materia et forma. If anything characterizes
‘analytic’ philosophy, then it is presumably the emphasis placed on
analysis. But as history shows, there is a wide range of conceptions of
analysis, so such a characterization says nothing that would distinguish
analytic philosophy from much of what has either preceded or developed
alongside it. Given that the decompositional conception is usually offered
as the main conception, it might be thought that it is this that characterizes
analytic philosophy, even Oxonian 'informalists' like Strawson.But this
conception was prevalent in the early modern period, shared by both the British
Empiricists and Leibniz, for example. Given that Kant denied the
importance of de-compositional analysis, however, it might be suggested that
what characterizes analytic philosophy is the value it places on such
analysis. This might be true of G. E. Moore's early work, and of one
strand within analytic philosophy; but it is not generally true. What
characterizes analytic philosophy as it was founded by Frege and Russell is the
role played by logical analysis, which depended on the development of modern
logic. Although other and subsequent forms of analysis, such as
'linguistic' analysis, were less wedded to systems of FORMAL logic, the central
insight motivating logical analysis remained. Pappus's account of
method in ancient Greek geometry suggests that the regressive conception of
analysis was dominant at the time — however much other conceptions may also
have been implicitly involved.In the early modern period, the decompositional
conception became widespread.What characterizes analytic philosophy—or at least
that central strand that originates in the work of Frege and Russell—is the recognition
of what was called earlier the transformative or interpretive dimension of
analysis.Any analysis presupposes a particular framework of interpretation, and
work is done in interpreting what we are seeking to analyze as part of the
process of regression and decomposition. This may involve transforming it
in some way, in order for the resources of a given theory or conceptual
framework to be brought to bear. Euclidean geometry provides a good
illustration of this. But it is even more obvious in the case of analytic
geometry, where the geometrical problem is first ‘translated’ into the language
of algebra and arithmetic in order to solve it more easily.What Descartes and
Fermat did for analytic geometry, Frege and Russell did for analytic
PHILOSOPHY. Analytic philosophy is ‘analytic’ much more in the way that
analytic geometry (as Fermat's and Descartes's) is ‘analytic’ than in the crude
decompositional sense that Kant understood it. The interpretive
dimension of philosophical analysis can also be seen as anticipated in medieval
scholasticism and it is remarkable just how much of modern concerns with
propositions, meaning, reference, and so on, can be found in the medieval
literature. Interpretive analysis is also illustrated in the nineteenth
century by Bentham's conception of paraphrasis, which he characterized
as "that sort of exposition which may be afforded by transmuting into
a proposition, having for its subject some real entity, a proposition which has
not for its subject any other than a fictitious entity." Bentham, a
palaeo-Griceian, applies the idea in ‘analyzing away’ talk of ‘obligations’,
and the anticipation that we can see here of Russell's theory of descriptions
has been noted by, among others, Wisdom and Quine in ‘Five Milestones of Empiricism.'vide:
Wisdom on Bentham as palaeo-Griceian.What was crucial in analytic philosophy,
however, was the development of quantificational theory, which provided a far
more powerful interpretive system than anything that had hitherto been
available. In the case of Frege and Russell, the system into which
statements were ‘translated’ was predicate calculus, and the divergence that
was thereby opened up between the 'matter' and the logical 'form' meant that
the process of 'translation' (or logical construction or deconstruction) itself
became an issue of philosophical concern. This induced greater
self-consciousness about our use of language and its potential to mislead us
(the infamous implicaturums, which are neither matter nor form -- they are
IMPLICATED matter, and the philosopher may want to arrive at some IMPLICATED
form -- as 'the'), and inevitably raised semantic, epistemological and
metaphysical questions about the relationships between language, logic, thought
and reality which have been at the core of analytic philosophy ever
since. Both Frege and Russell (after the latter's initial flirtation
with then fashionable Hegelian Oxonian idealism -- "We were all Hegelians
then") were concerned to show, against Kant, that arithmetic (or number
theory, from Greek 'arithmos,' number -- if not geometry) is a system of
analytic and not synthetic truths, as Kant misthought. In the Grundlagen,
Frege offers a revised conception of analyticity, which arguably endorses and
generalizes Kant's logical as opposed to phenomenological criterion, i.e.,
(ANL) rather than (ANO) (see the supplementary section on
Kant): (AN) A truth is analytic if its proof depends only on
general logical laws and definitions. The question of whether arithmetical
truths are analytic then comes down to the question of whether they can be
derived purely logically. This was the failure of Ramsey's logicist
project.Here we already have ‘transformation’, at the theoretical level —
involving a reinterpretation of the concept of analyticity.To demonstrate this,
Frege realized that he needed to develop logical theory in order to 'FORMALISE'
a mathematical statements, which typically involve multiple generality or
multiple quantification -- alla "The altogether nice girl loves the
one-at-at-a-time sailor" (e.g., ‘Every natural number has a
successor’, i.e. ‘For every natural number x there is another natural number y
that is the successor of x’). This development, by extending the use of
function-argument analysis in mathematics to logic and providing a notation for
quantification, is essentially the achievement of his Begriffsschrift,
where he not only created the first system of predicate calculus but also,
using it, succeeded in giving a logical analysis of mathematical induction (see
Frege FR, 47-78). In Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, Frege goes on to
provide a logical analysis of number statements (as in "Mary had two
little lambs; therefore she has one little lamb" -- "Mary has a
little lamb" -- "Mary has at least one lamb and at most one
lamb").
Frege's central idea is
that a number statement contains an assertion about a 'concept.'A statement
such as Jupiter has four moons.is to be understood NOT as *predicating* of
*Jupiter* the property of having four moons, but as predicating of the 'concept'
"moon of Jupiter" the second-level property " ... has at least
and at most four instances," which can be logically defined. The
significance of this construal can be brought out by considering negative
existential statements (which are equivalent to number statements involving
"0"). Take the following negative existential
statement: Unicorns do not exist. Or Grice's"Pegasus does
not exist.""A flying horse does not exist."If we attempt to
analyze this decompositionally, taking the 'matter' to leads us to the 'form,'
which as philosophers, is all we care for, we find ourselves asking what these
unicorns or this flying horse called Pegasus are that have the property of
non-existence!Martin, to provoke Quine, called his cat 'Pegasus.'For Quine, x
is Pegasus if x Pegasus-ises (Quine, to abbreviate, speaks of 'pegasise,' which
is "a solicism, at Oxford."We may then be forced to posit the
Meinongian subsistence — as opposed to existence — of a unicorn -- cf. Warnock
on 'Tigers exist' in "Metaphysics in Logic" -- just as Meinong (in
his ontological jungle, as Grice calls it) and Russell did ('the author of
Waverley does not exist -- he was invented by the literary society"), in
order for there to be something that is the subject of our statement.
On the Fregean account, however, to deny that
something exists is to say that the corresponding concept has no instance -- it
is not possible to apply 'substitutional quantification.' (This leads to the
paradox of extensionalism, as Grice notes, in that all void predicates refer to
the empty set). There is no need to posit any mysterious object, unless
like Locke, we proceed empirically with complex ideas (that of a unicorn, or
flying horse) as simple ideas (horse, winged). The Fregean analysis of
(0a) consists in rephrasing it into (0b), which can then be readily FORMALISED
as(0b) The concept unicorn is not instantiated. (0c) ~(∃x)
Fx. Similarly, to say that God exists is to say that the concept God
is (uniquely) instantiated, i.e., to deny that the concept has 0 instances (or
2 or more instances). This is actually Russell's example ("What does
it mean that (Ex)God?")But cf. Pears and Thomson, two collaborators with
Grice in the reprint of an old Aristotelian symposium, "Is existence a
predicate?"On this view, existence is no longer seen as a (first-level)
predicate, but instead, existential statements are analyzed in terms of the
(second-level) predicate is instantiated, represented by means of the
existential quantifier. As Frege notes, this offers a neat diagnosis of what
is wrong with the ontological argument, at least in its traditional form (GL,
§53). All the problems that arise if we try to apply decompositional
analysis (at least straight off) simply drop away, although an account is still
needed, of course, of concepts and quantifiers. The possibilities
that this strategy of ‘translating’ 'MATTER' into 'FORM' opens up are
enormous.We are no longer forced to treat the 'MATTER' of a statement as a
guide to 'FORM', and are provided with a means of representing that form.
This is the value of logical analysis.It allows us to ‘analyze away’
problematic linguistic MATERIAL or matter-expressions and explain what it is
going on at the level of the FORM, not the MATTERGrice calls this
'hylemorphism,' granting "it is confusing in that we are talking 'eidos,'
not 'morphe'." This strategy was employed, most famously, in Russell's
theory of descriptions (on 'the' and 'some') which was a major motivation
behind the ideas of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.SeeGrice, "Definite descriptions
in Russell and in the vernacular"Although subsequent philosophers were to
question the assumption that there could ever be a definitive logical analysis
of a given statement, the idea that this or that 'material' expression may be
systematically misleading has remained. To illustrate this, consider
the following examples from Ryle's essay ‘Systematically Misleading
Expressions’: (Ua) Unpunctuality is reprehensible.Or from
Grice's and Strawson's seminar on Aristotle's Categories:Smith's
disinteresteness and altruism are in the other room.Banbury is an egoism.
Egoism is reprehensible Banbury is malevolent. Malevolence is rephrensible.
Banbury is an altruism. Altruism and cooperativeness are commendable. In terms
of second-order predicate calculus. If Banbury is altruist, Banbury is
commendable. (Ta) Banbury hates (the thought of) going to
hospital. Ray Noble loves the very thought of you. In each case, we
might be tempted to make unnecessary 'reification,' or subjectification, as
Grice prefers (mocking 'nominalisation' -- a category shift) taking
‘unpunctuality’ and ‘the thought of going to hospital’ as referring to a thing,
or more specifically a 'prote ousia,' or spatio-temporal continuant. It is
because of this that Ryle describes such expressions as ‘systematically
misleading’. As Ryle later told Grice, "I would have used
'implicaturally misleading,' but you hadn't yet coined the thing!" (Ua)
and (Ta) must therefore be rephrased: (Ub) Whoever is unpunctual
deserves that other people should reprove him for being unpunctual.
Although Grice might say that it is one harmless thing to reprove
'interestedness' and another thing to recommend BANBURY himself, not his
disinterestedness. (Tb) Jones feels distressed when he thinks of what he will
undergo IF he goes to hospital. Or in more behaviouristic terms: The
dog salivates when he salivates that he will be given food.(Ryle avoided
'thinking' like the rats). In this or that FORM of the MATTER, there is no
overt talk at all of ‘unpunctuality’ or ‘thoughts’, and hence nothing to tempt
us to posit the existence of any corresponding entities. The problems that
otherwise arise have thus been ‘analyzed away’. At the time that he
wrote ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’, Ryle too, assumed that every
statement has a form -- even Sraffa's gesture has a form -- that was to be
exhibited correctly.But when he gave up this assumption (and call himself and
Strawson 'informalist') he did not give up the motivating idea of conceptual
analysis—to show what is wrong with misleading expressions. In The Concept
of Mind Ryle sought to explain what he called the ‘category-mistake’ involved
in talk of the mind as a kind of ‘Ghost in the Machine’. "I was so
fascinated with this idea that when they offered me the editorship of
"Mind," on our first board meeting I proposed we changed the name of
the publication to "Ghost." They objected, with a smile."Ryle's
aim is to “'rectify' the conceptual geography or botany of the knowledge which
we already possess," an idea that was to lead to the articulation of
connective rather than 'reductive,' alla Grice, if not reductionist, alla
Churchland, conceptions of analysis, the emphasis being placed on elucidating
the relationships BETWEEN this or that concepts without assuming that there is
a privileged set of intrinsically basic or prior concepts (v. Oxford Linguistic
Philosophy). For Grice, surely 'intend' is prior to 'mean,' and
'utterer' is prior to 'expression'. Yet he is no reductionist. In
"Negation," introspection and incompatibility are prior to 'not.'In
"Personal identity," memory is prior to 'self.'Etc. Vide, Grice,
"Conceptual analysis and the defensible province of philosophy."Ryle
says, "You might say that if it's knowledge it cannot be rectified, but this
is Oxford! Everything is rectifiable!" What these varieties of conceptual
analysis suggest, then, is that what characterizes analysis in analytic
philosophy is something far richer than the mere ‘de-composition’ of a concept
into its ‘constituents’. Although reductive is surely a necessity.The
alternative is to take the concept as a 'theoretical' thing introduced by
Ramseyfied description in this law of this theory.For things which are a matter
of intuition, like all the concepts Grice has philosophical intuitions for, you
cannot apply the theory-theory model. You need the 'reductive analysis.' And
the analysis NEEDS to be 'reductive' if it's to be analysis at all! But this is
not to say that the decompositional conception of analysis plays no role at
all. It can be found in Moore, for example.It might also be seen as
reflected in the approach to the analysis of concepts that seeks to specify the
necessary and sufficient conditions for their correct employment, as in
Grice's infamous account of 'mean' for which he lists Urmson and Strawson as
challenging the sufficiency, and himself as challenging the necessity!
Conceptual analysis in this way goes back to the Socrates of Plato's early
dialogues -- and Grice thought himself an English Socrates -- and Oxonian
dialectic as Athenian dialectic-- "Even if I never saw him bothering
people with boring philosophical puzzles."But it arguably reached its
heyday with Grice.The definition of ‘knowledge’ as ‘justified true belief’ is
perhaps the second most infamous example; and this definition was criticised in
Gettier's classic essay -- and again by Grice in the section on the causal
theory of 'know' in WoW -- Way of Words.The specification of necessary and
sufficient conditions may no longer be seen as the primary aim of conceptual
analysis, especially in the case of philosophical concepts such as ‘knowledge’,
which are fiercely contested.But consideration of such conditions remains a
useful tool in the analytic philosopher's toolbag, along with the implicaturum,
what Grice called his "new shining tool" "even if it comes with
a new shining skid!"The
use of ‘logical form,’ as Grice and Strawson note, tends to be otiose. They
sometimes just use ‘form.’ It’s different from the ‘syntactic matter’ of the
expression. Matter is strictly what Ammonius uses to translate ‘hyle’ as
applied to this case. When Aristotle in Anal. Pr. Uses variable letters that’s
the forma or eidos; when he doesn’t (and retreats to ‘homo’, etc.) he is into ‘hyle,’
or ‘materia.’ What other form is there? Grammatical? Surface versus deep
structure? God knows. It’s not even clear with Witters! Grice at least has a
theory. You draw a skull to communicate there is danger. So you are concerned
with the logical form of “there is danger.” An exploration on logical form can
start and SHOULD INCLUDE what Grice calls the ‘one-off predicament,” of an open
GAIIB.” To use Carruthers’s example and Blackburn: You draw an arrow to have
your followers choose one way on the fork of the road. The logical form is that
of the communicatum. The emissor means that his follower should follow the left
path. What is the logical form of this? It may be said that “p” has a simplex
logical form, the A is B – predicate calculus, or ‘predicative’ calculus, as
Starwson more traditionally puts it! Then there is molecular complex logical
form with ‘negation,’ ‘and’, ‘or’, and ‘if.’. you can’t put it in symbols, it’s
not worth saying. Oh, no, if you can put it in symbols, it’s not worth saying.
Grice loved the adage, “quod per litteras demonstrare volumus, universaliter
demonstramus.” material adequacy, the property that belongs to a
formal definition of a concept when that definition characterizes or “captures”
the extension (or material) of the concept. Intuitively, a formal definition of
a concept is materially adequate if and only if it is neither too broad nor too
narrow. Tarski advanced the state of philosophical semantics by discovering the
criterion of material adequacy of truth definitions contained in his convention
T. Material adequacy contrasts with analytic adequacy, which belongs to
definitions that provide a faithful analysis. Defining an integer to be even if
and only if it is the product of two consecutive integers would be materially
adequate but not analytically adequate, whereas defining an integer to be even
if and only if it is a multiple of 2 would be both materially and analytically
adequate.
Mccosh: Like Kant, a
Scots philosopher, a common sense realist who attempted to reconcile
Christianity with evolution. A prolific writer, McCosh was a pastor in Scotland
and a professor at Queen’s College, Belfast, before becoming president of the
College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). In The Intuitions of the Mind
(1860) he argued that while acts of intelligence begin with immediate knowledge
of the self or of external objects, they also exhibit intuitions in the
spontaneous formation of self-evident convictions about objects. In opposition
to Kant and Hamilton, McCosh treated intuitions not as forms imposed by minds
on objects, but as inductively ascertainable rules that minds follow in forming
convictions after perceiving objects. In his Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill’s
Philosophy (1866) McCosh criticized Mill for denying the existence of
intuitions while assuming their operation. In The Religious Aspects of
Evolution (1885) McCosh defended the design argument by equating Darwin’s
chance variations with supernatural design.
Mcdougall: Irish
philosophical psychologist. He was probably the first to define psychology as
the science of behavior (Physiological Psychology, 1905; Psychology: The
Science of Behavior, 1912) and he invented hormic (purposive) psychology. By
the early twentieth century, as psychology strove to become scientific, purpose
had become a suspect concept, but following Stout, McDougall argued that
organisms possess an “intrinsic power of self-determination,” making goal
seeking the essential and defining feature of behavior. In opposition to
mechanistic and intellectualistic psychologies, McDougall, again following
Stout, proposed that innate instincts (later, propensities) directly or
indirectly motivate all behavior (Introduction to Social Psychology, 1908).
Unlike more familiar psychoanalytic instincts, however, many of McDougall’s
instincts were social in nature (e.g. gregariousness, deference). Moreover,
McDougall never regarded a person as merely an assemblage of unconnected and
quarreling motives, since people are “integrated unities” guided by one supreme
motive around which others are organized. McDougall’s stress on behavior’s inherent
purposiveness influenced the behaviorist E. C. Tolman, but was otherwise
roundly rejected by more mechanistic behaviorists and empiricistically inclined
sociologists. In his later years, McDougall moved farther from mainstream
thought by championing Lamarckism and sponsoring research in parapsychology.
Active in social causes, McDougall was an advocate of eugenics (Is America Safe
for Democracy?, 1921).
low-subjective contraster: in WoW: 140, Grice distinguishes between a subjective
contraster (such as “The pillar box seems red,” “I see that the pillar box is
red,” “I believe that the pillar box is red” and “I know that the pillar box is
red”) and an objective contraster (“The pillar box is red.”) Within these
subjective contraster, Grice proposes a sub-division between nonfactive
(“low-subjective”) and (“high-subjective”). Low-subjective contrasters are “The
pillar box seems red” and “I believe that the pillar box is red,” which do NOT
entail the corresponding objective contraster. The high-subjective contraster,
being factive or transparent, does. The entailment in the case of the
high-subjective contraster is explained via truth-coniditions: “A sees that the
pillar box is red” and “A knows that the pillar box is red” are analysed ‘iff’
the respective low-subjective contraster obtains (“The pillar box seems red,”
and “A believes that the pillar box is red”), the corresponding objective
contraster also obtains (“The pillar box is red”), and a third condition
specifying the objective contraster being the CAUSE of the low-subjective
contraster. Grice repeats his account of suprasegmental. Whereas in “Further
notes about logic and conversation,” he had focused on the accent on the
high-subjective contraster (“I KNOW”), he now focuses his attention on the accent
on the low subjective contraster. “I BELIEVE that the pillar box is red.” It is
the accented version that gives rise to the implicaturum, generated by the
utterer’s intention that the addressee’s will perceive some restraint or
guardedness on the part of the utterer of ‘going all the way’ to utter a claim
to ‘seeing’ or ‘knowing’, the
high-subjective contraster, but stopping short at the low-subjective
contraster.
martian
conversational implicaturum: “Oh, all
the difference in the world!” Grice converses with a
Martian. About Martian x-s that the pillar box is red. (upper x-ing
organ) Martian y-s that the pillar box is red. (lower y-ing organ). Grice: Is
x-ing that the pillar box is red LIKE y-ing that the pillar-box is red?
Martian: Oh, no; there's all the difference in the world! Analogy x smells
sweet. x tastes sweet. Martian x-s the the pillar box is red-x. Martian y-s
that the pillar box is red-y. Martian x-s the pillar box is medium red. Martian
y-s the pillar box is light red.
Materialism: one of the
twelve labours of H. P. Grice. d’Holbach, Paul-Henri-Dietrich, Baron,
philosopher, a leading materialist and prolific contributor to the
Encyclopedia. He dharma d’Holbach, Paul-Henri-Dietrich 231 231 was born in the Rhenish Palatinate,
settled in France at an early age, and read law at Leiden. After inheriting an
uncle’s wealth and title, he became a solicitor at the Paris “Parlement” and a
regular host of philosophical dinners attended by the Encyclopedists and
visitors of renown Gibbon, Hume, Smith, Sterne, Priestley, Beccaria, Franklin.
Knowledgeable in chemistry and mineralogy and fluent in several languages, he
tr. G. scientific works and English anti-Christian pamphlets into . Basically,
d’Holbach was a synthetic thinker, powerful though not original, who
systematized and radicalized Diderot’s naturalism. Also drawing on Hobbes,
Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Buffon, Helvétius, and La Mettrie, his treatises were so
irreligious and anticlerical that they were published abroad anonymously or
pseudonymously: Christianity Unveiled 1756, The Sacred Contagion 1768, Critical
History of Jesus 1770, The Social System 1773, and Universal Moral 1776. His
masterpiece, the System of Nature 1770, a “Lucretian” compendium of
eighteenth-century materialism, even shocked Voltaire. D’Holbach derived
everything from matter and motion, and upheld universal necessity. The
self-sustaining laws of nature are normative. Material reality is therefore
contrasted to metaphysical delusion, self-interest to alienation, and earthly
happiness to otherworldly optimism. More vindictive than Toland’s, d’Holbach’s
unmitigated critique of Christianity anticipated Feuerbach, Strauss, Marx, and
Nietzsche. He discredited supernatural revelation, theism, deism, and pantheism
as mythological, censured Christian virtues as unnatural, branded piety as
fanatical, and stigmatized clerical ignorance, immorality, and despotism.
Assuming that science liberates man from religious hegemony, he advocated
sensory and experimental knowledge. Believing that society and education form
man, he unfolded a mechanistic anthropology, a eudaimonistic morality, and a
secular, utilitarian social and political program.
maximum: Grice uses ‘maximum’ variously.
“Maximally effective exchange of information.” Maximum is used in decision
theory and in value theory. Cfr. Kasher on maximin. “Maximally effective
exchange of information” (WOW: 28) is the exact phrase Grice uses, allowing it
should be generalised. He repeats the idea in “Epilogue.” Things did not
change.
maximal consistent set,
in formal logic, any set of sentences S that is consistent – i.e., no
contradiction is provable from S – and maximally so – i.e., if T is consistent
and S 0 T, then S % T. It can be shown that if S is maximally consistent and s
is a sentence in the same language, then either s or - s (the negation of s) is
in S. Thus, a maximally consistent set is complete: it settles every question
that can be raised in the language.
maximin strategy, a
strategy that maximizes an agent’s minimum gain, or equivalently, minimizes his
maximum loss. Writers who work in terms of loss thus call such a strategy a
minimax strategy. The term ‘security strategy’, which avoids potential
confusions, is now widely used. For each action, its security level is its payoff
under the worst-case scenario. A security strategy is one with maximal security
level. An agent’s security strategy maximizes his expected utility if and only
if (1) he is certain that “nature” has his worst interests at heart and (2) he
is certain that nature will be certain of his strategy when choosing hers. The
first condition is satisfied in the case of a two-person zero-sum game where
the payoff structure is commonly known. In this situation, “nature” is the
other player, and her gain is equal to the first player’s loss. Obviously,
these conditions do not hold for all decision problems.
Maxwell’s pataphysics --
hammer: Scots physicist who made pioneering contributions to the theory of
electromagnetism, the kinetic theory of gases, and the theory of color vision.
His work on electromagnetism is summarized in his Treatise on Electricity and
Magnetism (1873). In 1871 he became Cambridge University’s first professor of
experimental physics and founded the Cavendish Laboratory, which he directed
until his death. Maxwell’s most important achievements were his field theory of
electromagnetism and the discovery of the equations that bear his name. The
field theory unified the laws of electricity and magnetism, identified light as
a transverse vibration of the electromagnetic ether, and predicted the
existence of radio waves. The fact that Maxwell’s equations are
Lorentz-invariant and contain the speed of light as a constant played a major
role in the genesis of the special theory of relativity. He arrived at his
theory by searching for a “consistent representation” of the ether, i.e., a
model of its inner workings consistent with the laws of mechanics. His search
for a consistent representation was unsuccessful, but his papers used
mechanical models and analogies to guide his thinking. Like Boltzmann, Maxwell
advocated the heuristic value of model building. Maxwell was also a pioneer in
statistical physics. His derivation of the laws governing the macroscopic
behavior of gases from assumptions about the random collisions of gas molecules
led directly to Boltzmann’s transport equation and the statistical analysis of
irreversibility. To show that the second law of thermodynamics is
probabilistic, Maxwell imagined a “neat-fingered” demon who could cause the
entropy of a gas to decrease by separating the faster-moving gas molecules from
the slower-moving ones.
Mead: philosopher, social
theorist, and social reformer. He was a member of the Chicago school of
pragmatism, which included figures such as James Hayden Tufts and John Dewey.
Whitehead agreed with Dewey’s assessment of Mead: “a seminal mind of the very
first order.” Mead was raised in a household with deep roots in New England
puritanism, but he eventually became a confirmed naturalist, convinced that
modern science could make the processes of nature intelligible. On his path to
naturalism he studied with the idealist Josiah Royce at Harvard. The German
idealist tradition of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel (who were portrayed by Mead
as Romantic philosophers in Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century) had
a lasting influence on his thought, even though he became a confirmed
empiricist. Mead is considered the progenitor of the school of symbolic
interaction in sociology, and is best known for his explanation of the genesis
of the mind and the self in terms of language development and role playing. A
close friend of Jane Addams, he viewed his theoretical work in this area as
lending weight to his progressive political convictions. Mead is often referred
to as a social behaviorist. He employed the categories of stimulus and response
in order to explain behavior, but contra behaviorists such as John B. Watson,
Mead did not dismiss conduct that was not observed by others. He examined the
nature of self-consciousness, whose development is depicted in Mind, Self, and
Society, from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. He also addressed
behavior in terms of the phases of an organism’s adjustment to its environment
in The Philosophy of the Act. His reputation as a theorist of the social
development of the self has tended to eclipse his original work in other areas
of concern to philosophers, e.g., ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, and the
philosophy of science. Influenced by Darwin, Mead sought to understand nature, as
well as social relationships, in terms of the process of emergence. He
emphasized that qualitatively new forms of life arise through natural and
intelligible processes. When novel events occur the past is transformed, for
the past has now given rise to the qualitatively new, and it must be seen from
a different perspective. Between the arrival of the new order – which the novel
event instigates – and the old order, there is a phase of readjustment, a stage
that Mead describes as one of sociality. Mead’s views on these and related
matters are discussed in The Philosophy of the Present. Mead never published a
book-length work in philosophy. His unpublished manuscripts and students’ notes
were edited and published as the books cited above.
Communicatum: meaning,
the conventional, common, or standard sense of an expression, construction, or
sentence in a given language, or of a non-linguistic signal or symbol. Literal
meaning is the non-figurative, strict meaning an expression or sentence has in
a language by virtue of the dictionary meaning of its words and the import of
its syntactic constructions. Synonymy is sameness of literal meaning:
‘prestidigitator’ means ‘expert at sleight of hand’. It is said that meaning is
what a good translation preserves, and this may or may not be literal: in
French ‘Où sont les neiges d’antan?’ literally means ‘Where are the snows of
yesteryear?’ and figuratively means ‘nothing lasts’. Signal-types and symbols
have non-linguistic conventional meaning: the white flag means truce; the lion
means St. Mark. In another sense, meaning is what a person intends to
communicate by a particular utterance – utterer’s meaning, as Grice called it,
or speaker’s meaning, in Stephen Schiffer’s term. A speaker’s meaning may or
may not coincide with the literal meaning of what is uttered, and it may be
non-linguistic. Non-literal: in saying “we will soon be in our tropical
paradise,” Jane meant that they would soon be in Antarctica. Literal: in saying
“that’s deciduous,” she meant that the tree loses its leaves every year.
Non-linguistic: by shrugging, she meant that she agreed. The literal meaning of
a sentence typically does not determine exactly what a speaker says in making a
literal utterance: the meaning of ‘she is praising me’ leaves open what John
says in uttering it, e.g. that Jane praises John at 12:00 p.m., Dec. 21, 1991.
A not uncommon – but theoretically loaded – way of accommodating this is to
count the context-specific things that speakers say as propositions, entities
that can be expressed in different languages and that are (on certain theories)
the content of what is said, believed, desired, and so on. On that assumption,
a sentence’s literal meaning is a context-independent rule, or function, that
determines a certain proposition (the content of what the speaker says) given
the context of utterance. David Kaplan has called such a rule or function a
sentence’s “character.” A sentence’s literal meaning also includes its
potential for performing certain illocutionary acts, in J. L. Austin’s term.
The meaning of an imperative sentence determines what orders, requests, and the
like can literally be expressed: ‘sit down there’ can be uttered literally by
Jane to request (or order or urge) John to sit down at 11:59 a.m. on a certain
bench in Santa Monica. Thus a sentence’s literal meaning involves both its
character and a constraint on illocutionary acts: it maps contexts onto
illocutionary acts that have (something like) determinate propositional
contents. A context includes the identity of speaker, hearer, time of
utterance, and also aspects of the speaker’s intentions. In ethics the
distinction has flourished between the expressive or emotive meaning of a word
or sentence and its cognitive meaning. The emotive meaning of an utterance or a
term is the attitude it expresses, the pejorative meaning of ‘chiseler’, say.
An emotivist in ethics, e.g. C. L. Stevenson, cited by Grice in “Meaning” for
the Oxford Philosophical Society, holds that the literal meaning of ‘it is
good’ is identical with its emotive meaning, the positive attitude it
expresses. On Hare’s theory, the literal meaning of ‘ought’ is its prescriptive
meaning, the imperative force it gives to certain sentences that contain it.
Such “noncognitivist” theories can allow that a term like ‘good’ also has
non-literal descriptive meaning, implying nonevaluative properties of an
object. By contrast, cognitivists take the literal meaning of an ethical term
to be its cognitive meaning: ‘good’ stands for an objective property, and in
asserting “it is good” one literally expresses, not an attitude, but a true or
false judgment. ’Cognitive meaning’ serves as well as any other term to capture
what has been central in the theory of meaning beyond ethics, the “factual”
element in meaning that remains when we abstract from its illocutionary and
emotive aspects. It is what is shared by ‘there will be an eclipse tomorrow’
and ‘will there be an eclipse tomorrow?’. This common element is often
identified with a proposition (or a “character”), but, once again, that is
theoretically loaded. Although cognitive meaning has been the preoccupation of
the theory of meaning in the twentieth century, it is difficult to define
precisely in non-theoretical terms. Suppose we say that the cognitive meaning
of a sentence is ‘that aspect of its meaning which is capable of being true or
false’: there are non-truth-conditional theories of meaning (see below) on
which this would not capture the essentials. Suppose we say it is ‘what is
capable of being asserted’: an emotivist might allow that one can assert that a
thing is good. Still many philosophers have taken for granted that they know
cognitive meaning (under that name or not) well enough to theorize about what
it consists in, and it is the focus of what follows. The oldest theories of
meaning in modern philosophy are the seventeenth-to-nineteenth-century idea
theory (also called the ideational theory) and image theory of meaning,
according to which the meaning of words in public language derives from the
ideas or mental images that words are used to express. As for what constitutes
the representational properties of ideas, Descartes held it to be a basic
property of the mind, inexplicable, and Locke a matter of resemblance (in some
sense) between ideas and things. Contemporary analytic philosophy speaks more
of propositional attitudes – thoughts, beliefs, intentions – than of ideas and
images; and it speaks of the contents of such attitudes: if Jane believes that
there are lions in Africa, that belief has as its content that there are lions
in Africa. Virtually all philosophers agree that propositional attitudes have
some crucial connection with meaning. A fundamental element of a theory of
meaning is where it locates the basis of meaning, in thought, in individual
speech, or in social practices. (i) Meaning may be held to derive entirely from
the content of thoughts or propositional attitudes, that mental content itself
being constituted independently of public linguistic meaning. (‘Constituted
independently of’ does not imply ‘unshaped by’.) (ii) It may be held that the
contents of beliefs and communicative intentions themselves derive in part from
the meaning of overt speech, or even from social practices. Then meaning would
be jointly constituted by both individual psychological and social linguistic
facts. Theories of the first sort include those in the style of Grice,
according to which sentences’ meanings are determined by practices or implicit
conventions that govern what speakers mean when they use the relevant words and
constructions. The emissor’s meaning is explained in terms of certain
propositional attitudes, namely the emissor’s intentions to produce certain
effects in his emissee. To mean that it is raining and that the emissee is to
close the door is to utter or to do something (not necessarily linguistic) with
the intention (very roughly) of getting one’s emissee to believe that it is
raining and go and close the door. Theories of the emissor’s meaning have been
elaborated at Oxford by H. P. Grice (originally in a lecture to the Oxford
Philosophical Society, inspired in part by Ogden and Richards’s The Meaning of
Meaning – ‘meaning’ was not considered a curricular topic in the Lit. Hum.
programme he belonge in) and by Schiffer. David Lewis has proposed that linguistic
meaning is constituted by implicit conventions that systematically associate
sentences with speakers’ beliefs rather than with communicative intentions. The
contents of thought might be held to be constitutive of linguistic meaning
independently of communication. Russell, and Wittgenstein in his early
writings, wrote about meaning as if the key thing is the propositional content
of the belief or thought that a sentence (somehow) expresses; they apparently
regarded this as holding on an individual basis and not essentially as deriving
from communication intentions or social practices. And Chomsky speaks of the
point of language as being “the free expression of thought.” Such views suggest
that ‘linguistic meaning’ may stand for two properties, one involving
communication intentions and practices, the other more intimately related to
thinking and conceiving. By contrast, the content of propositional attitudes
and the meaning of overt speech might be regarded as coordinate facts neither
of which can obtain independently: to interpret other people one must assign
both content to their beliefs/intentions and meaning to their utterances. This
is explicit in Davidson’s truth-conditional theory (see below); perhaps it is
present also in the post-Wittgensteinian notion of meaning as assertability
conditions – e.g., in the writings of Dummett. On still other accounts,
linguistic meaning is essentially social. Wittgenstein is interpreted by Kripke
as holding in his later writings that social rules are essential to meaning, on
the grounds that they alone explain the normative aspect of meaning, explain
the fact that an expression’s meaning determines that some uses are correct or
others incorrect. Another way in which meaning may be essentially social is
Putnam’s “division of linguistic labor”: the meanings of some terms, say in
botany or cabinetmaking, are set for the rest of us by specialists. The point
might extend to quite non-technical words, like ‘red’: a person’s use of it may
be socially deferential, in that the rule which determines what ‘red’ means in
his mouth is determined, not by his individual usage, but by the usage of some
social group to which he semantically defers. This has been argued by Tyler
Burge to imply that the contents of thoughts themselves are in part a matter of
social facts. Let us suppose there is a language L that contains no indexical
terms, such as ‘now’, ‘I’, or demonstrative pronouns, but contains only proper
names, common nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, logical words. (No natural
language is like this; but the supposition simplifies what follows.) Theories
of meaning differ considerably in how they would specify the meaning of a
sentence S of L. Here are the main contenders. (i) Specify S’s truth
conditions: S is true if and only if some swans are black. (ii) Specify the
proposition that S expresses: S means (the proposition) that some swans are
black. (iii) Specify S’s assertability conditions: S is assertable if and only
if blackswan-sightings occur or black-swan-reports come in, etc. (iv) Translate
S into that sentence of our language which has the same use as S or the same
conceptual role. Certain theories, especially those that specify meanings in
ways (i) and (ii), take the compositionality of meaning as basic. Here is an elementary
fact: a sentence’s meaning is a function of the meanings of its component words
and constructions, and as a result we can utter and understand new sentences –
old words and constructions, new sentences. Frege’s theory of Bedeutung or
reference, especially his use of the notions of function and object, is about
compositionality. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein explains compositionality in
his picture theory of meaning and theory of truth-functions. According to
Wittgenstein, a sentence or proposition is a picture of a (possible) state of
affairs; terms correspond to non-linguistic elements, and those terms’
arrangements in sentences have the same form as arrangements of elements in the
states of affairs the sentences stand for. The leading truth-conditional theory
of meaning is the one advocated by Davidson, drawing on the work of Tarski.
Tarski showed that, for certain formalized languages, we can construct a finite
set of rules that entails, for each sentence S of the infinitely many sentences
of such a language, something of the form ‘S is true if and only if . . .’.
Those finitely statable rules, which taken together are sometimes called a
truth theory of the language, might entail ‘ “(x) (Rx P Bx)” is true if and
only if every raven is black’. They would do this by having separately assigned
interpretations to ‘R’, ‘B’, ‘P’, and ‘(x)’. Truth conditions are
compositionally determined in analogous ways for sentences, however complex.
Davidson proposes that Tarski’s device is applicable to natural languages and
that it explains, moreover, what meaning is, given the following setting.
Interpretation involves a principle of charity: interpreting a person N means
making the best possible sense of N, and this means assigning meanings so as to
maximize the overall truth of N’s utterances. A systematic interpretation of
N’s language can be taken to be a Tarski-style truth theory that (roughly)
maximizes the truth of N’s utterances. If such a truth theory implies that a
sentence S is true in N’s language if and only if some swans are black, then
that tells us the meaning of S in N’s language. A propositional theory of
meaning would accommodate compositionality thus: a finite set of rules, which
govern the terms and constructions of L, assigns (derivatively) a proposition
(putting aside ambiguity) to each sentence S of L by virtue of S’s terms and
constructions. If L contains indexicals, then such rules assign to each
sentence not a fully specific proposition but a ‘character’ in the above sense.
Propositions may be conceived in two ways: (a) as sets of possible
circumstances or “worlds” – then ‘Hesperus is hot’ in English is assigned the
set of possible worlds in which Hesperus is hot; and (b) as structured
combinations of elements – then ‘Hesperus is hot’ is assigned a certain ordered
pair of elements ‹M1,M2(. There are two theories about M1 and M2. They may be
the senses of ‘Hesperus’ and ‘(is) hot’, and then the ordered pair is a
“Fregean” proposition. They may be the references of ‘Hesperus’ and ‘(is) hot’,
and then the ordered pair is a “Russellian” proposition. This difference
reflects a fundamental dispute in twentieth-century philosophy of language. The
connotation or sense of a term is its “mode of presentation,” the way it
presents its denotation or reference. Terms with the same reference or
denotation may present their references differently and so differ in sense or
connotation. This is unproblematic for complex terms like ‘the capital of
Italy’ and ‘the city on the Tiber’, which refer to Rome via different
connotations. Controversy arises over simple terms, such as proper names and
common nouns. Frege distinguished sense and reference for all expressions; the
proper names ‘Phosphorus’ and ‘Hesperus’ express descriptive senses according
to how we understand them – [that bright starlike object visible before dawn in
the eastern sky . . .], [that bright starlike object visible after sunset in
the western sky . . .]; and they refer to Venus by virtue of those senses.
Russell held that ordinary proper names, such as ‘Romulus’, abbreviate definite
descriptions, and in this respect his view resembles Frege’s. But Russell also
held that, for those simple terms (not ‘Romulus’) into which statements are
analyzable, sense and reference are not distinct, and meanings are “Russellian”
propositions. (But Russell’s view of their constituents differs from
present-day views.) Kripke rejected the “Frege-Russell” view of ordinary proper
names, arguing that the reference of a proper name is determined, not by a
descriptive condition, but typically by a causal chain that links name and
reference – in the case of ‘Hesperus’ a partially perceptual relation perhaps,
in the case of ‘Aristotle’ a causal-historical relation. A proper name is
rather a rigid designator: any sentence of the form ‘Aristotle is . . . ‘
expresses a proposition that is true in a given possible world (or set of
circumstances) if and only if our (actual) Aristotle satisfies, in that world,
the condition ‘ . . . ‘. The “Frege-Russell” view by contrast incorporates in
the proposition, not the actual referent, but a descriptive condition
connotated by ‘Aristotle’ (the author of the Metaphysics, or the like), so that
the name’s reference differs in different worlds even when the descriptive
connotation is constant. (Someone else could have written the Metaphysics.)
Some recent philosophers have taken the rigid designator view to motivate the
stark thesis that meanings are Russellian propositions (or characters that map
contexts onto such propositions): in the above proposition/meaning ‹M1,M2(, M1
is simply the referent – the planet Venus – itself. This would be a referential
theory of meaning, one that equates meaning with reference. But we must
emphasize that the rigid designator view does not directly entail a referential
theory of meaning. What about the meanings of predicates? What sort of entity
is M2 above? Putnam and Kripke also argue an anti-descriptive point about
natural kind terms, predicates like ‘(is) gold’, ‘(is a) tiger’, ‘(is) hot’.
These are not equivalent to descriptions – ’gold’ does not mean ‘metal that is
yellow, malleable, etc.’ – but are rigid designators of underlying natural
kinds whose identities are discovered by science. On a referential theory of
meanings as Russellian propositions, the meaning of ‘gold’ is then a natural
kind. (A complication arises: the property or kind that ‘widow’ stands for
seems a good candidate for being the sense or connotation of ‘widow’, for what
one understands by it. The distinction between Russellian and Fregean propositions
is not then firm at every point.) On the standard sense-theory of meanings as
Fregean propositions, M1 and M2 are pure descriptive senses. But a certain
“neo-Fregean” view, suggested but not held by Gareth Evans, would count M1 and
M2 as object-dependent senses. For example, ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ would
rigidly designate the same object but have distinct senses that cannot be
specified without mention of that object. Note that, if proper names or natural
kind terms have meanings of either sort, their meanings vary from speaker to
speaker. A propositional account of meaning (or the corresponding account of
“character”) may be part of a broader theory of meaning; for example: a
Grice-type theory involving implicit conventions; (b) a theory that meaning
derives from an intimate connection of language and thought; (c) a theory that
invokes a principle of charity or the like in interpreting an individual’s
speech; (d) a social theory on which meaning cannot derive entirely from the
independently constituted contents of individuals’ thoughts or uses. A central
tradition in twentieth-century theory of meaning identifies meaning with
factors other than propositions (in the foregoing senses) and truth-conditions.
The meaning of a sentence is what one understands by it; and understanding a
sentence is knowing how to use it – knowing how to verify it and when to assert
it, or being able to think with it and to use it in inferences and practical
reasoning. There are competing theories here. In the 1930s, proponents of
logical positivism held a verification theory of meaning, whereby a sentence’s
or statement’s meaning consists in the conditions under which it can be
verified, certified as acceptable. This was motivated by the positivists’
empiricism together with their view of truth as a metaphysical or non-empirical
notion. A descendant of verificationism is the thesis, influenced by the later
Wittgenstein, that the meaning of a sentence consists in its assertability
conditions, the circumstances under which one is justified in asserting the
sentence. If justification and truth can diverge, as they appear to, then a
meaning meaning sentence’s assertability conditions can be distinct from (what
non-verificationists see as) its truth conditions. Dummett has argued that
assertability conditions are the basis of meaning and that truth-conditional
semantics rests on a mistake (and hence also propositional semantics in sense
[a] above). A problem with assertability theories is that, as is generally
acknowledged, compositional theories of the assertability conditions of
sentences are not easily constructed. A conceptual role theory of meaning (also
called conceptual role semantics) typically presupposes that we think in a
language of thought (an idea championed by Fodor), a system of internal states
structured like a language that may or may not be closely related to one’s
natural language. The conceptual role of a term is a matter of how thoughts
that contain the term are dispositionally related to other thoughts, to sensory
states, and to behavior. Hartry Field has pointed out that our Fregean
intuitions about ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ are explained by those terms’
having distinct conceptual roles, without appeal to Fregean descriptive senses
or the like, and that this is compatible with those terms’ rigidly designating
the same object. This combination can be articulated in two ways. Gilbert
Harman proposes that meaning is “wide” conceptual role, so that conceptual role
incorporates not just inferential factors, etc., but also Kripke-Putnam
external reference relations. But there are also two-factor theories of
meaning, as proposed by Field among others, which recognize two strata of
meaning, one corresponding to how a person understands a term – its narrow
conceptual role, the other involving references, Russellian propositions, or
truth-conditions. As the language-of-thought view indicates, some concerns
about meaning have been taken over by theories of the content of thoughts or
propositional attitudes. A distinction is often made between the narrow content
of a thought and its wide content. If psychological explanation invokes only
“what is in the head,” and if thought contents are essential to psychological
explanation, there must be narrow content. Theories have appealed to the
“syntax” or conceptual roles or “characters” of internal sentences, as well as
to images and stereotypes. A thought’s wide content may then be regarded (as
motivated by the Kripke-Putnam arguments) as a Russellian proposition. The
naturalistic reference-relations that determine the elements of such
propositions are the focus of causal, “informational” and “teleological”
theories by Fodor, Dretske, and Ruth Millikan. Assertability theories and
conceptual role theories have been called use theories of meaning in a broad
sense that marks a contrast with truthconditional theories. On a use theory in
this broad sense, understanding meaning consists in knowing how to use a term
or sentence, or being disposed to use a term or sentence in response to certain
external or conceptual factors. But ‘use theory’ also refers to the doctrine of
the later writings of Wittgenstein, by whom theories of meaning that abstract
from the very large variety of interpersonal uses of language are declared a
philosopher’s mistake. The meanings of terms and sentences are a matter of the
language games in which they play roles; these are too various to have a common
structure that can be captured in a philosopher’s theory of meaning. Conceptual
role theories tend toward meaning holism, the thesis that a term’s meaning
cannot be abstracted from the entirety of its conceptual connections. On a
holistic view any belief or inferential connection involving a term is as much
a candidate for determining its meaning as any other. This could be avoided by
affirming the analytic–synthetic distinction, according to which some of a
term’s conceptual connections are constitutive of its meaning and others only
incidental. (‘Bachelors are unmarried’ versus ‘Bachelors have a tax advantage’.)
But many philosophers follow Quine in his skepticism about that distinction.
The implications of holism are drastic, for it strictly implies that different
people’s words cannot mean the same. In the philosophy of science, meaning
holism has been held to imply the incommensurability of theories, according to
which a scientific theory that replaces an earlier theory cannot be held to
contradict it and hence not to correct or to improve on it – for the two
theories’ apparently common terms would be equivocal. Remedies might include,
again, maintaining some sort of analytic–synthetic distinction for scientific
terms, or holding that conceptual role theories and hence holism itself, as
Field proposes, hold only intrapersonally, while taking interpersonal and intertheoretic
meaning comparisons to be referential and truth-conditional. Even this,
however, leads to difficult questions about the interpretation of scientific
theories. A radical position, associated with Quine, identifies the meaning of
a theory as a whole with its empirical meaning, that is, the set of actual and
possible sensory or perceptual situations that would count as verifying the
theory as a whole. This can be seen as a successor to the verificationist
theory, with theory replacing statement or sentence. Articulations of meaning
internal to a theory would then be spurious, as would virtually all ordinary
intuitions about meaning. This fits well Quine’s skepticism about meaning, his
thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, according to which no objective
facts distinguish a favored translation of another language into ours from
every apparently incorrect translation. Many constructive theories of meaning
may be seen as replies to this and other skepticisms about the objective status
of semantic facts. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Meaning,” H. P. Grice, “Utterer’s
meaning and intentions,” H. P. Grice, “Utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning, and
word-meaning,” H. P. Grice, “Meaning revisited.”
H. P. Grice’s postulate
of conversational helpfulness.
H. P. Grice’s postulate
of conversational co-operation. Grice loved to botanise linguistically on
‘desideratum,’ ‘objective,’ ‘postulate,’ ‘principle.’ “My favourite seems to be
‘postulate.’” -- postŭlo , āvi, ātum, 1, v. a. posco,
Which Lewis and Short render as I.to ask, demand, require, request, desire
(syn.: posco, flagito, peto); constr. with aliquid, aliquid ab aliquo, aliquem
aliquid, with ut (ne), de, with inf., or absol. I. In gen.: “incipiunt
postulare, poscere, minari,” Cic. Verr. 2, 3, 34, § 78: “nemo inventus est tam
audax, qui posceret, nemo tam impudens qui postularet ut venderet,” id. ib. 2,
4, 20, § 44; cf. Liv. 2, 45; 3, 19: “tametsi causa postulat, tamen quia
postulat, non flagitat, praeteribo,” Cic. Quint. 3, 13: “postulabat autem magis
quam petebat, ut, etc.,” Curt. 4, 1, 8: “dehinc postulo, sive aequom est, te
oro, ut, etc.,” Ter. And. 1, 2, 19: “ita volo itaque postulo ut fiat,” id. ib.
3, 3, 18; Plaut. Aul. 4, 10, 27: “suom jus postulat,” Ter. Ad. 2, 1, 47; cf.:
“aequom postulat, da veniam,” id. And. 5, 3, 30; and: “quid est? num iniquom
postulo?” id. Phorm. 2, 3, 64: “nunc hic dies alios mores postulat,” id. And.
1, 2, 18: “fidem publicam,” Cic. Att. 2, 24, 2: “istud, quod postulas,” id.
Rep. 1, 20, 33; id. Lael. 2, 9: “ad senatum venire auxilium postulatum,” Caes.
B. G. 1, 31: “deliberandi sibi unum diem postulavit,” Cic. N. D. 1, 22, 60;
cf.: “noctem sibi ad deliberandum postulavit,” id. Sest. 34, 74: “postulo abs
te, ut, etc.,” Plaut. Capt. 5, 1, 18: “postulatur a te jam diu vel flagitatur potius
historia,” Cic. Leg. 1, 5: “quom maxime abs te postulo atque oro, ut, etc.,”
Ter. And. 5, 1, 4; and: “quidvis ab amico postulare,” Cic. Lael. 10, 35; cf. in
pass.: “cum aliquid ab amicis postularetur,” id. ib.: “orationes a me duas
postulas,” id. Att. 2, 7, 1: “quod principes civitatum a me postulassent,” id.
Fam. 3, 8, 5; cf. infra the passages with an object-clause.—With ut (ne):
“quodam modo postulat, ut, etc.,” Cic. Att. 10, 4, 2: “postulatum est, ut
Bibuli sententia divideretur,” id. Fam. 1, 2, 1 (for other examples with ut, v.
supra): “legatos ad Bocchum mittit postulatum, ne sine causā hostis populo
Romano fieret,” Sall. J. 83, 1.—With subj. alone: “qui postularent, eos qui
sibi Galliaeque bellum intulissent, sibi dederent,” Caes. B. G. 4, 16, 3.—With
de: “sapientes homines a senatu de foedere postulaverunt,” Cic. Balb. 15, 34:
“Ariovistus legatos ad eum mittit, quod antea de colloquio postulasset, id per
se fieri licere,” Caes. B. G. 1, 42.—With inf., freq. to be rendered, to wish,
like, want: qui lepide postulat alterum frustrari, Enn. ap. Gell. 18, 2, 7
(Sat. 32 Vahl.): “hic postulat se Romae absolvi, qui, etc.,” Cic. Verr. 2, 3,
60, § 138: “o facinus impudicum! quam liberam esse oporteat, servire
postulare,” Plaut. Rud. 2, 3, 62; id. Men. 2, 3, 88: “me ducere istis dictis
postulas?” Ter. And. 4, 1, 20; id. Eun. 1, 1, 16: “(lupinum) ne spargi quidem
postulat decidens sponte,” Plin. 18, 14, 36, § 135: “si me tibi praemandere
postulas,” Gell. 4, 1, 11.—With a double object: quas (sollicitudines) levare
tua te prudentia postulat, demands of you, Luccei. ap. Cic. Fam. 5, 14, 2.
—With nom. and inf.: “qui postulat deus credi,” Curt. 6, 11, 24.— II. In
partic., in jurid. lang. A. To summon, arraign before a court, to prosecute,
accuse, impeach (syn.: accuso, insimulo); constr. class. usu. with de and abl.,
post-Aug. also with gen.): “Gabinium tres adhuc factiones postulant: L.
Lentulus, qui jam de majestate postulavit,” Cic. Q. Fr. 3, 1, 5, § 15: “aliquem
apud praetorem de pecuniis repetundis,” id. Cornel. Fragm. 1: “aliquem
repetundis,” Tac. A. 3, 38: “aliquem majestatis,” id. ib. 1, 74: “aliquem
repetundarum,” Suet. Caes. 4: aliquem aliquā lege, Cael. ap. Cic. Fam. 8, 12,
3: “aliquem ex aliquā causā reum,” Plin. 33, 2, 8, § 33: “aliquem impietatis
reum,” Plin. Ep. 7, 33, 7: “aliquem injuriarum,” Suet. Aug. 56 fin.: “aliquem
capitis,” Dig. 46, 1, 53: “qui (infames) postulare prohibentur,” Paul. Sent. 1,
2, 1.— B. To demand a writ or leave to prosecute, from the prætor or other
magistrate: “postulare est desiderium suum vel amici sui in jure apud eum qui
jurisdictioni praeest exponere vel alterius desiderio contradicere, etc.,” Dig.
3, 1, 1; cf. “this whole section: De postulando: in aliquem delationem nominis
postulare,” Cic. Div. in Caecil. 20, 64: “postulare servos in quaestionem,” id.
Rosc. Am. 28, 77: “quaestionem,” Liv. 2, 29, 5.— C. For the usual expostulare,
to complain of one: “quom patrem adeas postulatum,” Plaut. Bacch. 3, 3, 38 (but
in id. Mil. 2, 6, 35, the correct read. is expostulare; v. Ritschl ad h. l.).—*
D. Postulare votum (lit. to ask a desire, i. e.), to vow, App. Flor. init.— E.
Of the seller, to demand a price, ask (post-class. for posco): “pro eis
(libris) trecentos Philippeos postulasse,” Lact. 1, 6, 10; cf.: “accipe victori
populus quod postulat aurum,” Juv. 7, 243. — III. Transf., of things. A. To
contain, measure: “jugerum sex modios seminis postulat,” Col. 2, 9, 17.— B. To
need, require: “cepina magis frequenter subactam postulat terram,” Col. 11, 3,
56.—Hence, po-stŭlātum , i, n.; usually in plur.: po-stŭlāta , ōrum, a demand,
request (class.): “intolerabilia postulata,” Cic. Fam. 12, 4, 1; id. Phil. 12,
12, 28: deferre postulata alicujus ad aliquem, Caes. B. C. 1, 9: “cognoscere de
postulatis alicujus,” id. B. G. 4, 11 fin.: “postulata facere,” Nep. Alcib. 8,
4.
“conversational
postulate” – an otiosity deviced by Lakoff and Gordon (or Gordon and Lakoff)
after Carnap’s infamous meaning postulate, a sentence that specifies part or
all of the meaning of a predicate. Meaning postulates would thus include
explicit, contextual, and recursive definitions, reduction sentences for
dispositional predicates, and, more generally, any sentences stating how the
extensions of predicates are interrelated by virtue of the meanings of those
predicates. For example, any reduction sentence of the form (x) (x has f / (x
is malleable S x has y)) could be a meaning postulate for the predicate ‘is
malleable’. The notion of a meaning postulate was introduced by Carnap, whose
original interest stemmed from a desire to explicate sentences that are analytic
(“true by virtue of meaning”) but not logically true. Where G is a set of such
postulates, one could say that A is analytic with respect to G if and only if A
is a logical consequence of G. On this account, e.g., the sentence ‘Jake is not
a married bachelor’ is analytic with respect to {’All bachelors are
unmarried’}.
Mechanism.
A monster. But on p. 286 of WoW he speaks of mechanism, and psychological
mechanism. Or rather of this or that psychological mechanism to be BENEFICIAL
for a mouse that wants to eat a piece of cheese. He uses it twice, and it’s the
OPERATION of the mechanism which is beneficial. So a psychophysical
correspondence is desirable for the psychological mechanism to operate in a way
that is beneficial for the sentient creature. Later in that essay he now
applies ‘mechanism’ to communication, and he speak of a ‘communication
mechanism’ being beneficial. In particular he is having in mind Davidson’s
transcendental argument for the truth of the transmitted beliefs. “If all our
transfers involved mistaken beliefs, it is not clear that the communication
mechanism would be beneficial for the institution of ‘shared experience.’”
Refs.: H. P. Grice, “My twelve labours.”
mechanistic explanation,
a kind of explanation countenanced by views that range from the extreme
position that all natural phenomena can be explained entirely in terms of
masses in motion of the sort postulated in Newtonian mechanics, to little more
than a commitment to naturalistic explanations. Mechanism in its extreme form is
clearly false because numerous physical phenomena of the most ordinary sort
cannot be explained entirely in terms of masses in motion. Mechanics is only
one small part of physics. Historically, explanations were designated as
mechanistic to indicate that they included no reference to final causes or
vital forces. In this weak sense, all present-day scientific explanations are
mechanistic. The adequacy of mechanistic explanation is usually raised in
connection with living creatures, especially those capable of deliberate
action. For example, chromosomes lining up opposite their partners in
preparation for meiosis looks like anything but a purely mechanical process,
and yet the more we discover about the process, the more mechanistic it turns
out to be. The mechanisms responsible for meiosis arose through variation and
selection and cannot be totally understood without reference to the
evolutionary process, but meiosis as it takes place at any one time appears to
be a purely mechanistic physicochemical meaning, conceptual role theory of
mechanistic explanation process. Intentional behavior is the phenomenon that is
most resistant to explanation entirely in physicochemical terms. The problem is
not that we do not know enough about the functioning of the central nervous
system but that no matter how it turns out to work, we will be disinclined to
explain human action entirely in terms of physicochemical processes. The
justification for this disinclination tends to turn on what we mean when we
describe people as behaving intentionally. Even so, we may simply be mistaken
to ascribe more to human action than can be explained in terms of purely
physicochemical processes. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Mechanism.”
Medina: Dominican
theologian who taught theology at Alcalá and then at Salamanca. His major works
are commentaries on Aquinas’s Summa theologica. Medina is often called the
father of probabilism but scholars disagree on the legitimacy of this
attribution. Support for it is contained in Medina’s commentary on Aquinas’s Prima
secundae (1577). Medina denies that it is sufficient for an opinion to be
probable that there are apparent reasons in its favor and that it is supported
by many people. For then all errors would be probable. Rather, an opinion is
probable if it can be followed without censure and reproof, as when wise
persons state and support it with excellent reasons. Medina suggests the use of
these criteria in decisions concerning moral dilemmas (Suma de casos morales
[“Summa of Moral Questions”], 1580). P.Gar. Megarians, also called Megarics, a
loose-knit group of Greek philosophers active in the fourth and early third
centuries B.C., whose work in logic profoundly influenced the course of ancient
philosophy. The name derives from that of Megara, the hometown of Euclid (died
c.365 B.C.; unrelated to the later mathematician), who was an avid companion of
Socrates and author of (lost) Socratic dialogues. Little is recorded about his
views, and his legacy rests with his philosophical heirs. Most prominent of
these was Eubulides, a contemporary and critic of Aristotle; he devised a host
of logical paradoxes, including the liar and the sorites or heap paradoxes. To
many this ingenuity seemed sheer eristic, a label some applied to him. One of
his associates, Alexinus, was a leading critic of Zeno, the founder of
Stoicism, whose arguments he twitted in incisive parodies. Stilpo (c.380–c.300
B.C.), a native of Megara, was also famous for disputation but best known for
his apatheia (impassivity). Rivaling the Cynics as a preacher of self-reliance,
he once insisted, after his city and home were plundered, that he lost nothing
of his own since he retained his knowledge and virtue. Zeno the Stoic was one
of many followers he attracted. Most brilliant of the Megarians was Diodorus, nicknamed
Cronus or “Old Fogey” (fl. 300 B.C.), who had an enormous impact on Stoicism
and the skeptical Academy. Among the first explorers of propositional logic, he
and his associates were called “the dialecticians,” a label that referred not
to an organized school or set of doctrines but simply to their highly original
forms of reasoning. Diodorus defined the possible narrowly as what either is or
will be true, and the necessary broadly as what is true and will not be false.
Against his associate Philo, the first proponent of material implication, he
maintained that a conditional is true if and only if it is neverthe case that
its antecedent is true and its consequent false. He argued that matter is
atomic and that time and motion are likewise discrete. With an exhibitionist’s
flair, he demonstrated that meaning is conventional by naming his servants
“But” and “However.” Most celebrated is his Master (or Ruling) Argument, which
turns on three propositions: (1) Every truth about the past is necessary; (2) nothing
impossible follows from something possible; and (3) some things are possible
that neither are nor will be true. His aim was apparently to establish his
definition of possibility by showing that its negation in (3) is inconsistent
with (1) and (2), which he regarded as obvious. Various Stoics, objecting to
the implication of determinism here, sought to uphold a wider form of
possibility by overturning (1) or (2). Diodorus’s fame made him a target of
satire by eminent poets, and it is said that he expired from shame after
failing to solve on the spot a puzzle Stilpo posed at a party.
Meinong: Austrian
philosopher and psychologist, founder of Gegenstandstheorie, the theory of
(existent and nonexistent intended) objects. He was the target of Russell’s criticisms
of the idea of non-existent objects in his landmark essay “On Denoting” (1905).
Meinong, after eight years at the Vienna Gymnasium, enrolled in the University
of Vienna, studying German philology and history and completing a dissertation
on Arnold von Brescia. After this period he became interested in philosophy as
a result of his critical self-directed reading of Kant. At the suggestion of
his teacher Franz Brentano, he undertook a systematic investigation of Hume’s
empiricism, culminating in his first publications in philosophy, the “Hume-Studien,”
Meinong was appointed Professor Extraordinarius at Graz (receiving promotion to
Ordinarius), where he remained until his death. At Graz he established the
first laboratory for experimental psychology in Austria, and was occupied with
psychological as well as philosophical problems throughout his career. The Graz
school of phenomenological psychology and philosophical semantics, which
centered on Meinong and his students, made important contributions to object
theory in philosophical semantics, metaphysics, ontology, value theory,
epistemology, theory of evidence, possibility and probability, and the analysis
of emotion, imagination, and abstraction. Meinong’s object theory is based on a
version of Brentano’s immanent intentionality thesis, that every psychological
state contains an intended object toward which the mental event (or, in a less
common terminology, a mental act) is semantically directed. Meinong, however,
rejects Brentano’s early view of the immanence of the intentional, maintaining
that thought is directed toward transcendent mind-independent existent or
non-existent objects. Meinong distinguishes between judgments about the being
(Sein) of intended objects of thought, and judgments about their “so-being,”
character, or nature (Sosein). He claims that every thought is intentionally
directed toward the transcendent mind-independent object the thought purports
to be “about,” which entails that in at least some cases contingently
non-existent and even impossible objects, for instance Berkeley’s golden
mountain and the round square, must be included as non-existent intended
objects in the object theory semantic domain. Meinong further maintains that an
intended object’s Sosein is independent of its Sein or ontological status, of
whether or not the object happens to exist. This means, contrary to what many
philosophers have supposed, that non-existent objects can truly possess the
constitutive properties predicated of them in thought. Meinong’s object theory
evolved over a period of years, and underwent many additions and revisions. In
its mature form, the theory includes the following principles: (1) Thought can
freely (even if falsely) assume the existence of any describable object
(principle of unrestricted free assumption, or unbeschränkten Annahmefreiheit
thesis); (2) Every thought is intentionally directed toward a transcendent,
mind-independent intended object (modified intentionality thesis); (3) Every
intended object has a nature, character, Sosein, “how-it-is,” “so-being,” or
“being thus-and-so,” regardless of its ontological status (independence of
Sosein from Sein thesis); (4) Being or non-being is not part of the Sosein of
any intended object, nor of an object considered in itself (indifference
thesis, or doctrine of the Aussersein of the homeless pure object); (5) There
are two modes of being or Sein for intended objects: (a) spatiotemporal
existence and (b) Platonic subsistence (Existenz/Bestand thesis); (6) There are
some intended objects that do not have Sein at all, but neither exist nor
subsist (objects of which it is true that there are no such objects). Object
theory, unlike extensionalist semantics, makes it possible, as in much of
ordinary and scientific thought and language, to refer to and truly predicate
properties of non-existent objects. There are many misconceptions about
Meinong’s theory, such as that reflected in the objection that Meinong is a
super-Platonist who inflates ontology with non-existent objects that
nevertheless have being in some sense, that object theory tolerates outright
logical inconsistency rather than mere incompatibility of properties in the
Soseine of impossible intended objects. Russell, in his reviews of Meinong’s
theory in 1904–05, raises the problem of the existent round square, which seems
to be existent by virtue of the independence of Sosein from Sein, and to be
non-existent by virtue of being globally and simultaneously both round and
square. Meinong’s response involves several complex distinctions, but it has
been observed that to avoid the difficulty he need only appeal to the
distinction between konstitutorisch or nuclear and ausserkonstitutorisch or
extranuclear properties, adopted from a suggestion by his student Ernst Mally
(1878–1944), according to which only ordinary nuclear properties like being
red, round, or ten centimeters tall are part of the Sosein of any object, to
the exclusion of categorical or extranuclear properties like being existent,
determinate, possible, or impossible. This avoids counterexamples like the
existent round square, because it limits the independence of Sosein from Sein
exclusively to nuclear properties,implying that neither the existent nor the
nonexistent round square can possibly have the (extranuclear) property of being
existent or nonexistent in their respective Soseine, and cannot be said truly
to have the properties of being existent or non-existent merely by free
assumption and the independence of Sosein from Sein.
meliorism:
the view that the world is neither completely good nor completely bad, and that
incremental progress or regress depend on human actions. By creative
intelligence and education we can improve the environment and social
conditions. The position is first attributed to George Eliot and William James.
Whitehead suggested that meliorism applies to God, who can both improve the
world and draw sustenance from human efforts to improve the world.
Melissus of Samos,
Grecian hilosopher, traditionally classified as a member of the Eleatic School.
He was also famous as the victorious commander in a preemptive attack by the
Samians on an Athenian naval force (441 B.C.). Like Parmenides – who must have
influenced Melissus, even though there is no evidence the two ever met –
Melissus argues that “what-is” or “the real” cannot come into being out of
nothing, cannot perish into nothing, is homogeneous, and is unchanging. Indeed,
he argues explicitly (whereas Parmenides only implies) that there is only one
such entity, that there is no void, and that even spatial rearrangement
(metakosmesis) must be ruled out. But unlike Parmenides, Melissus deduces that
what-is is temporally infinite (in significant contrast to Parmenides,
regardless as to whether the latter held that what-is exists strictly in the
“now” or that it exists non-temporally). Moreover, Melissus argues that what-is
is spatially infinite (whereas Parmenides spoke of “bounds” and compared
what-is to a well-made ball). Significantly, Melissus repeatedly speaks of “the
One.” It is, then, in Melissus, more than in Parmenides or in Zeno, that we
find the emphasis on monism. In a corollary to his main argument, Melissus
argues that “if there were many things,” each would have to be – per
impossibile – exactly like “the One.” This remark has been interpreted as
issuing the challenge that was taken up by the atomists. But it is more
reasonable to read it as a philosophical strategist’s preemptive strike:
Melissus anticipates the move made in the pluralist systems of the second half
of the fifth century, viz., positing a plurality of eternal and unchanging
elements that undergo only spatial rearrangement.
Grice’s memory – Grice on
temporary mnemonic state. Grice remembers. Grice reminisces. "someone hears a noise" iff "a
(past) hearing of a nose is an elemnent in a total temporary state which is a
member of a series of total temporary statess such that every member of the
series would, given certain conditions, contain as al element a MEMORY of some
EXPERIENCE which is an element in some previous member OR contains as an
element some experience a memory of which would, given certain conditions,
occur as an element in some subsequent member; there being no subject of
members which is independent from all the rest." The retention of,
or the capacity to retain, past experience or previously acquired information.
There are two main philosophical questions about memory: (1) In what does
memory consist? and (2) What constitutes knowing a fact on the basis of memory?
Not all memory is remembering facts: there is remembering one’s perceiving or
feeling or acting in a certain way – which, while it entails remembering the
fact that one did experience in that way, must be more than that. And not all
remembering of facts is knowledge of facts: an extremely hesitant attempt to
remember an address, if one gets it right, counts as remembering the address
even if one is too uncertain for this to count as knowing it. (1) Answers to
the first question agree on some obvious points: that memory requires (a) a
present and (b) a past state of, or event in, the subject, and (c) the right
sort of internal and causal relations between the two. Also, we must
distinguish between memory states (remembering for many years the name of one’s
first-grade teacher) and memory occurrences (recalling the name when asked). A
memory state is usually taken to be a disposition to display an appropriate
memory occurrence given a suitable stimulus. But philosophers disagree about
further specifics. On one theory (held by many empiricists from Hume to Russell,
among others, but now largely discredited), occurrent memory consists in images
of past experience (which have a special quality marking them as memory images)
and that memory of facts is read off such image memory. This overlooks the
point that people commonly remember facts without remembering when or how they
learned them. A more sophisticated theory of factual memory (popular nowadays)
holds that an occurrent memory of a fact requires, besides a past learning of
it, (i) some sort of present mental representation of it (perhaps a linguistic
one) and (ii) continuous storage between then and now of a representation of
it. But condition (i) may not be conceptually necessary: a disposition to dial
the right number when one wants to call home constitutes remembering the number
(provided it is appropriately linked causally to past learning of the number)
and manifesting that disposition is occurrently remembering the fact as to what
the number is even if one does not in the process mentally represent that fact.
Condition (ii) may also be too strong: it seems at least conceptually possible
that a causal link sufficient for memory should be secured by a relation that
does not involve anything continuous between the relevant past and present
occurrences (in The Analysis of Mind, Russell countenanced this possibility and
called it “mnemic causation”). (2) What must be added to remembering that p to
get a case of knowing it because one remembers it? We saw that one must not be
uncertain that p. Must one also have grounds for trusting one’s memory
impression (its seeming to one that one remembers) that p? How could one have
such grounds except by knowing them on the basis of memory? The facts one can
know not on the basis of memory are limited at most to what one presently
perceives and what one presently finds self-evident. If no memory belief
qualifies as knowledge unless it is supported by memory knowledge of the
reliability of one’s memory, then the process of qualifying as memory knowledge
cannot succeed: there would be an endless chain, or loop, of facts – this
belief is memory knowledge if and only if this other belief is, which is if and
only if this other one is, and so on – which never becomes a set that entails
that any belief is memory knowledge. On the basis of such reasoning a skeptic
might deny the possibility of memory knowledge. We may avoid this consequence
without going to the lax extreme of allowing that any correct memory impression
is knowledge; we can impose the (frequently satisfied) requirement that one not
have reasons specific to the particular case for believing that one’s memory
impression might be unreliable. Finally, remembering that p becomes memory
knowledge that p only if one believes that p because it seems to one that one
remembers it. One might remember that p and confidently believe that p, but if
one has no memory impression of having previously learned it, or one has such
an impression but does not trust it and believes that p only for other reasons
(or no reason), then one should not be counted as knowing that p on the basis
of memory. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Memory and personal identity.” H. P. Grice,
“Benjamin on Broad on ‘remembering’”
Mendel, Austrian
discoverer of the basic ‘laws’ of heredity. An Augustinian monk who conducted
plant-breeding experiments in a monastery garden in Brünn (now Brno, Czech
Republic), Mendel discovered that certain characters of a common variety of
garden pea are transmitted in a strikingly regular way. The characters with
which he dealt occur in two distinct states, e.g., pods that are smooth or
ridged. In characters such as these, one state is dominant to its recessive
partner, i.e., when varieties of each sort are crossed, all the offspring
exhibit the dominant character. However, when the offspring of these crosses
are themselves crossed, the result is a ratio of three dominants to one
recessive. In modern terms, pairs of genes (alleles) separate at reproduction
(segregation) and each offspring receives only one member of each pair. Of
equal importance, the recessive character reappears unaffected by its temporary
suppression. Alleles remain pure. Mendel also noted that the pairs of
characters that he studied assort independently of each other, i.e., if two
pairs of characters are followed through successive crosses, no statistical
correlations in their transmission can be found. As genetics developed after
the turn of the century, the simple “laws” that Mendel had set out were
expanded and altered. Only a relatively few characters exhibit two distinct states,
one dominant to the other. In many, the heterozygote exhibits an intermediate
state. In addition, genes do not exist in isolation from each other but
together on chromosomes. Only those genes that reside on different pairs of
chromosomes assort in total independence of each other. During his research,
Mendel corresponded with Karl von Nägeli (1817–91), a major authority in plant
hybridization. Von Nägeli urged Mendel to cross varieties of the common
hawkweed. When Mendel took his advice, he failed to discover the hereditary
patterns that he had found in garden peas. In 1871 Mendel ceased his research
to take charge of his monastery. In 1900 Hugo de Vries (1848–1935) stumbled
upon several instances of three-to-one ratios while developing his own theory of
the origin of species. No sooner did he publish his results than two young
biologists announced independent discovery of what came to be known as Mendel’s
laws. The founders of modern genetics abandoned attempts to work out the
complexities of embryological development and concentrated just on
transmission. As a result of several unfortunate misunderstandings, early
Mendelian geneticists thought that their theory of genetics was incompatible
with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Eventually, however, the two theories were
merged to form the synthetic theory of evolution. In the process, R. A. Fisher
(1890–1962) questioned the veracity of Mendel’s research, arguing that the only
way that Mendel could have gotten data as good as he did was by sanitizing it.
Present-day historians view all of the preceding events in a very different
light. The science of heredity that developed at the turn of the century was so
different from anything that Mendel had in mind that Mendel hardly warrants
being considered its father. The neglect of Mendel’s work is made to seem so
problematic only by reading later developments back into Mendel’s original
paper. Like de Vries, Mendel was interested primarily in developing a theory of
the origin of species. The results of Mendel’s research on the hawkweed brought
into question the generalizability of the regularities that he had found in
peas, but they supported his theory of species formation through hybridization.
Similarly, the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws can be viewed as an instance of
multiple, simultaneous discovery only by ignoring important differences in the
views expressed by these authors. Finally, Mendel certainly did not mindlessly
organize and report his data, but the methods that he used can be construed as
questionable only in contrast to an overly empirical, inductive view of
science. Perhaps Mendel was no Mendelian, but he was not a fraud either.
Mendelssohn, M.: German
philosopher known as “the Jewish Socrates.” He began as a Bible and Talmud
scholar. After moving to Berlin he learned Latin and German, and became a close
friend of Lessing, who modeled the Jew in his play Nathan the Wise after him.
Mendelssohn began writing on major philosophical topics of the day, and won a
prize from the Berlin Academy in 1764. He was actively engaged in discussions
about aesthetics, psychology, and religion, and offered an empirical,
subjectivist view that was very popular at the time. His most famous writings
are Morgenstunden (Morning Hours, or Lectures on the Existence of God, 1785),
Phaedon (Phaedo, or on the Immortality of the Soul, 1767), and Jerusalem
(1783). He contended that one could prove the existence of God and the
immortality of the soul. He accepted the ontological argument and the argument
from design. In Phaedo he argued that since the soul is a simple substance it
is indestructible. Kant criticized his arguments in the first Critique.
Mendelssohn was pressed by the Swiss scientist Lavater to explain why he, as a
reasonable man, did not accept Christianity. At first he ignored the challenge,
but finally set forth his philosophical views about religion and Judaism in
Jerusalem, where he insisted that Judaism is not a set of doctrines but a set
of practices. Reasonable persons can accept that there is a universal religion
of reason, and there are practices that God has ordained that the Jews follow.
Mendelssohn was a strong advocate of religious toleration and separation of
church and state. His views played an important part in the emancipation of the
Jews, and in the Jewish Enlightenment that flowered in Germany at the beginning
of the nineteenth century.
mens rea: One of the two
main prerequisites, along with “actus reus” for prima facie liability to
criminal punishment in the English legal systems. To be punishable in such
systems, one must not only have performed a legally prohibited action, such as
killing another human being; one must have done so with a culpable state of
mind, or mens rea. Such culpable mental states are of three kinds: they are
either motivational states of purpose, cognitive states of belief, or the
non-mental state of negligence. To illustrate each of these with respect to the
act of killing: a killer may kill either having another’s death as ultimate
purpose, or as mediate purpose on the way to achieving some further, ultimate
end. Alternatively, the killer may act believing to a practical certainty that
his act will result in another’s death, even though such death is an unwanted
side effect, or he may believe that there is a substantial and unjustified risk
that his act will cause another’s death. The actor may also be only negligent,
which is to take an unreasonable risk of another’s death even if the actor is
not aware either of such risk or of the lack of justification for taking it.
Mens rea usually does not have to do with any awareness by the actor that the
act done is either morally wrong or legally prohibited. Neither does mens rea
have to do with any emotional state of guilt or remorse, either while one is
acting or afterward. Sometimes in its older usages the term is taken to include
the absence of excuses as well as the mental states necessary for prima facie
liability; in such a usage, the requirement is helpfully labeled “general mens
rea,” and the requirement above discussed is labeled “special mens rea.”
“Mentalese” – Grice on
‘modest mentalism’ -- the language of thought (the title of an essay by Fodor)
or of “brain writing” (a term of Dennett’s); specifically, a languagelike
medium of representation in which the contents of mental events are supposedly
expressed or recorded. (The term was probably coined by Wilfrid Sellars, with
whose views it was first associated.) If what one believes are propositions,
then it is tempting to propose that believing something is having the Mentalese
expression of that proposition somehow written in the relevant place in one’s
mind or brain. Thinking a thought, at least on those occasions when we think
“wordlessly” (without formulating our thoughts in sentences or phrases composed
of words of a public language), thus appears to be a matter of creating a
short-lived Mentalese expression in a special arena or work space in the mind.
In a further application of the concept, the process of coming to understand a
sentence of natural language can be viewed as one of translating the sentence
into Mentalese. It has often been argued that this view of understanding only
postpones the difficult questions of meaning, for it leaves unanswered the
question of how Mentalese expressions come to have the meanings they do. There
have been frequent attempts to develop versions of the hypothesis that mental
activity is conducted in Mentalese, and just as frequent criticisms of these
attempts. Some critics deny there is anything properly called representation in
the mind or brain at all; others claim that the system of representation used
by the brain is not enough like a natural language to be called a language.
Even among defenders of Mentalese, it has seldom been claimed that all brains
“speak” the same Mentalese.
mentalism: Cfr.
‘psychism,’ animism.’ ‘spiritualism,’ cfr. Grice’s modest mentalism; any theory
that posits explicitly mental events and processes, where ‘mental’ means
exhibiting intentionality, not necessarily being immaterial or non-physical. A
mentalistic theory is couched in terms of belief, desire, thinking, feeling,
hoping, etc. A scrupulously non-mentalistic theory would be couched entirely in
extensional terms: it would refer only to behavior or to neurophysiological
states and events. The attack on mentalism by behaviorists was led by B. F.
Skinner, whose criticisms did not all depend on the assumption that mentalists
were dualists, and the subsequent rise of cognitive science has restored a sort
of mentalism (a “thoroughly modern mentalism,” as Fodor has called it) that is
explicitly materialistic. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Myro’s modest mentalism.”
mentatum: Grice prefers psi-transmission. He
knows that ‘mentatum’ sounds too much like ‘mind,’ and the mind is part of the
‘rational soul,’ not even encompassing the rational pratical soul. If perhaps
Grice was unhappy about the artificial flavour to saying that a word is a sign,
Grice surely should have checked with all the Grecian-Roman cognates of mean,
as in his favourite memorative-memorable distinction, and the many Grecian
realisations, or with Old Roman mentire and mentare. Lewis and Short
have “mentĭor,” f. mentire, L and S note, is prob. from root men-, whence mens
and memini, q. v. The original meaning, they say, is to invent, hence,
but alla Umberto Eco with sign, mentire comes to mean in later use what Grice
(if not the Grecians) holds is the opposite of mean. Short and Lewis render
mentire as to lie, cheat, deceive, etc., to pretend, to declare falsely:
mentior nisi or si mentior, a form of asseveration, I am a liar, if, etc.: But
also, animistically (modest mentalism?) of things, as endowed with a mind. L
and S go on: to deceive, impose upon, to deceive ones self, mistake, to lie or
speak falsely about, to assert falsely, make a false promise about; to feign,
counterfeit, imitate a shape, nature, etc.: to devise a falsehood, to
assume falsely, to promise falsely, to invent, feign, of a poetical
fiction: “ita mentitur (sc. Homerus), Trop., of inanim. grammatical
Subjects, as in Semel fac illud, mentitur tua quod subinde tussis, Do what your
cough keeps falsely promising, i. e. die, Mart. 5, 39, 6. Do what your cough
means! =imp. die!; hence, mentĭens, a fallacy, sophism: quomodo
mentientem, quem ψευδόμενον vocant, dissolvas;” mentītus, imitated,
counterfeit, feigned (poet.): “mentita tela;” For “mentior,” indeed, there is a
Griceian implicaturum involving rational control. The rendition of mentire as
to lie stems from a figurative shift from to be mindful, or inventive, to
have second thoughts" to "to lie, conjure up". But Grice would
also have a look at cognate “memini,” since this is also cognate with “mind,”
“mens,” and covers subtler instances of mean, as in Latinate, “mention,” as in
Grices “use-mention” distinction. mĕmĭni, cognate with "mean" and
German "meinen," to think = Grecian ὑπομένειν, await (cf. Schiffer,
"remnants of meaning," if I think, I hesitate, and therefore re-main,
cf. Grecian μεν- in μένω, Μέντωρ; μαν- in μαίνομαι, μάντις; μνᾶ- in μιμνήσκω,
etc.; cf.: maneo, or manere, as in remain. The idea, as Schiffer well
knows or means, being that if you think, you hesitate, and therefore, wait and
remain], moneo, reminiscor [cf. reminiscence], mens, Minerva, etc. which L and
S render as “to remember, recollect, to think of, be mindful of a
thing; not to have forgotten a person or thing, to bear in
mind (syn.: reminiscor, recordor).” Surely with a relative clause,
and to make mention of, to mention a thing, either in speaking or
writing (rare but class.). Hence. mĕmĭnens, mindful And then Grice would
have a look at moneo, as in adMONish, also cognate is “mŏnĕo,” monere, causative
from the root "men;" whence memini, q. v., mens (mind), mentio
(mention); lit. to cause to think, to re-mind, put in mind of, bring to ones
recollection; to admonish, advise, warn, instruct, teach (syn.: hortor, suadeo,
doceo). L and S are Griceian if not Grecian when they note that ‘monere’
can be used "without the accessory notion [implicaturum or entanglement,
that is] of reminding or admonishing, in gen., to teach, instruct, tell,
inform, point out; also, to announce, predict, foretell, even if
also to punish, chastise (only
in Tacitus): “puerili verbere moneri.” And surely, since he loved to
re-minisced, Grice would have allowed to just earlier on just minisced. Short
and Lewis indeed have rĕmĭniscor, which, as they point out, features the root
men; whence mens, memini; and which they compare to comminiscere, v.
comminiscor, to recall to mind, recollect, remember (syn. recordor), often used
by the Old Romans with with Grices beloved that-clause, for
sure. For what is the good of reminiscing or comminiscing, if you cannot
reminisce that Austin always reminded Grice that skipping the dictionary was
his big mistake! If Grice uses mention, cognate with mean, he loved commenting
Aristotle. And commentare is, again, cognate with mean. As opposed to the
development of the root in Grecian, or English, in Roman the root for mens is
quite represented in many Latinate cognates. But a Roman, if not a Grecian,
would perhaps be puzzled by a Grice claiming, by intuition, to retrieve the
necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of this or that expression.
When the Roman is told that the Griceian did it for fun, he understands, and
joins in the fun! Indeed, hardly a natural kind in the architecture of the
world, but one that fascinated Grice and the Grecian philosophers before him!
Communication.
Mercier: philosopher, a
formative figure in NeoThomism and founder of the Institut Supérieur de
Philosophie at Louvain. Created at the request of Pope Leo XIII, Mercier’s
institute treated Aquinas as a subject of historical research and as a
philosopher relevant to modern thought. His approach to Neo-Thomism was
distinctive for its direct response to the epistemological challenges posed by
idealism, rationalism, and positivism. Mercier’s epistemology was termed a
criteriology; it intended to defend the certitude of the intellect against
skepticism by providing an account of the motives and rules that guide
judgment. Truth is affirmed by intellectual judgment by conforming itself not
to the thing-in-itself but to its abstract apprehension. Since the certitude of
judgment is a state of the cognitive faculty in the human soul, Mercier
considered criteriology as psychology; see Critériologie générale ou Théorie
générale de la certitude (1906), Origins of Contemporary Psychology (trans.
1918), and Manual of Scholastic Philosophy (trans. 1917–18).
mereology: the theory of
the totum and the pars. -- parts. Typically, a mereological theory employs
notions such as the following: “proper part,” “mproper part,” “overlapping”
(having a part in common), disjoint (not overlapping), mereological product
(the “intersection” of overlapping objects), mereological sum (a collection of
parts), mereological difference, the universal sum, mereological complement,
and atom (that which has no proper parts). A formal mereology is an axiomatic
system. Goodman’s “Calculus of Individuals” is compatible with Nominalism,
i.e., no reference is made to sets, properties, or any other abstract entity.
Goodman hopes that his mereology, with its many parallels to set theory, may provide
an alternative to set theory as a foundation for mathematics. Fundamental and
controversial implications of Goodman’s theories include their extensionality
and collectivism. An extensional theory implies that for any individuals, x and
y, x % y provided x and y have the same proper parts. One reason extensionality
is controversial is that it rules out an object’s acquiring or losing a part,
and therefore is inconsistent with commonsense beliefs such as that a car has a
new tire or that a table has lost a sliver of wood. A second reason for
controversy is that extensionality is incompatible with the belief that a
statue and the piece of bronze of which it is made have the same parts and yet
are diverse objects. Collectivism implies that any individuals, no matter how
scattered, have a mereological sum or constitute an object. Moreover, according
to collectivism, assembling or disassembling parts does not affect the
existence of things, i.e., nothing is created or destroyed by assembly or
disassembly, respectively. Thus, collectivism is incompatible with commonsense
beliefs such as that when a watch is disassembled, it is destroyed, or that
when certain parts are assembled, a watch is created. Because the
aforementioned formal theories shun modality, they lack the resources to
express the thesis that a whole has each of its parts necessarily. This thesis
of mereological essentialism has recently been defended by Roderick Chisholm.
meritum, a meritarian is one
who asserts the relevance of individual merit, as an independent justificatory
condition, in attempts to design social structures or distribute goods.
‘Meritarianism’ is a recently coined term in social and political philosophy,
closely related to ‘meritocracy’, and used to identify a range of related
concerns that supplement or oppose egalitarian, utilitarian, and contractarian
principles and principles based on entitlement, right, interest, and need,
among others. For example, one can have a pressing need for an Olympic medal
but not merit it; one can have the money to buy a masterpiece but not be worthy
of it; one can have the right to a certain benefit but not deserve it.
Meritarians assert that considerations of desert are always relevant and
sometimes decisive in such cases. What counts as merit, and how important
should it be in moral, social, and political decisions? Answers to these
questions serve to distinguish one meritarian from another, and sometimes to
blur the distinctions between the meritarian position and others. Merit may
refer to any of these: comparative rank, capacities, abilities, effort,
intention, or achievement. Moreover, there is a relevance condition to be met:
to say that highest honors in a race should go to the most deserving is
presumably to say that the honors should go to those with the relevant sort of
merit – speed, e.g., rather than grace. Further, meritarians may differ about
the strength of the merit principle, and how various political or social
structures should be influenced by it.
meritocracy, in ordinary
usage, a system in which advancement is based on ability and achievement, or
one in which leadership roles are held by talented achievers. The term may also
refer to an elite group of talented achievers. In philosophical usage, the
term’s meaning is similar: a meritocracy is a scheme of social organization in
which essential offices, and perhaps careers and jobs of all sorts are (a) open
only to those who have the relevant qualifications for successful performance
in them, or (b) awarded only to the candidates who are likely to perform the
best, or (c) managed so that people advance in and retain their offices and
jobs solely on the basis of the quality of their performance in them, or (d)
all of the above.
Merleau-Ponty: philosopher
disliked by Austin, loved by Grice, and described by Paul Ricoeur as “the
greatest of the French phenomenologists.” MerleauPonty occupied the chair of
child psychology and pedagogy at the Sorbonne and was later professor of
philosophy at the Collège de France. His sudden death preceded completion of an
important manuscript; this was later edited and published by Claude Lefort
under the title The Visible and the Invisible. The relation between the late,
unfinished work and his early Phenomenology of Perception (1945) has received much
scholarly discussion. While some commentators see a significant shift in
direction in his later thought, others insist on continuity throughout his
work. Thus, the exact significance of his philosophy, which in his life was
called both a philosophy of ambiguity and an ambiguous philosophy, retains to
this day its essential ambiguity. With his compatriot and friend, Sartre,
Merleau-Ponty was responsible for introducing the phenomenology of Edmund
Husserl into France. Impressed above all by the later Husserl and by Husserl’s
notion of the life-world (Lebenswelt), Merleau-Ponty combined Husserl’s
transcendental approach to epistemological issues with an existential
orientation derived from Heidegger and Marcel. Going even further than
Heidegger, who had himself sought to go beyond Husserl by “existentializing”
Husserl’s Transcendental Ego (referring to it as Dasein), MerleauPonty sought
to emphasize not only the existential (worldly) nature of the human subject
but, above all, its bodily nature. Thus his philosophy could be characterized
as a philosophy of the lived body or the body subject (le corps propre).
Although Nietzsche called attention to the all-importance of the body, it was
MerleauPonty who first made the body the central theme of a detailed philosophical
analysis. This provided an original perspective from which to rethink such
perennial philosophical issues as the nature of knowledge, freedom, time
(temporality), language, and intersubjectivity. Especially in his early work,
Merleau-Ponty battled against absolutist thought (“la pensée de l’absolu”),
stressing the insurmountable ambiguity and contingency of all meaning and
truth. An archopponent of Cartesian rationalism, he was an early and ardent
spokesman for that position now called antifoundationalism. Merleau-Ponty’s
major early work, the Phenomenology of Perception, is best known for its
central thesis concerning “the primacy of perception.” In this lengthy study he
argued that all the “higher” functions of consciousness (e.g., intellection, volition)
are rooted in and depend upon the subject’s prereflective, bodily existence,
i.e., perception (“All consciousness is perceptual, even the consciousness of
ourselves”). MerleauPonty maintained, however, that perception had never been
adequately conceptualized by traditional philosophy. Thus the book was to a
large extent a dialectical confrontation with what he took to be the two main
forms of objective thinking – intellectualism and empiricism – both of which,
he argued, ignored the phenomenon of perception. His principal goal was to get
beyond the intellectual constructs of traditional philosophy (such as
sense-data) and to effect “a return to the phenomena,” to the world as we
actually experience it as embodied subjects prior to all theorizing. His main
argument (directed against mainline philosophy) was that the lived body is not
an object in the world, distinct from the knowing subject (as in Descartes),
but is the subject’s own point of view on the world; the body is itself the
original knowing subject (albeit a nonor prepersonal, “anonymous” subject),
from which all other forms of knowledge derive, even that of geometry. As a
phenomenological (or, as he also said, “archaeological”) attempt to unearth the
basic (corporeal) modalities of human existence, emphasizing the rootedness
(enracinement) of the personal subject in the obscure and ambiguous life of the
body and, in this way, the insurpassable contingency of all meaning, the
Phenomenology was immediately and widely recognized as a major statement of
French existentialism. In his subsequent work in the late 1940s and the 1950s,
in many shorter essays and articles, Merleau-Ponty spelled out in greater
detail the philosophical consequences of “the primacy of perception.” These
writings sought to respond to widespread objections that by “grounding” all
intellectual and cultural acquisitions in the prereflective and prepersonal
life of the body, the Phenomenology of Perception results in a kind of
reductionism and anti-intellectualism and teaches only a “bad ambiguity,” i.e.,
completely undermines the notions of reason and truth. By shifting his
attention from the phenomenon of perception to that of (creative) expression,
his aim was to work out a “good ambiguity” by showing how “communication with others
and thought take up and go beyond the realm of perception which initiated us to
the truth.” His announced goal after the Phenomenology was “working out in a
rigorous way the philosophical foundations” of a theory of truth and a theory
of intersubjectivity (including a theory of history). No such large-scale work
(a sequel, as it were, to the Phenomenology) ever saw the light of day,
although in pursuing this project he reflected on subjects as diverse as
painting, literary language, Saussurian linguistics, structuralist
anthropology, politics, history, the human sciences, psychoanalysis,
contemporary science (including biology), and the philosophy of nature. Toward
the end of his life, however, MerleauPonty did begin work on a projected
large-scale manuscript, the remnants of which were published posthumously as
The Visible and the Invisible. A remarkable feature of this work (as Claude
Lefort has pointed out) is the resolute way in which Merleau-Ponty appears to
be groping for a new philosophical language. His express concerns in this
abortive manuscript are explicitly ontological (as opposed to the more limited
phenomenological concerns of his early work), and he consistently tries to
avoid the subject (consciousness)–object language of the philosophy of
consciousness (inherited from Husserl’s transcendental idealism) that
characterized the Phenomenology of Perception. Although much of Merleau-Ponty’s
later thought was a response to the later Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty sets himself
apart from Heidegger in this unfinished work by claiming that the only ontology
possible is an indirect one that can have no direct access to Being itself.
Indeed, had he completed it, Merleau-Ponty’s new ontology would probably have
been one in which, as Lefort has remarked, “the word Being would not have to be
uttered.” He was always keenly attuned to “the sensible world”; the key term in
his ontological thinking is not so much ‘Being’ as it is ‘the flesh’, a term
with no equivalent in the history of philosophy. What traditional philosophy
referred to as “subject” and “object” were not two distinct sorts of reality,
but merely “differentiations of one sole and massive adhesion to Being [Nature]
which is the flesh.” By viewing the perceiving subject as “a coiling over of
the visible upon the visible,” Merleau-Ponty was attempting to overcome the
subject–object dichotomy of modern philosophy, which raised the intractable
problems of the external world and other minds. With the notion of the flesh he
believed he could finally overcome the solipsism of modern philosophy and had
discovered the basis for a genuine intersubjectivity (conceived of as basically
an intercorporeity). Does ‘flesh’ signify something significantly different
from ‘body’ in Merleau-Ponty’s earlier thought? Did his growing concern with
ontology (and the question of nature) signal abandonment of his earlier
phenomenology (to which the question of nature is foreign)? This has remained a
principal subject of conflicting interpretations in Merleau-Ponty scholarship.
As illustrated by his last, unfinished work, Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre as a whole
is fragmentary. He always insisted that true philosophy is the enemy of the
system, and he disavowed closure and completion. While Heidegger has had
numerous disciples and epigones, it is difficult to imagine what a
“Merleau-Ponty school of philosophy” would be. This is not to deny that
Merleau-Ponty’s work has exerted considerable influence. Although he was
relegated to a kind of intellectual purgatory in France almost immediately upon
his death, the work of his poststructuralist successors such as Foucault and
Jacques Derrida betrays a great debt to his previous struggles with
philosophical modernity. And in Germany, Great Britain, and, above all, North
America, Merleau-Ponty has continued to be a source of philosophical
inspiration and the subject of extensive scholarship. Although his work does
not presume to answer the key questions of existence, it is a salient model of
philosophy conceived of as unremitting interrogation. It is this questioning
(“zetetic”) attitude, combined with a non-dogmatic humanism, that continues to
speak not only to philosophers but also to a wide audience among practitioners
of the human sciences (phenomenological psychology being a particularly noteworthy
example). Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Why Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of perception is
unpopular at Oxford,” J. L. Austin, “What Merleau-Ponty thinks he perceives.”
Mersenne: he compiled
massive works on philosophy, mathematics, music, and natural science, and conducted
an enormous correspondence with such figures as Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes.
He translated Galileo’s Mechanics and Herbert of Cherbury’s De Veritate and
arranged for publication of Hobbes’s De Cive. He is best known for gathering
the objections published with Descartes’s Meditations. Mersenne served a
function in the rise of modern philosophy and science that is today served by
professional journals and associations. His works contain attacks on deists,
atheists, libertines, and skeptics; but he also presents mitigated skepticism
as a practical method for attaining scientific knowledge. He did not believe
that we can attain knowledge of inner essences, but argued – by displaying it –
that we have an immense amount of knowledge about the material world adequate
to our needs. Like Gassendi, Mersenne advocated mechanistic explanations in
science, and following Galileo, he proposed mathematical models of material
phenomena. Like the Epicureans, he believed that mechanism was adequate to save
the phenomena. He thus rejected Aristotelian forms and occult powers. Mersenne
was another of the great philosopher-priests of the seventeenth century who
believed that to increase scientific knowledge is to know and serve God.
merton: merton holds a portrait of H. P. Grice. And the
association is closer. Grice was sometime Harmsworth Scholar at Merton. It was
at Merton he got the acquaintance with S. Watson, later historian at St.
John’s. Merton is the see of the Sub-Faculty of Philosophy. What does that
mean? It means that the Lit. Hum. covers more than philosophy. Grice was Lit.
Hum. (Phil.), which means that his focus was on this ‘sub-faculty.’ The faculty
itself is for Lit. Hum. in general, and it is not held anywhere specifically.
Grice loved Ryle’s games with this:: “Oxford is a universale, with St. John’s
being a particulare which can become your sense-datum.’
meta-ethics. “philosophia moralis” was te traditional label – until
Nowell-Smith. Hare is professor of moral philosophy, not meta-ethics. Strictly,
‘philosophia practica’ as opposed to ‘philosophia speculativa’. Philosophia speculativa is distinguished
from philosophia
practica; the former is further differentiated into physica,
mathematica, and theologia; the latter into moralis, oeconomica and politica.
Surely the philosophical mode does not change
when he goes into ethics or other disciplines. Philosophy is ENTIRE. Ethics
relates to metaphysics, but this does not mean that the philosopher is a
moralist. In this respect, unlike, say Philippa Foot, Grice remains a
meta-ethicist. Grice is ‘meta-ethically’ an futilitarian, since he provides a
utilitarian backing of Kantian rationalism, within his empiricist, naturalist,
temperament. For Grice it is complicated, since there is an ethical or
practical side even to an eschatological argument. Grice’s views on ethics are
Oxonian. At Oxford, meta-ethics is a generational thing: there’s Grice, and the
palaeo-Gricieans, and the post-Gricieans. There’s Hampshire, and Hare, and
Nowell-Smith, and Warnock. P. H. Nowell Smith felt overwhelmed by Grice’s
cleverness and they would hardly engage in meta-ethical questions. But Nowell
Smith felt that Grice was ‘too clever.’ Grice objected Hare’s use of
descriptivism and Strawsons use of definite descriptor. Grice preferred to say
“the the.”. “Surely Hare is wrong when sticking with his anti-descriptivist
diatribe. Even his dictum is descriptive!” Grice was amused that it all started
with Abbott BEFORE 1879, since Abbott’s first attempt was entitled, “Kant’s
theory of ethics, or practical philosophy” (1873). ”! Grices explorations on
morals are language based. With a substantial knowledge of the classical
languages (that are so good at verb systems and modes like the optative, that
English lacks), Grice explores modals like should, (Hampshire) ought to
(Hare) and, must (Grice ‒ necessity). Grice is well aware of Hares
reflections on the neustic qualifications on the phrastic. The imperative has
usually been one source for the philosophers concern with the language of morals. Grice
attempts to balance this with a similar exploration on good, now regarded as
the value-paradeigmatic notion par excellence. We cannot understand, to
echo Strawson, the concept of a person unless we understand the concept of a
good person, i.e. the philosopher’s conception of a good person.
Morals is very Oxonian. There were in Grices time only three chairs of
philosophy at Oxford: the three W: the Waynflete chair of metaphysical
philosophy, the Wykeham chair of logic (not philosophy, really), and the White
chair of moral philosophy. Later, the Wilde chair of philosophical
psychology was created. Grice was familiar with Austin’s cavalier attitude
to morals as Whites professor of moral philosophy, succeeding Kneale. When
Hare succeeds Austin, Grice knows that it is time to play with the neustic implicaturum! Grices
approach to morals is very meta-ethical and starts with a fastidious (to use
Blackburns characterisation, not mine!) exploration of modes related to
propositional phrases involving should, ought to, and must. For Hampshire,
should is the moral word par excellence. For Hare, it is ought. For
Grice, it is only must that preserves that sort of necessity that, as a Kantian
rationalist, he is looking for. However, Grice hastens to add that whatever hell
say about the buletic, practical or boulomaic must must also apply to the
doxastic must, as in What goes up must come down. That he did not hesitate to
use necessity operators is clear from his axiomatic treatment, undertaken with
Code, on Aristotelian categories of izzing and hazzing. To understand
Grices view on ethics, we should return to the idea of creature construction in
more detail. Suppose we are genitors-demigods-designing living creatures,
creatures Grice calls Ps. To design a type of P is to specify a diagram and
table for that type plus evaluative procedures, if any. The design is
implemented in animal stuff-flesh and bones typically. Let us focus on one type
of P-a very sophisticated type that Grice, borrowing from Locke, calls very
intelligent rational Ps. Let me be a little more explicit, and a great deal
more speculative, about the possible relation to ethics of my programme for
philosophical psychology. I shall suppose that the genitorial programme has
been realized to the point at which we have designed a class of Ps which,
nearly following Locke, I might call very intelligent rational Ps. These Ps
will be capable of putting themselves in the genitorial position, of asking
how, if they were constructing themselves with a view to their own survival,
they would execute this task; and, if we have done our work aright, their
answer will be the same as ours . We might, indeed, envisage the contents of a
highly general practical manual, which these Ps would be in a position to
compile. The contents of the initial manual would have various kinds of
generality which are connected with familiar discussions of universalizability.
The Ps have, so far, been endowed only with the characteristics which belong to
the genitorial justified psychological theory; so the manual will have to be
formulated in terms of that theory, together with the concepts involved in the
very general description of livingconditions which have been used to set up
that theory; the manual will therefore have conceptual generality. There will
be no way of singling out a special subclass of addressees, so the injunctions
of the manual will have to be addressed, indifferently, to any very intelligent
rational P, and will thus have generality of form. And since the manual can be
thought of as being composed by each of the so far indistinguishable Ps, no P
would include in the manual injunctions prescribing a certain line of conduct
in circumstances to which he was not likely to be Subjects; nor indeed could he
do so even if he would. So the circumstances for which conduct is prescribed
could be presumed to be such as to be satisfied, from time to time, by any
addressee; the manual, then, will have generality of application. Such a manual
might, perhaps, without ineptitude be called an immanuel; and the very
intelligent rational Ps, each of whom both composes it and from time to time
heeds it, might indeed be ourselves (in our better moments, of course). Refs.:
Most of Grice’s theorizing on ethics counts as ‘meta-ethic,’ especially in connection
with R. M. Hare, but also with less prescriptivist Oxonian philosophers such as
Nowell-Smith, with his bestseller for Penguin, Austin, Warnock, and Hampshire.
Keywords then are ‘ethic,’ and ‘moral.’ There are many essays on both Kantotle,
i.e. on Aristotle and Kant. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
metalanguage, in formal
semantics, a language used to describe another language (the object language).
The object language may be either a natural language or a formal language. The
goal of a formal semantic theory is to provide an axiomatic or otherwise
systematic theory of meaning for the object language. The metalanguage is used
to specify the object language’s symbols and formation rules, which determine
its grammatical sentences or well-formed formulas, and to assign meanings or
interpretations to these sentences or formulas. For example, in an extensional
semantics, the metalanguage is used to assign denotations to the singular
terms, extensions to the general terms, and truth conditions to sentences. The
standard format for assigning truth conditions, as in Tarski’s formulation of
his “semantical conception of truth,” is a T-sentence, which takes the form ‘S
is true if and only if p.’ Davidson adapted this format to the purposes of his
truth-theoretic account of meaning. Examples of T-sentences, with English as
the metalanguage, are ‘ “La neige est blanche” is true if and only if snow is
white’, where the object langauge is French and the homophonic (Davidson)
‘“Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white’, where the object
language is English as well. Although for formal purposes the distinction
between metalanguage and object language must be maintained, in practice one
can use a langauge to talk about expressions in the very same language. One
can, in Carnap’s terms, shift 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 560 from the
material mode to the formal mode, e.g. from ‘Every veterinarian is an animal
doctor’ to ‘ “Veterinarian” means “animal doctor”.’ This shift is important in
discussions of synonymy and of the analytic–synthetic distinction. Carnap’s
distinction corresponds to the use–mention distinction. We are speaking in the
formal mode – we are mentioning a linguistic expression – when we ascribe a
property to a word or other expression type, such as its spelling,
pronunciation, meaning, or grammatical category, or when we speak of an
expression token as misspelled, mispronounced, or misused. We are speaking in
the material mode when we say “Reims is hard to find” but in the formal mode
when we say “ ‘Reims’ is hard to pronounce.”
metaphilosophy, the
theory of the nature of philosophy, especially its goals, methods, and
fundamental assumptions. First-order philosophical inquiry includes such
disciplines as epistemology, ontology, ethics, and value theory. It thus
constitutes the main activity of philosophers, past and present. The
philosophical study of firstorder philosophical inquiry raises philosophical
inquiry to a higher order. Such higher-order inquiry is metaphilosophy. The
first-order philosophical discipline of (e.g.) epistemology has the nature of
knowledge as its main focus, but that discipline can itself be the focus of
higher-order philosophical inquiry. The latter focus yields a species of
metaphilosophy called metaepistemology. Two other prominent species are
metaethics and metaontology. Each such branch of metaphilosophy studies the
goals, methods, and fundamental assumptions of a first-order philosophical
discipline. Typical metaphilosophical topics include (a) the conditions under
which a claim is philosophical rather than non-philosophical, and (b) the
conditions under which a first-order philosophical claim is either meaningful,
true, or warranted. Metaepistemology, e.g., pursues not the nature of knowledge
directly, but rather the conditions under which claims are genuinely
epistemological and the conditions under which epistemological claims are
either meaningful, or true, or warranted. The distinction between philosophy
and metaphilosophy has an analogue in the familiar distinction between
mathematics and metamathematics. Questions about the autonomy, objectivity,
relativity, and modal status of philosophical claims arise in metaphilosophy.
Questions about autonomy concern the relationship of philosophy to such
disciplines as those constituting the natural and social sciences. For
instance, is philosophy methodologically independent of the natural sciences?
Questions about objectivity and relativity concern the kind of truth and
warrant available to philosophical claims. For instance, are philosophical
truths characteristically, or ever, made true by mind-independent phenomena in
the way that typical claims of the natural sciences supposedly are? Or, are
philosophical truths unavoidably conventional, being fully determined by (and
thus altogether relative to) linguistic conventions? Are they analytic rather
than synthetic truths, and is knowledge of them a priori rather than a
posteriori? Questions about modal status consider whether philosophical claims
are necessary rather than contingent. Are philosophical claims necessarily true
or false, in contrast to the contingent claims of the natural sciences? The
foregoing questions identify major areas of controversy in contemporary
metaphilosophy.
metaphor, a figure of
speech (or a trope) in which a word or phrase that literally denotes one thing
is used to denote another, thereby implicitly comparing the two things. In the
normal use of the sentence ‘The Mississippi is a river’, ‘river’ is used
literally – or as some would prefer to say, used in its literal sense. By
contrast, if one assertively uttered “Time is a river,” one would be using
‘river’ metaphorically – or be using it in a metaphorical sense. Metaphor has
been a topic of philosophical discussion since Aristotle; in fact, it has
almost certainly been more discussed by philosophers than all the other tropes
together. Two themes are prominent in the discussions up to the nineteenth
century. One is that metaphors, along with all the other tropes, are
decorations of speech; hence the phrase ‘figures of speech’. Metaphors are
adornments or figurations. They do not contribute to the cognitive meaning of
the discourse; instead they lend it color, vividness, emotional impact, etc.
Thus it was characteristic of the Enlightenment and proto-Enlightenment
philosophers – Hobbes and Locke are good examples – to insist that though
philosophers may sometimes have good reason to communicate their thought with
metaphors, they themselves should do their thinking entirely without metaphors.
The other theme prominent in discussions of metaphor up to the nineteenth
century is that metaphors are, so far as their cognitive force is concerned,
elliptical similes. The cognitive force of ‘Time is a river’, when ‘river’ in
that sentence is used metaphorically, is the same as ‘Time is like a river’.
What characterizes almost all theories of metaphor from the time of the
Romantics up through our own century is the rejection of both these traditional
themes. Metaphors – so it has been argued – are not cognitively dispensable
decorations. They contribute to the cognitive meaning of our discourse; and
they are indispensable, not only to religious discourse, but to ordinary, and
even scientific, discourse, not to mention poetic. Nietzsche, indeed, went so
far as to argue that all speech is metaphorical. And though no consensus has
yet emerged on how and what metaphors contribute to meaning, nor how we
recognize what they contribute, nearconsensus has emerged on the thesis that
they do not work as elliptical similes.
metaphysical deduction: cf. the transcendental club. or
argument. transcendental argument Metaphysics,
epistemology An argument that starts from some accepted experience or fact to
prove that there must be something which is beyond experience but which is a
necessary condition for making the accepted experience or fact possible. The
goal of a transcendental argument is to establish the transcendental dialectic truth of this precondition.
If there is something X of which Y is a necessary condition, then Y must be
true. This form of argument became prominent in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,
where he argued that the existence of some fundamental a priori concepts,
namely the categories, and of space and time as pure forms of sensibility, are
necessary to make experience possible. In contemporary philosophy,
transcendental arguments are widely proposed as a way of refuting skepticism.
Wittgenstein used this form of argument to reject the possibility of a private
language that only the speaker could understand. Peter Strawson employs a
transcendental argument to prove the perception-independent existence of
material particulars and to reject a skeptical attitude toward the existence of
other minds. There is disagreement about the kind of necessity involved in
transcendental arguments, and Barry Stroud has raised important questions about
the possibility of transcendental arguments succeeding. “A transcendental
argument attempts to prove q by proving it is part of any correct explanation
of p, by proving it a precondition of p’s possibility.” Nozick Philosophical
Explanations transcendental deduction Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics,
aesthetics For Kant, the argument to prove that certain a priori concepts are
legitimately, universally, necessarily, and exclusively applicable to objects
of experience. Kant employed this form of argument to establish the legitimacy
of space and time as the forms of intuition, of the claims of the moral law in
the Critique of Practical Reason, and of the claims of the aesthetic judgment
of taste in the Critique of Judgement. However, the most influential example of
this form of argument appeared in the Critique of Pure Reason as the
transcendental deduction of the categories. The metaphysical deduction set out
the origin and character of the categories, and the task of the transcendental
deduction was to demonstrate that these a priori concepts do apply to objects
of experience and hence to prove the objective validity of the categories. The
strategy of the proof is to show that objects can be thought of only by means
of the categories. In sensibility, objects are subject to the forms of space
and time. In understanding, experienced
objects must stand under the conditions of the transcendental unity of
apperception. Because these conditions require the determination of objects by
the pure concepts of the understanding, there can be no experience that is not
subject to the categories. The categories, therefore, are justified in their
application to appearances as conditions of the possibility of experience. In
the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Kant extensively
rewrote the transcendental deduction, although he held that the result remained
the same. The first version emphasized the subjective unity of consciousness,
while the second version stressed the objective character of the unity, and it
is therefore possible to distinguish between a subjective and objective
deduction. The second version was meant to clarify the argument, but remained
extremely difficult to interpret and assess. The presence of the two versions
of this fundamental argument makes interpretation even more demanding.
Generally speaking, European philosophers prefer the subjective version, while
Anglo-American philosophers prefer the objective version. The transcendental
deduction of the categories was a revolutionary development in modern
philosophy. It was the main device by which Kant sought to overcome the errors
and limitations of both rationalism and empiricism and propelled philosophy
into a new phase. “The explanation of the manner in which concepts can thus
relate a priori to objects I entitle their transcendental deduction.” Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason. metaphysical realism, in the widest
sense, the view that (a) there are real objects (usually the view is concerned
with spatiotemporal objects), (b) they exist independently of our experience or
our knowledge of them, and (c) they have properties and enter into relations
independently of the concepts with which we understand them or of the language
with which we describe them. Anti-realism is any view that rejects one or more
of these three theses, though if (a) is rejected the rejection of (b) and (c)
follows trivially. (If it merely denies the existence of material things, then
its traditional name is ‘idealism.’) Metaphysical realism, in all of its three
parts, is shared by common sense, the sciences, and most philosophers. The
chief objection to it is that we can form no conception of real objects, as
understood by it, since any such conception must rest on the concepts we
already have and on our language and experience. To accept the objection seems
to imply that we can have no knowledge of real objects as they are in
themselves, and that truth must not be understood as correspondence to such
objects. But this itself has an even farther reaching consequence: either (i)
we should accept the seemingly absurd view that there are no real objects
(since the objection equally well applies to minds and their states, to
concepts and words, to properties and relations, to experiences, etc.), for we
should hardly believe in the reality of something of which we can form no
conception at all; or (ii) we must face the seemingly hopeless task of a
drastic change in what we mean by ‘reality’, ‘concept’, ‘experience’,
‘knowledge’, ‘truth’, and much else. On the other hand, the objection may be
held to reduce to a mere tautology, amounting to ‘We (can) know reality only as
we (can) know it’, and then it may be argued that no substantive thesis, which
anti-realism claims to be, is derivable from a mere tautology. Yet even if the
objection is a tautology, it serves to force us to avoid a simplistic view of
our cognitive relationship to the world. In discussions of universals,
metaphysical realism is the view that there are universals, and usually is
contrasted with nominalism. But this either precludes a standard third
alternative, namely conceptualism, or simply presupposes that concepts are
general words (adjectives, common nouns, verbs) or uses of such words. If this
presupposition is accepted, then indeed conceptualism would be the same as
nominalism, but this should be argued, not legislated verbally. Traditional
conceptualism holds that concepts are particular mental entities, or at least
mental dispositions, that serve the classificatory function that universals
have been supposed to serve and also explain the classificatory function that
general words undoubtedly also serve. -- metaphysics, most generally, the
philosophical investigation of the nature, constitution, and structure of
reality. It is broader in scope than science, e.g., physics and even cosmology
(the science of the nature, structure, and origin of the universe as a whole),
since one of its traditional concerns is the existence of non-physical
entities, e.g., God. It is also more fundamental, since it investigates
questions science does not address but the answers to which it presupposes. Are
there, for instance, physical objects at all, and does every event have a
cause? So understood, metaphysics was rejected by positivism on the ground that
its statements are “cognitively meaningless” since they are not empirically
verifiable. More recent philosophers, such as Quine, reject metaphysics on the
ground that science alone provides genuine knowledge. In The Metaphysics of
Logical Positivism (1954), Bergmann argued that logical positivism, and any
view such as Quine’s, presupposes a metaphysical theory. And the positivists’
criterion of cognitive meaning was never formulated in a way satisfactory even
to them. A successor of the positivist attitude toward metaphysics is P. F.
Strawson’s preference (especially in Individuals, 1959) for what he calls
descriptive metaphysics, which is “content to describe the actual structure of
our thought about the world,” as contrasted with revisionary metaphysics, which
is “concerned to produce a better structure.” The view, sometimes considered
scientific (but an assumption rather than an argued theory), that all that
there is, is spatiotemporal (a part of “nature”) and is knowable only through
the methods of the sciences, is itself a metaphysics, namely metaphysical
naturalism (not to be confused with natural philosophy). It is not part of
science itself. In its most general sense, metaphysics may seem to coincide with
philosophy as a whole, since anything philosophy investigates is presumably a
part of reality, e.g., knowledge, values, and valid reasoning. But it is useful
to reserve the investigation of such more specific topics for distinct branches
of philosophy, e.g., epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and logic, since they
raise problems peculiar to themselves. Perhaps the most familiar question in
metaphysics is whether there are only material entities – materialism – or only
mental entities, i.e., minds and their states – idealism – or both – dualism.
Here ‘entity’ has its broadest sense: anything real. More specific questions of
metaphysics concern the existence and nature of certain individuals – also
called particulars – (e.g., God), or certain properties (e.g., are there
properties that nothing exemplifies?) or relations (e.g., is there a relation
of causation that is a necessary connection rather than a mere regular
conjunction between events?). The nature of space and time is another important
example of such a more specific topic. Are space and time peculiar individuals
that “contain” ordinary individuals, or are they just systems of relations
between individual things, such as being (spatially) higher or (temporally)
prior. Whatever the answer, space and time are what render a world out of the
totality of entities that are parts of it. Since on any account of knowledge,
our knowledge of the world is extremely limited, concerning both its spatial
and temporal dimensions and its inner constitution, we must allow for an
indefinite number of possible ways the world may be, might have been, or will
be. And this thought gives rise to the idea of an indefinite number of possible
worlds. This idea is useful in making vivid our understanding of the nature of
necessary truth (a necessarily true proposition is one that is true in all
possible worlds) and thus is commonly employed in modal logic. But the idea can
also make possible worlds seem real, a highly controversial doctrine. The
notion of a spatiotemporal world is commonly that employed in discussions of
the socalled issue of realism versus anti-realism, although this issue has also
been raised with respect to universals, values, and numbers, which are not
usually considered spatiotemporal. While there is no clear sense in asserting
that nothing is real, there seems to be a clear sense in asserting that there
is no spatiotemporal world, especially if it is added that there are minds and
their ideas. This was Berkeley’s view. But contemporary philosophers who raise questions
about the reality of the spatiotemporal world are not comfortable with
Berkeleyan minds and ideas and usually just somewhat vaguely speak of
“ourselves” and our “representations.” The latter are themselves often
understood as material (states of our brains), a clearly inconsistent position
for anyone denying the reality of the spatiotemporal world. Usually, the
contemporary anti-realist does not actually deny it but rather adopts a view
resembling Kant’s transcendental idealism. Our only conception of the world,
the anti-realist would argue, rests on our perceptual and conceptual faculties,
including our language. But then what reason do we have to think that this
conception is true, that it corresponds to the world as the world is in itself?
Had our faculties and language been different, surely we would have had very
different conceptions of the world. And very different conceptions of it are
possible even in terms of our present faculties, as seems to be shown by the
fact that very different scientific theories can be supported by exactly the
same data. So far, we do not have anti-realism proper. But it is only a short
step to it: if our conception of an independent spatiotemporal world is
necessarily subjective, then we have no good reason for supposing that there is
such a world, especially since it seems selfcontradictory to speak of a
conception that is independent of our conceptual faculties. It is clear that
this question, like almost all the questions of general metaphysics, is at
least in part epistemological. Metaphysics can also be understood in a more
definite sense, suggested by Aristotle’s notion (in his Metaphysics, the title
of which was given by an early editor of his works, not by Aristotle himself)
of “first philosophy,” namely, the study of being qua being, i.e., of the most
general and necessary characteristics that anything must have in order to count
as a being, an entity (ens). Sometimes ‘ontology’ is used in this sense, but
this is by no means common practice, ‘ontology’ being often used as a synonym
of ‘metaphysics’. Examples of criteria (each of which is a major topic in
metaphysics) that anything must meet in order to count as a being, an entity,
are the following. (A) Every entity must be either an individual thing (e.g., Socrates
and this book), or a property (e.g., Socrates’ color and the shape of this
book), or a relation (e.g., marriage and the distance between two cities), or
an event (e.g., Socrates’ death), or a state of affairs (e.g., Socrates’ having
died), or a set (e.g., the set of Greek philosophers). These kinds of entities
are usually called categories, and metaphysics is very much concerned with the
question whether these are the only categories, or whether there are others, or
whether some of them are not ultimate because they are reducible to others
(e.g., events to states of affairs, or individual things to temporal series of
events). (B) The existence, or being, of a thing is what makes it an entity.
(C) Whatever has identity and is distinct from everything else is an entity.
(D) The nature of the “connection” between an entity and its properties and
relations is what makes it an entity. Every entity must have properties and
perhaps must enter into relations with at least some other entities. (E) Every
entity must be logically self-consistent. It is noteworthy that after
announcing his project of first philosophy, Aristotle immediately embarked on a
defense of the law of non-contradiction. Concerning (A) we may ask (i) whether
at least some individual things (particulars) are substances, in the
Aristotelian sense, i.e., enduring through time and changes in their properties
and relations, or whether all individual things are momentary. In that case,
the individuals of common sense (e.g., this book) are really temporal series of
momentary individuals, perhaps events such as the book’s being on a table at a
specific instant. We may also ask (ii) whether any entity has essential
properties, i.e., properties without which it would not exist, or whether all
properties are accidental, in the sense that the entity could exist even if it
lost the property in question. We may ask (iii) whether properties and
relations are particulars or universals, e.g., whether the color of this page
and the color of the next page, which (let us assume) are exactly alike, are
two distinct entities, each with its separate spatial location, or whether they
are identical and thus one entity that is exemplified by, perhaps even located
in, the two pages. Concerning (B), we may ask whether existence is itself a
property. If it is, how is it to be understood, and if it is not, how are we to
understand ‘x exists’ and ‘x does not exist’, which seem crucial to everyday
and scientific discourse, just as the thoughts they express seem crucial to
everyday and scientific thinking? Should we countenance, as Meinong did,
objects having no existence, e.g. golden mountains, even though we can talk and
think about them? We can talk and think about a golden mountain and even claim
that it is true that the mountain is golden, while knowing all along that what
we are thinking and talking about does not exist. If we do not construe
non-existent objects as something, then we are committed to the somewhat
startling view that everything exists. Concerning (C) we may ask how to
construe informative identity statements, such as, to use Frege’s example, ‘The
Evening Star is identical with the Morning Star’. This contrasts with trivial
and perhaps degenerate statements, such as ‘The Evening Star is identical with
the Evening Star’, which are almost never made in ordinary or scientific
discourse. The former are essential to any coherent, systematic cognition (even
to everyday recognition of persons and places). Yet they are puzzling. We
cannot say that they assert of two things that they are one, even though
ordinary language suggests precisely this. Neither can we just say that they
assert that a certain thing is identical with itself, for this view would be
obviously false if the statements are informative. The fact that Frege’s
example includes definite descriptions (‘the Evening Star’, ‘the Morning Star’)
is irrelevant, contrary to Russell’s view. Informative identity statements can
also have as their subject terms proper names and even demonstrative pronouns
(e.g., ‘Hesperus is identical with Phosphorus’ and ‘This [the shape of this
page] is identical with that [the shape of the next page]’), the reference of
which is established not by description but ostensively, perhaps by actual
pointing. Concerning (D) we can ask about the nature of the relationship,
usually called instantiation or exemplification, between an entity and its
properties and relations. Surely, there is such a relationship. But it can
hardly be like an ordinary relation such as marriage that connects things of
the same kind. And we can ask what is the connection between that relation and
the entities it relates, e.g., the individual thing on one hand and its
properties and relations on the other. Raising this question seems to lead to
an infinite regress, as Bradley held; for the supposed connection is yet
another relation to be connected with something else. But how do we avoid the
regress? Surely, an individual thing and its properties and relations are not
unrelated items. They have a certain unity. But what is its character?
Moreover, we can hardly identify the individual thing except by reference to
its properties and relations. Yet if we say, as some have, that it is nothing
but a bundle of its properties and relations, could there not be another bundle
of exactly the same properties and relations, yet distinct from the first one?
(This question concerns the so-called problem of individuation, as well as the
principle of the identity of indiscernibles.) If an individual is something
other than its properties and relations (e.g., what has been called a bare
particular), it would seem to be unobservable and thus perhaps unknowable.
Concerning (E), virtually no philosopher has questioned the law of
non-contradiction. But there are important questions about its status. Is it
merely a linguistic convention? Some have held this, but it seems quite
implausible. Is the law of non-contradiction a deep truth about being qua
being? If it is, (E) connects closely with (B) and (C), for we can think of the
concepts of self-consistency, identity, and existence as the most fundamental
metaphysical concepts. They are also fundamental to logic, but logic, even if
ultimately grounded in metaphysics, has a rich additional subject matter
(sometimes merging with that of mathematics) and therefore is properly regarded
as a separate branch of philosophy. The word ‘metaphysics’ has also been used
in at least two other senses: first, the investigation of entities and states
of affairs “transcending” human experience, in particular, the existence of
God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will (this was Kant’s
conception of the sort of metaphysics that, according to him, required
“critique”); and second, the investigation of any alleged supernatural or
occult phenomena, such as ghosts and telekinesis. The first sense is properly
philosophical, though seldom occurring today. The second is strictly popular,
since the relevant supernatural phenomena are most questionable on both
philosophical and scientific grounds. They should not be confused with the
subject matter of philosophical theology, which may be thought of as part of
metaphysics in the general philosophical sense, though it was included by
Aristotle in the subject matter of metaphysics in his sense of the study of
being qua being.
metaphysical wisdom: J. London-born philosopher, cited by H. P. Grice in his
third programme lecture on Metaphysics. “Wisdom used to say that metaphysics is
nonsense, but INTERESTING nonsense.” Some more “contemporary” accounts of “metaphysics”
sound, on the face of it at least, very different from either of these. Consider, for example, from the OTHER place,
John Wisdom's description of a metaphysical, shall we say, ‘statement’ – I
prefer ‘utterance’ or pronouncement!
Wisdom says that a metaphysical, shall we say, ‘proposition’ is,
characteristically, a sort of illuminating falsehood, a pointed paradox, which
uses what Wisdom calls ‘ordinary language’ in a disturbing, baffling, and even
shocking way, but not otiosely, but in order to make your tutee aware of a
hidden difference or a hidden resemblance between this thing and that thing – a
difference and a resemblance hidden by our ordinary ways of “talking.” The metaphysician renders what is clear,
obscure. And the metaphysician MUST
retort to some EXTRA-ordinary language, as Wisdom calls it! Of course, to be fair to Wisdom and the
OTHER place, Wisdom does not claim this to be a complete characterisation, nor
perhaps a literally correct one. Since
Wisdom loves a figure of speech and a figure of thought! Perhaps what Wisdom claims should *itself* be
seen as an illuminating paradox, a meta-meta-physical one! In any case, its relation to Aristotle's, or,
closer to us, F. H. Bradley's, account of the matter is not obvious, is it? But perhaps a relation CAN be
established. Certainly not every
metaphysical statement is a paradox serving to call attention to an usually
unnoticed difference or resemblance.
For many a metaphysical statement is so obscure (or unperspicuous, as I
prefer) that it takes long training, usually at Oxford, before the
metaphysician’s meaning can be grasped.
A paradox, such as Socrates’s, must operate with this or that familiar
concept. For the essence of a paradox is
that it administers a shock, and you cannot shock your tutee when he is
standing on such unfamiliar ground that he has no particular expectations. Nevertheless there IS a connection between
“metaphysics” and Wisdom's kind of paradox.
He is not speaking otiosely!
Suppose we consider the paradox:
i. Everyone is really always alone.
Considered by itself, it is no more than an epigram -- rather a flat
one - about the human condition. The implicaturum, via hyperbole, is “I am
being witty.” The pronouncement (i) might be said, at least, to minimise the
difference between “being BY oneself” and “being WITH other people,”
Heidegger’s “Mit-Sein.” But now consider
the pronouncement (i), not simply by itself, but surrounded and supported by a
certain kind of “metaphysical” argument: by a “metaphysical” argument to the
effect that what passes for “knowledge” of the other's mental or psychological
process is, at best, an unverifiable conjecture, since the mind (or soul) and
the body are totally distinct things, and the working of the mind (or soul, as
Aristotle would prefer, ‘psyche’) is always withdrawn behind the screen of its
bodily manifestations, as Witters would have it. (Not in vain Wisdom calls
himself or hisself a disciple of Witters!)
When this solitude-affirming paradox, (i) is seen in the context of a
general theory about the soul and the body and the possibilities and limits of
so-called “knowledge” (as in “Knowledge of other minds,” to use Wisdom’s
fashionable sobriquet), when it is seen as embodying such a “metaphysical”
theory, indeed the paradox BECOMES clearly a “metaphysical” statement. But the fact that the statement or
proposition is most clearly seen as “metaphysical” in such a setting does not
mean that there is no “metaphysics” at all in it when it is deprived of the setting.
(Cf. my “The general theory of context.”). An utterance like (ii) Everyone is alone. invites us to change, for a moment at least
and in one respect, our ordinary way of looking at and talking about things,
and hints (or the metaphysician implicates rather) that the changed view the
tutee gets is the truer, the profounder, view.
Cf. Cook Wilson, “What we know we know,” as delighting this air marshal.
methodological holism,
also called metaphysical holism, the thesis that with respect to some system
there is explanatory emergence, i.e., the laws of the more complex situations
in the system are not deducible by way of any composition laws or laws of
coexistence from the laws of the simpler or simplest situation(s). Explanatory
emergence may exist in a system for any of the following reasons: that at some
more complex level a variable interacts that does not do so at simpler levels,
that a property of the “whole” interacts with properties of the “parts,” that
the relevant variables interact by different laws at more complex levels owing
to the complexity of the levels, or (the limiting case) that strict lawfulness
breaks down at some more complex level. Thus, explanatory emergence does not
presuppose descriptive emergence, the thesis that there are properties of
“wholes” (or more complex situations) that cannot be defined through the
properties of the “parts” (or simpler situations). The opposite of
methodological holism is methodological individualism, also called explanatory
reductionism, according to which all laws of the “whole” (or more complex
situations) can be deduced from a combination of the laws of the simpler or
simplest situation(s) and either some composition laws or laws of coexistence
(depending on whether or not there is descriptive emergence). Methodological
individualists need not deny that there may be significant lawful connections
among properties of the “whole,” but must insist that all such properties are
either definable through, or connected by laws of coexistence with, properties
of the “parts.”
middle knowledge,
knowledge of a particular kind of propositions, now usually called
“counterfactuals of freedom,” first attributed to God by the sixteenth-century
Jesuit Luis de Molina. These propositions state, concerning each possible free
creature God could create, what that creature would do in each situation of
(libertarian) free choice in which it could possibly find itself. The claim
that God knows these propositions offers important theological advantages; it
helps in explaining both how God can have foreknowledge of free actions and how
God can maintain close providential control over a world containing libertarian
freedom. Opponents of middle knowledge typically argue that it is impossible
for there to be true counterfactuals of freedom.
Middle Platonism, the
period of Platonism between Antiochus of Ascalon (c.130–68 B.C.) and Plotinus
(A.D. 204–70), characterized by a rejection of the skeptical stance of the New
Academy and by a gradual advance, with many individual variations, toward a
comprehensive dogmatic position on metaphysical principles, while exhibiting a
certain latitude, as between Stoicizing and Peripateticizing positions, in the
sphere of ethics. Antiochus himself was much influenced by Stoic materialism
(though disagreeing with the Stoics in ethics), but in the next generation a
neo-Pythagorean influence made itself felt, generating the mix of doctrines
that one may most properly term Middle Platonic. From Eudorus of Alexandria
(fl. c.25 B.C.) on, a transcendental, two-world metaphysic prevailed, featuring
a supreme god, or Monad, a secondary creator god, and a world soul, with which
came a significant change in ethics, substituting, as an ‘end of goods’
(telos), “likeness to God” (from Plato, Theaetetus 176b), for the Stoicizing
“assimilation to nature” of Antiochus. Our view of the period is hampered by a
lack of surviving texts, but it is plain that, in the absence of a central
validating authority (the Academy as an institution seems to have perished in
the wake of the capture of Athens by Mithridates in 88 B.C.), a considerable
variety of doctrine prevailed among individual Platonists and schools of
Platonists, particularly in relation to a preference for Aristotelian or Stoic
principles of ethics. Most known activity occurred in the late first and second
centuries A.D. Chief figures in this period are Plutarch of Chaeronea
(c.45–125), Calvenus Taurus (fl. c.145), and Atticus (fl. c.175), whose
activity centered on Athens (though Plutarch remained loyal to Chaeronea in
Boeotia); Gaius (fl. c.100) and Albinus (fl. c.130) – not to be identified with
“Alcinous,” author of the Didaskalikos; the rhetorician Apuleius of Madaura
(fl. c.150), who also composed a useful treatise on the life and doctrines of
Plato; and the neo-Pythagoreans Moderatus of Gades (fl. c.90), Nicomachus of
Gerasa (fl. c.140), and Numenius (fl. c.150), who do not, however, constitute a
“school.” Good evidence for an earlier stage of Middle Platonism is provided by
the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c.25 B.C.–A.D. 50). Perhaps the
single most important figure for the later Platonism of Plotinus and his
successors is Numenius, of whose works we have only fragments. His speculations
on the nature of the first principle, however, do seem to have been a stimulus
to Plotinus in his postulation of a supraessential One. Plutarch is important
as a literary figure, though most of his serious philosophical works are lost;
and the handbooks of Alcinous and Apuleius are significant for our
understanding of second-century Platonism.
Milesians, the
pre-Socratic philosophers of Miletus, a Greek city-state on the Ionian coast of
Asia Minor. During the 6th century B.C. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes
produced the earliest Western philosophies, stressing an arche or material
source from which the cosmos and all things in it were generated.
Mill, James (1773–1836),
Scottish-born philosopher and social theorist. He applied the utilitarianism of
his contemporary Bentham to such social matters as systems of education and
government, law and penal systems, and colonial policy. He also advocated the
associationism of Hume. Mill was an influential thinker in early
nineteenth-century London, but his most important role in the history of
philosophy was the influence he had on his son, J. S. Mill. He raised his more
famous son as a living experiment in his associationist theory of education.
His utilitarian views were developed and extended by J. S. Mill, while his
associationism was also adopted by his son and became a precursor of the
latter’s phenomenalism.
Mill, John Stuart
(1806–73), British empiricist philosopher and utilitarian social reformer. He
was the son of James Mill, a historian of British India, a leading defender of
Bentham’s utilitarianism, and an advocate of reforms based on that philosophy.
The younger Mill was educated by his father in accordance with the principles
of the associationist psychology adopted by the Benthamites and deriving from
Hartley, and was raised with the expectation that he would become a defender of
the principles of the Benthamite school. He began the study of Greek at three
and Latin at eight, and later assisted his father in educating his younger
brothers and sisters. At twenty he went to France to learn the language, and
studied chemistry and mathematics at Montpellier. From 1824 to 1828 he wrote
regularly for the Westminster Review, the Benthamite journal. In 1828 he
underwent a mental crisis that lasted some months. This he later attributed to
his rigid education; in any case he emerged from a period of deep depression
still advocating utilitarianism but in a very much revised version. Mill
visited Paris during the revolution of 1830, meeting Lafayette and other
popular leaders, and was introduced to the writings of Saint-Simon and Comte.
Also in 1830 he met Mrs. Harriet Taylor, to whom he immediately became devoted.
They married only in 1851, when her husband died. He joined the India House
headquarters of the East India Company in 1823, serving as an examiner until
the company was dissolved in 1858 in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny. Mill
sat in Parliament from 1865 to 1868. Harriet Mill died in 1858, and was buried
at Avignon, where Mill thereafter regularly resided for half of each year until
his own death. Mill’s major works are his System of Logic, Deductive and
Inductive (first edition, 1843), Political Economy (first edition, 1848), On
Liberty (1860), Utilitarianism (first published in Fraser’s Magazine, 1861),
The Subjection of Women (1869), An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s
Philosophy (1865), and the posthumous Three Essays on Religion (1874). His
writing style is excellent, and his history of his own mental development, the
Autobiography (1867), is a major Victorian literary text. His main opponents
philosophically were Whewell and Hamilton, and it is safe to say that after
Mill their intuitionism in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and ethics could
no longer be defended. Mill’s own views were later to be eclipsed by those of
T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and the other British idealists. In the present
century his views in metaphysics and philosophy of science have been revived
and defended by Russell and the logical positivists, while his utilitarian
ethics has regained its status as one of the major ethical theories. His social
philosophy deeply infuenced the Fabians and other groups on the British left;
its impact continues. Mill was brought up on the basis of, and to believe in,
the strict utilitarianism of his father. His own development largely consisted
in his attempts to broaden it, to include a larger and more sympathetic view of
human nature, and to humanize its program to fit this broader view of human
beings. In his own view, no doubt largely correct, he did not so much reject
his father’s principles as fill in the gaps and eliminate rigidities and
crudities. He continued throughout his life his father’s concern to propagate
principles conceived as essential to promoting human happiness. These extended
from moral principles to principles of political economy to principles of logic
and metaphysics. Psychology. Mill’s vision of the human being was rooted in the
psychological theories he defended. Arguing against the intuitionism of Reid
and Whewell, he extended the associationism of his father. On this theory,
ideas have their genetic antecedents in sensation, a complex idea being
generated out of a unique set of simple, elementary ideas, through associations
based on regular patterns in the presented sensations. Psychological analysis
reveals the elementary parts of ideas and is thus the means for investigating
the causal origins of our ideas. The elder Mill followed Locke in conceiving
analysis on the model of definition, so that the psychological elements are
present in the idea they compose and the idea is nothing but its associated
elements. The younger Mill emerged from his mental crisis with the recognition
that mental states are often more than the sum of the ideas that are their
genetic antecedents. On the revised model of analysis, the analytical elements
are not actually present in the idea, but are present only dispositionally,
ready to be recovered by association under the analytical set. Moreover, it is
words that are defined, not ideas, though words become general only by becoming
associated with ideas. Analysis thus became an empirical task, rather than
something settled a priori according to one’s metaphysical predispositions, as
it had been for Mill’s predecessors. The revised psychology allowed the younger
Mill to account empirically in a much more subtle way than could the earlier
associationists for the variations in our states of feeling. Thus, for example,
the original motive to action is simple sensations of pleasure, but through
association things originally desired as means become associated with pleasure
and thereby become desirable as ends, as parts of one’s pleasure. But these
acquired motives are not merely the sum of the simple pleasures that make them
up; they are more than the sum of those genetic antecedents. Thus, while Mill
holds with his father that persons seek to maximize their pleasures, unlike his
father he also holds that not all ends are selfish, and that pleasures are not
only quantitatively but also qualitatively distinct. Ethics. In ethics, then,
Mill can hold with the intuitionists that our moral sentiments are
qualitatively distinct from the lower pleasures, while denying the intuitionist
conclusion that they are innate. Mill urges, with his father and Bentham, that
the basic moral norm is the principle of utility, that an action is right
provided it maximizes human welfare. Persons always act to maximize their own
pleasure, but the general human welfare can be among the pleasures they seek.
Mill’s position thus does not have the problems that the apparently egoistic psychology
of his father created. The only issue is whether a person ought to maximize
human welfare, whether he ought to be the sort of person who is so motivated.
Mill’s own ethics is that this is indeed what one ought to be, and he tries to
bring this state of human being about in others by example, and by urging them
to expand the range of their human sympathy through poetry like that of
Wordsworth, through reading the great moral teachers such as Jesus and
Socrates, and by other means of moral improvement. Mill also offers an argument
in defense of the principle of utility. Against those who, like Whewell, argue
that there is no basic right to pleasure, he argues that as a matter of
psychological fact, people seek only pleasure, and concludes that it is therefore
pointless to suggest that they ought to do anything other than this. The test
of experience thus excludes ends other than pleasure. This is a plausible
argument. Less plausible is his further argument that since each seeks her own
pleasure, the general good is the (ultimate) aim of all. This latter argument
unfortunately presupposes the invalid premise that the law for a whole follows
from laws about the individual parts of the whole. Other moral rules can be
justified by their utility and the test of experience. For example, such
principles of justice as the rules of property and of promise keeping are
justified by their role in serving certain fundamental human needs. Exceptions
to such secondary rules can be justified by appeal to the principle of utility.
But there is also utility in not requiring in every application a lengthy
utilitarian calculation, which provides an objective justification for
overlooking what might be, objectively considered in terms of the principle of
utility, an exception to a secondary rule. Logic and philosophy of science. The
test of experience is also brought to bear on norms other than those of
morality, e.g., those of logic and philosophy of science. Mill argues, against
the rationalists, that science is not demonstrative from intuited premises.
Reason in the sense of deductive logic is not a logic of proof but a logic of
consistency. The basic axioms of any science are derived through generalization
from experience. The axioms are generic and delimit a range of possible
hypotheses about the specific subject matter to which they are applied. It is
then the task of experiment and, more generally, observation to eliminate the
false and determine which hypothesis is true. The axioms, the most generic of
which is the law of the uniformity of nature, are arrived at not by this sort
of process of elimination but by induction by simple enumeration: Mill argues
plausibly that on the basis of experience this method becomes more reliable the
more generic is the hypothesis that it is used to justify. But like Hume, Mill
holds that for any generalization from experience the evidence can never be
sufficient to eliminate all possibility of doubt. Explanation for Mill, as for
the logical positivists, is by subsumption under matter-of-fact
generalizations. Causal generalizations that state sufficient or necessary and
sufficient conditions are more desirable as explanations than mere
regularities. Still more desirable is a law or body of laws that gives
necessary and sufficient conditions for any state of a system, i.e., a body of
laws for which there are no explanatory gaps. As for explanation of laws, this
can proceed either by filling in gaps or by subsuming the law under a generic
theory that unifies the laws of several areas. Mill, John Stuart Mill, John
Stuart 569 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 569 Mill argues that in the
social sciences the subject matter is too complex to apply the normal methods
of experiment. But he also rejects the purely deductive method of the
Benthamite political economists such as his father and David Ricardo. Rather,
one must deduce the laws for wholes, i.e., the laws of economics and sociology,
from the laws for the parts, i.e., the laws of psychology, and then test these
derived laws against the accumulated data of history. Mill got the idea for
this methodology of the social sciences from Comte, but unfortunately it is
vitiated by the false idea, already noted, that one can deduce without any
further premise the laws for wholes from the laws for the parts. Subsequent
methodologists of the social sciences have come to substitute the more
reasonable methods of statistics for this invalid method Mill proposes. Mill’s
account of scientific method does work well for empirical sciences, such as the
chemistry of his day. He was able to show, too, that it made good sense of a
great deal of physics, though it is arguable that it cannot do justice to
theories that explain the atomic and subatomic structure of matter – something
Mill himself was prepared to acknowledge. He also attempted to apply his views
to geometry, and even more implausibly, to arithmetic. In these areas, he was
certainly bested by Whewell, and the world had to wait for the logical work of
Russell and Whitehead before a reasonable empiricist account of these areas
became available. Metaphysics. The starting point of all inference is the sort
of observation we make through our senses, and since we know by experience that
we have no ideas that do not derive from sense experience, it follows that we
cannot conceive a world beyond what we know by sense. To be sure, we can form
generic concepts, such as that of an event, which enable us to form concepts of
entities that we cannot experience, e.g., the concept of the tiny speck of sand
that stopped my watch or the concept of the event that is the cause of my
present sensation. Mill held that what we know of the laws of sensation is
sufficient to make it reasonable to suppose that the immediate cause of one’s
present sensation is the state of one’s nervous system. Our concept of an
objective physical object is also of this sort; it is the set of events that
jointly constitute a permanent possible cause of sensation. It is our inductive
knowledge of laws that justifies our beliefs that there are entities that fall
under these concepts. The point is that these entities, while unsensed, are (we
reasonably believe) part of the world we know by means of our senses. The
contrast is to such things as the substances and transcendent Ideas of
rationalists, or the God of religious believers, entities that can be known
only by means that go beyond sense and inductive inferences therefrom. Mill
remained essentially pre-Darwinian, and was willing to allow the plausibility
of the hypothesis that there is an intelligent designer for the perceived order
in the universe. But this has the status of a scientific hypothesis rather than
a belief in a substance or a personal God transcending the world of experience
and time. Whewell, at once the defender of rationalist ideas for science and
for ethics and the defender of established religion, is a special object for
Mill’s scorn. Social and political thought. While Mill is respectful of the
teachings of religious leaders such as Jesus, the institutions of religion,
like those of government and of the economy, are all to be subjected to
criticism based on the principle of utility: Do they contribute to human
welfare? Are there any alternatives that could do better? Thus, Mill argues
that a free-market economy has many benefits but that the defects, in terms of
poverty for many, that result from private ownership of the means of production
may imply that we should institute the alternative of socialism or public
ownership of the means of production. He similarly argues for the utility of
liberty as a social institution: under such a social order individuality will
be encouraged, and this individuality in turn tends to produce innovations in
knowledge, technology, and morality that contribute significantly to improving
the general welfare. Conversely, institutions and traditions that stifle
individuality, as religious institutions often do, should gradually be
reformed. Similar considerations argue on the one hand for democratic
representative government and on the other for a legal system of rights that
can defend individuals from the tyranny of public opinion and of the majority.
Status of women. Among the things for which Mill campaigned were women’s
rights, women’s suffrage, and equal access for women to education and to
occupations. He could not escape his age and continued to hold that it was
undesirable for a woman to work to help support her family. While he disagreed
with his father and Bentham that all motives are egoistic and self-interested,
he nonetheless held that in most affairs of ecoMill, John Stuart Mill, John
Stuart 570 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 570 millet paradox Mill’s
methods 571 nomics and government such motives are dominant. He was therefore
led to disagree with his father that votes for women are unnecessary since the
male can speak for the family. Women’s votes are needed precisely to check the
pursuit of male self-interest. More generally, equality is essential if the
interests of the family as such are to be served, rather than making the family
serve male self-interest as had hitherto been the case. Changing the relation
between men and women to one of equality will force both parties to curb their
self-interest and broaden their social sympathies to include others. Women’s
suffrage is an essential step toward the moral improvement of humankind.
Mill’s methods,
procedures for discovering necessary conditions, sufficient conditions, and
necessary and sufficient conditions, where these terms are used as follows: if
whenever A then B (e.g., whenever there is a fire then oxygen is present), then
B is a necessary (causal) condition for A; and if whenever C then D (e.g.,
whenever sugar is in water, then it dissolves), then C is a sufficient (causal)
condition for D. Method of agreement. Given a pair of hypotheses about
necessary conditions, e.g., (1) whenever A then B1 whenever A then B2, then an
observation of an individual that is A but not B2 will eliminate the second
alternative as false, enabling one to conclude that the uneliminated hypothesis
is true. This method for discovering necessary conditions is called the method
of agreement. To illustrate the method of agreement, suppose several people
have all become ill upon eating potato salad at a restaurant, but have in other
respects had quite different meals, some having meat, some vegetables, some
desserts. Being ill and not eating meat eliminates the latter as the cause;
being ill and not eating dessert eliminates the latter as cause; and so on. It
is the condition in which the individuals who are ill agree that is not
eliminated. We therefore conclude that this is the cause or necessary condition
for the illness. Method of difference. Similarly, with respect to the pair of
hypotheses concerning sufficient conditions, e.g., (2) whenever C1 then D
whenever C2 then D, an individual that is C1 but not D will eliminate the first
hypothesis and enable one to conclude that the second is true. This is the
method of difference. A simple change will often yield an example of an
inference to a sufficient condition by the method of difference. If something
changes from C1 to C2, and also thereupon changes from notD to D, one can
conclude that C2, in respect of which the instances differ, is the cause of D.
Thus, Becquerel discovered that burns can be caused by radium, i.e., proximity
to radium is a sufficient but not necessary condition for being burned, when he
inferred that the radium he carried in a bottle in his pocket was the cause of
a burn on his leg by noting that the presence of the radium was the only
relevant causal difference between the time when the burn was present and the
earlier time when it was not. Clearly, both methods can be generalized to cover
any finite number of hypotheses in the set of alternatives. The two methods can
be combined in the joint method of agreement and difference to yield the
discovery of conditions that are both necessary and sufficient. Sometimes it is
possible to eliminate an alternative, not on the basis of observation, but on
the basis of previously inferred laws. If we know by previous inductions that
no C2 is D, then observation is not needed to eliminate the second hypothesis
of (2), and we can infer that what remains, or the residue, gives us the
sufficient condition for D. Where an alternative is eliminated by previous inductions,
we are said to use the method of residues. The methods may be generalized to
cover quantitative laws. A cause of Q may be taken not to be a necessary and
sufficient condition, but a factor P on whose magnitude the magnitude of Q
functionally depends. If P varies when Q varies, then one can use methods of
elimination to infer that P causes Q. This has been called the method of
concomitant variation. More complicated methods are needed to infer what
precisely is the function that correlates the two magnitudes. Clearly, if we
are to conclude that one of (1) is true on the basis of the given data, we need
an additional premise to the effect that there is at least one necessary
condition for B and it is among the set consisting of A1 and A2. 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999
7:42 AM Page 571 Mimamsa mimesis 572 The existence claim here is known as a
principle of determinism and the delimited range of alternatives is known as a
principle of limited variety. Similar principles are needed for the other
methods. Such principles are clearly empirical, and must be given prior
inductive support if the methods of elimination are to be conclusive. In
practice, generic scientific theories provide these principles to guide the
experimenter. Thus, on the basis of the observations that justified Kepler’s
laws, Newton was able to eliminate all hypotheses concerning the force that
moved the planets about the sun save the inverse square law, provided that he
also assumed as applying to this specific sort of system the generic theoretical
framework established by his three laws of motion, which asserted that there
exists a force accounting for the motion of the planets (determinism) and that
this force satisfies certain conditions, e.g., the action-reaction law (limited
variety). The eliminative methods constitute the basic logic of the
experimental method in science. They were first elaborated by Francis Bacon
(see J. Weinberg, Abstraction, Relation, and Induction, 1965). They were
restated by Hume, elaborated by J. F. W. Herschel, and located centrally in
scientific methodology by J. S. Mill. Their structure was studied from the
perspective of modern developments in logic by Keynes, W. E. Johnson, and
especially Broad.
Mimamsa, also called
Purva Mimamsa, an orthodox school within Hinduism that accepts the existence of
everlasting souls or minds to which consciousness is not intrinsic, everlasting
material atoms, and mind-independent physical objects caused by the natural
mutual attraction of atoms. Atheistic, it accepts – in common with the other
orthodox schools – the doctrines of the beginningless transmigration of souls
and the operation of karma. Mimamsa accepts perception, inference, and
testimony (or authority) as reliable sources of knowledge. Testimony comes in
two kinds, personal and impersonal. Personal testimony (someone’s spoken or
written word, giving knowledge if the person giving it is reliable) is
descriptive. Impersonal testimony (the Vedas) is imperatival, giving commands
that ritual actions be performed; properly understanding and following these
commands is essential to achieving enlightenment. Reliable personal testimony
presupposes reliable perception and inference; impersonal testimony does not.
Postulation is taken to be a fourth source of knowledge. If the postulation
that event A occurred adequately explains that event B occurred, though A is
unobserved and there is no necessary or universal connection between events
like A and events like B, one can know that A occurred, but this knowledge is
neither perceptual nor inferential. In effect, this distinguishes inference to
best explanation (abduction) from inductive reasoning.
mimesis (from Greek
mimesis, ‘imitation’), the modeling of one thing on another, or the presenting
of one thing by another; imitation. The concept played a central role in the
account formulated by Plato and Aristotle of what we would now call the fine
arts. The poet, the dramatist, the painter, the musician, the sculptor, all
compose a mimesis of reality. Though Plato, in his account of painting,
definitely had in mind that the painter imitates physical reality, the general
concept of mimesis used by Plato and Aristotle is usually better translated by
‘representation’ than by ‘imitation’: it belongs to the nature of the work of
art to represent, to re-present, reality. This representational or mimetic
theory of art remained far and away the dominant theory in the West until the
rise of Romanticism – though by no means everyone agreed with Plato that it is
concrete items of physical reality that the artist represents. The hold of the
mimetic theory was broken by the insistence of the Romantics that, rather than
the work of art being an imitation, it is the artist who, in his or her
creative activity, imitates Nature or God by composing an autonomous object.
Few contemporary theorists of art would say that the essence of art is to
represent; the mimetic theory is all but dead. In part this is a reflection of
the power of the Romantic alternative to the mimetic theory; in part it is a
reflection of the rise to prominence over the last century of nonobjective,
abstract painting and sculpture and of “absolute” instrumental music.
Nonetheless, the phenomenon of representation has not ceased to draw the
attention of theorists. In recent years three quite different general theories
of representation have appeared: Nelson Goodman’s (The Languages of Art),
Nicholas Wolterstorff’s (Works and Worlds of Art), and Kendall Walton’s
(Mimesis as Make-Believe).
ming, Chinese term
meaning ‘fate’, ‘mandate’. In general, ming is what is outside of human
control. ‘Ming’ is thus nearly synonymous with one use of ‘t’ien’, as in the
observation by Mencius: “That which is done when no one does it is due to
t’ien; that which comes about when no one brings it about is due to ming.” Ming
can also refer to the mandate to rule given by t’ien or the “moral endowment”
of each human.
minimal transformationalism. Grice was proud that his system PIROTESE ‘allowed for the
most minimal transformations.” transformational
grammar Philosophy of language The most powerful of the three kinds of grammar
distinguished by Chomsky. The other two are finite-state grammar and
phrasestructure grammar. Transformational grammar is a replacement for
phrase-structure grammar that (1) analyzes only the constituents in the
structure of a sentence; (2) provides a set of phrase-structure rules that
generate abstract phrase-structure representations; (and 3) holds that the
simplest sentences are produced according to these rules. Transformational
grammar provides a further set of transformational rules to show that all
complex sentences are formed from simple elements. These rules manipulate
elements and otherwise rearrange structures to give the surface structures of
sentences. Whereas phrase-structure rules only change one symbol to another in
a sentence, transformational rules show that items of a given grammatical form
can be transformed into items of a different grammatical form. For example,
they can show the transformation of negative sentences into positive ones,
question sentences into affirmative ones and passive sentences into active
ones. Transformational grammar is presented as an improvement over other forms
of grammar and provides a model to account for the ability of a speaker to
generate new sentences on the basis of limited data. “The central idea of
transformational grammar is determined by repeated application of certain
formal operations called ‘grammatical transformations’ to objects of a more
elementary sort.” Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
miracle, an extraordinary
event brought about by God. In the medieval understanding of nature, objects
have certain natural powers and tendencies to exercise those powers under
certain circumstances. Stones have the power to fall to the ground, and the
tendency to exercise that power when liberated from a height. A miracle is then
an extraordinary event in that it is not brought about by any object exercising
its natural powers – e.g., a liberated stone rising in the air – but brought
about directly by God. In the modern understanding of nature, there are just
events (states of objects) and laws of nature that determine which events
follow which other events. There is a law of nature that heavy bodies when
liberated fall to the ground. A miracle is then a “violation” of a law of
nature by God. We must understand by a law a principle that determines what
happens unless there is intervention from outside the natural order, and by a
“violation” such an intervention. There are then three problems in identifying
a miracle. The first is to determine whether an event of some kind, if it
occurred, would be a violation of a law of nature (beyond the natural power of
objects to bring about). To know this we must know what are the laws of nature.
The second problem is to find out whether such an event did occur on a
particular occasion. Our own memories, the testimony of witnesses, and physical
traces will be the historical evidence of this, but they can mislead. And the
evidence from what happened on other occasions that some law L is a law of
nature is evidence supporting the view that on the occasion in question L was
operative, and so there was no violation. Hume claimed that in practice there
has never been enough historical evidence for a miracle to outweigh the latter
kind of counterevidence. Finally, it must be shown that God was the cause of
the violation. For that we need grounds from natural theology for believing
that there is a God and that this is the sort of occasion on which he is likely
to intervene in nature.
misfire. Used by Grice in Meaning Revisited. Cf. Austin.
“When the utterance is a misfire, the procedure which we purport to invoke is
disallowed or is botched: and our act (marrying, etc.) is void or without
effect, etc. We speak of our act as a purported act, or perhaps an attempt, or
we use such an expression as ‘went through a form of marriaage’ by contrast
with ‘married.’ If somebody issues a performative utterance, and the
utterance is classed as a misfire because the procedure invoked is not
accepted , it is presumably persons other than the speaker who do not
accept it (at least if the speaker is speaking seriously ). What would be
an ex- ample ? Consider ‘I divorce you*, said to a wife by her
husband in a Christian country, and both being Chris- tians rather than
Mohammedans. In this case it might be said, ‘nevertheless he has not
(successfully) divorced her: we admit only some other verbal or
non-verbal pro- cedure’; or even possibly ‘we (we) do not admit any
procedure at all for effecting divorce — marriage is indis- soluble’.
This may be carried so far that we reject what may be called a whole code
of procedure, e.g. the code of honour involving duelling: for example, a
challenge may be issued by ‘my seconds will call on you’, which is
equivalent to ‘ I challenge you’, and we merely shrug it off The general
position is exploited in the unhappy story of Don Quixote. Of
course, it will be evident that it is comparatively simple if we never
admit any ‘such’ procedure at all — that is, any procedure at all for
doing that sort of thing, or that procedure anyway for doing that
particular thing. But equally possible are the cases where we do
sometimes — in certain circumstances or at certain hands — accept
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ULIL 111 ttllj UL1U/1 L/llCUllli3Lail\/^ KJL CIL other
hands. And here we may often be in doubt (as in 28
Horn to do things with Words the naming example
above) whether an infelicity should be brought into our present class A.
i or rather into A. 2 (or even B. i or B. 2). For example, at a party,
you say, when picking sides, ‘I pick George’: George grunts ‘I’m
not playing.’ Has George been picked? Un- doubtedly, the situation is an
unhappy one. Well, we may say, you have not picked George, whether
because there is no convention that you can pick people who aren’t
playing or because George in the circumstances is an inappropriate object
for the procedure of picking. Or on a desert island you may say to me ‘Go
and pick up wood’; and I may say 4 1 don’t take orders from you’ or
‘you’re not entitled to give me orders’ — I do not take orders from you
when you try to ‘assert your authority’ (which I might fall in with but
may not) on a desert island, as opposed to the case when you are the
captain on a ship and therefore genuinely have authority.
Miskawayh (936–c.1030),
Persian courtierstatesman, historian, physician, and advocate of Greek and
other ancient learning in Islam. His On the Refinement of Character (tr.
Constantine Zurayk, 1968) has been called “the most influential work on
philosophical ethics” in Islam. It transmutes Koranic command ethics into an
Aristotelian virtue ethics whose goal is the disciplining (ta’dib, cf. the
Greek paideia) of our natural irascibility, allowing our deeper unity to be
expressed in love and fellowship. Miskawayh’s system was copied widely –
crucially, in al-Ghazali’s all-but-canonical treatment of virtue ethics – but
denatured by al-Ghazali’s substitution of pietistic themes where Miskawayh
seemed too secular or humanistic.
missum: If Grice uses psi-transmission, he also
uses transmission, and mission, transmissum, and missum. Grice was out on a
mission. Grice uses ‘emissor,’ but then there’s the ‘missor.’ This is in key
with modern communication theory as instituted by Shannon. The ‘missor’ ‘sends’
a ‘message’ to a recipient – or missee. But be careful, he may miss it. In any
case, it shows that e-missor is a compound of ‘ex-‘ plus ‘missor,’ so that
makes sense. It transliterates Grice’s ut-terer (which literally means
‘out-erer’). And then there’s the prolatum, from proferre, which has the
professor, as professing that p, that is. As someone said, if H. P. Girce were
to present a talk to the Oxford Philosophical Society he would possibly call it
“Messaging.” c. 1300, "a communication
transmitted via a messenger, a notice sent through some agency," from Old
French message "message,
news, tidings, embassy" (11c.), from Medieval Latin missaticum, from Latin missus "a sending away,
sending, dispatching; a throwing, hurling," noun use of past participle
of mittere "to
release, let go; send, throw" (see mission). The Latin word is glossed in Old English by ærende. Specific religious sense of
"divinely inspired communication via a prophet" (1540s) led to
transferred sense of "the broad meaning (of something)," which is
attested by 1828. To get the message "understand" is by 1960.
M’Naghten rule, a rule in
Anglo-American criminal law defining legal insanity for purposes of creating a
defense to criminal liability: legal insanity is any defect of reason, due to
disease of the mind, that causes an accused criminal either not to know the
nature and quality of his act, or not to know that his act was morally or
legally wrong. Adopted in the M’Naghten case in England in 1843, the rule harks
back to the responsibility test for children, which was whether they were
mature enough to know the difference between right and wrong. The rule is
alternatively viewed today as being either a test of a human being’s general
status as a moral agent or a test of when an admitted moral agent is
nonetheless excused because of either factual or moral/legal mistakes. On the
first (or status) interpretation of the rule, the insane are exempted from
criminal liability because they, like young children, lack the rational agency
essential to moral personhood. On the second (or mistake) interpretation of the
rule, the insane are exempted from criminal liability because they instantiate
the accepted moral excuses of mistake or ignorance. See also
mnemic causation, a type
of causation in which, in order to explain the proximate cause of an organism’s
behavior, it is necessary to specify not only the present state of the organism
and the present stimuli operating upon it, but also the past experiences of the
organism. The term was introduced by Russell in The Analysis of Mind (1921).
Mode
of correlation: a technical jargon. Grice is not sure whether ‘mode’ ‘of’ and
‘correlation’ are the appropriate terms. Grice speaks of an associative mode of
correlation – vide associatum. He also speaks of a conventional mode of
correlation (or is it mode of conventional correlation) – vide non-conventional,
and he speaks of an iconic mode of correlation, vide non-iconic. Indeed he
speaks once of ‘conventional correlation’ TO THE ASSOCIATED specific response. So the mode is rather
otiose. In the context when he uses ‘conventional correlation’ TO THE ASSOCIATED
specific response, he uses ‘way’ rather than mode – Grice wants ‘conventional
correlation’ TO THE ASSOCIATED specific RESPONSE to be just one way, or mode.
There’s ASSOCIATIVE correlation, and iconic correlation, and ‘etc.’ Strictly,
as he puts it, this or that correlation is this or that provision of a way in
which the expressum is correlated to a specific response. When symbolizing he
uses the informal “correlated in way c with response r’ – having said that ‘c’
stands for ‘mode of correlation.’ But ‘mode sounds too pretentious, hence his
retreat to the more flowing ‘way.’
model theory: H. P.
Grice, “A conversational model,” a branch of mathematical logic that deals with
the connection between a language and its interpretations or structures. Basic
to it is the characterization of the conditions under which a sentence is true
in structure. It is confusing that the term ‘model’ itself is used slightly
differently: a model for a sentence is a structure for the language of the
sentence in which it is true. Model theory was originally developed for
explicitly constructed, formal languages, with the purpose of studying
foundational questions of mathematics, but was later applied to the semantical
analysis of empirical theories, a development initiated by the Dutch
philosopher Evert Beth, and of natural languages, as in Montague grammar. More
recently, in situation theory, we find a theory of semantics in which not the
concept of truth in a structure, but that of information carried by a statement
about a situation, is central. The term ‘model theory’ came into use in the 0s,
with the work on first-order model theory by Tarski, but some of the most
central results of the field date from before that time. The history of the
field is complicated by the fact that in the 0s and 0s, when the first
model-theoretic findings were obtained, the separation between first-order
logic and its extensions was not yet completed. Thus, in 5, there appeared an
article by Leopold Löwenheim, containing the first version of what is now
called the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem. Löwenheim proved that every satisfiable
sentence has a countable model, but he did not yet work in firstorder logic as
we now understand it. One of the first who did so was the Norwegian logician
Thoralf Skolem, who showed in 0 that a set of first-order sentences that has a
model, has a countable model, one form of the LöwenheimSkolem theorem. Skolem
argued that logic was first-order logic and that first-order logic was the
proper basis for metamathematical investigations, fully accepting the
relativity of set-theoretic notions in first-order logic. Within philosophy
this thesis is still dominant, but in the end it has not prevailed in
mathematical logic. In 0 Kurt Gödel solved an open problem of Hilbert-Ackermann
and proved a completeness theorem for first-order logic. This immediately led
to another important model-theoretic result, the compactness theorem: if every
finite subset of a set of sentences has a model then the set has a model. A
good source for information about the model theory of first-order logic, or
classical model theory, is still Model Theory by C. C. Chang and H. J. Keisler
3. When the separation between first-order logic and stronger logics had been
completed and the model theory of first-order logic had become a mature field,
logicians undertook in the late 0s the study of extended model theory, the
model theory of extensions of first-order logic: first of cardinality
quantifiers, later of infinitary languages and of fragments of second-order logic.
With so many examples of logics around
where sometimes classical theorems did generalize, sometimes not Per Lindström showed in 9 what sets
first-order logic apart from its extensions: it is the strongest logic that is
both compact and satisfies the LöwenheimSkolem theorem. This work has been the
beginning of a study of the relations between various properties logics may
possess, the so-called abstract model.
modus: Grice was an expert on mode. There is one mode too many.
If Grice found ‘senses’ obsolete (“Sense are not to be multiplied beyond
necessity”), he was always ready to welcome a new mode – e. g. the quessertive
--. or mode. ἔγκλισις , enclisis, mood of a verb, D.H.Comp.6, D.T.638.7, A.D. Synt.248.14,
etc.Many times, under ‘mode,’ Grice describes what others call ‘aspect.’ Surely
‘tense’ did not affect him much, except when it concerned “=”. But when it came
to modes, he included ‘aspect,’ so there’s the optative, the imperative, the
indicative, the informational, and then the future intentional and the future
indicative, and the subjunctive, and the way they interact with the praesens,
praeteritum and futurum, and wih the axis of what Aristotle called ‘teleios’
and ‘ateleios,’ indefinite and definite, or ‘perfectum, and ‘imperfectum, ‘but
better ‘definitum’ and ‘indefinitum.’ Grice
uses psi-asrisk, to be read asterisk-sub-psi. He is not concerned with
specficics. All the specifics the philosopher can take or rather ‘assume’ as
‘given.’ The category of mode translates ‘tropos,’ modus. Kant wrongly assumed
it was Modalitat, which irritated Grice so much that he echoed Kant as saying
‘manner’! Grice is a modista. He sometimes uses ‘modus,’ after Abbott. The
earliest record is of course “Meaning.” After elucidating what he calls
‘informative cases,’ he moves to ‘imperative’ ones. Grice agreed with Thomas
Urquhart that English needed a few more moods! Grice’s seven modes.Thirteenthly,
In lieu of six moods which other languages have at most, this one injoyeth
seven in its conjugable words. Ayer had said that non-indicative
utterances are hardly significant. Grice had been freely using the very English
not Latinate ‘mood’ until Moravcsik, of all people, corrects him: What you
mean ain’t a mood. I shall call it mode just to please you, J. M. E. The
sergeant is to muster the men at dawn is a perfect imperative. They shall not
pass is a perfect intentional. A version of this essay was presented in a
conference whose proceedings were published, except for Grices essay, due to
technical complications, viz. his idiosyncratic use of idiosyncratic
symbology! By mode Grice means indicative or imperative. Following
Davidson, Grice attaches probability to the indicative, via the doxastic, and
desirability to the indicative, via the buletic-boulomaic. He also
allows for mixed utterances. Probability is qualified with a suboperator
indicating a degree d; ditto for desirability, degree d. In some of the drafts,
Grice kept using mode until Moravsik suggested to him that mode was a better
choice, seeing that Grices modality had little to do with what other authors
were referring to as mood. Probability, desirability, and modality, modality, desirability,
and probability; modality, probability, desirability. He would use mode
operator. Modality is the more correct term, for things like should,
ought, and must, in that order. One sense. The doxastic modals are
correlated to probability. The buletic or boulomaic modals are correlated to
desirability. There is probability to a degree d. But there is also
desirability to a degree d. They both combine in Grices attempt to
show how Kants categorical imperative reduces to the hypothetical or
suppositional. Kant uses modality in a way that Grice disfavours, preferring
modus. Grice is aware of the use by Kant of modality qua category in the reduction
by Kant to four of the original ten categories in Aristotle). The Jeffrey-style
entitled Probability, desirability, and mode operators finds Grice at his
formal-dress best. It predates the Kant lectures and it got into so much detail
that Grice had to leave it at that. So abstract it hurts. Going further than
Davidson, Grice argues that structures expressing probability and desirability
are not merely analogous. They can both be replaced by more complex structures
containing a common element. Generalising over attitudes using the symbol ψ,
which he had used before, repr. WoW:v, Grice proposes G ψ that p. Further,
Grice uses i as a dummy for sub-divisions of psychological attitudes. Grice
uses Op supra i sub α, read: operation supra i sub alpha, as Grice was
fastidious enough to provide reading versions for these, and where α is a dummy
taking the place of either A or B, i. e. Davidsons prima facie or desirably,
and probably. In all this, Grice keeps using the primitive !, where a more
detailed symbolism would have it correspond exactly to Freges composite
turnstile (horizontal stroke of thought and vertical stroke of assertoric
force, Urteilstrich) that Grice of course also uses, and for which it is
proposed, then: !─p. There are generalising movements here but also merely
specificatory ones. α is not generalised. α is a dummy to serve as a
blanket for this or that specifications. On the other hand, ψ is indeed
generalised. As for i, is it generalising or specificatory? i is a dummy for
specifications, so it is not really generalising. But Grice generalises over
specifications. Grice wants to find buletic, boulomaic or volitive as he
prefers when he does not prefer the Greek root for both his protreptic and
exhibitive versions (operator supra exhibitive, autophoric, and operator supra
protreptic, or hetero-phoric). Note that Grice (WoW:110) uses the asterisk * as
a dummy for either assertoric, i.e., Freges turnstile, and non-assertoric, the
!─ the imperative turnstile, if you wish. The operators A are not mode
operators; they are such that they represent some degree (d) or measure of
acceptability or justification. Grice prefers acceptability because it connects
with accepting that which is a psychological, souly attitude, if a general one.
Thus, Grice wants to have It is desirable that p and It is believable
that p as understood, each, by the concatenation of three elements. The first
element is the A-type operator. The second element is the protreptic-type
operator. The third element is the phrastic, root, content, or proposition
itself. It is desirable that p and It is believable that p share the
utterer-oriented-type operator and the neustic or proposition. They only differ
at the protreptic-type operator (buletic/volitive/boulomaic or
judicative/doxastic). Grice uses + for concatenation, but it is best to use ^,
just to echo who knows who. Grice speaks in that mimeo (which he delivers in
Texas, and is known as Grices Performadillo talk ‒ Armadillo + Performative) of
various things. Grice speaks, transparently enough, of acceptance: V-acceptance
and J-acceptance. V not for Victory but for volitional, and J for judicative.
The fact that both end with -acceptance would accept you to believe that both
are forms of acceptance. Grice irritatingly uses 1 to mean the doxastic, and 2
to mean the bulematic. At Princeton in Method, he defines the doxastic in terms
of the buletic and cares to do otherwise, i. e. define the buletic in terms of
the doxastic. So whenever he wrote buletic read doxastic, and vice versa. One
may omits this arithmetic when reporting on Grices use. Grice uses two further
numerals, though: 3 and 4. These, one may decipher – one finds oneself as an
archeologist in Tutankamons burial ground, as this or that relexive attitude.
Thus, 3, i. e. ψ3, where we need the general operator ψ, not just
specificatory dummy, but the idea that we accept something simpliciter. ψ3
stands for the attitude of buletically accepting an or utterance: doxastically
accepting that p or doxastically accepting that ~p. Why we should be concerned
with ~p is something to consider. G wants to decide whether to believe p
or not. I find that very Griceian. Suppose I am told that there is a volcano in
Iceland. Why would I not want to believe it? It seems that one may want to
decide whether to believe p or not when p involves a tacit appeal to value.
But, as Grice notes, even when it does not involve value, Grice still needs
trust and volition to reign supreme. On the other hand, theres 4, as attached
to an attitude, ψ4. This stands for an attitude of buletically accepting an or
utterance: buletically accepting that p, or G buletically accepting that ~p, i.
e. G wants to decide whether to will, now that p or not. This indeed is
crucial, since, for Grice, morality, as with Kantotle, does cash in desire, the
buletic. Grice smokes. He wills to smoke. But does he will to will to smoke?
Possibly yes. Does he will to will to will to smoke? Regardless of what Grice wills,
one may claim this holds for a serious imperatives (not Thou shalt not reek,
but Thou shalt not kill, say) or for any p if you must (because if you know
that p causes cancer (p stands for a proposition involving cigarette) you
should know you are killing yourself. But then time also kills, so what gives?
So I would submit that, for Kant, the categoric imperative is one which allows
for an indefinite chain, not of chain-smokers, but of good-willers. If, for
some p, we find that at some stage, the P does not will that he wills that he
wills that he wills that, p can not be universalisable. This is proposed in an
essay referred to in The Philosophers Index but Marlboro Cigarettes took no
notice. One may go on to note Grices obsession on make believe. If I say, I
utter expression e because the utterer wants his addressee to believe that the
utterer believes that p, there is utterer and addresse, i. e. there are two
people here ‒ or any soul-endowed creature ‒ for Grices
squarrel means things to Grice. It even implicates. It miaows to me while I was
in bed. He utters miaow. He means that he is hungry, he means (via implicaturum)
that he wants a nut (as provided by me). On another occasion he miaowes
explicating, The door is closed, and implicating Open it, idiot. On the other
hand, an Andy-Capps cartoon read: When budgies get sarcastic Wild-life
programmes are repeating One may note that one can want some other person
to hold an attitude. Grice uses U or G1 for utterer and A or G2 for addressee.
These are merely roles. The important formalism is indeed G1 and G2. G1 is a
Griceish utterer-person; G2 is the other person, G1s addressee. Grice dislikes
a menage a trois, apparently, for he seldom symbolises a third party, G3. So, G
ψ-3-A that p is 1 just in case G ψ2(G ψ1 that p) or G ψ1 that ~p is 1. And here
the utterers addressee, G2 features: G1 ψ³ protreptically that p is 1 just
in case G buletically accepts ψ² (G buletically accepts ψ² (G doxastically
accepts ψ1 that p, or G doxastically accepts ψ1 that ~p))) is 1. Grice seems to
be happy with having reached four sets of operators, corresponding to four sets
of propositional attitudes, and for which Grice provides the paraphrases. The
first set is the doxastic proper. It is what Grice has as doxastic,and which
is, strictly, either indicative, of the utterers doxastic, exhibitive state, as
it were, or properly informative, if addressed to the addressee A, which is
different from U himself, for surely one rarely informs oneself. The second is
the buletic proper. What Grice dubs volitive, but sometimes he prefers the
Grecian root. This is again either self- or utterer-addressed, or
utterer-oriented, or auto-phoric, and it is intentional, or it is
other-addressed, or addressee-addressed, or addressee- oriented, or hetero-phoric,
and it is imperative, for surely one may not always say to oneself, Dont smoke,
idiot!. The third is the doxastic-interrogative, or doxastic-erotetic. One may
expand on ? here is minimal compared to the vagaries of what I called the
!─ (non-doxastic or buletic turnstile), and which may be symbolised by ?─p,
where ?─ stands for the erotetic turnstile. Geachs and Althams erotetic somehow
Grice ignores, as he more often uses the Latinate interrogative. Lewis and
Short have “interrŏgātĭo,” which they render as “a questioning, inquiry,
examination, interrogation;” “sententia per interrogationem, Quint. 8, 5, 5; instare
interrogation; testium; insidiosa; litteris inclusæ; verbis obligatio fit ex
interrogatione et responsione; as rhet. fig., Quint. 9, 2, 15; 9, 3, 98. B. A
syllogism: recte genus hoc interrogationis ignavum ac iners nominatum est, Cic.
Fat. 13; Sen. Ep. 87 med. Surely more people know what interrogative means
what erotetic means, he would not say ‒ but he would. This attitude comes again
in two varieties: self-addressed or utterer-oriented, reflective (Should I go?)
or again, addresee-addressed, or addressee-oriented, imperative, as in Should
you go?, with a strong hint that the utterer is expecting is addressee to make
up his mind in the proceeding, not just inform the utterer. Last but not least,
there is the fourth kind, the buletic-cum-erotetic. Here again, there is one
varietiy which is reflective, autophoric, as Grice prefers,
utterer-addressed, or utterer-oriented, or inquisitive (for which Ill think of
a Greek pantomime), or addressee-addressed, or addressee-oriented. Grice
regrets that Greek (and Latin, of which he had less ‒ cfr. Shakespeare who had
none) fares better in this respect the Oxonian that would please Austen, if not
Austin, or Maucalay, and certainly not Urquhart -- his language has twelve
parts of speech: each declinable in eleven cases, four numbers, eleven genders
(including god, goddess, man, woman, animal, etc.); and conjugable in eleven
tenses, seven moods, and four voices.These vocal mannerisms will result in the
production of some pretty barbarous English sentences; but we must remember
that what I shall be trying to do, in uttering such sentences, will be to
represent supposedly underlying structure; if that is ones aim, one can hardly
expect that ones speech-forms will be such as to excite the approval of, let us
say, Jane Austen or Lord Macaulay. Cf. the quessertive, or quessertion,
possibly iterable, that Grice cherished. But then you cant have everything.
Where would you put it? Grice: The
modal implicaturum. Grice sees two different, though connected questions
about mode. First, there is the obvious demand for a characterisation, or
partial characterisation, of this or that mode as it emerges in this or that
conversational move, which is plausible to regard as modes primary habitat)
both at the level of the explicatum or the implicaturum, for surely an
indicative conversational move may be the vehicle of an imperatival implicaturum.
A second, question is how, and to what extent, the representation of mode
(Hares neustic) which is suitable for application to this or that
conversational move may be legitimately exported into philosophical psychology,
or rather, may be grounded on questions of philosophical psychology, matters of
this or that psychological state, stance, or attitude (notably desire and
belief, and their species). We need to consider the second question, the
philosophico- psychological question, since, if the general rationality
operator is to read as something like acceptability, as in U accepts, or A
accepts, the appearance of this or that mode within its scope of accepting is
proper only if it may properly occur within the scope of a generic
psychological verb I accept that . Lewis and Short have “accepto,” “v. freq.
a. accipio,” which Short and Lewis render as “to take, receive, accept,”
“argentum,” Plaut. Ps. 2, 2, 32; so Quint. 12, 7, 9; Curt. 4, 6, 5; Dig. 34, 1,
9: “jugum,” to submit to, Sil. Ital. 7, 41. But in Plin. 36, 25, 64, the
correct read. is coeptavere; v. Sillig. a. h. l. The easiest way Grice finds to
expound his ideas on the first question is by reference to a schematic table or
diagram (Some have complained that I seldom use a board, but I will
today. Grice at this point reiterates his temporary contempt for
the use/mention distinction, which which Strawson is obsessed. Perhaps
Grices contempt is due to Strawsons obsession. Grices exposition would make the
hair stand on end in the soul of a person especially sensitive in this area.
And Im talking to you, Sir Peter! (He is on the second row). But
Grices guess is that the only historical philosophical mistake properly attributable
to use/mention confusion is Russells argument against Frege in On denoting, and
that there is virtually always an acceptable way of eliminating disregard of
the use-mention distinction in a particular case, though the substitutes are
usually lengthy, obscure, and tedious. Grice makes three initial
assumptions. He avails himself of two species of acceptance, Namesly,
volitive acceptance and judicative acceptance, which he, on occasion, calls
respectively willing that p and willing that p. These are to be
thought of as technical or semi-technical, theoretical or semi-theoretical,
though each is a state which approximates to what we vulgarly call thinking
that p and wanting that p, especially in the way in which we can speak of a
beast such as a little squarrel as thinking or wanting something ‒ a
nut, poor darling little thing. Grice here treats each will and judge (and
accept) as a primitive. The proper interpretation would be determined by
the role of each in a folk-psychological theory (or sequence of
folk-psychological theories), of the type the Wilde reader in mental philosophy
favours at Oxford, designed to account for the behaviours of members of the
animal kingdom, at different levels of psychological complexity (some classes
of creatures being more complex than others, of course). As Grice suggests in
Us meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning, at least at the point at which
(Schema Of Procedure-Specifiers For Mood-Operators) in ones
syntactico-semantical theory of Pirotese or Griceish, one is introducing this
or that mode (and possibly earlier), the proper form to use is a specifier for
this or that resultant procedure. Such a specifier is of the general
form, For the utterer U to utter x if C, where the blank is replaced by
the appropriate condition. Since in the preceding scheme x represents an
utterance or expression, and not a sentence or open sentence, there is no
guarantee that this or that actual sentence in Pirotese or Griceish contains a
perspicuous and unambiguous modal representation. A sentence may
correspond to more than one modal structure. The sentence is structurally
ambiguous (multiplex in meaning ‒ under the proviso that senses are
not to be multiplied beyond necessity) and will have more than one reading, or
parsing, as every schoolboy at Clifton knows when translating viva voce from
Greek or Latin, as the case might be. The general form of a procedure-specifier
for a modal operator involves a main clause and an antecedent clause, which
follows if. In the schematic representation of the main clause, U represents an
utterer, A his addressee, p the radix or neustic; and Opi represents that
operator whose number is i (1, 2, 3, or 4), e.g g., Op3A represents
Operator 3A, which, since ?⊢ appears in the Operator column for 3A)
would be ?A ⊢ p. This
reminds one of Grandys quessertions, for he did think they were iterable
(possibly)). The antecedent clause consists of a sequence whose elements
are a preamble, as it were, or preface, or prefix, a supplement to a
differential (which is present only in a B-type, or addressee-oriented case), a
differential, and a radix. The preamble, which is always present, is
invariant, and reads: The U U wills (that) A A judges (that) U (For surely meaning is a species of intending
is a species of willing that, alla Prichard, Whites professor,
Corpus). The supplement, if present, is also invariant. And the idea
behind its varying presence or absence is connected, in the first instance,
with the volitive mode. The difference between an ordinary expression of
intention ‒ such as I shall not fail, or They shall not
pass ‒ and an ordinary imperative (Like Be a little kinder to
him) is accommodated by treating each as a sub-mode of the volitive mode,
relates to willing that p) In the intentional case (I shall not fail), the
utterer U is concerned to reveal to his addressee A that he (the utterer U)
wills that p. In the imperative case (They shall not pass), the utterer U is
concerned to reveal to his addressee A that the utterer U wills that the
addresee A will that p. In each case, of course, it is to be
presumed that willing that p will have its standard outcome, viz., the
actualization, or realisation, or direction of fit, of the radix (from expression
to world, downwards). There is a corresponding distinction between two uses of
an indicative. The utterer U may be declaring or affirming that p, in
an exhibitive way, with the primary intention to get his addressee A to judge
that the utterer judges that p. Or the U is telling (in a protreptic way)
ones addressee that p, that is to say, hoping to get his addressee to
judge that p. In the case of an indicative, unlike that of a volitive, there is
no explicit pair of devices which would ordinarily be thought of as sub-mode
marker. The recognition of the sub-mode is implicated, and comes from
context, from the vocative use of the Names of the addressee, from the presence
of a speech-act verb, or from a sentence-adverbial phrase (like for your
information, so that you know, etc.). But Grice has already, in his
initial assumptions, allowed for such a situation. The
exhibitive-protreptic distinction or autophoric-heterophoric distinction, seems
to Grice to be also discernible in the interrogative mode (?). Each differentials
is associated with, and serve to distinguish, each of the two basic modes
(volitive or judicative) and, apart from one detail in the case of the
interrogative mode, is invariant between autophoric-exhibitive) and
heterophoric-protreptic sub-modes of any of the two basic modes. They are
merely unsupplemented or supplemented, the former for an exhibitive sub-mode
and the latter for a protreptic sub-mode. The radix needs (one hopes) no
further explanation, except that it might be useful to bear in mind that Grice
does not stipulated that the radix for an intentional (buletic exhibitive
utterer-based) incorporate a reference to the utterer, or be in the first
person, nor that the radix for an imperative (buletic protreptic
addressee-based) incorporate a reference of the addresee, and be in the second
person. They shall not pass is a legitimate intentional, as is You shall
not get away with it; and The sergeant is to muster the men at dawn, as uttered
said by the captain to the lieutenant) is a perfectly good
imperative. Grice gives in full the two specifiers derived from the
schema. U to utter to A autophoric-exhibitive ⊢ p if U wills that A judges that U judges
p. Again, U to utter to A ! heterophoric-protreptic p if U wills that A A
judges that U wills that A wills that p. Since, of the states denoted by
each differential, only willing that p and judging that p are strictly cases of
accepting that p, and Grices ultimate purpose of his introducing this
characterization of mode is to reach a general account of expressions which are
to be conjoined, according to his proposal, with an acceptability operator, the
first two numbered rows of the figure are (at most) what he has a direct use
for. But since it is of some importance to Grice that his treatment of
mode should be (and should be thought to be) on the right lines, he adds a
partial account of the interrogative mode. There are two varieties of
interrogatives, a yes/no interrogatives (e. g. Is his face clean? Is the king
of France bald? Is virtue a fire-shovel?) and x-interrogatives, on which Grice
qua philosopher was particularly interested, v. his The that and the why.
(Who killed Cock Robin?, Where has my beloved gone?, How did he fix
it?). The specifiers derivable from the schema provide only for yes/no interrogatives,
though the figure could be quite easily amended so as to yield a restricted but
very large class of x-interrogatives. Grice indicates how this could be
done. The distinction between a buletic and a doxastic interrogative
corresponds with the difference between a case in which the utterer U indicates
that he is, in one way or another, concerned to obtain information (Is he at
home?), and a case in which the utterer U indicates that he is concerned to
settle a problem about what he is to do ‒ Am I to leave the door open?, Shall I
go on reading? or, with an heterophoric Subjects, Is the prisoner to be
released? This difference is fairly well represented in grammar, and much
better represented in the grammars of some other languages. The
hetero-phoric-cum-protreptic/auto-phoric-cum- exhibitive difference may
not marked at all in this or that grammar, but it should be marked in Pirotese.
This or that sub-mode is, however, often quite easily detectable. There is
usually a recognizable difference between a case in which the utterer A says,
musingly or reflectively, Is he to be trusted? ‒ a case in which the
utterer might say that he is just wondering ‒ and a case in which he
utters a token of the same sentence as an enquiry. Similarly, one can usually
tell whether an utterer A who utters Shall I accept the invitation? is
just trying to make up his mind, or is trying to get advice or instruction from
his addressee. The employment of the variable α needs to be explained. Grice
borrows a little from an obscure branch of logic, once (but maybe no longer)
practised, called, Grice thinks, proto-thetic ‒ Why? Because it deals with this
or that first principle or axiom, or thesis), the main rite in which is to
quantify over, or through, this or that connective. α is to have as its two
substituents positively and negatively, which may modify either will or judge,
negatively willing or negatively judging that p is judging or willing that
~p. The quantifier (∃1α) . . . has to
be treated substitutionally. If, for example, I ask someone whether John
killed Cock Robin (protreptic case), I do not want the addressee merely to will
that I have a particular logical quality in mind which I believe to apply. I
want the addressee to have one of the Qualities in mind which he wants me to
believe to apply. To meet this demand, supplementation must drag back the
quantifier. To extend the schema so as to provide specifiers for a single
x-interrogative (i. e., a question like What did the butler see? rather than a
question like Who went where with whom at 4 oclock yesterday afternoon?),
we need just a little extra apparatus. We need to be able to superscribe a
W in each interrogative operator e.g., together with the proviso that a radix
which follows a superscribed operator must be an open radix, which contains one
or more occurrences of just one free variable. And we need a chameleon
variable λ, to occur only in this or that quantifier. (∃λ).Fx is to be regarded as a way of
writing (∃x)Fx. (∃λ)Fy is a way of writing (∃y)Fy. To provide a specifier for a
x-superscribed operator, we simply delete the appearances of α in the specifier
for the corresponding un-superscribed operator, inserting instead the
quantifier (∃1λ) () at the
position previously occupied by (∃1α) (). E.g. the specifiers for Who
killed Cock Robin?, used as an enquiry, would be: U to utter to A killed Cock Robin if U wills A to judge U to
will that (∃1λ) (A should
will that U judges (x killed Cock Robin)); in which (∃1λ) takes on the shape (∃1x) since x is the free variable within
its scope. Grice compares his buletic-doxastic distinction to prohairesis/doxa
distinction by Aristotle in Ethica Nichomachea. Perhaps his simplest
formalisation is via subscripts: I will-b but will-d not. Refs.: The main
references are given above under ‘desirability.’ The most systematic treatment
is the excursus in “Aspects,” Clarendon. BANC.
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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum helps. He is a scoundrel may
well be the implicaturum 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. (Implicaturum: 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 implicaturum 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-implicaturum 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 ‘implicaturum’ 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 implicaturum:
“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 implicaturum, 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 implicaturum 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 ‘implicaturum’ 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 ‘implicaturum’ 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 IMPLICATURUM (pp. 49–50), or implicitum. This dichotomy is in
several ways oversimplified. First, Grice (1975, 1978) also makes room for
‘conventional’ implicaturums (“She was poor BUT she was honest”) and
non-conversational non-conventional implicaturums (“Thank you,” abiding with
the maxim, ‘be polite’), although these dimensions are both somewhat
controversial (cf. Bach’s attack on conventional implicaturum) 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum can itself be either particularized
(henceforth, PCIs) or generalized (GCIs) (56).” Most familiar examples of implicaturum
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 implicaturum will simply disappear, perhaps to
be replaced by another. With a generalised implicaturum, 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum. 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 implicaturums. 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 implicaturum
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 implicaturum.
An implicaturum 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 implicaturum.” I hope Williamson
considers this. In Madagascar, they have other ‘norms’ of conversation: since
speakers are guarded, implicatura to the effect, “I don’t know” are never
invited! Unlike the true lexical ambiguity that arises from a language-specific
convention, an implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum (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
conversationalimplicaturum 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 implicaturum (philosopher Walker, 1975; linguist Sadock, 1978).”Excellent
POINT! Walker would be fascinated to see that Grice once coined ‘disimplicaturum’
for some loose uses. “Macbeth saw Banquo.” “That tie is yellow under that
light, but orange under this one.” Actually, Grice creates ‘disimplicaturum’ 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 ‘disimplicaturum’ 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 implicaturum. But they
will also have the same semantic implications, so the non-detachability of an
alleged implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum. Besides these inconclusive tests
for implicaturum, 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
implicaturum 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 implicaturum of ‘or’ IS available within the scope of a
propositional-attitude verb. A strong implicaturum 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 implicaturum, 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 implicatura, 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 implicatura are
all ‘scalar’ quantity implicatura, 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturums 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 implicaturum
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 implicaturum 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’. Implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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’ IMPLICATURUM to the inferrability
of “if p, q” or “p; so, q.” I agree with Strawson that Grice’s account of
‘conventional’ implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturums as early as age three. Such
children, knowing only the primary meaning of the expression, would be unable
to recover the conversational implicaturum 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 implicaturum.”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 implicaturum.
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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum
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 implicaturum.
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 implicaturum, 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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
implicaturum 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’ implicaturum-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 implicatura
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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum had to be not just calculaBLE but
actually calculatED, that would suffice to explain why this one-time, one-off, implicaturum
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 implicaturum
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 implicaturum (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 implicaturum
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 implicaturum 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’ implicaturum
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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicaturum 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 implicatura 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.”
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Press.Bach, K. “Thought and Reference,” Oxford.“Conversational impliciture,”
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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.
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