fichte: G.
philosopher. He was a proponent of an uncompromising system of transcendental
idealism, the Wissenschaftslehre, which played a key role in the development of
post-Kantian philosophy. Born in Saxony, Fichte studied at Jena and Leipzig.
The writings of Kant led him to abandon metaphysical determinism and to embrace
transcendental idealism as “the first system of human freedom.” His first book,
Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung “Attempt at a Critique of all
Revelations,” 1792, earned him a reputation as a brilliant exponent of
Kantianism, while his early political writings secured him a reputation as a
Jacobin. Inspired by Reinhold, Jacobi, Maimon, and Schulze, Fichte rejected the
“letter” of Kantianism and, in the lectures and writings he produced at Jena
179499, advanced a new, rigorously systematic presentation of what he took to
be its Ferguson, Adam Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 307 307 “spirit.” He dispensed with Kant’s
things-inthemselves, the original duality of faculties, and the distinction
between the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental analytic. By
emphasizing the unity of theoretical and practical reason in a way consistent
with “the primacy of practical reason,” Fichte sought to establish the unity of
the critical philosophy as well as of human experience. In Ueber den Begriff
der Wissenschaftslehre “On the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre,” 1794 he
explained his conception of philosophy as “the science of science,” to be
presented in a deductive system based on a self-evident first principle. The
basic “foundations” of this system, which Fichte called Wissenschaftslehre
theory of science, were outlined in his Grundlage der gesamten
Wissenschaftslehre “Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre,” 179495 and
Grundriß der Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre in Rücksicht auf das
theoretische Vermögen “Outline of the Distinctive Character of the
Wissenschaftslehre with respect to the Theoretical Faculty,” 1795 and then,
substantially revised, in his lectures on Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo
179699. The “foundational” portion of the Wissenschaftslehrelinks our
affirmation of freedom to our experience of natural necessity. Beginning with
the former “the I simply posits itself”, it then demonstrates how a freely
self-positing subject must be conscious not only of itself, but also of
“representations accompanied by a feeling of necessity” and hence of an
objective world. Fichte insisted that the essence of selfhood lies in an active
positing of its own self-identity and hence that self-consciousness is an
auto-productive activity: a Tathandlung or “fact/act.” However, the I can posit
itself only as limited; in order for the originally posited act of “sheer
self-positing” to occur, certain other mental acts must occur as well, acts
through which the I posits for itself an objective, spatiotemporal world, as
well as a moral realm of free, rational beings. The I first posits its own
limited condition in the form of “feeling” occasioned by an inexplicable Anstob
or “check” upon its own practical striving, then as a “sensation,” then as an
“intuition” of a thing, and finally as a “concept.” The distinction between the
I and the not-I arises only in these reiterated acts of self-positing, a
complete description of which thus amounts to a “genetic deduction” of the
necessary conditions of experience. Freedom is thereby shown to be possible
only in the context of natural necessity, where it is limited and finite. At
the same time “our freedom is a theoretical determining principle of our
world.” Though it must posit its freedom “absolutely” i.e., schlechthin or “for no reason” a genuinely free agent can exist only as a
finite individual endlessly striving to overcome its own limits. After
establishing its “foundations,” Fichte extended his Wissenschaftslehre into
social and political philosophy and ethics. Subjectivity itself is essentially
intersubjective, inasmuch as one can be empirically conscious of oneself only
as one individual among many and must thus posit the freedom of others in order
to posit one’s own freedom. But for this to occur, the freedom of each
individual must be limited; indeed, “the concept of right or justice Recht is
nothing other than the concept of the coexistence of the freedom of several
rational/sensuous beings.” The Grundlage des Naturrechts “Foundations of
Natural Right,” 179697 examines how individual freedom must be externally
limited if a community of free individuals is to be possible, and demonstrates
that a just political order is a demand of reason itself, since “the concept of
justice or right is a condition of self-consciousness.” “Natural rights” are
thus entirely independent of moral duties. Unlike political philosophy, which
purely concerns the public realm, ethics, which is the subject of Das System
der Sittenlehre “The System of Ethical Theory,” 1798, concerns the inner realm
of conscience. It views objects not as given to consciousness but as produced
by free action, and concerns not what is, but what ought to be. The task of
ethics is to indicate the particular duties that follow from the general
obligation to determine oneself freely the categorical imperative. Before
Fichte could extend the Wissenschaftslehre into the philosophy of religion, he
was accused of atheism and forced to leave Jena. The celebrated controversy
over his alleged atheism the Atheismusstreit was provoked by “Ueber den Grund
unseres Glaubens in einer göttliche Weltregierung” “On the Basis of our Belief
in a Divine Governance of the World,” 1798, in which he sharply distinguished
between philosophical and religious questions. While defending our right to
posit a “moral world order,” Fichte insisted that this order does not require a
personal deity or “moral lawgiver.” After moving to Berlin, Fichte’s first
concern was to rebut the charge of atheism and to reply to the indictment of
philosophy as “nihilism” advanced in Jacobi’s Open Letter to Fichte 1799. This
was the task of Die Bestimmung des Menschen “The Vocation of Man,” 1800. During
the occupation, he delivered Reden an
die deutsche Nation “Addresses to the G. Nation,” 1808, which proposed a program
of national education and attempted to kindle G. patriotism. The other
publications of his Berlin years include a foray into political economy, Der
geschlossene Handelstaat “The Closed Commercial State,” 1800; a speculative
interpretation of human history, Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtiges Zeitalters
“The Characteristics of the Present Age,” 1806; and a mystically tinged
treatise on salvation, Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben “Guide to the Blessed
Life,” 1806. In unpublished private lectures he continued to develop radically
new versions of the Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte’s substantial influence was not
limited to his well-known influence on Schelling and Hegel both of whom
criticized the “subjectivism” of the early Wissenschaftslehre. He is also
important in the history of G. nationalism and profoundly influenced the early
Romantics, especially Novalis and Schlegel. Recent decades have seen renewed
interest in Fichte’s transcendental philosophy, expecially the later,
unpublished versions of the Wissenschaftslehre. This century’s most significant
contribution to Fichte studies, however, is the ongoing publication of the
first critical edition of his complete works.
Italian philosophy. Grice
loved it and could recite an Italian philosopher for each letter of the
alphabet, including the famous Alessandro Speranza, from Milano!
ficino:
neoplatonic philosopher who played a leading role in the cultural life of
Florence. Ordained a priest in 1473, he hoped to draw people to Christ by means
of Platonism. It was through Ficino’s translation and commentaries that the
works of Plato first became accessible to the Latin-speaking West, but the
impact of Plato’s work was considerably affected by Ficino’s other interests.
He accepted Neoplatonic interpretations of Plato, including those of Plotinus,
whom he tr.; and he saw Plato as the heir of Hermes Trismegistus, a mythical
Egyptian sage and supposed author of the hermetic corpus, which he tr. early in
his career. He embraced the notion of a prisca theologia, an ancient wisdom
that encapsulated philosophic and religious truth, was handed on to Plato, and
was later validated by the Christian revelation. The most popular of his
original works was Three Books on Life 1489, which contains the fullest
Renaissance exposition of a theory of magic, based mainly on Neoplatonic
sources. He postulated a living cosmos in which the World-Soul is linked to the
world-body by spirit. This relationship is mirrored in man, whose spirit or
astral body links his body and soul, and the resulting correspondence between
microcosm and macrocosm allows both man’s control of natural objects through
magic and his ascent to knowledge of God. Other popular works were his
commentary on Plato’s Symposium 1469, which presents a theory of Platonic love;
and his Platonic Theology 1474, in which he argues for the immortality of the
soul.
fictum:
in the widest usage, whatever contrasts with what is a matter of fact. As
applied to works of fiction, however, this is not the appropriate contrast. For
a work of fiction, such as a historical novel, might turn out to be true
regarding its historical subject, without ceasing to be fiction. The correct
contrast of fiction is to non-fiction. If a work of fiction might turn out to
be true, how is ‘fiction’ best defined? According to some philosophers, such as
Searle, the writer of nonfiction performs illocutionary speech acts, such as
asserting that such-and-such occurred, whereas the writer of fiction
characteristically only pretends to perform these illocutionary acts. Others
hold that the core idea to which appeal should be made is that of
making-believe or imagining certain states of affairs. Kendall Walton Mimesis
as Make-Believe, 0, for instance, holds that a work of fiction is to be
construed in terms of a prop whose function is to serve in games of make-believe.
Both kinds of theory allow for the possibility that a work of fiction might
turn out to be true.
fidanza: Bonaventura,
Saint c.122174, theologian. Born
Giovanni di Fidanza in Bagnorea, Tuscany, he was educated at Paris, earning a
master’s degree in arts and a doctorate in theology. He joined the Franciscans
about 1243, while still a student, and was elected minister general of the
order in 1257. Made cardinal bishop of Albano by Pope Gregory X in 1274,
Bonaventure helped organize the Second Ecumenical Council of Lyons, during the
course of which he died, in July 1274. He was canonized in 1482 and named a
doctor of the church in 1587. Bonaventure wrote and preached extensively on the
relation between philosophy and theology, the role of reason in spiritual and
religious life, and the extent to which knowledge in God is obtainable by the
“wayfarer.” His basic position is nicely expressed in De reductione artium ad
theologiam “On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology”: “the manifold wisdom of
God, which is clearly revealed in sacred scripture, lies hidden in all
knowledge and in all nature.” He adds, “all divisions of knowledge are
handmaids of theology.” But he is critical of those theologians who wish to
sever the connection between faith and reason. As he argues in another famous
work, Itinerarium mentis ad deum “The Mind’s Journey unto God,” 1259, “since,
relative to our life on earth, the world is itself a ladder for ascending to
God, we find here certain traces, certain images” of the divine hand, in which
God himself is mirrored. Although Bonaventure’s own philosophical outlook is
Augustinian, he was also influenced by Aristotle, whose newly available works
he both read and appreciated. Thus, while upholdBonaventure, Saint Bonaventure,
Saint 94 94 ing the Aristotelian ideas
that knowledge of the external world is based on the senses and that the mind
comes into existence as a tabula rasa, he also contends that divine
illumination is necessary to explain both the acquisition of universal concepts
from sense images, and the certainty of intellectual judgment. His own
illuminationist epistemology seeks a middle ground between, on the one hand,
those who maintain that the eternal light is the sole reason for human knowing,
providing the human intellect with its archetypal and intelligible objects,
and, on the other, those holding that the eternal light merely influences human
knowing, helping guide it toward truth. He holds that our intellect has certain
knowledge when stable; eternal archetypes are “contuited by us [a nobis
contuita],” together with intelligible species produced by its own fallible
powers. In metaphysics, Bonaventure defends exemplarism, the doctrine that all
creation is patterned after exemplar causes or ideas in the mind of God. Like
Aquinas, but unlike Duns Scotus, he argues that it is through such ideas that
God knows all creatures. He also adopts the emanationist principle that
creation proceeds from God’s goodness, which is self-diffusive, but differs
from other emanationists, such as al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, in arguing
that divine emanation is neither necessary nor indirect i.e., accomplished by
secondary agents or intelligences. Indeed, he sees the views of these Islamic
philosophers as typical of the errors bound to follow once Aristotelian
rationalism is taken to its extreme. He is also well known for his
anti-Aristotelian argument that the eternity of the world something even Aquinas following Maimonides
concedes as a theoretical possibility is
demonstrably false. Bonaventure also subscribes to several other doctrines
characteristic of medieval Augustinianism: universal hylomorphism, the thesis,
defended by Ibn Gabirol and Avicenna among others, that everything other than
God is composed of matter and form; the plurality of forms, the view that
subjects and predicates in the category of substance are ordered in terms of
their metaphysical priority; and the ontological view of truth, according to
which truth is a kind of rightness perceived by the mind. In a similar vein,
Bonaventure argues that knowledge ultimately consists in perceiving truth
directly, without argument or demonstration. Bonaventure also wrote several
classic works in the tradition of mystical theology. His bestknown and most
popular mystical work is the aforementioned Itinerarium, written in 1259 on a
pilgrimage to La Verna, during which he beheld the six-winged seraph that had
also appeared to Francis of Assisi when Francis received the stigmata.
Bonaventure outlines a seven-stage spiritual journey, in which our mind moves
from first considering God’s traces in the perfections of irrational creatures,
to a final state of peaceful repose, in which our affections are “transferred
and transformed into God.” Central to his writings on spiritual life is the
theme of the “three ways”: the purgative way, inspired by conscience, which
expels sin; the illuminative way, inspired by the intellect, which imitates
Christ; and the unitive way, inspired by wisdom, which unites us to God through
love. Bonaventure’s writings most immediately influenced the work of other
medieval Augustinians, such as Matthew of Aquasparta and John Peckham, and
later, followers of Duns Scotus. But his modern reputation rests on his
profound contributions to philosophical theology, Franciscan spirituality, and
mystical thought, in all three of which he remains an authoritative
source.
campus
-- field theory, a theory that proceeds by assigning values of physical
quantities to the points of space, or of space-time, and then lays down laws
relating these values. For example, a field theory might suppose a value for
matter density, or a temperature for each space-time point, and then relate
these values, usually in terms of differential equations. In these examples
there is at least the tacit assumption of a physical substance that fills the
relevant region of space-time. But no such assumption need be made. For
instance, in Ficino, Marsilio field theory 309
309 Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field, each point of
space-time carries a value for an electric and a magnetic field, and these
values are then governed by Maxwell’s equations. In general relativity, the
geometry e.g., the curvature of space-time is itself treated as a field, with
lawlike connections with the distribution of energy and matter. Formulation in
terms of a field theory resolves the problem of action at a distance that so
exercised Newton and his contemporaries. We often take causal connection to
require spatial contiguity. That is, for one entity to act causally on another,
the two entities need to be contiguous. But in Newton’s description
gravitational attraction acts across spatial distances. Similarly, in
electrostatics the mutual repulsion of electric charges is described as acting
across spatial distances. In the times of both Newton and Maxwell numerous
efforts to understand such action at a distance in terms of some space-filling
mediating substance produced no viable theory. Field theories resolve the
perplexity. By attributing values of physical quantities directly to the
space-time points one can describe gravitation, electrical and magnetic forces,
and other interactions without action at a distance or any intervening physical
medium. One describes the values of physical quantities, attributed directly to
the space-time points, as influencing only the values at immediately
neighboring points. In this way the influences propagate through space-time,
rather than act instantaneously across distances or through a medium. Of course
there is a metaphysical price: on such a description the space-time points
themselves take on the role of a kind of dematerialized ether. Indeed, some
have argued that the pervasive role of field theory in contemporary physics and
the need for space-time points for a field-theoretic description constitute a
strong argument for the existence of the space-time points. This conclusion
contradicts “relationalism,” which claims that there are only spatiotemporal
relations, but no space-time points or regions thought of as particulars. Quantum
field theory appears to take on a particularly abstract form of field theory,
since it associates a quantum mechanical operator with each space-time point.
However, since operators correspond to physical magnitudes rather than to
values of such magnitudes, it is better to think of the field-theoretic aspect
of quantum field theory in terms of the quantum mechanical amplitudes that it
also associates with the space-time points.
figura: figure-ground,
the discrimination of an object or figure from the context or background
against which it is set. Even when a connected region is grouped together
properly, as in the famous figure that can be seen either as a pair of faces or
as a vase, it is possible to interpret the region alternately as figure and as ground.
This fact was originally elaborated in 1 by Edgar Rubin 6 1. Figureground
effects and the existence of other ambiguous figures such as the Necker cube
and the duck-rabbit challenged the prevailing assumption, Vitters thought, in
classical theories of perception
maintained, e.g., by H. P. Grice and J. S. Mill and H. von
Helmholtz that complex perceptions could
be understood in terms of primitive sensations constituting them. The
underdetermination of perception by the visual stimulus, noted by Berkeley in
his Essay of 1709, takes account of the fact that the retinal image is
impoverished with respect to threedimensional information. Identical
stimulation at the retina can result from radically different distal sources.
Within Gestalt psychology, the Gestalt, or pattern, was recognized to be
underdetermined by constituent parts available in proximal stimuli. M.
Wertheimer 03 observed in 2 that apparent motion could be induced by viewing a
series of still pictures in rapid succession. He concluded that perception of
the whole, as involving movement, was fundamentally different from the
perception of the static images of which it is composed. W. Köhler An example
of visual reversal from Edgar Rubin: the object depicted can be seen
alternately as a vase or as a pair of faces. The reversal occurs whether there
is a black ground and white figure or white figure and black ground. figure
figure ground 310 310 77 observed that there was no figure
ground articulation in the retinal image, and concluded that inherently
ambiguous stimuli required some autonomous selective principles of perceptual
organization. As subsequently developed by Gestalt psychologists, form is taken
as the primitive unit of perception. In philosophical treatments, figureground
effects are used to enforce the conclusion that interpretation is central to
perception, and that perceptions are no more than hypotheses based on sensory
data. Refs.: Grice, “You can’t see a knife as a knife,” “The Causal Theory of
Perception,” Vitters on ‘seeing-as’”.
filmer:
r. English political writer who produced, most importantly, the posthumous
Patriarcha 1680. It is remembered because Locke attacked it in the first of his
Two Treatises of Government 1690. Filmer argued that God gave complete
authority over the world to Adam, and that from him it descended to his eldest
son when he became the head of the family. Thereafter only fathers directly
descended from Adam could properly be rulers. Just as Adam’s rule was not
derived from the consent of his family, so the king’s inherited authority is
not dependent on popular consent. He rightly makes laws and imposes taxes at
his own good pleasure, though like a good father he has the welfare of his
subjects in view. Filmer’s patriarchalism, intended to bolster the absolute
power of the king, is the classic English statement of the doctrine.
find
play
– where Grice’s implicaturum finds play Strawson Wiggins p. 523
fludd:
r. English physician and writer. Influenced by Paracelsus, hermetism, and the
cabala, Fludd defended a Neoplatonic worldview on the eve of its supersession
by the new mechanistic philosophy. He produced improvements in the manufacture
of steel and invented a thermometer, though he also used magnets to cure
disease and devised a salve to be applied to a weapon to cure the wound it had
inflicted. He held that science got its ideas from Scripture allegorically
interpreted, when they were of any value. His works combine theology with an
occult, Neoplatonic reading of the Bible, and contain numerous fine diagrams
illustrating the mutual sympathy of human beings, the natural world, and the
supernatural world, each reflecting the others in parallel harmonic structures.
In controversy with Kepler, Fludd claimed to uncover essential natural
processes rooted in natural sympathies and the operation of God’s light, rather
than merely describing the external movements of the heavens. Creation is the
extension of divine light into matter. Evil arises from a darkness in God, his
failure to will. Matter is uncreated, but this poses no problem for orthodoxy,
since matter is nothing, a mere possibility without the least actuality, not
something Filmer, Robert Fludd, Robert 311
311 coeternal with the Creator.
fodor:
j. a. – Griceian philosophical psychologis from the New World (Old World,
originally)t, known for his energetic and often witty defense of intensional
realism, a computationalrepresentational model of thought, and an atomistic,
externalist theory of content determination for mental states. Fodor’s
philosophical writings fall under three headings. First, he has defended the
theory of mind implicit in contemporary cognitive psychology, that the
cognitive mind-brain is both a representational/computational device and,
ultimately, physical. He has taken on behaviorists Ryle, psychologists in the
tradition of J. J. Gibson, and eliminative materialists P. A. Churchland.
Second, he has engaged in various theoretical disputes within cognitive
psychology, arguing for the modularity of the perceptual and language systems
roughly, the view that they are domain-specific, mandatory, limited-access,
innately specified, hardwired, and informationally encapsulated The Modularity
of Mind, 3; for a strong form of nativism that virtually all of our concepts
are innate; and for the existence of a “language of thought” The Language of
Thought, 5. The latter has led him to argue against connectionism as a
psychological theory as opposed to an implementation theory. Finally, he has
defended the views of ordinary propositional attitude psychology that our
mental states 1 are semantically evaluable intentional, 2 have causal powers,
and 3 are such that the implicit generalizations of folk psychology are largely
true of them. His defense is twofold. Folk psychology is unsurpassed in explanatory
power; furthermore, it is vindicated by contemporary cognitive psychology
insofar as ordinary propositional attitude states can be identified with
information-processing states, those that consist in a computational relation
to a representation. The representational component of such states allows us to
explain the semantic evaluability of the attitudes; the computational
component, their causal efficacy. Both sorts of accounts raise difficulties.
The first is satisfactory only if supplemented by a naturalistic account of
representational content. Here Fodor has argued for an atomistic, externalist
causal theory Psychosemantics, 7 and against holism the view that no mental
representation has content unless many other non-synonymous mental representations
also have content Holism: A Shopper’s Guide, 2, against conceptual role
theories the view that the content of a representation is determined by its
conceptual role N. Block (who quotes Grice’s Method), B. F. Loar (DPhil Oxon
under Grice’s collaborator G. J. Warnock) and against teleofunctional theories
teleofunctionalism is the view that the content of a representation is
determined, at least in part, by the biological functions of the
representations themselves or systems that produce or use those representations
Ruth Millikan, David Papineau. The second sort is satisfactory only if it does
not imply epiphenomenalism with respect to content properties. To avoid such
epiphenomenalism, Fodor has argued that not only strict laws but also ceteris
paribus laws can be causal. In addition, he has sought to reconcile his
externalism vis-à-vis content with the view that causal efficacy requires an
individualistic individuation of states. Two solutions have been explored: the
supplementation of broad externally determined content with narrow content,
where the latter supervenes on what is “in the head” Psychosemantics, 7, and
its supplementation with modes of presentation identical to sentences of the
language of thought The Elm and the Expert, 5.
Grice’s
folksy psychology: Grice loved Ramsey, “But Ramsey was born
before folk-psychology, so his ‘Theories’ is very dense.”” one sense, a
putative network of principles constituting a commonsense theory that allegedly
underlies everyday explanations of human behavior; the theory assigns a central
role to mental states like belief, desire, and intention. Consider an example
of an everyday commonsense psychological explanation: Jane went to the
refrigerator because she wanted a beer and she believed there was beer in the refrigerator.
Like many such explanations, this adverts to a so-called propositional
attitude a mental state, expressed by a
verb ‘believe’ plus a that-clause, whose intentional content is propositional.
It also adverts to a mental state, expressed by a verb ‘want’ plus a
direct-object phrase, whose intentional content appears not to be
propositional. In another, related sense, folk psychology is a network of
social practices that includes ascribing such mental states to ourselves and
others, and proffering explanations of human behavior that advert to these
states. The two senses need distinguishing because some philosophers who
acknowledge the existence of folk psychology in the second sense hold that
commonsense psychological explanations do not employ empirical generalizations,
and hence that there is no such theory as folk psychology. Henceforth, ‘FP’
will abbreviate ‘folk psychology’ in the first sense; the unabbreviated phrase
will be used in the second sense. Eliminativism in philosophy of mind asserts
that FP is an empirical theory; that FP is therefore subject to potential
scientific falsification; and that mature science very probably will establish
that FP is so radically false that humans simply do not undergo mental states
like beliefs, desires, and intentions. One kind of eliminativist argument first
sets forth certain methodological strictures about how FP would have to
integrate with mature science in order to be true e.g., being smoothly
reducible to neuroscience, or being absorbed into mature cognitive science, and
then contends that these strictures are unlikely to be met. Another kind of
argument first claims that FP embodies certain strong empirical commitments
e.g., to mental representations with languagelike syntactic structure, and then
contends that such empirical presuppositions are likely to turn out false. One
influential version of folk psychological realism largely agrees with
eliminativism about what is required to vindicate folk psychology, but also
holds that mature science is likely to provide such vindication. Realists of
this persuasion typically argue, for instance, that mature cognitive science
will very likely incorporate FP, and also will very likely treat beliefs,
desires, and other propositional attitudes as states with languagelike
syntactic structure. Other versions of folkpsychological realism take issue, in
one way or another, with either i the eliminativists’ claims about FP’s
empirical commitments, or ii the eliminativists’ strictures about how FP must
mesh with mature science in order to be true, or both. Concerning i, for
instance, some philosophers maintain that FP per se is not committed to the
existence of languagelike mental representations. If mature cognitive science
turns out not to posit a “language of thought,” they contend, this would not
necessarily show that FP is radically false; instead it might only show that
propositional attitudes are subserved in some other way than via languagelike
representational structures. Concerning ii, some philosophers hold that FP can
be true without being as tightly connected to mature scientific theories as the
eliminativists require. For instance, the demand that the special sciences be
smoothly reducible to the fundamental natural sciences is widely considered an
excessively stringent criterion of intertheoretic compatibility; so perhaps FP
could be true without being smoothly reducible to neuroscience. Similarly, the
demand that FP be directly absorbable into empirical cognitive science is
sometimes considered too stringent as a criterion either of FP’s truth, or of
the soundness of its ontology of beliefs, desires, and other propositional
attitudes, or of the legitimacy of FP-based explanations of behavior. Perhaps
FP is a true theory, and explanatorily legitimate, even if it is not destined
to become a part of science. Even if FP’s ontological categories are not
scientific natural kinds, perhaps its generalizations are like generalizations
about clothing: true, explanatorily usable, and ontologically sound. No one doubts
the existence of hats, coats, or scarves. No one doubts the truth or
explanatory utility of generalizations like ‘Coats made of heavy material tend
to keep the body warm in cold weather’, even though these generalizations are
not laws of any science. Yet another approach to folk psychology, often wedded
to realism about beliefs and desires although sometimes wedded to
instrumentalism, maintains that folk psychology does not employ empirical
generalizations, and hence is not a theory at all. One variant denies that folk
psychology employs any generalizations, empirical or otherwise. Another variant
concedes that there are folk-psychological generalizations, but denies that
they are empirical; instead they are held to be analytic truths, or norms of
rationality, or both at once. Advocates of non-theory views typically regard
folk psychology as a hermeneutic, or interpretive, enterprise. They often claim
too that the attribution of propositional attitudes, and also the proffering
and grasping of folk-psychological explanations, is a matter of imaginatively
projecting oneself into another person’s situation, and then experiencing a
kind of empathic understanding, or Verstehen, of the person’s actions and the
motives behind them. A more recent, hi-tech, formulation of this idea is that
the interpreter “runs a cognitive simulation” of the person whose actions are
to be explained. Philosophers who defend folk-psychological realism, in one or
another of the ways just canvassed, also sometimes employ arguments based on
the allegedly self-stultifying nature of eliminativism. One such argument
begins from the premise that the notion of action is folk-psychological that a behavioral event counts as an action
only if it is caused by propositional attitudes that rationalize it under some
suitable actdescription. If so, and if humans never really undergo
propositional attitudes, then they never really act either. In particular, they
never really assert anything, or argue for anything since asserting and arguing
are species of action. So if eliminativism is true, the argument concludes,
then eliminativists can neither assert it nor argue for it an allegedly intolerable pragmatic paradox.
Eliminativists generally react to such arguments with breathtaking equanimity.
A typical reply is that although our present concept of action might well be
folk-psychological, this does not preclude the possibility of a future
successor concept, purged of any commitment to beliefs and desires, that could
inherit much of the role of our current, folk-psychologically tainted, concept
of action.
Fonseca, Pedro da, philosopher and logician. He entered the
Jesuit order in 1548. Apart from a period in Rome, he lived in Portugal,
teaching philosophy and theology at the universities of Evora and Coimbra and
performing various administrative duties for his order. He was responsible for
the idea of a published course on Aristotelian philosophy, and the resulting
series of Coimbra commentaries, the Cursus Conimbricensis, was widely used in
the seventeenth century. His own logic text, the Institutes of Dialectic 1564,
went into many editions. It is a good example of Renaissance Aristotelianism,
with its emphasis on Aristotle’s syllogistic, but it retains some material on
medieval developments, notably consequences, exponibles, and supposition
theory. Fonseca also wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics published in
parts from 1577 on, which contains the Grecian text, a corrected Latin
translation, comments on textual matters, and an extensive exploration of
selected philosophical problems. He cites a wide range of medieval
philosophers, both Christian and Arab, as well as the newly published Grecian
commentators on Aristotle. His own position is sympathetic to Aquinas, but
generally independent. Fonseca is important not so much for any particular
doctrines, though he did hold original views on such matters as analogy, but
for his provision of fully documented, carefully written and carefully argued
books that, along with others in the same tradition, were read at universities,
both Catholic and Protestant, well into the seventeenth century. He represents
what is often called the Second Scholasticism.
Fontenelle, Bernard Le
Bovier de: writer who heralded the age of the philosophes. A product of Jesuit
education, he was a versatile freethinker with skeptical inclinations.
Dialogues of the Dead 1683 showed off his analytical mind and elegant style. In
1699, he was appointed secretary of the Academy of Sciences. He composed famous
eulogies of scientists; defended the superiority of modern science over
tradition in Digression on Ancients and Moderns 1688; popularized Copernican
astronomy in Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds 1686 famous for postulating the inhabitation of
planets; stigmatized superstition and credulity in History of Oracles 1687 and
The Origin of Fables 1724; promoted Cartesian physics in The Theory of
Cartesian Vortices 1752; and wrote Elements of Infinitesimal Calculus 1727 in
the wake of Newton and Leibniz. J.-L.S. Foot, Philippa b.0, British philosopher
who exerted a lasting influence on the development of moral philosophy in the
second half of the twentieth century. Her persisting, intertwined themes are
opposition to all forms of subjectivism in ethics, the significance of the virtues
and vices, and the connection between morality and rationality. In her earlier
papers, particularly “Moral Beliefs” 8 and “Goodness and Choice” 1, reprinted
in Virtues and Vices 8, she undermines the subjectivist accounts of moral
“judgment” derived from C. L. Stevenson and Hare by arguing for many logical or
conceptual connections between evaluations and the factual statements on which
they must be based. Lately she has developed this kind of thought into the
naturalistic claim that moral evaluations are determined by facts about our
life and our nature, as evaluations of features of plants and animals as good
or defective specimens of their kind are determined by facts about their nature
and their life. Foot’s opposition to subjectivism has remained constant, but
her views on the virtues in relation to rationality have undergone several
changes. In “Moral Beliefs” she relates them to self-interest, maintaining that
a virtue must benefit its possessor; in the subsequently repudiated “Morality
as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives” 2 she went as far as to deny that
there was necessarily anything contrary to reason in being uncharitable or
unjust. In “Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake?” Oxford Journal of Legal
Studies, 5 the virtues themselves appear as forms of practical rationality. Her
most recent work, soon to be published as The Grammar of Goodness, preserves
and develops the latter claim and reinstates ancient connections between
virtue, rationality, and happiness.
forcing: a
method introduced by Paul J. Cohen see
his Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis 6
to prove independence results in Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory ZF. Cohen
proved the independence of the axiom of choice AC from ZF, and of the continuum
hypothesis CH from ZF ! AC. The consistency of AC with ZF and of CH with ZF !
AC had previously been proved by Gödel by the method of constructible sets. A
model of ZF consists of layers, with the elements of a set at one layer always
belonging to lower layers. Starting with a model M, Cohen’s method produces an
“outer model” N with no more levels but with more sets at each level whereas
Gödel’s method produces an ‘inner model’ L: much of what will become true in N
can be “forced” from within M. The method is applicable only to hypotheses in
the more “abstract” branches of mathematics infinitary combinatorics, general
topology, measure theory, universal algebra, model theory, etc.; but there it
is ubiquitous. Applications include the proof by Robert M. Solovay of the
consistency of the measurability of all sets of all projective sets with ZF
with ZF ! AC; also the proof by Solovay and Donald A. Martin of the consistency
of Martin’s axiom MA plus the negation of the continuum hypothesis -CH with ZF
! AC. CH implies MA; and of known consequences of CH about half are implied by
MA, about half refutable by MA ! -CH. Numerous simplifications, extensions, and
variants e.g. Boolean-valued models of Cohen’s method have been
introduced.
fordyce:
d., philosopher and educational theorist whose writings were influential in the
eighteenth century. His lectures formed the basis of his Elements of Moral
Philosophy, written originally for The Preceptor 1748, later tr. into G. and ,
and abridged for the articles on moral philosophy in the first Encylopaedia
Britannica 1771. Fordyce combines the preacher’s appeal to the heart in the
advocacy of virtue with a moral “scientist’s” appraisal of human psychology. He
claims to derive our duties experimentally from a study of the prerequisites of
human happiness. M.A.St. foreknowledge, divine.
forma: form,
in metaphysics, especially Plato’s and Aristotle’s, the structure or essence of
a thing as contrasted with its matter. Plato’s theory of Forms is a realistic
ontology of universals. In his elenchus, Socrates sought what is common to,
e.g., all chairs. Plato believed there must be an essence or Form
common to everything falling under one concept, which makes anything
what it is. A chair is a chair because it “participates in” the Form of Chair.
The Forms are ideal “patterns,” unchanging, timeless, and perfect. They exist
in a world of their own cf. the Kantian noumenal realm. Plato speaks of them as
self-predicating: the Form of Beauty is perfectly beautiful. This led, as he
realized, to the Third Man argument that there must be an infinite number of
Forms. The only true understanding is of the Forms. This we attain through
anamnesis, “recollection.” 2 Aristotle agreed that forms are closely tied to
intelligibility, but denied their separate existence. Aristotle explains change
and generation through a distinction between the form and matter of substances.
A lump of bronze matter becomes a statue through its being molded into a
certain shape form. In his earlier metaphysics, Aristotle identified primary
substance with the composite of matter and form, e.g. Socrates. Later, he
suggests that primary substance is form
what makes Socrates what he is the form here is his soul. This notion of
forms as essences has obvious similarities with the Platonic view. They became
the “substantial forms” of Scholasticism, accepted until the seventeenth
century. Kant saw form as the a priori aspect of experience. We are presented
with phenomenological “matter,” which has no meaning until the mind imposes
some form upon it. Grice finds the ‘logical’ in ‘logical form’ otiose. “Unless
we contrast it with logical matter.” Refs.: Grice, “Form: logical and other.” A
formal fallacy is an invalid inference pattern that is described in terms of a
formal logic. There are three main cases: 1 an invalid or otherwise
unacceptable argument identified solely by its form or structure, with no
reference to the content of the premises and conclusion such as equivocation or
to other features, generally of a pragmatic character, of the argumentative
discourse such as unsuitability of the argument for the purposes for which it
is given, failure to satisfy inductive standards for acceptable argument, etc.;
the latter conditions of argument evaluation fall into the purview of informal
fallacy; 2 a formal rule of inference, or an argument form, that is not valid
in the logical system on which the evaluation is made, instances of which are
sufficiently frequent, familiar, or deceptive to merit giving a name to the
rule or form; ad 3 an argument that is an instance of a fallacious rule of
inference or of a fallacious argument form and that is not itself valid. The
criterion of satisfactory argument typically taken as relevant in discussing
formal fallacies is validity. In this regard, it is important to observe that rules
of inference and argument forms that are not valid may have instances which may
be another rule or argument form, or may be a specific argument that are valid.
Thus, whereas the argument form i P, Q; therefore R a form that every argument,
including every valid argument, consisting of two premises shares is not valid,
the argument form ii, obtained from i by substituting P&Q for R, is a valid
instance of i: ii P, Q; therefore P&Q. Since ii is not invalid, ii is not a
formal fallacy though it is an instance of i. Thus, some instances of formally
fallacious rules of inference or argument-forms may be valid and therefore not
be formal fallacies. Examples of formal fallacies follow below, presented
according to the system of logic appropriate to the level of description of the
fallacy. There are no standard names for some of the fallacies listed below.
Fallacies of sentential propositional logic. Affirming the consequent: If p
then q; q / , p. ‘If Richard had his nephews murdered, then Richard was an evil
man; Richard was an evil man. Therefore, Richard had his nephews murdered.’
Denying the antecedent: If p then q; not-p / , not-q. ‘If North was found
guilty by the courts, then North committed the crimes charged of him; North was
not found guilty by the courts. Therefore, North did not commit the crimes
charged of him.’ Commutation of conditionals: If p then q / , If q then p. ‘If
Reagan was a great leader, then so was Thatcher. Therefore, if Thatcher was a
great leader, then so was Reagan.” Improper transposition: If p then q / , If
not-p then not-q. ‘If the nations of the Middle East disarm, there will be
peace in the region. Therefore, if the nations of the Middle East do not
disarm, there will not be peace in the region.’ Improper disjunctive syllogism affirming
one disjunct: p or q; p / ,, not-q. ‘Either John is an alderman or a ward
committeeman; John is an alderman. Therefore, John is not a ward committeeman.’
This rule of inference would be valid if ‘or’ were interpreted exclusively,
where ‘p or EXq’ is true if exactly one constituent is true and is false
otherwise. In standard systems of logic, however, ‘or’ is interpreted
inclusively. Fallacies of syllogistic logic. Fallacies of distribution where M
is the middle term, P is the major term, and S is the minor term. Undistributed
middle term: the middle term is not distributed in either premise roughly,
nothing is said of all members of the class it designates, as in form,
grammatical formal fallacy 316 316 Some
P are M ‘Some politicians are crooks. Some M are S Some crooks are thieves.
,Some S are P. ,Some politicians are thieves.’ Illicit major undistributed
major term: the major term is distributed in the conclusion but not in the
major premise, as in All M are P ‘All radicals are communists. No S are M No
socialists are radicals. ,Some S are ,Some socialists are not not P.
communists.’ Illicit minor undistributed minor term: the minor term is
distributed in the conclusion but not in the minor premise, as in All P are M
‘All neo-Nazis are radicals. All M are S All radicals are terrorists. ,All S
are P. ,All terrorists are neoNazis.’ Fallacies of negation. Two negative
premises exclusive premises: the syllogism has two negative premises, as in No
M are P ‘No racist is just. Some M are not S Some racists are not police. ,Some
S are not P. ,Some police are not just. Illicit negative/affirmative: the
syllogism has a negative premise conclusion but no negative conclusion premise,
as in All M are P ‘All liars are deceivers. Some M are not S Some liars are not
aldermen. ,Some S are P. ,Some aldermen are deceivers.’ and All P are M ‘All
vampires are monsters. All M are S All monsters are creatures. ,Some S are not
P. ,Some creatures are not vampires.’ Fallacy of existential import: the
syllogism has two universal premises and a particular conclusion, as in All P
are M ‘All horses are animals. No S are M No unicorns are animals. ,Some S are
not P. ,Some unicorns are not horses.’ A syllogism can commit more than one
fallacy. For example, the syllogism Some P are M Some M are S ,No S are P
commits the fallacies of undistributed middle, illicit minor, illicit major,
and illicit negative/affirmative. Fallacies of predicate logic. Illicit
quantifier shift: inferring from a universally quantified existential
proposition to an existentially quantified universal proposition, as in Ex Dy
Fxy / , Dy Ex Fxy ‘Everyone is irrational at some time or other /, At some
time, everyone is irrational.’ Some are/some are not unwarranted contrast:
inferring from ‘Some S are P’ that ‘Some S are not P’ or inferring from ‘Some S
are not P’ that ‘Some S are P’, as in Dx Sx & Px / , Dx Sx & -Px ‘Some
people are left-handed / , Some people are not left-handed.’ Illicit
substitution of identicals: where f is an opaque oblique context and a and b
are singular terms, to infer from fa; a = b / , fb, as in ‘The Inspector
believes Hyde is Hyde; Hyde is Jekyll / , The Inspector believes Hyde is
Jekyll.’ Forma gives rise to formalism
(or the formalists), which Grice contrasts with Ryle and Strawson’s informalism
(the informalists). Formalism is described by Grice as the the view that
mathematics concerns manipulations of symbols according to prescribed
structural rules. It is cousin to nominalism, the older and more general
metaphysical view that denies the existence of all abstract objects and is
often contrasted with Platonism, which takes mathematics to be the study of a
special class of non-linguistic, non-mental objects, and intuitionism, which
takes it to be the study of certain mental constructions. In sophisticated
versions, mathematical activity can comprise the study of possible formal
manipulations within a system as well as the manipulations themselves, and the
“symbols” need not be regarded as either linguistic or concrete. Formalism is
often associated with the mathematician formalism formalism 317 317 David Hilbert. But Hilbert held that the
“finitary” part of mathematics, including, for example, simple truths of
arithmetic, describes indubitable facts about real objects and that the “ideal”
objects that feature elsewhere in mathematics are introduced to facilitate
research about the real objects. Hilbert’s formalism is the view that the
foundations of mathematics can be secured by proving the consistency of formal
systems to which mathematical theories are reduced. Gödel’s two incompleteness
theorems establish important limitations on the success of such a project. And
then there’s “formalization,” an abstract representation of a theory that must
satisfy requirements sharper than those imposed on the structure of theories by
the axiomatic-deductive method. That method can be traced back to Euclid’s
Elements. The crucial additional requirement is the regimentation of
inferential steps in proofs: not only do axioms have to be given in advance,
but the rules representing argumentative steps must also be taken from a
predetermined list. To avoid a regress in the definition of proof and to
achieve intersubjectivity on a minimal basis, the rules are to be “formal” or
“mechanical” and must take into account only the form of statements. Thus, to
exclude any ambiguity, a precise and effectively described language is needed
to formalize particular theories. The general kind of requirements was clear to
Aristotle and explicit in Leibniz; but it was only Frege who, in his
Begriffsschrift 1879, presented, in addition to an expressively rich language
with relations and quantifiers, an adequate logical calculus. Indeed, Frege’s
calculus, when restricted to the language of predicate logic, turned out to be
semantically complete. He provided for the first time the means to formalize
mathematical proofs. Frege pursued a clear philosophical aim, namely, to
recognize the “epistemological nature” of theorems. In the introduction to his
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 3, Frege wrote: “By insisting that the chains of
inference do not have any gaps we succeed in bringing to light every axiom,
assumption, hypothesis or whatever else you want to call it on which a proof
rests; in this way we obtain a basis for judging the epistemological nature of
the theorem.” The Fregean frame was used in the later development of
mathematical logic, in particular, in proof theory. Gödel established through
his incompleteness theorems fundamental limits of formalizations of particular
theories, like the system of Principia Mathematica or axiomatic set theories.
The general notion of formal theory emerged from the subsequent investigations
of Church and Turing clarifying the concept of ‘mechanical procedure’ or
‘algorithm.’ Only then was it possible to state and prove the incompleteness
theorems for all formal theories satisfying certain very basic representability
and derivability conditions. Gödel emphasized repeatedly that these results do
not establish “any bounds for the powers of human reason, but rather for the
potentialities of pure formalism in mathematics.” As Grice notes, to ormalize: narrowly
construed, to formulate a subject as a theory in first-order predicate logic;
broadly construed, to describe the essentials of the subject in some formal
language for which a notion of consequence is defined. For Hilbert, formalizing
mathematics requires at least that there be finite means of checking purported
proofs. The formalists speak of a
‘formal’ language, “but is it a language?” – Grice. formal language: H. P.
Grice, “Bergmann on ideal language versus ordinary language,” a language in
which an expression’s grammaticality and interpretation if any are determined
by precisely defined rules that appeal only to the form or shape of the symbols
that constitute it rather than, for example, to the intention of the speaker.
It is usually understood that the rules are finite and effective so that there
is an algorithm for determining whether an expression is a formula and that the
grammatical expressions are uniquely readable, i.e., they are generated by the
rules in only one way. A paradigm example is the language of firstorder
predicate logic, deriving principally from the Begriffsschrift of Frege. The
grammatical formulas of this language can be delineated by an inductive
definition: 1 a capital letter ‘F’, ‘G’, or ‘H’, with or without a numerical
subscript, folformalism, aesthetic formal language 318 318 lowed by a string of lowercase letters
‘a’, ‘b’, or ‘c’, with or without numerical subscripts, is a formula; 2 if A is
a formula, so is -A; 3 if A and B are formulas, so are A & B, A P B, and A
7 B; 4 if A is a formula and v is a lowercase letter ‘x’, ‘y’, or ‘z’, with or
without numerical subscripts, then DvA' and EvA' are formulas where A' is obtained
by replacing one or more occurrences of some lowercase letter in A together
with its subscripts if any by v; 5 nothing is a formula unless it can be shown
to be one by finitely many applications of the clauses 14. The definition uses
the device of metalinguistic variables: clauses with ‘A’ and ‘B’ are to be
regarded as abbreviations of all the clauses that would result by replacing
these letters uniformly by names of expressions. It also uses several naming
conventions: a string of symbols is named by enclosing it within single quotes
and also by replacing each symbol in the string by its name; the symbols ‘7’,
‘‘,’’, ‘&’, ‘P’, ‘-’ are considered names of themselves. The interpretation
of predicate logic is spelled out by a similar inductive definition of truth in
a model. With appropriate conventions and stipulations, alternative definitions
of formulas can be given that make expressions like ‘P 7 Q’ the names of
formulas rather than formulas themselves. On this approach, formulas need not
be written symbols at all and form cannot be identified with shape in any
narrow sense. For Tarski, Carnap, and others a formal language also included
rules of “transformation” specifying when one expression can be regarded as a
consequence of others. Today it is more common to view the language and its
consequence relation as distinct. Formal languages are often contrasted with
natural languages, like English or Swahili. Richard Montague, however, has
tried to show that English is itself a formal language, whose rules of grammar
and interpretation are similar to though
much more complex than predicate
logic. Then there’s formal learnability
theory, the study of human language learning through explicit formal models
typically employing artifical languages and simplified learning strategies. The
fundamental problem is how a learner is able to arrive at a grammar of a
language on the basis of a finite sample of presented sentences and perhaps
other kinds of information as well. The seminal work is by E. Gold 7, who showed,
roughly, that learnability of certain types of grammars from the Chomsky
hierarchy by an unbiased learner required the presentation of ungrammatical
strings, identified as such, along with grammatical strings. Recent studies
have concentrated on other types of grammar e.g., generative transformational
grammars, modes of presentation, and assumptions about learning strategies in
an attempt to approximate the actual situation more closely. If Strawson and
Ryle are into ‘informal logic,’ Hilbert isn’t. Formal logic, versus ‘material
logic,’ is the science of correct reasoning, going back to Aristotle’s Prior
Analytics, based upon the premise that the validity of an argument is a
function of its structure or logical form. The modern embodiment of formal logic
is symbolic mathematical logic. This is the study of valid inference in
artificial, precisely formulated languages, the grammatical structure of whose
sentences or well-formed formulas is intended to mirror, or be a regimentation
of, the logical forms of their natural language counterparts. These formal
languages can thus be viewed as mathematical models of fragments of natural
language. Like models generally, these models are idealizations, typically
leaving out of account such phenomena as vagueness, ambiguity, and tense. But
the idea underlying symbolic logic is that to the extent that they reflect
certain structural features of natural language arguments, the study of valid
inference in formal languages can yield insight into the workings of those arguments.
The standard course of study for anyone interested in symbolic logic begins
with the classical propositional calculus sentential calculus, or PC. Here one
constructs a theory of valid inference for a formal language built up from a
stock of propositional variables sentence letters and an expressively complete
set of connectives. In the propositional calculus, one is therefore concerned
with arguments whose validity turns upon the presence of two-valued
truth-functional sentence-forming operators on sentences such as classical
negation, conjunction, disjunction, and the like. The next step is the
predicate calculus lower functional calculus, first-order logic, elementary
quantification theory, the study of valid inference in first-order languages. These
are languages built up from an expressively complete set of connectives,
first-order universal or existential quantifiers, individual variables, names,
predicates relational symbols, and perhaps function symbols. Further, and more
specialized, work in symbolic logic might involve looking at fragments of the
language of the propositional or predicate calculus, changing the semantics
that the language is standardly given e.g., by allowing truth-value gaps or
more than two truth-values, further embellishing the language e.g., by adding
modal or other non-truth-functional connectives, or higher-order quantifiers,
or liberalizing the grammar or syntax of the language e.g., by permitting
infinitely long well-formed formulas. In some of these cases, of course,
symbolic logic remains only marginally connected with natural language
arguments as the interest shades off into one in formal languages for their own
sake, a mark of the most advanced work being done in formal logic today. Some philosophers (“me included” – Grice)
speak of “formal semantics,” as opposed to Austin’s informal linguistic
botanising -- the study of the interpretations of formal languages. A formal
language can be defined apart from any interpretation of it. This is done by
specifying a set of its symbols and a set of formation rules that determine
which strings of symbols are grammatical or well formed. When rules of
inference transformation rules are added and/or certain sentences are
designated as axioms a logical system also known as a logistic system is
formed. An interpretation of a formal language is roughly an assignment of
meanings to its symbols and truth conditions to its sentences. Typically a
distinction is made between a standard interpretation of a formal language and
a non-standard interpretation. Consider a formal language in which arithmetic
is formulable. In addition to the symbols of logic variables, quantifiers,
brackets, and connectives, this language will contain ‘0’, ‘!’, ‘•’, and ‘s’. A
standard interpretation of it assigns the set of natural numbers as the domain
of discourse, zero to ‘0’, addition to ‘!’, multiplication to ‘•’, and the
successor function to ‘s’. Other standard interpretations are isomorphic to the
one just given. In particular, standard interpretations are numeral-complete in
that they correlate the numerals one-to-one with the domain elements. A result
due to Gödel and Rosser is that there are universal quantifications xAx that
are not deducible from the Peano axioms if those axioms are consistent even though
each An is provable. The Peano axioms if consistent are true on each standard
interpretation. Thus each An is true on such an interpretation. Thus xAx is
true on such an interpretation since a standard interpretation is
numeral-complete. However, there are non-standard interpretations that do not
correlate the numerals one-to-one with domain elements. On some of these
interpretations each An is true but xAx is false. In constructing and
interpreting a formal language we use a language already known to us, say,
English. English then becomes our metalanguage, which we use to talk about the
formal language, which is our object language. Theorems proven within the
object language must be distinguished from those proven in the metalanguage.
The latter are metatheorems. One goal of a semantical theory of a formal
language is to characterize the consequence relation as expressed in that
language and prove semantical metatheorems about that relation. A sentence S is
said to be a consequence of a set of sentences K provided S is true on every
interpretation on which each sentence in K is true. This notion has to be kept
distinct from the notion of deduction. The latter concept can be defined only
by reference to a logical system associated with a formal language.
Consequence, however, can be characterized independently of a logical system,
as was just done.
foucault:
m., philosopher and historian of thought. Foucault’s earliest writings e.g.,
Maladie mentale et personnalité [“Mental Illness and Personality”], 4 focused
on psychology and developed within the frameworks of Marxism and existential
phenomenology. He soon moved beyond these frameworks, in directions suggested
by two fundamental influences: formal mode Foucault, Michel 320 320 history and philosophy of science, as
practiced by Bachelard and especially Canguilhem, and the modernist literature
of, e.g., Raymond Roussel, Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot. In studies of
psychiatry Histoire de la folie [“History of Madness in the Classical Age”], 1,
clinical medicine The Birth of the Clinic, 3, and the social sciences The Order
of Things, 6, Foucault developed an approach to intellectual history, “the
archaeology of knowledge,” that treated systems of thought as “discursive
formations” independent of the beliefs and intentions of individual thinkers.
Like Canguilhem’s history of science and like modernist literature, Foucault’s
archaeology displaced the human subject from the central role it played in the
humanism dominant in our culture since Kant. He reflected on the historical and
philosophical significance of his archaeological method in The Archaeology of
Knowledge 9. Foucault recognized that archaeology provided no account of
transitions from one system to another. Accordingly, he introduced a “genealogical”
approach, which does not replace archaeology but goes beyond it to explain
changes in systems of discourse by connecting them to changes in the
non-discursive practices of social power structures. Foucault’s genealogy
admitted the standard economic, social, and political causes but, in a
non-standard, Nietzschean vein, refused any unified teleological explanatory
scheme e.g., Whig or Marxist histories. New systems of thought are seen as
contingent products of many small, unrelated causes, not fulfillments of grand
historical designs. Foucault’s geneaological studies emphasize the essential
connection of knowledge and power. Bodies of knowledge are not autonomous
intellectual structures that happen to be employed as Baconian instruments of
power. Rather, precisely as bodies of knowledge, they are tied but not
reducible to systems of social control. This essential connection of power and
knowledge reflects Foucault’s later view that power is not merely repressive
but a creative, if always dangerous, source of positive values. Discipline and
Punish 5 showed how prisons constitute criminals as objects of disciplinary
knowledge. The first volume of the History of Sexuality 6 sketched a project
for seeing how, through modern biological and psychological sciences of
sexuality, individuals are controlled by their own knowledge as
self-scrutinizing and self-forming subjects. The second volume was projected as
a study of the origins of the modern notion of a subject in practices of
Christian confession. Foucault wrote such a study The Confessions of the Flesh
but did not publish it because he decided that a proper understanding of the
Christian development required a comparison with ancient conceptions of the
ethical self. This led to two volumes 4 on Grecian and Roman sexuality: The Use
of Pleasure and The Care of the Self. These final writings make explicit the
ethical project that in fact informs all of Foucault’s work: the liberation of
human beings from contingent conceptual constraints masked as unsurpassable a priori
limits and the adumbration of alternative forms of existence.
Grice’s
foundationalism: the view that knowledge and epistemic
knowledge-relevant justification have a two-tier structure: some instances of
knowledge and justification are non-inferential, or foundational; and all other
instances thereof are inferential, or non-foundational, in that they derive
ultimately from foundational knowledge or justification. This structural view
originates in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics at least regarding knowledge,
receives an extreme formulation in Descartes’s Meditations, and flourishes,
with varying details, in the works of such twentieth-century philosophers as
Russell, C. I. Lewis, and Chisholm. Versions of foundationalism differ on two
main projects: a the precise explanation of the nature of non-inferential, or
foundational, knowledge and justification, and b the specific explanation of
how foundational knowledge and justification can be transmitted to
non-foundational beliefs. Foundationalism allows for differences on these
projects, since it is essentially a view about the structure of knowledge and
epistemic justification. The question whether knowledge has foundations is
essentially the question whether the sort of justification pertinent to knowledge
has a twotier structure. Some philosophers have construed the former question
as asking whether knowledge depends on beliefs that are certain in some sense
e.g., indubitable or infallible. This construal bears, however, on only one
species of foundationalism: radical foundationalism. Such foundationalism,
represented primarily by Descartes, requires that foundational beliefs be
certain and able to guarantee the certainty of the non-foundational beliefs
they support. Radical foundationalism is currently unpopular for two main
reasons. First, very few, if any, of our perceptual beliefs are certain i.e.,
indubitable; and, second, those of our beliefs that might be candidates for
certainty e.g., the belief that I am thinking lack sufficient substance to guarantee
the certainty of our rich, highly inferential knowledge of the external world
e.g., our knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology. Contemporary
foundationalists typically endorse modest foundationalism, the view that
non-inferentially justified, foundational beliefs need not possess or provide
certainty and need not deductively support justified non-foundational beliefs.
Foundational beliefs or statements are often called basic beliefs or
statements, but the precise understanding of ‘basic’ here is controversial
among foundationalists. Foundationalists agree, however, in their general
understanding of non-inferentially justified, foundational beliefs as beliefs
whose justification does not derive from other beliefs, although they leave
open whether the causal basis of foundational beliefs includes other beliefs.
Epistemic justification comes in degrees, but for simplicity we can restrict
discussion to justification sufficient for satisfaction of the justification
condition for knowledge; we can also restrict discussion to what it takes for a
belief to have justification, omitting issues of what it takes to show that a
belief has it. Three prominent accounts of non-inferential justification are
available to modest foundationalists: a self-justification, b justification by
non-belief, non-propositional experiences, and c justification by a non-belief
reliable origin of a belief. Proponents of self-justification including, at one
time, Ducasse and Chisholm contend that foundational beliefs can justify themselves,
with no evidential support elsewhere. Proponents of foundational justification
by non-belief experiences shun literal self-justification; they hold, following
C. I. Lewis, that foundational perceptual beliefs can be justified by
non-belief sensory or perceptual experiences e.g., seeming to see a dictionary
that make true, are best explained by, or otherwise support, those beliefs
e.g., the belief that there is, or at least appears to be, a dictionary here.
Proponents of foundational justification by reliable origins find the basis of
non-inferential justification in belief-forming processes e.g., perception,
memory, introspection that are truth-conducive, i.e., that tend to produce true
rather than false beliefs. This view thus appeals to the reliability of a
belief’s nonbelief origin, whereas the previous view appeals to the particular
sensory or perceptual experiences that correspond to e.g., make true or are
best explained by a foundational belief. Despite disagreements over the basis
of foundational justification, modest foundationalists typically agree that
foundational justification is characterized by defeasibility, i.e., can be
defeated, undermined, or overridden by a certain sort of expansion of one’s
evidence or justified beliefs. For instance, your belief that there is a blue
dictionary before you could lose its justification e.g., the justification from
your current perceptual experiences if you acquired new evidence that there is
a blue light shining on the dictionary before you. Foundational justification,
therefore, can vary over time if accompanied by relevant changes in one’s
perceptual evidence. It does not follow, however, that foundational
justification positively depends, i.e., is based, on grounds for denying that
there are defeaters. The relevant dependence can be regarded as negative in
that there need only be an absence of genuine defeaters. Critics of
foundationalism sometimes neglect that latter distinction regarding epistemic
dependence. The second big task for foundationalists is to explain how
justification transmits from foundational beliefs to inferentially justified,
non-foundational beliefs. Radical foundationalists insist, for such
transmission, on entailment relations that guarantee the truth or the certainty
of nonfoundational beliefs. Modest foundationalists are more flexible, allowing
for merely probabilistic inferential connections that transmit justification.
For instance, a modest foundationalist can appeal to explanatory inferential
connections, as when a foundational belief e.g., I seem to feel wet is best
explained for a person by a particular physical-object belief e.g., the belief
that the air conditioner overhead is leaking on me. Various other forms of
probabilistic inference are available to modest foundationalists; and nothing
in principle requires that they restrict foundational beliefs to what one
“seems” to sense or to perceive. The traditional motivation for foundationalism
comes largely from an eliminative regress argument, outlined originally
regarding knowledge in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. The argument, in
shortest form, is that foundationalism is a correct account of the structure of
justification since the alternative accounts all fail. Inferential
justification is justification wherein one belief, B1, is justified on the
basis of another belief, B2. How, if at all, is B2, the supporting belief,
itself justified? Obviously, Aristotle suggests, we cannot have a circle here,
where B2 is justified by B1; nor can we allow the chain of support to extend
endlessly, with no ultimate basis for justification. We cannot, moreover, allow
B2 to remain unjustified, foundationalism foundationalism 322 322 lest it lack what it takes to support
B1. If this is right, the structure of justification does not involve circles,
endless regresses, or unjustified starter-beliefs. That is, this structure is
evidently foundationalist. This is, in skeletal form, the regress argument for
foundationalism. Given appropriate flesh, and due attention to skepticism about
justification, this argument poses a serious challenge to non-foundationalist
accounts of the structure of epistemic justification, such as epistemic
coherentism. More significantly, foundationalism will then show forth as one of
the most compelling accounts of the structure of knowledge and justification.
This explains, at least in part, why foundationalism has been very prominent
historically and is still widely held in contemporary epistemology.
fourier:
f.-m.-c. social theorist and radical critic, often called a utopian socialist.
His main works were The Theory of Universal Unity 1822 and The New Industrial
and Societal World 1829. He argued that since each person has, not an integral
soul but only a partial one, personal integrity is possible only in unity with
others. Fourier thought that all existing societies were antagonistic.
Following Edenism, he believed societies developed through stages of savagery,
patriarchalism, barbarianism, and civilization. He believed this antagonism
could be transcended only in Harmony. It would be based on twelve kinds of
passions. Five were sensual, four affective, and three distributive; and these
in turn encouraged the passion for unity. The basic social unit would be a
phalanx containing 300 400 families about 1,6001,800 people of scientifically
blended characters. As a place of production but also of maximal satisfaction
of the passions of every member, Harmony should make labor attractive and
pleasurable. The main occupations of its members should be gastronomy, opera, and
horticulture. It should also establish a new world of love a form of polygamy
where men and women would be equal in rights. Fourier believed that phalanxes
would attract members of all other social systems, even the less civilized, and
bring about this new world system. Fourier’s vision of cooperation both in
theory and experimental practice influenced some anarchists, syndicalists, and
the cooperationist movement. His radical social critique was important for the
development of political and social thought in France, Europe, and North
America.
frankena:
w. philosopher who wrote a series of influential articles and a text, Ethics 3,
which was tr. into eight languages and remains in use today. Frankena taught at
the of Michigan 778, where he and his colleagues
C. L. Stevenson 879, a leading noncognitivist, and Richard Brandt, an important
ethical naturalist, formed for many years one of the most formidable faculties
in moral philosophy in the world. Frankena was known for analytical rigor and
sharp insight, qualities already evident in his first essay, “The Naturalistic
Fallacy” 9, which refuted Moore’s influential claim that ethical naturalism or
any other reductionist ethical theory could be convicted of logical error. At
best, Frankena showed, reductionists could be said to conflate or misidentify
ethical properties with properties of some other kind. Even put this way, such
assertions were question-begging, Frankena argued. Where Moore claimed to see
properties of two different kinds, naturalists and other reductionists claimed
to be able to see only one. Many of Frankena’s most important papers concerned
similarly fundamental issues about value and normative judgment. “Obligation
and Motivation in Recent Moral Philosophy” 8, for example, is a classic treatment
of the debate between internalism, which holds that motivation is essential to
obligation or to the belief or perception that one is obligated, and
externalism, which holds that motivation is only contingently related to these.
In addition to metaethics, Frankena’s published works ranged broadly over
normative ethical theory, virtue ethics, moral psychology, religious ethics,
moral education, and the philosophy of education. Although relatively few of
his works were devoted exclusively to the area, Frankena was also known as the
preeminent historian of ethics of his day. More usually, Frankena used the
history of ethics as a framework within which to discuss issues of perennial
interest. It was, however, for Ethics, one of the most widely used and frequently
cited philosophical ethics textbooks of the twentieth century, that Frankena
was perhaps best known. Ethics continues to provide an unparalleled
introduction to the subject, as useful in a first undergraduate course as it is
to graduate students and professional philosophers looking for perspicuous ways
to frame issues and categorize alternative solutions. For example, when in the
0s philosophers came to systematically investigate normative ethical theories,
it was Frankena’s distinction in Ethics between deontological and teleological
theories to which they referred.
frankfurt
school: a group of philosophers, cultural critics, and
social scientists associated with the Institute for Social Research, which was
founded in Frankfurt. Its prominent members included, among others, the
philosophers Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, as well as the psychoanalyst
Erich Fromm and the literary critic Walter Benjamin. Habermas is the leading
representative of its second generation. The Frankfurt School is less known for
particular theories or doctrines than for its program of a “critical theory of
society.” Critical theory represents a sophisticated effort to continue Marx’s
transformation of moral philosophy into social and political critique, while
rejecting orthodox Marxism as a dogma. Critical theory is primarily a way of
doing philosophy, integrating the normative aspects of philosophical reflection
with the explanatory achievements of the social sciences. The ultimate goal of
its program is to link theory and practice, to provide insight, and to empower
subjects to change their oppressive circumstances and achieve human
emancipation, a rational society that satisfies human needs and powers. The
first generation of the Frankfurt School went through three phases of
development. The first, lasting from the beginning of the Institute until the
end of the 0s, can be called “interdisciplinary historical materialism” and is
best represented in Horkheimer’s programmatic writings. Horkheimer argued that
a revised version of historical materialism could organize the results of
social research and give it a critical perspective. The second, “critical
theory” phase saw the abandonment of Marxism for a more generalized notion of
critique. However, with the near-victory of the Nazis in the early 0s,
Horkheimer and Adorno entered the third phase of the School, “the critique of
instrumental reason.” In their Dialectic of Enlightenment 1 as well as in
Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man 4, the process of instrumentally dominating nature
leads to dehumanization and the domination of human beings. In their writings
after World War II, Adorno and Horkheimer became increasingly pessimistic,
seeing around them a “totally administered society” and a manipulated,
commodity culture. Horkheimer’s most important essays are from the first phase
and focus on the relation of philosophy and social science. Besides providing a
clear definition and program for critical social science, he proposes that the
normative orientation of philosophy should be combined with the empirical
research in the social sciences. This metaphilosophical orientation
distinguishes a “critical,” as opposed to “traditional,” theory. For example,
such a program demands rethinking the relation of epistemology to the sociology
of science. A critical theory seeks to show how the norm of truth is historical
and practical, without falling into the skepticism or relativism of traditional
sociologies of knowledge such as Mannheim’s. Adorno’s major writings belong
primarily to the second and third phases of the development of the Frankfurt
School. As the possibilities for criticism appeared to him increasingly narrow,
Adorno sought to discover them in aesthetic experience and the mimetic relation
to nature. Adorno’s approach was motivated by his view that modern society is a
“false totality.” His diagnosis of the causes traced this trend back to the
spread of a one-sided, instrumental reason, based on the domination of nature
and other human beings. For this reason, he sought a noninstrumental and
non-dominating relation to nature and to others, and found it in diverse and
fragmentary experiences. Primarily, it is art that preserves this possibility
in contemporary society, since in art there is a possibility of mimesis, or the
“non-identical” relation to the object. Adorno’s influential attempt to avoid
“the logic of identity” gives his posthumous Aesthetic Theory 0 and other later
works a paradoxical character. It was in reaction to the third phase that the
second generation of the Frankfurt School recast the idea of a critical theory.
Habermas argued for a new emphasis on normative foundations as well as a return
to an interdisciplinary research program in the social sciences. After first
developing such a foundation in a theory of cognitive interests technical,
practical, and emancipatory, Habermas turned to a theory of the unavoidable
presuppositions of communicative action and an ethics of discourse. The
potential for emancipatory change lies in communicative, or discursive, rationality
and practices that embody it, such as the democratic public sphere. Habermas’s
analysis of communication seeks to provide norms for non-dominating relations
to others and a broader notion of reason.
free:
“ “Free” is one of the trickiest adjectives in English. My favourite is
‘alcohol-free’. And then there’s ‘free logic.”” Free logic, a system of
quantification theory, with or without identity, that allows for non-denoting
singular terms. In classical quantification theory, all singular terms free
variables and individual constants are assigned a denotation in all models. But
this condition appears counterintuitive when such systems are applied to
natural language, where many singular terms seem to be non-denoting ‘Pegasus’,
‘Sherlock Holmes’, and the like. Various solutions of this problem have been
proposed, ranging from Frege’s chosen object theory assign an arbitrary
denotation to each non-denoting singular term to Russell’s description theory
deny singular term status to most expressions used as such in natural language,
and eliminate them from the “logical form” of that language to a weakening of
the quantifiers’ “existential import,” which allows for denotations to be
possible, but not necessarily actual, objects. All these solutions preserve the
structure of classical quantification theory and make adjustments at the level
of application. Free logic is a more radical solution: it allows for legitimate
singular terms to be denotationless, maintains the quantifiers’ existential
import, but modifies both the proof theory and the semantics of first-order
logic. Within proof theory, the main modification consists of eliminating the
rule of existential generalization, which allows one to infer ‘There exists a
flying horse’ from ‘Pegasus is a flying horse’. Within semantics, the main
problem is giving truth conditions for sentences containing non-denoting
singular terms, and there are various ways of accomplishing this. Conventional
semantics assigns truth-values to atomic sentences containing non-denoting singular
terms by convention, and then determines the truth-values of complex sentences
as usual. Outer domain semantics divides the domain of interpretation into an
inner and an outer part, using the inner part as the range of quantifiers and
the outer part to provide for “denotations” for non-denoting singular terms
which are then not literally denotationless, but rather left without an
existing denotation. Supervaluational semantics, when considering a sentence A,
assigns all possible combinations of truth-values to the atomic components of A
containing non-denoting singular terms, evaluates A on the basis of each of
those combinations, and then assigns to A the logical product of all such
evaluations. Thus both ‘Pegasus flies’ and ‘Pegasus does not fly’ turn out
truth-valueless, but ‘Pegasus flies or Pegasus does not fly’ turns out true
since whatever truth-value is assigned to its atomic component ‘Pegasus flies’
the truth-value for the whole sentence is true. A free logic is inclusive if it
allows for the possibility that the range of quantifiers be empty that there
exists nothing at all; it is exclusive otherwise. Then there’s the free rider, a person who
benefits from a social arrangement without bearing an appropriate share of the
burdens of maintaining that arrangement, e.g. one who benefits from government
services without paying one’s taxes that support them. The arrangements from
which a free rider benefits may be either formal or informal. Cooperative
arrangements that permit free riders are likely to be unstable; parties to the
arrangement are unlikely to continue to bear the burdens of maintaining it if
others are able to benefit without doing their part. As a result, it is common
for cooperative arrangements to include mechanisms to discourage free riders,
e.g. legal punishment, or in cases of informal conventions the mere disapproval
of one’s peers. It is a matter of some controversy as to whether it is always
morally wrong to benefit from an arrangement without contributing to its
maintenance. Then there’s the free will problem, the problem of the nature of
free agency and its relation to the origins and conditions of responsible
behavior. For those who contrast ‘free’ with ‘determined’, a central question
is whether humans are free in what they do or determined by external events
beyond their control. A related concern is whether an agent’s responsibility
for an action requires that the agent, the act, or the relevant decision be
free. This, in turn, directs attention to action, motivation, deliberation,
choice, and intention, and to the exact sense, if any, in which our actions are
under our control. Use of ‘free will’ is a matter of traditional nomenclature;
it is debated whether freedom is properly ascribed to the will or the agent, or
to actions, choices, deliberations, etc. Controversy over conditions of
responsible behavior forms the predominant historical and conceptual background
of the free will problem. Most who ascribe moral responsibility acknowledge
some sense in which agents must be free in acting as they do; we are not
responsible for what we were forced to do or were unable to avoid no matter how
hard we tried. But there are differing accounts of moral responsibility and
disagreements about the nature and extent of such practical freedom a notion
also important in Kant. Accordingly, the free will problem centers on these
questions: Does moral responsibility require any sort of practical freedom? If
so, what sort? Are people practically free? Is practical freedom consistent
with the antecedent determination of actions, thoughts, and character? There is
vivid debate about this last question. Consider a woman deliberating about whom
to vote for. From her first-person perspective, she feels free to vote for any
candidate and is convinced that the selection is up to her regardless of prior
influences. But viewing her eventual behavior as a segment of larger natural
and historical processes, many would argue that there are underlying causes
determining her choice. With this contrast of intuitions, any attempt to decide
whether the voter is free depends on the precise meanings associated with terms
like ‘free’, ‘determine’, and ‘up to her’. One thing event, situation
determines another if the latter is a consequence of it, or necessitated by it,
e.g., the voter’s hand movements by her intention. As usually understood,
determinism holds that whatever happens is determined by antecedent conditions,
where determination is standardly conceived as causation by antecedent events
and circumstances. So construed, determinism implies that at any time the
future is already fixed and unique, with no possibility of alternative
development. Logical versions of determinism declare each future event to be
determined by what is already true, specifically, by the truth that it will
occur then. Typical theological variants accept the predestination of all
circumstances and events inasmuch as a divine being knows in advance or even
from eternity that they will obtain. Two elements are common to most
interpretations of ‘free’. First, freedom requires an absence of determination
or certain sorts of determination, and second, one acts and chooses freely only
if these endeavors are, properly speaking, one’s own. From here, accounts
diverge. Some take freedom liberty of indifference or the contingency of
alternative courses of action to be critical. Thus, for the woman deliberating
about which candidate to select, each choice is an open alternative inasmuch as
it is possible but not yet necessitated. Indifference is also construed as
motivational equilibrium, a condition some find essential to the idea that a
free choice must be rational. Others focus on freedom liberty of spontaneity,
where the voter is free if she votes as she chooses or desires, a reading that
reflects the popular equation of freedom with “doing what you want.” Associated
with both analyses is a third by which the woman acts freely if she exercises
her control, implying responsiveness to free rider free will problem 326 326 intent as well as both abilities to
perform an act and to refrain. A fourth view identifies freedom with autonomy,
the voter being autonomous to the extent that her selection is self-determined,
e.g., by her character, deeper self, higher values, or informed reason. Though
distinct, these conceptions are not incompatible, and many accounts of
practical freedom include elements of each. Determinism poses problems if
practical freedom requires contingency alternate possibilities of action.
Incompatibilism maintains that determinism precludes freedom, though
incompatibilists differ whether everything is determined. Those who accept
determinism thereby endorse hard determinism associated with eighteenthcentury
thinkers like d’Holbach and, recently, certain behaviorists, according to which
freedom is an illusion since behavior is brought about by environmental and
genetic factors. Some hard determinists also deny the existence of moral
responsibility. At the opposite extreme, metaphysical libertarianism asserts
that people are free and responsible and, a fortiori, that the past does not
determine a unique future a position
some find enhanced by developments in quantum physics. Among adherents of this
sort of incompatibilism are those who advocate a freedom of indifference by
describing responsible choices as those that are undetermined by antecedent
circumstances Epicureans. To rebut the charge that choices, so construed, are
random and not really one’s “own,” it has been suggested that several elements,
including an agent’s reasons, delimit the range of possibilities and influence
choices without necessitating them a view held by Leibniz and, recently, by
Robert Kane. Libertarians who espouse agency causation, on the other hand,
blend contingency with autonomy in characterizing a free choice as one that is
determined by the agent who, in turn, is not caused to make it a view found in
Carneades and Reid. Unwilling to abandon practical freedom yet unable to
understand how a lack of determination could be either necessary or desirable
for responsibility, many philosophers take practical freedom and responsibility
to be consistent with determinism, thereby endorsing compatibilism. Those who
also accept determinism advocate what James called soft determinism. Its
supporters include some who identify freedom with autonomy the Stoics, Spinoza
and others who champion freedom of spontaneity Hobbes, Locke, Hume. The latter
speak of liberty as the power of doing or refraining from an action according
to what one wills, so that by choosing otherwise one would have done otherwise.
An agent fails to have liberty when constrained, that is, when either prevented
from acting as one chooses or compelled to act in a manner contrary to what one
wills. Extending this model, liberty is also diminished when one is caused to
act in a way one would not otherwise prefer, either to avoid a greater danger
coercion or because there is deliberate interference with the envisioning of
alternatives manipulation. Compatibilists have shown considerable ingenuity in
responding to criticisms that they have ignored freedom of choice or the need
for open alternatives. Some apply the spontaneity, control, or autonomy models
to decisions, so that the voter chooses freely if her decision accords with her
desires, is under her control, or conforms to her higher values, deeper
character, or informed reason. Others challenge the idea that responsibility
requires alternative possibilities of action. The so-called Frankfurt-style
cases developed by Harry G. Frankfurt are situations where an agent acts in
accord with his desires and choices, but because of the presence of a
counterfactual intervener a mechanism
that would have prevented the agent from doing any alternative action had he
shown signs of acting differently the
agent could not have done otherwise. Frankfurt’s intuition is that the agent is
as responsible as he would have been if there were no intervener, and thus that
responsible action does not require alternative possibilities. Critics have
challenged the details of the Frankfurt-style cases in attempting to undermine
the appeal of the intuition. A different compatibilist tactic recognizes the
need for open alternatives and employs versions of the indifference model in
describing practical freedom. Choices are free if they are contingent relative
to certain subsets of circumstances, e.g. those the agent is or claims to be
cognizant of, with the openness of alternatives grounded in what one can choose
“for all one knows.” Opponents of compatibilism charge that since these
refinements leave agents subject to external determination, even by hidden
controllers, compatibilism continues to face an insurmountable challenge. Their
objections are sometimes summarized by the consequence argument so called by
Peter van Inwagen, who has prominently defended it: if everything were
determined by factors beyond one’s control, then one’s acts, choices, and
character would also be beyond one’s control, and consequently, agents would
never be free and there would be nothing free will problem free will problem
327 327 for which they are responsible.
Such reasoning usually employs principles asserting the closure of the
practical modalities ability, control, avoidability, inevitability, etc. under
consequence relations. However, there is a reason to suppose that the sort of
ability and control required by responsibility involve the agent’s sense of
what can be accomplished. Since cognitive states are typically not closed under
consequence, the closure principles underlying the consequence argument are disputable.
freges
sättigung:
Frege’s original Sinn. Fregeian saturation. Grice was once at the Bodleian
assisting Austin in his translation of Frege’s Grundlegung – and browsing
through the old-style library fiches, Grice exclaims: “All these essays in German
journals about Fregeian saturation can surely saturate one!’ Austin was not
amused. Neben mathematischen und physikalischen Vorlesungen sowie einer in
Philosophie hat Frege in Jena Vorlesungen in Chemie besucht und in diesem Fach
auch an einem einsemestrigen Praktikum teilgenommen. In seiner wohlbekannten
Rede über Bindung und Sättigung von Ausdrücken klingt davon noch etwas
nach.Betrachten wir nun die Konsequenzen der Fregeschen Auffassung der
prädikativen Natur der Begriffe. Hierfür ist es zunächst erforderlich,
abschließend einige Besonderheiten anzumerken, die daraus folgen, daß auch
Begriffsausdrücke bedeutungsvoll sein sollen. Zunächst hatten wir ja mit Hilfe
der Analogie festgestellt, daß in einem Satz dasjenige, was Begriffsausdrücke
bedeuten, denselben ontologischen Status haben muß wie das, was Eigennamen
bedeuten. Insofern scheinen sowohl Eigennamen als auch Begriffsausdrücke
jeweils bestimmte (wenn auch hinsichtlich ihrer Sättigung oder
Bindungsfähigkeit unterschiedene) Entitäten als Bedeutung zu haben. Und Frege
erklärt auch explizit „Begriff ist Bedeutung eines Prädikates“ [BG, 198]. Frege’s distinction between saturated
expressions and unsaturated expressions corresponds to the distinction between
objects and concepts. A saturated expression refers to an object or argument
and has a complete sense in itself, while an unsaturated expression refers to a
concept or function and does not have a complete sense. For example, in the
sentence “Socrates is the teacher of Plato,” “Socrates” and “Plato” are proper
names and are saturated, while “. . . is the teacher of . . .” is unsaturated,
for it has empty spaces that must be filled with saturated expressions before it
gains a complete sense. “Statements in general . . . can be imagined to be
split up into two parts; one complete in itself, and the other in need of
supplementation, or ‘unsaturated’.” Frege, “Function and Concept,”
Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. -- frege, G.,
philosopher. A founder of modern mathematical logic, an advocate of logicism,
and a major source of twentieth-century analytic philosophy, he directly
influenced Russell, Vitters, and Carnap. Frege’s distinction between the sense
and the reference of linguistic expressions continues to be debated. His first
publication in logic was his strikingly original 1879 Begriffsschrift
Concept-notation. Here he devised a formal language whose central innovation is
the quantifier-variable notation to express generality; he set forth in this
language a version of second-order quantificational logic that he used to
develop a logical definition of the ancestral of a relation. Frege invented his
Begriffsschrift in order to circumvent drawbacks of the use of colloquial
language to state proofs. Colloquial language is irregular, unperspicuous, and
ambiguous in its expression of logical relationships. Moreover, logically
crucial features of the content of statements may remain tacit and unspoken. It
is thus impossible to determine exhaustively the premises on which the
conclusion of any proof conducted within ordinary language depends. Frege’s
Begriffsschrift is to force the explicit statement of the logically relevant
features of any assertion. Proofs in the system are limited to what can be
obtained from a body of evidently true logical axioms by means of a small
number of truth-preserving notational manipulations inference rules. Here is
the first hallmark of Frege’s view of logic: his formulation of logic as a
formal system and the ideal of explicitness and rigor that this presentation
subserves. Although the formal exactitude with which he formulates logic makes
possible the metamathematical investigation of formalized theories, he showed
almost no interest in metamathematical questions. He intended the
Begriffsschrift to be used. How though does Frege conceive of the subject
matter of logic? His orientation in logic is shaped by his anti-psychologism,
his conviction that psychology has nothing to do with logic. He took his
notation to be a full-fledged language in its own right. The logical axioms do
not mention objects or properties whose investigation pertains to some special
science; and Frege’s quantifiers are unrestricted. Laws of logic are, as he
says, the laws of truth, and these are the most general truths. He envisioned
the supplementation of the logical vocabulary of the Begriffsschrift with the
basic vocabulary of the special sciences. In this way the Begriffsschrift
affords a framework for the completely rigorous deductive development of any
science whatsoever. This resolutely nonpsychological universalist view of logic
as the most general science is the second hallmark of Frege’s view of logic.
This universalist view distinguishes his approach sharply from the coeval
algebra of logic approach of George Boole and Ernst Schröder. Vitters, both in
the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 1 and in later writings, is very critical of
Frege’s universalist view. Logical positivism
most notably Carnap in The Logical Syntax of Language 4 rejected it as well. Frege’s universalist
view is also distinct from more contemporary views. With his view of
quantifiers as intrinsically unrestricted, he saw little point in talking of
varying interpretations of a language, believing that such talk is a confused
way of getting at what is properly said by means of second-order
generalizations. In particular, the semantical conception of logical
consequences that becomes prominent in logic after Kurt Gödel’s and Tarski’s
work is foreign to Frege. Frege’s work in logic was prompted by an inquiry
after the ultimate foundation for arithmetic truths. He criticized J. S. Mill’s
empiricist attempt to ground knowledge of the arithmetic of the positive
integers inductively in our manipulations of small collections of things. He
also rejected crudely formalist views that take pure mathematics to be a sort
of notational game. In contrast to these views and Kant’s, he hoped to use his
Begriffsschrift to define explicitly the basic notions of arithmetic in logical
terms and to deduce the basic principles of arithmetic from logical axioms and
these definitions. The explicitness and rigor of his formulation of logic will
guarantee that there are no implicit extralogical premises on which the
arithmetical conclusions depend. Such proofs, he believed, would show
arithmetic to be analytic, not synthetic as Kant had claimed. However, Frege
redefined ‘analytic’ to mean ‘provable from
logical laws’ in his rather un-Kantian sense of ‘logic’ and definitions.
Frege’s strategy for these proofs rests on an analysis of the concept of
cardinal number that he presented in his nontechnical 4 book, The Foundations
of Arithmetic. Frege, attending to the use of numerals in statements like ‘Mars
has two moons’, argued that it contains an assertion about a concept, that it
asserts that there are exactly two things falling under the concept ‘Martian
moon’. He also noted that both numerals in these statements and those of pure
arithmetic play the logical role of singular terms, his proper names. He
concluded that numbers are objects so that a definition of the concept of
number must then specify what objects numbers are. He observed that 1 the
number of F % the number of G just in case there is a one-to-one correspondence
between the objects that are F and those that are G. The right-hand side of 1
is statable in purely logical terms. As Frege recognized, thanks to the
definition of the ancestral of a relation, 1 suffices in the second-order
setting of the Begriffsschrift for the derivation of elementary arithmetic. The
vindication of his logicism requires, however, the logical definition of the
expression ‘the number of’. He sharply criticized the use in mathematics of any
notion of set or collection that views a set as built up from its elements.
However, he assumed that, corresponding to each concept, there is an object,
the extension of the concept. He took the notion of an extension to be a
logical one, although one to which the notion of a concept is prior. He adopted
as a fundamental logical principle the ill-fated biconditional: the extension
of F % the extension of G just in case every F is G, and vice versa. If this
principle were valid, he could exploit the equivalence relation over concepts
that figures in the right-hand side of 1 to identify the number of F with a
certain extension and thus obtain 1 as a theorem. In The Basic Laws of
Arithmetic vol. 1, 3; vol. 2, 3 he formalized putative proofs of basic
arithmetical laws within a modified version of the Begriffsschrift that
included a generalization of the law of extensions. However, Frege’s law of
extensions, in the context of his logic, is inconsistent, leading to Russell’s
paradox, as Russell communicated to Frege in 2. Frege’s attempt to establish
logicism was thus, on its own terms, unsuccessful. In Begriffsschrift Frege
rejected the thesis that every uncompound sentence is logically segmented into
a subject and a predicate. Subsequently, he said that his approach in logic was
distinctive in starting not from the synthesis of concepts into judgments, but
with the notion of truth and that to which this notion is applicable, the
judgeable contents or thoughts that are expressed by statements. Although he
said that truth is the goal of logic, he did not think that we have a grasp of
the notion of truth that is independent of logic. He eschewed a correspondence
theory of truth, embracing instead a redundancy view of the truth-predicate.
For Frege, to call truth the goal of logic points toward logic’s concern with
inference, with the recognition-of-thetruth judging of one thought on the basis
of the recognition-of-the-truth of another. This recognition-of-the-truth-of is
not verbally expressed by a predicate, but rather in the assertive force with
which a sentence is uttered. The starting point for logic is then reflection on
elementary inference patterns that analyze thoughts and reveal a logical
segmentation in language. This starting point, and the fusion of logical and
ontological categories it engenders, is arguably what Frege is pointing toward
by his enigmatic context principle in Foundations: only in the context of a
sentence does a word have a meaning. He views sentences as having a
function-argument segmentation like that manifest in the terms of arithmetic,
e.g., 3 $ 4 ! 2. Truth-functional inference patterns, like modus ponens,
isolate sentences as logical units in compound sentences. Leibniz’s law the substitution of one name for another in a
sentence on the basis of an equation
isolates proper names. Proper names designate objects. Predicates,
obtainable by removing proper names from sentences, designate concepts. The
removal of a predicate from a sentence leaves a higher level predicate that
signifies a second-level concept under which first-level concepts fall. An
example is the universal quantifier over objects: it designates a second-level
concept under which a first-level concept falls, if every object falls under
it. Frege takes each first-level concept to be determinately true or false of
each object. Vague predicates, like ‘is bald’, thus fail to signify concepts.
This requirement of concept determinacy is a product of Frege’s construal of
quantification over objects as intrinsically unrestricted. Thus, concept
determinacy is simply a form of the law of the excluded middle: for any concept
F and any object x, either x is F or x is not F. Frege elaborates and modifies
his basic logical ideas in three seminal papers from , “Function and Concept,”
“On Concept and Frege, Gottlob Frege, Gottlob 329 329 Object,” and “On Sense and Meaning.” In
“Function and Concept,” Frege sharpens his conception of the function-argument
structure of language. He introduces the two truth-values, the True and the
False, and maintains that sentences are proper names of these objects. Concepts
become functions that map objects to either the True or the False. The
course-of-values of a function is introduced as a generalization of the notion
of an extension. Generally then, an object is anything that might be designated
by a proper name. There is nothing more basic to be said by way of elucidating
what an object is. Similarly, first-level functions are what are designated by
the expressions that result from removing names from compound proper names.
Frege calls functions unsaturated or incomplete, in contrast to objects, which
are saturated. Proper names and function names are not intersubstitutable so
that the distinction between objects and functions is a type-theoretic,
categorial distinction. No function is an object; no function name designates
an object; there are no quantifiers that simultaneously generalize over both
functions and concepts. Just here Frege’s exposition of his views, if not the
views themselves, encounter a difficulty. In explaining his views, he uses
proper names of the form ‘the concept F’ to talk about concepts; and in
contrasting unsaturated functions with saturated objects, apepars to generalize
over both with a single quantifier. Benno Kerry, a contemporary of Frege,
charged Frege’s views with inconsistency. Since the phrase ‘the concept horse’
is a proper name, it must designate an object. On Frege’s view, it follows that
the concept ‘horse’ is not a concept, but an object, an apparent inconsistency.
Frege responded to Kerry’s criticism in “On Concept and Object.” He embraced
Kerry’s paradox, denying that it represents a genuine inconsistency, while
admitting that his remarks about the functionobject distinction are, as the
result of an unavoidable awkwardness of language, misleading. Frege maintained
that the distinction between function and object is logically simple and so
cannot be properly defined. His remarks on the distinction are informal
handwaving designed to elucidate what is captured within the Begriffsschrift by
the difference between proper names and function names together with their
associated distinct quantifiers. Frege’s handling of the function object
distinction is a likely source for Vitters’s sayshow distinction in the
Tractatus. At the beginning of “On Sense and Meaning,” Frege distinguishes
between the reference or meaning Bedeutung of a proper name and its sense Sinn.
He observes that the sentence ‘The Morning Star is identical with the Morning
Star’ is a trivial instance of the principle of identity. In contrast, the
sentence ‘The Morning Star is identical with the Evening Star’ expresses a
substantive astronomical discovery. The two sentences thus differ in what Frege
called their cognitive value: someone who understood both might believe the
first and doubt the second. This difference cannot be explained in terms of any
difference in reference between names in these sentences. Frege explained it in
terms of a difference between the senses expressed by ‘the Morning Star’ and
‘the Evening Star’. In posthumously published writings, he indicated that the
sensereference distinction extends to function names as well. In this
distinction, Frege extends to names the notion of the judgeable content
expressed by a sentence: the sense of a name is the contribution that the name
makes to the thought expressed by sentences in which it occurs. Simultaneously,
in classifying sentences as proper names of truth-values, he applies to
sentences the notion of a name’s referring to something. Frege’s
function-argument view of logical segmentation constrains his view of both the
meaning and the sense of compound names: the substitution for any name
occurring in a compound expression of a name with the same reference sense
yields a new compound expression with the same reference sense as the original.
Frege advances several theses about sense that individually and collectively
have been a source of debate in philosophy of language. First, the sense of an
expression is what is grasped by anyone who understands it. Despite the
connection between understanding and sense, Frege provides no account of
synonymy, no identity criteria for senses. Second, the sense of an expression
is not something psychological. Senses are objective. They exist independently
of anyone’s grasping them; their availability to different thinkers is a
presupposition for communication in science. Third, the sense expressed by a
name is a mode of presentation of the name’s reference. Here Frege’s views
contrast with Russell’s. Corresponding to Frege’s thoughts are Russell’s
propositions. In The Principles of Mathematics 3, Russell maintained that the
meaningful words in a sentence designate things, properties, and relations that
are themselves constituents of the proposition expressed by the sentence. For
Frege, our access through judgment to objects and functions is via Frege,
Gottlob Frege, Gottlob 330 330 the
senses that are expressed by names that mean these items. These senses, not the
items they present, occur in thoughts. Names expressing different senses may
refer to the same item; and some names, while expressing a sense, refer to
nothing. Any compound name containing a name that has a sense, but lacks a
reference, itself lacks a meaning. A person may fully understand an expression
without knowing whether it means anything and without knowing whether it
designates what another understood name does. Fourth, the sense ordinarily
expressed by a name is the reference of the name, when the name occurs in
indirect discourse. Although the Morning Star is identical with the Evening
Star, the inference from the sentence ‘Smith believes that the Morning Star is
a planet’ to ‘Smith believes that the Evening Star is a planet’ is not sound.
Frege, however, accepts Leibniz’s law without restriction. He accordingly takes
such seeming failures of Leibniz’s law to expose a pervasive ambiguity in
colloquial language: names in indirect discourse do not designate what they
designate outside of indirect discourse. The fourth thesis is offered as an
explanation of this ambiguity.
liberatum: liberum arbitrium – vide ‘arbitrium’ How can arbitrium not
be free? Oddly this concerns rationality. For Grice, as for almost everyone, a
rational agent is an autonomous agent. Freewill is proved grammatically. The
Romans had a ‘modus deliberativus’, and even a ‘modus optativus’ (ortike
ktesis) “in imitationem Graecis.”If you utter “Close the door!” you rely on
free will. It would be otiose for a language or system of communication to have
as its goal to inform/get informed, and influence/being influenced if
determinism and fatalism were true. freedom:
Like identity, crucial in philosophy in covering everything. E cannot
communicate that p, unless E is FREE. An amoeba cannot communicate thatp. End
setting, unweighed rationality, rationality about the ends, autonomy. Grice was
especially concerned with Kants having brought back the old Greek idea of eleutheria
for philosophical discussion. Refs.: the obvious keywords are “freedom” and
“free,” but most of the material is in “Actions and events,” in PPQ, and below
under ‘kantianism’ – The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.Bratman, of
Stanford, much influenced by Grice (at Berkeley then) thanks to their
Hands-Across-the-Bay programme, helps us to understand this Pological
progression towards the idea of strong autonomy or freedom. Recall that Grices
Ps combine Lockes very intelligent parrots with Russells and Carnaps nonsensical
Ps of which nothing we are told other than they karulise elatically. Grices
purpose is to give a little thought to a question. What are the general
principles exemplified, in creature-construction, in progressing from one type
of P to a higher type? What kinds of steps are being made? The kinds of step
with which Grice deals are those which culminate in a licence to include,
within the specification of the content of the psychological state of this or
that type of P, a range of expressions which would be inappropriate with
respect to this lower-type P. Such expressions include this or that connective,
this or that quantifier, this or that temporal modifier, this or that mode
indicator, this or that modal operator, and (importantly) this or that expression
to refer to this or that souly state like
… judges that … and … will that … This or that expression, that is, the
availability of which leads to the structural enrichment of the specification
of content. In general, these steps will be ones by which this or that item or
idea which has, initially, a legitimate place outside the scope of this or that
souly instantiable (or, if you will, the expressions for which occur
legitimately outside the scope of this or that souly predicate) come to have a legitimate
place within the scope of such an instantiable, a step by which, one might say,
this or that item or ideas comes to be internalised. Grice is disposed to
regard as prototypical the sort of natural disposition or propension which Hume
attributes to a person, and which is very important to Hume, viz. the tendency
of the soul to spread itself upon objects, i.e. to project into the world items
which, properly or primitively considered, is a feature of this or that souly
state. Grice sets out in stages the application of aspects of the genitorial
programme. We then start with a zero-order, with a P equipped to satisfy
unnested, or logically amorphous, judging and willing, i.e. whose contents do
not involve judging or willing. We soon reach our first P, G1. It
would be advantageous to a P0 if it could have this or that
judging and this or that willing, which relate to its own judging or willing.
Such G1 could be equipped to control or regulate its own
judgings and willings. It will presumably be already constituted so as to
conform to the law that, cæteris paribus, if it wills that p and judge that ~p,
if it can, it makes it the case that p in its soul To give it some control over
its judgings and willings, we need only extend the application of this law to
the Ps judging and willing. We equip the P so that, cæteris paribus, if it
wills that it is not the case that it wills that p and it judges that they do
will that p, if it can, it makes it the case that it does not will that p. And
we somehow ensure that sometimes it can do this. It may be that the
installation of this kind of control would go hand in had with the installation
of the capacity for evaluation. Now, unlike it is the case with a G1, a G2s
intentional effort depends on the motivational strength of its considered
desire at the time of action. There is a process by which this or that
conflicting considered desire motivates action as a broadly causal process, a
process that reveals motivational strength. But a G2 might itself try to weigh
considerations provided by such a conflicting desire B1 and B2 in deliberation
about this or that pro and this or that con of various alternatives. In the
simplest case, such weighing treats each of the things desired as a prima facie
justifying end. In the face of conflict, it weighs this and that desired end,
where the weights correspond to the motivational strength of the associated
considered desire. The outcome of such deliberation, Aristotle’s prohairesis,
matches the outcome of the causal motivational process envisioned in the
description of G2. But, since the weights it invokes in such
deliberation correspond to the motivational strength of this or that relevant
considered desire (though perhaps not to the motivational strength of this or
that relevant considered desire), the resultant activitiy matches those of a
corresponding G2 (each of whose desires, we are assuming, are
considered). To be more realistic, we might limit ourselves to saying that a P2 has
the capacity to make the transition from this or that unconsidered desire to
this or that considered desire, but does not always do this. But it will keep
the discussion more manageable to simplify and to suppose that each desire is
considered. We shall not want this G2 to depend, in each will and act in ways
that reveal the motivational strength of this or that considered desire at the
time of action, but for a G3 it will also be the case that in
this or that, though not each) case, it acts on the basis of how it weights
this or that end favoured by this or that conflicting considered desire. This
or that considered desire will concern matters that cannot be achieved simply
by action at a single time. E. g. G3 may want to nurture a vegetable garden, or
build a house. Such matters will require organized and coordinated action that
extends over time. What the G3 does now will depend not only on what it now
desires but also on what it now expects it will do later given what it does
now. It needs a way of settling now what it will do later given what it does
now. The point is even clearer when we remind ourselves that G3 is not alone.
It is, we may assume, one of some number of G3; and in many cases it needs to
coordinate what it does with what other G3 do so as to achieve ends desired by
all participants, itself included. These costs are magnified for G4 whose
various plans are interwoven so that a change in one element can have
significant ripple effects that will need to be considered. Let us suppose that
the general strategies G4 has for responding to new information about its
circumstances are sensitive to these kinds of costs. Promoting in the long run
the satisfaction of its considered desires and preferences. G4 is
a somewhat sophisticated planning agent but it has a problem. It can expect
that its desires and preferences may well change over time and undermine its
efforts at organizing and coordinating its activities over time. Perhaps in
many cases this is due to the kind of temporal discounting. So for example G4
may have a plan to exercise every day but may tend to prefer a sequence of not
exercising on the present day but exercising all days in the future, to a
uniform sequence the present day included. At the end of the day it returns to
its earlier considered preference in favour of exercising on each and every
day. Though G4, unlike G3, has the capacity to settle on prior plans
or plaices concerning exercise, this capacity does not yet help in such a case.
A creature whose plans were stable in ways in part shaped by such a no-regret
principle would be more likely than G4 to resist temporary temptations. So
let us build such a principle into the stability of the plans of a G5, whose
plans and policies are not derived solely from facts about its limits of time,
attention, and the like. It is also grounded in the central concerns of a
planning agent with its own future, concerns that lend special significance to
anticipated future regret. So let us add to G5 the capacity and disposition to
arrive at such hierarchies of higher-order desires concerning its will. This
gives us creature G6. There is a problem with G6, one that has been much
discussed. It is not clear why a higher-order desire ‒ even a
higher-order desire that a certain desire be ones will ‒ is not
simply one more desire in the pool of desires (Berkeley Gods will problem). Why
does it have the authority to constitute or ensure the agents (i. e. the
creatures) endorsement or rejection of a first-order desire? Applied to G6 this
is the question of whether, by virtue solely of its hierarchies of desires, it
really does succeed in taking its own stand of endorsement or rejection of
various first-order desires. Since it was the ability to take its own stand
that we are trying to provide in the move to P6, we need some
response to this challenge. The basic point is that G6 is not
merely a time-slice agent. It is, rather, and understands itself to be, a
temporally persisting planning agent, one who begins, and continues, and
completes temporally extended projects. On a broadly Lockean view, its
persistence over time consists in relevant psychological continuities (e.g.,
the persistence of attitudes of belief and intention) and connections (e.g.,
memory of a past event, or the later intentional execution of an intention
formed earlier). Certain attitudes have as a primary role the constitution and
support of such Lockean continuities and connections. In particular, policies
that favour or reject various desires have it as their role to constitute and
support various continuities both of ordinary desires and of the politicos
themselves. For this reason such policies are not merely additional wiggles in
the psychic stew. Instead, these policies have a claim to help determine where
the agent ‒ i.e., the temporally persisting agent ‒ stands with respect to
its desires, or so it seems to me reasonable to say. The psychology of G7
continues to have the hierarchical structure of pro-attitudes introduced with
G6. The difference is that the higher-order pro-attitudes of G6 were simply
characterized as desires in a broad, generic sense, and no appeal was made to
the distinctive species of pro-attitude constituted by plan-like attitudes.
That is the sense in which the psychology of G7 is an extension of the
psychology of G6. Let us then give G7 such higher-order policies with the
capacity to take a stand with respect to its desires by arriving at relevant
higher-order policies concerning the functioning of those desires over time. G7 exhibits
a merger of hierarchical and planning structures. Appealing to planning theory
and ground in connection to the temporally extended structure of agency to be
ones will. G7 has higher-order policies that favour or challenge motivational
roles of its considered desires. When G7 engages in deliberative weighing of
conflicting, desired ends it seems that the assigned weights should reflect the
policies that determine where it stands with respect to relevant desires. But
the policies we have so far appealed to ‒ policies concerning what desires are
to be ones will ‒ do not quite address this concern. The problem is that one
can in certain cases have policies concerning which desires are to motivate and
yet these not be policies that accord what those desires are for a
corresponding justifying role in deliberation. G8. A solution is to give our creature,
G8, the capacity to arrive at policies that express its
commitment to be motivated by a desire by way of its treatment of that desire
as providing, in deliberation, a justifying end for action. G8 has
policies for treating (or not treating) certain desires as providing justifying
ends, as, in this way, reason-providing, in motivationally effective
deliberation. Let us call such policies self-governing policies. We will
suppose that these policies are mutually compatible and do not challenge each other.
In this way G8 involves an extension of structures already present in G7. The
grounds on which G8 arrives at (and on occasion revises) such self-governing
policies will be many and varied. We can see these policies as crystallizing
complex pressures and concerns, some of which are grounded in other policies or
desires. These self-governing policies may be tentative and will normally not
be immune to change. If we ask what G8 values in this case, the answer seems to
be: what it values is constituted in part by its higher-order self-governing
policies. In particular, it values exercise over nonexercise even right now,
and even given that it has a considered, though temporary, preference to the
contrary. Unlike lower Ps, what P8 now values is not simply a
matter of its present, considered desires and preferences. Now this model of P8
seems in relevant aspects to be a partial) model of us, in our better moments,
of course. So we arrive at the conjecture that one important kind of valuing of
which we are capable involves, in the cited ways, both our first-order desires
and our higher order self-governing policies. In an important sub-class of
cases our valuing involves reflexive polices that are both first-order policies
of action and higher-order policies to treat the first-order policy as reason
providing in motivationally effective deliberation. This may seem odd. Valuing
seems normally to be a first-order attitude. One values honesty, say. The
proposal is that an important kind of valuing involves higher-order policies.
Does this mean that, strictly speaking, what one values (in this sense) is
itself a desire ‒ not honesty, say, but a desire for honesty? No, it does not.
What I value in the present case is honesty; but, on the theory, my valuing
honesty in art consists in certain higher-order self-governing policies. An
agents reflective valuing involves a kind of higher-order willing. Freud
challenged the power structure of the soul in Plato: it is the libido that
takes control, not the logos. Grice takes up this polemic. Aristotle takes up
Platos challenge, each type of soul is united to the next by the idea of life.
The animal soul, between the vegetative and the rational, is not detachable.
Grice’s
Freudian slip: Grice thought that the idea of a Freudian
slip was ‘ridiculous,’ – for Grice ‘mean’ is intentional, unless it is used
metaphorically, for ‘dark clouds mean rain.’ Since his interest is in
‘communicate,’ surely the ‘slipper’ (R. lapsus linguae) cannot ‘communicate.’ “What
bothers me most is Freudian convoluted attempts to have this, as Lacan will, as
the libido saying this or that!” -- Austrian neurologist and psychologist, the
founder of psychoanalysis. Starting with the study of hysteria in late
nineteenth-century Vienna, Freud developed a theory of the mind that has come
to dominate modern thought. His notions of the unconscious, of a mind divided
against itself, of the meaningfulness of apparently meaningless activity, of
the displacement and transference of feelings, of stages of psychosexual development,
of the pervasiveness and importance of sexual motivation, as well as of much
else, have helped shape modern consciousness. His language and that of his
translators, whether specifying divisions of the mind e.g. id, ego, and
superego, types of disorder e.g. obsessional neurosis, or the structure of
experience e.g. Oedipus complex, narcissism, has become the language in which
we describe and understand ourselves and others. As the poet W. H. Auden wrote
on the occasion of Freud’s death, “if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,
/ to us he is no more a person / now but a whole climate of opinion / under
whom we conduct our different lives. . . .” Hysteria is a disorder involving
organic symptoms with no apparent organic cause. Following early work in
neurophysiology, Freud in collaboration with Josef Breuer came to the view that
“hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences,” in particular buried memories of
traumatic experiences, the strangulated affect of which emerged in conversion
hysteria in the distorted form of physical symptoms. Treatment involved the
recovery of the repressed memories to allow the cathartic discharge or
abreaction of the previously displaced and strangulated affect. This provided
the background for Freud’s seduction theory, which traced hysterical symptoms
to traumatic prepubertal sexual assaults typically by fathers. But Freud later
abandoned the seduction theory because the energy assumptions were problematic
e.g., if the only energy involved was strangulated affect from long-past
external trauma, why didn’t the symptom successfully use up that energy and so
clear itself up? and because he came to see that fantasy could have the same
effects as memory of actual events: “psychical reality was of more importance
than material reality.” What was repressed was not memories, but desires. He
came to see the repetition of symptoms as fueled by internal, in particular
sexual, energy. While it is certainly true that Freud saw the Frege-Geach point
Freud, Sigmund 331 331 working of
sexuality almost everywhere, it is not true that he explained everything in
terms of sexuality alone. Psychoanalysis is a theory of internal psychic
conflict, and conflict requires at least two parties. Despite developments and
changes, Freud’s instinct theory was determinedly dualistic from beginning to
end at the beginning, libido versus ego
or self-preservative instincts, and at the end Eros versus Thanatos, life
against death. Freud’s instinct theory not to be confused with standard
biological notions of hereditary behavior patterns in animals places instincts
on the borderland between the mental and physical and insists that they are
internally complex. In particular, the sexual instinct must be understood as
made up of components that vary along a number of dimensions source, aim, and
object. Otherwise, as Freud argues in his Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality 5, it would be difficult to understand how the various perversions
are recognized as “sexual” despite their distance from the “normal” conception
of sexuality heterosexual genital intercourse between adults. His broadened
concept of sexuality makes intelligible sexual preferences emphasizing
different sources erotogenic zones or bodily centers of arousal, aims acts,
such as intercourse and looking, designed to achieve pleasure and satisfaction,
and objects whether of the same or different gender, or even other than whole
living persons. It also allows for the recognition of infantile sexuality.
Phenomena that might not on the surface appear sexual e.g. childhood
thumbsucking share essential characteristics with obviously sexual activity
infantile sensual sucking involves pleasurable stimulation of the same
erotogenic zone, the mouth, stimulated in adult sexual activities such as
kissing, and can be understood as earlier stages in the development of the same
underlying instinct that expresses itself in such various forms in adult
sexuality. The standard developmental stages are oral, anal, phallic, and
genital. Neuroses, which Freud saw as “the negative of perversions” i.e., the
same desires that might in some lead to perverse activity, when repressed,
result in neurosis, could often be traced to struggles with the Oedipus
complex: the “nucleus of the neuroses.” The Oedipus complex, which in its positive
form postulates sexual feelings toward the parent of the opposite sex and
ambivalently hostile feelings toward the parent of the same sex, suggests that
the universal shape of the human condition is a triangle. The conflict reaches
its peak between the ages of three and five, during the phallic stage of
psychosexual development. The fundamental structuring of emotions has its roots
in the prolonged dependency of the human infant, leading to attachment a primary form of love to the primary caregiver, who partly for
biological reasons such as lactation is most often the mother, and the
experience of others as rivals for the time, attention, and concern of the
primary caregiver. Freud’s views of the Oedipus complex should not be
oversimplified. The sexual desires involved, e.g., are typically unconscious
and necessarily infantile, and infantile sexuality and its associated desires
are not expressed in the same form as mature genital sexuality. His efforts to
explain the distinctive features of female psychosexual development in
particular led to some of his most controversial views, including the
postulation of penis envy to explain why girls but not boys standardly
experience a shift in gender of their primary love object both starting with
the mother as the object. Later love objects, including psychoanalysts as the
objects of transference feelings in the analytic setting, the analyst functions
as a blank screen onto which the patient projects feelings, are the results of
displacement or transference from earlier objects: “The finding of an object is
in fact a refinding of it.” Freud used the same structure of explanation for
symptoms and for more normal phenomena, such as dreams, jokes, and slips of the
tongue. All can be seen as compromise formations between forces pressing for
expression localized by Freud’s structural theory in the id, understood as a
reservoir of unconscious instinct and forces of repression some also
unconscious, seeking to meet the constraints of morality and reality. On Freud’s
underlying model, the fundamental process of psychic functioning, the primary
process, leads to the uninhibited discharge of psychic energy. Such discharge
is experienced as pleasurable, hence the governing principle of the fundamental
process is called the pleasure principle. Increase of tension is experienced as
unpleasure, and the psychic apparatus aims at a state of equilibrium or
constancy sometimes Freud writes as if the state aimed at is one of zero
tension, hence the Nirvana principle associated with the death instinct in
Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle [0]. But since pleasure can in fact only
be achieved under specific conditions, which sometimes require arrangement,
planning, and delay, individuals must learn to inhibit discharge, and this secondary
process thinking is governed by what Freud came to call the reality principle.
The aim is still satisfaction, but the “exigencies of life” require attention,
reasoning, and judgment to avoid falling into the fantasy wishfulfillment of
the primary process. Sometimes defense mechanisms designed to avoid increased
tension or unpleasure can fail, leading to neurosis in general, under the
theory, a neurosis is a psychological disorder rooted in unconscious
conflict particular neuroses being
correlated with particular phases of development and particular mechanisms of
defense. Repression, involving the confining of psychic representations to the
unconscious, is the most important of the defense mechanisms. It should be
understood that unlike preconscious ideas, which are merely descriptively
unconscious though one may not be aware of them at the moment, they are readily
accessible to consciousness, unconscious ideas in the strict sense are kept
from awareness by forces of repression, they are dynamically unconscious as evidenced by the resistance to making the
unconscious conscious in therapy. Freud’s deep division of the mind between
unconscious and conscious goes beyond neurotic symptoms to help make sense of
familiar forms of irrationality such as selfdeception, ambivalence, and
weakness of the will that are highly problematical on Cartesian models of an
indivisible unitary consciousness. Perhaps the best example of the primary
process thinking that characterizes the unconscious unconstrained by the realities
of time, contradiction, causation, etc. can be found in dreaming. Freud
regarded dreams as “the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious.” Dreams
are the disguised fulfillment of unconscious wishes. In extracting the meaning
of dreams through a process of interpretation, Freud relied on a central
distinction between the manifest content the dream as dreamt or as remembered
on waking and the latent content the unconscious dreamthoughts. Freud held that
interpretation via association to particular elements of the manifest content
reversed the process of dream construction, the dream-work in which various
mechanisms of distortion operated on the day’s residues perceptions and
thoughts stemming from the day before the dream was dreamt and the latent dream-thoughts
to produce the manifest dream. Prominent among the mechanisms are the
condensation in which many meanings are represented by a single idea and
displacement in which there is a shift of affect from a significant and intense
idea to an associated but otherwise insignificant one also typical of neurotic
symptoms, as well as considerations of representability and secondary revision
more specific to dream formation. Symbolism is less prominent in Freud’s theory
of dreams than is often thought; indeed, the section on symbols appeared only
as a later addition to The Interpretation of Dreams 0. Freud explicitly
rejected the ancient “dream book” mode of interpretation in terms of fixed
symbols, and believed one had to recover the hidden meaning of a dream through
the dreamer’s not the interpreter’s associations to particular elements. Such
associations are a part of the process of free association, in which a patient
is obliged to report to the analyst all thoughts without censorship of any
kind. The process is crucial to psychoanalysis, which is both a technique of
psychotherapy and a method of investigation of the workings of the mind. Freud
used the results of his investigations to speculate about the origins of
morality, religion, and political authority. He tended to find their historical
and psychological roots in early stages of the development of the individual.
Morality in particular he traced to the internalization as one part of the
resolution of the Oedpius complex of parental prohibitions and demands,
producing a conscience or superego which is also the locus of self-observation
and the ego-ideal. Such identification by incorporation introjection
plays an important role in character formation in general. The
instinctual renunciation demanded by morality and often achieved by repression
Freud regarded as essential to the order society needs to conduct its business.
Civilization gets the energy for the achievements of art and science by
sublimation of the same instinctual drives. But the costs of society and
civilization to the individual in frustration, unhappiness, and neurosis can be
too high. Freud’s individual therapy was meant to lead to the liberation of
repressed energies which would not by itself guarantee happiness; he hoped it
might also provide energy to transform the world and moderate its excess
demands for restraint. But just as his individual psychology was founded on the
inevitability of internal conflict, in his social thought he saw some limits
especially on aggression the death
instinct turned outward as necessary and he remained pessimistic about the
apparently endless struggle reason must wage Civilization and Its Discontents,
0. Freudscher
Versprecher Zur Navigation springenZur Suche springen Ein Freudscher
Versprecher (nach Sigmund Freud), auch Lapsus Linguae genannt, ist eine
sprachliche Fehlleistung, bei der angeblich ein eigentlicher Gedanke oder eine
Intention des Sprechers unwillkürlich zutage tritt. Inhaltsverzeichnis
1 Allgemeine Beschreibung 2
Begründungen der Theorie 3 Akzeptanz und wissenschaftliche Abgrenzung 4
Beispiele 5 Literatur 6 Weblinks 7 Einzelnachweise Allgemeine Beschreibung Bei
der Bewertung eines scheinbar sinnvollen Versprechers als einer Freudschen
Fehlleistung wird davon ausgegangen, dass in der Bedeutungsabweichung, die
durch einen Versprecher entsteht, eine unbewusste Aussage zum Vorschein kommt.
Es wird also nicht angenommen, dass solchen Versprechern eine einfache,
(neuro-)physiologische oder auch assoziative Beeinflussung der Sprachproduktion
zugrunde liegt,[1][2] sondern behauptet, dass es v. a. eine psychische Ursache
dafür gibt. Bei den Freudschen Fehlleistungen würde somit anstelle des
eigentlich Gemeinten etwas gesagt werden, das dem Gedachten ggf. sogar besser
entspräche und in diesem Sinne interpretiert werden könnte. Die Existenz
eines solchen Phänomens wurde durch Freud (1900, 1904) in Zur Psychopathologie
des Alltagslebens behauptet. Seit dem allgemeinen Bekanntwerden der auf Freuds
Befunde gestützten Theorie der Fehlleistungen hat jemand, dem ein solcher
Versprecher unterläuft, einen schlechten Stand, seinem Publikum nachzuweisen,
dass es sich gar nicht um einen Lapsus der Freudschen Art handelt, wohingegen
vor Freuds Zeit solch ein Versprecher lediglich ein Anlass zur Heiterkeit gewesen
wäre, oder eventuell begleitet von völligem Unverständnis, auch empörtem
Getuschel. Ein Beispiel von Freud sei hier berichtet:[3] „Ein Mann
erzählt von irgendwelchen Vorgängen, die er beanstandet, und setzt fort: Dann
aber sind Tatsachen zum ‚Vorschwein‘ gekommen. ([…] Auf Anfrage bestätigt er,
dass er diese Vorgänge als ‚Schweinereien‘ bezeichnen wollte.) ‚Vorschein und
Schweinerei‘ haben zusammen das sonderbare ‚Vorschwein‘ entstehen
lassen.“ – Sigmund Freud[4] Diese Bewertung hatte also nicht verbalisiert
werden sollen, hatte sich aber Bahn verschafft, indem sie sich in die aktuelle
Äußerung als (Freudscher) Versprecher einschob. Aufgrund spezifischer
Motivation kann man erst dann, nämlich bei solchen, einen Nebengedanken
unterdrückenden Maßnahmen, von einer eigentlichen „Fehl“-Leistung
sprechen. Begründungen der Theorie Freudsche Versprecher sind solche, bei
denen eine psychische Motivation angenommen wird, ein „Sinn“, wie es bei Freud
heißt, um eine Abgrenzung gegen die Urteile „Zufall“ oder „physiologischer
Hintergrund“ als Ursache solcher (Fehl- oder richtigen) Leistungen vorzunehmen.
An dieser Bestimmung wird zugleich die Bandbreite des Problemfeldes deutlich:
Einerseits handelt es sich um ein Phänomen. Das heißt: Es ist für den Sprecher
mindestens potentiell erkennbar, dass seinen Zuhörern etwas zu Ohren kam, was
so nicht bewusst beabsichtigt gewesen war; Rosa Ferber hat allerdings
festgestellt, dass die meisten Versprecher gar nicht bemerkt werden, weder von
den Sendern noch von den Empfängern.[5] Andererseits handelt es sich bei Freuds
Aussage, es stecke allgemein ein „Sinn“ hinter allen sog. „Freudschen
Fehlleistungen“, um die wissenschaftliche Interpretation eines Phänomens: Unter
der Prämisse, dass der Versprecher einen unbewussten oder vorbewussten
Beweggrund zur Ursache habe – einen erkennbaren Sinn oder eine Struktur –
besteht die erste Aufgabe darin, zu untersuchen, welcher Beweggrund als der
wahrscheinlichste angenommen werden kann. Akzeptanz und wissenschaftliche
Abgrenzung Gegenüber dieser Vorgehensweise spaltet sich das wissenschaftliche
Lager in mindestens drei Teile auf: Die einen halten die Frage der
Motivierung überhaupt für verfehlt und falsch und wollen nur Untersuchungen
zulassen, die sich aus der Sicht der rein physiologischen Prozesse mit der
Sprachproduktion und den deren Ablauf störenden Versprechern befassen. Für
dieses Lager sind Versprecher wertvolle Fenster, die Einblicke u. a. in die
neurologisch gesteuerte Sprachproduktion gestatten. Michael Motley wäre dagegen
ein Vertreter des anderen Lagers, der in der Psycholinguistik die Motivierung
von Versprechern experimentell nachzuweisen versucht. Motley konnte, indem er
bei einem Schnelllesen-Experiment als Kontext sexuell oder neutral geprägte
Situationen anbot, zeigen, dass die Frequenz der Freud’schen Versprechern bei
sexuellen Kontext-Situationen im Vergleich zu neutralen zunimmt. Damit
bestätigte er experimentell die Freudsche Theorie, und Dilger/Bredenkamp
kombinieren beide Ansätze. Neurolinguistischen Untersuchungen zufolge
existieren organisch bedingte oder zufällig auftretende Störungen des
ordentlichen Sprachablaufs. Grund können beispielsweise Zerstörungen oder
Fehlbildungen von Arealen des Sprachzentrums im Gehirn sein. Daher ist es nicht
sinnvoll, hinter jeder Art von Versprechern eine Freudsche Fehlleistung zu
vermuten. Die Versprecherforschung im Rahmen der kognitiven Linguistik
untersucht den Zusammenhang zwischen sprachlichen Strukturen und auftretenden
Versprechertypen. Die hierbei gefundenen Erklärungen für unterschiedliche Arten
von Versprechern machen in vielen Fällen die Annahme einer psychischen Ursache
im Sinne der Freudschen Theorien überflüssig (siehe Linguistische
Versprecher-Theorien). Insbesondere aber ist die Frage der Motivierung
bei lexikalischen Versprechern nicht unangebracht. Je nachdem, welche
Auffassung man von den psychischen Vorgängen und der „Topologie des psychischen
Apparates“ hat, wird man dem Unbewussten mehr oder weniger Wirkungskraft
zuschreiben. Beispiele Freud führt in der Psychopathologie des
Alltagslebens an: Der deutschnationale Abgeordnete Lattmann tritt 1908 im
Reichstag für eine Ergebenheitsadresse an Wilhelm II. ein, und wenn man das
tue, „[…] so wollen wir das auch rückgratlos tun.“ Nach, laut
Sitzungsprotokoll, minutenlanger stürmischer Heiterkeit erklärt der Redner, er
habe natürlich rückhaltlos gemeint. Otto Rank führt im Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse eine Stelle aus Shakespeares Der Kaufmann von Venedig an: Porzia
ist es eigentlich durch ein Gelübde verboten, Bassanio ihre Liebe zu gestehen,
sagt aber „Halb bin ich Euer, die andre Hälfte Euer – mein wollt ich sagen.“
Literatur Sven Staffeldt: Das Drängen der störenden Redeabsicht. Dieter Fladers
Kritik an Freuds Theorie der Versprecher, Kümmerle, Göppingen 2004. Sebastiano
Timpanaro: Il lapsus freudiano: Psicanalisi e critica testuale (Florenz: La
Nuova Italia 1974). Englische Übersetzung: The Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis
and Textual Criticism. Transl. by Kate Soper (London, 1976). Weblinks Sabine
Stahl: "Wolker bis heitig" und andere Versprecher, SWR2 – „Wissen“
vom 3. April 2009 Einzelnachweise Nora Wiedenmann (1998): Versprecher.
Phänomene und Daten. Mit Materialien auf Diskette. Wien: Wissenschaftsverlag
Edition Praesens. Nora Wiedenmann (1997): Versprecher – Dissimilation und
Similation von Konsonanten. Sprachproduktion unter spatio-temporalem Aspekt.
Dissertation. Sprechwissenschaft und Psycholinguistik, Institut für Phonetik
und Sprachliche Kommunikation; Philosophische Fakultät für Sprach- und
Literaturwissenschaft II; Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; = 1999:
Versprecher: Dissimilation von Konsonanten. Sprachproduktion unter
spatio-temporalem Aspekt (Linguistische Arbeiten, 404). Tübingen:
Niemeyer. Hartmann Hinterhuber: Sigmund Freud, Rudolf Meringer und Carl
Mayer: Versprechen und Verlesen. In: Neuropsychiatrie. Band 21, Nr. 4, 2007, S.
291–296. Sigmund Freud: Gesammelte Werke. Band XI, 1916/1917, S.
35. R. Ferber: Fehlerlinguistik. Eine Sprechfehlersammlung und ihre
beschreibende Darstellung. In: Unpublished MA thesis, University of Freiburg.
1986. Kategorien: PsychoanalyseMündliche KommunikationSigmund Freud als
NamensgeberFehlleistung. The Signorelli parapraxis represents the first and
best known example of a parapraxis and its analysis in Freud's The
Psychopathology of Everyday Life. The parapraxis centers on a word-finding
problem and the production of substitutes. Freud could not recall the name
(Signorelli) of the painter of the Orvieto frescos and produced as substitutes
the names of two painters Botticelli and Boltraffio. Freud's analysis shows
what associative processes had linked Signorelli to Botticelli and Boltraffio.
The analysis has been criticised by linguists and others. Contents
1 Botticelli – Boltraffio – Trafoi 2 Trafoi
in Kraepelin's dream 3 Sebastiano Timpanaro 4 Swales' investigation 5 Freud neglected
his own observation 6 See also 7 References
8 Sources 9 Further reading Botticelli – Boltraffio – Trafoi One important
ingredient in Freud's analysis was the North-Italian village Trafoi where he
received the message of the suicide of one of his patients, struggling with
sexual problems. Without Trafoi the substitute Boltraffio associated to it
would be incomprehensible. Freud links Trafoi to the theme death and sexuality,
a theme preceding the word finding problem in a conversation Freud had during a
trip by train through Bosnia-Herzegovina. The second important ingredient
in Freud's analysis is the extraction of an Italian word signor from the
forgotten name Signorelli. Herr, the German counterpart of Signor, is then
linked to (Her)zegovina and the word Herr occurring, as Freud tells us, in the
conversation. That country's Turks, he recalled, valued sexual pleasure a lot,
and he was told by a colleague that a patient once said to him: "For you
know, sir (Herr) if that ceases, life no longer has any charm". Moreover,
Freud argued that (Bo)snia linked (Bo)tticelli with (Bo)ltraffio and Trafoi. He
concludes by saying: "We shall represent this state of affairs carefully enough
if we assert that beside the simple forgetting of proper names there is another
forgetting which is motivated by repression".[1] Freud denies the
relevance of the content of the frescos. Nevertheless, psychoanalysts have
pursued their investigations particularly into this direction, finding however
no new explanation of the parapraxis. Jacques Lacan suggested that the
parapraxis may be an act of self-forgetting. Trafoi in Kraepelin's dream
The first critique to Freud came from Emil Kraepelin, who in a postscript to his
1906 monograph on language disturbances in dreams, relates a dream involving
Trafoi. The dream centers around a neologism Trafei, which Kraepelin links to
Trafoi. The dream may be seen as an implicit critique on Freud's analysis.
Italian trofei is associated to Trafei in the same way as Trafoi (cf. van
Ooijen, 1996) and clarifies Kraepelin's dream. The meaning of trofei reads in
German Siegeszeichen (victory-signs) and this German word together with Latin
signum clearly links to Freud's first name (Engels, 2006, p. 22-24).
Sebastiano Timpanaro In The Freudian Slip Sebastiano Timpanaro discusses
Freud's analysis in chapter 6 "Love and Death at Orvieto." (p.
63-81). He in fact doubts that the name Boltraffio would have played a major
role during the parapraxis, as he states: "Boltraffio is a Schlimbesserung
[that is a substitute worse than another substitute]" and adds "the
correction goes astray because of incapacity to localize the fault."(p.
71). He calls Botticelli an "involuntary banalization" and Boltraffio
"a semi-conscious disimproved correction."(p. 75). As to the
Signor-element in Freud's analysis he puts: "The immediate equivalence
Signore= Herr is one thing, the extraction of signor from Signorelli and of
Her(r) from Herzegowina is another." Swales' investigation Peter
Swales (2003) investigated the historical data and states that Freud probably
visited an exposition of Italian masters in Bergamo mid-September 1898, showing
paintings of Signorelli, Botticelli and Boltraffio one next to the other. In
his view the paintings at the exposition were the source of the substitute
names in the parapraxis. Swales dwells largely on the three paintings. The
association of the name Boltraffio to the name Da Vinci, another hypothesis
formulated by Swales (because Freud might have seen the statue of Boltraffio at
the bottom of the Da Vinci monument on Piazza della Scala in Milan some days
before his visit to Bergamo), is not further pursued by Swales. Although Freud
visited Trafoi on the 8th of August 1898, Swales doubts whether Freud received
a message on the suicide of one of his patients. Freud neglected his own
observation Fresco of the Deeds of the Antichrist Freud in his analysis
did not use the fact that he remembered very well a picture of the painter in
the lower left corner of one of the frescos. The picture, sort of a signature,
was thus a third substitute to the forgotten name Signorelli. The
"signature" can be interpreted as a reference to the Latin verb
signare and this word, instead of Freud's signore, then leads to a simple
analysis of the Signorelli parapraxis (Engels, 2006, p. 66-69). There seems to
be no more need for the Bosnia-Herzegovina associations (Bo and Herr) Freud
himself introduced. In the alternative to Freud's analysis the suicide message
in Trafoi remains an important point to understand the parapraxis (this message
being a blow to Freud's self-esteem). The occurrence of the Signorelli
parapraxis during Freud's trip from Ragusa to Trebinje (in Herzegovina) is not
questioned, as was done by Swales.[citation needed] See also Dream speech
References Freud, S. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, chapter 1,
"Forgetting of Proper Names". Sources Engels, Huub (2006). Emil
Kraepelins Traumsprache 1908-1926. ISBN 978-90-6464-060-5 Timpanaro, S. (1976).
The Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Criticism. London: NLB. Swales,
P. (2003). Freud, Death and Sexual Pleasures. On the Psychical Mechanism of Dr.
Sigm. Freud. Arc de Cercle, 1, 4-74. Further reading Molnar, M. (1994). Reading
the Look. In Sander, Gilman, Birmele, Geller & Greenberg (ed.): Reading
Freud's Reading. pp. 77–90. New York: Oxford. Ooijen, B. van. (1996). Vowel
mutability and lexical selection in English: Evidence from a word
reconstruction task. Memory & Cognition, 24, 573-583. Ooijen shows that in
word reconstruction tasks e.g. the non-word kebra is more readily substituted
by cobra than by zebra. This is what is meant by 'vowel mutability.' Owens,
M.E. (2004). Forgetting Signorelli: Monstruous Visions of the Resurrection of
the Dead. Muse: scholarly journals online. Categories: Psychoanalytic
terminologyFreudian psychology.
functionalism: Grice’s
functionalism: a response to the dualist challenge -- dualism, the view that
reality consists of two disparate parts. The crux of dualism is an apparently
unbridgeable gap between two incommensurable orders of being that must be
reconciled if our assumption that there is a comprehensible universe is to be
justified. Dualism is exhibited in the pre-Socratic division between appearance
and reality; Plato’s realm of being containing eternal Ideas and realm of
becoming containing changing things; the medieval division between finite man
and infinite God; Descartes’s substance dualism of thinking mind and extended
matter; Hume’s separation of fact from value; Kant’s division between empirical
phenomena and transcendental noumena; the epistemological double-aspect theory
of James and Russell, who postulate a neutral substance that can be understood
in separate ways either as mind or brain; and Heidegger’s separation of being
and time that inspired Sartre’s contrast of being and nothingness. The doctrine
of two truths, the sacred and the profane or the religious and the secular, is
a dualistic response to the conflict between religion and science. Descartes’s
dualism is taken to be the source of the mindbody problem. If the mind is
active unextended thinking and the body is passive unthinking extension, how
can these essentially unlike and independently existing substances interact causally,
and how can mental ideas represent material things? How, in other words, can
the mind know and influence the body, and how can the body affect the mind?
Descartes said mind and body interact and that ideas represent material things
without resembling them, but dream argument dualism 244 244 could not explain how, and concluded
merely that God makes these things happen. Proposed dualist solutions to the
mindbody problem are Malebranche’s occasionalism mind and body do not interact
but God makes them appear to; Leibniz’s preestablished harmony among
noninteracting monads; and Spinoza’s property dualism of mutually exclusive but
parallel attributes expressing the one substance God. Recent mindbody dualists
are Popper and John C. Eccles. Monistic alternatives to dualism include
Hobbes’s view that the mental is merely the epiphenomena of the material;
Berkeley’s view that material things are collections of mental ideas; and the
contemporary materialist view of Smart, Armstrong, and Paul and Patricia Churchland
that the mind is the brain. A classic treatment of these matters is Arthur O.
Lovejoy’s The Revolt Against Dualism. Dualism is related to binary thinking,
i.e., to systems of thought that are two-valued, such as logic in which
theorems are valid or invalid, epistemology in which knowledge claims are true
or false, and ethics in which individuals are good or bad and their actions are
right or wrong. In The Quest for Certainty, Dewey finds that all modern
problems of philosophy derive from dualistic oppositions, particularly between
spirit and nature. Like Hegel, he proposes a synthesis of oppositions seen as
theses versus antitheses. Recent attacks on the view that dualistic divisions
can be explicitly described or maintained have been made by Vitters, who offers
instead a classification scheme based on overlapping family resemblances; by
Quine, who casts doubt on the division between analytic or formal truths based
on meanings and synthetic or empirical truths based on facts; and by Derrida,
who challenges our ability to distinguish between the subjective and the
objective. But despite the extremely difficult problems posed by ontological
dualism, and despite the cogency of many arguments against dualistic thinking,
Western philosophy continues to be predominantly dualistic, as witnessed by the
indispensable use of two-valued matrixes in logic and ethics and by the
intractable problem of rendering mental intentions in terms of material
mechanisms or vice versa. functional
dependence, a relationship between variable magnitudes especially physical
magnitudes and certain properties or processes. In modern physical science
there are two types of laws stating such relationships. 1 There are numerical
laws stating concomitant variation of certain quantities, where a variation in
any one is accompanied by variations in the others. An example is the law for
ideal gases: pV % aT, where p is the pressure of the gas, V its volume, T its
absolute temperature, and a a constant derived from the mass and the nature of
the gas. Such laws say nothing about the temporal order of the variations, and
tests of the laws can involve variation of any of the relevant magnitudes.
Concomitant variation, not causal sequence, is what is tested for. 2 Other
numerical laws state variations of physical magnitudes correlated with times.
Galileo’s law of free fall asserts that the change in the unit time of a freely
falling body in a vacuum in the direction of the earth is equal to gt, where g
is a constant and t is the time of the fall, and where the rate of time changes
of g is correlative with the temporal interval t. The law is true of any body
in a state of free fall and for any duration. Such laws are also called
“dynamical” because they refer to temporal processes usually explained by the
postulation of forces acting on the objects in question. functionalism, the
view that mental states are defined by their causes and effects. As a
metaphysical thesis about the nature of mental states, functionalism holds that
what makes an inner state mental is not an intrinsic property of the state, but
rather its relations to sensory stimulation input, to other inner states, and
to behavior output. For example, what makes an inner state a pain is its being
a type of state typically caused by pinpricks, sunburns, and so on, a type that
causes other mental states e.g., worry, and a type that causes behavior e.g.,
saying “ouch”. Propositional attitudes also are identified with functional
states: an inner state is a desire for water partly in virtue of its causing a
person to pick up a glass and drink its contents when the person believes that
the glass contains water. The basic distinction needed for functionalism is
that between role in terms of which a type of mental state is defined and
occupant the particular thing that occupies a role. Functional states exhibit
multiple realizability: in different kinds of beings humans, computers,
Martians, a particular kind of causal role may have different occupants e.g., the causal role definitive of a belief
that p, say, may be occupied by a neural state in a human, but occupied perhaps
by a hydraulic state in a Martian. Functionalism, like behaviorism, thus
entails that mental states may be shared by physically dissimilar systems.
Although functionalism does not automatically rule out the existence of
immaterial souls, its motivation has been to provide a materialistic account of
mentality. The advent of the computer gave impetus to functionalism. First, the
distinction between software and hardware suggested the distinction between
role function and occupant structure. Second, since computers are automated,
they demonstrate how inner states can be causes of output in the absence of a
homunculus i.e., a “little person” intelligently directing output. Third, the
Turing machine provided a model for one of the earliest versions of
functionalism. A Turing machine is defined by a table that specifies
transitions from current state and input to next state or to output. According
to Turing machine functionalism, any being with pscychological states has a
unique best description, and each psychological state is identical to a machine
table state relative to that description. To be in mental state type M is to
instantiate or realize Turing machine T in state S. Turing machine functionalism,
developed largely by Putnam, has been criticized by Putnam, Ned Block, and
Fodor. To cite just one serious problem: two machine table states and hence, according to Turing machine
functionalism, two psychological states
are distinct if they are followed by different states or by different
outputs. So, if a pinprick causes A to say “Ouch” and causes B to say “Oh,”
then, if Turing machine functionalism were true, A’s and B’s states of pain
would be different psychological states. But we do not individuate
psychological states so finely, nor should we: such fine-grained individuation
would be unsuitable for psychology. Moreover, if we assume that there is a path
from any state to any other state, Turing machine functionalism has the
unacceptable consequence that no two systems have any of their states in common
unless they have all their states in common. Perhaps the most prominent version
of functionalism is the causal theory of mind. Whereas Turing machine
functionalism is based on a technical computational or psychological theory,
the causal theory of mind relies on commonsense understanding: according to the
causal theory of mind, the concept of a mental state is the concept of a state
apt for bringing about certain kinds of behavior Armstrong. Mental state terms
are defined by the commonsense platitudes in which they appear David Lewis.
Philosophers can determine a priori what mental states are by conceptual
analysis or by definition. Then scientists determine what physical states
occupy the causal roles definitive of mental states. If it turned out that
there was no physical state that occupied the causal role of, say, pain i.e.,
was caused by pinpricks, etc., and caused worry, etc., it would follow, on the
causal theory, that pain does not exist. To be in mental state type M is to be
in a physical state N that occupies causal role R. A third version is
teleological or “homuncular” functionalism, associated with William G. Lycan
and early Dennett. According to homuncular functionalism, a human being is
analogous to a large corporation, made up of cooperating departments, each with
its own job to perform; these departments interpret stimuli and produce
behavioral responses. Each department at the highest subpersonal level is in
turn constituted by further units at a sub-subpersonal level and so on down
until the neurological level is reached. The roleoccupant distinction is thus
relativized to level: an occupant at one level is a role at the next level
down. On this view, to be in a mental state type M is to have a sub- . . .
subpersonal f-er that is in its characteristic state Sf. All versions of
functionalism face problems about the qualitative nature of mental states. The
difficulty is that functionalism individuates states in purely relational terms,
but the acrid odor of, say, a paper mill seems to have a non-relational,
qualitative character that functionalism misses altogether. If two people, on
seeing a ripe banana, are in states with the same causes and effects, then, by
functionalist definition, they are in the same mental state say, having a sensation of yellow. But it
seems possible that one has an “inverted spectrum” relative to the other, and
hence that their states are qualitatively different. Imagine that, on seeing
the banana, one of the two is in a state qualitatively indistinguishable from
the state that the other would be in on seeing a ripe tomato. Despite
widespread intuitions that such inverted spectra are possible, according to
functionalism, they are not. A related problem is that of “absent qualia.” The
population of China, or even the economy of Bolivia, could be functionally
equivalent to a human brain i.e., there
could be a function that mapped the relations between inputs, outputs, and
internal states of the population of China onto those of a human brain; yet the
population of China, no matter how its members interact with one another and
with other nations, intuitively does not have mental states. The status of
these arguments remains controversial.
fundamentum divisionis: a
term in Scholastic logic and ontology for the ‘grounds for a distinction’. Some
distinctions categorize separately existing things, such as men and beasts.
This is a real distinction, and the fundamentum divisionis exists in reality.
Some distinctions categorize things that cannot exist separately but can be
distinguished mentally, such as the difference between being a human being and
having a sense of humor, or the difference between a soul and one of its
powers, say, the power of thinking. A mental distinction is also called a
formal distinction. Duns Scotus is well known for the idea of formalis
distinctio cum fundamento ex parte rei a formal distinction with a foundation
in the thing, primarily in order to handle logical problems with functionalism,
analytical fundamentum divisionis 335
335 the Christian concept of God. God is supposed to be absolutely
simple; i.e., there can be no multiplicity of composition in him. Yet,
according to traditional theology, many properties can be truly attributed to
him. He is wise, good, and powerful. In order to preserve the simplicity of
God, Duns Scotus claimed that the difference between wisdom, goodness, and
power was only formal but still had some foundation in God’s own being.
futurum contingens: Grice
knew that his obsession with action was an obsession with the uncertainty of a
contingent future, alla Aristotle. Futurum -- future contingents, singular
events or states of affairs that may come to pass, and also may not come to
pass, in the future. There are three traditional problems involving future
contingents: the question of universal validity of the principle of bivalence,
the question of free will and determinism, and the question of foreknowledge.
The debate about future contingents in modern philosophical logic was revived
by Lukasiewicz’s work on three-valued logic. He thought that in order to avoid
fatalistic consequences, we must admit that the principle of bivalence for any
proposition, p, either p is true or not-p is true does not hold good for
propositions about future contingents. Many authors have considered this view
confused. According to von Wright, e.g., when propositions are said to be true
or false and ‘is’ in ‘it is true that’ is tenseless or atemporal, the illusion
of determinism does not arise. It has its roots in a tacit oscillation between
a temporal and an atemporal reading of the phrase ‘it is true’. In a
temporalized reading, or in its tensed variants such as ‘it was/will be/is
already true’, one can substitute, for ‘true’, other words like ‘certain’,
‘fixed’, or ‘necessary’. Applying this diachronic necessity to atemporal
predications of truth yields the idea of logical determinism. In contemporary
discussions of tense and modality, future contingents are often treated with the
help of a model of time as a line that breaks up into branches as it moves from
left to right i.e., from past to future. Although the conception of truth at a
moment has been found philosophically problematic, the model of historical
modalities and branching time as such is much used in works on freedom and
determination. Aristotle’s On Interpretation IX contains a classic discussion
of future contingents with the famous example of tomorrow’s sea battle. Because
of various ambiguities in the text and in Aristotle’s modal conceptions in
general, the meaning of the passage is in dispute. In the Metaphysics VI.3 and
in the Niocmachean Ethics III.5, Aristotle tries to show that not all things
are predetermined. The Stoics represented a causally deterministic worldview;
an ancient example of logical determinism is Diodorus Cronus’s famous master
argument against contingency. Boethius thought that Aristotle’s view can be
formulated as follows: the principle of bivalence is universally valid, but
propositions about future contingents, unlike those about past and present
things, do not obey the stronger principle according to which each proposition
is either determinately true or determinately false. A proposition is
indeterminately true as long as the conditions that make it true are not yet
fixed. This was the standard Latin doctrine from Abelard to Aquinas. Similar
discussions occurred in Arabic commentaries on On Interpretation. In the
fourteenth century, many thinkers held that Aristotle abandoned bivalence for future
contingent propositions. This restriction was usually refuted, but it found
some adherents like Peter Aureoli. Duns Scotus and Ockham heavily criticized
the Boethian-Thomistic view that God can know future contingents only because
the flux of time is present to divine eternity. According to them, God
contingently foreknows free acts. Explaining this proved to be a very
cumbersome task. Luis de Molina 15351600 suggested that God knows what possible
creatures would do in any possible situation. This “middle knowledge” theory
about counterfactuals of freedom has remained a living theme in philosophy of
religion; analogous questions are treated in theories of subjunctive
reasoning.
futurum
indicativum: The Grecians called it just ‘horistike klesis.’ The
Romans transliterated as modus definitivus, inclination anima affectations
demonstrans.’ But they had other terms, indicativus, finitus, finitivus, and
pronuntiativus. f. H. P. Grice and D. F. Pears, “Predicting and deciding.” The
future is essentially involved in “E communicates that p,” i. e. E, the
emissor, intends that his addressee, in a time later than t, will come to
believe this or that. Grice is
especially concerned with the future for his analysis of the communicatum.
“Close the door!” By uttering “Close the door!,” U means that A is to close the
door – in the future. So Grice spends HOURS exploring how one can have
justification to have an intention about a future event. Grice is aware of the
‘shall.’ Grice uses ‘shall’ in the first person to mean wha the calls ‘futurum
indicativum.’ (He considers the case of the ‘shall’ in the second and third
persons in his analysis of mode). What are the conditions for the use of
“shall” in the first person. “I shall close the door” may be predictable. It is
in the indicative mode. “Thou shalt close the door,” and “He shall close the
door” are in the imperative mode, or rather they correspond to the ‘futurum
intentionale.’ Since Grice is an analytic
philosopher, he specifies the analysis in the third person (“U means that…”)
one has to be careful. For ‘futurum indicativum’ we have ‘shall’ in the first
person, and ‘will’ in the second and third persons. So for the first group, U
means that he will go. In the second group, U means that his addressee or a
third party shall go. Grice adopts a subscript variant, stick with ‘will,’ but
add the mode afterwards: so will-ind. will be ‘futurum indicativum,’ and
will-int. will be futurum intentionale. The OED has it as “shall,”
and defines as a Germanic preterite-present strong verb. In Old English,
it is “sceal,” and which the OED renders as “to owe (money,” 1425 Hoccleve Min.
Poems, The leeste ferthyng þat y men shal. To owe (allegiance); 1649 And by
that feyth I shal to god and yow; followed by an infinitive, without to. Except
for a few instances of shall will, shall may (mowe), "shall conne" in
the 15th c., the infinitive after shall is always either that of a principal
verb or of have or be; The present tense shall; in general statements of what
is right or becoming, = ought, superseded by the past subjunctive should; in
OE. the subjunctive present sometimes occurs in this use; 1460 Fortescue Abs.
and Lim. Mon. The king shall often times send his judges to punish rioters and
risers. 1562 Legh Armory; Whether are Roundells of all suche coloures, as ye
haue spoken of here before? or shall they be Namesd Roundelles of those
coloures? In OE. and occas. in Middle English used to express necessity of
various kinds. For the many shades of meaning in Old English see Bosworth and Toller),
= must, "must needs", "have to", "am compelled
to", etc.; in stating a necessary condition: = `will have to, `must (if
something else is to happen). 1596 Shaks. Merch. V. i. i. 116 You shall seeke
all day ere you finde them, & when you haue them they are not worth the
search. 1605 Shaks. Lear. He that parts vs, shall bring a Brand from Heauen. c
In hypothetical clause, accompanying the statement of a necessary condition: =
`is to. 1612 Bacon Ess., Greatn. Kingd., Neither must they be too much broken
of it, if they shall be preserued in vigor; ndicating what is appointed or
settled to take place = the mod. `is to, `am to, etc. 1600 Shaks. A.Y.L. What
is he that shall buy his flocke and pasture? 1625 in Ellis Orig. Lett. Ser.
"Tomorrow His Majesty will be present
to begin the Parliament which is thought shall be removed to Oxford; in
commands or instructions; n the second person, “shall” is equivalent to an
imperative. Chiefly in Biblical language, of divine commandments, rendering the
jussive future of the Hebrew and Vulgate. In Old English the imperative mode is
used in the ten commandments. 1382 Wyclif Exod. Thow shalt not tak the Names of
the Lord thi God in veyn. So Coverdale, etc. b) In expositions: you shall
understand, etc. (that). c) In the formula you shall excuse (pardon) me. (now
"must"). 1595 Shaks. John. Your Grace shall pardon me, I will not
backe. 1630 R. Johnsons Kingd. and Commw. 191 You shall excuse me, for I eat no
flesh on Fridayes; n the *third* person. 1744 in Atkyns Chanc. Cases (1782)
III. 166 The words shall and may in general acts of parliament, or in private
constitutions, are to be construed imperatively, they must remove them; in the
second and third persons, expressing the determination by the Griceian utterer
to bring about some action, event, or state of things in the future, or
(occasionally) to refrain from hindering what is otherwise certain to take
place, or is intended by another person; n the second person. 1891 J. S. Winter
Lumley. If you would rather not stay then, you shall go down to South
Kensington Square then; in third person. 1591 Shaks. Two Gent. Verona shall not
hold thee. 1604 Shaks. Oth. If there be any cunning Crueltie, That can torment
him much, It shall be his. 1891 J. S. Winter Lumley xiv, `Oh, yes, sir, she
shall come back, said the nurse. `Ill take care of that. `I will come back,
said Vere; in special interrogative uses, a) in the *first* person, used in
questions to which the expected answer is a command, direction, or counsel, or
a resolve on the speakers own part. a) in questions introduced by an
interrogative pronoun (in oblique case), adverb, or adverbial phrase. 1600
Fairfax Tasso. What shall we doe? shall we be gouernd still, By this false
hand? 1865 Kingsley Herew. Where shall we stow the mare? b) in categorical
questions, often expressing indignant reprobation of a suggested course of
action, the implication (or implicaturum, or entailment) being that only a
negative (or, with negative question an affirmative) answer is conceivable.
1611 Shaks. Wint. T. Shall I draw the Curtaine? 1802 Wordsw. To the Cuckoo i, O
Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice? 1891 J. S. Winter
Lumley `Are you driving, or shall I call you a cab? `Oh, no; Im driving,
thanks. c) In *ironical* affirmative in exclamatory sentence, equivalent to the
above interrogative use, cf. Ger. soll. 1741 Richardson Pamela, A pretty thing
truly! Here I, a poor helpless Girl, raised from Poverty and Distress, shall
put on Lady-airs to a Gentlewoman born. d) to stand shall I, shall I (later
shill I, shall I: v. shilly-shally), to be at shall I, shall I (not): to be
vacillating, to shilly-shally. 1674 R. Godfrey Inj. and Ab. Physic Such
Medicines. that will not stand shall I? shall I? but will fall to work on the
Disease presently. b Similarly in the *third* person, where the Subjects
represents or includes the utterer, or when the utterer is placing himself at
anothers point of view. 1610 Shaks. Temp., Hast thou (which art but aire) a
touch, a feeling Of their afflictions, and shall not my selfe, One of their
kinde be kindlier moud then thou art? In the second and third person, where the
expected answer is a decision on the part of the utterer or of some person
OTHER than the Subjects. The question often serves as an impassioned
repudiation of a suggestion (or implicaturum) that something shall be
permitted. 1450 Merlin `What shal be his Names? `I will, quod she, `that it
haue Names after my fader. 1600 Shaks. A.Y.L.; What shall he haue that kild the
Deare? 1737 Alexander Pope, translating Horaces Epistle, And say, to which
shall our applause belong, this new court jargon, or the good old song? 1812
Crabbe Tales, Shall a wife complain? In indirect question. 1865 Kingsley Herew,
Let her say what shall be done with it; as a mere auxiliary, forming, with
present infinitive, the future, and (with perfect infinitive) the future
perfect tense. In Old English, the notion of the future tense is ordinarily
expressed by the present tense. To prevent ambiguity, wile (will) is not unfrequently
used as a future auxiliary, sometimes retaining no trace of its initial usage,
connected with the faculty of volition, and cognate indeed with volition. On
the other hand, sceal (shall), even when rendering a Latin future, can hardly
be said to have been ever a mere future tense-sign in Old English. It always
expressed something of its original notion of obligation or necessity, so
Hampshire is wrong in saying I shall climb Mt. Everest is predictable. In
Middle English, the present early ceases to be commonly employed in futural
usage, and the future is expressed by shall or will, the former being much
more common. The usage as to the choice between the two auxiliaries, shall and
will, has varied from time to time. Since the middle of the seventeenth century,
with Wallis, mere predictable futurity is expressed in the *first* person by
shall, in the second and third by will, and vice versa. In oratio obliqua,
usage allows either the retention of the auxiliary actually used by the
original utterer, or the substitution of that which is appropriate to the point
of view of the uttering reporting; in Old English, ‘sceal,; while retaining its
primary usage, serves as a tense-sign in announcing a future event as fated or
divinely decreed, cf. Those spots mean measle. Hence shall has always been the
auxiliary used, in all persons, for prophetic or oracular announcements of the
future, and for solemn assertions of the certainty of a future event. 1577 in
Allen Martyrdom Campion; The queene neither ever was, nor is, nor ever shall be
the head of the Church of England. 1601 Shaks. Jul. C. Now do I Prophesie. A
Curse shall light vpon the limbes of men. b In the first person,
"shall" has, from the early ME. period, been the normal auxiliary for
expressing mere futurity, without any adventitious notion. (a) Of events
conceived as independent of the volition of the utterer. To use will in these
cases is now a mark of, not public-school-educated Oxonian, but Scottish,
Irish, provincial, or extra-British idiom. 1595 in Cath. Rec. Soc. Publ. V. 357
My frend, yow and I shall play no more at Tables now. 1605 Shaks. Macb. When
shall we three meet againe? 1613 Shaks. Hen. VIII, Then wee shall haue em,
Talke vs to silence. 1852 Mrs. Stowe Uncle Toms C.; `But what if you dont hit? `I
shall hit, said George coolly; of voluntary action or its intended result. Here
I shall or we shall is always admissible except where the notion of a present,
as distinguished from a previous, decision or consent is to be expressed, in
which case ‘will’ shall be used. Further, I shall often expresses a
determination insisted on in spite of opposition. In the 16th c. and earlier, I
shall often occurs where I will would now be used. 1559 W. Cunningham Cosmogr.
Glasse, This now shall I alway kepe surely in memorye. 1601 Shaks. Alls Well;
Informe him so tis our will he should.-I shall my liege. 1885 Ruskin On Old
Road, note: Henceforward I shall continue to spell `Ryme without our wrongly
added h. c In the *second* person, shall as a mere future auxiliary appears
never to have been usual, but in categorical questions it is normal, e.g. Shall
you miss your train? I am afraid you will. d In the *third* person, superseded
by will, except when anothers statement or expectation respecting himself is
reported in the third person, e.g. He conveys that he shall not have time to
write. Even in this case will is still not uncommon, but in some contexts leads
to serious ambiguity. It might be therefore preferable, to some, to use ‘he
shall’ as the indirect rendering of ‘I shall.’ 1489 Caxton Sonnes of Aymon ii.
64 Yf your fader come agayn from the courte, he shall wyll yelde you to the
kynge Charlemayne. 1799 J. Robertson Agric. Perth, The effect of the statute
labour has always been, now is, and
probably shall continue to be, less productive than it might. Down to the
eighteenth century, shall, the auxiliary appropriate to the first person, is
sometimes used when the utterer refers to himself in the third person. Cf. the
formula: `And your petitioner shall ever pray. 1798 Kemble Let. in Pearsons
Catal. Mr. Kemble presents his respectful compliments to the Proprietors of the
`Monthly Mirror, and shall have great pleasure at being at all able to aid
them; in negative, or virtually negative, and interrogative use, shall often =
will be able to. 1600 Shaks. Sonn. lxv: How with this rage shall beautie hold a
plea. g) Used after a hypothetical clause or an imperative sentence in a
statementsof a result to be expected from some action or occurrence. Now (exc.
in the *first* person) usually replaced by will. But shall survives in literary
use. 1851 Dasent Jest and Earnest, Visit Rome and you shall find him [the Pope]
mere carrion. h) In clause expressing the object of a promise, or of an
expectation accompanied by hope or fear, now only where shall is the ordinary
future auxiliary, but down to the nineteenth century shall is often preferred
to will in the second and third persons. 1628 in Ellis Orig. Lett. Ser., He is
confident that the blood of Christ shall wash away his sins. 1654 E. Nicholas
in N. Papers, I hope neither your Cosen Wat. Montagu nor Walsingham shall be permitted to
discourse with the D. of Gloucester; in impersonal phrases,
"it shall be well, needful", etc. (to do so and so). (now
"will"). j) shall be, added to a future date in clauses measuring
time. 1617 Sir T. Wentworth in Fortescue Papers. To which purpose my late Lord
Chancelour gave his direction about the 3. of Decembre shallbe-two-yeares; in
the idiomatic use of the future to denote what ordinarily or occasionally
occurs under specified conditions, shall was formerly the usual auxiliary. In
the *second* and *third* persons, this is now somewhat formal or rhetorical.
Ordinary language substitutes will or may. Often in antithetic statements
coupled by an adversative conjunction or by and with adversative force. a in
the first person. 1712 Steele Spect. In spite of all my Care, I shall every now
and then have a saucy Rascal ride by reconnoitring under my Windows. b) in the *second* person.
1852 Spencer Ess. After knowing him for years, you shall suddenly discover that
your friends nose is slightly awry. c) in the *third* person. 1793 W. Roberts
Looker-On, One man shall approve the same thing that another man shall condemn.
1870 M. Arnold St. Paul and Prot. It may well happen that a man who lives and
thrives under a monarchy shall yet theoretically disapprove the principle of
monarchy. Usage No. 10: in hypothetical, relative, and temporal clauses
denoting a future contingency, the future auxiliary is shall for all persons
alike. Where no ambiguity results, however, the present tense is commonly used
for the future, and the perfect for the future-perfect. The use of shall, when
not required for clearness, is, Grice grants, apt to sound pedantic by non
Oxonians. Formerly sometimes used to express the sense of a present
subjunctive. a) in hypothetical clauses. (shall I = if I shall) 1680 New
Hampsh. Prov. Papers, If any Christian shall speak contempteously of the Holy
Scriptures, such person shall be
punished. b) in relative clauses, where the antecedent denotes an as yet
undetermined person or thing: 1811 Southey Let., The minister who shall first
become a believer in that book will
obtain a higher reputation than ever statesman did before him. 1874 R. Congreve
Ess. We extend our sympathies to the unborn generations which shall follow us
on this earth; in temporal clauses: 1830 Laws of Cricket in Nyren Yng.
Cricketers Tutor, If in striking, or at any other time, while the ball shall be
in play, both his feet be over the popping-crease; in clauses expressing the
purposed result of some action, or the object of a desire, intention, command,
or request, often admitting of being replaced by may. In Old English, and
occasionally as late as the seventeenth century, the present subjunctive was
used exactly as in Latin. a) in final clause usually introduced by that. In
this use modern idiom prefers should (22 a): see quot. 1611 below, and the
appended remarks. 1879 M. Pattison Milton At the age of nine and twenty, Milton
has already determined that this lifework shall be an epic poem; in relative
clause: 1599 Shaks. Hen. V, ii. iv. 40: As Gardeners doe with Ordure hide those
Roots that shall first spring. The choice between should and would follows the
same as shall and will as future auxiliaries, except that should must sometimes
be avoided on account of liability to be misinterpreted as = `ought to. In
present usage, should occurs mainly in the first person. In the other persons
it follows the use of shall. III Elliptical and quasi-elliptical uses. Usage
No. 24: with ellipsis of verb of motion: = `shall go; he use is common in OHG.
and OS., and in later HG., LG., and Du. In the Scandinavian languages it is
also common, and instances occur in MSw.] 1596 Shaks. 1 Hen. IV, That with our
small coniunction we should on. 1598 Shaks. Merry W. If the bottome were as
deepe as hell, I shold down; n questions, what shall = `what shall (it) profit,
`what good shall (I) do. Usage No. 26: with the sense `is due, `is proper, `is
to be given or applied. Cf. G. soll. Usage No. 27: a) with ellipsis of active
infinitive to be supplied from the context. 1892 Mrs. H. Ward David Grieve,
`No, indeed, I havnt got all I want, said Lucy `I never shall, neither; if I
shall. Now dial. 1390 Gower Conf. II. 96: Doun knelende on mi kne I take leve,
and if I schal, I kisse hire. 1390 Gower Conf., II. 96: I wolde kisse hire
eftsones if I scholde. 1871 Earle Philol. Engl. Tongue 203: The familiar
proposal to carry a basket, I will if I shall, that is, I am willing if you
will command me; I will if so required. 1886 W. Somerset Word-bk. Ill warn our
Tomll do it vor ee, nif he shall-i.e. if you wish. c) with generalized ellipsis
in proverbial phrase: needs must that needs shall = `he must whom fate compels.
Usage No. 28: a) with ellipsis of do (not occurring in the context). 1477
Norton Ord. Alch., O King that shall These Workes! b) the place of the inf. is
sometimes supplied by that or so placed at the beginning of the sentence. The
construction may be regarded as an ellipsis of "do". It is distinct
from the use (belonging to 27) in which so has the sense of `thus, `likewise,
or `also. In the latter there is usually inversion, as so shall I. 1888 J. S.
Winter Bootles Childr. iv: I should like to see her now shes grown up. `So you
shall. Usage No. 29: with ellipsis of be or passive inf., or with so in place
of this (where the preceding context has is, was, etc.). 1615 J. Chamberlain in
Crt. And Times Jas.; He is not yet executed, nor I hear not when he shall.
Surely he may not will that he be executed.
futurum intentionale: Surely intention has nothing to do with predictable truth.
If Smith promises Jones a job – he intends that Jones get a job. Then the world
explodes, so Jones does not get the job. Kant, Austin, or Grice, don’t care. A
philosopher is not a scientist. He is into ‘conceptual matters,’ about what is
to have a good intention, not whether the intention, in a future scenario, is
realised or not. If they are interested in ‘tense,’ as Prior was as Grice was with
his time-relative identity, it’s still because in the PRESENT, the emissor
emits a future-tense utterance. The future figures more prominently than
anything because in “Emissor communicates that p” there is the FUTURE
ESSENTIAL. The emissor intends that his addressee in a time later than the
present will do this or that. While Grice is always looking to cross the
credibility/desirability divide, there is a feature that is difficult to cross
in the bridge of asses. This is the shall vs. will. Grice is aware that ‘will,’
in the FIRST person, is not a matter of prediction. When Grice says “I will go
to Harborne,” that’s not a prediction. He firmly contrasts it with “I shall go
to Harborne” which is a perfect prediction in the indicative mode. “I will go
to Harborne” is in the ‘futurum intentionale.’ Grice is also aware that in the
SECOND and THIRD persons, ‘will’ reports something that the utterer must judge
unpredictable. An utterance like “Thou wilt go to London” and “He will go to
London” is in the ‘futurum indicativus.’ This is one nuance that Prichard
forgets in the analysis of ‘willing’ that Grice eventually adopts. Prichard
uses ‘will’ derivatively, and followed by a ‘that’-clause. Prichard quotes from
the New-World, where the dialect is slightly different. For William James had
said, “I will that the distant table slides over the floor toward me. And it
does not.” Since James is using ‘will’ in the first person, the utterance is
indeed NOT in the indicative, but the ‘intentional’ mode. In the case of the
‘communicatum,’ things get complicated, since U intends that A will believe
that… In which case, U’s intention (and thus will) is directed towards the
‘will’ of his addressee, too, even if it is merely to adopt a ‘belief.’ So what
would be the primary uses of the ‘will.’ In the first person, “I will go to
Harborne” is in the futurum intentionale. It is used to report the utterer’s
will. In the second and third person – “Thou will go to Harborne” and “He will
go to Harborne,” the utterer uses the futurum indicativum and utters a statement
which is predictable. Since analytic
philosophers specify the analysis in the third person (“U means that…”) one has
to be careful. For ‘futurum intentionale’ we have ‘will’ in the first person,
and ‘shall’ in the second and third persons. So for the first group, U means
that he SHALL go. In the second group, U means that his addressee or a third
party WILL go. Grice adopts a subscript variant, stick with ‘will,’ but add the
mode afterwards: so will-ind. will be ‘futurum indicativum,’ and will-int. will
be futurum intentionale. Grice distinguishes the ‘futurum imperativum.’ This
may be seen as a sub-class of the ‘futurum intentionale,’ as applied to the
second and third persons, to avoid the idea that one can issue a ‘self-command.’
Grice has a futurum imperativum, in Latin ending in -tō(te), used to request
someone to do something, or if something else happens first. “Sī quid
acciderit, scrībitō. If anything happens, write to me' (Cicero). ‘Ubi nōs
lāverimus, lavātō.’ 'When*we* have finished washing, *you* get washed.’
(Terence). ‘Crūdam si edēs, in acētum intinguitō.’ ‘If you eat cabbage raw, dip
it in vinegar.’ (Cato). ‘Rīdētō multum quī tē, Sextille, cinaedum dīxerit et
digitum porrigitō medium.’ 'Laugh loudly at anyone who calls you camp,
Sextillus, and stick up your middle finger at him.' (Martial). In Latin, some verbs have only a futurum
imperativum, e. g., scītō 'know', mementō 'remember'. In Latin, there is also a
third person imperative also ending in -tō, plural -ntō exists. It is used in
very formal contexts such as laws. ‘Iūsta imperia suntō, īsque cīvēs pārentō.’
'Orders must be just, and citizens must obey them' (Cicero). Other ways of
expressing a command or request are made with expressions such as cūrā ut 'take
care to...', fac ut 'see to it that...' or cavē nē 'be careful that you
don't...' Cūrā ut valeās. 'Make sure you keep well' (Cicero). Oddly, in Roman,
the futurum indicativum can be used for a polite commands. ‘Pīliae salūtem dīcēs
et Atticae.’ 'Will you please give my
regards to Pilia and Attica?' (Cicero. The OED has will, would. It is traced to
Old English willan, pres.t. wille, willaþ, pa. t. wolde. Grice was especially
interested to check Jamess and Prichards use of willing that, Prichards shall
will and the will/shall distinction; the present tense will; transitive uses,
with simple obj. or obj. clause; occas. intr. 1 trans. with simple obj.:
desire, wish for, have a mind to, `want (something); sometimes implying also
`intend, purpose. 1601 Shaks. (title) Twelfe Night, Or what you will. 1654
Whitlock Zootomia 44 Will what befalleth, and befall what will. 1734 tr.
Rollins Anc. Hist. V. 31 He that can do what ever he will is in great danger of
willing what he ought not. b intr. with well or ill, or trans. with sbs. of
similar meaning (e.g. good, health), usually with dat. of person: Wish (or
intend) well or ill (to some one), feel or cherish good-will or ill-will. Obs.
(cf. will v.2 1 b). See also well-willing; to will well that: to be willing
that. 1483 Caxton Gold. Leg. I wyl wel that thou say, and yf thou say ony good,
thou shalt be pesybly herde. Usage No. 2: trans. with obj. clause (with vb. in
pres. subj., or in periphrastic form with should), or acc. and inf.: Desire,
wish; sometimes implying also `intend, purpose (that something be done or
happen). 1548 Hutten Sum of Diuinitie K viij, God wylle all men to be saued;
enoting expression (usually authoritative) of a wish or intention: Determine,
decree, ordain, enjoin, give order (that something be done). 1528 Cromwell in
Merriman Life and Lett. (1902) I. 320 His grace then wille that thellection of
a new Dean shalbe emonges them of the colledge; spec. in a direction or
instruction in ones will or testament; hence, to direct by will (that something
be done). 1820 Giffords Compl. Engl. Lawyer. I do hereby will and direct that
my executrix..do excuse and release the said sum of 100l. to him; figurative usage. of an abstract thing (e.g.
reason, law): Demands, requires. 1597 Shaks. 2 Hen. IV, Our Battaile is more
full of Namess then yours Then Reason will, our hearts should be as good. Usage
No. 4 transf. (from 2). Intends to express, means; affirms, maintains. 1602
Dolman La Primaud. Fr. Acad. Hee will that this authority should be for a
principle of demonstration. 2 With dependent infinitive (normally without
"to"); desire to, wish to, have a mind to (do something); often also
implying intention. 1697 Ctess DAunoys Trav. I will not write to you often,
because I will always have a stock of News to tell you, which..is pretty long
in picking up. 1704 Locke Hum. Und. The
great Encomiasts of the Chineses, do all to a man agree and will convince us
that the Sect of the Literati are Atheists. 6 In relation to anothers desire or
requirement, or to an obligation of some kind: Am (is, are) disposed or willing
to, consent to; †in early use sometimes = deign or condescend to.With the (rare
and obs.) imper. use, as in quot. 1490, cf. b and the corresponding negative
use in 12 b. 1921 Times Lit. Suppl. 10 Feb. 88/3 Literature thrives where
people will read what they do not agree with, if it is good. b In 2nd person,
interrog., or in a dependent clause after beg or the like, expressing a request
(usually courteous; with emphasis, impatient). 1599 Shaks. Hen. V, ii. i. 47
Will you shogge off? 1605 1878 Hardy Ret. Native v. iii, O, O, O,..O, will you
have done! Usage No. 7 Expressing voluntary action, or conscious intention
directed to the doing of what is expressed by the principal verb (without
temporal reference as in 11, and without emphasis as in 10): = choose to
(choose v. B. 3 a). The proper word for this idea, which cannot be so precisely
expressed by any other. 1685 Baxter Paraphr., When God will tell us we shall
know. Usage No. 8 Expressing natural disposition to do something, and hence
habitual action: Has the habit, or `a way, of --ing; is addicted or accustomed
to --ing; habitually does; sometimes connoting `may be expected to (cf. 15).
1865 Ruskin Sesame, Men, by their nature, are prone to fight; they will fight
for any cause, or for none; expressing potentiality, capacity, or sufficiency:
Can, may, is able to, is capable of --ing; is (large) enough or sufficient
to.†it will not be: it cannot be done or brought to pass; it is all in vain.
So, †will it not be? 1833 N. Arnott Physics, The heart will beat after removal
from the body. Usage No. 10 As a strengthening of sense 7, expressing
determination, persistence, and the like (without temporal reference as in 11);
purposes to, is determined to. 1539 Bible (Great) Isa. lxvi. 6, I heare ye
voyce of the Lorde, that wyll rewarde, etc; recompence his enemyes;
emphatically. Is fully determined to; insists on or persists in --ing:
sometimes with mixture of sense 8. (In 1st pers. with implication of futurity,
as a strengthening of sense 11 a. Also fig. = must inevitably, is sure to. 1892
E. Reeves Homeward Bound viii. 239, I have spent 6,000 francs to come here..and
I will see it! c In phr. of ironical or critical force referring to anothers
assertion or opinion. Now arch. exc. in will have it; 1591 Shaks. 1 Hen. VI,
This is a Riddling Merchant for the nonce, He will be here, and yet he is not
here. 1728 Chambers Cycl., Honey, Some naturalists will have honey to be of a
different quality, according to the difference of the flowers..the bees suck it
from. Also, as auxiliary of the future tense with implication (entailment
rather than cancellable implicaturum) of intention, thus distinguished from
‘shall,’ v. B. 8, where see note); in 1st person: sometimes in slightly
stronger sense = intend to, mean to. 1600 Shaks. A.Y.L., To morrow will we be
married. 1607 Shaks. Cor., Ile run away Till I am bigger, but then Ile fight.
1777 Clara Reeve Champion of Virtue, Never fear it..I will speak to Joseph
about it. b In 2nd and 3rd pers., in questions or indirect statements. 1839
Lane Arab. Nts., I will cure thee
without giving thee to drink any potion When King Yoonán heard his words,
he..said.., How wilt thou do this? c will do (with omission of "I"):
an expression of willingness to carry out a request. Cf. wilco. colloq. 1967 L.
White Crimshaw Memorandum, `And find out where the bastard was `Will do, Jim
said. 13 In 1st pers., expressing immediate intention: "I will" = `I
am now going to, `I proceed at once to. 1885 Mrs. Alexander At Bay, Very well;
I will wish you good-evening. b In 1st pers. pl., expressing a proposal: we
will (†wule we) = `let us. 1798 Coleridge Nightingale 4 Come, we will rest on
this old mossy bridge!, c figurative, as in It will rain, (in 3rd pers.) of a
thing: Is ready to, is on the point of --ing. 1225 Ancr. R. A treou þet wule
uallen, me underset hit mid on oðer treou. 14 In 2nd and 3rd pers., as
auxiliary expressing mere futurity, forming (with pres. inf.) the future, and
(with pf. inf.) the future pf. tense: corresponding to "shall" in the
1st pers. (see note s.v. shall v. B. 8). 1847 Tennyson Princess iii. 12 Rest,
rest, on mothers breast, Father will come to thee soon. b As auxiliary of
future substituted for the imper. in mild injunctions or requests. 1876 Ruskin
St. Marks Rest. That they should use their own balances, weights, and measures;
(not by any means false ones, you will please to observe). 15 As auxiliary of
future expressing a contingent event, or a result to be expected, in a supposed
case or under particular conditions (with the condition expressed by a
conditional, temporal, or imper. clause, or otherwise implied). 1861 M.
Pattison Ess. The lover of the
Elizabethan drama will readily recal many such allusions; b with pers.sSubjects
(usually 1st pers. sing.), expressing a voluntary act or choice in a supposed
case, or a conditional promise or undertaking: esp. in asseverations, e.g. I
will die sooner than, I’ll be hanged if, etc.). 1898 H. S. Merriman Rodens
Corner. But I will be hanged if I see what it all means, now; xpressing a
determinate or necessary consequence (without the notion of futurity). 1887
Fowler Deductive Logic, From what has been said it will be seen that I do not
agree with Mr. Mill. Mod. If, in a syllogism, the middle term be not distributed
in either premiss, there will be no conclusion; ith the notion of futurity
obscured or lost: = will prove or turn out to, will be found on inquiry to; may
be supposed to, presumably does. Hence (chiefly Sc. and north. dial.) in
estimates of amount, or in uncertain or approximate statements, the future
becoming equivalent to a present with qualification: e.g. it will be = `I think
it is or `it is about; what will that be? = `what do you think that is? 1584
Hornby Priory in Craven Gloss. Where on 40 Acres there will be xiij.s. iv.d.
per acre yerely for rent. 1791 Grose Olio (1792) 106, I believe he will be an
Irishman. 1791 Grose Olio. C. How far is it to Dumfries? W. It will be twenty
miles. 1812 Brackenridge Views Louisiana, The agriculture of this territory
will be very similar to that of Kentucky. 1876 Whitby Gloss. sThis word we have
only once heard, and that will be twenty years ago. 16 Used where
"shall" is now the normal auxiliary, chiefly in expressing mere
futurity: since 17th c. almost exclusively in Scottish, Irish, provincial, or
extra-British use (see shall. 1602 Shaks. Ham. I will win for him if I can: if
not, Ile gaine nothing but my shame, and the odde hits. 1825 Scott in Lockhart
Ballantyne-humbug. I expect we will have some good singing. 1875 E. H. Dering
Sherborne. `Will I start, sir? asked the Irish groom. Usage No. 3 Elliptical
and quasi-elliptical uses; n absol. use, or with ellipsis of obj. clause as in
2: in meaning corresponding to senses 5-7.if you will is sometimes used
parenthetically to qualify a word or phrase: = `if you wish it to be so called,
`if you choose or prefer to call it so. 1696 Whiston The. Earth. Gravity
depends entirely on the constant and efficacious, and, if you will, the
supernatural and miraculous Influence of Almighty God. 1876 Ruskin St. Marks
Rest. Very savage! monstrous! if you will. b In parenthetic phr. if God will
(†also will God, rarely God will), God willing: if it be the will of God,
`D.V.In OE. Gode willi&asg.ende (will v.2) = L. Deo volente. 1716 Strype
in Thoresbys Lett. Next week, God willing, I take my journey to my Rectory in
Sussex; fig. Demands, requires (absol. or ellipt. use of 3 c). 1511 Reg. Privy
Seal Scot. That na seculare personis have intrometting with thaim uther wais
than law will; I will well: I assent, `I should think so indeed. (Cf. F. je
veux bien.) Usage No. 18: with ellipsis of a vb. of motion. 1885 Bridges Eros
and Psyche Aug. I will to thee oer the stream afloat. Usage No. 19: with
ellipsis of active inf. to be supplied from the context. 1836 Dickens Sk. Boz,
Steam Excurs., `Will you go on deck? `No, I will not. This was said with a most
determined air. 1853 Dickens Bleak Ho. lii, I cant believe it. Its not that I
dont or I wont. I cant! 1885 Mrs. Alexander Valeries Fate vi, `Do you know that
all the people in the house will think it very shocking of me to walk with
you?.. `The deuce they will!; With generalized ellipsis, esp. in proverbial
saying (now usually as in quot. 1562, with will for would). 1639 J. Clarke
Paroem. 237 He that may and will not, when he would he shall not. c With so or
that substituted for the omitted inf. phr.: now usually placed at the beginning
of the sentence. 1596 Shaks. Tam. Shr. Hor. I promist we would beare his charge
of wooing Gremio. And so we wil. d Idiomatically used in a qualifying phr. with
relative, equivalent to a phr. with indef. relative in -ever; often with a
thing as subj., becoming a mere synonym of may: e.g. shout as loud as you will
= `however loud you (choose to) shout; come what will = `whatever may come; be
that as it will = `however that may be. 1732 Pope Mor. Ess. The ruling Passion,
be it what it will, The ruling Passion conquers Reason still. 20 With ellipsis
of pass. inf. A. 1774 Goldsm. Surv. Exp. Philos. The airs force is compounded
of its swiftness and density, and as these are encreased, so will the force of
the wind; in const. where the ellipsis may be either of an obj. clause or of an
inf. a In a disjunctive qualifying clause or phr. usually parenthetic, as
whether he will or no, will he or not, (with pron. omitted) will or no, (with
or omitted) will he will he not, will he nill he (see VI. below and
willy-nilly), etc.In quot. 1592 vaguely = `one way or another, `in any case.
For the distinction between should and would, v. note s.v. shall; in a
noun-clause expressing the object of desire, advice, or request, usually with a
person as subj., implying voluntary action as the desired end: thus
distinguished from should, which may be used when the persons will is not in
view. Also (almost always after wish) with a thing as Subjects, in which case
should can never be substituted because it would suggest the idea of command or
compulsion instead of mere desire. Cf. shall; will; willest; willeth; wills;
willed (wIld); also: willian, willi, wyll, wille, wil, will, willode, will,
wyllede, wylled, willyd, ied, -it, -id, willed; wijld, wilde, wild, willid,
-yd, wylled,willet, willed; willd(e, wild., OE. willian wk. vb. = German
“willen.” f. will sb.1, 1 trans. to wish, desire; sometimes with implication of
intention: = will. 1400 Lat. and Eng. Prov. He þt a lytul me 3euyth to me
wyllyth optat longe lyffe. 1548 Udall, etc. Erasm. Par. Matt. v. 21-24 Who so
euer hath gotten to hymselfe the charitie of the gospell, whyche wylleth wel to
them that wylleth yll. 1581 A. Hall Iliad, By Mineruas helpe, who willes you
all the ill she may. A. 1875 Tennyson Q. Mary i. iv, A great party in the state
Wills me to wed her; To assert, affirm: = will v.1 B. 4. 1614 Selden Titles
Hon. None of this excludes Vnction before, but only wils him the first
annointed by the Pope. 2 a to direct by ones will or testament (that something
be done, or something to be done); to dispose of by will; to bequeath or
devise; to determine by the will; to attempt to cause, aim at effecting by
exercise of will; to set the mind with conscious intention to the performance
or occurrence of something; to choose or decide to do something, or that
something shall be done or happen. Const. with simple obj., acc. and inf.,
simple inf. (now always with to), or obj. clause; also absol. or intr. (with as
or so). Nearly coinciding in meaning with will v.1 7, but with more explicit
reference to the mental process of volition. 1630 Prynne Anti-Armin. 119 He had
onely a power, not to fall into sinne vnlesse he willed it. 1667 Milton P.L. So
absolute she seems..that what she wills to do or say, Seems wisest. 1710 J.
Clarke tr. Rohaults Nat. Philos. If I will to move my Arm, it is presently
moved. 1712 Berkeley Pass. Obed. He that willeth the end, doth will the
necessary means conducive to that end. 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. All shall be as
God wills. 1880 Meredith Tragic Com. So great, heroical, giant-like, that what
he wills must be. 1896 Housman Shropsh. Lad xxx, Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst; intr. to exercise the will; to
perform the mental act of volition. 1594 Hooker Eccl. Pol. To will, is to bend
our soules to the hauing or doing of that which they see to be good. 1830
Mackintosh Eth. Philos. Wks.. But what could induce such a being to will or to
act? 1867 A. P. Forbes Explan. Is this infinitely powerful and intelligent
Being free? wills He? loves He? c trans. To bring or get (into, out of, etc.)
by exercise of will. 1850 L. Hunt Table-t. (1882) 184 Victims of opium have
been known to be unable to will themselves out of the chair in which they were
sitting. d To control (another person), or induce (another) to do something, by
the mere exercise of ones will, as in hypnotism. 1882 Proc. Soc. Psych.
Research I. The one to be `willed would go to the other end of the house, if
desired, whilst we agreed upon the thing to be done. 1886 19th Cent. They are
what is called `willed to do certain things desired by the ladies or gentlemen
who have hold of them. 1897 A. Lang Dreams & Ghosts iii. 59 A young
lady, who believed that she could play the `willing game successfully without
touching the person `willed; to express or communicate ones will or wish with
regard to something, with various shades of meaning, cf. will, v.1 3.,
specifically: a to enjoin, order; to decree, ordain, a) with personal obj.,
usually with inf. or clause. 1481 Cov. Leet Bk. 496 We desire and also will you
that vnto oure seid seruaunt ye yeue your aid. 1547 Edw. VI in Rymer Foedera,
We Wyll and Commaunde yowe to Procede in the seid Matters. 1568 Grafton Chron.,
Their sute was smally regarded, and shortly after they were willed to silence.
1588 Lambarde Eiren. If a man do lie in awaite to rob me, and (drawing his
sword upon me) he willeth me to deliver my money. 1591 Shaks. 1 Hen. VI We doe
no otherwise then wee are willd. 1596 Nashe Saffron Walden P 4, Vp he was had
and.willed to deliuer vp his weapon. 1656 Hales Gold. Rem. The King in the
Gospel, that made a Feast, and..willed his servants to go out to the high-ways
side. 1799 Nelson in Nicolas Disp., Willing and requiring all Officers and men
to obey you; 1565 Cooper Thesaurus s.v. Classicum, By sounde of trumpet to will
scilence. 1612 Bacon Ess., Of Empire. It is common with Princes (saith Tacitus)
to will contradictories. 1697 Dryden Æneis i. 112 Tis yours, O Queen! to will
The Work, which Duty binds me to fulfil. 1877 Tennyson Harold vi. i, Get thou
into thy cloister as the king Willd it.; to pray, request, entreat; = desire v.
6. 1454 Paston Lett. Suppl. As for the questyon that ye wylled me to aske my
lord, I fond hym yet at no good leyser. 1564 Haward tr. Eutropius. The Romaines
sent ambassadoures to him, to wyll him to cease from battayle. 1581 A. Hall
Iliad, His errand done, as he was willde, he toke his flight from thence. 1631
[Mabbe] Celestina. Did I not will you I should not be wakened? 1690 Dryden
Amphitryon i. i, He has sent me to will and require you to make a swinging long
Night for him; fig. of a thing, to require, demand; also, to induce, persuade a
person to do something. 1445 in Anglia. Constaunce willeth also that thou doo
noughte with weyke corage. Cable and Baugh note that one important s. of
prescriptions that now form part of all our grammars -- that governing the use
of will and shall -- has its origin in this period. Previous to 1622 no grammar
recognized any distinction between will and shall. In 1653 Wallis in his
Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae states in Latin and for the benefit of Europeans
that Subjectsive intention is expressed by will in the first person, by shall
in the second and third, while simple factual indicative predictable futurity
is expressed by shall in the first person, by will in the second and third. It
is not until the second half of the eighteenth century that the use in
questions and subordinate clauses is explicitly defined. In 1755 Johnson, in
his Dictionary, states the rule for questions, and in 1765 William Ward, in his
Grammar, draws up for the first time the full set of prescriptions that
underlies, with individual variations, the rules found in later tracts. Wards
pronouncements are not followed generally by other grammarians until Lindley
Murray gives them greater currency in 1795. Since about 1825 they have often
been repeated in grammars, v. Fries, The periphrastic future with will and
shall. Will qua modal auxiliary never had an s. The absence of conjugation is a
very old common Germanic phenomenon. OE 3rd person present indicative of willan
(and of the preterite-present verbs) is not distinct from the 1st person
present indicative. That dates back at least to CGmc, or further if one looks
just as the forms and ignore tense and/or mood). Re: Prichard: "Prichard
wills that he go to London. This is Prichards example, admired by Grice
("but I expect not pleasing to Maucaulays ears"). The -s is
introduced to indicate a difference between the modal and main verb use (as in
Prichard and Grice) of will. In fact, will, qua modal, has never been used with
a to-infinitive. OE uses present-tense forms to refer to future events as well
as willan and sculan. willan would give a volitional nuance; sculan, an
obligational nuance. Its difficult to find an example of weorthan used to
express the future, but that doesnt mean it didnt happen. In insensitive
utterers, will has very little of volition about it, unless one follows Walliss
observation for for I will vs. I shall. Most probably use ll, or be going
to for the future.
fuzzy
implicaturum. Grice loved ‘fuzzy,’ “if only because it’s one of the few
non-Graeco-Roman philosophical terms!” -- fuzzy set, a set in which membership is a
matter of degree. In classical set theory, for every set S and thing x, either
x is a member of S or x is not. In fuzzy set theory, things x can be members of
sets S to any degree between 0 and 1, inclusive. Degree 1 corresponds to ‘is a
member of’ and 0 corresponds to ‘is not’; the intermediate degrees are degrees
of vagueness or uncertainty. Example: Let S be the set of men who are bald at
age forty. L. A. Zadeh developed a logic of fuzzy sets as the basis for a logic
of vague predicates. A fuzzy set can be represented mathematically as a
function from a given universe into the interval [0, 1]. Zadeh tried to interpret Grice alla fuzzy in
“Pragmatics”
gadamer: philosopher, the
leading proponent of hermeneutics in the second half of the twentieth century.
He studied at Marburg in the 0s with Natorp and Heidegger. His first book,
Plato’s Dialectical Ethics 1, bears their imprint and reflects his abiding
interest in Grecian philosophy. Truth and Method 0 established Gadamer as an
original thinker and had an impact on a variety of disciplines outside
philosophy, including theology, legal theory, and literary criticism. The three
parts of Truth and Method combine to displace the scientific conceptions of
truth and method as the model for understanding in the human sciences. In the
first part, which presents itself as a critique of the abstraction inherent in
aesthetic consciousness, Gadamer argues that artworks make a claim to truth.
Later Gadamer draws on the play of art in the experience of the beautiful to
offer an analogy to how a text draws its readers into the event of truth by
making a claim on them. In the central portion of the book Gadamer presents
tradition as a condition of understanding. Tradition is not for him an object
of historical knowledge, but part of one’s very being. The final section of
Truth and Method is concerned with language as the site of tradition. Gadamer
sought to shift the focus of hermeneutics from the problems of obscurity and
misunderstanding to the community of understanding that the participants in a
dialogue share through language. Gadamer was involved in three debates that
define his philosophical contribution. The first was an ongoing debate with
Heidegger reflected throughout Gadamer’s corpus. Gadamer did not accept all of
the innovations that Heidegger introduced into his thinking in the 0s,
particularly his reconstruction of the history of philosophy as the history of
being. Gadamer also rejected Heidegger’s elevation of Hölderlin to the status
of an authority. Gadamer’s greater accessibility led Habermas to characterize
Gadamer’s contribution as that of having “urbanized the Heideggerian province.”
The second debate was with Habermas himself. Habermas criticized Gadamer’s
rejection of the Enlightenment’s “prejudice against prejudice.” Whereas
Habermas objected to the conservatism inherent in Gadamer’s rehabilitation of
prejudice, Gadamer explained that he was only setting out the conditions for
understanding, conditions that did not exclude the possibility of radical
change. The third debate, which formed the basis of Dialogue and Deconstruction
9, was with Derrida. Derridean deconstruction is indebted to Heidegger’s later
philosophy and so this debate was in part about the direction philosophy should
take after Heidegger. However, many observers concluded that there was no real
engagement between Gadamer and Derrida. To some it seemed that Derrida, by
refusing to accept the terms on which Gadamer insisted dialogue should take
place, had exposed the limits imposed by hermeneutics. To others it was
confirmation that any attempt to circumvent the conditions of dialogue
specified by Gadamerian hermeneutics is selfdefeating.
galen:
philosopher, he traveled extensively in the Greco-Roman world before settling
in Rome and becoming court physician to Marcus Aurelius. His philosophical
interests lay mainly in the philosophy of science On the Therapeutic Method and
nature On the Function of Parts, and in logic Introduction to Logic, in which
he develops a crude but pioneering treatment of the logic of relations. Galen
espoused an extreme form of directed teleology in natural explanation, and
sought to develop a syncretist picture of cause and explanation drawing on Plato,
Aristotle, the Stoics, and preceding medical writers, notably Hippocrates,
whose views he attempted to harmonize with those of Plato On the Doctrines of
Hippocrates and Plato. He wrote on philosophical psychology On the Passions and
Errors of the Soul; his materialist account of mind Mental Characteristics Are
Caused by Bodily Conditions is notable for its caution in approaching issues
such as the actual nature of the substance of the soul and the age and
structure of the universe that he regarded as undecidable. In physiology, he
adopted a version of the four-humor theory, that health consists in an
appropriate balance of four basic bodily constituents blood, black bile, yellow
bile, and phlegm, and disease in a corresponding imbalance a view owed ultimately
to Hippocrates. He sided with the rationalist physicians against the
empiricists, holding that it was possible to elaborate and to support theories
concerning the fundamentals of the human body; but he stressed the importance
of observation and experiment, in particular in anatomy he discovered the
function of the recurrent laryngeal nerve by dissection and ligation. Via the
Arabic tradition, Galen became the most influential doctor of the ancient
world; his influence persisted, in spite of the discoveries of the seventeenth
century, until the end of the nineteenth century. He also wrote extensively on
semantics, but these texts are lost.
galileo
galilei: philosopher. His Dialogue concerning the Two Chief
World Systems defends Copernicus by arguing against the major tenets of the
Aristotelian cosmology. On his view, one kind of motion replaces the multiple
distinct celestial and terrestrial motions of Aristotle; mathematics is
applicable to the real world; and explanation of natural events appeals to
efficient causes alone, not to hypothesized natural ends. Galileo was called
before the Inquisition, was made to recant his Copernican views, and spent the
last years of his life under house arrest. Discourse concerning Two New
Sciences 1638 created the modern science of mechanics: it proved the laws of
free fall, thus making it possible to study accelerated motions; asserted the
principle of the independence of forces; and proposed a theory of parabolic
ballistics. His work was developed by Huygens and Newton. Galileo’s scientific
and technological achievements were prodigious. He invented an air thermoscope,
a device for raising water, and a computer for calculating quantities in
geometry and ballistics. His discoveries in pure science included the isochronism
of the pendulum and the hydrostatic balance. His telescopic observations led to
the discovery of four of Jupiter’s satellites the Medicean Stars, the moon’s
mountains, sunspots, the moon’s libration, and the nature of the Milky Way. In
methodology Galileo accepted the ancient Grecian ideal of demonstrative
science, and employed the method of retroductive inference, whereby the
phenomena under investigation are attributed to remote causes. Much of his work
utilizes the hypothetico-deductive method.
gambler’s
fallacy: also called Monte Carlo fallacy, the fallacy of
supposing, of a sequence of independent events, that the probabilities of later
outcomes must increase or decrease to “compensate” for earlier outcomes. For
example, since by Bernoulli’s theorem in a long run of tosses of a fair coin it
is very probable that the coin will come up heads roughly half the time, one
might think that a coin that has not come up heads recently must be “due” to
come up heads must have a probability
greater than one-half of doing so. But this is a misunderstanding of the law of
large numbers, which requires no such compensating tendencies of the coin. The
probability of heads remains one-half for each toss despite the preponderance,
so far, of tails. In the sufficiently long run what “compensates” for the
presence of improbably long subsequences in which, say, tails strongly
predominate, is simply that such subsequences occur rarely and therefore have
only a slight effect on the statistical character of the whole.
conversational
game theory: Grice for ‘homo ludens’. In “Logic and
conversation,” Grice uses the phrases, “the game of conversation,”
“conversational game,” “conversational move,” “the conversational rules,” – so
he knew he was echoing Neumann and Morgenstern. J. Hintikka, “Grice and game
theory.” the theory of the structure of, and the rational procedures (or
strategies) for performing in, games or game-like human interactions. Although
there are forerunners, game theory is virtually invented by Neumann and Morgenstern.
Its most striking feature is its compact representation of interactions of at
least two players; e. g. two players may face two choices each, and in
combination these choices produce four possible outcomes. Actual choices are of
strategies, not of outcomes, although it is assessments of outcomes that
recommend this or that procedure, maxim, imperative, or strategy. To do well in
a game, even for each player to do well, as is often possible, generally
requires taking the other player’s position, interest, and goal, into account.
Hence, to evaluate an imperative or rule or strategiy directly, without
reference to the outcomes they might produce in interaction with others, is
conspicuously perverse. It is not surprising, therefore, that in meta-ethics,
game theory has been preeminently applied to utilitarianianism. As the numbers
of players and rational procedure, guideline or strategies rise, the complexity
of the game of conversation increases geometrically. If players have *2*
strategies each and each ranks the four possible outcomes without ties, there
are already *78* strategically distinct conversations. Even minor real-life
interactions may have astronomically greater complexity. Grice once complained
to Hintikka that this makes game theory ‘useless,’ or ‘otiose.’ Alternatively,
one can note that this makes it realistic and helps us understand why real-life
choices are at least as complex as they sometimes seem. To complicate matters
further, conversationalists can choose over probabilistic combinations of their
pure rational guidelines or strategies. Hence, the original 4 outcomes in a
simple 2 $ 2 game define a continuum of potential outcomes. After noting the
structure of the game of conversation, one might then be struck by an immediate
implication of this mere description. A rational agent may be supposed to
attempt to maximize his potential or expected outcome in the game of
conversation. But as there are at least two players in the game of
conversation, in general conversationalists cannot all maximize simultaneously
over their expected outcomes while assuming that all others are doing likewise.
This is an analytical principle. In general, we cannot maximize over two
functions simultaneously. The general notion of the greatest good of the greatest
number, e. g., is incoherent. Hence, in inter-active choice contexts, the
simple notion of economic rationality is incoherent. Virtually all of early
game theory was dedicated to finding an alternative principle for resolving
conversational game interactions. There are now many of what Grice calls a
“solution theory,” most of which are about this or that outcome rather than this
or that rational guideline or strategy they stipulate which outcomes or range
of outcomes is game-theoretically “rational.” There is little consensus on how
to generalize from the ordinary rationality of merely choosing more rather than
less and of displaying consistent preferences to the general choice of
strategies in games. A pay-off in early game theory is almost always represented
in a cardinal, transferable utility. A transferable utility is an odd notion
that is evidently introduced to avoid the disdain with which philosophers then
treated interpersonal comparisons of utility. It seems to be analogous to
money. One could say that the theory is one of wealth maximization. In the
early theory, the “rationality” conditions are as follows.In general, if the
sums of the pay-offs to each players in various outcomes differ, it is assumed
that a rational player will manage to divide the largest possible payoff with
the other player. 2 No rational agent will accept a payoff below the “security
level” obtainable even if all the other player or players really form a
coalition against the individual. Sometimes it is also assumed that no group of
players will rationally accept less than it could get as its group security
level but in some games, no outcome can
meet this condition. This is an odd combination of elements. The collective
elements are plausibly thought of as merely predictive. If we individually wish
to do well, we should combine efforts to help us do best AS A CONVERSATIONAL
DYAD. But what we want is a theory that converts two individual preferences
into one collective result – Grice’s conversational shared goal of influencing
and being influenced by others. Unfortunately, to put a move doing just this in
the foundations of the theory is question-begging. Our fundamental burden is to
determine whether a theory of subjective rationality MAY produce an
inter-subjectively good result, not to stipulate that it must. In the theory
with cardinal, additive payoffs, we can divide games. There is the constant-sum
game, in which the sum of all players’ payoffs in each outcome is a constant,
and variable sum games. A zero-sum games is a special case of a constant sum
game. Two-player constant sum games are games of pure conversational
‘conflict.’ Each player’s gain is the other’s loss. In constant sum games with
more than two players and in all variable sum games, there is generally reason
for coalition formation to improve payoffs to members of the coalition. A game
without transferable utility, such as a games in which players have only
ordinal preferences, may be characterized as a game of pure conflict or of pure
co-ordination (or co-operation) when players’ preference orderings over
outcomes are, respectively, opposite or identical, or as games of mixed motive
when their orderings are partly the same and partly reversed. Grice’s nalysis
of such games is evidently less tractable than that of games with cardinal,
additive utility, and their theory is only beginning to be extensively
developed by Griceians. Despite the apparent circularity of the rationality
assumptions of early game theory, it is the game theorists’ prisoner’s dilemma that
makes clear that compelling subjectivistic principles of choice can produce an
inter-subjective deficient outcome. This game given its catchy but inapt name.
If they play it in isolation from any other interaction between them, two
players in this game can each do what seems individually best and reach an
outcome that both consider inferior to the outcome that results from making
opposite strategy choices. Even with the knowledge that this is the problem
they face, the players still have incentive to choose the strategies that
jointly produce the inferior outcome. The prisoner’s dilemma involves both
coordination (or co-operation) and conflict. It has played a central role in
discussions of Griceian conversational pragmatics. Games that predominantly involve
coordination (or cooperation), such as when we coordinate in all driving on the
right or all on the left, have a similarly central role. The understanding of
both classes of games has been read into the philosophy of Hobbes and Hume and
into “mutual advantage” theories of justice.
gassendi: philosopher
who advocates a via media to scientific knowledge about the empirically
observable material world that avoids both the dogmatism of Cartesians, who
claimed to have certain knowledge, and the skepticism of Montaigne and Charron,
who doubted that we have knowledge about anything. Gassendi presented Epicurean
atomism as a model for explaining how bodies are structured and interact. He
advanced a hypothetico-deductive method by proposing that experiments should be
used to test mechanistic hypotheses. Like the ancient Pyrrhonian Skeptics, he
did not challenge the immediate reports of our senses; but unlike them he
argued that while we cannot have knowledge of the inner essences of things, we
can develop a reliable science of the world of appearances. In this he
exemplified the mitigated skepticism of modern science that is always open to
revision on the basis of empirical evidence. Gassendi’s first book,
Exercitationes Paradoxicae Adversis Aristoteleos 1624, is an attack on
Aristotle. He is best known as the author of the fifth set of objections to
Descartes’s Meditations1641, in which Gassendi proposed that even clear and
distinct ideas may represent no objects outside our minds, a possibility that
Descartes called the objection of objections, but dismissed as destructive of
all reason. Gassendi’s Syntagma Philosophiae Epicuri 1649 contains his
development of Epicurean philosophy and science. His elaboration of the
mechanistic atomic model and his advocacy of experimental testing of hypotheses
were crucially important in the rise of modern science. Gassendi’s career as a
Catholic priest, Epicurean atomist, mitigated skeptic, and mechanistic
scientist presents a puzzle as do the
careers of several other philosopher-priests in the seventeenth century concerning his true beliefs. On the one hand,
he professed faith and set aside Christian doctrine as not open to challenge.
On the other hand, he utilized an arsenal of skeptical arguments that was
beginning to undermine and would eventually destroy the rational foundations of
the church. Gassendi thus appears to be of a type almost unknown today, a
thinker indifferent to the apparent discrepancy between his belief in Christian
doctrine and his advocacy of materialist science.
gay: j. philosopher Grice
read quite a lot, who tried to reconcile divine command theory and
utilitarianism. The son of a minister, Gay was elected a fellow of Sidney
Sussex , Cambridge, where he taught Grecian philosophy. His essay, “Dissertation
Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality” argues that
obligation is founded on the will of God, which, because people are destined to
be happy, directs us to act to promote the general happiness. Gay offers an
associationist psychology according to which we pursue objects that have come
to be associated with happiness e.g. money, regardless of whether they now make
us happy, and argues, contra Hutcheson, that our moral sense is conditioned
rather than natural. Gay’s blend of utilitarianism with associationist
psychology gave David Hartley the basis for his moral psychology, which later
influenced Bentham in his formulation of classical utilitarianism.
burlæus: Burleigh’s
donkey – Grice preferred the spelling “Gualterus Burlaeus.” “One would hardly
realise it’s Irish to the backbone!” – Grice. Geach’s donkey: geach, Peter b.6,
English philosopher and logician whose main work has been in logic and
philosophy of language. A great admirer of McTaggart, he has published a
sympathetic exposition of the latter’s work Truth, Love and Immortality, 9, and
has always aimed to emulate what he sees as the clarity and rigor of the
Scottish idealist’s thought. Greatly influenced by Frege and Vitters, Geach is
particularly noted for his powerful use of what he calls “the Frege point,”
better called “the Frege-Geach point,” that the same thought may occur as
asserted or unasserted and yet retain the same truth-value. The point has been
used by Geach to refute ascriptivist theories of responsibility, and can be
employed against noncognitivist theories of ethics, which are said to face the
Frege-Geach problem of accounting for the sense of moral ascriptions in
contexts like ‘If he did wrong, he will be punished’. He is also noted for
helping to bring Frege to the English-speaking world, through co-translations
with Max Black 9 88. In logic he is known for proving, independently of Quine,
a contradiction in Frege’s way out of Russell’s paradox Mind, 6, and for his
defense of modern Fregean-Russellian logic against traditional
Aristotelian-Scholastic logic. He also has a deep admiration for the Polish
logicians. In metaphysics, Geach is known for his defense of relative identity,
the thesis that an object a can be the same F where F is a kind-term as an object
b while not being the same G, even though a and b are both G’s. His spirited
defense of the thesis has been met by equally vigorous attacks, and it has not
received wide acceptance. An obvious application of the thesis is to the
defense of the doctrine of the Trinity e.g., the Father is the same god as the
Son but not the same person, which has caught the attention of some
philosophers of religion. Geach’s main works include Mental Acts 8, which
attacks dispositional theories of mind, Reference and Generality 2, which
contains much important work on logic, and the collection Logic Matters 2. A
notable defender of Catholicism despite his animadversions against Scholastic
logic, his religious views find their greatest exposure in God and the Soul 9,
Providence and Evil 7, and The Virtues 7. He is married to the philosopher
Elizabeth Anscombe.
Grice’s
genitorial programme – A type of ideal observer theory -- demiurge
from Grecian demiourgos, ‘artisan’, ‘craftsman’, a deity who shapes the
material world from the preexisting chaos. Plato introduces the demiurge in his
Timaeus. Because he is perfectly good, the demiurge wishes to communicate his
own goodness. Using the Forms as a model, he shapes the initial chaos into the
best possible image of these eternal and immutable archetypes. The visible
world is the result. Although the demiurge is the highest god and the best of
causes, he should not be identified with the God of theism. His ontological and
axiological status is lower than that of the Forms, especially the Form of the
Good. He is also limited. The material he employs is not created by him.
Furthermore, it is disorderly and indeterminate, and thus partially resists his
rational ordering. In gnosticism, the demiurge is the ignorant, weak, and evil
or else morally limited cause of the cosmos. In the modern era the term has
occasionally been used for a deity who is limited in power or knowledge. Its
first occurrence in this sense appears to be in J. S. Mill’s Theism 1874.
gentile:
g. idealist philosopher. He taught philosophy at Pisa. Gentile rejects Hegel’s
dialectics as the process of an objectified thought. Gentile’s actualism or
actual idealism claims that only the pure act of thinking or the transcendental
subject can undergo a dialectical process. All reality, such as nature, God,
good, and evil, is immanent in the dialectics of the transcendental subject,
which is distinct from the empirical subject. Among his major works are “La
teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro” and “Sistema di logica come
teoria del conoscere.” Gentile sees conversation is a concerted act that
overcomes the apparent difficulties of inter-subjectivity and realizes a unity within
two transcendental subjects. Actualism was pretty influential. With Croce’s historicism,
it influenced two Oxonian idealists discussed by H. P. Grice: Bernard Bosanquet
and R. G. Collingwood (vide: H. P. Grice, “Metaphysics,” in D. F. Pears, The
Nature of Metaphysics, London, Macmillan).
genus:
gender.
H. P. Grice calls Austin an artless sexist when referring to the trouser word.
We see how after Austin’s death, Grice more and more loses his reverential
attitude towards the ‘school master’ and shows Austin for what he is! Gender implicaturum
– Most languages have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter (or
epicene, or common). feminist epistemology, epistemology from a feminist
perspective. It investigates the relevance that the gender of the
inquirer/knower has to epistemic practices, including the theoretical practice
of epistemology. It is typified both by themes that are exclusively feminist in
that they could arise only from a critical attention to gender, and by themes
that are non-exclusively feminist in that they might arise from other
politicizing theoretical perspectives besides feminism. A central, exclusively
feminist theme is the relation between philosophical conceptions of reason and
cultural conceptions of masculinity. Here a historicist stance must be adopted,
so that philosophy is conceived as the product of historically and culturally
situated hence gendered authors. This stance brings certain patterns of
intellectual association into view
patterns, perhaps, of alignment between philosophical conceptions of
reason as contrasted with emotion or intuition, and cultural conceptions of
masculinity as contrasted with femininity. A central, non-exclusively feminist
theme might be called “social-ism” in epistemology. It has two main
tributaries: political philosophy, in the form of Marx’s historical
materialism; and philosophy of science, in the form of either Quinean
naturalism or Kuhnian historicism. The first has resulted in feminist
standpoint theory, which adapts and develops the Marxian idea that different
social groups have different epistemic standpoints, where the material positioning
of one of the groups is said to bestow an epistemic privilege. The second has
resulted in feminist work in philosophy of science which tries to show that not
only epistemic values but also non-epistemic e.g. gendered values are of
necessity sometimes an influence in the generation of scientific theories. If
this can be shown, then an important feminist project suggests itself: to work
out a rationale for regulating the influence of these values so that science
may be more self-transparent and more responsible. By attempting to reveal the
epistemological implications of the fact that knowers are diversely situated in
social relations of identity and power, feminist epistemology represents a
radicalizing innovation in the analytic tradition, which has typically assumed
an asocial conception of the epistemic subject, and of the philosopher. --
feminist philosophy, a discussion of philosophical concerns that refuses to
identify the human experience with the male experience. Writing from a variety
of perspectives, feminist philosophers challenge several areas of traditional
philosophy on the grounds that they fail 1 to take seriously women’s interests,
identities, and issues; and 2 to recognize women’s ways of being, thinking, and
doing as valuable as those of men. Feminist philosophers fault traditional
metaphysics for splitting the self from the other and the mind from the body;
for wondering whether “other minds” exist and whether personal identity depends
more on memories or on physical characteristics. Because feminist philosophers
reject all forms of ontological dualism, they stress the ways in which
individuals interpenetrate each other’s psyches through empathy, and the ways
in which the mind and body coconstitute each other. Because Western culture has
associated rationality with “masculinity” and emotionality with “femininity,”
traditional epistemologists have often concluded that women are less human than
men. For this reason, feminist philosophers argue that reason and emotion are
symbiotically related, coequal sources of knowledge. Feminist philosophers also
argue that Cartesian knowledge, for all its certainty and clarity, is very
limFechner’s law feminist philosophy 305
305 ited. People want to know more than that they exist; they want to
know what other people are thinking and feeling. Feminist philosophers also
observe that traditional philosophy of science is not as objective as it claims
to be. Whereas traditional philosophers of science often associate scientific
success with scientists’ ability to control, rule, and otherwise dominate
nature, feminist philosophers of science associate scientific success with
scientists’ ability to listen to nature’s self-revelations. Since it willingly
yields abstract theory to the testimony of concrete fact, a science that
listens to what nature says is probably more objective than one that does not.
Feminist philosophers also criticize traditional ethics and traditional social
and political philosophy. Rules and principles have dominated traditional ethics.
Whether agents seek to maximize utility for the aggregate or do their duty for
the sake of duty, they measure their conduct against a set of universal,
abstract, and impersonal norms. Feminist philosophers often call this
traditional view of ethics a “justice” perspective, contrasting it with a
“care” perspective that stresses responsibilities and relationships rather than
rights and rules, and that attends more to a moral situation’s particular
features than to its general implications. Feminist social and political
philosophy focus on the political institutions and social practices that
perpetuate women’s subordination. The goals of feminist social and political
philosophy are 1 to explain why women are suppressed, repressed, and/or
oppressed in ways that men are not; and 2 to suggest morally desirable and
politically feasible ways to give women the same justice, freedom, and equality
that men have. Liberal feminists believe that because women have the same
rights as men do, society must provide women with the same educational and
occupational opportunities that men have. Marxist feminists believe that women
cannot be men’s equals until women enter the work force en masse and domestic
work and child care are socialized. Radical feminists believe that the fundamental
causes of women’s oppression are sexual. It is women’s reproductive role and/or
their sexual role that causes their subordination. Unless women set their own
reproductive goals childlessness is a legitimate alternative to motherhood and
their own sexual agendas lesbianism, autoeroticism, and celibacy are
alternatives to heterosexuality, women will remain less than free.
Psychoanalytic feminists believe that women’s subordination is the result of
earlychildhood experiences that cause them to overdevelop their abilities to
relate to other people on the one hand and to underdevelop their abilities to
assert themselves as autonomous agents on the other. Women’s greatest strength,
a capacity for deep relationships, may also be their greatest weakness: a
tendency to be controlled by the needs and wants of others. Finally,
existentialist feminists claim that the ultimate cause of women’s subordination
is ontological. Women are the Other; men are the Self. Until women define
themselves in terms of themselves, they will continue to be defined in terms of
what they are not: men. Recently, socialist feminists have attempted to weave
these distinctive strands of feminist social and political thought into a
theoretical whole. They argue that women’s condition is overdetermined by the
structures of production, reproduction and sexuality, and the socialization of
children. Women’s status and function in all of these structures must change if
they are to achieve full liberation. Furthermore, women’s psyches must also be
transformed. Only then will women be liberated from the kind of patriarchal
thoughts that undermine their self-concept and make them always the Other.
Interestingly, the socialist feminist effort to establish a specifically
feminist standpoint that represents how women see the world has not gone
without challenge. Postmodern feminists regard this effort as an instantiation
of the kind of typically male thinking that tells only one story about reality,
truth, knowledge, ethics, and politics. For postmodern feminists, such a story
is neither feasible nor desirable. It is not feasible because women’s
experiences differ across class, racial, and cultural lines. It is not
desirable because the “One” and the “True” are philosophical myths that
traditional philosophy uses to silence the voices of the many. Feminist
philosophy must be many and not One because women are many and not One. The
more feminist thoughts, the better. By refusing to center, congeal, and cement
separate thoughts into a unified and inflexible truth, feminist philosophers
can avoid the pitfalls of traditional philosophy. As attractive as the
postmodern feminist approach to philosophy may be, some feminist philosophers
worry that an overemphasis on difference and a rejection of unity may lead to
intellectual as well as political disintegration. If feminist philosophy is to
be without any standpoint whatsoever, it becomes difficult to ground claims
about what is good for women in particufeminist philosophy feminist philosophy
306 306 lar and for human beings in
general. It is a major challenge to contemporary feminist philosophy,
therefore, to reconcile the pressures for diversity and difference with those
for integration and commonality.
genus
generalissimum: “I love a superlative: good, gooder and
goodest, my favourites!” a genus that is not a species of some higher genus; a
broadest natural kind. One of the ten Aristotelian categories, it is also
called summum genus. For Aristotle
and many of his followers, the ten categories (twelve in Kant, four in Grice) are
*not* species of some higher all-inclusive genus say, being. Otherwise, that alleged
over-arching all-inclusive genus would wholly include the differences, say,
between conversational quality, conversational quantity, conversational
relation, and conversational mode, and would be universally predicable of
conversational quality, conversational quantity, conversational relation, and
conversational mode. But no genus is predicable of its differences in this
manner. Few authors explained this reasoning clearly, but Grice did: “If I
appeal to four conversational categories, I know what I am doing. The principle
of conversational benevolence cannot float in the air: it needs four categories
– informativeness, trustworthiness, connectedness and perspicuity – to make it
applicable to our conversational realities. Grice points out that if the
difference ‘rational’ just meant ‘rational animal’, to define ‘man’ as
‘rational animal’ would be to define him as ‘rational animal animal’, which
would infringe the conversational maxims ‘be brief,’ and ‘do not be repetitive’
– “On toop, man is a rational animal animal is ill formed.” So too generally:
no genus can include its differences in this way. Thus there is no
all-inclusive genus. Grice’s four conversational categories are the most
general conversational genera.
charlier:
a. k. a. gerson, j. de, philosopher. He studied in Paris, and succeeded the
nominalist Pierre d’Ailly as chancellor of the varsity. Both d’Ailly and Gerson
played a prominent part in the work of the Council of Constance. Much of
Charlier’s influence on later thinkers arose from his conciliarism, the view
that the church is a political society and that a general council, acting on
behalf of the church, has the power to depose a pope who fails to promote the
church’s welfare, for it seemed that similar arguments could apply to other
forms of political society. Gerson’s conciliarism was not constitutionalism in
the modern sense, for he appealed to corporate and hierarchical ideas of church
government, and did not rest his case on any principle of individual rights.
His main writings dealt with mystical theology, which, he thought, brings the
believer closer to the beatific vision of God than do other forms of theology.
He was influenced by St. Bonaventure and Albertus Magnus, but especially by
Pseudo-Dionysius, whom he saw as a disciple of St. Paul and not as a Platonist.
He was thus able to adopt an anti-Platonic position in his attacks on the
mystic Ruysbroeck and on contemporary followers of Duns Scotus, such as Jean de
Ripa. In dismissing Scotist realism, he made use of nominalist positions,
particularly those that emphasized divine freedom. He warned theologians
against being misled by pride into supposing that natural reason alone could
solve metaphysical problems; and he emphasized the importance of a priest’s
pastoral duties. Despite his early prominence, he spent the last years of his
life in relative obscurity.
gersonides:
a leading Aristotelian. His oeuvre includes supercommentaries on commentaries
on Aristotle, On the Correct Syllogism, a treatise on the modal syllogism; and
a major Scholastic treatise, The Wars of the Lord. In addition, his biblical
commentaries rank among the best examples of philosophical scriptural exegesis;
especially noteworthy is his interpretation of the Song of Songs as an allegory
describing the ascent of the human intellect to the agent intellect.
Gersonides’ mentors in the Aristotelian tradition were Maimonides and Averroes.
However, more than either of them, Gersonides held philosophical truth and
revealed truth to be coextensive: he acknowledged neither the conflict that
Averroes saw between reason and revelation nor Maimonides’ critical view of the
limitations of the human intellect. Furthermore, while remaining within the
Aristotelian framework, Gersonides was not uncritical of it; his independence
can be illustrated by two of his most distinctive positions. First, against
Maimonides, Gersonides claimed that it is possible to demonstrate both the
falsity of the Aristotelian theory of the eternity of the world Averroes’
position and the absurdity of creation ex nihilo, the traditional rabbinic view
that Maimonides adopted, though for nondemonstrative reasons. Instead
Gersonides advocated the Platonic theory of temporal creation from primordial
matter. Second, unlike Maimonides and Averroes, who both held that the alleged
contradiction between divine foreknowledge of future contingent particulars and
human freedom is spurious, Gersonides took the dilemma to be real. In defense
of human freedom, he then argued that it is logically impossible even for God
to have knowledge of particulars as particulars, since his knowledge is only of
general laws. At the same time, by redefining ‘omniscience’ as knowing
everything that is knowable, he showed that this impossibility is no deficiency
in God’s knowledge. Although Gersonides’ biblical commentaries received wide
immediate acceptance, subsequent medieval Jewish philosophers, e.g., Hasdai
Crescas, by and large reacted negatively to his rigorously rationalistic
positions. Especially with the decline of Aristotelianism within the
philosophical world, both Jewish and Christian, he was either criticized
sharply or simply ignored.
get across – A more colloquial way for what Grice later will have as
‘soul-to-soul-transfer,’ used by Grice in Causal: Surely the truth or falsity
of Strawson having a beautiful handwriting has no bearing on the truth or
falsity of his being hopeless at philosophy (“provided that is what I intended
to get across,” implicating, ‘who cares,’ or ‘whatever’). His cavalier attitude
shows that Grice is never really concerned with the individuation of the
logical form of the implicaturum, just to note that whatever some philosopher
thought was part of the sense it ain’t! This is the Austinian in Grice. Austin
suggested that Grice analysed or consult with Holdcroft for all ‘forms of
indirect communication.’ Grice lists: mean, indicate, suggest, imply,
insinuate, hint – ‘get across’.
geulincx:
a. philosopher. Born in Antwerp, he was educated at Louvain and there became
professor of philosophy and dean. He was forced out of Louvain, perhaps for his
Jansenist or Cartesian tendencies, and in 1658 he moved to Leyden and became a
Protestant. Though he taught there until his death, he never attained a regular
professorship at the varsity. His main philosophical work is his “Ethica; or, De
virtute et primis ejus proprietatibus.” Other oeuvre includes “Questiones
quodlibeticae”; later editions published as “Saturnalia,” a “Logica” 1661, and
a “Methodus inveniendi argumenta,”.”Physica vera,” “Physica peripatetica,”
“Metaphysica vera,” “Metaphysica ad mentem peripateticam,” posthumous
commentaries on Descartes’s Principia Philosophiae. Geulincx was deeply influenced
by Descartes, and had many ideas that closely resemble those of the later
Cartesians as well as those of more independent thinkers like Spinoza and
Leibniz. Though his grounds were original, like many later Cartesians, Geulincx
upholds a version of occasionalism; he argued that someone or something can
only do what it knows how to do (in terms of strict physiological laws). From
this Geulincx infers (“fallaciously,” according to Grice) from that that he
(sc. Geulincx) cannot be the genuine cause of his own bodily movement. In
discussing the mind-body relation, Geulincx used a clock analogy similar to one
Leibniz used in connection with his preestablished harmony. Geulincx also held
a view of mental and material substance reminiscent of that of Spinoza.
Finally, he proposed a system of ethics grounded in the idea of a virtuous
will. As Grice notes: “Despite the evident similarities between Geulincx’s
views and the views of his more renowned contemporaries, it is very difficult
to determine exactly what influence Geulincx may have had on them, and they may
have had on him – but then who gives?”
colonna
–
e. giles di roma, ome, original name, a member of the order of the Hermits of
St. Augustine, he studied arts at Augustinian house and theology at the varsity
in Paris 1260 72 but was censured by the theology faculty 1277 and denied a
license to teach as tutor. Owing to the intervention of Pope Honorius IV, he
later returned from Italy to Paris to teach theology, was appointed general of
his order, and became archbishop of Bourges. Colonna both defends and
criticizes views of Aquinas. He held that essence and existence are really
distinct in creatures, but described them as “things”; that prime matter cannot
exist without some substantial form; and, early in his career, that an
eternally created world is possible. He defended only one substantial form in
composites, including man. Grice adds: “Colonna supported Pope Boniface VIII in
his quarrel with Philip IV of France – and that was a bad choice.”
gilson: É.,
philosopher, historian, cofounder of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval
Studies, and a major figure in Neo-Thomism. Gilson discovered medieval
philosophy through his pioneering work on Descartes’s scholastic background.
Gilson argues that early modern philosophy was incomprehensible without
medieval thought, and that medieval philosophy itself did not represent the
unified theory of reality that some Thomists had supposed. His studies of Duns
Scotus, Augustine, Bernard, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Dante, and Abelard and
Héloïse explore this diversity. But in his Gifford lectures 132, The Spirit of
Medieval Philosophy, Gilson attempts a broad synthesis of medieval teaching on
philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology, and employed it in his
critique of modern philosophy, The Unity of Philosophical Experience 7. Most of
all, Gilson attempted to reestablish Aquinas’s distinction between essence and
existence in created being, as in Being and Some Philosophers 9.
gioberti,
v. philosopher, He was imprisoned and exiled for advocating unification, and became a central political
figure during the Risorgimento. His major political oeuvre, “Del primato morale
e civile degli italiani,” argues for a federation of the states. Gioberti’s philosophical theory, ontologism,
in contrast to Hegel’s idealism, identifies the dialectics of Being with God’s
creation. Gioberti condensed his theory in the formula: “Being creates the
existent.” “L’essere crea l’essistente.” The dialectics of Being, which is the
only necessary substance, is a “palingenesis,” or a return to its origin, in
which the existent first departs from and imitates its creator (“mimesis”) and
then returns to its creator (“methexis”). By intuition, the human mind comes in
contact with God and discovers truth by retracing the dialectics of Being.
However, knowledge of supernatural truths is given only by God’s revelation.
His oeuvre also includes “Teorica del soprannaturale” and “Introduzione allo
studio della filosofia.” Gioberti criticized modern philosophers such as
Descartes for their psychologism seeking
truth from the human subject instead of from Being itself and its revelation.
His thought is very influential in Italy.
datum: in epistemology,
the “brute fact” element to be found or postulated as a component of perceptual
experience. Some theorists who endorse the existence of a given element in
experience think that we can find this element by careful introspection of what
we experience Moore, H. H. Price. Such theorists generally distinguish between those
components of ordinary perceptual awareness that constitute what we believe or
know about the objects we perceive and those components that we strictly
perceive. For example, if we analyze introspectively what we are aware of when
we see an apple we find that what we believe of the apple is that it is a
three-dimensional object with a soft, white interior; what we see of it,
strictly speaking, is just a red-shaped expanse of one of its facing sides.
This latter is what is “given” in the intended sense. Other theorists treat the
given as postulated rather than introspectively found. For example, some
theorists treat cognition as an activity imposing form on some material given
in conscious experience. On this view, often attributed to Kant, the given and
the conceptual are interdefined and logically inseparable. Sometimes this
interdependence is seen as rendering a description of the given as impossible;
in this case the given is said to be ineffable C. I. Lewis, Mind and the World
Order. On some theories of knowledge foundationalism the first variant of the
given that which is “found” rather than
“postulated” provides the empirical
foundations of what we might know or justifiably believe. Thus, if I believe on
good evidence that there is a red apple in front of me, the evidence is the
non-cognitive part of my perceptual awareness of the red appleshaped expanse.
Epistemologies postulating the first kind of givenness thus require a single
entity-type to explain the sensorial nature of perception and to provide
immediate epistemic foundations for empirical knowledge. This requirement is
now widely regarded as impossible to satisfy; hence Wilfred Sellars describes
the discredited view as the myth of the given.
glanvill: English
philosopher who defended the Royal Society against scholasticism. Glanvill believes
that certainty is possible in the mathematical but not in the empirical realm.
In “The Vanity of Dogmatizing,” he claimed that the human corruption that
resulted from Adam’s fall precludes dogmatic knowledge of nature. Using
traditional sceptical arguments as well as an analysis of causality that
anticipate Hume, Glanvill argues that empirical belief is the probabilistic
variety acquired by piece-meal investigation. Despite his scepticism he argues
for the existence of witches in Witches and Witchcraft (“Probably he was
married to one,” Grice comments).
gnosticism:
a
philosophical movement, especially important under the leadership of Valentinus
and Basilides. They teach that matter was evil, the result of a cosmic
disruption in which an evil archon often associated with the god of the Old
Testament, Yahweh rebelled against the heavenly pleroma the complete spiritual
world. In the process divine sparks were unleashed from the pleroma and lodged
in material human bodies. Jesus was a high-ranking archon Logos sent to restore
those souls with divine sparks to the pleroma by imparting esoteric knowledge
gnosis to them. Gnosticism influenced and threatened the orthodox church from
within and without. NonChristian gnostic sects rivaled Christianity, and
Christian gnostics threatened orthodoxy by emphasizing salvation by knowledge
rather than by faith. Theologians like Clement of Alexandria and his pupil
Origen held that there were two roads to salvation, the way of faith for the
masses and the way of esoteric or mystical knowledge for the philosophers.
Gnosticism profoundly influenced the C. of E., causing it to define its
scriptural canon and to develop a set of creeds and an episcopal organization
(“My mother, Mabel Fenton Grice, was a bit of a gnostic, if I must say” –
Grice).
göckel:
goclenius r., philosopher, after holding some minor posts elsewhere, he becomes
professor at Marburg. “Though he was well read and knowledgeable of later
trends in these disciplines,” Grice ntoes, “you could clearly see his basic
sympathies areAristotelian.” Goclenius was very well regarded by his contemporaries,
who called him “Plato marburgensis,” the Christian Aristotle, and “TheLight of
Europe,” among other things. Göckel published an unusually large number of
essays, including “Psychologia, hoc est de hominis perfection,” “Conciliator
philosophicus,” “Controversiae logicae et philosophicae,” and numerous other
works on logic, rhetoric, physics, metaphysics, and the Latin language. But his
most lasting work is his “Lexicon Philosophicum” – “very practical,” Grice
notes, “since the entries are alphabetically ordered.” -- together with its
companion, the “Lexicon Philosophicum Graecum” – “I gave a copy to Urmson,”
Grice recalls, “and the next day he was writing the “Greek Philosopical
Lexicon.” Göckel’s “Lexicon philosophicum” provides pretty obscure definitions
of the philosophical terminology of late Scholastic philosophy, and “they are
deemed so obscure that he is banned from quotation at some varsities.” – Grice.
gödel:
cited by Grice. His incompleteness theorems, two theorems formulated and proved
by the Austrian logician Kurt Gödel 678 in his famous 1 paper “Über formal
unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und vervandter Systeme I,”
probably the most celebrated results in the whole of logic. They are aptly
referred to as “incompleteness” theorems since each shows, for any member of a
certain class of formal systems, that there is a sentence formulable in its
language that it cannot prove, but that it would be desirable for it to prove.
In the case of the first theorem G1, what cannot be proved is a true sentence
of the language of the given theory. G1 is thus a disappointment to any theory
constructor who wants his theory to tell the whole truth about its subject. In
the case of the second theorem G2, what cannot be proved is a sentence of the
theory that “expresses” its consistency. G2 is thus a disappointment to those
who desire a straightforward execution of Hilbert’s Program. The proofs of the
incompleteness theorems can be seen as based on three main ideas. The first is
that of a Gödel numbering, i.e., an assignment of natural numbers to each of
the various objects i.e., the terms, formulas, axioms, proofs, etc. belonging
to the various syntactical categories of the given formal system T referred to
here as the “represented theory” whose metamathematics is under consideration.
The second is that of a representational scheme. This includes i the use of the
Gödel numbering to develop number-theoretic codifications of various of the
metamathematical properties pertaining to the represented theory, and ii the
selection of a theory S hereafter, the “representing theory” and a family of
formulas from that theory the “representing formulas” in terms of which to
register as theorems various of the facts concerning the metamathematical
properties of the represented theory thus encoded. The basic result of this
representational scheme is the weak representation of the set of Gödel numbers
of theorems of T, where a set L of numbers is said to be weakly represented in
S by a formula ‘Lx’ of S just in case for every number n, n1 L if and only if
‘L[n]’ is a theorem of S, where ‘[n]’ is the standard term of S that, under the
intended interpretation of S, designates the number n. Since the set of Gödel
numbers of theorems of the represented theory T will typically be recursively
enumerable, and the representing theory S must be capable of weakly
representing this set, the basic strength requirement on S is that it be
capable of weakly representing the recursively enumerable sets of natural
numbers. Because basic systems of arithmetic e.g. Robinson’s arithmetic and
Peano arithmetic all have this capacity, Gödel’s theorems are often stated
using containment of a fragment of arithmetic as the basic strength requirement
governing the capacities of the representing theory which, of course, is also
often the represented theory. More on this point below. The third main idea
behind the incompleteness theorems is that of a diagonal or fixed point
construction within S for the notion of unprovability-in-T; i.e., the
formulation of a sentence Gödel of S which, under the given Gödel numbering of
T, the given representation of T’s metamathematical notions in S, and the
intended interpretation of the language of S, says of itself that it is not
provable-in-T. Gödel is thus false if provable and unprovable if true. More
specifically, if ‘ProvTx’ is a formula of S that weakly represents the set of
Gödel numbers of theorems of T in S, then Gödel can be any formula of S that is
provably equivalent in S to the formula ‘- ProvT [Gödel]’. Given this
background, G1 can be stated as follows: If a the representing theory S is any
subtheory of the represented theory T up to and God Gödel’s incompleteness
theorems 347 347 including the
represented theory itself, b the representing theory S is consistent, c the
formula ‘ProvT x’ weakly represents the set of Gödel numbers of theorems of the
represented theory T in the representing theory S, and d Gödel is any sentence
provably equivalent in the representing theory S to ‘ProvT [Gödel]’, then
neither Gödel nor -Gödel is a theorem of the representing theory S. The proof
proceeds in two parts. In the first part it is shown that, for any representing
theory S up to and including the case where S % T , if S is consistent, then
-Gödel is not a theorem of S. To obtain this in its strongest form, we pick the
strongest subtheory S of T possible, namely S % T, and construct a reductio.
Thus, suppose that 1 -Gödel is a theorem of T. From 1 and d it follows that 2
‘ProvT[Gödel]’ is a theorem of T. And from 2 and c in the “if” direction it
follows that 3 Gödel is a theorem of T. But 1 and 3 together imply that the
representing theory T is inconsistent. Hence, if T is consistent, -Gödel cannot
be a theorem of T. In the second part of the proof it is argued that if the
representing theory S is consistent, then Gödel is not a theorem of it. Again,
to obtain the strongest result, we let S be the strongest subtheory of T
possible namely T itself and, as before, argue by reductio. Thus we suppose
that A Gödel is a theorem of S % T . From this assumption and condition d it
follows that B ‘-Provr [Gödel]’ is a theorem of S % T . By A and c in the “only
if” direction it follows that C ‘ProvT [Gödel]’ is a theorem of S % T . But
from B and C it follows that S % T is
inconsistent. Hence, Gödel is not provable in any consistent representing
theory S up to and including T itself. The above statement of G1 is, of course,
not the usual one. The usual statement suppresses the distinction stressed
above between the representing and represented theories and collaterally
replaces our condition c with a clause to the effect that T is a recursively
axiomatizable extension of some suitably weak system of arithmetic e.g.
Robinson’s arithmetic, primitive recursive arithmetic, or Peano arithmetic.
This puts into a single clause what, metamathematically speaking, are two
separate conditions one pertaining to the
representing theory, the other to the represented theory. The requirement that
T be an extension of the selected weak arithmetic addresses the question of T’s
adequacy as a representing theory, since the crucial fact about extensions of
the weak arithmetic chosen is that they are capable of weakly representing all
recursively enumerable sets. This constraint on T’s capabilities as a
representing theory is in partnership with the usual requirement that, in its
capacity as a represented theory, T be recursively axiomatizable. For T’s
recursive axiomatizability ensures under ordinary choices of logic for T that its set of theorems will be recursively
enumerable and hence weakly representable
in the kind of representing theory that it itself by virtue of its being an
extension of the weak arithmetic specified is. G1 can, however, be extended to
certain theories whose sets of Gödel numbers of theorems are not recursively
enumerable. When this is done, the basic capacity required of the representing
theory is no longer merely that the recursively enumerable sets of natural
numbers be representable in it, but that it also be capable of representing
various non-recursively enumerable sets, and hence that it go beyond the weak
arithmetics mentioned earlier. G2 is a more demanding result that G1 in that it
puts significantly stronger demands on the formula ‘ProvT x’ used to express
the notion of provability for the represented theory T. In proving G1 all that
is required of ‘ProvT x’ is that it weakly represent θ % the set of Gödel
numbers of theorems of T; i.e., that it yield an extensionally accurate
registry of the theorems of the represented theory in the representing theory.
G2 places additional conditions on ‘ProvT x’; conditions which result from the
fact that, to prove G2, we must codify the second part of the proof of G1 in T
itself. To do this, ‘ProvT x’ must be a provability predicate for T. That is,
it must satisfy the following constraints, commonly referred to as the
Derivability Conditions for ‘ProvT x’: I If A is a theorem of the represented
theory, then ‘ProvT [A]’ must be a theorem of the representing theory. II Every
instance of the formula ‘ProvT [A P B] P ProvT [A] P ProvT [B]’ must be a
theorem of T. III Every instance of the formula ‘ProvT [A] P ProvT [ProvT [A]]’
must be a theorem of T. I, of course, is just part of the requirement that
‘ProvT [A]’ weakly represent T’s theoremset in T. So it does not go beyond what
is required for the proof of G1. II and III, however, do. They make it possible
to “formalize” the second part of the proof of G1 in T itself. II captures, in
terms of ‘ProvT X’, the modus ponens inference by which B is derived from A,
and III codiGödel’s incompleteness theorems Gödel’s incompleteness theorems
348 348 fies in T the appeal to c used
in deriving C from A. The result of this “formalization” process is a proof
within T of the formula ‘ConT P Gödel’ where ConT is a formula of the form ‘-
ProvT [#]’, with ‘ProvT x’ a provability predicate for T and ‘[#]’ the standard
numeral denoting the Gödel number # of some formula refutable in T . From this,
and the proof of the second part of G1 itself in which the first Derivability
Condition, which is just the “only if” direction of c, figures prominently, we
arrive at the following result, which is a generalized form of G2: If S is any
consistent representing theory up to and including the represented theory T
itself, ‘ProvT x’ any provability predicate for T, and ConT any formula of T of
the form ‘- ProvT [#]’, then ConT is not a theorem of S. To the extent that, in
being a provability predicate for T, ‘ProvT x’ “expresses” the notion of
provability of the represented theory T, it seems fair to say that ConT
expresses its consistency. And to the extent that this is true, it is sensible
to read G2 as saying that for any representing theory S and any represented
theory T extending S, if S is consistent, then the consistency of T is not
provable in S.
fontaines:
g. philosopher. He taught at Paris. Among his major writings are fifteen
Quodlibetal Questions and other disputations. He was strongly Aristotelian in
philosophy, with Neoplatonic influences in metaphysics. Fontaines defends the
identity of essence and existence in creatures against theories of their real
or intentional distinction, and argues for the possibility of demonstrating
God’s existence and of some quidditative knowledge of God. He admits divine
ideas for species but not for individuals within species. He makes wide
applications (“and misapplications,” Grice adds) of Aristotelian act-potency
theory e.g., to the distinction between
the soul and its powers (this is discussed by Grice in “The power structure of
the soul”), to the explanation of intellection and volition, to the general
theory of substance and accident, and in unusual fashion to essence-existence
“composition” of creatures.
godwin:
w. English philosopher. “An Enquiry concerning Political Justice” arises heated
debate. Godwin argues for radical forms of determinism, anarchism, and
utilitarianism. Godwin thought that government corrupts everyone by encouraging
stereotyped thinking that prevents us from seeing each other as unique
individuals. His “Caleb Williams” portrays a good man corrupted by prejudice.
Once we remove prejudice and artificial inequality we will see that our acts
are wholly determined. This obviously makes punishment pointless. Only in a small
anarchic society – such as the one he observed outside Oxford -- can people see
others as they really are and thus come to feel a ‘sympathetic concern’ for his
well-being. (In this he influenced Edward Carpenter of “England Arise” infame).
Only so can we be virtuous, because being virtuous is acting from a ‘sympathetic’
(cf. Grice’s principle of conversational sympathy) feeling to bring the
greatest happiness to the dyad affected. Godwin takes this principle (relabeled
“the principle of conversational sympathy” by Grice) quite literally, and
accepts all its consequences. Truthfulness has no claim on us other than the
happiness it brings. If keeping a promise causes less good than breaking it,
there is no reason (or duty) at all to keep it. If one must choose between
saving the life either of a major human benefactor or of one’s distant uncle,
one must choose the benefactor. We surely need no ‘rules’ in morals. An alleged
‘moral’ “rule” would prevent us from seeing others properly, thereby impairing
the sympathetic feeling that constitutes virtue. Rights, too, are pointless. Sympathetic
people will act to help (or cooperate with) others. Later utilitarians like
Bentham had difficulty in separating their positions from Godwin’s notorious
views. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Godwin and
the ethics of conversation.’
Kennst
du das Land, wo die Zitronen bluhn?: j. w. v. Goethe, a ballad from Mignon that
Goethe uses in Book II of his novel, The apprentice. Grice was amused by
Searle’s example – “even if it misses its point!” An British soldier in the
Second World War is captured by Italian troops. The British soldier wishes to
get the Italian troops to believe that he is a *German* officer, in order to
get them to release him. What he would like to do is to tell them, in German,
or Italian, that he is a German officer (“Sono tedesco,” “Ich bin Deutsche”) but
he does not know enough German, or Italian, to do such a simple thing as that.
So he, as it were, attempts to put on a show of telling them that he is a
German officer by reciting the only line of German that he knows, a line he
learned at Clifton, to wit: ‘Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen bluhen?”. The
British soldier intends to produce a certain response in his Italian captors,
viz. that they should believe him to be a German officer. He intends to produce
this response by means of the Italian troops’s recognition of his intention to
produce it. Nevertheless, it would seem false that when the British soldier
utters, "Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen bluhen?” what he means or
communicates is that he is a German
officer. Searle thinks he can support a claim that something is missing from
Grice’s account of meaning. This would (Grice think Searle thinks) be improved
if it were supplemented as follows (Grice’s conjecture): "U meant that p
by x" means " U intended to produce in A a certain effect by means of
the recognition of U's intention to produce that effect, and (if the utterance
of x is the utterance of a sentence) U intends A's recognition of U's intention
(to produce the effect) to be achieved by means of the recognition that the
sentence uttered is conventionally used to produce such an effect." Now
even if Grice should be faced with a genuine counterexample, he should be very
reluctant to take the way out which Grice suspects is being offered him. Grice
finds it difficult to tell whether this is what was being offered, since Searle
is primarily concerned with the characterization of something different, not
with a general discussion of the nature of meaning or communication. On top he
is seems mainly concerned to adapt Grice’s account of meaning to a dissimilar purpose,
and hardly, as Schiffer at least tried, to amend Grice’s analysis so as to be
better suited to its avowed end. Of course Grice would not want to deny that
when the vehicle of meaning is a sentence (or the utterance of a sentence, as
in “Mary had a little lamb” – uttered by a German officer in France to have the
French believe that he is an English officer) the utterer’s intentions are to
be recognized, in the normal case, by virtue of a knowledge of the conventional
use of the sentence (indeed Grice’s account of “conversational” or in general "non-conventional
implicaturum" depends, in some cases, on something like this idea). But
Grice treats meaning something by the utterance of a sentence as being only a
SPECIAL case of meaning or communicating that p by an utterance (in Grice’s
extended use of ‘utterance’ to include gestures and stuff), and to treat a
‘conventional’ co-relation between a sentence and a specific response as
providing only one of the ways (or modes) in which an utterance may be
correlated with a response. Is Searle’s “Kennst du das land, wo die Zitronen
bluhen?” however, a genuine counterexample? It seems to Grice that the
imaginary situation is under-described, and that there are perhaps three different
cases to be considered. First, the situation might be such that the only real
chance that the Italian soldiers would, on hearing the British soldier recite
the line from Goethe suppose him to be a German officer, would be if the Italians
were to, as they should not, argue as follows: "The British soldier has
just recited the first line from Goethe’s “Faust,” in a surprisingly
authoritative tone); He thinks we are silly enough to think he is, with the
British uniform and all, a German soldier.” If the situation was such that the
Italian soldier were likely to argue like that, and the British soldier knew
that to be so, it would be difficult to avoid attributing to him the intention,
when he recited the line from “Fuast”, that they should argue like that. One
cannot in general intend that some result should be achieved, if one knows that
there is no likelihood that it will be achieved. But if the British soldier’s
intention is as just described, he certainly would not, by Grice’s account, be
meaning that he is a German soldier.
For though he would intend the Italian soldier to believe him to be a German
soldier, he would not be intending the Italian soldier to believe this on the
basis of the Italian soldier’s recognition of his intention. And it seems to
Grice that though this is not how Searle wishes the example to be taken, it
would be much the most likely situation to have obtained. Second, Grice thinks
that Searle wants us to suppose that the British soldier hopes that the Italian
soldier will each a belief that the English soldier is a German soldier via a
belief that the line from Goethe which he uttered means other than what it
does, for why would they NOT know the land where the lemon trees bloom? They
are in it! It s not easy to see how to build up the context of utterance so as
to give the English soldier any basis for his hope that the Italian soldier
thinks that the English soldier thinks that the Italian soldier knows where the
lemon trees bloom – his native land! Now it becomes doubtful whether, after
all, it is right to say that the English solidier did not mean (unsuccessfully
communicate) that he is a German
soldier. Communication is not factive. That Geothe’s line translates as "Knowest
thou the land where the lemon trees bloom" is totally irrelevant. If the
English soldier could be said to have meant or communicated that he was a German soldier, he would
have meant that by saying the line, or by saying the line in a particularly
authoritative way. It makes a difference whether U merely intends A to think
that a particular sentence has a certain meaning which it does not in fact
have, or whether he also intends him to think of himself as supposed to make
use of his (mistaken) thought that, metabolically, the expression has this ‘meaning’
in reaching a belief about U's intentions. If A is intended to think that U
expects A to understand the sentence spoken and is intended to attribute to it,
metabolically, a ‘meaning’ which U knows it does not have, he utterer should
not be described as meaning, by his utterance, that p. Grice does not see the
force of this contention, nor indeed does he find it easy or conceptually clear
to apply the distinction which it attempts to make. The general point seems to
be as follows. Characteristically, an utterer intends his recipient to
recognize (and to think himself intended to recognize) some "crucial"
feature F, and to think of F (and to think himself intended to think of F) as
co-related in a certain way or mode with some response which the utterer
intends the audience to produce. It does not matter so far as the attribution
of the utterer’s meaning is concerned, whether F is thought by U to be *really*
co-related in that way or mode with the response or not; though of course in
the normal case U will think F to be so co-related. Suppose, however, we fill in
the detail of the English soldier case, so as to suppose he accompanies
"Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen bluhen" with gesticulations,
chest-thumping, and so forth; he might then hope to succeed in conveying to the
Italian soldier that he intends them to understand what the line ‘means’, to
learn from the particular German sentence that the English soldier intends them
to think that he is a German officer (whereas really of course the English
soldier does not expect them to learn that way, but only by assuming, on the
basis of the situation and the character of the English soldier’s performance,
that he must be trying to communicate to them, against all reasonable hopes, that he is a German officer. Perhaps in
that case, we should be disinclined to say that the English soldier means or
communicates that he is a German
officer, and ready to say only that the English soldier means, naturally and
metabolically, as it were, the Italian solider to think that he was a
German officer. Grice goes on to suggest a revised set of conditions for "
U meant something by x" (Redefinition III, Version A): Ranges of
variables: A: audiences f: features of utterance r: responses c: modes of
correlation (for example, iconic, associative, conventional) I63 H. P. GRICE
(HA) (if) (3r) (ic): U uttered x intending (i) A to think x possessesf (2) A to
think U intends (i) (3) A to think off as correlated in way c with the type to
which r belongs (4) A to think U intends (3) (5) A to think on the basis of the
fulfillment of (i) and (3) that U intends A to produce r (6) A, on the basis of
fulfillment of (5), to produce r (7) A to think U intends (6). In the case of
the "little girl" there is a single feature f (that of being an
utterance of a particular French sentence) with respect to which A has all the
first four intentions. (The only thing wrong is that this feature is not in
fact correlated conventionally with the intended responses, and this does not
disqualify the utterance from being one by which U means something.) In the
English soldier case there is no such single feature. The Italian soldier is intended
(i) to recognize, and go by, feature f1 (x's being a bit of German and being
uttered with certain gesticulations, and so. forth) but (2) to think that he is
intended to recognize x as havingf2 (as being a particular German sentence). So
intention (2) on our revised list is absent. And so we do not need the
condition previously added to eliminate this example. I think, however, that
condition (7) (the old condition [i]) is still needed, unless it can be
replaced by a general "anti-deception" clause. It may be that such
replacement is possible; it may be that the "backward-looking"
subclauses (2), (4), and (7) can be omitted, and replaced by the prohibitive clause
which figures in Redefinition II, Version B. We have then to consider the
merits of Redefinition III, Version B, the definiens of which will run as
follows: (3A) (if) (3r) (ic): (a) U uttered x intending (I) A to think x
possessesf (2) A to thinkf correlated in way c with the type to which r belongs
(3) A to think, on the basis of the fulfillment of (I) and (3) that U intends A
to produce r (4) A, on the basis of the fulfillment of (3) to produce r, and
(b) there is no inference-element E such that U intends both (I') A in his
determination of r to rely on E (2') A to think Uto intend (I') to be false. Grice
would actually often play and sing the ballad. G. writer often considered the
leading cultural figure of his age. He wrote lyric poetry, dramas, and
fictional, essayistic, and aphoristic prose as well as works in various natural
sciences, including anatomy, botany, and optics. A lawyer by training, for most
of his life Goethe was a government official at the provincial court of
Saxony-Weimar. In his numerous contributions to world literature, such as the
novels The Sorrows of Young Werther, Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Apprenticeship,
Elective Affinities, and Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Pilgrimage, and the two-part
tragedy Faust, Goethe represented the tensions between individual and society
as well as between culture and nature, with increased recognition of their
tragic opposition and the need to cultivate a resigned self-discipline in
artistic and social matters. In his poetic and scientific treatment of nature
he was influenced by Spinoza’s pantheist identification of nature and God and
maintained that everything in nature is animate and expressive of divine
presence. In his theory and practice of science he opposed the quantitative and
experimental method and insisted on a description of the phenomena that was to
include the intuitive grasp of the archetypal forms or shapes underlying all
development in nature.
Tipperary: music-hall cited
by Grice. Grice liked the song and would often accompany himself at the piano
(“in Eb always”). He especially loved to recite the three verses (“Up to
mighty London came an Irishman one day,”
“Paddy wrote a letter to his Irish Molly-O,” and “Molly wrote a neat reply to
Irish Paddy-O”). Grice devises a possible counter-example to his account of
‘communication,’ or strictly the conditions that have to be met for the state
of affairs “Emisor E communicates that p” to hold. In Grice’s scenario, a
reminiscence shared by his father, at a musical soirée in 1912,
at Harborne, Grice’s grandfather sings "Tipperary” “in a
raucous voice” (those are Grice’s father’s words) with the intention of getting
his mother-in-law (whom he knew was never too keen on the music-hall) to leave
the drawing-room. Grice’s grandfather’s mother-in-law is supposed to recognise
(and to know that she is intended to recognise) that Grice’s grandfather wants
to get rid of his mother in law – “to put it bluntly,” as Grice’s father has
it. Grice’s grandfather, moreover, intends that his mother-in-law shall, in the
event, leave because she recognizes Grice’s grandfather’s intention that
she shall go. Grice’s grandfather’s
scheme is that his mother-in-law should, somewhat wrongly, think that Grice’s
grandfather intends his mother-in-law to think that he intends to get rid of
her by means of the recognition of his intention that she should go. In other
words, the mother-in-law is supposed to argue: "My son-in-law intends me
to *think* that he intends to get rid of me by the raucous singing of that
awful ditty complete with the three verses – starting with “Up to mighty London
came an Irishman one day” -- but of course he, rude as he is, really wants to
get rid of me by means of the recognition of his intention to get rid of me. I
am really intended to go because he wants me to go, not because I cannot stand
the singing – I suppose. I mean, I could possibly stand it, if tied up, or
something." The fact that the mother in law, while thinking she is seeing
through his son-in-law’s plans, is really *conforming* to them (a situation
that would not hold if she is known by her son-in-law to be
‘counter-suggestible’), is suggested as precluding Grice from deeming, here,
that his grandfather means by the singing in a raucuous voice the opening line
to “Tipperary” in a raucuous voice (“Up to mighty London came an Irishman one
day”) that his mother-in-law should go. However, it is clear to Grice that,
once one tries to fill in the detail of this description, the example becomes
baffling – “even if I myself designed it.” “For, how is my grandfather’s
mother-in-law sposed to reach the idea that my grandfather wants her to think
that he intends to get rid of her by singing in a raucuous voice “Up to mighty
London came an Irishman one day”?” “My father tells me that my grandfather sould
sing in a *particular nasal tone*, so common at the music-hall, which he knows *not*
necessarily to be displeasing to his mother in law (when put to use to a
respectable drawing-room ballad), though it is to most people that visit the
Grices.” Grice’s grandfather’s mother in law knows that Grice’s grandfather knows
this particular nasa tone not to be displeasing to her, but she thinks, rather
wrongly, that Grice’s grandfaather does not know that his mother-in-law knows
this (she would never display his tastes in public). The mother-in-law might
then be supposed to argue: "My son-in-law cannot want to drive me out of
the drawing-room by his singing, awful to most, since he knows that that
particularly nasal tone is not really displeasing to me. My son-in-law,
however, does not know that I know he knows this. Therefore, maybe my
son-in-law is does wantsme to think that he intends to drive me out, on the
ground of a mere cause, rather than a reason, *by* his singing." “At this
point,” Grice notes, “one would expect my grandfather’s mother-in-law to be completely
at a loss to explain my grandfather’s performance.” “I see no reason at all why
my grandfather’s mother in-law should then suppose that he *really* wants to
get rid of her in some other way.” Whether or not this example could be made to
work, its complexity is ennerving. “And the sad thing about it, is that any
attempt on my part to introduce yet further restrictions would involve more
ennerving complexities still.” “It is in general true that one cannot have
intentions to achieve results which one sees no chance of achieving; and the
success of intentions of the kind involved in communication requires he to whom
communications or near-communications is addressed to be capable in the
circumstances of having certain thoughts and drawing certain conclusions.” At
some early stage in the attempted regression the calculations required of my
grandfather’s mother-in-lawy by my grandfather will be impracticably difficult;
and I suspect the limit has now been reached (if not exceeded).” “So my
grandfather, is he is a Grice, cannot have the intentions – as reconstructed by
my father, this was way back in 1912 -- required of him in order to force the
addition of further restrictions. Not only are the calculations my grandfather
would be requiring of his mother-in-law too difficult, but it would be
impossible for him to find cues to indicate to her that the calculations should
be made, even if they were within his mother-in-law’s compass. So one is
tempted to conclude that no regress is involved.” But even should this
conclusion be correct, we seem to be left with an uncomfortable situation. For
though we may know that we do not need an infinite series of backward-looking sub-clauses,
we cannot say just how many such sub-clauses are required. “Indeed, it looks as
if the definitional expansion of "By uttering x emisor E communicates that p" might have to vary from
case to case, depending on such things as the nature of the intended response,
the circumstances in which the attempt to elicit the response is made (say, a
musical soirée at Harborne in mid-1912), and the intelligence of the utterer (in
this case my grandfather) and of the addressee (his mother in law).” It is
dubious whether such variation can be acceptable. However, Grice genially finds
out that this ennerving difficulty (of the type some of Grice’s tutees trying
to outshine him would display) is avoided if we could eliminate potential
counter-examples not by requiring the emisor to have certain additional,
backward-looking, intentions, but rather by requiring the emisor *not* to have
a certain sort of intention or complex of intentions. Potential counterexamples
of the kind involves the construction of a situation in which the emisor E
intends the sendee S, in the reflection process by which the sendee S is
supposed to reach his response, both to rely on some inference-element, i. e., ome
premise or some inferential step, E, and also to think that the emisor E
intends his sendee S not to rely on E. “What I propose, then, is to uproot such
potential counterexamples by a single clause which prohibits the emisor from
having this kind of complex intention.” We reach a redefinition: "the
emisor E means that p by uttering x" is true iff (for some sendee S and
for some response r): (a) the emisor U utters x intending (i) the sendee to
produce r (2) the sendee S to think the
emisor E to intend (i) (3) the sendee S’s fulfillment of (i) to be based on the
sendee S’s fulfillment of (2) (b) there is no inference-element E such that the
emsior E utters x intending both (i') that the sendee S’s determination of r
should rely on the inference element e and (2') that the sendee S should think
the emisor E to intend that (I') be false.”
Goldman: “literally, man
of gold” – Grice. philosopher who has made notable contributions to action
theory, naturalistic and social epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive
science. He has persistently urged the relevance of cognitive and social
science to problems in epistemology, metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and
ethics. A Theory of Human Action proposes a Griceian causal theory of action,
describes the generative structure of basic and non-basic action, and argues
for the compatibility of free will and determinism. In “Epistemics: The
Regulative Theory of Cognition” 8, he argued that traditional epistemology
should be replaced by ‘epistemics’, which differs from traditional epistemology
in characterizing knowledge, justified belief, and rational belief in light of
empirical cognitive science. Traditional epistemology has used a coarse-grained
notion of belief, taken too restrictive a view of cognitive methods, offered
advice for ideal cognizers rather than for human beings with limited cognitive
resources, and ignored flaws in our cognitive system that must be recognized if
cognition is to be improved. Epistemologists must attend to the results of
cognitive science if they are to remedy these deficiencies in traditional
epistemology. Goldman later developed epistemics in Epistemology and Cognition
6, in which he developed a historical, reliabilist theory of knowledge and
epistemic justification and employed empirical cognitive science to
characterize knowledge, evaluate skepticism, and assess human cognitive
resources. In Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences and
in Knowledge in a Social World 9, he defended and elaborated a veritistic i.e.,
truth-oriented evaluation of communal beliefprofiles, social institutions, and
social practices e.g., the practice of restricting evidence admissible in a
jury trial. He has opposed the widely accepted view that mental states are
functional states “The Psychology of Folk Psychology,” Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 3 and defended a simulation theory of mental state attribution, on
which one attributes mental states to another by imagining what mental state
one would be in if one were in the other’s situation “In Defense of the
Simulation Theory,” 2. He has also argued that cognitive science bears on
ethics by providing information relevant to the nature of moral evaluation,
moral choice, and hedonic states associated with the good e.g., happiness
“Ethics and Cognitive Science,” 3.
bonum: good-making
characteristic, a characteristic that makes whatever is intrinsically or
inherently good, good. Hedonists hold that pleasure and conducing to pleasure
are the sole good-making characteristics. Pluralists hold that those
characteristics are only some among many other goodmaking characteristics,
which include, for instance, knowledge, friendship, beauty, and acting from a
sense of duty.
Goodman: n. very
New-World philosopher who made seminal contributions to metaphysics,
epistemology, and aesthetics. Like Quine, Goodman repudiates analyticity and
kindred notions. Goodman’s work can be read as a series of investigations into
how to do philosophy without them. A central concern is how symbols structure
facts and our understanding of them. The Structure of Appearance 2 presents
Goodman’s constructionalism. Pretheoretical beliefs are vague and mutually inconsistent.
By devising an interpreted formal system that derives them from or explicates
them in terms of suitable primitives, we bring them into logical contact,
eliminate inconsistencies, and disclose unanticipated logical and theoretical
connections. Multiple, divergent systems do justice to the same pretheoretical
beliefs. All systems satisfying our criteria of adequacy are equally
acceptable. Nothing favors any one of them over the others. Ways of Worldmaking
8 provides a less formal treatment of the same themes. Category schemes dictate
criteria of identity for their objects. So mutually irreducible category
schemes do not treat of the same things. Since a world consists of the things
it comprises, irreducible schemes mark out different worlds. There are, Goodman
concludes, many worlds if any. Inasmuch as the categories that define identity onditions
on objects are human constructs, we make worlds. Languages of Art 8 argues that
art, like science, makes and reveals worlds. Aesthetics is the branch of epistemology
that investigates art’s cognitive functions. Goodman analyzes the syntactic and
semantic structures of symbol systems, both literal and figurative, and shows
how they advance understanding in art and elsewhere. Fact, Fiction, and
Forecast4 poses the new riddle of induction. An item is grue if and only if it
is examined before future time t and found to be green or is not so examined
and is blue. All hitherto examined emeralds are both green and grue. What
justifies our expecting future emeralds to be green, not grue? Inductive
validity, the riddle demonstrates, depends on the characterization as well as
the classification of the evidence class. ‘Green’ is preferable, Goodman
maintains, because it is entrenched in inductive practice. This does not guarantee
that inferences using ‘green’ will yield truths. Nothing guarantees that. But
entrenched predicates are pragmatically advantageous, because they mesh with
our habits of thought and other cognitive resources. Goodman’s other works
include Problems and Projects 2, Of Mind and Other Matters 4, and Reconceptions
8, written with Catherine Z. Elgin.
gorgias:
Grecian Sophist – “never to be confused with a philosopher even if they were
oh-so-much cleverer than your average one!” – Grice. A teacher of rhetoric from
Leontini in Syracuse, Gorgias came to Athens as an ambassador from his city and
caused a sensation with his artful oratory. He is known through references and
short quotations in later writers, and through a few surviving texts two speeches and a philosophical treatise. He
taught a rhetorical style much imitated in antiquity, by delivering model
speeches to paying audiences. Unlike other Sophists he did not give formal
instruction in other topics, nor prepare a formal rhetorical manual. He was known
to have had views on language, on the nature of reality, and on virtue.
Gorgias’s style was remarkable for its use of poetic devices such as rhyme,
meter, and elegant words, as well as for its dependence on artificial
parallelism and balanced antithesis. His surviving speeches, defenses of Helen
and Palamedes, display a range of arguments that rely heavily on what the
ancients called eikos ‘likelihood’ or ‘probability’. Gorgias maintained in his
“Helen” that a speech can compel its audience to action; elsewhere he remarked
that in the theater it is wiser to be deceived than not. Gorgias’s short book
On Nature or On What Is Not survives in two paraphrases, one by Sextus
Empiricus and the other now considered more reliable in an Aristotelian work,
On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias. Gorgias argued for three theses: that
nothing exists; that even if it did, it could not be known; and that even if it
could be known, it could not be communicated. Although this may be in part a
parody, most scholars now take it to be a serious philosophical argument in its
own right. In ethics, Plato reports that Gorgias thought there were different
virtues for men and for women, a thesis Aristotle defends in the Politics.
Gracián y Morales,
Baltasar: moralist, and a leading literary theorist of the baroque. Born in Belmonte, he entered the
Jesuit order in 1619 and became rector of the Jesuit at Tarragona and a favorite of King Philip
III. Gracián’s most important works are Agudeza y arte de ingenio “The Art of
Worldly Wisdom,” 164248 and El criticón “The Critic,” 165157. The first
provides philosophical support for conceptismo, a literary movement that sought to create new
concepts through the development of an elaborate style, characterized by
subtlety agudeza and ingenious literary artifices. El criticón, written in the
conceptist style, is a philosophical novel that pessimistically criticizes the
evils of civilization. Gracián anticipates Rousseau’s noble savage in claiming
that, although human beings are fundamentally good in the state of nature, they
are corrupted by civilization. Echoing a common theme of thought at the time, he attributes the
nefarious influence of civilization to the confusion it creates between
appearance and reality. But Gracián’s pessimism is tempered by faith: man has
hope in the afterlife, when reality is finally revealed. Gracián wrote several
other influential books. In El héroe “The Hero,” 1637 and El político “The
Politician,” 1640, he follows Machiavelli in discussing the attributes of the ideal
prince; El discreto “The Man of Discretion,” 1646 explores the ideal gentleman,
as judged by society. Most of Gracián’s
books were published under pseudonyms to avoid censure by his order. Gorgias
Gracián y Morales, Baltasar 351 351
Among authors outside Spain who used his ideas are Nietzsche, Schopenhauer,
Voltaire, and Rousseau.
grammaticum: Is there a ‘grammar’ of gestures? How
loose can an Oxonian use ‘grammar’? Sometimes geography, sometimes botany –
“Grammatica” the Romans never cared to translate. Although ‘literature’ is the
cognate. – For some reasons, the Greeks were obsessed with the alphabet – It
was a trivial ‘art’. Like ‘logic,’ and philosophy is NOT an art or ‘techne.’ A
philosopher is not a technician – and hardly an artist like William Morris (his
‘arts and crafts’ is a joke since it translates in Latin to ‘ars et ars,’ and
‘techne kai techne’). The sad thing is that at MIT, as Grice knew, Chomsky is
appointed professor of philosophy, and he mainly writes about ‘grammar’! Later,
Chomsky tries to get more philosophical, but chooses the wrong paradigm –
Cartesianism, the ghost in the machine, in Ryle’s parlance. Odly, Oxonians, who
rarely go to grammar schools, see ‘grammar’ as a divinity, and talk of the
logical grammar of a Ryleian agitation, say. It sounds high class because there
is the irony that an Oxonian philosopher is surely not a common-or-garden
grammarian, involved in the grammar of, say, “Die Deutsche Sprache.” The
Oxonian is into the logical grammar. It is more of a ‘linguistic turn’
expression than the duller ‘conceptual analysis,’ or ‘linguistic philosophy.’
cf. logical form, and Russell, “grammar is a pretty good guide to logical
form.” while philosophers would use grammar jocularly, Chomsky didnt. The
problem, as Grice notes, is that Chomsky never tells us where grammar ends (“or
begins for that matter.”) “Consider the P, karulising elatically.” When Carnap
introduces the P, he talks syntax, not grammar. But philosophers always took
semiotics more seriously than others. So Carnap is well aware of Morriss triad
of the syntactics, the semantics, and the pragmatics. Philosophers always
disliked grammar, because back in the days of Aelfric, philosophia was supposed
to embrace dialectica and grammatica, and rhetorica. “It is all part of
philosophy.” Truth-conditional semantics and implicatura. grammar,
a system of rules specifying a language. The term has often been used
synonymously with ‘syntax’, the principles governing the construction of
sentences from words perhaps also including the systems of word derivation and
inflection case markings, verbal tense
markers, and the like. In modern linguistic usage the term more often
encompasses other components of the language system such as phonology and
semantics as well as syntax. Traditional grammars that we may have encountered
in our school days, e.g., the grammars of Latin or English, were typically
fragmentary and often prescriptive
basically a selective catalog of forms and sentence patterns, together
with constructions to be avoided. Contemporary linguistic grammars, on the
other hand, aim to be descriptive, and even explanatory, i.e., embedded within
a general theory that offers principled reasons for why natural languages are
the way they are. This is in accord with the generally accepted view of
linguistics as a science that regards human language as a natural phenomenon to
be understood, just as physicists attempt to make sense of the world of
physical objects. Since the publication of Syntactic Structures 7 and Aspects of
the Theory of Syntax 5 by Noam Chomsky, grammars have been almost universally
conceived of as generative devices, i.e., precisely formulated deductive
systems commonly called generative
grammars specifying all and only the
well-formed sentences of a language together with a specification of their
relevant structural properties. On this view, a grammar of English has the
character of a theory of the English language, with the grammatical sentences
and their structures as its theorems and the grammar rules playing the role of
the rules of inference. Like any empirical theory, it is subject to
disconfirmation if its predictions do not agree with the facts if, e.g., the grammar implies that ‘white or
snow the is’ is a wellformed sentence or that ‘The snow is white’ is not. The
object of this theory construction is to model the system of knowledge
possessed by those who are able to speak and understand an unlimited number of
novel sentences of the language specified. Thus, a grammar in this sense is a
psychological entity a component of the
human mind and the task of linguistics
avowedly a mentalistic discipline is to determine exactly of what this
knowledge consists. Like other mental phenomena, it is not observable directly
but only through its effects. Thus, underlying linguistic competence is to be
distinguished from actual linguistic performance, which forms part of the
evidence for the former but is not necessarily an accurate reflection of it,
containing, as it does, errors, false starts, etc. A central problem is how
this competence arises in the individual, i.e., how a grammar is inferred by a
child on the basis of a finite, variable, and imperfect sample of utterances
encountered in the course of normal development. Many sorts of observations
strongly suggest that grammars are not constructed de novo entirely on the
basis of experience, and the view is widely held that the child brings to the
task a significant, genetically determined predisposition to construct grammars
according to a well-defined pattern. If this is so, and since apparently no one
language has an advantage over any other in the learning process, this inborn
component of linguistic competence can be correctly termed a universal grammar.
It represents whatever the grammars of all natural languages, actual or
potential, necessarily have in common because of the innate linguistic
competence of human beings. The apparent diversity of natural languages has
often led to a serious underestimation of the scope of universal grammar. One
of the most influential proposals concerning the nature of universal grammar
was Chomsky’s theory of transformational grammar. In this framework the
syntactic structure of a sentence is given not by a single object e.g., a parse
tree, as in phrase structure grammar, but rather by a sequence of trees
connected by operations called transformations. The initial tree in such a
sequence is specified generated by a phrase structure grammar, together with a
lexicon, and is known as the deep structure. The final tree in the sequence,
the surface structure, contains the morphemes meaningful units of the sentence
in the order in which they are written or pronounced. For example, the English
sentences ‘John hit the ball’ and its passive counterpart ‘The ball was hit by
John’ might be derived from the same deep structure in this case a tree looking
very much like the surface structure for the active sentence except that the
optional transformational rule of passivization has been applied in the
derivation of the latter sentence. This rule rearranges the constituents of the
tree in such a way that, among other changes, the direct object ‘the ball’ in
deep structure becomes the surface-structure subject of the passive sentence.
It is thus an important feature of this theory that grammatical grammar grammar
352 352 relations such as subject,
object, etc., of a sentence are not absolute but are relative to the level of
structure. This accounts for the fact that many sentences that appear superficially
similar in structure e.g., ‘John is easy to please’, ‘John is eager to please’
are nonetheless perceived as having different underlying deep-structure
grammatical relations. Indeed, it was argued that any theory of grammar that
failed to make a deep-structure/surface-structure distinction could not be
adequate. Contemporary linguistic theories have, nonetheless, tended toward
minimizing the importance of the transformational rules with corresponding
elaboration of the role of the lexicon and the principles that govern the
operation of grammars generally. Theories such as generalized phrase-structure
grammar and lexical function grammar postulate no transformational rules at all
and capture the relatedness of pairs such as active and passive sentences in
other ways. Chomsky’s principles and parameters approach 1 reduces the
transformational component to a single general movement operation that is
controlled by the simultaneous interaction of a number of principles or
subtheories: binding, government, control, etc. The universal component of the
grammar is thus enlarged and the contribution of languagespecific rules is
correspondingly diminished. Proponents point to the advantages this would allow
in language acquisition. Presumably a considerable portion of the task of
grammar construction would consist merely in setting the values of a small
number of parameters that could be readily determined on the basis of a small
number of instances of grammatical sentences. A rather different approach that
has been influential has arisen from the work of Richard Montague, who applied
to natural languages the same techniques of model theory developed for logical
languages such as the predicate calculus. This so-called Montague grammar uses
a categorial grammar as its syntactic component. In this form of grammar,
complex lexical and phrasal categories can be of the form A/B. Typically such
categories combine by a kind of “cancellation” rule: A/B ! B P A something of
category A/B combines with something of category B to yield something of
category A. In addition, there is a close correspondence between the syntactic
category of an expression and its semantic type; e.g., common nouns such as
‘book’ and ‘girl’ are of type e/t, and their semantic values are functions from
individuals entities, or e-type things to truth-values T-type things, or
equivalently, sets of individuals. The result is an explicit, interlocking
syntax and semantics specifying not only the syntactic structure of grammatical
sentences but also their truth conditions. Montague’s work was embedded in his
own view of universal grammar, which has not, by and large, proven persuasive
to linguists. A great deal of attention has been given in recent years to
merging the undoubted virtues of Montague grammar with a linguistically more
palatable view of universal grammar. Refs.: One source is an essay on
‘grammar’ in the H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
gramsci:
a. political leader whose imprisonment by the Fascists for his involvement with
the Communist Party had the ironical
result of sparing him from Stalinism and enabling him to better articulate his
distinctive political philosophy. He welcomes the Bolshevik Revolution as a
“revolution against Capital” rather than against capitalism: as a revolution
refuting the deterministic Marxism according to which socialism could arise
only by the gradual evolution of capitalism, and confirming the possibility of
the radical transformation of social institutions. In 1 he supported creation
of the Communist Party; as its general
secretary from 4, he tried to reorganize it along more democratic lines. In 6
the Fascists outlawed all opposition parties. Gramsci spent the rest of his
life in various prisons, where he wrote more than a thousand s of notes ranging
from a few lines to chapterlength essays. These Prison Notebooks pose a major
interpretive challenge, but they reveal a keen, insightful, and open mind
grappling with important social and political problems. The most common
interpretation stems from Palmiro Togliatti, Gramsci’s successor as leader of
grammar, categorial Gramsci, Antonio 353
353 the Communists. After the
fall of Fascism and the end of World War II, Togliatti read into Gramsci the
so-called road to socialism: a strategy
for attaining the traditional Marxist goals of the classless society and the nationalization
of the means of production by cultural means, such as education and persuasion.
In contrast to Bolshevism, one had to first conquer social institutions, and
then their control would yield the desired economic and political changes. This
democratic theory of Marxist revolution was long regarded by many as especially
relevant to Western industrial societies, and so for this and other reasons
Gramsci is a key figure of Western Marxism. The same theory is often called
Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, referring to a relationship between two political
units where one dominates the other with the consent of that other. This
interpretation was a political reconstruction, based primarily on Gramsci’s
Communist involvement and on highly selective passages from the Notebooks. It
was also based on exaggerating the influence on Gramsci of Marx, Engels, Lenin,
and Gentile, and minimizing influences like Croce, Mosca, Machiavelli, and
Hegel. No new consensus has emerged yet; it would have to be based on analytical
and historical spadework barely begun. One main interpretive issue is whether
Gramsci, besides questioning the means, was also led to question the ends of
traditional Marxism. In one view, his commitment to rational persuasion,
political realism, methodological fallibilism, democracy, and pluralism is much
deeper than his inclinations toward the classless society, the abolition of
private property, the bureaucratically centralized party, and the like; in
particular, his pluralism is an aspect of his commitment to the dialectic as a
way of thinking, a concept he adapted from Hegel through Croce.
green:
t. h., absolute idealist and social
philosopher. The son of a clergyman, Green studied and taught at Oxford. His
central concern was to resolve what he saw as the spiritual crisis of his age
by analyzing knowledge and morality in ways inspired by Kant and Hegel. In his
lengthy introduction to Hume’s Treatise, he argued that Hume had shown
knowledge and morality to be impossible on empiricist principles. In his major
work, “Prolegomena to Ethics,” Green contended that thought imposed relations
on sensory feelings and impulses whose source was an eternal consciousness to
constitute objects of knowledge and of desire. Furthermore, in acting on
desires, rational agents seek the satisfaction of a self that is realized
through their own actions. This requires rational agents to live in harmony
among themselves and hence to act morally. In Lectures on the Principles of
Political Obligation Green transformed classical liberalism by arguing that
even though the state has no intrinsic value, its intervention in society is
necessary to provide the conditions that enable rational beings to achieve
self-satisfaction.
gregorius: I,
Saint, called Gregory the Great c.540604, a pope and Roman political leader.
Born a patrician, he was educated for public office and became prefect of Rome
in 570. In 579, he was appointed papal representative in Constantinople,
returning to Rome as counselor to Pope Pelagius II in 586. He was elected Pope
Gregory I in 590. When the Lombards attacked Rome in 594, Gregory bought them
off. Constantinople would neither cede nor defend Italy, and Gregory stepped in
as secular ruler of what became the Papal States. He asserted the universal
jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome, and claimed patriarchy of the West. His
writings include important letters; the Moralia, an exposition of the Book of
Job summarizing Christian theology; Pastoral Care, which defined the duties of
the clergy for the Middle Ages; and Dialogues, which deals chiefly with the
immortality of the soul, holding it could enter heaven immediately without
awaiting the Last Judgment. His thought, largely Augustinian, is unoriginal,
but was much quoted in the Middle Ages.
gregory
of
Nyssa, Saint, Grecian theologian and mystic who tried to reconcile Platonism
with Christianity. As bishop of Cappadocia in eastern Asia Minor, he championed
orthodoxy and was prominent at the First Council of Constantinople. He related
the doctrine of the Trinity to Plato’s ideas of the One and the Many. He
followed Origen in believing that man’s material great chain of being Gregory
of Nyssa 354 354 nature was due to the
fall and in believing in the Apocatastasis, the universal restoration of all
souls, including Satan’s, in the kingdom of God.
rimini:
gregorio di, philosopher, he studied in Italy, England, and France, and taught
at the universities of Bologna, Padua, Perugia, and Paris before becoming prior
general of the Hermits of St. Augustine in his native city of Rimini, about
eighteen months before he died. Gregory earned the honorific title “the
Authentic Doctor” because he was considered by many of his contemporaries to be
a faithful interpreter of Augustine, and thus a defender of tradition, in the midst
of the scepticism of Occam and his disciples regarding what could be known in
natural philosophy and theology. Thus, in his commentary on Books I and II of
Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Gregory rejected the view that because of God’s
omnipotence he can do anything and is therefore unknowable in his nature and
his ways. Gregory also maintained that after Adam’s fall from righteousness,
men need, in conjunction with their free will, God’s help grace to perform
morally good actions. In non-religious matters Gregory is usually associated
with the theory of the complexe significabile, according to which the object of
knowledge acquired by scientific proof is neither an object existing outside
the mind, nor a word simplex or a proposition complexum, but rather the
complexe significabile, that which is totally and adequately signified by the
proposition expressed in the conclusion of the proof in question.
grice: as
a count noun – “Lots of grice in the fields.” – One Scots to another -- count
noun, a noun that can occur syntactically a with quantifiers ‘each’, ‘every’,
‘many’, ‘few’, ‘several’, and numerals; b with the indefinite article, ‘an’;
and c in the plural form. The following are examples of count nouns CNs, paired
with semantically similar mass nouns MNs: ‘each dollar / silver’, ‘one
composition / music’, ‘a bed / furniture’, ‘instructions / advice’. MNs but not
CNs can occur with the quantifiers ‘much’ and ‘little’: ‘much poetry / poems’,
‘little bread / loaf’. Both CNs and MNs may occur with ‘all’, ‘most’, and
‘some’. Semantically, CNs but not MNs refer distributively, providing a
counting criterion. It makes sense to ask how many CNs?: ‘How many coins /
gold?’ MNs but not CNs refer collectively. It makes sense to ask how much MN?:
‘How much gold / coins?’ One problem is that these syntactic and semantic
criteria yield different classifications; another problem is to provide logical
forms and truth conditions for sentences containing mass nouns.
Grice: English
philosopher, born in Harborne, “in the middle of nowhere,” as Strawson put it –
(“He was from London, Strawson was”) -- whose work concerns perception and
philosophy of language, and whose most influential contribution is the concept
of a conversational implicaturum and the associated theoretical machinery of
conversational ‘postulates.’ The concept of a conversational implicaturum is
first used in his ‘presentation’ on the causal theory of perception and
reference. Grice distinguishes between the ‘meaning’ of the words used in a
sentence and what is implied by the utterer’s choice of words. If someone says
“It looks as if there is a red pillar box in front of me,” the choice of words
implies that there is some doubt about the pillar box being red. But, Grice
argues, that is a matter of word choice and the sentence itself does not
‘impl’ that there is doubt. The term
‘conversational implicaturum’ was introduced in Grice’s William James lectures
published in 8 and used to defend the use of the material implication as a
logical translation of ‘if’. With Strawson “In Defence of Dogma”, Grice gives a
spirited defense of the analyticsynthetic distinction against Quine’s
criticisms. In subsequent systematic papers Grice attempts, among other things,
to give a theoretical grounding of the distinction. Grice’s oeuvre is part of
the Oxford ordinary language tradition, if formal and theoretical. He also
explores metaphysics, especially the concept of absolute value. There is the H.
P. Grice Society – Other organisations Grice-related are “The Grice Club,” “The
Grice Circle,” and “H. P. Grice’s Playgroup.”
H. P. Grice’s Playgroup:
after the death of J. L. Austin, Grice kept the routine of the Saturday morning
with a few new rules. 1. Freedom. 2. Freedom, and 3. Freedom.
Griceian. Grice disliked
the spelling “Gricean” that some people in the New World use. “Surely my
grandmother was right when she said she had become a Griceian by marrying a
Grice!”
Brown, S. author of the
Dictionary of British Philosophers (“I first thought of writing a dictionary of
English philosophers, but then I thought that Russell would be out – he was
born in Wales!.”
grice: g. r. – Welsh
philosopher who taught at Norwich. Since H. P. Grice and G. R. Grice both wrote
on the contract and morality, one has to be careful.
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