zabarella: Grice was
often called the English Zabarella, after philosopher Jacopo Zabarella, of
Padova. Zabarella produces extensive commentaries on Grice’s favourite tract by
Aristotle, “De Anima,” and Physica and also discussed some Aristotelian
interpreters. However, Zabarella’s most original contribution is his work in
semantics, “Opera logica.” Zabarella regards semantics as a preliminary study
that provides the tools necessary for philosophical analysis. Two such tools
are what Zabarella calls “order” (cf. Grice, ‘be orderly’). Another tool is
what Zabarella calls “ method.” Order teaches us how to organize the content of
a discipline to apprehend it more easily. Method teaches us how to draw a
syllogistic inference. Zabarella reduces the varieties of orders and methods
classified by other interpreters to compositive order, and resolutive order,
and composite method and and resolutive method. The compositive order from a
principle to this or that corollary applies to this or that speculative,
alethic or theoretical discipline. The ‘resolutive’ order, from a desired end
to the means appropriate to its achievement applies to this or that practical
discipline, such as ‘pragmatics’ understood as a manual of rules of etiquette.
This much is already in Aristotle. However, Zabarella offers an original
analysis of ‘method.’ The compositive method infers a particular consequence or
corollary from a ‘generic’ principle. The ‘resolutive’ method INFERS an
originating gneric principle from this or that particular consequence,
corollary, or instantiantion, as in inductive reasoning or in reasoning from
effect to cause. Zabarella’s terminology influenced Galileo’s mechanics, and
has been applied to Grice’s inference of the principle of conversational
co-operation out from the only evidence which Grice has, which is this or that ‘dyadic’
exchange, as he calls it. In Grice’s case, his corpus is intentionally limited
to conversations between two philosophers: A: What’s that? B: A pillar box? A:
What colour is it? B: Seems red to me. From such an exchange, Grice infers the
principle of conversational co-operation. It clashes when a cancellation (or as
Grice prefers, an annulation) is on sight: “I surely don’t mean to imply that
it MIGHT actually be red.” “Then why be so guarded? I thought you were
cooperating.”
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
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