The Grice Club

Welcome

The Grice Club

The club for all those whose members have no (other) club.

Is Grice the greatest philosopher that ever lived?

Search This Blog

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Griceian Cockfighting & Beyond

Speranza

Once there was a time when chicken roamed free -- but were cocks all ways fighting with each other? This begs a question. Indeed, it _is_ a question. An a Griceian one at that. For, to echo Grice in "The conception of value": is 'chicken' a value-oriented word? (He notes that 'cabbage' and 'king' are -- but then he is quoting from Lewis Carroll).
 
Cultural & Scientific Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions.
 
-- is an essay in progress by Greger Larson.
 
Larson, like Grice did, teaches at Oxford -- Grice adds: "For the poor; only the poor learn at Oxford." (Grice is implicating he has read Arnold, and this was Arnold's impression when he went there; oddly shared by Grice, who already KNEW MOST THINGS when he went up to Oxford straight from Clifton -- a 'Midlands scholarship boy'.
 
In his lectures on chicken, Larson notes,
 
"It looks like from all the evidence
that chickens existed for a VERY LONG
TIME [Larson empahsises in his Oxonian
accent] in association with people
and the were NOT food."
 
(Again, with Oxonian emphasis on 'food'.)
 
Students -- the "poor'uns," took notice.
 
Larson goes on:

"Oddly enough, it would seem that for thousands
of years, the primary ROLE or function of chickens
seems to have been in cockfighting -- or other
various rituals."
 
"Chickens only started to be eaten in Israel
a about 2,200 years ago, ONLY."
 
Larson grants that "we are still not sure
what humans did with chickens for all
that time -- or chickens with humans, if you
wish."
 
(The 'poor'un' students took notice.)
 
"In Austria, I found a cemetery," Larson adds,
"where people were buried along with their
chickens -- which is neat."
 
"What's more, carbon studies suggest they
-- humans and chickens --were sharing a
similar diet. This confused me at first."
 
He implicates "no longer."
 
Larson quotes from Grice, "The conception of value", where he (Grice) provides a conceptual analysis of "Old English sheepdog". According to Grice, this dog was not originally a sheepdog, never mind an Old English one. He was just a dog. But with domestication, "the _conceived_ value of sheeping was added to the 'canis familiaris'." Grice notes this poses a problem for "those dogs that the English call 'toy dogs' and which they criticise as the French worshipping them."
 
References
 
Larson, Cultural & Scientific Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions.

Grice, The Conception of Value, Clarendon Press.

No comments:

Post a Comment