Oxford change, Cambridge change

Speranza

P. T. Geach writes:

"As I have said, the question of ‘real’ relations is a question of how a true relational property latches on to reality."

 

Geach goes on:

 

"I must begin by refuting a false view as to the logical syntax of relational propositions: the view that such propositions do not admit of subject-predicate analysis."

 

"This is a narrowly logical point to make; but the acceptance of such a view would prevent us from accepting or even understanding the Thomistic doctrine of ‘real’ relations."

 

"If a relational proposition indeed made no predications about A or B, but only affirmed a relation ‘between’ them, then it would be quite unintelligible how, if true, the proposition could correspond to a reality in A rather than to a reality in B; and as the two converse relations, alike holding ‘between’ A and B, one could not very well be more ‘real’ than the other. So we need to see why the ‘between’ account of relations is wrong."

 

Geach later notes:

 

"I have thus tied up ‘real’ relations with real changes."

"I have written about the problem of ‘real’ changes elsewhere (cf. The index to my recent collection God and the Soul)."

Geach goes on:

"I have urged that we need to distinguish ‘real’ [or "Oxford" as Grice might prefer] changes, processes that actually go on in a given individual, from among ‘Cambridge’ changes."


-----

Why "Cambridge"?

"The great Cambridge philosophical works published in the early years of this century, like Russell's Principles of Mathematics and McTaggart’s Nature of Existence, explained "change" as simply a matter of contradictory attributes holding good of individuals at different times."

"Clearly ANY change [even an "Oxford change"] logically implies a ‘Cambridge’ change."

"But the converse is clearly not true."

"There is a *sense* of ‘change,’ hard to explicate, in which it is false to say that

EXAMPLE 1:

Socrates changes by coming to be shorter than Theatetus when the boy grows up, or

EXAMPLE 2:

that the butter changes by rising in price, or that

EXAMPLE 3:

Herbert changes by becoming an ‘object of envy to Edith’."

--- BUT SURELY THIS CAN BE DISIMPLICATED. And what Peter Thomas Geach means by 'sense' is not what Herbert Paul Grice means by IMPLICATURE. "It is FALSE to say" versus "It is ODD to say" ('misleadingly odd, but true").

"In these cases, a ‘Cambridge’ change of an object (Socrates, the butter, Herbert) makes no ‘real’ change in that object."