest that he saw necessity and analyticity as dealing with the deepest berths (which are at premium, and thus beyond controversy/denial/doubt -- they constitute 'knowledge').
---
On the other hand, Jones is considering both 'mathematical' and other types of 'knowledge'. I would think that Grice (like me) never considered science (empirical science) as a matter of 'necessity'.
In "Aspects of Reason" he mentions, as a joke, the idea of
ichthyological necessity.
He is considering uses of 'must'. He wants to say, "You must not kill" and "what goes up must come down". Surely, there are NO two senses -- one 'alethic', one 'practical' -- of "must". There is a Thesis of AEQUI-vocality, as he calls it. It's the same vox ('must') that allows for the different uses. Similarly, here the joke, it would be otiose to think of the necessity of fish.
"Ichthyological necessity".
---
We should provide some generalisations in empirical science about fish, and find what's allegedly necessary about them. Nothing! But perhaps what a fish izz is not what a fish hazz.
---
Here below some running commentary on some material by Jones elsewhere that may relate:
Jones recalls his source hre:
"This is in fact close to my point of entry into Aristotle. My interest was provoked by [...] [a] version of set of semi-formal principles formulated by Code following his collaboration with Grice on some Aristotelian studies. Grice was interested inter alia in "the multiplicity of being", i.e. in whether the verb "to be" has many different or one single "sense". In this connection Grice coined two words to unambiguously express essential and accidental predication, viz: "izz" and "hazz"."
Jones goes on to point out that
"[his -- i.e. Jones'] formal treatment of the Aristotelian syllogism"
and the points regarding
"predication in Aristotle's philosophy",
to wit,
that
"affirmative propositions carry existential import and that
there is no presumption of non-emptyness of the extension of
terms."
Jones notes that in view of this,
"the theory of the syllogism is in need of
modification once Aristotle's distinction between essential
and accidental predication (as given in the Metaphysics
rather than the Categories) is taken into account."
Jones then brings Maritain into account.
For Maritain,
"the existential import is associated with
affirmative propositions only if they are accidental, not if
they are essential."
Jones comments:
"[Maritain] does not seem to be offering any way in which we can
discover whether a proposition is essential or accidental,
and this characteristic is shown in his examples by
parenthetical remarks, suggesting that in the absence of
these remarks there is material ambiguity on this point.
This seems to me quite a radical departure from anything I
have previously seen suggested about Aristotle's
syllogistic, and so naturally, in default of textual
evidence (which in the passage in Maritain [...] is
not conspicuous) I would have to suspend judgement on it."
Jones goes on:
"At some point I did intend to produce a better combined
partial model of the syllogistic with accidental and
essential predication, since I wanted to remove the
presumption of non-emptyness in the terms."
"Prior to reading Maritain I would have done this by instead
attaching existential import to affirmative propositions,
irrespective of whether they are accidental."
"If I believed Maritain then I would have to do this
exclusively for accidental predication, and I would have to
do something different for essential predication, withdrawing
existential import from both universal and particular
essential predications."
Jones then goes to consider
Some A is B
A = B
Some A is A.
Jones rewrites this, as it
"seems to correspond to my reading of
Maritain, which can be rendered in Gricean terminology by
saying that:
All A izz A
and
Some A izz A
are necessary truths, but
All A hazz A
and
Some A hazz A
will be at best contingently true, if an A contingently
exists."
Jones notes:
"The question then arises whether this reading can be shown
to be true to Aristotle."
Jones is
"looking for specific refences in the contemporary
secondary literature which explain the relevant Aristotelian
doctrines, preferably with appropriate detailed references
to the Aristotelian texts."
A mention of
Terence Parsons
--- cited by Grice in "Vacuous Names" --
incidentally, was
"was enough for [Jones] to find on
his web site a description of Aristotle's syllogism which was
clear on the required points"
For the record, the site to Aristotle's work at
http://texts.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/classics/aristotl/o1110c.htm#18
As we provide the Aristotle quotes...
Part of this is Greek (to me).
Grice (his wife would confess) complained that Berkeley students could read no Greek. Grice was already suffering that in Oxford.
In the Oxford of Grice's youthful days, NO ENGLISH translation of Aristotle was necessary. Loeb -- we love Loeb -- Loeb is all you need -- is a charm, but it was not Loeb's Aristotle that Oxonians were reading. They were dealing with the Oxford Aristotle -- in Greek only.
By the time Grice was tutoring in Oxford, he happened to have J. L. Ackrill as one of his students. Ackrill will go on to translate Aristotle into Greek. The sad thing is that Oxford would then go on to publish Aristotle _in English only_! (In the preface, Acrkill credits Grice -- and Austin, his other tutor).
----
So, when discussing Aristotle quotes, we have to consider the 'deep berths' of Greek syntax, too.
Recall that
"All A izz A"
"Some A izz A"
"Some A hazz B"
then become things to consider.
Recall that the Greeks, from what I recall, also use things like 'ekhein' (to have), and perhaps things like 'participate'.
--- So we should start with predication as a syntactic phenomenon.
Surely the Square of Opposition, as set by Aristotle, is a basic thing. But we should also be careful when we deal with 'singular terms' (not a Greek notion) like "Socrates".
The examples by Aristotle do involve
"Socrates"
and
"white".
"Socrates laughs".
"Socrates is rational"
"Socrates is mortal"
"MEN are mortal".
"Men laugh."
----- Consider 'to idion'. What is proper (Latin proprium). This FOLLOWS from a necessary predication, but is not necessary itself.
Then there's the 'qua'.
This particle Aristotle uses. Aristotle did not care much for 'ordinary language'. In fact, Grice would say that, like Austin, or Grice himself, Aristotle felt the need to 'work' on the ordinary language and come up with concoctions like 'implicature' or 'performative'. In the case of Aristotle, the
'qua'
-- in Greek, 'e' --
we have a dative case formation.
"Socrates, qua man, is mortal."
But consider
"Plato".
"I was reading Plato".
In this case,
"Plato, qua man, was NOT what I was reading."
Plato can refer to something resembling a world-3 construction by Popper. The THOUGHTS of Plato, say, rather than Plato qua res extensa. More like 'res cogitans'. And so on.
-----
The point about Grice's "deep berths" reappear, more superficially, in his "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature" -- In fact, in "Indicative Conditionals" and "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature", and Jones may examine this.
Grice, indeed following Terence Parsons, considers the square-bracket device:
Some A izz A
Some A hazz A
as
[Some A] izz A
[Some A] hazz A
The point is to consider things like
"My aunt's cousin went to that concert"
as
[My aunt's cousin] went to that concert.
In the "Oxford philosophy" notes (MS, Grice collection) where he speaks of 'deep berths', he is considering the syntax of predication. If there is such a thing like 'knowledge', it would correspond to those things which we cannot challenge. We are anchored to them; deep berths are at a premium.
----
Grice, in his more colloquial parlance, considers what it would be a 'conversation without' THAT type of logic -- where EVERYTHING can be doubted or denied.
Recall that his:
Tweetie: "That looks like a big black cat to me."
---- should only project the implicature of 'doubt or denial' (D-or-D, in the parlance of "Causal theory").
In "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature" he has A and B:
A: Lovely concert.
B: I agree.
A: You went?
B: No. Not me. My aunt's cousin did.
"It is quite natural to say to somebody,
when we are discussing some concert,
"My aunt's cousin went to that concert,"
when we know perfectly well that the
person we are talking to is very likely
not even to know that we have an aunt,
let alone know that our aunt has a cousin.
So the supposition must be not that
it is common _knowledge_ but rather that
it is _noncontroversial_, in the sense
that it is something that we would
expect the hearer to take from us
(if he does not already know). That is to
say, I do not expect, when I tell
someone that my aunt's cousin went
to a concert, to be QUESTIONED whether
I have an aunt, and if so, whether
my aunt has a cousin."
---
Here Grice is then, mutatis mutandis, considering the non-emptyness of classes.
The class
"My aunt"
the class
"my aunt's cousin".
This is in the context of
"The Loyalty Examiner won't be summoning you."
(WoW: 271).
In this case the square-bracket status
[There is a loyalty examiner]
is cancelled, qua implicature that it was.
This is what Grice calls a 'contextual cancellation':
---
An implication regarding the non-emptyness of the subject-class
"seems to be", on occasion, "contextually cancellable, that is
cancellable by circumstances attending the utterance [of a
negative S-P sentence, The S is not P.].
"If it is a matter of dispute whether the
Government has a very undercover person who
interrogates those whose loyalty is
suspect, and who, IF HE EXISTED, could
be legitimately referred to as "The Loyalty
Examiner"; and if, further, I am KNOWN to be
very sceptical about the existence of such
a person, I could _perfectly well_ say to a
plainly loyal person,
"Well, the loyalty examiner won't be
summoning you, at any rate."
--- "without, I would think, being taken to
IMPLY that such a person exists."
----
This then relates with commentary by Jones, elsewhere, along the lines of:
"Marmaduke Bloggs won't be at the party."
--- "Well, he doesn't exist."
--- "That's what I mean. When I use "There is", I don't implicate the things I do when I say, "There exists"."
And so on.
And so on.
-----
It is in "Vacuous Names" that Grice quotes from Parsons, and indeed Boolos and Myro and Mates. This in the context of Quine, but surely the point can be extended to cover Aristotle.
Strawson, for example, never understood Quine, and thought him otiose. Strawson would rather play with Aristotle _for hours_, if indeed _not years_. Predication in Aristotle, or Kantotle, if you mustn't, is Grice's essential game.
Or something.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Jones was sharing some material in phil-logic, which I quote below.
Jones is interested in the
necessary-contingent distinction
as it parallels the
analytic-synthetic distinction
and how this touches on
Grice's izz-hazz distinction.
On top of that, I brought Kripke into the picture, with Kripke's examples of
Socrates
Socrates is
Socrates is called "Socrates"
and so on.
Kripke jokes:
"See how high the seas of language can rise. And
at the lowest points, too."
----
The "lowest points" I identified with what Grice calls the 'shallow' almost, "BERTHS" of language -- the Grice manuscript reads, "deep berths". For Grice there are deep berths and shallow berths. If he mentions Long. and Lat. elsewhere, here he mentions depth. He was a sailor at heart.
----
I would suggest that he saw necessity and analyticity as dealing with the deepest berths (which are at premium, and thus beyond controversy/denial/doubt -- they constitute 'knowledge').
---
On the other hand, Jones is considering both 'mathematical' and other types of 'knowledge'. I would think that Grice (like me) never considered science (empirical science) as a matter of 'necessity'.
In "Aspects of Reason" he mentions, as a joke, the idea of
ichthyological necessity.
He is considering uses of 'must'. He wants to say, "You must not kill" and "what goes up must come down". Surely, there are NO two senses -- one 'alethic', one 'practical' -- of "must". There is a Thesis of AEQUI-vocality, as he calls it. It's the same vox ('must') that allows for the different uses. Similarly, here the joke, it would be otiose to think of the necessity of fish.
"Ichthyological necessity".
---
We should provide some generalisations in empirical science about fish, and find what's allegedly necessary about them. Nothing! But perhaps what a fish izz is not what a fish hazz.
---
Here below some running commentary on some material by Jones elsewhere that may relate:
Jones recalls his source hre:
"This is in fact close to my point of entry into Aristotle. My interest was provoked by [...] [a] version of set of semi-formal principles formulated by Code following his collaboration with Grice on some Aristotelian studies. Grice was interested inter alia in "the multiplicity of being", i.e. in whether the verb "to be" has many different or one single "sense". In this connection Grice coined two words to unambiguously express essential and accidental predication, viz: "izz" and "hazz"."
Jones goes on to point out that
"[his -- i.e. Jones'] formal treatment of the Aristotelian syllogism"
and the points regarding
"predication in Aristotle's philosophy",
to wit,
that
"affirmative propositions carry existential import and that
there is no presumption of non-emptyness of the extension of
terms."
Jones notes that in view of this,
"the theory of the syllogism is in need of
modification once Aristotle's distinction between essential
and accidental predication (as given in the Metaphysics
rather than the Categories) is taken into account."
Jones then brings Maritain into account.
For Maritain,
"the existential import is associated with
affirmative propositions only if they are accidental, not if
they are essential."
Jones comments:
"[Maritain] does not seem to be offering any way in which we can
discover whether a proposition is essential or accidental,
and this characteristic is shown in his examples by
parenthetical remarks, suggesting that in the absence of
these remarks there is material ambiguity on this point.
This seems to me quite a radical departure from anything I
have previously seen suggested about Aristotle's
syllogistic, and so naturally, in default of textual
evidence (which in the passage in Maritain [...] is
not conspicuous) I would have to suspend judgement on it."
Jones goes on:
"At some point I did intend to produce a better combined
partial model of the syllogistic with accidental and
essential predication, since I wanted to remove the
presumption of non-emptyness in the terms."
"Prior to reading Maritain I would have done this by instead
attaching existential import to affirmative propositions,
irrespective of whether they are accidental."
"If I believed Maritain then I would have to do this
exclusively for accidental predication, and I would have to
do something different for essential predication, withdrawing
existential import from both universal and particular
essential predications."
Jones then goes to consider
Some A is B
A = B
Some A is A.
Jones rewrites this, as it
"seems to correspond to my reading of
Maritain, which can be rendered in Gricean terminology by
saying that:
All A izz A
and
Some A izz A
are necessary truths, but
All A hazz A
and
Some A hazz A
will be at best contingently true, if an A contingently
exists."
Jones notes:
"The question then arises whether this reading can be shown
to be true to Aristotle."
Jones is
"looking for specific refences in the contemporary
secondary literature which explain the relevant Aristotelian
doctrines, preferably with appropriate detailed references
to the Aristotelian texts."
A mention of
Terence Parsons
--- cited by Grice in "Vacuous Names" --
incidentally, was
"was enough for [Jones] to find on
his web site a description of Aristotle's syllogism which was
clear on the required points"
For the record, the site to Aristotle's work at
http://texts.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/classics/aristotl/o1110c.htm#18
As we provide the Aristotle quotes...
Part of this is Greek (to me).
Grice (his wife would confess) complained that Berkeley students could read no Greek. Grice was already suffering that in Oxford.
In the Oxford of Grice's youthful days, NO ENGLISH translation of Aristotle was necessary. Loeb -- we love Loeb -- Loeb is all you need -- is a charm, but it was not Loeb's Aristotle that Oxonians were reading. They were dealing with the Oxford Aristotle -- in Greek only.
By the time Grice was tutoring in Oxford, he happened to have J. L. Ackrill as one of his students. Ackrill will go on to translate Aristotle into Greek. The sad thing is that Oxford would then go on to publish Aristotle _in English only_! (In the preface, Acrkill credits Grice -- and Austin, his other tutor).
----
So, when discussing Aristotle quotes, we have to consider the 'deep berths' of Greek syntax, too.
Recall that
"All A izz A"
"Some A izz A"
"Some A hazz B"
then become things to consider.
Recall that the Greeks, from what I recall, also use things like 'ekhein' (to have), and perhaps things like 'participate'.
--- So we should start with predication as a syntactic phenomenon.
Surely the Square of Opposition, as set by Aristotle, is a basic thing. But we should also be careful when we deal with 'singular terms' (not a Greek notion) like "Socrates".
The examples by Aristotle do involve
"Socrates"
and
"white".
"Socrates laughs".
"Socrates is rational"
"Socrates is mortal"
"MEN are mortal".
"Men laugh."
----- Consider 'to idion'. What is proper (Latin proprium). This FOLLOWS from a necessary predication, but is not necessary itself.
Then there's the 'qua'.
This particle Aristotle uses. Aristotle did not care much for 'ordinary language'. In fact, Grice would say that, like Austin, or Grice himself, Aristotle felt the need to 'work' on the ordinary language and come up with concoctions like 'implicature' or 'performative'. In the case of Aristotle, the
'qua'
-- in Greek, 'e' --
we have a dative case formation.
"Socrates, qua man, is mortal."
But consider
"Plato".
"I was reading Plato".
In this case,
"Plato, qua man, was NOT what I was reading."
Plato can refer to something resembling a world-3 construction by Popper. The THOUGHTS of Plato, say, rather than Plato qua res extensa. More like 'res cogitans'. And so on.
-----
The point about Grice's "deep berths" reappear, more superficially, in his "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature" -- In fact, in "Indicative Conditionals" and "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature", and Jones may examine this.
Grice, indeed following Terence Parsons, considers the square-bracket device:
Some A izz A
Some A hazz A
as
[Some A] izz A
[Some A] hazz A
The point is to consider things like
"My aunt's cousin went to that concert"
as
[My aunt's cousin] went to that concert.
In the "Oxford philosophy" notes (MS, Grice collection) where he speaks of 'deep berths', he is considering the syntax of predication. If there is such a thing like 'knowledge', it would correspond to those things which we cannot challenge. We are anchored to them; deep berths are at a premium.
----
Grice, in his more colloquial parlance, considers what it would be a 'conversation without' THAT type of logic -- where EVERYTHING can be doubted or denied.
Recall that his:
Tweetie: "That looks like a big black cat to me."
---- should only project the implicature of 'doubt or denial' (D-or-D, in the parlance of "Causal theory").
In "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature" he has A and B:
A: Lovely concert.
B: I agree.
A: You went?
B: No. Not me. My aunt's cousin did.
"It is quite natural to say to somebody,
when we are discussing some concert,
"My aunt's cousin went to that concert,"
when we know perfectly well that the
person we are talking to is very likely
not even to know that we have an aunt,
let alone know that our aunt has a cousin.
So the supposition must be not that
it is common _knowledge_ but rather that
it is _noncontroversial_, in the sense
that it is something that we would
expect the hearer to take from us
(if he does not already know). That is to
say, I do not expect, when I tell
someone that my aunt's cousin went
to a concert, to be QUESTIONED whether
I have an aunt, and if so, whether
my aunt has a cousin."
---
Here Grice is then, mutatis mutandis, considering the non-emptyness of classes.
The class
"My aunt"
the class
"my aunt's cousin".
This is in the context of
"The Loyalty Examiner won't be summoning you."
(WoW: 271).
In this case the square-bracket status
[There is a loyalty examiner]
is cancelled, qua implicature that it was.
This is what Grice calls a 'contextual cancellation':
---
An implication regarding the non-emptyness of the subject-class
"seems to be", on occasion, "contextually cancellable, that is
cancellable by circumstances attending the utterance [of a
negative S-P sentence, The S is not P.].
"If it is a matter of dispute whether the
Government has a very undercover person who
interrogates those whose loyalty is
suspect, and who, IF HE EXISTED, could
be legitimately referred to as "The Loyalty
Examiner"; and if, further, I am KNOWN to be
very sceptical about the existence of such
a person, I could _perfectly well_ say to a
plainly loyal person,
"Well, the loyalty examiner won't be
summoning you, at any rate."
--- "without, I would think, being taken to
IMPLY that such a person exists."
----
This then relates with commentary by Jones, elsewhere, along the lines of:
"Marmaduke Bloggs won't be at the party."
--- "Well, he doesn't exist."
--- "That's what I mean. When I use "There is", I don't implicate the things I do when I say, "There exists"."
And so on.
And so on.
-----
It is in "Vacuous Names" that Grice quotes from Parsons, and indeed Boolos and Myro and Mates. This in the context of Quine, but surely the point can be extended to cover Aristotle.
Strawson, for example, never understood Quine, and thought him otiose. Strawson would rather play with Aristotle _for hours_, if indeed _not years_. Predication in Aristotle, or Kantotle, if you mustn't, is Grice's essential game.
Or something.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Grice, The "Deep Berths"
Speranza
--- vide Grice, "Philosophy at Oxford 1945-1970", The Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
--- vide Grice, "Philosophy at Oxford 1945-1970", The Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
The Deep Berths of Language
--- To izz or not to izz, that hazz the question.
Grice's reply to Kripke's irreverential:
"See how high the seas of language can rise. And at the lowest points, too."
Speranza
Jones, in "Izz", etc., writes:
"Without as yet actually using Grice's words (though I might well put them in soon), the subject matter of Grice's work on predication in Aristotle is one of the topics under discussion at the moment on the phil-logic@philo.at mailing list. It may not be a favourite haunt of Grice club denizens (Grice doesn't often get a mention) but I thought it worth a mention."
Thanks for _that_!
--
Jones:
"In my own formal work partly inspired by the Grice/Code collaboration I combined formal models of essential and accidental predication (izzing and hazzing in Grice's terms) with the syllogistic logic. In doing so, my preliminary conclusions were that once you bring in that distinction (which seems to originate rather in Aristotle's metaphysics than his organon), then the rules of the syllogism become more complex, the usual conception of validity not being reflected fully for all kinds of predication."
Excellent points.
"Grice's interest seems to have been at least partly in multiplicity of "being", the question whether that verb has more than one sense. Izzing and Hazzing are different names to distinguish two ways in which "being" (and some other words like "having") are used, the neologism being useful because the distinction between essential and accidental predication (as this is conceived by Aristotle) is not in ordinary language consistently conveyed by distinct vocabulary."
Indeed. In other languages, it may even be inexistent. (I have not checked this. I would not be surprised if in some aboriginal -- i.e. there from the origins -- language (or 'lingo' as Kant says) there is no word for 'is': "Your letter, sir" -- the butler says. Surely it would be redundant to add, "Here IS your letter, sir".). Note that in classical Latin, 'est' is also omitted:
Tu quoque.
"You, too" -- surely "are".
---
One may wonder why the _need_ for 'is'. Recall that in Aristotelian logic,
"S est P"
but, as Aristotle argued, and Kant, too, 'is' (the copula) is "NOT" a predicate.
--- And so on.
Jones:
"Grice I believe was inclined to question that multiple senses really are involved, and the question arises by what criteria one can judge whether observed usage constitutes a single or multiple senses. On this I remain at present, much less than adequately acquainted with Grice's position, but there is one possible criterion which now occurs to me as a result of material on phil-logic."
Lovely always to have the cross-references!
Jones:
"It seems that there may be differences in Aristotle's conception of the ontological commitments implicit in affirmative propositions according to whether they involve essential or accidental predication, and hence differences in truth conditions.
The idea is that an accidental universal affirmation does entail existence, whereas an essential one does not. I am still not clear on whether this is the case, but if it were and the truth conditions do vary in such a manner, then it is hard to see how these two kinds of predication could avoid being distinguished as different senses."
--- Personally (I hate this redundancy) I'm not too sure that's the case.
We can consider Grice's ("Descartes" essay, WoW) example:
"I think; therefore I am".
---- By contraposition, this becomes Speranza's dictum:
"I am; therefore I think" (echoes of my uncle)
---
Grice's 'izz' and 'hazz' have (is?) the incovenience that it's not meant for first-person, surely the most important person (to some).
I suggest then, to reformulate:
I am; therefore, I think.
As:
Speranza IZZ; therefore Speranza HAZZ thought.
Or something.
Jones is suggesting taht to say that
"Speranza hazz thought" is _accidental_, or an accidental thing to say. Whereas to say that God (rather than Speranza) _IZZ_ would be, again in someone's parlance, _essential_ (or an essential thing to say). But I disgress.
Jones:
"Could one plausibly argue against the "multiplicity of being" if it were once established that there is a multiplicity of truth conditions?"
Yes. But perhaps we should bring Kripke in:
Kripke wrote:
'the seas of language'.
Dummett found that funny and entitled his odd collection of this and that, "The seas of language". Kripke considers things like:
Socrates is white.
Socrates has a big nose (Socrates "hazz" a big, flat, nose, in Grice's spelling).
Socrates is called "Socrates".
Of the latter, Kripke said:
"Actually sentences like 'Socrates is called "Socrates"' are very interesting and one can spend, strange as it may seem, hours talking about their analysis. I actually did, once, do that. I won't do that, however, on this occasion. (See how high the seas of language can rise. And at the lowest points, too.)"
And Kripke should possibly be quoting from Grice, unless he isn't (Determinists find, I read, counterfactual thinking a hard thing to engage in). For Grice wrote:
The source here is interesting enough and the keyword:
the 'deep berths' of language
KEYWORD: deep berths
---
Quote:
Grice, H. P. "Philosophy at Oxford 1945-1970", in The Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
---
Grice is attempting to reconcile the Oxford 'school' of philosophy (as he never named it) with Aristotle's idea that philosophy is about the nature of things (to use the title of a book by Lord Quinton) , rather than language.
Grice proposes to adopt the _hypothesis_ that OPINION (Greek 'doxa') is generally reflected in language ("ta legomena").
But this is done with different 'levels' (Grice's word) representing differents degrees of commitment.
Some aspects of 'knowledge' receive the DEEPEST levels of embedding within (even) SYNTAX.
This aspects of knowledge then reside in what Grice describes, indeed, as the 'DEEP BERTHS' of language.
It is not possible, Grice suggests, for an utterer to use a language such as English WITHOUT BEING committed to (or anchored in) these 'deep berths' of language.
----
The DEEPEST levels are at a premium. So, it is in the interests of utterers (within population speaking Lingo L) to reserve these deepest levels (the "deep berths" of language), naturally enough, to their deepest commitments.
---
Other people MIGHT challenge this, Grice suggests, but it would DANGEROUS to do so. If we subscribe to this account, we might be tempted to argue that 'first principles' of 'knowledge' (as it were) are to be found in the deep categorial, syntactic even, structure of this or that lingo, rather than, say, in the VOCABULARY of a given language ("is" as categorial: "izz" and "hazz" as its representations).
Grice writes:
'[H]ow w talk OUGHT [emphasis Grice's -- in his
usual underlining] to reflect our most
solid, cherished and generally accepted
opinions'.
(Grice, op. cit.).
---
In this discussion of what is presented as 'uncontroversial', say, and what is, rather, available for 'denial', Grice might be described as interested in the ways in which different syntactic (as it were -- in Gentzen's sense) devices are available for conveying 'information' (or 'knowledge', if you mustn't) bring with them different 'existential' or 'ontological' commitments, if you mustn't.
And so on.
But back to Kripke:
Socrates: I am, therefore, I think (NON-SEQUITUR).
I think; therefore I am.
Socrates thinks.
Socrates is.
Socrates izz
Socrtaes is a thinking being.
Socrates, on top of that, is called (IZZ called, HAZZ called) "Socrates".
What is essential? What is not?
Kripke:
"Actually sentences like 'Socrates is called "Socrates"'
are very interesting and one can spend, strange
as it may seem, hours talking
about their analysis. I actually
did, once, do that. I won't do that,
however, on this occasion. (See
how high the seas of language can
rise. And at the lowest points,
too.)"
----
Perhaps Grice was too much of a sailor (as Kripke ain't) and went straight to the deepest berths, as perhaps he shouldn't ('have' or 'izz'). And so on.
Grice's reply to Kripke's irreverential:
"See how high the seas of language can rise. And at the lowest points, too."
Speranza
Jones, in "Izz", etc., writes:
"Without as yet actually using Grice's words (though I might well put them in soon), the subject matter of Grice's work on predication in Aristotle is one of the topics under discussion at the moment on the phil-logic@philo.at mailing list. It may not be a favourite haunt of Grice club denizens (Grice doesn't often get a mention) but I thought it worth a mention."
Thanks for _that_!
--
Jones:
"In my own formal work partly inspired by the Grice/Code collaboration I combined formal models of essential and accidental predication (izzing and hazzing in Grice's terms) with the syllogistic logic. In doing so, my preliminary conclusions were that once you bring in that distinction (which seems to originate rather in Aristotle's metaphysics than his organon), then the rules of the syllogism become more complex, the usual conception of validity not being reflected fully for all kinds of predication."
Excellent points.
"Grice's interest seems to have been at least partly in multiplicity of "being", the question whether that verb has more than one sense. Izzing and Hazzing are different names to distinguish two ways in which "being" (and some other words like "having") are used, the neologism being useful because the distinction between essential and accidental predication (as this is conceived by Aristotle) is not in ordinary language consistently conveyed by distinct vocabulary."
Indeed. In other languages, it may even be inexistent. (I have not checked this. I would not be surprised if in some aboriginal -- i.e. there from the origins -- language (or 'lingo' as Kant says) there is no word for 'is': "Your letter, sir" -- the butler says. Surely it would be redundant to add, "Here IS your letter, sir".). Note that in classical Latin, 'est' is also omitted:
Tu quoque.
"You, too" -- surely "are".
---
One may wonder why the _need_ for 'is'. Recall that in Aristotelian logic,
"S est P"
but, as Aristotle argued, and Kant, too, 'is' (the copula) is "NOT" a predicate.
--- And so on.
Jones:
"Grice I believe was inclined to question that multiple senses really are involved, and the question arises by what criteria one can judge whether observed usage constitutes a single or multiple senses. On this I remain at present, much less than adequately acquainted with Grice's position, but there is one possible criterion which now occurs to me as a result of material on phil-logic."
Lovely always to have the cross-references!
Jones:
"It seems that there may be differences in Aristotle's conception of the ontological commitments implicit in affirmative propositions according to whether they involve essential or accidental predication, and hence differences in truth conditions.
The idea is that an accidental universal affirmation does entail existence, whereas an essential one does not. I am still not clear on whether this is the case, but if it were and the truth conditions do vary in such a manner, then it is hard to see how these two kinds of predication could avoid being distinguished as different senses."
--- Personally (I hate this redundancy) I'm not too sure that's the case.
We can consider Grice's ("Descartes" essay, WoW) example:
"I think; therefore I am".
---- By contraposition, this becomes Speranza's dictum:
"I am; therefore I think" (echoes of my uncle)
---
Grice's 'izz' and 'hazz' have (is?) the incovenience that it's not meant for first-person, surely the most important person (to some).
I suggest then, to reformulate:
I am; therefore, I think.
As:
Speranza IZZ; therefore Speranza HAZZ thought.
Or something.
Jones is suggesting taht to say that
"Speranza hazz thought" is _accidental_, or an accidental thing to say. Whereas to say that God (rather than Speranza) _IZZ_ would be, again in someone's parlance, _essential_ (or an essential thing to say). But I disgress.
Jones:
"Could one plausibly argue against the "multiplicity of being" if it were once established that there is a multiplicity of truth conditions?"
Yes. But perhaps we should bring Kripke in:
Kripke wrote:
'the seas of language'.
Dummett found that funny and entitled his odd collection of this and that, "The seas of language". Kripke considers things like:
Socrates is white.
Socrates has a big nose (Socrates "hazz" a big, flat, nose, in Grice's spelling).
Socrates is called "Socrates".
Of the latter, Kripke said:
"Actually sentences like 'Socrates is called "Socrates"' are very interesting and one can spend, strange as it may seem, hours talking about their analysis. I actually did, once, do that. I won't do that, however, on this occasion. (See how high the seas of language can rise. And at the lowest points, too.)"
And Kripke should possibly be quoting from Grice, unless he isn't (Determinists find, I read, counterfactual thinking a hard thing to engage in). For Grice wrote:
The source here is interesting enough and the keyword:
the 'deep berths' of language
KEYWORD: deep berths
---
Quote:
Grice, H. P. "Philosophy at Oxford 1945-1970", in The Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
---
Grice is attempting to reconcile the Oxford 'school' of philosophy (as he never named it) with Aristotle's idea that philosophy is about the nature of things (to use the title of a book by Lord Quinton) , rather than language.
Grice proposes to adopt the _hypothesis_ that OPINION (Greek 'doxa') is generally reflected in language ("ta legomena").
But this is done with different 'levels' (Grice's word) representing differents degrees of commitment.
Some aspects of 'knowledge' receive the DEEPEST levels of embedding within (even) SYNTAX.
This aspects of knowledge then reside in what Grice describes, indeed, as the 'DEEP BERTHS' of language.
It is not possible, Grice suggests, for an utterer to use a language such as English WITHOUT BEING committed to (or anchored in) these 'deep berths' of language.
----
The DEEPEST levels are at a premium. So, it is in the interests of utterers (within population speaking Lingo L) to reserve these deepest levels (the "deep berths" of language), naturally enough, to their deepest commitments.
---
Other people MIGHT challenge this, Grice suggests, but it would DANGEROUS to do so. If we subscribe to this account, we might be tempted to argue that 'first principles' of 'knowledge' (as it were) are to be found in the deep categorial, syntactic even, structure of this or that lingo, rather than, say, in the VOCABULARY of a given language ("is" as categorial: "izz" and "hazz" as its representations).
Grice writes:
'[H]ow w talk OUGHT [emphasis Grice's -- in his
usual underlining] to reflect our most
solid, cherished and generally accepted
opinions'.
(Grice, op. cit.).
---
In this discussion of what is presented as 'uncontroversial', say, and what is, rather, available for 'denial', Grice might be described as interested in the ways in which different syntactic (as it were -- in Gentzen's sense) devices are available for conveying 'information' (or 'knowledge', if you mustn't) bring with them different 'existential' or 'ontological' commitments, if you mustn't.
And so on.
But back to Kripke:
Socrates: I am, therefore, I think (NON-SEQUITUR).
I think; therefore I am.
Socrates thinks.
Socrates is.
Socrates izz
Socrtaes is a thinking being.
Socrates, on top of that, is called (IZZ called, HAZZ called) "Socrates".
What is essential? What is not?
Kripke:
"Actually sentences like 'Socrates is called "Socrates"'
are very interesting and one can spend, strange
as it may seem, hours talking
about their analysis. I actually
did, once, do that. I won't do that,
however, on this occasion. (See
how high the seas of language can
rise. And at the lowest points,
too.)"
----
Perhaps Grice was too much of a sailor (as Kripke ain't) and went straight to the deepest berths, as perhaps he shouldn't ('have' or 'izz'). And so on.
Grice on dthis and dthat
Speranza
Jones writes in "Maggee", etc.
"I am always interested in critiques of one man's analytic philosophy in the terms of another's. And also in the dispossessed or marginalised, those who might possibly have become academic philosophers had not their philosophical inclinations been too far removed from the prevailing orthodoxy of their day or whose philosophy was conducted in some more liberal context sheltered from the critical gaze of the principle centers of analytic orthodoxy. In that category I count Gellner, Berlin, and Magee, possibly Murdoch and in all of these cases the orthodoxy of their youth was probably "linguistic philosophy". Why not Popper, Lakatos, ...? In these terms perhaps LSE is a haven for philosophical unorthodoxy. Well I don't feel that Popper and Lakatos were marginalised. Perhaps it's just an Oxford thing I am groping at, since Gellner, Berlin, Magee and Murdoch were all in some way dissenting Oxonians."
Too true.
--- Keyword: ALWAYS (or all-ways, as I prefer) Oxford.
Jones:
"It had not occurred to me that Dummett should be thought outside the fold of linguistic philosophy until Speranza's recent postings about his critical attitude towards Austin. I suppose to make sense of this we must distinguish between "linguistic philosophy" and "ordinary language philosophy", and say that Dummett may not have been an "ordinary language philosopher" but he was certainly a linguistic philosopher."
Too true. It is fun to see how his books are 'catalogued' by the British library, say, or the Library of (the American) congress. "Philosophy of Language". I would think the serious keyword here is:
'philosophy of Language' -- but this is tricky, since "Philosophy of X" is "ALL-ways" second-rate when it comes to philosophical methodology: "Metaphysics" is fine, but "he was a philosopher of language" cannot be complimenary -- ever.
Jones goes on:
"[Dummett] was a linguistic philosopher because he gave primacy to philosophy of language, and because he seems to have subscribed to a point of view which Magee singled out for especially thorough refutation in his "confessions of a philosopher".
If we take this view (which I will explain shortly) then we can see Grice's philosophy as moderating not only the extremes of Austinian ordinary language philosophy, but also the extreme of linguistic philosophy which Dummett inhabited."
Good. Will check this out!
Jones:
"The doctrine which Magee singled out for special obloquy is the argument for the primacy of linguistic philosophy on the grounds that thought is essentially linguistic."
Mmm. Echoes of Peacocke?
I treasure a little chapter, by Peacocke, somewhere, "Thought and Language" (or "Language and Thought" -- I never recall).
Jones:
"When we sit silently chewing the cud, the argument goes, our thinking is a stream of bits of language which we just happen to refrain from articulating.
Since all thought consists of propositions expressed or repressed, the philosophy of language has prime place, and a study of language is an essential part of any philosophical enterprise. This is a doctrine which Dummett does explicitly subscribe to, somewhere, perhaps in his "Is analytic philosophy systematic and should it be?"."
Echoes of that UNPUBLISHED lecture by Grice -- for years. The very last "William James" lecture on "Logic and Conversation" (WoW:vi). It's all about the alleged primacy of "mean" (meaning) -- Grice's prefered locution -- over thought, or vice versa.
---
Jones:
"Dummett also at least some of the time, and particularly in his attempt to provide a philosophical justification for intuitionistic logic. The analogous caricature of Austinian ordinary language philosophy would be that philosophy is just the study of ordinary language, and the advancement of our understanding of this instrument through a detailed analysis of its use. This nominally as a prelude to the resolution of extra-linguistic philosophical problems. This seems to be the line in Austin's "A Plea for Excuses", which is his most explicit metaphilosophical pronouncement. The Austin of "Sense and Sensibilia" is using observations about ordinary language in a critique of a philosophical argument concerning a problem which is not itself purely linguistic. But the Austin of "Doing things with words" seems to have moved on from criticising a philosophical position to practicing a new kind of philosophy consisting primarily or exclusively in the study of language through its non philosophical manifestations."
Indeed. There probably is more continuity in Austin's thought (I love that: 'the continuity of ...' -- e.g. "The continuity of Middle English philosophy from Beowulf") than his manuscripts suggest.
Recall that "How to do things with words" was never thought by Austin to be published. Urmson did that for him! And on top of that, Oxford engaged Marina Sbisa to finish the thing! ---- The "Sense and sensibilia" was, also, never meant for publication by Austin. Warnock did that for Austin, since Warnock's ego moved Warnock to have Austin's discussion of Warnock in the latter lectures (Austin focuses on Warnock's booklet on Berkeley).
I think there is a lot of continuity in Austin's oeuvre, as there is in Grice's oeuvre, but we have to consider, almost, year-by-year dating of publications and unpublications, and separate the 'public' Austin from the more personal philosophical Austin, and so on. I'm pleased I'm not an Austinian, or else this would be the Austin Club (or something).
Jones:
"My impression is that Grice doesn't himself fit in with either of these extremes.
His essay on philosophical method and ordinary language in WOW suggests: firstly, that philosophical analysis is a kind of conceptual analysis (which surprises me a little, I would not have thought that consistent with the whole of his philosophical output); secondly, the assertion of an "unswerving association" of philosophy with the study not just of language but of "ordinary language""
What a beautiful word.
--- begin quoted text:
swever, early 13c., "to depart, make off;" early 14c., "to turn aside, deviate from a straight course," probably from O.E. sweorfan "to rub, scour, file" (but sense development is difficult to trace), from P.Gmc. *swerbanan (cf O.N. sverfa "to scour, file," O.S. swebran "to wipe off"), from PIE base *swerbh-. Cognate words in other Germanic languages (cf. O.Fris. swerva "to creep," M.Du. swerven "to rove, stray") suggests the sense of "go off, turn aside" may have existed in O.E., though unrecorded. The noun is recorded from 1741.
---
Jones:
"But an association is not an identification, so there is some softening there. Grice associates the opposition to this point of view (thinking of Russell and Quine) with "scientism". This critique is probably even more applicable to Rudolf Carnap"
--- intersting. Grice will re-quote "Scientism" later in his "Method" -- by this time, it has become "The devil of Scientism" (big quote repeated elsewhere, etc.).
Jones:
"[This critique is probably even more applicable to Rudolf Carnap] who, because of his dedication to the formalisation of science and his conception of science as encompassing all systematic study of empirical or synthetic truth, does at least regard the study of ordinary language as empirical science (and the kind of philosophy which he practiced as a deductive/demonstrative science insofar as it establishes new truths rather than proposing new languages and methods)."
Interesting. There are various points here:
---- I would associate Carnap indeed with that grand movement, American in spirit, apparently, of the "Unified science".
--- the other point is sublter. When I was studying kewords, I made a distinction between
philosophical linguistics
and
linguistic philosophy.
Indeed, 'philosophical linguistics' seems oxymoronic, since, since Saussure, linguists have NOT been _too_ philosophical. By registering Carnap's attitude towards things such as 'pragmatics' as the empirical study of assertion and belief, say, in that little essay that we have discussed elsewhere with Jones, Carnap seems to be minimising linguistics, and linguistic philosophy (into the bargain) so! I don't mind about his minimising empirical linguistics (I guess) --. But then I would disagree that what Austin or Grice are doing is 'empirical' linguistics alla Naess. They are more into Kantotelian linguistics. For Austin (and more so for Grice) the study of language is important because it is a study of _categories_. And categories can come in ontological, cognitive, AND linguistic format.
---
SOME empirical linguists (notably Whorf) emphasised this. But others (notably Chomsky and his followers, such as some of the early Griceains) did not, and rather stuck with relative paradigms of a given language AS if they were universalia, without knowing (or something like that).
Jones:
"Sorry, I think I must have lost my thread. I am trying to get a better handle quite generally on the kinds of philosophical analysis which have been proposed or practiced and their relationships, which seems like an enterprise of unending complexity, since it is in the nature of philosophy not only that no two philosophers share a common philosophy, but probably also that no two share the same conception of what philosophy is or how it should be done. Making an illuminating story out of this (which is what I am trying to do) is a bit of a challenge, and I am interested especially in how my own limited conception of 20th Century philosophy looks wrong to others (particularly in how it exposes my extensive ignorance!)."
Not at all. It's very simple! You love to make things complicated, which I love!
-----
("It's very simple!" is an utterance of utter complexity).
It all starts with the first Witters. (When philosophers engage to discuss the history of 20th century philosophy -- they HAVE to mention Witters). His "Tractatus". This is ONE language. Then there's the second Witters: the USES of language.
Then there's the Unified Science Movement. Carnap noted one big complication of this: physicalism versus phenomenalism. Given the complexities of quantum physics, say, why bother to formalise, in first-order predicate calculus, what physicists are saying? They may not even know it (Echoes of Dummett: "metaphysics is an examination of the philosophy of physics").
Then comes Austin. It is best to understand Austin in terms of how philosophy (how BORINGLY) philosophy was conducted in Oxford before he came. Try to read any pre-Austinian philosopher! They are just impossible! -- Bradley, Prichard (realism), Cook Wilson. Big words! Big manifestos. Ryle softened this a bit, with his irreverencies. But Austin set the thing _on fire_. He thought: 'let us focus on how 'know' works -- perhaps it works 'performatively', as I might say'. And so on. His students were FASCINATED (except Dummett, -- and the female philosophers Murdoch and Anscombe).
Austin exerted a fascination NOT ONLY On his students (this is understandable) but on people like GRICE who was only TWO YEARS his junior!
--- The rest is history!
In the case of Grice, he starts to get serious when he tries to systematise on what he was doing.
Recall that in 1967, in "Logic and Conversation", he chose himself as an example of a linguistic philosopher. He lists like 16 philosophers, mostly obscure. One philosopher he cites is NOT obscure. He refers to his own,
"Causal theory of perception", 1961.
He starts to wonder what he meant by 'implication', as it applies to the phenomenalist verb, 'seems':
That red pillar box seems red to me.
Why not 'is'?
This 'doubt-or-denial' implication, is it part of the _sense_ of 'seem'? It's not!
----
Things sometime seem as they are!
---
So, Grice is bringing in a caveat: the analysis of use versus meaning or over meaning should take into consideration that conditions of use do not specify conditions of meaning necessarily (contra Witters I and Witters II).
---
By this time, he was finding 'enemies' in Strawson (who had said that 'and' and "&" have different _meanings_ -- in "Introduction to Logical Theory") or with much younger (and American) philosophers like Searle. I like to think of Grice's "Logic and Conversation" as a response to Searle, "Aberrations and modifications", in British Analytic Philosophy.
---
Grice has the answer. He thinks that we need a theory of lingo (or language) as a rational activity. This should explain things like the scale:
seem, is.
know, believe
3,2,1,...
etc.
We say 'seem' when we think 'is' would be too strong a thing to say. We say "There are four apples" in the basket, when we think that to say that there are 3 apples is too soft or weak a thing to say (when there are four -- surely if there are 4 apples, there are 3 apples).
---
He then needs to evoke the rule by which we play:
'be strong, unless you kant' -- in the things you say. The category of Quantity, as he later relabelled.
No other philosopher had considered these pragmatic categories, almost.
Nowell-Smith HAD, in his "Ethics", when he speaks of 'relevance' and 'sincerity', or Urmson in various papers, as Austin. Indeed Strawson himself had pointed to a principle of relevance, and a principle of ignorance (and of knowledge) explaining our use of 'definite descriptions'.
In this light, Grice comes out as bringing to the fore the rationale behind various uses of locutions of philosophical interest.
Philosophers had been loose in their wordings. Take L. J. Cohen, who was teaching at Oxford at the time. His "Diversity of Meaning" and later work suggests that we can very well 'multiply' senses, as we need them. Grice finds Rationalism a better practice. In the proceedings, he finds alliances with Aristotle and Kant (his Kantotle) which helps...
Philosophers who examine Grice only for his contribution to this or that (dthis or dthat, in Kaplan's parlance) but are unware or uninterested in the continuity of his thought are bound to ignore this or that, but that's life!
----
And so on!
Jones writes in "Maggee", etc.
"I am always interested in critiques of one man's analytic philosophy in the terms of another's. And also in the dispossessed or marginalised, those who might possibly have become academic philosophers had not their philosophical inclinations been too far removed from the prevailing orthodoxy of their day or whose philosophy was conducted in some more liberal context sheltered from the critical gaze of the principle centers of analytic orthodoxy. In that category I count Gellner, Berlin, and Magee, possibly Murdoch and in all of these cases the orthodoxy of their youth was probably "linguistic philosophy". Why not Popper, Lakatos, ...? In these terms perhaps LSE is a haven for philosophical unorthodoxy. Well I don't feel that Popper and Lakatos were marginalised. Perhaps it's just an Oxford thing I am groping at, since Gellner, Berlin, Magee and Murdoch were all in some way dissenting Oxonians."
Too true.
--- Keyword: ALWAYS (or all-ways, as I prefer) Oxford.
Jones:
"It had not occurred to me that Dummett should be thought outside the fold of linguistic philosophy until Speranza's recent postings about his critical attitude towards Austin. I suppose to make sense of this we must distinguish between "linguistic philosophy" and "ordinary language philosophy", and say that Dummett may not have been an "ordinary language philosopher" but he was certainly a linguistic philosopher."
Too true. It is fun to see how his books are 'catalogued' by the British library, say, or the Library of (the American) congress. "Philosophy of Language". I would think the serious keyword here is:
'philosophy of Language' -- but this is tricky, since "Philosophy of X" is "ALL-ways" second-rate when it comes to philosophical methodology: "Metaphysics" is fine, but "he was a philosopher of language" cannot be complimenary -- ever.
Jones goes on:
"[Dummett] was a linguistic philosopher because he gave primacy to philosophy of language, and because he seems to have subscribed to a point of view which Magee singled out for especially thorough refutation in his "confessions of a philosopher".
If we take this view (which I will explain shortly) then we can see Grice's philosophy as moderating not only the extremes of Austinian ordinary language philosophy, but also the extreme of linguistic philosophy which Dummett inhabited."
Good. Will check this out!
Jones:
"The doctrine which Magee singled out for special obloquy is the argument for the primacy of linguistic philosophy on the grounds that thought is essentially linguistic."
Mmm. Echoes of Peacocke?
I treasure a little chapter, by Peacocke, somewhere, "Thought and Language" (or "Language and Thought" -- I never recall).
Jones:
"When we sit silently chewing the cud, the argument goes, our thinking is a stream of bits of language which we just happen to refrain from articulating.
Since all thought consists of propositions expressed or repressed, the philosophy of language has prime place, and a study of language is an essential part of any philosophical enterprise. This is a doctrine which Dummett does explicitly subscribe to, somewhere, perhaps in his "Is analytic philosophy systematic and should it be?"."
Echoes of that UNPUBLISHED lecture by Grice -- for years. The very last "William James" lecture on "Logic and Conversation" (WoW:vi). It's all about the alleged primacy of "mean" (meaning) -- Grice's prefered locution -- over thought, or vice versa.
---
Jones:
"Dummett also at least some of the time, and particularly in his attempt to provide a philosophical justification for intuitionistic logic. The analogous caricature of Austinian ordinary language philosophy would be that philosophy is just the study of ordinary language, and the advancement of our understanding of this instrument through a detailed analysis of its use. This nominally as a prelude to the resolution of extra-linguistic philosophical problems. This seems to be the line in Austin's "A Plea for Excuses", which is his most explicit metaphilosophical pronouncement. The Austin of "Sense and Sensibilia" is using observations about ordinary language in a critique of a philosophical argument concerning a problem which is not itself purely linguistic. But the Austin of "Doing things with words" seems to have moved on from criticising a philosophical position to practicing a new kind of philosophy consisting primarily or exclusively in the study of language through its non philosophical manifestations."
Indeed. There probably is more continuity in Austin's thought (I love that: 'the continuity of ...' -- e.g. "The continuity of Middle English philosophy from Beowulf") than his manuscripts suggest.
Recall that "How to do things with words" was never thought by Austin to be published. Urmson did that for him! And on top of that, Oxford engaged Marina Sbisa to finish the thing! ---- The "Sense and sensibilia" was, also, never meant for publication by Austin. Warnock did that for Austin, since Warnock's ego moved Warnock to have Austin's discussion of Warnock in the latter lectures (Austin focuses on Warnock's booklet on Berkeley).
I think there is a lot of continuity in Austin's oeuvre, as there is in Grice's oeuvre, but we have to consider, almost, year-by-year dating of publications and unpublications, and separate the 'public' Austin from the more personal philosophical Austin, and so on. I'm pleased I'm not an Austinian, or else this would be the Austin Club (or something).
Jones:
"My impression is that Grice doesn't himself fit in with either of these extremes.
His essay on philosophical method and ordinary language in WOW suggests: firstly, that philosophical analysis is a kind of conceptual analysis (which surprises me a little, I would not have thought that consistent with the whole of his philosophical output); secondly, the assertion of an "unswerving association" of philosophy with the study not just of language but of "ordinary language""
What a beautiful word.
--- begin quoted text:
swever, early 13c., "to depart, make off;" early 14c., "to turn aside, deviate from a straight course," probably from O.E. sweorfan "to rub, scour, file" (but sense development is difficult to trace), from P.Gmc. *swerbanan (cf O.N. sverfa "to scour, file," O.S. swebran "to wipe off"), from PIE base *swerbh-. Cognate words in other Germanic languages (cf. O.Fris. swerva "to creep," M.Du. swerven "to rove, stray") suggests the sense of "go off, turn aside" may have existed in O.E., though unrecorded. The noun is recorded from 1741.
---
Jones:
"But an association is not an identification, so there is some softening there. Grice associates the opposition to this point of view (thinking of Russell and Quine) with "scientism". This critique is probably even more applicable to Rudolf Carnap"
--- intersting. Grice will re-quote "Scientism" later in his "Method" -- by this time, it has become "The devil of Scientism" (big quote repeated elsewhere, etc.).
Jones:
"[This critique is probably even more applicable to Rudolf Carnap] who, because of his dedication to the formalisation of science and his conception of science as encompassing all systematic study of empirical or synthetic truth, does at least regard the study of ordinary language as empirical science (and the kind of philosophy which he practiced as a deductive/demonstrative science insofar as it establishes new truths rather than proposing new languages and methods)."
Interesting. There are various points here:
---- I would associate Carnap indeed with that grand movement, American in spirit, apparently, of the "Unified science".
--- the other point is sublter. When I was studying kewords, I made a distinction between
philosophical linguistics
and
linguistic philosophy.
Indeed, 'philosophical linguistics' seems oxymoronic, since, since Saussure, linguists have NOT been _too_ philosophical. By registering Carnap's attitude towards things such as 'pragmatics' as the empirical study of assertion and belief, say, in that little essay that we have discussed elsewhere with Jones, Carnap seems to be minimising linguistics, and linguistic philosophy (into the bargain) so! I don't mind about his minimising empirical linguistics (I guess) --. But then I would disagree that what Austin or Grice are doing is 'empirical' linguistics alla Naess. They are more into Kantotelian linguistics. For Austin (and more so for Grice) the study of language is important because it is a study of _categories_. And categories can come in ontological, cognitive, AND linguistic format.
---
SOME empirical linguists (notably Whorf) emphasised this. But others (notably Chomsky and his followers, such as some of the early Griceains) did not, and rather stuck with relative paradigms of a given language AS if they were universalia, without knowing (or something like that).
Jones:
"Sorry, I think I must have lost my thread. I am trying to get a better handle quite generally on the kinds of philosophical analysis which have been proposed or practiced and their relationships, which seems like an enterprise of unending complexity, since it is in the nature of philosophy not only that no two philosophers share a common philosophy, but probably also that no two share the same conception of what philosophy is or how it should be done. Making an illuminating story out of this (which is what I am trying to do) is a bit of a challenge, and I am interested especially in how my own limited conception of 20th Century philosophy looks wrong to others (particularly in how it exposes my extensive ignorance!)."
Not at all. It's very simple! You love to make things complicated, which I love!
-----
("It's very simple!" is an utterance of utter complexity).
It all starts with the first Witters. (When philosophers engage to discuss the history of 20th century philosophy -- they HAVE to mention Witters). His "Tractatus". This is ONE language. Then there's the second Witters: the USES of language.
Then there's the Unified Science Movement. Carnap noted one big complication of this: physicalism versus phenomenalism. Given the complexities of quantum physics, say, why bother to formalise, in first-order predicate calculus, what physicists are saying? They may not even know it (Echoes of Dummett: "metaphysics is an examination of the philosophy of physics").
Then comes Austin. It is best to understand Austin in terms of how philosophy (how BORINGLY) philosophy was conducted in Oxford before he came. Try to read any pre-Austinian philosopher! They are just impossible! -- Bradley, Prichard (realism), Cook Wilson. Big words! Big manifestos. Ryle softened this a bit, with his irreverencies. But Austin set the thing _on fire_. He thought: 'let us focus on how 'know' works -- perhaps it works 'performatively', as I might say'. And so on. His students were FASCINATED (except Dummett, -- and the female philosophers Murdoch and Anscombe).
Austin exerted a fascination NOT ONLY On his students (this is understandable) but on people like GRICE who was only TWO YEARS his junior!
--- The rest is history!
In the case of Grice, he starts to get serious when he tries to systematise on what he was doing.
Recall that in 1967, in "Logic and Conversation", he chose himself as an example of a linguistic philosopher. He lists like 16 philosophers, mostly obscure. One philosopher he cites is NOT obscure. He refers to his own,
"Causal theory of perception", 1961.
He starts to wonder what he meant by 'implication', as it applies to the phenomenalist verb, 'seems':
That red pillar box seems red to me.
Why not 'is'?
This 'doubt-or-denial' implication, is it part of the _sense_ of 'seem'? It's not!
----
Things sometime seem as they are!
---
So, Grice is bringing in a caveat: the analysis of use versus meaning or over meaning should take into consideration that conditions of use do not specify conditions of meaning necessarily (contra Witters I and Witters II).
---
By this time, he was finding 'enemies' in Strawson (who had said that 'and' and "&" have different _meanings_ -- in "Introduction to Logical Theory") or with much younger (and American) philosophers like Searle. I like to think of Grice's "Logic and Conversation" as a response to Searle, "Aberrations and modifications", in British Analytic Philosophy.
---
Grice has the answer. He thinks that we need a theory of lingo (or language) as a rational activity. This should explain things like the scale:
seem, is.
know, believe
3,2,1,...
etc.
We say 'seem' when we think 'is' would be too strong a thing to say. We say "There are four apples" in the basket, when we think that to say that there are 3 apples is too soft or weak a thing to say (when there are four -- surely if there are 4 apples, there are 3 apples).
---
He then needs to evoke the rule by which we play:
'be strong, unless you kant' -- in the things you say. The category of Quantity, as he later relabelled.
No other philosopher had considered these pragmatic categories, almost.
Nowell-Smith HAD, in his "Ethics", when he speaks of 'relevance' and 'sincerity', or Urmson in various papers, as Austin. Indeed Strawson himself had pointed to a principle of relevance, and a principle of ignorance (and of knowledge) explaining our use of 'definite descriptions'.
In this light, Grice comes out as bringing to the fore the rationale behind various uses of locutions of philosophical interest.
Philosophers had been loose in their wordings. Take L. J. Cohen, who was teaching at Oxford at the time. His "Diversity of Meaning" and later work suggests that we can very well 'multiply' senses, as we need them. Grice finds Rationalism a better practice. In the proceedings, he finds alliances with Aristotle and Kant (his Kantotle) which helps...
Philosophers who examine Grice only for his contribution to this or that (dthis or dthat, in Kaplan's parlance) but are unware or uninterested in the continuity of his thought are bound to ignore this or that, but that's life!
----
And so on!
More on Izzing and Hazzing
Roger Bishop Jones
Without as yet actually using Grice's words (though I might well put them in soon), the subject matter of Grice's work on predication in Aristotle is one of the topics under discussion at the moment on the phil-logic@philo.at mailing list.
It may not be a favourite haunt of Grice club denizens (Grice doesn't often get a mention) but I thought it worth a mention.
In my own formal work partly inspired by the Grice/Code collaboration I combined formal models of essential and accidental predication (izzing and hazzing in Grice's terms) with the syllogistic logic.
In doing so, my preliminary conclusions were that once you bring in that distinction (which seems to originate rather in Aristotle's metaphysics than his organon), then the rules of the syllogism become more complex, the usual conception of validity not being reflected fully for all kinds of predication.
Grice's interest seems to have been at least partly in multiplicity of "being", the question whether that verb has more than one sense.
Izzing and Hazzing are different names to distinguish two ways in which "being" (and some other words like "having") are used, the neologism being useful because the distinction between essential and accidental predication (as this is conceived by Aristotle) is not in ordinary language consistently conveyed by distinct vocabulary.
Grice I believe was inclined to question that multiple senses really are involved, and the question arises by what criteria one can judge whether observed usage constitutes a single or multiple senses.
On this I remain at present, much less than adequately acquainted with Grice's position, but there is one possible criterion which now occurs to me as a result of material on phil-logic.
It seems that there may be differences in Aristotle's conception of the ontological commitments implicit in affirmative propositions according to whether they involve essential or accidental predication, and hence differences in truth conditions.
The idea is that an accidental universal affirmation does entail existence, whereas an essential one does not.
I am still not clear on whether this is the case, but if it were and the truth conditions do vary in such a manner, then it is hard to see how these two kinds of predication could avoid being distinguished as different senses.
Could one plausibly argue against the "multiplicity of being" if it were once established that there is a multiplicity of truth conditions?
RBJ
Without as yet actually using Grice's words (though I might well put them in soon), the subject matter of Grice's work on predication in Aristotle is one of the topics under discussion at the moment on the phil-logic@philo.at mailing list.
It may not be a favourite haunt of Grice club denizens (Grice doesn't often get a mention) but I thought it worth a mention.
In my own formal work partly inspired by the Grice/Code collaboration I combined formal models of essential and accidental predication (izzing and hazzing in Grice's terms) with the syllogistic logic.
In doing so, my preliminary conclusions were that once you bring in that distinction (which seems to originate rather in Aristotle's metaphysics than his organon), then the rules of the syllogism become more complex, the usual conception of validity not being reflected fully for all kinds of predication.
Grice's interest seems to have been at least partly in multiplicity of "being", the question whether that verb has more than one sense.
Izzing and Hazzing are different names to distinguish two ways in which "being" (and some other words like "having") are used, the neologism being useful because the distinction between essential and accidental predication (as this is conceived by Aristotle) is not in ordinary language consistently conveyed by distinct vocabulary.
Grice I believe was inclined to question that multiple senses really are involved, and the question arises by what criteria one can judge whether observed usage constitutes a single or multiple senses.
On this I remain at present, much less than adequately acquainted with Grice's position, but there is one possible criterion which now occurs to me as a result of material on phil-logic.
It seems that there may be differences in Aristotle's conception of the ontological commitments implicit in affirmative propositions according to whether they involve essential or accidental predication, and hence differences in truth conditions.
The idea is that an accidental universal affirmation does entail existence, whereas an essential one does not.
I am still not clear on whether this is the case, but if it were and the truth conditions do vary in such a manner, then it is hard to see how these two kinds of predication could avoid being distinguished as different senses.
Could one plausibly argue against the "multiplicity of being" if it were once established that there is a multiplicity of truth conditions?
RBJ
Grice, Dummett and Magee
Roger Bishop Jones
I am always interested in critiques of one man's analytic philosophy in the terms of another's.
And also in the dispossessed or marginalised, those who might possibly have become academic philosophers had not their philosophical inclinations been too far removed from the prevailing orthodoxy of their day or whose philosophy was conducted in some more liberal context sheltered from the critical gaze of the principle centers of analytic orthodoxy.
In that category I count Gellner, Berlin, and Magee, possibly Murdoch and in all of these cases the orthodoxy of their youth was probably "linguistic philosophy".
Why not Popper, Lakatos, ...? In these terms perhaps LSE is a haven for philosophical unorthodoxy. Well I don't feel that Popper and Lakatos were marginalised. Perhaps its just an Oxford thing I am groping at, since Gellner, Berlin, Magee and Murdoch were all in some way dissenting Oxonians.
It had not occurred to me that Dummett should be thought outside the fold of linguistic philosophy until Speranza's recent postings about his critical attitude towards Austin.
I suppose to make sense of this we must distinguish between "linguistic philosophy" and "ordinary language philosophy", and say that Dummett may not have been an "ordinary language philosopher" but he was certainly a linguistic philosopher. He was a linguistic philosopher because he gave primacy to philosophy of language, and because he seems to have subscribed to a point of view which Magee singled out for especially thorough refutation in his "confessions of a philosopher".
If we take this view (which I will explain shortly) then we can see Grice's philosophy as moderating not only the extremes of Austinian ordinary language philosophy, but also the extreme of linguistic philosophy which Dummett inhabited.
The doctrine which Magee singled out for special obloquy is the argument for the primacy of linguistic philosophy on the grounds that thought is essentially linguistic. When we sit silently chewing the cud, the argument goes, our thinking is a stream of bits of language which we just happen to refrain from articulating.
Since all thought consists of propositions expressed or repressed, the philosophy of language has prime place, and a study of language is an essential part of any philosophical enterprise.
This is a doctrine which Dummett does explicitly subscribe to, somewhere, perhaps in his "Is analytic philosophy systematic and should it be?".
Dummett also at least some of the time, and particularly in his attempt to provide a philosophical justification for intuitionistic logic,
The analogous caricature of Austinian ordinary language philosophy would be that philosophy is just the study of ordinary language, and the advancement of our understanding of this instrument through a detailed analysis of its use.
This nominally as a prelude to the resolution of extra-linguistic philosophical problems. This seems to be the line in Austin's "A Plea for Excuses", which is his most explicit metaphilosophical pronouncement.
The Austin of "Sense and Sensibilia" is using observations about ordinary language in a critique of a philosophical argument concerning a problem which is not itself purely linguistic.
But the Austin of "Doing things with words" seems to have moved on from criticising a philosophical position to practicing a new kind of philosophy consisting primarily or exclusively in the study of language through its non philosophical manifestations.
My impression is that Grice doesn't himself fit in with either of these extremes.
His essay on philosophical method and ordinary language in WOW suggests:
Firstly that philosophical analysis is a kind of conceptual analysis (which surprises me a little, I would not have thought that consistent with the whole of his philosophical output),
Secondly the assertion of an "unswerving association" of philosophy with the study not just of language but of "ordinary language".
But an association is not an identification, so there is some softening there.
Grice associates the opposition to this point of view (thinking of Russell and Quine) with "scientism".
This critique is probably even more applicable to Rudolf Carnap, who, because of his dedication to the formalisation of science and his conception of science as encompassing all systematic study of empirical or synthetic truth, does at least regard the study of ordinary language as empirical science (and the kind of philosophy which he practiced as a deductive/demonstrative science insofar as it establishes new truths rather than proposing new languages and methods).
Sorry, I think I must have lost my thread.
I am trying to get a better handle quite generally on the kinds of philosophical analysis which have been proposed or practiced and their relationships, which seems like an enterprise of unending complexity, since it is in the nature of philosophy not only that no two philosophers share a common philosophy, but probably also that no two share the same conception of what philosophy is or how it should be done.
Making an illuminating story out of this (which is what I am trying to do) is a bit of a challenge, and I am interested especially in how my own limited conception of 20th Century philosophy looks wrong to others (particularly in how it exposes my extensive ignorance!).
RBJ
I am always interested in critiques of one man's analytic philosophy in the terms of another's.
And also in the dispossessed or marginalised, those who might possibly have become academic philosophers had not their philosophical inclinations been too far removed from the prevailing orthodoxy of their day or whose philosophy was conducted in some more liberal context sheltered from the critical gaze of the principle centers of analytic orthodoxy.
In that category I count Gellner, Berlin, and Magee, possibly Murdoch and in all of these cases the orthodoxy of their youth was probably "linguistic philosophy".
Why not Popper, Lakatos, ...? In these terms perhaps LSE is a haven for philosophical unorthodoxy. Well I don't feel that Popper and Lakatos were marginalised. Perhaps its just an Oxford thing I am groping at, since Gellner, Berlin, Magee and Murdoch were all in some way dissenting Oxonians.
It had not occurred to me that Dummett should be thought outside the fold of linguistic philosophy until Speranza's recent postings about his critical attitude towards Austin.
I suppose to make sense of this we must distinguish between "linguistic philosophy" and "ordinary language philosophy", and say that Dummett may not have been an "ordinary language philosopher" but he was certainly a linguistic philosopher. He was a linguistic philosopher because he gave primacy to philosophy of language, and because he seems to have subscribed to a point of view which Magee singled out for especially thorough refutation in his "confessions of a philosopher".
If we take this view (which I will explain shortly) then we can see Grice's philosophy as moderating not only the extremes of Austinian ordinary language philosophy, but also the extreme of linguistic philosophy which Dummett inhabited.
The doctrine which Magee singled out for special obloquy is the argument for the primacy of linguistic philosophy on the grounds that thought is essentially linguistic. When we sit silently chewing the cud, the argument goes, our thinking is a stream of bits of language which we just happen to refrain from articulating.
Since all thought consists of propositions expressed or repressed, the philosophy of language has prime place, and a study of language is an essential part of any philosophical enterprise.
This is a doctrine which Dummett does explicitly subscribe to, somewhere, perhaps in his "Is analytic philosophy systematic and should it be?".
Dummett also at least some of the time, and particularly in his attempt to provide a philosophical justification for intuitionistic logic,
The analogous caricature of Austinian ordinary language philosophy would be that philosophy is just the study of ordinary language, and the advancement of our understanding of this instrument through a detailed analysis of its use.
This nominally as a prelude to the resolution of extra-linguistic philosophical problems. This seems to be the line in Austin's "A Plea for Excuses", which is his most explicit metaphilosophical pronouncement.
The Austin of "Sense and Sensibilia" is using observations about ordinary language in a critique of a philosophical argument concerning a problem which is not itself purely linguistic.
But the Austin of "Doing things with words" seems to have moved on from criticising a philosophical position to practicing a new kind of philosophy consisting primarily or exclusively in the study of language through its non philosophical manifestations.
My impression is that Grice doesn't himself fit in with either of these extremes.
His essay on philosophical method and ordinary language in WOW suggests:
Firstly that philosophical analysis is a kind of conceptual analysis (which surprises me a little, I would not have thought that consistent with the whole of his philosophical output),
Secondly the assertion of an "unswerving association" of philosophy with the study not just of language but of "ordinary language".
But an association is not an identification, so there is some softening there.
Grice associates the opposition to this point of view (thinking of Russell and Quine) with "scientism".
This critique is probably even more applicable to Rudolf Carnap, who, because of his dedication to the formalisation of science and his conception of science as encompassing all systematic study of empirical or synthetic truth, does at least regard the study of ordinary language as empirical science (and the kind of philosophy which he practiced as a deductive/demonstrative science insofar as it establishes new truths rather than proposing new languages and methods).
Sorry, I think I must have lost my thread.
I am trying to get a better handle quite generally on the kinds of philosophical analysis which have been proposed or practiced and their relationships, which seems like an enterprise of unending complexity, since it is in the nature of philosophy not only that no two philosophers share a common philosophy, but probably also that no two share the same conception of what philosophy is or how it should be done.
Making an illuminating story out of this (which is what I am trying to do) is a bit of a challenge, and I am interested especially in how my own limited conception of 20th Century philosophy looks wrong to others (particularly in how it exposes my extensive ignorance!).
RBJ
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Dummett gets interviewed
Speranza
Jones was wondering about the source for the Dummett interviews.
One is at:
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/552/
-- and there are TWO interviewers, which I have simplified as "Q", and where Dummett becomes "A". The two interviewers are R. F. and M. S. They tend to expand on the questions in a charming way. At one point, Dummett (our "A") utters, (words to the effect): "Hey, I shouldn't be posing the questions, I know..."
There is another interview, to Dummett, which Dummett cared to reprint in his book, "Origin of Analytic Philosophy". He conducted the interview in German. He later found the thing fascinating enough to care to translate it to English. It is perhaps less technical than the RF/MS interview.
BUT...
The interview in "Origin of Analytic Philosophy", and I was thinking of sharing this with "City of Eternal Truth" AND Carnap Corner, there is a reference, by Dummett to
CARNAP.
This in the context of Austin. He calls Austin's influence 'noxious', and I can only think that if Grice was motivated to defend the Oxonian dialectic, was to counterpoint this rather otiose comments by Dummett.
When it comes to Austin, Dummett notes that it was not so much what Austin DID that bothered him, but what Austin CEASED to do. "Disregard for Carnap", comes first to Dummett's mind.
So --- it's like saying that Austin should have been different from what Austin was.
Oxonian types of a certain generation -- not Grice's -- expected too much from their tutors and stuff (staff?). Dummett, as the interviewer to "Origin of Anaytic Philosophy" points out, disregards Austin.
"So, Austin did teach you something useful, then?" (The interviewer is referring to the fact that Dummett would never have heard the name "Frege" had it not been for Austin caring to translate the "Grundlagen" into English prose for Blackwell for this 'Foundations of modern epistemology' course.
----
The RF and MS interview was published in a non-philosophical venue, and it covers pretty much everything. The latter sections of the interview bring in Dummett's philosophy of mind, and his conception of metaphysics as "philosophy of physics".
And so on.
----
Hopefully, the Dummett unpublished papers will be deposited at the Bodleian, for Griceains and Dummettians alike to investigate.
As we know, the references by Grice to Dummett are meagre: a passing reference in WoW:4, and a mention of Dummett as a "no" philosopher (along with female philosophers Murdoch and Anscombe). But we can imagine further connections, as we bring in Urmson into the picture (who taught Dummett at Christ Church) and indeed Flew, a tutee of Grice -- this is something that fascinates philosophers: the 'genealogy' in terms of tutorials.
On the whole, the most technical reference by Dummett to Grice is the idea that 'implicature' is so technical a notion that it cannot fit with 'ordinary language philosophy' (in "Is analytic philosophy systematic, or ought it be?", repr. in "Truth and other enigmas").
Personally, I believe that "The influence of Grice on Frege" should also shed light on further connections. It seems to be considered that Dummett's Frege is the definite, reference Frege. But he ain't! --- There are many notions in Frege that correspond quite closely to notions in Griceian pragmatics: colouring, for example. Dummett was interested in just one side to Frege, and wanted to 'deconstruct', as it were, the idea of truth behind 'truth-conditional' semantics as Dummett saw it or failed to do it!
---- The funeral for Dummett took place at St. Alosyus, Oxford.
----
R. I. P.
Jones was wondering about the source for the Dummett interviews.
One is at:
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/552/
-- and there are TWO interviewers, which I have simplified as "Q", and where Dummett becomes "A". The two interviewers are R. F. and M. S. They tend to expand on the questions in a charming way. At one point, Dummett (our "A") utters, (words to the effect): "Hey, I shouldn't be posing the questions, I know..."
There is another interview, to Dummett, which Dummett cared to reprint in his book, "Origin of Analytic Philosophy". He conducted the interview in German. He later found the thing fascinating enough to care to translate it to English. It is perhaps less technical than the RF/MS interview.
BUT...
The interview in "Origin of Analytic Philosophy", and I was thinking of sharing this with "City of Eternal Truth" AND Carnap Corner, there is a reference, by Dummett to
CARNAP.
This in the context of Austin. He calls Austin's influence 'noxious', and I can only think that if Grice was motivated to defend the Oxonian dialectic, was to counterpoint this rather otiose comments by Dummett.
When it comes to Austin, Dummett notes that it was not so much what Austin DID that bothered him, but what Austin CEASED to do. "Disregard for Carnap", comes first to Dummett's mind.
So --- it's like saying that Austin should have been different from what Austin was.
Oxonian types of a certain generation -- not Grice's -- expected too much from their tutors and stuff (staff?). Dummett, as the interviewer to "Origin of Anaytic Philosophy" points out, disregards Austin.
"So, Austin did teach you something useful, then?" (The interviewer is referring to the fact that Dummett would never have heard the name "Frege" had it not been for Austin caring to translate the "Grundlagen" into English prose for Blackwell for this 'Foundations of modern epistemology' course.
----
The RF and MS interview was published in a non-philosophical venue, and it covers pretty much everything. The latter sections of the interview bring in Dummett's philosophy of mind, and his conception of metaphysics as "philosophy of physics".
And so on.
----
Hopefully, the Dummett unpublished papers will be deposited at the Bodleian, for Griceains and Dummettians alike to investigate.
As we know, the references by Grice to Dummett are meagre: a passing reference in WoW:4, and a mention of Dummett as a "no" philosopher (along with female philosophers Murdoch and Anscombe). But we can imagine further connections, as we bring in Urmson into the picture (who taught Dummett at Christ Church) and indeed Flew, a tutee of Grice -- this is something that fascinates philosophers: the 'genealogy' in terms of tutorials.
On the whole, the most technical reference by Dummett to Grice is the idea that 'implicature' is so technical a notion that it cannot fit with 'ordinary language philosophy' (in "Is analytic philosophy systematic, or ought it be?", repr. in "Truth and other enigmas").
Personally, I believe that "The influence of Grice on Frege" should also shed light on further connections. It seems to be considered that Dummett's Frege is the definite, reference Frege. But he ain't! --- There are many notions in Frege that correspond quite closely to notions in Griceian pragmatics: colouring, for example. Dummett was interested in just one side to Frege, and wanted to 'deconstruct', as it were, the idea of truth behind 'truth-conditional' semantics as Dummett saw it or failed to do it!
---- The funeral for Dummett took place at St. Alosyus, Oxford.
----
R. I. P.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Grice and The Aristotelian Society
Speranza
Table of Contents of The Aristotelian Society, Proceedings, vol. 112, with commentary.
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
"Nominalistic Adequacy"
Jeffrey Ketland (Munich)
-----
"Plural Quantification and Modality"
Gabriel Uzquiano (Oxford)
----
"Beyond Eros: Friendship in the Phaedrus"
Frisbee C. C. Sheffield (Cambridge)
cfr. Grice on Judith Baker, Aristotle on the friend as the alter ego, in WoW, Grice, Eschatology.
---
"Universality and Argument in Mencius IIA6"
R. A. H. King (Glasgow)
---
"Reference and the Permutation Argument"
Richard Gaskin (Liverpool)
---
DISCUSSION NOTES
---
"Self-Respect Regained"
Jake Chandler (Leuven) and Adam Rieger (Glasgow)
---
"Transparency as Inference:
A Reply to Alex Byrne"
Markos Valaris (New South Wales)
---
________________________________________
"Intention and the Self"
Rory Madden (UCL)
---
"Is There a Problem of Other Minds?"
Anil Gomes (Oxford)
---- Cfr. Paul, cited by Grice, "Is there a problem about ... sense data?" "Is there a problem about" -- arguments?
---
"Hearing Properties, Effects or Parts?"
Casey O'Callaghan (Rice)
cfr. Grice's example in "Personal Identity": "I am hearing a noise".
---
"Reasons for Action"
Pamela Hieronymi (UCLA)
--- Cfr. Grice, "Intention and uncertainty". Willing as a reason for acting.
"Cross-Modal Experiences"
Fiona Macpherson (Glasgow)
---
"Counterfactuals, Overdetermination and Mental Causation"
Simona Aimar (Oxford)
---- Grice on "Indicative conditionals" -- implicature: "Subjective conditionals" are not implicatural.
"A Critique of Hermeneutical Injustice"
Laura Beeby (Sheffield)
---
"Specular Space"
Clare Mac Cumhaill (Edinburgh)
---
"Angels and Philosophers: With a New Interpretation of Spinoza's Common Notions"
Eric Schliesser (Ghent) in response to Susan James (Birkbeck) on "Spinoza on the Politics of Philosophical Understanding"
---
And so on.
Was Grice an angel?
---
Table of Contents of The Aristotelian Society, Proceedings, vol. 112, with commentary.
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
"Nominalistic Adequacy"
Jeffrey Ketland (Munich)
-----
"Plural Quantification and Modality"
Gabriel Uzquiano (Oxford)
----
"Beyond Eros: Friendship in the Phaedrus"
Frisbee C. C. Sheffield (Cambridge)
cfr. Grice on Judith Baker, Aristotle on the friend as the alter ego, in WoW, Grice, Eschatology.
---
"Universality and Argument in Mencius IIA6"
R. A. H. King (Glasgow)
---
"Reference and the Permutation Argument"
Richard Gaskin (Liverpool)
---
DISCUSSION NOTES
---
"Self-Respect Regained"
Jake Chandler (Leuven) and Adam Rieger (Glasgow)
---
"Transparency as Inference:
A Reply to Alex Byrne"
Markos Valaris (New South Wales)
---
________________________________________
"Intention and the Self"
Rory Madden (UCL)
---
"Is There a Problem of Other Minds?"
Anil Gomes (Oxford)
---- Cfr. Paul, cited by Grice, "Is there a problem about ... sense data?" "Is there a problem about" -- arguments?
---
"Hearing Properties, Effects or Parts?"
Casey O'Callaghan (Rice)
cfr. Grice's example in "Personal Identity": "I am hearing a noise".
---
"Reasons for Action"
Pamela Hieronymi (UCLA)
--- Cfr. Grice, "Intention and uncertainty". Willing as a reason for acting.
"Cross-Modal Experiences"
Fiona Macpherson (Glasgow)
---
"Counterfactuals, Overdetermination and Mental Causation"
Simona Aimar (Oxford)
---- Grice on "Indicative conditionals" -- implicature: "Subjective conditionals" are not implicatural.
"A Critique of Hermeneutical Injustice"
Laura Beeby (Sheffield)
---
"Specular Space"
Clare Mac Cumhaill (Edinburgh)
---
"Angels and Philosophers: With a New Interpretation of Spinoza's Common Notions"
Eric Schliesser (Ghent) in response to Susan James (Birkbeck) on "Spinoza on the Politics of Philosophical Understanding"
---
And so on.
Was Grice an angel?
---
Sunday, January 15, 2012
The Influence of Grice on Frege
Speranza
It is fascinating to review Dummett's intellectual autobiography. While critical of Austin and Grice, it was via Austin that Dummett became who Dummett was. This optional paper programme for Dummett's BA had Dummett exploring Frege's "Foundations" that Austin had translated.
As Beaney, Neale, Horn, and others have showed, there is a lot of agreement between Frege's and Grice's views on the workings of natural language. Dummett was never emphatic about this. Rather, he focused on what he saw as the negative side ('noxious') of the type of linguistic botany that had Austin, Strawson, and Grice, explore underlying mechanisms for the explanation of divergences between first-order predicate calculus and, shall we say, English. And so on.
It is fascinating to review Dummett's intellectual autobiography. While critical of Austin and Grice, it was via Austin that Dummett became who Dummett was. This optional paper programme for Dummett's BA had Dummett exploring Frege's "Foundations" that Austin had translated.
As Beaney, Neale, Horn, and others have showed, there is a lot of agreement between Frege's and Grice's views on the workings of natural language. Dummett was never emphatic about this. Rather, he focused on what he saw as the negative side ('noxious') of the type of linguistic botany that had Austin, Strawson, and Grice, explore underlying mechanisms for the explanation of divergences between first-order predicate calculus and, shall we say, English. And so on.
Dummett and "Oxford philosophy": Grice's Reply
Speranza
----
In "Origins of Analytic Philosophy", Dummett reprints an interview with his German translator. The nice thing about it is the 'dialogue' format. He expands on things he talks about in his other (LSE) interview, rather than the 'dialogue' with Davidson (videorecorded).
He refers to Austin at various stages. Dummett calls Austin's influence 'noxious'. We know that it is around Austin that Grice's place in "post-war Oxford philosophy" centres, so the connection is interesting. Besides the bad things Dummett has to say about "Oxford philosophy", of the type that Dummett never showed a sensibility for, there's this bit about Frege.
It was via Austin's translation of Frege that Dummett grew his interest for Frege.
Now, Grice has expanded on various aspects of what he calls the "Oxonian dialetic", and Dummett has not been a good critic of it, never having quite understood it. Dummett's tutors at Christ Church were members of Austin's playgroup -- two of them: Urmson and Flew -- (Foster wasn't).
The Frege-Austin connection is good. Students of Frege (I'm not) are realising how many of Frege's concoctions relate to neo-Griceian ones. Indeed, alla Bradbury in "Eeating people is wrong", I am tempted to refer to "the influence of Grice on Frege". The idea of 'conventional implicature' relates, in surprising ways, to Frege's views on colouring, etc. (Neale has written on this, and also Horn).
----
So, we have a methodological-substantive interaction to consider here: Dummett's criticism to the methodology of "Oxford philosophy" AND the outcomes of such methodology, as they relate to outcomes of other methodologies and approaches that Dummett favours.
Dummett seems always to have been a 'continental' type, and ironically refers to the 'insularity' which he associated with Austin's Play Group. I can agree that it tended towards insularity in various ways. As Warnock recalls in "Saturday mornings", they never cared to publish their views, because they knew they were the centre of world philosophy, and they didn't need to promote what they are into.
Dummett notes the reverence and iconic status that the Play Group attained in the USA: Austin and Grice were indeed both William James lecturers. Dummett's implicature seems to be that the Americans should rather be concentrating on grander Continental names like Frege.
At one point in "Reply to Richards", Grice mentions his classical background. Like Austin, Grice had a first in classics (rather than PPE, then unexistent). This sensibility for the 'dead' languages -- Graeco-Roman, as it were -- is important, Grice notes, to understand the members of the Play Group and their sensitivity for questions of usage. Naturally, those deprived of this classical education are bound to criticise those who have it of displaying and showing off a talent which is a sign of a privilege. While Dummett had attended a public school (and a good one at that: Winchester), he apparently never seems to have displayed an interest in questions of usage (until much later when, provoked by his students'papers -- "Grammar and style, for examination candidates").
So, Dummett's connection with Austin is interesting in it being a first-hand encounter with Grice's Play Group. It was via Austin's "Methods in Modern Epistemology", the optional-paper programme for the BA at Oxford, which, Dummett tells us, had Austin translating Frege (for Blackwell). It was via tutorials with Urmson (a colleague of Grice, though slightly younger) and Flew (a tutee of Grice) that Dummett learned about philosophy (also Foster).
YET --- given Dummett's different sensibilities (his growing interest in Frege -- he ceased to show any respect for the sort of 'linguistic botany' that the Play Group practiced. Dummett's further commentaries on or against Strawson should also be considered.
By the time of the revival of truth-conditional semantics with Davidson in Oxford, this streak of anti-Oxonian analysis in Dummett had been forgotten, and Dummett could yet again show his polemic approach in yet different ways. And so on.
----
In "Origins of Analytic Philosophy", Dummett reprints an interview with his German translator. The nice thing about it is the 'dialogue' format. He expands on things he talks about in his other (LSE) interview, rather than the 'dialogue' with Davidson (videorecorded).
He refers to Austin at various stages. Dummett calls Austin's influence 'noxious'. We know that it is around Austin that Grice's place in "post-war Oxford philosophy" centres, so the connection is interesting. Besides the bad things Dummett has to say about "Oxford philosophy", of the type that Dummett never showed a sensibility for, there's this bit about Frege.
It was via Austin's translation of Frege that Dummett grew his interest for Frege.
Now, Grice has expanded on various aspects of what he calls the "Oxonian dialetic", and Dummett has not been a good critic of it, never having quite understood it. Dummett's tutors at Christ Church were members of Austin's playgroup -- two of them: Urmson and Flew -- (Foster wasn't).
The Frege-Austin connection is good. Students of Frege (I'm not) are realising how many of Frege's concoctions relate to neo-Griceian ones. Indeed, alla Bradbury in "Eeating people is wrong", I am tempted to refer to "the influence of Grice on Frege". The idea of 'conventional implicature' relates, in surprising ways, to Frege's views on colouring, etc. (Neale has written on this, and also Horn).
----
So, we have a methodological-substantive interaction to consider here: Dummett's criticism to the methodology of "Oxford philosophy" AND the outcomes of such methodology, as they relate to outcomes of other methodologies and approaches that Dummett favours.
Dummett seems always to have been a 'continental' type, and ironically refers to the 'insularity' which he associated with Austin's Play Group. I can agree that it tended towards insularity in various ways. As Warnock recalls in "Saturday mornings", they never cared to publish their views, because they knew they were the centre of world philosophy, and they didn't need to promote what they are into.
Dummett notes the reverence and iconic status that the Play Group attained in the USA: Austin and Grice were indeed both William James lecturers. Dummett's implicature seems to be that the Americans should rather be concentrating on grander Continental names like Frege.
At one point in "Reply to Richards", Grice mentions his classical background. Like Austin, Grice had a first in classics (rather than PPE, then unexistent). This sensibility for the 'dead' languages -- Graeco-Roman, as it were -- is important, Grice notes, to understand the members of the Play Group and their sensitivity for questions of usage. Naturally, those deprived of this classical education are bound to criticise those who have it of displaying and showing off a talent which is a sign of a privilege. While Dummett had attended a public school (and a good one at that: Winchester), he apparently never seems to have displayed an interest in questions of usage (until much later when, provoked by his students'papers -- "Grammar and style, for examination candidates").
So, Dummett's connection with Austin is interesting in it being a first-hand encounter with Grice's Play Group. It was via Austin's "Methods in Modern Epistemology", the optional-paper programme for the BA at Oxford, which, Dummett tells us, had Austin translating Frege (for Blackwell). It was via tutorials with Urmson (a colleague of Grice, though slightly younger) and Flew (a tutee of Grice) that Dummett learned about philosophy (also Foster).
YET --- given Dummett's different sensibilities (his growing interest in Frege -- he ceased to show any respect for the sort of 'linguistic botany' that the Play Group practiced. Dummett's further commentaries on or against Strawson should also be considered.
By the time of the revival of truth-conditional semantics with Davidson in Oxford, this streak of anti-Oxonian analysis in Dummett had been forgotten, and Dummett could yet again show his polemic approach in yet different ways. And so on.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Wright's Elitist Implicature
Speranza
Wright’s Philosophical Ramblings
During Summer 2011 Crispin Wright (NIP Director and Professor at NYU) walked The Pennine Way, 268 miles along the "backbone of England" from the Derbyshire peak District to the Scottish Borders.
Wright's aim was to raise money to support graduate students from elsewhere to visit the Northern Institute of Philosophy and to support Northern Institute of Philosophy graduate students to visit other institutions.
This is in line with a general mission of the Institute to support early career philosophers to develop their interests and skills through collaboration and philosophical interactions. The costs of such visits and exchanges are seldom adequately provided for in the budgets of grant giving authorities, and philosophy departments, even when in principle willing to support research-related travel by graduate students, are less and less able to do so.
Each night of the journey, Crispin answered — or anyway addressed — a philosophical (or not) question chosen by the benefactors.
Below is a sample of one of Crispin's responses, given on day DAY FOURTEEN after walking from Alston to Slaggyford.
Q: Should philosophy be funded, even if funding it holds forth almost no prospect of improving the lives of ordinary people? If so, why?”
WRIGHT:
"There are a number of ingredient questions here. One is whether philosophy has any value, – for presumably it should not be funded if it hasn’t. Another is whether the kind of value that philosophy has, or ought to have, depends upon its being appreciated as valuable in the way in which the value of a good joke, perhaps, depends upon its being appreciated as funny."
"A third is whether it is really true that money spent on funding philosophy has little or no chance of improving the lives of ‘ordinary people’. And a fourth is whether the kind of value that philosophy possesses – if any – is worth funding, given the multitude of pressing demands on scarce resources."
"Finally there is the question whether, even if it is good that some money be spent on philosophy, it is appropriate that it be public money, or whether the matter should be left to concerned individuals and charities."
"So, not a simple question. But matters become still more complex when we ask what we are understanding by ‘philosophy’. I don’t have in mind a distinction between different broad schools of philosophy – say Maoist, or Zen, or Continental, or Analytical – or different areas of philosophy, (though I suppose somebody might think that philosophy of language is worth funding but analytical metaphysics is not ☺.)"
"But we do need to distinguish the teaching of philosophy, the products of philosophy, the process of philosophical research, philosophical conversation, debate and interaction, and outreach – the cultivation of philosophical awareness, and interest, in the wider community."
"One thing that I think is clear straight away is that, contrary to what one might first assume, philosophical process is a very large part of the value of philosophy. Suppose it became possible to program computers to take over most of the projects of philosophical research currently being pursued in academia, and to produce articles and books about the issues matching the standards of the better contemporary work. Few would feel, “Well good, we can leave all that to the machines now, and get on with other things”. The quality of its research products is of course an important component in the value of philosophy, but it is crucial that these products be attained by human beings, and strongly preferable that they be attained by a shared process in which there is conversation and mutual understanding of why what results results, of the conceptual pressures and constraints that shape it. It isn’t even true that a good product is a necessary condition of a good philosophical process: an excellent philosophical seminar does not need to result in a blueprint for a research paper."
"If this is right, then we should give a qualified endorsement to the analogy with the good joke. A good philosophical process will be one which, necessarily, is appreciated as such by its participants, as interesting, eye-opening, inspiring, and perhaps importantly revisionary. So now the overarching question begins to look something like this."
*************** WRIGHT'S ELITIST IMPLICATURE:
Wright writes:
"Should funds be invested
in promoting this kind of
activity even if it stands no prospect of improving the
lives of the ‘ordinary folk’ who don’t participate in it?"
Wright adds:
"Setting aside
the elitist implicature
[the term is Grice's]
[that]: ["][T]hose who do
participate are somehow extraordinary ["],
the answer seems to me pretty obvious."
---- [No explicature required].
"If it is a good for those who participate, then in a pluralist and civilized society, participation should be encouraged, and its scope should be widened as far as possible."
"And now the issue starts to take on essentially the same kind of contour that the corresponding question takes with, say, the performing arts, and sport."
It is good that people be trained to participate, to the best of their ability. It is good that those who have the capacity to excel at the highest level be supported to do so. It is good that as many as possible be brought into position where they can appreciate and value such excellence. And it is not good, of course, if such excellence becomes the province of a few, highly trained individuals performing, as it were, behind closed doors."
"It is in this last respect that philosophy is especially vulnerable. World class sprinting, or football, can excite people who cannot sprint, or do not know how to kick a ball. Great orchestral music can, to a point, be appreciated by the musically untrained, though there are many different levels of appreciation of musical performance and those who know something of the history of music, who can read a musical score, or who can play an instrument, will literally hear, and enjoy, much more. But in philosophy, as indeed in chess, it can seem that there is no corresponding scale of partial levels of appreciation. An inexperienced chess player will derive no entertainment from observing a game at grandmaster level. And when even graduate students can struggle to follow an exchange between philosophers in the top echelon of the profession, there isn’t likely to be much of interest there to the philosophically untrained."
"But I think this merely qualifies the point I am making, rather than defeats it. In the former Soviet Union – and I dare say in Russia still – chess did have the status of a popular sport. There was a culture of chess playing, and training, from an early age, that was quite unmatched anywhere else. And the general level of chess understanding in the population at large was such that the exploits of the great champions – Petrosian, Tal, Botvinnik, Spassky, and the rest – were appreciated in much the way that the skills of top footballers used to be appreciated in the days when almost every kid knew how to trap, shield, pass or run with a football, or a tin can, through long hours of practice in the streets."
"Although there is a glint in my eye as I write this, I am not seriously suggesting that we should work towards a culture where analytic philosophy has the same place in the hearts of the citizenry at large as chess had in the former Soviet Union. But I am perfectly serious when I say that the full value of philosophy – as both activity and research discipline – does depend upon the existence of the equivalent of a ‘grass roots’, a culture of philosophical education and awareness contrasting utterly with the narrowing of the subject to an academic specialism, whose movements and preoccupations have absolutely no impact on the thought even of other academics and intellectuals, let alone the population at large, which professional philosophers have largely been content to tolerate almost since I first took an interest in the subject. In doing this they have been allowing the branch to wither on which they sit. Even cosmologists have done a better job of communicating to the public at large something of the general nature of their subject and the present state of its major issues than philosophers."
"So of course philosophy should be funded, but only because it belongs to the kind of value that the subject has that the style of thinking it involves, and its preoccupations, is capable of communication to, and beneficial impact upon, the lives of the population in general. In essence, the reasons why philosophy should be funded are more or less the same as those (non-instrumental) reasons why education generally should be funded. But a sea change is needed in the attitudes of philosophers themselves who have, for the most part, too long been content to bury their heads in their teaching and research and to ignore their obligations as wider communicators. When those obligations have come to be more widely met, the title question will no longer seem terribly controversial."
"I haven’t touched on the matter of who should fund philosophy. That's another, quite complex discussion in itself."
OTHER questions rambled by Wright:
Question 1.
Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder. What do you think this means?
--- Speranza: I wonder.
---
2. Are you thinking what I am thinking?
---- Speranza: What do YOU think?
3.
"Epistemology, Metaphysics, Semantics: are any of the branches of philosophy mentioned more fundamental than the others?"
Speranza:
Grice: "No. That's why I entitled Section II in WoW: "Explorations in SEMANTICS AND METAPHYSICS", and surely there is no implicature to the ordering of conjuncts in "p & q".
QUESTION 4.
"What, to your mind, have been the most interesting philosophical ideas in the last 50 years?"
Speranza: implicature.
Grice: "Implicature AND disimplicature."
QUESTION 5.
"Have you ever had a radical change of mind about some philosophical topic? What made you change your mind?"
Speranza: Grice.
Grice: Grice.
QUESTION 6.
"Who is your philosophical hero and why?"
Speranza: Grice. Why? Why not?
Grice: Hardie.
---
QUESTION 7.
Does god exist? Why/why not?
Speranza: I use capitals to refer to God. The Greeks didn't.
Grice: My father was a non-conformist.
QUESTION 8.
Apparently, you're a big football fan. What is it that you like in football?
--- Grice: I prefer cricket.
--- Speranza: Grice was the head ("captain", he called it) of the football team at Christ Church.
---
QUESTIN 9.
"What do you think is the hardest philosophical question?"
---- Speranza: What Timothy Williamson may think about the vagueness of 'hard'? (Just teasing).
Grice: "hard" disimplicates.
---
QUESTION 10.
What are numbers?
---- Speranza: Numbers of what?
---- Grice: A number is a platonic quantity implicature ("Joan Rivers is eighty years old" ENTAILS "Joan Rivers is nine years old").
QUESTION 11.
"What do you think is the most important thing that you learnt from your teachers?"
Speranza: I didn't know they were my teachers.
Grice: From Hardie, "What is the meaning of 'of'?"
---
QUESTION 12.
What do you take to be your biggest philosophical achievement?
GRICE: My life, as a whole?
Speranza: Take? Why not give?
--
QUESTION 13.
"Why are there so few women doing analytic philosophy?"
--- Grice: Foot, Avramides, Anscombe. In fact, MANY females (We don't 'disimplicate' "women").
Speranza: Some of my friends are female.
---
QUESTION 14.
What can philosophy achieve?
Grice: 'achieve' as in 'achieve'?
Speranza: I use capitals to refer to philosophy.
QUESTION 15.
You founded two philosophical research centres? Why?
--- Speranza: One was the Grice Club. The other wasn't.
Grice: One was the Aristotelian Society, but it was already there. The other was the Mind Association, even if I'm a functionalist, and it was already there, too, almost.
(Grice's favourite society was Oxford's "Philosophical Society" -- Speranza's favourite society is Nancy Mitford's "Society" as in "Society lady".
Question 16.
Have you ever had a radical change of mind about some philosophical topic? Which one? What made you change your mind?
Speranza: I think I've heard this before.
Grice: I was a non-conformist, and then I changed.
Question 17.
How should we conceive of truth in philosophy?
Speranza: I use capital to refer to "Truth".
Grice: I prefer implicature.
Question 18.
If scientists explain the world and how things work, what do philosophers do?
---- Speranza: Must a philosopher DO? (Cfr. Sir Cecil Vyse, in "A room with a view": "profession"? That's a rude word.
Grice: Philosophers philosophise. See my "In defence of a dogma" written with my former pupil Strawson (now Sir Peter).
QUESTION 19.
What is philosophy?
--- Speranza: Isn't the pretentious etymology obvious enough? (Love-Wisdom).
Grice: What is NOT philosophy?
---
QUESTION 20.
Has being a philosopher had an impact on how you approach life?
Crispin Wright: Yes.
---
Wright’s Philosophical Ramblings
During Summer 2011 Crispin Wright (NIP Director and Professor at NYU) walked The Pennine Way, 268 miles along the "backbone of England" from the Derbyshire peak District to the Scottish Borders.
Wright's aim was to raise money to support graduate students from elsewhere to visit the Northern Institute of Philosophy and to support Northern Institute of Philosophy graduate students to visit other institutions.
This is in line with a general mission of the Institute to support early career philosophers to develop their interests and skills through collaboration and philosophical interactions. The costs of such visits and exchanges are seldom adequately provided for in the budgets of grant giving authorities, and philosophy departments, even when in principle willing to support research-related travel by graduate students, are less and less able to do so.
Each night of the journey, Crispin answered — or anyway addressed — a philosophical (or not) question chosen by the benefactors.
Below is a sample of one of Crispin's responses, given on day DAY FOURTEEN after walking from Alston to Slaggyford.
Q: Should philosophy be funded, even if funding it holds forth almost no prospect of improving the lives of ordinary people? If so, why?”
WRIGHT:
"There are a number of ingredient questions here. One is whether philosophy has any value, – for presumably it should not be funded if it hasn’t. Another is whether the kind of value that philosophy has, or ought to have, depends upon its being appreciated as valuable in the way in which the value of a good joke, perhaps, depends upon its being appreciated as funny."
"A third is whether it is really true that money spent on funding philosophy has little or no chance of improving the lives of ‘ordinary people’. And a fourth is whether the kind of value that philosophy possesses – if any – is worth funding, given the multitude of pressing demands on scarce resources."
"Finally there is the question whether, even if it is good that some money be spent on philosophy, it is appropriate that it be public money, or whether the matter should be left to concerned individuals and charities."
"So, not a simple question. But matters become still more complex when we ask what we are understanding by ‘philosophy’. I don’t have in mind a distinction between different broad schools of philosophy – say Maoist, or Zen, or Continental, or Analytical – or different areas of philosophy, (though I suppose somebody might think that philosophy of language is worth funding but analytical metaphysics is not ☺.)"
"But we do need to distinguish the teaching of philosophy, the products of philosophy, the process of philosophical research, philosophical conversation, debate and interaction, and outreach – the cultivation of philosophical awareness, and interest, in the wider community."
"One thing that I think is clear straight away is that, contrary to what one might first assume, philosophical process is a very large part of the value of philosophy. Suppose it became possible to program computers to take over most of the projects of philosophical research currently being pursued in academia, and to produce articles and books about the issues matching the standards of the better contemporary work. Few would feel, “Well good, we can leave all that to the machines now, and get on with other things”. The quality of its research products is of course an important component in the value of philosophy, but it is crucial that these products be attained by human beings, and strongly preferable that they be attained by a shared process in which there is conversation and mutual understanding of why what results results, of the conceptual pressures and constraints that shape it. It isn’t even true that a good product is a necessary condition of a good philosophical process: an excellent philosophical seminar does not need to result in a blueprint for a research paper."
"If this is right, then we should give a qualified endorsement to the analogy with the good joke. A good philosophical process will be one which, necessarily, is appreciated as such by its participants, as interesting, eye-opening, inspiring, and perhaps importantly revisionary. So now the overarching question begins to look something like this."
*************** WRIGHT'S ELITIST IMPLICATURE:
Wright writes:
"Should funds be invested
in promoting this kind of
activity even if it stands no prospect of improving the
lives of the ‘ordinary folk’ who don’t participate in it?"
Wright adds:
"Setting aside
the elitist implicature
[the term is Grice's]
[that]: ["][T]hose who do
participate are somehow extraordinary ["],
the answer seems to me pretty obvious."
---- [No explicature required].
"If it is a good for those who participate, then in a pluralist and civilized society, participation should be encouraged, and its scope should be widened as far as possible."
"And now the issue starts to take on essentially the same kind of contour that the corresponding question takes with, say, the performing arts, and sport."
It is good that people be trained to participate, to the best of their ability. It is good that those who have the capacity to excel at the highest level be supported to do so. It is good that as many as possible be brought into position where they can appreciate and value such excellence. And it is not good, of course, if such excellence becomes the province of a few, highly trained individuals performing, as it were, behind closed doors."
"It is in this last respect that philosophy is especially vulnerable. World class sprinting, or football, can excite people who cannot sprint, or do not know how to kick a ball. Great orchestral music can, to a point, be appreciated by the musically untrained, though there are many different levels of appreciation of musical performance and those who know something of the history of music, who can read a musical score, or who can play an instrument, will literally hear, and enjoy, much more. But in philosophy, as indeed in chess, it can seem that there is no corresponding scale of partial levels of appreciation. An inexperienced chess player will derive no entertainment from observing a game at grandmaster level. And when even graduate students can struggle to follow an exchange between philosophers in the top echelon of the profession, there isn’t likely to be much of interest there to the philosophically untrained."
"But I think this merely qualifies the point I am making, rather than defeats it. In the former Soviet Union – and I dare say in Russia still – chess did have the status of a popular sport. There was a culture of chess playing, and training, from an early age, that was quite unmatched anywhere else. And the general level of chess understanding in the population at large was such that the exploits of the great champions – Petrosian, Tal, Botvinnik, Spassky, and the rest – were appreciated in much the way that the skills of top footballers used to be appreciated in the days when almost every kid knew how to trap, shield, pass or run with a football, or a tin can, through long hours of practice in the streets."
"Although there is a glint in my eye as I write this, I am not seriously suggesting that we should work towards a culture where analytic philosophy has the same place in the hearts of the citizenry at large as chess had in the former Soviet Union. But I am perfectly serious when I say that the full value of philosophy – as both activity and research discipline – does depend upon the existence of the equivalent of a ‘grass roots’, a culture of philosophical education and awareness contrasting utterly with the narrowing of the subject to an academic specialism, whose movements and preoccupations have absolutely no impact on the thought even of other academics and intellectuals, let alone the population at large, which professional philosophers have largely been content to tolerate almost since I first took an interest in the subject. In doing this they have been allowing the branch to wither on which they sit. Even cosmologists have done a better job of communicating to the public at large something of the general nature of their subject and the present state of its major issues than philosophers."
"So of course philosophy should be funded, but only because it belongs to the kind of value that the subject has that the style of thinking it involves, and its preoccupations, is capable of communication to, and beneficial impact upon, the lives of the population in general. In essence, the reasons why philosophy should be funded are more or less the same as those (non-instrumental) reasons why education generally should be funded. But a sea change is needed in the attitudes of philosophers themselves who have, for the most part, too long been content to bury their heads in their teaching and research and to ignore their obligations as wider communicators. When those obligations have come to be more widely met, the title question will no longer seem terribly controversial."
"I haven’t touched on the matter of who should fund philosophy. That's another, quite complex discussion in itself."
OTHER questions rambled by Wright:
Question 1.
Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder. What do you think this means?
--- Speranza: I wonder.
---
2. Are you thinking what I am thinking?
---- Speranza: What do YOU think?
3.
"Epistemology, Metaphysics, Semantics: are any of the branches of philosophy mentioned more fundamental than the others?"
Speranza:
Grice: "No. That's why I entitled Section II in WoW: "Explorations in SEMANTICS AND METAPHYSICS", and surely there is no implicature to the ordering of conjuncts in "p & q".
QUESTION 4.
"What, to your mind, have been the most interesting philosophical ideas in the last 50 years?"
Speranza: implicature.
Grice: "Implicature AND disimplicature."
QUESTION 5.
"Have you ever had a radical change of mind about some philosophical topic? What made you change your mind?"
Speranza: Grice.
Grice: Grice.
QUESTION 6.
"Who is your philosophical hero and why?"
Speranza: Grice. Why? Why not?
Grice: Hardie.
---
QUESTION 7.
Does god exist? Why/why not?
Speranza: I use capitals to refer to God. The Greeks didn't.
Grice: My father was a non-conformist.
QUESTION 8.
Apparently, you're a big football fan. What is it that you like in football?
--- Grice: I prefer cricket.
--- Speranza: Grice was the head ("captain", he called it) of the football team at Christ Church.
---
QUESTIN 9.
"What do you think is the hardest philosophical question?"
---- Speranza: What Timothy Williamson may think about the vagueness of 'hard'? (Just teasing).
Grice: "hard" disimplicates.
---
QUESTION 10.
What are numbers?
---- Speranza: Numbers of what?
---- Grice: A number is a platonic quantity implicature ("Joan Rivers is eighty years old" ENTAILS "Joan Rivers is nine years old").
QUESTION 11.
"What do you think is the most important thing that you learnt from your teachers?"
Speranza: I didn't know they were my teachers.
Grice: From Hardie, "What is the meaning of 'of'?"
---
QUESTION 12.
What do you take to be your biggest philosophical achievement?
GRICE: My life, as a whole?
Speranza: Take? Why not give?
--
QUESTION 13.
"Why are there so few women doing analytic philosophy?"
--- Grice: Foot, Avramides, Anscombe. In fact, MANY females (We don't 'disimplicate' "women").
Speranza: Some of my friends are female.
---
QUESTION 14.
What can philosophy achieve?
Grice: 'achieve' as in 'achieve'?
Speranza: I use capitals to refer to philosophy.
QUESTION 15.
You founded two philosophical research centres? Why?
--- Speranza: One was the Grice Club. The other wasn't.
Grice: One was the Aristotelian Society, but it was already there. The other was the Mind Association, even if I'm a functionalist, and it was already there, too, almost.
(Grice's favourite society was Oxford's "Philosophical Society" -- Speranza's favourite society is Nancy Mitford's "Society" as in "Society lady".
Question 16.
Have you ever had a radical change of mind about some philosophical topic? Which one? What made you change your mind?
Speranza: I think I've heard this before.
Grice: I was a non-conformist, and then I changed.
Question 17.
How should we conceive of truth in philosophy?
Speranza: I use capital to refer to "Truth".
Grice: I prefer implicature.
Question 18.
If scientists explain the world and how things work, what do philosophers do?
---- Speranza: Must a philosopher DO? (Cfr. Sir Cecil Vyse, in "A room with a view": "profession"? That's a rude word.
Grice: Philosophers philosophise. See my "In defence of a dogma" written with my former pupil Strawson (now Sir Peter).
QUESTION 19.
What is philosophy?
--- Speranza: Isn't the pretentious etymology obvious enough? (Love-Wisdom).
Grice: What is NOT philosophy?
---
QUESTION 20.
Has being a philosopher had an impact on how you approach life?
Crispin Wright: Yes.
---
Crispin Wright and his elitist implicature
Speranza
---
During Summer 2011 Crispin Wright (NIP Director and Professor at NYU) walked The Pennine Way, 268 miles along the "backbone of England" from the Derbyshire peak District to the Scottish Borders.
His aim was to raise money to support graduate students from elsewhere to visit the Northern Institute of Philosophy and to support Northern Institute of Philosophy graduate students to visit other institutions.
This is in line with a general mission of the Institute to support early career philosophers to develop their interests and skills through collaboration and philosophical interactions.
The costs of such visits and exchanges are seldom adequately provided for in the budgets of grant giving authorities, and philosophy departments, even when in principle willing to support research-related travel by graduate students, are less and less able to do so.
We hope to build a Trust Fund at NIP to enable us to provide such support as a part of the regular working routine of the Institute.
Each night of the journey, Crispin answered — or anyway addressed — a philosophical (or not) question chosen by the benefactors.
Below is a sample of one of Crispin's responses, given on day DAY FOURTEEN after walking from Alston to Slaggyford.
“Should philosophy be funded, even if funding it holds forth almost no prospect of improving the lives of ordinary people? If so, why?”
"There are a number of ingredient questions here. One is whether philosophy has any value, – for presumably it should not be funded if it hasn’t. Another is whether the kind of value that philosophy has, or ought to have, depends upon its being appreciated as valuable in the way in which the value of a good joke, perhaps, depends upon its being appreciated as funny. A third is whether it is really true that money spent on funding philosophy has little or no chance of improving the lives of ‘ordinary people’. And a fourth is whether the kind of value that philosophy possesses – if any – is worth funding, given the multitude of pressing demands on scarce resources. Finally there is the question whether, even if it is good that some money be spent on philosophy, it is appropriate that it be public money, or whether the matter should be left to concerned individuals and charities.
So, not a simple question. But matters become still more complex when we ask what we are understanding by ‘philosophy’. I don’t have in mind a distinction between different broad schools of philosophy – say Maoist, or Zen, or Continental, or Analytical – or different areas of philosophy, (though I suppose somebody might think that philosophy of language is worth funding but analytical metaphysics is not ☺.) But we do need to distinguish the teaching of philosophy, the products of philosophy, the process of philosophical research, philosophical conversation, debate and interaction, and outreach – the cultivation of philosophical awareness, and interest, in the wider community.
One thing that I think is clear straight away is that, contrary to what one might first assume, philosophical process is a very large part of the value of philosophy. Suppose it became possible to program computers to take over most of the projects of philosophical research currently being pursued in academia, and to produce articles and books about the issues matching the standards of the better contemporary work. Few would feel, “Well good, we can leave all that to the machines now, and get on with other things”. The quality of its research products is of course an important component in the value of philosophy, but it is crucial that these products be attained by human beings, and strongly preferable that they be attained by a shared process in which there is conversation and mutual understanding of why what results results, of the conceptual pressures and constraints that shape it. It isn’t even true that a good product is a necessary condition of a good philosophical process: an excellent philosophical seminar does not need to result in a blueprint for a research paper.
If this is right, then we should give a qualified endorsement to the analogy with the good joke. A good philosophical process will be one which, necessarily, is appreciated as such by its participants, as interesting, eye-opening, inspiring, and perhaps importantly revisionary. So now the overarching question begins to look something like this: should funds be invested in promoting this kind of activity even if it stands no prospect of improving the lives of the ‘ordinary folk’ who don’t participate in it? Setting aside the elitist implicature that those who do participate are somehow extraordinary, the answer seems to me pretty obvious. If it is a good for those who participate, then in a pluralist and civilized society, participation should be encouraged, and its scope should be widened as far as possible. And now the issue starts to take on essentially the same kind of contour that the corresponding question takes with, say, the performing arts, and sport. It is good that people be trained to participate, to the best of their ability. It is good that those who have the capacity to excel at the highest level be supported to do so. It is good that as many as possible be brought into position where they can appreciate and value such excellence. And it is not good, of course, if such excellence becomes the province of a few, highly trained individuals performing, as it were, behind closed doors.
It is in this last respect that philosophy is especially vulnerable. World class sprinting, or football, can excite people who cannot sprint, or do not know how to kick a ball. Great orchestral music can, to a point, be appreciated by the musically untrained, though there are many different levels of appreciation of musical performance and those who know something of the history of music, who can read a musical score, or who can play an instrument, will literally hear, and enjoy, much more. But in philosophy, as indeed in chess, it can seem that there is no corresponding scale of partial levels of appreciation. An inexperienced chess player will derive no entertainment from observing a game at grandmaster level. And when even graduate students can struggle to follow an exchange between philosophers in the top echelon of the profession, there isn’t likely to be much of interest there to the philosophically untrained.
But I think this merely qualifies the point I am making, rather than defeats it. In the former Soviet Union – and I dare say in Russia still – chess did have the status of a popular sport. There was a culture of chess playing, and training, from an early age, that was quite unmatched anywhere else. And the general level of chess understanding in the population at large was such that the exploits of the great champions – Petrosian, Tal, Botvinnik, Spassky, and the rest – were appreciated in much the way that the skills of top footballers used to be appreciated in the days when almost every kid knew how to trap, shield, pass or run with a football, or a tin can, through long hours of practice in the streets.
Although there is a glint in my eye as I write this, I am not seriously suggesting that we should work towards a culture where analytic philosophy has the same place in the hearts of the citizenry at large as chess had in the former Soviet Union. But I am perfectly serious when I say that the full value of philosophy – as both activity and research discipline – does depend upon the existence of the equivalent of a ‘grass roots’, a culture of philosophical education and awareness contrasting utterly with the narrowing of the subject to an academic specialism, whose movements and preoccupations have absolutely no impact on the thought even of other academics and intellectuals, let alone the population at large, which professional philosophers have largely been content to tolerate almost since I first took an interest in the subject. In doing this they have been allowing the branch to wither on which they sit. Even cosmologists have done a better job of communicating to the public at large something of the general nature of their subject and the present state of its major issues than philosophers.
So of course philosophy should be funded, but only because it belongs to the kind of value that the subject has that the style of thinking it involves, and its preoccupations, is capable of communication to, and beneficial impact upon, the lives of the population in general. In essence, the reasons why philosophy should be funded are more or less the same as those (non-instrumental) reasons why education generally should be funded. But a sea change is needed in the attitudes of philosophers themselves who have, for the most part, too long been content to bury their heads in their teaching and research and to ignore their obligations as wider communicators. When those obligations have come to be more widely met, the title question will no longer seem terribly controversial.
I haven’t touched on the matter of who should fund philosophy. That's another, quite complex discussion in itself."
Other questions rambled:
1.Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder. What do you think this means?
2.Are you thinking what I am thinking?
3.Epistemology, Metaphysics, Semantics: are any of the branches of philosophy mentioned more fundamental than the others?
4.What, to your mind, have been the most interesting philosophical ideas in the last 50 years?
5.Have you ever had a radical change of mind about some philosophical topic? What made you change your mind?
6.Who is your philosophical hero and why?
7.Does god exist? Why/why not?
8.Apparently, you're a big football fan. What is it that you like in football?
9.What do you think is the hardest philosophical question?
10.What are numbers?
11.What do you think is the most important thing that you learnt from your teachers?
12.What do you take to be your biggest philosophical achievement?
13.Why are there so few women doing analytic philosophy?
14.What can philosophy achieve?
15.You founded two philosophical research centres? Why?
16.Have you ever had a radical change of mind about some philosophical topic? Which one? What made you change your mind?
17.How should we conceive of truth in philosophy?
18.If scientists explain the world and how things work, what do philosophers do?
>
19.What is philosophy?
20.Has being a philosopher had an impact on how you approach life?
For more information on Wright’s Philosophical Ramblings.
---
During Summer 2011 Crispin Wright (NIP Director and Professor at NYU) walked The Pennine Way, 268 miles along the "backbone of England" from the Derbyshire peak District to the Scottish Borders.
His aim was to raise money to support graduate students from elsewhere to visit the Northern Institute of Philosophy and to support Northern Institute of Philosophy graduate students to visit other institutions.
This is in line with a general mission of the Institute to support early career philosophers to develop their interests and skills through collaboration and philosophical interactions.
The costs of such visits and exchanges are seldom adequately provided for in the budgets of grant giving authorities, and philosophy departments, even when in principle willing to support research-related travel by graduate students, are less and less able to do so.
We hope to build a Trust Fund at NIP to enable us to provide such support as a part of the regular working routine of the Institute.
Each night of the journey, Crispin answered — or anyway addressed — a philosophical (or not) question chosen by the benefactors.
Below is a sample of one of Crispin's responses, given on day DAY FOURTEEN after walking from Alston to Slaggyford.
“Should philosophy be funded, even if funding it holds forth almost no prospect of improving the lives of ordinary people? If so, why?”
"There are a number of ingredient questions here. One is whether philosophy has any value, – for presumably it should not be funded if it hasn’t. Another is whether the kind of value that philosophy has, or ought to have, depends upon its being appreciated as valuable in the way in which the value of a good joke, perhaps, depends upon its being appreciated as funny. A third is whether it is really true that money spent on funding philosophy has little or no chance of improving the lives of ‘ordinary people’. And a fourth is whether the kind of value that philosophy possesses – if any – is worth funding, given the multitude of pressing demands on scarce resources. Finally there is the question whether, even if it is good that some money be spent on philosophy, it is appropriate that it be public money, or whether the matter should be left to concerned individuals and charities.
So, not a simple question. But matters become still more complex when we ask what we are understanding by ‘philosophy’. I don’t have in mind a distinction between different broad schools of philosophy – say Maoist, or Zen, or Continental, or Analytical – or different areas of philosophy, (though I suppose somebody might think that philosophy of language is worth funding but analytical metaphysics is not ☺.) But we do need to distinguish the teaching of philosophy, the products of philosophy, the process of philosophical research, philosophical conversation, debate and interaction, and outreach – the cultivation of philosophical awareness, and interest, in the wider community.
One thing that I think is clear straight away is that, contrary to what one might first assume, philosophical process is a very large part of the value of philosophy. Suppose it became possible to program computers to take over most of the projects of philosophical research currently being pursued in academia, and to produce articles and books about the issues matching the standards of the better contemporary work. Few would feel, “Well good, we can leave all that to the machines now, and get on with other things”. The quality of its research products is of course an important component in the value of philosophy, but it is crucial that these products be attained by human beings, and strongly preferable that they be attained by a shared process in which there is conversation and mutual understanding of why what results results, of the conceptual pressures and constraints that shape it. It isn’t even true that a good product is a necessary condition of a good philosophical process: an excellent philosophical seminar does not need to result in a blueprint for a research paper.
If this is right, then we should give a qualified endorsement to the analogy with the good joke. A good philosophical process will be one which, necessarily, is appreciated as such by its participants, as interesting, eye-opening, inspiring, and perhaps importantly revisionary. So now the overarching question begins to look something like this: should funds be invested in promoting this kind of activity even if it stands no prospect of improving the lives of the ‘ordinary folk’ who don’t participate in it? Setting aside the elitist implicature that those who do participate are somehow extraordinary, the answer seems to me pretty obvious. If it is a good for those who participate, then in a pluralist and civilized society, participation should be encouraged, and its scope should be widened as far as possible. And now the issue starts to take on essentially the same kind of contour that the corresponding question takes with, say, the performing arts, and sport. It is good that people be trained to participate, to the best of their ability. It is good that those who have the capacity to excel at the highest level be supported to do so. It is good that as many as possible be brought into position where they can appreciate and value such excellence. And it is not good, of course, if such excellence becomes the province of a few, highly trained individuals performing, as it were, behind closed doors.
It is in this last respect that philosophy is especially vulnerable. World class sprinting, or football, can excite people who cannot sprint, or do not know how to kick a ball. Great orchestral music can, to a point, be appreciated by the musically untrained, though there are many different levels of appreciation of musical performance and those who know something of the history of music, who can read a musical score, or who can play an instrument, will literally hear, and enjoy, much more. But in philosophy, as indeed in chess, it can seem that there is no corresponding scale of partial levels of appreciation. An inexperienced chess player will derive no entertainment from observing a game at grandmaster level. And when even graduate students can struggle to follow an exchange between philosophers in the top echelon of the profession, there isn’t likely to be much of interest there to the philosophically untrained.
But I think this merely qualifies the point I am making, rather than defeats it. In the former Soviet Union – and I dare say in Russia still – chess did have the status of a popular sport. There was a culture of chess playing, and training, from an early age, that was quite unmatched anywhere else. And the general level of chess understanding in the population at large was such that the exploits of the great champions – Petrosian, Tal, Botvinnik, Spassky, and the rest – were appreciated in much the way that the skills of top footballers used to be appreciated in the days when almost every kid knew how to trap, shield, pass or run with a football, or a tin can, through long hours of practice in the streets.
Although there is a glint in my eye as I write this, I am not seriously suggesting that we should work towards a culture where analytic philosophy has the same place in the hearts of the citizenry at large as chess had in the former Soviet Union. But I am perfectly serious when I say that the full value of philosophy – as both activity and research discipline – does depend upon the existence of the equivalent of a ‘grass roots’, a culture of philosophical education and awareness contrasting utterly with the narrowing of the subject to an academic specialism, whose movements and preoccupations have absolutely no impact on the thought even of other academics and intellectuals, let alone the population at large, which professional philosophers have largely been content to tolerate almost since I first took an interest in the subject. In doing this they have been allowing the branch to wither on which they sit. Even cosmologists have done a better job of communicating to the public at large something of the general nature of their subject and the present state of its major issues than philosophers.
So of course philosophy should be funded, but only because it belongs to the kind of value that the subject has that the style of thinking it involves, and its preoccupations, is capable of communication to, and beneficial impact upon, the lives of the population in general. In essence, the reasons why philosophy should be funded are more or less the same as those (non-instrumental) reasons why education generally should be funded. But a sea change is needed in the attitudes of philosophers themselves who have, for the most part, too long been content to bury their heads in their teaching and research and to ignore their obligations as wider communicators. When those obligations have come to be more widely met, the title question will no longer seem terribly controversial.
I haven’t touched on the matter of who should fund philosophy. That's another, quite complex discussion in itself."
Other questions rambled:
1.Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder. What do you think this means?
2.Are you thinking what I am thinking?
3.Epistemology, Metaphysics, Semantics: are any of the branches of philosophy mentioned more fundamental than the others?
4.What, to your mind, have been the most interesting philosophical ideas in the last 50 years?
5.Have you ever had a radical change of mind about some philosophical topic? What made you change your mind?
6.Who is your philosophical hero and why?
7.Does god exist? Why/why not?
8.Apparently, you're a big football fan. What is it that you like in football?
9.What do you think is the hardest philosophical question?
10.What are numbers?
11.What do you think is the most important thing that you learnt from your teachers?
12.What do you take to be your biggest philosophical achievement?
13.Why are there so few women doing analytic philosophy?
14.What can philosophy achieve?
15.You founded two philosophical research centres? Why?
16.Have you ever had a radical change of mind about some philosophical topic? Which one? What made you change your mind?
17.How should we conceive of truth in philosophy?
18.If scientists explain the world and how things work, what do philosophers do?
>
19.What is philosophy?
20.Has being a philosopher had an impact on how you approach life?
For more information on Wright’s Philosophical Ramblings.
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