THESAVRVS GRICEIANVM -- in twelve volumes, vol. VIII.

modified Occam’s razor: Grice was obsessed with ‘sense,’ and thought Oxonian philosohpers were multiplying it otiosely – notably L. J. Cohen (“The diversity of meaning”). The original razor is what Grice would have as ‘ontological,’ to which he opposes with in his ‘ontological marxism’. Entities should not be multiplied beyond the necessity of needing them as honest working entities. He keeps open house provided they come in help with the work. This restriction explains what Grice means by ‘necessity’ in the third lecture – a second sense does not do any work. The implicatum does.  Grice loved a razor, and being into analogy and focal meaning, if he HAD to have semantic multiplicity, for the case of ‘is,’ (being) or ‘good,’ it had to be a UNIFIED semantic multiplicity, as displayed by paronymy. The essay had circulated since the Harvard days, and it was also repr. in Pragmatics, ed. Cole for Academic Press. Personally, I prefer dialectica.  ‒ Grice. This is the third James lecture at Harvard. It is particularly useful for Grices introduction of his razor, M. O. R., or Modified Occams Razor, jocularly expressed by Grice as: Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. An Englishing of the Ockhams Latinate, Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem. But what do we mean sense. Surely Occam was right with his Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem. We need to translate that alla linguistic turn. Grice jokes: Senses are not be multiplied beyond necessity. He also considers irony, stress (supra-segmental fourth-articulatory phonology), and truth, which the Grice Papers have under a special f. in the s. V . Three topics where the implicatum helps. He is a scoundrel may well be the implicatum of He is a fine friend. But cf. the pretense theory of irony. Grice, being a classicist, loved the etymological connection. With Stress, he was concerned with anti-Gettier uses of emphatic know: I KNOW. (Implicatum: I do have conclusive evidence). Truth (or  is true) sprang from the attention by Grice to that infamous Bristol symposium between Austin and Strawson. Cf. Moores paradox. Grice wants to defend correspondence theory of Austin against the performative approach of Strawson. If  is true implicates someone previously affirmed this, that does not mean a ditto implicatum is part of the entailment of a  is true utterance, further notes on logic and conversation, in Cole, repr. in a revised form, Modified Occams Razor, irony, stress, truth. The preferred citation should be the Harvard. This is originally the third James lecture, in a revised form.In that lecture, Grice introduced the M. O. R., or Modified Occams Razor. Senses are not be multiplied beyond necessity. The point is that entailment-cum-implicatum does the job that multiplied senses should not do! The Grice Papers contains in a different f. the concluding section for that lecture, on irony, stress, and truth. Grice went back to the Modified Occams razor, but was never able to formalise it! It is, as he concedes, almost a vacuous methodological thingy! It is interesting that the way he defines the alethic value of true alrady cites satisfactory. I shall use, to Names such a property, not true but factually satisfactory. Grices sympathies dont lie with Strawsons Ramsey-based redundance theory of truth, but rather with Tarskis theory of correspondence. He goes on to claim his trust in the feasibility of such a theory. It is, indeed, possible to construct a theory which treats truth as (primarily) a property, not true but factually satisfactory. One may see that point above as merely verbal and not involving any serious threat. Lets also assume that it will be a consequence, or theorem, of such a theory that there will be a class C of utterances (utterances of affirmative Subjects-predicate sentences [such as snow is white or the cat is on the mat of the dog is hairy-coated such that each member of C designates or refers to some item and indicates or predicates some class (these verbs to be explained within the theory), and is factually satisfactory if the item belongs to the class. Let us also assume that there can be a method of introducing a form of expression, it is true that /it is buletic that  and linking it with the notion of factually or alethic or doxastic satisfactory, a consequence of which will be that to say it is true that Smith is happy will be equivalent to saying that any utterance of class C which designates Smith and indicates the class of happy people is factually satisfactory (that is, any utterance which assigns Smith to the class of happy people is factually satisfactory. Mutatis mutandis for Let Smith be happy, and buletic satisfactoriness. The move is Tarskian. TBy stress, Grice means suprasegmental phonology, but he was too much of a philosopher to let that jargon affect him! Refs.: The locus classicus, if that does not sound too pretentious, is Essay 3 in WoW, but there are references elsewhere, such as in “Meaning Revisited,” and under ‘semantics.’ The only one who took up Grice’s challenge at Oxford was L. J. Cohen, “Grice on the particles of natural language,” which got a great response by Oxonian R. C. S. Walker (citing D. Bostock, a tutee of Grice), to which Cohen again responded “Can the conversationalist hypothesis be defended.” Cohen clearly centres his criticism on the razor. He had an early essay, citing Grice, on the DIVERSITY of meaning. Cohen opposes Grice’s conversationalist hypothesis to his own ‘semantic hypothesis’ (“Multiply senses all you want.”). T. D. Bontly explores the topic of Grice’s MOR. “Ancestors of this essay were presented at meetings of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology (Edmonton, Alberta), of the the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association (San Francisco, CA) and at the University of Connecticut. I am indebted to all three groups and particularly to the commentators D. Sanford (at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology) and M. Reimer (at the APA). Thanks also to the following for helpful comments or discussion (inclusive): F. Adams, A. Ariew, P. Bloom, M. Devitt, B. Enc, C. Gaulker, M. Lynch, R. Millikan, J. Pust, E. Sober, R. C. Stalnaker, D. W. Stampe, and S. Wheeler.” Bontly writes, more or less (I have paraphrased him a little, with good intentions, always!) “Some philosophers have appealed to a principle which H. P. Grice, in his third William James lecture, dubs Modified Occam’s Razor (henceforth, “M. O. R.”): “Senses – rather than ‘entities,’ as the inceptor from Ockham more boringly has it -- are not to be multiplied beyond necessity’.” What is ‘necessity’? Bontly: “Superficially, Grice’s “M. O. R.” seems a routine application of Ockham’s principle of parsimony: ‘entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. Now, parsimony arguments, though common in science, are notoriously problematic, and their use by Grice faces one objection or two. Grice’s “M. O. R.” makes considerably more sense in light of certain assumptions about the psychological processes involved in language development, learning, and acquisition, and it describes recent *empirical*, if not philosophical or conceptual, of the type Grice seems mainly interested in -- findings that bear these assumptions out. [My] resulting account solves several difficulties that otherwise confront Grice’s “M. O. R.”, and it draws attention to problematic assumptions involved in using parsimony to argue for pragmatic accounts of the type of phenomena ‘ordinary-language’ philosophers were interested in. In more general terms, when an expression E has two or more uses – U1 and U2, say -- enabling its users to express two or more different meanings – M1 and M2, say -- one is tempted to assume that E is semantically (i.e. lexically) ambiguous, or polysemous, i.e., that some convention, constituting the language L, assign E these two meanings M1 and M2 corresponding to its two uses U1 and U2. One hears, for instance, that ‘or’ is ambiguous (polysemous) between a weak (inclusive) (‘p v q’) and a strong (exclusive) sense, ‘p w q.’ Grice actually feels that speaking of the meaning or sense of ‘or’ sounds harsh (“Like if I were asked what the meaning of ‘to’ is!”). But in one note from a seminar from Strawson he writes: “Jones is between Smith and Williams.” “I wouldn’t say that ‘between’ is ambiguous, even if we interpret the sentence in a physical sense, or in an ordering of merit, say.” Bontly: “Used exclusively, an utterance of ‘p or q’ (p v q) entails that ‘p’ and ‘q’ are NOT both true. Used inclusively, it does not. Still, ambiguity is not the only possible explanation.” (This reminds me of Atlas, “Philosophy WITHOUT ambiguity!” – ambitious title!). The phenomenon can also be approached pragmatically, from within the framework of a general theory conversation alla Grice. One could, e. g., first, maintain that ‘p or q’ is unambiguously monosemous inclusive and, second, apply Grice’s idea of an ‘implicatum’ to explain the exclusive.” I actually traced this, and found that O. P. Wood in an odd review of a logic textbook (by Faris) in “Mind,” in the 1950s, makes the point about the inclusive-exclusive distinction, pre-Griceianly! Grice seems more interested, as you later consider, the implicatum: “Utterer U has non-truth-functional grounds for uttering ‘p or q. Not really the ‘inclusive-exclusive’ distinction. Jennings deals with this in “The genealogy of disjunction,” and elsewhere, and indeed notes that ‘or’ may be a dead metaphor from ‘another.’  Bontly goes on: “On any such account, ‘p or q’ would have two uses U1 and U2 and two standard interpretations, I1 and I2, but NEVER two ‘conventional’ meanings,” M1 and M2 Or take ‘and’ (p.q) which (when used as a sentential connective) ordinarily stands for truth-functional conjunction (as in 1a, below). Often enough, though, ‘p and q’ seems to imply temporal priority (1b), while in other cases it suggests causal priority (1c). (1) a. Bill bought a shirt and Christy [bought] a sweater. b. Adam took off his shoes and [he] got into bed. c. “Jack fell down and [he] broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling o:ter.” (to rhyme with ‘water’ in an earlier line.”Apparently Grice loved this nursery rhyme too, “Jack is an Englishman; he must, therefore, be brave,” Jill says.” (Grice, “Aspects of reason.”)Bontly: “Again, one suspects an ambiguity, M1 and M2, but Grice argues that a ‘conversational’ explanation is available and preferable. According to the ‘pragmatist’ or ‘conversationalist’ hypothesis’ (as I shall call it), a temporal or a causal reading of “and” (p.q) may be part of what the UTTERER means, but such a reading I2, are not part of what the sentence means, or the word _and_ means, and thus belong in a general theory of conversation, not the grammar of a specific language.” Oddly, I once noticed that Chomsky, of all people, and since you speak of ‘grammar,’ competence, etc. refers to “A.” Albert? P. Grice in his 1966! Aspects of the theory of syntax. “A. P. Grice wants to say that the temporal succession is not part of the meaning of ‘and.’” I suspect one of Grice’s tutees at Oxford was spreading the unauthorized word! Bontly: “Many an alleged ambiguity seems amenable to Grice’s conversationalist hypothesis. Besides the sentential connectives or truth-functors, a pragmatic explanation has been applied fruitfully to quantifiers (Grice lists ‘all’ and ‘some (at least one’), definite descriptions (Grice lists ‘the,’ ‘the murderer’), the indefinite description (‘a finger’, much discussed by Grice, “He’s meeting a woman this evening.”), the genitive construction (‘Peter’s bat’), and the indirect speech act (‘Can you pass the salt?’) — to mention just a few. The literature on the Griceian treatment of these phenomena is extensive. Some classic treatments are found in the oeuvre of philosophers like Grice, Bach, Harnish, and Davis, and linguists like Horn, Gazdar, and Levinson. But the availability of a pragmatic explanation poses an interesting methodological problem. Prima facie, the alleged ‘ambiguity’ M1 and M2, can now be explained either semantically (by positing two or more senses S1 and S2, or M1 and M2, of expression E) or pragmatically (by positing just one sense (S) plus one super-imposed implicature, I).Sometimes, of course, one approach or the other is transparently inadequate. When the ‘use’ of E cannot be derived from a general conversational principle, the pragmatic explanation seems a non-starter.” Not for a radically radical pragmatist like Atlas! Ambitious! Similarly, an ambiguity- or polysemy- based explanation seems out of the question where the interpretation of E at issue is highly context-dependent.” (My favourite is Grice on “a,” that you analyse in term of ‘developmental’ or ontogenetical pragmatics – versus Millikan’s phylogenetical! But, in many cases, a semantic, or polysemy, and a conversational explanations both appear plausible, and the usual data — Grice’s intuitions about how the expression can and cannot be used, should or shouldn’t beused — appear to leave the choice of one of the two hypotheses under-determined.These were the cases that most interest Grice, the philosopher, since they impinge on various projects in philosophical analysis. (Cf. Grice, 1989, pp. 3–21 and passim).” Notably the ‘ordinary-language’ philosophy ‘project,’ I would think. I love the fact that in the inventory of philosophers who are loose about this (as in the reference you mention above, pp. 3-21, he includes himself in “Causal theory of perception”! “To adjudicate these border-line cases, Grice (1978) proposes a methodological principle which he dubs “Modified Occam’s Razor,” M. O. R.” ‘Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.’ (1978, pp. 118–119) “(I follow Grice in using the Latinate ‘Occam’ rather than the Anglo-Saxon ‘Ockham’ which is currently preferred). More fully, the idea is that one should not posit an alleged special, stronger SENSE S2, for an expression E when a general conversational principle suffices to explain why E, which bears only Sense 1, S1, receives a certain interpretation or carries implicatum I. Thus, if the ‘use’ (or an ‘use’) of E can be explained pragmatically, other things being equal, the use should be explained pragmatically.” Griceians appeal to M. O. R. quite often,” pragmatically bearded or not! (I love Quine’s idea that Occam’s razor was created to shave Plato’s beard. Cfr. Schiffer’s anti-shave! It is affirmed, in spirit if not letter, by philosopher/linguist Atlas and Levinson, philosopher/linguist Bach, Bach and philosopher Harnish, Horn, Levinson, Morgan, linguist/philosopher Neale, philosopher Searle, philosopher Stalnaker, philosopher Walker (of Oxford), and philosopher Ziff” (I LOVE Ziff’s use, seeing that he could be otherwise so anti-Griceian, vide Martinich, “On Ziff on Grice on meaning,” and indeed Stampe (that you mention) on Ziff on Grice on meaning. One particularly forceful statement is found in “of all people” Kripke, who derides the ambiguity hypothesis as ‘the lazy man’s approach in philosophy’ and issues a strong warning.” When I read that, I was reminded that Stampe, in some unpublished manuscripts, deals with the loose use of Griceian ideas by Kripke. Stampe discusses at length, “Let’s get out of here, the cops are coming.” Stampe thinks Kripke is only superficially a Griceian! Kripke: “‘Do not posit an ambiguity unless you are really forced to, unless there are really compelling theoretical (or intuitive) grounds to suppose that an ambiguity really is present’ (1977, p. 20). A similar idea surfaces in Ruhl’s principle of “mono-semic” bias’. One’s initial effort is directed toward determining a UNITARY meaning S1 for a lexical item E, trying to attribute apparent variations (S2) in meaning to other factors. If such an effort fails, one tries to discover a means of relating the distinct meanings S1 and S2. If this effort fails, there are several words: E1 and E2 (1989, p. 4).” Grice’s ‘vice’ and Grice’s ‘vyse,’ different words in English, same in Old Roman (“violent.”). Ruhl’s position differs from Grice’s approach. Whereas Grice takes word-meaning to be its WEAKEST exhibited meaning, Ruhl argues that word-meaning can be so highly abstract or schematic as to provide only a CORE of meaning, making EVEN the weakest familiar reading a pragmatic specialisation.” Loved that! Ruhl as more Griceian than Grice! Indeed, Grice is freely using the very abstract notion of a Fregeian ‘sense,’ with the delicacy you would treat a brick! “The difference between Grice’s and Ruhl’s positions raises issues beyond the scope of the present essay (though see Atlas, 1989, for further discussion).”  I will! Atlas knows everything you wanted to know, and more, especially when it comes to linguists! He has a later book with ‘implicature’ in its subtitle. “Considering the central role that “M. O. R.” plays in Grice’s programme, one is thus surprised to find barely any attention paid to whether it is a good principle — to whether it is true that a pragmatic explanation, when available, is in general more likely to be true than its ‘ambiguity’ or polysemy, or bi-semy, or aequi-vocal rival.” Trying to play with this, I see that Grice loves ‘aequi-vocal.’ He thinks that ‘must’ is ‘aequi-vocal’ between an alethic and a practical ‘use.’ It took me some time to process that! He means that since it’s the ‘same,’ ‘aequi’, ‘voice’, vox’. So ‘aequi-vocal’ IS ‘uni-vocal.’ The Aristotelian in Grice, I guess! “Grice himself offers vanishingly little argument.” How extended is a Harvard philosophical audience’s attention-span? “Examining just two (out of the blue, unphilosophical) cases where we seem happy to attribute a secondary or derivative sense S2 to one word or expression E, but not another, Grice notes that, in both cases, the supposition that the expression E has an additional sense S2 is not superfluous, or unparsimonious, accounting for certain facets of the use of E that cannot, apparently, be explained pragmatically.” I wonder if a radically radical pragmatist would agree! I never met a polysemous expression! Grice concludes that, therefore, ‘there is as yet no reason NOT to accept M. O. R. ’ (1978, p. 120) — faint praise for a principle so important to his philosophical programme! Besides this weak argument for “M. O. R.,” Grice (1978) also mentions a few independent, rather loose, tests for alleged ambiguity.” (“And how to fail them,” as Zwicky would have it!) But Grice’s rationale for “M. O. R.,” presumably, is a thought Grice does not bother to articulate, thinking perhaps that the principle’s name, its kinship with Occam’s famous razor, ‘Do not multiply entities beyond necessity,’ made its epistemic credentials sufficiently obvious already.” Plus, Harvard is very Occamist!“To lay it out, though, the thought is surely that parsimony -- and other such qualities as simplicity, generality, and unification -- are always prized in scientific (and philosophical?) explanation, the more parsimonious (etc.) of two otherwise equally adequate theories being ipso facto more likely to be true. If, as would seem to be the case, a pragmatic explanation were more parsimonious than its semantic, or ‘conventionalist,’ or ambiguity, or polysemic, or polysemy or bi-semic rival, the conversational explanation would be supported by an established, received, general principle of scientific inference.” I love your exploration of Newton on this below! Hypotheses non fingo! “Certainly, some such argument is on Grice’s mind when he names his principle as he does, and much the same thought surely lies behind Kripke’s references to ‘general methodological considerations’ and ‘considerations of economy’ Other ‘Griceian’ appeals to these theoretical virtues are even more transparent. Linguist J. L. Morgan tells us, for instance, that ‘Occam’s Razor dictates that we take a Gricean account of an indirect speech act as the correct analysis, lacking strong evidence to the contrary’ Philosopher Stalnaker argues that a major advantage accrues to a pragmatic treatment of Strawson’s presupposition in that ‘there will then be no need to complicate the semantics or the lexicon’” or introduce metaphysically dubious truth-value gaps! Linguist S. C. Levinson suggests that a major selling point for a conversational theory in general is that such a theory promises to ‘effect a radical simplification of the semantics’ and ‘approximately halve the size of the lexicon’.” So we don’t need to learn two words, ‘vyse’ and ‘vice.’ There can be little doubt, therefore, that a Griceian takes parsimony to argue for the pragmatic approach.” I use the rather pedantic and awful spelling “Griceian,” so that I can keep the pronunciation /grais/ and also because Fodor used it! And non-philosophers, too! “But a parsimony argument is notoriously problematic, and the argument for “M. O. R.” is no exception. The preference for a parsimonious theory is surprisingly difficult to justify, as is the assumption that a pragmatic explanation IS more parsimonious. This does not mean Grice’s “M. O. R.” is entirely without merit. On the contrary, Grice is right to hold that senses should not be multiplied, if a conversational principle will do.” But the justification for M. O. R. need have nothing to do with the idea that parsimony is, always and everywhere, a virtue in scientific theories.”  Also because we are dealing with philosophy, not science, here? What makes Grice’s “M. O. R.” reasonable, rather, is a set of assumptions about the psychological processes involved in language learning, development, and acquisition, and I will report some empirical (rather than conceptual, as Grice does) evidence that these assumptions are, at least, roughly correct. One disclaimer. While I shall defend Grice’s “M. O. R.,” and therefore the research programme initiated by Grice, it is not my goal here to vindicate any specific pragmatic account, nor to argue that any given linguistic phenomenon requires a pragmatic explanation.” This reminds me of Kilgariff, a Longman linguist. He has a lovely piece, “I don’t believe in word SENSE!” I think he found that Longman had, under ‘horse’: 1. Quadruped animal. 2. Painting of a horse, notably by Stubbs! He did not like that! Why would ‘sense,’ a Fregeian notion, have a place in something like ‘lexicography,’ that deals with corpuses and statistics? “The task is, rather, to understand the logic of a particular type of inference, a type of Griceian inference that can be and has been employed by a philosopher such as Grice who disagree on many other points of theory. Since it would be impossible within the confines of this essay to discuss these disagreements, or to do justice to the many ways in which Grice’s paradigm or programme has been revised and extended (palaeo-Griceians, neo-Griceians, post-Griceians), my discussion is confined to a few hackneyed examples hackneyed by Grice himself, and to Grice’s orthodox theory, if a departure therefrom will be noted where relevant. The conversational explanation of an alleged ambiguity or polysemy or bi-semy aims to show how an utterer U can take an expression E with one conventional meaning and use it as if it had other meanings as well. Typically, this requires showing how the utterer U’s intended message can be ‘inferred,’ with the aid of a general principle of communicative behaviour, from the conventional meaning or sense of the word E that U utters. In Grice’s pioneering account, for instance, the idea is that speech is subject to a Principle of Conversational Co-Operation (In earlier Oxford seminars, where he introduced ‘implicature’ he speaks of two principles in conflict: the principle of conversational self-interest, and the principle of conversational benevolence! I much love THAT than the rather artificial Kant scheme at Harvard). ‘Make your conversational contribution, or move, such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the conversational exchange in which you are engaged.’(1975, p. 44). “Sub-ordinate to the Principle of Conversational Co-Operation are four conversational maxims (he was jocularly ‘echoing’ Kant!) falling under the four Kantian conversational categories of Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Modus. Roughly: Make your contribution true. Kant’s quality has to do with affirmation and negation, rather. Make your contribution informative. Kant’s quantity has to do with ‘all’ and ‘one,’ rather. Make your contribution relevant. Kant’s relation God knows what it has to do with. Make your contribution perspicuous [sic]. Kant’s modus has to do with ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent.’ Grice actually has ‘sic’ in the original “Logic and Conversation.” It’s like the self-refuting Kantian. Also in ‘be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity’” ‘proguard obfuscation,’ sort of thing? “… further specifying what cooperation entails (pp. 45–46).” It’s sad Grice did not remember about the principle of conversational benevolence clashing with the principle of conversational self-interest, or dismissed the idea, when he wrote that ‘retro-spective’ epilogue about the maxims, etc. Bontly: “Unlike the constitutive (to use Anscombe and Searle, not regulative) principles of a grammar, the Principle of Conversational Co-Operation and the conversational, universalisable, maxims are to be thought of not as an arbitrary convention – vide Lewis -- but rather as a rational STRATEGY or guideline (if ‘strategy’ is too strong) for achieving one’s communicative ends.” I DO think ‘strategy’ is too strong. A strategist is a general: it’s a zero-sum game, war. I think Grice’s idea is that U is a rational agent dealing with his addressee A, another rational agent. So, it’s not strategic rationality, but communicative rationality. But then I’m being an etymologist! Surely chess players speak of ‘strategies,’ but then they also speak of ‘check mate,” kill the king! Bontly quotes from Grice: “‘[A]nyone who cares about the goals that are central to conversation,’ says Grice, ought to find the principle of conversational cooperation eminently reasonable (p. 49).” If not rational! I love Grice’s /: rational/reasonable. He explores on this later, “The price of that pair of shoes is not reasonable, but hardly irrational!” Bontly: “Like a grammar, however, the principle of conversational co-operation is (supposedly) tacitly known (or assumed) by conversationalists, who can thus call on it to interpret each other’s conversational moves.” Exactly. Parents teach their children well, not to lie, etc. “These interpretive practices being mutual ‘knowledge,’ or common ground, moreover, an utterer U can plan on his co-conversationalist B using the principle of conversational cooperation, to interpret his own utterances, enabling him to convey a good deal of information (and influencing) implicitly by relying on others to infer his intended meaning.”INFORMING seems to do, because, although Grice makes a distinction between ‘informing’ and ‘influencing,’ he takes an ‘exhibitive’ approach. So “Close the door!” means “I WANT YOU To believe that I want you to close the door.” I.e. I’m informing – influencing VIA informing. “Detailed discussions of Grice’s principle of conversational cooperation are found in many of the essays collected in Grice (1989), as well as in the work by linguists like Levinson (1983) and linguist/philosopher Neale (1992). Extensions and refinements of Grice’s approach are developed by linguist Horn (1972), linguist/philosopher Bach and philosopher Harnish (1979), linguist Gazdar (1979), linguist/philosopher Atlas and philosopher Levinson (1981), anthropologist Sperber and linguist Wilson (1986), linguist/philosopher Bach (1994), linguisdt Levinson (2000), and linguist Carston (2002).). The Principle of conversational cooperation and its conversational maxims allow Grice to draw a distinction between two dimensions of an utterer’s meaning within the total significance.” I never liked that Grice uses “signification,” here when in “Meaning” he had said: “Words, for all that Locke said, are NOT signs.” “We apply ‘sign’ to traffic signals, not to ‘dog’.” Bontly: “That which is ‘closely related to the conventional meaning of the word’ uttered is what the utterer has SAID (1975, p. 44),” or the explicatum, or explicitum. That which must instead be inferred with the aid of the principle of conversational cooperation is what the utterer U has conversationally implicated, the IMPLICATUM (pp. 49–50), or implicitum. This dichotomy is in several ways oversimplified. First, Grice (1975, 1978) also makes room for ‘conventional’ implicatures (“She was poor BUT she was honest”) and non-conversational non-conventional implicatures (“Thank you,” abiding with the maxim, ‘be polite’), although these dimensions are both somewhat controversial (cf. Bach’s attack on conventional implicature) and can be set aside here. Also controversial is the precise delineation of Grice’s notion of what is said.” He grants he is using ‘say’ ‘artifiicially,’ which means, “natural TO ME!.” Some (anthropologist Sperber and linguist Wilson, 1986; linguist Carston, 1988, 2002; philosopher Recanati, 1993) hold that ‘what is said,’ the DICTUM, the explicatum, or explicitum, is significantly underdetermined by the conventional meaning of the word uttered, with the result that considerable pragmatic intrusive processing must occur even to recover what the utterer said.” And Grice allows that an implicatum can occur within the scope of an operator.“Linguist/philosopher Bach disagrees, though he does add an ‘intermediate’ dimension (that of conversational ‘impliciture’) which is, in part, pragmatically determined, enriched, or intruded. For my purpose, the important distinction is between that element of meaning which is conventional or ‘encoded’ and that element which is ‘inferred,’ ab-duced, or pragmatically determined, whether or not it is properly considered part of what is said,” in Grice’s admittedly artificial use of this overused verb! (“A horse says neigh!”) A conversational implicatum can itself be either particularized (henceforth, PCIs) or generalized (GCIs) (56).” Most familiar examples of implicature are particularised, where the inference to the utterer U’s intended meaning relies on a specific assumption regarding the context of utterance.” Grice’s first example, possibly, “Jones has beautiful handwriting” (Grice 1961).“Alter that context much at all and the implicatum will simply disappear, perhaps to be replaced by another. With a generalised implicatum, on the other hand, the inference or abduction to U’s intended interpretation is relatively context-independent, going through unless special clues to the contrary are provided to defeat it.”Love the ‘defeat.’ Levinson cites one of Grice’s unpublications as “Probability, defeasibility, and mood operators,” where Grice is actually writing, “desirability.”! “For instance, an utterance of the sentence” ‘SOME residents survived the earth-quake,’ would quite generally, absent any special clues to the contrary, seem to implicate that not all survived. All survived, alas, seems to be, to some, no news. Cruel world. No special ‘stage-setting’ has to be provided to make the implicatum appreciable. No particular context needs to be assumed in order to calculate the likely intended meaning. All one needs to know is that an utterer U who thought that everyone, all residents survived the earthquake (or that none did?) would probably make this stronger assertion (in keeping with Grice’s first sub-maxim of Quantity: ‘Make your contribution as informative as required’).” Perhaps it’s best to deal with buildings. “Some – some 75%, I would say -- of the buildings did not collapse after the earth-quake on the tiny island, and fortunately, no fatalities need be reported. It wasn’t such a big earth-quake as pessimist had predicted.” “A Gricean should maintain that the ‘ambiguity’ of “some” -> “not all” canvassed at the outset can all be explained in terms of a generalized conversational implicatum. For instance, linguist Horn shows, in his PhD on English, how an exclusive use of ‘or’ can be treated as a consequence of the maxim of Quantity. Roughly, since ‘p AND q’ is always ‘more informative,’ stronger, than ‘p or q’, an utterer U’s choosing to assert only the disjunction would ordinarily indicate that he takes one or the other disjunct to be false. He could assert the conjunction anyway, but then he would be violating Grice’s first submaxim of Quality: ‘Do not say what you believe to be false’ For similar reasons, the assertion of a disjunction would ordinarily seem to implicate that the utterer U does not know which disjunct is true (otherwise he would assert that disjunct rather than the entire disjunction) and hence, and this is the way Grice puts it, which is technically, the best way, that the utterer wants to be ‘interpreted’ as having some ‘non-truth-functional grounds’ for believing the disjunction (philosopher Grice, 1978; linguist Gazdar, 1979).  For recall that this all goes under the scope of a psychological attitude. In “Method in psychological philosophy: from the banal to the bizarre,” repr. in “The conception of value,” Grice considers proper disjunctions: “The eagle is not sure whether to attack the rabbit or the dove.” I think Loar plays with this too in his book for Cambridge on meaning and mind and Grice. “Grice (1981) takes a similar line with regard to asymmetric uses of ‘and’.” Indeed, I loved his “Jones got into bed and took off his clothes, but I do not want to suggest in that order.” “Is that a linguistic offence?” Don’t think so!” “The fourth submaxim of Manner,” ‘be orderly’ -- I tend to think this is ad-hoc and that Grice had this maxim JUST to explain away the oddity of “She got a children and married,” by Strawson in Strawson 1952. “says that utterers should be ‘orderly,’ and when describing a sequence of events, an orderly presentation would normally describe the events in the order in which they occurred. So an utterance of  (1b) (‘Jones took off his trousers – he had taken off his shoes already -- and got into bed.’ “would ordinarily (unless the utterer U ‘indicates’ otherwise) implicate that Jones did so in that order, hence the temporal reading of ‘and’.” “(Grice’s (1981) account of asymmetric ‘and’ seems NOT to account for causal interpretations like (1c).”Ryle says in “Informal logic,” 1953, in Dilemmas, “She felt ill and took arsenic,” has the conscript ‘and’ of Whitehead and Russell, not the ‘civil’ ‘and’ of the informalist. “Oxonian philosopher R. C. S. Walker – what took him to respond to Cohen? Walker quotes from Bostock, who was Grice’s tutee at St. John’s -- (1975, p. 136) suggests that the causal reading can be derived from the maxim of Relation.”Nowell-Smith had spoken of ‘be relevant’ in Ethics. But Grice HAD to be a Kantian!“Since conversationalists are expected to make their utterances relevant, one expects that conjoined sentences will ‘have some bearing to one another’, often a causal bearing. More nearly adequate accounts of the temporal and causal uses of ‘and’ (so-called ‘conjunction buttressing’) are found in linguist/philosopher Atlas and linguist Levinson (1981) and in linguist Levinson (1983, 2000). Linguist Carston (1988, 2002) develops a rival pragmatic account within the framework of anthropologist Sperber’s and linguist Wilson’s Relevance Theory, on which temporal and causal readings are explicatures rather than implicatures. For the purposes of this essay, it is immaterial which of these accounts best accords with the data. In these and many other cases, it seems that a general principle regarding communicative RATIONALITY can provide an alternative to positing a semantic ambiguity.”Williamson is lecturing at Yale that ‘rationality’ has little to do with it!“But a Gricean goes a step further and claims that the implicatum account (when available) is BETTER than an ambiguity or polysemy account. One possible argument for the stronger thesis is that the various specialised uses of ‘or’ (etc.) bear all the usual hallmarks of a conversational implicatum. An implicatum is: calculable (i.e. derivable from what is said or dictum or explicatum or explicitum via the Principle of conversational cooperation and the conversational maxims); cancellable (retractable without contradiction), and; non-detachable (incapable of being paraphrased away) Grice, 1975, pp. 50 and 57–58). They ought also to be, sort of, universal.” (Cf. Elinor Keenan Ochs, “The universality of conversational implicature.” I hope Williamson considers this. In Madagascar, they have other ‘norms’ of conversation: since speakers are guarded, implicata to the effect, “I don’t know” are never invited! Unlike the true lexical ambiguity that arises from a language-specific convention, an implicatum derives rather from general features of communicative RATIONALITY and should thus be similar across different languages (philosopher Kripke, 1977; linguist Levinson, 1983).”I’m not sure. Cfr. Ochs in Madagascar. But she is a linguist/anthropologist, rather than a philosopher? From a philosophical point of view, perhaps the best who treated this issues is English philosopher Martin Hollis in his essays on ‘rationality’ and ‘relativism’ (keywords!)“Since the ‘ambiguity’ in question here has all these features, at least to some degree, the implicatum approach may well seem irresistible. It is well known, however, that none of the features listed on various occasions by Grice are sufficient (individually or jointly) to establish the presence of a conversational implicatum (Grice, 1978; linguist Sadock, 1978). Take calculability.” Or how to ‘work it out,’ to keep it Anglo-Saxon, as pretentious Grice would not! The main difficulty is that a conversationalimplicatum can become fossilized, or ‘conventionalised’ over time but remain calculable nonetheless, as happens with some ‘dead’ metaphors — one-time non-literal uses which congealed into a new conventional meaning.” A linguist at Berkeley worked on this, Traugott, on items in the history of the English language, or H-E-L, for short, H.O.T.E.L, history of the English language. I don’t think Grice considers this. He sticks with old Roman ‘animal’ -> ‘non-human’, strictly, having a ‘soul,’ or animus, anima. (I think Traugott’s focus was on verb forms, like “I have eaten,” meaning, literally, “I possess eating,” or something. But she does quote Grice and speaks of fossilization. “For instance, the expression.” ‘S went to the bathroom’ (Jones?) could, for obvious reasons, be used with its original, compositional, meaning to implicate that S ‘relieved himself’.” “The intended meaning would still be calculable today.”Or “went to powder her nose?” (Or consider the pre-Griceian (?) child’s overinformative, standing from table at dinner, “I’m going to the bathroom to do number 2 (unless he is flouting the maxim). “But the use has been absorbed, or encoded into some people’s grammar, as witnessed by the fact that  ‘S went to the bathroom on the living room carpet.’ is not contradictory (linguist J. L. Morgan, 1978; linguist Sadock, 1978).”I wonder what some contextualists at Yale (De Rose) would say about that!? Cf. Jason Stanley, enfant terrible. “Grice’s cancellability is similarly problematic. While one may cancel the exclusive interpretation of ‘p or q’ (e.g. by adding ‘or possibly both’), the added remark could just as well be disambiguating an ambiguous utterance as canceling the implicatum (philosopher Walker, 1975; linguist Sadock, 1978).”Excellent POINT! Walker would be fascinated to see that Grice once coined ‘disimplicature’ for some loose uses. “Macbeth saw Banquo.” “That tie is yellow under that light, but orange under this one.” Actually, Grice creates ‘disimplicature’ to refute Davidson on intending: “Jones intends to climb Mt Everest next weekend.” Intending DOES entail BELIEF, but people abuse ‘intend’ and use it ‘loosely,’ with one sense dropped. Similarly, Grice says, with “You’re the cream in my coffee,” where the ‘disimplicature’ is TOTAL!“Non-detachability fares no better. When two sentences are synonymous (if there is, pace Quine, such a thing), utterances of them ought to generate the same implicatum. But they will also have the same semantic implications, so the non-detachability of an alleged implicatum shows very little if anything at all (linguist Sadock, 1978).”I never liked non-detachability, because it ENTAILS that there MUST be a synonym expression: cfr. God? Divinity? “Universality is perhaps the best test of the four.”I agree. When linguists like Elinor Keenan disregard this, I tend to think: “the cunning of conversational reason,” alla Hollis. Grice was a member of Austin’s playgroup, and the conversational MAXIMS were ‘universalisable’ within THAT group. That seems okay for both Kant AND Hegel!“Since an implicatum can fossilise into a conventional meanings, however, it is always possible for a cross-linguistic alleged ‘ambiguity’ to be pragmatic in some language though lexical in another.”Is that ‘f*rnication’? Or is it Grice on ‘pushing up the daisies’ as an “established idiom” for ‘… is dead’ in WJ5? Austin and Grice would I think take for granted THREE languages: Greek and Roman, that they studied at their public schools – and this is important, because Grice says his method of analysis is somehow grounded on his classical education – and, well, English. Donald Davidson, in the New World, would object to the ‘substantiation’ that speaking of “Greek” as a language, say, may entail.“So while Grice’s tests are suggestive, they supply no clear verdict on the presence of an implicatum. Besides these inconclusive tests for implicature, Grice could also appeal to various diagnostic tests for alleged ambiguity.” “And how to fail them,” to echo Zwicky. Grice himself suggests three, although none of them prove terribly helpful.”Loved your terrible. Cfr. ‘terrific’. And the king entering St. Paul’s cathedral: “Aweful!” meaning ‘awe-some!’“First, Grice points out that each alleged sense Sn of an allegedly ambiguous word E ought to be expressible ‘in a reasonably wide range of linguistic environments’ (1978, p. 117). The fact that the strong implicatum of ‘or’ is UNavailable within the scope of a negation, for instance, would seem to count AGAINST alleged ambiguity or polysemy. On the other hand, the strong implicatum of ‘or’ IS available within the scope of a propositional-attitude verb. A strong implicatum of ‘and’ is arguably available in both environments, within the scope of a negation, and within the scope of a psychological-attitude verb. So the first test seems a wash.”Metaphorically, or implicaturally. J“Second, Grice says, if the expression E is ambiguous with one sense S2 being derived (somehow) from the initial or original or etymological sense S1, that derivative sense S2 ‘ought to conform to whatever principle there may be which governs the generation of derivative senses’ (pp. 117–118).”GRICE AT HIS BEST! I think he is trying to irritate Quine, who is seating on second row at Harvard! (After all Quine thought he was a field linguist!)Bontly, charmingly: “Not knowing the content of thi principle Grice invokes— and Grice gives us no hint as to what it might be — we cannot bring it, alas, to bear here!”I THINK he was thinking Ullman. At Oxford, linguists were working on ‘semantics,’ cfr. Gardiner. And he just thought that it would be Unphilosophical on his part to bore his philosophical Harvard audience with ‘facts.’ At one point he does mention that the facts of the history of the English language (how ‘disc’ can be used, etc.) are not part of the philosopher’s toolkit?“Third and finally, Grice says, we must ‘give due (but not undue) weight to MY INTUITIONS about the existence (or indeed non-existence) of a putative sense S2 of a word E.’ (p. 120).”Emphasis on ‘my’ mine! -- As I say, I never had any intuition about an expression having an extra-putative sense. Not even ‘bank,’ – since in Old Germanic, it’s all etymologically related!Bontly: “But, even granting the point that ‘or’ is NON-INTUITIVELY ambiguous in quite the same way that ‘bank’ IS, allegedly, INTUITIVELY ambiguous, the source of our present difficulty is precisely the fact that ‘p or q’ often *seems* intuitively to imply that one or the other disjunct is false.”Grice apparently uses ‘intuition’ and ‘introspection’ interchangeably, if that helps? Continental phenomenological philosophers would make MUCH of this! For Grice’s intuitions are HIS own. In a lecture at Wellesley, of all places (in Grice 1989) he writes: “My problems with my use of E arise from MY intuitions about the use of E. I don’t care how YOU use E. Philosophy is personal.” Much criticised, but authentic, in a way!“Since he discounts the latter intuition, Grice cannot place much weight on the former!”As I say, Grice’s intuitions are hard to fathom! So are his introspections! Actually, I think that Grice’s sticking with introspections and intuitions save him, as Suppes shows in PGRICE ed Grandy and Warner, from being a behaviourist. He is, rather, an intentionalist!“While a complete review of ambiguity tests is beyond the scope of this essay, we have perhaps seen enough to motivate the methodological problem with which we began: viz., that an, intuitive, alleged, ambiguity seems fit to be explained either semantically (ambiguity thesis, polysemy, bi-semy) or pragmatically/conversationally, with little by way of direct evidence to tell us which is which!”“If philosophy generated no problems, it would be dead!” – Grice. J“Linguists Zwicky and Sadock review several linguistic tests for ambiguity (e.g. conjunction reduction) and point out that most are ill-suited to detect ambiguities where the meanings in question are privative opposites,”Oddly, Grice’s first publication ever was on “Negation and privation,” 1938!Bontly: “i.e. where one meaning is a specialization or specification of the other (as for instance with the female and neutral senses of ‘goose’).”Or cf. Urmson, “There is an animal in the backyard.” “You mean Aunt Matilda?”Bontly: “Since the putative ambiguities of ‘or’ and the like are all of this sort, it seems inevitable that these tests will fail us here as well. For further discussion, see linguist Horn (1989, pp. 317–18 and 365–66) and linguist Carston (2002, pp. 274–77).It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find that a Gricean typically falls back on a methodological argument like parsimony, as instantiated in “M. O. R.”Let’s now turn to Parsimony and Its Problems. It may, at first, be less than obvious why an ambiguity or polysemy or bi-semy account should be deemed less parsimonious than its Gricean rival.” Where the conventionalist or ambiguist posits an additional sense S2, Grice adds, to S1, a conversational implicatum, I”. Cheap, but no free lunch! (Grice saves)Bontly: “Superficially, little seems to be gained.” Ah, the surfaces of Oxford superficiality! “Looking closer, however, the methodological virtues of the Grice’s approach seem fairly clear.”Good!Bontly: “First, the principles and inference patterns that a pragmatic or conversational account utilizes are independently motivated. The principles and inference patterns are needed in any case to account for the relatively un-controversial class of particularized implicata, and they provide an elegant approach to phenomena like figures of rhetoric, or speech -- metaphor, irony, meiosis, litotes, understatement, sarcasm – cfr. Holdcroft -- and tricks like Strawson’s presupposition. So it would seem that Grice can make do with explanatory material already on hand, whereas the ambiguity or polysemy theorist must posit a new semantic rule in each and every case. Furthermore, the explanatory material has an independent grounding in considerations of rationality.”I love that evening when Grice received a phonecall at Berkeley: “Professor Grice: You have been appointed the Immanuel Kant Memorial Lecturer at Stanford.” He gave the lectures on aspects of reason and reasoning!Bontly: “Since conversation is typically a goal-directed activity, it makes sense for conversationalists to abide by the Principle of Conversational Cooperation (something like Kant’s categorical imperative, in conversational format) and its (universalisable) conversational maxims, and so it makes sense for a co-conversationalist to interpret the conversationalist accordingly. A pragmatic explanation is therefore CHEAP – hence Occam on ‘aeconomicus’ -- the principle it calls on being explainable by — and perhaps even reducible to — facts about rational behavior in general.”I loved your “REDUCE.” B. F. Loar indeed thought, and correctly, that the maxims are ‘empirical generalisations over functional states.’ Genius!Bontly: A pragmatic account is not only more economic, or cheaper. It also reveals an orderliness or systematicity that positing a separate lexical ambiguity or polysemy or bisemy in each and every case would seem to miss (linguist/philosopher Bach). To a Griceian, it is no accident that a sentential connective or truth-functor (“not,” “and,” “or,” and “if”), a quantified expression (Grice’s “all” and “some (at least one)”) and a description (Grice’s “the”) all lend themselves to a weak and a stronger interpretation”Cf. Holdcroft, “Weak or strong?” in “Words and deeds.”Bontly: “Note, for instance, that a sentence with the logical form ‘Some Fs are Gs’,  and the pleonethetic, to use Geach’s and Altham’s coinage, ‘Most Fs are Gs’, and ‘A few Fs are Gs’ are all allegedly ‘ambiguous’ in the SAME way. Each of those expressions has an obvious weak reading in addition to a stronger reading: ‘Not all Fs are Gs’.Good because Grice’s first examination was: “That pillar-box seems red to me.” And he analyses the oddness in terms of ‘strength.’ (Grice 1961). He tries to analyse this ‘strength’ in terms of ‘entailment,’ but fails (“Neither ‘The pillar-box IS red’ NOR ‘The pillar-box SEEMS red’ entail each other.”)Bontly: For the conventionalist or polysemy theorist, there is no apparent reason why this should be so. There is no reason, that is, why three etymologically unrelated words (“some,” “most,” and “few”) should display the SAME pattern of alleged ambiguity. The Gricean, on the other hand, explains each the SAME way, by appealing to some rational principle of conversation. The implicata are all ‘scalar’ quantity implicata, attributable to the utterer U’s having uttered a weaker, less informative, sentence than he might have.” Linguist Levinson, 1983). Together, these considerations make a persuasive case for the Grice’s approach. A pragmatic explanation is more economical, and the resulting view of conversation is more natural and unified. Since economy and unification are both presumably virtues to be sought in a scientific or philosophical explanation — virtues which for brevity I lump together under Occamist ‘parsimony’ — it would NOT be unreasonable to conclude that a pragmatic explanation is (ceteris paribus) a better explanation. So it seems that Grice’s principle, the “M. O. R.” is correct. Senses ought not to be multiplied when pragmatics will do. Still, there are several reasons to be suspicious of the parsimony argument. “I lay out three. It bears emphasis that none of these are objections to the pragmatic approach per se.” I have no quarrel with the theory of conversation or particular attempts to apply it to conversational phenomena. The objections focus rather on the role that parsimony (or simplicity, or generality, etc.) plays in arguments PRO the implicatum and CONTRA ambiguity or polysemy.” Then, there’s Dead Metaphors. First is a worry that parsimony is too blunt an instrument, generalizing to unwanted conclusions. Versions of this objection appear in philosopher Walker (1975), linguist Morgan (1978), and linguist Sadock (1978).” More recently, Reimer (1998) and Devitt (forthcoming) use it to argue against a Gricean treatment of the referential/attributive distinction.”But have they read Grice’s VACUOUS NAMES? I know you did! Grice notes: “My distinction has nothing to do with Donnellan’s!” Grice’s approach is syntactic: ‘the’ and “THE,” identificatory and non-identificatory uses. R. M. Sainsbury and D. E. Over have worked on this. Fascinating. Bontly: “For as with the afore-mentioned so-called ‘dead’ metaphor, it can happen that a word has a secondary use that is pragmatically predictable, and yet fully conventional. In many such cases, of course, the original, etymological meaning is long forgotten: e. g. the contemporary use of ‘fornication’, originally a euphemism for activities done in fornice (that is, in the vaulted underground dwellings that once served as brothels in Rome). (I owe this [delightful] example to Sam Wheeler). Few speakers recall the original meaning, so the metaphor can no longer be ‘calculated,’ as Grice’s “You’re the cream in my coffee!” (title of song) can!” The metaphor is both dead _and buried_.”Still un-buriable?“In other cases, however, speakers do possess the information to construct a Gricean explanation, and yet the metaphor is dead anyway.”Reimer’s (1998) example of the verb ‘incense’ is a case in point. One conventional meaning (‘to make or become angry’) began life as a metaphorical extension of the other (‘to make fragrant with incense’). The reason for the extension is fairly transparent (resting on familiar comparisons of burning and emotion), but the use allegedly represents an additional sense nonetheless.”What dictionaries have as ‘fig.’ But are we sure that when the dictionaries list things like 1., 2., 3., they are listing SENSES!? Cf. Grice, “I don’t give a hoot what the dictionary says,” to Austin, “And that’s where you make your big mistake.” Once Grice actually opened the dictionary (he was studying ‘feeling + adj.’ – he got to ‘byzantine,’ finding that MOST adjectives did, and got bored!Bontly: Such examples suggest that an implicatum makes up an important source of semantic—and, according to linguist Levinson (2000), syntactic—innovation. A linguistic phenomenon can begin life as a pragmatic specialization or an extension and subsequently become conventionalized by stages, making it difficult to determine at what point (and for which ‘utterers’) a use has become fully conventional. One consequence is that an expression E can have, allegedly, a second sense S2, even when a pragmatic explanation appears to make it explanatorily superfluous, and parsimony can therefore mislead.”I’m not sure dictionary readers read ‘fig.’ as a different ‘sense,’ and lexicographers need not be Griceian in style!Bontly: “A related point is that an ambiguity account needn’t be LESS unified than an implicatum account after all. If pragmatic considerations can explain the origin and development of new linguistic conventions, the ambiguity or polysemy theorist can provide a unified dia-chronic account of how several un-related expressions came to exhibit similar patterns of alleged ‘ambiguity.’ Quantifiers like ‘some’, ‘most’, and ‘a few’ may be similarly allegedly ambiguous today because they generated similar implicatures in the past (cf. Millikan, 2001).”OKAY, so that’s the right way to go then? Diachrony and evolution, right?Bontly: “Then, there’s Tradeoffs. A ‘dead’ metaphor suggests that parsimony is too strong for the pragmatist’s purposes, but as a pragmatic account could have hidden costs to offset the semantic savings, parsimony may also be too weak! E. g. an implicatum account looks, at least superficially, to multiply (to use Occam’s term) inferential labour, leaving it to the addressee to infer the utterer’s intended meaning from the words uttered, the context, and the conversational principle. Thus there are trade-offs involved, and the account which is semantically more parsimonious may be less parsimonious all things considered.”Grice once invited the “P. E. R. E.,” principle of economy of rational effort, though. Things which seem to be psychologically UNREAL are just DEEMED, tacitly, to occur.Bontly: “To be clear, this is not to suggest that the ambiguity or polysemy account can dispense with inference entirely. Were the exclusive and inclusive senses of ‘or’ BOTH lexically encoded (as they were in Old Roman, ‘vel’ and ‘aut,’ hence Whitehead’s choice of ‘v’ for ‘p v q’) still hearers would need to infer from contextual clues which meaning were intended. The worry is not, therefore, so much that the implicatum account increases the number of inferences which conversants or conversationalists have to perform. The issue concerns rather the complexity of these inferences. Alleged dis-ambiguation is a highly constrained process. In principle, one need only choose the relevant sense Sn, from a finite list represented in the so-called ‘mental lexicon’. Implicature calculation, on the other hand, is a matter of finding the best explanation (abductively, alla Hanson) for an utterer’s utterance, the utterer’s meaning being introduced as an explanatory hypothesis, answering to a ‘why’ question. Unlike dis-ambiguation, where the various possible readings are known in advance, in the conversational explanation, the only constraints are provided by the addressee’s understanding of the context and the conversational principle. So it appears that Grice’s approach saves on the lexical semantics by placing a greater inferential burden on utterer and addressee.”But Grice played bridge, and loved those burdens. Stampe actually gives a lovely bridge alleged counter-example to Grice (in Grice 1989).Bontly: “Now, a Gricean can try to lessen this load in various ways. Grice can argue, for instance, that the inference used to recover a generalised implicatum is less demanding than that for a particularized one, that familiarity with types of generalised implicate can “stream-line” the inferential process, and so on.”Love that, P. E. R. E., or principle of economy of rational effort, above?!Bontly: “We examine these moves. There’s Justification. Another difficulty with Grice’s appeals to parsimony is the most fundamental. On the one hand, it can hardly be denied that parsimony plays a role in scientific, if not philosophical, inference.” Across the sciences, if not in philosophy, it is standard practice to cite parsimony (simplicity, generality, etc.) as a reason to choose one hypothesis over another; philosophers often do the same.”Bontly’s ‘often’ implicates, ‘often not’! Grice became an opponent of his own minimalism at a later stage of his life, vide his “Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of Paul Grice,” by Paul Grice!Bontly: “At the same time, however, it remains quite mysterious, if that’s the word, why parsimony (etc.) should be given such weight by Occamists like Grice. If it were safe to assume that Nature is simple and economical, the preference for theories with these qualities would make perfect sense. Sir Isaac Newton offers such an ontological rationale for parsimony in the “Principia.” Sir Isaac writes (in Roman?) “I am to admit no more cause of a natural thing than such as are true and sufficient to explain its appearance.” “To this purpose, the philosopher says that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less serves.” “For Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of a superfluous cause.” “While a blanket assertion about the simplicity of Nature is hardly uncommon in the history of science, today it is viewed with suspicion.” Bontly:  “Newton’s reasons were presumably theological.” “If I knew that the Creator values simplicity and economy, I should expect the creatION to display these qualities as well.” “Lacking much information about the Creator’s tastes, however, the assumption becomes quite difficult, if not impossible, to support.”Cfr. literature on ‘biological diversity.’Bontly: “(Sober discusses several objections to an ontological justification for the principle of parsimony. Philosopher of science Mary Hesse surveys several other attempts to justify the use of parsimony and simplicity in scientific inference. Philosophers of science today are largely persuaded that the role of parsimony is ‘purely methodological’ epistemological, pragmatist, rather than ontological — that it is rational to reject unnecessary posits (or complex, dis-unified theories) no matter what Nature is like. One might argue, for instance, that the principle of parsimony is really just a principle of minimum risk. The more existence claims one accepts, the greater the chance of accepting a falsehood. Better, then, to do without any existence claim one does not need. Philosopher J. J. C. Smart attributes this view to John Stuart Mill.”Cf. Grice: “Not to bring more Grice to the Mill.”Bontly: “Now, risk minimization may be a reasonable methodological principle, but it does not suffice to explain the role of parsimony in natural science. When a theoretical posit is deemed explanatorily superfluous, the accepted practice is not merely to withhold belief in its existence but to conclude positively that it does not exist. As Sober notes, ‘Occam’s razor preaches atheism about unnecessary entities, not just a-gnosticism.’” Similarly, Grice’s razor tells us that we should believe an expression E to be unambiguous, aequi-vocal, monosemous, unless we have evidence for a second meaning. The absence of evidence for this alleged additional, ‘multiplied’ ‘sense’ is presumed to count as evidence that this alleged second, additional, multiplied, sense is absent, does not exist. But an absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of an absence.” The difficult question about scientific methodology is why we should count one as the other. Why, that is, should a lack of evidence for an existence claim count as evidence for a non-existence claim? The minimum risk argument leaves this question unanswered. Indeed, philosophers of science have had so little success in explaining why parsimony should be a guide to truth that many are tempted to conclude that it and the other ‘super-empirical virtues’ have no epistemic value whatsoever. Their role is rather pragmatic, or aesthetic.”This is in part Strawson’s reply in his “If and the horseshoe” (1968), repr. in PGRICE, in Grandy/Warner. He says words to the effect: “Grice’s theory may be more BEAUTIFUL than mine, but that’s that!” (Strawson thinks that ‘if’ acts as ‘so’ or ‘therefore’ but in UNASSERTED clauses. So it’s a matter of a ‘conventional’ IMPLICATUM to the inferrability of “if p, q” or “p; so, q.” I agree with Strawson that Grice’s account of ‘conventional’ implicatum is not precisely too beautiful?Bontly: “Parsimony can make a theory easier to understand or apply, and it pleases those of us with a taste for desert landscapes, but (according to these sceptics) they do not make the theory any more likely to be true.”The reference to the ‘desert landscape’ is genial. Cfr. Strawson’s “A logician’s landscape.” Later in life, Grice indeed found it unfair that an explanation of cherry trees blooming in spring should be explained as a ‘desert landscape.’ “That’s impoverishing it!”Bontly: “van Fraassen, for instance, tells us that a super-empirical virtue ‘does not concern the relation between the theory and the world, but rather the use and usefulness of the theory; it provide reasons to prefer the theory independently of questions of truth.” “If that were correct, it would be doubtful that parsimony can shoulder the burden Grice places on it.” “For then the conventionalist may happily grant that a pragmatic explanation is clever and elegant, and beautiful.”  “The conventionalist can agree that an implicature account comprehends a maximum of phenomena with a minimum of theoretical apparatus.” “But when it comes to truth, or alethic satisfactoriness, as Grice would prefer, a conventionalist may insist that parsimony is simply irrelevant.” “One Gricean sympathizer who apparently accepts the ‘aesthetic’ view of parsimony is the philosopher of science R. C. S. Walker (1975), who claims that the ‘[c]hoice between Grice’s and Cohen’s theories is an aesthetic matter’ and concludes that ‘we should not regard either the Conversationalist Hypothesis or its [conventionalist] rivals as definitely right or wrong.’” Cfr. Strawson in Grandy/Warner, but Strawson is no Griceian sympathiser! “Now asking Grice to justify the principle of parsimony may seem a bit unfair.” “Grice also assumes the reality of the external world, the existence of intentional mental states, and the validity of modus ponens.” “Need Grice justify these assumptions as well?” “Of course not!” “But even if the epistemic value of parsimony is taken entirely for granted, it is unclear why it should even count in semantics.” “All sides agree, after all, that many, perhaps even most, expressions of natural language are allegedly ‘ambiguous.’” “There are both poly-semies, where one word has multiple, though related, meanings (‘horn’, ‘trunk’), and homo-nymies, where two distinct words have converged on a single phonological form (‘bat’, ‘pole’).”  “The distinction between poly-semy and homo-nymy is notoriously difficult to draw with any precision, chiefly because we lack clear criteria for the identity of words (Bach).” “If words are individuated phono-logically, there would be no homo-nyms.” “If words are individuated semantically, there would be no poly-semies.” “Individuating words historically leads to some odd consequences: e.g., that ‘bank’ is poly-semous rather than homo-nymous, since the ‘sense’ in which it means financial institution and the ‘sense’ in which it means edge of a river are derived from a common source.” “I owe this example to David Sanford. For further discussion, see Jackendoff.”Soon at Hartford. And Sanford is right!Bontly: “Given that ambiguity is hardly rare, then, one wonders whether a semantic theory ought really to minimize it (cf. Stampe, 1974).” “One might indeed argue that the burden of proof here is on the pragmatist, not the ambiguity or polysemy theorist.” “Perhaps we ought to assume, ceteris paribus, that every regular use of an expression represents a SPECIAL sense.” “Such a methodological policy may be less economical than Grice’s, but it does extend the same pattern of explanation to all alleged ambiguities, and it might even accord better with the haphazard ways in which natural languages are prone to evolve (Millikan, 2001).”Yes, the evolutionary is the way to go!Bontly: “So Grice owe us some reason to think that parsimony and the like should count in semantics.” “He needn’t claim, of course, that parsimony is always and everywhere a reason to believe a hypothesis true.” “He needn’t produce a global justification for Occam’s Razor, that is—a local justification, one specific to language, would suffice.” “I propose to set aside the larger issue about parsimony in general, therefore, and argue that Modified Occam’s Razor can be justified by considerations peculiar to the study of language.” “Now for A Developmental Account of Semantic Parsimony.”  “My approach to parsimony in linguistics is inspired by Sober’s work on parsimony arguments in evolutionary biology.”And Grice was an evolutionary philosopher of sorts.Bontly: “In Sober’s view, philosophers have misunderstood the role of parsimony in scientific inference, taking it to function as a global, domain-general principle of scientific reasoning (akin perhaps to an axiom of the probability calculus).” “A more realistic analysis, Sober claims, shows that parsimony arguments function as tacit references to domain-specific process assumptions — to assumptions (whether clearly articulated or not) about the process(es) that generate the phenomena under study.” “Where these processes tend to be frugal, parsimony is a reasonable principle of theory-choice.” “Where they are apt to be profligate, it is not.” “What makes parsimony reasonable in one area of inquiry may, on Sober’s view, be quite unrelated to the reasons it counts in another.” “Parsimony arguments in the units of selection controversy, for instance, rest on one set of process assumptions (i.e. assumptions about the conditions necessary for ‘group’ selection to occur).” “The application of parsimony to ‘phylogenetic’ inference rests on a completely different set of assumptions (about rates of evolutionary change).” “As Sober notes, in either case the assumptions are empirically testable, and it could turn out that parsimony is a reliable principle of inference in one, both, or neither of these areas. Sober’s approach amounts to a thorough-going local reductionism about parsimony.It counts in theory-choice if and only if there are domain-specific reasons to think the theory which is more economical (in some specifiable respect) is more likely to be true. The ‘only if’ claim is the more controversial part of the bi-conditional, and I need not defend it here. For present purposes I need only the weaker claim that domain-specific assumptions can be sufficient to justify using parsimony — that parsimony is a sensible principle of inference if the phenomena in question result from processes themselves biased, as it were, towards parsimony. Now, in natural-language semantics, the phenomena in question are ordinarily taken to be the semantic rules or conventions shared by a community of speakers.”Cf. Peacocke on Grice as applied to ‘community of utterers,’ in Evans/McDowell, Truth and meaning, Oxford. Bontly: “The task is to uncover the ‘arbitrary’ mappings between a sound and a meaning (or concepts or referent) of which utterers have tacit knowledge. This ‘semantic competence’ is shaped by both the inputs that language learners encounter and the cognitive processes that guide language acquisition from infancy through adulthood. So the question is whether that input and these processes are themselves biased toward semantic parsimony and against the acquisition of multiple meanings for single phonological forms. As I shall now argue, there are several reasons to suspect that such a bias should exist. Psychologists often conceptualize learning in general and word learning in particular as a process of generating and testing hypotheses. A child (or, in many cases, an adult) encounters an unfamiliar word, forms one or more hypotheses as to its possible meaning, checks the hypotheses against the ways in which he hears the word used, and finally adopts one such hypothesis. This ‘child-as-scientist’ model is plainly short on details, but whatever mechanism implements the generating and testing, it would seem that the process cannot be repeated with every subsequent exposure to a word. Once a hypothesis is accepted — a word learned — the process effectively halts, so that the next time the child hears that word, he doesn’t have to hypothesize. Instead, the child can access the known meaning and use it to grasp the intended message. For that reason, an unfamiliar word ought to be the only one to trigger the learning process, and that of course makes ambiguity problematic. Take a person who knows one meaning of an ambiguous word, but not the other. To him, the word is not unfamiliar, even when used with an unfamiliar meaning. At least, it will not sound unfamiliar. So, the learning process will not kick in unless some other source of evidence suggests another, as-yet-unknown meaning. Presumably the evidence will come from ‘anomalous’ utterances: i.e. uses that are contextually absurd, given only the familiar meaning. This is not to say, of course, that hearing one anomalous utterance would be sufficient to re-start the learning process. Since there are other reasons why an utterance may seem anomalous (e.g. the utterer simply misspoke), it might take several anomalies to convince one that the word has another meaning. In the absence of anomalies, however, it seems highly unlikely that learners would seriously entertain the possibility of a second sense. A related point is that acquisition involves, or is at least thought to involve, a variety of ‘boot-strapping’ operations where the learner uses what he knows of the language in order to learn more.”Oddly Grice has a bootstrap principle (it relates to having one’s metalanguage as rich as one’s object-language.Bontly: “It has been argued, for instance, that children use semantic information to constrain hypotheses about words’ syntactic features (Pinker) and, conversely, syntactic information to constrain hypotheses about words’ semantic features (Gleitman). Likewise, children must surely use their knowledge of some words’ meanings to constrain hypotheses as to the meanings of others, thus inferring the meanings of unfamiliar words from context. However, that process only works insofar as one can safely assume that the familiar words in an utterance are typically used with their familiar meanings. If it were assumed that familiar words are typically used with unknown meanings, the bootstraps would be too weak. Together, these considerations point to the hypothesis that language acquisition is semantically conservative. Children will posit new meanings for familiar words only when necessary—only when they encounter utterances that make no sense to them, even though all the words are familiar. Interestingly, experimental work in language acquisition provides empirical evidence for much the same conclusion. Psychologists have long observed that children have considerable difficulties learning and using homo-nyms (Peters and Zaidel), leading many to suspect that young children operate under the helpful, though mistaken, assumption that a word can have but one meaning (Slobin). Children have similar difficulties acquiring synonyms and may likewise assume that a given meaning can be represented by at most one word. (Markman & Wachtel, see Bloom for a different explanation). I cannot here survey the many experimental studies bearing on this hypothesis, but one series of experiments conducted by Michele Mazzocco is particularly germane. Mazzocco presents children from several age-groups, as well as adults, with stories designed to mimic one’s first encounter with the secondary meaning of an ambiguous word. To control the effects of antecedent familiarity with secondary meanings, the stories used familiar words (e.g., ‘rope’) as if they had further unknown meanings—as ‘pseudo-homo-nyms’.For comparison, other stories included a non-sense word (e.g. ‘blus’) used as if it had a conventional meaning — as a ‘pseudo-word’ — to mimic one’s first encounter with an entirely unfamiliar word.”Cf. Grice’s seminar at Berkeley: “How pirots karulise elatically: some simpler ways.”“A pirot  can be said to potch or cotch an obble as fang or feng or fid with another obble.”“A person can be said to perceive or cognize an object as having the property f or f2 or being in a relation R with another object.”Bontly: Some stories, finally, used only genuine words with only their familiar meanings. After hearing a story, subjects are presented with a series of illustrations and asked to pick out the item referred to in the story. In a subsequent experiment, subjects had to act out their interpretations of the stories. In the pseudo-homo-nym condition, one picture would always illustrate the word’s conventional but contextually inappropriate meaning, one would depict the unfamiliar but contextually appropriate meaning, and the rest would be distractors. As one would expect, adults and older children (10- to 12-year-olds) performed equally well on these tasks, reliably picking out the intended meanings for familiar words, non-sense words and pseudo-homonyms alike. Young children (3- to 5-year-olds), on the other hand, could understand the stories where familiar words were used conventionally, and they were reasonably good at inferring the intended meanings of non-sense words from context, but they could not do so for pseudo-homonyms. Instead, they reliably chose the picture illustrating the familiar meaning, even though the story made that meaning quite inappropriate. These results are noteworthy for several reasons. It is significant, first of all, that spontaneous positing of ambiguities did not occur. As long as the known meaning of a word comported with its use in a story, subjects show not the slightest tendency to assign that word a new, secondary meaning—just as one would expect if the acquisition process were semantically conservative. Second, note that performance in the non-sense word condition confirms the familiar finding that young children can acquire the meanings of novel words from context — just as the bootstrapping procedure suggests. Unlike older children and adults, however, these young children are unable to determine the meanings of pseudo-homo-nyms from context, even though they could do so for pseudo-words — exactly what one would expect if young children assumed that words can have one meaning only. Why young children would have such a conservative bias remains controversial. Unfortunately it would take us too far afield to delve into this debate here. Doherty finds evidence that the understanding of ambiguity is strongly correlated with a grasp of synonymy, suggesting that these biases have a common source.” Doherty also finds evidence that the understanding of ambiguity/synonymy is strongly predicted by the ability to reason about false beliefs, suggesting the intriguing hypothesis that young children’s biases are due to their lack of a representational ‘theory of mind’).”  Cf. Grice on transmission of true beliefs in “Meaning, revisited.” – a transcendental argument.Bontly: “Nonetheless, Mazzocco’s results provide empirical evidence for our conjecture that a person will typically posit a second meaning for a known word only when necessary (and, as with young children, not always then). And that, of course, is precisely the sort of process assumption that would make Grice’s “M. O. R.” a reasonable principle for theory choice in semantics. For we have been operating under the assumption that the principal task of linguistic semantics is to describe the competent speaker’s tacit linguistic knowledge. If that knowledge is shaped by a process biased toward semantic parsimony, our semantic theorizing ought surely to be biased in the same direction. Is Pragmatism Vindicated?” That said, the question is still open whether Grice’s “M. O. R.,” understood now developmentally, ontogenetically, and not phylogenetically, as perhaps Millikan would prefer, has such consequences as Gricea typically assumes. In particular, it remains for us to consider whether and, if so, when the above process assumptions favor implicature hypotheses over ambiguity hypotheses, and the answer would seem to hang on two further issues. First, there is in each case the question whether a child learning the language will find it necessary to posit a second sense for a given expression. The fact that linguists, apprised as they are of the principles of conversation, find it unnecessary to introduce a second sense for (e.g.) ‘or’ does NOT imply that children would find it unnecessary. For one thing, children might acquire the various uses of ‘or’ well before they have any pragmatic understanding themselves.”Cfr. You can eat the cake or the sandwich.”Bontly: Even if they do not, the order in which the various uses are acquired could make considerable difference.It may be, for instance, that a child who first learned the inclusive use of ‘or’ would have no need to posit a second exclusive sense, whereas a child who originally interpreted ‘or’ exclusively might need eventually to posit an additional, inclusive sense. So we may well have to determine what meaning children first attach to an expression in order to determine whether they would find it necessary to posit a second. The issues raised above are pretty clearly empirical ones, and significant inter-personal differences could complicate matters considerably. Just for the sake of argument, however, let us grant that children do indeed first learn to interpret ‘or’ inclusively, to interpret ‘and’ as mere conjunction, and so on. Let us assume, that is, that the meanings which Grice typically takes to be conventional are just that. In fact, the assumption that weak uses are typically learned first has garnered some empirical support, as one referee brought to my attention. Paris shows that children are less likely than adults to interpret ‘or’ exclusively (see also Sternberg, and Braine and Rumain). More recent experimental work indicates that children first learn to interpret ‘and’ a-temporally (Noveck and Chevaux) and ‘some’ weakly (as compatible with ‘all’) (Noveck, 2001). Even so, it remains an interesting question whether children would posit secondary senses for any of these expressions, and Grice would be on firm ground in arguing that they would not. First, the ‘ambiguities’ discussed at the outset all involve secondary uses which can, with the help of pragmatic principles, be understood in terms of the presumed primary meaning of the expression. If a child, encountering this secondary use for the first time, already knows the primary meaning, and if he has moreover an understanding of the norms of conversation—if he is a ‘Griceian child’ —, he ought to be able to understand the secondary use perfectly well. He can recover the implicature and infer the speaker’s meaning from the encoded meaning of the utterance. To the ‘Griceian child,’ therefore, the utterance would not be anomalous. It would make perfect sense in context, giving him no reason to posit a secondary meaning. But what about children who are not yet Griceans — children too young to understand pragmatic principles or to have the conceptual resources to make inferences about other people’s likely communicative intentions? While there seems to be no consensus as to when pragmatic abilities emerge, several considerations suggest that they develop fairly early. Bloom argues that pragmatic understanding is part of the best account of how children learn the meanings of words. Papafragou discusses evidence that children can calculate implicatures as early as age three. Such children, knowing only the primary meaning of the expression, would be unable to recover the conversational implicatum and thus unable to grasp the secondary use of the expression via the pragmatic route. Nonetheless, I argue that they would still (at least in most cases) find it unnecessary to posit a second meaning for the expression. Consider: the ‘ambiguities’ at issue all involve secondary meanings which are specificatory, being identical to the primary but for some additional feature making it more restricted or specific. The primary and second meanings would thus be privative, as opposed to polar, opposites; Zwicky and Sadock). What a speaker means when he uses the expression in this secondary way, therefore, would typically imply the proposition he would mean if he were speaking literally (i.e. if he were using the primary meaning of the expression). One could thus say something true using the secondary sense only in contexts where one could say something true using the primary sense—whenever ‘P exclusive-or Q’ is true, so is ‘P inclusive-or Q’; whenever ‘P and-then Q’ is true, so is ‘P and Q’; and so on. Thus even when the intended meaning involves the alleged second sense, the utterance would still come out true if interpreted with the primary sense in mind. And this means, crucially, that the utterance would not seem anomalous, there being no obvious clash between the primary interpretation of the utterance and the conversational context. The utterance may well be pragmatically inappropriate when interpreted this way, but our pre-Gricean child is insensitive to such niceties. Otherwise, he would be already a ‘Gricean’ child. On our account, therefore, the pre-Gricean child still sees no need to posit a second meaning for the expression, even though he could not grasp the intended (specificatory) meaning. We may illustrate the above with the help of an ‘ambiguity’ in the indefinite description (“a dog”) made famous by Grice. A philosopher would ordinarily take an expressions of the form ‘an F’ to be a straightforward existential quantifier, “(Ex)”, as would seem to be the case in ‘I am going to a meeting’ On the other hand, an utterance of ‘I broke a finger’ seems to imply that it is my finger which I broke (unless you are a nurse – I think Horn’s cancellation goes), whereas ‘I saw a dog in the backyard’ would seem to carry the opposite sort of implication — i.e. that it was not my dog which I saw.”Grice finds this delightful ‘reductio’ of the sense-positer: “a” would have _three_ senses!Bontly: “We have then the potential for a three-way ambiguity, but our ruminations on word learning argue against it.”Take a child who has learned (somehow) the weak (existential quantier) use of ‘an F’ (Ex)Fx, but has for some reason never been exposed to strong uses: ‘my,’ ‘not mine.’ Now the child hears his mother say ‘Come look! There is a dog in the backyard!’ Running to the window, the child sees not his mother’s pet dog Fido, but some strange dog, that is not her mother’s. To an adult, this would be entirely predictable.” Using the indefinite description ‘a dog’ (logical form, “(Ex)Dx”) instead of the name for the utterer’s dog would lead one to expect that Fido (the utterer’s dog) is not the dog in question.”Actually, like Ryle, Grice has a shaggy-dog story in WJ5, “That dog is hairy-coated.” “Shaggy, if you must!”. Bontly: “And if the child were of an age to have a rudimentary understanding of the pragmatic aspects of language use, he would make the same prediction and thus see no need here to posit a second ‘sense’ for ‘an F,’ and take ‘not mine’ as an implicatum.”It’s different with what Grice would have as an ‘established idiom’ (his example, “He’s pushing up the daisies,” but not “He is fertilizing the daffodils”) as one might argue that “I broke a finger” is. Bontly: “The child would not, because the intended, contextually appropriate interpretation would be clear given the primary meaning plus pragmatics, or implicatum. But even if the child fails to grasp the intended meaning of his mother’s remark, it still seems unlikely that the child would be compelled to posit an ambiguity. No matter what the child’s mother means, there is, after all, a dog in the backyard (“Gotcha! That’s _a_ dog, my Fido is, ain’t it?!”). So the primary interpretation still yields a true proposition. While the ‘pre-Gricean child’ thus misses (part of) the intended meaning of the utterance, still he would not experience a clash between his interpretation and the contextually appropriate interpretation. Perhaps the pre-Gricean child could be forced to see an anomaly. Consider the following example. A parent offers her pre-Gricean child dessert, saying, ‘Ice-cream, or cake?’ When the child helps himself to some of each, the mother removes the cake with a look of annoyance and says:‘I said ice-cream OR cake’.  “While the mother’s behavioural response makes it abundantly clear that the child’s ‘inclusive’ interpretation is inappropriate, there are several reasons why he might still refrain from positing an ambiguity. For one, young children, who are more Griceian (even pre-Griceian) and logical than a few adults, appear to operate under the assumption that a word can have one meaning only, and it may be that pre-Gricean children are simply unable to override this assumption. This would seem particularly likely if Doherty is right that the ability to understand ambiguity requires a robust ‘theory of mind’.At any rate, the position taken here is that recognition of anomaly is necessary for one to posit a second meaning, not that it is sufficient. Contrast this with a similar case where, coming to the window, the child sees no dog but does see (e.g.) a motorcycle, a tree, a bird, and a fence.Then he would have reason to consider an ambiguity, though other explanations might also fit.” “Perhaps Mom was joking or hallucinating.” The claim is, then, that language acquisition works in such a way as to make it unlikely that learners would introduce a second senses for the ‘ambiguities’ in question. Of course, that claim is contingent on a very large assumption — viz., that the meaning which Grice take to be lexically ‘encoded’ is indeed the primary meaning of the expression — and that assumption may be mistaken.” In the continuing debate over Donnellan’s referential/attributive distinction, for instance, Grice takes it as uncontroversial that Russell on ‘the’ provides at least one of the conventional interpretations for sentences of the form ‘The king of France is bald’ (i.e., the attributive interpretation).” Grice’s example in “Vacuous names,” that Bontly quotes,  is “Jones’s butler mixed our coats and hats,” when “Jones’s butler” is actually Jones’s haberdasher dressed as a butler for the occasion.” So Grice distinguishes between THE butler (identificatory) and ‘the’ butler (non-identificatory, whoever he might be). Bontly: From there, they argue that we needn’t posit a secondary (referential) semantics for descriptions since the referential use can be captured by Russell’s theory supplemented by Grice’s pragmatics. Grice, 1969 (Vacuous Names); Kripke, 1977; Neale, 1990). From a developmental perspective, however, the ‘uncontroversial’ assumption that Russell on ‘the’ provides the primary meaning for description phrases is certainly questionable. It being likely that the vast majority of descriptions children hear early in life are used referentially, Grice’s position could conceivably have things exactly backwards— perhaps the referential is primary with the attributive acquired later, either as an additional meaning or a pragmatic extension. Still, the fact, if it is a fact, that a referential use is more common in children’s early environment does not imply that the referential is acquired first.” Exclusive uses of ‘or’ are at least as frequent as inclusive uses, and yet there is a good deal of evidence that the inclusive is developmentally primary. (Paris, Sternberg, Braine and Rumain). Either way, the point remains that plausible assumptions about language acquisition do indeed justify a role for parsimony in semantics. These ‘process’ assumptions may, of course, turn out to be incorrect.” If the evidence points the other way—if it emerges that the learning process posits ambiguities quite freely—then Grice’s “M. O. R.” could conceivably be groundless.”Making it a matter of empirical support or lack thereof, and that was perhaps why Millikan thought that was the wrong way to go? But then if she thought the evolutionary was the right way to go, wouldn’t THAT make Grice’s initially ‘sort of’ analytic pragmatist methodological philosophical decision a matter of fact or lack thereof? Bontly: “Nonetheless, we can see now that the debate between Grice and the conventionalists is ultimately an empirical, rather than, as Grice perhaps thougth, a conceptual one. Choices between pragmatic and semantic accounts may be under-determined by Grice’s intuitions about meaning and use, but they need not be under-determined tout court. Then there’s Tradeoffs, Dead Metaphors, and a Dilemma. The developmental approach to parsimony provides some purchase on the problems regarding tradeoffs and dead metaphors as well. The former problem is that parsimony can be a double-edged sword. While an ambiguity account does multiply senses, the implicature account appears to multiply inferential labour. Hearers have to ‘work out’ or ‘calculate’ the utterer’s meaning from the conversational principle, without the benefit of a list of possible meanings as in disambiguation. Pragmatic inference thus seems complex and time-consuming. But the fact is that we are rarely conscious of engaging in any reasoning of the sort Grice requires, pace his Principle of Economy of Rational Effort. Consequently, the claim that communicators actually work through all these complicated inferences seems psychologically unrealistic. To combat these charges, Grice’s response is to claim that implicature calculation is largely unconscious and implicit.”Indeed Grice’s principle of economy of rational effort. Bontly: “Background assumptions can be taken for granted, steps can be skipped, and only rarely need the entire process breach the surface of consciousness. This picture seems particularly plausible with a generalised implicatum as opposed to a particularized one.” When a particular use of an expression E, though unconventional, has become standard or regular (“I broke a finger”? “He’s pushing up the daisies”), the inferential process can be considerably stream-lined; it gets ‘short-circuited’ or ‘compressed by precedent’ (Bach and Harnish). “Bach’s and Harnish’s notion of short-circuited inference is similar to but not quite the same as J. L. Morgan’s notion of short-circuited implicature. The latter involves conventions of use (as Searle would put it), to which Bach and Harnish see their account as an alternative. Levinson objects to Bach’s and Harnish’s characterization of default inferences as those compressed by the weight of precedent. A generalised implicatum, Levinson says, ‘is generative, driven by general heuristics and not dependent on routinization’ But Levinson’s complaint against Bach and Harnish may seem uncharitable. Even on Bach’s and Harnish’s view, where a default inference is that ‘compressed by the weight of precedent’, a generalised implicatum is still generative: it is still generated by the maxims of conversation. Only the stream-lined character of the inference is dependent on precedent, not the implicatum itself. If the addressee has calculated the EXCLUSIVE meaning of ‘or’ enough times in the past (from  his mother, we’ll assume) it becomes the default, allowing one to proceed directly to the exclusive interpretation (unless something about the context provides a clue that the standard interpretation would here be inappropriate. Now, the idea that the generalised implicatum can be the default interpretation, reached without all the fancy inference, provides an obvious reply to the worry about tradeoffs. While it is true that a pragmatic inference, as Grice calls it, in contrast with the ‘logical inference, -- “Retrospective Epilogue” -- are in principle abductive, fairly complex and potentially laborious, familiarity can simplify the process enormously, to the point where it becomes no more difficult than dis-ambiguation.” But the appeal to a default interpretation raises an interesting difficulty that (to my knowledge) Grice never adequately addressed. It is now quite unclear why this default interpretation should be considered an implicatum rather than an additional sense of the expression.”Because it’s cancellable?Bontly: “To say that it is a default interpretation is, after all, to say that utterers and addressees learn to associate that interpretation with the type of expression in question. The default meaning is known in advance, and all one has to do is be on the lookout for information that could rule it out. “‘Short-circuited’ implicature-calculation is thus hard to differentiate from disambiguation, making Grice’s hypothesis look more like a notional variant than a real competitor to the ambiguity hypothesis. Insofar as Grice has considered this problem, his answer appears to be that linguistic meanings, being conventional, are inherently arbitrary.”cf. Bach and Harnish, 1979, pp. 192–195).”Indeed, in his evolutionary take on language, it all starts with Green’s self-expression. You get hit, and you express pain unvoluntarily. Then you proceed to simulate the response in absence of the hit, but the meaning is “I’m in pain.” Finally, you adopt the conventions, arbitrary, and say, ‘pain,’ which is only arbitrarily connected with, well, the pain. It is the last stage that Grice stresses as ‘artificial,’ and ‘arbitrary,’ “non-iconic,” as he retorts to Peirceian terminology he was familiar with since his Oxford days. Bontly: “The exclusive use of ‘or’, on the other hand, is entirely predictable from the conversational principle, so there is nothing arbitrary about it. Thus the exclusive interpretation cannot be part of the encoded meaning, even if it is the default interpretation. Familiarity with that use, in other words, can remove the need to go through the canonical inference, but it does not change the fact that the use has a ‘natural’ (i.e., non-conventional, principled, indeed rational) explanation. It doesn’t change the fact that it is calculable. At this point, however, Grice’s defense of default pragmatic interpretations collides with our remaining issue, the problem of a dead metaphor, such as “He is pushing up the daisies.”” Or as Grice prefers, an ‘established’ or ‘recognised’ ‘idiom.’Bontly: “A metaphor and other conversational implicata can become conventionalized and ‘die’, turning into new senses. In many such cases the original rationale for the use is long forgotten, but in other cases the dead metaphor remains calculable. A dead metaphors thus pose a nasty, macabre?, dilemma for Grice.”Especially if the implicatum is “He is dead”!Bontly: “On the one hand, it is tempting to argue that a dead metaphor involves a new conventional meaning precisely because the interpretation in question is no longer actually inferred via Gricean inferences (though one could do so if one had to—if, say, one somehow forgot that the expression had this secondary meaning). If a conversational implicatum had to be not just calculaBLE but actually calculatED, that would suffice to explain why this one-time, one-off, implicatum is now semantically significant. But that reply is apparently closed to pragmatists, for then it will be said that the same is true of (e.g.) the exclusive use of ‘or.’ The exclusive interpretation is certainly calculabLE, but since no one actually calculatES it (except in the most unusual of circumstances, as Grice at Harvard!), the implication should be considered semantic, not pragmatic. On the other hand, Grice might maintain that an implicatum need only be calculabLE and stick by their view that the exclusive reading of ‘or’ is conversationally implicated. But then we shall have to face the consequence that many a dead metaphor (“He is pushing up the daisies”) is likewise calculabLE and thus, according to the present view, ought not to be considered conventional meanings of the expressions in question, which in most cases seems quite wrong.”I’m never sure what Grice means by an ‘established idiom.’ Established by whom? Perhaps he SHOULD consult the dictionary every now and then! Sad the access to OED3 is so expensive!Bontly: What one needs, evidently, is some reason to treat these two types of cases differently.To treat the exclusive use of ‘or’ as an implicatum (even though it is only rarely calculatED as such) while at the same time to view (e.g.) the once metaphorical use of ‘incense’ (or ‘… pushing up the daisies”) as semantically significant (even though it remains calculabLE).” And the developmental account of parsimony offers just such a reason. On the present view, the reason that the ambiguity account has the burden of proof has to do with the nature of the acquisition, learning, ontogenetical process and specifically with the presumption that language learners will avoid postulating unnecessary senses. But the implicatum must be calculable by the learner, given his prior understanding of the expression E and his level of pragmatic sophistication.”Grice was a sophisticated. As I think Dora B.-O knows, Moore has been claiming that Grice’s idea that animals cannot mean, because they are not ‘sophisticated’ enough, is an empirical claim, even for Grice!Bontly: “t may be, therefore, that children at the relevant developmental stage have no difficulty understanding the exclusive use of ‘or’ (etc.) as an implicatum and yet lack the understanding necessary to predict that ‘incense’ could be used to mean to make or become angry, or that to say of someone that he ‘is pushing up the daisies,’ means that, having died and getting buried, the corpse is helping the flowers to grow. The child might not realize, for instance, that ‘incense’ also means an aromatic substance that burns with a pleasant odour, and even those who do probably lack the general background knowledge necessary to appreciate the metaphorical connections between burning and emotion.”Cf. Turner and Fauconnier on ‘blends.’Bontly: Either way, the metaphor would be dead to the child, forcing him to learn that use the same way they learn any arbitrary convention.”It may do to explore ‘established idioms’ in, say, parts of England, which are not so ‘established’ in OTHER parts. Nancy Mitford with his U and non-U distinction may do. “He went to Haddon Hall” invites, for Mitford, the ‘unintended’ implicature that the utterer is NOT upper-class. “Surely we drop “hall.’ What else can Haddon be?” But the inference may be lacking for a non-U addressee or utterer. Similarly, in the north of England, “our Mary,” invites the implicature of ‘affection,’ and this may go over the head of members of the south-of-England community.Bontly: “The way out of the dilemma, then, is to look to learning.”Alla Kripkenstein?Bontly: To the problem of tradeoffs, Grice can reply that it is better to multiply (if we must use the Occamist verb) inferences – logical inference and pragmatic inference -- than multiply senses because language acquisition is biased in that direction. And Grice may likewise answer the problem of a dead metaphor, or established idiom like, “He’s been pushing up the daisies for some time, now. The reason that Grice’s “M. O. R.” does not mandate an implicatum account for Grice as well is that such a dead metaphor or established idiom is not calculable by children at the time they learn such expressions, even if they are calculable by some adult speakers.”Is that a fact? I would think that a child is a ‘relentless literalist,’ as Grice called Austin. “Pushing up the daisies?” “I don’t see any daisies!”I think Brigitte Nerlich has a similar example re: irony: MOTHER: What a BEAUTIFUL day! (ironically)CHILD: What do you mean? It’s pouring and nasty. MOTHER: I was being ironic.I don’t think the child is going to posit a second sense to ‘beautiful’ meaning ‘nasty.’Bontly: “For the deciding question in applying Grice’s “M. O. R.” is NOT whether the implicatum account is available to a philosopher like Grice, but whether it is available to the learner! On this way of carving things up, by the way, some alleged ambiguities which Grice would treat as implicata could turn out to be semantically significant after all. Likewise, some allegedly dead metaphor may turn out to be very much alive.” Look! He did kick the bucket!” “But he’s PRETENDING to die, dear! Some uses, finally, may vary from utterer to utterer, there being no guarantee that every utterer will have learned the use in the same way. As a conclusion, a better understanding of developmental processes might therefore enlarge our appreciation of the ways in which semantics and pragmatics interact.”Indeed.REFERENCES Atlas, J. D. “Philosophy without Ambiguity.” Oxford: Clarendon Press. E: Wolfson, Oxford. Philosopher. And S. Levinson, “It-clefts, informativeness, and logical form: Radical pragmatics (revised standard version),” in P. Cole (ed.), Radical Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.Bach, K. “Thought and Reference,” Oxford.“Conversational impliciture,” Mind & Language, 9And R. Harnish, “Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts,” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bloom, P. “How Children Learn the Meanings of Words,” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  “Mind-reading, communication and the learning of names for things,” Mind & Language, 17Braine, M. and Rumain, B. “Development of comprehension of ‘or’: evidence for a sequence of developmental competencies,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 31. Davis, S. (ed.) “Pragmatics: A Reader,” Oxford Devitt, M. “The case for referential descriptions,” in M. Reimer/A. Bezuidenhout, “Descriptions and Beyond,” Oxford Doherty, M. “Children’s understanding of homonymy: meta-linguistic awareness and false belief,” Journal of Child Language, 27 Gazdar, G. “Pragmatics: Implicature, Presupposition, and Logical Form,” New York: Academic Press. Gleitman, L. “The structural sources of verb meanings,” Language Acquisition, 1Grice, H. P. “Vacuous names,” in D. Davidson and J. Hintikka, Words and Objections. Dordrecht: Reidel. Repr. in part in Ostertag, “Definite descriptions,” MIT.Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, pp. 41–58. Reprinted in Grice, 1989, and Davis, 1991. Grice, P. 1978: Further notes on logic and conversation. In P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, vol. 9, Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, pp. 113–128. Reprinted in Grice, 1989. Presupposition and conversational implicature. In P. Cole (ed.), Radical Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, 183–198. Reprinted in Grice, 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hesse, M. “Simplicity,” in P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: MacMillan.Jackendoff, R. “Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution,” Oxford. Kripke, S. “Speaker’s reference and semantic reference,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Repr. in Davis, 1991. Levinson, S. “Pragmatics,” Cambridge.“Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature,” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Markman, E./G. Wachtel, “Childrens’ use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meaning of words,” Cognitive Psychology, 20Mazzocco, M. “Children’s interpretations of homonyms: A developmental study,” Journal of Child Language, 24Morgan, J. L. “Two types of convention in indirect speech acts,” n P. Cole (ed.): Syntax and Semantics, vol. 9, Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, reprinted in Davis, 1991. Newton, I. “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,” A. Motte (trans.) and F. Cajori (rev.). Repr. in R. Hutchins (ed.), Great Books of the Western World, vol. 34. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952. Noveck, I. When children are more logical than adults are: Experimental investigations of scalar implicature, Cognition, 78, 165–188. And F. Chevaux, “The pragmatic development of and. In A. Ho, S. Fish, and B. Skarabela, Proceedings of the 26th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Papafragou, A. “Mind-reading and verbal communication,” Mind & Language, 17Paris, S. “Comprehension of language connectives and propositional logical relationships,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 16.Peters, A./E. Zaidel, “The acquisition of homonymy. Cognition, 8.Pinker, S. “Language Learnability and Language Development,” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reimer, M. “Donnellan’s distinction/Kripke’s test.” Analysis, 58.Ruhl, C. “On Monosemy: A Study in Linguistic Semantics,” Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Sadock, J. “On testing for conversational implicature,” in P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, vol. 9, Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, Repr. in Davis, 1991. Searle, J. R. “Indirect speech acts,” n P. Cole and J. Morgan, Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, Repr. in Davis, 1991. Slobin, D. “Crosslinguistic evidence for a language-making capacity,” n D. Slobin, The Cross-linguistic Study of Language Acquisition, vol. 2. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Smart, J. “Ockham’s razor,” in J. Fetzer, “Principles of Philosophical Reasoning,” Totowa, NJ: Rowan and Allanheld. Sober, E. “The principle of parsimony,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 32“Reconstructing the Past,” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.“Let’s razor Ockham’s razor,” in D. Knowles, Explanation and Its Limits. Cambridge.Stalnaker, R. C. “Pragmatic presupposition,” in M. Munitz/P. Unger, “Semantics and Philosophy,” New York: Academic Press, pp. 197–213. Repr. in Davis, 1991. Stampe, D. W. “Attributives and interrogatives,” in M. Munitz/P. Unger, Semantics and Philosophy. New York: Academic Press.Sternberg, R. “Developmental patterns in the encoding and combination of logical connectives,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 28 Van Fraassen, B. “The Scientific Image,” Oxford.Walker, R. C. S. “Conversational implicatures: a reply to Cohen,” in S. W. Blackburn, Meaning, Reference, and Necessity. Cambridge. Ziff, P. “Semantic Analysis.” Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Zwicky, A./J. Sadock, “Ambiguity tests and how to fail them,” in J. Kimball, Syntax and Semantics, vol. 4. New York: Academic Press.Refs: The Grice Papers, BANC, Bancroft.

modus. “The distinction between Judicative and Volitive Interrogatives corresponds with the difference between cases in which a questioner is indicated as being, in one way or another, concerned to obtain information ("Is he at home?"), and cases in which the questioner is indicated as being concerned to settle a problem about what he is to do ("Am I to leave the door open?", "Is the prisoner to be released?", "Shall I go on reading?"). This difference is better represented in Grecian and Roman.”The Greek word was ‘egklisis,’ which Priscian translates as ‘modus’ and defines as ‘inclinatio anima, affectionis demonstrans.’ The Greeks recognised five: horistike, indicativus, pronuntiativus, finitus, or definitivus, prostastike, imperativus, euktike, optativus, hypotaktike (subjunctivus, or conjunnctivus, but also volitivus, hortativus, deliberativus, iussivus, prohibitivus anticipativus ) and aparemphatos infinitivus or infinitus.

modus optativus. optative enclisis (gre: ευκτική έγκλιση, euktike enclisis, hence it may be seen as a modus optatīvus. Something that fascinated Grice. The way an ‘action’ is modalised in the way one describes it. He had learned the basics for Greek and Latin at Oxford, and he was exhilarated to be able to teach now on the subtleties of the English system of ‘aspect.’ To ‘opt’ is to choose. So ‘optativus’ is the deliberative mode. Grice proved the freedom of the will with a “grammatical argument.” ‘Given that the Greeks and the Romans had an optative mode, there is free will.” Romans, having no special verbal forms recognized as Optative, had no need of the designation modus optativus. Yet they sometimes used it, ad imitationem.

modality, the manner in which a proposition (or statement) describes or applies to its subject matter. Derivatively ‘modality’ refers to characteristics of entities or states of affairs described by modal propositions. Modalities are classified as follows: Assertoric propositions are expressions of mere fact. Alethic modalities include necessity and possibility (the latter two sometimes are referred to respectively as the apodictic and problematic modalities). The causal modalities include causal (or empirical) necessity and possibility, whereas the deontic modalities include obligation and permittedness. There are epistemic modalities such as knowing that and doxastic ones such as believing that. Following medieval logicians, propositions can be distinguished on the basis of whether the modality is introduced via adverbial modification of the copula or verb (sensus divisus) or via a modal operator that modifies the proposition (sensus compositus). Today many deny the distinction or confine attention just to modal operators. Modal operators in non-assertoric propositions are said to produce referential opacity or oblique contexts in which truth is not preserved under substitution of extensionally equivalent expressions. Modal and deontic logics provide formal analyses of various modalities. Intensional logics investigate the logic of oblique contexts. Modal logicians have produced possible worlds semantics interpretations wherein propositions MP with modal operator M are true provided P is true in all suitable (e.g., logically possible, causally possible, morally permissible, rationally acceptable) possible worlds. Modal realism grants ontological status to possible worlds other than the actual world or otherwise commits to objective modalities in nature or reality.

modal logic, the study of the logic of the operators ‘it is possible that’ and ‘it is necessary that’. These operators are usually symbolized by B and A respectively, and each can be defined in terms of the other. To say that a proposition is possible, or possibly true, is to say that it is not necessarily false. Thus B f could be regarded as an abbreviation of -A-f. Equally, to say that a proposition is necessary, or necessarily true, is to deny that its negation is possible. Thus Af could be regarded as an abbreviation of -B-f. However, it aids comprehension to take both operators as primitive. Systems of sentential modal logic are obtained by adding B and A to sentential logic; if the sentential logic is classical/intuitionist/minimal, so is the corresponding modal logic. We concentrate on the classical case here. As with any kind of logic, there are three components to a system of modal logic: a syntax, which determines the formal language + and the notion of well-formed formula (wff); a semantics, which determines the semantic consequence relation X on +-wffs; and a system of inference, which determines the mnemic causation modal logic 574 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 574 deductive consequence relation Y on +-wffs. The syntax of the modal operators is the same in every system: briefly, the modal operators are one-place connectives like negation. There are many different systems of modal logic, some of which can be generated by different ways of setting up the semantics. Each of the familiar ways of doing this can be associated with a sound and complete system of inference. Alternatively, a system of inference can be laid down first and we can search for a semantics for it relative to which it is sound and complete. Here we give primacy to the semantic viewpoint. Semantic consequence is defined in modal logic in the usual classical way: a set of sentences 9 semantically entails a sentence s, 9 X s, if and only if no interpretation I makes all members of 9 true and s false. The question is how to extend the notion of interpretation from sentential logic to accommodate the modal operators. In classical sentential logic, an interpretation is an assignment to each sentence letter of exactly one of the two truth-values = and where n % m ! 1. So to determine relative possibility in a model, we identify R with a collection of pairs of the form where each of u and v is in W. If a pair is in R, v is possible relative to u, and if is not in R, v is impossible relative to u. The relative possibility relation then enters into the rules for evaluating modal operators. For example, we do not want to say that at the actual world, it is possible for me to originate from a different sperm and egg, since the only worlds where this takes place are impossible relative to the actual world. So we have the rule that B f is true at a world u if f is true at some world v such that v is possible relative to u. Similarly, Af is true at a world u if f is true at every world v which is possible relative to u. R may have simple first-order properties such as reflexivity, (Ex)Rxx, symmetry, (Ex)(Ey)(Rxy P Ryx), and transitivity, (Ex)(Ey)(Ez)((Rxy & Ryz) P Rxz), and different modal systems can be modal logic modal logic 575 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 575 obtained by imposing different combinations of these on R (other systems can be obtained from higher-order constraints). The least constrained system is the system K, in which no structural properties are put on R. In K we have B (B & C) X B B, since if B (B & C) holds at w* then (B & C) holds at some world w possible relative to w*, and thus by the truth-function for &, B holds at w as well, so B B holds at w*. Hence any interpretation that makes B (B & C) true (% true at w*) also makes B B true. Since there are no restrictions on R in K, we can expect B (B & C) X B B in every system of modal logic generated by constraining R. However, for K we also have C Z B C. For suppose C holds at w*. B C holds at w* only if there is some world possible relative to w* where C holds. But there need be no such world. In particular, since R need not be reflexive, w* itself need not be possible relative to w*. Concomitantly, in any system for which we stipulate a reflexive R, we will have C X B C. The simplest such system is known as T, which has the same semantics as K except that R is stipulated to be reflexive in every interpretation. In other systems, further or different constraints are put on R. For example, in the system B, each interpretation must have an R that is reflexive and symmetric, and in the system S4, each interpretation must have an R that is reflexive and transitive. In B we have B C Z B B C, as can be shown by an interpretation with nontransitive R, while in S4 we have B AC Z C, as can be shown by an interpretation with non-symmetric R. Correspondingly, in S4, B C X B B C, and in B, B AC X C. The system in which R is reflexive, transitive, and symmetric is called S5, and in this system, R can be omitted. For if R has all three properties, R is an equivalence relation, i.e., it partitions W into mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive equivalence classes. If Cu is the equivalence class to which u belongs, then the truthvalue of a formula at u is independent of the truth-values of sentence letters at worlds not in Cu, so only the worlds in Cw* are relevant to the truth-values of sentences in an S5 interpretation. But within Cw* R is universal: every world is possible relative to every other. Consequently, in an S5 interpretation, we need not specify a relative possibility relation, and the evaluation rules for B and A need not mention relative possibility; e.g., we can say that B f is true at a world u if there is at least one world v at which f is true. Note that by the characteristics of R, whenever 9 X s in K, T, B, or S4, then 9 X s in S5: the other systems are contained in S5. K is contained in all the systems we have mentioned, while T is contained in B and S4, neither of which is contained in the other. Sentential modal logics give rise to quantified modal logics, of which quantified S5 is the bestknown. Just as, in the sentential case, each world in an interpretation is associated with a valuation of sentence letters as in non-modal sentential logic, so in quantified modal logic, each world is associated with a valuation of the sort familiar in non-modal first-order logic. More specifically, in quantified S5, each world w is assigned a domain Dw – the things that exist at w – such that at least one Dw is non-empty, and each atomic n-place predicate of the language is assigned an extension Extw of n-tuples of objects that satisfy the predicate at w. So even restricting ourselves to just the one first-order extension of a sentential system, S5, various degrees of freedom are already evident. We discuss the following: (a) variability of domains, (b) interpretation of quantifiers, and (c) predication. (a) Should all worlds have the same domain or may the domains of different worlds be different? The latter appears to be the more natural choice; e.g., if neither of of Dw* and Du are subsets of the other, this represents the intuitive idea that some things that exist might not have, and that there could have been things that do not actually exist (though formulating this latter claim requires adding an operator for ‘actually’ to the language). So we should distinguish two versions of S5, one with constant domains, S5C, and the other with variable domains, S5V. (b) Should the truth of (Dn)f at a world w require that f is true at w of some object in Dw or merely of some object in D (D is the domain of all possible objects, 4weWDw)? The former treatment is called the actualist reading of the quantifiers, the latter, the possibilist reading. In S5C there is no real choice, since for any w, D % Dw, but the issue is live in S5V. (c) Should we require that for any n-place atomic predicate F, an n-tuple of objects satisfies F at w only if every member of the n-tuple belongs to Dw, i.e., should we require that atomic predicates be existence-entailing? If we abbreviate (Dy) (y % x) by Ex (for ‘x exists’), then in S5C, A(Ex)AEx is logically valid on the actualist reading of E (%-D-) and on the possibilist. On the former, the formula says that at each world, anything that exists at that world exists at every world, which is true; while on the latter, using the definition of ‘Ex’, it says that at each world, anything that exists at some world or other is such that at every world, it exists at some world or other, which is also true; indeed, the formula stays valid in S5C with possibilist quantifiers even if we make E a primitive logical constant, stipulated to be true at every w of modal logic modal logic 576 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 576 exactly the things that exist at w. But in S5V with actualist quantifiers, A(Ex)AEx is invalid, as is (Ex)AEx – consider an interpretation where for some u, Du is a proper subset of Dw*. However, in S5V with possibilist quantifiers, the status of the formula, if ‘Ex’ is defined, depends on whether identity is existence-entailing. If it is existenceentailing, then A(Ex)AEx is invalid, since an object in D satisfies (Dy)(y % x) at w only if that object exists at w, while if identity is not existence-entailing, the formula is valid. The interaction of the various options is also evident in the evaluation of two well-known schemata: the Barcan formula, B (Dx)fx P (Dx) B fx; and its converse, (Dx) B fx P B (Dx)fx. In S5C with ‘Ex’ either defined or primitive, both schemata are valid, but in S5V with actualist quantifiers, they both fail. For the latter case, if we substitute -E for f in the converse Barcan formula we get a conditional whose antecedent holds at w* if there is u with Du a proper subset of Dw*, but whose consequent is logically false. The Barcan formula fails when there is a world u with Du not a subset of Dw*, and the condition f is true of some non-actual object at u and not of any actual object there. For then B (Dx)f holds at w* while (Dx) B fx fails there. However, if we require atomic predicates to be existence-entailing, then instances of the converse Barcan formula with f atomic are valid. In S5V with possibilist quantifiers, all instances of both schemata are valid, since the prefixes (Dx) B and B (Dx) correspond to (Dx) (Dw) and (Dw) (Dx), which are equivalent (with actualist quantifiers, the prefixes correspond to (Dx 1 Dw*), and (Dw) (Dx 1 Dw) which are non-equivalent if Dw and Dw* need not be the same set). Finally in S5V with actualist quantifiers, the standard quantifier introduction and elimination rules must be adjusted. Suppose c is a name for an object that does not actually exist; then - Ec is true but (Dx) - Ex is false. The quantifier rules must be those of free logic: we require Ec & fc before we infer (Dv)fv and Ec P fc, as well as the usual EI restrictions, before we infer (Ev)fv.

mode from Latin modus, ‘way’, ‘fashion’, a term used in many senses in philosophy. In Aristotelian logic, it refers either to the arrangement of universal, particular, affirmative, or negative propositions within a syllogism, only certain of which are valid this is often tr. as ‘mood’ in English, or to the property a proposition has by virtue of which it is necessary or contingent, possible or impossible. In Scholastic metaphysics, it was often used in a not altogether technical sense to mean that which characterizes a thing and distinguishes it from others. Micraelius Lexicon philosophicum, 1653 writes that “a mode does not compose a thing, but distinguishes it and makes it determinate.” It was also used in the context of the modal distinction in the theory of distinctions to designate the distinction that holds between a substance and its modes or between two modes of a single substance. The term ‘mode’ also appears in the technical vocabulary of medieval speculative grammar in connection with the notions of modes of signifying modi significandi, modes of understanding modi intelligendi, and modes of being modi essendi. The term ‘mode’ became especially important in the seventeenth century, when Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke each took it up, giving it three somewhat different special meanings within their respective systems. Descartes makes ‘mode’ a central notion in his metaphysics in his Principia philosophiae. For Descartes, each substance is characterized by a principal attribute, thought for mind and extension for body. Modes, then, are particular ways of being extended or thinking, i.e., particular sizes, shapes, etc., or particular thoughts, properties in the broad sense that individual things substances have. In this way, ‘mode’ occupies the role in Descartes’s philosophy that ‘accident’ does in Aristotelian philosophy. But for Descartes, each mode must be connected with the principal attribute of a substance, a way of being extended or a way of thinking, whereas for the Aristotelian, accidents may or may not be connected with the essence of the substance in which they inhere. Like Descartes, Spinoza recognizes three basic metaphysical terms, ‘substance,’ ‘attribute’, and ‘mode’. Recalling Descartes, he defines ‘mode’ as “the affections of a substance, or that which is in another, and which is also conceived through another” Ethics I. But for Spinoza, there is only one substance, which has all possible attributes. This makes it somewhat difficult to determine exactly what Spinoza means by ‘modes’, whether they are to be construed as being in some sense “properties” of God, the one infinite modal logic of programs mode 577    577 substance, or whether they are to be construed more broadly as simply individual things that depend for their existence on God, just as Cartesian modes depend on Cartesian substance. Spinoza also introduces somewhat obscure distinctions between infinite and finite modes, and between immediate and mediate infinite modes. Locke uses ‘mode’ in a way that evidently derives from Descartes’s usage, but that also differs from it. For Locke, modes are “such complex Ideas, which however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as Dependences on, or Affections of Substances” Essay II. Modes are thus ideas that represent to us the complex properties of things, ideas derived from what Locke calls the simple ideas that come to us from experience. Locke distinguishes between simple modes like number, space, and infinity, which are supposed to be constructed by compounding the same idea many times, and mixed modes like obligation or theft, which are supposed to be compounded of many simple ideas of different sorts. 

modularity, the commitment to functionally independent and specialized cognitive systems in psychological organization, or, more generally, in the organization of any complex system. Modularity entails that behavior is the product of components with subordinate functions, that these functions are realized in discrete physical systems, and that the subsystems are minimally interactive. Modular organization varies from simple decomposability to what Herbert Simon calls near decomposability. In the former, component systems are independent, operating according to intrinsically determined principles; system behavior is an additive or aggregative function of these independent contributions. In the latter, the short-run behavior of components is independent of the behavior of other components; the system behavior is a relatively simple function of component contributions. In the early nineteenth century, Franz Joseph Gall 17581828 defended a modular organization for the mind/brain, holding that the cerebral hemispheres consist of a variety of organs, or centers, each subserving specific intellectual and moral functions. This picture of the brain as a collection of relatively independent organs contrasts sharply with the traditional view that intellectual activity involves the exercise of a general faculty in a variety of domains, a view that was common to Descartes and Hume as well as Gall’s major opponents such as Pierre Flourens 17941867. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the  physicians Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud 17961 and Pierre-Paul Broca 182480 defended the view that language is controlled by localized structures in the left hemisphere and is relatively independent of other cognitive activities. It was later discovered by Karl Wernicke 18485 that there are at least two centers for the control of language, one more posterior and one more anterior. On these views, there are discrete physical structures responsible for language, which are largely independent of one another and of structures responsible for other psychological functions. This is therefore a modular organization. This view of the neurophysiological organization of language continues to have advocates into the late twentieth century, though the precise characterization of the functions these two centers serve is controversial. Many more recent views have tended to limit modularity to more peripheral functions such as vision, hearing, and motor control and speech, but have excluded so-called higher cognitive processes. 

modus ponens, in full, modus ponendo ponens Latin, ‘proposing method’, 1 the argument form ‘If A then B; A; therefore, B’, and arguments of this form compare fallacy of affirming the consequent; 2 the rule of inference that permits one to infer the consequent of a conditional from that conditional and its antecedent. This is also known as the rule of /-elimination or rule of /- detachment. 

modus tollens, in full, modus tollendo tollens Latin, ‘removing method’, 1 the argument form ‘If A then B; not-B; therefore, not-A’, and arguments of this form compare fallacy of denying the antecedent; 2 the rule of inference that permits one to infer the negation of the antecedent of a conditional from that conditional and the negation of its consequent. 

Molina, L. de 15351600,  Jesuit theologian and philosopher. He studied and taught at Coimbra and Évora and also taught in Lisbon and Madrid. His most important works are the Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis“Free Will and Grace,” 1588, Commentaria in primam divi Thomae partem “Commentary on the First Part of Thomas’s Summa,” 1592, and De justitia et jure “On Justice and Law,” 15921613. Molina is best known for his doctrine of middle knowledge scientia media. Its aim was to preserve free will while maintaining the Christian doctrine of the efficacy of divine grace. It was opposed by Thomists such as Bañez, who maintained that God exercises physical predetermination over secondary causes of human action and, thus, that grace is intrinsically efficacious and independent of human will and merits. For Molina, although God has foreknowledge of what human beings will choose to do, neither that knowledge nor God’s grace determine human will; the cooperation concursus of divine grace with human will does not determine the will to a particular action. This is made possible by God’s middle knowledge, which is a knowledge in between the knowledge God has of what existed, exists, and will exist, and the knowledge God has of what has not existed, does not exist, and will not exist. Middle knowledge is God’s knowledge of conditional future contingent events, namely, of what persons would do under any possible set of circumstances. Thanks to this knowledge, God can arrange for certain human acts to occur by prearranging the circumstances surrounding the choice without determining the human will. Thus, God’s grace is concurrent with the act of the will and does not predetermine it, rendering the Thomistic distinction between sufficient and efficacious grace superfluous. 

Molyneux question, also called Molyneux’s problem, the question that, in correspondence with Locke, William Molyneux or Molineux, 1656 98, a Dublin lawyer and member of the Irish Parliament, posed and Locke inserted in the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1694; book 2, chap. 9, section 8: Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish a Cube, and a Sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and t’other, which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see. Quære, Whether by his sight, before he touch’d them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe, which the Cube. Although it is tempting to regard Molyneux’s question as straightforwardly empirical, attempts to gauge the abilities of newly sighted adults have yielded disappointing and ambiguous results. More interesting, perhaps, is the way in which different theories of perception answer the question. Thus, according to Locke, sensory modalities constitute discrete perceptual channels, the contents of which perceivers must learn to correlate. Such a theory answers the question in the negative as did Molyneux himself. Other theories encourage different responses. 

Montaigne, Michel de 153392,  essayist and philosopher who set forth the Renaissance version of Grecian skepticism. Born and raised in Bordeaux, he became its mayor, and was an adviser to leaders of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. In 1568 he tr. the work of the  rationalist theologian Raimund Sebond on natural theology. Shortly thereafter he began writing essais, attempts, as the author said, to paint himself. These, the first in this genre, are rambling, curious discussions of various topics, suggesting tolerance and an undogmatic Stoic morality. The longest essai, the “Apology for Raimund Sebond,” “defends” Sebond’s rationalism by arguing that since no adequate reasons or evidence could be given to support any point of view in theology, philosophy, or science, one should not blame Sebond for his views. Montaigne then presents and develops the skeptical arguments found in Sextus Empiricus and Cicero. Montaigne related skeptical points to thencurrent findings and problems. Data of explorers, he argues, reinforce the cultural and ethical relativism of the ancient Skeptics. Disagreements between Scholastics, Platonists, and Renaissance naturalists on almost everything cast doubt on whether any theory is correct. Scientists like Copernicus and Paracelsus contradict previous scientists, and will probably be contradicted by future ones. Montaigne then offers the more theoretical objections of the Skeptics, about the unreliability of sense experience and reasoning and our inability to find an unquestionable criterion of true knowledge. Trying to know reality is like trying to clutch water. What should we then do? Montaigne advocates suspending judgment on all theories that go beyond experience, accepting experience undogmatically, living according to the dictates of nature, and following the rules and customs of one’s society. Therefore one should remain in the religion in which one was born, and accept only those principles that God chooses to reveal to us. Montaigne’s skepticism greatly influenced European thinkers in undermining confidence in previous theories and forcing them to seek new ways of grounding knowledge. His acceptance of religion on custom and faith provided a way of living with total skepticism. His presentation of skepticism in a modern language shaped the vocabulary and the problems of philosophy in modern times. 

Montanism, a charismatic, schismatic movement in early Christianity, originating in Phrygia in the late second century. It rebuked the mainstream church for laxity and apathy, and taught moral purity, new, i.e. postbiblical, revelation, and the imminent end of the world. Traditional accounts, deriving from critics of the movement, contain exaggerations and probably some fabrications. Montanus himself, abetted by the prophetesses Maximilla and Prisca, announced in ecstatic speech a new, final age of prophecy. This fulfilled the biblical promises that in the last days the Holy Spirit would be poured out universally Joel 2: 28ff.; Acts 2: 16ff. and would teach “the whole truth” Jon. 14:26; 16:13. It also empowered the Montanists to enjoin more rigorous discipline than that required by Jesus. The sect denied that forgiveness through baptism covered serious subsequent sin; forbade remarriage for widows and widowers; practiced fasting; and condemned believers who evaded persecution. Some later followers may have identified Montanus with the Holy Spirit itself, though he claimed only to be the Spirit’s mouthpiece. The “new prophecy” flourished for a generation, especially in North Africa, gaining a famous convert in Tertullian. But the church’s bishops repudiated the movement’s criticisms and innovations, and turned more resolutely against postapostolic revelation, apocalyptic expectation, and ascetic extremes.

Montesquieu, Baron de La Brède et de, title of Charles-Louis de Secondat 16891755,  political philosopher, the political philosophe of the Enlightenment. He was born at La Brède, educated at the Oratorian Collège de Juilly 170005, and received law degrees from the  of Bordeaux 1708. From his uncle he inherited the barony of Montesquieu 1716 and the office of Président à Mortier at the Parliament of Guyenne at Bordeaux. Fame, national monism Montesquieu 581    581 and international, came suddenly 1721 with the Lettres persanes “The Persian Letters”, published in Holland and France, a landmark of the Enlightenment. His Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle en Europe, written and printed 1734 to remind the authorities of his qualifications and availability, delivered the wrong message at the wrong time anti-militarism, pacifism, free trade, while France supported Poland’s King Stanislas, dethroned by Russia and Austria. Montesquieu withdrew the Réflexions before publication and substituted the Considerations on the Romans: the same thesis is expounded here, but in the exclusively classical context of ancient history. The stratagem succeeded: the Amsterdam edition was freely imported; the Paris edition appeared with a royal privilège 1734. A few months after the appearance of the Considerations, he undertook L’Esprit des lois, the outline of a modern political science, conceived as the foundation of an effective governmental policy. His optimism was shaken by the disasters of the War of Austrian Succession 174048; the Esprit des lois underwent hurried changes that upset its original plan. During the very printing process, the author was discovering the true essence of his philosophie pratique: it would never culminate in a final, invariable program, but in an orientation, continuously, intelligently adapting to the unpredictable circumstances of historical time in the light of permanent values. According to L’Esprit des lois, governments are either republics, monarchies, or despotisms. The principles, or motivational forces, of these types of government are, respectively, political virtue, honor, and fear. The type of government a people has depends on its character, history, and geographical situation. Only a constitutional government that separates its executive, legislative, and judicial powers preserves political liberty, taken as the power to do what one ought to will. A constitutional monarchy with separation of powers is the best form of government. Montesquieu influenced the authors of the U.S. Constitution and the political philosophers Burke and Rousseau.  

Moore: g. e. – cited by H. P. Grice. Irish London-born philosopher who spearheaded the attack on idealism and was a major supporter of realism in all its forms: metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological. He was born in Upper Norwood, a suburb of London; did his undergraduate work at Cambridge ; spent 84 as a fellow of Trinity ; returned to Cambridge in 1 as a lecturer; and was granted a professorship there in 5. He also served as editor of Mind. The bulk of his work falls into four categories: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophical methodology. Metaphysics. In this area, Moore is mainly known for his attempted refutation of idealism and his defense thereby of realism. In his “The Refutation of Idealism” 3, he argued that there is a crucial premise that is essential to all possible arguments for the idealistic conclusion that “All reality is mental spiritual.” This premise is: “To be is to be perceived” in the broad sense of ‘perceive’. Moore argued that, under every possible interpretation of it, that premise is either a tautology or false; hence no significant conclusion can ever be inferred from it. His positive defense of realism had several prongs. One was to show that there are certain claims held by non-realist philosophers, both idealist ones and skeptical ones. Moore argued, in “A Defense of Common Sense” 5, that these claims are either factually false or self-contradictory, or that in some cases there is no good reason to believe them. Among the claims that Moore attacked are these: “Propositions about purported material facts are false”; “No one has ever known any such propositions to be true”; “Every purported physical fact is logically dependent on some mental fact”; and “Every physical fact is causally dependent on some mental fact.” Another major prong of Moore’s defense of realism was to argue for the existence of an external world and later to give a “Proof of an External World” 3. Epistemology. Most of Moore’s work in this area dealt with the various kinds of knowledge we have, why they must be distinguished, and the problem of perception and our knowledge of an external world. Because he had already argued for the existence of an external world in his metaphysics, he here focused on how we know it. In many papers and chapters e.g., “The Nature and Reality of Objects of Perception,” 6 he examined and at times supported three main positions: naive or direct realism, representative or indirect realism, and phenomenalism. Although he seemed to favor direct realism at first, in the majority of his papers he found representative realism to be the most supportable position despite its problems. It should also be noted that, in connection with his leanings mood toward representative realism, Moore maintained the existence of sense-data and argued at length for an account of just how they are related to physical objects. That there are sense-data Moore never doubted. The question was, What is their ontological status? With regard to the various kinds of knowledge or ways of knowing, Moore made a distinction between dispositional or non-actualized and actualized knowledge. Within the latter Moore made distinctions between direct apprehension often known as knowledge by acquaintance, indirect apprehension, and knowledge proper or propositional knowledge. He devoted much of his work to finding the conditions for knowledge proper. Ethics. In his major work in ethics, Principia Ethica 3, Moore maintained that the central problem of ethics is, What is good?  meaning by this, not what things are good, but how ‘good’ is to be defined. He argued that there can be only one answer, one that may seem disappointing, namely: good is good, or, alternatively, ‘good’ is indefinable. Thus ‘good’ denotes a “unique, simple object of thought” that is indefinable and unanalyzable. His first argument on behalf of that claim consisted in showing that to identify good with some other object i.e., to define ‘good’ is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. To commit this fallacy is to reduce ethical propositions to either psychological propositions or reportive definitions as to how people use words. In other words, what was meant to be an ethical proposition, that X is good, becomes a factual proposition about people’s desires or their usage of words. Moore’s second argument ran like this: Suppose ‘good’ were definable. Then the result would be even worse than that of reducing ethical propositions to non-ethical propositions  ethical propositions would be tautologies! For example, suppose you defined ‘good’ as ‘pleasure’. Then suppose you maintained that pleasure is good. All you would be asserting is that pleasure is pleasure, a tautology. To avoid this conclusion ‘good’ must mean something other than ‘pleasure’. Why is this the naturalistic fallacy? Because good is a non-natural property. But even if it were a natural one, there would still be a fallacy. Hence some have proposed calling it the definist fallacy  the fallacy of attempting to define ‘good’ by any means. This argument is often known as the open question argument because whatever purported definition of ‘good’ anyone offers, it would always be an open question whether whatever satisfies the definition really is good. In the last part of Principia Ethica Moore turned to a discussion of what sorts of things are the greatest goods with which we are acquainted. He argued for the view that they are personal affection and aesthetic enjoyments. Philosophical methodology. Moore’s methodology in philosophy had many components, but two stand out: his appeal to and defense of common sense and his utilization of various methods of philosophical/conceptual analysis. “A Defense of Common Sense” argued for his claim that the commonsense view of the world is wholly true, and for the claim that any view which opposed that view is either factually false or self-contradictory. Throughout his writings Moore distinguished several kinds of analysis and made use of them extensively in dealing with philosophical problems. All of these may be found in the works cited above and other essays gathered into Moore’s Philosophical Studies2 and Philosophical Papers 9. These have been referred to as refutational analysis, with two subforms, showing contradictions and “translation into the concrete”; distinctional analysis; decompositional analysis either definitional or divisional; and reductional analysis. Moore was greatly revered as a teacher. Many of his students and colleagues have paid high tribute to him in very warm and grateful terms.  .

Moore’s paradox, as first discussed by G. E. Moore, the perplexity involving assertion of what is expressed by conjunctions such as ‘It’s raining, but I believe it isn’t’ and ‘It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is’. The oddity of such presenttense first-person uses of ‘to believe’ seems peculiar to those conjunctions just because it is assumed both that, when asserting  roughly, representing as true  a conjunction, one also asserts its conjuncts, and that, as a rule, the assertor believes the asserted proposition. Thus, no perplexity arises from assertions of, for instance, ‘It’s raining today, but I falsely believed it wasn’t until I came out to the porch’ and ‘If it’s raining but I believe it isn’t, I have been misled by the weather report’. However, there are reasons to think that, if we rely only on these assumptions and examples, our characterization of the problem is unduly narrow. First, assertion seems relevant only because we are interested in what the assertor believes. Secondly, those conjunctions are disturbing only insofar as they show that Moore’s paradox Moore’s paradox 583    583 some of the assertor’s beliefs, though contingent, can only be irrationally held. Thirdly, autobiographical reports that may justifiably be used to charge the reporter with irrationality need be neither about his belief system, nor conjunctive, nor true e.g., ‘I don’t exist’, ‘I have no beliefs’, nor false e.g., ‘It’s raining, but I have no evidence that it is’. So, Moore’s paradox is best seen as the problem posed by contingent propositions that cannot be justifiably believed. Arguably, in forming a belief of those propositions, the believer acquires non-overridable evidence against believing them. A successful analysis of the problem along these lines may have important epistemological consequences. 

moral dilemma. 1 Any problem where morality is relevant. This broad use includes not only conflicts among moral reasons but also conflicts between moral reasons and reasons of law, religion, or self-interest. In this sense, Abraham is in a moral dilemma when God commands him to sacrifice his son, even if he has no moral reason to obey. Similarly, I am in a moral dilemma if I cannot help a friend in trouble without forgoing a lucrative but morally neutral business opportunity. ’Moral dilemma’ also often refers to 2 any topic area where it is not known what, if anything, is morally good or right. For example, when one asks whether abortion is immoral in any way, one could call the topic “the moral dilemma of abortion.” This epistemic use does not imply that anything really is immoral at all. Recently, moral philosophers have discussed a much narrower set of situations as “moral dilemmas.” They usually define ‘moral dilemma’ as 3 a situation where an agent morally ought to do each of two acts but cannot do both. The bestknown example is Sartre’s student who morally ought to care for his mother in Paris but at the same time morally ought to go to England to join the Free  and fight the Nazis. However, ‘ought’ covers ideal actions that are not morally required, such as when someone ought to give to a certain charity but is not required to do so. Since most common examples of moral dilemmas include moral obligations or duties, or other requirements, it is more accurate to define ‘moral dilemma’ more narrowly as 4 a situation where an agent has a moral requirement to do each of two acts but cannot do both. Some philosophers also refuse to call a situation a moral dilemma when one of the conflicting requirements is clearly overridden, such as when I must break a trivial promise in order to save a life. To exclude such resolvable conflicts, ‘moral dilemma’ can be defined as 5 a situation where an agent has a moral requirement to adopt each of two alternatives, and neither requirement is overridden, but the agent cannot fulfill both. Another common move is to define ‘moral dilemma’ as 6 a situation where every alternative is morally wrong. This is equivalent to 4 or 5, respectively, if an act is morally wrong whenever it violates any moral requirement or any non-overridden moral requirement. However, we usually do not call an act wrong unless it violates an overriding moral requirement, and then 6 rules out moral dilemmas by definition, since overriding moral requirements clearly cannot conflict. Although 5 thus seems preferable, some would object that 5 includes trivial requirements and conflicts, such as conflicts between trivial promises. To include only tragic situations, we could define ‘moral dilemma’ as 7 a situation where an agent has a strong moral obligation or requirement to adopt each of two alternatives, and neither is overridden, but the agent cannot adopt both alternatives. This definition is strong enough to raise the important controversies about moral dilemmas without being so strong as to rule out their possibility by definition.

moral epistemology, the discipline, at the intersection of ethics and epistemology, that studies the epistemic status and relations of moral judgments and principles. It has developed out of an interest, common to both ethics and epistemology, in questions of justification and justifiability  in epistemology, of statements or beliefs, and in ethics, of actions as well as judgments of actions and also general principles of judgment. Its most prominent questions include the following. Can normative claims be true or false? If so, how can they be known to be true or false? If not, what status do they have, and are they capable of justification? If they are capable of justification, how can they be justified? Does the justification of normative claims differ with respect to particular claims and with respect to general principles? In epistemology recent years have seen a tendency to accept as valid an account of knowledge as entailing justified true belief, a conception that requires an account not just of truth but also of justification and of justified belief. Thus, under what conditions is someone justified, epistemically, in believing something? Justification, of actions, of judgments, and of principles, has long been a central element in ethics. It is only recently that justification in ethics came to be thought of as an epistemological problem, hence ‘moral epistemology’, as an expression, is a fairly recent coinage, although its problems have a long lineage. One long-standing linkage is provided by the challenge of skepticism. Skepticism in ethics can be about the existence of any genuine distinction between right and wrong, or it can focus on the possibility of attaining any knowledge of right and wrong, good or bad. Is there a right answer? is a question in the metaphysics of ethics. Can we know what the right answer is, and if so how? is one of moral epistemology. Problems of perception and observation and ones about observation statements or sense-data play an important role in epistemology. There is not any obvious parallel in moral epistemology, unless it is the role of prereflective moral judgments, or commonsense moral judgments  moral judgments unguided by any overt moral theory  which can be taken to provide the data of moral theory, and which need to be explained, systematized, coordinated, or revised to attain an appropriate relation between theory and data. This would be analogous to taking the data of epistemology to be provided, not by sense-data or observations but by judgments of perception or observation statements. Once this step is taken the parallel is very close. One source of moral skepticism is the apparent lack of any observational counterpart for moral predicates, which generates the question how moral judgments can be true if there is nothing for them to correspond to. Another source of moral skepticism is apparently constant disagreement and uncertainty, which would appear to be explained by the skeptical hypothesis denying the reality of moral distinctions. Noncognitivism in ethics maintains that moral judgments are not objects of knowledge, that they make no statements capable of truth or falsity, but are or are akin to expressions of attitudes. Some other major differences among ethical theories are largely epistemological in character. Intuitionism maintains that basic moral propositions are knowable by intuition. Empiricism in ethics maintains that moral propositions can be established by empirical means or are complex forms of empirical statements. Ethical rationalism maintains that the fundamental principles of morality can be established a priori as holding of necessity. This is exemplified by Kant’s moral philosophy, in which the categorical imperative is regarded as synthetic a priori; more recently by what Alan Gewirth b.2 calls the “principle of generic consistency,” which he claims it is selfcontradictory to deny. Ethical empiricism is exemplified by classical utilitarianism, such as that of Bentham, which aspires to develop ethics as an empirical science. If the consequences of actions can be scientifically predicted and their utilities calculated, then ethics can be a science. Situationism is equivalent to concrete case intuitionism in maintaining that we can know immediately what ought to be done in specific cases, but most ethical theories maintain that what ought to be done is, in J. S. Mill’s words, determined by “the application of a law to an individual case.” Different theories differ on the epistemic status of these laws and on the process of application. Deductivists, either empiricistic or rationalistic, hold that the law is essentially unchanged in the application; non-deductivists hold that the law is modified in the process of application. This distinction is explained in F. L. Will [998], Beyond Deduction, 8. There is similar variation about what if anything is selfevident, Sidgwick maintaining that only certain highly abstract principles are self-evident, Ross that only general rules are, and Prichard that only concrete judgments are, “by an act of moral thinking.” Other problems in moral epistemology are provided by the factvalue distinction  and controversies about whether there is any such distinction  and the isought question, the question how a moral judgment can be derived from statements of fact alone. Naturalists affirm the possibility, non-naturalists deny it. Prescriptivists claim that moral judgments are prescriptions and cannot be deduced from descriptive statements alone. This question ultimately leads to the question how an ultimate principle can be justified. If it cannot be deduced from statements of fact, that route is out; if it must be deduced from some other moral principle, then the principle deduced cannot be ultimate and in any case this process is either circular or leads to an infinite regress. If the ultimate principle is self-evident, then the problem may have an answer. But if it is not it would appear to be arbitrary. The problem of the justification of an ultimate principle continues to be a leading one in moral epistemology. Recently there has been much interest in the status and existence of “moral facts.” Are there any, what are they, and how are they established as “facts”? This relates to questions about moral realism. Moral realism maintains that moral predicates are real and can be known to be so; anti-realists deny this. This denial links with the view that moral properties supervene on natural ones, and the problem of supervenience is another recent link between ethics and epistemology. Pragmatism in ethics maintains that a moral problem is like any problem in that it is the occasion for inquiry and moral judgments are to be regarded as hypotheses to be tested by how well they resolve the problem. This amounts to an attempt to bypass the isought problem and all such “dualisms.” So is constructivism, a development owing much to the work of Rawls, which contrasts with moral realism. Constructivism maintains that moral ideas are human constructs and the task is not epistemological or metaphysical but practical and theoretical  that of attaining reflective equilibrium between considered moral judgments and the principles that coordinate and explain them. On this view there are no moral facts. Opponents maintain that this only replaces a foundationalist view of ethics with a coherence conception. The question whether questions of moral epistemology can in this way be bypassed can be regarded as itself a question of moral epistemology. And the question of the foundations of morality, and whether there are foundations, can still be regarded as a question of moral epistemology, as distinct from a question of the most convenient and efficient arrangement of our moral ideas. 

morality, an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, having the lessening of evil or harm as its goal, and including what are commonly known as the moral rules, moral ideals, and moral virtues. To say that it is a public system means that all those to whom it applies must understand it and that it must not be irrational for them to use it in deciding what to do and in judging others to whom the system applies. Games are the paradigm cases of public systems; all games have a point and the rules of a game apply to all who play it. All players know the point of the game and its rules, and it is not irrational for them to be guided by the point and rules and to judge the behavior of other players by them. To say that morality is informal means that there is no decision procedure or authority that can settle all its controversial questions. Morality thus resembles a backyard game of basketball more than a professional game. Although there is overwhelming agreement on most moral matters, certain controversial questions must be settled in an ad hoc fashion or not settled at all. For example, when, if ever, abortion is acceptable is an unresolvable moral matter, but each society and religion can adopt its own position. That morality has no one in a position of authority is one of the most important respects in which it differs from law and religion. Although morality must include the commonly accepted moral rules such as those prohibiting killing and deceiving, different societies can interpret these rules somewhat differently. They can also differ in their views about the scope of morality, i.e., about whether morality protects newborns, fetuses, or non-human animals. Thus different societies can have somewhat different moralities, although this difference has limits. Also within each society, a person may have his own view about when it is justified to break one of the rules, e.g., about how much harm would have to be prevented in order to justify deceiving someone. Thus one person’s morality may differ somewhat from another’s, but both will agree on the overwhelming number of non-controversial cases. A moral theory is an attempt to describe, explain, and if possible justify, morality. Unfortunately, most moral theories attempt to generate some simplified moral code, rather than to describe the complex moral system that is already in use. Morality does not resolve all disputes. Morality does not require one always to act so as to produce the best consequences or to act only in those ways that one would will everyone to act. Rather morality includes both moral rules that no one should transgress and moral ideals that all are encouraged to follow, but much of what one does will not be governed by morality.

moral psychology, 1 the subfield of psychology that traces the development over time of moral reasoning and opinions in the lives of individuals this subdiscipline includes work of Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan; 2 the part of philosophy where philosophy of mind and ethics overlap, which concerns all the psychological issues relevant to morality. There are many different psychological matters relevant to ethics, and each may be relevant in more than one way. Different ethical theories imply different sorts of connections. So moral psychology includes work of many and diverse kinds. But several traditional clusters of concern are evident. Some elements of moral psychology consider the psychological matters relevant to metaethical issues, i.e., to issues about the general nature of moral truth, judgment, and knowledge. Different metaethical theories invoke mental phenomena in different ways: noncognitivism maintains that sentences expressing moral judgments do not function to report truths or falsehoods, but rather, e.g., to express certain emotions or to prescribe certain actions. So some forms of noncognitivism imply that an understanding of certain sorts of emotions, or of special activities like prescribing that may involve particular psychological elements, is crucial to a full understanding of how ethical sentences are meaningful. Certain forms of cognitivism, the view that moral declarative sentences do express truths or falsehoods, imply that moral facts consist of psychological facts, that for instance moral judgments consist of expressions of positive psychological attitudes of some particular kind toward the objects of those judgments. And an understanding of psychological phenomena like sentiment is crucial according to certain sorts of projectivism, which hold that the supposed moral properties of things are mere misleading projections of our sentiments onto the objects of those sentiments. Certain traditional moral sense theories and certain traditional forms of intuitionism have held that special psychological faculties are crucial for our epistemic access to moral truth. Particular views in normative ethics, particular views about the moral status of acts, persons, and other targets of normative evaluation, also often suggest that an understanding of certain psychological matters is crucial to ethics. Actions, intentions, and character are some of the targets of evaluation of normative ethics, and their proper understanding involves many issues in philosophy of mind. Also, many normative theorists have maintained that there is a close connection between pleasure, happiness, or desiresatisfaction and a person’s good, and these things are also a concern of philosophy of mind. In addition, the rightness of actions is often held to be closely connected to the motives, beliefs, and other psychological phenomena that lie behind those actions. Various other traditional philosophical concerns link ethical and psychological issues: the nature of the patterns in the long-term development in individuals of moral opinions and reasoning, the appropriate form for moral education and punishment, the connections between obligation and motivation, i.e., between moral reasons and psychological causes, and the notion of free will and its relation to moral responsibility and autonomy. Some work in philosophy of mind also suggests that moral phenomena, or at least normative phenomena of some kind, play a crucial role in illuminating or constituting psychological phenomena of various kinds, but the traditional concern of moral psychology has been with the articulation of the sort of philosophy of mind that can be useful to ethics. 

moral rationalism, the view that the substance of morality, usually in the form of general moral principles, can be known a priori. The view is defended by Kant in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, but it goes back at least to Plato. Both Plato and Kant thought that a priori moral knowledge could have an impact on what we do quite independently of any desire that we happen to have. This motivational view is also ordinarily associated with moral rationalism. It comes in two quite different forms. The first is that a priori moral knowledge consists in a sui generis mental state that is both belief-like and desire-like. This seems to have been Plato’s view, for he held that the belief that something is good is itself a disposition to promote that thing. The second is that a priori moral knowledge consists in a belief that is capable of rationally producing a distinct desire. Rationalists who make the first claim have had trouble accommodating the possibility of someone’s believing that something is good but, through weakness of will, not mustering the desire to do it. Accordingly, they have been forced to assimilate weakness of will to ignorance of the good. Rationalists who make the second claim about reason’s action-producing capacity face no such problem. For this reason, their view is often preferred. The best-known anti-rationalist about morality is Hume. His Treatise of Human Nature denies both that morality’s substance can be known by reason alone and that reason alone is capable of producing action. 

moral realism, a metaethical view committed to the objectivity of ethics. It has 1 metaphysical, 2 semantic, and 3 epistemological components. 1 Its metaphysical component is the claim that there are moral facts and moral properties whose existence and nature are independent of people’s beliefs and attitudes about what is right or wrong. In this claim, moral realism contrasts with an error theory and with other forms of nihilism that deny the existence of moral facts and properties. It contrasts as well with various versions of moral relativism and other forms of ethical constructivism that make moral facts consist in facts about people’s moral beliefs and attitudes. 2 Its semantic component is primarily cognitivist. Cognitivism holds that moral judgments should be construed as assertions about the moral properties of actions, persons, policies, and other objects of moral assessment, that moral predicates purport to refer to properties of such objects, that moral judgments or the propositions that they express can be true or false, and that cognizers can have the cognitive attitude of belief toward the propositions that moral judgments express. These cognitivist claims contrast with the noncognitive claims of emotivism and prescriptivism, according to which the primary purpose of moral judgments is to express the appraiser’s attitudes or commitments, rather than to state facts or ascribe properties. Moral realism also holds that truth for moral judgments is non-epistemic; in this way it contrasts with moral relativism and other forms of ethical constructivism that make the truth of a moral judgment epistemic. The metaphysical and semantic theses imply that there are some true moral propositions. An error theory accepts the cognitivist semantic claims but denies the realist metaphysical thesis. It holds that moral judgments should be construed as containing referring expressions and having truth-values, but insists that these referring expressions are empty, because there are no moral facts, and that no moral claims are true. Also on this theory, commonsense moral thought presupposes the existence of moral facts and properties, but is systematically in error. In this way, the error theory stands to moral realism much as atheism stands to theism in a world of theists. J. L. Mackie introduced and defended the error theory in his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 7. 3 Finally, if moral realism is to avoid skepticism it must claim that some moral beliefs are true, that there are methods for justifying moral beliefs, and that moral knowledge is possible. While making these metaphysical, semantic, and epistemological claims, moral realism is compatible with a wide variety of other metaphysical, semantic, and epistemological principles and so can take many different forms. The moral realists in the early part of the twentieth century were generally intuitionists. Intuitionism combined a commitment to moral realism with a foundationalist moral epistemology according to which moral knowledge must rest on self-evident moral truths and with the nonnaturalist claim that moral facts and properties are sui generis and not reducible to any natural facts or properties. Friends of noncognitivism found the metaphysical and epistemological commitments of intuitionism extravagant and so rejected moral realism. Later moral realists have generally sought to defend moral realism without the metaphysical and epistemological trappings of intuitionism. One such version of moral realism takes a naturalistic form. This form of ethical naturalism claims that our moral beliefs are justified when they form part of an explanatorily coherent system of beliefs with one another and with various non-moral beliefs, and insists that moral properties are just natural properties of the people, actions, and policies that instantiate them. Debate between realists and anti-realists and within the realist camp centers on such issues as the relation between moral judgment and action, the rational authority of morality, moral epistemology and methodology, the relation between moral and non-moral natural properties, the place of ethics in a naturalistic worldview, and the parity of ethics and the sciences. 

moral sense theory, an ethical theory, developed by eighteenth-century British philosophers  notably Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume  according to which the pleasure or pain a person feels upon thinking about or “observing” certain character traits is indicative of the virtue or vice, respectively, of those features. It is a theory of “moral perception,” offered in response to moral rationalism, the view that moral distinctions are derived by reason alone, and combines Locke’s empiricist doctrine that all ideas begin in experience with the belief, widely shared at the time, that feelings play a central role in moral evaluation and motivation. On this theory, our emotional responses to persons’ characters are often “perceptions” of their morality, just as our experiences of an apple’s redness and sweetness are perceptions of its color and taste. These ideas of morality are seen as products of an “internal” sense, because they are produced in the “observer” only after she forms a concept of the conduct or trait being observed or contemplated  as when a person realizes that she is seeing someone intentionally harm another and reacts with displeasure at what she sees. The moral sense is conceived as being analogous to, or possibly an aspect of, our capacity to recognize varying degrees of beauty in things, which modern writers call “the sense of beauty.” Rejecting the popular view that morality is based on the will of God, Shaftesbury maintains rather that morality depends on human nature, and he introduces the notion of a sense of right and wrong, possessed uniquely by human beings, who alone are capable of reflection. Hutcheson argues that to approve of a character is to regard it as virtuous. For him, reason, which discovers relations of inanimate objects to rational agents, is unable to arouse our approval in the absence of a moral sense. Ultimately, we can explain why, for example, we approve of someone’s temperate character only by appealing to our natural tendency to feel pleasure sometimes identified with approval at the thought of characters that exhibit benevolence, the trait to which all other virtues can be traced. This disposition to feel approval and disapproval is what Hutcheson identifies as the moral sense. Hume emphasizes that typical human beings make moral distinctions on the basis of their feelings only when those sentiments are experienced from a disinterested or “general” point of view. In other words, we turn our initial sentiments into moral judgments by compensating for the fact that we feel more strongly about those to whom we are emotionally close than those from whom we are more distant. On a widely held interpretation of Hume, the moral sense provides not only judgments, but also motives to act according to those judgments, since its feelings may be motivating passions or arouse such passions. Roderick Firth’s 787 twentieth-century ideal observer theory, according to which moral good is designated by the projected reactions of a hypothetically omniscient, disinterested observer possessing other ideal traits, as well as Brandt’s contemporary moral spectator theory, are direct descendants of the moral sense theory. 

moral scepticism, any metaethical view that raises fundamental doubts about morality as a whole. Different kinds of doubts lead to different kinds of moral skepticism. The primary kinds of moral skepticism are epistemological. Moral justification skepticism is the claim that nobody ever has any or adequate justification for believing any substantive moral claim. Moral knowledge skepticism is the claim that nobody ever knows that any substantive moral claim is true. If knowledge implies justification, as is often assumed, then moral justification skepticism implies moral knowledge skepticism. But even if knowledge requires justification, it requires more, so moral knowledge skepticism does not imply moral justification skepticism. Another kind of skeptical view in metaethics rests on linguistic analysis. Some emotivists, expressivists, and prescriptivists argue that moral claims like “Cheating is morally wrong” resemble expressions of emotion or desire like “Boo, cheating” or prescriptions for action like “Don’t cheat”, which are neither true nor false, so moral claims themselves are neither true nor false. This linguistic moral skepticism, which is sometimes called noncognitivism, implies moral knowledge skepticism if knowledge implies truth. Even if such linguistic analyses are rejected, one can still hold that no moral properties or facts really exist. This ontological moral skepticism can be combined with the linguistic view that moral claims assert moral properties and facts to yield an error theory that all positive moral claims are false. A different kind of doubt about morality is often raised by asking, “Why should I be moral?” Practical moral skepticism answers that there is not always any reason or any adequate reason to be moral or to do what is morally required. This view concerns reasons to act rather than reasons to believe. Moral skepticism of all these kinds is often seen as immoral, but moral skeptics can act and be motivated and even hold moral beliefs in much the same way as non-skeptics. Moral skeptics just deny that their or anyone else’s moral beliefs are justified or known or true, or that they have adequate reason to be moral. 

moral status, the suitability of a being to be viewed as an appropriate object of direct moral concern; the nature or degree of a being’s ability to count as a ground of claims against moral agents; the moral standing, rank, or importance of a kind of being; the condition of being a moral patient; moral considerability. Ordinary moral reflection involves considering others. But which others ought to be considered? And how are the various objects of moral consideration to be weighed against one another? Anything might be the topic of moral discussion, but not everything is thought to be an appropriate object of direct moral concern. If there are any ethical constraints on how we may treat a ceramic plate, these seem to derive from considerations about other beings, not from the interests or good or nature of the plate. The same applies, presumably, to a clod of earth. Many philosophers view a living but insentient being, such as a dandelion, in the same way; others have doubts. According to some, even sentient animal life is little more deserving of moral consideration than the clod or the dandelion. This tradition, which restricts significant moral status to humans, has come under vigorous and varied attack by defenders of animal liberation. This attack criticizes speciesism, and argues that “humanism” is analogous to theories that illegitimately base moral status on race, gender, or social class. Some philosophers have referred to beings that are appropriate objects of direct moral concern as “moral patients.” Moral agents are those beings whose actions are subject to moral evaluation; analogously, moral patients would be those beings whose suffering in the sense of being the objects of the actions of moral agents permits or demands moral evaluation. Others apply the label ‘moral patients’ more narrowly, just to those beings that are appropriate objects of direct moral concern but are not also moral agents. The issue of moral status concerns not only whether beings count at all morally, but also to what degree they count. After all, beings who are moral patients might still have their claims outweighed by the preferred claims of other beings who possess some special moral status. We might, with Nozick, propose “utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people.” Similarly, the bodily autonomy argument in defense of abortion, made famous by Thomson, does not deny that the fetus is a moral patient, but insists that her/his/its claims are limited by the pregnant woman’s prior claim to control her bodily destiny. It has often been thought that moral status should be tied to the condition of “personhood.” The idea has been either that only persons are moral patients, or that persons possess a special moral status that makes them morally more important than nonpersons. Personhood, on such theories, is a minimal condition for moral patiency. Why? Moral patiency is said to be “correlative” with moral agency: a creature has both or neither. Alternatively, persons have been viewed not as the only moral patients, but as a specially privileged elite among moral patients, possessing rights as well as interests. 

More, Henry 161487, English philosopher, theologian, and poet, the most prolific of the Cambridge Platonists. In 1631 he entered Christ’s , where he spent the rest of his life after becoming Fellow in 1641. He was primarily an apologist of anti-Calvinist, latitudinarian stamp whose inalienable philosophico- theological purpose was to demonstrate the existence and immortality of the soul and to cure “two enormous distempers of the mind,” atheism and “enthusiasm.” He described himself as “a Fisher for Philosophers, desirous to draw them to or retain them in the Christian Faith.” His eclectic method deployed Neoplatonism notably Plotinus and Ficino, mystical theologies, cabalistic doctrines as More misconceived them, empirical findings including reports of witchcraft and ghosts, the new science, and the new philosophy, notably the philosophy of Descartes. Yet he rejected Descartes’s beast-machine doctrine, his version of dualism, and the pretensions of Cartesian mechanical philosophy to explain all physical phenomena. Animals have souls; the universe is alive with souls. Body and spirit are spatially extended, the former being essentially impenetrable, inert, and discerpible divisible into parts, the latter essentially penetrable, indiscerpible, active, and capable of a spiritual density, which More called essential spissitude, “the redoubling or contracting of substance into less space than it does sometimes occupy.” Physical processes are activated and ordered by the spirit of nature, a hylarchic principle and “the vicarious power of God upon this great automaton, the world.” More’s writings on natural philosophy, especially his doctrine of infinite space, are thought to have influenced Newton. More attacked Hobbes’s materialism and, in the 1660s and 1670s, the impieties of Dutch Cartesianism, including the perceived atheism of Spinoza and his circle. He regretted the “enthusiasm” for and conversion to Quakerism of Anne Conway, his “extramural” tutee and assiduous correspondent. More had a partiality for coinages and linguistic exotica. We owe to him ‘Cartesianism’ 1662, coined a few years before the first appearance of the  equivalent, and the substantive ‘materialist’ 1668.

More, Sir Thomas 1477 or 14781535, English humanist, statesman, martyr, and saint. A lawyer by profession, he entered royal service in 1517 and became lord chancellor in 1529. After refusing to swear to the Act of Supremacy, which named Henry VIII the head of the English church, More was beheaded as a traitor. Although his writings include biography, poetry, letters, and anti-heretical tracts, his only philosophical work, Utopia published in Latin, 1516, is his masterpiece. Covering a wide variety of subjects including government, education, punishment, religion, family life, and euthanasia, Utopia contrasts European social institutions with their counterparts on the imaginary island of Utopia. Inspired in part by Plato’s Republic, the Utopian communal system is designed to teach virtue and reward it with happiness. The absence of money, private property, and most social distinctions allows Utopians the leisure to develop the faculties in which happiness consists. Because of More’s love of irony, Utopia has been subject to quite different interpretations. 

Mosca, Gaetano 18581,  political scientist who made pioneering contributions to the theory of democratic elitism. Combining the life of a  professor with that of a politician, he taught such subjects as constitutional law, public law, political science, and history of political theory; at various times he was also an editor of the Parliamentary proceedings, an elected member of the Chamber of Deputies, an under-secretary for colonial affairs, a newspaper columnist, and a member of the Senate. For Mosca ‘elitism’ refers to the empirical generalization that every society is ruled by an organized minority. His democratic commitment is embodied in what he calls juridical defense: the normative principle that political developments are to be judged by whether and how they prevent any one person, class, force, or institution from dominating the others. His third main contribution is a framework consisting of two intersecting distinctions that yield four possible ideal types, defined as follows: in autocracy, authority flows from the rulers to the ruled; in liberalism, from the ruled to the rulers; in democracy, the ruling class is open to renewal by members of other classes; in aristocracy it is not. He was influenced by, and in turn influenced, positivism, for the elitist thesis presumably constitutes the fundamental “law” of political “science.” Even deeper is his connection with the tradition of Machiavelli’s political realism. There is also no question that he practiced an empirical approach. In the tradition of elitism, he may be compared and contrasted with Pareto, Michels, and Schumpeter; and in the tradition of  political philosophy, to Croce, Gentile, and Gramsci. 

motivation, a property central in motivational explanations of intentional conduct. To assert that Ann is driving to Boston today because she wants to see the Red Sox play and believes that they are playing today in Boston is to offer a More, Sir Thomas motivation 591    591 motivational explanation of this action. On a popular interpretation, the assertion mentions a pair of attitudes: a desire and a belief. Ann’s desire is a paradigmatic motivational attitude in that it inclines her to bring about the satisfaction of that very attitude. The primary function of motivational attitudes is to bring about their own satisfaction by inducing the agent to undertake a suitable course of action, and, arguably, any attitude that has that function is, ipso facto, a motivational one. The related thesis that only attitudes having this function are motivational  or, more precisely, motivation-constituting  is implausible. Ann hopes that the Sox won yesterday. Plainly, her hope cannot bring about its own satisfaction, since Ann has no control over the past. Even so, the hope seemingly may motivate action e.g., Ann’s searching for sports news on her car radio, in which case the hope is motivation-constituting. Some philosophers have claimed that our beliefs that we are morally required to take a particular course of action are motivation-constituting, and such beliefs obviously do not have the function of bringing about their own satisfaction i.e., their truth. However, the claim is controversial, as is the related claim that beliefs of this kind are “besires”  that is, not merely beliefs but desires as well. 

motivational explanation, a type of explanation of goal-directed behavior where the explanans appeals to the motives of the agent. The explanation usually is in the following form: Smith swam hard in order to win the race. Here the description of what Smith did identifies the behavior to be explained, and the phrase that follows ‘in order to’ identifies the goal or the state of affairs the obtaining of which was the moving force behind the behavior. The general presumption is that the agent whose behavior is being explained is capable of deliberating and acting on the decisions reached as a result of the deliberation. Thus, it is dubious whether the explanation contained in ‘The plant turned toward the sun in order to receive more light’ is a motivational explanation. Two problems are thought to surround motivational explanations. First, since the state of affairs set as the goal is, at the time of the action, non-existent, it can only act as the “moving force” by appearing as the intentional object of an inner psychological state of the agent. Thus, motives are generally desires for specific objects or states of affairs on which the agent acts. So motivational explanation is basically the type of explanation provided in folk psychology, and as such it inherits all the alleged problems of the latter. And second, what counts as a motive for an action under one description usually fails to be a motive for the same action under a different description. My motive for saying “hello” may have been my desire to answer the phone, but my motive for saying “hello” loudly was to express my irritation at the person calling me so late at night. 

motivational internalism, the view that moral motivation is internal to moral duty or the sense of duty. The view represents the contemporary understanding of Hume’s thesis that morality is essentially practical. Hume went on to point out the apparent logical gap between statements of fact, which express theoretical judgments, and statements about what ought to be done, which express practical judgments. Motivational internalism offers one explanation for this gap. No motivation is internal to the recognition of facts. The specific internal relation the view affirms is that of necessity. Thus, motivational internalists hold that if one sees that one has a duty to do a certain action or that it would be right to do it, then necessarily one has a motive to do it. For example, if one sees that it is one’s duty to donate blood, then necessarily one has a motive to donate blood. Motivational externalism, the opposing view, denies this relation. Its adherents hold that it is possible for one to see that one has a duty to do a certain action or that it would be right to do it yet have no motive to do it. Motivational externalists typically, though not universally, deny any real gap between theoretical and practical judgments. Motivational internalism takes either of two forms, rationalist and anti-rationalist. Rationalists, such as Plato and Kant, hold that the content or truth of a moral requirement guarantees in those who understand it a motive of compliance. Anti-rationalists, such as Hume, hold that moral judgment necessarily has some affective or volitional component that supplies a motive for the relevant action but that renders morality less a matter of reason and truth than of feeling or commitment. It is also possible in the abstract to draw an analogous distinction between two forms of motivational externalism, cognitivist and noncognitivist, but because the view springs from an interest in assimilating practical judgment to theoretical judgment, its only influential form has been cognitivist. 

mystical experience, an experience alleged to reveal some aspect of reality not normally accessible to sensory experience or cognition. The experience  typically characterized by its profound emotional impact on the one who experiences it, its transcendence of spatial and temporal distinctions, its transitoriness, and its ineffability  is often but not always associated with some religious tradition. In theistic religions, mystical experiences are claimed to be brought about by God or by some other superhuman agent. Theistic mystical experiences evoke feelings of worshipful awe. Their content can vary from something no more articulate than a feeling of closeness to God to something as specific as an item of revealed theology, such as, for a Christian mystic, a vision of the Trinity. Non-theistic mystical experiences are usually claimed to reveal the metaphysical unity of all things and to provide those who experience them with a sense of inner peace or bliss.  MYSTICISM. W.E.M. mysticism, a doctrine or discipline maintaining that one can gain knowledge of reality that is not accessible to sense perception or to rational, conceptual thought. Generally associated with a religious tradition, mysticism can take a theistic form, as it has in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, or a non-theistic form, as it has in Buddhism and some varieties of Hinduism. Mystics claim that the mystical experience, the vehicle of mystical knowledge, is usually the result of spiritual training, involving some combination of prayer, meditation, fasting, bodily discipline, and renunciation of worldly concerns. Theistic varieties of mysticism describe the mystical experience as granted by God and thus not subject to the control of the mystic. Although theists claim to feel closeness to God during the mystical experience, they regard assertions of identity of the self with God as heretical. Non-theistic varieties are more apt to describe the experience as one that can be induced and controlled by the mystic and in which distinctions between the self and reality, or subject and object, are revealed to be illusory. Mystics claim that, although veridical, their experiences cannot be adequately described in language, because ordinary communication is based on sense experience and conceptual differentiation: mystical writings are thus characterized by metaphor and simile. It is con   593 troversial whether all mystical experiences are basically the same, and whether the apparent diversity among them is the result of interpretations influenced by different cultural traditions. 

myth: Grice was possibly motivated by Quine’s irreverent, “The mth of meaning,” a talk at France, “Le mythe de la signification.” It’s odd that he gives the example of a ‘social contract’, developed by G. R. Grice as a ‘myth’ as his own on ‘expressing pain.’ “My succession of stages is a methodological myth designed to exhibit the conceptual link between expression and communication. Rather than Plato, he appeals to Rawls and the myth of the social conpact! Grice knows a little about Descartess “Discours de la methode,” and he is also aware of similar obsession by Collingwood with philosopical methodology. Grice would joke on midwifery, as the philosopher’s apter method at Oxford: to strangle error at its birth. Grice typifies a generation at Oxford. While he did not socialize with the crème de la crème in pre-war Oxford, he shared some their approach. E.g. a love affair with Russell’s logical construction. After the war, and in retrospect, Grice liked to associate himself with Austin. He obviously felt the need to belong to a group, to make a difference, to make history. Many participants of the play group saw themselves as doing philosophy, rather than reading about it! It was long after that Grice started to note the differences in methodology between Austin and himself. His methodology changed a little. He was enamoured with formalism for a while, and he grants that this love never ceased. In a still later phase, he came to realise that his way of doing philosophy was part of literature (essay writing). And so he started to be slightly more careful about his style – which some found florid. The stylistic concerns were serious. Oxonian philosophers like Holloway had been kept away from philosophy because of the stereotype that the Oxonian philosophers style is pedantic, when it neednt! A philosopher should be allowed, as Plato was, to use a myth, if he thinks his tutee will thank him for that! Grice loved to compare his Oxonian dialectic with Platos Athenian (strictly, Academic) dialectic. Indeed, there is some resemblance of the use of myth in Plato and Grice for philosophical methodological purposes. Grice especially enjoys a myth in his programme in philosophical psychology. In this, he is very much being a philosopher. Non-philosophers usually criticise this methodological use of a myth, but they would, wouldnt they. Grice suggests that a myth has diagogic relevance. Creature construction, the philosopher as demi-god, if mythical, is an easier way for a philosophy don to instil his ideas on his tutee than, say, privileged access and incorrigibility. myth of Er, a tale at the end of Plato’s Republic dramatizing the rewards of justice and philosophy by depicting the process of reincarnation. Complementing the main argument of the work, that it is intrinsically better to be just than unjust, this longest of Plato’s myths blends traditional lore with speculative cosmology to show that justice also pays, usually in life and certainly in the afterlife. Er, a warrior who revived shortly after death, reports how judges assign the souls of the just to heaven but others to punishment in the underworld, and how most return after a thousand years to behold the celestial order, to choose their next lives, and to be born anew.  Refs.: The main source is Grice’s essay on ‘myth’, in The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.

Nagarjuna fl. early second century A.D.,  Mahayana Buddhist philosopher, founder of the Madhyamika view. The Mulanadhyamakarika Prajña “The Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way” and the Sunyatasaptati “The Septuagint on Emptiness” are perhaps his major works. He distinguishes between “two truths”: a conditional truth, which is provisional and reflects the sort of distinctions we make in everyday speech and find in ordinary experience; and a final truth, which is that there exists only an ineffable independent reality. Overcoming acceptance of the conventional, conditional truth is requisite for seeing the final truth in enlightenment. 

Nagel, Ernest 185, Czech-born  philosopher, the preeminent  philosopher of science in the period from the mid-0s to the 0s. Arriving in New York as a ten-yearold immigrant, he earned his B.S. degree from the  of the City of New York and his Ph.D. from Columbia  in 1. He was a member of the Philosophy Department at Columbia from 0 to 0. He coauthored the influential An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method with his former teacher, M. R. Cohen. His many publications include two well-known classics: Principles of the Theory of Probability 9 and Structure of Science 0. Nagel was sensitive to developments in logic, foundations of mathematics, and probability theory, and he shared with Russell and with members of the Vienna Circle like Carnap and Phillip Frank a respect for the relevance of scientific inquiry for philosophical reflection. But his writing also reveals the influences of M. R. Cohen and that strand in the thinking of the pragmatism of Peirce and Dewey which Nagel himself called “contextualist naturalism.” He was a persuasive critic of Russell’s views of the data of sensation as a source of non-inferential premises for knowledge and of cognate views expressed by some members of the Vienna Circle. Unlike Frege, Russell, Carnap, Popper, and others, he rejected the view that taking account of context in characterizing method threatened to taint philosophical reflection with an unacceptable psychologism. This stance subsequently allowed him to oppose historicist and sociologist approaches to the philosophy of science. Nagel’s contextualism is reflected in his contention that ideas of determinism, probability, explanation, and reduction “can be significantly discussed only if they are directed to the theories or formulations of a science and not its subject matter” Principles of the Theory of Probability, 9. This attitude infused his influential discussions of covering law explanation, statistical explanation, functional explanation, and reduction of one theory to another, in both natural and social science. Similarly, his contention that participants in the debate between realism and instrumentalism should clarify the import of their differences for context-sensitive scientific methodology served as the core of his argument casting doubt on the significance of the dispute. In addition to his extensive writings on scientific knowledge methodology, Nagel wrote influential essays on measurement, the history of mathematics, and the philosophy of law. 

Nagel, Thomas b.7,  professor of philosophy and of law at New York , known for his important contributions in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. Nagel’s work in these areas is unified by a particular vision of perennial philosophical problems, according to which they emerge from a clash between two perspectives from which human beings can view themselves and the world. From an impersonal perspective, which results from detaching ourselves from our particular viewpoints, we strive to achieve an objective view of the world, whereas from a personal perspective, we see the world from our particular point of view. According to Nagel, dominance of the impersonal perspective in trying to understand reality leads to implausible philosophical views because it fails to accommodate facts about the self, minds, agency, and values that are revealed through engaged personal perspectives. In the philosophy of mind, for instance, Nagel criticizes various reductive accounts of mentality 595 N    595 resulting from taking an exclusively impersonal standpoint because they inevitably fail to account for the irreducibly subjective character of consciousness. In ethics, consequentialist moral theories like utilitarianism, which feature strong impartialist demands that stem from taking a detached, impersonal perspective, find resistance from the personal perspective within which individual goals and motives are accorded an importance not found in strongly impartialist moral theories. An examination of such problems in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics is found in his Moral Questions 9 and The View from Nowhere 6. In Equality and Partiality 0 Nagel argues that the impersonal standpoint gives rise to an egalitarian form of impartial regard for all people that often clashes with the goals, concerns, and affections that individuals experience from a personal perspective. Quite generally, then, as Nagel sees it, one important philosophical task is to explore ways in which these two standpoints on both theoretical and practical matters might be integrated. Nagel has also made important contributions regarding the nature and possibility of reason or rationality in both its theoretical and its practical uses. The Possibility of Altruism 0 is an exploration of the structure of practical reason in which Nagel defends the rationality of prudence and altruism, arguing that the possibility of such behavior is connected with our capacities to view ourselves respectively persisting through time and recognizing the reality of other persons. The Last Word 8 is a defense of reason against skeptical views, according to which reason is a merely contingent, locally conditioned feature of particular cultures and hence relative. 

natural intelligence -- artificial intelligence, also called AI, the scientific effort to design and build intelligent artifacts. Since the effort inevitably presupposes and tests theories about the nature of intelligence, it has implications for the philosophy of mind  perhaps even more than does empirical psychology. For one thing, actual construction amounts to a direct assault on the mindbody problem; should it succeed, some form of materialism would seem to be vindicated. For another, a working model, even a limited one, requires a more global conception of what intelligence is than do experiments to test specific hypotheses. In fact, psychology’s own overview of its domain Arouet, François-Marie artificial intelligence 53   53 has been much influenced by fundamental concepts drawn from AI. Although the idea of an intelligent artifact is old, serious scientific research dates only from the 0s, and is associated with the development of programmable computers. Intelligence is understood as a structural property or capacity of an active system; i.e., it does not matter what the system is made of, as long as its parts and their interactions yield intelligent behavior overall. For instance, if solving logical problems, playing chess, or conversing in English manifests intelligence, then it is not important whether the “implementation” is electronic, biological, or mechanical, just as long as it solves, plays, or talks. Computers are relevant mainly because of their flexibility and economy: software systems are unmatched in achievable active complexity per invested effort. Despite the generality of programmable structures and the variety of historical approaches to the mind, the bulk of AI research divides into two broad camps  which we can think of as language-oriented and pattern-oriented, respectively. Conspicuous by their absence are significant influences from the conditionedresponse paradigm, the psychoanalytic tradition, the mental picture idea, empiricist atomistic associationism, and so on. Moreover, both AI camps tend to focus on cognitive issues, sometimes including perception and motor control. Notably omitted are such psychologically important topics as affect, personality, aesthetic and moral judgment, conceptual change, mental illness, etc. Perhaps such matters are beyond the purview of artificial intelligence; yet it is an unobvious substantive thesis that intellect can be cordoned off and realized independently of the rest of human life. The two main AI paradigms emerged together in the 0s along with cybernetic and information-theoretic approaches, which turned out to be dead ends; and both are vigorous today. But for most of the sixties and seventies, the language-based orientation dominated attention and funding, for three signal reasons. First, computer data structures and processes themselves seemed languagelike: data were syntactically and semantically articulated, and processing was localized serial. Second, twentieth-century linguistics and logic made it intelligible that and how such systems might work: automatic symbol manipulation made clear, powerful sense. Finally, the sorts of performance most amenable to the approach  explicit reasoning and “figuring out”  strike both popular and educated opinion as particularly “intellectual”; hence, early successes were all the more impressive, while “trivial” stumbling blocks were easier to ignore. The basic idea of the linguistic or symbol manipulation camp is that thinking is like talking  inner discourse  and, hence, that thoughts are like sentences. The suggestion is venerable; and Hobbes even linked it explicitly to computation. Yet, it was a major scientific achievement to turn the general idea into a serious theory. The account does not apply only, or even especially, to the sort of thinking that is accessible to conscious reflection. Nor is the “language of thought” supposed to be much like English, predicate logic, LISP, or any other familiar notation; rather, its detailed character is an empirical research problem. And, despite fictional stereotypes, the aim is not to build superlogical or inhumanly rational automata. Our human tendencies to take things for granted, make intuitive leaps, and resist implausible conclusions are not weaknesses that AI strives to overcome but abilities integral to real intelligence that AI aspires to share. In what sense, then, is thought supposed to be languagelike? Three items are essential. First, thought tokens have a combinatorial syntactic structure; i.e., they are compounds of welldefined atomic constituents in well-defined recursively specifiable arrangements. So the constituents are analogous to words, and the arrangements are analogous to phrases and sentences; but there is no supposition that they should resemble any known words or grammar. Second, the contents of thought tokens, what they “mean,” are a systematic function of their composition: the constituents and forms of combination have determinate significances that together determine the content of any wellformed compound. So this is like the meaning of a sentence being determined by its grammar and the meanings of its words. Third, the intelligent progress or sequence of thought is specifiable by rules expressed syntactically  they can be carried out by processes sensitive only to syntactic properties. Here the analogy is to proof theory: the formal validity of an argument is a matter of its according with rules expressed formally. But this analogy is particularly treacherous, because it immediately suggests the rigor of logical inference; but, if intelligence is specifiable by formal rules, these must be far more permissive, context-sensitive, and so on, than those of formal logic. Syntax as such is perfectly neutral as to how the constituents are identified by sound, by artificial intelligence artificial intelligence 54   54 shape, by magnetic profile and arranged in time, in space, via address pointers. It is, in effect, a free parameter: whatever can serve as a bridge between the semantics and the processing. The account shares with many others the assumptions that thoughts are contentful meaningful and that the processes in which they occur can somehow be realized physically. It is distinguished by the two further theses that there must be some independent way of describing these thoughts that mediates between simultaneously determines their contents and how they are processed, and that, so described, they are combinatorially structured. Such a description is syntactical. We can distinguish two principal phases in language-oriented AI, each lasting about twenty years. Very roughly, the first phase emphasized processing search and reasoning, whereas the second has emphasized representation knowledge. To see how this went, it is important to appreciate the intellectual breakthrough required to conceive AI at all. A machine, such as a computer, is a deterministic system, except for random elements. That is fine for perfectly constrained domains, like numerical calculation, sorting, and parsing, or for domains that are constrained except for prescribed randomness, such as statistical modeling. But, in the general case, intelligent behavior is neither perfectly constrained nor perfectly constrained with a little random variation thrown in. Rather, it is generally focused and sensible, yet also fallible and somewhat variable. Consider, e.g., chess playing an early test bed for AI: listing all the legal moves for any given position is a perfectly constrained problem, and easy to program; but choosing the best move is not. Yet an intelligent player does not simply determine which moves would be legal and then choose one randomly; intelligence in chess play is to choose, if not always the best, at least usually a good move. This is something between perfect determinacy and randomness, a “between” that is not simply a mixture of the two. How is it achievable in a machine? The crucial innovation that first made AI concretely and realistically conceivable is that of a heuristic procedure. The term ‘heuristic’ derives from the Grecian word for discovery, as in Archimedes’ exclamation “Eureka!” The relevant point for AI is that discovery is a matter neither of following exact directions to a goal nor of dumb luck, but of looking around sensibly, being guided as much as possible by what you know in advance and what you find along the way. So a heuristic procedure is one for sensible discovery, a procedure for sensibly guided search. In chess, e.g., a player does well to bear in mind a number of rules of thumb: other things being equal, rooks are more valuable than knights, it is an asset to control the center of the board, and so on. Such guidelines, of course, are not valid in every situation; nor will they all be best satisfied by the same move. But, by following them while searching as far ahead through various scenarios as possible, a player can make generally sensible moves  much better than random  within the constraints of the game. This picture even accords fairly well with the introspective feel of choosing a move, particularly for less experienced players. The essential insight for AI is that such roughand-ready ceteris paribus rules can be deterministically programmed. It all depends on how you look at it. One and the same bit of computer program can be, from one point of view, a deterministic, infallible procedure for computing how a given move would change the relative balance of pieces, and from another, a generally sensible but fallible procedure for estimating how “good” that move would be. The substantive thesis about intelligence  human and artificial alike  then is that our powerful but fallible ability to form “intuitive” hunches, educated guesses, etc., is the result of largely unconscious search, guided by such heuristic rules. The second phase of language-inspired AI, dating roughly from the mid-0s, builds on the idea of heuristic procedure, but dramatically changes the emphasis. The earlier work was framed by a conception of intelligence as finding solutions to problems good moves, e.g.. From such a perspective, the specification of the problem the rules of the game plus the current position and the provision of some heuristic guides domain-specific rules of thumb are merely a setting of the parameters; the real work, the real exercise of intelligence, lies in the intensive guided search undertaken in the specified terms. The later phase, impressed not so much by our problem-solving prowess as by how well we get along with “simple” common sense, has shifted the emphasis from search and reasoning to knowledge. The motivation for this shift can be seen in the following two sentences: We gave the monkey the banana because it was ripe. We gave the monkey the banana because it was hungry. artificial intelligence artificial intelligence 55   55 The word ‘it’ is ambiguous, as the terminal adjectives make clear. Yet listeners effortlessly understand what is meant, to the point, usually, of not even noticing the ambiguity. The question is, how? Of course, it is “just common sense” that monkeys don’t get ripe and bananas don’t get hungry, so . . . But three further observations show that this is not so much an answer as a restatement of the issue. First, sentences that rely on common sense to avoid misunderstanding are anything but rare: conversation is rife with them. Second, just about any odd fact that “everybody knows” can be the bit of common sense that understanding the next sentence depends on; and the range of such knowledge is vast. Yet, third, dialogue proceeds in real time without a hitch, almost always. So the whole range of commonsense knowledge must be somehow at our mental fingertips all the time. The underlying difficulty is not with speed or quantity alone, but with relevance. How does a system, given all that it knows about aardvarks, Alabama, and ax handles, “home in on” the pertinent fact that bananas don’t get hungry, in the fraction of a second it can afford to spend on the pronoun ‘it’? The answer proposed is both simple and powerful: common sense is not just randomly stored information, but is instead highly organized by topics, with lots of indexes, cross-references, tables, hierarchies, and so on. The words in the sentence itself trigger the “articles” on monkeys, bananas, hunger, and so on, and these quickly reveal that monkeys are mammals, hence animals, that bananas are fruit, hence from plants, that hunger is what animals feel when they need to eat  and that settles it. The amount of search and reasoning is minimal; the issue of relevance is solved instead by the antecedent structure in the stored knowledge itself. While this requires larger and more elaborate systems, the hope is that it will make them faster and more flexible. The other main orientation toward artificial intelligence, the pattern-based approach  often called “connectionism” or “parallel distributed processing”  reemerged from the shadow of symbol processing only in the 0s, and remains in many ways less developed. The basic inspiration comes not from language or any other psychological phenomenon such as imagery or affect, but from the microstructure of the brain. The components of a connectionist system are relatively simple active nodes  lots of them  and relatively simple connections between those nodes  again, lots of them. One important type and the easiest to visualize has the nodes divided into layers, such that each node in layer A is connected to each node in layer B, each node in layer B is connected to each node in layer C, and so on. Each node has an activation level, which varies in response to the activations of other, connected nodes; and each connection has a weight, which determines how strongly and in what direction the activation of one node affects that of the other. The analogy with neurons and synapses, though imprecise, is intended. So imagine a layered network with finely tuned connection weights and random or zero activation levels. Now suppose the activations of all the nodes in layer A are set in some particular way  some pattern is imposed on the activation state of this layer. These activations will propagate out along all the connections from layer A to layer B, and activate some pattern there. The activation of each node in layer B is a function of the activations of all the nodes in layer A, and of the weights of all the connections to it from those nodes. But since each node in layer B has its own connections from the nodes in layer A, it will respond in its own unique way to this pattern of activations in layer A. Thus, the pattern that results in layer B is a joint function of the pattern that was imposed on layer A and of the pattern of connection weights between the two layers. And a similar story can be told about layer B’s influence on layer C, and so on, until some final pattern is induced in the last layer. What are these patterns? They might be any number of things; but two general possibilities can be distinguished. They might be tantamount to or substrata beneath representations of some familiar sort, such as sentencelike structures or images; or they might be a kind or kinds of representation previously unknown. Now, people certainly do sometimes think in sentences and probably images; so, to the extent that networks are taken as complete brain models, the first alternative must be at least partly right. But, to that extent, the models are also more physiological than psychological: it is rather the implemented sentences or images that directly model the mind. Thus, it is the possibility of a new genus of representation  sometimes called distributed representation  that is particularly exciting. On this alternative, the patterns in the mind represent in some way other than by mimetic imagery or articulate description. How? An important feature of all network models is that there are two quite different categories of pattern. On the one hand, there are the relatively ephemeral patterns of activation in various artificial intelligence artificial intelligence 56   56 groups of nodes; on the other, there are the relatively stable patterns of connection strength among the nodes. Since there are in general many more connections than nodes, the latter patterns are richer; and it is they that determine the capabilities of the network with regard to the former patterns. Many of the abilities most easily and “naturally” realized in networks can be subsumed under the heading pattern completion: the connection weights are adjusted  perhaps via a training regime  such that the network will complete any of the activation patterns from a predetermined group. So, suppose some fraction say half of the nodes in the net are clamped to the values they would have for one of those patterns say P while the remainder are given random or default activations. Then the network, when run, will reset the latter activations to the values belonging to P  thus “completing” it. If the unclamped activations are regarded as variations or deviations, pattern completion amounts to normalization, or grouping by similarity. If the initial or input nodes are always the same as in layered networks, then we have pattern association or transformation from input to output. If the input pattern is a memory probe, pattern completion becomes access by content. If the output pattern is an identifier, then it is pattern recognition. And so on. Note that, although the operands are activation patterns, the “knowledge” about them, the ability to complete them, is contained in the connection patterns; hence, that ability or know-how is what the network represents. There is no obvious upper bound on the possible refinement or intricacy of these pattern groupings and associations. If the input patterns are sensory stimuli and the output patterns are motor control, then we have a potential model of coordinated and even skillful behavior. In a system also capable of language, a network model or component might account for verbal recognition and content association, and even such “nonliteral” effects as trope and tone. Yet at least some sort of “symbol manipulation” seems essential for language use, regardless of how networklike the implementation is. One current speculation is that it might suffice to approximate a battery of symbolic processes as a special subsystem within a cognitive system that fundamentally works on quite different principles. The attraction of the pattern-based approach is, at this point, not so much actual achievement as it is promise  on two grounds. In the first place, the space of possible models, not only network topologies but also ways of construing the patterns, is vast. Those built and tested so far have been, for practical reasons, rather small; so it is possible to hope beyond their present limitations to systems of significantly greater capability. But second, and perhaps even more attractive, those directions in which patternbased systems show the most promise  skills, recognition, similarity, and the like  are among the areas of greatest frustration for languagebased AI. Hence it remains possible, for a while at least, to overlook the fact that, to date, no connectionist network can perform long division, let alone play chess or solve symbolic logic problems. 

Natural life -- artificial life, an interdisciplinary science studying the most general character of the fundamental processes of life. These processes include self-organization, self-reproduction, learning, adaptation, and evolution. Artificial life or ALife is to theoretical biology roughly what artificial intelligence AI is to theoretical psychology  computer simulation is the methodology of choice. In fact, since the mind exhibits many of life’s fundamental properties, AI could be considered a subfield of ALife. However, whereas most traditional AI models are serial systems with complicated, centralized controllers making decisions based on global state information, most natural systems exhibiting complex autonomous behavior are parallel, distributed networks of simple entities making decisions based solely on their local state information, so typical ALife models have a corresponding distributed architecture. A computer simulation of evolving “bugs” can illustrate what ALife models are like. Moving around in a two-dimensional world periodically laden with heaps of “food,” these bugs eat, reproduce, and sometimes perish from starvation. Each bug’s movement is genetically determined by the quantities of food in its immediate neighborhood, and random mutations and crossovers modify these genomes during reproduction. Simulations started with random genes show spontaneous waves of highly adaptive genetic novelties continuously sweeping through the population at precisely quantifiable rates.C. Langston et al., eds., Artificial Life II 1. artificial language artificial life 57   57 ALife science raises and promises to inform many philosophical issues, such as: Is functionalism the right approach toward life? When, if ever, is a simulation of life really alive? When do systems exhibit the spontaneous emergence of properties? 

naturalism, the twofold view that 1 everything is composed of natural entities  those studied in the sciences on some versions, the natural sciences  whose properties determine all the properties of things, persons included abstracta like possibilia and mathematical objects, if they exist, being constructed of such abstract entities as the sciences allow; and 2 acceptable methods of justification and explanation are continuous, in some sense, with those in science. Clause 1 is metaphysical or ontological, clause 2 methodological and/or epistemological. Often naturalism is formulated only for a specific subject matter or domain. Thus ethical naturalism holds that moral properties are equivalent to or at least determined by certain natural properties, so that moral judgments either form a subclass of, or are non-reductively determined by the factual or descriptive judgments, and the appropriate methods of moral justification and explanation are continuous with those in science. Aristotle and Spinoza sometimes are counted among the ancestors of naturalism, as are Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and Hobbes. But the major impetus to naturalism in the last two centuries comes from advances in science and the growing explanatory power they signify. By the 1850s, the synthesis of urea, reflections on the conservation of energy, work on “animal electricity,” and discoveries in physiology suggested to Feuerbach, L. Buchner, and others that all aspects of human beings are explainable in purely natural terms. Darwin’s theory had even greater impact, and by the end of the nineteenth century naturalist philosophies were making inroads where idealism once reigned unchallenged. Naturalism’s ranks now included H. Spencer, J. Tyndall, T. H. Huxley, W. K. Clifford, and E. Haeckel. Early in the twentieth century, Santayana’s naturalism strongly influenced a number of  philosophers, as did Dewey’s. Still other versions of naturalism flourished in America in the 0s and 0s, including those of R. W. Sellars and M. Cohen. Today most New-World philosophers of mind are naturalists of some stripe, largely because of what they see as the lessons of continuing scientific advances, some of them spectacular, particularly in the brain sciences. Nonetheless, twentieth-century philosophy has been largely anti-naturalist. Both phenomenology in the Husserlian tradition and analytic philosophy in the Fregean tradition, together with their descendants, have been united in rejecting psychologism, a species of naturalism according to which empirical discoveries about mental processes are crucial for understanding the nature of knowledge, language, and logic. In order to defend the autonomy of philosophy against inroads from descriptive science, many philosophers have tried to turn the tables by arguing for the priority of philosophy over science, hence over any of its alleged naturalist implications. Many continue to do so, often on the ground that philosophy alone can illuminate the normativity and intentionality involved in knowledge, language, and logic; or on the ground that philosophy can evaluate the normative and regulative presuppositions of scientific practice which science itself is either blind to or unequipped to analyze; or on the ground that phi- losophy understands how the language of science can no more be used to get outside itself than any other, hence can no more be known to be in touch with the world and ourselves than any other; or on the ground that would-be justifications of fundamental method, naturalist method certainly included, are necessarily circular because they must employ the very method at issue. Naturalists may reply by arguing that naturalism’s methodological clause 2 entails the opposite of dogmatism, requiring as it does an uncompromising fallibilism about philosophical matters that is continuous with the open, selfcritical spirit of science. If evidence were to accumulate against naturalism’s metaphysical clause 1, 1 would have to be revised or rejected, and there is no a priori reason such evidence could in principle never be found; indeed many naturalists reject the a priori altogether. Likewise, 2 itself might have to be revised or even rejected in light of adverse argument, so that in this respect 2 is self-referentially consistent. Until then, 2’s having survived rigorous criticism to date is justification enough, as is the case with hypotheses in science, which often are deployed without circularity in the course of their own evaluation, whether positive or negative H. I. Brown, “Circular Justifications,” 4. So too can language be used without circularity in expressing hypotheses about the relations between language and the prelinguistic world as illustrated by R. Millikan’s Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories, 4; cf. Post, “Epistemology,” 6. As for normativity and intentionality, naturalism does not entail materialism or physicalism, according to which everything is composed of the entities or processes studied in physics, and the properties of these basic physical affairs determine all the properties of things as in Quine. Some naturalists deny this, holding that more things than are dreamt of in physics are required to account for normativity and intentionality  and consciousness. Nor need naturalism be reductive, in the sense of equating every property with some natural property. Indeed many physicalists themselves explain how the physical, hence natural, properties of things might determine other, non-natural properties without being equivalent to them G. Hellman, T. Horgan, D. Lewis; see J. Post, The Faces of Existence, 7. Often the determining physical properties are not all properties of the thing x that has the non-natural properties, but include properties of items separated from x in space and time or in some cases bearing no physical relation to x that does any work in determining x’s properties Post, “ ‘Global’ Supervenient Determination: Too Permissive?” 5. Thus naturalism allows a high degree of holism and historicity, which opens the way for a non-reductive naturalist account of intentionality and normativity, such as Millikan’s, that is immune to the usual objections, which are mostly objections to reduction. The alternative psychosemantic theories of Dretske and Fodor, being largely reductive, remain vulnerable to such objections. In these and other ways non-reductive naturalism attempts to combine a monism of entities  the natural ones of which everything is composed  with a pluralism of properties, many of them irreducible or emergent. Not everything is nothing but a natural thing, nor need naturalism accord totalizing primacy to the natural face of existence. Indeed, some naturalists regard the universe as having religious and moral dimensions that enjoy a crucial kind of primacy; and some offer theologies that are more traditionally theist as do H. N. Wieman, C. Hardwick, J. Post. So far from exhibiting “reptilian indifference” to humans and their fate, the universe can be an enchanted place of belonging. 

naturalistic epistemology, an approach to epistemology that views the human subject as a natural phenomenon and uses empirical science to study epistemic activity. The phrase was introduced by Quine “Epistemology Naturalized,” in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, 9, who proposed that epistemology should be a chapter of psychology. Quine construed classical epistemology as Cartesian epistemology, an attempt to ground all knowledge in a firmly logical way on immediate experience. In its twentieth-century embodiment, it hoped to give a translation of all discourse and a deductive validation of all science in terms of sense experience, logic, and set theory. Repudiating this dream as forlorn, Quine urged that epistemology be abandoned and replaced by psychology. It would be a scientific study of how the subject takes sensory stimulations as input and delivers as output a theory of the three-dimensional world. This formulation appears to eliminate the normative mission of epistemology. In later writing, however, Quine has suggested that normative epistemology can be naturalized as a chapter of engineering: the technology of predicting experience, or sensory stimulations. Some theories of knowledge are naturalistic in their depiction of knowers as physical systems in causal interaction with the environment. One such theory is the causal theory of knowing, which says that a person knows that p provided his belief that p has a suitable causal connection with a corresponding state of affairs. Another example is the information-theoretic approach developed by Dretske Knowledge and the Flow of Information, 1. This says that a person knows that p only if some signal “carries” this information that p to him, where information is construed as an objective commodity that can be processed and transmitted via instruments, gauges, neurons, and the like. Information is “carried” from one site to another when events located at those sites are connected by a suitable lawful dependence. The normative concept of justification has also been the subject of naturalistic construals. Whereas many theories of justified belief focus on logical or probabilistic relations between evidence and hypothesis, naturalistic theories focus on the psychological processes causally responsible for the belief. The logical status of a belief does not fix its justificational status. Belief in a tautology, for instance, is not justified if it is formed by blind trust in an ignorant guru. According to Goldman Epistemology and Cognition, 6, a belief qualifies as justified only if it is produced by reliable belief-forming processes, i.e., processes that generally have a high truth ratio. Goldman’s larger program for naturalistic epistemology is called “epistemics,” an interdisciplinary enterprise in which cognitive science would play a major role. Epistemics would seek to identify the subset of cognitive operations available to the human cognizer that are best from a truth-bearing standpoint. Relevant truth-linked properties include problem-solving power and speed, i.e., the abilities to obtain correct answers to questions of interest and to do so quickly. Close connections between epistemology and artificial intelligence have been proposed by Clark Glymour, Gilbert Harman, John Pollock, and Paul Thagard. Harman stresses that principles of good reasoning are not directly given by rules of logic. Modus ponens, e.g., does not tell you to infer q if you already believe p and ‘if p then q’. In some cases it is better to subtract a belief in one of the premises rather than add a belief in q. Belief revision also requires attention to the storage and computational limitations of the mind. Limits of memory capacity, e.g., suggest a principle of clutter avoidance: not filling one’s mind with vast numbers of useless beliefs Harman, Change in View, 6. Other conceptions of naturalistic epistemology focus on the history of science. Larry Laudan conceives of naturalistic epistemology as a scientific inquiry that gathers empirical evidence concerning the past track records of various scientific methodologies, with the aim of determining which of these methodologies can best advance the chosen cognitive ends. Naturalistic epistemology need not confine its attention to individual epistemic agents; it can also study communities of agents. This perspective invites contributions from sciences that address the social side of the knowledge-seeking enterprise. If naturalistic epistemology is a normative inquiry, however, it must not simply naturalism, biological naturalistic epistemology 598    598 describe social practices or social influences; it must analyze the impact of these factors on the attainment of cognitive ends. Philosophers such as David Hull, Nicholas Rescher, Philip Kitcher, and Alvin Goldman have sketched models inspired by population biology and economics to explore the epistemic consequences of alternative distributions of research activity and different ways that professional rewards might influence the course of research. 

natural kind, a category of entities classically conceived as having modal implications; e.g., if Socrates is a member of the natural kind human being, then he is necessarily a human being. The idea that nature fixes certain sortals, such as ‘water’ and ‘human being’, as correct classifications that appear to designate kinds of entities has roots going back at least to Plato and Aristotle. Anil Gupta has argued that sortals are to be distinguished from properties designated by such predicates as ‘red’ by including criteria for individuating the particulars bits or amounts for mass nouns that fall under them as well as criteria for sorting those particulars into the class. Quine is salient among those who find the modal implications of natural kinds objectionable. He has argued that the idea of natural kinds is rooted in prescientific intuitive judgments of comparative similarity, and he has suggested that as these intuitive classifications are replaced by classifications based on scientific theories these modal implications drop away. Kripke and Putnam have argued that science in fact uses natural kind terms having the modal implications Quine finds so objectionable. They see an important role in scientific methodology for the capacity to refer demonstratively to such natural kinds by pointing out particulars that fall under them. Certain inferences within science  such as the inference to the charge for electrons generally from the measurement of the charge on one or a few electrons  seem to be additional aspects of a role for natural kind terms in scientific practice. Other roles in the methodology of science for natural kind concepts have been discussed in recent work by Ian Hacking and Thomas Kuhn. 

natural law, also called law of nature, in moral and political philosophy, an objective norm or set of objective norms governing human behavior, similar to the positive laws of a human ruler, but binding on all people alike and usually understood as involving a superhuman legislator. Ancient Grecian and Roman thought, particularly Stoicism, introduced ideas of eternal laws directing the actions of all rational beings and built into the very structure of the universe. Roman lawyers developed a doctrine of a law that all civilized peoples would recognize, and made some effort to explain it in terms of a natural law common to animals and humans. The most influential forms of natural law theory, however, arose from later efforts to use Stoic and legal language to work out a Christian theory of morality and politics. The aim was to show that the principles of morals could be known by reason alone, without revelation, so that the whole human race could know how to live properly. The law of nature applies, on this understanding, only to rational beings, who can obey or disobey it deliberately and freely. It is thus different in kind from the laws God laid down for the inanimate and irrational parts of creation. Natural law theorists often saw continuities and analogies between natural laws for humans and those for the rest of creation but did not confuse them. The most enduringly influential natural law writer was Aquinas. On his view God’s eternal reason ordains laws directing all things to act for the good of the community of the universe, the declaration of His own glory. Human reason can participate sufficiently in God’s eternal reason to show us the good of the human community. The natural law is thus our sharing in the eternal law in a way appropriate to our human nature. God lays down certain other laws through revelation; these divine laws point us toward our eternal goal. The natural law concerns our earthly good, and needs to be supplemented by human laws. Such laws can vary from community to community, but to be binding they must always stay within the limits of the law of nature. God engraved the most basic principles of the natural law in the minds of all people alike, but their detailed application takes reasoning powers that not everyone may have. Opponents of Aquinas  called voluntarists  argued that God’s will, not his intellect, is the source of law, and that God could have laid down different natural laws for us. Hugo Grotius rejected their position, but unlike Aquinas he conceived of natural law as meant not to direct us to bring about some definite common good but to set the limits on the ways in which each of us could properly pursue our own personal aims. This Grotian outlook was developed by Hobbes, Pufendorf, and Locke along voluntarist lines. Thomistic views continued to be expounded by Protestant as well as Roman Catholic writers until the end of the seventeenth century. Thereafter, while natural law theory remained central to Catholic teaching, it ceased to attract major new non-Catholic proponents. Natural law doctrine in both Thomistic and Grotian versions treats morality as basically a matter of compliance with law. Obligation and duty, obedience and disobedience, merit and guilt, reward and punishment, are central notions. Virtues are simply habits of following laws. Though the law is suited to our distinctive human nature and can be discovered by the proper use of reason, it is not a self-imposed law. In following it we are obeying God. Since the early eighteenth century, philosophical discussions of whether or not there is an objective morality have largely ceased to center on natural law. The idea remains alive, however, in jurisprudence. Natural law theories are opposed to legal positivism, the view that the only binding laws are those imposed by human sovereigns, who cannot be subject to higher legal constraints. Legal theorists arguing that there are rational objective limits to the legislative power of rulers often think of these limits in terms of natural law, even when their theories do not invoke or imply any of the religious aspects of earlier natural law positions. 

natural philosophy, the study of nature or of the spatiotemporal world. This was regarded as a task for philosophy before the emergence of modern science, especially physics and astronomy, and the term is now only used with reference to premodern times. Philosophical questions about nature still remain, e.g., whether materialism is true, but they would usually be placed in metaphysics or in a branch of it that may be called philosophy of nature. Natural philosophy is not to be confused with metaphysical naturalism, which is the metaphysical view no part of science itself that all that there is is the spatiotemporal world and that the only way to study it is that of the empirical sciences. It is also not to be confused with natural theology, which also may be considered part of metaphysics.

natural religion, a term first occurring in the second half of the seventeenth century, used in three related senses, the most common being 1 a body of truths about God and our duty that can be discovered by natural reason. These truths are sufficient for salvation or according to some orthodox Christians would have been sufficient if Adam had not sinned. Natural religion in this sense should be distinguished from natural theology, which does not imply this. A natural religion may also be 2 one that has a human, as distinct from a divine, origin. It may also be 3 a religion of human nature as such, as distinguished from religious beliefs and practices that have been determined by local circumstances. Natural religion in the third sense is identified with humanity’s original religion. In all three senses, natural religion includes a belief in God’s existence, justice, benevolence, and providential government; in immortality; and in the dictates of common morality. While the concept is associated with deism, it is also sympathetically treated by Christian writers like Clarke, who argues that revealed religion simply restores natural religion to its original purity and adds inducements to compliance. 

necessitarianism, the doctrine that necessity is an objective feature of the world. Natural language permits speakers to express modalities: a state of affairs can be actual Paris’s being in France, merely possible chlorophyll’s making things blue, or necessary 2 ! 2 % 4. Anti-necessitarians believe that these distinctions are not grounded in the nature of the world. Some of them claim that the distinctions are merely verbal. Others, e.g., Hume, believed that psychological facts, like our expectations of future events, explain the idea of necessity. Yet others contend that the modalities reflect epistemic considerations; necessity reflects the highest level of an inquirer’s commitment. Some necessitarians believe there are different modes of metaphysical necessity, e.g., causal and logical necessity. Certain proponents of idealism believe that each fact is necessarily connected with every other fact so that the ultimate goal of scientific inquiry is the discovery of a completely rigorous mathematical system of the world.

necessity, a modal property attributable to a whole proposition dictum just when it is not possible that the proposition be false the proposition being de dicto necessary. Narrowly construed, a proposition P is logically necessary provided P satisfies certain syntactic conditions, namely, that P’s denial is formally self-contradictory. More broadly, P is logically necessary just when P satisfies certain semantic conditions, namely, that P’s denial is false, and P true, in all possible worlds. These semantic conditions were first suggested by Leibniz, refined by Vitters and Carnap, and fully developed as the possible worlds semantics of Kripke, Hintikka, et al., in the 0s. Previously, philosophers had to rely largely on intuition to determine the acceptability or otherwise of formulas involving the necessity operator, A, and were at a loss as to which of various axiomatic systems for modal logic, as developed in the 0s by C. I. Lewis, best captured the notion of logical necessity. There was much debate, for instance, over the characteristic NN thesis of Lewis’s system S4, namely, AP / A AP if P is necessary then it is necessarily necessary. But given a Leibnizian account of the truth conditions for a statement of the form Aa namely R1 that Aa is true provided a is true in all possible worlds, and R2 that Aa is false provided there is at least one possible world in which a is false, a proof can be constructed by reductio ad absurdum. For suppose that AP / AAP is false in some arbitrarily chosen world W. Then its antecedent will be true in W, and hence by R1 it follows a that P will be true in all possible worlds. But equally its consequent will be false in W, and hence by R2 AP will be false in at least one possible world, from which again by R2 it follows b that P will be false in at least one possible world, thus contradicting a. A similar proof can be constructed for the characteristic thesis of S5, namely, -A-P / A-A-P if P is possibly true then it is necessarily possible. Necessity is also attributable to a property F of an object O provided it is not possible that there is no possible world in which O exists and lacks F  F being de re necessary, internal or essential to O. For instance, the non-repeatable haecceitist property of being identical to O is de re necessary essential to O, and arguably the repeatable property of being extended is de re necessary to all colored objects. 

need – H. P. Grice, “Need,” cf. D. Wiggins, “Need.” “What Toby needs” Grice was also interested in the modal use of ‘need’. “You need to do it.” “ ‘Need,’ like ‘ought’ takes ‘to.’” “It’s very Anglo-Saxon.”

negation: H. P. Grice, “Negation.” the logical operation on propositions that is indicated, e.g., by the prefatory clause ‘It is not the case that . . .’. Negation is standardly distinguished sharply from the operation on predicates that is called complementation and that is indicated by the prefix ‘non-’. Because negation can also be indicated by the adverb ‘not’, a distinction is often drawn between external negation, which is indicated by attaching the prefatory ‘It is not the case that . . .’ to an assertion, and internal negation, which is indicated by inserting the adverb ‘not’ along with, perhaps, nature, right of negation 601    601 grammatically necessary words like ‘do’ or ‘does’ into the assertion in such a way as to indicate that the adverb ‘not’ modifies the verb. In a number of cases, the question arises as to whether external and internal negation yield logically equivalent results. For example, ‘It is not the case that Santa Claus exists’ would seem obviously to be true, whereas ‘Santa Claus does not exist’ seems to some philosophers to presuppose what it denies, on the ground that nothing could be truly asserted of Santa Claus unless he existed. 

Nemesius of Emesa fl. c.390400, Grecian Christian philosopher. His treatise on the soul, On the Nature of Man, tr. from Grecian into Latin by Alphanus of Salerno and Burgundio of Pisa c.1160, was attributed to Gregory of Nyssa in the Middle Ages, and enjoyed some authority; the treatise rejects Plato for underplaying the unity of soul and body, and Aristotle for making the soul essentially corporeal. The soul is selfsubsistent, incorporeal, and by nature immortal, but naturally suited for union with the body. Nemesius draws on Ammonius Saccas and Porphyry, as well as analogy to the union of divine and human nature in Christ, to explain the incorruptible soul’s perfect union with the corruptible body. His review of the powers of the soul draws especially on Galen on the brain. His view that rational creatures possess free will in virtue of their rationality influenced Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus.

neo-Kantianism, the diverse Kantian movement that emerged within G. philosophy in the 1860s, gained a strong academic foothold in the 1870s, reached its height during the three decades prior to World War I, and disappeared with the rise of Nazism. The movement was initially focused on renewed study and elaboration of Kant’s epistemology in response to the growing epistemic authority of the natural sciences and as an alternative to both Hegelian and speculative idealism and the emerging materialism of, among others, Ludwig Büchner 182499. Later neo-Kantianism explored Kant’s whole philosophy, applied his critical method to disciplines other than the natural sciences, and developed its own philosophical systems. Some originators and/or early contributors were Kuno Fischer 18247, Hermann von Helmholtz 182, Friedrich Albert Lange 182875, Eduard Zeller 18148, and Otto Liebmann 18402, whose Kant und die Epigonen 1865 repeatedly stated what became a neoKantian motto, “Back to Kant!” Several forms of neo-Kantianism are to be distinguished. T. K. Oesterreich 09, in Friedrich Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie “F.U.’s Compendium of the History of Philosophy,” 3, developed the standard, somewhat chronological, classification: 1 The physiological neo-Kantianism of Helmholtz and Lange, who claimed that physiology is “developed or corrected Kantianism.” 2 The metaphysical neo-Kantianism of the later Liebmann, who argued for a Kantian “critical metaphysics” beyond epistemology in the form of “hypotheses” about the essence of things. 3 The realist neo-Kantianism of Alois Riehl 18444, who emphasized the real existence of Kant’s thing-in-itself. 4 The logistic-methodological neo-Kantianism of the Marburg School of Hermann Cohen 18428 and Paul Natorp 18544. 5 The axiological neo-Kantianism of the Baden or Southwest G. School of Windelband 18485 and Heinrich Rickert 18636. 6 The relativistic neo-Kantianism of Georg Simmel 18588, who argued for Kantian categories relative to individuals and cultures. 7 The psychological neo-Kantianism of Leonard Nelson 27, originator of the Göttingen School; also known as the neo-Friesian School, after Jakob Friedrich Fries 17731843, Nelson’s self-proclaimed precursor. Like Fries, Nelson held that Kantian a priori principles cannot be transcendentally justified, but can be discovered only through introspection. Oesterreich’s classification has been narrowed or modified, partly because of conflicting views on how distinctly “Kantian” a philosopher must have been to be called “neo-Kantian.” The very term ‘neo-Kantianism’ has even been called into question, as suggesting real intellectual commonality where little or none is to be found. There is, however, growing consensus that Marneo-Euclidean geometry neo-Kantianism 603    603 burg and Baden neo-Kantianism were the most important and influential. Marburg School. Its founder, Cohen, developed its characteristic Kantian idealism of the natural sciences by arguing that physical objects are truly known only through the laws of these sciences and that these laws presuppose the application of Kantian a priori principles and concepts. Cohen elaborated this idealism by eliminating Kant’s dualism of sensibility and understanding, claiming that space and time are construction methods of “pure thought” rather than a priori forms of perception and that the notion of any “given” perceptual data prior to the “activity” of “pure thought” is meaningless. Accordingly, Cohen reformulated Kant’s thing-in-itself as the regulative idea that the mathematical description of the world can always be improved. Cohen also emphasized that “pure thought” refers not to individual consciousess  on his account Kant had not yet sufficiently left behind a “subjectobject” epistemology  but rather to the content of his own system of a priori principles, which he saw as subject to change with the progress of science. Just as Cohen held that epistemology must be based on the “fact of science,” he argued, in a decisive step beyond Kant, that ethics must transcendentally deduce both the moral law and the ideal moral subject from a humanistic science  more specifically, from jurisprudence’s notion of the legal person. This analysis led to the view that the moral law demands that all institutions, including economic enterprises, become democratic  so that they display unified wills and intentions as transcendental conditions of the legal person  and that all individuals become colegislators. Thus Cohen arrived at his frequently cited claim that Kant “is the true and real originator of G. socialism.” Other important Marburg Kantians were Cohen’s colleague Natorp, best known for his studies on Plato and philosophy of education, and their students Karl Vorländer 18608, who focused on Kantian socialist ethics as a corrective of orthodox Marxism, and Ernst Cassirer 18745. Baden School. The basic task of philosophy and its transcendental method is seen as identifying universal values that make possible culture in its varied expressions. This focus is evident in Windelband’s influential insight that the natural sciences seek to formulate general laws  nomothetic knowledge  while the historical sciences seek to describe unique events  idiographic knowledge. This distinction is based on the values interests of mastery of nature and understanding and reliving the unique past in order to affirm our individuality. Windelband’s view of the historical sciences as idiographic raised the problem of selection central to his successor Rickert’s writings: How can historians objectively determine which individual events are historically significant? Rickert argued that this selection must be based on the values that are generally recognized within the cultures under investigation, not on the values of historians themselves. Rickert also developed the transcendental argument that the objectivity of the historical sciences necessitates the assumption that the generally recognized values of different cultures approximate in various degrees universally valid values. This argument was rejected by Weber, whose methodological work was greatly indebted to Rickert. 

Neoplatonism, that period of Platonism following on the new impetus provided by the philosophical speculations of Plotinus A.D. 20469. It extends, as a minimum, to the closing of the Platonic School in Athens by Justinian in 529, but maximally through Byzantium, with such figures as Michael Psellus 101878 and Pletho c.13601452, the Renaissance Ficino, Pico, and the Florentine Academy, and the early modern period the Cambridge Platonists, Thomas Taylor, to the advent of the “scientific” study of the works of Plato with Schleiermacher 17681834 at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The term was formerly also used to characterize the whole period from the Old Academy of Plato’s immediate successors, Speusippus and Xenocrates, through what is now termed Middle Platonism c.80 B.C.A.D. 220, down to Plotinus. This account confines itself to the “minimum” interpretation. Neoplatonism proper may be divided into three main periods: that of Plotinus and his immediate followers third century; the “Syrian” School of Iamblichus and his followers fourth century; and the “Athenian” School begun by Plutarch of Athens, and including Syrianus, Proclus, and their successors, down to Damascius fifthsixth centuries. Plotinus and his school. Plotinus’s innovations in Platonism developed in his essays, the Enneads, collected and edited by his pupil Porphyry after his death, are mainly two: a above the traditional supreme principle of earlier Platonism and Aristotelianism, a self-thinking intellect, which was also regarded as true being, he postulated a principle superior to intellect and being, totally unitary and simple “the One”; b he saw reality as a series of levels One, Intelligence, Soul, each higher one outflowing or radiating into the next lower, while still remaining unaffected in itself, and the lower ones fixing themselves in being by somehow “reflecting back” upon their priors. This eternal process gives the universe its existence and character. Intelligence operates in a state of non-temporal simultaneity, holding within itself the “forms” of all things. Soul, in turn, generates time, and receives the forms into itself as “reason principles” logoi. Our physical three-dimensional world is the result of the lower aspect of Soul nature projecting itself upon a kind of negative field of force, which Plotinus calls “matter.” Matter has no positive existence, but is simply the receptacle for the unfolding of Soul in its lowest aspect, which projects the forms in three-dimensional space. Plotinus often speaks of matter as “evil” e.g. Enneads II.8, and of the Soul as suffering a “fall” e.g. Enneads V.1, 1, but in fact he sees the whole cosmic process as an inevitable result of the superabundant productivity of the One, and thus “the best of all possible worlds.” Plotinus was himself a mystic, but he arrived at his philosophical conclusions by perfectly logical means, and he had not much use for either traditional religion or any of the more recent superstitions. His immediate pupils, Amelius c.22590 and Porphyry 234c.305, while somewhat more hospitable to these, remained largely true to his philosophy though Amelius had a weakness for triadic elaborations in metaphysics. Porphyry was to have wide influence, both in the Latin West through such men as Marius Victorinus, Augustine, and Boethius, and in the Grecian East and even, through translations, on medieval Islam, as the founder of the Neoplatonic tradition of commentary on both Plato and Aristotle, but it is mainly as an expounder of Plotinus’s philosophy that he is known. He added little that is distinctive, though that little is currently becoming better appreciated. Iamblichus and the Syrian School. Iamblichus c.245325, descendant of an old Syrian noble family, was a pupil of Porphyry’s, but dissented from him on various important issues. He set up his own school in Apamea in Syria, and attracted many pupils. One chief point of dissent was the role of theurgy really just magic, with philosophical underpinnings, but not unlike Christian sacramental theology. Iamblichus claimed, as against Porphyry, that philosophical reasoning alone could not attain the highest degree of enlightenment, without the aid of theurgic rites, and his view on this was followed by all later Platonists. He also produced a metaphysical scheme far more elaborate than Plotinus’s, by a Scholastic filling in, normally with systems of triads, of gaps in the “chain of being” left by Plotinus’s more fluid and dynamic approach to philosophy. For instance, he postulated two Ones, one completely transcendent, the other the source of all creation, thus “resolving” a tension in Plotinus’s metaphysics. Iamblichus was also concerned to fit as many of the traditional gods as possible into his system, which later attracted the attention of the Emperor Julian, who based himself on Iamblichus when attempting to set up a Hellenic religion to rival Christianity, a project which, however, died with him in 363. The Athenian School. The precise links between the pupils of Iamblichus and Plutarch d.432, founder of the Athenian School, remain obscure, but the Athenians always retained a great respect for the Syrian. Plutarch himself is a dim figure, but Syrianus c.370437, though little of his writings survives, can be seen from constant references to him by his pupil Proclus 412 85 to be a major figure, and the source of most of Proclus’s metaphysical elaborations. The Athenians essentially developed and systematized further the doctrines of Iamblichus, creating new levels of divinity e.g. intelligibleintellectual gods, and “henads” in the realm of the One  though they rejected the two Ones, this process reaching its culmination in the thought of the last head of the Athenian Academy, Damascius c.456540. The drive to systematize reality and to objectivize concepts, exhibited most dramatically in Proclus’s Elements of Theology, is a lasting legacy of the later Neoplatonists, and had a significant influence on the thought, among others, of Hegel. 

neo-Scholasticism, the movement given impetus Neoplatonism, Islamic neo-Scholasticism 605    605 by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris 1879, which, while stressing Aquinas, was a general recommendation of the study of medieval Scholasticism as a source for the solution of vexing modern problems. Leo assumed that there was a doctrine common to Aquinas, Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus, and Duns Scotus, and that Aquinas was a preeminent spokesman of the common view. Maurice De Wulf employed the phrase ‘perennial philosophy’ to designate this common medieval core as well as what of Scholasticism is relevant to later times. Historians like Mandonnet, Grabmann, and Gilson soon contested the idea that there was a single medieval doctrine and drew attention to the profound differences between the great medieval masters. The discussion of Christian philosophy precipitated by Brehier in 1 generated a variety of suggestions as to what medieval thinkers and later Christian philosophers have in common, but this was quite different from the assumption of Aeterni Patris. The pedagogical directives of this and later encyclicals brought about a revival of Thomism rather than of Scholasticism, generally in seminaries, ecclesiastical s, and Catholic universities. Louvain’s Higher Institute of Philosophy under the direction of Cardinal Mercier and its Revue de Philosophie Néoscolastique were among the first fruits of the Thomistic revival. The studia generalia of the Dominican order continued at a new pace, the Saulchoir publishing the Revue thomiste. In graduate centers in Milan, Madrid, Latin America, Paris, and Rome, men were trained for the task of teaching in s and seminaries, and scholarly research began to flourish as well. The Leonine edition of the writings of Aquinas was soon joined by new critical editions of Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and Ockham, as well as Albertus Magnus. Medieval studies in the broader sense gained from the quest for manuscripts and the growth of paleography and codicology. Besides the historians mentioned above, Jacques Maritain 23, a layman and convert to Catholicism, did much both in his native France and in the United States to promote the study of Aquinas. The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at Toronto, with Gilson regularly and Maritain frequently in residence, became a source of  and  teachers in Canada and the United States, as Louvain and, in Rome, the Jesuit Gregorianum and the Dominican Angelicum already were. In the 0s s took doctorates in theology and philosophy at Laval in Quebec and soon the influence of Charles De Koninck was felt. Jesuits at St. Louis  began to publish The Modern Schoolman, Dominicans in Washington The Thomist, and the  Catholic Philosophical Association The New Scholasticism. The School of Philosophy at Catholic , long the primary domestic source of professors and scholars, was complemented by graduate programs at St. Louis, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Fordham, and Marquette. In the golden period of the Thomistic revival in the United States, from the 0s until the end of the Vatican Council II in 5, there were varieties of Thomism based on the variety of views on the relation between philosophy and science. By the 0s Thomistic philosophy was a prominent part of the curriculum of all Catholic s and universities. By 0, it had all but disappeared under the mistaken notion that this was the intent of Vatican II. This had the effect of releasing Aquinas into the wider philosophical world. 

Neo-Thomism, a philosophical-theological movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries manifesting a revival of interest in Aquinas. It was stimulated by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris 1879 calling for a renewed emphasis on the teaching of Thomistic principles to meet the intellectual and social challenges of modernity. The movement reached its peak in the 0s, though its influence continues to be seen in organizations such as the  Catholic Philosophical Association. Among its major figures are Joseph Kleutgen, Désiré Mercier, Joseph Maréchal, Pierre Rousselot, Réginald Garrigou-LaGrange, Martin Grabmann, M.-D. Chenu, Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, Yves R. Simon, Josef Pieper, Karl Rahner, Cornelio Fabro, Emerich Coreth, Bernard Lonergan, and W. Norris Clarke. Few, if any, of these figures have described themselves as NeoThomists; some explicitly rejected the designation. Neo-Thomists have little in common except their commitment to Aquinas and his relevance to the contemporary world. Their interest produced a more historically accurate understanding of Aquinas and his contribution to medieval thought Grabmann, Gilson, Chenu, including a previously ignored use of the Platonic metaphysics of participation Fabro. This richer understanding of Aquinas, as forging a creative synthesis in the midst of competing traditions, has made arguing for his relevance easier. Those Neo-Thomists who were suspicious of modernity produced fresh readings of Aquinas’s texts applied to contemporary problems Pieper, Gilson. Their influence can be seen in the revival of virtue theory and the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. Others sought to develop Aquinas’s thought with the aid of later Thomists Maritain, Simon and incorporated the interpretations of Counter-Reformation Thomists, such as Cajetan and Jean Poinsot, to produce more sophisticated, and controversial, accounts of the intelligence, intentionality, semiotics, and practical knowledge. Those Neo-Thomists willing to engage modern thought on its own terms interpreted modern philosophy sympathetically using the principles of Aquinas Maréchal, Lonergan, Clarke, seeking dialogue rather than confrontation. However, some readings of Aquinas are so thoroughly integrated into modern philosophy that they can seem assimilated Rahner, Coreth; their highly individualized metaphysics inspired as much by other philosophical influences, especially Heidegger, as Aquinas. Some of the labels currently used among Neo-Thomists suggest a division in the movement over critical, postKantian methodology. ‘Existential Thomism’ is used for those who emphasize both the real distinction between essence and existence and the role of the sensible in the mind’s first grasp of being. ‘Transcendental Thomism’ applies to figures like Maréchal, Rousselot, Rahner, and Coreth who rely upon the inherent dynamism of the mind toward the real, rooted in Aquinas’s theory of the active intellect, from which to deduce their metaphysics of being. 

New Academy, the name given the Academy, the school founded by Plato in Athens, during the time it was controlled by Academic Skeptics after about 265 B.C. Its principal leaders in this period were Arcesilaus 315242 and Carneades 219 129; our most accessible source for the New Academy is Cicero’s Academica. A master of logical techniques such as sorites Neo-Thomism New Academy 608    608 which he learned from Diodorus, Arcesilaus attempted to revive the dialectic of Plato, using it to achieve the suspension of belief he learned to value from Pyrrho. Later, and especially under the leadership of Carneades, the New Academy developed a special relationship with Stoicism: as the Stoics found new ways to defend their doctrine of the criterion, Carneades found new ways to refute it in the Stoics’ own terms. Carneades’ visit to Rome in 155 B.C. with a Stoic and a Peripatetic marks the beginning of Rome’s interest in Grecian philosophy. His anti-Stoic arguments were recorded by his successor Clitomachus d. c.110 B.C., whose work is known to us through summaries in Cicero. Clitomachus was succeeded by Philo of Larisa c.16079 B.C., who was the teacher of Antiochus of Ascalon c.130c.67 B.C.. Philo later attempted to reconcile the Old and the New Academy by softening the Skepticism of the New and by fostering a Skeptical reading of Plato. Angered by this, Antiochus broke away in about 87 B.C. to found what he called the Old Academy, which is now considered to be the beginning of Middle Platonism. Probably about the same time, Aenesidemus dates unknown revived the strict Skepticism of Pyrrho and founded the school that is known to us through the work of Sextus Empiricus. Academic Skepticism differed from Pyrrhonism in its sharp focus on Stoic positions, and possibly in allowing for a weak assent as opposed to belief, which they suspended in what is probable; and Pyrrhonians accused Academic Skeptics of being dogmatic in their rejection of the possibility of knowledge. The New Academy had a major influence on the development of modern philosophy, most conspicuously through Hume, who considered that his brand of mitigated skepticism belonged to this school. 

Newcomb’s paradox, a conflict between two widely accepted principles of rational decision, arising in the following decision problem, known as Newcomb’s problem. Two boxes are before you. The first contains either $1,000,000 or nothing. The second contains $1,000. You may take the first box alone or both boxes. Someone with uncanny foresight has predicted your choice and fixed the content of the first box according to his prediction. If he has predicted that you will take only the first box, he has put $1,000,000 in that box; and if he has predicted that you will take both boxes, he has left the first box empty. The expected utility of an option is commonly obtained by multiplying the utility of its possible outcomes by their probabilities given the option, and then adding the products. Because the predictor is reliable, the probability that you receive $1,000,000 given that you take only the first box is high, whereas the probability that you receive $1,001,000 given that you take both boxes is low. Accordingly, the expected utility of taking only the first box is greater than the expected utility of taking both boxes. Therefore the principle of maximizing expected utility says to take only the first box. However, the principle of dominance says that if the states determining the outcomes of options are causally independent of the options, and there is one option that is better than the others in each state, then you should adopt it. Since your choice does not causally influence the contents of the first box, and since choosing both boxes yields $1,000 in addition to the contents of the first box whatever they are, the principle says to take both boxes. Newcomb’s paradox is named after its formulator, William Newcomb. Nozick publicized it in “Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice” 9. Many theorists have responded to the paradox by changing the definition of the expected utility of an option so that it is sensitive to the causal influence of the option on the states that determine its outcome, but is insensitive to the evidential bearing of the option on those states. 

Newman, John Henry 180, English prelate and philosopher of religion. As fellow at Oriel , Oxford, he was a prominent member of the Anglican Oxford Movement. He became a Roman Catholic in 1845, took holy orders in 1847, and was made a cardinal in 1879. His most important philosophical work is the Grammar of Assent 1870. Here Newman explored the difference between formal reasoning and the informal or natural movement of the mind in discerning the truth about the concrete and historical. Concrete reasoning in the mode of natural inference is implicit and unreflective; it deals not with general principles as such but with their employment in particular circumstances. Thus a scientist must judge whether the phenomenon he confronts is a novel significant datum, a coincidence, or merely an insignificant variation in the data. The acquired capacity to make judgments of Newcomb’s paradox Newman, John Henry 609    609 this sort Newman called the illative sense, an intellectual skill shaped by experience and personal insight and generally limited for individuals to particular fields of endeavor. The illative sense makes possible a judgment of certitude about the matter considered, even though the formal argument that partially outlines the process possesses only objective probability for the novice. Hence probability is not necessarily opposed to certitude. In becoming aware of its tacit dimension, Newman spoke of recognizing a mode of informal inference. He distinguished such reasoning, which, by virtue of the illative sense, culminates in a judgment of certitude about the way things are real assent, from formal reasoning conditioned by the certainty or probability of the premises, which assents to the conclusion thus conditioned notional assent. In real assent, the proposition functions to “image” the reality, to make its reality present. In the Development of Christian Doctrine 1845, Newman analyzed the ways in which some ideas unfold themselves only through historical development, within a tradition of inquiry. He sought to delineate the common pattern of such development in politics, science, philosophy, and religion. Although his focal interest was in how religious doctrines develop, he emphasizes the general character of such a pattern of progressive articulation.

New Realism, an early twentieth-century revival, both in England and in the United States, of various forms of realism in reaction to the dominant idealisms inherited from the nineteenth century. In America this revival took a cooperative form when six philosophers Ralph Barton Perry, Edwin Holt, William Pepperell Montague, Walter Pitkin, Edward Spaulding, and Walter Marvin published “A Program and First Platform of Six Realists” 0, followed two years later by the cooperative volume The New Realism, in which each authored an essay. This volume gave rise to the designation ‘New Realists’ for these six philosophers. Although they clearly disagreed on many particulars, they concurred on several matters of philosophical style and epistemological substance. Procedurally they endorsed a cooperative and piecemeal approach to philosophical problems, and they were constitutionally inclined to a closeness of analysis that would prepare the way for later philosophical tendencies. Substantively they agreed on several epistemological stances central to the refutation of idealism. Among the doctrines in the New Realist platform were the rejection of the fundamental character of epistemology; the view that the entities investigated in logic, mathematics, and science are not “mental” in any ordinary sense; the view that the things known are not the products of the knowing relation nor in any fundamental sense conditioned by their being known; and the view that the objects known are immediately and directly present to consciousness while being independent of that relation. New Realism was a version of direct realism, which viewed the notions of mediation and representation in knowledge as opening gambits on the slippery slope to idealism. Their refutation of idealism focused on pointing out the fallacy of moving from the truism that every object of knowledge is known to the claim that its being consists in its being known. That we are obviously at the center of what we know entails nothing about the nature of what we know. Perry dubbed this fact “the egocentric predicament,” and supplemented this observation with arguments to the effect that the objects of knowledge are in fact independent of the knowing relation. New Realism as a version of direct realism had as its primary conceptual obstacle “the facts of relativity,” i.e., error, illusion, perceptual variation, and valuation. Dealing with these phenomena without invoking “mental intermediaries” proved to be the stumbling block, and New Realism soon gave way to a second cooperative venture by another group of  philosophers that came to be known as Critical Realism. The term ‘new realism’ is also occasionally used with regard to those British philosophers principal among them Moore and Russell similarly involved in refuting idealism. Although individually more significant than the  group, theirs was not a cooperative effort, so the group term came to have primarily an  referent. 

Newton, Sir Isaac 16421727, English physicist and mathematician, one of the greatest scientists of all time. Born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, he attended Cambridge , receiving the B.A. in 1665; he became a fellow of Trinity in New Realism Newton, Sir Isaac 610    610 1667 and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1671 and served as its president from 1703 until his death. In 1696 he was appointed warden of the mint. In his later years he was involved in political and governmental affairs rather than in active scientific work. A sensitive, secretive person, he was prone to irascibility  most notably in a dispute with Leibniz over priority of invention of the calculus. His unparalleled scientific accomplishments overshadow a deep and sustained interest in ancient chronology, biblical study, theology, and alchemy. In his early twenties Newton’s genius asserted itself in an astonishing period of mathematical and experimental creativity. In the years 1664 67, he discovered the binomial theorem; the “method of fluxions” calculus; the principle of the composition of light; and fundamentals of his theory of universal gravitation. Newton’s masterpiece, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, appeared in 1687. This work sets forth the mathematical laws of physics and “the system of the world.” Its exposition is modeled on Euclidean geometry: propositions are demonstrated mathematically from definitions and mathematical axioms. The world system consists of material bodies masses composed of hard particles at rest or in motion and interacting according to three axioms or laws of motion: 1 Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. 2 The change of motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and is made in the direction of the straight line in which that force is impressed. [Here, the impressed force equals mass times the rate of change of velocity, i.e., acceleration. Hence the familiar formula, F % ma.] 3 To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual action of two bodies upon each other is always equal and directed to contrary parts. Newton’s general law of gravitation in modern restatement is: Every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force varying directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square of the distance between them. The statement of the laws of motion is preceded by an equally famous scholium in which Newton enunciates the ultimate conditions of his universal system: absolute time, space, place, and motion. He speaks of these as independently existing “quantities” according to which true measurements of bodies and motions can be made as distinct from relative “sensible measures” and apparent observations. Newton seems to have thought that his system of mathematical principles presupposed and is validated by the absolute framework. The scholium has been the subject of much critical discussion. The main problem concerns the justification of the absolute framework. Newton commends adherence to experimental observation and induction for advancing scientific knowledge, and he rejects speculative hypotheses. But absolute time and space are not observable. In the scholium Newton did offer a renowned experiment using a rotating pail of water as evidence for distinguishing true and apparent motions and proof of absolute motion. It has been remarked that conflicting strains of a rationalism anticipating Kant and empiricism anticipating Hume are present in Newton’s conception of science. Some of these issues are also evident in Newton’s Optics 1704, especially the fourth edition, 1730, which includes a series of suggestive “Queries” on the nature of light, gravity, matter, scientific method, and God. The triumphant reception given to Newton’s Principia in England and on the Continent led to idealization of the man and his work. Thus Alexander Pope’s famous epitaph: Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light. The term ‘Newtonian’, then, denoted the view of nature as a universal system of mathematical reason and order divinely created and administered. The metaphor of a “universal machine” was frequently applied. The view is central in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, inspiring a religion of reason and the scientific study of society and the human mind. More narrowly, ‘Newtonian’ suggests a reduction of any subject matter to an ontology of individual particles and the laws and basic terms of mechanics: mass, length, and time. 

Nicholas of Autrecourt c.1300after 1350,  philosopher and theologian. Born in Autrecourt, he was educated at Paris and earned bachelor’s degrees in theology and law and a master’s degree in arts. After a list of propositions from his writings was condemned in 1346, he was sentenced to burn his works publicly and recant, which he did in Paris the following year. He was appointed dean of Metz cathedral in 1350. Nicholas’s ecclesiastical troubles arose partly from nine letters two of which survive which reduce to absurdity the view that appearances provide a sufficient basis for certain and evident knowledge. On the contrary, except for “certitude of the faith,” we can be certain only of what is equivalent or reducible to the principle of noncontradiction. He accepts as a consequence of this that we can never validly infer the existence of one distinct thing from another, including the existence of substances from qualities, or causes from effects. Indeed, he finds that “in the whole of his natural philosophy and metaphysics, Aristotle had such [evident] certainty of scarcely two conclusions, and perhaps not even of one.” Nicholas devotes another work, the Exigit ordo executionis also known as The Universal Treatise, to an extended critique of Aristotelianism. It attacks what seemed to him the blind adherence given by his contemporaries to Aristotle and Averroes, showing that the opposite of many conclusions alleged to have been demonstrated by the Philosopher  e.g., on the divisibility of continua, the reality of motion, and the truth of appearances  are just as evident or apparent as those conclusions themselves. Because so few of his writings are extant, however, it is difficult to ascertain just what Nicholas’s own views were. Likewise, the reasons for his condemnation are not well understood, although recent studies have suggested that his troubles might have been due to a reaction to certain ideas that he appropriated from English theologians, such as Adam de Wodeham. Nicholas’s views elicited comment not only from church authorities, but also from other philosophers, including Buridan, Marsilius of Inghen, Albert of Saxony, and Nicholas of Oresme. Despite a few surface similarities, however, there is no evidence that his teachings on certainty or causality had any influence on modern philosophers, such as Descartes or Hume. 

Nicholas of Cusa, also called Nicolaus Cusanus, Nicholas Kryfts 140164, G. philosopher, an important Renaissance Platonist. Born in Kues on the Moselle, he earned a doctorate in canon law in 1423. He became known for his De concordantia catholica, written at the Council of Basel in 1432, a work defending the conciliarist position against the pope. Later, he decided that only the pope could provide unity for the church in its negotiations with the East, and allied himself with the papacy. In 143738, returning from a papal legation to Constantinople, he had his famous insight into the coincidence of opposites coincidentia oppositorum in the infinite, upon which his On Learned Ignorance is based. His unceasing labor was chiefly responsible for the Vienna Concordat with the Eastern church in 1448. He was made cardinal in 1449 as a reward for his efforts, and bishop of Brixen Bressanone in 1450. He traveled widely in G.y as a papal legate 145052 before settling down in his see. Cusa’s central insight was that all oppositions are united in their infinite measure, so that what would be logical contradictions for finite things coexist without contradiction in God, who is the measure of i.e., is the form or essence of all things, and identical to them inasmuch as he is identical with their reality, quiddity, or essence. Considered as it is contracted to the individual, a thing is only an image of its measure, not a reality in itself. His position drew on mathematical models, arguing, for instance, that an infinite straight line tangent to a circle is the measure of the curved circumference, since a circle of infinite diameter, containing all the being possible in a circle, would coincide with the tangent. In general, the measure of a thing must contain all the possible being of that sort of thing, and so is infinite, or unlimited, in its being. Cusa attacked Aristotelians for their unwillingness to give up the principle of non-contradiction. His epistemology is a form of Platonic skepticism. Our knowledge is never of reality, the infinite measure of things that is their essence, but only of finite images of reality corresponding to the finite copies with which we must deal. These images are constructed by our own minds, and do not represent an immediate grasp of any reality. Their highest form is found in mathematics, and it is only through mathematics that reason can understand the world. In relation to the infinite real, these images and the contracted realities they enable us to know have only an infinitesimal reality. Our knowledge is only a mass of conjectures, i.e., assertions that are true insofar as they capture some part of the truth, but never the whole truth, the infinite measure, as it really is in itself. Cusa was much read in the Renaissance, and is somethimes said to have had significant influence on G. thought of the eighteenth century, in particular on Leibniz, and G. idealism, but it is uncertain, despite the considerable intrinsic merit of his thought, if this is true. 

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 18440, G. philosopher and cultural critic. Born in a small town in the Prussian province of Saxony, Nietzsche’s early education emphasized religion and classical languages and literature. After a year at the  at Bonn he transferred to Leipzig, where he pursued classical studies. There he happened upon Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, which profoundly influenced his subsequent concerns and early philosophical thinking. It was as a classical philologist, however, that he was appointed professor at the Swiss  at Basel, before he had even received his doctorate, at the astonishingly early age of twenty-four. A mere twenty years of productive life remained to him, ending with a mental and physical collapse in January 9, from which he never recovered. He held his position at Basel for a decade, resigning in 1879 owing to the deterioration of his health from illnesses he had contracted in 1870 as a volunteer medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war. At Basel he lectured on a variety of subjects chiefly relating to classical studies, including Grecian and Roman philosophy as well as literature. During his early years there he also became intensely involved with the composer Richard Wagner; and his fascination with Wagner was reflected in several of his early works  most notably his first book, The Birth of Tragedy 1872, and his subsequent essay Richard Wagner in Bayreuth 1876. His later break with Wagner, culminating in his polemic The Case of Wagner8, was both profound and painful to him. While at first regarding Wagner as a creative genius showing the way to a cultural and spiritual renewal, Nietzsche came to see him and his art as epitomizing and exacerbating the fundamental problem with which he became increasingly concerned. This problem was the pervasive intellectual and cultural crisis Nietzsche later characterized in terms of the “death of God” and the advent of “nihilism.” Traditional religious and metaphysical ways of thinking were on the wane, leaving a void that modern science could not fill, and endangering the health of civilization. The discovery of some life-affirming alternative to Schopenhauer’s radically pessimistic response to this disillusionment became Nietzsche’s primary concern. In The Birth of Tragedy he looked to the Grecians for clues and to Wagner for inspiration, believing that their art held the key to renewed human flourishing for a humanity bereft both of the consolations of religious faith and of confidence in reason and science as substitutes for it. In his subsequent series of Untimely Meditations 187376 he expanded upon his theme of the need to reorient human thought and endeavor to this end, and criticized a variety of tendencies detrimental to it that he discerned among his contemporaries. Both the deterioration of Nietzsche’s health and the shift of his interest away from his original discipline prevented retention of his position at Basel. In the first years after his retirement, he completed his transition from philologist to philosopher and published the several parts of Human, All-Too-Human 187890, Daybreak 1, and the first four parts of The Gay Science 2. These aphoristic writings sharpened and extended his analytical and critical assessment of various human tendencies and social, cultural, and intellectual phenomena. During this period his thinking became much more sophisticated; and he developed the philosophical styles and concerns that found mature expression in the writings of the final years of his brief active life, following the publication of the four parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra 385. These last remarkably productive years saw the appearance of Beyond Good and Evil 6, a fifth part of The Gay Science, On the Genealogy of Morals 7, The Case of Wagner 8, and a series of prefaces to his earlier works 687, as well as the completion of several books published after his collapse  Twilight of the Idols 9, The Antichrist 5, and Ecce Homo 8. He was also amassing a great deal of material in notebooks, of which a selection was later published under the title The Will to Power. The status and significance of this mass of Nachlass material are matters of continuing controversy. In the early 0s, when he wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche arrived at a conception of human life and possibility  and with it, of value and meaning  that he believed could overcome the Schopenhauerian pessimism and nihilism that he saw as outcomes of the collapse of traditional modes of religious and philosophical interpretation. He prophesied a period of nihilism in the aftermath of their decline and fall; but this prospect deeply distressed him. He was convinced of the untenability of the “God hypothesis,” and indeed of all religious and metaphysical interpretations of the world and ourselves; and yet he was well aware that the very possibility of the affirmation of life was at stake, and required more than the mere abandonment of all such “lies” and “fictions.” He took the basic challenge of philosophy now to be to reinterpret life and the world along more tenable lines that would also overcome nihilism. What Nietzsche called “the death of God” was both a cultural event  the waning and impending demise of the “Christian-moral” interpretation of life and the world  and also a philosophical development: the abandonment of anything like the God-hypothesis all demidivine absolutes included. As a cultural event it was a phenomenon to be reckoned with, and a source of profound concern; for he feared a “nihilistic rebound” in its wake, and worried about the consequences for human life and culture if no countermovement to it were forthcoming. As a philosophical development, on the other hand, it was his point of departure, which he took to call for a radical reconsideration of everything from life and the world and human existence and knowledge to value and morality. The “de-deification of nature,” the “translation of man back into nature,” the “revaluation of values,” the tracing of the “genealogy of morals” and their critique, and the elaboration of “naturalistic” accounts of knowledge, value, morality, and our entire “spiritual” nature thus came to be his main tasks. His published and unpublished writings contain a wealth of remarks, observations, and suggestions contributing importantly to them. It is a matter of controversy, even among those with a high regard for Nietzsche, whether he tried to work out positions on issues bearing any resemblance to those occupying other philosophers before and after him in the mainstream of the history of philosophy. He was harshly critical of most of his predecessors and contemporaries; and he broke fundamentally with them and their basic ideas and procedures. His own writings, moreover, bear little resemblance to those of most other philosophers. Those he himself published as well as his reflections in his notebooks do not systematically set out and develop views. Rather, they consist for the most part in collections of short paragraphs and sets of aphorisms, often only loosely if at all connected. Many deal with philosophical topics, but in very unconventional ways; and because his remarks about these topics are scattered through many different works, they are all too easily taken in isolation and misunderstood. On some topics, moreover, much of what he wrote is found only in his very rough notebooks, which he filled with thoughts without indicating the extent of his reflected commitment to them. His language, furthermore, is by turns coolly analytical, heatedly polemical, sharply critical, and highly metaphorical; and he seldom indicates clearly the scope of his claims and what he means by his terms. It is not surprising, therefore, that many philosophers have found it difficult to know what to make of him and to take him seriously  and that some have taken him to repudiate altogether the traditional philosophical enterprise of seeking reasoned conclusions with respect to questions of the kind with which philosophers have long been concerned, heralding the “death” not only of religious and metaphysical thinking, but also of philosophy itself. Others read him very differently, as having sought to effect a fundamental reorientation of philosophical thinking, and to indicate by both precept and example how philosophical inquiry might better be pursued. Those who regard Nietzsche in the former way take his criticisms of his philosophical predecessors and contemporaries to apply to any attempt to address such matters. They seize upon and construe some of his more sweeping negative pronouncements on truth and knowledge as indicating that he believed we can only produce fictions and merely expedient or possibly creative perspectival expressions of our needs and desires, as groups or as individuals. They thus take him as a radical nihilist, concerned to subvert the entire philosophical enterprise and replace it with a kind of thinking more akin to the literary exploration of human possibilities in the service of life  a kind of artistic play liberated from concern with truth and knowledge. Those who view him in the latter way, on the other hand, take seriously his concern to find a way of overcoming the nihilism he believed to result from traditional ways of thinking; his retention of recast notions of truth and knowledge; and his evident concern  especially in his later writings  to contribute to the comprehension of a broad range of phenomena. This way of understanding him, like the former, remains controversial; but it permits an interpretation of his writings that is philosophically more fruitful. Nietzsche indisputably insisted upon the interpretive character of all human thought; and he called for “new philosophers” who would follow him in engaging in more self-conscious and intellectually responsible attempts to assess and improve upon prevailing interpretations of human life. He also was deeply concerned with how these matters might better be evaluated, and with the values by which human beings live and might better do so. Thus he made much of the need for a revaluation of all received values, and for attention to the problems of the nature, status, and standards of value and evaluation. One form of inquiry he took to be of great utility in connection with both of these tasks is genealogical inquiry into the conditions under which various modes of interpretation and evaluation have arisen. It is only one of the kinds of inquiry he considered necessary in both cases, however, serving merely to prepare for others that must be brought to bear before any conclusions are warranted. Nietzsche further emphasized the perspectival character of all thinking and the merely provisional character of all knowing, rejecting the idea of the very possibility of absolute knowledge transcending all perspectives. However, because he also rejected the idea that things and values have absolute existence “in themselves” apart from the relations in which he supposes their reality to consist, he held that, if viewed in the multiplicity of perspectives from which various of these relations come to light, they admit of a significant measure of comprehension. This perspectivism thus does not exclude the possibility of any sort of knowledge deserving of the name, but rather indicates how it is to be conceived and achieved. His kind of philosophy, which he characterizes as fröhliche Wissenschaft cheerful science, proceeds by way of a variety of such “perspectival” approaches to the various matters with which he deals. Thus for Nietzsche there is no “truth” in the sense of the correspondence of anything we might think or say to “being,” and indeed no “true world of being” to which it may even be imagined to fail to correspond; no “knowledge” conceived in terms of any such truth and reality; and, further, no knowledge at all  even of ourselves and the world of which we are a part  that is absolute, non-perspectival, and certain. But that is not the end of the matter. There are, e.g., ways of thinking that may be more or less well warranted in relation to differing sorts of interest and practice, not only within the context of social life but also in our dealings with our environing world. Nietzsche’s reflections on the reconceptualization of truth and knowledge thus point in the direction of a naturalistic epistemology that he would have replace the conceptions of truth and knowledge of his predecessors, and fill the nihilistic void seemingly left by their bankruptcy. There is, moreover, a good deal about ourselves and our world that he became convinced we can comprehend. Our comprehension may be restricted to what life and the world show themselves to be and involve in our experience; but if they are the only kind of reality, there is no longer any reason to divorce the notions of truth, knowledge, and value from them. The question then becomes how best to interpret and assess what we find as we proceed to explore them. It is to these tasks of interpretation and “revaluation” that Nietzsche devoted his main efforts in his later writings. In speaking of the death of God, Nietzsche had in mind not only the abandonment of the Godhypothesis which he considered to be utterly “unworthy of belief,” owing its invention and appeal entirely to naïveté, error, all-too-human need, and ulterior motivation, but also the demise of all metaphysical substitutes for it. He likewise criticized and rejected the related postulations of substantial “souls” and self-contained “things,” taking both notions to be ontological fictions merely reflecting our artificial though convenient linguistic-conceptual shorthand for functionally unitary products, processes, and sets of relations. In place of this cluster of traditional ontological categories and interpretations, he conceived the world in terms of an interplay of forces without any inherent structure or final end. It ceaselessly organizes and reorganizes itself, as the fundamental disposition he called will to power gives rise to successive arrays of power relationships. “This world is the will to power  and nothing besides,” he wrote; “and you yourselves are also this will to power  and nothing besides!” Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal return or eternal recurrence underscores this conception of a world without beginning or end, in which things happen repeatedly in the way they always have. He first introduced this idea as a test of one’s ability to affirm one’s own life and the general character of life in this world as they are, without reservation, qualification, or appeal to anything transcending them. He later entertained the thought that all events might actually recur eternally in exactly the same sequence, and experimented in his unpublished writings with arguments to this effect. For the most part, however, he restricted himself to less problematic uses of the idea that do not presuppose its literal truth in this radical form. His rhetorical embellishments and experimental elaborations of the idea may have been intended to make it more vivid and compelling; but he employed it chiefly to depict his conception of the radically non-linear character of events in this world and their fundamental homogeneity, and to provide a way of testing our ability to live with it. If we are sufficiently strong and well disposed to life to affirm it even on the supposition that it will only be the same sequence of events repeated eternally, we have what it takes to endure and flourish in the kind of world in which Nietzsche believed we find ourselves in the aftermath of disillusionment. Nietzsche construed human nature and existence naturalistically, in terms of the will to power and its ramifications in the establishment and expression of the kinds of complex systems of dynamic quanta in which human beings consist. “The soul is only a word for something about the body,” he has Zarathustra say; and the body is fundamentally a configuration of natural forces and processes. At the same time, he insisted on the importance of social arrangements and interactions in the development of human forms of awareness and activity. He also emphasized the possibility of the emergence of exceptional human beings capable of an independence and creativity elevating them above the level of the general human rule. So he stressed the difference between “higher men” and “the herd,” and through Zarathustra proclaimed the Übermensch ‘overman’ or ‘superman’ to be “the meaning of the earth,” employing this image to convey the ideal of the overcoming of the “all-too-human” and the fullest possible creative “enhancement of life.” Far from seeking to diminish our humanity by stressing our animality, he sought to direct our efforts to the emergence of a “higher humanity” capable of endowing existence with a human redemption and justification, above all through the enrichment of cultural life. Notwithstanding his frequent characterization as a nihilist, therefore, Nietzsche in fact sought to counter and overcome the nihilism he expected to prevail in the aftermath of the collapse and abandonment of traditional religious and metaphysical modes of interpretation and evaluation. While he was highly critical of the latter, it was not his intention merely to oppose them; for he further attempted to make out the possibility of forms of truth and knowledge to which philosophical interpreters of life and the world might aspire, and espoused a “Dionysian value-standard” in place of all non-naturalistic modes of valuation. In keeping with his interpretation of life and the world in terms of his conception of will to power, Nietzsche framed this standard in terms of his interpretation of them. The only tenable alternative to nihilism must be based upon a recognition and affirmation of the world’s fundamental character. This meant positing as a general standard of value the attainment of a kind of life in which the will to power as the creative transformation of existence is raised to its highest possible intensity and qualitative expression. This in turn led him to take the “enhancement of life” and creativity to be the guiding ideas of his revaluation of values and development of a naturalistic value theory. This way of thinking carried over into Nietzsche’s thinking about morality. Insisting that moralities as well as other traditional modes of valuation ought to be assessed “in the perspective of life,” he argued that most of them were contrary to the enhancement of life, reflecting the all-too-human needs and weaknesses and fears of less favored human groups and types. Distinguishing between “master” and “slave” moralities, he found the latter to have become the dominant type of morality in the modern world. He regarded present-day morality as a “herd-animal morality,” well suited to the requirements and vulnerabilities of the mediocre who are the human rule, but stultifying and detrimental to the development of potential exceptions to that rule. Accordingly, he drew attention to the origins and functions of this type of morality as a social-control mechanism and device by which the weak defend and avenge and assert themselves against the actually or potentially stronger. He further suggested the desirability of a “higher morality” for the exceptions, in which the contrast of the basic “slave/herd morality” categories of “good and evil” would be replaced by categories more akin to the “good and bad” contrast characteristic of “master morality,” with a revised and variable content better attuned to the conditions and attainable qualities of the enhanced forms of life such exceptional human beings can achieve. The strongly creative flavor of Nietzsche’s notions of such a “higher humanity” and associated “higher morality” reflects his linkage of both to his conception of art, to which he attached great importance. Art, for Nietzsche, is fundamentally creative rather than cognitive, serving to prepare for the emergence of a sensi   616 bility and manner of life reflecting the highest potentiality of human beings. Art, as the creative transformation of the world as we find it and of ourselves thereby on a small scale and in particular media, affords a glimpse of a kind of life that would be lived more fully in this manner, and constitutes a step toward emergence. In this way, Nietzsche’s mature thought thus expands upon the idea of the basic connection between art and the justification of life that was his general theme in his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy. 

Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu:, a principal tenet of empiricism. A weak interpretation of the principle maintains that all concepts are acquired from sensory experience; no concepts are innate or a priori. A stronger interpretation adds that all propositional knowledge is derived from sense experience. The weak interpretation was held by Aquinas and Locke, who thought nevertheless that we can know some propositions to be true in virtue of the relations between the concepts involved. The stronger interpretation was endorsed by J. S. Mill, who argued that even the truths of mathematics are inductively based on experience.

Nihil ex nihilo fit Latin, ‘Nothing arises from nothing’, an intuitive metaphysical principle first enunciated in the West by Parmenides, often held equivalent to the proposition that nothing arises without a cause. Creation ex nihilo is God’s production of the world without any natural or material cause, but involves a supernatural cause, and so it would not violate the principle.

noetic from Grecian noetikos, from noetos, ‘perceiving’, of or relating to apprehension by the intellect. In a strict sense the term refers to nonsensuous data given to the cognitive faculty, which discloses their intelligible meaning as distinguished from their sensible apprehension. We hear a sentence spoken, but it becomes intelligible for us only when the sounds function as a foundation for noetic apprehension. For Plato, the objects of such apprehension noetá are the Forms eide with respect to which the sensible phenomena are only occasions of manifestation: the Forms in themselves transcend the sensible and have their being in a realm apart. For empiricist thinkers, e.g., Locke, there is strictly speaking no distinct noetic aspect, since “ideas” are only faint sense impressions. In a looser sense, however, one may speak of ideas as independent of reference to particular sense impressions, i.e. independent of their origin, and then an idea can be taken to signify a class of objects. Husserl uses the term to describe the intentionality or dyadic character of consciousness in general, i.e. including both eidetic or categorial and perceptual knowing. He speaks of the correlation of noesis or intending and noema or the intended object of awareness. The categorial or eidetic is the perceptual object as intellectually cognized; it is not a realm apart, but rather what is disclosed or made present “constituted” Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu noetic 617    617 when the mode of appearance of the perceptual object is intended by a categorial noesis. 

non-Euclidean geometry, those axiomatized versions of geometry in which the parallel axiom of Euclidean geometry is rejected, after so many unsuccessful attempts to prove it. As in so many branches of mathematics, C. F. Gauss had thought out much of the matter first, but he kept most of his ideas to himself. As a result, credit is given to J. Bolyai and N. Lobachevsky, who worked independently from the late 1820s. Instead of assuming that just one line passes through a point in a plane parallel to a non-coincident coplanar line, they offered a geometry in which a line admits more than one parallel, and the sum of the “angles” between the “sides” of a “triangle” lies below 180°. Then in mid-century G. F. B. Riemann conceived of a geometry in which lines always meet so no parallels, and the sum of the “angles” exceeds 180°. In this connection he distinguished between the unboundedness of space as a property of its extent, and the special case of the infinite measure over which distance might be taken which is dependent upon the curvature of that space. Pursuing the published insight of Gauss, that the curvature of a surface could be defined in terms only of properties dependent solely on the surface itself and later called “intrinsic”, Riemann also defined the metric on a surface in a very general and intrinsic way, in terms of the differential arc length. Thereby he clarified the ideas of “distance” that his non-Euclidean precursors had introduced drawing on trigonometric and hyperbolic functions; arc length was now understood geodesically as the shortest “distance” between two “points” on a surface, and was specified independent of any assumptions of a geometry within which the surface was embedded. Further properties, such as that pertaining to the “volume” of a three-“dimensional” solid, were also studied. The two main types of non-Euclidean geometry, and its Euclidean parent, may be summarized as follows: Reaction to these geometries was slow to develop, but their impact gradually emerged. As mathematics, their legitimacy was doubted; but in 1868 E. Beltrami produced a model of a Bolyai-type two-dimensional space inside a planar circle. The importance of this model was to show that the consistency of this geometry depended upon that of the Euclidean version, thereby dispelling the fear that it was an inconsistent flash of the imagination. During the last thirty years of the nineteenth century a variety of variant geometries were proposed, and the relationships between them were studied, together with consequences for projective geometry. On the empirical side, these geometries, and especially Riemann’s approach, affected the understanding of the relationship between geometry and space; in particular, it posed the question whether space is curved or not the latnoetic analysis non-Euclidean geometry 618    618 non-monotonic logic nonviolence 619 ter being the Euclidean answer. The geometries thus played a role in the emergence and articulation of relativity theory, especially the differential geometry and tensorial calculus within which its mathematical properties could be expressed. Philosophically the new geometries stressed the hypothetical nature of axiomatizing, in contrast to the customary view of mathematical theories as true in some usually unclear sense. This feature led to the name ‘metageometry’ for them; it was intended as an ironical proposal of opponents to be in line with the hypothetical character of metaphysics in philosophy. They also helped to encourage conventionalist philosophy of science with Poincaré, e.g., and put fresh light on the age-old question of the impossibility of a priori knowledge. 

non-monotonic logic, a logic that fails to be monotonic, i.e., in proof-theoretic terms, fails to meet the condition that for all statements u1, . . . un,f,y, if ‘u1, . . . un Yf’, then, for any y, ‘u1 , . . . un, y Y f’. Equivalently, let Γ represent a collection of statements, u1 . . . un, and say that in monotonic logic, if ‘Γ Y f’, then, for any y, ‘Γ, y Y f’ and similarly in other cases. A non-monotonic logic is any logic with the following property: For some Γ, f, and y, ‘ΓNML f’ but ‘Γ, y K!NML f’. This is a weak non-monotonic logic. In a strong non-monotonic logic, we might have, again for some Γ, f, y, where Γ is consistent and Γ 8 f is consistent: ‘Γ, y YNML > f’. A primary motivation among AI researchers for non-monotonic logic or defeasible reasoning, which is so evident in commonsense reasoning, is to produce a machine representation for default reasoning or defeasible reasoning. The interest in defeasible reasoning readily spreads to epistemology, logic, and ethics. The exigencies of practical affairs requires leaping to conclusions, going beyond available evidence, making assumptions. In doing so, we often err and must leap back from our conclusions, undo our assumptions, revise our beliefs. In the literature’s standard example, Tweety is a bird and all birds fly, except penguins and ostriches. Does Tweety fly? If pressed, we may need to form a belief about this matter. Upon discovering that Tweety is a penguin, we may have to retract our conclusion. Any representation of defeasible reasoning must capture the nonmonotonicity of this reasoning. Non-monotonic logic is an attempt to do this within logic itself  by adding rules of inference that do not preserve monotonicity. Although practical affairs require us to reason defeasibly, the best way to achieve non-monotonicity may not be to add non-monotonic rules of inference to standard logic. What one gives up in such systems may well not be worth the cost: loss of the deduction theorem and of a coherent notion of consistency. Therefore, the challenge of non-monotonic logic or defeasible reasoning, generally is to develop a rigorous way to represent the structure of non-monotonic reasoning without losing or abandoning the historically hard-won properties of monotonic standard logic. 

nonviolence, the renunciation of violence in personal, social, or international affairs. It often includes a commitment called active nonviolence or nonviolent direct action actively to oppose violence and usually evil or injustice as well by nonviolent means. Nonviolence may renounce physical violence alone or both physical and psychological violence. It may represent a purely personal commitment or be intended to be normative for others as well. When unconditional  absolute    619 norm normative relativism 620 nonviolence  it renounces violence in all actual and hypothetical circumstances. When conditional  conditional nonviolence  it concedes the justifiability of violence in hypothetical circumstances but denies it in practice. Held on moral grounds principled nonviolence, the commitment belongs to an ethics of conduct or an ethics of virtue. If the former, it will likely be expressed as a moral rule or principle e.g., One ought always to act nonviolently to guide action. If the latter, it will urge cultivating the traits and dispositions of a nonviolent character which presumably then will be expressed in nonviolent action. As a principle, nonviolence may be considered either basic or derivative. Either way, its justification will be either utilitarian or deontological. Held on non-moral grounds pragmatic nonviolence, nonviolence is a means to specific social, political, economic, or other ends, themselves held on non-moral grounds. Its justification lies in its effectiveness for these limited purposes rather than as a way of life or a guide to conduct in general. An alternative source of power, it may then be used in the service of evil as well as good. Nonviolent social action, whether of a principled or pragmatic sort, may include noncooperation, mass demonstrations, marches, strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience  techniques explored extensively in the writings of Gene Sharp. Undertaken in defense of an entire nation or state, nonviolence provides an alternative to war. It seeks to deny an invading or occupying force the capacity to attain its objectives by withholding the cooperation of the populace needed for effective rule and by nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience. It may also be used against oppressive domestic rule or on behalf of social justice. Gandhi’s campaign against British rule in India, Scandinavian resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s actions on behalf of civil rights in the United States are illustrative. Nonviolence has origins in Far Eastern thought, particularly Taoism and Jainism. It has strands in the Jewish Talmud, and many find it implied by the New Testament’s Sermon on the Mount.

normal form, a formula equivalent to a given logical formula, but having special properties. The main varieties follow. Conjunctive normal form. If D1 . . . Dn are disjunctions of sentential variables or their negations, such as p 7 -q 7 r, then a formula F is in conjunctive normal form provided F % D1 & D2 & . . & Dn. The following are in conjunctive normal form: -p 7 q; p 7 q 7 r & -p 7 -q 7 -r & -q 7 r. Every formula of sentential logic has an equivalent conjunctive normal form; this fact can be used to prove the completeness of sentential logic. Disjunctive normal form. If C1 . . . Cn are conjunctions of sentential variables or their negations, such as p & -q & -r, then a formula F is in disjunctive normal form provided F % C1 7 C27 . . Cn. The following are thus in disjunctive normal form: p & -q 7 -p & q; p & q & -r 7 -p & -q & -r. Every formula of sentential logic has an equivalent disjunctive normal form. Prenex normal form. A formula of predicate logic is in prenex normal form if 1 all quantifiers occur at the beginning of the formula, 2 the scope of the quantifiers extends to the end of the formula, and 3 what follows the quantifiers contains at least one occurrence of every variable that appears in the set of quantifiers. Thus, DxDyFx / Gy and xDyzFxy 7 Gyz / Dxyz are in prenex normal form. The formula may contain free variables; thus, Dxy Fxyz / Gwyx is also in prenex normal form. The following, however, are not in prenex normal form: xDy Fx / Gx; xy Fxy / Gxy. Every formula of predicate logic has an equivalent formula in prenex normal form. Skolem normal form. A formula F in predicate logic is in Skolem normal form provided 1 F is in prenex normal form, 2 every existential quantifier precedes any universal quantifier, 3 F contains at least one existential quantifier, and 4 F contains no free variables. Thus, DxDy zFxy / Gyz and DxDyDzwFxy 7 Fyz 7 Fzw are in Skolem normal form; however, Dx y Fxyz and x y Fxy 7 Gyx are not. Any formula has an equivalent Skolem normal form; this has implications for the completeness of predicate logic. 

Notum – Grice was slightly obsessed with “know,” Latin ‘notum – nosco’ -- nosco , nōvi, nōtum, 3 (old form, GNOSCO, GNOVI, GNOTVM, acc. to Prisc. p. 569 P.; I.inf. pass. GNOSCIER, S. C. de Bacch.; cf. GNOTV, cognitu, Paul. ex Fest. p. 96 Müll.: GNOT (contr. for gnovit) οἶδεν, ἐπιγινώσκει; GNOTV, γνῶσιν, διάγνωσιν, Gloss. Labb.—Contr. forms in class. Lat. are nosti, noram, norim. nosse; nomus for novimus: nomus ambo Ulixem, Enn. ap. Diom. p. 382 P., or Trag. v. 199 Vahl.), v. a. for gnosco, from the root gno; Gr. γιγνώσκω, to begin to know, to get a knowledge of, become acquainted with, come to know a thing (syn.: scio, calleo). I. Lit. 1. (α). Tempp. praes.: “cum igitur, nosce te, dicit, hoc dicit, nosce animum tuum,” Cic. Tusc. 1, 22, 52: Me. Sauream non novi. Li. At nosce sane, Plaut. As. 2, 4, 58; cf.: Ch. Nosce signum. Ni. Novi, id. Bacch. 4, 6, 19; id. Poen. 4, 2, 71: “(Juppiter) nos per gentes alium alia disparat, Hominum qui facta, mores, pietatem et fidem noscamus,” id. Rud. prol. 12; id. Stich. 1, 1, 4: “id esse verum, cuivis facile est noscere,” Ter. Ad. 5, 4, 8: “ut noscere possis quidque,” Lucr. 1, 190; 2, 832; 3, 124; 418; 588; Cic. Rep. 1, 41, 64: deus ille, quem mente noscimus, id. N. D. 1, 14, 37.—Pass.: “EAM (tabulam) FIGIER IOVBEATIS, VBEI FACILVMED GNOSCIER POTISIT, S. C. de Bacch.: forma in tenebris nosci non quita est, Ter Hec. 4, 1, 57 sq.: omnes philosophiae partes tum facile noscuntur, cum, etc.,” Cic. N. D. 1, 4, 9: philosophiae praecepta noscenda, id. Fragm. ap. Lact. 3, 14: “nullique videnda, Voce tamen noscar,” Ov. M. 14, 153: “nec noscitur ulli,” by any one, id. Tr. 1, 5, 29: “noscere provinciam, nosci exercitui,” by the army, Tac. Agr. 5.— (β). Temppperf., to have become acquainted with, to have learned, to know: “si me novisti minus,” Plaut. Aul. 4, 10, 47: “Cylindrus ego sum, non nosti nomen meum?” id. Men. 2, 2, 20: “novi rem omnem,” Ter. And. 4, 4, 50: “qui non leges, non instituta ... non jura noritis,” Cic. Pis. 13, 30: “plerique neque in rebus humanis quidquam bonum norunt, nisi, etc.,” id. Lael. 21, 79: “quam (virtutem) tu ne de facie quidem nosti,” id. Pis. 32, 81; id. Fin. 2, 22, 71: “si ego hos bene novi,” if I know them well, id. Rosc. Am. 20 fin.: si Caesarem bene novi, Balb. ap. Cic. Att. 9, 7, B, 2: “Lepidum pulchre noram,” Cic. Fam. 10, 23, 1: “si tuos digitos novi,” id. Att. 5, 21, 13: “res gestas de libris novisse,” to have learned from books, Lact. 5, 19, 15: “nosse Graece, etc. (late Lat. for scire),” Aug. Serm. 45, 5; 167, 40 al.: “ut ibi esses, ubi nec Pelopidarum—nosti cetera,” Cic. Fam. 7, 28, 2; Plin. Ep. 3, 9, 11.— 2. To examine, consider: “ad res suas noscendas,” Liv. 10, 20: “imaginem,” Plaut. Ps. 4, 2, 29.—So esp., to take cognizance of as a judge: “quae olim a praetoribus noscebantur,” Tac. A. 12, 60.— II. Transf., in the tempp. praes. A. In gen., to know, recognize (rare; perh. not in Cic.): hau nosco tuom, I know your (character, etc.), i. e. I know you no longer, Plaut. Trin. 2, 4, 44: “nosce imaginem,” id. Ps. 4, 2, 29; id. Bacch. 4, 6, 19: “potesne ex his ut proprium quid noscere?” Hor. S. 2, 7, 89; Tac. H. 1, 90.— B. In partic., to acknowledge, allow, admit of a reason or an excuse (in Cic.): “numquam amatoris meretricem oportet causam noscere, Quin, etc.,” Plaut. Truc. 2, 1, 18: “illam partem excusationis ... nec nosco, nec probo,” Cic. Fam. 4, 4, 1; cf.: “quod te excusas: ego vero et tuas causas nosco, et, etc.,” id. Att. 11, 7, 4: “atque vereor, ne istam causam nemo noscat,” id. Leg. 1, 4, 11.— III. Transf. in tempp. perf. A. To be acquainted with, i. e. to practise, possess: “alia vitia non nosse,” Sen. Q. N. 4 praef. § 9.— B. In mal. part., to know (in paronomasia), Plaut. Most. 4, 2, 13; id. Pers. 1, 3, 51.— IV. (Eccl. Lat.) Of religious knowledge: “non noverant Dominum,” Vulg. Judic. 2, 12; ib. 2 Thess. 1, 8: “Jesum novi, Paulum scio,” I acknowledge, ib. Act. 19, 15.—Hence, nōtus , a, um, P. a., known. A. Lit.: “nisi rem tam notam esse omnibus et tam manifestam videres,” Cic. Verr. 2, 3, 58, 134: “ejusmodi res ita notas, ita testatas, ita manifestas proferam,” id. ib. 2, 2, 34, § “85: fingi haec putatis, quae patent, quae nota sunt omnibus, quae tenentur?” id. Mil. 28, 76: “noti atque insignes latrones,” id. Phil. 11, 5, 10: “habere omnes philosophiae notos et tractatos locos,” id. Or. 33, 118: “facere aliquid alicui notum,” id. Fam. 5, 12, 7: “tua nobilitas hominibus litteratis est notior, populo obscurior,” id. Mur. 7, 16: “nullus fuit civis Romanus paulo notior, quin, etc.,” Caes. B. C. 2, 19: “vita P. Sullae vobis populoque Romano notissima,” Cic. Sull. 26, 72: “nulli nota domus sua,” Juv. 1, 7.— (β). With gen. (poet.): “notus in fratres animi paterni,” Hor. C. 2, 2, 6: noti operum Telchines. Stat. Th. 2, 274: “notusque fugarum, Vertit terga,” Sil. 17, 148.— (γ). With subj.-clause: “notum est, cur, etc.,” Juv. 2, 58.— (δ). With inf. (poet.): “Delius, Trojanos notus semper minuisse labores,” Sil. 12, 331.— 2. In partic. a. Subst.: nōti , acquaintances, friends: “de dignitate M. Caelius notis ac majoribus natu ... respondet,” Cic. Cael. 2, 3: “hi suos notos hospitesque quaerebant,” Caes. B. C. 1, 74, 5; Hor. S. 1, 1, 85; Verg. Cir. 259.— b. In a bad sense, notorious: “notissimi latronum duces,” Cic. Fam. 10, 14, 1: “integrae Temptator Orion Dianae,” Hor. C. 3, 4, 70; Ov. M. 1, 198: “Clodia, mulier non solum nobilis sed etiam nota,” Cic. Cael. 13, 31; cf. Cic. Verr. 1, 6, 15: “moechorum notissimus,” Juv. 6, 42.— B. Transf., act., knowing, that knows: novi, notis praedicas, to those that know, Plaut. Ps. 4, 2, 39.Chisholm: r. m. influential  philosopher whose publications spanned the field, including ethics and the history of philosophy. He is mainly known as an epistemologist, metaphysician, and philosopher of mind. In early opposition to powerful forms of reductionism, such as phenomenalism, extensionalism, and physicalism, Chisholm developed an original philosophy of his own. Educated at Brown and Harvard Ph.D., 2, he spent nearly his entire career at Brown. He is known chiefly for the following contributions. a Together with his teacher and later his colleague at Brown, C. J. Ducasse, he developed and long defended an adverbial account of sensory experience, set against the sense-datum act-object account then dominant. b Based on deeply probing analysis of the free will problematic, he defended a libertarian position, again in opposition to the compatibilism long orthodox in analytic circles. His libertarianism had, moreover, an unusual account of agency, based on distinguishing transeunt event causation from immanent agent causation. c In opposition to the celebrated linguistic turn of linguistic philosophy, he defended the primacy of intentionality, a defense made famous not only through important papers, but also through his extensive and eventually published correspondence with Wilfrid Sellars. d Quick to recognize the importance and distinctiveness of the de se, he welcomed it as a basis for much de re thought. e His realist ontology is developed through an intentional concept of “entailment,” used to define key concepts of his system, and to provide criteria of identity for occupants of fundamental categories. f In epistemology, he famously defended forms of foundationalism and internalism, and offered a delicately argued dissolution of the ancient problem of the criterion. The principles of Chisholm’s epistemology and metaphysics are not laid down antecedently as hard-and-fast axioms. Lacking any inviolable antecedent privilege, they must pass muster in the light of their consequences and by comparison with whatever else we may find plausible. In this regard he sharply contrasts with such epistemologists as Popper, with the skepticism of justification attendant on his deductivism, and Quine, whose stranded naturalism drives so much of his radical epistemology and metaphysics. By contrast, Chisholm has no antecedently set epistemic or metaphysical principles. His philosophical views develop rather dialectically, with sensitivity to whatever considerations, examples, or counterexamples reflection may reveal as relevant. This makes for a demanding complexity of elaboration, relieved, however, by a powerful drive for ontological and conceptual economy.  notum per se Latin, ‘known through itself’, self-evident. This term corresponds roughly to the term ‘analytic’. In Thomistic theology, there are two ways for a thing to be self-evident, secundum se in itself and quoad nos to us. The proposition that God exists is self-evident in itself, because God’s existence is identical with his essence; but it is not self-evident to us humans, because humans are not directly acquainted with God’s essence.Aquinas’s Summa theologiae I, q.2,a.1,c. 

non-conventional. Unfortunately, Grice never came up with a word or sobriquet for the non-conventional, and kept using the ‘non-conventional.’ Similarly, he never came up with a positive way to refer to the non-natural, and non-natural it remained. Luckily, we can take it as a joke. Convention figures TWICE in Grice’s scheme. For his reductive analysis of communication, he surely can avoid convention by relying on a self-referring anti-sneaky clause. But when it comes to the ‘taxonomy’ of the ‘shades’ of implication, he wants the emissor to implicate that p WITHOUT relying on a convention. If the emissor RELIES on a convention, there are problems for his analysis. Why? First, at the explicit level, it can be assumed that conventions will feature (Smith’s dog is ‘by convention’ called ‘Fido”). At the level of the implied, there are two ways where convention matters in a wrong way. “My neighbour’s three-year-old is an adult” FLOUTS a convention – or meaning postulate. And it corresponds to the entailment. But finally, there is a third realm of the conventional. For particles like “therefore,” or ‘but.’ “But” Grice does not care much about, but ‘therefore’ he does. He wants to say that ‘therefore’ is mainly emphatic.The emissor implies a passage from premise to conclusion. And that implication relies on a convention YET it is not part of the entailment. So basically, it is an otiose addition. Why would rational conversationalists rely on them? The rationale for this is that Grice wants to provide a GENERAL theory of communication that will defeat Austin’s convention-tied ritualistic view of language. So Grice needs his crucial philosophical refutations NOT to rely on convention. What relies on convention cannot be cancellable. What doesn’t can. I an item relies on convention it has not really redeemed from that part of the communicative act that can not be explained rationally by argument. There is no way to calculate a conventional item. It is just a given. And Grice is interested in providing a rationale. His whole campaign relates to this idea that Austin has rushed, having detected a nuance in a linguistic phenomenon, to explain it away, without having explored in detail what kind of nuance it is. For Grice it is NOT a conventional nuance – it’s a sous-entendu of conversation (as Mill has it), an unnecessary implication (as Russell has it). Why did Grice chose ‘convention’? The influence of Lewis seems minor, because he touches on the topic in “Causal Theory,” before Lewis. The word ‘convention’ does NOT occur in “Causal Theory,” though. But there are phrasings to that effect. Notably, let us consider his commentary in the reprint, when he omits the excursus. He says that he presents FOUR cases: a particularized conversational (‘beautiful handwriting’), a generalised conversational (“in the kitchen or in the bedroom”), a ‘conventional implicature’ (“She was poor but she was honest”) and a presupposition (“You have not ceased to eat iron”). So the obvious target for exploration is the third, where Grice has the rubric ‘convention,’ as per ‘conventional.’ So his expansion on the ‘but’ example (what Frege has as ‘colouring’ of “aber”) is interesting to revise. “plied is that Smith has been bcating his wifc. (2) " She was poor but she was honcst ", whele what is implied is (vcry roughly) that there is some contrast between poverty and honesty, or between her poverty and her honesty. The first cxample is a stock case of what is sometimes called " prcsupposition " and it is often held that here 1he truth of what is irnplicd is a necessary condition of the original statement's beirrg cither true or false. This might be disputed, but it is at lcast arguable that it is so, and its being arguable might be enough to distinguish-this type of case from others. I shall however for convenience assume that the common view mentioned is correct. This consideration clearly distinguishes (1) from (2); even if the implied proposition were false, i.e. if there were no reason in the world to contrast poverty with honesty either in general or in her case, the original statement could still be false; it would be false if for example she were rich and dishonest. One might perhaps be less comfortable about assenting to its truth if the implied contrast did not in fact obtain; but the possibility of falsity is enough for the immediate purpose. My next experiment on these examples is to ask what it is in each case which could properly be said to be the vehicle of implication (to do the implying). There are at least four candidates, not necessarily mutually exclusive. Supposing someone to have uttered one or other of my sample sentences, we may ask whether the vehicle of implication would be (a) what the speaker said (or asserted), or (b) the speaker (" did he imply that . . . .':) or (c) the words the speaker used, or (d) his saying that (or again his saying that in that way); or possibly some plurality of these items. As regards (a) I think (1) and (2) differ; I think it would be correct to say in the case of (l) that what he speaker said (or asserted) implied that Smith had been beating this wife, and incorrect to say in the case of (2) that what te said (or asserted) implied that there was a contrast between e.g., honesty and poverty. A test on which I would rely is the following : if accepting that the implication holds involves one in r27 128 H. P. GRICE accepting an hypothetical' if p then q ' where 'p ' represents the original statement and ' q' represents what is implied, then what the speaker said (or asserted) is a vehicle of implication, otherwise not. To apply this rule to the given examples, if I accepted the implication alleged to hold in the case of (1), I should feel compelled to accept the hypothetical " If Smith has left off beating his wife, then he has been beating her "; whereas if I accepted the alleged implication in the case of (2), I should not feel compelled to accept the hypothetical " If she was poor but honest, then there is some contrast between poverty and honesty, or between her poverty and her honesty." The other candidates can be dealt with more cursorily; I should be inclined to say with regard to both (l) and (2) that the speaker could be said to have implied whatever it is that is irnplied; that in the case of (2) it seems fairly clear that the speaker's words could be said to imply a contrast, whereas it is much less clear whether in the case of (1) the speaker's words could be said to imply that Smith had been beating his wife; and that in neither case would it be evidently appropriate to speak of his saying that, or of his saying that in that way, as implying what is implied. The third idea with which I wish to assail my two examples is really a twin idea, that of the detachability or cancellability of the implication. (These terms will be explained.) Consider example (1): one cannot fi.nd a form of words which could be used to state or assert just what the sentence " Smith has left off beating his wife " might be used to assert such that when it is used the implication that Smith has been beating his wife is just absent. Any way of asserting what is asserted in (1) involves the irnplication in question. I shall express this fact by saying that in the case of (l) the implication is not detqchable from what is asserted (or simpliciter, is not detachable). Furthermore, one cannot take a form of words for which both what is asserted and what is implied is the same as for (l), and then add a further clause withholding commitment from what would otherwise be implied, with the idea of annulling the implication without annulling the assertion. One cannot intelligibly say " Smith has left off beating his wife but I do not mean to imply that he has been beating her." I shall express this fact by saying that in the case of (1) the implication is not cancellable (without THE CAUSAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION r29 cancelling the assertion). If we turn to (2) we find, I think, that there is quite a strong case for saying that here the implication ls detachable. Thcrc sccms quitc a good case for maintaining that if, instead of sayirrg " She is poor but shc is honcst " I were to say " She is poor and slre is honcst", I would assert just what I would havc asscrtcct ii I had used thc original senterrce; but there would now be no irnplication of a contrast between e.g', povery and honesty. But the question whether, in tl-re case of (2), thc inrplication is cancellable, is slightly more cornplex. Thcrc is a sonse in which we may say that it is non-cancellable; if sorncone were to say " She is poor but she is honest, though of course I do not mean to imply that there is any contrast between poverty and honesty ", this would seem a puzzling and eccentric thing to have said; but though we should wish to quarrel with the speaker, I do not think we should go so far as to say that his utterance was unintelligible; we should suppose that he had adopted a most peculiar way of conveying the the news that she was poor and honesl. The fourth and last test that I wish to impose on my exarnples is to ask whether we would be inclined to regard the fact that the appropriate implication is present as being a matter of the meaning of some particular word or phrase occurring in the sentences in question. I am aware that this may not be always a very clear or easy question to answer; nevertheless Iwill risk the assertion that we would be fairly happy to say that, as regards (2), the factthat the implication obtains is a matter of the meaning of the word ' but '; whereas so far as (l) is concerned we should have at least some inclination to say that the presence of the implication was a matter of the meaning of some of the words in the sentence, but we should be in some difficulty when it came to specifying precisely which this word, or words are, of which this is true.” Since the actual wording ‘convention’ does not occur it may do to revise how he words ‘convention’ in Essay 2 of WoW. So here is the way he words it in Essay II.“In some cases the CONVENTIONAL meaning of the WORDS used will DETERMINE what is impliccated, besides helping to determine what is said.” Where ‘determine’ is the key word. It’s not “REASON,” conversational reason that determines it. “If I say (smugly), ‘He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave,’ I have certainly COMMITTED myself, by virtue of the meaning of my words, to its being the case that his being brave is a consequence of (follows from) his being an Englishman. But, while I have said that [or explicitly conveyed THAT] he is an Englishman, and [I also have] said that [or explicitly conveyed that] he is brave, I do not want to say [if I may play with what people conventionally understand by ‘convention’] that I have said [or explicitly conveyed] (in the favoured sense) that [or explicitly conveyed that] it follows from his being an Englishman that he is brave, though I have certainly INDICATED, and so implicated, that this is so.” The rationale as to why the label is ‘convention’ comes next. “I do not want to say that my utterance of this sentence would be, strictly speaking, FALSE should the consequence in question fail to hold. So some implicatures are conventional, unlike the one with which I introduce this discussion of implicature.”Grice’s observation or suggestion then or advise then, in terms of nomenclature. His utterance WOULD be FALSE if the MEANING of ‘therefore’ were carried as an ENTAILMENT (rather than emphatic truth-value irrelevant rhetorical emphasis). He expands on this in The John Lecture, where Jill is challenged. “What do you mean, “Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave”?” What is being challenged is the validity of the consequence. ‘Therefore’ is vague enough NOT to specify what type of consequence is meant. So, should someone challenge the consequence, Jill would still be regarded by Grice as having uttered a TRUE utterance. The metabolism here is complex since it involves assignment of ‘meaning’ to this or that expression (in this case ‘therefore’). In Essay VI he is perhaps more systematic.The wider programme just mentioned arises out of a distinction which, for purposes which I need not here specify, I wish to make within the total signification of a remark: a distinction between what the speaker has said (in a certain favoured, and maybe in some degree artificial, sense of 'said'), and what he has 'implicated' (e.g. implied, indicated, suggested, etc.), taking into account the fact that what he has implicated may be either conventionally implicated (implicated by virtue of the meaning of some word or phrase which he has used) or non-conventionally implicated (in which case the specification of the implicature falls [TOTALLY] outside [AND INDEPENDENTLY, i. e. as NOT DETERMINED BY] the specification of the conventional meaning of the words used [Think ‘beautiful handwriting,’ think ‘In the kitchen or in the bedroom’). He is clearest in Essay 6 – where he adds ‘=p’ in the symbolization.UTTERER'S MEANING, SENTENCE-MEANING, AND WORD-MEANINGMy present aim is to throw light on the connection between (a) a notion of ‘meaning’ which I want to regard as basic, viz. that notion which is involved in saying of someone that ‘by’ (when) doing SUCH-AND-SUCH he means THAT SO-AND-SO (in what I have called a non-natural use of 'means'), and (b) the notions of meaning involved in saying First, that a given sentence means 'so-and-so' Second, that a given word or phrase means 'so-and-so'. What I have to say on these topics should be looked upon as an attempt to provide a sketch of what might, I hope, prove to be a viable theory, rather than as an attempt to provide any part of a finally acceptable theory. The account which I shall otTer of the (for me) basic notion of meaning is one which I shall not  seek now to defend.I should like its approximate correctness to be assumed, so that attention may be focused on its utility, if correct, in the explication of other and (I hope) derivative notions of meaning. This enterprise forms part of a wider programme which I shall in a moment delineate, though its later stages lie beyond the limits which I have set for this paper. The wider programme just mentioned arises out of a distinction which, for purposes which I need not here specify, I wish to make within the total signification of a remark: a distinction between what the speaker has said (in a certain favoured, and maybe in some degree artificial, sense of 'said'), and what he has 'implicated' (e.g. implied, indicated, suggested, etc.), taking into account the fact that what he has implicated may be either conventionally implicated (implicated by virtue of the meaning of some word or phrase which he has used) or non-conventionally implicated (in which case the specification of the implicature falls [TOTALLY] outside [AND INDEPENDENTLY, i. e. as NOT DETERMINED BY] the specification of the conventional meaning of the words used [Think ‘beautiful handwriting,’ think ‘In the kitchen or in the bedroom’). The programme is directed towards an explication of the favoured SENSE of 'say' and a clarification of its relation to the notion of conventional meaning. The stages of the programme are as folIows: First, To distinguish between locutions of the form 'U (utterer) meant that .. .' (locutions which specify what rnight be called 'occasion-meaning') and locutions of the From Foundalions oJ Language. 4 (1968), pp. 1-18. Reprinted by permission of the author and the editor of Foundations oJ Language. I I hope that material in this paper, revised and re·arranged, will form part of a book to be published by the Harvard University Press.  form 'X (utterance-type) means H ••• "'. In locutions of the first type, meaning is specified without the use of quotation-marks, whereas in locutions of the second type the meaning of a sentence, word or phrase is specified with the aid of quotation marks. This difference is semantically important. Second, To attempt to provide a definiens for statements of occasion-meaning; more precisely, to provide a definiens for 'By (when) uttering x, U meant that *p'. Some explanatory comments are needed here. First, I use the term 'utter' (together with 'utterance') in an artificially wide sense, to cover any case of doing x or producing x by the performance of which U meant that so-and-so. The performance in question need not be a linguistic or even a conventionalized performance. A specificatory replacement of the dummy 'x' will in some cases be a characterization of a deed, in others a characterization of a product (e.g. asound). (b) '*' is a dummy mood-indicator, distinct from specific mood-indicators like 'I-' (indicative or assertive) or '!' (imperative). More precisely, one may think of the schema 'Jones meant that *p' as yielding a full English sentence after two transformation al steps: (i) replace '*' by a specific mood-indicator and replace 'p' by an indicative sentence. One might thus get to 'Jones meant that I- Smith will go home' or to 'Jones meant that! Smith will go horne'. (ii) replace the sequence following the word 'that' by an appropriate clause in indirect speech (in accordance with rules specified in a linguistic theory). One might thus get to 'Jones meant that Srnith will go horne' 'Jones meant that Srnith is to go horne'. Third, To attempt to elucidate the notion of the conventional meaning of an utterance-type; more precisely, to explicate sentences which make claims of the form 'X (utterance-type) means "*''', or, in case X is a non-scntcntial utterancctype, claims of the form 'X means H ••• "', where the location is completed by a nonsentential expression. Again, some explanatory comments are required. First, It will be convenient to recognize that what I shall call statements of timeless meaning (statements of the type 'X means " ... "', in which the ~pecification of meaning involves quotation-marks) may be subdivided into (i) statements of timeless 'idiolect-meaning', e.g. 'For U (in U's idiolect) X means " ... '" and (ü) statements of timeless 'Ianguage meaning', e.g. 'In L (language) X means " ... "'. It will be convenient to handle these separately, and in the order just given. (b) The truth of a statement to the effect that X means ' .. .' is of course not incompatible with the truth of a further statement to the effect that X me ans '--", when the two lacunae are quite differently completed. An utterance-type rriay have more than one conventional meaning, and any definiens which we offer must allow fOT this fact. 'X means " ... '" should be understood as 'One of the meanings of X is " ... " '. (IV) In view of the possibility of multiplicity in the timeless meaning of an utterance-type, we shall need to notice, and to provide an explication of, what I shall call the applied timeless meaning of an utterance-type. That is to say, we need a definiens for the schema 'X (utterance-type) meant here " ... "', a schema the specifications of which announce the correct reading of X for a given occasion of utterance. Comments. (a) We must be careful to distinguish the applied timeless meaning of X (type) with respecf to a particular token x (belonging to X) from the occasionmeaning of U's utterance of x. The following are not equivalent: (i) 'When U uttered it, the sentence "Palmer gave Nickiaus quite a beating" meant "Palmer vanquished Nickiaus with some ease" [rather than, say, "Palmer administered vigorous corporal punishment to NickIaus."]' (ii) 'When U uttered the sentence "Palmer gave NickIaus quite a beating" U meant that Palmer vanquished NickIaus with some ease.' U might have been speaking ironically, in which case he would very likely have meant that NickIaus vanquished Palmer with some ease. In that case (ii) would c1early be false; but nevertheless (i) would still have been true. Second, There is some temptation to take the view that the conjunction of One, 'By uttering X, U meant that *p' and (Two, 'When uttered by U, X meant "*p'" provides a definiens for 'In uttering X, U said [OR EXPLICITLY CONVEYED] that *p'. Indeed, ifwe give consideration only to utterance-types for which there are available adequate statements of time1ess meaning taking the exemplary form 'X meant "*p'" (or, in the case of applied time1ess meaning, the form 'X meant here "*p" '), it may even be possible to uphold the thesis that such a coincidence of occasion-meaning and applied time1ess meaning is a necessary and sufficient condition for saying that *p. But a litde refiection should convince us of the need to recognize the existence of statements of timeless meaning which instantiate forms other than the cited exemplary form. There are, I think, at least some sentences whose ‘timeless’ meaning is not adequately specifiable by a statement of the exemplary form. Consider the sentence 'Bill is a philosopher and he is, therefore, brave' (S ,). Or Jill:
“Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave.”It would be appropriate, I think, to make a partial specification of the timeless meaning of S, by saying 'Part of one meaning of S, is "Bill is occupationally engaged in philosophical studies" '. One might, indeed, give a full specifu::ation of timeless meaning for S, by saying 'One meaning of S, inc1udes "Bill is occupationally engaged in philosophie al studies" and "Bill is courageous" and "[The fact] That Bill is courageous follows from his being occupationally engaged in philosophical studies", and that is all that is included'.  We might re-express this as 'One meaning of S, comprises "Bill is occupationally engaged (etc)", "Bill is courageous",  and "That Bill is eourageous follows (ete .)".'] It will be preferable to speeify the timeless meaning of S I in this way than to do so as folIows: 'One meaning of S I is "Bill is occupationally engaged (etc.) and Bill is courageous and that Bill is eourageous follows (ete.)" '; for this latter formulation at least suggests that SI is synonymous with the conjunctive sentence quoted in the formulation, whieh does not seem to be the case. Since it is true that another meaning of SI inc1udes 'Bill is addicted to general reftections about life' (vice 'Bill is occupationally engaged (etc.)'), one could have occasion to say (truly), with respect to a given utterance by U of SI' 'The meaning of SI HERE comprised "Bill is oecupationally engaged (ete.)", "Bill is eourageous", and "That Bill is courageous follows (ete.)"', or to say 'The meaning of S I HERE included "That Bill is courageous follows (etc.)" '. It could also be true that when U uttered SI he meant (part of what he meant was) that that Bill is eourageous follows (ete.). Now I do not wish to allow that, in my favoured sense of'say', one who utters SI will have said [OR EXPLICITLY CONVEYED ] that Bill's being courageous follows from his being a philosopher, though he may weil have said that Bill is a philosopher and that Bill is courageous. I would wish to maintain that the SEMANTIC FUNCTION of the 'therefore' is to enable a speaker to indicate, though not to say [or explicitly convey], that a certain consequenee holds. Mutatis mutandis, I would adopt the same position with regard to words like 'but' and 'moreover'. In the case of ‘but’ – contrast.In the case of ‘moreover,’ or ‘furthermore,’ the speaker is not explicitly conveying that he is adding; he is implicitly conveying that he is adding, and using the emphatic, colloquial, rhetorical, device. Much favoured by rhetoricians. To start a sentence with “Furthermore” is very common. To start a sentence, or subsentence with, “I say that in addition to the previous, the following also holds, viz.”My primary reason for opting for this partieular sense of'say' is that I expect it to be of greater theoretical utility than some OTHER sense of'say' [such as one held, say, by L. J. Cohen at Oxford] would be. So I shall be committed to the view that applied timeless meaning and occasion=meaning may coincide, that is to say, it may be true both First, that when U uttered X the meaning of X inc1uded '*p' and Second,  that part of what U meant when he uttered X was that *p, and yet be false that U has said, among other things, that *p. “I would like to use the expression 'conventionally meant that' in such a way that the fulfilment of the two conditions just mentioned, while insufficient for the truth of 'U said that *p' will be suffieient (and neeessary) for the truth of 'U conventionally meant that *p'.”The above is important because Grice is for the first time allowing the adverb ‘conventionally’ to apply not as he does in Essay I to ‘implicate’ but to ‘mean’ in general – which would INCLUDE what is EXPLICITLY CONVEYED. This will not be as central as he thinks he is here, because his exploration will be on the handwave which surely cannot be specified in terms of that the emissor CONVENTIONALLY MEANS.(V) This distinction between what is said [or explicity conveyed] and what is conventionally meant [or communicated, or conveyed simpliciter] creates the task of specifying the conditions in which what U conventionally means by an utterance is also part of what U said [or explicitly conveyed].I have hopes of being able to discharge this task by proceeding along the following lines.First, To specify conditions which will be satisfied only by a limited range of speech-acts, the members of which will thereby be stamped as specially central or fundamental. “Adding, contrasting, and reasoning” will not. Second, To stipulate that in uttering X [utterance type], U will have said [or explicitly conveyed] that *p, if both First, U has 1stFLOOR-ed that *p, where 1stFloor-ing is a CENTRAL speech-act [not adding, contrasting, or reasoning], and Second, X [the utterance type] embodies some CONVENTIONAL device [such as the mode of the copula] the meaning of which is such that its presence in X [the utterance type] indicates that its utterer is FIRST-FLOOR -ing that *p. Third, To define, for each member Y of the range of central speech-aets, 'U has Y -ed that *p' in terms of occasion-meaning (meaning that ... ) or in terms of some important elements) involved in the already provided definition of occasion-meaning. (VI) The fulfilment of the task just outlined will need to be supplemented by an account of this or that ELEMENT in the CONVENTIONAL MEANING of an utterance (such as one featuring ‘therefore,’ ‘but,’ or ‘moreover’) which is NOT part of what has been said [or explicitly conveyed].This account, at least for an important sub-class of such elements, might take the following shape: First, this or that problematic element is linked with this or that speech-act which is exhibited as posterior to, and such that their performance is dependent upon, some member or disjunction of members of the central, first-floor range; e. g. the meaning of 'moreover' would be linked with the speech-act of adding, the performance of which would require the performance of one or other of the central speech-acts. – [and the meaning of ‘but’ with contrasting, and the meaning of ‘therefore’ with reasoning, or inferring].Second, If SECOND-FLOOR-ing is such a non-central speech-act [such as inferring/reasoning, contrasting, or adding], the dependence of SECOND-FLOOR-ing that *p upon the performance of some central FIRST-FLOOR speech-act [such as stating or ordering] would have to be shown to be of a nature which justifies a RELUCTANCE to treat SECOND-FLOOR-ing (e. g. inferring, contrasting, adding) that *p as a case not merely of saying that *p, but also of saying that = p, or of saying that = *p (where' = p', or ' = *p', is a representation of one or more sentential forms specifically associated with SECOND-FLOOR-ing). Z Third, The notion of SECOND-FLOOR-ing (inferring, contrasting, adding) that *p (where Z-ing is non-central) would be explicated in terms of the nation of meaning that (or in terms of some important elements) in the definition of that notion). When Grice learned that that brilliant Harvardite, D. K. Lewis, was writing a dissertation under Quine on ‘convention’ he almost fainted! When he noticed that Lewis was relying rightly on Schelling and mainly restricting the ‘conventionality’ to the ‘arbitrariness,’ which Grice regarded as synonym with ‘freedom’ (Willkuere, liber arbitrium), he recovered. For Lewis, a two-off predicament occurs when you REPEAT. Grice is not interested. When you repeat, you may rely on some ‘arbitrariness.’ This is usually the EMISSOR’s auctoritas. As when Humptyy Dumpty was brought to Davidson’s attention. “Impenetrability!” “I don’t know what that means.” “Well put, Alice, if that is your name, as you said it was. What I mean by ‘impenetrability’ is that we rather change the topic, plus it’s tea time, and I feel like having some eggs.” Grice refers to this as the ‘idion.’ He reminisces when he was in the bath and designed a full new highway code (“Nobody has yet used it – but the pleasure was in the semiotic design.”). A second reminiscence pertains to his writing a full grammar of “Deutero-Esperanto.” “I loved it – because I had all the power a master needs! I decide what it’s proper!” In the field of the implicata, Grice uses ‘convention’ casually, mainly to contrast it with HIS field, the non-conventional. One should not attach importance to this. On occasion Grice used Frege’s “Farbung,” just to confuse. The sad story is that Strawson was never convinced by the non-conventional. Being a conventionalist at heart (vide his “Intention and convention in speech acts,”) and revering Austin, Strawson opposes Grice’s idea of the ‘non-conventional.’ Note that in Grice’s general schema for the communicatum, the ‘conventional’ is just ONE MODE OF CORRELATION between the signum and the signatum, or the communicatum and the intentum. The ‘conventional’ can be explained, unlike Lewis, in mere terms of the validatum. Strawson and Wiggins “Cogito; ergo, sum”: What is explicitly conveyed is: “cogito”  and “sum”. The conjunction “cogito” and “sum” is not made an ‘invalidatum’ if the implicated consequence relation, emotionally expressed by an ‘alas’-like sort of ejaculation, ‘ergo,’ fails to hold. Strawson and Wiggins give other examples. For some reason, Latin ‘ergo’ becomes the more structured, “therefore,” which is a composite of ‘there’ and ‘fore.’ Then there’s the very Hun, “so,” (as in “so so”). Then there’s the “Sie schoene aber poor,” discussed by Frege --“but,” – and Strawson and Wiggins add a few more that had Grice elaborating on first-floor versus second-floor. Descartes is on the first floor. He states “cogito” and he states “sum.” Then he goes to the second floor, and the screams, “ergo,” or ‘dunc!’” The examples Strawson and Wiggins give are: “although” (which looks like a subordinating dyadic connector but not deemed essential by Gazdar’s 16 ones). Then they give an expression Grice quite explored, “because,” or “for”as Grice prefers (‘since it improves on Stevenson), the ejaculation “alas,” and in its ‘misusage,’ “hopefully.” This is an adverbial that Grice loved: “Probably, it will rains,” “Desirably, there is icecream.” There is a confusing side to this too. “intentions are to be recognized, in the normal case, by virtue of a knowledge of the conventional use of the sentence (indeed my account of "non-conventional implicature" depends on this idea).” So here we may disregard the ‘bandaged leg case’ and the idea that there is implicature in art, etc. If we take the sobriquet ‘non-conventional’ seriously, one may be led to suggest that the ‘non-conventional’ DEPENDS on the conventional. One distinctive feature – the fifth – of the conversational implicatum is that it is partly generated as partly depending on the ‘conventional’ “use.” So this is tricky. Grice’s anti-conventionalism -- conventionalism, the philosophical doctrine that logical truth and mathematical truth are created by our choices, not dictated or imposed on us by the world. The doctrine is a more specific version of the linguistic theory of logical and mathematical truth, according to which the statements of logic and mathematics are true because of the way people use language. Of course, any statement owes its truth to some extent to facts about linguistic usage. For example, ‘Snow is white’ is true in English because of the facts that 1 ‘snow’ denotes snow, 2 ‘is white’ is true of white things, and 3 snow is white. What the linguistic theory asserts is that statements of logic and mathematics owe their truth entirely to the way people use language. Extralinguistic facts such as 3 are not relevant to the truth of such statements. Which aspects of linguistic usage produce logical truth and mathematical truth? The conventionalist answer is: certain linguistic conventions. These conventions are said to include rules of inference, axioms, and definitions. The idea that geometrical truth is truth we create by adopting certain conventions received support by the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries. Prior to this discovery, Euclidean geometry had been seen as a paradigm of a priori knowledge. The further discovery that these alternative systems are consistent made Euclidean geometry seem rejectable without violating rationality. Whether we adopt the Euclidean system or a non-Euclidean system seems to be a matter of our choice based on such pragmatic considerations as simplicity and convenience. Moving to number theory, conventionalism received a prima facie setback by the discovery that arithmetic is incomplete if consistent. For let S be an undecidable sentence, i.e., a sentence for which there is neither proof nor disproof. Suppose S is true. In what conventions does its truth consist? Not axioms, rules of inference, and definitions. For if its truth consisted in these items it would be provable. Suppose S is not true. Then its negation must be true. In what conventions does its truth consist? Again, no answer. It appears that if S is true or its negation is true and if neither S nor its negation is provable, then not all arithmetic truth is truth by convention. A response the conventionalist could give is that neither S nor its negation is true if S is undecidable. That is, the conventionalist could claim that arithmetic has truth-value gaps. As to logic, all truths of classical logic are provable and, unlike the case of number theory and geometry, axioms are dispensable. Rules of inference suffice. As with geometry, there are alternatives to classical logic. The intuitionist, e.g., does not accept the rule ‘From not-not-A infer A’. Even detachment  ’From A, if A then B, infer B’  is rejected in some multivalued systems of logic. These facts support the conventionalist doctrine that adopting any set of rules of inference is a matter of our choice based on pragmatic considerations. But the anti-conventionalist might respond consider a simple logical truth such as ‘If Tom is tall, then Tom is tall’. Granted that this is provable by rules of inference from the empty set of premises, why does it follow that its truth is not imposed on us by extralinguistic facts about Tom? If Tom is tall the sentence is true because its consequent is true. If Tom is not tall the sentence is true because its antecedent is false. In either case the sentence owes its truth to facts about Tom.  -- convention T, a criterion of material adequacy of proposed truth definitions discovered, formally articulated, adopted, and so named by Tarski in connection with his 9 definition of the concept of truth in a formalized language. Convention T is one of the most important of several independent proposals Tarski made concerning philosophically sound and logically precise treatment of the concept of truth. Various of these proposals have been criticized, but convention T has remained virtually unchallenged and is regarded almost as an axiom of analytic philosophy. To say that a proposed definition of an established concept is materially adequate is to say that it is “neither too broad nor too narrow,” i.e., that the concept it characterizes is coextensive with the established concept. Since, as Tarski emphasized, for many formalized languages there are no criteria of truth, it would seem that there can be no general criterion of material adequacy of truth definitions. But Tarski brilliantly finessed this obstacle by discovering a specification that is fulfilled by the established correspondence concept of truth and that has the further property that any two concepts fulfilling it are necessarily coextensive. Basically, convention T requires that to be materially adequate a proposed truth definition must imply all of the infinitely many relevant Tarskian biconditionals; e.g., the sentence ‘Some perfect number is odd’ is true if and only if some perfect number is odd. Loosely speaking, a Tarskian biconditional for English is a sentence obtained from the form ‘The sentence ——— is true if and only if ——’ by filling the right blank with a sentence and filling the left blank with a name of the sentence. Tarski called these biconditionals “equivalences of the form T” and referred to the form as a “scheme.” Later writers also refer to the form as “schema T.” 

nonsense: Sense-nonsense -- demarcation, the line separating empirical science from mathematics and logic, from metaphysics, and from pseudoscience. Science traditionally was supposed to rely on induction, the formal disciplines including metaphysics on deduction. In the verifiability criterion, the logical positivists identified the demarcation of empirical science from metaphysics with the demarcation of the cognitively meaningful from the meaningless, classifying metaphysics as gibberish, and logic and mathematics, more charitably, as without sense. Noting that, because induction is invalid, the theories of empirical science are unverifiable, Popper proposed falsifiability as their distinguishing characteristic, and remarked that some metaphysical doctrines, such as atomism, are obviously meaningful. It is now recognized that science is suffused with metaphysical ideas, and Popper’s criterion is therefore perhaps a rather rough criterion of demarcation of the empirical from the nonempirical rather than of the scientific from the non-scientific. It repudiates the unnecessary task of demarcating the cognitively meaningful from the cognitively meaningless. 

NOTUM -- divided line, one of three analogies with the sun and cave offered in Plato’s Republic VI, 509d 511e as a partial explanation of the Good. Socrates divides a line into two unequal segments: the longer represents the intelligible world and the shorter the sensible world. Then each of the segments is divided in the same proportion. Socrates associates four mental states with the four resulting segments beginning with the shortest: eikasia, illusion or the apprehension of images; pistis, belief in ordinary physical objects; dianoia, the sort of hypothetical reasondispositional belief divided line 239   239 ing engaged in by mathematicians; and noesis, rational ascent to the first principle of the Good by means of dialectic. Grice read Austin’s essay on this with interest. Refs.: J. L. Austin, “Plato’s Cave,” in Philosophical Papers.

noûs, Grecian term for mind or the faculty of reason. Noûs is the highest type of thinking, the kind a god would do. Sometimes called the faculty of intellectual intuition, it is at work when someone understands definitions, concepts, and anything else that is grasped all at once. Noûs stands in contrast with another intellectual faculty, dianoia. When we work through the steps of an argument, we exercise dianoia; to be certain the conclusion is true without argument  to just “see” it, as, perhaps, a god might  is to exercise noûs. Just which objects could be apprehended by noûs was controversial.

Novalis, pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg 17721801, G. poet and philosopher of early G. Romanticism. His starting point was Fichte’s reflective type of transcendental philosophy; he attempted to complement Fichte’s focus on philosophical speculation by including other forms of intellectual experience such as faith, love, poetry, and religion, and exhibit their equally autonomous status of existence. Of special importance in this regard is his analysis of the imagination in contrast to reason, of the poetic power in distinction from the reasonable faculties. Novalis insists on a complementary interaction between these two spheres, on a union of philosophy and poetry. Another important aspect of his speculation concerns the relation between the inner and the outer world, subject and object, the human being and nature. Novalis attempted to reveal the correspondence, even unity between these two realms and to present the world as a “universal trope” or a “symbolic image” of the human mind and vice versa. He expressed his philosophical thought mostly in fragments. 

nowell-smithianism. “The Nowell is redundant,” Grice would say. P. H. Nowell-Smith adopted the “Nowell” after his father’s first name. In “Ethics,” he elaborates on what he calls ‘contextual implication.’ The essay was widely read, and has a freshness that other ‘meta-ethicist’ at Oxford seldom display. His ‘contextual implication’ compares of course to Grice’s ‘conversational implicature.’ Indeed, by using ‘conversational implicature,’ Grice is following an Oxonian tradition started with C. K. Grant and his ‘pragmatic implication,’ and P. H. Nowell-Smith and his ‘contextual implication.’ At Oxford, they were obsessed with these types of ‘implicata,’ because it was the type of thing that a less subtle philosopher would ignore. Grice’s cancellability priority for his type of implicata hardly applies to Nowell-Smith. Nowell-Smith never displays the ‘rationalist’ bent that Grice wants to endow to his principle of conversational co-operation. Nowell-Smith, rather, calls his ‘principles’ “rules of conversational etiquette.” If you revise the literature, you will see that things like “avoid ambiguity,” “don’t play unnecessary with words,” are listed indeed in what is called a ‘conversational manual,’ of ‘conversational etiquette,’ that is. In his rationalist bent, Grice narrows down the use of ‘conversational’ to apply to ‘conversational maxim,’ which is only a UNIVERSALISABLE one, towards the overarching goal of rational co-operation. In this regard, many of the rules of ‘conversational etiquette’ (Grice even mentions ‘moral rules,’ and a rule like ‘be polite’) to fall outside the principle of conversational helpfulness, and thus, not exactly generating a ‘conversational implicatum.’ While Grice gives room to allow such non-conversational non-conventional implicata to be ‘calculable,’ that is, ‘rationalizable, by ‘argument,’ he never showed any interest in giving one example – for the simple reason that none of those ‘maxims’ generated the type of ‘mistake’ on the part of this or that philosopher, as he was interested in rectifying.

Nozick, Robert b.8,  philosopher, Harvard , best known for Anarchy, State, and Utopia, which defends the libertarian position that only a minimal state limited to protecting rights is just. Nozick argues that a minimal state, but not a more extensive state, could arise without violating rights. Drawing on Kant’s dictum that people may not be used as mere means, Nozick says that people’s rights are inviolable, no matter how useful violations might be to the state. He criticizes principles of redistributive justice on which theorists base defenses of extensive states, such as the principle of utility, and Rawls’s principle that goods should be distributed in favor of the least well-off. Enforcing these principles requires eliminating the cumulative effects of free exchanges, which violates permanent, bequeathable property rights. Nozick’s own entitlement theory says that a distribution of holdings is just if people under that distribution are entitled to what they hold. Entitlements, in turn, would be clarified using principles of justice in acquisition, transfer, and rectification. Nozick’s other works include Philosophical Explanations 1, The Examined Life 9, The Nature of Rationality 3, and Socratic Puzzles 7. These are contributions to rational choice theory, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and ethics. Philosophical Explanations features two especially important contributions. The first is Nozick’s reliabilist, causal view that beliefs that constitute knowledge must track the truth. My belief that say a cat is on the mat tracks the truth only if a I would not believe this if a cat were not on the mat, and b I would believe this if a cat were there. The tracking account positions Nozick to reject the principle that people know all of the things they believe via deductions from things they know, and to reject versions of skepticism based on this principle of closure. The second is Nozick’s closest continuer theory of identity, according to which A’s identity at a later time can depend on facts about other existing things, for it depends on 1 what continues A closely enough to be A and 2 what  continues A more closely than any other existing thing. Nozick’s 9 essay “Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice” is another important contribution. It is the first discussion of Newcomb’s problem, a problem in decision theory, and presents many positions prominent in subsequent debate. 

Numenius of Apamea fl. mid-second century A.D., Grecian Platonist philosopher of neoPythagorean tendencies. Very little is known of his life apart from his residence in Apamea, Syria, but his philosophical importance is considerable. His system of three levels of spiritual reality  a primal god the Good, the Father, who is almost supra-intellectual; a secondary, creator god the demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus; and a world soul  largely anticipates that of Plotinus in the next century, though he was more strongly dualist than Plotinus in his attitude to the physical world and matter. He was much interested in the wisdom of the East, and in comparative religion. His most important work, fragments of which are preserved by Eusebius, is a dialogue On the Good, but he also wrote a polemic work On the Divergence of the Academics from Plato, which shows him to be a lively controversialist. J.M.D. numerical identity.

Nussbaum, Martha Craven, philosopher, classicist, and public intellectual with influential views on the human good, the emotions and their place in practical reasoning, and the rights of women and homosexuals. After training at Harvard in classical philology, she published a critical edition, with translation and commentary, of Aristotle’s Motion of Animals 8. Its essays formulated ideas that she has continued to articulate: that perception is trainable, imagination interpretive, and desire a reaching out for the good. Via provocative readings of Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, The Fragility of Goodness 6 argues that many true goods succumb to fortune, lack any common measure, and demand finetuned discernment. The essays in Love’s Knowledge 0  on Proust, Dickens, Beckett, Henry James, and others  explore the emotional implications of our fragility and the particularism of practical reasoning. They also undertake a brief against Plato’s ancient criticism of the poets, an argument that Nussbaum carried on years later in debates with Judge Richard Posner. The Therapy of Desire 4 dissects the Stoics’ conviction that our vulnerability calls for philosophical therapy to extirpate the emotions. While Nussbaum holds that the Stoics were mistaken about the good, she has adopted and strengthened their view that emotions embody judgments  most notably in her Gifford Lectures of 3, Upheavals of Thought. A turning point in Nussbaum’s career came in 7, when she became a part-time research adviser at the United Nationssponsored World Institute for Development Economics Research. She there adapted her Aristotelian account of the human good to help ground the “capabilities approach” that the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen was developing for policymakers to use in assessing individuals’ well-being. Nussbaum spells out the human capabilities essential to leading a good life, integrating them within a nuanced liberalism of universalist appeal. This view has ramified: Poetic Justice 6 argues that its legal realization must avoid the oversimplifications that utilitarianism and economics encourage and instead balance generality with emotionally sensitive imagination. Sex and Social Justice 8 explores her view’s implications for problems of sexual inequality, gay rights, and sexual objectification. Feminist Internationalism, her 8 Seeley Lec   622 tures, argues that an effective international feminism must champion rights, eschew relativism, and study local traditions sufficiently closely to see their diversity. 

O: particularis abdicativa. See Grice, “Circling the Square of Opposition.”

Oakeshott, M.: H. P. Grice, “Oakeshott’s conversational implicature,” English philosopher and political theorist trained at Cambridge and in G.y. He taught first at Cambridge and Oxford; from 1 he was professor of political science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His works include Experience and Its Modes 3, Rationalism in Politics 2, On Human Conduct 5, and On History 3. Oakeshott’s misleading general reputation, based on Rationalism in Politics, is as a conservative political thinker. Experience and Its Modes is a systematic work in the tradition of Hegel. Human experience is exclusively of a world of ideas intelligible insofar as it is coherent. This world divides into modes historical, scientific, practical, and poetic experience, each being partly coherent and categorially distinct from all others. Philosophy is the never entirely successful attempt to articulate the coherence of the world of ideas and the place of modally specific experience within that whole. His later works examine the postulates of historical and practical experience, particularly those of religion, morality, and politics. All conduct in the practical mode postulates freedom and is an “exhibition of intelligence” by agents who appropriate inherited languages and ideas to the generic activity of self-enactment. Some conduct pursues specific purposes and occurs in “enterprise associations” identified by goals shared among those who participate in them. The most estimable forms of conduct, exemplified by “conversation,” have no such purpose and occur in “civil societies” under the purely “adverbial” considerations of morality and law. “Rationalists” illicitly use philosophy to dictate to practical experience and subordinate human conduct to some master purpose. Oakeshott’s distinctive achievement is to have melded holistic idealism with a morality and politics radical in their affirmation of individuality.

objectivism: Grice reads Meinong on objectivity and finds it funny! Meinong distinguishes four classes of objects: ‘Objekt,’ simpliciter, which can be real (like horses) or ideal (like the concepts of difference, identity, etc.) and “Objectiv,” e.g. the affirmation of the being (Sein) or non-being (Nichtsein), of a being-such (Sosein), or a being-with (Mitsein) - parallel to existential, categorical and hypothetical judgements. An “Objectiv” is close to what contemporary philosophers call states of affairs (where these may be actual—may obtain—or not). The third class is the dignitative, e.g. the true, the good, the beautiful. Finally, there is the desiderative, e.g. duties, ends, etc. To these four classes of objects correspond four classes of psychological acts:  (re)presentation (das Vorstellen), for objects thought (das Denken), for the objectives feeling (das Fühlen), for dignitatives desire (das Begehren), for the desideratives. Grice starts with subjectivity. Objectivity can be constructed as non-relativised subjectivity. Grice discusses of Inventing right and wrong by Mackie. In the proceedings, Grice quotes the artless sexism of Austin in talking about the trouser words in Sense and Sensibilia. Grice tackles all the distinctions Mackie had played with: objective/Subjectsive, absolute/relative, categorical/hypothetical or suppositional. Grice quotes directly from Hare: Think of one world into whose fabric values are objectively built; and think of another in which those values have been annihilated. And remember that in both worlds the people in them go on being concerned about the same things—there is no difference in the Subjectsive value. Now I ask, what is the difference between the states of affairs in these two worlds? Can any answer be given except, none whatever? Grice uses the Latinate objective (from objectum). Cf. Hare on what he thinks the oxymoronic sub-jective value. Grice considered more seriously than Barnes did the systematics behind Nicolai Hartmanns stratification of values. Refs.: the most explicit allusion is a specific essay on “objectivity” in The H. P. Grice Papers. Most of the topic is covered in “Conception,” Essay 1. BANC.

objectivum. Here the contrast is what what is subjective, or subjectivum. Notably value. For Hartmann and Grice, a value is rational, objective and absolute, and categorical (not relative).

objectum. For Grice the subjectum is prior. While ‘subject’ and ‘predicate’ are basic Aristotelian categories, the idea of the direct object or indirect object seems to have little philosophical relevance. (but cf. “What is the meaning of ‘of’? Genitivus subjectivus versus enitivus objectivus. The usage that is more widespread is a misnomer for ‘thing’. When an empiricist like Grice speaks of an ‘obble’ or an ‘object,’ he means a thing. That is because, since Hume there’s no such thing as a ‘subject’ qua self. And if there is no subject, there is no object. No Copernican revolution for empiricists.

obiectum quo Latin, ‘object by which’, in medieval and Scholastic epistemology, the object by which an object is known. It should be understood in contrast with obiectum quod, which refers to the object that is known. For example, when a person knows what an apple is, the apple is the obiectum quod and his concept of the apple is the obiectum quo. That is, the concept is instrumental to knowing the apple, but is not itself what is known. Human beings need concepts in order to have knowledge, because their knowledge is receptive, in contrast with God’s which is productive. God creates what he knows. Human knowledge is mediated; divine knowledge is immediate. Scholastic philosophers believe that the distinction between obiectum quod and obiectum quo exposes the crucial mistake of idealism. According to idealists, the object of knowledge, i.e., what a person knows, is an idea. In contrast, the Scholastics maintain that idealists conflate the object of knowledge with the means by which human knowledge is made possible. Humans must be connected to the object of knowledge by something obiectum quo, but what connects them is not that to which they are connected. A.P.M. object, intentional.

objective rightness. In ethics, an action is objectively right for a person to perform on some occasion if the agent’s performing it on that occasion really is right, whether or not the agent, or anyone else, believes it is. An action is subjectively right for a person to perform on some occasion if the agent believes, or perhaps justifiably believes, of that action that it is objectively right. For example, according to a version of utilitarianism, an action is objectively right provided the action is optimific in the sense that the consequences that would result from its per624 O    624 formance are at least as good as those that would result from any alternative action the agent could instead perform. Were this theory correct, then an action would be an objectively right action for an agent to perform on some occasion if and only if that action is in fact optimific. An action can be both objectively and subjectively right or neither. But an action can also be subjectively right, but fail to be objectively right, as where the action fails to be optimific again assuming that a utilitarian theory is correct, yet the agent believes the action is objectively right. And an action can be objectively right but not subjectively right, where, despite the objective rightness of the action, the agent has no beliefs about its rightness or believes falsely that it is not objectively right. This distinction is important in our moral assessments of agents and their actions. In cases where we judge a person’s action to be objectively wrong, we often mitigate our judgment of the agent when we judge that the action was, for the agent, subjectively right. This same objectivesubjective distinction applies to other ethical categories such as wrongness and obligatoriness, and some philosophers extend it to items other than actions, e.g., emotions. 

Obligatum -- Deontology -- duty, what a person is obligated or required to do. Duties can be moral, legal, parental, occupational, etc., depending on their foundations or grounds. Because a duty can have several different grounds, it can be, say, both moral and legal, though it need not be of more than one type. Natural duties are moral duties people have simply in virtue of being persons, i.e., simply in virtue of their nature. There is a prima facie duty to do something if and only if there is an appropriate basis for doing that thing. For instance, a prima facie moral duty will be one for which there is a moral basis, i.e., some moral grounds. This conDutch book duty 248   248 trasts with an all-things-considered duty, which is a duty one has if the appropriate grounds that support it outweigh any that count against it. Negative duties are duties not to do certain things, such as to kill or harm, while positive duties are duties to act in certain ways, such as to relieve suffering or bring aid. While the question of precisely how to draw the distinction between negative and positive duties is disputed, it is generally thought that the violation of a negative duty involves an agent’s causing some state of affairs that is the basis of the action’s wrongness e.g., harm, death, or the breaking of a trust, whereas the violation of a positive duty involves an agent’s allowing those states of affairs to occur or be brought about. Imperfect duties are, in Kant’s words, “duties which allow leeway in the interest of inclination,” i.e., that permit one to choose among several possible ways of fulfilling them. Perfect duties do not allow that leeway. Thus, the duty to help those in need is an imperfect duty since it can be fulfilled by helping the sick, the starving, the oppressed, etc., and if one chooses to help, say, the sick, one can choose which of the sick to help. However, the duty to keep one’s promises and the duty not to harm others are perfect duties since they do not allow one to choose which promises to keep or which people not to harm. Most positive duties are imperfect; most negative ones, perfect. obligationes, the study of inferentially inescapable, yet logically odd arguments, used by late medieval logicians in analyzing inferential reasoning. In Topics VIII.3 Aristotle describes a respondent’s task in a philosophical argument as providing answers so that, if they must defend the impossible, the impossibility lies in the nature of the position, and not in its logical defense. In Prior Analytics I.13 Aristotle argues that nothing impossible follows from the possible. Burley, whose logic exemplifies early fourteenth-century obligationes literature, described the resulting logical exercise as a contest between interlocutor and respondent. The interlocutor must force the respondent into maintaining contradictory statements in defending a position, and the respondent must avoid this while avoiding maintaining the impossible, which can be either a position logically incompatible with the position defended or something impossible in itself. Especially interesting to Scholastic logicians were the paradoxes of disputation inherent in such disputes. Assuming that a respondent has successfully defended his position, the interlocutor may be able to propose a commonplace position that the respondent can neither accept nor reject, given the truth of the first, successfully defended position. Roger Swineshead introduced a controversial innovation to obligationes reasoning, later rejected by Paul of Venice. In the traditional style of obligation, a premise was relevant to the argument only if it followed from or was inconsistent with either a the proposition defended or b all the premises consequent to the former and prior to the premise in question. By admitting any premise that was either consequent to or inconsistent with the proposition defended alone, without regard to intermediate premises, Swineshead eliminated concern with the order of sentences proposed by the interlocutor, making the respondent’s task harder. 

Casus obliquus -- oblique context. As explained by Frege in “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” 2, a linguistic context is oblique ungerade if and only if an expression e.g., proper name, dependent clause, or sentence in that context does not express its direct customary sense. For Frege, the sense of an expression is the mode of presentation of its nominatum, if any. Thus in direct speech, the direct customary sense of an expression designates its direct customary nominatum. For example, the context of the proper name ‘Kepler’ in 1 Kepler died in misery. is non-oblique i.e., direct since the proper name expresses its direct customary sense, say, the sense of ‘the man who discovered the elliptical planetary orbits’, thereby designating its direct customary nominatum, Kepler himself. Moreover, the entire sentence expresses its direct sense, namely, the proposition that Kepler died in misery, thereby designating its direct nominatum, a truth-value, namely, the true. By contrast, in indirect speech an expression neither expresses its direct sense nor, therefore, designates its direct nominatum. One such sort of oblique context is direct quotation, as in 2 ‘Kepler’ has six letters. The word appearing within the quotation marks neither expresses its direct customary sense nor, therefore, designates its direct customary nominatum, Kepler. Rather, it designates a word, a proper name. Another sort of oblique context is engendered by the verbs of propositional attitude. Thus, the context of the proper name ‘Kepler’ in 3 Frege believed Kepler died in misery. is oblique, since the proper name expresses its indirect sense, say, the sense of the words ‘the man widely known as Kepler’, thereby designating its indirect nominatum, namely, the sense of ‘the man who discovered the elliptical planetary orbits’. Note that the indirect nominatum of ‘Kepler’ in 3 is the same as the direct sense of ‘Kepler’ in 1. Thus, while ‘Kepler’ in 1 designates the man Kepler, ‘Kepler’ in 3 designates the direct customary sense of the word ‘Kepler’ in 1. Similarly, in 3 the context of the dependent clause ‘Kepler died in misery’ is oblique since the dependent clause expresses its indirect sense, namely, the sense of the words ‘the proposition that Kepler died in misery’, thereby designating its indirect nominatum, namely, the proposition that Kepler died in misery. Note that the indirect nominatum of ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 3 is the same as the direct sense of ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 1. Thus, while ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 1 designates a truthvalue, ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 3 designates a proposition, the direct customary sense of the words ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 1. 

obversion, a sort of immediate inference that allows a transformation of affirmative categorical A-propositions and I-propositions into the corresponding negative E-propositions and O-propositions, and of E- and O-propositions into the corresponding A- and I-propositions, keeping in each case the order of the subject and predicate terms, but changing the original predicate into its complement, i.e., into a negated term. For example, ‘Every man is mortal’  ’No man is non-mortal’; ‘Some students are happy’  ‘Some students are not non-happy’; ‘No dogs are jealous’  ‘All dogs are non-jealous’; and ‘Some bankers are not rich’  ‘Some bankers are not non-rich’.  .

occasionalism, a theory of causation held by a number of important seventeenth-century Cartesian philosophers, including Johannes Clauberg 162265, Géraud de Cordemoy 1626 84, Arnold Geulincx 162469, Louis de la Forge 163266, and Nicolas Malebranche 16381715. In its most extreme version, occasionalism is the doctrine that all finite created entities are devoid of causal efficacy, and that God is the only true causal agent. Bodies do not cause effects in other bodies nor in minds; and minds do not cause effects in bodies nor even within themselves. God is directly, immediately, and solely responsible for bringing about all phenomena. When a needle pricks the skin, the physical event is merely an occasion for God to cause the relevant mental state pain; a volition in the soul to raise an arm or to think of something is only an occasion for God to cause the arm to rise or the ideas to be present to the mind; and the impact of one billiard ball upon another is an occasion for God to move the second ball. In all three contexts  mindbody, bodybody, and mind alone  God’s ubiquitous causal activity proceeds in accordance with certain general laws, and except for miracles he acts only when the requisite material or psychic conditions obtain. Less thoroughgoing forms of occasionalism limit divine causation e.g., to mindbody or bodybody alone. Far from being an ad hoc solution to a Cartesian mindbody problem, as it is often considered, occasionalism is argued for from general philosophical considerations regarding the nature of causal relations considerations that later appear, modified, in Hume, from an analysis of the Cartesian concept of matoblique intention occasionalism 626    626 ter and of the necessary impotence of finite substance, and, perhaps most importantly, from theological premises about the essential ontological relation between an omnipotent God and the created world that he sustains in existence. Occasionalism can also be regarded as a way of providing a metaphysical foundation for explanations in mechanistic natural philosophy. Occasionalists are arguing that motion must ultimately be grounded in something higher than the passive, inert extension of Cartesian bodies emptied of the substantial forms of the Scholastics; it needs a causal ground in an active power. But if a body consists in extension alone, motive force cannot be an inherent property of bodies. Occasionalists thus identify force with the will of God. In this way, they are simply drawing out the implications of Descartes’s own metaphysics of matter and motion. 

Occam – see H. P. Grice, “Modified Occam’s Razor” -- William c.12851347, also written William Occam, known as the More than Subtle Doctor, English Scholastic philosopher known equally as the father of nominalism and for his role in the Franciscan dispute with Pope John XXII over poverty. Born probably in the village of Ockham near London, William Ockham entered the Franciscan order at an early age and studied at Oxford, attaining the rank of baccalarius formatus. His brilliant but controversial career was cut short when John Lutterell, former chancellor of Oxford , presented the pope with a list of fifty-six allegedly heretical theses extracted from Ockham’s writings. The papal commission studied them for two years and found fifty-one open to censure, but none was formally condemned. While in Avignon, Ockham researched previous papal concessions to the Franciscans regarding collective poverty, eventually concluding that John XXII contradicted his predecessors and hence was “no true pope.” After committing these charges to writing, Ockham fled with Michael of Cesena, then minister general of the order, first to Pisa and ultimately to Munich, where he lived until his death, writing many treatises about churchstate relations. Although departures from his eminent predecessors have combined with ecclesiastical difficulties to make Ockham unjustly notorious, his thought remains, by current lights, philosophically and theologically conservative. On most metaphysical issues, Ockham fancied himself the true interpreter of Aristotle. Rejecting the doctrine that universals are real things other than names or concepts as “the worst error of philosophy,” Ockham dismissed not only Platonism, but also “modern realist” doctrines according to which natures enjoy a double mode of existence and are universal in the intellect but numerically multiplied in particulars. He argues that everything real is individual and particular, while universality is a property pertaining only to names and that by virtue of their signification relations. Because Ockham understands the primary names to be mental i.e., naturally significant concepts, his own theory of universals is best classified as a form of conceptualism. Ockham rejects atomism, and defends Aristotelian hylomorphism in physics and metaphysics, complete with its distinction between substantial and accidental forms. Yet, he opposes the reifying tendency of the “moderns” unnamed contemporary opponents, who posited a distinct kind of thing res for each of Aristotle’s ten categories; he argues that  from a purely philosophical point of view  it is indefensible to posit anything besides particular substances and qualities. Ockham followed the Franciscan school in recognizing a plurality of substantial forms in living things in humans, the forms of corporeity, sensory soul, and intellectual soul, but diverged from Duns Scotus in asserting a real, not a formal, distinction among them. Aristotle had reached behind regular correlations in nature to posit substance-things and accident-things as primitive explanatory entities that essentially are or give rise to powers virtus that produce the regularities; similarly, Ockham distinguishes efficient causality properly speaking from sine qua non causality, depending on whether the correlation between A’s and B’s is produced by the power of A or by the will of another, and explicitly denies the existence of any sine qua non causation in nature. Further, Ockham insists, in Aristotelian fashion, that created substance- and accident-natures are essentially the causal powers they are in and of themselves and hence independently of their relations to anything else; so that not even God can make heat naturally a coolant. Yet, if God cannot change, He shares with created things the ability to obstruct such “Aristotelian” productive powers and prevent their normal operation. Ockham’s nominalistic conceptualism about universals does not keep him from endorsing the uniformity of nature principle, because he holds that individual natures are powers and hence that co-specific things are maximally similar powers. Likewise, he is conventional in appealing to several other a priori causal principles: “Everything that is in motion is moved by something,” “Being cannot come from non-being,” “Whatever is produced by something is really conserved by something as long as it exists.” He even recognizes a kind of necessary connection between created causes and effects  e.g., while God could act alone to produce any created effect, a particular created effect could not have had another created cause of the same species instead. Ockham’s main innovation on the topic of causality is his attack on Duns Scotus’s distinction between “essential” and “accidental” orders and contrary contention that every genuine efficient cause is an immediate cause of its effects. Ockham is an Aristotelian reliabilist in epistemology, taking for granted as he does that human cognitive faculties the senses and intellect work always or for the most part. Ockham infers that since we have certain knowledge both of material things and of our own mental acts, there must be some distinctive species of acts of awareness intuitive cognitions that are the power to produce such evident judgments. Ockham is matter-of-fact both about the disruption of human cognitive functions by created obstacles as in sensory illusion and about divine power to intervene in many ways. Such facts carry no skeptical consequences for Ockham, because he defines certainty in terms of freedom from actual doubt and error, not from the logical, metaphysical, or natural possibility of error. In action theory, Ockham defends the liberty of indifference or contingency for all rational beings, created or divine. Ockham shares Duns Scotus’s understanding of the will as a self-determining power for opposites, but not his distaste for causal models. Thus, Ockham allows that 1 unfree acts of will may be necessitated, either by the agent’s own nature, by its other acts, or by an external cause; and that 2 the efficient causes of free acts may include the agent’s intellectual and sensory cognitions as well as the will itself. While recognizing innate motivational tendencies in the human agent  e.g., the inclination to seek sensory pleasure and avoid pain, the affectio commodi tendency to seek its own advantage, and the affectio iustitiae inclination to love things for their own intrinsic worth  he denies that these limit the will’s scope. Thus, Ockham goes beyond Duns Scotus in assigning the will the power, with respect to any option, to will for it velle, to will against it nolle, or not to act at all. In particular, Ockham concludes that the will can will against nolle the good, whether ignorantly or perversely  by hating God or by willing against its own happiness, the good-in-general, the enjoyment of a clear vision of God, or its own ultimate end. The will can also will velle evils  the opposite of what right reason dictates, unjust deeds qua unjust, dishonest, and contrary to right reason, and evil under the aspect of evil. Ockham enforces the traditional division of moral science into non-positive morality or ethics, which directs acts apart from any precept of a superior authority and draws its principles from reason and experience; and positive morality, which deals with laws that oblige us to pursue or avoid things, not because they are good or evil in themselves, but because some legitimate superior commands them. The notion that Ockham sponsors an unmodified divine command theory of ethics rests on conflation and confusion. Rather, in the area of non-positive morality, Ockham advances what we might label a “modified right reason theory,” which begins with the Aristotelian ideal of rational self-government, according to which morally virtuous action involves the agent’s free coordination of choice with right reason. He then observes that suitably informed right reason would dictate that God, as the infinite good, ought to be loved above all and for his own sake, and that such love ought to be expressed by the effort to please him in every way among other things, by obeying all his commands. Thus, if right reason is the primary norm in ethics, divine commands are a secondary, derivative norm. Once again, Ockham is utterly unconcerned about the logical possibility opened by divine liberty of indifference, that these twin norms might conflict say, if God commanded us to act contrary to right reason; for him, their de facto congruence suffices for the moral life. In the area of soteriological merit and demerit a branch of positive morality, things are the other way around: divine will is the primary norm; yet because God includes following the dictates of right reason among the criteria for divine acceptance thereby giving the moral life eternal significance, right reason becomes a secondary and derivative norm there. 

Occam’s razor: H. P. Grice, “Modified Occam’s Razor.” Also called the principle of parsimony, a methodological principle commending a bias toward simplicity in the construction of theories. The parameters whose simplicity is singled out for attention have varied considerably, from kinds of entities to the number of presupposed axioms to the nature of the curve drawn between data points. Found already in Aristotle, the tag “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity” became associated with William Ockham although he never states that version, and even if non-contradiction rather than parsimony is his favorite weapon in metaphysical disputes, perhaps because it characterized the spirit of his philosophical conclusions. Opponents, who thought parsimony was being carried too far, formulated an “anti-razor”: where fewer entities do not suffice, posit more! 

Olivi, Peter John, philosopher-theologian whose views on the theory and practice of Franciscan poverty led to a long series of investigations of his orthodoxy. Olivi’s preference for humility, as well as the suspicion with which he was regarded, prevented his becoming a master of theology at Paris. After 1285, he was effectively vindicated and permitted to teach at Florence and Montpellier. But after his death, probably in part because his remains were venerated and his views were championed by the Franciscan Spirituals, his orthodoxy was again examined. The Council of Vienne 131112 condemned three unrelated tenets associated with Olivi. Finally, in 1326, Pope John XXII condemned a series of statements based on Olivi’s Apocalypse commentary. Olivi thought of himself chiefly as a theologian, writing copious biblical commentaries; his philosophy of history was influenced by Joachim of Fiore. His views on poverty inspired the leader of the Franciscan Observant reform movement, St. Bernardino of Siena. Apart from his views on poverty, Olivi is best known for his philosophical independence from Aristotle, whom he condemned as a materialist. Contrary to Aristotle’s theory of projectile motion, Olivi advocated a theory of impetus. He undermined orthodox views on Aristotelian categories. His attack on the category of relation was thought to have dangerous implications in Trinitarian theology. Ockham’s theory of quantity is in part a defense of views presented by Olivi. Olivi was critical of Augustinian as well as Aristotelian views; he abandoned the theories of seminal reason and divine illumination. He also argued against positing impressed sensible and intelligible species, claiming that only the soul, not perceptual objects, played an active role in perception. Bold as his philosophical views were, he presented them tentatively. A voluntarist, he emphasized the importance of will. He claimed that an act of understanding was not possible in the absence of an act of will. He provided an important experiential argument for the freedom of the will. His treatises on contracts revealed a sophisticated understanding of economics. His treatise on evangelical poverty includes the first defense of a theory of papal infallibility.

omega, the last letter of the Grecian alphabet w. Following Cantor 18451, it is used in lowercase as a proper name for the first infinite ordinal number, which is the ordinal of the natural ordering of the set of finite ordinals. By extension it is also used as a proper name for the set of finite ordinals itself or even for the set of natural numbers. Following Gödel 678, it is used as a prefix in names of various logical properties of sets of sentences, most notably omega-completeness and omega-consistency. Omega-completeness, in the original sense due to Tarski, is a syntactical property of sets of sentences in a formal arithmetic language involving a symbol ‘0’ for the number zero and a symbol ‘s’ for the so-called successor function, resulting in each natural number being named by an expression, called a numeral, in the following series: ‘0’, ‘s0’, ‘ss0’, and so on. For example, five is denoted by ‘sssss0’. A set of sentences is said to be omegacomplete if it deductively yields every universal sentence all of whose singular instances it yields. In this framework, as usual, every universal sentence, ‘for every n, n has P’ yields each and every one of its singular instances, ‘0 has P’, ‘s0 has P’, ‘ss0 has P’, etc. However, as had been known by logicians at least since the Middle Ages, the converse is not true, i.e., it is not in general the case that a universal sentence is deducible from the set of its singular instances. Thus one should not expect to find omega-completeness except in exceptional sets. The set of all true sentences of arithmetic is such an exceptional set; the reason is the semantic fact that every universal sentence whether or not in arithmetic is materially equivalent to the set of all its singular instances. A set of sentences that is not omega-complete is Ockham’s razor omega 629    629 said to be omega-incomplete. The existence of omega-incomplete sets of sentences is a phenomenon at the core of the 1 Gödel incompleteness result, which shows that every “effective” axiom set for arithmetic is omega-incomplete and thus has as theorems all singular instances of a universal sentence that is not one of its theorems. Although this is a remarkable fact, the existence of omega-incomplete sets per se is far from remarkable, as suggested above. In fact, the empty set and equivalently the set of all tautologies are omega-incomplete because each yields all singular instances of the non-tautological formal sentence, here called FS, that expresses the proposition that every number is either zero or a successor. Omega-consistency belongs to a set that does not yield the negation of any universal sentence all of whose singular instances it yields. A set that is not omega-consistent is said to be omega-inconsistent. Omega-inconsistency of course implies consistency in the ordinary sense; but it is easy to find consistent sets that are not omega-consistent, e.g., the set whose only member is the negation of the formal sentence FS mentioned above. Corresponding to the syntactical properties just mentioned there are analogous semantic properties whose definitions are obtained by substituting ‘semantically implies’ for ‘deductively yields’. The Grecian letter omega and its English name have many other uses in modern logic. Carnap introduced a non-effective, non-logical rule, called the omega rule, for “inferring” a universal sentence from its singular instances; adding the omega rule to a standard axiomatization of arithmetic produces a complete but non-effective axiomatization. An omega-valued logic is a many-valued logic whose set of truth-values is or is the same size as the set of natural numbers. 

one-at-a-time-sailor. He is loved by the altogether nice girl. Or grasshopper: Grice’s one-at-a-time grasshopper. His rational reconstruction of ‘some’ and ‘all.’ “A simple proposal for the treatment of the two quantifiers, rendered otiosely in English by “all” and “some (at least one),” – “the” is definable in terms of “all” -- would call for the assignment to a predicate such as that of ‘being a grasshopper,” symbolized by “G,” besides its normal or standard EXtension, two special things (or ‘object,’ if one must use Quine’s misnomer), associated with quantifiers, an 'altogether' ‘substitute’, thing or object and a 'one-at-a-time' non-substitute thing or object.”“To the predicate 'grasshopper' is assigned not only an individual, viz. a grasshopper, but also what I call  ‘The All-Together Grass-Hopper,’ or species-1and ‘The One-At-A-Time Grass-Hopper,’ or species-2. “I now stipulate that an 'altogether' item satisfies such a predicate as “being a grasshopper,” or G, just in case every normal or standard item associated with “the all-to-gether” grasshopper satisfies the predicate in question. Analogously, a 'one-at-a-time' item satisfies a predicate just in case “SOME (AT LEAST ONE)” of the associated standard items satisfies that predicate.”“So ‘The All-To-Gether Grass-Hopper izzes green just in case every individual grasshopper is green.The one-at-a-time grasshopper izzes green just in case some (at least one) individual grasshopper izzes green.”“We can take this pair of statements about these two special grasshoppers as providing us with representations of (respectively) the statements, ‘Every grass-hopper is green,’ and ‘Some (at least one) grasshopper is green.’“The apparatus which Grice sketched is plainly not, as it stands, adequate to provide a comprehensive treatment of quantification.”“It will not, e. g. cope with well-known problems of multiple quantification,” as in “Every Al-Together Nice Grass-Hopper Loves A Sailing Grass-Hopper.”“It will not deliver for us distinct representations of the two notorious (alleged) readings of ‘Every nice girl loves a sailor,” in one of which (supposedly) the universal quantifier is dominant with respect to scope, and in the other of which the existential quantifier is dominant.”The ambiguity was made ambiguous by Marie Lloyd. For every time she said “a sailor,” she pointed at herself – thereby disimplicating the default implicatum that the universal quantifier be dominant. “To cope with Marie Lloyd’s problem it might be sufficient to explore, for semantic purposes, the device of exportation, and to distinguish between, 'There exists a sailor such that every nice girl loves him', which attributes a certain property to the one-at-a-time sailor, and (ii) 'Every nice girl is such that she loves some sailor', which attributes a certain (and different) property to the altogether nice girl.Note that, as one makes this move, that though exportation, when applied to statements about individual objects, seems not to affect truth-value, whatever else may be its semantic function, when it is applied to sentences about special objects it may, and sometimes will, affect truth-value.”“But however effective this particular shift may be, it is by no means clear that there are not further demands to be met which would overtax the strength of the envisaged apparatus.It is not, for example, clear whether it could be made adequate to deal with indefinitely long strings of 'mixed' quantifiers.”“The proposal might also run into objections of a more conceptual character from those who would regard the special objects which it invokes as metaphysically disreputable – for where would an ‘altogether sailor” sail?, or an one-at-a-time grasshopper hop?“Should an alternative proposal be reached or desired, one (or, indeed, more than one) is available.”“One may be regarded as a replacement for, an extension of, or a reinterpretation of the scheme just outlined, in accordance with whatever view is finally taken of the potency and respectability of the ideas embodied in that scheme.” “This proposal treats a propositional complexum as a sequence, indeed as ordered pairs containing a subject-item and a predicate-item.It thus offers a subject-predicate account of quantification (as opposed to what?, you may wonder). However, it will not allow an individual, i. e. a sailor, or a nice girl, to appear as COMPONENTS in a propositional complexum.The sailor and the nice girl will always be reduced, ‘extensionally,’ or ‘extended,’ if you wish, as a set or an attribute.“According to the class-theoretic version, we associate with the subject-expression of a canonically formulated sentence a class of (at least) a second order. If the subject expression is a singular name, like “Grice,” its ontological correlatum will be the singleton of the singleton of the entity which bears the name Grice, or Pop-Eye.” “The treatment of a singular terms which are not names – e. g. ‘the sailor’ -- will be parallel, but is here omitted. It involves the iota operator, about which Russell would say that Frege knew a iota. If the subject-expression is an indefinite quantificational phrase, like 'some (at least one) sailor’ ‘or some (at least one) grasshopper', its ontological correlatum will be the set of all singletons whose sole member is a member belonging to the extension of the predicate to which the indefinite modifier “some (at least one)” is attached.So the ontological correlatum of the phrase ‘some (at least one) sailor’ or 'some (at least one) grasshopper' will be the class of all singletons whose sole member is an individuum (sailor, grasshopper). If the subject expression is a universal quantificational phrase, like ‘every nice girl’ its ontological correlatum will be the singleton whose sole member is the class which forms the extension of the predicate to which the universal modifier (‘every’) is attached.Thus,  the correlate of the phrase 'every nice girl' will be the singleton of the class of nice girls.The song was actually NOT written by a nice girl – but by a bad boy.A predicate of a canonically formulated sentence is correlated with the classes which form its extension.As for the predication-relation, i. e., the relation which has to obtain between subject-element and predicate-element in a propositional complex for that complex to be factive, a propositional complexum is factive or value-satisfactory just in case its subject-element contains as a member at least one item which is a sub-class of the predicate-element.”If the ontological correlatum of 'a sailor,’ or, again, of 'every nice girl') contains as a member at least one subset of the ontological correlata of the dyadic predicate ' … loves … ' (viz. the class of love), the propositional complexum directly associated with the sentence ‘A sailor loves every nice girl’ is factive, as is its converse“Grice devotes a good deal of energy to the ‘one-at-a-time-sailor,’ and the ‘altogether nice girl’ and he convinced himself that it offered a powerful instrument which, with or without adjustment, is capable of handling not only indefinitely long sequences of ‘mixed’ quantificational phrases, but also some other less obviously tractable problems, such as the ‘ground’ for this being so: what it there about a sailor – well, you know what sailors are. When the man o' war or merchant ship comes sailing into port/The jolly tar with joy, will sing out, Land Ahoy!/With his pockets full of money and a parrot in a cage/He smiles at all the pretty girls upon the landing stage/All the nice girls love a sailor/All the nice girls love a tar/For there's something about a sailor/(Well you know what sailors are!)/Bright and breezy, free and easy,/He's the ladies' pride and joy!/He falls in love with Kate and Jane, then he's off to sea again,/Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!/He will spend his money freely, and he's generous to his pals,/While Jack has got a sou, there's half of it for you,/And it's just the same in love and war, he goes through with a smile,/And you can trust a sailor, he's a white man (meaning: honest man) all the while!“Before moving on, however, I might perhaps draw attention to three features of the proposal.”“First, employing a strategy which might be thought of as Leibnizian, it treats a subject-element (even a lowly tar) as being of an order HIGHER than, rather than an order LOWER than, the predicate element.”“Second, an individual name, such as Grice, is in effect treated like a universal quantificational phrase, thus recalling the practice of old-style traditionalism.“Third, and most importantly, the account which is offered is, initially, an account of propositional complexes, not of propositions; as I envisage them, propositions will be regarded as families of propositional complexes.”“Now the propositional complexum directly associated with the sentence “Every nice girl loves a sailor” (WoW: 34) will be both logically equivalent to and numerically distinct from the propositional complex directly associated with ‘It is not the case that no nice girl loves no sailor.’ Indeed for any given propositional complex there will be indefinitely many propositional complexes which are both equipolent to yet numerically distinct from the original complexum. Strawson used to play with this. The question of how tight or how relaxed are to be the family ties which determine the IDENTITY of propositio 1 with propositio 2  remains to be decided. Such conditions will vary according to context or purpose.

occam : a picturesque village in Surrey. His most notable resident is William. When William left Occam, he was often asked, “Where are you from?” In the vernacular, he would make an effort to aspirate the ‘h’ Ock-Home.’ His French friends were unable to aspirate, and he ended up accepting that perhaps he WAS from “Occam.” Vide Modified Occam’s Razor.

Occamism -- Occamism: d’Ailly, P.: Ockhamist philosopher, prelate, and writer. Educated at the Collège de Navarre, he was promoted to doctor in the Sorbonne in 1380, appointed chancellor of Paris  in 1389, consecrated bishop in 1395, and made a cardinal in 1411. He was influenced by John of Mirecourt’s nominalism. He taught Gerson. At the Council of Constance 141418, which condemned Huss’s teachings, d’Ailly upheld the superiority of the council over the pope conciliarism. The relation of astrology to history and theology figures among his primary interests. His 1414 Tractatus de Concordia astronomicae predicted the 1789  Revolution. He composed a De anima, a commentary on Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and another on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. His early logical work, Concepts and Insolubles c.1472, was particularly influential. In epistemology, d’Ailly contradistinguished “natural light” indubitable knowledge from reason relative knowledge, and emphasized thereafter the uncertainty of experimental knowledge and the mere probability of the classical “proofs” of God’s existence. His doctrine of God differentiates God’s absolute power potentia absoluta from God’s ordained power on earth potentia ordinata. His theology anticipated fideism Deum esse sola fide tenetur, his ethics the spirit of Protestantism, and his sacramentology Lutheranism.

Occasion: Grice struggled with the lingo and he not necessarily arrived at the right choice. Occasion he uses in the strange phrase “occasion-meaning” (sic). Surely not ‘occasional meaning.’ What is an occasion? Surely it’s a context. But Grice would rather be seen dead than using a linguistic turn of phrase like Firth’s context-of-utterance! So there you have the occasion-meaning. Basically, it’s the PARTICULARISED implicature. On occasion o, E communicates that p. Grice allows that there is occasion-token and occasion-type.

one-off communicatum. The condition for an action to be taken in a specific way in cases where the audience must recognize the utterer’s intention (a ‘one-off predicament’). The recognition of the C-intention does not have to occur ‘once we have habits of taking utterances one way or another.’

Blackburn: From one-off AIIBp to one-off GAIIB. Surely we have to generalise the B into the PSI. Plus, 'action' is too strong, and should be replaced by 'emitting'This yields From EIIψp GEIIψp. According to this assumption, an emissor who is not assuming his addressee shares any system of communication is in the original situation that S. W. Blackburn, of Pembroke, dubbs “the one-off predicament, and one can provide a scenario where the Griciean conditions, as they are meant to hold, do hold, and emissor E communicates that p i. e. C1, C2, and C3, are fulfilled. 

. be accomplished in the "one-off predicament" (in which no linguistic or other conventional ...The Gricean mechanism with its complex communicative intentions has a clear point in what Blackburn calls “a one-off predicament” - a . Simon Blackburn's "one-off predicament" of communicating without a shared language illustrates how Grice's theory can be applied to iconic signals such as the ...Blackburn's "one-off predicament" of communicating without a shared language illustrates how Grice's theory can be applied to iconic signals such as the drawing of a skull to wam of danger. See his Spreading the Word. III. 112.Thus S may draw a pic- "one-off predicament"). ... Clarendon, 1976); and Simon Blackburn, Spreading the Word (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) ...by Blackburn in “Spreading the word.” Since Grice’s main motivation is to progress from one-off to philosophers’s mistakes, he does not explore the situation. He gets close to it in “Meaning Revisited,” when proposing a ‘rational reconstruction,’ FROM a one-off to a non-iconic system of communication, where you can see his emphasis and motivation is in the last stage of the progress. Since he is having the ‘end result,’ sometimes he is not careful in the description of the ‘one-off,’ or dismissive of it. But as Blackburn notes, it is crucial that Grice provides the ‘rudiments’ for a ‘meaning-nominalism,’ where an emissor can communicate that p in a one-off scenario. This is all Grice needs to challenge those accounts based on ‘convention,’ or the idea of a ‘system’ of communication. There is possibly an implicature to the effect that if something is a device is not a one-off, but that is easily cancellable. “He used a one-off device, and it worked.”

one-piece-repertoire: of hops and rye, and he told me that in twenty-two years neither the personnel of the three-piece band nor its one-piece repertoire had undergone a change.

One-many problem, also called one-and-many problem, the question whether all things are one or many. According to both Plato and Aristotle this was the central question for pre-Socratic philosophers. Those who answered “one,” the monists, ascribed to all things a single nature such as water, air, or oneness itself. They appear not to have been troubled by the notion that numerically many things would have this one nature. The pluralists, on the other hand, distinguished many principles or many types of principles, though they also maintained the unity of each principle. Some monists understood the unity of all things as a denial of motion, and some pluralists advanced their view as a way of refuting this denial. To judge from our sources, early Grecian metaphysics revolved around the problem of the one and the many. In the modern period the dispute between monists and pluralists centered on the question whether mind and matter constitute one or two substances and, if one, what its nature is. 

one over many, a universal; especially, a Platonic Form. According to Plato, if there are, e.g., many large things, there must be some one largeness itself in respect of which they are large; this “one over many” hen epi pollon is an intelligible entity, a Form, in contrast with the sensible many. Plato himself recognizes difficulties explaining how the one character can be present to the many and why the one and the many do not together constitute still another many e.g., Parmenides 131a133b. Aristotle’s sustained critique of Plato’s Forms Metaphysics A 9, Z 1315 includes these and other problems, and it is he, more than Plato, who regularly uses ‘one over many’ to refer to Platonic Forms. 

ontogenesis. Grice taught his children “not to tell lies” – “as my father and my mother taught me.” One of his favourite paintings was “When did you last see your father?” “I saw him in my dreams,” – “Not a lie, you see.” it is interesting that Grice was always enquiring his childrens playmates: Can a sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed! One found a developmental account of the princile of conversational helpfulness boring, or as he said, "dull." Refs.: There is an essay on the semantics of children’s language, BANC.

ontological marxism:  As opposed to ‘ontological laisssez-faire’ Note the use of ‘ontological’ in ‘ontological’ Marxism. Is not metaphysical Marxism, so Grice knows what he is talking about. Many times when he uses ‘metaphysics,’ he means ‘ontological.’ Ontological for Grice is at least liberal. He is hardly enamoured of some of the motivations which prompt the advocacy of psycho-physical identity. He has in mind a concern to exclude an entity such as as a ‘soul,’ an event of the soul, or a property of the soul. His taste is for keeping open house for all sorts of conditions of entities, just so long as when the entity comes in it helps with the housework, i. e., provided that Grice see the entity work, and provided that it is not detected in illicit logical behaviour, which need not involve some degree of indeterminacy, The entity works? Ergo, the entity exists. And, if it comes on the recommendation of some transcendental argument the entity may even qualify as an entium realissimum. To exclude an honest working entitiy is metaphysical snobbery, a reluctance to be seen in the company of any but the best. A category, a universalium plays a role in Grice’s meta-ethics. A principles or laws of psychology may be self-justifying, principles connected with the evaluation of ends. If these same principles play a role in determining what we count as entia realissima, metaphysics, and an abstractum would be grounded in part in considerations about value (a not unpleasant project). This ontological Marxism is latter day. In “Some remarks,” he expresses his disregard for what he calls a “Wittgensteinian” limitation in expecting behavioural manifestation of an ascription about a soul. Yet in “Method” he quotes almost verbatim from Witters, “No psychological postulation without the behaviour the postulation is meant to explain.” It was possibly D. K. Lewis who made him change his mind. Grice was obsessed with Aristotle on ‘being,’ and interpreted Aristotle as holding a thesis of unified semantic ‘multiplicity.’ This is in agreement with the ontological Marxism, in more than one ways. By accepting a denotatum for a praedicatum like ‘desideratum,’ Grice is allowing the a desideratum may be the subject of discourse. It is an ‘entity’ in this fashion. Marxism and laissez-faire both exaggerate the role of the economy. Society needs a safety net to soften the rough edges of free enterprise. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Ontological Marxism and ontological laissez-faire.” Engels – studied by Grice for his “Ontological Marxism” -- F, G. socialist and economist who, with Marx, was the founder of what later was called Marxism. Whether there are significant differences between Marx and Engels is a question much in dispute among scholars of Marxism. Certainly there are differences in emphasis, but there was also a division of labor between them. Engels, and not Marx, presented a Marxist account of natural science and integrated Darwinian elements in Marxian theory. But they also coauthored major works, including The Holy Family, The G. Ideology 1845, and The Communist Manifesto 1848. Engels thought of himself as the junior partner in their lifelong collaboration. That judgment is correct, but Engels’s work is both significant and more accessible than Marx’s. He gave popular articulations of their common views in such books as Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and AntiDühring 1878. His work, more than Marx’s, was taken by the Second International and many subsequent Marxist militants to be definitive of Marxism. Only much later with some Western Marxist theoreticians did his influence decline. Engels’s first major work, The Condition of the Working Class in England 1845, vividly depicted workers’ lives, misery, and systematic exploitation. But he also saw the working class as a new force created by the industrial revolution, and he developed an account of how this new force would lead to the revolutionary transformation of society, including collective ownership and control of the means of production and a rational ordering of social life; all this would supersede the waste and disparity of human conditions that he took to be inescapable under capitalism. The G. Ideology, jointly authored with Marx, first articulated what was later called historical materialism, a conception central to Marxist theory. It is the view that the economic structure of society is the foundation of society; as the productive forces develop, the economic structure changes and with that political, legal, moral, religious, and philosophical ideas change accordingly. Until the consolidation of socialism, societies are divided into antagonistic classes, a person’s class being determined by her relationship to the means of production. The dominant ideas of a society will be strongly conditioned by the economic structure of the society and serve the class interests of the dominant class. The social consciousness the ruling ideology will be that which answers to the interests of the dominant class. From the 1850s on, Engels took an increasing interest in connecting historical materialism with developments in natural science. This work took definitive form in his Anti-Dühring, the first general account of Marxism, and in his posthumously published Dialectics of Nature. AntiDühring also contains his most extensive discussion of morality. It was in these works that Engels articulated the dialectical method and a systematic communist worldview that sought to establish that there were not only social laws expressing empirical regularities in society but also universal laws of nature and thought. These dialectical laws, Engels believed, reveal that both nature and society are in a continuous process of evolutionary though conflict-laden development. Engels should not be considered primarily, if at all, a speculative philosopher. Like Marx, he was critical of and ironical about speculative philosophy and was a central figure in the socialist movement. While always concerned that his account be warrantedly assertible, Engels sought to make it not only true, but also a finely tuned instrument of working-class emancipation which would lead to a world without classes. 

ontological commitment, the object or objects common to the ontology fulfilling some regimented theory a term fashioned by Quine. The ontology of a regimented theory consists in the objects the theory assumes there to be. In order to show that a theory assumes a given object, or objects of a given class, we must show that the theory would be true only if that object existed, or if that class is not empty. This can be shown in two different but equivalent ways: if the notation of the theory contains the existential quantifier ‘Ex’ of first-order predicate logic, then the theory is shown to assume a given object, or objects of a given class, provided that object is required among the values of the bound variables, or additionally is required among the values of the domain of a given predicate, in order for the theory to be true. Thus, if the theory entails the sentence ‘Exx is a dog’, then the values over which the bound variable ‘x’ ranges must include at least one dog, in order for the theory to be true. Alternatively, if the notation of the theory contains for each predicate a complementary predicate, then the theory assumes a given object, or objects of a given class, provided some predicate is required to be true of that object, in order for the theory to be true. Thus, if the theory contains the predicate ‘is a dog’, then the extension of ‘is a dog’ cannot be empty, if the theory is to be true. However, it is possible for different, even mutually exclusive, ontologies to fulfill a theory equally well. Thus, an ontology containing collies to the exclusion of spaniels and one containing spaniels to the exclusion of collies might each fulfill a theory that entails ‘Ex x is a dog’. It follows that some of the objects a theory assumes in its ontology may not be among those to which the theory is ontologically committed. A theory is ontologically committed to a given object only if that object is common to all of the ontologies fulfilling the theory. And the theory is ontologically committed to objects of a given class provided that class is not empty according to each of the ontologies fulfilling the theory. 

casus obliquus – casus rectus (orthe ptosis) vs. ‘casus obliquus – plagiai ptoseis – genike, dotike, aitiatike.   “ptosis” is not attested in Grecian before Plato. A noun of action based on the radical of πίπτω, to fall, ptôsis means literally a fall: the fall of a die Plato, Republic, X.604c, or of lightning Aristotle, Meteorology, 339a Alongside this basic value and derived metaphorical values: decadence, death, and so forth, in Aristotle the word receives a linguistic specification that was to have great influence: retained even in modern Grecian ptôsê πτώση, its Roman Tr.  casus allowed it to designate grammatical case in most modern European languages. In fact, however, when it first appears in Aristotle, the term does not initially designate the noun’s case inflection. In the De Int. chaps. 2 and 3, it qualifies the modifications, both semantic and formal casual variation of the verb and those of the noun: he was well, he will be well, in relation to he is well; about Philo, to Philo, in relation to Philo. As a modification of the noun—that is, in Aristotle, of its basic form, the nominative—the case ptôsis differs from the noun insofar as, associated with is, was, or will be, it does not permit the formation of a true or false statement. As a modification of the verb, describing the grammatical tense, it is distinguished from the verb that oversignifies the present: the case of the verb oversignifies the time that surrounds the present. From this we must conclude that to the meaning of a given verb e.g., walk the case of the verb adds the meaning prossêmainei πϱοσσημαίνει of its temporal modality he will walk. Thus the primacy of the present over the past and the future is affirmed, since the present of the verb has no case. But the Aristotelian case is a still broader, vaguer, and more elastic notion: presented as part of expression in chapter 20 of the Poetics, it qualifies variation in number and modality. It further qualifies the modifications of the noun, depending on the gender ch.21 of the Poetics; Top.   as well as adverbs derived from a substantive or an adjective, like justly, which is derived from just. The notion of case is thus essential for the characterization of paronyms. Aristotle did not yet have specialized names for the different cases of nominal inflection. When he needs to designate them, he does so in a conventional manner, usually by resorting to the inflected form of a pronoun— τούτου, of this, for the genitive, τούτῳ, to this, for the dative, and so on — and sometimes to that of a substantive or adjective. In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle insists on distinguishing between the terms ὅϱοι that ought always to be stated in the nominative ϰλῆσεις, e.g. man, good, contraries, but the premisses ought to be understood with reference to the cases of each term—either the dative, e.g. ‘equal to this’ toutôi, dative, or the genitive, e.g. ‘double of this’ toutou, genitive, or the accusative, e.g. ‘that which strikes or v.s this’ τούτο, accusative, or the nominative, e.g. ‘man is an animal’ οὗτος, nominative, or in whatever other way the word falls πίπτει in the premiss Anal. Post., I.36, 48b, 4 In the latter expression, we may find the origin of the metaphor of the fall—which remains controversial. Some commentators relate the distinction between what is direct and what is oblique as pertains to grammatical cases, which may be direct orthê ptôsis or oblique plagiai ptôseis, but also to the grand metaphoric and conceptual register that stands on this distinction to falling in the game of jacks, it being possible that the jack could fall either on a stable side and stand there—the direct case—or on three unstable sides— the oblique cases. In an unpublished dissertation on the principles of Stoic grammar, Hans Erich Müller proposes to relate the Stoic theory of cases to the theory of causality, by trying to associate the different cases with the different types of causality. They would thus correspond in the utterance to the different causal postures of the body in the physical field. For the Stoics, predication is a matter not of identifying an essence ousia οὖσια and its attributes in conformity with the Aristotelian categories, but of reproducing in the utterance the causal relations of action and passion that bodies entertain among themselves. It was in fact with the Stoics that cases were reduced to noun cases—in Dionysius Thrax TG, 13, the verb is a word without cases lexis aptôton, and although egklisis means mode, it sometimes means inflection, and then it covers the variations of the verb, both temporal and modal. If Diogenes Laertius VII.192 is to be believed, Chrysippus wrote a work On the Five Cases. It must have included, as Diogenes VII.65 tells us, a distinction between the direct case orthê ptôsis—the case which, constructed with a predicate, gives rise to a proposition axiôma, VII.64—and oblique cases plagiai ptseis, which now are given names, in this order: genitive genikê, dative dôtikê, and accusative aitiatikê. A classification of predicates is reported by Porphyry, cited in Ammonius Commentaire du De Int. d’Aristote, 44, 19f.. Ammonius 42, 30f. reports a polemic between Aristotle and the Peripatetics, on the one hand, and the Stoics and grammarians associated with them, on the other. For the former, the nominative is not a case, it is the noun itself from which the cases are declined; for the latter, the nominative is a full-fledged case: it is the direct case, and if it is a case, that is because it falls from the concept, and if it is direct, that is because it falls directly, just as the stylus can, after falling, remain stable and straight. Although ptôsis is part of the definition of the predicate—the predicate is what allows, when associated with a direct case, the composition of a proposition—and figures in the part of dialectic devoted to signifieds, it is neither defined nor determined as a constituent of the utterance alongside the predicate. In Stoicism, ptôsis v.ms to signify more than grammatical case alone. Secondary in relation to the predicate that it completes, it is a philosophical concept that refers to the manner in which the Stoics v.m to have criticized the Aristotelian notion of substrate hupokeimenon ὑποϰειμένον as well as the distinction between substance and accidents. Ptôsis is the way in which the body or bodies that our representation phantasia φαντασία presents to us in a determined manner appear in the utterance, issuing not directly from perception, but indirectly, through the mediation of the concept that makes it possible to name it/them in the form of an appellative a generic concept, man, horse or a name a singular concept, Socrates. Cases thus represent the diverse ways in which the concept of the body falls in the utterance though Stoic nominalism does not admit the existence of this concept—just as here there is no Aristotelian category outside the different enumerated categorial rubrics, there is no body outside a case position. However, caring little for these subtleties, the scholiasts of Technê v.m to confirm this idea in their own context when they describe the ptôsis as the fall of the incorporeal and the generic into the specific ἔϰ τοῦ γενιϰοῦ εἰς τὸ εἰδιϰόν. In the work of the grammarians, case is reduced to the grammatical case, that is, to the morphological variation of nouns, pronouns, articles, and participles, which, among the parts of speech, accordingly constitute the subclass of casuels, a parts of speech subject to case-based inflection πτωτιϰά. The canonical list of cases places the vocative klêtikê ϰλητιϰή last, after the direct eutheia εὐθεῖα case and the three oblique cases, in their Stoic order: genitive, dative, accusative. This order of the oblique cases gives rise, in some commentators eager to rationalize Scholia to the Technê, 549, 22, to a speculation inspired by localism: the case of the PARONYM 743 place from which one comes in Grecian , the genitive is supposed naturally to precede that of the place where one is the dative, which itself naturally precedes that of the place where one is going the accusative. Apollonius’s reflection on syntax is more insightful; in his Syntax III.15888 he presents, in this order, the accusative, the genitive, and the dative as expressing three degrees of verbal transitivity: conceived as the distribution of activity and passivity between the prime actant A in the direct case and the second actant B in one of the three oblique cases in the process expressed by a biactantial verb, the transitivity of the accusative corresponds to the division A all active—B all passive A strikes B; the transitivity of the genitive corresponds to the division A primarily active/passive to a small degree—B primarily passive/active to a small degree A listens to B; and the transitivity of the dative, to the division A and B equally active-passive A fights with The direct case, at the head of the list, owes its prmacy to the fact that it is the case of nomination: names are given in the direct case. The verbs of existence and nomination are constructed solely with the direct case, without the function of the attribute being thematized as such. Although Chrysippus wrote about five cases, the fifth case, the vocative, v.ms to have escaped the division into direct and oblique cases. Literally appelative prosêgorikon πϱοσηγοϱιϰόν, it could refer not only to utterances of address but also more generally to utterances of nomination. In the grammarians, the vocative occupies a marginal place; whereas every sentence necessarily includes a noun and a verb, the vocative constitutes a complete sentence by itself. Frédérique Ildefonse REFS.: Aristotle. Analytica priorTr.  J. Jenkinson. In the Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, ed.  and Tr.  W. D. Ross, E. M. Edghill, J. Jenkinson, G.R.G. Mure, and Wallace Pickford. Oxford: Oxford , 192 . Poetics. Ed.  and Tr.  Stephen Halliwell. Cambridge: Harvard  / Loeb Classical Library, . Delamarre, Alexandre. La notion de ptōsis chez Aristote et les Stoïciens. In Concepts et Catégories dans la pensée antique, ed.  by Pierre Aubenque, 3214 : Vrin, . Deleuze, Gilles. Logique du sens. : Minuit, . Tr.  Mark Lester with Charles Stivale: The Logic of Sense. Ed.  by Constantin V. Boundas. : Columbia , . Dionysius Thrax. Technē grammatikē. Book I, vol. 1 of Grammatici Graeci, ed.  by Gustav Uhlig. Leipzig: Teubner, 188 Eng. Tr.  T.  D. son: The Grammar. St. Louis, 187 Fr.  Tr.  J. Lallot: La grammaire de Denys le Thrace. 2nd rev. and expanded ed. : CNRS Éditions, . Frede, Michael. The Origins of Traditional Grammar. In Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology, and Phil.  of Science, ed.  by E. H. Butts and J. Hintikka, 517 Dordrecht, Neth.: Reiderl, . Reprinted, in M. Frede, Essays in Ancient Phil. , 3385 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, . . The Stoic Notion of a Grammatical Case. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of 39 : 132 Hadot, Pierre. La notion de ‘cas’ dans la logique stoïcienne. Pp. 10912 in Actes du XIIIe Congrès des sociétés de philosophie en langue française. Geneva: Baconnière, . Hiersche, Rolf. Entstehung und Entwicklung des Terminus πτῶσις, ‘Fall.’ Sitzungsberichte der deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin: Klasse für Sprachen, Literatur und Kunst 3 1955: 51 Ildefonse, Frédérique. La naissance de la grammaire dans l’Antiquité grecque. : Vrin, . Imbert, Claude. Phénoménologies et langues formularies. : Presses Universitaires de France, . Pinborg, Jan. Classical Antiquity: Greece. In Current Trends in Linguistics, ed.  by Th. Sebeok. Vol. 13 in Historiography of Linguistics series. The Hague and : Mouton, .-- oratio obliqua: The idea of ‘oratio’ is central. Grice’s sentence. It expresses ‘a thought,’ a ‘that’-clause. Oratio recta is central, too. Grice’s example is “The dog is shaggy.” The use of ‘oratio’ here Grice disliked. One can see a squarrel grabbing a nut, Toby judges that a nut is to eat. So we would have a ‘that’-clause, and in a way, an ‘oratio obliqua,’ which is what the UTTERER (not the squarrel) would produce as ‘oratio recta,’ ‘A nut is to eat,’ should the circumstance obtains. At some points he allows things like “Snow is white” means that snow is white. Something at the Oxford Philosohical Society he would not. Grice is vague in this. If the verb is a ‘verbum dicendi,’ ‘oratio obliqua’ is literal. If it’s a verbum sentiendi or percipiendi, volendi, credendi, or cognoscenti, the connection is looser. Grice was especially concerned that buletic verbs usually do not take a that-clause (but cf. James: I will that the distant table sides over the floor toward me. It does not!). Also that seems takes a that-clause in ways that might not please Maucalay. Grice had explored that-clauses with Staal. He was concerned about the viability of an initially appealing etymological approach by Davidson to the that-clause in terms of demonstration. Grice had presupposed the logic of that-clauses from a much earlier stage, Those spots mean that he has measles.The f. contains a copy of Davidsons essay, On saying that, the that-clause, the that-clause, with Staal . Davidson quotes from Murray et al. The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford. Cf. Onions, An Advanced English Syntax, and remarks that first learned that that in such contexts evolved from an explicit demonstrative from Hintikkas Knowledge and Belief. Hintikka remarks that a similar development has taken place in German Davidson owes the reference to the O.E.D. to Stiezel. Indeed Davidson was fascinated by the fact that his conceptual inquiry repeated phylogeny. It should come as no surprise that a that-clause utterance evolves through about the stages our ruminations have just carried us. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of that in a that-clause is generally held to have arisen out of the demonstrative pronoun pointing to the clause which it introduces. The sequence goes as follows. He once lived here: we all know that; that, now this, we all know: he once lived here; we all know that, or this: he once lived here; we all know that he once lived here. As Hintikka notes, some pedants trying to display their knowledge of German, use a comma before that: We all know, that he once lived here, to stand for an earlier :: We all know: that he once lived here. Just like the English translation that, dass can be omitted in a sentence. Er glaubt, dass die Erde eine Scheibe sei. He believes that the Earth is a disc. Er glaubt, die Erde sei eine Scheibe. He believes the Earth is a disc. The that-clause is brought to the fore by Davidson, who, consulting the OED, reminds philosophers that the English that is very cognate with the German idiom. More specifically, that is a demonstrative, even if the syntax, in English, hides this fact in ways which German syntax doesnt. Grice needs to rely on that-clauses for his analysis of mean, intend, and notably will. He finds that Prichards genial discovery was the license to use willing as pre-facing a that-clause. This allows Grice to deals with willing as applied to a third person. I will that he wills that he wins the chess match. Philosophers who disregard this third-person use may indulge in introspection and Subjectsivism when they shouldnt! Grice said that Prichard had to be given great credit for seeing that the accurate specification of willing should be willing that and not willing to. Analogously, following Prichard on willing, Grice does not stipulate that the radix for an intentional (utterer-oriented or exhibitive-autophoric-buletic) incorporate a reference to the utterer (be in the first person), nor that the radix for an imperative (addressee-oriented or hetero-phoric protreptic buletic) or desiderative in general, incorporate a reference of the addressee (be in the second person). They shall not pass is a legitimate intentional as is the ‘you shall not get away with it,’either involves Prichards wills that, rather than wills to). And the sergeant is to muster the men at dawn (uttered by a captain to a lieutenant) is a perfectly good imperative, again involving Prichards wills that, rather than wills to. Refs.: The allusions are scattered, but there are specific essays, one on the ‘that’-clause, and also discussions on Davidson on saying that. There is a reference to ‘oratio obliqua’ and Prichard in “Uncertainty,” BANC.

open formula, also called open sentence, a sentence with a free occurrence of a variable. A closed sentence, sometimes called a statement, has no free occurrences of variables. In a language whose only variable-binding operators are quantifiers, an occurrence of a variable in a formula is bound provided that occurrence either is within the scope of a quantifier employing that variable or is the occurrence in that quantifier. An occurrence of a variable in a formula is free provided it is not bound. The formula ‘xy  O’ is open because both ‘x’ and ‘y’ occur as free variables. In ‘For some real number y, xy  O’, no occurrence of ‘y’ is free; but the occurrence of ‘x’ is free, so the formula is open. The sentence ‘For every real number x, for some real number y, xy  O’ is closed, since none of the variables occur free. Semantically, an open formula such as ‘xy  0’ is neither true nor false but rather true of or false of each assignment of values to its free-occurring variables. For example, ‘xy  0’ is true of each assignment of two positive or two negative real numbers to ‘x’ and to ‘y’ and it is false of each assignment of 0 to either and false at each assignment of a positive real to one of the variables and a negative to the other. 

open texture, the possibility of vagueness. Fridrich Waismann “Verifiability,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 5 introduced the concept, claiming that open texture is a universal property of empirical terms. Waismann claimed that an inexhaustible source of vagueness remains even after measures are taken to make an expression precise. His grounds were, first, that there are an indefinite number of possibilities for which it is indeterminate whether the expression applies i.e., for which the expression is vague. There is, e.g., no definite answer whether a catlike creature that repeatedly vanishes into thin air, then reappears, is a cat. Waismann’s explanation is that when we define an empirical term, we frame criteria of its applicability only for foreseeable circumstances. Not all possible situations in which we may use the term, however, can be foreseen. Thus, in unanticipated circumstances, real or merely possible, a term’s criteria of applicability may yield no definite answer to whether it applies. Second, even for terms such as ‘gold’, for which there are several precise criteria of application specific gravity, X-ray spectrograph, solubility in aqua regia, applying different criteria can yield divergent verdicts, the result being vagueness. Waismann uses the concept of open texture to explain why experiential statements are not conclusively verifiable, and why phenomenalist attempts to translate material object statements fail. 

operationalism, a program in philosophy of science that aims to interpret scientific concepts via experimental procedures and observational outcomes. P. W. Bridgman introduced the terminology when he required that theoretical concepts be identified with the operations used to measure them. Logical positivism’s criteria of cognitive significance incorporated the notion: Bridgman’s operationalism was assimilated to the positivistic requirement that theoretical terms T be explicitly defined via logically equivalent to directly observable conditions O. Explicit definitions failed to accommodate alternative measurement procedures for the same concept, and so were replaced by reduction sentences that partially defined individual concepts in observational terms via sentences such as ‘Under observable circumstances C, x is T if and only if O’. Later this was weakened to allow ensembles of theoretical concepts to be partially defined via interpretative systems specifying collective observable effects of the concepts rather than effects peculiar to single concepts. These cognitive significance notions were incorporated into various behaviorisms, although the term ‘operational definition’ is rarely used by scientists in Bridgman’s or the explicit definition senses: intervening variables are theoretical concepts defined via reduction sentences and hypothetical constructs are definable by interpretative systems but not reduction sentences. In scientific contexts observable terms often are called dependent or independent variables. When, as in science, the concepts in theoretical assertions are only partially defined, observational consequences do not exhaust their content, and so observational data underdetermines the truth of such assertions in the sense that more than one theoretical assertion will be compatible with maximal observational data. 

operator, a one-place sentential connective; i.e., an expression that may be prefixed to an open or closed sentence to produce, respectively, a new open or closed sentence. Thus ‘it is not the case that’ is a truth-functional operator. The most thoroughly investigated operators are the intensional ones; an intensional operator O, when prefixed to an open or closed sentence E, produces an open or closed sentence OE, whose extension is determined not by the extension of E but by some other property of E, which varies with the choice of O. For example, the extension of a closed sentence is its truth-value A, but if the modal operator ‘it is necessary that’ is prefixed to A, the extension of the result depends on whether A’s extension belongs to it necessarily or contingently. This property of A is usually modeled by assigning to A a subset X of a domain of possible worlds W. If X % W then ‘it is necessary that A’ is true, but if X is a proper subset of W, it is false. Another example involves the epistemic operator ‘it is plausible that’. Since a true sentence may be either plausible or implausible, the truth-value of ‘it is plausible that A’ is not fixed by the truth-value of A, but rather by the body of evidence that supports A relative to a thinker in a given context. This may also be modeled in a possible worlds framework, by operant conditioning operator 632    632 stipulating, for each world, which worlds, if any, are plausible relative to it. The topic of intensional operators is controversial, and it is even disputable whether standard examples really are operators at the correct level of logical form. For instance, it can be argued that ‘it is necessary that’, upon analysis, turns out to be a universal quantifier over possible worlds, or a predicate of expressions. On the former view, instead of ‘it is necessary that A’ we should write ‘for every possible world w, Aw’, and, on the latter, ‘A is necessarily true’. 

operator theory of adverbs, a theory that treats adverbs and other predicate modifiers as predicate-forming operators on predicates. The theory expands the syntax of first-order logic by adding operators of various degrees, and makes corresponding additions to the semantics. Romane Clark, Terence Parsons, and Richard Montague with Hans Kamp developed the theory independently in the early 0s. For example: ‘John runs quickly through the kitchen’ contains a simple one-place predicate, ‘runs’ applied to John; a zero-place operator, ‘quickly’, and a one-place operator, ‘through ’ with ‘the kitchen’ filling its place. The logical form of the sentence becomes [O1 1a [O2 0 [Pb]]], which can be read: [through the kitchen [quickly [runs John]]]. Semantically ‘quickly’ will be associated with an operation that takes us from the extension of ‘runs’ to a subset of that extension. ‘John runs quickly’ will imply ‘John runs’. ‘Through the kitchen’ and other operators are handled similarly. The wide variety of predicate modifiers complicates the inferential conditions and semantics of the operators. ‘John is finally done’ implies ‘John is done’. ‘John is nearly done’ implies ‘John is not done’. Clark tries to distinguish various types of predicate modifiers and provides a different semantic analysis for operators of different sorts. The theory can easily characterize syntactic aspects of predicate modifier iteration. In addition, after being modified the original predicates remain as predicates, and maintain their original degree. Further, there is no need to force John’s running into subject position as might be the case if we try to make ‘quickly’ an ordinary predicate.

optimum. If (a) S accepts at t an alethic acceptability-conditional C 1 , the antecedent of which favours, to degree d, the consequent of C 1 , (b) S accepts at t the antecedent of C 1 , end p.81 (c) after due search by S for such a (further) conditional, there is no conditional C 2 such that (1) S accepts at t C 2 and its antecedent, (2) and the antecedent of C 2 is an extension of the antecedent of C 1 , (3) and the consequent of C 2 is a rival (incompatible with) of the consequent of C 1 , (4) and the antecedent of C 2 favours the consequent of C 2 more than it favours the consequent of C 1 : then S may judge (accept) at t that the consequent of C 1 is acceptable to degree d. For convenience, we might abbreviate the complex clause (C) in the antecedent of the above rule as 'C 1 is optimal for S at t'; with that abbreviation, the rule will run: "If S accepts at t an alethic acceptability-conditional C 1 , the antecedent of which favours its consequent to degree d, and S accepts at t the antecedent of C 1 , and C 1 is optimal for S at C 1 , then S may accept (judge) at t that the consequent of C 1 is acceptable to degree d." Before moving to the practical dimension, I have some observations to make.See validum. For Grice, the validum can attain different shapes or guises. One is the optimum. He uses it for “Emissor E communicates thata p” which ends up denotating an ‘ideal,’ that can only be deemed, titularily, to be present ‘de facto.’ The idea is that of the infinite, or rather self-reference regressive closure. Vide Blackburn on “open GAIIB.” Grice uses ‘optimality’ as one guise of value. Obviously, it is, as Short and Lewis have it, the superlative of ‘bonum,’ so one has to be careful. Optimum is used in value theory and decision theory, too.  Cf. Maximum, and minimax. In terms of the principle of least conversational effort, the optimal move is the least costly. To utter, “The pillar box seems red” when you can utter, “The pillar box IS red” is to go into the trouble when you shouldn’t. So this maximin regulates the conversational exchange. The utterer is meant to be optimally efficient, and the addressee is intended to recognise that.

order, the level of a logic as determined by the type of entity over which the free variables of that logic range. Entities of the lowest type, usually called type O, are known as individuals, and entities of higher type are constructed from entities of lower type. For example, type 1 entities are i functions from individuals or n-tuples of individuals to individuals, and ii n-place relations on individuals. First-order logic is that logic whose variables range over individuals, and a model for first-order logic includes a domain of individuals. The other logics are known as higher-order logics, and the first of these is second-order logic, in which there are variables that range over type 1 entities. In a model for second-order logic, the first-order domain determines the second-order domain. For every sentence to have a definite truth-value, only totally defined functions are allowed in the range of second-order function variables, so these variables range over the collection of total functions from n-tuples of individuals to individuals, for every value of n. The second-order predicate variables range over all subsets of n-tuples of individuals. Thus if D is the domain of individuals of a model, the type 1 entities are the union of the two sets {X: Dn: X 0 Dn$D}, {X: Dn: X 0 Dn}. Quantifiers may bind second-order variables and are subject to introduction and elimination rules. Thus whereas in first-order logic one may infer ‘Someone is wise, ‘DxWx’, from ‘Socrates is wise’, ‘Ws’, in second-order logic one may also infer ‘there is something that Socrates is’, ‘DXXs’. The step from first- to second-order logic iterates: in general, type n entities are the domain of n ! 1thorder variables in n ! 1th order logic, and the whole hierarchy is known as the theory of types.

 ordering, an arrangement of the elements of a set so that some of them come before others. If X is a set, it is useful to identify an ordering R of X with a subset R of X$X, the set of all ordered pairs with members in X. If ‹ x,y  1 R then x comes before y in the ordering of X by R, and if ‹ x,y  2 R and ‹ y,x  2 R, then x and y are incomparable. Orders on X are therefore relations on X, since a relation on a set X is any subset of X $ X. Some minimal conditions a relation must meet to be an ordering are i reflexivity: ExRxx; ii antisymmetry: ExEyRxy & Ryx / x % y; and iii transitivity: ExEyEzRxy & Ryz / Rxz. A relation meeting these three conditions is known as a partial order also less commonly called a semi-order, and if reflexivity is replaced by irreflexivity, Ex-Rxx, as a strict partial order. Other orders are strengthenings of these. Thus a tree-ordering of X is a partial order with a distinguished root element a, i.e. ExRax, and that satisfies the backward linearity condition that from any element there is a unique path back to a: ExEyEzRyx & Rzx / Ryz 7 Rzy. A total order on X is a partial order satisfying the connectedness requirement: ExEyRxy 7 Ryx. Total orderings are sometimes known as strict linear orderings, contrasting with weak linear orderings, in which the requirement of antisymmetry is dropped. The natural number line in its usual order is a strict linear order; a weak linear ordering of a set X is a strict linear order of levels on which various members of X may be found, while adding antisymmetry means that each level contains only one member. Two other important orders are dense partial or total orders, in which, between any two elements, there is a third; and well-orders. A set X is said to be well-ordered by R if R is total and every non-empty subset of Y of X has an R-least member: EY 0 X[Y & / / Dz 1 YEw 1 YRzw]. Well-ordering rules out infinite descending sequences, while a strict well-ordering, which is irreflexive rather than reflexive, rules out loops. The best-known example is the membership relation of axiomatic set theory, in which there are no loops such as x 1 y 1 x or x 1 x, and no infinite descending chains . . . x2 1 x1 1 x0. 

order type omega, in mathematics, the order type of the infinite set of natural numbers. The last letter of the Grecian alphabet, w, is used to denote this order type; w is thus the first infinite ordinal number. It can be defined as the set of all finite ordinal numbers ordered by magnitude; that is, w % {0,1,2,3 . . . }. A set has order type w provided it is denumerably infinite, has a first element but not a last element, has for each element a unique successor, and has just one element with no immediate predecessor. The set of even numbers ordered by magnitude, {2,4,6,8 . . . }, is of order type w. The set of natural numbers listing first all even numbers and then all odd numbers, {2,4,6,8 . . .; 1,3,5,7 . . . }, is not of order type w, since it has two elements, 1 and 2, with no immediate predecessor. The set of negative integers ordered by magnitude, { . . . 3,2,1}, is also not of order type w, since it has no first element. V.K. ordinal logic, any means of associating effectively and uniformly a logic in the sense of a formal axiomatic system Sa with each constructive ordinal notation a. This notion and term for it was introduced by Alan Turing in his paper “Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals” 9. Turing’s aim was to try to overcome the incompleteness of formal systems discovered by Gödel in 1, by means of the transfinitely iterated, successive adjunction of unprovable but correct principles. For example, according to Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem, for each effectively presented formal system S containing a modicum of elementary number theory, if S is consistent then S does not prove the purely universal arithmetical proposition Cons expressing the consistency of S via the Gödelnumbering of symbolic expressions, even though Cons is correct. However, it may be that the result S’ of adjoining Cons to S is inconsistent. This will not happen if every purely existential statement provable in S is correct; call this condition E-C. Then if S satisfies E-C, so also does S; % S ! Cons ; now S; is still incomplete by Gödel’s theorem, though it is more complete than S. Clearly the passage from S to S; can be iterated any finite number of times, beginning with any S0 satisfying E-C, to form S1 % S; 0, S2 % S; 1, etc. But this procedure can also be extended into the transfinite, by taking Sw to be the union of the systems Sn for n % 0,1, 2 . . . and then Sw!1 % S;w, Sw!2 % S;w!1, etc.; condition EC is preserved throughout. To see how far this and other effective extension procedures of any effectively presented system S to another S; can be iterated into the transfinite, one needs the notion of the set O of constructive ordinal notations, due to Alonzo Church and Stephen C. Kleene in 6. O is a set ordering ordinal logic 634    634 of natural numbers, and each a in O denotes an ordinal a, written as KaK. There is in O a notation for 0, and with each a in O is associated a notation sca in O with KscaK % KaK ! 1; finally, if f is a number of an effective function {f} such that for each n, {f}n % an is in O and KanK < Kan!1K, then we have a notation øf in O with KøfK % limnKanK. For quite general effective extension procedures of S to S; and for any given S0, one can associate with each a in O a formal system Sa satisfying Ssca % S;a and Søf % the union of the S{f}n for n % 0,1, 2. . . . However, as there might be many notations for each constructive ordinal, this ordinal logic need not be invariant, in the sense that one need not have: if KaK % KbK then Sa and Sb have the same consequences. Turing proved that an ordinal logic cannot be both complete for true purely universal statements and invariant. Using an extension procedure by certain proof-theoretic reflection principles, he constructed an ordinal logic that is complete for true purely universal statements, hence not invariant. The history of this and later work on ordinal logics is traced by the undersigned in “Turing in the Land of Oz,” in The Universal Turing Machine: A Half Century Survey, edited by Rolf Herken [8]. 

Ordinary-language philosophy: vide, H. P. Grice, “Post-War Oxford Philosophy,” a loosely structured philosophical movement holding that the significance of concepts, including those central to traditional philosophy  e.g., the concepts of truth and knowledge  is fixed by linguistic practice. Philosophers, then, must be attuned to the actual uses of words associated with these concepts. The movement enjoyed considerable prominence chiefly among English-speaking philosophers between the mid-0s and the early 0s. It was initially inspired by the work of Vitters, and later by John Wisdom, Gilbert Ryle, Norman Malcolm, and J. L. Austin, though its roots go back at least to Moore and arguably to Socrates. Ordinary language philosophers do not mean to suggest that, to discover what truth is, we are to poll our fellow speakers or consult dictionaries. Rather, we are to ask how the word ‘truth’ functions in everyday, nonphilosophical settings. A philosopher whose theory of truth is at odds with ordinary usage has simply misidentified the concept. Philosophical error, ironically, was thought by Vitters to arise from our “bewitchment” by language. When engaging in philosophy, we may easily be misled by superficial linguistic similarities. We suppose minds to be special sorts of entity, for instance, in part because of grammatical parallels between ‘mind’ and ‘body’. When we fail to discover any entity that might plausibly count as a mind, we conclude that minds must be nonphysical entities. The cure requires that we remind ourselves how ‘mind’ and its cognates are actually used by ordinary speakers. 

organic, having parts that are organized and interrelated in a way that is the same as, or analogous to, the way in which the parts of a living animal or other biological organism are organized and interrelated. Thus, an organic unity or organic whole is a whole that is organic in the above sense. These terms are primarily used of entities that are not literally organisms but are supposedly analogous to them. Among the applications of the concept of an organic unity are: to works of art, to the state e.g., by Hegel, and to the universe as a whole e.g., in absolute idealism. The principal element in the concept is perhaps the notion of an entity whose parts cannot be understood except by reference to their contribution to the whole entity. Thus to describe something as an organic unity is typically to imply that its properties cannot be given a reductive explanation in terms of those of its parts; rather, at least some of the properties of the parts must themselves be explained by reference to the properties of the whole. Hence it usually involves a form of holism. Other features sometimes attributed to organic unities include a mutual dependence between the existence of the parts and that of the whole and the need for a teleological explanation of properties of the parts in terms of some end or purpose associated with the whole. To what extent these characteristics belong to genuine biological organisms is disputed. 

organicism, a theory that applies the notion of an organic unity, especially to things that are not literally organisms. G. E. Moore, in Principia Ethica, proposed a principle of organic unities, concerning intrinsic value: the intrinsic value of a whole need not be equivalent to the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. Moore applies the principle in arguing that there is no systematic relation between the intrinsic value of an element of a complex whole and the difference that the presence of that element makes to the value of the whole. E.g., he holds that although a situation in which someone experiences pleasure in the contemplation of a beautiful object has far greater intrinsic goodness than a situation in which the person contemplates the same object without feeling pleasure, this does not mean that the pleasure itself has much intrinsic value.

organism, a carbon-based living thing or substance, e.g., a paramecium, a tree, or an ant. Alternatively, ‘organism’ can mean a hypothetical living thing of another natural kind, e.g., a silicon-based living thing. Defining conditions of a carbon-based living thing, x, are as follows. 1 x has a layer made of m-molecules, i.e., carbonbased macromolecules of repeated units that have a high capacity for selective reactions with other similar molecules. x can absorb and excrete through this layer. 2 x can metabolize m-molecules. 3 x can synthesize m-molecular parts of x by means of activities of a proper part of x that is a nuclear molecule, i.e., an m-molecule that can copy itself. 4 x can exercise the foregoing capacities in such a way that the corresponding activities are causally interrelated as follows: x’s absorption and excretion causally contribute to x’s metabolism; these processes jointly causally contribute to x’s synthesizing; and x’s synthesizing causally contributes to x’s absorption, excretion, and metabolism. 5 x belongs to a natural kind of compound physical substance that can have a member, y, such that: y has a proper part, z; z is a nuclear molecule; and y reproduces by means of z’s copying itself. 6 x is not possibly a proper part of something that satisfies 16. The last condition expresses the independence and autonomy of an organism. For example, a part of an organism, e.g., a heart cell, is not an organism. It also follows that a colony of organisms, e.g., a colony of ants, is not an organism. 

Origen, Christian theologian and biblical scholar in the Alexandrian church. Born in Egypt, he became head of the catechetical school in Alexandria. Like his mentor, Clement of Alexandria, he was influenced by Middle Platonism. His principal works were Hexapla, On First Principles, and Contra Celsum. The Hexapla, little of which survives, consisted of six Hebrew and two Grecian versions of the Old Testament with Origen’s commentary. On First Principles sets forth the most systematic Christian theology of the early church, including some doctrines subsequently declared heretical, such as the subordination of the Son “a secondary god” and Spirit to the Father, preexisting human souls but not their transmigration, and a premundane fall from grace of each human soul. The most famous of his views was the notion of apocatastasis, universal salvation, the universal restoration of all creation to God in which evil is defeated and the devil and his minions repent of their sins. He interpreted hell as a temporary purgatory in which impure souls were purified and made ready for heaven. His notion of subordination of the Son of God to the Father was condemned by the church in 533. Origen’s Contra Celsum is the first sustained work in Christian apologetics. It defends Christianity before the pagan world. Origen was a leading exponent of the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures, holding that the text had three levels of meaning corresponding to the three parts of human nature: body, soul, and spirit. The first was the historical sense, sufficient for simple people; the second was the moral sense; and the third was the mystical sense, open only to the deepest souls.

Orphism, a religious movement in ancient Greece that may have influenced Plato and some of the pre-Socratics. Neither the nature of the movement nor the scope of its influence is adequately understood: ancient sources and modern scholars tend to confuse Orphism with Pythagoreanism and with ancient mystery cults, especially the Bacchic or Dionysiac mysteries. “Orphic poems,” i.e., poems attributed to Orpheus a mythic figure, circulated as early as the mid-sixth century B.C. We have only indirect evidence of the early Orphic poems; but we do have a sizable body of fragments from poems composed in later antiquity. Central to both early and later versions is a theogonic-cosmogonic narrative that posits Night as the primal entity  ostensibly a revision of the account offered by Hesiod  and gives major emphasis to the birth, death through dismemberment, and rebirth of the god Dionysus. Plato gives us clear evidence of the existence in his time of itinerant religious teachers who, drawing on the “books of Orpheus,” performed and taught rituals of initiation and purification intended to procure divine favor either in this life or in an afterlife. The extreme skepticism of such scholars as Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and I. M. Linforth concerning the importance of early Orphism for Grecian religion and Grecian philosophy has been undermined by archaeological findings in recent decades: the Derveni papyrus, which is a fragment of a philosophical commentary on an Orphic theogony; and inscriptions with Orphic instructions for the dead, from funerary sites in southern Italy, mainland Greece, and the Crimea.

Ortega y Gasset, J. philosopher and essayist. Born in Madrid, he studied there and in Leipzig, Berlin, and Marburg. In 0 he was named professor of metaphysics at the  of Madrid and taught there until 6, when he was forced to leave because of his political involvement in and support for the  Republic. He returned to Spain in 5. Ortega was a prolific writer whose works fill nine thick volumes. Among his most influential books are Meditaciones del Quijote “Meditations on the Quixote,” 4, El tema de nuestro tiempo “The Modern Theme,” 3, La revolución de las masas “The Revolt of the Masses,” 2, La deshumanización del arte “The Dehumanization of Art,” 5, Historia como sistema “History as a System,” 1, and the posthumously published El hombre y la gente “Man and People,” 7 and La idea de principio en Leibniz“The Idea of Principle in Leibniz,” 8. His influence in Spain and Latin America was enormous, in part because of his brilliant style of writing and lecturing. He avoided jargon and rejected systematization; most of his works were first written as articles for newspapers and magazines. In 3 he founded the Revista de Occidente, a cultural magazine that helped spread his ideas and introduced G. thought into Spain and Latin America. Ortega ventured into nearly every branch of philosophy, but the kernel of his views is his metaphysics of vital reason rasón vital and his perspectival epistemology. For Ortega, reality is identified with “my life”; something is real only insofar as it is rooted and appears in “my life.” “My life” is further unpacked as “myself” and “my circumstances” “yo soy yo y mi circumstancia“. The self is not an entity separate from what surrounds it; there is a dynamic interaction and interdependence of self and things. These and the self together constitute reality. Because every life is the result of an interaction between self and circumstances, every self has a unique perspective. Truth, then, is perspectival, depending on the unique point of view from which it is determined, and no perspective is false except one that claims exclusivity. This doctrine is known as Ortega’s perspectivism.

ostensum: In his analysis of the two basic procedures, one involving the subjectum, and another the praedicatum, Grice would play with the utterer OSTENDING that p. This relates to his semiotic approach to communication, and avoiding to the maximum any reference to a linguistic rule or capacity or faculty as different from generic rationality. In WoW:134 Grice explores what he calls ‘ostensive correlation.’ He is exploring communication scenarios where the Utterer is OSTENDING that p, or in predicate terms, that the A is B. He is not so much concerned with the B, but with the fact that “B” is predicated of a particular denotatum of “the A,” and by what criteria. He is having in mind his uncle’s dog, Fido, who is shaggy, i.e. fairy coated. So he is showing to Strawson that that dog over there is the one that belongs to his uncle, and that, as Strawson can see, is a shaggy dog, by which Grice means hairy coated. That’s the type of ‘ostensive correlation’ Grice is having in mind. In an attempted ostensive correlation of the predicate B (‘shaggy’) with the feature or property of being hairy coated, as per a standard act of communication in which Grice, uttering, “Fido is shaggy’ will have Strawson believe that Uncle Grice’s dog is hairy coated – (1) U will perform a number of acts in each of which he ostends a thing  (a1, a2, a3, etc.). (2) Simultaneously with each ostension, he utters a token of the predicate “shaggy.” (3) It is his intention TO OSTEND, and to be recognised as ostending, only things which are either, in his view, plainly hairy-coated, or are, in his view, plainly NOT hairy-coated. (4) In a model sequence these intentions are fulfilled. Grice grants that this does not finely distinguish between ‘being hairy-coated’ from ‘being such that the UTTERER believes to be unmistakenly hairy coated.’ But such is a problem of any explicit correlation, which are usually taken for granted – and deemed ‘implicit’ in standard acts of communication. In primo actu non indiget volunta* diiectivo , sed sola_» objecti ostensio ... non potest errar* ciica finem in universali ostensum , potest tamen secundum eos ... Oxford Calculators, a group of natural philosophers, mathematicians, and logicians who flourished at Oxford  in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. The name derives from the Liber calculationum Book of Calculations, written some time before 1350. The author of this work, often called “Calculator” by later Continental authors, was probably named Richard Swineshead. The Book of Calculations discussed a number of issues related to the quantification or measurement of local motion, alteration, and augmentation for a fuller description, see John Murdoch and Edith Sylla, “Swineshead, Richard,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 13, 6. The Book of Calculations has been studied mainly by historians of science and grouped together with a number of other works discussing natural philosophical topics by such authors as Thomas Bradwardine, William Heytesbury, and John Dumbleton. In earlier histories many of the authors now referred to as Oxford Calculators are referred to as the Merton School, since many of them were fellows of Merton . But since some authors whose work appears to fit into the same intellectual tradition e.g., Richard Kilvington, whose Sophismata represents an earlier stage of the tradition later epitomized by William Heytesbury’s Sophismata have no known connection with Merton , the name ‘Oxford Calculators’ would appear to be a more accurate appellation. The works of the Oxford Calculators were produced in the context of education in the Oxford arts faculty see Edith Sylla, “The Oxford Calculators,” in Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 2. In Oxford at this time logic was the centerpiece of the early years of undergraduate education. After logic, Oxford came to be known for its work in mathematics, astronomy, and natural philosophy. Students studying under the Oxford faculty of arts not only heard lectures on the liberal arts and on natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysics; they were also required to take part in disputations. William Heytesbury’s Regule solvendi sophismatum Rules for Solving Sophismata explicitly and Swineshead’s Book of Calculations implicitly are written to prepare students for these disputations. The three influences most formative on the work of the Oxford Calculators were 1 the tradition of commentaries on the works of Aristotle; 2 the developments in logical theory, particularly the theories of categorematic and syncategorematic terms and the theory of logical supposition; and 3 developments in mathematics, particularly the theory of ratios as developed in Thomas Bradwardine’s De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus On the Ratios of Velocities in Motions. In addition to Richard Swineshead, Heytesbury, Bradwardine, Dumbleton, and Kilvington, other authors and works related to the work of the Oxford Calculators are Walter Burley, De primo et ultimo instanti, Tractatus Primus De formis accidentalibus, Tractatus Secundus De intensione et remissione formarum; Roger Swineshead, Descriptiones motuum; and John Bode, A est unum calidum. These and other works had a considerable later influence on the Continent. 

ousia, ancient Grecian term traditionally tr. as ‘substance’. Formed from the participle for ‘being’, the term ousia refers to the character of being, beingness, as if this were itself an entity. Just as redness is the character that red things have, so ousia is the character that beings have. Thus, the ousia of something is the character that makes it be, its nature. But ousia also refers to an entity that possesses being in its own right; for consider a case where the ousia of something is just the thing itself. Such a thing possesses being by virtue of itself; because its being depends on nothing else, it is self-subsistent and has a higher degree of being than things whose being depends on something else. Such a thing would be an ousia. Just which entities meet the criteria for ousia is a question addressed by Aristotle. Something such as redness that exists only as an attribute would not have being in its own right. An individual person is an ousia, but Aristotle also argues that his form is more properly an ousia; and an unmoved mover is the highest type of ousia. The traditional rendering of the term into Latin as substantia and English as ‘substance’ is appropriate only in contexts like Aristotle’s Categories where an ousia “stands under” attributes. In his Metaphysics, where Aristotle argues that being a substrate does not characterize ousia, and in other Grecian writers, ‘substance’ is often not an apt translation. 

outweighed rationality – the grammar – rationality of the end, not just the means – extrinsic rationality – not intrinsic to the means.  -- The intrinsic-extrinsic – outweigh -- extrinsic desire, a desire of something for its conduciveness to something else that one desires. Extrinsic desires are distinguished from intrinsic desires, desires of items for their own sake, or as ends. Thus, an individual might desire financial security extrinsically, as a means to her happiness, and desire happiness intrinsically, as an end. Some desires are mixed: their objects are desired both for themselves and for their conduciveness to something else. Jacques may desire to jog, e.g., both for its own sake as an end and for the sake of his health. A desire is strictly intrinsic if and only if its object is desired for itself alone. A desire is strictly extrinsic if and only if its object is not desired, even partly, for its own sake. Desires for “good news”  e.g., a desire to hear that one’s child has survived a car accident  are sometimes classified as extrinsic desires, even if the information is desired only because of what it indicates and not for any instrumental value that it may have. Desires of each kind help to explain action. Owing partly to a mixed desire to entertain a friend, Martha might acquire a variety of extrinsic desires for actions conducive to that goal. Less happily, intrinsically desiring to be rid of his toothache, George might extrinsically desire to schedule a dental appointment. If all goes well for Martha and George, their desires will be satisfied, and that will be due in part to the effects of the desires upon their behavior. 

“Oxonian dialectic” -- dialectic: H. P. Grice, “Athenian dialectic and Oxonian dialectic,” an argumentative exchange involving contradiction or a technique or method connected with such exchanges. The word’s origin is the Grecian dialegein, ‘to argue’ or ‘converse’; in Aristotle and others, this often has the sense ‘argue for a conclusion’, ‘establish by argument’. By Plato’s time, if not earlier, it had acquired a technical sense: a form of argumentation through question and answer. The adjective dialektikos, ‘dialectical’, would mean ‘concerned with dialegein’ or of persons ‘skilled in dialegein’; the feminine dialektike is then ‘the art of dialegein’. Aristotle says that Zeno of Elea invented diagonalization dialectic 232   232 dialectic. He apparently had in mind Zeno’s paradoxical arguments against motion and multiplicity, which Aristotle saw as dialectical because they rested on premises his adversaries conceded and deduced contradictory consequences from them. A first definition of dialectical argument might then be: ‘argument conducted by question and answer, resting on an opponent’s concessions, and aiming at refuting the opponent by deriving contradictory consequences’. This roughly fits the style of argument Socrates is shown engaging in by Plato. So construed, dialectic is primarily an art of refutation. Plato, however, came to apply ‘dialectic’ to the method by which philosophers attain knowledge of Forms. His understanding of that method appears to vary from one dialogue to another and is difficult to interpret. In Republic VIVII, dialectic is a method that somehow establishes “non-hypothetical” conclusions; in the Sophist, it is a method of discovering definitions by successive divisions of genera into their species. Aristotle’s concept of dialectical argument comes closer to Socrates and Zeno: it proceeds by question and answer, normally aims at refutation, and cannot scientifically or philosophically establish anything. Aristotle differentiates dialectical arguments from demonstration apodeixis, or scientific arguments, on the basis of their premises: demonstrations must have “true and primary” premises, dialectical arguments premises that are “apparent,” “reputable,” or “accepted” these are alternative, and disputed, renderings of the term endoxos. However, dialectical arguments must be valid, unlike eristic or sophistical arguments. The Topics, which Aristotle says is the first art of dialectic, is organized as a handbook for dialectical debates; Book VIII clearly presupposes a ruledirected, formalized style of disputation presumably practiced in the Academy. This use of ‘dialectic’ reappears in the early Middle Ages in Europe, though as Aristotle’s works became better known after the twelfth century dialectic was increasingly associated with the formalized disputations practiced in the universities recalling once again the formalized practice presupposed by Aristotle’s Topics. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant declared that the ancient meaning of ‘dialectic’ was ‘the logic of illusion’ and proposed a “Transcendental Dialectic” that analyzed the “antinomies” deductions of contradictory conclusions to which pure reason is inevitably led when it extends beyond its proper sphere. This concept was further developed by Fichte and Schelling into a traidic notion of thesis, opposing antithesis, and resultant synthesis. Hegel transformed the notion of contradiction from a logical to a metaphysical one, making dialectic into a theory not simply of arguments but of historical processes within the development of “spirit”; Marx transformed this still further by replacing ‘spirit’ with ‘matter’. 

Oxonian Epicureanism, -- Walter Pater, “Marius, The Epicurean” -- one of the three leading movements constituting Hellenistic philosophy. It was founded by Epicurus 341271 B.C., together with his close colleagues Metrodorus c.331 278, Hermarchus Epicurus’s successor as head of the Athenian school, and Polyaenus d. 278. He set up Epicurean communities at Mytilene, Lampsacus, and finally Athens 306 B.C., where his school the Garden became synonymous with Epicureanism. These groups set out to live the ideal Epicurean life, detached from political society without actively opposing it, and devoting themselves to philosophical discussion and the cult of friendship. Their correspondence was anthologized and studied as a model of the philosophical life by later Epicureans, for whom the writings of Epicurus and his three cofounders, known collectively as “the Men,” held a virtually biblical status. Epicurus wrote voluminously, but all that survives are three brief epitomes the Letter to Herodotus on physics, the Letter to Pythocles on astronomy, etc., and the Letter to Menoeceus on ethics, a group of maxims, and papyrus fragments of his magnum opus On Nature. Otherwise, we are almost entirely dependent on secondary citations, doxography, and the writings of his later followers. The Epicurean physical theory is atomistic, developed out of the fifth-century system of Democritus. Per se existents are divided into bodies and space, each of them infinite in quantity. Space is, or includes, absolute void, without which motion would be impossible, while body is constituted out of physically indivisible particles, “atoms.” Atoms are themselves further analyzable as sets of absolute “minima,” the ultimate quanta of magnitude, posited by Epicurus to circumvent the paradoxes that Zeno of Elea had derived from the hypothesis of infinite divisibility. Atoms themselves have only the primary properties of shape, size, and weight. All secondary properties, e.g. color, are generated out of atomic compounds; given their dependent status, they cannot be added to the list of per se existents, but it does not follow, as the skeptical tradition in atomism had held, that they are not real either. Atoms are in constant rapid motion, epapoge Epicureanism 269   269 at equal speed since in the pure void there is nothing to slow them down. Stability emerges as an overall property of compounds, which large groups of atoms form by settling into regular patterns of complex motion, governed by the three motive principles of weight, collisions, and a minimal random movement, the “swerve,” which initiates new patterns of motion and blocks the danger of determinism. Our world itself, like the countless other worlds, is such a compound, accidentally generated and of finite duration. There is no divine mind behind it, or behind the evolution of life and society: the gods are to be viewed as ideal beings, models of the Epicurean good life, and therefore blissfully detached from our affairs. Canonic, the Epicurean theory of knowledge, rests on the principle that “all sensations are true.” Denial of empirical cognition is argued to amount to skepticism, which is in turn rejected as a self-refuting position. Sensations are representationally not propositionally true. In the paradigm case of sight, thin films of atoms Grecian eidola, Latin simulacra constantly flood off bodies, and our eyes mechanically report those that reach them, neither embroidering nor interpreting. Inference from these guaranteed photographic, as it were data to the nature of external objects themselves involves judgment, and there alone error can occur. Sensations thus constitute one of the three “criteria of truth,” along with feelings, a criterion of values and introspective information, and prolepseis, or naturally acquired generic conceptions. On the basis of sense evidence, we are entitled to infer the nature of microscopic or remote phenomena. Celestial phenomena, e.g., cannot be regarded as divinely engineered which would conflict with the prolepsis of the gods as tranquil, and experience supplies plenty of models that would account for them naturalistically. Such grounds amount to consistency with directly observed phenomena, and are called ouk antimarturesis “lack of counterevidence”. Paradoxically, when several alternative explanations of the same phenomenon pass this test, all must be accepted: although only one of them can be true for each token phenomenon, the others, given their intrinsic possibility and the spatial and temporal infinity of the universe, must be true for tokens of the same type elsewhere. Fortunately, when it comes to the basic tenets of physics, it is held that only one theory passes this test of consistency with phenomena. Epicurean ethics is hedonistic. Pleasure is our innate natural goal, to which all other values, including virtue, are subordinated. Pain is the only evil, and there is no intermediate state. Philosophy’s task is to show how pleasure can be maximized, as follows: Bodily pleasure becomes more secure if we adopt a simple way of life that satisfies only our natural and necessary desires, with the support of like-minded friends. Bodily pain, when inevitable, can be outweighed by mental pleasure, which exceeds it because it can range over past, present, and future. The highest pleasure, whether of soul or body, is a satisfied state, “katastematic pleasure.” The pleasures of stimulation “kinetic pleasures”, including those resulting from luxuries, can vary this state, but have no incremental value: striving to accumulate them does not increase overall pleasure, but does increase our vulnerability to fortune. Our primary aim should instead be to minimize pain. This is achieved for the body through a simple way of life, and for the soul through the study of physics, which achieves the ultimate katastematic pleasure, ”freedom from disturbance” ataraxia, by eliminating the two main sources of human anguish, the fears of the gods and of death. It teaches us a that cosmic phenomena do not convey divine threats, b that death is mere disintegration of the soul, with hell an illusion. To fear our own future non-existence is as irrational as to regret the non-existence we enjoyed before we were born. Physics also teaches us how to evade determinism, which would turn moral agents into mindless fatalists: the swerve doctrine secures indeterminism, as does the logical doctrine that future-tensed propositions may be neither true nor false. The Epicureans were the first explicit defenders of free will, although we lack the details of their positive explanation of it. Finally, although Epicurean groups sought to opt out of public life, they took a keen and respectful interest in civic justice, which they analyzed not as an absolute value, but as a contract between humans to refrain from harmful activity on grounds of utility, perpetually subject to revision in the light of changing circumstances. Epicureanism enjoyed widespread popularity, but unlike its great rival Stoicism it never entered the intellectual bloodstream of the ancient world. Its stances were dismissed by many as philistine, especially its rejection of all cultural activities not geared to the Epicurean good life. It was also increasingly viewed as atheistic, and its ascetic hedonism was misrepresented as crude sensualism hence the modern use of ‘epicure’. The school nevertheless continued to flourish down to and well beyond the end of the Hellenistic age. In the first century B.C. its exponents Epicureanism Epicureanism 270   270 included Philodemus, whose fragmentarily surviving treatise On Signs attests to sophisticated debates on induction between Stoics and Epicureans, and Lucretius, the Roman author of the great Epicurean didactic poem On the Nature of Things. In the second century A.D. another Epicurean, Diogenes of Oenoanda, had his philosophical writings engraved on stone in a public colonnade, and passages have survived. Thereafter Epicureanism’s prominence declined. Serious interest in it was revived by Renaissance humanists, and its atomism was an important influence on early modern physics, especially through Gassendi. 

oxonianism: Grice was “university lecturer in philosophy” and “tutorial fellow in philosophy” – that’s why he always saw philosophy, like virtue, as entire. He would never accept a post like “professor of moral philosophy” or “professor of logic,” or “professor of metaphysical philosophy,” or “reader in natural theology,” or “reader in mental philosophy.” So he felt a responsibility towards ‘philosophy undepartmentilised’ and he succeded in never disgressing from this gentlemanly attitude to philosophy as a totum, and not a technically specified field of ‘expertise.’ See playgroup. The playgroup was Oxonian. There are aspects of Grice’s philosophy which are Oxonian but not playgroup-related, and had to do with his personal inclinations. The fact that it was Hardie who was his tutor and instilled on him a love for Aristotle. Grice’s rapport with H. A. Prichard. Grice would often socialize with members of Ryle’s group, such as O. P. Wood, J. D. Mabbott, and W. C. Kneale. And of course, he had a knowleddge of the history of Oxford philosophy, quoting from J. C. Wilson, G. F. Stout, H. H. Price, Bosanquet, Bradley. He even had his Oxonian ‘enemies,’ Dummett, Anscombe. And he would quote from independents, like A. J. P. Kenny. But if he had to quote someone first, it was a member of his beloved playgroup: Austin, Strawson, Warnock, Urmson, Hare, Hart, Hampshire. Grice cannot possibly claim to talk about post-war Oxford philosophy, but his own! Cf. Oxfords post-war philosophy.  What were Grices first impressions when arriving at Oxford. He was going to learn. Only the poor learn at Oxford was an adage he treasured, since he wasnt one! Let us start with an alphabetical listing of Grices play Group companions: Austin, Butler, Flew, Gardiner, Grice, Hare, Hampshire, Hart, Nowell-Smith, Parkinson, Paul, Pears, Quinton, Sibley, Strawson, Thomson, Urmson, and Warnock.  Grices main Oxonian association is St. Johns, Oxford. By Oxford Philosophy, Grice notably refers to Austins Play Group, of which he was a member. But Grice had Oxford associations pre-war, and after the demise of Austin. But back to the Play Group, this, to some, infamous, playgroup, met on Saturday mornings at different venues at Oxford, including Grices own St. John’s ‒ apparently, Austins favourite venue. Austin regarded himself and his kindergarten as linguistic or language botanists. The idea was to list various ordinary uses of this or that philosophical notion. Austin: They say philosophy is about language; well, then, let’s botanise! Grices involvement with Oxford philosophy of course predated his associations with Austins play group. He always said he was fortunate of having been a tutee to Hardie at Corpus. Corpus, Oxford. Grice would occasionally refer to the emblematic pelican, so prominently displayed at Corpus. Grice had an interim association with the venue one associates most directly with philosophy, Merton ‒: Grice, Merton, Oxford. While Grice loved to drop Oxonian Namess, notably his rivals, such as Dummett or Anscombe, he knew when not to. His Post-war Oxford philosophy, as opposed to more specific items in The Grice Collection, remains general in tone, and intended as a defense of the ordinary-language approach to philosophy. Surprisingly, or perhaps not (for those who knew Grice), he takes a pretty idiosyncratic characterisation of conceptual analysis. Grices philosophical problems emerge with Grices idiosyncratic use of this or that expression. Conceptual analysis is meant to solve his problems, not others, repr. in WOW . Grice finds it important to reprint this since he had updated thoughts on the matter, which he displays in his Conceptual analysis and the province of philosophy. The topic represents one of the strands he identifies behind the unity of his philosophy. By post-war Oxford philosophy, Grice meant the period he was interested in. While he had been at Corpus, Merton, and St. Johns in the pre-war days, for some reason, he felt that he had made history in the post-war period. The historical reason Grice gives is understandable enough. In the pre-war days, Grice was the good student and the new fellow of St. Johns ‒ the other one was Mabbott. But he had not been able to engage in philosophical discussion much, other than with other tutees of Hardie. After the war, Grice indeed joins Austins more popular, less secretive Saturday mornings. Indeed, for Grice, post-war means all philosophy after the war (and not just say, the forties!) since he never abandoned the methods he developed under Austin, which were pretty congenial to the ones he had himself displayed in the pre-war days, in essays like Negation and Personal identity. Grice is a bit of an expert on Oxonian philosophy. He sees himself as a member of the school of analytic philosophy, rather than the abused term ordinary-language philosophy. This is evident by the fact that he contributed to such polemic  ‒ but typically Oxonian  ‒ volumes such as Butler, Analytic Philosophy, published by Blackwell (of all publishers). Grice led a very social life at Oxford, and held frequent philosophical discussions with the Play group philosophers (alphabetically listed above), and many others, such as Wood.  Post-war Oxford philosophy, miscellaneous, Oxford philosophy, in WOW, II, Semantics and Met. , Essay. By Oxford philosophy, Grice means his own. Grice went back to the topic of philosophy and ordinary language, as one of his essays is precisely entitled, Philosophy and ordinary language, philosophy and ordinary language, : ordinary-language philosophy, linguistic botanising. Grice is not really interested in ordinary language as a philologist might. He spoke ordinary language, he thought. The point had been brought to the fore by Austin. If they think philosophy is a play on words, well then, lets play the game. Grices interest is methodological. Malcolm had been claiming that ordinary language is incorrigible. While Grice agreed that language can be clever, he knew that Aristotle was possibly right when he explored ta legomena in terms of the many and the selected wise, philosophy and ordinary language, philosophy and ordinary language, : philosophy, ordinary language. At the time of writing, ordinary-language philosophy had become, even within Oxford, a bit of a term of abuse. Grice tries to defend Austins approach to it, while suggesting ideas that Austin somewhat ignored, like what an utterer implies by the use of an ordinary-language expression, rather than what the expression itself does. Grice is concerned, contra Austin, in explanation (or explanatory adequacy), not taxonomy (or descriptive adequacy). Grice disregards Austins piecemeal approach to ordinary language, as Grice searches for the big picture of it all. Grice never used ordinary language seriously. The phrase was used, as he explains, by those who HATED ordinary-language philosophy. Theres no such thing as ordinary language. Surely you cannot fairly describe the idiosyncratic linguistic habits of an Old Cliftonian as even remotely ordinary. Extra-ordinary more likely! As far as the philosophy bit goes, this is what Bergmann jocularly described as the linguistic turn. But as Grice notes, the linguistic turn involves both the ideal language and the ordinary language. Grice defends the choice by Austin of the ordinary seeing that it was what he had to hand! While Grice seems to be in agreement with the tone of his Wellesley talk, his idioms there in. Youre crying for the moon! Philosophy need not be grand! These seem to contrast with his more grandiose approach to philosophy. His struggle was to defend the minutiæ of linguistic botanising, that had occupied most of his professional life, with a grander view of the discipline. He blamed Oxford for that. Never in the history of philosophy had philosophers shown such an attachment to ordinary language as they did in post-war Oxford, Grice liked to say.  Having learned Grecian and Latin at Clifton, Grice saw in Oxford a way to go back to English! He never felt the need to explore Continental modern languages like German or French. Aristotle was of course cited in Greek, but Descartes is almost not cited, and Kant is cited in the translation available to Oxonians then. Grice is totally right that never has philosophy experienced such a fascination with ordinary use except at Oxford. The ruthless and unswerving association of philosophy with ordinary language has been peculiar to the Oxford scene. While many found this attachment to ordinary usage insidious, as Warnock put it, it fit me and Grice to a T, implicating you need a sort of innate disposition towards it! Strawson perhaps never had it! And thats why Grices arguments contra Strawson rest on further minutiæ whose detection by Grice never ceased to amaze his tutee! In this way, Grice felt he WAS Austins heir! While Grice is associated with, in chronological order, Corpus, Merton, and St. Johns, it is only St. Johns that counts for the Griceian! For it is at St. Johns he was a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy! And we love him as a philosopher. Refs.: The obvious keyword is “Oxford.” His essay in WoW on post-war Oxford philosophy is general – the material in the H. P. Grice papers is more anecdotic. Also “Reply to Richards,” and references above under ‘linguistic botany’ and ‘play group,’ in BANC.

pacifism, 1 opposition to war, usually on moral or religious grounds, but sometimes on the practical ground pragmatic pacifism that it is wasteful and ineffective; 2 opposition to all killing and violence; 3 opposition only to war of a specified kind e.g., nuclear pacifism. Not to be confused with passivism, pacifism usually involves actively promoting peace, understood to imply cooperation and justice among peoples and not merely absence of war. But some usually religious pacifists accept military service so long as they do not carry weapons. Many pacifists subscribe to nonviolence. But some consider violence and/or killing permissible, say, in personal self-defense, law enforcement, abortion, or euthanasia. Absolute pacifism rejects war in all circumstances, hypothetical and actual. Conditional pacifism concedes war’s permissibility in some hypothetical circumstances but maintains its wrongness in practice. If at least some hypothetical wars have better consequences than their alternative, absolute pacifism will almost inevitably be deontological in character, holding war intrinsically wrong or unexceptionably prohibited by moral principle or divine commandment. Conditional pacifism may be held on either deontological or utilitarian teleological or sometimes consequentialist grounds. If deontological, it may hold war at most prima facie wrong intrinsically but nonetheless virtually always impermissible in practice because of the absence of counterbalancing right-making features. If utilitarian, it will hold war wrong, not intrinsically, but solely because of its consequences. It may say either that every particular war has worse consequences than its avoidance act utilitarianism or that general acceptance of or following or compliance with a rule prohibiting war will have best consequences even if occasional particular wars have best consequences rule utilitarianism. 

Paine, T.: philosopher, revolutionary defender of democracy and human rights, and champion of popular radicalism in three countries. Born in Thetford, England, he emigrated to the  colonies in 1774; he later moved to France, where he was made a  citizen in 1792. In 1802 he returned to the United States, where he was rebuffed by the public because of his support for the  Revolution. Paine was the bestknown polemicist for the  Revolution. In many incendiary pamphlets, he called for a new, more democratic republicanism. His direct style and uncompromising egalitarianism had wide popular appeal. In Common Sense 1776 Paine asserted that commoners were the equal of the landed aristocracy, thus helping to spur colonial resentments sufficiently to support independence from Britain. The sole basis of political legitimacy is universal, active consent; taxation without representation is unjust; and people have the right to resist when the contract between governor and governed is broken. He defended the  Revolution in The Rights of Man 179, arguing against concentrating power in any one individual and against a property qualification for suffrage. Since natural law and right reason as conformity to nature are accessible to all rational persons, sovereignty resides in human beings and is not bestowed by membership in class or nation. Opposed to the extremist Jacobins, he helped write, with Condorcet, a constitution to secure the Revolution. The Age of Reason 1794, Paine’s most misunderstood work, sought to secure the social cohesion necessary to a well-ordered society by grounding it in belief in a divinity. But in supporting deism and attacking established religion as a tool of enslavement, he alienated the very laboring classes he sought to enlighten. A lifelong adversary of slavery and supporter of universal male suffrage, Paine argued for redistributing property in Agrarian Justice 1797. 

palæo-Griceian: Within the Oxford group, Grice was the first, and it’s difficult to find a precursor. It’s obviously Grice was not motivated to create or design his manoeuvre to oppose a view by Ryle – who cared about Ryle in the playgroup? None – It is obviously more clear that Grice cared a hoot about Vitters, Benjamin, and Malcolm. So that leaves us with the philosophers Grice personally knew. And we are sure he was more interested in criticizing Austin than his own tutee Strawson. So ths leaves us with Austin. Grice’s manoeuvre was intended for Austin – but he waited for Austin’s demise to present it. Even though the sources were publications that were out there before Austin died (“Other minds,” “A plea for excuses”). So Grice is saying that Austin is wrong, as he is. In order of seniority, the next was Hart (who Grice mocked about ‘carefully’ in Prolegomena. Then came more or less same-generational Hare (who was not too friendly with Grice) and ‘to say ‘x is good’ is to recommend x’ (a ‘performatory fallacy’) and Strawson with ‘true’ and, say, ‘if.’ So, back to the palaeo-Griceian, surely nobody was in a position to feel a motivation to criticise Austin, Hart, Hare, and Strawson! When philosophers mention this or that palaeo-Griceian philosopher, surely the motivation was different. And a philosophical manoevre COMES with a motivation. If we identify some previous (even Oxonian) philosopher who was into the thing Grice is, it would not have Austin, Hart, Hare or Strawson as ‘opponents.’ And of course it’s worse with post-Griceians. Because, as Grice says, there was no othe time than post-war Oxford philosophy where “my manoeuvre would have make sense.’ If it does, as it may, post-Grice, it’s “as derivative” of “the type of thing we were doing back in the day. And it’s no fun anymore.” “Neo-Griceian” is possibly a misnomer. As Grice notes, “usually you add ‘neo-’ to sell; that’s why, jokingly, I call Strawson a neo-traditionalist; as if he were a bit of a neo-con, another oxymoron, as he was!’That is H. P. Grice was the first member of the play group to come up with a system of ‘pragmatic rules.’ Or perhaps he wasn’t. In any case, palaeo-Griceian refers to any attempt by someone who is an Oxonian English philosopher who suggested something like H. P. Grice later did! There are palaeo-Griceian suggestions in Bradley – “Logic” --, Bosanquet, J. C. Wilson (“Statement and inference”) and a few others. Within those who interacted with Grice to provoke him into the ‘pragmatic rule’ account were two members of the play group. One was not English, but a Scot: G. A. Paul. Paul had been to ‘the other place,’ and was at Oxford trying to spread Witters’s doctrine. The bafflement one gets from “I certainly don’t wish to cast any doubt on the matter, but that pillar box seems red to me; and the reason why it is does, it’s because it is red, and its redness causes in my sense of vision the sense-datum that the thing is red.” Grice admits that he first came out with the idea when confronted with this example. Mainly Grice’s motivation is to hold that such a ‘statement’ (if statement, it is, -- vide Bar-Hillel) is true. The other member was English: P. F. Strawson. And Grice notes that it was Strawson’s Introduction to logical theory that motivated him to apply a technique which had proved successful in the area of the philosophy of perception to this idea by Strawson that Whitehead and Russell are ‘incorrect.’ Again, Grice’s treatment concerns holding a ‘statement’ to be ‘true.’ Besides these two primary cases, there are others. First, is the list of theses in “Causal Theory.” None of them are assigned to a particular philosopher, so the research may be conducted towards the identification of these. The theses are, besides the one he is himself dealing, the sense-datum ‘doubt or denial’ implicatum: One, What is actual is not also possible. Two, What is known to be the case is not also believed to be the case. Three, Moore was guilty of misusing the lexeme ‘know.’ Four, To say that someone is responsible is to say that he is accountable for something condemnable. Six, A horse cannot look like a horse. Now, in “Prolegomena” he add further cases. Again, since this are palaeo-Griceian, it may be a matter of tracing the earliest occurrences. In “Prolegomena,” Grice divides the examples in Three Groups. The last is an easy one to identity: the ‘performatory’ approach: for which he gives the example by Strawson on ‘true,’ and mentions two other cases: a performatory use of ‘I know’ for I guarantee; and the performatory use of ‘good’ for ‘I approve’ (Ogden). The second group is easy to identify since it’s a central concern and it is exactly Strawson’s attack on Whitehead and Russell. But Grice is clear here. It is mainly with regard to ‘if’ that he wants to discuss Strawson, and for which he quotes him at large. Before talking about ‘if’, he mentions the co-ordinating connectives ‘and’ and ‘or’, without giving a source. So, here there is a lot to research about the thesis as held by other philosophers even at Oxford (where, however, ‘logic’ was never considered a part of philosophy proper). The first group is the most varied, and easier to generalise, because it refers to any ‘sub-expression’ held to occur in a full expression which is held to be ‘inappropriate.’ Those who judge the utterance to be inappropriate are sometimes named. Grice starts with Ryle and The Concept of Mind – palaeo-Griceian, in that it surely belongs to Grice’s previous generation. It concerns the use of the adverb ‘voluntary’ and Grice is careful to cite Ryle’s description of the case, using words like ‘incorrect,’ and that a ‘sense’ claimed by philosophers is an absurd one. Then there is a third member of the playgroup – other than G. A. Paul and P. F. Strawson – the Master Who Wobbles, J. L. Austin. Grice likes the way Austin offers himself as a good target – Austin was dead by then, and Grice would otherwise not have even tried – Austin uses variables: notably Mly, and a general thesis, ‘no modification without aberration.’ But basically, Grice agrees that it’s all about the ‘philosophy of action.’ So in describing an agent’s action, the addition of an adverb makes the whole thing inappropriate. This may relate to at least one example in “Causal” involving ‘responsible.’ While Grice there used the noun and adjective, surely it can be turned into an adverb. The fourth member of the playgroup comes next: H. L. A. Hart. Grice laughs at Hart’s idea that to add ‘carefully’ in the description of an action the utterer is committed to the idea that the agent THINKS the steps taken for the performance are reasonable. There is a thesis he mentions then which alla “Causal Theory,” gets uncredited – about ‘trying.’ But he does suggest Witters. And then there is his own ‘doubt or denial’ re: G. A. Paul, and another one in the field of the philosophy of perception that he had already mentioned vaguely in “Causal”: a horse cannot look like a horse. Here he quotes Witters in extenso, re: ‘seeing as.’ While Grice mentions ‘philosophy of action,’ there is at least one example involving ‘philosophical psychology’: B. S. Benjamin on C. D. Broad on the factiveness of ‘remember.’ When one thinks of all the applications that the ‘conversational model’ has endured, one realizes that unless your background is philosophical, you are bound not to realise the centrality of Grice’s thesis for philosophical methodology.

Paley, W.: English moral philosopher and theologian. He was born in Peterborough and educated at Cambridge, 639 P    639 where he lectured in moral philosophy, divinity, and Grecian New Testament before assuming a series of posts in the Church of England, the last as archdeacon of Carlisle. The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy 1785 first introduced utilitarianism to a wide public. Moral obligation is created by a divine command “coupled” with the expectation of everlasting rewards or punishments. While God’s commands can be ascertained “from Scripture and the light of nature,” Paley emphasizes the latter. Since God wills human welfare, the rightness or wrongness of actions is determined by their “tendency to promote or diminish the general happiness.” Horae Pauline: Or the Truth of the Scripture History of St Paul Evinced appeared in 1790, A View of the Evidences of Christianity in 1794. The latter defends the authenticity of the Christian miracles against Hume. Natural Theology 1802 provides a design argument for God’s existence and a demonstration of his attributes. Nature exhibits abundant contrivances whose “several parts are framed and put together for a purpose.” These contrivances establish the existence of a powerful, wise, benevolent designer. They cannot show that its power and wisdom are unlimited, however, and “omnipotence” and “omniscience” are mere “superlatives.” Paley’s Principles and Evidences served as textbooks in England and America well into the nineteenth century. 

panpsychism, the doctrine that the physical world is pervasively psychical, sentient or conscious understood as equivalent. The idea, usually, is that it is articulated into certain ultimate units or particles, momentary or enduring, each with its own distinct charge of sentience or consciousness, and that some more complex physical units possess a sentience emergent from the interaction between the charges of sentience pertaining to their parts, sometimes down through a series of levels of articulation into sentient units. Animal consciousness is the overall sentience pertaining to some substantial part or aspect of the brain, while each neuron may have its own individual charge of sentience, as may each included atom and subatomic particle. Elsewhere the only sentient units may be at the atomic and subatomic level. Two differently motivated versions of the doctrine should be distinguished. The first implies no particular view about the nature of matter, and regards the sentience pertaining to each unit as an extra to its physical nature. Its point is to explain animal and human consciousness as emerging from the interaction and perhaps fusion of more pervasive sentient units. The better motivated, second version holds that the inner essence of matter is unknown. We know only structural facts about the physical or facts about its effects on sentience like our own. Panpsychists hypothesize that the otherwise unknown inner essence of matter consists in sentience or consciousness articulated into the units we identify externally as fundamental particles, or as a supervening character pertaining to complexes of such or complexes of complexes, etc. Panpsychists can thus uniquely combine the idealist claim that there can be no reality without consciousness with rejection of any subjectivist reduction of the physical world to human experience of it. Modern versions of panpsychism e.g. of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and Sprigge are only partly akin to hylozoism as it occurred in ancient thought. Note that neither version need claim that every physical object possesses consciousness; no one supposes that a team of conscious cricketers must itself be conscious. 

pantheism, the view that God is identical with everything. It may be seen as the result of two tendencies: an intense religious spirit and the belief that all reality is in some way united. Pantheism should be distinguished from panentheism, the view that God is in all things. Just as water might saturate a sponge and in that way be in the entire sponge, but not be identical with the sponge, God might be in everything without being identical with everything. Spinoza is the most distinguished pantheist in Western philosophy. He argued that since substance is completely self-sufficient, and only God is self-sufficient, God is the only substance. In other words, God is everything. Hegel is also sometimes considered a pantheist since he identifies God with the totality of being. Many people think that pantheism is tantamount to atheism, because they believe that theism requires that God transcend ordinary, sensible reality at least to some degree. It is not obvious that theism requires a transcendent or Panaetius pantheism 640    640 personal notion of God; and one might claim that the belief that it does is the result of an anthropomorphic view of God. In Eastern philosophy, especially the Vedic tradition of  philosophy, pantheism is part of a rejection of polytheism. The apparent multiplicity of reality is illusion. What is ultimately real or divine is Brahman. 

Pantheismusstreit G., ‘dispute over pantheism’, a debate primarily between the G. philosophers Jacobi and Mendelssohn, although it also included Lessing, Kant, and Goethe. The basic issue concerned what pantheism is and whether all pantheists are atheists. In particular, it concerned whether Spinoza was a pantheist, and if so, whether he was an atheist; and how close Lessing’s thought was to Spinoza’s. The standard view, propounded by Bayle and Leibniz, was that Spinoza’s pantheism was a thin veil for his atheism. Lessing and Goethe did not accept this harsh interpretation of him. They believed that his pantheism avoided the alienating transcendence of the standard Judeo-Christian concept of God. It was debated whether Lessing was a Spinozist or some form of theistic pantheist. Lessing was critical of dogmatic religions and denied that there was any revelation given to all people for rational acceptance. He may have told Jacobi that he was a Spinozist; but he may also have been speaking ironically or hypothetically. 

Paracelsus, pseudonym of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, philosopher. He pursued medical studies at various G. and Austrian universities, probably completing them at Ferrara. Thereafter he had little to do with the academic world, apart from a brief and stormy period as professor of medicine at Basle 152728. Instead, he worked first as a military surgeon and later as an itinerant physician in G.y, Austria, and Switzerland. His works were mainly in G. rather than Latin, and only a few were published during his lifetime. His importance for medical practice lay in his insistence on observation and experiment, and his use of chemical methods for preparing drugs. The success of Paracelsian medicine and chemistry in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was, however, largely due to the theoretical background he provided. He firmly rejected the classical medical inheritance, particularly Galen’s explanation of disease as an imbalance of humors; he drew on a combination of biblical sources, G. mysticism, alchemy, and Neoplatonic magic as found in Ficino to present a unified view of humankind and the universe. He saw man as a microcosm, reflecting the nature of the divine world through his immortal soul, the sidereal world through his astral body or vital principle, and the terrestrial world through his visible body. Knowledge requires union with the object, but because elements of all the worlds are found in man, he can acquire knowledge of the universe and of God, as partially revealed in nature. The physician needs knowledge of vital principles called astra in order to heal. Disease is caused by external agents that can affect the human vital principle as well as the visible body. Chemical methods are employed to isolate the appropriate vital principles in minerals and herbs, and these are used as antidotes. Paracelsus further held that matter contains three principles, sulfur, mercury, and salt. As a result, he thought it was possible to transform one metal into another by varying the proportions of the fundamental principles; and that such transformations could also be used in the production of drugs. 

paraconsistency, the property of a logic in which one cannot derive all statements from a contradiction. What is objectionable about contradictions, from the standpoint of classical logic, is not just that they are false but that they imply any statement whatsoever: one who accepts a contradiction is thereby committed to accepting everything. In paraconsistent logics, however, such as relevance logics, contradictions are isolated inferentially and thus rendered relatively harmless. The interest in such logics stems from the fact that people sometimes continue to work in inconsistent theories even after the inconsistency has been exposed, and do so without inferring everything. Whether this phenomenon can be explained satisfactorily by the classical logician or shows instead that the underlying logic of, e.g., science and mathematics is some non-classical paraconsistent logic, is disputed. 

paradigm-case argument: Grice tries to give the general form of this argument, as applied to Urmson, and Grice and Strawson. I wonder if Grice thought that STRAWSON’s appeal to resentment to prove freewill is paradigm case? The idiom was coined by Grice’s first tutee at St. John’s, G. N. A. Flew, and he applied it to ‘free will.’ Grice later used it to describe the philosophising by Urmson (in “Retrospetive”). he issue of analyticity is, as Locke puts it, the issue of whats trifle. That a triangle is trilateral Locke considers a trifling proposition, like Saffron is yellow. Lewes (who calls mathematical propositions analytic) describes the Kantian problem. The reductive analysis of meaning Grice offers depends on the analytic. Few Oxonian philosophers would follow Loar, D. Phil Oxon, under Warnock, in thinking of Grices conversational maxims as empirical inductive generalisations over functional states! Synthesis may do in the New World,but hardly in the Old! The locus classicus for the ordinary-language philosophical response to Quine in Two dogmas of empiricism. Grice and Strawson claim that is analytic does have an ordinary-language use, as attached two a type of behavioural conversational response. To an analytically false move (such as My neighbours three-year-old son is an adult) the addressee A is bound to utter, I dont understand you! You are not being figurative, are you? To a synthetically false move, on the other hand (such as My neighbours three-year-old understands Russells Theory of Types), the addressee A will jump with, Cant believe it! The topdogma of analyticity is for Grice very important to defend. Philosophy depends on it! He knows that to many his claim to fame is his In defence of a dogma, the topdogma of analyticity, no less. He eventually turns to a pragmatist justification of the distinction. This pragmatist justification is still in accordance with what he sees as the use of analytic in ordinary language. His infamous examples are as follows. My neighbours three-year old understands Russells Theory of Types. A: Hard to believe, but I will. My neighbours three-year old is an adult. Metaphorically? No. Then I dont understand you, and what youve just said is, in my scheme of things, analytically false. Ultimately, there are conversational criteria, based on this or that principle of conversational helfpulness. Grice is also circumstantially concerned with the synthetic a priori, and he would ask his childrens playmates: Can a sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed! The distinction is ultimately Kantian, but it had brought to the fore by the linguistic turn, Oxonian and other! In defence of a dogma, Two dogmas of empiricism, : the analytic-synthetic distinction. For Quine, there are two. Grice is mainly interested in the first one: that there is a distinction between the analytic and the synthetic. Grice considers Empiricism as a monster on his way to the Rationalist City of Eternal Truth. Grice came back time and again to explore the analytic-synthetic distinction. But his philosophy remained constant. His sympathy is for the practicality of it, its rationale. He sees it as involving formal calculi, rather than his own theory of conversation as rational co-operation which does not presuppose the analytic-synthetic distinction, even if it explains it! Grice would press the issue here: if one wants to prove that such a theory of conversation as rational co-operation has to be seen as philosophical, rather than some other way, some idea of analyticity may be needed to justify the philosophical enterprise. Cf. the synthetic a priori, that fascinated Grice most than anything Kantian else! Can a sweater be green and red all over? No stripes allowed. With In defence of a dogma, Grice and Strawson attack a New-World philosopher. Grice had previously collaborated with Strawson in an essay on Met.  (actually a three-part piece, with Pears as the third author). The example Grice chooses to refute attack by Quine of the top-dogma is the Aristotelian idea of the peritrope, as Aristotle refutes Antiphasis in Met.  (v. Ackrill, Burnyeat and Dancy). Grice explores chapter Γ 8 of Aristotles Met. .  In Γ 8, Aristotle presents two self-refutation arguments against two theses, and calls the asserter, Antiphasis, T1 = Everything is true, and T2 = Everything is false, Metaph. Γ 8, 1012b13–18. Each thesis is exposed to the stock objection that it eliminates itself. An utterer who explicitly conveys that everything is true also makes the thesis opposite to his own true, so that his own is not true (for the opposite thesis denies that his is true), and any utterer U who explicitly conveys that everything is false also belies himself.  Aristotle does not seem to be claiming that, if everything is true, it would also be true that it is false that everything is true and, that, therefore, Everything is true must be false: the final, crucial inference, from the premise if, p, ~p to the conclusion ~p is missing. But it is this extra inference that seems required to have a formal refutation of Antiphasiss T1 or T2 by consequentia mirabilis. The nature of the argument as a purely dialectical silencer of Antiphasis is confirmed by the case of T2, Everything is false. An utterer who explicitly conveys that everything is false unwittingly concedes, by self-application, that what he is saying must be false too. Again, the further and different conclusion Therefore; it is false that everything is false is missing. That proposal is thus self-defeating, self-contradictory (and comparable to Grices addressee using adult to apply to three-year old, without producing the creature), oxymoronic, and suicidal. This seems all that Aristotle is interested in establishing through the self-refutation stock objection. This is not to suggest that Aristotle did not believe that Everything is true or Everything is false is false, or that he excludes that he can prove its falsehood. Grice notes that this is not what Aristotle seems to be purporting to establish in 1012b13–18. This holds for a περιτροπή (peritrope) argument, but not for a περιγραφή (perigraphe) argument (συμβαίνει δὴ καὶ τὸ θρυλούμενον πᾶσι τοῖς τοιούτοις λόγοις, αὐτοὺς ἑαυτοὺς ἀναιρεῖν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ πάντα ἀληθῆ λέγων καὶ τὸν ἐναντίον αὑτοῦ λόγον ἀληθῆ ποιεῖ, ὥστε τὸν ἑαυτοῦ οὐκ ἀληθῆ (ὁ γὰρ ἐναντίος οὔ φησιν αὐτὸν ἀληθῆ), ὁ δὲ πάντα ψευδῆ καὶ αὐτὸς αὑτόν.) It may be emphasized that Aristotles argument does not contain an explicit application of consequentia mirabilis. Indeed, no extant self-refutation argument before Augustine, Grice is told by Mates, contains an explicit application of consequentia mirabilis. This observation is a good and important one, but Grice has doubts about the consequences one may draw from it. One may take the absence of an explicit application of consequentia mirabilis to be a sign of the purely dialectical nature of the self-refutation argument. This is questionable. The formulation of a self-refutation argument (as in Grices addressee, Sorry, I misused adult.) is often compressed and elliptical and involves this or that implicatum. One usually assumes that this or that piece in a dialectical context has been omitted and should be supplied (or worked out, as Grice prefers) by the addressee. But in this or that case, it is equally possible to supply some other, non-dialectical piece of reasoning. In Aristotles arguments from Γ 8, e.g., the addressee may supply an inference to the effect that the thesis which has been shown to be self-refuting is not true. For if Aristotle takes the argument to establish that the thesis has its own contradictory version as a consequence, it must be obvious to Aristotle that the thesis is not true (since every consequence of a true thesis is true, and two contradictory theses cannot be simultaneously true). On the further assumption (that Grice makes explicit) that the principle of bivalence is applicable, Aristotle may even infer that the thesis is false. It is perfectly plausible to attribute such an inference to Aristotle and to supply it in his argument from Γ 8. On this account, there is no reason to think that the argument is of an intrinsically dialectical nature and cannot be adequately represented as a non-dialectical proof of the non-truth, or even falsity, of the thesis in question. It is indeed difficult to see signs of a dialectical exchange between two parties (of the type of which Grice and Strawson are champions) in Γ8, 1012b13–18. One piece of evidence is Aristotles reference to the person, the utterer, as Grice prefers who explicitly conveys or asserts (ὁ λέγων) that T1 or that T2. This reference by the Grecian philosopher to the Griceian utterer or asserter of the thesis that everything is true would be irrelevant if Aristotles aim is to prove something about T1s or T2s propositional content, independently of the act by the utterer of uttering its expression and thereby explicitly conveying it. However, it is not clear that this reference is essential to Aristotles argument. One may even doubt whether the Grecian philosopher is being that Griceian, and actually referring to the asserter of T1 or T2. The *implicit* (or implicated) grammatical Subjects of Aristotles ὁ λέγων (1012b15) might be λόγος, instead of the utterer qua asserter. λόγος is surely the implicit grammatical Subjects of ὁ λέγων shortly after ( 1012b21–22. 8). The passage may be taken to be concerned with λόγοι ‒ this or that statement, this or that thesis  ‒ but not with its asserter.  In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle states that no thesis (A three-year old is an adult) can necessarily imply its own contradictory (A three-year old is not an adult) (2.4, 57b13–14). One may appeal to this statement in order to argue for Aristotles claim that a self-refutation argument should NOT be analyzed as involving an implicit application of consequentia mirabilis. Thus, one should deny that Aristotles self-refutation argument establishes a necessary implication from the self-refuting thesis to its contradictory. However, this does not explain what other kind of consequence relation Aristotle takes the self-refutation argument to establish between the self-refuting thesis and its contradictory, although dialectical necessity has been suggested. Aristotles argument suffices to establish that Everything is false is either false or liar-paradoxical. If a thesis is liar-paradoxical (and Grice loved, and overused the expression), the assumption of its falsity leads to contradiction as well as the assumption of its truth. But Everything is false is only liar-paradoxical in the unlikely, for Aristotle perhaps impossible, event that everything distinct from this thesis is false. So, given the additional premise that there is at least one true item distinct from the thesis Everything is false, Aristotle can safely infer that the thesis is false. As for Aristotles ὁ γὰρ λέγων τὸν ἀληθῆ λόγον ἀληθῆ ἀληθής,, or eliding the γὰρ,  ὁ  λέγων τὸν ἀληθῆ λόγον ἀληθῆ ἀληθής, (ho legon ton alethe logon alethe alethes) may be rendered as either: The statement which states that the true statement is true is true, or, more alla Grice, as He who says (or explicitly conveys, or indicates) that the true thesis is true says something true. It may be argued that it is quite baffling (and figurative or analogical or metaphoric) in this context, to take ἀληθής to be predicated  of the Griceian utterer, a person (true standing for truth teller, trustworthy), to take it to mean that he says something true, rather than his statement stating something true, or his statement being true. But cf. L and S: ἀληθής [α^], Dor. ἀλαθής, [α^], Dor. ἀλαθής, ές, f. λήθω, of persons, truthful, honest (not in Hom., v. infr.), ἀ. νόος Pi. O.2.92; κατήγορος A. Th. 439; κριτής Th. 3.56; οἶνος ἀ. `in vino veritas, Pl. Smp. 217e; ὁ μέσος ἀ. τις Arist. EN 1108a20. Admittedly, this or that non-Griceian passage in which it is λόγος, and not the utterer, which is the implied grammatical Subjects of ὁ λέγων can be found in Metaph. Γ7, 1012a24–25; Δ6, 1016a33; Int. 14, 23a28–29; De motu an. 10, 703a4; Eth. Nic. 2.6, 1107a6–7. 9. So the topic is controversial. Indeed such a non-Griceian exegesis of the passage is given by Alexander of Aphrodisias (in Metaph. 340. 26–29):9, when Alexander observes that the statement, i.e. not the utterer, that says that everything is false (ὁ δὲ πάντα ψευδῆ εἶναι λέγων λόγος) negates itself, not himself, because if everything is false, this very statement, which, rather than, by which the utterer, says that everything is false, would be false, and how can an utterer be FALSE? So that the statement which, rather than the utterer who, negates it, saying that not everything is false, would be true, and surely an utterer cannot be true. Does Alexander misrepresent Aristotles argument by omitting every Griceian reference to the asserter or utterer qua rational personal agent, of the thesis? If the answer is negative, even if the occurrence of ὁ λέγων at 1012b15 refers to the asserter, or utterer, qua rational personal agent, this is merely an accidental feature of Aristotles argument that cannot be regarded as an indication of its dialectical nature. None of this is to deny that some self-refutation argument may be of an intrinsically dialectical nature; it is only to deny that every one is This is in line with Burnyeats view that a dialectical self-refutation, even if qualified, as Aristotle does, as ancient, is a subspecies of self-refutation, but does not exhaust it. Granted, a dialectical approach may provide a useful interpretive framework for many an ancient self-refutation argument. A statement like If proof does not exist, proof exists ‒ that occurs in an anti-sceptical self-refutation argument reported by Sextus Empiricus  ‒ may receive an attractive dialectical re-interpretation. It may be argued that such a statement should not be understood at the level of what is explicated, but should be regarded as an elliptical reminder of a complex dialectical argument which can be described as follows. Cf. If thou claimest that proof doth not exist, thou must present a proof of what thou assertest, in order to be credible, but thus thou thyself admitest that proof existeth. A similar point can be made for Aristotles famous argument in the Protrepticus that one must philosophise. A number of sources state that this argument relies on the implicature, If one must not philosophize, one must philosophize. It may be argued that this implicature is an elliptical reminder of a dialectical argument such as the following. If thy position is that thou must not philosophise, thou must reflect on this choice and argue in its support, but by doing so thou art already choosing to do philosophy, thereby admitting that thou must philosophise. The claim that every instance of an ancient self-refutation arguments is of an intrinsically dialectical nature is thus questionable, to put it mildly. V also 340.19–26, and A. Madigan, tcomm., Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotles Met.  4, Ithaca, N.Y., Burnyeat, Protagoras and Self-Refutation in Later Greek Philosophy,. Grices implicature is that Quine should have learned Greek before refuting Aristotle. But then *I* dont speak Greek! Strawson refuted. Refs.: The obvious keyword is ‘analytic,’ in The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC. : For one, Grice does not follow Aristotle, but Philo. the conditional If Alexander exists, Alexander talks or If Alexander exists, he has such-and-such an age is not true—not even if he is in fact of such-and-such an age when the proposition is said. (in APr 175.34–176.6)⁴³ ⁴³ … δείκνυσιν ὅτι μὴ οἷόν τε δυνατῷ τι ἀδύνατον ἀκολουθεῖν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀνάγκη ἀδύνατον εἶναι ᾧ τὸ ἀδύνατον ἀκολουθεῖ, ἐπὶ πάσης ἀναγκαίας ἀκολουθίας. ἔστι δὲ ἀναγκαία ἀκολουθία οὐχ ἡ πρόσκαιρος, ἀλλὰ ἐν ᾗ ἀεὶ τὸ ἑπόμενον ἕπεσθαι ἔστι τῷ τὸ εἰλημμένον ὡς ἡγούμενον εἶναι. οὐ γὰρ ἀληθὲς συνημμένον τὸ εἰ ᾿Αλέξανδρος ἔστιν, ᾿Αλέξανδρος διαλέγεται, ἢ εἰ ᾿Αλέξανδρος ἔστι, τοσῶνδε ἐτῶν ἐστι, καὶ εἰ εἴη ὅτε λέγεται ἡ πρότασις τοσούτων ἐτῶν. vide Barnes. ... έχη δε και επιφοράν το 5 αντικείμενον τώ ήγουμένω, τότε ο τοιούτος γίνεται δεύτερος αναπόδεικτος, ώς το ,,ει ημέρα έστι, φώς έστιν ουχί δέ γε φώς έστιν ουκ άρα ...εί ημέρα εστι , φως έστιν ... eine unrichtige ( μοχθηρόν ) bezeichnet 142 ) , und Zwar war es besonders Philo ... οίον , , εί ημέρα εστι , φως έστιν , ή άρχεται από ψεύδους και λήγει επί ψεύδος ... όπερ ήν λήγον . bei der Obwaltende Conditional - Nexus gar nicht in Betracht ...Philo: If it is day, I am talking. One of Grice’s favorite paradoxes, that display the usefulness of the implicatum are the so-called ‘paradoxes of implication.’ Johnson, alas, uses ‘paradox’ in the singular. So there must be earlier accounts of this in the history of philosophy. Notably in the ancient commentators to Philo! (Greek “ei” and Roman “si”). Misleading but true – could do.” Note that Grice has an essay on the ‘paradoxes of entailment’. As Strawson notes, this is misleading. For Strawson these are not paradoxes. The things are INCORRECT. For Grice, the Philonian paradoxes are indeed paradoxical because each is a truth. Now, Strawson and Wiggins challenge this. For Grice, to utter “if p, q” implicates that the utterer is not in a position to utter anything stronger. He implicates that he has NON-TRUTH-FUNCTIONAL REASON or grounds to utter “if p, q.” For Strawson, THAT is precisely what the ‘consequentialist’ is holding. For Strawson, the utterer CONVENTIONALLY IMPLIES that the consequent or apodosis follows, in some way, from the antecedent or protasis. Not for Grice. For Grice, what the utterer explicitly conveys is that the conditions that obtain are those of the Philonian conditional. He implicitly conveys that there is n inferrability, and this is cancellable. If Strawson holds that it is a matter of a conventional implicatum, the issue of cancellation becomes crucial. For Grice, to add that “But I don’t want to covey that there is any inferrability between the protasis and the apodosis” is NOT a contradiction. The utterer or emissor is NOT self-contradicting. And he isn’t! The first to use the term ‘paracox’ here is a genius. Possibly Philo. It was W. E. Johnson who first used the expression 'paradox of implication', explaining that a paradox of this sort arises when a logician proceeds step by step, using accepted principles, until a formula is reached which conflicts with common sense [Johnson, 1921, 39].The paradox of implication assumes many forms,  some of which are not easily recognised as involving  mere varieties of the same fundamental principle. But     COMPOUND PROPOSITIONS 47   I believe that they can all be resolved by the consideration that we cannot ivithotd qjialification apply a com-  posite and (in particular) an implicative proposition to  the further process of inference. Such application is  possible only when the composite has been reached  irrespectively of any assertion of the truth or falsity of  its components. In other words, it is a necessary con-  dition for further inference that the components of a  composite should really have been entertained hypo-  thetically when asserting that composite.   § 9. The theory of compound propositions leads to  a special development when in the conjunctives the  components are taken — not, as hitherto, assertorically —  but hypothetically as in the composites. The conjunc-  tives will now be naturally expressed by such words as  possible or compatible, while the composite forms which  respectively contradict the conjunctives will be expressed  by such words as necessary or impossible. If we select  the negative form for these conjunctives, we should write  as contradictory pairs :   Conjunctives {possible) Composites {fiecessary)     a. p does not imply q   1, p is not implied by q   c. p is not co-disjunct to q   d. p is not co-alternate to q     a, p implies q   b, p is implied by q   c, p is co-disjunct to q   d, p is co-alternate to q     Or Otherwise, using the term 'possible' throughout,  the four conjunctives will assume the form that the several  conjunctions — pq^pq, pq ^-nd pq — are respectively /^i*-  sidle. Here the word possible is equivalent to being  merely hypothetically entertained, so that the several  conjunctives are now qualified in the same way as are  the simple components themselves. Similarly the four CHAPTER HI   corresponding composites may be expressed negatively  by using the term 'impossible,' and will assume the  form that the ^^;yunctions pq^ pq, pq and pq are re-  spectively impossible, or (which means the same) that  the ^zVjunctions/^, ^^, pq Rnd pq are necessary. Now  just as 'possible* here means merely 'hypothetically  entertained/ so 'impossible' and 'necessary' mean re-  spectively 'assertorically denied' and 'assertorically  affirmed/   The above scheme leads to the consideration of the  determinate relations that could subsist of p to q when  these eight propositions (conjunctives and composites)  are combined in everypossibleway without contradiction.  Prima facie there are i6 such combinations obtained by  selecting a or ay b or 3, c or c, d or J for one of the four  constituent terms. Out of these i6 combinations, how-  ever, some will involve a conjunction of supplementaries  (see tables on pp. 37, 38), which would entail the as-  sertorical affirmation or denial of one of the components  / or q, and consequently would not exhibit a relation of  p to q. The combinations that, on this ground, must be  disallowed are the following nine :   cihcd, abed, abed, abed] abed, bacd, cabd, dabc\ abed.   The combinations that remain to be admitted are  therefore the followino- seven :   abld, cdab\ abed, bald, cdab^ dcab\ abed.   In fact, under the imposed restriction, since a or b  cannot be conjoined with c or d, it follows that we must  always conjoin a with c and d\ b with e and d\ c with  a and b\ ^with a and b. This being understood, the     COMPOUND PROPOSITIONS 49   seven permissible combinations that remain are properly  to be expressed in the more simple forms:   ab, cd\ ab, ba, cd, dc\ and abed   These will be represented (but re-arranged for purposes  of symmetry) in the following table giving all the  possible relations of any proposition/ to any proposition  q. The technical names which 1 propose to adopt for  the several relations are printed in the second column  of the table.   Table of possible relations of propositio7i p to proposition q.     1. {a,b)\ p implies and is implied by q   2. (a, b) : p implies but is not implied by q,   3. {b^d): p is implied by but does not imply q,   4. {djb^'c^d): p is neither implicans nor impli   cate nor co-disjunct nor co-alternate to g.   5. {dy c)\ /is co-alternate but not co-disjunct to $r,   6. {Cyd): /isco-disjunctbutnotco-alternateto$^.   7. {Cjd)'. p is co-disjunct and co-alternate to q,     p is co-implicant to q  p is super-implicant to q.  p is sub-implicant to q.   p is independent of q     p is sub-opponent to q  p is super-opponent to q,  p is co-opponent to q,   Here the symmetry indicated by the prefixes, co-,  super-, sub-, is brought out by reading downwards and  upwards to the middle line representing independence.  In this order the propositional forms range from the  supreme degree of consistency to the supreme degree  of opponency, as regards the relation of/ to ^. In tradi-  tional logic the seven forms of relation are known respec-  tively by the names equipollent, superaltern, subaltern,  independent, sub-contrary, contrary, contradictory. This  latter terminology, however, is properly used to express  the formal relations of implication and opposition,  whereas the terminology which I have adopted will apply  indifferently both for formal and for material relations. One of Grice’s claims to fame is his paradox, under ‘Yog and Zog.’ Another paradox that Grice examines at length is paradox by Moore. For Grice, unlike Nowell-Smith, an utterer who, by uttering The cat is on the mat explicitly conveys that the cat is on the mat does not thereby implicitly convey that he believes that the cat is on the mat. He, more crucially expresses that he believes that the cat is on the mat ‒ and this is not cancellable. He occasionally refers to Moores paradox in the buletic mode, Close the door even if thats not my desire. An imperative still expresses someones desire. The sergeant who orders his soldiers to muster at dawn because he is following the lieutenants order. Grices first encounter with paradox remains his studying Malcolms misleading exegesis of Moore. Refs.: The main sources given under ‘heterologicality,’ above. ‘Paradox’ is a good keyword in The H. P. Grice Papers, since he used ‘paradox’ to describe his puzzle about ‘if,’ but also Malcolm on Moore on the philosopher’s paradox, and paradoxes of material implication and paradoxes of entailment. Grice’s point is that a paradox is not something false. For Strawson it is. “The so-called paradoxes of ‘entailment’ and ‘material implication’ are a misnomer. They statements are not paradoxical, they are false.” Not for Grice! Cf. aporia. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

paradigm, as used by Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2, a set of scientific and metaphysical beliefs that make up a theoretical framework within which scientific theories can be tested, evaluated, and if necessary revised. Kuhn’s principal thesis, in which the notion of a paradigm plays a central role, is structured around an argument against the logical empiricist view of scientific theory change. Empiricists viewed theory change as an ongoing smooth and cumulative process in which empirical facts, discovered through observation or experimentation, forced revisions in our theories and thus added to our ever-increasing knowledge of the world. It was claimed that, combined with this process of revision, there existed a process of intertheoretic reduction that enabled us to understand the macro in terms of the micro, and that ultimately aimed at a unity of science. Kuhn maintains that this view is incompatible with what actually happens in case after case in the history of science. Scientific change occurs by “revolutions” in which an older paradigm is overthrown and is replaced by a framework incompatible or even incommensurate with it. Thus the alleged empirical “facts,” which were adduced to support the older theory, become irrelevant to the new; the questions asked and answered in the new framework cut across those of the old; indeed the vocabularies of the two frameworks make up different languages, not easily intertranslatable. These episodes of revolution are separated by long periods of “normal science,” during which the theories of a given paradigm are honed, refined, and elaborated. These periods are sometimes referred to as periods of “puzzle solving,” because the changes are to be understood more as fiddling with the details of the theories to “save the phenomena” than as steps taking us closer to the truth. A number of philosophers have complained that Kuhn’s conception of a paradigm is too imprecise to do the work he intended for it. In fact, Kuhn, fifteen years later, admitted that at least two distinct ideas were exploited by the term: i the “shared elements [that] account for the relatively unproblematic character of professional communication and for the relative unanimity of professional judgment,” and ii “concrete problem solutions, accepted by the group [of scientists] as, in a quite usual sense, paradigmatic” Kuhn, “Second Thoughts on Paradigms,” 7. Kuhn offers the terms ‘disciplinary matrix’ and ‘exemplar’, respectively, for these two ideas. 

paradigm case argument, an argument designed to yield an affirmative answer to the following general type of skeptically motivated question: Are A’s really B? E.g., Do material objects really exist? Are any of our actions really free? Does induction really provide reasonable grounds for one’s beliefs? The structure of the argument is simple: in situations that are “typical,” “exemplary,” or “paradigmatic,” standards for which are supplied by common sense, or ordinary language, part of what it is to be B essentially involves A. Hence it is absurd to doubt if A’s are ever B, or to doubt if in general A’s are B. More commonly, the argument is encountered in the linguistic mode: part of what it means for something to be B is that, in paradigm cases, it be an A. Hence the question whether A’s are ever B is meaningless. An example may be found in the application of the argument to the problem of induction. See Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory, 2. When one believes a generalization of the form ‘All F’s are G’ on the basis of good inductive evidence, i.e., evidence constituted by innumerable and varied instances of F all of which are G, one would thereby have good reasons for holding this belief. The argument for this claim is based on the content of the concepts of reasonableness and of strength of evidence. Thus according to Strawson, the following two propositions are analytic: 1 It is reasonable to have a degree of belief in a proposition that is proportional to the strength of the evidence in its favor. 2 The evidence for a generalization is strong in proportion as the number of instances, and the variety of circumstances in which they have been found, is great. Hence, Strawson concludes, “to ask whether it is reasonable to place reliance on inductive procedures is like asking whether it is reasonable to proportion the degree of one’s convictions to the strength of the evidence. Doing this is what ‘being reasonable’ means in such a context” p. 257. In such arguments the role played by the appeal to paradigm cases is crucial. In Strawson’s version, paradigm cases are constituted by “innumerable and varied instances.” Without such an appeal the argument would fail completely, for it is clear that not all uses of induction are reasonable. Even when this appeal is made clear though, the argument remains questionable, for it fails to confront adequately the force of the word ‘really’ in the skeptical challenges. paradigm case argument paradigm case argument

paradox, a seemingly sound piece of reasoning based on seemingly true assumptions that leads to a contradiction or other obviously false conclusion. A paradox reveals that either the principles of reasoning or the assumptions on which it is based are faulty. It is said to be solved when the mistaken principles or assumptions are clearly identified and rejected. The philosophical interest in paradoxes arises from the fact that they sometimes reveal fundamentally mistaken assumptions or erroneous reasoning techniques. Two groups of paradoxes have received a great deal of attention in modern philosophy. Known as the semantic paradoxes and the logical or settheoretic paradoxes, they reveal serious difficulties in our intuitive understanding of the basic notions of semantics and set theory. Other well-known paradoxes include the barber paradox and the prediction or hangman or unexpected examination paradox. The barber paradox is mainly useful as an example of a paradox that is easily resolved. Suppose we are told that there is an Oxford barber who shaves all and only the Oxford men who do not shave themselves. Using this description, we can apparently derive the contradiction that this barber both shaves and does not shave himself. If he does not shave himself, then according to the description he must be one of the people he shaves; if he does shave himself, then according to the description he is one of the people he does not shave. This paradox can be resolved in two ways. First, the original claim that such a barber exists can simply be rejected: perhaps no one satisfies the alleged description. Second, the described barber may exist, but not fall into the class of Oxford men: a woman barber, e.g., could shave all and only the Oxford men who do not shave themselves. The prediction paradox takes a variety of forms. Suppose a teacher tells her students on Friday that the following week she will give a single quiz. But it will be a surprise: the students will not know the evening before that the quiz will take place the following day. They reason that she cannot give such a quiz. After all, she cannot wait until Friday to give it, since then they would know Thursday evening. That leaves Monday through Thursday as the only possible days for it. But then Thursday can be ruled out for the same reason: they would know on Wednesday evening. Wednesday, Tuesday, and Monday can be ruled out by similar reasoning. Convinced by this seemingly correct reasoning, the students do not study for the quiz. On Wednesday morning, they are taken by surprise when the teacher distributes it. It has been pointed out that the students’ reasoning has this peculiar feature: in order to rule out any of the days, they must assume that the quiz will be given and that it will be a surprise. But their alleged conclusion is that it cannot be given or else will not be a surprise, undermining that very assumption. Kaplan and Montague have argued in “A Paradox Regained,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 0 that at the core of this puzzle is what they call the knower paradox  a paradox that arises when intuitively plausible principles about knowledge and its relation to logical consequence are used in conjunction with knowledge claims whose content is, or entails, a denial of those very claims. 

paradoxes of omnipotence, a series of paradoxes in philosophical theology that maintain that God could not be omnipotent because the concept is inconsistent, alleged to result from the intuitive idea that if God is omnipotent, then God must be able to do anything. 1 Can God perform logically contradictory tasks? If God can, then God should be able to make himself simultaneously omnipotent and not omnipotent, which is absurd. If God cannot, then it appears that there is something God cannot do. Many philosophers have sought to avoid this consequence by claiming that the notion of performing a logically contradictory task is empty, and that question 1 specifies no task that God can perform or fail to perform. 2 Can God cease to be omnipotent? If God can and were to do so, then at any time thereafter, God would no longer be completely sovereign over all things. If God cannot, then God cannot do something that others can do, namely, impose limitations on one’s own powers. A popular response to question 2 is to say that omnipotence is an essential attribute of a necessarily existing being. According to this response, although God cannot cease to be omnipotent any more than God can cease to exist, these features are not liabilities but rather the lack of liabilities in God. 3 Can God create another being who is omnipotent? Is it logically possible for two beings to be omnipotent? It might seem that there could be, if they never disagreed in fact with each other. If, however, omnipotence requires control over all possible but counterfactual situations, there could be two omnipotent beings only if it were impossible for them to disagree. 4 Can God create a stone too heavy for God to move? If God can, then there is something that God cannot do  move such a stone  and if God cannot, then there is something God cannot do  create such a stone. One reply is to maintain that ‘God cannot create a stone too heavy for God to move’ is a harmless consequence of ‘God can create stones of any weight and God can move stones of any weight.’ 

paradox of analysis, an argument that it is impossible for an analysis of a meaning to be informative for one who already understands the meaning. Consider: ‘An F is a G’ e.g., ‘A circle is a line all points on which are equidistant from some one point’ gives a correct analysis of the meaning of ‘F’ only if ‘G’ means the same as ‘F’; but then anyone who already understands both meanings must already know what the sentence says. Indeed, that will be the same as what the trivial ‘An F is an F’ says, since replacing one expression by another with the same meaning should preserve what the sentence says. The conclusion that ‘An F is a G’ cannot be informative for one who already understands all its terms is paradoxical only for cases where ‘G’ is not only synonymous with but more complex than ‘F’, in such a way as to give an analysis of ‘F’. ‘A first cousin is an offspring of a parent’s sibling’ gives an analysis, but ‘A dad is a father’ does not and in fact could not be informative for one who already knows the meaning of all its words. The paradox appears to fail to distinguish between different sorts of knowledge. Encountering for the first time and understanding a correct analysis of a meaning one already grasps brings one from merely tacit to explicit knowledge of its truth. One sees that it does capture the meaning and thereby sees a way of articulating the meaning one had not thought of before. 

paradox of omniscience, an objection to the possibility of omniscience, developed by Patrick Grim, that appeals to an application of Cantor’s power set theorem. Omniscience requires knowing all truths; according to Grim, that means knowing every truth in the set of all truths. But there is no set of all truths. Suppose that there were a set T of all truths. Consider all the subsets of T, that is, all members of the power set 3T. Take some truth T1. For each member of 3T either T1 is a member of that set or T1 is not a member of that set. There will thus correspond to each member of 3T a further truth specifying whether T1 is or is not a member of that set. Therefore there are at least as many truths as there are members of 3T. By the power set theorem, there are more members of 3T than there are of T. So T is not the set of all truths. By a parallel argument, no other set is, either. So there is no set of all truths, after all, and therefore no one who knows every member of that set. The objection may be countered by denying that the claim ‘for every proposition p, if p is true God knows that p’ requires that there be a set of all true propositions. 

Paraphilosophy: “I phoned Gellner: you chould entitle your essay, an attack on ordinary language PARA-philosophy, since that is what Austin asks us to do.”

parapsychology, the study of certain anomalous phenomena and ostensible causal connections neither recognized nor clearly rejected by traditional science. Parapsychology’s principal areas of investigation are extrasensory perception ESP, psychokinesis PK, and cases suggesting the survival of mental functioning following bodily death. The study of ESP has traditionally focused on two sorts of ostensible phenomena, telepathy the apparent anomalous influence of one person’s mental states on those of another, commonly identified with apparent communication between two minds by extrasensory means and clairvoyance the apparent anomalous influence of a physical state of affairs on a person’s mental states, commonly identified with the supposed ability to perceive or know of objects or events not present to the senses. The forms of ESP may be viewed either as types of cognition e.g., the anomalous knowledge of another person’s mental states or as merely a form of anomalous causal influence e.g., a distant burning house causing one to have  possibly incongruous  thoughts about fire. The study of PK covers the apparent ability to produce various physical effects independently of familiar or recognized intermediate sorts of causal links. These effects include the ostensible movement of remote objects, materializations the apparently instantaneous production of matter, apports the apparently instantaneous relocation of an object, and in laboratory experiments statistically significant non-random behavior of normally random microscopic processes such as radioactive decay. Survival research focuses on cases of ostensible reincarnation and mental mediumship i.e., “channeling” of information from an apparently deceased communicator. Cases of ostensible precognition may be viewed as types of telepathy and clairvoyance, and suggest the causal influence of some state of affairs on an earlier event an agent’s ostensible precognitive experience. However, those opposed to backward causation may interpret ostensible precognition either as a form of unconscious inference based on contemporaneous information acquired by ESP, or else as a form of PK possibly in conjunction with telepathic influence by which the precognizer brings about the events apparently precognized. The data of parapsychology raise two particularly deep issues. The evidence suggesting survival poses a direct challenge to materialist theories of the mental. And the evidence for ESP and PK suggests the viability of a “magical” worldview associated usually with so-called primitive societies, according to which we have direct and intimate access to and influence on the thoughts and bodily states of others. 

Pareto efficiency, also called Pareto optimality, a state of affairs in which no one can be made better off without making someone worse off. The  economist Vilfredo Pareto referred to optimality rather than efficiency, but usage has drifted toward the less normative term. Pareto supposed that utilitarian addition of welfare across individuals is meaningless. He concluded that the only useful aggregate measures of welfare must be ordinal. One state of affairs is Pareto-superior to another if we cannot move to the second state without making someone worse off. Although the Pareto criteria are generally thought to be positive rather than normative, they are often used as normative principles for justifying particular changes or refusals to make changes. For example, some economists and philosophers take the Pareto criteria as moral constraints and therefore oppose certain government policies. In market and voluntary exchange contexts, it makes sense to suppose every exchange will be Pareto-improving, at least for the direct parties to the exchange. If, however, we fail to account for external effects of our exchange on other people, it may not be Pareto-improving. Moreover, we may fail to provide collective benefits that require the cooperation or coordination of many individuals’ efforts. Hence, even in markets, we cannot expect to achieve Pareto efficiency. We might therefore suppose we should invite government intervention to help us. But in typical social contexts, it is often hard to believe that significant policy changes can be Paretoimproving: there are sure to be losers from any change. 

Parfit, Derek – cites H. P. Grice on “Personal identity,” philosopher internationally known for his major contributions to the metaphysics of persons, moral theory, and practical reasoning. Parfit first rose to prominence by challenging the prevalent view that personal identity is a “deep fact” that must be all or nothing and that matters greatly in rational and moral deliberations. Exploring puzzle cases involving fission and fusion, Parfit propounded a reductionist account of personal identity, arguing that what matters in survival are physical and psychological continuities. These are a matter of degree, and sometimes there may be no answer as to whether some future person would be me. Parfit’s magnum opus, Reasons and Persons 4, is a strikingly original book brimming with startling conclusions that have significantly reshaped the philosophical agenda. Part One treats different theories of morality, rationality, and the good; blameless wrongdoing; moral immorality; rational irrationality; imperceptible harms and benefits; harmless torturers; and the self-defeatingness of certain theories. Part Two introduces a critical present-aim theory of individual rationality, and attacks the standard selfinterest theory. It also discusses the rationality of different attitudes to time, such as caring more about the future than the past, and more about the near than the remote. Addressing the age-old conflict between self-interest and morality, Parfit illustrates that contrary to what the self-interest theory demands, it can be rational to care about certain other aims as much as, or more than, about our own future well-being. In addition, Parfit notes that the self-interest theory is a hybrid position, neutral with respect to time but partial with respect to persons. Thus, it can be challenged from one direction by morality, which is neutral with respect to both persons and time, and from the other by a present-aim theory, which is partial with respect to both persons and time. Part Three refines Parfit’s views regarding personal identity and further criticizes the self-interest theory: personal identity is not what matters, hence reasons to be specially concerned about our future are not provided by the fact that it will be our future. Part Four presents puzzles regarding future generations and argues that the moral principles we need when considering future people must take an impersonal form. Parfit’s arguments deeply challenge our understanding of moral ideals and, some believe, the possibility of comparing outcomes. Parfit has three forthcoming manuscripts, tentatively titled Rediscovering Reasons, The Metaphysics of the Self, and On What Matters. His current focus is the normativity of reasons. A reductionist about persons, he is a non-reductionist about reasons. He believes in irreducibily normative beliefs that are in a strong sense true. A realist about reasons for acting and caring, he challenges the views of naturalists, noncognitivists, and constructivists. Parfit contends that internalists conflate normativity with motivating force, that contrary to the prevalent view that all reasons are provided by desires, no reasons are, and that Kant poses a greater threat to rationalism than Hume. Parfit is Senior Research Fellow of All Souls , Oxford, and a regular visiting professor at both Harvard and New York . Legendary for monograph-length criticisms of book manuscripts, he is editor of the Oxford Ethics Series, whose goal is to make definite moral progress, a goal Parfit himself is widely believed to have attained. 

Parmenides, Grecian philosopher, the most influential of the preSocratics, active in Elea Roman and modern Velia, an Ionian Grecian colony in southern Italy. He was the first Grecian thinker who can properly be called an ontologist or metaphysician. Plato refers to him as “venerable and awesome,” as “having magnificent depth” Theaetetus 183e 184a, and presents him in the dialogue Parmenides as a searching critic  in a fictional and dialectical transposition  of Plato’s own theory of Forms. Nearly 150 lines of a didactic poem by Parmenides have been preserved, assembled into about twenty fragments. The first part, “Truth,” provides the earliest specimen in Grecian intellectual history of a sustained deductive argument. Drawing on intuitions concerning thinking, knowing, and language, Parmenides argues that “the real” or “what-is” or “being” to eon must be ungenerable and imperishable, indivisible, and unchanging. According to a Plato-inspired tradition, Parmenides held that “all is one.” But the phrase does not occur in the fragments; Parmenides does not even speak of “the One”; and it is possible that either a holistic One or a plurality of absolute monads might conform to Parmenides’ deduction. Nonetheless, it is difficult to resist the impression that the argument converges on a unique entity, which may indifferParfit, Derek Parmenides 646    646 ently be referred to as Being, or the All, or the One. Parmenides embraces fully the paradoxical consequence that the world of ordinary experience fails to qualify as “what-is.” Nonetheless, in “Opinions,” the second part of the poem, he expounds a dualist cosmology. It is unclear whether this is intended as candid phenomenology  a doctrine of appearances  or as an ironic foil to “Truth.” It is noteworthy that Parmenides was probably a physician by profession. Ancient reports to this effect are borne out by fragments from “Opinions” with embryological themes, as well as by archaeological findings at Velia that link the memory of Parmenides with Romanperiod remains of a medical school at that site. Parmenides’ own attitude notwithstanding, “Opinions” recorded four major scientific breakthroughs, some of which, doubtless, were Parmenides’ own discoveries: that the earth is a sphere; that the two tropics and the Arctic and Antarctic circles divide the earth into five zones; that the moon gets its light from the sun; and that the morning star and the evening star are the same planet. The term Eleatic School is misleading when it is used to suggest a common doctrine supposedly held by Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Melissus of Samos, and anticipating Parmenides Xenophanes of Colophon. The fact is, many philosophical groups and movements, from the middle of the fifth century onward, were influenced, in different ways, by Parmenides, including the “pluralists,” Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus. Parmenides’ deductions, transformed by Zeno into a repertoire of full-blown paradoxes, provided the model both for the eristic of the Sophists and for Socrates’ elenchus. Moreover, the Parmenidean criteria for “whatis” lie unmistakably in the background not only of Plato’s theory of Forms but also of salient features of Aristotle’s system, notably, the priority of actuality over potentiality, the unmoved mover, and the man-begets-man principle. Indeed, all philosophical and scientific systems that posit principles of conservation of substance, of matter, of matter-energy are inalienably the heirs to Parmenides’ deduction.

parsing, the process of determining the syntactic structure of a sentence according to the rules of a given grammar. This is to be distinguished from the generally simpler task of recognition, which is merely the determination of whether or not a given string is well-formed grammatical. In general, many different parsing strategies can be employed for grammars of a particular type, and a great deal of attention has been given to the relative efficiencies of these techniques. The most thoroughly studied cases center on the contextfree phrase structure grammars, which assign syntactic structures in the form of singly-rooted trees with a left-to-right ordering of “sister” nodes. Parsing procedures can then be broadly classified according to the sequence of steps by which the parse tree is constructed: top-down versus bottom-up; depth-first versus breadthfirst; etc. In addition, there are various strategies for exploring alternatives agendas, backtracking, parallel processing and there are devices such as “charts” that eliminate needless repetitions of previous steps. Efficient parsing is of course important when language, whether natural or artificial e.g., a programming language, is being processed by computer. Human beings also parse rapidly and with apparently little effort when they comprehend sentences of a natural language. Although little is known about the details of this process, psycholinguists hope that study of mechanical parsing techniques might provide insights.

partition, division of a set into mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subsets. Derivatively, ‘partition’ can mean any set P whose members are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subsets of set S. Each subset of a partition P is called a partition class of S with respect to P. Partitions are intimately associated with equivalence relations, i.e. with relations that are transitive, symmetric, and reflexive. Given an equivalence relation R defined on a set S, R induces a partition P of S in the following natural way: members s1 and s2 belong to the same partition class of P if and only if s1 has the relation R to s2. Conversely, given a partition P of a set S, P induces an equivalence relation R defined on S in the following natural way: members s1 and s2 are such that s1 has the relation R to s2 if and only if s1 and s2 belong to the same partition class of P. For obvious reasons, then, partition classes are also known as equivalence classes. 

Pascal, B. – cited by H. P. Grice, philosopher known for his brilliance as a mathematician, physicist, inventor, theologian, polemicist, and  prose stylist. Born at Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne, he was educated by his father, Étienne, and first gained note for his contribution to mathematics when at sixteen he produced, under the influence of Desargues, a work on the projective geometry of the cone. This was published in 1640 under the title Essai pour les coniques and includes what has since become known as Pascal’s theorem. Pascal’s other mathematical accomplishments include the original development of probability theory, worked out in correspondence with Fermat, and a method of infinitesimal analysis to which Leibniz gave credit for inspiring his own development of the calculus. Pascal’s early scientific fame rests also on his work in physics, which includes a treatise on hydrostatics Traités de l’équilibre des liqueurs et de la pesanteur de la masse de l’air and his experiments with the barometer, which attempted to establish the possibility of a vacuum and the weight of air as the cause of the mercury’s suspension. Pascal’s fame as a stylist rests primarily on his Lettres provinciales 165657, which were an anonymous contribution to a dispute between the Jansenists, headed by Arnauld, and the Jesuits. Jansenism was a Catholic religious movement that emphasized an Augustinian position on questions of grace and free will. Pascal, who was not himself a Jansenist, wrote a series of scathing satirical letters ridiculing both Jesuit casuistry and the persecution of the Jansenists for their purported adherence to five propositions in Jansen’s Augustinus. Pascal’s philosophical contributions are found throughout his work, but primarily in his Pensées 1670, an intended apology for Christianity left incomplete and fragmentary at his death. The influence of the Pensées on religious thought and later existentialism has been profound because of their extraordinary insight, passion, and depth. At the time of Pascal’s death some of the fragments were sewn together in clusters; many others were left unorganized, but recent scholarship has recovered much of the original plan of organization. The Pensées raise skeptical arguments that had become part of philosophical parlance since Montaigne. While these arguments were originally raised in order to deny the possibility of knowledge, Pascal, like Descartes in the Meditations, tries to utilize them toward a positive end. He argues that what skepticism shows us is not that knowledge is impossible, but that there is a certain paradox about human nature: we possess knowledge yet recognize that this knowledge cannot be rationally justified and that rational arguments can even be directed against it fragments 109, 131, and 110. This peculiarity can be explained only through the Christian doctrine of the fall e.g., fragment 117. Pascal extends his skeptical considerations by undermining the possibility of demonstrative proof of God’s existence. Such knowledge is impossible on philosophical grounds because such a proof could be successful only if an absurdity followed from denying God’s existence, and nature furnishes us with no knowledge incompatible with unbelief fragments 429 and 781. Furthermore, demonstrative proof of God’s existence is incompatible with the epistemological claims of Christianity, which make God’s personal agency essential to religious knowledge fragments 460, 449. Pascal’s use of skepticism and his refusal to admit proofs of God’s existence have led some commentators, like Richard Popkin “Fideism,” 7 and Terence Penelhum “Skepticism and Fideism,” 3 to interpret Pascal as a fideist, i.e., one who denies that religious belief can be based on anything other than pragmatic reasons. But such an interpretation disregards Pascal’s attempts to show that Christian belief is rational because of the explanatory power of its doctrines, particularly its doctrine of the fall e.g., fragments 131, 137, 149, 431, 449, and 482. These purported demonstrations of the explanatory superiority of Christianity prepare Parva naturalia Pascal, Blaise 648    648 the way for Pascal’s famous “wager” fragment 418. The wager is among the fragments that Pascal had not classified at the time of his death, but textual evidence shows that it would have been included in Section 12, entitled “Commencement,” after the demonstrations of the superior explanatory power of Christianity. The wager is a direct application of the principles developed in Pascal’s earlier work on probability, where he discovered a calculus that could be used to determine the most rational action when faced with uncertainty about future events, or what is now known as decision theory. In this case the uncertainty is the truth of Christianity and its claims about afterlife; and the actions under consideration are whether to believe or not. The choice of the most rational action depends on what would now be called its “expected value.” The expected value of an action is determined by 1 assigning a value, s, to each possible outcome of the action, 2 subtracting the cost of the action, c, from this value, and 3 multiplying the difference by the probability of the respective outcomes and adding these products together. Pascal invites the reader to consider Christian faith and unbelief as if they were acts of wagering on the truth of Christianity. If one believes, then there are two possible outcomes  either God exists or not. If God does exist, the stake to be gained is infinite life. If God does not exist, there are no winnings. Because the potential winnings are infinite, religious belief is more rational than unbelief because of its greater expected value. The wager has been subjected to numerous criticisms. William James argued that it is indecisive, because it would apply with equal validity to any religion that offers a promise of infinite rewards The Will to Believe, 7. But this ignores Pascal’s careful attempt to show that only Christianity has adequate explanatory power, so that the choice is intended to be between Christianity and unbelief. A stronger objection to the wager arises from contemporary work in decision theory that prohibits the introduction of infinite values because they have the counterintuitive result of making even the slightest risk irrational. But while these objections are valid, they do not refute Pascal’s strategy in the Pensées, in which the proofs of Christianity’s explanatory power and the wager have only the preliminary role of inducing the reader to seek the religious certainty that comes only from a saving religious experience which he calls “inspiration” fragments 110, 381, 382, 588, 808. 

paternalism, interference with the liberty or autonomy of another person, with justifications referring to the promotion of the person’s good or the prevention of harm to the person. More precisely, P acts paternalistically toward Q if and only if a P acts with the intent of averting some harm or promoting some benefit for Q; b P acts contrary to or is indifferent to the current preferences, desires or values of Q; and c P’s act is a limitation on Q’s autonomy or liberty. The presence of both autonomy and liberty in clause c is to allow for the fact that lying to someone is not clearly an interference with liberty. Notice that one can act paternalistically by telling people the truth as when a doctor insists that a patient know the exact nature of her illness, contrary to her wishes. Note also that the definition does not settle any questions about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of paternalistic interventions. Typical examples of paternalistic actions are 1 laws requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets; 2 court orders allowing physicians to transfuse Jehovah’s Witnesses against their wishes; 3 deception of a patient by physicians to avoid upsetting the patient; 4 civil commitment of persons judged dangerous to themselves; and 5 laws forbidding swimming while lifeguards are not on duty. Soft weak paternalism is the view that paternalism is justified only when a person is acting non-voluntarily or one needs time to determine whether the person is acting voluntarily or not. Hard strong paternalism is the view that paternalism is sometimes justified even when the person being interfered with is acting voluntarily. The analysis of the term is relative to some set of problems. If one were interested in the organizational behavior of large corporations, one might adopt a different definition than if one were concerned with limits on the state’s right to exercise coercion. The typical normative problems about paternalistic actions are whether, and to what extent, the welfare of individuals may outweigh the need to respect their desire to lead their own lives and make their own decisions even when mistaken. J. S. Mill is the best example of a virtually absolute antipaternalism, at least with respect to the right of the state to act paternalistically. He argued that unless we have reason to believe that a person is not acting voluntarily, as in the case of a man walking across a bridge that, unknown to him, is about to collapse, we ought to allow adults the freedom to act even if their acts are harmful to themselves. 

patristic authors, also called church fathers, a group of early Christian authors originally so named because they were considered the “fathers” patres of the orthodox Christian churches. The term is now used more broadly to designate the Christian writers, orthodox or heterodox, who were active in the first six centuries or so of the Christian era. The chronological division is quite flexible, and it is regularly moved several centuries later for particular purposes. Moreover, the study of these writers has traditionally been divided by languages, of which the principal ones are Grecian, Latin, and Syriac. The often sharp divisions among patristic scholarships in the different languages are partly a reflection of the different histories of the regional churches, partly a reflection of the sociology of modern scholarship. Grecians. The patristic period in Grecian is usually taken as extending from the first writers after the New Testament to such figures as Maximus the Confessor 579/580662 or John of Damascus c.650c.750. The period is traditionally divided around the Council of Nicea 325. PreNicean Grecian authors of importance to the history of philosophy include Irenaeus 130/140 after ?, Clement of Alexandria c.150after 215, and Origen c.180c.254. Important Nicean and post-Nicean authors include Athanasius c.295373; the Cappadocians, i.e., Gregory of Nazianzus c.33090, Basil of Cesarea c.33079, and his brother, Gregory of Nyssa 335/340c.394; and John Chrysostom c.350 407. Philosophical topics and practices are constantly engaged by these Grecian authors. Justin Martyr second century, e.g., describes his conversion to Christianity quite explicitly as a transit through lower forms of philosophy into the true philosophy. Clement of Alexandria, again, uses the philosophic genre of the protreptic and a host of ancient texts to persuade his pagan readers that they ought to come to Christianity as to the true wisdom. Origen devotes his Against Celsus to the detailed rebuttal of one pagan philosopher’s attack on Christianity. More importantly, if more subtly, the major works of the Cappadocians appropriate and transform the teachings of any number of philosophic authors  Plato and the Neoplatonists in first place, but also Aristotle, the Stoics, and Galen. Latins. The Latin churches came to count four post-Nicean authors as its chief teachers: Ambrose 337/33997, Jerome c.347419, Augustine 354430, and Gregory the Great c.540604. Other Latin authors of philosophical interest include Tertullian fl. c.c.220, Lactantius c.260c.330, Marius Victorinus 280/285before 386, and Hilary of Poitiers fl. 35664. The Latin patristic period is typically counted from the second century to the fifth or sixth, i.e., roughly from Tertullian to Boethius. The Latin authors share with their Grecian contemporaries a range of relations to the pagan philosophic schools, both as rival institutions and as sources of useful teaching. Tertullian’s Against the Nations and Apology, for example, take up pagan accusations against Christianity and then counterattack a number of pagan beliefs, including philosophical ones. By contrast, the writings of Marius Victorinus, Ambrose, and Augustine enact transformations of philosophic teachings, especially from the Neoplatonists. Because philosophical erudition was generally not as great among the Latins as among the Grecians, they were both more eager to accept philosophical doctrines and freer in improvising variations on them. 

Paul of Venice c.13681429,  philosopher and theologian. A Hermit of Saint Augustine O.E.S.A., he spent three years as a student patriarchalism Paul of Venice 650    650 in Oxford 139093 and taught at the  of Padua, where he became a doctor of arts and theology in 1408. He also held appointments at the universities of Parma, Siena, and Bologna. He was active in the administration of his order, holding various high offices. Paul of Venice wrote commentaries on several logical, ethical, and physical works of Aristotle, but his name is connected especially with an extremely popular textbook, Logica parva over 150 manuscripts survive, and more than forty printed editions of it were made, and with a huge Logica magna. These Oxford-influenced works contributed to the favorable climate enjoyed by the English logic in northern  universities from the late fourteenth century through the fifteenth century. I.Bo. Peano, Giuseppe.

Peano postulates, also called Peano axioms, a list of assumptions from which the integers can be defined from some initial integer, equality, and successorship, and usually seen as defining progressions. The Peano postulates for arithmetic were produced by G. Peano in 9. He took the set N of integers with a first term 1 and an equality relation between them, and assumed these nine axioms: 1 belongs to N; N has more than one member; equality is reflexive, symmetric, and associative, and closed over N; the successor of any integer in N also belongs to N, and is unique; and a principle of mathematical induction applying across the members of N, in that if 1 belongs to some subset M of N and so does the successor of any of its members, then in fact M % N. In some ways Peano’s formulation was not clear. He had no explicit rules of inference, nor any guarantee of the legitimacy of inductive definitions which Dedekind established shortly before him. Further, the four properties attached to equality were seen to belong to the underlying “logic” rather than to arithmetic itself; they are now detached. It was realized by Peano himself that the postulates specified progressions rather than integers e.g., 1, ½, ¼, 1 /8, . . . , would satisfy them, with suitable interpretations of the properties. But his work was significant in the axiomatization of arithmetic; still deeper foundations would lead with Russell and others to a major role for general set theory in the foundations of mathematics. In addition, with O. Veblen, T. Skolem, and others, this insight led in the early twentieth century to “non-standard” models of the postulates being developed in set theory and mathematical analysis; one could go beyond the ‘. . .’ in the sequence above and admit “further” objects, to produce valuable alternative models of the postulates. These procedures were of great significance also to model theory, in highlighting the property of the non-categoricity of an axiom system. A notable case was the “non-standard analysis” of A. Robinson, where infinitesimals were defined as arithmetical inverses of transfinite numbers without incurring the usual perils of rigor associated with them.