non-conventional. Unfortunately, Grice never came up
with a word or sobriquet for the non-conventional, and kept using the
‘non-conventional.’ Similarly, he never came up with a positive way to refer to
the non-natural, and non-natural it remained. Luckily, we can take it as a
joke. Convention figures TWICE in Grice’s scheme. For his reductive analysis of
communication, he surely can avoid convention by relying on a self-referring
anti-sneaky clause. But when it comes to the ‘taxonomy’ of the ‘shades’ of
implication, he wants the emissor to implicate that p WITHOUT relying on a
convention. If the emissor RELIES on a convention, there are problems for his
analysis. Why? First, at the explicit level, it can be assumed that conventions
will feature (Smith’s dog is ‘by convention’ called ‘Fido”). At the level of
the implied, there are two ways where convention matters in a wrong way. “My
neighbour’s three-year-old is an adult” FLOUTS a convention – or meaning
postulate. And it corresponds to the entailment. But finally, there is a third
realm of the conventional. For particles like “therefore,” or ‘but.’ “But”
Grice does not care much about, but ‘therefore’ he does. He wants to say that
‘therefore’ is mainly emphatic.The emissor implies a passage from premise to
conclusion. And that implication relies on a convention YET it is not part of
the entailment. So basically, it is an otiose addition. Why would rational
conversationalists rely on them? The rationale for this is that Grice wants to
provide a GENERAL theory of communication that will defeat Austin’s
convention-tied ritualistic view of language. So Grice needs his crucial
philosophical refutations NOT to rely on convention. What relies on convention
cannot be cancellable. What doesn’t can. I an item relies on convention it has
not really redeemed from that part of the communicative act that can not be
explained rationally by argument. There is no way to calculate a conventional
item. It is just a given. And Grice is interested in providing a rationale. His
whole campaign relates to this idea that Austin has rushed, having detected a
nuance in a linguistic phenomenon, to explain it away, without having explored
in detail what kind of nuance it is. For Grice it is NOT a conventional nuance
– it’s a sous-entendu of conversation (as Mill has it), an unnecessary
implication (as Russell has it). Why did Grice chose ‘convention’? The
influence of Lewis seems minor, because he touches on the topic in “Causal
Theory,” before Lewis. The word ‘convention’ does NOT occur in “Causal Theory,”
though. But there are phrasings to that effect. Notably, let us consider his
commentary in the reprint, when he omits the excursus. He says that he presents
FOUR cases: a particularized conversational (‘beautiful handwriting’), a
generalised conversational (“in the kitchen or in the bedroom”), a
‘conventional implicaturum’ (“She was poor but she was honest”) and a
presupposition (“You have not ceased to eat iron”). So the obvious target for
exploration is the third, where Grice has the rubric ‘convention,’ as per
‘conventional.’ So his expansion on the ‘but’ example (what Frege has as
‘colouring’ of “aber”) is interesting to revise. “plied
is that Smith has been bcating his wifc. (2) " She was poor but she was
honcst ", whele what is implied is (vcry roughly) that there is some
contrast between poverty and honesty, or between her poverty and her honesty.
The first cxample is a stock case of what is sometimes called "
prcsupposition " and it is often held that here 1he truth of what is
irnplicd is a necessary condition of the original statement's beirrg cither
true or false. This might be disputed, but it is at lcast arguable that it is
so, and its being arguable might be enough to distinguish-this type of case
from others. I shall however for convenience assume that the common view
mentioned is correct. This consideration clearly distinguishes (1) from (2);
even if the implied proposition were false, i.e. if there were no reason in the
world to contrast poverty with honesty either in general or in her case, the
original statement could still be false; it would be false if for example she
were rich and dishonest. One might perhaps be less comfortable about assenting
to its truth if the implied contrast did not in fact obtain; but the
possibility of falsity is enough for the immediate purpose. My next experiment
on these examples is to ask what it is in each case which could properly be
said to be the vehicle of implication (to do the implying). There are at least
four candidates, not necessarily mutually exclusive. Supposing someone to have
uttered one or other of my sample sentences, we may ask whether the vehicle of
implication would be (a) what the speaker said (or asserted), or (b) the
speaker (" did he imply that . . . .':) or (c) the words the speaker used,
or (d) his saying that (or again his saying that in that way); or possibly some
plurality of these items. As regards (a) I think (1) and (2) differ; I think it
would be correct to say in the case of (l) that what he speaker said (or
asserted) implied that Smith had been beating this wife, and incorrect to say
in the case of (2) that what te said (or asserted) implied that there was a
contrast between e.g., honesty and poverty. A test on which I would rely is the
following : if accepting that the implication holds involves one in r27 128 H.
P. GRICE accepting an hypothetical' if p then q ' where 'p ' represents the
original statement and ' q' represents what is implied, then what the speaker
said (or asserted) is a vehicle of implication, otherwise not. To apply this
rule to the given examples, if I accepted the implication alleged to hold in
the case of (1), I should feel compelled to accept the hypothetical " If
Smith has left off beating his wife, then he has been beating her ";
whereas if I accepted the alleged implication in the case of (2), I should not
feel compelled to accept the hypothetical " If she was poor but honest,
then there is some contrast between poverty and honesty, or between her poverty
and her honesty." The other candidates can be dealt with more cursorily; I
should be inclined to say with regard to both (l) and (2) that the speaker
could be said to have implied whatever it is that is irnplied; that in the case
of (2) it seems fairly clear that the speaker's words could be said to imply a
contrast, whereas it is much less clear whether in the case of (1) the
speaker's words could be said to imply that Smith had been beating his wife;
and that in neither case would it be evidently appropriate to speak of his
saying that, or of his saying that in that way, as implying what is implied.
The third idea with which I wish to assail my two examples is really a twin
idea, that of the detachability or cancellability of the implication. (These
terms will be explained.) Consider example (1): one cannot fi.nd a form of
words which could be used to state or assert just what the sentence " Smith
has left off beating his wife " might be used to assert such that when it
is used the implication that Smith has been beating his wife is just absent.
Any way of asserting what is asserted in (1) involves the irnplication in
question. I shall express this fact by saying that in the case of (l) the
implication is not detqchable from what is asserted (or simpliciter, is not
detachable). Furthermore, one cannot take a form of words for which both what
is asserted and what is implied is the same as for (l), and then add a further
clause withholding commitment from what would otherwise be implied, with the
idea of annulling the implication without annulling the assertion. One cannot
intelligibly say " Smith has left off beating his wife but I do not mean
to imply that he has been beating her." I shall express this fact by
saying that in the case of (1) the implication is not cancellable (without THE
CAUSAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION r29 cancelling the assertion). If we turn to (2) we
find, I think, that there is quite a strong case for saying that here the
implication ls detachable. Thcrc sccms quitc a good case for maintaining that
if, instead of sayirrg " She is poor but shc is honcst " I were to
say " She is poor and slre is honcst", I would assert just what I
would havc asscrtcct ii I had used thc original senterrce; but there would now
be no irnplication of a contrast between e.g', povery and honesty. But the
question whether, in tl-re case of (2), thc inrplication is cancellable, is
slightly more cornplex. Thcrc is a sonse in which we may say that it is
non-cancellable; if sorncone were to say " She is poor but she is honest,
though of course I do not mean to imply that there is any contrast between
poverty and honesty ", this would seem a puzzling and eccentric thing to
have said; but though we should wish to quarrel with the speaker, I do not
think we should go so far as to say that his utterance was unintelligible; we
should suppose that he had adopted a most peculiar way of conveying the the
news that she was poor and honesl. The fourth and last test that I wish to
impose on my exarnples is to ask whether we would be inclined to regard the
fact that the appropriate implication is present as being a matter of the
meaning of some particular word or phrase occurring in the sentences in
question. I am aware that this may not be always a very clear or easy question
to answer; nevertheless Iwill risk the assertion that we would be fairly happy
to say that, as regards (2), the factthat the implication obtains is a matter of
the meaning of the word ' but '; whereas so far as (l) is concerned we should
have at least some inclination to say that the presence of the implication was
a matter of the meaning of some of the words in the sentence, but we should be
in some difficulty when it came to specifying precisely which this word, or
words are, of which this is true.” Since the actual wording ‘convention’ does
not occur it may do to revise how he words ‘convention’ in Essay 2 of WoW. So
here is the way he words it in Essay II.“In some cases the CONVENTIONAL meaning
of the WORDS used will DETERMINE what is impliccated, besides helping to
determine what is said.” Where ‘determine’ is the key word. It’s not “REASON,”
conversational reason that determines it. “If I say (smugly), ‘He is an
Englishman; he is, therefore, brave,’ I have certainly COMMITTED myself, by
virtue of the meaning of my words, to its being the case that his being brave
is a consequence of (follows from) his being an Englishman. But, while I have
said that [or explicitly conveyed THAT] he is an Englishman, and [I also have]
said that [or explicitly conveyed that] he is brave, I do not want to say [if I
may play with what people conventionally understand by ‘convention’] that I
have said [or explicitly conveyed] (in the favoured sense) that [or explicitly
conveyed that] it follows from his being an Englishman that he is brave, though
I have certainly INDICATED, and so implicated, that this is so.” The rationale
as to why the label is ‘convention’ comes next. “I do not want to say that my
utterance of this sentence would be, strictly speaking, FALSE should the
consequence in question fail to hold. So some implicaturums are conventional,
unlike the one with which
I
introduce this discussion of implicaturum.”Grice’s observation or suggestion
then or advise then, in terms of nomenclature. His utterance WOULD be FALSE if
the MEANING of ‘therefore’ were carried as an ENTAILMENT (rather than emphatic
truth-value irrelevant rhetorical emphasis). He expands on this in The John Lecture,
where Jill is challenged. “What do you mean, “Jack is an Englishman; he is,
therefore, brave”?” What is being challenged is the validity of the
consequence. ‘Therefore’ is vague enough NOT to specify what type of
consequence is meant. So, should someone challenge the consequence, Jill would
still be regarded by Grice as having uttered a TRUE utterance. The metabolism
here is complex since it involves assignment of ‘meaning’ to this or that
expression (in this case ‘therefore’). In Essay VI he is perhaps more
systematic.The wider programme just mentioned arises out of a distinction
which, for purposes which I need not here specify, I wish to make within the
total signification of a remark: a distinction between what the speaker has
said (in a certain favoured, and maybe in some degree artificial, sense of
'said'), and what he has 'implicated' (e.g. implied, indicated, suggested,
etc.), taking into account the fact that what he has implicated may be either
conventionally implicated (implicated by virtue of the meaning of some word or
phrase which he has used) or non-conventionally implicated (in which case the
specification of the implicaturum falls [TOTALLY] outside [AND INDEPENDENTLY,
i. e. as NOT DETERMINED BY] the specification of the conventional meaning of
the words used [Think ‘beautiful handwriting,’ think ‘In the kitchen or in the
bedroom’). He is clearest in Essay 6 – where he adds ‘=p’ in the
symbolization.UTTERER'S MEANING, SENTENCE-MEANING, AND WORD-MEANINGMy present
aim is to throw light on the connection between (a) a notion of ‘meaning’ which
I want to regard as basic, viz. that notion which is involved in saying of
someone that ‘by’ (when) doing SUCH-AND-SUCH he means THAT SO-AND-SO (in what I
have called a non-natural use of 'means'), and (b) the notions of meaning
involved in saying First, that a given sentence means 'so-and-so' Second, that
a given word or phrase means 'so-and-so'. What I have to say on these topics
should be looked upon as an attempt to provide a sketch of what might, I hope,
prove to be a viable theory, rather than as an attempt to provide any part of a
finally acceptable theory. The account which I shall otTer of the (for me)
basic notion of meaning is one which I shall not seek now to defend.I should like its approximate
correctness to be assumed, so that attention may be focused on its utility, if
correct, in the explication of other and (I hope) derivative notions of
meaning. This enterprise forms part of a wider programme which I shall in a
moment delineate, though its later stages lie beyond the limits which I have
set for this paper. The wider programme just mentioned arises out of a
distinction which, for purposes which I need not here specify, I wish to make
within the total signification of a remark: a distinction between what the
speaker has said (in a certain favoured, and maybe in some degree artificial,
sense of 'said'), and what he has 'implicated' (e.g. implied, indicated,
suggested, etc.), taking into account the fact that what he has implicated may
be either conventionally implicated (implicated by virtue of the meaning of
some word or phrase which he has used) or non-conventionally implicated (in
which case the specification of the implicaturum falls [TOTALLY] outside [AND
INDEPENDENTLY, i. e. as NOT DETERMINED BY] the specification of the
conventional meaning of the words used [Think ‘beautiful handwriting,’ think
‘In the kitchen or in the bedroom’). The programme is directed towards an
explication of the favoured SENSE of 'say' and a clarification of its relation
to the notion of conventional meaning. The stages of the programme are as
folIows: First, To distinguish between locutions of the form 'U (utterer) meant
that .. .' (locutions which specify what rnight be called 'occasion-meaning')
and locutions of the From Foundalions oJ Language. 4 (1968), pp. 1-18.
Reprinted by permission of the author and the editor of Foundations oJ
Language. I I hope that material in this paper, revised and re·arranged, will
form part of a book to be published by the Harvard University Press. form 'X (utterance-type) means H ••• "'.
In locutions of the first type, meaning is specified without the use of
quotation-marks, whereas in locutions of the second type the meaning of a sentence,
word or phrase is specified with the aid of quotation marks. This difference is
semantically important. Second, To attempt to provide a definiens for
statements of occasion-meaning; more precisely, to provide a definiens for 'By
(when) uttering x, U meant that *p'. Some explanatory comments are needed here.
First, I use the term 'utter' (together with 'utterance') in an artificially
wide sense, to cover any case of doing x or producing x by the performance of
which U meant that so-and-so. The performance in question need not be a
linguistic or even a conventionalized performance. A specificatory replacement
of the dummy 'x' will in some cases be a characterization of a deed, in others
a characterization of a product (e.g. asound). (b) '*' is a dummy
mood-indicator, distinct from specific mood-indicators like 'I-' (indicative or
assertive) or '!' (imperative). More precisely, one may think of the schema
'Jones meant that *p' as yielding a full English sentence after two
transformation al steps: (i) replace '*' by a specific mood-indicator and replace
'p' by an indicative sentence. One might thus get to 'Jones meant that I- Smith
will go home' or to 'Jones meant that! Smith will go horne'. (ii) replace the
sequence following the word 'that' by an appropriate clause in indirect speech
(in accordance with rules specified in a linguistic theory). One might thus get
to 'Jones meant that Srnith will go horne' 'Jones meant that Srnith is to go
horne'. Third, To attempt to elucidate the notion of the conventional meaning
of an utterance-type; more precisely, to explicate sentences which make claims
of the form 'X (utterance-type) means "*''', or, in case X is a
non-scntcntial utterancctype, claims of the form 'X means H ••• "', where
the location is completed by a nonsentential expression. Again, some explanatory
comments are required. First, It will be convenient to recognize that what I
shall call statements of timeless meaning (statements of the type 'X means
" ... "', in which the ~pecification of meaning involves
quotation-marks) may be subdivided into (i) statements of timeless
'idiolect-meaning', e.g. 'For U (in U's idiolect) X means " ... '"
and (ü) statements of timeless 'Ianguage meaning', e.g. 'In L (language) X
means " ... "'. It will be convenient to handle these separately, and
in the order just given. (b) The truth of a statement to the effect that X
means ' .. .' is of course not incompatible with the truth of a further
statement to the effect that X me ans '--", when the two lacunae are quite
differently completed. An utterance-type rriay have more than one conventional
meaning, and any definiens which we offer must allow fOT this fact. 'X means
" ... '" should be understood as 'One of the meanings of X is "
... " '. (IV) In view of the possibility of multiplicity in the timeless
meaning of an utterance-type, we shall need to notice, and to provide an
explication of, what I shall call the applied timeless meaning of an
utterance-type. That is to say, we need a definiens for the schema 'X
(utterance-type) meant here " ... "', a schema the specifications of
which announce the correct reading of X for a given occasion of utterance.
Comments. (a) We must be careful to distinguish the applied timeless meaning of
X (type) with respecf to a particular token x (belonging to X) from the
occasionmeaning of U's utterance of x. The following are not equivalent: (i)
'When U uttered it, the sentence "Palmer gave Nickiaus quite a
beating" meant "Palmer vanquished Nickiaus with some ease"
[rather than, say, "Palmer administered vigorous corporal punishment to
NickIaus."]' (ii) 'When U uttered the sentence "Palmer gave NickIaus
quite a beating" U meant that Palmer vanquished NickIaus with some ease.'
U might have been speaking ironically, in which case he would very likely have
meant that NickIaus vanquished Palmer with some ease. In that case (ii) would
c1early be false; but nevertheless (i) would still have been true. Second,
There is some temptation to take the view that the conjunction of One, 'By
uttering X, U meant that *p' and (Two, 'When uttered by U, X meant "*p'"
provides a definiens for 'In uttering X, U said [OR EXPLICITLY CONVEYED] that
*p'. Indeed, ifwe give consideration only to utterance-types for which there
are available adequate statements of time1ess meaning taking the exemplary form
'X meant "*p'" (or, in the case of applied time1ess meaning, the form
'X meant here "*p" '), it may even be possible to uphold the thesis
that such a coincidence of occasion-meaning and applied time1ess meaning is a
necessary and sufficient condition for saying that *p. But a litde refiection
should convince us of the need to recognize the existence of statements of
timeless meaning which instantiate forms other than the cited exemplary form. There
are, I think, at least some sentences whose ‘timeless’ meaning is not adequately
specifiable by a statement of the exemplary form. Consider the sentence 'Bill
is a philosopher and he is, therefore, brave' (S ,). Or Jill:
“Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave.”It would be appropriate, I think, to make a partial specification of the timeless meaning of S, by saying 'Part of one meaning of S, is "Bill is occupationally engaged in philosophical studies" '. One might, indeed, give a full specifu::ation of timeless meaning for S, by saying 'One meaning of S, inc1udes "Bill is occupationally engaged in philosophie al studies" and "Bill is courageous" and "[The fact] That Bill is courageous follows from his being occupationally engaged in philosophical studies", and that is all that is included'. We might re-express this as 'One meaning of S, comprises "Bill is occupationally engaged (etc)", "Bill is courageous", and "That Bill is eourageous follows (ete .)".'] It will be preferable to speeify the timeless meaning of S I in this way than to do so as folIows: 'One meaning of S I is "Bill is occupationally engaged (etc.) and Bill is courageous and that Bill is eourageous follows (ete.)" '; for this latter formulation at least suggests that SI is synonymous with the conjunctive sentence quoted in the formulation, whieh does not seem to be the case. Since it is true that another meaning of SI inc1udes 'Bill is addicted to general reftections about life' (vice 'Bill is occupationally engaged (etc.)'), one could have occasion to say (truly), with respect to a given utterance by U of SI' 'The meaning of SI HERE comprised "Bill is oecupationally engaged (ete.)", "Bill is eourageous", and "That Bill is courageous follows (ete.)"', or to say 'The meaning of S I HERE included "That Bill is courageous follows (etc.)" '. It could also be true that when U uttered SI he meant (part of what he meant was) that that Bill is eourageous follows (ete.). Now I do not wish to allow that, in my favoured sense of'say', one who utters SI will have said [OR EXPLICITLY CONVEYED ] that Bill's being courageous follows from his being a philosopher, though he may weil have said that Bill is a philosopher and that Bill is courageous. I would wish to maintain that the SEMANTIC FUNCTION of the 'therefore' is to enable a speaker to indicate, though not to say [or explicitly convey], that a certain consequenee holds. Mutatis mutandis, I would adopt the same position with regard to words like 'but' and 'moreover'. In the case of ‘but’ – contrast.In the case of ‘moreover,’ or ‘furthermore,’ the speaker is not explicitly conveying that he is adding; he is implicitly conveying that he is adding, and using the emphatic, colloquial, rhetorical, device. Much favoured by rhetoricians. To start a sentence with “Furthermore” is very common. To start a sentence, or subsentence with, “I say that in addition to the previous, the following also holds, viz.”My primary reason for opting for this partieular sense of'say' is that I expect it to be of greater theoretical utility than some OTHER sense of'say' [such as one held, say, by L. J. Cohen at Oxford] would be. So I shall be committed to the view that applied timeless meaning and occasion=meaning may coincide, that is to say, it may be true both First, that when U uttered X the meaning of X inc1uded '*p' and Second, that part of what U meant when he uttered X was that *p, and yet be false that U has said, among other things, that *p. “I would like to use the expression 'conventionally meant that' in such a way that the fulfilment of the two conditions just mentioned, while insufficient for the truth of 'U said that *p' will be suffieient (and neeessary) for the truth of 'U conventionally meant that *p'.”The above is important because Grice is for the first time allowing the adverb ‘conventionally’ to apply not as he does in Essay I to ‘implicate’ but to ‘mean’ in general – which would INCLUDE what is EXPLICITLY CONVEYED. This will not be as central as he thinks he is here, because his exploration will be on the handwave which surely cannot be specified in terms of that the emissor CONVENTIONALLY MEANS.(V) This distinction between what is said [or explicity conveyed] and what is conventionally meant [or communicated, or conveyed simpliciter] creates the task of specifying the conditions in which what U conventionally means by an utterance is also part of what U said [or explicitly conveyed].I have hopes of being able to discharge this task by proceeding along the following lines.First, To specify conditions which will be satisfied only by a limited range of speech-acts, the members of which will thereby be stamped as specially central or fundamental. “Adding, contrasting, and reasoning” will not. Second, To stipulate that in uttering X [utterance type], U will have said [or explicitly conveyed] that *p, if both First, U has 1stFLOOR-ed that *p, where 1stFloor-ing is a CENTRAL speech-act [not adding, contrasting, or reasoning], and Second, X [the utterance type] embodies some CONVENTIONAL device [such as the mode of the copula] the meaning of which is such that its presence in X [the utterance type] indicates that its utterer is FIRST-FLOOR -ing that *p. Third, To define, for each member Y of the range of central speech-aets, 'U has Y -ed that *p' in terms of occasion-meaning (meaning that ... ) or in terms of some important elements) involved in the already provided definition of occasion-meaning. (VI) The fulfilment of the task just outlined will need to be supplemented by an account of this or that ELEMENT in the CONVENTIONAL MEANING of an utterance (such as one featuring ‘therefore,’ ‘but,’ or ‘moreover’) which is NOT part of what has been said [or explicitly conveyed].This account, at least for an important sub-class of such elements, might take the following shape: First, this or that problematic element is linked with this or that speech-act which is exhibited as posterior to, and such that their performance is dependent upon, some member or disjunction of members of the central, first-floor range; e. g. the meaning of 'moreover' would be linked with the speech-act of adding, the performance of which would require the performance of one or other of the central speech-acts. – [and the meaning of ‘but’ with contrasting, and the meaning of ‘therefore’ with reasoning, or inferring].Second, If SECOND-FLOOR-ing is such a non-central speech-act [such as inferring/reasoning, contrasting, or adding], the dependence of SECOND-FLOOR-ing that *p upon the performance of some central FIRST-FLOOR speech-act [such as stating or ordering] would have to be shown to be of a nature which justifies a RELUCTANCE to treat SECOND-FLOOR-ing (e. g. inferring, contrasting, adding) that *p as a case not merely of saying that *p, but also of saying that = p, or of saying that = *p (where' = p', or ' = *p', is a representation of one or more sentential forms specifically associated with SECOND-FLOOR-ing). Z Third, The notion of SECOND-FLOOR-ing (inferring, contrasting, adding) that *p (where Z-ing is non-central) would be explicated in terms of the nation of meaning that (or in terms of some important elements) in the definition of that notion). When Grice learned that that brilliant Harvardite, D. K. Lewis, was writing a dissertation under Quine on ‘convention’ he almost fainted! When he noticed that Lewis was relying rightly on Schelling and mainly restricting the ‘conventionality’ to the ‘arbitrariness,’ which Grice regarded as synonym with ‘freedom’ (Willkuere, liber arbitrium), he recovered. For Lewis, a two-off predicament occurs when you REPEAT. Grice is not interested. When you repeat, you may rely on some ‘arbitrariness.’ This is usually the EMISSOR’s auctoritas. As when Humptyy Dumpty was brought to Davidson’s attention. “Impenetrability!” “I don’t know what that means.” “Well put, Alice, if that is your name, as you said it was. What I mean by ‘impenetrability’ is that we rather change the topic, plus it’s tea time, and I feel like having some eggs.” Grice refers to this as the ‘idion.’ He reminisces when he was in the bath and designed a full new highway code (“Nobody has yet used it – but the pleasure was in the semiotic design.”). A second reminiscence pertains to his writing a full grammar of “Deutero-Esperanto.” “I loved it – because I had all the power a master needs! I decide what it’s proper!” In the field of the implicatura, Grice uses ‘convention’ casually, mainly to contrast it with HIS field, the non-conventional. One should not attach importance to this. On occasion Grice used Frege’s “Farbung,” just to confuse. The sad story is that Strawson was never convinced by the non-conventional. Being a conventionalist at heart (vide his “Intention and convention in speech acts,”) and revering Austin, Strawson opposes Grice’s idea of the ‘non-conventional.’ Note that in Grice’s general schema for the communicatum, the ‘conventional’ is just ONE MODE OF CORRELATION between the signum and the signatum, or the communicatum and the intentum. The ‘conventional’ can be explained, unlike Lewis, in mere terms of the validatum. Strawson and Wiggins “Cogito; ergo, sum”: What is explicitly conveyed is: “cogito” and “sum”. The conjunction “cogito” and “sum” is not made an ‘invalidatum’ if the implicated consequence relation, emotionally expressed by an ‘alas’-like sort of ejaculation, ‘ergo,’ fails to hold. Strawson and Wiggins give other examples. For some reason, Latin ‘ergo’ becomes the more structured, “therefore,” which is a composite of ‘there’ and ‘fore.’ Then there’s the very Hun, “so,” (as in “so so”). Then there’s the “Sie schoene aber poor,” discussed by Frege --“but,” – and Strawson and Wiggins add a few more that had Grice elaborating on first-floor versus second-floor. Descartes is on the first floor. He states “cogito” and he states “sum.” Then he goes to the second floor, and the screams, “ergo,” or ‘dunc!’” The examples Strawson and Wiggins give are: “although” (which looks like a subordinating dyadic connector but not deemed essential by Gazdar’s 16 ones). Then they give an expression Grice quite explored, “because,” or “for”as Grice prefers (‘since it improves on Stevenson), the ejaculation “alas,” and in its ‘misusage,’ “hopefully.” This is an adverbial that Grice loved: “Probably, it will rains,” “Desirably, there is icecream.” There is a confusing side to this too. “intentions are to be recognized, in the normal case, by virtue of a knowledge of the conventional use of the sentence (indeed my account of "non-conventional implicaturum" depends on this idea).” So here we may disregard the ‘bandaged leg case’ and the idea that there is implicaturum in art, etc. If we take the sobriquet ‘non-conventional’ seriously, one may be led to suggest that the ‘non-conventional’ DEPENDS on the conventional. One distinctive feature – the fifth – of the conversational implicaturum is that it is partly generated as partly depending on the ‘conventional’ “use.” So this is tricky. Grice’s anti-conventionalism -- conventionalism, the philosophical doctrine that logical truth and mathematical truth are created by our choices, not dictated or imposed on us by the world. The doctrine is a more specific version of the linguistic theory of logical and mathematical truth, according to which the statements of logic and mathematics are true because of the way people use language. Of course, any statement owes its truth to some extent to facts about linguistic usage. For example, ‘Snow is white’ is true in English because of the facts that 1 ‘snow’ denotes snow, 2 ‘is white’ is true of white things, and 3 snow is white. What the linguistic theory asserts is that statements of logic and mathematics owe their truth entirely to the way people use language. Extralinguistic facts such as 3 are not relevant to the truth of such statements. Which aspects of linguistic usage produce logical truth and mathematical truth? The conventionalist answer is: certain linguistic conventions. These conventions are said to include rules of inference, axioms, and definitions. The idea that geometrical truth is truth we create by adopting certain conventions received support by the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries. Prior to this discovery, Euclidean geometry had been seen as a paradigm of a priori knowledge. The further discovery that these alternative systems are consistent made Euclidean geometry seem rejectable without violating rationality. Whether we adopt the Euclidean system or a non-Euclidean system seems to be a matter of our choice based on such pragmatic considerations as simplicity and convenience. Moving to number theory, conventionalism received a prima facie setback by the discovery that arithmetic is incomplete if consistent. For let S be an undecidable sentence, i.e., a sentence for which there is neither proof nor disproof. Suppose S is true. In what conventions does its truth consist? Not axioms, rules of inference, and definitions. For if its truth consisted in these items it would be provable. Suppose S is not true. Then its negation must be true. In what conventions does its truth consist? Again, no answer. It appears that if S is true or its negation is true and if neither S nor its negation is provable, then not all arithmetic truth is truth by convention. A response the conventionalist could give is that neither S nor its negation is true if S is undecidable. That is, the conventionalist could claim that arithmetic has truth-value gaps. As to logic, all truths of classical logic are provable and, unlike the case of number theory and geometry, axioms are dispensable. Rules of inference suffice. As with geometry, there are alternatives to classical logic. The intuitionist, e.g., does not accept the rule ‘From not-not-A infer A’. Even detachment ’From A, if A then B, infer B’ is rejected in some multivalued systems of logic. These facts support the conventionalist doctrine that adopting any set of rules of inference is a matter of our choice based on pragmatic considerations. But the anti-conventionalist might respond consider a simple logical truth such as ‘If Tom is tall, then Tom is tall’. Granted that this is provable by rules of inference from the empty set of premises, why does it follow that its truth is not imposed on us by extralinguistic facts about Tom? If Tom is tall the sentence is true because its consequent is true. If Tom is not tall the sentence is true because its antecedent is false. In either case the sentence owes its truth to facts about Tom. -- convention T, a criterion of material adequacy of proposed truth definitions discovered, formally articulated, adopted, and so named by Tarski in connection with his 9 definition of the concept of truth in a formalized language. Convention T is one of the most important of several independent proposals Tarski made concerning philosophically sound and logically precise treatment of the concept of truth. Various of these proposals have been criticized, but convention T has remained virtually unchallenged and is regarded almost as an axiom of analytic philosophy. To say that a proposed definition of an established concept is materially adequate is to say that it is “neither too broad nor too narrow,” i.e., that the concept it characterizes is coextensive with the established concept. Since, as Tarski emphasized, for many formalized languages there are no criteria of truth, it would seem that there can be no general criterion of material adequacy of truth definitions. But Tarski brilliantly finessed this obstacle by discovering a specification that is fulfilled by the established correspondence concept of truth and that has the further property that any two concepts fulfilling it are necessarily coextensive. Basically, convention T requires that to be materially adequate a proposed truth definition must imply all of the infinitely many relevant Tarskian biconditionals; e.g., the sentence ‘Some perfect number is odd’ is true if and only if some perfect number is odd. Loosely speaking, a Tarskian biconditional for English is a sentence obtained from the form ‘The sentence ——— is true if and only if ——’ by filling the right blank with a sentence and filling the left blank with a name of the sentence. Tarski called these biconditionals “equivalences of the form T” and referred to the form as a “scheme.” Later writers also refer to the form as “schema T.”
“Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave.”It would be appropriate, I think, to make a partial specification of the timeless meaning of S, by saying 'Part of one meaning of S, is "Bill is occupationally engaged in philosophical studies" '. One might, indeed, give a full specifu::ation of timeless meaning for S, by saying 'One meaning of S, inc1udes "Bill is occupationally engaged in philosophie al studies" and "Bill is courageous" and "[The fact] That Bill is courageous follows from his being occupationally engaged in philosophical studies", and that is all that is included'. We might re-express this as 'One meaning of S, comprises "Bill is occupationally engaged (etc)", "Bill is courageous", and "That Bill is eourageous follows (ete .)".'] It will be preferable to speeify the timeless meaning of S I in this way than to do so as folIows: 'One meaning of S I is "Bill is occupationally engaged (etc.) and Bill is courageous and that Bill is eourageous follows (ete.)" '; for this latter formulation at least suggests that SI is synonymous with the conjunctive sentence quoted in the formulation, whieh does not seem to be the case. Since it is true that another meaning of SI inc1udes 'Bill is addicted to general reftections about life' (vice 'Bill is occupationally engaged (etc.)'), one could have occasion to say (truly), with respect to a given utterance by U of SI' 'The meaning of SI HERE comprised "Bill is oecupationally engaged (ete.)", "Bill is eourageous", and "That Bill is courageous follows (ete.)"', or to say 'The meaning of S I HERE included "That Bill is courageous follows (etc.)" '. It could also be true that when U uttered SI he meant (part of what he meant was) that that Bill is eourageous follows (ete.). Now I do not wish to allow that, in my favoured sense of'say', one who utters SI will have said [OR EXPLICITLY CONVEYED ] that Bill's being courageous follows from his being a philosopher, though he may weil have said that Bill is a philosopher and that Bill is courageous. I would wish to maintain that the SEMANTIC FUNCTION of the 'therefore' is to enable a speaker to indicate, though not to say [or explicitly convey], that a certain consequenee holds. Mutatis mutandis, I would adopt the same position with regard to words like 'but' and 'moreover'. In the case of ‘but’ – contrast.In the case of ‘moreover,’ or ‘furthermore,’ the speaker is not explicitly conveying that he is adding; he is implicitly conveying that he is adding, and using the emphatic, colloquial, rhetorical, device. Much favoured by rhetoricians. To start a sentence with “Furthermore” is very common. To start a sentence, or subsentence with, “I say that in addition to the previous, the following also holds, viz.”My primary reason for opting for this partieular sense of'say' is that I expect it to be of greater theoretical utility than some OTHER sense of'say' [such as one held, say, by L. J. Cohen at Oxford] would be. So I shall be committed to the view that applied timeless meaning and occasion=meaning may coincide, that is to say, it may be true both First, that when U uttered X the meaning of X inc1uded '*p' and Second, that part of what U meant when he uttered X was that *p, and yet be false that U has said, among other things, that *p. “I would like to use the expression 'conventionally meant that' in such a way that the fulfilment of the two conditions just mentioned, while insufficient for the truth of 'U said that *p' will be suffieient (and neeessary) for the truth of 'U conventionally meant that *p'.”The above is important because Grice is for the first time allowing the adverb ‘conventionally’ to apply not as he does in Essay I to ‘implicate’ but to ‘mean’ in general – which would INCLUDE what is EXPLICITLY CONVEYED. This will not be as central as he thinks he is here, because his exploration will be on the handwave which surely cannot be specified in terms of that the emissor CONVENTIONALLY MEANS.(V) This distinction between what is said [or explicity conveyed] and what is conventionally meant [or communicated, or conveyed simpliciter] creates the task of specifying the conditions in which what U conventionally means by an utterance is also part of what U said [or explicitly conveyed].I have hopes of being able to discharge this task by proceeding along the following lines.First, To specify conditions which will be satisfied only by a limited range of speech-acts, the members of which will thereby be stamped as specially central or fundamental. “Adding, contrasting, and reasoning” will not. Second, To stipulate that in uttering X [utterance type], U will have said [or explicitly conveyed] that *p, if both First, U has 1stFLOOR-ed that *p, where 1stFloor-ing is a CENTRAL speech-act [not adding, contrasting, or reasoning], and Second, X [the utterance type] embodies some CONVENTIONAL device [such as the mode of the copula] the meaning of which is such that its presence in X [the utterance type] indicates that its utterer is FIRST-FLOOR -ing that *p. Third, To define, for each member Y of the range of central speech-aets, 'U has Y -ed that *p' in terms of occasion-meaning (meaning that ... ) or in terms of some important elements) involved in the already provided definition of occasion-meaning. (VI) The fulfilment of the task just outlined will need to be supplemented by an account of this or that ELEMENT in the CONVENTIONAL MEANING of an utterance (such as one featuring ‘therefore,’ ‘but,’ or ‘moreover’) which is NOT part of what has been said [or explicitly conveyed].This account, at least for an important sub-class of such elements, might take the following shape: First, this or that problematic element is linked with this or that speech-act which is exhibited as posterior to, and such that their performance is dependent upon, some member or disjunction of members of the central, first-floor range; e. g. the meaning of 'moreover' would be linked with the speech-act of adding, the performance of which would require the performance of one or other of the central speech-acts. – [and the meaning of ‘but’ with contrasting, and the meaning of ‘therefore’ with reasoning, or inferring].Second, If SECOND-FLOOR-ing is such a non-central speech-act [such as inferring/reasoning, contrasting, or adding], the dependence of SECOND-FLOOR-ing that *p upon the performance of some central FIRST-FLOOR speech-act [such as stating or ordering] would have to be shown to be of a nature which justifies a RELUCTANCE to treat SECOND-FLOOR-ing (e. g. inferring, contrasting, adding) that *p as a case not merely of saying that *p, but also of saying that = p, or of saying that = *p (where' = p', or ' = *p', is a representation of one or more sentential forms specifically associated with SECOND-FLOOR-ing). Z Third, The notion of SECOND-FLOOR-ing (inferring, contrasting, adding) that *p (where Z-ing is non-central) would be explicated in terms of the nation of meaning that (or in terms of some important elements) in the definition of that notion). When Grice learned that that brilliant Harvardite, D. K. Lewis, was writing a dissertation under Quine on ‘convention’ he almost fainted! When he noticed that Lewis was relying rightly on Schelling and mainly restricting the ‘conventionality’ to the ‘arbitrariness,’ which Grice regarded as synonym with ‘freedom’ (Willkuere, liber arbitrium), he recovered. For Lewis, a two-off predicament occurs when you REPEAT. Grice is not interested. When you repeat, you may rely on some ‘arbitrariness.’ This is usually the EMISSOR’s auctoritas. As when Humptyy Dumpty was brought to Davidson’s attention. “Impenetrability!” “I don’t know what that means.” “Well put, Alice, if that is your name, as you said it was. What I mean by ‘impenetrability’ is that we rather change the topic, plus it’s tea time, and I feel like having some eggs.” Grice refers to this as the ‘idion.’ He reminisces when he was in the bath and designed a full new highway code (“Nobody has yet used it – but the pleasure was in the semiotic design.”). A second reminiscence pertains to his writing a full grammar of “Deutero-Esperanto.” “I loved it – because I had all the power a master needs! I decide what it’s proper!” In the field of the implicatura, Grice uses ‘convention’ casually, mainly to contrast it with HIS field, the non-conventional. One should not attach importance to this. On occasion Grice used Frege’s “Farbung,” just to confuse. The sad story is that Strawson was never convinced by the non-conventional. Being a conventionalist at heart (vide his “Intention and convention in speech acts,”) and revering Austin, Strawson opposes Grice’s idea of the ‘non-conventional.’ Note that in Grice’s general schema for the communicatum, the ‘conventional’ is just ONE MODE OF CORRELATION between the signum and the signatum, or the communicatum and the intentum. The ‘conventional’ can be explained, unlike Lewis, in mere terms of the validatum. Strawson and Wiggins “Cogito; ergo, sum”: What is explicitly conveyed is: “cogito” and “sum”. The conjunction “cogito” and “sum” is not made an ‘invalidatum’ if the implicated consequence relation, emotionally expressed by an ‘alas’-like sort of ejaculation, ‘ergo,’ fails to hold. Strawson and Wiggins give other examples. For some reason, Latin ‘ergo’ becomes the more structured, “therefore,” which is a composite of ‘there’ and ‘fore.’ Then there’s the very Hun, “so,” (as in “so so”). Then there’s the “Sie schoene aber poor,” discussed by Frege --“but,” – and Strawson and Wiggins add a few more that had Grice elaborating on first-floor versus second-floor. Descartes is on the first floor. He states “cogito” and he states “sum.” Then he goes to the second floor, and the screams, “ergo,” or ‘dunc!’” The examples Strawson and Wiggins give are: “although” (which looks like a subordinating dyadic connector but not deemed essential by Gazdar’s 16 ones). Then they give an expression Grice quite explored, “because,” or “for”as Grice prefers (‘since it improves on Stevenson), the ejaculation “alas,” and in its ‘misusage,’ “hopefully.” This is an adverbial that Grice loved: “Probably, it will rains,” “Desirably, there is icecream.” There is a confusing side to this too. “intentions are to be recognized, in the normal case, by virtue of a knowledge of the conventional use of the sentence (indeed my account of "non-conventional implicaturum" depends on this idea).” So here we may disregard the ‘bandaged leg case’ and the idea that there is implicaturum in art, etc. If we take the sobriquet ‘non-conventional’ seriously, one may be led to suggest that the ‘non-conventional’ DEPENDS on the conventional. One distinctive feature – the fifth – of the conversational implicaturum is that it is partly generated as partly depending on the ‘conventional’ “use.” So this is tricky. Grice’s anti-conventionalism -- conventionalism, the philosophical doctrine that logical truth and mathematical truth are created by our choices, not dictated or imposed on us by the world. The doctrine is a more specific version of the linguistic theory of logical and mathematical truth, according to which the statements of logic and mathematics are true because of the way people use language. Of course, any statement owes its truth to some extent to facts about linguistic usage. For example, ‘Snow is white’ is true in English because of the facts that 1 ‘snow’ denotes snow, 2 ‘is white’ is true of white things, and 3 snow is white. What the linguistic theory asserts is that statements of logic and mathematics owe their truth entirely to the way people use language. Extralinguistic facts such as 3 are not relevant to the truth of such statements. Which aspects of linguistic usage produce logical truth and mathematical truth? The conventionalist answer is: certain linguistic conventions. These conventions are said to include rules of inference, axioms, and definitions. The idea that geometrical truth is truth we create by adopting certain conventions received support by the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries. Prior to this discovery, Euclidean geometry had been seen as a paradigm of a priori knowledge. The further discovery that these alternative systems are consistent made Euclidean geometry seem rejectable without violating rationality. Whether we adopt the Euclidean system or a non-Euclidean system seems to be a matter of our choice based on such pragmatic considerations as simplicity and convenience. Moving to number theory, conventionalism received a prima facie setback by the discovery that arithmetic is incomplete if consistent. For let S be an undecidable sentence, i.e., a sentence for which there is neither proof nor disproof. Suppose S is true. In what conventions does its truth consist? Not axioms, rules of inference, and definitions. For if its truth consisted in these items it would be provable. Suppose S is not true. Then its negation must be true. In what conventions does its truth consist? Again, no answer. It appears that if S is true or its negation is true and if neither S nor its negation is provable, then not all arithmetic truth is truth by convention. A response the conventionalist could give is that neither S nor its negation is true if S is undecidable. That is, the conventionalist could claim that arithmetic has truth-value gaps. As to logic, all truths of classical logic are provable and, unlike the case of number theory and geometry, axioms are dispensable. Rules of inference suffice. As with geometry, there are alternatives to classical logic. The intuitionist, e.g., does not accept the rule ‘From not-not-A infer A’. Even detachment ’From A, if A then B, infer B’ is rejected in some multivalued systems of logic. These facts support the conventionalist doctrine that adopting any set of rules of inference is a matter of our choice based on pragmatic considerations. But the anti-conventionalist might respond consider a simple logical truth such as ‘If Tom is tall, then Tom is tall’. Granted that this is provable by rules of inference from the empty set of premises, why does it follow that its truth is not imposed on us by extralinguistic facts about Tom? If Tom is tall the sentence is true because its consequent is true. If Tom is not tall the sentence is true because its antecedent is false. In either case the sentence owes its truth to facts about Tom. -- convention T, a criterion of material adequacy of proposed truth definitions discovered, formally articulated, adopted, and so named by Tarski in connection with his 9 definition of the concept of truth in a formalized language. Convention T is one of the most important of several independent proposals Tarski made concerning philosophically sound and logically precise treatment of the concept of truth. Various of these proposals have been criticized, but convention T has remained virtually unchallenged and is regarded almost as an axiom of analytic philosophy. To say that a proposed definition of an established concept is materially adequate is to say that it is “neither too broad nor too narrow,” i.e., that the concept it characterizes is coextensive with the established concept. Since, as Tarski emphasized, for many formalized languages there are no criteria of truth, it would seem that there can be no general criterion of material adequacy of truth definitions. But Tarski brilliantly finessed this obstacle by discovering a specification that is fulfilled by the established correspondence concept of truth and that has the further property that any two concepts fulfilling it are necessarily coextensive. Basically, convention T requires that to be materially adequate a proposed truth definition must imply all of the infinitely many relevant Tarskian biconditionals; e.g., the sentence ‘Some perfect number is odd’ is true if and only if some perfect number is odd. Loosely speaking, a Tarskian biconditional for English is a sentence obtained from the form ‘The sentence ——— is true if and only if ——’ by filling the right blank with a sentence and filling the left blank with a name of the sentence. Tarski called these biconditionals “equivalences of the form T” and referred to the form as a “scheme.” Later writers also refer to the form as “schema T.”
nonsense: Sense-nonsense
-- demarcation, the line separating empirical science from mathematics and
logic, from metaphysics, and from pseudoscience. Science traditionally was
supposed to rely on induction, the formal disciplines including metaphysics on
deduction. In the verifiability criterion, the logical positivists identified
the demarcation of empirical science from metaphysics with the demarcation of
the cognitively meaningful from the meaningless, classifying metaphysics as
gibberish, and logic and mathematics, more charitably, as without sense. Noting
that, because induction is invalid, the theories of empirical science are
unverifiable, Popper proposed falsifiability as their distinguishing characteristic,
and remarked that some metaphysical doctrines, such as atomism, are obviously
meaningful. It is now recognized that science is suffused with metaphysical
ideas, and Popper’s criterion is therefore perhaps a rather rough criterion of
demarcation of the empirical from the nonempirical rather than of the
scientific from the non-scientific. It repudiates the unnecessary task of
demarcating the cognitively meaningful from the cognitively meaningless.
NOTUM -- divided line,
one of three analogies with the sun and cave offered in Plato’s Republic VI,
509d 511e as a partial explanation of the Good. Socrates divides a line into
two unequal segments: the longer represents the intelligible world and the
shorter the sensible world. Then each of the segments is divided in the same
proportion. Socrates associates four mental states with the four resulting
segments beginning with the shortest: eikasia, illusion or the apprehension of
images; pistis, belief in ordinary physical objects; dianoia, the sort of
hypothetical reasondispositional belief divided line 239 239 ing engaged in by mathematicians; and
noesis, rational ascent to the first principle of the Good by means of
dialectic. Grice read Austin’s essay on this with interest. Refs.: J. L.
Austin, “Plato’s Cave,” in Philosophical Papers.
noûs, Grecian term for
mind or the faculty of reason. Noûs is the highest type of thinking, the kind a
god would do. Sometimes called the faculty of intellectual intuition, it is at
work when someone understands definitions, concepts, and anything else that is
grasped all at once. Noûs stands in contrast with another intellectual faculty,
dianoia. When we work through the steps of an argument, we exercise dianoia; to
be certain the conclusion is true without argument to just “see” it, as, perhaps, a god
might is to exercise noûs. Just which
objects could be apprehended by noûs was controversial.
Novalis, pseudonym of
Friedrich von Hardenberg 17721801, G. poet and philosopher of early G.
Romanticism. His starting point was Fichte’s reflective type of transcendental
philosophy; he attempted to complement Fichte’s focus on philosophical
speculation by including other forms of intellectual experience such as faith,
love, poetry, and religion, and exhibit their equally autonomous status of
existence. Of special importance in this regard is his analysis of the
imagination in contrast to reason, of the poetic power in distinction from the
reasonable faculties. Novalis insists on a complementary interaction between
these two spheres, on a union of philosophy and poetry. Another important
aspect of his speculation concerns the relation between the inner and the outer
world, subject and object, the human being and nature. Novalis attempted to
reveal the correspondence, even unity between these two realms and to present
the world as a “universal trope” or a “symbolic image” of the human mind and
vice versa. He expressed his philosophical thought mostly in fragments.
nowell-smithianism. “The Nowell is redundant,” Grice
would say. P. H. Nowell-Smith adopted the “Nowell” after his father’s first
name. In “Ethics,” he elaborates on what he calls ‘contextual implication.’ The
essay was widely read, and has a freshness that other ‘meta-ethicist’ at Oxford
seldom display. His ‘contextual implication’ compares of course to Grice’s
‘conversational implicaturum.’ Indeed, by using ‘conversational implicaturum,’
Grice is following an Oxonian tradition started with C. K. Grant and his
‘pragmatic implication,’ and P. H. Nowell-Smith and his ‘contextual
implication.’ At Oxford, they were obsessed with these types of ‘implicatura,’
because it was the type of thing that a less subtle philosopher would ignore.
Grice’s cancellability priority for his type of implicatura hardly applies to
Nowell-Smith. Nowell-Smith never displays the ‘rationalist’ bent that Grice
wants to endow to his principle of conversational co-operation. Nowell-Smith,
rather, calls his ‘principles’ “rules of conversational etiquette.” If you
revise the literature, you will see that things like “avoid ambiguity,” “don’t
play unnecessary with words,” are listed indeed in what is called a
‘conversational manual,’ of ‘conversational etiquette,’ that is. In his
rationalist bent, Grice narrows down the use of ‘conversational’ to apply to
‘conversational maxim,’ which is only a UNIVERSALISABLE one, towards the
overarching goal of rational co-operation. In this regard, many of the rules of
‘conversational etiquette’ (Grice even mentions ‘moral rules,’ and a rule like
‘be polite’) to fall outside the principle of conversational helpfulness, and
thus, not exactly generating a ‘conversational implicaturum.’ While Grice gives
room to allow such non-conversational non-conventional implicatura to be
‘calculable,’ that is, ‘rationalizable, by ‘argument,’ he never showed any
interest in giving one example – for the simple reason that none of those
‘maxims’ generated the type of ‘mistake’ on the part of this or that
philosopher, as he was interested in rectifying.
Nozick, Robert b.8, philosopher, Harvard , best known for
Anarchy, State, and Utopia, which defends the libertarian position that only a
minimal state limited to protecting rights is just. Nozick argues that a
minimal state, but not a more extensive state, could arise without violating rights.
Drawing on Kant’s dictum that people may not be used as mere means, Nozick says
that people’s rights are inviolable, no matter how useful violations might be
to the state. He criticizes principles of redistributive justice on which
theorists base defenses of extensive states, such as the principle of utility,
and Rawls’s principle that goods should be distributed in favor of the least
well-off. Enforcing these principles requires eliminating the cumulative
effects of free exchanges, which violates permanent, bequeathable property
rights. Nozick’s own entitlement theory says that a distribution of holdings is
just if people under that distribution are entitled to what they hold.
Entitlements, in turn, would be clarified using principles of justice in acquisition,
transfer, and rectification. Nozick’s other works include Philosophical
Explanations 1, The Examined Life 9, The Nature of Rationality 3, and Socratic
Puzzles 7. These are contributions to rational choice theory, epistemology,
metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and ethics.
Philosophical Explanations features two especially important contributions. The
first is Nozick’s reliabilist, causal view that beliefs that constitute
knowledge must track the truth. My belief that say a cat is on the mat tracks
the truth only if a I would not believe this if a cat were not on the mat, and
b I would believe this if a cat were there. The tracking account positions
Nozick to reject the principle that people know all of the things they believe via
deductions from things they know, and to reject versions of skepticism based on
this principle of closure. The second is Nozick’s closest continuer theory of
identity, according to which A’s identity at a later time can depend on facts
about other existing things, for it depends on 1 what continues A closely
enough to be A and 2 what continues A
more closely than any other existing thing. Nozick’s 9 essay “Newcomb’s Problem
and Two Principles of Choice” is another important contribution. It is the first
discussion of Newcomb’s problem, a problem in decision theory, and presents
many positions prominent in subsequent debate.
Numenius of Apamea fl.
mid-second century A.D., Grecian Platonist philosopher of neoPythagorean
tendencies. Very little is known of his life apart from his residence in
Apamea, Syria, but his philosophical importance is considerable. His system of
three levels of spiritual reality a
primal god the Good, the Father, who is almost supra-intellectual; a secondary,
creator god the demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus; and a world soul largely anticipates that of Plotinus in the
next century, though he was more strongly dualist than Plotinus in his attitude
to the physical world and matter. He was much interested in the wisdom of the
East, and in comparative religion. His most important work, fragments of which
are preserved by Eusebius, is a dialogue On the Good, but he also wrote a
polemic work On the Divergence of the Academics from Plato, which shows him to
be a lively controversialist. J.M.D. numerical identity.
Nussbaum, Martha Craven,
philosopher, classicist, and public intellectual with influential views on the
human good, the emotions and their place in practical reasoning, and the rights
of women and homosexuals. After training at Harvard in classical philology, she
published a critical edition, with translation and commentary, of Aristotle’s
Motion of Animals 8. Its essays formulated ideas that she has continued to
articulate: that perception is trainable, imagination interpretive, and desire
a reaching out for the good. Via provocative readings of Plato, Aristotle,
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, The Fragility of Goodness 6 argues that
many true goods succumb to fortune, lack any common measure, and demand
finetuned discernment. The essays in Love’s Knowledge 0 on Proust, Dickens, Beckett, Henry James, and
others explore the emotional
implications of our fragility and the particularism of practical reasoning.
They also undertake a brief against Plato’s ancient criticism of the poets, an
argument that Nussbaum carried on years later in debates with Judge Richard
Posner. The Therapy of Desire 4 dissects the Stoics’ conviction that our
vulnerability calls for philosophical therapy to extirpate the emotions. While
Nussbaum holds that the Stoics were mistaken about the good, she has adopted
and strengthened their view that emotions embody judgments most notably in her Gifford Lectures of 3,
Upheavals of Thought. A turning point in Nussbaum’s career came in 7, when she
became a part-time research adviser at the United Nationssponsored World
Institute for Development Economics Research. She there adapted her
Aristotelian account of the human good to help ground the “capabilities
approach” that the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen was developing for
policymakers to use in assessing individuals’ well-being. Nussbaum spells out
the human capabilities essential to leading a good life, integrating them
within a nuanced liberalism of universalist appeal. This view has ramified:
Poetic Justice 6 argues that its legal realization must avoid the
oversimplifications that utilitarianism and economics encourage and instead
balance generality with emotionally sensitive imagination. Sex and Social
Justice 8 explores her view’s implications for problems of sexual inequality,
gay rights, and sexual objectification. Feminist Internationalism, her 8 Seeley
Lec 622 tures, argues that an effective
international feminism must champion rights, eschew relativism, and study local
traditions sufficiently closely to see their diversity.
O:
particularis abdicativa. See Grice, “Circling the Square of Opposition.”
Oakeshott, M.: H. P.
Grice, “Oakeshott’s conversational implicaturum,” English philosopher and
political theorist trained at Cambridge and in G.y. He taught first at
Cambridge and Oxford; from 1 he was professor of political science at the
London School of Economics and Political Science. His works include Experience
and Its Modes 3, Rationalism in Politics 2, On Human Conduct 5, and On History
3. Oakeshott’s misleading general reputation, based on Rationalism in Politics,
is as a conservative political thinker. Experience and Its Modes is a
systematic work in the tradition of Hegel. Human experience is exclusively of a
world of ideas intelligible insofar as it is coherent. This world divides into
modes historical, scientific, practical, and poetic experience, each being
partly coherent and categorially distinct from all others. Philosophy is the
never entirely successful attempt to articulate the coherence of the world of
ideas and the place of modally specific experience within that whole. His later
works examine the postulates of historical and practical experience,
particularly those of religion, morality, and politics. All conduct in the
practical mode postulates freedom and is an “exhibition of intelligence” by
agents who appropriate inherited languages and ideas to the generic activity of
self-enactment. Some conduct pursues specific purposes and occurs in
“enterprise associations” identified by goals shared among those who
participate in them. The most estimable forms of conduct, exemplified by
“conversation,” have no such purpose and occur in “civil societies” under the
purely “adverbial” considerations of morality and law. “Rationalists” illicitly
use philosophy to dictate to practical experience and subordinate human conduct
to some master purpose. Oakeshott’s distinctive achievement is to have melded
holistic idealism with a morality and politics radical in their affirmation of
individuality.
objectivism:
Grice reads Meinong on objectivity and finds it funny! Meinong distinguishes
four classes of objects: ‘Objekt,’ simpliciter, which can be real (like horses)
or ideal (like the concepts of difference, identity, etc.) and “Objectiv,” e.g.
the affirmation of the being (Sein) or non-being (Nichtsein), of a being-such
(Sosein), or a being-with (Mitsein) - parallel to existential, categorical and
hypothetical judgements. An “Objectiv” is close to what contemporary
philosophers call states of affairs (where these may be actual—may obtain—or
not). The third class is the dignitative, e.g. the true, the good, the beautiful.
Finally, there is the desiderative, e.g. duties, ends, etc. To these four
classes of objects correspond four classes of psychological acts: (re)presentation (das Vorstellen), for
objects thought (das Denken), for the objectives feeling (das Fühlen), for
dignitatives desire (das Begehren), for the desideratives. Grice starts with
subjectivity. Objectivity can be constructed as non-relativised
subjectivity. Grice discusses of Inventing right and wrong by Mackie. In
the proceedings, Grice quotes the artless sexism of Austin in talking
about the trouser words in Sense and Sensibilia. Grice tackles all the
distinctions Mackie had played with: objective/Subjectsive, absolute/relative,
categorical/hypothetical or suppositional. Grice quotes directly from Hare:
Think of one world into whose fabric values are objectively built; and think of
another in which those values have been annihilated. And remember that in both
worlds the people in them go on being concerned about the same things—there is
no difference in the Subjectsive value. Now I ask, what is the difference
between the states of affairs in these two worlds? Can any answer be given except,
none whatever? Grice uses the Latinate objective (from objectum). Cf. Hare on
what he thinks the oxymoronic sub-jective value. Grice considered more
seriously than Barnes did the systematics behind Nicolai Hartmanns
stratification of values. Refs.: the most explicit allusion is a specific essay
on “objectivity” in The H. P. Grice Papers. Most of the topic is covered in “Conception,”
Essay 1. BANC.
objectivum.
Here the contrast is what what is subjective, or subjectivum. Notably value.
For Hartmann and Grice, a value is rational, objective and absolute, and
categorical (not relative).
objectum. For Grice the subjectum is prior. While ‘subject’ and
‘predicate’ are basic Aristotelian categories, the idea of the direct object or
indirect object seems to have little philosophical relevance. (but cf. “What is
the meaning of ‘of’? Genitivus subjectivus versus enitivus objectivus. The
usage that is more widespread is a misnomer for ‘thing’. When an empiricist
like Grice speaks of an ‘obble’ or an ‘object,’ he means a thing. That is
because, since Hume there’s no such thing as a ‘subject’ qua self. And if there
is no subject, there is no object. No Copernican revolution for empiricists.
obiectum quo Latin,
‘object by which’, in medieval and Scholastic epistemology, the object by which
an object is known. It should be understood in contrast with obiectum quod,
which refers to the object that is known. For example, when a person knows what
an apple is, the apple is the obiectum quod and his concept of the apple is the
obiectum quo. That is, the concept is instrumental to knowing the apple, but is
not itself what is known. Human beings need concepts in order to have
knowledge, because their knowledge is receptive, in contrast with God’s which
is productive. God creates what he knows. Human knowledge is mediated; divine
knowledge is immediate. Scholastic philosophers believe that the distinction
between obiectum quod and obiectum quo exposes the crucial mistake of idealism.
According to idealists, the object of knowledge, i.e., what a person knows, is
an idea. In contrast, the Scholastics maintain that idealists conflate the
object of knowledge with the means by which human knowledge is made possible.
Humans must be connected to the object of knowledge by something obiectum quo,
but what connects them is not that to which they are connected. A.P.M. object,
intentional.
objective rightness. In
ethics, an action is objectively right for a person to perform on some occasion
if the agent’s performing it on that occasion really is right, whether or not
the agent, or anyone else, believes it is. An action is subjectively right for
a person to perform on some occasion if the agent believes, or perhaps
justifiably believes, of that action that it is objectively right. For example,
according to a version of utilitarianism, an action is objectively right
provided the action is optimific in the sense that the consequences that would
result from its per624 O 624 formance
are at least as good as those that would result from any alternative action the
agent could instead perform. Were this theory correct, then an action would be
an objectively right action for an agent to perform on some occasion if and
only if that action is in fact optimific. An action can be both objectively and
subjectively right or neither. But an action can also be subjectively right,
but fail to be objectively right, as where the action fails to be optimific
again assuming that a utilitarian theory is correct, yet the agent believes the
action is objectively right. And an action can be objectively right but not
subjectively right, where, despite the objective rightness of the action, the
agent has no beliefs about its rightness or believes falsely that it is not
objectively right. This distinction is important in our moral assessments of
agents and their actions. In cases where we judge a person’s action to be
objectively wrong, we often mitigate our judgment of the agent when we judge
that the action was, for the agent, subjectively right. This same objectivesubjective
distinction applies to other ethical categories such as wrongness and
obligatoriness, and some philosophers extend it to items other than actions,
e.g., emotions.
Obligatum -- Deontology
-- duty, what a person is obligated or required to do. Duties can be moral,
legal, parental, occupational, etc., depending on their foundations or grounds.
Because a duty can have several different grounds, it can be, say, both moral
and legal, though it need not be of more than one type. Natural duties are moral
duties people have simply in virtue of being persons, i.e., simply in virtue of
their nature. There is a prima facie duty to do something if and only if there
is an appropriate basis for doing that thing. For instance, a prima facie moral
duty will be one for which there is a moral basis, i.e., some moral grounds.
This conDutch book duty 248 248 trasts
with an all-things-considered duty, which is a duty one has if the appropriate
grounds that support it outweigh any that count against it. Negative duties are
duties not to do certain things, such as to kill or harm, while positive duties
are duties to act in certain ways, such as to relieve suffering or bring aid.
While the question of precisely how to draw the distinction between negative
and positive duties is disputed, it is generally thought that the violation of
a negative duty involves an agent’s causing some state of affairs that is the
basis of the action’s wrongness e.g., harm, death, or the breaking of a trust,
whereas the violation of a positive duty involves an agent’s allowing those
states of affairs to occur or be brought about. Imperfect duties are, in Kant’s
words, “duties which allow leeway in the interest of inclination,” i.e., that
permit one to choose among several possible ways of fulfilling them. Perfect
duties do not allow that leeway. Thus, the duty to help those in need is an
imperfect duty since it can be fulfilled by helping the sick, the starving, the
oppressed, etc., and if one chooses to help, say, the sick, one can choose which
of the sick to help. However, the duty to keep one’s promises and the duty not
to harm others are perfect duties since they do not allow one to choose which
promises to keep or which people not to harm. Most positive duties are
imperfect; most negative ones, perfect. obligationes, the study of
inferentially inescapable, yet logically odd arguments, used by late medieval
logicians in analyzing inferential reasoning. In Topics VIII.3 Aristotle
describes a respondent’s task in a philosophical argument as providing answers
so that, if they must defend the impossible, the impossibility lies in the
nature of the position, and not in its logical defense. In Prior Analytics I.13
Aristotle argues that nothing impossible follows from the possible. Burley,
whose logic exemplifies early fourteenth-century obligationes literature,
described the resulting logical exercise as a contest between interlocutor and
respondent. The interlocutor must force the respondent into maintaining
contradictory statements in defending a position, and the respondent must avoid
this while avoiding maintaining the impossible, which can be either a position
logically incompatible with the position defended or something impossible in
itself. Especially interesting to Scholastic logicians were the paradoxes of
disputation inherent in such disputes. Assuming that a respondent has
successfully defended his position, the interlocutor may be able to propose a
commonplace position that the respondent can neither accept nor reject, given
the truth of the first, successfully defended position. Roger Swineshead
introduced a controversial innovation to obligationes reasoning, later rejected
by Paul of Venice. In the traditional style of obligation, a premise was
relevant to the argument only if it followed from or was inconsistent with
either a the proposition defended or b all the premises consequent to the
former and prior to the premise in question. By admitting any premise that was
either consequent to or inconsistent with the proposition defended alone, without
regard to intermediate premises, Swineshead eliminated concern with the order
of sentences proposed by the interlocutor, making the respondent’s task
harder.
Casus obliquus -- oblique
context. As explained by Frege in “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” 2, a linguistic
context is oblique ungerade if and only if an expression e.g., proper name,
dependent clause, or sentence in that context does not express its direct
customary sense. For Frege, the sense of an expression is the mode of
presentation of its nominatum, if any. Thus in direct speech, the direct
customary sense of an expression designates its direct customary nominatum. For
example, the context of the proper name ‘Kepler’ in 1 Kepler died in misery. is
non-oblique i.e., direct since the proper name expresses its direct customary
sense, say, the sense of ‘the man who discovered the elliptical planetary
orbits’, thereby designating its direct customary nominatum, Kepler himself.
Moreover, the entire sentence expresses its direct sense, namely, the proposition
that Kepler died in misery, thereby designating its direct nominatum, a
truth-value, namely, the true. By contrast, in indirect speech an expression
neither expresses its direct sense nor, therefore, designates its direct
nominatum. One such sort of oblique context is direct quotation, as in 2
‘Kepler’ has six letters. The word appearing within the quotation marks neither
expresses its direct customary sense nor, therefore, designates its direct
customary nominatum, Kepler. Rather, it designates a word, a proper name.
Another sort of oblique context is engendered by the verbs of propositional
attitude. Thus, the context of the proper name ‘Kepler’ in 3 Frege believed
Kepler died in misery. is oblique, since the proper name expresses its indirect
sense, say, the sense of the words ‘the man widely known as Kepler’, thereby
designating its indirect nominatum, namely, the sense of ‘the man who
discovered the elliptical planetary orbits’. Note that the indirect nominatum
of ‘Kepler’ in 3 is the same as the direct sense of ‘Kepler’ in 1. Thus, while
‘Kepler’ in 1 designates the man Kepler, ‘Kepler’ in 3 designates the direct
customary sense of the word ‘Kepler’ in 1. Similarly, in 3 the context of the
dependent clause ‘Kepler died in misery’ is oblique since the dependent clause
expresses its indirect sense, namely, the sense of the words ‘the proposition
that Kepler died in misery’, thereby designating its indirect nominatum,
namely, the proposition that Kepler died in misery. Note that the indirect nominatum
of ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 3 is the same as the direct sense of ‘Kepler died
in misery’ in 1. Thus, while ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 1 designates a
truthvalue, ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 3 designates a proposition, the direct
customary sense of the words ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 1.
obversion, a sort of
immediate inference that allows a transformation of affirmative categorical
A-propositions and I-propositions into the corresponding negative
E-propositions and O-propositions, and of E- and O-propositions into the
corresponding A- and I-propositions, keeping in each case the order of the
subject and predicate terms, but changing the original predicate into its
complement, i.e., into a negated term. For example, ‘Every man is mortal’ ’No man is non-mortal’; ‘Some students are
happy’ ‘Some students are not
non-happy’; ‘No dogs are jealous’ ‘All
dogs are non-jealous’; and ‘Some bankers are not rich’ ‘Some bankers are not non-rich’. .
occasionalism, a theory
of causation held by a number of important seventeenth-century Cartesian
philosophers, including Johannes Clauberg 162265, Géraud de Cordemoy 1626 84,
Arnold Geulincx 162469, Louis de la Forge 163266, and Nicolas Malebranche
16381715. In its most extreme version, occasionalism is the doctrine that all
finite created entities are devoid of causal efficacy, and that God is the only
true causal agent. Bodies do not cause effects in other bodies nor in minds;
and minds do not cause effects in bodies nor even within themselves. God is
directly, immediately, and solely responsible for bringing about all phenomena.
When a needle pricks the skin, the physical event is merely an occasion for God
to cause the relevant mental state pain; a volition in the soul to raise an arm
or to think of something is only an occasion for God to cause the arm to rise
or the ideas to be present to the mind; and the impact of one billiard ball
upon another is an occasion for God to move the second ball. In all three
contexts mindbody, bodybody, and mind
alone God’s ubiquitous causal activity
proceeds in accordance with certain general laws, and except for miracles he
acts only when the requisite material or psychic conditions obtain. Less
thoroughgoing forms of occasionalism limit divine causation e.g., to mindbody
or bodybody alone. Far from being an ad hoc solution to a Cartesian mindbody
problem, as it is often considered, occasionalism is argued for from general
philosophical considerations regarding the nature of causal relations
considerations that later appear, modified, in Hume, from an analysis of the
Cartesian concept of matoblique intention occasionalism 626 626 ter and of the necessary impotence of
finite substance, and, perhaps most importantly, from theological premises about
the essential ontological relation between an omnipotent God and the created
world that he sustains in existence. Occasionalism can also be regarded as a
way of providing a metaphysical foundation for explanations in mechanistic
natural philosophy. Occasionalists are arguing that motion must ultimately be
grounded in something higher than the passive, inert extension of Cartesian
bodies emptied of the substantial forms of the Scholastics; it needs a causal
ground in an active power. But if a body consists in extension alone, motive
force cannot be an inherent property of bodies. Occasionalists thus identify
force with the will of God. In this way, they are simply drawing out the
implications of Descartes’s own metaphysics of matter and motion.
Occam – see H. P. Grice,
“Modified Occam’s Razor” -- William c.12851347, also written William Occam,
known as the More than Subtle Doctor, English Scholastic philosopher known
equally as the father of nominalism and for his role in the Franciscan dispute
with Pope John XXII over poverty. Born probably in the village of Ockham near
London, William Ockham entered the Franciscan order at an early age and studied
at Oxford, attaining the rank of baccalarius formatus. His brilliant but
controversial career was cut short when John Lutterell, former chancellor of
Oxford , presented the pope with a list of fifty-six allegedly heretical theses
extracted from Ockham’s writings. The papal commission studied them for two
years and found fifty-one open to censure, but none was formally condemned.
While in Avignon, Ockham researched previous papal concessions to the
Franciscans regarding collective poverty, eventually concluding that John XXII
contradicted his predecessors and hence was “no true pope.” After committing
these charges to writing, Ockham fled with Michael of Cesena, then minister
general of the order, first to Pisa and ultimately to Munich, where he lived
until his death, writing many treatises about churchstate relations. Although
departures from his eminent predecessors have combined with ecclesiastical
difficulties to make Ockham unjustly notorious, his thought remains, by current
lights, philosophically and theologically conservative. On most metaphysical
issues, Ockham fancied himself the true interpreter of Aristotle. Rejecting the
doctrine that universals are real things other than names or concepts as “the
worst error of philosophy,” Ockham dismissed not only Platonism, but also
“modern realist” doctrines according to which natures enjoy a double mode of
existence and are universal in the intellect but numerically multiplied in
particulars. He argues that everything real is individual and particular, while
universality is a property pertaining only to names and that by virtue of their
signification relations. Because Ockham understands the primary names to be
mental i.e., naturally significant concepts, his own theory of universals is
best classified as a form of conceptualism. Ockham rejects atomism, and defends
Aristotelian hylomorphism in physics and metaphysics, complete with its
distinction between substantial and accidental forms. Yet, he opposes the
reifying tendency of the “moderns” unnamed contemporary opponents, who posited
a distinct kind of thing res for each of Aristotle’s ten categories; he argues
that from a purely philosophical point of
view it is indefensible to posit
anything besides particular substances and qualities. Ockham followed the
Franciscan school in recognizing a plurality of substantial forms in living
things in humans, the forms of corporeity, sensory soul, and intellectual soul,
but diverged from Duns Scotus in asserting a real, not a formal, distinction
among them. Aristotle had reached behind regular correlations in nature to
posit substance-things and accident-things as primitive explanatory entities
that essentially are or give rise to powers virtus that produce the
regularities; similarly, Ockham distinguishes efficient causality properly
speaking from sine qua non causality, depending on whether the correlation
between A’s and B’s is produced by the power of A or by the will of another,
and explicitly denies the existence of any sine qua non causation in nature.
Further, Ockham insists, in Aristotelian fashion, that created substance- and
accident-natures are essentially the causal powers they are in and of themselves
and hence independently of their relations to anything else; so that not even
God can make heat naturally a coolant. Yet, if God cannot change, He shares
with created things the ability to obstruct such “Aristotelian” productive
powers and prevent their normal operation. Ockham’s nominalistic conceptualism
about universals does not keep him from endorsing the uniformity of nature
principle, because he holds that individual natures are powers and hence that
co-specific things are maximally similar powers. Likewise, he is conventional
in appealing to several other a priori causal principles: “Everything that is
in motion is moved by something,” “Being cannot come from non-being,” “Whatever
is produced by something is really conserved by something as long as it
exists.” He even recognizes a kind of necessary connection between created
causes and effects e.g., while God could
act alone to produce any created effect, a particular created effect could not
have had another created cause of the same species instead. Ockham’s main
innovation on the topic of causality is his attack on Duns Scotus’s distinction
between “essential” and “accidental” orders and contrary contention that every
genuine efficient cause is an immediate cause of its effects. Ockham is an Aristotelian
reliabilist in epistemology, taking for granted as he does that human cognitive
faculties the senses and intellect work always or for the most part. Ockham
infers that since we have certain knowledge both of material things and of our
own mental acts, there must be some distinctive species of acts of awareness
intuitive cognitions that are the power to produce such evident judgments.
Ockham is matter-of-fact both about the disruption of human cognitive functions
by created obstacles as in sensory illusion and about divine power to intervene
in many ways. Such facts carry no skeptical consequences for Ockham, because he
defines certainty in terms of freedom from actual doubt and error, not from the
logical, metaphysical, or natural possibility of error. In action theory,
Ockham defends the liberty of indifference or contingency for all rational
beings, created or divine. Ockham shares Duns Scotus’s understanding of the
will as a self-determining power for opposites, but not his distaste for causal
models. Thus, Ockham allows that 1 unfree acts of will may be necessitated,
either by the agent’s own nature, by its other acts, or by an external cause;
and that 2 the efficient causes of free acts may include the agent’s
intellectual and sensory cognitions as well as the will itself. While
recognizing innate motivational tendencies in the human agent e.g., the inclination to seek sensory
pleasure and avoid pain, the affectio commodi tendency to seek its own
advantage, and the affectio iustitiae inclination to love things for their own
intrinsic worth he denies that these
limit the will’s scope. Thus, Ockham goes beyond Duns Scotus in assigning the
will the power, with respect to any option, to will for it velle, to will
against it nolle, or not to act at all. In particular, Ockham concludes that
the will can will against nolle the good, whether ignorantly or perversely by hating God or by willing against its own
happiness, the good-in-general, the enjoyment of a clear vision of God, or its
own ultimate end. The will can also will velle evils the opposite of what right reason dictates,
unjust deeds qua unjust, dishonest, and contrary to right reason, and evil
under the aspect of evil. Ockham enforces the traditional division of moral
science into non-positive morality or ethics, which directs acts apart from any
precept of a superior authority and draws its principles from reason and
experience; and positive morality, which deals with laws that oblige us to
pursue or avoid things, not because they are good or evil in themselves, but
because some legitimate superior commands them. The notion that Ockham sponsors
an unmodified divine command theory of ethics rests on conflation and
confusion. Rather, in the area of non-positive morality, Ockham advances what
we might label a “modified right reason theory,” which begins with the
Aristotelian ideal of rational self-government, according to which morally
virtuous action involves the agent’s free coordination of choice with right
reason. He then observes that suitably informed right reason would dictate that
God, as the infinite good, ought to be loved above all and for his own sake,
and that such love ought to be expressed by the effort to please him in every
way among other things, by obeying all his commands. Thus, if right reason is
the primary norm in ethics, divine commands are a secondary, derivative norm.
Once again, Ockham is utterly unconcerned about the logical possibility opened
by divine liberty of indifference, that these twin norms might conflict say, if
God commanded us to act contrary to right reason; for him, their de facto
congruence suffices for the moral life. In the area of soteriological merit and
demerit a branch of positive morality, things are the other way around: divine
will is the primary norm; yet because God includes following the dictates of
right reason among the criteria for divine acceptance thereby giving the moral
life eternal significance, right reason becomes a secondary and derivative norm
there.
Occam’s razor: H. P.
Grice, “Modified Occam’s Razor.” Also called the principle of parsimony, a
methodological principle commending a bias toward simplicity in the
construction of theories. The parameters whose simplicity is singled out for
attention have varied considerably, from kinds of entities to the number of
presupposed axioms to the nature of the curve drawn between data points. Found
already in Aristotle, the tag “entities should not be multiplied beyond
necessity” became associated with William Ockham although he never states that
version, and even if non-contradiction rather than parsimony is his favorite
weapon in metaphysical disputes, perhaps because it characterized the spirit of
his philosophical conclusions. Opponents, who thought parsimony was being
carried too far, formulated an “anti-razor”: where fewer entities do not
suffice, posit more!
Olivi, Peter John,
philosopher-theologian whose views on the theory and practice of Franciscan
poverty led to a long series of investigations of his orthodoxy. Olivi’s
preference for humility, as well as the suspicion with which he was regarded,
prevented his becoming a master of theology at Paris. After 1285, he was
effectively vindicated and permitted to teach at Florence and Montpellier. But
after his death, probably in part because his remains were venerated and his
views were championed by the Franciscan Spirituals, his orthodoxy was again
examined. The Council of Vienne 131112 condemned three unrelated tenets
associated with Olivi. Finally, in 1326, Pope John XXII condemned a series of
statements based on Olivi’s Apocalypse commentary. Olivi thought of himself
chiefly as a theologian, writing copious biblical commentaries; his philosophy
of history was influenced by Joachim of Fiore. His views on poverty inspired
the leader of the Franciscan Observant reform movement, St. Bernardino of
Siena. Apart from his views on poverty, Olivi is best known for his
philosophical independence from Aristotle, whom he condemned as a materialist.
Contrary to Aristotle’s theory of projectile motion, Olivi advocated a theory
of impetus. He undermined orthodox views on Aristotelian categories. His attack
on the category of relation was thought to have dangerous implications in
Trinitarian theology. Ockham’s theory of quantity is in part a defense of views
presented by Olivi. Olivi was critical of Augustinian as well as Aristotelian
views; he abandoned the theories of seminal reason and divine illumination. He
also argued against positing impressed sensible and intelligible species,
claiming that only the soul, not perceptual objects, played an active role in
perception. Bold as his philosophical views were, he presented them
tentatively. A voluntarist, he emphasized the importance of will. He claimed
that an act of understanding was not possible in the absence of an act of will.
He provided an important experiential argument for the freedom of the will. His
treatises on contracts revealed a sophisticated understanding of economics. His
treatise on evangelical poverty includes the first defense of a theory of papal
infallibility.
omega, the last letter of
the Grecian alphabet w. Following Cantor 18451, it is used in lowercase as a
proper name for the first infinite ordinal number, which is the ordinal of the
natural ordering of the set of finite ordinals. By extension it is also used as
a proper name for the set of finite ordinals itself or even for the set of
natural numbers. Following Gödel 678, it is used as a prefix in names of
various logical properties of sets of sentences, most notably omega-completeness
and omega-consistency. Omega-completeness, in the original sense due to Tarski,
is a syntactical property of sets of sentences in a formal arithmetic language
involving a symbol ‘0’ for the number zero and a symbol ‘s’ for the so-called
successor function, resulting in each natural number being named by an
expression, called a numeral, in the following series: ‘0’, ‘s0’, ‘ss0’, and so
on. For example, five is denoted by ‘sssss0’. A set of sentences is said to be
omegacomplete if it deductively yields every universal sentence all of whose
singular instances it yields. In this framework, as usual, every universal
sentence, ‘for every n, n has P’ yields each and every one of its singular
instances, ‘0 has P’, ‘s0 has P’, ‘ss0 has P’, etc. However, as had been known
by logicians at least since the Middle Ages, the converse is not true, i.e., it
is not in general the case that a universal sentence is deducible from the set
of its singular instances. Thus one should not expect to find
omega-completeness except in exceptional sets. The set of all true sentences of
arithmetic is such an exceptional set; the reason is the semantic fact that
every universal sentence whether or not in arithmetic is materially equivalent
to the set of all its singular instances. A set of sentences that is not
omega-complete is Ockham’s razor omega 629
629 said to be omega-incomplete. The existence of omega-incomplete sets
of sentences is a phenomenon at the core of the 1 Gödel incompleteness result,
which shows that every “effective” axiom set for arithmetic is omega-incomplete
and thus has as theorems all singular instances of a universal sentence that is
not one of its theorems. Although this is a remarkable fact, the existence of
omega-incomplete sets per se is far from remarkable, as suggested above. In
fact, the empty set and equivalently the set of all tautologies are
omega-incomplete because each yields all singular instances of the
non-tautological formal sentence, here called FS, that expresses the
proposition that every number is either zero or a successor. Omega-consistency
belongs to a set that does not yield the negation of any universal sentence all
of whose singular instances it yields. A set that is not omega-consistent is
said to be omega-inconsistent. Omega-inconsistency of course implies
consistency in the ordinary sense; but it is easy to find consistent sets that
are not omega-consistent, e.g., the set whose only member is the negation of
the formal sentence FS mentioned above. Corresponding to the syntactical properties
just mentioned there are analogous semantic properties whose definitions are
obtained by substituting ‘semantically implies’ for ‘deductively yields’. The
Grecian letter omega and its English name have many other uses in modern logic.
Carnap introduced a non-effective, non-logical rule, called the omega rule, for
“inferring” a universal sentence from its singular instances; adding the omega
rule to a standard axiomatization of arithmetic produces a complete but
non-effective axiomatization. An omega-valued logic is a many-valued logic
whose set of truth-values is or is the same size as the set of natural numbers.
one-at-a-time-sailor. He is loved by the altogether nice girl. Or grasshopper:
Grice’s one-at-a-time grasshopper. His rational reconstruction of ‘some’ and
‘all.’ “A simple proposal for the treatment of the two quantifiers, rendered
otiosely in English by “all” and “some (at least one),” – “the” is definable in
terms of “all” -- would call for the assignment to a predicate such as that of
‘being a grasshopper,” symbolized by “G,” besides its normal or standard
EXtension, two special things (or ‘object,’ if one must use Quine’s misnomer),
associated with quantifiers, an 'altogether' ‘substitute’, thing or object and
a 'one-at-a-time' non-substitute thing or object.”“To the predicate
'grasshopper' is assigned not only an individual, viz. a grasshopper, but also
what I call ‘The All-Together Grass-Hopper,’
or species-1and ‘The One-At-A-Time Grass-Hopper,’ or species-2. “I now
stipulate that an 'altogether' item satisfies such a predicate as “being a
grasshopper,” or G, just in case every normal or standard item associated with
“the all-to-gether” grasshopper satisfies the predicate in question. Analogously,
a 'one-at-a-time' item satisfies a predicate just in case “SOME (AT LEAST ONE)”
of the associated standard items satisfies that predicate.”“So ‘The
All-To-Gether Grass-Hopper izzes green just in case every individual
grasshopper is green.The one-at-a-time grasshopper izzes green just in case some
(at least one) individual grasshopper izzes green.”“We can take this pair of
statements about these two special grasshoppers as providing us with
representations of (respectively) the statements, ‘Every grass-hopper is
green,’ and ‘Some (at least one) grasshopper is green.’“The apparatus which
Grice sketched is plainly not, as it stands, adequate to provide a comprehensive
treatment of quantification.”“It will not, e. g. cope with well-known problems of
multiple quantification,” as in “Every Al-Together Nice Grass-Hopper Loves A
Sailing Grass-Hopper.”“It will not deliver for us distinct representations of
the two notorious (alleged) readings of ‘Every nice girl loves a sailor,” in
one of which (supposedly) the universal quantifier is dominant with respect to
scope, and in the other of which the existential quantifier is dominant.”The
ambiguity was made ambiguous by Marie Lloyd. For every time she said “a
sailor,” she pointed at herself – thereby disimplicating the default implicaturum
that the universal quantifier be dominant. “To cope with Marie Lloyd’s problem
it might be sufficient to explore, for semantic purposes, the device of
exportation, and to distinguish between, 'There exists a sailor such that every
nice girl loves him', which attributes a certain property to the one-at-a-time
sailor, and (ii) 'Every nice girl is such that she loves some sailor', which
attributes a certain (and different) property to the altogether nice girl.Note
that, as one makes this move, that though exportation, when applied to
statements about individual objects, seems not to affect truth-value, whatever
else may be its semantic function, when it is applied to sentences about
special objects it may, and sometimes will, affect truth-value.”“But however
effective this particular shift may be, it is by no means clear that there are
not further demands to be met which would overtax the strength of the envisaged
apparatus.It is not, for example, clear whether it could be made adequate to
deal with indefinitely long strings of 'mixed' quantifiers.”“The proposal might
also run into objections of a more conceptual character from those who would
regard the special objects which it invokes as metaphysically disreputable –
for where would an ‘altogether sailor” sail?, or an one-at-a-time grasshopper
hop?“Should an alternative proposal be reached or desired, one (or, indeed,
more than one) is available.”“One may be regarded as a replacement for, an
extension of, or a reinterpretation of the scheme just outlined, in accordance
with whatever view is finally taken of the potency and respectability of the ideas
embodied in that scheme.” “This proposal treats a propositional complexum as a
sequence, indeed as ordered pairs containing a subject-item and a
predicate-item.It thus offers a subject-predicate account of quantification (as
opposed to what?, you may wonder). However, it will not allow an individual, i.
e. a sailor, or a nice girl, to appear as COMPONENTS in a propositional
complexum.The sailor and the nice girl will always be reduced, ‘extensionally,’
or ‘extended,’ if you wish, as a set or an attribute.“According to the class-theoretic
version, we associate with the subject-expression of a canonically formulated
sentence a class of (at least) a second order. If the subject expression is a singular
name, like “Grice,” its ontological correlatum will be the singleton of the
singleton of the entity which bears the name Grice, or Pop-Eye.” “The treatment
of a singular terms which are not names – e. g. ‘the sailor’ -- will be
parallel, but is here omitted. It involves the iota operator, about which
Russell would say that Frege knew a iota. If the subject-expression is an
indefinite quantificational phrase, like 'some (at least one) sailor’ ‘or some
(at least one) grasshopper', its ontological correlatum will be the set of all
singletons whose sole member is a member belonging to the extension of the
predicate to which the indefinite modifier “some (at least one)” is attached.So
the ontological correlatum of the phrase ‘some (at least one) sailor’ or 'some (at
least one) grasshopper' will be the class of all singletons whose sole member
is an individuum (sailor, grasshopper). If the subject expression is a universal
quantificational phrase, like ‘every nice girl’ its ontological correlatum will
be the singleton whose sole member is the class which forms the extension of
the predicate to which the universal modifier (‘every’) is attached.Thus, the correlate of the phrase 'every nice girl' will
be the singleton of the class of nice girls.The song was actually NOT written
by a nice girl – but by a bad boy.A predicate of a canonically formulated
sentence is correlated with the classes which form its extension.As for the
predication-relation, i. e., the relation which has to obtain between
subject-element and predicate-element in a propositional complex for that
complex to be factive, a propositional complexum is factive or
value-satisfactory just in case its subject-element contains as a member at least
one item which is a sub-class of the predicate-element.”If the ontological
correlatum of 'a sailor,’ or, again, of 'every nice girl') contains as a member
at least one subset of the ontological correlata of the dyadic predicate ' …
loves … ' (viz. the class of love), the propositional complexum directly associated
with the sentence ‘A sailor loves every nice girl’ is factive, as is its
converse“Grice devotes a good deal of energy to the ‘one-at-a-time-sailor,’ and
the ‘altogether nice girl’ and he convinced himself that it offered a powerful
instrument which, with or without adjustment, is capable of handling not only
indefinitely long sequences of ‘mixed’ quantificational phrases, but also some
other less obviously tractable problems, such as the ‘ground’ for this being
so: what it there about a sailor – well, you know what sailors are. When the
man o' war or merchant ship comes sailing into port/The jolly tar with joy,
will sing out, Land Ahoy!/With his pockets full of money and a parrot in a
cage/He smiles at all the pretty girls upon the landing stage/All the nice
girls love a sailor/All the nice girls love a tar/For there's something about a
sailor/(Well you know what sailors are!)/Bright and breezy, free and easy,/He's
the ladies' pride and joy!/He falls in love with Kate and Jane, then he's off
to sea again,/Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!/He will spend his money freely, and he's
generous to his pals,/While Jack has got a sou, there's half of it for you,/And
it's just the same in love and war, he goes through with a smile,/And you can
trust a sailor, he's a white man (meaning: honest man) all the while!“Before
moving on, however, I might perhaps draw attention to three features of the
proposal.”“First, employing a strategy which might be thought of as Leibnizian,
it treats a subject-element (even a lowly tar) as being of an order HIGHER than,
rather than an order LOWER than, the predicate element.”“Second, an individual
name, such as Grice, is in effect treated like a universal quantificational
phrase, thus recalling the practice of old-style traditionalism.“Third, and
most importantly, the account which is offered is, initially, an account of
propositional complexes, not of propositions; as I envisage them, propositions
will be regarded as families of propositional complexes.”“Now the propositional
complexum directly associated with the sentence “Every nice girl loves a
sailor” (WoW: 34) will be both logically equivalent to and numerically distinct
from the propositional complex directly associated with ‘It is not the case
that no nice girl loves no sailor.’ Indeed for any given propositional complex
there will be indefinitely many propositional complexes which are both
equipolent to yet numerically distinct from the original complexum. Strawson
used to play with this. The question of how tight or how relaxed are to be the
family ties which determine the IDENTITY of propositio 1 with propositio 2 remains to be decided. Such conditions will vary
according to context or purpose.
occam : a picturesque village in Surrey. His most notable
resident is William. When William left Occam, he was often asked, “Where are
you from?” In the vernacular, he would make an effort to aspirate the ‘h’
Ock-Home.’ His French friends were unable to aspirate, and he ended up
accepting that perhaps he WAS from “Occam.” Vide Modified Occam’s Razor.
Occamism
-- Occamism:
d’Ailly, P.: Ockhamist philosopher, prelate, and writer. Educated at the
Collège de Navarre, he was promoted to doctor in the Sorbonne in 1380,
appointed chancellor of Paris in 1389,
consecrated bishop in 1395, and made a cardinal in 1411. He was influenced by
John of Mirecourt’s nominalism. He taught Gerson. At the Council of Constance
141418, which condemned Huss’s teachings, d’Ailly upheld the superiority of the
council over the pope conciliarism. The relation of astrology to history and
theology figures among his primary interests. His 1414 Tractatus de Concordia
astronomicae predicted the 1789
Revolution. He composed a De anima, a commentary on Boethius’s
Consolation of Philosophy, and another on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. His early
logical work, Concepts and Insolubles c.1472, was particularly influential. In
epistemology, d’Ailly contradistinguished “natural light” indubitable knowledge
from reason relative knowledge, and emphasized thereafter the uncertainty of
experimental knowledge and the mere probability of the classical “proofs” of
God’s existence. His doctrine of God differentiates God’s absolute power
potentia absoluta from God’s ordained power on earth potentia ordinata. His
theology anticipated fideism Deum esse sola fide tenetur, his ethics the spirit
of Protestantism, and his sacramentology Lutheranism.
Occasion:
Grice struggled with the lingo and he not necessarily arrived at the right
choice. Occasion he uses in the strange phrase “occasion-meaning” (sic). Surely
not ‘occasional meaning.’ What is an occasion? Surely it’s a context. But Grice
would rather be seen dead than using a linguistic turn of phrase like Firth’s
context-of-utterance! So there you have the occasion-meaning. Basically, it’s
the PARTICULARISED implicaturum. On occasion o, E communicates that p. Grice
allows that there is occasion-token and occasion-type.
one-off communicatum. The
condition for an action to be taken in a specific way in cases where the
audience must recognize the utterer’s intention (a ‘one-off predicament’). The
recognition of the C-intention does not have to occur ‘once we have habits of
taking utterances one way or another.’
Blackburn: From one-off AIIBp to
one-off GAIIB. Surely we have to generalise the B into the PSI. Plus,
'action' is too strong, and should be replaced by 'emitting'This
yields From EIIψp GEIIψp. According to this
assumption, an emissor who is not assuming his addressee shares any system of
communication is in the original situation that S. W. Blackburn, of Pembroke,
dubbs “the one-off
predicament, and one can provide a scenario where the Griciean conditions, as
they are meant to hold, do hold, and emissor E communicates that p i. e. C1,
C2, and C3, are fulfilled.
. be accomplished in the "one-off predicament" (in which no
linguistic or other conventional ...The Gricean mechanism with its complex
communicative intentions has a clear point in what Blackburn calls “a one-off predicament”
- a . Simon Blackburn's "one-off predicament"
of communicating without a shared language illustrates how Grice's theory can
be applied to iconic signals such as the ...Blackburn's "one-off
predicament" of communicating without a shared language illustrates how
Grice's theory can be applied to iconic signals such as the drawing of a skull
to wam of danger. See his Spreading the Word. III. 112.Thus S may draw a pic- "one-off
predicament"). ... Clarendon, 1976); and Simon Blackburn, Spreading the Word
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) ...by
Blackburn in “Spreading the word.” Since Grice’s main motivation is to progress
from one-off to philosophers’s mistakes, he does not explore the situation. He
gets close to it in “Meaning Revisited,” when proposing a ‘rational
reconstruction,’ FROM a one-off to a non-iconic system of communication, where
you can see his emphasis and motivation is in the last stage of the progress.
Since he is having the ‘end result,’ sometimes he is not careful in the
description of the ‘one-off,’ or dismissive of it. But as Blackburn notes, it
is crucial that Grice provides the ‘rudiments’ for a ‘meaning-nominalism,’
where an emissor can communicate that p in a one-off scenario. This is all
Grice needs to challenge those accounts based on ‘convention,’ or the idea of a
‘system’ of communication. There is possibly an implicaturum to the effect that
if something is a device is not a one-off, but that is easily cancellable. “He
used a one-off device, and it worked.”
one-piece-repertoire: of hops and rye, and he told me that in twenty-two years
neither the personnel of the three-piece band nor its one-piece repertoire had
undergone a change.
One-many problem, also
called one-and-many problem, the question whether all things are one or many.
According to both Plato and Aristotle this was the central question for
pre-Socratic philosophers. Those who answered “one,” the monists, ascribed to
all things a single nature such as water, air, or oneness itself. They appear
not to have been troubled by the notion that numerically many things would have
this one nature. The pluralists, on the other hand, distinguished many
principles or many types of principles, though they also maintained the unity
of each principle. Some monists understood the unity of all things as a denial
of motion, and some pluralists advanced their view as a way of refuting this
denial. To judge from our sources, early Grecian metaphysics revolved around
the problem of the one and the many. In the modern period the dispute between
monists and pluralists centered on the question whether mind and matter constitute
one or two substances and, if one, what its nature is.
one over many, a
universal; especially, a Platonic Form. According to Plato, if there are, e.g.,
many large things, there must be some one largeness itself in respect of which
they are large; this “one over many” hen epi pollon is an intelligible entity,
a Form, in contrast with the sensible many. Plato himself recognizes
difficulties explaining how the one character can be present to the many and
why the one and the many do not together constitute still another many e.g.,
Parmenides 131a133b. Aristotle’s sustained critique of Plato’s Forms
Metaphysics A 9, Z 1315 includes these and other problems, and it is he, more
than Plato, who regularly uses ‘one over many’ to refer to Platonic Forms.
ontogenesis. Grice taught his children “not to tell lies” – “as my
father and my mother taught me.” One of his favourite paintings was “When did
you last see your father?” “I saw him in my dreams,” – “Not a lie, you see.” it
is interesting that Grice was always enquiring his childrens playmates: Can a
sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed! One found a
developmental account of the princile of conversational helpfulness boring, or
as he said, "dull." Refs.: There is an essay on the semantics of
children’s language, BANC.
ontological
marxism: As opposed to
‘ontological laisssez-faire’ Note the use of ‘ontological’ in ‘ontological’
Marxism. Is not metaphysical Marxism, so Grice knows what he is talking about.
Many times when he uses ‘metaphysics,’ he means ‘ontological.’ Ontological for Grice is at least liberal. He is
hardly enamoured of some of the motivations which prompt the advocacy of
psycho-physical identity. He has in mind a concern to exclude an entity such as
as a ‘soul,’ an event of the soul, or a property of the soul. His taste is for
keeping open house for all sorts of conditions of entities, just so long as
when the entity comes in it helps with the housework, i. e., provided that
Grice see the entity work, and provided that it is not detected in illicit
logical behaviour, which need not involve some degree of indeterminacy, The
entity works? Ergo, the entity exists. And, if it comes on the recommendation
of some transcendental argument the entity may even qualify as an entium
realissimum. To exclude an honest working entitiy is metaphysical snobbery, a
reluctance to be seen in the company of any but the best. A category, a
universalium plays a role in Grice’s meta-ethics. A principles or laws
of psychology may be self-justifying, principles connected with the
evaluation of ends. If these same principles play a role in determining
what we count as entia realissima, metaphysics, and an abstractum would be
grounded in part in considerations about value (a not unpleasant project). This
ontological Marxism is latter day. In “Some remarks,” he expresses his
disregard for what he calls a “Wittgensteinian” limitation in expecting
behavioural manifestation of an ascription about a soul. Yet in “Method” he
quotes almost verbatim from Witters, “No psychological postulation without the
behaviour the postulation is meant to explain.” It was possibly D. K. Lewis who
made him change his mind. Grice was obsessed with Aristotle on ‘being,’ and
interpreted Aristotle as holding a thesis of unified semantic ‘multiplicity.’
This is in agreement with the ontological Marxism, in more than one ways. By
accepting a denotatum for a praedicatum like ‘desideratum,’ Grice is allowing
the a desideratum may be the subject of discourse. It is an ‘entity’ in this
fashion. Marxism and laissez-faire both exaggerate the role of the economy. Society needs a safety
net to soften the rough edges of free enterprise. Refs.: H. P. Grice,
“Ontological Marxism and ontological laissez-faire.” Engels – studied by Grice
for his “Ontological Marxism” -- F, G. socialist and economist who, with Marx,
was the founder of what later was called Marxism. Whether there are significant
differences between Marx and Engels is a question much in dispute among
scholars of Marxism. Certainly there are differences in emphasis, but there was
also a division of labor between them. Engels, and not Marx, presented a
Marxist account of natural science and integrated Darwinian elements in Marxian
theory. But they also coauthored major works, including The Holy Family, The G.
Ideology 1845, and The Communist Manifesto 1848. Engels thought of himself as
the junior partner in their lifelong collaboration. That judgment is correct,
but Engels’s work is both significant and more accessible than Marx’s. He gave
popular articulations of their common views in such books as Socialism: Utopian
and Scientific and AntiDühring 1878. His work, more than Marx’s, was taken by
the Second International and many subsequent Marxist militants to be definitive
of Marxism. Only much later with some Western Marxist theoreticians did his
influence decline. Engels’s first major work, The Condition of the Working
Class in England 1845, vividly depicted workers’ lives, misery, and systematic
exploitation. But he also saw the working class as a new force created by the
industrial revolution, and he developed an account of how this new force would
lead to the revolutionary transformation of society, including collective
ownership and control of the means of production and a rational ordering of social
life; all this would supersede the waste and disparity of human conditions that
he took to be inescapable under capitalism. The G. Ideology, jointly authored
with Marx, first articulated what was later called historical materialism, a
conception central to Marxist theory. It is the view that the economic
structure of society is the foundation of society; as the productive forces
develop, the economic structure changes and with that political, legal, moral,
religious, and philosophical ideas change accordingly. Until the consolidation
of socialism, societies are divided into antagonistic classes, a person’s class
being determined by her relationship to the means of production. The dominant
ideas of a society will be strongly conditioned by the economic structure of
the society and serve the class interests of the dominant class. The social
consciousness the ruling ideology will be that which answers to the interests
of the dominant class. From the 1850s on, Engels took an increasing interest in
connecting historical materialism with developments in natural science. This
work took definitive form in his Anti-Dühring, the first general account of
Marxism, and in his posthumously published Dialectics of Nature. AntiDühring
also contains his most extensive discussion of morality. It was in these works
that Engels articulated the dialectical method and a systematic communist
worldview that sought to establish that there were not only social laws
expressing empirical regularities in society but also universal laws of nature
and thought. These dialectical laws, Engels believed, reveal that both nature
and society are in a continuous process of evolutionary though conflict-laden
development. Engels should not be considered primarily, if at all, a
speculative philosopher. Like Marx, he was critical of and ironical about
speculative philosophy and was a central figure in the socialist movement.
While always concerned that his account be warrantedly assertible, Engels
sought to make it not only true, but also a finely tuned instrument of
working-class emancipation which would lead to a world without classes.
ontological commitment,
the object or objects common to the ontology fulfilling some regimented theory
a term fashioned by Quine. The ontology of a regimented theory consists in the
objects the theory assumes there to be. In order to show that a theory assumes
a given object, or objects of a given class, we must show that the theory would
be true only if that object existed, or if that class is not empty. This can be
shown in two different but equivalent ways: if the notation of the theory
contains the existential quantifier ‘Ex’ of first-order predicate logic, then
the theory is shown to assume a given object, or objects of a given class,
provided that object is required among the values of the bound variables, or
additionally is required among the values of the domain of a given predicate,
in order for the theory to be true. Thus, if the theory entails the sentence
‘Exx is a dog’, then the values over which the bound variable ‘x’ ranges must
include at least one dog, in order for the theory to be true. Alternatively, if
the notation of the theory contains for each predicate a complementary
predicate, then the theory assumes a given object, or objects of a given class,
provided some predicate is required to be true of that object, in order for the
theory to be true. Thus, if the theory contains the predicate ‘is a dog’, then
the extension of ‘is a dog’ cannot be empty, if the theory is to be true.
However, it is possible for different, even mutually exclusive, ontologies to
fulfill a theory equally well. Thus, an ontology containing collies to the
exclusion of spaniels and one containing spaniels to the exclusion of collies
might each fulfill a theory that entails ‘Ex x is a dog’. It follows that some
of the objects a theory assumes in its ontology may not be among those to which
the theory is ontologically committed. A theory is ontologically committed to a
given object only if that object is common to all of the ontologies fulfilling
the theory. And the theory is ontologically committed to objects of a given
class provided that class is not empty according to each of the ontologies
fulfilling the theory.
casus obliquus – casus rectus (orthe ptosis) vs. ‘casus obliquus – plagiai
ptoseis – genike, dotike, aitiatike. “ptosis” is not
attested in Grecian before Plato. A noun of action based on the radical of
πίπτω, to fall, ptôsis means literally a fall: the fall of a die Plato,
Republic, X.604c, or of lightning Aristotle, Meteorology, 339a Alongside this
basic value and derived metaphorical values: decadence, death, and so forth, in
Aristotle the word receives a linguistic specification that was to have great
influence: retained even in modern Grecian ptôsê πτώση, its Roman Tr. casus allowed it to designate grammatical
case in most modern European languages. In fact, however, when it first appears
in Aristotle, the term does not initially designate the noun’s case inflection.
In the De Int. chaps. 2 and 3, it qualifies the modifications, both semantic
and formal casual variation of the verb and those of the noun: he was well, he
will be well, in relation to he is well; about Philo, to Philo, in relation to
Philo. As a modification of the noun—that is, in Aristotle, of its basic form,
the nominative—the case ptôsis differs from the noun insofar as, associated
with is, was, or will be, it does not permit the formation of a true or false
statement. As a modification of the verb, describing the grammatical tense, it
is distinguished from the verb that oversignifies the present: the case of the
verb oversignifies the time that surrounds the present. From this we must
conclude that to the meaning of a given verb e.g., walk the case of the verb
adds the meaning prossêmainei πϱοσσημαίνει of its temporal modality he will
walk. Thus the primacy of the present over the past and the future is affirmed,
since the present of the verb has no case. But the Aristotelian case is a still
broader, vaguer, and more elastic notion: presented as part of expression in
chapter 20 of the Poetics, it qualifies variation in number and modality. It
further qualifies the modifications of the noun, depending on the gender ch.21
of the Poetics; Top. as well as adverbs
derived from a substantive or an adjective, like justly, which is derived from
just. The notion of case is thus essential for the characterization of
paronyms. Aristotle did not yet have specialized names for the different cases
of nominal inflection. When he needs to designate them, he does so in a
conventional manner, usually by resorting to the inflected form of a pronoun—
τούτου, of this, for the genitive, τούτῳ, to this, for the dative, and so on —
and sometimes to that of a substantive or adjective. In the Prior Analytics,
Aristotle insists on distinguishing between the terms ὅϱοι that ought always to
be stated in the nominative ϰλῆσεις, e.g. man, good, contraries, but the
premisses ought to be understood with reference to the cases of each
term—either the dative, e.g. ‘equal to this’ toutôi, dative, or the genitive,
e.g. ‘double of this’ toutou, genitive, or the accusative, e.g. ‘that which
strikes or v.s this’ τούτο, accusative, or the nominative, e.g. ‘man is an
animal’ οὗτος, nominative, or in whatever other way the word falls πίπτει in
the premiss Anal. Post., I.36, 48b, 4 In the latter expression, we may find the
origin of the metaphor of the fall—which remains controversial. Some
commentators relate the distinction between what is direct and what is oblique
as pertains to grammatical cases, which may be direct orthê ptôsis or oblique
plagiai ptôseis, but also to the grand metaphoric and conceptual register that
stands on this distinction to falling in the game of jacks, it being possible
that the jack could fall either on a stable side and stand there—the direct
case—or on three unstable sides— the oblique cases. In an unpublished
dissertation on the principles of Stoic grammar, Hans Erich Müller proposes to
relate the Stoic theory of cases to the theory of causality, by trying to associate
the different cases with the different types of causality. They would thus
correspond in the utterance to the different causal postures of the body in the
physical field. For the Stoics, predication is a matter not of identifying an
essence ousia οὖσια and its attributes in conformity with the Aristotelian
categories, but of reproducing in the utterance the causal relations of action
and passion that bodies entertain among themselves. It was in fact with the
Stoics that cases were reduced to noun cases—in Dionysius Thrax TG, 13, the
verb is a word without cases lexis aptôton, and although egklisis means mode,
it sometimes means inflection, and then it covers the variations of the verb,
both temporal and modal. If Diogenes Laertius VII.192 is to be believed,
Chrysippus wrote a work On the Five Cases. It must have included, as Diogenes
VII.65 tells us, a distinction between the direct case orthê ptôsis—the case
which, constructed with a predicate, gives rise to a proposition axiôma,
VII.64—and oblique cases plagiai ptseis, which now are given names, in this
order: genitive genikê, dative dôtikê, and accusative aitiatikê. A
classification of predicates is reported by Porphyry, cited in Ammonius
Commentaire du De Int. d’Aristote, 44, 19f.. Ammonius 42, 30f. reports a
polemic between Aristotle and the Peripatetics, on the one hand, and the Stoics
and grammarians associated with them, on the other. For the former, the
nominative is not a case, it is the noun itself from which the cases are
declined; for the latter, the nominative is a full-fledged case: it is the
direct case, and if it is a case, that is because it falls from the concept,
and if it is direct, that is because it falls directly, just as the stylus can,
after falling, remain stable and straight. Although ptôsis is part of the
definition of the predicate—the predicate is what allows, when associated with
a direct case, the composition of a proposition—and figures in the part of
dialectic devoted to signifieds, it is neither defined nor determined as a
constituent of the utterance alongside the predicate. In Stoicism, ptôsis v.ms
to signify more than grammatical case alone. Secondary in relation to the
predicate that it completes, it is a philosophical concept that refers to the
manner in which the Stoics v.m to have criticized the Aristotelian notion of
substrate hupokeimenon ὑποϰειμένον as well as the distinction between substance
and accidents. Ptôsis is the way in which the body or bodies that our
representation phantasia φαντασία presents to us in a determined manner appear
in the utterance, issuing not directly from perception, but indirectly, through
the mediation of the concept that makes it possible to name it/them in the form
of an appellative a generic concept, man, horse or a name a singular concept,
Socrates. Cases thus represent the diverse ways in which the concept of the
body falls in the utterance though Stoic nominalism does not admit the
existence of this concept—just as here there is no Aristotelian category
outside the different enumerated categorial rubrics, there is no body outside a
case position. However, caring little for these subtleties, the scholiasts of
Technê v.m to confirm this idea in their own context when they describe the
ptôsis as the fall of the incorporeal and the generic into the specific ἔϰ τοῦ
γενιϰοῦ εἰς τὸ εἰδιϰόν. In the work of the grammarians, case is reduced to the
grammatical case, that is, to the morphological variation of nouns, pronouns,
articles, and participles, which, among the parts of speech, accordingly
constitute the subclass of casuels, a parts of speech subject to case-based
inflection πτωτιϰά. The canonical list of cases places the vocative klêtikê ϰλητιϰή
last, after the direct eutheia εὐθεῖα case and the three oblique cases, in
their Stoic order: genitive, dative, accusative. This order of the oblique
cases gives rise, in some commentators eager to rationalize Scholia to the
Technê, 549, 22, to a speculation inspired by localism: the case of the PARONYM
743 place from which one comes in Grecian , the genitive is supposed naturally
to precede that of the place where one is the dative, which itself naturally
precedes that of the place where one is going the accusative. Apollonius’s
reflection on syntax is more insightful; in his Syntax III.15888 he presents,
in this order, the accusative, the genitive, and the dative as expressing three
degrees of verbal transitivity: conceived as the distribution of activity and
passivity between the prime actant A in the direct case and the second actant B
in one of the three oblique cases in the process expressed by a biactantial
verb, the transitivity of the accusative corresponds to the division A all
active—B all passive A strikes B; the transitivity of the genitive corresponds
to the division A primarily active/passive to a small degree—B primarily
passive/active to a small degree A listens to B; and the transitivity of the
dative, to the division A and B equally active-passive A fights with The direct
case, at the head of the list, owes its prmacy to the fact that it is the case
of nomination: names are given in the direct case. The verbs of existence and
nomination are constructed solely with the direct case, without the function of
the attribute being thematized as such. Although Chrysippus wrote about five
cases, the fifth case, the vocative, v.ms to have escaped the division into
direct and oblique cases. Literally appelative prosêgorikon πϱοσηγοϱιϰόν, it
could refer not only to utterances of address but also more generally to
utterances of nomination. In the grammarians, the vocative occupies a marginal
place; whereas every sentence necessarily includes a noun and a verb, the
vocative constitutes a complete sentence by itself. Frédérique Ildefonse REFS.:
Aristotle. Analytica priorTr. J.
Jenkinson. In the Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, ed. and Tr.
W. D. Ross, E. M. Edghill, J. Jenkinson, G.R.G. Mure, and Wallace
Pickford. Oxford: Oxford , 192 . Poetics. Ed.
and Tr. Stephen Halliwell.
Cambridge: Harvard / Loeb Classical
Library, . Delamarre, Alexandre. La notion de ptōsis chez Aristote et les
Stoïciens. In Concepts et Catégories dans la pensée antique, ed. by Pierre Aubenque, 3214 : Vrin, . Deleuze,
Gilles. Logique du sens. : Minuit, . Tr.
Mark Lester with Charles Stivale: The Logic of Sense. Ed. by Constantin V. Boundas. : Columbia , .
Dionysius Thrax. Technē grammatikē. Book I, vol. 1 of Grammatici Graeci,
ed. by Gustav Uhlig. Leipzig: Teubner,
188 Eng. Tr. T. D. son: The Grammar. St. Louis, 187 Fr. Tr. J.
Lallot: La grammaire de Denys le Thrace. 2nd rev. and expanded ed. : CNRS
Éditions, . Frede, Michael. The Origins of Traditional Grammar. In Historical
and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology, and Phil. of Science, ed. by E. H. Butts and J. Hintikka, 517
Dordrecht, Neth.: Reiderl, . Reprinted, in M. Frede, Essays in Ancient Phil. ,
3385 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, . . The Stoic Notion of a
Grammatical Case. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the
University of 39 : 132 Hadot, Pierre. La notion de ‘cas’ dans la logique
stoïcienne. Pp. 10912 in Actes du XIIIe Congrès des sociétés de philosophie en
langue française. Geneva: Baconnière, . Hiersche, Rolf. Entstehung und
Entwicklung des Terminus πτῶσις, ‘Fall.’ Sitzungsberichte der deutschen
Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin: Klasse für Sprachen, Literatur und Kunst
3 1955: 51 Ildefonse, Frédérique. La naissance de la grammaire dans l’Antiquité
grecque. : Vrin, . Imbert, Claude. Phénoménologies et langues formularies. :
Presses Universitaires de France, . Pinborg, Jan. Classical Antiquity: Greece.
In Current Trends in Linguistics, ed. by
Th. Sebeok. Vol. 13 in Historiography of Linguistics series. The Hague and :
Mouton, .-- oratio obliqua: The idea of
‘oratio’ is central. Grice’s sentence. It expresses ‘a thought,’ a
‘that’-clause. Oratio recta is central, too. Grice’s example is “The dog is
shaggy.” The use of ‘oratio’ here Grice disliked. One can see a squarrel
grabbing a nut, Toby judges that a nut is to eat. So we would have a
‘that’-clause, and in a way, an ‘oratio obliqua,’ which is what the UTTERER
(not the squarrel) would produce as ‘oratio recta,’ ‘A nut is to eat,’ should
the circumstance obtains. At some points he allows things like “Snow is white”
means that snow is white. Something at the Oxford Philosohical Society he would
not. Grice is vague in this. If the verb is a ‘verbum dicendi,’ ‘oratio
obliqua’ is literal. If it’s a verbum sentiendi or percipiendi, volendi, credendi,
or cognoscenti, the connection is looser. Grice was especially concerned that
buletic verbs usually do not take a that-clause (but cf. James: I will that the
distant table sides over the floor toward me. It does not!). Also that seems
takes a that-clause in ways that might not please Maucalay. Grice had explored
that-clauses with Staal. He was concerned about the viability of an initially
appealing etymological approach by Davidson to the that-clause in terms of
demonstration. Grice had presupposed the logic of that-clauses from a much
earlier stage, Those spots mean that he has measles.The f. contains a copy of
Davidsons essay, On saying that, the that-clause, the that-clause, with Staal .
Davidson quotes from Murray et al. The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford.
Cf. Onions, An Advanced English Syntax, and remarks that first learned
that that in such contexts evolved from an explicit demonstrative from
Hintikkas Knowledge and Belief. Hintikka remarks that a similar development has
taken place in German Davidson owes the reference to the O.E.D. to Stiezel.
Indeed Davidson was fascinated by the fact that his conceptual inquiry repeated
phylogeny. It should come as no surprise that a that-clause
utterance evolves through about the stages our ruminations have just
carried us. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of that in a
that-clause is generally held to have arisen out of the demonstrative pronoun
pointing to the clause which it introduces. The sequence goes as follows. He
once lived here: we all know that; that, now this, we all know: he once lived
here; we all know that, or this: he once lived here; we all know that he once
lived here. As Hintikka notes, some pedants trying to display their knowledge
of German, use a comma before that: We all know, that he once lived here, to
stand for an earlier :: We all know: that he once lived here. Just like
the English translation that, dass can be omitted in a
sentence. Er glaubt, dass die Erde eine
Scheibe sei. He believes that the Earth is a disc. Er
glaubt, die Erde sei eine Scheibe. He believes the Earth is a disc. The
that-clause is brought to the fore by Davidson, who, consulting the OED,
reminds philosophers that the English that is very cognate with the German
idiom. More specifically, that is a demonstrative, even if the syntax, in
English, hides this fact in ways which German syntax doesnt. Grice needs
to rely on that-clauses for his analysis of mean, intend, and notably
will. He finds that Prichards genial discovery was the license to use
willing as pre-facing a that-clause. This allows Grice to deals with
willing as applied to a third person. I will that he wills that he wins the
chess match. Philosophers who disregard this third-person use may indulge in
introspection and Subjectsivism when they shouldnt! Grice said that Prichard
had to be given great credit for seeing that the accurate specification of
willing should be willing that and not willing to. Analogously, following
Prichard on willing, Grice does not
stipulate that the radix for an intentional (utterer-oriented or
exhibitive-autophoric-buletic) incorporate a reference to the utterer (be in
the first person), nor that the radix for an imperative (addressee-oriented or
hetero-phoric protreptic buletic) or desiderative in general, incorporate a
reference of the addressee (be in the second person). They shall not pass is a
legitimate intentional as is the ‘you shall not get away with it,’either
involves Prichards wills that, rather than wills to). And the sergeant is to
muster the men at dawn (uttered by a captain to a lieutenant) is a perfectly
good imperative, again involving Prichards wills that, rather than wills to. Refs.:
The allusions are scattered, but there are specific essays, one on the
‘that’-clause, and also discussions on Davidson on saying that. There is a
reference to ‘oratio obliqua’ and Prichard in “Uncertainty,” BANC.
open formula, also called
open sentence, a sentence with a free occurrence of a variable. A closed
sentence, sometimes called a statement, has no free occurrences of variables.
In a language whose only variable-binding operators are quantifiers, an
occurrence of a variable in a formula is bound provided that occurrence either
is within the scope of a quantifier employing that variable or is the
occurrence in that quantifier. An occurrence of a variable in a formula is free
provided it is not bound. The formula ‘xy
O’ is open because both ‘x’ and ‘y’ occur as free variables. In ‘For
some real number y, xy O’, no occurrence
of ‘y’ is free; but the occurrence of ‘x’ is free, so the formula is open. The
sentence ‘For every real number x, for some real number y, xy O’ is closed, since none of the variables
occur free. Semantically, an open formula such as ‘xy 0’ is neither true nor false but rather true
of or false of each assignment of values to its free-occurring variables. For
example, ‘xy 0’ is true of each
assignment of two positive or two negative real numbers to ‘x’ and to ‘y’ and
it is false of each assignment of 0 to either and false at each assignment of a
positive real to one of the variables and a negative to the other.
open texture, the
possibility of vagueness. Fridrich Waismann “Verifiability,” Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, 5 introduced the concept, claiming that open texture is a
universal property of empirical terms. Waismann claimed that an inexhaustible source
of vagueness remains even after measures are taken to make an expression
precise. His grounds were, first, that there are an indefinite number of
possibilities for which it is indeterminate whether the expression applies
i.e., for which the expression is vague. There is, e.g., no definite answer
whether a catlike creature that repeatedly vanishes into thin air, then
reappears, is a cat. Waismann’s explanation is that when we define an empirical
term, we frame criteria of its applicability only for foreseeable
circumstances. Not all possible situations in which we may use the term,
however, can be foreseen. Thus, in unanticipated circumstances, real or merely
possible, a term’s criteria of applicability may yield no definite answer to
whether it applies. Second, even for terms such as ‘gold’, for which there are
several precise criteria of application specific gravity, X-ray spectrograph,
solubility in aqua regia, applying different criteria can yield divergent
verdicts, the result being vagueness. Waismann uses the concept of open texture
to explain why experiential statements are not conclusively verifiable, and why
phenomenalist attempts to translate material object statements fail.
operationalism, a program
in philosophy of science that aims to interpret scientific concepts via
experimental procedures and observational outcomes. P. W. Bridgman introduced
the terminology when he required that theoretical concepts be identified with
the operations used to measure them. Logical positivism’s criteria of cognitive
significance incorporated the notion: Bridgman’s operationalism was assimilated
to the positivistic requirement that theoretical terms T be explicitly defined
via logically equivalent to directly observable conditions O. Explicit
definitions failed to accommodate alternative measurement procedures for the
same concept, and so were replaced by reduction sentences that partially
defined individual concepts in observational terms via sentences such as ‘Under
observable circumstances C, x is T if and only if O’. Later this was weakened
to allow ensembles of theoretical concepts to be partially defined via
interpretative systems specifying collective observable effects of the concepts
rather than effects peculiar to single concepts. These cognitive significance
notions were incorporated into various behaviorisms, although the term
‘operational definition’ is rarely used by scientists in Bridgman’s or the
explicit definition senses: intervening variables are theoretical concepts
defined via reduction sentences and hypothetical constructs are definable by
interpretative systems but not reduction sentences. In scientific contexts
observable terms often are called dependent or independent variables. When, as
in science, the concepts in theoretical assertions are only partially defined,
observational consequences do not exhaust their content, and so observational
data underdetermines the truth of such assertions in the sense that more than
one theoretical assertion will be compatible with maximal observational data.
operator, a one-place
sentential connective; i.e., an expression that may be prefixed to an open or
closed sentence to produce, respectively, a new open or closed sentence. Thus
‘it is not the case that’ is a truth-functional operator. The most thoroughly
investigated operators are the intensional ones; an intensional operator O,
when prefixed to an open or closed sentence E, produces an open or closed
sentence OE, whose extension is determined not by the extension of E but by
some other property of E, which varies with the choice of O. For example, the
extension of a closed sentence is its truth-value A, but if the modal operator
‘it is necessary that’ is prefixed to A, the extension of the result depends on
whether A’s extension belongs to it necessarily or contingently. This property
of A is usually modeled by assigning to A a subset X of a domain of possible
worlds W. If X % W then ‘it is necessary that A’ is true, but if X is a proper
subset of W, it is false. Another example involves the epistemic operator ‘it
is plausible that’. Since a true sentence may be either plausible or
implausible, the truth-value of ‘it is plausible that A’ is not fixed by the
truth-value of A, but rather by the body of evidence that supports A relative
to a thinker in a given context. This may also be modeled in a possible worlds
framework, by operant conditioning operator 632 632 stipulating, for each world, which
worlds, if any, are plausible relative to it. The topic of intensional
operators is controversial, and it is even disputable whether standard examples
really are operators at the correct level of logical form. For instance, it can
be argued that ‘it is necessary that’, upon analysis, turns out to be a
universal quantifier over possible worlds, or a predicate of expressions. On
the former view, instead of ‘it is necessary that A’ we should write ‘for every
possible world w, Aw’, and, on the latter, ‘A is necessarily true’.
operator theory of
adverbs, a theory that treats adverbs and other predicate modifiers as
predicate-forming operators on predicates. The theory expands the syntax of
first-order logic by adding operators of various degrees, and makes
corresponding additions to the semantics. Romane Clark, Terence Parsons, and
Richard Montague with Hans Kamp developed the theory independently in the early
0s. For example: ‘John runs quickly through the kitchen’ contains a simple
one-place predicate, ‘runs’ applied to John; a zero-place operator, ‘quickly’,
and a one-place operator, ‘through ’ with ‘the kitchen’ filling its place. The
logical form of the sentence becomes [O1 1a [O2 0 [Pb]]], which can be read:
[through the kitchen [quickly [runs John]]]. Semantically ‘quickly’ will be
associated with an operation that takes us from the extension of ‘runs’ to a
subset of that extension. ‘John runs quickly’ will imply ‘John runs’. ‘Through
the kitchen’ and other operators are handled similarly. The wide variety of
predicate modifiers complicates the inferential conditions and semantics of the
operators. ‘John is finally done’ implies ‘John is done’. ‘John is nearly done’
implies ‘John is not done’. Clark tries to distinguish various types of
predicate modifiers and provides a different semantic analysis for operators of
different sorts. The theory can easily characterize syntactic aspects of
predicate modifier iteration. In addition, after being modified the original
predicates remain as predicates, and maintain their original degree. Further,
there is no need to force John’s running into subject position as might be the
case if we try to make ‘quickly’ an ordinary predicate.
optimum. If (a) S accepts at t
an alethic acceptability-conditional C 1 , the antecedent of which favours, to
degree d, the consequent of C 1 , (b) S accepts at t the antecedent of C 1 , end
p.81 (c) after due search by S for such a (further) conditional, there is no
conditional C 2 such that (1) S accepts at t C 2 and its antecedent, (2) and
the antecedent of C 2 is an extension of the antecedent of C 1 , (3) and the
consequent of C 2 is a rival (incompatible with) of the consequent of C 1 , (4)
and the antecedent of C 2 favours the consequent of C 2 more than it favours
the consequent of C 1 : then S may judge (accept) at t that the consequent of C
1 is acceptable to degree d. For convenience, we might abbreviate the complex
clause (C) in the antecedent of the above rule as 'C 1 is optimal for S at t';
with that abbreviation, the rule will run: "If S accepts at t an alethic
acceptability-conditional C 1 , the antecedent of which favours its consequent
to degree d, and S accepts at t the antecedent of C 1 , and C 1 is optimal for
S at C 1 , then S may accept (judge) at t that the consequent of C 1 is
acceptable to degree d." Before moving to the practical dimension, I have
some observations to make.See validum. For
Grice, the validum can attain different shapes or guises. One is the optimum.
He uses it for “Emissor E communicates thata p” which ends up denotating an
‘ideal,’ that can only be deemed, titularily, to be present ‘de facto.’ The idea
is that of the infinite, or rather self-reference regressive closure. Vide
Blackburn on “open GAIIB.” Grice uses ‘optimality’ as one guise of value.
Obviously, it is, as Short and Lewis have it, the superlative of ‘bonum,’ so
one has to be careful. Optimum is used in value theory and decision theory,
too. Cf. Maximum, and minimax. In terms
of the principle of least conversational effort, the optimal move is the least
costly. To utter, “The pillar box seems red” when you can utter, “The pillar
box IS red” is to go into the trouble when you shouldn’t. So this maximin
regulates the conversational exchange. The utterer is meant to be optimally
efficient, and the addressee is intended to recognise that.
order, the level of a
logic as determined by the type of entity over which the free variables of that
logic range. Entities of the lowest type, usually called type O, are known as
individuals, and entities of higher type are constructed from entities of lower
type. For example, type 1 entities are i functions from individuals or n-tuples
of individuals to individuals, and ii n-place relations on individuals.
First-order logic is that logic whose variables range over individuals, and a
model for first-order logic includes a domain of individuals. The other logics
are known as higher-order logics, and the first of these is second-order logic,
in which there are variables that range over type 1 entities. In a model for
second-order logic, the first-order domain determines the second-order domain.
For every sentence to have a definite truth-value, only totally defined
functions are allowed in the range of second-order function variables, so these
variables range over the collection of total functions from n-tuples of
individuals to individuals, for every value of n. The second-order predicate
variables range over all subsets of n-tuples of individuals. Thus if D is the
domain of individuals of a model, the type 1 entities are the union of the two
sets {X: Dn: X 0 Dn$D}, {X: Dn: X 0 Dn}. Quantifiers may bind second-order
variables and are subject to introduction and elimination rules. Thus whereas
in first-order logic one may infer ‘Someone is wise, ‘DxWx’, from ‘Socrates is
wise’, ‘Ws’, in second-order logic one may also infer ‘there is something that
Socrates is’, ‘DXXs’. The step from first- to second-order logic iterates: in
general, type n entities are the domain of n ! 1thorder variables in n ! 1th
order logic, and the whole hierarchy is known as the theory of types.
ordering, an arrangement of the elements of a
set so that some of them come before others. If X is a set, it is useful to
identify an ordering R of X with a subset R of X$X, the set of all ordered
pairs with members in X. If ‹ x,y 1 R
then x comes before y in the ordering of X by R, and if ‹ x,y 2 R and ‹ y,x
2 R, then x and y are incomparable. Orders on X are therefore relations
on X, since a relation on a set X is any subset of X $ X. Some minimal
conditions a relation must meet to be an ordering are i reflexivity: ExRxx; ii
antisymmetry: ExEyRxy & Ryx / x % y; and iii transitivity: ExEyEzRxy &
Ryz / Rxz. A relation meeting these three conditions is known as a partial
order also less commonly called a semi-order, and if reflexivity is replaced by
irreflexivity, Ex-Rxx, as a strict partial order. Other orders are
strengthenings of these. Thus a tree-ordering of X is a partial order with a
distinguished root element a, i.e. ExRax, and that satisfies the backward
linearity condition that from any element there is a unique path back to a:
ExEyEzRyx & Rzx / Ryz 7 Rzy. A total order on X is a partial order
satisfying the connectedness requirement: ExEyRxy 7 Ryx. Total orderings are
sometimes known as strict linear orderings, contrasting with weak linear
orderings, in which the requirement of antisymmetry is dropped. The natural
number line in its usual order is a strict linear order; a weak linear ordering
of a set X is a strict linear order of levels on which various members of X may
be found, while adding antisymmetry means that each level contains only one
member. Two other important orders are dense partial or total orders, in which,
between any two elements, there is a third; and well-orders. A set X is said to
be well-ordered by R if R is total and every non-empty subset of Y of X has an
R-least member: EY 0 X[Y & / / Dz 1 YEw 1 YRzw]. Well-ordering rules out
infinite descending sequences, while a strict well-ordering, which is
irreflexive rather than reflexive, rules out loops. The best-known example is
the membership relation of axiomatic set theory, in which there are no loops
such as x 1 y 1 x or x 1 x, and no infinite descending chains . . . x2 1 x1 1
x0.
order type omega, in
mathematics, the order type of the infinite set of natural numbers. The last
letter of the Grecian alphabet, w, is used to denote this order type; w is thus
the first infinite ordinal number. It can be defined as the set of all finite
ordinal numbers ordered by magnitude; that is, w % {0,1,2,3 . . . }. A set has
order type w provided it is denumerably infinite, has a first element but not a
last element, has for each element a unique successor, and has just one element
with no immediate predecessor. The set of even numbers ordered by magnitude,
{2,4,6,8 . . . }, is of order type w. The set of natural numbers listing first
all even numbers and then all odd numbers, {2,4,6,8 . . .; 1,3,5,7 . . . }, is
not of order type w, since it has two elements, 1 and 2, with no immediate
predecessor. The set of negative integers ordered by magnitude, { . . . 3,2,1},
is also not of order type w, since it has no first element. V.K. ordinal logic,
any means of associating effectively and uniformly a logic in the sense of a
formal axiomatic system Sa with each constructive ordinal notation a. This
notion and term for it was introduced by Alan Turing in his paper “Systems of
Logic Based on Ordinals” 9. Turing’s aim was to try to overcome the
incompleteness of formal systems discovered by Gödel in 1, by means of the
transfinitely iterated, successive adjunction of unprovable but correct
principles. For example, according to Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem,
for each effectively presented formal system S containing a modicum of
elementary number theory, if S is consistent then S does not prove the purely
universal arithmetical proposition Cons expressing the consistency of S via the
Gödelnumbering of symbolic expressions, even though Cons is correct. However,
it may be that the result S’ of adjoining Cons to S is inconsistent. This will
not happen if every purely existential statement provable in S is correct; call
this condition E-C. Then if S satisfies E-C, so also does S; % S ! Cons ; now
S; is still incomplete by Gödel’s theorem, though it is more complete than S.
Clearly the passage from S to S; can be iterated any finite number of times,
beginning with any S0 satisfying E-C, to form S1 % S; 0, S2 % S; 1, etc. But
this procedure can also be extended into the transfinite, by taking Sw to be
the union of the systems Sn for n % 0,1, 2 . . . and then Sw!1 % S;w, Sw!2 %
S;w!1, etc.; condition EC is preserved throughout. To see how far this and
other effective extension procedures of any effectively presented system S to
another S; can be iterated into the transfinite, one needs the notion of the
set O of constructive ordinal notations, due to Alonzo Church and Stephen C.
Kleene in 6. O is a set ordering ordinal logic 634 634 of natural numbers, and each a in O
denotes an ordinal a, written as KaK. There is in O a notation for 0, and with
each a in O is associated a notation sca in O with KscaK % KaK ! 1; finally, if
f is a number of an effective function {f} such that for each n, {f}n % an is
in O and KanK < Kan!1K, then we have a notation øf in O with KøfK %
limnKanK. For quite general effective extension procedures of S to S; and for
any given S0, one can associate with each a in O a formal system Sa satisfying
Ssca % S;a and Søf % the union of the S{f}n for n % 0,1, 2. . . . However, as
there might be many notations for each constructive ordinal, this ordinal logic
need not be invariant, in the sense that one need not have: if KaK % KbK then
Sa and Sb have the same consequences. Turing proved that an ordinal logic
cannot be both complete for true purely universal statements and invariant.
Using an extension procedure by certain proof-theoretic reflection principles,
he constructed an ordinal logic that is complete for true purely universal
statements, hence not invariant. The history of this and later work on ordinal
logics is traced by the undersigned in “Turing in the Land of Oz,” in The
Universal Turing Machine: A Half Century Survey, edited by Rolf Herken
[8].
Ordinary-language
philosophy: vide, H. P. Grice, “Post-War Oxford Philosophy,” a loosely
structured philosophical movement holding that the significance of concepts,
including those central to traditional philosophy e.g., the concepts of truth and
knowledge is fixed by linguistic
practice. Philosophers, then, must be attuned to the actual uses of words
associated with these concepts. The movement enjoyed considerable prominence
chiefly among English-speaking philosophers between the mid-0s and the early
0s. It was initially inspired by the work of Vitters, and later by John Wisdom,
Gilbert Ryle, Norman Malcolm, and J. L. Austin, though its roots go back at
least to Moore and arguably to Socrates. Ordinary language philosophers do not
mean to suggest that, to discover what truth is, we are to poll our fellow
speakers or consult dictionaries. Rather, we are to ask how the word ‘truth’
functions in everyday, nonphilosophical settings. A philosopher whose theory of
truth is at odds with ordinary usage has simply misidentified the concept.
Philosophical error, ironically, was thought by Vitters to arise from our
“bewitchment” by language. When engaging in philosophy, we may easily be misled
by superficial linguistic similarities. We suppose minds to be special sorts of
entity, for instance, in part because of grammatical parallels between ‘mind’
and ‘body’. When we fail to discover any entity that might plausibly count as a
mind, we conclude that minds must be nonphysical entities. The cure requires
that we remind ourselves how ‘mind’ and its cognates are actually used by
ordinary speakers.
organic, having parts
that are organized and interrelated in a way that is the same as, or analogous
to, the way in which the parts of a living animal or other biological organism
are organized and interrelated. Thus, an organic unity or organic whole is a
whole that is organic in the above sense. These terms are primarily used of
entities that are not literally organisms but are supposedly analogous to them.
Among the applications of the concept of an organic unity are: to works of art,
to the state e.g., by Hegel, and to the universe as a whole e.g., in absolute
idealism. The principal element in the concept is perhaps the notion of an
entity whose parts cannot be understood except by reference to their
contribution to the whole entity. Thus to describe something as an organic
unity is typically to imply that its properties cannot be given a reductive
explanation in terms of those of its parts; rather, at least some of the
properties of the parts must themselves be explained by reference to the
properties of the whole. Hence it usually involves a form of holism. Other
features sometimes attributed to organic unities include a mutual dependence
between the existence of the parts and that of the whole and the need for a
teleological explanation of properties of the parts in terms of some end or
purpose associated with the whole. To what extent these characteristics belong
to genuine biological organisms is disputed.
organicism, a theory that
applies the notion of an organic unity, especially to things that are not
literally organisms. G. E. Moore, in Principia Ethica, proposed a principle of
organic unities, concerning intrinsic value: the intrinsic value of a whole
need not be equivalent to the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. Moore
applies the principle in arguing that there is no systematic relation between
the intrinsic value of an element of a complex whole and the difference that
the presence of that element makes to the value of the whole. E.g., he holds
that although a situation in which someone experiences pleasure in the
contemplation of a beautiful object has far greater intrinsic goodness than a
situation in which the person contemplates the same object without feeling
pleasure, this does not mean that the pleasure itself has much intrinsic value.
organism, a carbon-based
living thing or substance, e.g., a paramecium, a tree, or an ant. Alternatively,
‘organism’ can mean a hypothetical living thing of another natural kind, e.g.,
a silicon-based living thing. Defining conditions of a carbon-based living
thing, x, are as follows. 1 x has a layer made of m-molecules, i.e.,
carbonbased macromolecules of repeated units that have a high capacity for
selective reactions with other similar molecules. x can absorb and excrete
through this layer. 2 x can metabolize m-molecules. 3 x can synthesize
m-molecular parts of x by means of activities of a proper part of x that is a
nuclear molecule, i.e., an m-molecule that can copy itself. 4 x can exercise
the foregoing capacities in such a way that the corresponding activities are
causally interrelated as follows: x’s absorption and excretion causally
contribute to x’s metabolism; these processes jointly causally contribute to
x’s synthesizing; and x’s synthesizing causally contributes to x’s absorption,
excretion, and metabolism. 5 x belongs to a natural kind of compound physical
substance that can have a member, y, such that: y has a proper part, z; z is a
nuclear molecule; and y reproduces by means of z’s copying itself. 6 x is not
possibly a proper part of something that satisfies 16. The last condition
expresses the independence and autonomy of an organism. For example, a part of
an organism, e.g., a heart cell, is not an organism. It also follows that a
colony of organisms, e.g., a colony of ants, is not an organism.
Origen, Christian
theologian and biblical scholar in the Alexandrian church. Born in Egypt, he
became head of the catechetical school in Alexandria. Like his mentor, Clement
of Alexandria, he was influenced by Middle Platonism. His principal works were
Hexapla, On First Principles, and Contra Celsum. The Hexapla, little of which
survives, consisted of six Hebrew and two Grecian versions of the Old Testament
with Origen’s commentary. On First Principles sets forth the most systematic
Christian theology of the early church, including some doctrines subsequently
declared heretical, such as the subordination of the Son “a secondary god” and
Spirit to the Father, preexisting human souls but not their transmigration, and
a premundane fall from grace of each human soul. The most famous of his views
was the notion of apocatastasis, universal salvation, the universal restoration
of all creation to God in which evil is defeated and the devil and his minions
repent of their sins. He interpreted hell as a temporary purgatory in which
impure souls were purified and made ready for heaven. His notion of subordination
of the Son of God to the Father was condemned by the church in 533. Origen’s
Contra Celsum is the first sustained work in Christian apologetics. It defends
Christianity before the pagan world. Origen was a leading exponent of the
allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures, holding that the text had three
levels of meaning corresponding to the three parts of human nature: body, soul,
and spirit. The first was the historical sense, sufficient for simple people;
the second was the moral sense; and the third was the mystical sense, open only
to the deepest souls.
Orphism, a religious
movement in ancient Greece that may have influenced Plato and some of the
pre-Socratics. Neither the nature of the movement nor the scope of its
influence is adequately understood: ancient sources and modern scholars tend to
confuse Orphism with Pythagoreanism and with ancient mystery cults, especially
the Bacchic or Dionysiac mysteries. “Orphic poems,” i.e., poems attributed to
Orpheus a mythic figure, circulated as early as the mid-sixth century B.C. We
have only indirect evidence of the early Orphic poems; but we do have a sizable
body of fragments from poems composed in later antiquity. Central to both early
and later versions is a theogonic-cosmogonic narrative that posits Night as the
primal entity ostensibly a revision of
the account offered by Hesiod and gives
major emphasis to the birth, death through dismemberment, and rebirth of the
god Dionysus. Plato gives us clear evidence of the existence in his time of
itinerant religious teachers who, drawing on the “books of Orpheus,” performed
and taught rituals of initiation and purification intended to procure divine
favor either in this life or in an afterlife. The extreme skepticism of such
scholars as Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and I. M. Linforth concerning
the importance of early Orphism for Grecian religion and Grecian philosophy has
been undermined by archaeological findings in recent decades: the Derveni
papyrus, which is a fragment of a philosophical commentary on an Orphic
theogony; and inscriptions with Orphic instructions for the dead, from funerary
sites in southern Italy, mainland Greece, and the Crimea.
Ortega y Gasset, J.
philosopher and essayist. Born in Madrid, he studied there and in Leipzig,
Berlin, and Marburg. In 0 he was named professor of metaphysics at the of Madrid and taught there until 6, when he
was forced to leave because of his political involvement in and support for the Republic. He returned to Spain in 5. Ortega
was a prolific writer whose works fill nine thick volumes. Among his most
influential books are Meditaciones del Quijote “Meditations on the Quixote,” 4,
El tema de nuestro tiempo “The Modern Theme,” 3, La revolución de las masas
“The Revolt of the Masses,” 2, La deshumanización del arte “The Dehumanization
of Art,” 5, Historia como sistema “History as a System,” 1, and the
posthumously published El hombre y la gente “Man and People,” 7 and La idea de
principio en Leibniz“The Idea of Principle in Leibniz,” 8. His influence in Spain
and Latin America was enormous, in part because of his brilliant style of
writing and lecturing. He avoided jargon and rejected systematization; most of
his works were first written as articles for newspapers and magazines. In 3 he
founded the Revista de Occidente, a cultural magazine that helped spread his
ideas and introduced G. thought into Spain and Latin America. Ortega ventured
into nearly every branch of philosophy, but the kernel of his views is his
metaphysics of vital reason rasón vital and his perspectival epistemology. For
Ortega, reality is identified with “my life”; something is real only insofar as
it is rooted and appears in “my life.” “My life” is further unpacked as
“myself” and “my circumstances” “yo soy yo y mi circumstancia“. The self is not
an entity separate from what surrounds it; there is a dynamic interaction and
interdependence of self and things. These and the self together constitute
reality. Because every life is the result of an interaction between self and
circumstances, every self has a unique perspective. Truth, then, is
perspectival, depending on the unique point of view from which it is
determined, and no perspective is false except one that claims exclusivity.
This doctrine is known as Ortega’s perspectivism.
ostensum: In his analysis of the two basic
procedures, one involving the subjectum, and another the praedicatum, Grice
would play with the utterer OSTENDING that p. This relates to his semiotic
approach to communication, and avoiding to the maximum any reference to a
linguistic rule or capacity or faculty as different from generic rationality. In
WoW:134 Grice explores what he calls ‘ostensive correlation.’ He is exploring
communication scenarios where the Utterer is OSTENDING that p, or in predicate
terms, that the A is B. He is not so much concerned with the B, but with the
fact that “B” is predicated of a particular denotatum of “the A,” and by what
criteria. He is having in mind his uncle’s dog, Fido, who is shaggy, i.e. fairy
coated. So he is showing to Strawson that that dog over there is the one that
belongs to his uncle, and that, as Strawson can see, is a shaggy dog, by which
Grice means hairy coated. That’s the type of ‘ostensive correlation’ Grice is
having in mind. In an attempted ostensive correlation of the predicate B
(‘shaggy’) with the feature or property of being hairy coated, as per a
standard act of communication in which Grice, uttering, “Fido is shaggy’ will
have Strawson believe that Uncle Grice’s dog is hairy coated – (1) U will
perform a number of acts in each of which he ostends a thing (a1, a2, a3, etc.). (2) Simultaneously with
each ostension, he utters a token of the predicate “shaggy.” (3) It is his
intention TO OSTEND, and to be recognised as ostending, only things which are
either, in his view, plainly hairy-coated, or are, in his view, plainly NOT hairy-coated.
(4) In a model sequence these intentions are fulfilled. Grice grants that this
does not finely distinguish between ‘being hairy-coated’ from ‘being such that
the UTTERER believes to be unmistakenly hairy coated.’ But such is a problem of
any explicit correlation, which are usually taken for granted – and deemed
‘implicit’ in standard acts of communication. In
primo actu non indiget volunta* diiectivo , sed sola_» objecti ostensio ...
non potest errar* ciica finem in universali ostensum , potest tamen secundum
eos ... Oxford Calculators, a group of natural philosophers,
mathematicians, and logicians who flourished at Oxford in the second quarter of the fourteenth
century. The name derives from the Liber calculationum Book of Calculations,
written some time before 1350. The author of this work, often called
“Calculator” by later Continental authors, was probably named Richard
Swineshead. The Book of Calculations discussed a number of issues related to
the quantification or measurement of local motion, alteration, and augmentation
for a fuller description, see John Murdoch and Edith Sylla, “Swineshead,
Richard,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 13, 6. The Book of
Calculations has been studied mainly by historians of science and grouped
together with a number of other works discussing natural philosophical topics
by such authors as Thomas Bradwardine, William Heytesbury, and John Dumbleton.
In earlier histories many of the authors now referred to as Oxford Calculators
are referred to as the Merton School, since many of them were fellows of Merton
. But since some authors whose work appears to fit into the same intellectual
tradition e.g., Richard Kilvington, whose Sophismata represents an earlier
stage of the tradition later epitomized by William Heytesbury’s Sophismata have
no known connection with Merton , the name ‘Oxford Calculators’ would appear to
be a more accurate appellation. The works of the Oxford Calculators were produced
in the context of education in the Oxford arts faculty see Edith Sylla, “The
Oxford Calculators,” in Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds.,
The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 2. In Oxford at this time
logic was the centerpiece of the early years of undergraduate education. After
logic, Oxford came to be known for its work in mathematics, astronomy, and
natural philosophy. Students studying under the Oxford faculty of arts not only
heard lectures on the liberal arts and on natural philosophy, moral philosophy,
and metaphysics; they were also required to take part in disputations. William
Heytesbury’s Regule solvendi sophismatum Rules for Solving Sophismata
explicitly and Swineshead’s Book of Calculations implicitly are written to
prepare students for these disputations. The three influences most formative on
the work of the Oxford Calculators were 1 the tradition of commentaries on the
works of Aristotle; 2 the developments in logical theory, particularly the
theories of categorematic and syncategorematic terms and the theory of logical
supposition; and 3 developments in mathematics, particularly the theory of
ratios as developed in Thomas Bradwardine’s De proportionibus velocitatum in
motibus On the Ratios of Velocities in Motions. In addition to Richard
Swineshead, Heytesbury, Bradwardine, Dumbleton, and Kilvington, other authors
and works related to the work of the Oxford Calculators are Walter Burley, De
primo et ultimo instanti, Tractatus Primus De formis accidentalibus, Tractatus
Secundus De intensione et remissione formarum; Roger Swineshead, Descriptiones
motuum; and John Bode, A est unum calidum. These and other works had a
considerable later influence on the Continent.
ousia, ancient Grecian
term traditionally tr. as ‘substance’. Formed from the participle for ‘being’,
the term ousia refers to the character of being, beingness, as if this were
itself an entity. Just as redness is the character that red things have, so
ousia is the character that beings have. Thus, the ousia of something is the
character that makes it be, its nature. But ousia also refers to an entity that
possesses being in its own right; for consider a case where the ousia of
something is just the thing itself. Such a thing possesses being by virtue of
itself; because its being depends on nothing else, it is self-subsistent and
has a higher degree of being than things whose being depends on something else.
Such a thing would be an ousia. Just which entities meet the criteria for ousia
is a question addressed by Aristotle. Something such as redness that exists
only as an attribute would not have being in its own right. An individual
person is an ousia, but Aristotle also argues that his form is more properly an
ousia; and an unmoved mover is the highest type of ousia. The traditional
rendering of the term into Latin as substantia and English as ‘substance’ is
appropriate only in contexts like Aristotle’s Categories where an ousia “stands
under” attributes. In his Metaphysics, where Aristotle argues that being a
substrate does not characterize ousia, and in other Grecian writers,
‘substance’ is often not an apt translation.
outweighed
rationality – the grammar – rationality of the end, not just the means –
extrinsic rationality – not intrinsic to the means. -- The intrinsic-extrinsic –
outweigh -- extrinsic desire, a desire of something for its conduciveness to
something else that one desires. Extrinsic desires are distinguished from
intrinsic desires, desires of items for their own sake, or as ends. Thus, an
individual might desire financial security extrinsically, as a means to her
happiness, and desire happiness intrinsically, as an end. Some desires are
mixed: their objects are desired both for themselves and for their
conduciveness to something else. Jacques may desire to jog, e.g., both for its
own sake as an end and for the sake of his health. A desire is strictly
intrinsic if and only if its object is desired for itself alone. A desire is
strictly extrinsic if and only if its object is not desired, even partly, for
its own sake. Desires for “good news”
e.g., a desire to hear that one’s child has survived a car accident are sometimes classified as extrinsic desires,
even if the information is desired only because of what it indicates and not
for any instrumental value that it may have. Desires of each kind help to
explain action. Owing partly to a mixed desire to entertain a friend, Martha
might acquire a variety of extrinsic desires for actions conducive to that
goal. Less happily, intrinsically desiring to be rid of his toothache, George
might extrinsically desire to schedule a dental appointment. If all goes well
for Martha and George, their desires will be satisfied, and that will be due in
part to the effects of the desires upon their behavior.
“Oxonian dialectic” --
dialectic: H. P. Grice, “Athenian dialectic and Oxonian dialectic,” an
argumentative exchange involving contradiction or a technique or method
connected with such exchanges. The word’s origin is the Grecian dialegein, ‘to
argue’ or ‘converse’; in Aristotle and others, this often has the sense ‘argue
for a conclusion’, ‘establish by argument’. By Plato’s time, if not earlier, it
had acquired a technical sense: a form of argumentation through question and
answer. The adjective dialektikos, ‘dialectical’, would mean ‘concerned with
dialegein’ or of persons ‘skilled in dialegein’; the feminine dialektike is
then ‘the art of dialegein’. Aristotle says that Zeno of Elea invented
diagonalization dialectic 232 232
dialectic. He apparently had in mind Zeno’s paradoxical arguments against
motion and multiplicity, which Aristotle saw as dialectical because they rested
on premises his adversaries conceded and deduced contradictory consequences
from them. A first definition of dialectical argument might then be: ‘argument
conducted by question and answer, resting on an opponent’s concessions, and
aiming at refuting the opponent by deriving contradictory consequences’. This
roughly fits the style of argument Socrates is shown engaging in by Plato. So
construed, dialectic is primarily an art of refutation. Plato, however, came to
apply ‘dialectic’ to the method by which philosophers attain knowledge of
Forms. His understanding of that method appears to vary from one dialogue to
another and is difficult to interpret. In Republic VIVII, dialectic is a method
that somehow establishes “non-hypothetical” conclusions; in the Sophist, it is
a method of discovering definitions by successive divisions of genera into
their species. Aristotle’s concept of dialectical argument comes closer to
Socrates and Zeno: it proceeds by question and answer, normally aims at
refutation, and cannot scientifically or philosophically establish anything.
Aristotle differentiates dialectical arguments from demonstration apodeixis, or
scientific arguments, on the basis of their premises: demonstrations must have
“true and primary” premises, dialectical arguments premises that are
“apparent,” “reputable,” or “accepted” these are alternative, and disputed,
renderings of the term endoxos. However, dialectical arguments must be valid,
unlike eristic or sophistical arguments. The Topics, which Aristotle says is
the first art of dialectic, is organized as a handbook for dialectical debates;
Book VIII clearly presupposes a ruledirected, formalized style of disputation
presumably practiced in the Academy. This use of ‘dialectic’ reappears in the
early Middle Ages in Europe, though as Aristotle’s works became better known
after the twelfth century dialectic was increasingly associated with the
formalized disputations practiced in the universities recalling once again the
formalized practice presupposed by Aristotle’s Topics. In his Critique of Pure
Reason, Kant declared that the ancient meaning of ‘dialectic’ was ‘the logic of
illusion’ and proposed a “Transcendental Dialectic” that analyzed the
“antinomies” deductions of contradictory conclusions to which pure reason is
inevitably led when it extends beyond its proper sphere. This concept was
further developed by Fichte and Schelling into a traidic notion of thesis,
opposing antithesis, and resultant synthesis. Hegel transformed the notion of
contradiction from a logical to a metaphysical one, making dialectic into a
theory not simply of arguments but of historical processes within the
development of “spirit”; Marx transformed this still further by replacing
‘spirit’ with ‘matter’.
Oxonian Epicureanism, --
Walter Pater, “Marius, The Epicurean” -- one of the three leading movements
constituting Hellenistic philosophy. It was founded by Epicurus 341271 B.C.,
together with his close colleagues Metrodorus c.331 278, Hermarchus Epicurus’s
successor as head of the Athenian school, and Polyaenus d. 278. He set up
Epicurean communities at Mytilene, Lampsacus, and finally Athens 306 B.C., where
his school the Garden became synonymous with Epicureanism. These groups set out
to live the ideal Epicurean life, detached from political society without
actively opposing it, and devoting themselves to philosophical discussion and
the cult of friendship. Their correspondence was anthologized and studied as a
model of the philosophical life by later Epicureans, for whom the writings of
Epicurus and his three cofounders, known collectively as “the Men,” held a
virtually biblical status. Epicurus wrote voluminously, but all that survives
are three brief epitomes the Letter to Herodotus on physics, the Letter to
Pythocles on astronomy, etc., and the Letter to Menoeceus on ethics, a group of
maxims, and papyrus fragments of his magnum opus On Nature. Otherwise, we are
almost entirely dependent on secondary citations, doxography, and the writings
of his later followers. The Epicurean physical theory is atomistic, developed
out of the fifth-century system of Democritus. Per se existents are divided
into bodies and space, each of them infinite in quantity. Space is, or
includes, absolute void, without which motion would be impossible, while body
is constituted out of physically indivisible particles, “atoms.” Atoms are
themselves further analyzable as sets of absolute “minima,” the ultimate quanta
of magnitude, posited by Epicurus to circumvent the paradoxes that Zeno of Elea
had derived from the hypothesis of infinite divisibility. Atoms themselves have
only the primary properties of shape, size, and weight. All secondary
properties, e.g. color, are generated out of atomic compounds; given their
dependent status, they cannot be added to the list of per se existents, but it
does not follow, as the skeptical tradition in atomism had held, that they are
not real either. Atoms are in constant rapid motion, epapoge Epicureanism
269 269 at equal speed since in the
pure void there is nothing to slow them down. Stability emerges as an overall
property of compounds, which large groups of atoms form by settling into
regular patterns of complex motion, governed by the three motive principles of
weight, collisions, and a minimal random movement, the “swerve,” which
initiates new patterns of motion and blocks the danger of determinism. Our
world itself, like the countless other worlds, is such a compound, accidentally
generated and of finite duration. There is no divine mind behind it, or behind
the evolution of life and society: the gods are to be viewed as ideal beings,
models of the Epicurean good life, and therefore blissfully detached from our
affairs. Canonic, the Epicurean theory of knowledge, rests on the principle
that “all sensations are true.” Denial of empirical cognition is argued to
amount to skepticism, which is in turn rejected as a self-refuting position.
Sensations are representationally not propositionally true. In the paradigm
case of sight, thin films of atoms Grecian eidola, Latin simulacra constantly
flood off bodies, and our eyes mechanically report those that reach them,
neither embroidering nor interpreting. Inference from these guaranteed
photographic, as it were data to the nature of external objects themselves
involves judgment, and there alone error can occur. Sensations thus constitute
one of the three “criteria of truth,” along with feelings, a criterion of
values and introspective information, and prolepseis, or naturally acquired
generic conceptions. On the basis of sense evidence, we are entitled to infer
the nature of microscopic or remote phenomena. Celestial phenomena, e.g.,
cannot be regarded as divinely engineered which would conflict with the
prolepsis of the gods as tranquil, and experience supplies plenty of models
that would account for them naturalistically. Such grounds amount to
consistency with directly observed phenomena, and are called ouk antimarturesis
“lack of counterevidence”. Paradoxically, when several alternative explanations
of the same phenomenon pass this test, all must be accepted: although only one
of them can be true for each token phenomenon, the others, given their intrinsic
possibility and the spatial and temporal infinity of the universe, must be true
for tokens of the same type elsewhere. Fortunately, when it comes to the basic
tenets of physics, it is held that only one theory passes this test of
consistency with phenomena. Epicurean ethics is hedonistic. Pleasure is our
innate natural goal, to which all other values, including virtue, are
subordinated. Pain is the only evil, and there is no intermediate state.
Philosophy’s task is to show how pleasure can be maximized, as follows: Bodily
pleasure becomes more secure if we adopt a simple way of life that satisfies
only our natural and necessary desires, with the support of like-minded
friends. Bodily pain, when inevitable, can be outweighed by mental pleasure,
which exceeds it because it can range over past, present, and future. The
highest pleasure, whether of soul or body, is a satisfied state, “katastematic
pleasure.” The pleasures of stimulation “kinetic pleasures”, including those
resulting from luxuries, can vary this state, but have no incremental value:
striving to accumulate them does not increase overall pleasure, but does
increase our vulnerability to fortune. Our primary aim should instead be to
minimize pain. This is achieved for the body through a simple way of life, and
for the soul through the study of physics, which achieves the ultimate
katastematic pleasure, ”freedom from disturbance” ataraxia, by eliminating the
two main sources of human anguish, the fears of the gods and of death. It
teaches us a that cosmic phenomena do not convey divine threats, b that death
is mere disintegration of the soul, with hell an illusion. To fear our own
future non-existence is as irrational as to regret the non-existence we enjoyed
before we were born. Physics also teaches us how to evade determinism, which
would turn moral agents into mindless fatalists: the swerve doctrine secures
indeterminism, as does the logical doctrine that future-tensed propositions may
be neither true nor false. The Epicureans were the first explicit defenders of
free will, although we lack the details of their positive explanation of it.
Finally, although Epicurean groups sought to opt out of public life, they took
a keen and respectful interest in civic justice, which they analyzed not as an
absolute value, but as a contract between humans to refrain from harmful
activity on grounds of utility, perpetually subject to revision in the light of
changing circumstances. Epicureanism enjoyed widespread popularity, but unlike
its great rival Stoicism it never entered the intellectual bloodstream of the
ancient world. Its stances were dismissed by many as philistine, especially its
rejection of all cultural activities not geared to the Epicurean good life. It
was also increasingly viewed as atheistic, and its ascetic hedonism was
misrepresented as crude sensualism hence the modern use of ‘epicure’. The
school nevertheless continued to flourish down to and well beyond the end of
the Hellenistic age. In the first century B.C. its exponents Epicureanism Epicureanism
270 270 included Philodemus, whose
fragmentarily surviving treatise On Signs attests to sophisticated debates on
induction between Stoics and Epicureans, and Lucretius, the Roman author of the
great Epicurean didactic poem On the Nature of Things. In the second century
A.D. another Epicurean, Diogenes of Oenoanda, had his philosophical writings
engraved on stone in a public colonnade, and passages have survived. Thereafter
Epicureanism’s prominence declined. Serious interest in it was revived by Renaissance
humanists, and its atomism was an important influence on early modern physics,
especially through Gassendi.
oxonianism: Grice was “university lecturer in philosophy” and
“tutorial fellow in philosophy” – that’s why he always saw philosophy, like
virtue, as entire. He would never accept a post like “professor of moral
philosophy” or “professor of logic,” or “professor of metaphysical philosophy,”
or “reader in natural theology,” or “reader in mental philosophy.” So he felt a
responsibility towards ‘philosophy undepartmentilised’ and he succeded in never
disgressing from this gentlemanly attitude to philosophy as a totum, and not a
technically specified field of ‘expertise.’ See playgroup. The playgroup was
Oxonian. There are aspects of Grice’s philosophy which are Oxonian but not
playgroup-related, and had to do with his personal inclinations. The fact that
it was Hardie who was his tutor and instilled on him a love for Aristotle.
Grice’s rapport with H. A. Prichard. Grice would often socialize with members
of Ryle’s group, such as O. P. Wood, J. D. Mabbott, and W. C. Kneale. And of
course, he had a knowleddge of the history of Oxford philosophy, quoting from
J. C. Wilson, G. F. Stout, H. H. Price, Bosanquet, Bradley. He even had his
Oxonian ‘enemies,’ Dummett, Anscombe. And he would quote from independents,
like A. J. P. Kenny. But if he had to quote someone first, it was a member of
his beloved playgroup: Austin, Strawson, Warnock, Urmson, Hare, Hart,
Hampshire. Grice cannot possibly claim to talk about post-war Oxford
philosophy, but his own! Cf. Oxfords post-war philosophy. What were
Grices first impressions when arriving at Oxford. He was going to learn. Only
the poor learn at Oxford was an adage he treasured, since he wasnt
one! Let us start with an alphabetical listing of Grices play Group
companions: Austin, Butler, Flew, Gardiner, Grice, Hare, Hampshire, Hart,
Nowell-Smith, Parkinson, Paul, Pears, Quinton, Sibley, Strawson, Thomson,
Urmson, and Warnock. Grices main Oxonian association is St.
Johns, Oxford. By Oxford Philosophy, Grice notably refers to Austins Play
Group, of which he was a member. But Grice had Oxford associations
pre-war, and after the demise of Austin. But back to the Play Group, this, to
some, infamous, playgroup, met on Saturday mornings at different venues at
Oxford, including Grices own St. John’s ‒ apparently, Austins favourite
venue. Austin regarded himself and his kindergarten as linguistic or
language botanists. The idea was to list various ordinary uses of this or that
philosophical notion. Austin: They say philosophy is about language; well,
then, let’s botanise! Grices involvement with Oxford philosophy of course
predated his associations with Austins play group. He always said he was
fortunate of having been a tutee to Hardie at Corpus. Corpus, Oxford.
Grice would occasionally refer to the emblematic pelican, so prominently
displayed at Corpus. Grice had an interim association with the venue one
associates most directly with philosophy, Merton ‒: Grice, Merton,
Oxford. While Grice loved to drop Oxonian Namess, notably his rivals, such
as Dummett or Anscombe, he knew when not to. His Post-war Oxford philosophy, as
opposed to more specific items in The Grice Collection, remains general in
tone, and intended as a defense of the ordinary-language approach to
philosophy. Surprisingly, or perhaps not (for those who knew Grice), he takes a
pretty idiosyncratic characterisation of conceptual analysis. Grices
philosophical problems emerge with Grices idiosyncratic use of this or that
expression. Conceptual analysis is meant to solve his problems, not others, repr.
in WOW . Grice finds it important to reprint this since he had updated
thoughts on the matter, which he displays in his Conceptual analysis and the
province of philosophy. The topic represents one of the strands he
identifies behind the unity of his philosophy. By post-war Oxford philosophy,
Grice meant the period he was interested in. While he had been at Corpus,
Merton, and St. Johns in the pre-war days, for some reason, he felt that he had
made history in the post-war period. The historical reason Grice gives is
understandable enough. In the pre-war days, Grice was the good student and
the new fellow of St. Johns ‒ the other one was Mabbott. But he had not
been able to engage in philosophical discussion much, other than with other
tutees of Hardie. After the war, Grice indeed joins Austins more popular, less
secretive Saturday mornings. Indeed, for Grice, post-war means all philosophy
after the war (and not just say, the forties!) since he never abandoned the
methods he developed under Austin, which were pretty congenial to the ones he
had himself displayed in the pre-war days, in essays like Negation and Personal
identity. Grice is a bit of an expert on Oxonian philosophy. He sees
himself as a member of the school of analytic philosophy, rather than the
abused term ordinary-language philosophy. This is evident by the fact that
he contributed to such polemic ‒ but typically Oxonian ‒
volumes such as Butler, Analytic Philosophy, published by Blackwell (of all
publishers). Grice led a very social life at Oxford, and held frequent
philosophical discussions with the Play group philosophers (alphabetically
listed above), and many others, such as Wood. Post-war Oxford philosophy,
miscellaneous, Oxford philosophy, in WOW, II, Semantics and Met. , Essay. By
Oxford philosophy, Grice means his own. Grice went back to the topic of
philosophy and ordinary language, as one of his essays is precisely entitled,
Philosophy and ordinary language, philosophy and ordinary language, :
ordinary-language philosophy, linguistic botanising. Grice is not really
interested in ordinary language as a philologist might. He spoke
ordinary language, he thought. The point had been brought to the fore by
Austin. If they think philosophy is a play on words, well then, lets play
the game. Grices interest is methodological. Malcolm had been claiming
that ordinary language is incorrigible. While Grice agreed that language can be
clever, he knew that Aristotle was possibly right when he explored ta
legomena in terms of the many and the selected wise, philosophy and
ordinary language, philosophy and ordinary language, : philosophy, ordinary
language. At the time of writing, ordinary-language philosophy had become,
even within Oxford, a bit of a term of abuse. Grice tries to defend
Austins approach to it, while suggesting ideas that Austin somewhat ignored,
like what an utterer implies by the use of an ordinary-language expression,
rather than what the expression itself does. Grice is concerned, contra
Austin, in explanation (or explanatory adequacy), not taxonomy (or descriptive
adequacy). Grice disregards Austins piecemeal approach to ordinary
language, as Grice searches for the big picture of it all. Grice never used
ordinary language seriously. The phrase was used, as he explains, by those who
HATED ordinary-language philosophy. Theres no such thing as ordinary language.
Surely you cannot fairly describe the idiosyncratic linguistic habits of an Old
Cliftonian as even remotely ordinary. Extra-ordinary more likely! As far as the
philosophy bit goes, this is what Bergmann jocularly described as the
linguistic turn. But as Grice notes, the linguistic turn involves both the
ideal language and the ordinary language. Grice defends the choice by Austin of
the ordinary seeing that it was what he had to hand! While Grice seems to be in
agreement with the tone of his Wellesley talk, his idioms there in. Youre
crying for the moon! Philosophy need not be grand! These seem to contrast with
his more grandiose approach to philosophy. His struggle was to defend the
minutiæ of linguistic botanising, that had occupied most of his professional
life, with a grander view of the discipline. He blamed Oxford for that. Never
in the history of philosophy had philosophers shown such an attachment to
ordinary language as they did in post-war Oxford, Grice liked to say.
Having learned Grecian and Latin at Clifton, Grice saw in Oxford a way to go
back to English! He never felt the need to explore Continental modern languages
like German or French. Aristotle was of course cited in Greek, but Descartes is
almost not cited, and Kant is cited in the translation available to Oxonians
then. Grice is totally right that never has philosophy experienced such a
fascination with ordinary use except at Oxford. The ruthless and unswerving
association of philosophy with ordinary language has been peculiar to the
Oxford scene. While many found this attachment to ordinary usage insidious, as
Warnock put it, it fit me and Grice to a T, implicating you need a sort of
innate disposition towards it! Strawson perhaps never had it! And thats why
Grices arguments contra Strawson rest on further minutiæ whose detection by
Grice never ceased to amaze his tutee! In this way, Grice felt he WAS Austins
heir! While Grice is associated with, in chronological order, Corpus, Merton,
and St. Johns, it is only St. Johns that counts for the Griceian! For it is at
St. Johns he was a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy! And we love him as a
philosopher. Refs.: The obvious keyword is “Oxford.” His essay in WoW on
post-war Oxford philosophy is general – the material in the H. P. Grice papers
is more anecdotic. Also “Reply to Richards,” and references above under
‘linguistic botany’ and ‘play group,’ in BANC.
pacifism, 1 opposition to
war, usually on moral or religious grounds, but sometimes on the practical
ground pragmatic pacifism that it is wasteful and ineffective; 2 opposition to
all killing and violence; 3 opposition only to war of a specified kind e.g.,
nuclear pacifism. Not to be confused with passivism, pacifism usually involves
actively promoting peace, understood to imply cooperation and justice among
peoples and not merely absence of war. But some usually religious pacifists
accept military service so long as they do not carry weapons. Many pacifists
subscribe to nonviolence. But some consider violence and/or killing
permissible, say, in personal self-defense, law enforcement, abortion, or
euthanasia. Absolute pacifism rejects war in all circumstances, hypothetical
and actual. Conditional pacifism concedes war’s permissibility in some
hypothetical circumstances but maintains its wrongness in practice. If at least
some hypothetical wars have better consequences than their alternative,
absolute pacifism will almost inevitably be deontological in character, holding
war intrinsically wrong or unexceptionably prohibited by moral principle or
divine commandment. Conditional pacifism may be held on either deontological or
utilitarian teleological or sometimes consequentialist grounds. If
deontological, it may hold war at most prima facie wrong intrinsically but
nonetheless virtually always impermissible in practice because of the absence
of counterbalancing right-making features. If utilitarian, it will hold war
wrong, not intrinsically, but solely because of its consequences. It may say
either that every particular war has worse consequences than its avoidance act
utilitarianism or that general acceptance of or following or compliance with a
rule prohibiting war will have best consequences even if occasional particular
wars have best consequences rule utilitarianism.
Paine, T.: philosopher,
revolutionary defender of democracy and human rights, and champion of popular
radicalism in three countries. Born in Thetford, England, he emigrated to
the colonies in 1774; he later moved to
France, where he was made a citizen in
1792. In 1802 he returned to the United States, where he was rebuffed by the
public because of his support for the
Revolution. Paine was the bestknown polemicist for the Revolution. In many incendiary pamphlets, he
called for a new, more democratic republicanism. His direct style and
uncompromising egalitarianism had wide popular appeal. In Common Sense 1776
Paine asserted that commoners were the equal of the landed aristocracy, thus
helping to spur colonial resentments sufficiently to support independence from
Britain. The sole basis of political legitimacy is universal, active consent;
taxation without representation is unjust; and people have the right to resist
when the contract between governor and governed is broken. He defended the Revolution in The Rights of Man 179, arguing
against concentrating power in any one individual and against a property
qualification for suffrage. Since natural law and right reason as conformity to
nature are accessible to all rational persons, sovereignty resides in human
beings and is not bestowed by membership in class or nation. Opposed to the
extremist Jacobins, he helped write, with Condorcet, a constitution to secure
the Revolution. The Age of Reason 1794, Paine’s most misunderstood work, sought
to secure the social cohesion necessary to a well-ordered society by grounding
it in belief in a divinity. But in supporting deism and attacking established
religion as a tool of enslavement, he alienated the very laboring classes he
sought to enlighten. A lifelong adversary of slavery and supporter of universal
male suffrage, Paine argued for redistributing property in Agrarian Justice
1797.
palæo-Griceian: Within the Oxford group, Grice was the first, and it’s
difficult to find a precursor. It’s obviously Grice was not motivated to create
or design his manoeuvre to oppose a view by Ryle – who cared about Ryle in the
playgroup? None – It is obviously more clear that Grice cared a hoot about
Vitters, Benjamin, and Malcolm. So that leaves us with the philosophers Grice
personally knew. And we are sure he was more interested in criticizing Austin
than his own tutee Strawson. So ths leaves us with Austin. Grice’s manoeuvre
was intended for Austin – but he waited for Austin’s demise to present it. Even
though the sources were publications that were out there before Austin died
(“Other minds,” “A plea for excuses”). So Grice is saying that Austin is wrong,
as he is. In order of seniority, the next was Hart (who Grice mocked about
‘carefully’ in Prolegomena. Then came more or less same-generational Hare (who
was not too friendly with Grice) and ‘to say ‘x is good’ is to recommend x’ (a
‘performatory fallacy’) and Strawson with ‘true’ and, say, ‘if.’ So, back to
the palaeo-Griceian, surely nobody was in a position to feel a motivation to
criticise Austin, Hart, Hare, and Strawson! When philosophers mention this or
that palaeo-Griceian philosopher, surely the motivation was different. And a
philosophical manoevre COMES with a motivation. If we identify some previous
(even Oxonian) philosopher who was into the thing Grice is, it would not have
Austin, Hart, Hare or Strawson as ‘opponents.’ And of course it’s worse with
post-Griceians. Because, as Grice says, there was no othe time than post-war
Oxford philosophy where “my manoeuvre would have make sense.’ If it does, as it
may, post-Grice, it’s “as derivative” of “the type of thing we were doing back
in the day. And it’s no fun anymore.” “Neo-Griceian” is possibly a misnomer. As
Grice notes, “usually you add ‘neo-’ to sell; that’s why, jokingly, I call
Strawson a neo-traditionalist; as if he were a bit of a neo-con, another
oxymoron, as he was!’That is H. P. Grice was the first member of the play group
to come up with a system of ‘pragmatic rules.’ Or perhaps he wasn’t. In any
case, palaeo-Griceian refers to any attempt by someone who is an Oxonian
English philosopher who suggested something like H. P. Grice later did! There
are palaeo-Griceian suggestions in Bradley – “Logic” --, Bosanquet, J. C.
Wilson (“Statement and inference”) and a few others. Within those who
interacted with Grice to provoke him into the ‘pragmatic rule’ account were two
members of the play group. One was not English, but a Scot: G. A. Paul. Paul
had been to ‘the other place,’ and was at Oxford trying to spread Witters’s
doctrine. The bafflement one gets from “I certainly don’t wish to cast any
doubt on the matter, but that pillar box seems red to me; and the reason why it
is does, it’s because it is red, and its redness causes in my sense of vision
the sense-datum that the thing is red.” Grice admits that he first came out
with the idea when confronted with this example. Mainly Grice’s motivation is
to hold that such a ‘statement’ (if statement, it is, -- vide Bar-Hillel) is
true. The other member was English: P. F. Strawson. And Grice notes that it was
Strawson’s Introduction to logical theory that motivated him to apply a
technique which had proved successful in the area of the philosophy of
perception to this idea by Strawson that Whitehead and Russell are ‘incorrect.’
Again, Grice’s treatment concerns holding a ‘statement’ to be ‘true.’ Besides
these two primary cases, there are others. First, is the list of theses in
“Causal Theory.” None of them are assigned to a particular philosopher, so the
research may be conducted towards the identification of these. The theses are,
besides the one he is himself dealing, the sense-datum ‘doubt or denial’ implicaturum:
One, What is actual is not also possible. Two, What is known to be the case is
not also believed to be the case. Three, Moore was guilty of misusing the
lexeme ‘know.’ Four, To say that someone is responsible is to say that he is
accountable for something condemnable. Six, A horse cannot look like a horse.
Now, in “Prolegomena” he add further cases. Again, since this are
palaeo-Griceian, it may be a matter of tracing the earliest occurrences. In
“Prolegomena,” Grice divides the examples in Three Groups. The last is an easy
one to identity: the ‘performatory’ approach: for which he gives the example by
Strawson on ‘true,’ and mentions two other cases: a performatory use of ‘I
know’ for I guarantee; and the performatory use of ‘good’ for ‘I approve’
(Ogden). The second group is easy to identify since it’s a central concern and
it is exactly Strawson’s attack on Whitehead and Russell. But Grice is clear
here. It is mainly with regard to ‘if’ that he wants to discuss Strawson, and
for which he quotes him at large. Before talking about ‘if’, he mentions the
co-ordinating connectives ‘and’ and ‘or’, without giving a source. So, here
there is a lot to research about the thesis as held by other philosophers even
at Oxford (where, however, ‘logic’ was never considered a part of philosophy
proper). The first group is the most varied, and easier to generalise, because
it refers to any ‘sub-expression’ held to occur in a full expression which is
held to be ‘inappropriate.’ Those who judge the utterance to be inappropriate
are sometimes named. Grice starts with Ryle and The Concept of Mind –
palaeo-Griceian, in that it surely belongs to Grice’s previous generation. It
concerns the use of the adverb ‘voluntary’ and Grice is careful to cite Ryle’s
description of the case, using words like ‘incorrect,’ and that a ‘sense’
claimed by philosophers is an absurd one. Then there is a third member of the
playgroup – other than G. A. Paul and P. F. Strawson – the Master Who Wobbles,
J. L. Austin. Grice likes the way Austin offers himself as a good target –
Austin was dead by then, and Grice would otherwise not have even tried – Austin
uses variables: notably Mly, and a general thesis, ‘no modification without
aberration.’ But basically, Grice agrees that it’s all about the ‘philosophy of
action.’ So in describing an agent’s action, the addition of an adverb makes
the whole thing inappropriate. This may relate to at least one example in
“Causal” involving ‘responsible.’ While Grice there used the noun and
adjective, surely it can be turned into an adverb. The fourth member of the
playgroup comes next: H. L. A. Hart. Grice laughs at Hart’s idea that to add
‘carefully’ in the description of an action the utterer is committed to the
idea that the agent THINKS the steps taken for the performance are reasonable.
There is a thesis he mentions then which alla “Causal Theory,” gets uncredited
– about ‘trying.’ But he does suggest Witters. And then there is his own ‘doubt
or denial’ re: G. A. Paul, and another one in the field of the philosophy of
perception that he had already mentioned vaguely in “Causal”: a horse cannot
look like a horse. Here he quotes Witters in extenso, re: ‘seeing as.’ While
Grice mentions ‘philosophy of action,’ there is at least one example involving
‘philosophical psychology’: B. S. Benjamin on C. D. Broad on the factiveness of
‘remember.’ When one thinks of all the applications that the ‘conversational
model’ has endured, one realizes that unless your background is philosophical,
you are bound not to realise the centrality of Grice’s thesis for philosophical
methodology.
Paley, W.: English moral
philosopher and theologian. He was born in Peterborough and educated at
Cambridge, 639 P 639 where he lectured
in moral philosophy, divinity, and Grecian New Testament before assuming a
series of posts in the Church of England, the last as archdeacon of Carlisle.
The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy 1785 first introduced
utilitarianism to a wide public. Moral obligation is created by a divine
command “coupled” with the expectation of everlasting rewards or punishments.
While God’s commands can be ascertained “from Scripture and the light of
nature,” Paley emphasizes the latter. Since God wills human welfare, the
rightness or wrongness of actions is determined by their “tendency to promote
or diminish the general happiness.” Horae Pauline: Or the Truth of the
Scripture History of St Paul Evinced appeared in 1790, A View of the Evidences
of Christianity in 1794. The latter defends the authenticity of the Christian
miracles against Hume. Natural Theology 1802 provides a design argument for
God’s existence and a demonstration of his attributes. Nature exhibits abundant
contrivances whose “several parts are framed and put together for a purpose.”
These contrivances establish the existence of a powerful, wise, benevolent
designer. They cannot show that its power and wisdom are unlimited, however,
and “omnipotence” and “omniscience” are mere “superlatives.” Paley’s Principles
and Evidences served as textbooks in England and America well into the
nineteenth century.
panpsychism, the doctrine
that the physical world is pervasively psychical, sentient or conscious
understood as equivalent. The idea, usually, is that it is articulated into
certain ultimate units or particles, momentary or enduring, each with its own
distinct charge of sentience or consciousness, and that some more complex physical
units possess a sentience emergent from the interaction between the charges of
sentience pertaining to their parts, sometimes down through a series of levels
of articulation into sentient units. Animal consciousness is the overall
sentience pertaining to some substantial part or aspect of the brain, while
each neuron may have its own individual charge of sentience, as may each
included atom and subatomic particle. Elsewhere the only sentient units may be
at the atomic and subatomic level. Two differently motivated versions of the
doctrine should be distinguished. The first implies no particular view about
the nature of matter, and regards the sentience pertaining to each unit as an
extra to its physical nature. Its point is to explain animal and human
consciousness as emerging from the interaction and perhaps fusion of more
pervasive sentient units. The better motivated, second version holds that the
inner essence of matter is unknown. We know only structural facts about the
physical or facts about its effects on sentience like our own. Panpsychists
hypothesize that the otherwise unknown inner essence of matter consists in
sentience or consciousness articulated into the units we identify externally as
fundamental particles, or as a supervening character pertaining to complexes of
such or complexes of complexes, etc. Panpsychists can thus uniquely combine the
idealist claim that there can be no reality without consciousness with
rejection of any subjectivist reduction of the physical world to human experience
of it. Modern versions of panpsychism e.g. of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and
Sprigge are only partly akin to hylozoism as it occurred in ancient thought.
Note that neither version need claim that every physical object possesses
consciousness; no one supposes that a team of conscious cricketers must itself
be conscious.
pantheism, the view that
God is identical with everything. It may be seen as the result of two
tendencies: an intense religious spirit and the belief that all reality is in
some way united. Pantheism should be distinguished from panentheism, the view
that God is in all things. Just as water might saturate a sponge and in that
way be in the entire sponge, but not be identical with the sponge, God might be
in everything without being identical with everything. Spinoza is the most
distinguished pantheist in Western philosophy. He argued that since substance
is completely self-sufficient, and only God is self-sufficient, God is the only
substance. In other words, God is everything. Hegel is also sometimes
considered a pantheist since he identifies God with the totality of being. Many
people think that pantheism is tantamount to atheism, because they believe that
theism requires that God transcend ordinary, sensible reality at least to some
degree. It is not obvious that theism requires a transcendent or Panaetius
pantheism 640 640 personal notion of
God; and one might claim that the belief that it does is the result of an
anthropomorphic view of God. In Eastern philosophy, especially the Vedic
tradition of philosophy, pantheism is
part of a rejection of polytheism. The apparent multiplicity of reality is
illusion. What is ultimately real or divine is Brahman.
Pantheismusstreit G.,
‘dispute over pantheism’, a debate primarily between the G. philosophers Jacobi
and Mendelssohn, although it also included Lessing, Kant, and Goethe. The basic
issue concerned what pantheism is and whether all pantheists are atheists. In
particular, it concerned whether Spinoza was a pantheist, and if so, whether he
was an atheist; and how close Lessing’s thought was to Spinoza’s. The standard
view, propounded by Bayle and Leibniz, was that Spinoza’s pantheism was a thin
veil for his atheism. Lessing and Goethe did not accept this harsh
interpretation of him. They believed that his pantheism avoided the alienating
transcendence of the standard Judeo-Christian concept of God. It was debated
whether Lessing was a Spinozist or some form of theistic pantheist. Lessing was
critical of dogmatic religions and denied that there was any revelation given
to all people for rational acceptance. He may have told Jacobi that he was a
Spinozist; but he may also have been speaking ironically or
hypothetically.
Paracelsus, pseudonym of
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, philosopher. He pursued medical studies
at various G. and Austrian universities, probably completing them at Ferrara.
Thereafter he had little to do with the academic world, apart from a brief and
stormy period as professor of medicine at Basle 152728. Instead, he worked
first as a military surgeon and later as an itinerant physician in G.y,
Austria, and Switzerland. His works were mainly in G. rather than Latin, and
only a few were published during his lifetime. His importance for medical
practice lay in his insistence on observation and experiment, and his use of
chemical methods for preparing drugs. The success of Paracelsian medicine and
chemistry in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was, however,
largely due to the theoretical background he provided. He firmly rejected the
classical medical inheritance, particularly Galen’s explanation of disease as
an imbalance of humors; he drew on a combination of biblical sources, G.
mysticism, alchemy, and Neoplatonic magic as found in Ficino to present a
unified view of humankind and the universe. He saw man as a microcosm,
reflecting the nature of the divine world through his immortal soul, the
sidereal world through his astral body or vital principle, and the terrestrial
world through his visible body. Knowledge requires union with the object, but
because elements of all the worlds are found in man, he can acquire knowledge
of the universe and of God, as partially revealed in nature. The physician
needs knowledge of vital principles called astra in order to heal. Disease is
caused by external agents that can affect the human vital principle as well as
the visible body. Chemical methods are employed to isolate the appropriate
vital principles in minerals and herbs, and these are used as antidotes.
Paracelsus further held that matter contains three principles, sulfur, mercury,
and salt. As a result, he thought it was possible to transform one metal into
another by varying the proportions of the fundamental principles; and that such
transformations could also be used in the production of drugs.
paraconsistency, the
property of a logic in which one cannot derive all statements from a
contradiction. What is objectionable about contradictions, from the standpoint
of classical logic, is not just that they are false but that they imply any
statement whatsoever: one who accepts a contradiction is thereby committed to
accepting everything. In paraconsistent logics, however, such as relevance
logics, contradictions are isolated inferentially and thus rendered relatively
harmless. The interest in such logics stems from the fact that people sometimes
continue to work in inconsistent theories even after the inconsistency has been
exposed, and do so without inferring everything. Whether this phenomenon can be
explained satisfactorily by the classical logician or shows instead that the
underlying logic of, e.g., science and mathematics is some non-classical
paraconsistent logic, is disputed.
paradigm-case argument: Grice tries to give the general form of this argument, as
applied to Urmson, and Grice and Strawson. I wonder if Grice thought that
STRAWSON’s appeal to resentment to prove freewill is paradigm case? The idiom
was coined by Grice’s first tutee at St. John’s, G. N. A. Flew, and he applied
it to ‘free will.’ Grice later used it to describe the philosophising by Urmson
(in “Retrospetive”). he issue of analyticity is, as Locke puts it, the issue of
whats trifle. That a triangle is trilateral Locke considers a trifling
proposition, like Saffron is yellow. Lewes (who calls mathematical propositions
analytic) describes the Kantian problem. The reductive analysis of meaning Grice
offers depends on the analytic. Few Oxonian philosophers would follow Loar, D.
Phil Oxon, under Warnock, in thinking of Grices conversational maxims as
empirical inductive generalisations over functional states! Synthesis may do in
the New World,but hardly in the Old! The locus classicus for the
ordinary-language philosophical response to Quine in Two dogmas of empiricism.
Grice and Strawson claim that is analytic does have an ordinary-language use,
as attached two a type of behavioural conversational response. To an
analytically false move (such as My neighbours three-year-old son is an adult)
the addressee A is bound to utter, I dont understand you! You are not being
figurative, are you? To a synthetically false move, on the other hand (such as
My neighbours three-year-old understands Russells Theory of Types), the
addressee A will jump with, Cant believe it! The topdogma of analyticity
is for Grice very important to defend. Philosophy depends on it! He
knows that to many his claim to fame is his In defence of a dogma, the topdogma
of analyticity, no less. He eventually turns to a pragmatist justification
of the distinction. This pragmatist justification is still in accordance
with what he sees as the use of analytic in ordinary language. His infamous
examples are as follows. My neighbours three-year old understands Russells
Theory of Types. A: Hard to believe, but I will. My neighbours three-year
old is an adult. Metaphorically? No. Then I dont understand you, and
what youve just said is, in my scheme of things, analytically false.
Ultimately, there are conversational criteria, based on this or that principle
of conversational helfpulness. Grice is also circumstantially concerned with
the synthetic a priori, and he would ask his childrens playmates: Can a
sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed! The distinction is
ultimately Kantian, but it had brought to the fore by the linguistic turn,
Oxonian and other! In defence of a dogma, Two dogmas of
empiricism, : the analytic-synthetic distinction. For Quine, there
are two. Grice is mainly interested in the first one: that there is a
distinction between the analytic and the synthetic. Grice considers Empiricism
as a monster on his way to the Rationalist City of Eternal Truth. Grice
came back time and again to explore the analytic-synthetic distinction. But his
philosophy remained constant. His sympathy is for the practicality of it, its
rationale. He sees it as involving formal calculi, rather than his own theory
of conversation as rational co-operation which does not presuppose the
analytic-synthetic distinction, even if it explains it! Grice would press the
issue here: if one wants to prove that such a theory of conversation as
rational co-operation has to be seen as philosophical, rather than some other
way, some idea of analyticity may be needed to justify the philosophical
enterprise. Cf. the synthetic a priori, that fascinated Grice most than anything
Kantian else! Can a sweater be green and red all over? No stripes allowed. With
In defence of a dogma, Grice and Strawson attack a New-World philosopher. Grice
had previously collaborated with Strawson in an essay on Met. (actually a three-part piece, with Pears as
the third author). The example Grice chooses to refute attack by Quine of the
top-dogma is the Aristotelian idea of the peritrope, as Aristotle refutes
Antiphasis in Met. (v. Ackrill, Burnyeat
and Dancy). Grice explores chapter Γ 8 of Aristotles Met.
. In Γ 8, Aristotle presents two self-refutation arguments
against two theses, and calls the asserter, Antiphasis, T1 = Everything is
true, and T2 = Everything is false, Metaph. Γ 8, 1012b13–18. Each thesis
is exposed to the stock objection that it eliminates itself. An utterer
who explicitly conveys that everything is true also makes the thesis opposite
to his own true, so that his own is not true (for the opposite thesis denies
that his is true), and any utterer U who explicitly conveys that everything is
false also belies himself. Aristotle does not seem to be claiming
that, if everything is true, it would also be true that it is false that
everything is true and, that, therefore, Everything is true must be false: the
final, crucial inference, from the premise if, p, ~p to the
conclusion ~p is missing. But it is this extra inference that seems
required to have a formal refutation of Antiphasiss T1 or T2 by consequentia
mirabilis. The nature of the argument as a purely dialectical silencer of
Antiphasis is confirmed by the case of T2, Everything is false. An utterer who
explicitly conveys that everything is false unwittingly concedes, by
self-application, that what he is saying must be false too. Again, the further
and different conclusion Therefore; it is false that everything is false is
missing. That proposal is thus self-defeating, self-contradictory (and
comparable to Grices addressee using adult to apply to three-year old, without
producing the creature), oxymoronic, and suicidal. This seems all that
Aristotle is interested in establishing through the self-refutation stock
objection. This is not to suggest that Aristotle did not believe that
Everything is true or Everything is false is false, or that he excludes that he
can prove its falsehood. Grice notes that this is not what Aristotle seems
to be purporting to establish in 1012b13–18. This holds for a περιτροπή
(peritrope) argument, but not for a περιγραφή (perigraphe) argument (συμβαίνει
δὴ καὶ τὸ θρυλούμενον πᾶσι τοῖς τοιούτοις λόγοις, αὐτοὺς ἑαυτοὺς ἀναιρεῖν. ὁ
μὲν γὰρ πάντα ἀληθῆ λέγων καὶ τὸν ἐναντίον αὑτοῦ λόγον ἀληθῆ ποιεῖ, ὥστε τὸν
ἑαυτοῦ οὐκ ἀληθῆ (ὁ γὰρ ἐναντίος οὔ φησιν αὐτὸν ἀληθῆ), ὁ δὲ πάντα ψευδῆ καὶ
αὐτὸς αὑτόν.) It may be emphasized that Aristotles argument does not contain
an explicit application of consequentia mirabilis. Indeed, no
extant self-refutation argument before Augustine, Grice is told by Mates,
contains an explicit application of consequentia mirabilis. This observation is
a good and important one, but Grice has doubts about the consequences one may
draw from it. One may take the absence of an explicit application of
consequentia mirabilis to be a sign of the purely dialectical nature of the
self-refutation argument. This is questionable. The formulation of a
self-refutation argument (as in Grices addressee, Sorry, I misused adult.) is
often compressed and elliptical and involves this or that implicaturum. One
usually assumes that this or that piece in a dialectical context has been
omitted and should be supplied (or worked out, as Grice prefers) by the
addressee. But in this or that case, it is equally possible to supply some
other, non-dialectical piece of reasoning. In Aristotles arguments from Γ
8, e.g., the addressee may supply an inference to the effect that the thesis
which has been shown to be self-refuting is not true. For if Aristotle
takes the argument to establish that the thesis has its own contradictory
version as a consequence, it must be obvious to Aristotle that the thesis is
not true (since every consequence of a true thesis is true, and two
contradictory theses cannot be simultaneously true). On the further
assumption (that Grice makes explicit) that the principle of bivalence is
applicable, Aristotle may even infer that the thesis is false. It is perfectly
plausible to attribute such an inference to Aristotle and to supply it in his
argument from Γ 8. On this account, there is no reason to think that the
argument is of an intrinsically dialectical nature and cannot be adequately
represented as a non-dialectical proof of the non-truth, or even falsity, of
the thesis in question. It is indeed difficult to see signs of a
dialectical exchange between two parties (of the type of which Grice and
Strawson are champions) in Γ8, 1012b13–18. One piece of evidence is
Aristotles reference to the person, the utterer, as Grice prefers who
explicitly conveys or asserts (ὁ λέγων) that T1 or that T2. This reference
by the Grecian philosopher to the Griceian utterer or asserter of the thesis
that everything is true would be irrelevant if Aristotles aim is to prove
something about T1s or T2s propositional content, independently of the act
by the utterer of uttering its expression and thereby explicitly conveying
it. However, it is not clear that this reference is essential to
Aristotles argument. One may even doubt whether the Grecian philosopher is
being that Griceian, and actually referring to the asserter of T1 or T2. The
*implicit* (or implicated) grammatical Subjects of Aristotles ὁ λέγων (1012b15)
might be λόγος, instead of the utterer qua asserter. λόγος is surely the
implicit grammatical Subjects of ὁ λέγων shortly after ( 1012b21–22.
8). The passage may be taken to be concerned with λόγοι ‒ this or
that statement, this or that thesis ‒ but not with its
asserter. In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle states that no thesis (A
three-year old is an adult) can necessarily imply its own contradictory (A
three-year old is not an adult) (2.4, 57b13–14). One may appeal to this
statement in order to argue for Aristotles claim that a self-refutation
argument should NOT be analyzed as involving an implicit application of
consequentia mirabilis. Thus, one should deny that Aristotles self-refutation
argument establishes a necessary implication from the self-refuting thesis to
its contradictory. However, this does not explain what other kind of
consequence relation Aristotle takes the self-refutation argument to establish
between the self-refuting thesis and its contradictory, although dialectical
necessity has been suggested. Aristotles argument suffices to establish that
Everything is false is either false or liar-paradoxical. If a thesis is
liar-paradoxical (and Grice loved, and overused the expression), the assumption
of its falsity leads to contradiction as well as the assumption of its
truth. But Everything is false is only liar-paradoxical in the unlikely,
for Aristotle perhaps impossible, event that everything distinct from this
thesis is false. So, given the additional premise that there is at least
one true item distinct from the thesis Everything is false, Aristotle can
safely infer that the thesis is false. As for Aristotles ὁ γὰρ λέγων τὸν ἀληθῆ
λόγον ἀληθῆ ἀληθής,, or eliding the γὰρ, ὁ λέγων τὸν
ἀληθῆ λόγον ἀληθῆ ἀληθής, (ho legon ton alethe logon alethe alethes) may be
rendered as either: The statement which states that the true statement is true
is true, or, more alla Grice, as He who says (or explicitly conveys, or
indicates) that the true thesis is true says something true. It may be argued
that it is quite baffling (and figurative or analogical or metaphoric) in
this context, to take ἀληθής to be predicated of the Griceian utterer, a
person (true standing for truth teller, trustworthy), to take it to mean that
he says something true, rather than his statement stating something true, or
his statement being true. But cf. L and S: ἀληθής [α^], Dor. ἀλαθής, [α^], Dor.
ἀλαθής, ές, f. λήθω, of persons, truthful, honest (not in Hom., v. infr.), ἀ.
νόος Pi. O.2.92; κατήγορος A. Th. 439; κριτής Th. 3.56; οἶνος ἀ. `in vino
veritas, Pl. Smp. 217e; ὁ μέσος ἀ. τις Arist. EN 1108a20. Admittedly, this or
that non-Griceian passage in which it is λόγος, and not the utterer, which is
the implied grammatical Subjects of ὁ λέγων can be found in Metaph. Γ7,
1012a24–25; Δ6, 1016a33; Int. 14, 23a28–29; De motu an. 10, 703a4; Eth. Nic.
2.6, 1107a6–7. 9. So the topic is controversial. Indeed such a
non-Griceian exegesis of the passage is given by Alexander of Aphrodisias (in Metaph.
340. 26–29):9, when Alexander observes that the statement, i.e. not the
utterer, that says that everything is false (ὁ δὲ πάντα ψευδῆ εἶναι λέγων
λόγος) negates itself, not himself, because if everything is false, this very
statement, which, rather than, by which the utterer, says that everything is
false, would be false, and how can an utterer be FALSE? So that the statement
which, rather than the utterer who, negates it, saying that not everything is
false, would be true, and surely an utterer cannot be true. Does Alexander
misrepresent Aristotles argument by omitting every Griceian reference to the
asserter or utterer qua rational personal agent, of the thesis? If the answer
is negative, even if the occurrence of ὁ λέγων at 1012b15 refers to the asserter,
or utterer, qua rational personal agent, this is merely an accidental feature
of Aristotles argument that cannot be regarded as an indication of its
dialectical nature. None of this is to deny that some self-refutation argument
may be of an intrinsically dialectical nature; it is only to deny that every
one is This is in line with Burnyeats view that a dialectical self-refutation,
even if qualified, as Aristotle does, as ancient, is a subspecies of
self-refutation, but does not exhaust it. Granted, a dialectical approach may
provide a useful interpretive framework for many an ancient self-refutation
argument. A statement like If proof does not exist, proof exists ‒ that occurs
in an anti-sceptical self-refutation argument reported by Sextus Empiricus ‒
may receive an attractive dialectical re-interpretation. It may be argued
that such a statement should not be understood at the level of what is
explicated, but should be regarded as an elliptical reminder of a complex
dialectical argument which can be described as follows. Cf. If thou claimest
that proof doth not exist, thou must present a proof of what thou assertest, in
order to be credible, but thus thou thyself admitest that proof existeth. A
similar point can be made for Aristotles famous argument in the Protrepticus
that one must philosophise. A number of sources state that this argument relies
on the implicaturum, If one must not philosophize, one must philosophize. It
may be argued that this implicaturum is an elliptical reminder of a dialectical
argument such as the following. If thy position is that thou must not
philosophise, thou must reflect on this choice and argue in its support, but by
doing so thou art already choosing to do philosophy, thereby admitting that
thou must philosophise. The claim that every instance of an ancient
self-refutation arguments is of an intrinsically dialectical nature is thus
questionable, to put it mildly. V also 340.19–26, and A. Madigan, tcomm.,
Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotles Met.
4, Ithaca, N.Y., Burnyeat, Protagoras and Self-Refutation in Later Greek
Philosophy,. Grices implicaturum is that Quine should have learned Greek before
refuting Aristotle. But then *I* dont speak Greek! Strawson refuted. Refs.: The
obvious keyword is ‘analytic,’ in The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC. : For one,
Grice does not follow Aristotle, but Philo. the conditional If Alexander exists,
Alexander talks or If Alexander exists, he has such-and-such an age is not
true—not even if he is in fact of such-and-such an age when the proposition is
said. (in APr 175.34–176.6)⁴³ ⁴³
… δείκνυσιν ὅτι μὴ οἷόν τε δυνατῷ τι ἀδύνατον ἀκολουθεῖν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀνάγκη ἀδύνατον
εἶναι ᾧ τὸ ἀδύνατον ἀκολουθεῖ, ἐπὶ πάσης ἀναγκαίας ἀκολουθίας. ἔστι δὲ ἀναγκαία
ἀκολουθία οὐχ ἡ πρόσκαιρος, ἀλλὰ ἐν ᾗ ἀεὶ τὸ ἑπόμενον ἕπεσθαι ἔστι τῷ τὸ εἰλημμένον
ὡς ἡγούμενον εἶναι. οὐ γὰρ ἀληθὲς συνημμένον τὸ εἰ ᾿Αλέξανδρος ἔστιν, ᾿Αλέξανδρος
διαλέγεται, ἢ εἰ ᾿Αλέξανδρος ἔστι, τοσῶνδε ἐτῶν ἐστι, καὶ εἰ εἴη ὅτε λέγεται ἡ
πρότασις τοσούτων ἐτῶν. vide Barnes. ...
έχη δε και επιφοράν το 5 αντικείμενον τώ ήγουμένω, τότε ο τοιούτος γίνεται
δεύτερος αναπόδεικτος, ώς το ,,ει ημέρα έστι, φώς έστιν ουχί δέ γε φώς
έστιν ουκ άρα ...εί ημέρα εστι
, φως έστιν ... eine unrichtige (
μοχθηρόν ) bezeichnet 142 ) , und Zwar war es besonders Philo ... οίον , , εί ημέρα εστι , φως έστιν , ή άρχεται
από ψεύδους και λήγει επί ψεύδος ... όπερ ήν λήγον . bei der Obwaltende Conditional - Nexus gar nicht in
Betracht ...Philo: If it is day, I am talking. One
of Grice’s favorite paradoxes, that display the usefulness of the implicaturum
are the so-called ‘paradoxes of implication.’ Johnson, alas, uses ‘paradox’ in
the singular. So there must be earlier accounts of this in the history of
philosophy. Notably in the ancient commentators to Philo! (Greek “ei” and Roman
“si”). Misleading but true – could do.” Note that Grice has an essay on the
‘paradoxes of entailment’. As Strawson notes, this is misleading. For Strawson
these are not paradoxes. The things are INCORRECT. For Grice, the Philonian
paradoxes are indeed paradoxical because each is a truth. Now, Strawson and
Wiggins challenge this. For Grice, to utter “if p, q” implicates that the
utterer is not in a position to utter anything stronger. He implicates that he
has NON-TRUTH-FUNCTIONAL REASON or grounds to utter “if p, q.” For Strawson,
THAT is precisely what the ‘consequentialist’ is holding. For Strawson, the
utterer CONVENTIONALLY IMPLIES that the consequent or apodosis follows, in some
way, from the antecedent or protasis. Not for Grice. For Grice, what the
utterer explicitly conveys is that the conditions that obtain are those of the
Philonian conditional. He implicitly conveys that there is n inferrability, and
this is cancellable. If Strawson holds that it is a matter of a conventional implicaturum,
the issue of cancellation becomes crucial. For Grice, to add that “But I don’t
want to covey that there is any inferrability between the protasis and the
apodosis” is NOT a contradiction. The utterer or emissor is NOT
self-contradicting. And he isn’t! The first to use the term ‘paracox’ here is a
genius. Possibly Philo. It was W. E. Johnson who first used the expression 'paradox of implication', explaining that a paradox of this sort
arises when a logician proceeds step by step, using accepted principles, until a formula is reached which
conflicts with common sense [Johnson, 1921, 39].The paradox of implication assumes
many forms, some of which are not easily recognised as involving
mere varieties of the same fundamental principle. But
COMPOUND PROPOSITIONS 47 I believe that they can all be resolved
by the consideration that we cannot ivithotd qjialification apply a com-
posite and (in particular) an implicative proposition to the further
process of inference. Such application is possible only when the
composite has been reached irrespectively of any assertion of the truth
or falsity of its components. In other words, it is a necessary
con- dition for further inference that the components of a
composite should really have been entertained hypo- thetically when
asserting that composite. § 9. The theory of compound propositions
leads to a special development when in the conjunctives the
components are taken — not, as hitherto, assertorically — but
hypothetically as in the composites. The conjunc- tives will now be
naturally expressed by such words as possible or compatible, while the
composite forms which respectively contradict the conjunctives will be
expressed by such words as necessary or impossible. If we select
the negative form for these conjunctives, we should write as contradictory
pairs : Conjunctives {possible) Composites {fiecessary)
a. p does not imply q 1, p is not implied by q
c. p is not co-disjunct to q d. p is not co-alternate to
q a, p implies q b, p is implied by q
c, p is co-disjunct to q d, p is co-alternate to q
Or Otherwise, using the term 'possible' throughout, the four
conjunctives will assume the form that the several conjunctions — pq^pq,
pq ^-nd pq — are respectively /^i*- sidle. Here the word possible is
equivalent to being merely hypothetically entertained, so that the
several conjunctives are now qualified in the same way as are the
simple components themselves. Similarly the four CHAPTER HI
corresponding composites may be expressed negatively by using the
term 'impossible,' and will assume the form that the ^^;yunctions pq^ pq,
pq and pq are re- spectively impossible, or (which means the same)
that the ^zVjunctions/^, ^^, pq Rnd pq are necessary. Now just as
'possible* here means merely 'hypothetically entertained/ so 'impossible'
and 'necessary' mean re- spectively 'assertorically denied' and
'assertorically affirmed/ The above scheme leads to the
consideration of the determinate relations that could subsist of p to q
when these eight propositions (conjunctives and composites) are
combined in everypossibleway without contradiction. Prima facie there are
i6 such combinations obtained by selecting a or ay b or 3, c or c, d or J
for one of the four constituent terms. Out of these i6 combinations,
how- ever, some will involve a conjunction of supplementaries (see
tables on pp. 37, 38), which would entail the as- sertorical affirmation
or denial of one of the components / or q, and consequently would not
exhibit a relation of p to q. The combinations that, on this ground, must
be disallowed are the following nine : cihcd, abed, abed,
abed] abed, bacd, cabd, dabc\ abed. The combinations that remain to
be admitted are therefore the followino- seven : abld, cdab\
abed, bald, cdab^ dcab\ abed. In fact, under the imposed
restriction, since a or b cannot be conjoined with c or d, it follows
that we must always conjoin a with c and d\ b with e and d\ c with
a and b\ ^with a and b. This being understood, the COMPOUND PROPOSITIONS
49 seven permissible combinations that remain are properly to
be expressed in the more simple forms: ab, cd\ ab, ba, cd, dc\ and
abed These will be represented (but re-arranged for purposes
of symmetry) in the following table giving all the possible relations of
any proposition/ to any proposition q. The technical names which 1
propose to adopt for the several relations are printed in the second
column of the table. Table of possible relations of
propositio7i p to proposition q. 1. {a,b)\ p implies and is
implied by q 2. (a, b) : p implies but is not implied by q,
3. {b^d): p is implied by but does not imply q, 4.
{djb^'c^d): p is neither implicans nor impli cate nor co-disjunct
nor co-alternate to g. 5. {dy c)\ /is co-alternate but not
co-disjunct to $r, 6. {Cyd):
/isco-disjunctbutnotco-alternateto$^. 7. {Cjd)'. p is co-disjunct
and co-alternate to q, p is co-implicant to q p is
super-implicant to q. p is sub-implicant to q. p is independent
of q p is sub-opponent to q p is super-opponent to
q, p is co-opponent to q, Here the symmetry indicated by the
prefixes, co-, super-, sub-, is brought out by reading downwards
and upwards to the middle line representing independence. In this
order the propositional forms range from the supreme degree of
consistency to the supreme degree of opponency, as regards the relation
of/ to ^. In tradi- tional logic the seven forms of relation are known
respec- tively by the names equipollent, superaltern, subaltern,
independent, sub-contrary, contrary, contradictory. This latter
terminology, however, is properly used to express the formal relations of
implication and opposition, whereas the terminology which I have adopted
will apply indifferently both for formal and for material relations. One of Grice’s claims to fame is his paradox, under ‘Yog
and Zog.’ Another paradox that Grice examines at length is paradox by Moore.
For Grice, unlike Nowell-Smith, an utterer who, by uttering The cat is on the
mat explicitly conveys that the cat is on the mat does not thereby implicitly
convey that he believes that the cat is on the mat. He, more crucially
expresses that he believes that the cat is on the mat ‒ and this is not
cancellable. He occasionally refers to Moores paradox in the buletic mode, Close
the door even if thats not my desire. An imperative still expresses someones
desire. The sergeant who orders his soldiers to muster at dawn because he is
following the lieutenants order. Grices first encounter with paradox remains
his studying Malcolms misleading exegesis of Moore. Refs.: The main sources
given under ‘heterologicality,’ above. ‘Paradox’ is a good keyword in The H. P.
Grice Papers, since he used ‘paradox’ to describe his puzzle about ‘if,’ but
also Malcolm on Moore on the philosopher’s paradox, and paradoxes of material
implication and paradoxes of entailment. Grice’s point is that a paradox is not
something false. For Strawson it is. “The so-called paradoxes of ‘entailment’
and ‘material implication’ are a misnomer. They statements are not paradoxical,
they are false.” Not for Grice! Cf. aporia. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
paradigm, as used by
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2, a set of scientific and
metaphysical beliefs that make up a theoretical framework within which
scientific theories can be tested, evaluated, and if necessary revised. Kuhn’s
principal thesis, in which the notion of a paradigm plays a central role, is
structured around an argument against the logical empiricist view of scientific
theory change. Empiricists viewed theory change as an ongoing smooth and
cumulative process in which empirical facts, discovered through observation or
experimentation, forced revisions in our theories and thus added to our
ever-increasing knowledge of the world. It was claimed that, combined with this
process of revision, there existed a process of intertheoretic reduction that
enabled us to understand the macro in terms of the micro, and that ultimately
aimed at a unity of science. Kuhn maintains that this view is incompatible with
what actually happens in case after case in the history of science. Scientific
change occurs by “revolutions” in which an older paradigm is overthrown and is
replaced by a framework incompatible or even incommensurate with it. Thus the
alleged empirical “facts,” which were adduced to support the older theory,
become irrelevant to the new; the questions asked and answered in the new
framework cut across those of the old; indeed the vocabularies of the two
frameworks make up different languages, not easily intertranslatable. These
episodes of revolution are separated by long periods of “normal science,”
during which the theories of a given paradigm are honed, refined, and elaborated.
These periods are sometimes referred to as periods of “puzzle solving,” because
the changes are to be understood more as fiddling with the details of the
theories to “save the phenomena” than as steps taking us closer to the truth. A
number of philosophers have complained that Kuhn’s conception of a paradigm is
too imprecise to do the work he intended for it. In fact, Kuhn, fifteen years
later, admitted that at least two distinct ideas were exploited by the term: i
the “shared elements [that] account for the relatively unproblematic character
of professional communication and for the relative unanimity of professional
judgment,” and ii “concrete problem solutions, accepted by the group [of
scientists] as, in a quite usual sense, paradigmatic” Kuhn, “Second Thoughts on
Paradigms,” 7. Kuhn offers the terms ‘disciplinary matrix’ and ‘exemplar’,
respectively, for these two ideas.
paradigm case argument,
an argument designed to yield an affirmative answer to the following general
type of skeptically motivated question: Are A’s really B? E.g., Do material
objects really exist? Are any of our actions really free? Does induction really
provide reasonable grounds for one’s beliefs? The structure of the argument is
simple: in situations that are “typical,” “exemplary,” or “paradigmatic,”
standards for which are supplied by common sense, or ordinary language, part of
what it is to be B essentially involves A. Hence it is absurd to doubt if A’s
are ever B, or to doubt if in general A’s are B. More commonly, the argument is
encountered in the linguistic mode: part of what it means for something to be B
is that, in paradigm cases, it be an A. Hence the question whether A’s are ever
B is meaningless. An example may be found in the application of the argument to
the problem of induction. See Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory, 2. When
one believes a generalization of the form ‘All F’s are G’ on the basis of good
inductive evidence, i.e., evidence constituted by innumerable and varied
instances of F all of which are G, one would thereby have good reasons for
holding this belief. The argument for this claim is based on the content of the
concepts of reasonableness and of strength of evidence. Thus according to
Strawson, the following two propositions are analytic: 1 It is reasonable to
have a degree of belief in a proposition that is proportional to the strength
of the evidence in its favor. 2 The evidence for a generalization is strong in
proportion as the number of instances, and the variety of circumstances in which
they have been found, is great. Hence, Strawson concludes, “to ask whether it
is reasonable to place reliance on inductive procedures is like asking whether
it is reasonable to proportion the degree of one’s convictions to the strength
of the evidence. Doing this is what ‘being reasonable’ means in such a context”
p. 257. In such arguments the role played by the appeal to paradigm cases is
crucial. In Strawson’s version, paradigm cases are constituted by “innumerable
and varied instances.” Without such an appeal the argument would fail
completely, for it is clear that not all uses of induction are reasonable. Even
when this appeal is made clear though, the argument remains questionable, for
it fails to confront adequately the force of the word ‘really’ in the skeptical
challenges. paradigm case argument paradigm case argument
paradox, a seemingly
sound piece of reasoning based on seemingly true assumptions that leads to a
contradiction or other obviously false conclusion. A paradox reveals that
either the principles of reasoning or the assumptions on which it is based are
faulty. It is said to be solved when the mistaken principles or assumptions are
clearly identified and rejected. The philosophical interest in paradoxes arises
from the fact that they sometimes reveal fundamentally mistaken assumptions or
erroneous reasoning techniques. Two groups of paradoxes have received a great
deal of attention in modern philosophy. Known as the semantic paradoxes and the
logical or settheoretic paradoxes, they reveal serious difficulties in our
intuitive understanding of the basic notions of semantics and set theory. Other
well-known paradoxes include the barber paradox and the prediction or hangman
or unexpected examination paradox. The barber paradox is mainly useful as an
example of a paradox that is easily resolved. Suppose we are told that there is
an Oxford barber who shaves all and only the Oxford men who do not shave
themselves. Using this description, we can apparently derive the contradiction
that this barber both shaves and does not shave himself. If he does not shave
himself, then according to the description he must be one of the people he
shaves; if he does shave himself, then according to the description he is one
of the people he does not shave. This paradox can be resolved in two ways.
First, the original claim that such a barber exists can simply be rejected:
perhaps no one satisfies the alleged description. Second, the described barber
may exist, but not fall into the class of Oxford men: a woman barber, e.g.,
could shave all and only the Oxford men who do not shave themselves. The
prediction paradox takes a variety of forms. Suppose a teacher tells her
students on Friday that the following week she will give a single quiz. But it
will be a surprise: the students will not know the evening before that the quiz
will take place the following day. They reason that she cannot give such a
quiz. After all, she cannot wait until Friday to give it, since then they would
know Thursday evening. That leaves Monday through Thursday as the only possible
days for it. But then Thursday can be ruled out for the same reason: they would
know on Wednesday evening. Wednesday, Tuesday, and Monday can be ruled out by
similar reasoning. Convinced by this seemingly correct reasoning, the students
do not study for the quiz. On Wednesday morning, they are taken by surprise
when the teacher distributes it. It has been pointed out that the students’
reasoning has this peculiar feature: in order to rule out any of the days, they
must assume that the quiz will be given and that it will be a surprise. But
their alleged conclusion is that it cannot be given or else will not be a
surprise, undermining that very assumption. Kaplan and Montague have argued in
“A Paradox Regained,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 0 that at the core of
this puzzle is what they call the knower paradox a paradox that arises when intuitively
plausible principles about knowledge and its relation to logical consequence
are used in conjunction with knowledge claims whose content is, or entails, a
denial of those very claims.
paradoxes of omnipotence,
a series of paradoxes in philosophical theology that maintain that God could
not be omnipotent because the concept is inconsistent, alleged to result from
the intuitive idea that if God is omnipotent, then God must be able to do
anything. 1 Can God perform logically contradictory tasks? If God can, then God
should be able to make himself simultaneously omnipotent and not omnipotent,
which is absurd. If God cannot, then it appears that there is something God
cannot do. Many philosophers have sought to avoid this consequence by claiming
that the notion of performing a logically contradictory task is empty, and that
question 1 specifies no task that God can perform or fail to perform. 2 Can God
cease to be omnipotent? If God can and were to do so, then at any time
thereafter, God would no longer be completely sovereign over all things. If God
cannot, then God cannot do something that others can do, namely, impose limitations
on one’s own powers. A popular response to question 2 is to say that
omnipotence is an essential attribute of a necessarily existing being.
According to this response, although God cannot cease to be omnipotent any more
than God can cease to exist, these features are not liabilities but rather the
lack of liabilities in God. 3 Can God create another being who is omnipotent?
Is it logically possible for two beings to be omnipotent? It might seem that
there could be, if they never disagreed in fact with each other. If, however,
omnipotence requires control over all possible but counterfactual situations,
there could be two omnipotent beings only if it were impossible for them to
disagree. 4 Can God create a stone too heavy for God to move? If God can, then there
is something that God cannot do move
such a stone and if God cannot, then
there is something God cannot do create
such a stone. One reply is to maintain that ‘God cannot create a stone too
heavy for God to move’ is a harmless consequence of ‘God can create stones of
any weight and God can move stones of any weight.’
paradox of analysis, an
argument that it is impossible for an analysis of a meaning to be informative
for one who already understands the meaning. Consider: ‘An F is a G’ e.g., ‘A
circle is a line all points on which are equidistant from some one point’ gives
a correct analysis of the meaning of ‘F’ only if ‘G’ means the same as ‘F’; but
then anyone who already understands both meanings must already know what the
sentence says. Indeed, that will be the same as what the trivial ‘An F is an F’
says, since replacing one expression by another with the same meaning should
preserve what the sentence says. The conclusion that ‘An F is a G’ cannot be
informative for one who already understands all its terms is paradoxical only
for cases where ‘G’ is not only synonymous with but more complex than ‘F’, in
such a way as to give an analysis of ‘F’. ‘A first cousin is an offspring of a
parent’s sibling’ gives an analysis, but ‘A dad is a father’ does not and in
fact could not be informative for one who already knows the meaning of all its
words. The paradox appears to fail to distinguish between different sorts of
knowledge. Encountering for the first time and understanding a correct analysis
of a meaning one already grasps brings one from merely tacit to explicit
knowledge of its truth. One sees that it does capture the meaning and thereby
sees a way of articulating the meaning one had not thought of before.
paradox of omniscience,
an objection to the possibility of omniscience, developed by Patrick Grim, that
appeals to an application of Cantor’s power set theorem. Omniscience requires
knowing all truths; according to Grim, that means knowing every truth in the
set of all truths. But there is no set of all truths. Suppose that there were a
set T of all truths. Consider all the subsets of T, that is, all members of the
power set 3T. Take some truth T1. For each member of 3T either T1 is a member
of that set or T1 is not a member of that set. There will thus correspond to
each member of 3T a further truth specifying whether T1 is or is not a member
of that set. Therefore there are at least as many truths as there are members
of 3T. By the power set theorem, there are more members of 3T than there are of
T. So T is not the set of all truths. By a parallel argument, no other set is,
either. So there is no set of all truths, after all, and therefore no one who
knows every member of that set. The objection may be countered by denying that
the claim ‘for every proposition p, if p is true God knows that p’ requires
that there be a set of all true propositions.
Paraphilosophy:
“I phoned Gellner: you chould entitle your essay, an attack on ordinary
language PARA-philosophy, since that is what Austin asks us to do.”
parapsychology, the study
of certain anomalous phenomena and ostensible causal connections neither
recognized nor clearly rejected by traditional science. Parapsychology’s
principal areas of investigation are extrasensory perception ESP, psychokinesis
PK, and cases suggesting the survival of mental functioning following bodily
death. The study of ESP has traditionally focused on two sorts of ostensible
phenomena, telepathy the apparent anomalous influence of one person’s mental
states on those of another, commonly identified with apparent communication
between two minds by extrasensory means and clairvoyance the apparent anomalous
influence of a physical state of affairs on a person’s mental states, commonly
identified with the supposed ability to perceive or know of objects or events
not present to the senses. The forms of ESP may be viewed either as types of
cognition e.g., the anomalous knowledge of another person’s mental states or as
merely a form of anomalous causal influence e.g., a distant burning house
causing one to have possibly
incongruous thoughts about fire. The
study of PK covers the apparent ability to produce various physical effects
independently of familiar or recognized intermediate sorts of causal links.
These effects include the ostensible movement of remote objects,
materializations the apparently instantaneous production of matter, apports the
apparently instantaneous relocation of an object, and in laboratory experiments
statistically significant non-random behavior of normally random microscopic
processes such as radioactive decay. Survival research focuses on cases of
ostensible reincarnation and mental mediumship i.e., “channeling” of
information from an apparently deceased communicator. Cases of ostensible
precognition may be viewed as types of telepathy and clairvoyance, and suggest
the causal influence of some state of affairs on an earlier event an agent’s
ostensible precognitive experience. However, those opposed to backward
causation may interpret ostensible precognition either as a form of unconscious
inference based on contemporaneous information acquired by ESP, or else as a
form of PK possibly in conjunction with telepathic influence by which the
precognizer brings about the events apparently precognized. The data of
parapsychology raise two particularly deep issues. The evidence suggesting
survival poses a direct challenge to materialist theories of the mental. And
the evidence for ESP and PK suggests the viability of a “magical” worldview
associated usually with so-called primitive societies, according to which we
have direct and intimate access to and influence on the thoughts and bodily
states of others.
Pareto efficiency, also
called Pareto optimality, a state of affairs in which no one can be made better
off without making someone worse off. The
economist Vilfredo Pareto referred to optimality rather than efficiency,
but usage has drifted toward the less normative term. Pareto supposed that
utilitarian addition of welfare across individuals is meaningless. He concluded
that the only useful aggregate measures of welfare must be ordinal. One state
of affairs is Pareto-superior to another if we cannot move to the second state
without making someone worse off. Although the Pareto criteria are generally
thought to be positive rather than normative, they are often used as normative
principles for justifying particular changes or refusals to make changes. For
example, some economists and philosophers take the Pareto criteria as moral
constraints and therefore oppose certain government policies. In market and
voluntary exchange contexts, it makes sense to suppose every exchange will be
Pareto-improving, at least for the direct parties to the exchange. If, however,
we fail to account for external effects of our exchange on other people, it may
not be Pareto-improving. Moreover, we may fail to provide collective benefits
that require the cooperation or coordination of many individuals’ efforts.
Hence, even in markets, we cannot expect to achieve Pareto efficiency. We might
therefore suppose we should invite government intervention to help us. But in
typical social contexts, it is often hard to believe that significant policy
changes can be Paretoimproving: there are sure to be losers from any change.
Parfit, Derek – cites H.
P. Grice on “Personal identity,” philosopher internationally known for his
major contributions to the metaphysics of persons, moral theory, and practical
reasoning. Parfit first rose to prominence by challenging the prevalent view
that personal identity is a “deep fact” that must be all or nothing and that
matters greatly in rational and moral deliberations. Exploring puzzle cases
involving fission and fusion, Parfit propounded a reductionist account of
personal identity, arguing that what matters in survival are physical and
psychological continuities. These are a matter of degree, and sometimes there
may be no answer as to whether some future person would be me. Parfit’s magnum
opus, Reasons and Persons 4, is a strikingly original book brimming with startling
conclusions that have significantly reshaped the philosophical agenda. Part One
treats different theories of morality, rationality, and the good; blameless
wrongdoing; moral immorality; rational irrationality; imperceptible harms and
benefits; harmless torturers; and the self-defeatingness of certain theories.
Part Two introduces a critical present-aim theory of individual rationality,
and attacks the standard selfinterest theory. It also discusses the rationality
of different attitudes to time, such as caring more about the future than the
past, and more about the near than the remote. Addressing the age-old conflict
between self-interest and morality, Parfit illustrates that contrary to what
the self-interest theory demands, it can be rational to care about certain
other aims as much as, or more than, about our own future well-being. In
addition, Parfit notes that the self-interest theory is a hybrid position,
neutral with respect to time but partial with respect to persons. Thus, it can
be challenged from one direction by morality, which is neutral with respect to
both persons and time, and from the other by a present-aim theory, which is
partial with respect to both persons and time. Part Three refines Parfit’s
views regarding personal identity and further criticizes the self-interest
theory: personal identity is not what matters, hence reasons to be specially
concerned about our future are not provided by the fact that it will be our
future. Part Four presents puzzles regarding future generations and argues that
the moral principles we need when considering future people must take an
impersonal form. Parfit’s arguments deeply challenge our understanding of moral
ideals and, some believe, the possibility of comparing outcomes. Parfit has
three forthcoming manuscripts, tentatively titled Rediscovering Reasons, The
Metaphysics of the Self, and On What Matters. His current focus is the
normativity of reasons. A reductionist about persons, he is a non-reductionist
about reasons. He believes in irreducibily normative beliefs that are in a
strong sense true. A realist about reasons for acting and caring, he challenges
the views of naturalists, noncognitivists, and constructivists. Parfit contends
that internalists conflate normativity with motivating force, that contrary to
the prevalent view that all reasons are provided by desires, no reasons are,
and that Kant poses a greater threat to rationalism than Hume. Parfit is Senior
Research Fellow of All Souls , Oxford, and a regular visiting professor at both
Harvard and New York . Legendary for monograph-length criticisms of book
manuscripts, he is editor of the Oxford Ethics Series, whose goal is to make
definite moral progress, a goal Parfit himself is widely believed to have
attained.
Parmenides, Grecian philosopher,
the most influential of the preSocratics, active in Elea Roman and modern
Velia, an Ionian Grecian colony in southern Italy. He was the first Grecian
thinker who can properly be called an ontologist or metaphysician. Plato refers
to him as “venerable and awesome,” as “having magnificent depth” Theaetetus
183e 184a, and presents him in the dialogue Parmenides as a searching
critic in a fictional and dialectical
transposition of Plato’s own theory of
Forms. Nearly 150 lines of a didactic poem by Parmenides have been preserved,
assembled into about twenty fragments. The first part, “Truth,” provides the
earliest specimen in Grecian intellectual history of a sustained deductive
argument. Drawing on intuitions concerning thinking, knowing, and language,
Parmenides argues that “the real” or “what-is” or “being” to eon must be
ungenerable and imperishable, indivisible, and unchanging. According to a
Plato-inspired tradition, Parmenides held that “all is one.” But the phrase
does not occur in the fragments; Parmenides does not even speak of “the One”;
and it is possible that either a holistic One or a plurality of absolute monads
might conform to Parmenides’ deduction. Nonetheless, it is difficult to resist
the impression that the argument converges on a unique entity, which may
indifferParfit, Derek Parmenides 646
646 ently be referred to as Being, or the All, or the One. Parmenides
embraces fully the paradoxical consequence that the world of ordinary
experience fails to qualify as “what-is.” Nonetheless, in “Opinions,” the
second part of the poem, he expounds a dualist cosmology. It is unclear whether
this is intended as candid phenomenology
a doctrine of appearances or as
an ironic foil to “Truth.” It is noteworthy that Parmenides was probably a
physician by profession. Ancient reports to this effect are borne out by
fragments from “Opinions” with embryological themes, as well as by
archaeological findings at Velia that link the memory of Parmenides with
Romanperiod remains of a medical school at that site. Parmenides’ own attitude
notwithstanding, “Opinions” recorded four major scientific breakthroughs, some
of which, doubtless, were Parmenides’ own discoveries: that the earth is a
sphere; that the two tropics and the Arctic and Antarctic circles divide the
earth into five zones; that the moon gets its light from the sun; and that the
morning star and the evening star are the same planet. The term Eleatic School
is misleading when it is used to suggest a common doctrine supposedly held by
Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Melissus of Samos, and anticipating Parmenides
Xenophanes of Colophon. The fact is, many philosophical groups and movements,
from the middle of the fifth century onward, were influenced, in different
ways, by Parmenides, including the “pluralists,” Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and
Democritus. Parmenides’ deductions, transformed by Zeno into a repertoire of
full-blown paradoxes, provided the model both for the eristic of the Sophists
and for Socrates’ elenchus. Moreover, the Parmenidean criteria for “whatis” lie
unmistakably in the background not only of Plato’s theory of Forms but also of
salient features of Aristotle’s system, notably, the priority of actuality over
potentiality, the unmoved mover, and the man-begets-man principle. Indeed, all
philosophical and scientific systems that posit principles of conservation of
substance, of matter, of matter-energy are inalienably the heirs to Parmenides’
deduction.
parsing, the process of
determining the syntactic structure of a sentence according to the rules of a
given grammar. This is to be distinguished from the generally simpler task of
recognition, which is merely the determination of whether or not a given string
is well-formed grammatical. In general, many different parsing strategies can
be employed for grammars of a particular type, and a great deal of attention
has been given to the relative efficiencies of these techniques. The most
thoroughly studied cases center on the contextfree phrase structure grammars,
which assign syntactic structures in the form of singly-rooted trees with a
left-to-right ordering of “sister” nodes. Parsing procedures can then be
broadly classified according to the sequence of steps by which the parse tree
is constructed: top-down versus bottom-up; depth-first versus breadthfirst;
etc. In addition, there are various strategies for exploring alternatives
agendas, backtracking, parallel processing and there are devices such as
“charts” that eliminate needless repetitions of previous steps. Efficient
parsing is of course important when language, whether natural or artificial
e.g., a programming language, is being processed by computer. Human beings also
parse rapidly and with apparently little effort when they comprehend sentences
of a natural language. Although little is known about the details of this
process, psycholinguists hope that study of mechanical parsing techniques might
provide insights.
partition, division of a
set into mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subsets. Derivatively,
‘partition’ can mean any set P whose members are mutually exclusive and jointly
exhaustive subsets of set S. Each subset of a partition P is called a partition
class of S with respect to P. Partitions are intimately associated with
equivalence relations, i.e. with relations that are transitive, symmetric, and
reflexive. Given an equivalence relation R defined on a set S, R induces a
partition P of S in the following natural way: members s1 and s2 belong to the
same partition class of P if and only if s1 has the relation R to s2. Conversely,
given a partition P of a set S, P induces an equivalence relation R defined on
S in the following natural way: members s1 and s2 are such that s1 has the
relation R to s2 if and only if s1 and s2 belong to the same partition class of
P. For obvious reasons, then, partition classes are also known as equivalence
classes.
Pascal, B. – cited by H.
P. Grice, philosopher known for his brilliance as a mathematician, physicist,
inventor, theologian, polemicist, and
prose stylist. Born at Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne, he was educated
by his father, Étienne, and first gained note for his contribution to
mathematics when at sixteen he produced, under the influence of Desargues, a
work on the projective geometry of the cone. This was published in 1640 under the
title Essai pour les coniques and includes what has since become known as
Pascal’s theorem. Pascal’s other mathematical accomplishments include the
original development of probability theory, worked out in correspondence with
Fermat, and a method of infinitesimal analysis to which Leibniz gave credit for
inspiring his own development of the calculus. Pascal’s early scientific fame
rests also on his work in physics, which includes a treatise on hydrostatics
Traités de l’équilibre des liqueurs et de la pesanteur de la masse de l’air and
his experiments with the barometer, which attempted to establish the
possibility of a vacuum and the weight of air as the cause of the mercury’s
suspension. Pascal’s fame as a stylist rests primarily on his Lettres provinciales
165657, which were an anonymous contribution to a dispute between the
Jansenists, headed by Arnauld, and the Jesuits. Jansenism was a Catholic
religious movement that emphasized an Augustinian position on questions of
grace and free will. Pascal, who was not himself a Jansenist, wrote a series of
scathing satirical letters ridiculing both Jesuit casuistry and the persecution
of the Jansenists for their purported adherence to five propositions in
Jansen’s Augustinus. Pascal’s philosophical contributions are found throughout
his work, but primarily in his Pensées 1670, an intended apology for
Christianity left incomplete and fragmentary at his death. The influence of the
Pensées on religious thought and later existentialism has been profound because
of their extraordinary insight, passion, and depth. At the time of Pascal’s
death some of the fragments were sewn together in clusters; many others were
left unorganized, but recent scholarship has recovered much of the original
plan of organization. The Pensées raise skeptical arguments that had become
part of philosophical parlance since Montaigne. While these arguments were
originally raised in order to deny the possibility of knowledge, Pascal, like
Descartes in the Meditations, tries to utilize them toward a positive end. He
argues that what skepticism shows us is not that knowledge is impossible, but
that there is a certain paradox about human nature: we possess knowledge yet
recognize that this knowledge cannot be rationally justified and that rational
arguments can even be directed against it fragments 109, 131, and 110. This
peculiarity can be explained only through the Christian doctrine of the fall
e.g., fragment 117. Pascal extends his skeptical considerations by undermining
the possibility of demonstrative proof of God’s existence. Such knowledge is
impossible on philosophical grounds because such a proof could be successful
only if an absurdity followed from denying God’s existence, and nature
furnishes us with no knowledge incompatible with unbelief fragments 429 and
781. Furthermore, demonstrative proof of God’s existence is incompatible with
the epistemological claims of Christianity, which make God’s personal agency
essential to religious knowledge fragments 460, 449. Pascal’s use of skepticism
and his refusal to admit proofs of God’s existence have led some commentators,
like Richard Popkin “Fideism,” 7 and Terence Penelhum “Skepticism and Fideism,”
3 to interpret Pascal as a fideist, i.e., one who denies that religious belief
can be based on anything other than pragmatic reasons. But such an
interpretation disregards Pascal’s attempts to show that Christian belief is
rational because of the explanatory power of its doctrines, particularly its
doctrine of the fall e.g., fragments 131, 137, 149, 431, 449, and 482. These
purported demonstrations of the explanatory superiority of Christianity prepare
Parva naturalia Pascal, Blaise 648 648
the way for Pascal’s famous “wager” fragment 418. The wager is among the fragments
that Pascal had not classified at the time of his death, but textual evidence
shows that it would have been included in Section 12, entitled “Commencement,”
after the demonstrations of the superior explanatory power of Christianity. The
wager is a direct application of the principles developed in Pascal’s earlier
work on probability, where he discovered a calculus that could be used to
determine the most rational action when faced with uncertainty about future
events, or what is now known as decision theory. In this case the uncertainty
is the truth of Christianity and its claims about afterlife; and the actions
under consideration are whether to believe or not. The choice of the most
rational action depends on what would now be called its “expected value.” The
expected value of an action is determined by 1 assigning a value, s, to each
possible outcome of the action, 2 subtracting the cost of the action, c, from
this value, and 3 multiplying the difference by the probability of the
respective outcomes and adding these products together. Pascal invites the
reader to consider Christian faith and unbelief as if they were acts of
wagering on the truth of Christianity. If one believes, then there are two
possible outcomes either God exists or
not. If God does exist, the stake to be gained is infinite life. If God does
not exist, there are no winnings. Because the potential winnings are infinite,
religious belief is more rational than unbelief because of its greater expected
value. The wager has been subjected to numerous criticisms. William James
argued that it is indecisive, because it would apply with equal validity to any
religion that offers a promise of infinite rewards The Will to Believe, 7. But
this ignores Pascal’s careful attempt to show that only Christianity has
adequate explanatory power, so that the choice is intended to be between
Christianity and unbelief. A stronger objection to the wager arises from
contemporary work in decision theory that prohibits the introduction of
infinite values because they have the counterintuitive result of making even
the slightest risk irrational. But while these objections are valid, they do
not refute Pascal’s strategy in the Pensées, in which the proofs of
Christianity’s explanatory power and the wager have only the preliminary role
of inducing the reader to seek the religious certainty that comes only from a
saving religious experience which he calls “inspiration” fragments 110, 381,
382, 588, 808.
paternalism, interference
with the liberty or autonomy of another person, with justifications referring
to the promotion of the person’s good or the prevention of harm to the person.
More precisely, P acts paternalistically toward Q if and only if a P acts with
the intent of averting some harm or promoting some benefit for Q; b P acts
contrary to or is indifferent to the current preferences, desires or values of
Q; and c P’s act is a limitation on Q’s autonomy or liberty. The presence of
both autonomy and liberty in clause c is to allow for the fact that lying to
someone is not clearly an interference with liberty. Notice that one can act
paternalistically by telling people the truth as when a doctor insists that a
patient know the exact nature of her illness, contrary to her wishes. Note also
that the definition does not settle any questions about the legitimacy or
illegitimacy of paternalistic interventions. Typical examples of paternalistic
actions are 1 laws requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets; 2 court orders
allowing physicians to transfuse Jehovah’s Witnesses against their wishes; 3
deception of a patient by physicians to avoid upsetting the patient; 4 civil
commitment of persons judged dangerous to themselves; and 5 laws forbidding
swimming while lifeguards are not on duty. Soft weak paternalism is the view
that paternalism is justified only when a person is acting non-voluntarily or
one needs time to determine whether the person is acting voluntarily or not.
Hard strong paternalism is the view that paternalism is sometimes justified
even when the person being interfered with is acting voluntarily. The analysis
of the term is relative to some set of problems. If one were interested in the
organizational behavior of large corporations, one might adopt a different
definition than if one were concerned with limits on the state’s right to
exercise coercion. The typical normative problems about paternalistic actions
are whether, and to what extent, the welfare of individuals may outweigh the
need to respect their desire to lead their own lives and make their own
decisions even when mistaken. J. S. Mill is the best example of a virtually
absolute antipaternalism, at least with respect to the right of the state to
act paternalistically. He argued that unless we have reason to believe that a
person is not acting voluntarily, as in the case of a man walking across a
bridge that, unknown to him, is about to collapse, we ought to allow adults the
freedom to act even if their acts are harmful to themselves.
patristic authors, also
called church fathers, a group of early Christian authors originally so named
because they were considered the “fathers” patres of the orthodox Christian
churches. The term is now used more broadly to designate the Christian writers,
orthodox or heterodox, who were active in the first six centuries or so of the
Christian era. The chronological division is quite flexible, and it is
regularly moved several centuries later for particular purposes. Moreover, the
study of these writers has traditionally been divided by languages, of which
the principal ones are Grecian, Latin, and Syriac. The often sharp divisions
among patristic scholarships in the different languages are partly a reflection
of the different histories of the regional churches, partly a reflection of the
sociology of modern scholarship. Grecians. The patristic period in Grecian is
usually taken as extending from the first writers after the New Testament to
such figures as Maximus the Confessor 579/580662 or John of Damascus
c.650c.750. The period is traditionally divided around the Council of Nicea
325. PreNicean Grecian authors of importance to the history of philosophy
include Irenaeus 130/140 after ?, Clement of Alexandria c.150after 215, and
Origen c.180c.254. Important Nicean and post-Nicean authors include Athanasius
c.295373; the Cappadocians, i.e., Gregory of Nazianzus c.33090, Basil of
Cesarea c.33079, and his brother, Gregory of Nyssa 335/340c.394; and John
Chrysostom c.350 407. Philosophical topics and practices are constantly engaged
by these Grecian authors. Justin Martyr second century, e.g., describes his
conversion to Christianity quite explicitly as a transit through lower forms of
philosophy into the true philosophy. Clement of Alexandria, again, uses the
philosophic genre of the protreptic and a host of ancient texts to persuade his
pagan readers that they ought to come to Christianity as to the true wisdom.
Origen devotes his Against Celsus to the detailed rebuttal of one pagan
philosopher’s attack on Christianity. More importantly, if more subtly, the
major works of the Cappadocians appropriate and transform the teachings of any
number of philosophic authors Plato and
the Neoplatonists in first place, but also Aristotle, the Stoics, and Galen.
Latins. The Latin churches came to count four post-Nicean authors as its chief
teachers: Ambrose 337/33997, Jerome c.347419, Augustine 354430, and Gregory the
Great c.540604. Other Latin authors of philosophical interest include
Tertullian fl. c.c.220, Lactantius c.260c.330, Marius Victorinus 280/285before
386, and Hilary of Poitiers fl. 35664. The Latin patristic period is typically
counted from the second century to the fifth or sixth, i.e., roughly from
Tertullian to Boethius. The Latin authors share with their Grecian
contemporaries a range of relations to the pagan philosophic schools, both as
rival institutions and as sources of useful teaching. Tertullian’s Against the
Nations and Apology, for example, take up pagan accusations against
Christianity and then counterattack a number of pagan beliefs, including
philosophical ones. By contrast, the writings of Marius Victorinus, Ambrose,
and Augustine enact transformations of philosophic teachings, especially from
the Neoplatonists. Because philosophical erudition was generally not as great
among the Latins as among the Grecians, they were both more eager to accept
philosophical doctrines and freer in improvising variations on them.
Paul of Venice
c.13681429, philosopher and theologian.
A Hermit of Saint Augustine O.E.S.A., he spent three years as a student
patriarchalism Paul of Venice 650 650
in Oxford 139093 and taught at the of
Padua, where he became a doctor of arts and theology in 1408. He also held
appointments at the universities of Parma, Siena, and Bologna. He was active in
the administration of his order, holding various high offices. Paul of Venice
wrote commentaries on several logical, ethical, and physical works of
Aristotle, but his name is connected especially with an extremely popular
textbook, Logica parva over 150 manuscripts survive, and more than forty
printed editions of it were made, and with a huge Logica magna. These
Oxford-influenced works contributed to the favorable climate enjoyed by the
English logic in northern universities
from the late fourteenth century through the fifteenth century. I.Bo. Peano,
Giuseppe.
Peano postulates, also
called Peano axioms, a list of assumptions from which the integers can be
defined from some initial integer, equality, and successorship, and usually
seen as defining progressions. The Peano postulates for arithmetic were
produced by G. Peano in 9. He took the set N of integers with a first term 1
and an equality relation between them, and assumed these nine axioms: 1 belongs
to N; N has more than one member; equality is reflexive, symmetric, and
associative, and closed over N; the successor of any integer in N also belongs
to N, and is unique; and a principle of mathematical induction applying across
the members of N, in that if 1 belongs to some subset M of N and so does the
successor of any of its members, then in fact M % N. In some ways Peano’s
formulation was not clear. He had no explicit rules of inference, nor any
guarantee of the legitimacy of inductive definitions which Dedekind established
shortly before him. Further, the four properties attached to equality were seen
to belong to the underlying “logic” rather than to arithmetic itself; they are
now detached. It was realized by Peano himself that the postulates specified
progressions rather than integers e.g., 1, ½, ¼, 1 /8, . . . , would satisfy
them, with suitable interpretations of the properties. But his work was
significant in the axiomatization of arithmetic; still deeper foundations would
lead with Russell and others to a major role for general set theory in the
foundations of mathematics. In addition, with O. Veblen, T. Skolem, and others,
this insight led in the early twentieth century to “non-standard” models of the
postulates being developed in set theory and mathematical analysis; one could
go beyond the ‘. . .’ in the sequence above and admit “further” objects, to
produce valuable alternative models of the postulates. These procedures were of
great significance also to model theory, in highlighting the property of the
non-categoricity of an axiom system. A notable case was the “non-standard
analysis” of A. Robinson, where infinitesimals were defined as arithmetical
inverses of transfinite numbers without incurring the usual perils of rigor
associated with them.
pearsianism – after D. F. Pears, one of Grice’s collaborators in the
Play Group. “In them days, we would never publish, since the only philosophers
we were interested in communicating with we saw at least every Saturday!” –
With D. F. Pears, and J. F. Thomson, H. P. Grice explored topics in the
philosophy of action and ‘philosophical psychology.’ Actually, Grice carefully
writes ‘philosophy of action.’ Why? Well, because while with Pears and Thomson
he explored toopics like ‘intending’ and ‘deciding,’ it was always with a vew
towards ‘acting,’ or ‘doing.’ Grice is
very clear on this, “even fastidiously so,” as Blackburn puts it. In the
utterance of an imperative, or an intention, which may well be other-directed,
the immediate response or effect in your co-conversationalist is a
‘recognition,’ i. e. what Grice calls an ‘uptake,’ some sort of
‘understanding.’ In the case of these ‘desiderative’ moves, the recognition is
that the communicator WILLS something. Grice uses a ‘that’-clause attached to
‘will,’ so that he can formulate the proposition “p” – whose realization is in
question. Now, this ‘will’ on the part of the ‘communicator’ needs to be
‘transmitted.’ So the communicator’s will includes his will that his emissee
will adopt this will. “And eventually act upon it!” So, you see, while it looks
as if Pears and Thomson and Grice are into ‘philosophical psychology,’ they are
into ‘praxis.’ Not alla Althuser, but almost! Pears explored the idea of the
conversational implicaturum in connection, obviously, with action. There is a
particular type of conditional that relates to action. Grice’s example, “If I
COULD do it, I would climb Mt. Everest on hands and knees.” Grice and Pears, and indeed Thomson, analysed
this ‘if.’ Pears thinks that ‘if’ conversationally implicates ‘if and only if.’
Grice called that “Perfecct pears.”
peirce: c. s. – H. P.
Grice, “Lectures on C. S. Peirce’s general theory of signs,” Oxford;
philosopher, the founder of the philosophical movement called pragmatism.
Peirce was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the second son of Benjamin Peirce,
who was professor of mathematics and astronomy at Harvard and one of America’s
leading mathematicians. Charles Peirce studied at Harvard and in 1863 received a degree in chemistry.
In 1861 he began work with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, and remained in
this service for thirty years. Simultaneously with his professional career as a
scientist, Peirce worked in logic and philosophy. He lectured on philosophy and
logic at various universities and institutes, but was never able to obtain a
permanent academic position as a teacher of philosophy. In 7 he retired to
Milford, Pennsylvania, and devoted the rest of his life to philosophical work.
He earned a meager income from occasional lectures and by writing articles for
periodicals and dictionaries. He spent his last years in extreme poverty and
ill health. Pragmatism. Peirce formulated the basic principles of pragmatism in
two articles, “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”
187778. The title of the latter paper refers to Descartes’s doctrine of clear
and distinct ideas. According to Peirce, the criteria of clarity and
distinctness must be supplemented by a third condition of meaningfulness, which
states that the meaning of a proposition or an “intellectual conception” lies
in its “practical consequences.” In his paper “Pragmatism” 5 he formulated the
“Principle of Pragmatism” or the “Pragmatic Maxim” as follows: In order to
ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception we should consider what
practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of
that conception; and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire
meaning of the conception. By “practical consequences” Peirce means conditional
propositions of the form ‘if p, then q’, where the antecedent describes some
action or experimental condition, and the consequent describes an observable
phenomenon or a “sensible effect.” According to the Pragmatic Maxim, the
meaning of a proposition or of an “intellectual conception” can be expressed as
a conjunction of such “practical conditionals.” The Pragmatic Maxim might be
criticized on the ground that many meaningful sentences e.g., theoretical
hypotheses do not entail any “practical consequences” in themselves, but only
in conjunction with other hypotheses. Peirce anticipated this objection by
observing that “the maxim of pragmatism is that a conception can have no
logical effect or import differing from that of a second conception except so
far as, taken in connection with other conceptions and intentions, it might
conceivably modify our practical conduct differently from that of the second
conception” “Pragmatism and Abduction,” 3. Theory of inquiry and philosophy of
science. Peirce adopted Bain’s definition of belief as “that which a man is
prepared to act upon.” Belief guides action, and as a content of belief a
proposition can be regarded as a maxim of conduct. According to Peirce, belief
is a satisfactory and desirable state, whereas the opposite of belief, the
state of doubt, is an unsatisfactory state. The starting point of inquiry is
usually some surprising phenomenon that is inconsistent with one’s previously
accepted beliefs, and that therefore creates a state of doubt. The purpose of
inquiry is the replacement of this state by that of belief: “the sole aim of
inquiry is the settlement of opinion.” A successful inquiry leads to stable
opinion, a state of belief that need not later be given up. Peirce regarded the
ultimate stability of opinion as a criterion of truth and reality: “the real .
. . is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally
result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of you and me.”
He accepted, however, an objectivist conception of truth and reality: the
defining characteristic of reality is its independence of the opinions of
individual persons. In “The Fixation of Belief” Peirce argued that the
scientific method, a method in which we let our beliefs be determined by
external reality, “by something upon which our thinking has no effect,” is the
best way of settling opinion. Much of his philosophical work was devoted to the
analysis of the various forms of inference and argument employed in science. He
studied the concept of probability and probabilistic reasoning in science,
criticized the subjectivist view of probability, and adopted an objectivist
conception, according to which probability can be defined as a relative
frequency in the long run. Peirce distinguished between three main types of
inference, which correspond to three stages of inquiry: i abduction, a
tentative acceptance of an explanatory hypothesis which, if true, would make
the phenomenon under investigation intelligible; ii deduction, the derivation
of testable consequences from the explanatory hypothesis; and iii induction,
the evaluation of the hypothesis in the light of these consequences. He called
this method of inquiry the inductive method; in the contemporary philosophy of
science it is usually called the hypothetico-deductive method. According to
Peirce, the scientific method can be viewed as an application of the pragmatic
maxim: the testable consequences derived from an explanatory hypothesis
constitute its concrete “meaning” in the sense of the Pragmatic Maxim. Thus the
Maxim determines the admissibility of a hypothesis as a possible meaningful
explanation. According to Pierce, inquiry is always dependent on beliefs that
are not subject to doubt at the time of the inquiry, but such beliefs might be
questioned on some other occasion. Our knowledge does not rest on indubitable
“first premises,” but all beliefs are dependent on other beliefs. According to
Peirce’s doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always
tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the
certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by
continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own
mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth. Logic, the theory
of signs, and the philosophy of language. In “The Logic of Relatives,”
published in 3 in a collection of papers by himself and his students at the
Johns Hopkins Studies in Logic by
Members of the Johns Hopkins , Peirce formalized relational statements by using
subscript indices for individuals individual variables, and construed the
quantifiers ‘some’ and ‘every’ as variable binding operators; thus Peirce can
be regarded together Peirce, Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Sanders 652 652 with the G. logician Frege as one of
the founders of quantification theory predicate logic. In his paper “On the
Algebra of Logic A Contribution to the
Philosophy of Notation” 5 he interpreted propositional logic as a calculus of
truth-values, and defined logically necessary truth in propositional logic as
truth for all truth-value assignments to sentential letters. He studied the
logic of modalities and in the 0s he invented a system of logical graphs called
“existential graphs”, based on a diagrammatic representation of propositions,
in which he anticipated some basic ideas of the possible worlds semantics of
modal logic. Peirce’s letters and notebooks contain significant logical and
philosophical insights. For example, he examined three-valued truth tables
“Triadic Logic”, and discovered in 6 the possibility of representing the
truth-functional connectives of propositional logic by electrical switching
circuits. Peirce regarded logic as a part of a more general area of inquiry,
the theory of signs, which he also called semeiotic nowadays usually spelled
‘semiotics’. According to Peirce, sign relations are triadic, involving the
sign itself, its object or what the sign stands for, and an interpretant which
determines how the sign represents the object; the interpretant can be regarded
as the meaning of the sign. The interpretant of a sign is another sign which in
turn has its own interpretant or interpretants; such a sequence of
interpretants ends in an “ultimate logical interpretant,” which is “a change of
habit of conduct.” On the basis of the triadic character of the sign relation
Peirce distinguished three divisions of signs. These divisions were based on i
the character of the sign itself, ii the relation between the sign and its
object, and iii the way in which the interpretant represents the object. These
divisions reflect Peirce’s system of three fundamental ontological categories,
which he termed Quality or Firstness, Relation or Secondness, and
Representation or Thirdness. Thus, according to the first division, a sign can
be a a qualisign, a mere quality or appearance a First; b a sinsign or token,
an individual object, or event a Second; or c a legisign or a general type a
Third. Secondly, signs can be divided into icons, indices, and symbols on the
basis of their relations to their objects: an icon refers to an object on the
basis of its similarity to the object in some respect; an index stands in a
dynamic or causal relation to its object; whereas a symbol functions as a sign
of an object by virtue of a rule or habit of interpretation. Peirce’s third
division divides signs into rhemes predicative signs, propositional signs
propositions, and arguments. Some of the concepts and distinctions introduced
by Peirce, e.g., the distinction between “types” and “tokens” and the division
of signs into “icons,” “indices,” and “symbols,” have become part of the
standard conceptual repertoire of philosophy and semiotics. In his philosophy
of language Peirce made a distinction between a proposition and an assertion,
and studied the logical character of assertive speech acts. Metaphysics. In
spite of his critical attitude toward traditional metaphysics, Peirce believed
that metaphysical questions can be discussed in a meaningful way. According to
Peirce, metaphysics studies the most general traits of reality, and “kinds of
phenomena with which every man’s experience is so saturated that he usually
pays no particular attention to them.” The basic categories of Firstness,
Secondness, and Thirdness mentioned above occupy a central position in Peirce’s
metaphysics. Especially in his later writings he emphasized the reality and
metaphysical irreducibility of Thirdness, and defended the view that general
phenomena for example, general laws cannot be regarded as mere conjunctions of
their actual individual instances. This view was associated with Peirce’s
synechism, the doctrine that the world contains genuinely continuous phenomena.
He regarded synechism as a new form of Scholastic realism. In the area of
modalities Peirce’s basic categories appear as possibility, actuality, and
necessity. Here he argued that reality cannot be identified with existence or
actuality, but comprises real objective possibilities. This view was partly
based on his realization that many conditional statements, for instance the
“practical” conditionals expressing the empirical import of a proposition in
the sense of the Pragmatic Maxim, cannot be construed as material or
truth-functional conditionals, but must be regarded as modal subjunctive
conditionals. In his cosmology Peirce propounded the doctrine of tychism,
according to which there is absolute chance in the universe, and the basic laws
of nature are probabilistic and inexact. Peirce’s position in contemporary
philosophy. Peirce had few disciples, but some of his students and colleagues
became influential figures in philosophy
and science, e.g., the philosophers James, Royce, and Dewey and the economist
Thorstein Veblen. Peirce’s pragmatism Peirce, Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles
Sanders 653 653 became widely known
through James’s lectures and writings, but Peirce was dissatisfied with James’s
version of pragmatism, and renamed his own form of it ‘pragmaticism’, which
term he considered to be “ugly enough to keep it safe from kidnappers.”
Pragmatism became an influential philosophical movement during the twentieth
century through Dewey philosophy of science and philosophy of education, C. I.
Lewis theory of knowledge, Ramsey, Ernest Nagel, and Quine philosophy of
science. Peirce’s work in logic influenced, mainly through his contacts with
the G. logician Ernst Schröder, the model-theoretic tradition in
twentieth-century logic. There are three comprehensive collections of Peirce’s
papers: Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce 158, vols. 16 edited by
Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, vols. 78 edited by Arthur Burks; The New
Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce 6, edited by Carolyn Eisele; and
Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition 2.
Peirce’s law, the
principle ‘A P B P A P A’, which holds in classical logic but fails in the eyes
of relevance logicians when ‘ P’ is read as ‘entails’.
Pelagianism, the doctrine
in Christian theology that, through the exercise of free will, human beings can
attain moral perfection. A broad movement devoted to this proposition was only
loosely associated with its eponymous leader. Pelagius c.354c.425, a lay
theologian from Britain or Ireland, taught in Rome prior to its sacking in 410.
He and his disciple Celestius found a forceful adversary in Augustine, whom
they provoked to stiffen his stance on original sin, the bondage of the will,
and humanity’s total reliance upon God’s grace and predestination for
salvation. To Pelagius, this constituted fatalism and encouraged moral apathy.
God would not demand perfection, as the Bible sometimes suggested, were that
impossible to attain. Rather grace made the struggle easier for a sanctity that
would not be unreachable even in its absence. Though in the habit of sinning,
in consequence of the fall, we have not forfeited the capacity to overcome that
habit nor been released from the imperative to do so. For all its moral
earnestness this teaching seems to be in conflict with much of the New
Testament, especially as interpreted by Augustine, and it was condemned as
heresy in 418. The bondage of the will has often been reaffirmed, perhaps most
notably by Luther in dispute with Erasmus. Yet Christian theology and practice
have always had their sympathizers with Pelagianism and with its reluctance to
attest the loss of free will, the inevitability of sin, and the utter necessity
of God’s grace.
per accidens Latin, ‘by
accident’, by, as, or being an accident or non-essential feature. A per
accidens predication is one in which an accident is predicated of a substance.
The terminology is medieval. Note that the accident and substance themselves,
not words standing for them, are the terms of the predication relation. An ens
entity per accidens is either an accident or the “accidental unity” of a
substance and an accident Descartes, e.g., insists that a person is not a per
accidens union of body and mind.
perceptum: the traditional distinction is perceptum-conceptum: nihil
est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu. this is Grice on sense-datum.
Grice feels that the kettle is hot; Grice sees that the kettle is hot; Grice
perceives that the kettle is hot. WoW:251 uses this example. It may be argued that
the use of ‘see’ is there NOT factive. Cf. “I feel hot but it’s not hot.” Grice
modifies the thing to read, “DIRECTLY PERCEIVING”: Grice only indirectly
perceives that the kettle is hot’ if what he is doing is ‘seeing’ that the
kettle is hot. When Grice sees that the kettle is hot, it is a ‘secondary’
usage of ‘see,’ because it means that Grice perceives that the kettle has some
visual property that INDICATES the presence of hotness (Grice uses phi for the
general formula). Cf. sensum. Lewis and Short have “sentĭo,” which they
render, aptly, as “to sense,” ‘to discern by the senses; to feel, hear, see,
etc.; to perceive, be sensible of (syn. percipio).”
Note that Price is also cited by Grice in Personal identity. Grice: That pillar
box seems red to me. The locus classicus in the philosophical literature for
Grices implicaturum. Grice introduces a dout-or-denial condition for an
utterance of a phenomenalist report (That pillar-box seems red to me). Grice
attacks neo-Wittgensteinian approaches that regard the report as _false_. In a
long excursus on implication, he compares the phenomenalist report with
utterances like He has beautiful handwriting (He is hopeless at philosophy), a
particularised conversational implicaturum; My wife is in the kitchen or the
garden (I have non-truth-functional grounds to utter this), a generalised
conversational implicaturum; She was poor but she was honest (a Great-War
witty (her poverty and her honesty contrast), a conventional implicaturum; and
Have you stopped beating your wife? an old Oxonian conundrum. You have
been beating your wife, cf. Smith has not ceased from eating iron, a
presupposition. More importantly, he considers different tests for each
concoction! Those for the conversational implicaturum will become crucial: cancellability,
calculability, non-detachability, and indeterminacy. In the proceedings he
plays with something like the principle of conversational helpfulness, as
having a basis on a view of conversation as rational co-operation, and as
giving the rationale to the implicaturum. Past the excursus, and back to the
issue of perception, he holds a conservative view as presented by Price at
Oxford. One interesting reprint of Grices essay is in Daviss volume on Causal
theories, since this is where it belongs! White’s response is usually ignored,
but shouldnt. White is an interesting Australian philosopher at Oxford who is
usually regarded as a practitioner of ordinary-language philosophy. However, in
his response, White hardly touches the issue of the implicaturum with which
Grice is primarily concerned. Grice found that a full reprint from the PAS in a
compilation also containing the James Harvard would be too repetitive.
Therefore, he omits the excursus on implication. However, the way Grice
re-formulates what that excursus covers is very interesting. There is the
conversational implicaturum, particularised (Smith has beautiful handwriting)
and generalised (My wife is in the kitchen or in the garden). Then there is the
præsuppositum, or presupposition (You havent stopped beating your wife).
Finally, there is the conventional implicaturum (She was poor, but she was
honest). Even at Oxford, Grices implicaturum goes, philosophers ‒ even Oxonian
philosophers ‒ use imply for all those different animals! Warnock had attended
Austins Sense and Sensibilia (not to be confused with Sense and Sensibility by
Austen), which Grice found boring, but Warnock didnt because Austin reviews his
"Berkeley." But Warnock, for obvious reasons, preferred
philosophical investigations with Grice. Warnock reminisces that Grice once
tells him, and not on a Saturday morning, either, How clever language is, for
they find that ordinary language does not need the concept of a visum. Grice
and Warnock spent lovely occasions exploring what Oxford has as the philosophy
of perception. While Grice later came to see philosophy of perception as a bit
or an offshoot of philosophical psychology, the philosophy of perception is
concerned with that treasured bit of the Oxonian philosophers lexicon, the
sense-datum, always in the singular! The cause involved is crucial. Grice plays
with an evolutionary justification of the material thing as the denotatum of a
perceptual judgement. If a material thing causes the sense-datum of a nut, that
is because the squarrel (or squirrel) will not be nourished by the sense datum
of the nut; only by the nut! There are many other items in the Grice Collection
that address the topic of perception – notably with Warnock, and criticizing
members of the Ryle group like Roxbee-Cox (on vision, cf. visa ‒ taste, and
perception, in general – And we should not forget that Grice contributed a
splendid essay on the distinction of the senses to Butlers Analytic philosophy,
which in a way, redeemed a rather old-fashioned discipline by shifting it to
the idiom of the day, the philosophy of perception: a retrospective, with
Warnock, the philosophy of perception, : perception, the philosophy of
perception, visum. Warnock was possibly the only philosopher at Oxford
Grice felt congenial enough to engage in different explorations in the
so-called philosophy of perception. Their joint adventures involved the disimplicaturum
of a visum. Grice later approached sense data in more evolutionary terms: a
material thing is to be vindicated transcendentally, in the sense that it is a
material thing (and not a sense datum or collection thereof) that nourishes a
creature like a human. Grice was particularly grateful to Warnock. By
reprinting the full symposium on “Causal theory” of perception in his
influential s. of Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Warnock had spread Grices lore
of implicaturum all over! In some parts of the draft he uses more on visa,
vision, vision, with Warnock, vision. Of the five senses, Grice and
Warnock are particularly interested in seeing. As Grice will put it later, see
is a factive. It presupposes the existence of the event reported after the
that-clause; a visum, however, as an intermediary between the material thing
and the perceiver does not seem necessary in ordinary discourse. Warnock will
reconsider Grices views too (On what is seen, in Sibley). While Grice uses
vision, he knows he is interested in Philosophers paradox concerning seeing,
notably Witters on seeing as, vision, taste and the philosophy of perception,
vision, seeing. As an Oxonian philosopher, Grice was of course more
interested in seeing than in vision. He said that Austin would criticise even
the use of things like sensation and volition, taste, The Grice Papers,
keyword: taste, the objects of the five senses, the philosophy of perception,
perception, the philosophy of perception; philosophy of perception, vision,
taste, perception. Mainly with Warnock. Warnock repr. Grice’s “Causal
theory” in his influential Reading in Philosophy, The philosophy of perception,
perception, with Warnock, with Warner; perception. Warnock learns about
perception much more from Grice than from Austin, taste, The philosophy of perception,
the philosophy of perception, notes with Warnock on visum, : visum, Warnock,
Grice, the philosophy of perception. Grice kept the lecture notes to
a view of publishing a retrospective. Warnock recalled Grice
saying, how clever language is! Grice took the offer by Harvard University
Press, and it was a good thing he repr. part of “Causal theory.” However, the
relevant bits for his theory of conversation as rational co-operation lie in
the excursus which he omitted. What is Grices implicaturum: that one should
consider the topic rather than the method here, being sense datum, and
causation, rather than conversational helpfulness. After all, That pillar box
seems red to me, does not sound very helpful. But the topic of Causal theory is
central for his view of conversation as rational co-operation. Why? P1 gets
an impression of danger as caused by the danger out there. He communicates the
danger to P1, causing in P2 some behaviour. Without
causation, or causal links, the very point of offering a theory of conversation
as rational co-operation seems minimized. On top, as a metaphysician, he was
also concerned with cause simpliciter. He was especially proud that Price’s
section on the casual theory of perception, from his Belief, had been repr.
along with his essay in the influential volume by Davis on “Causal theories.”
In “Actions and events,” Grice further explores cause now in connection with
Greek aitia. As Grice notes, the original usage of this very Grecian item is
the one we find in rebel without a cause, cause-to, rather than cause-because.
The two-movement nature of causing is reproduced in the conversational
exchange: a material thing causes a sense datum which causes an expression
which gets communicated, thus causing a psychological state which will cause a
behaviour. This causation is almost representational. A material thing or a
situation cannot govern our actions and behaviours, but a re-præsentatum of it
might. Govern our actions and behaviour is Grices correlate of what a team of
North-Oxfordshire cricketers can do for North-Oxfordshire: what North
Oxfordshire cannot do for herself, Namesly, engage in a game of cricket! In
Retrospective epilogue he casts doubts on the point of his causal approach. It
is a short paragraph that merits much exploration. Basically, Grice is saying
his causalist approach is hardly an established thesis. He also proposes a
similar serious objection to his view in Some remarks about the senses, the
other essay in the philosophy of perception in Studies. As he notes, both engage
with some fundamental questions in the philosophy of perception, which is
hardly the same thing as saying that they provide an answer to each question!
Grice: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought
rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are several
philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined in order
to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have
been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind. Examples
which occur to me are the following six. You cannot see a knife ‘as’ a knife,
though you may see what is not a knife ‘as’ a knife (keyword: ‘seeing as’).
When he said he ‘knew’ that the objects before him were human hands, Moore was
guilty of misusing ‘know.’ For an occurrence to be properly said to have a
‘cause,’ it must be something abnormal or unusual (keyword: ‘cause’). For an
action to be properly described as one for which the agent is ‘responsible,’ it
must be the sort of action for which people are condemned (keyword:
responsibility). What is actual is not also possible (keyword: actual). What is
known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to be the case (keyword:
‘know’ – cf. Urmson on ‘scalar set’). And cf. with the extra examples he
presents in “Prolegomena.” I have no doubt that there will be other candidates
besides the six which I have mentioned. I must emphasize that I am not saying
that all these examples are importantly similar to the thesis which I have been
criticizing, only that, for all I know, they may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am merely
suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with
the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have
detectcd, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances
they are. “Causal theory”, knowledge and belief, knowledge, belief,
philosophical psychology. Grice: the doxastic implicaturum. I know only
implicates I do not believe. The following is a mistake by a philosopher. What
is known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to be the case. The
topic had attracted the attention of some Oxonian philosophers such as Urmson
in Parenthetical verbs. Urmson speaks of a scale: I know can be used
parenthetically, as I believe can. For Grice, to utter I believe is obviously
to make a weaker conversational move than you would if you utter I know.
And in this case, an approach to informativeness in terms of entailment is in
order, seeing that I know entails I believe. A is thus allowed to infer that
the utterer is not in a position to make the stronger claim. The mechanism is
explained via his principle of conversational helpfulness. Philosophers tend
two over-use these two basic psychological states, attitudes, or stances. Grice
is concerned with Gettier-type cases, and also the factivity of know versus the
non-factivity of believe. Grice follows the lexicological innovations by
Hintikka: the logic of belief is doxastic; the logic of knowledge is epistemic.
The last thesis that Grice lists in Causal theory that he thinks rests on a big
mistake he formulates as: What is known by me to be the case is NOT also
believed by me to be the case. What are his attending remarks? Grice writes:
The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine
point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are several philosophical
theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined in order to see whether
or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been
discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind. An example
which occurs to me is the following: What is known by me to be the case is not
also believed by me to be the case. I must emphasise that I am not saying that
this example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have been
criticising, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am merely
suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with
the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have
detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what SORT of nuances
they are! The ætiological implicaturum. Grice. For an occurrence to be
properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual. This
is an example Grice lists in Causal theory but not in Prolegomena. But cf.
‘responsible’ – and Hart and Honoré on accusation -- accusare "call
to account, make complaint against," from ad causa, from “ad,” with regard
to, as in ‘ad-’) + causa, a cause; a lawsuit,’ v. cause. For an occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it
must be something abnormal or unusual. Similar commentary to his example on
responsible/condemnable apply. The objector may stick with the fact that he is
only concerned with proper utterances. Surely Grice wants to go to a
pre-Humeian account of causation, possible Aristotelian, aetiologia. Where
everything has a cause, except, for Aristotle, God! What are his attending
remarks? Grice writes: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be
thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are
several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined
in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis
which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general
kind. An example which occurs to me is the following: What is known by me to be
the case is not also believed by me to be the case. I must emphasise that I am
not saying that this example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have
been criticizing, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of philosophising.
I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am merely suggesting that to
embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with the facts. Before we
rush ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should
make sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are! Causal
theory, cause, causality, causation, conference, colloquium, Stanford, cause,
metaphysics, the abnormal/unusual implicaturum, ætiology, ætiological implicaturum.
Grice: the ætiological implicaturum. Grices explorations on cause are very
rich. He is concerned with some alleged misuse of cause in ordinary language.
If as Hume suggests, to cause is to will, one would say that the decapitation
of Charles I wills his death, which sounds harsh, if not ungrammatical, too.
Grice later relates cause to the Greek aitia, as he should. He notes
collocations like rebel without a cause. For the Greeks, or Grecians, as he
called them, and the Griceians, it is a cause to which one should be involved
in elucidating. A ‘cause to’ connects with the idea of freedom. Grice was
constantly aware of the threat of mechanism, and his idea was to provide
philosophical room for the idea of finality, which is not mechanistically
derivable. This leads him to discussion of overlap and priority of, say, a
physical-cum-physiological versus a psychological theory explaining this or
that piece of rational behaviour. Grice can be Wittgensteinian when citing
Anscombes translation: No psychological concept without the behaviour the
concept is brought to explain. It is best to place his later treatment of
cause with his earlier one in Causal theory. It is surprising Grice does not
apply his example of a mistake by a philosopher to the causal bit of his causal
theory. Grice states the philosophical mistake as follows: For an occurrence to
be properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual.
This is an example Grice lists in Causal theory but not in Prolegomena. For an
occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal
or unusual. A similar commentary to his example on responsible/condemnable
applies: The objector may stick with the fact that he is only concerned with
PROPER utterances. Surely Grice wants to embrace a pre-Humeian account of
causation, possible Aristotelian. Keyword: Aitiologia, where everything has a
cause, except, for Aristotle, God! What are his attending remarks? Grice
writes: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought rather
a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are several
philosophical theses or dicta which would Grice thinks need to be examined in
order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which
Grice has been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind.
One example which occurs to Grice is the following: For an occurrence to be
properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual. Grice
feels he must emphasise that he is not saying that this example is importantly
similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for all I know,
it may be. To put the matter more generally, the position adopted by my
objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of
more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not condemning this
kind of manoeuvre. I am merely suggesting that to embark on it without due
caution is to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit
the linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should make sure that we are
reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are! Re:
responsibility/condemnation. Cf. Mabbott, Flew on punishment, Philosophy. And
also Hart. At Corpus, Grice enjoys his tutor Hardies resourcefulness in the
defence of what may be a difficult position, a characteristic illustrated by an
incident which Hardie himself once told Grice about himself. Hardie had parked
his car and gone to a cinema. Unfortunately, Hardie had parked his car on top
of one of the strips on the street by means of which traffic-lights were, at
the time, controlled by the passing traffic. As a result, the lights are
jammed, and it requires four policemen to lift Hardies car off the strip. The
police decides to prosecute. Grice indicated to Hardie that this hardly
surprised him and asked him how he fared. Oh, Hardie says, I got off. Then
Grice asks Hardie how on earth he managed that! Quite simply, Hardie answers. I
just invoked Mills method of difference. The police charged me with causing an
obstruction at 4 p.m. I told the police that, since my car was parked at 2
p.m., it could not have been my car which caused the obstruction at 4 p.m. This
relates to an example in Causal theory that he Grice does not discuss in
Prolegomena, but which may relate to Hart, and closer to Grice, to Mabbotts
essay on Flew on punishment, in Philosophy. Grice states the philosophical
mistake as follows: For an action to be properly described as one for which the
agent is responsible, it must be thc sort of action for which people are
condemned. As applied to Hardie. Is Hardie irresponsible? In any case, while
condemnable, he was not! Grice writes: The issue with which I have been mainly
concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an
isolated one. There are several philosophical theses or dicta which would I
think need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently
parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment
of the same general kind. An example which occurs to me is the following: For
an action to be properly described as one for which the agent is responsible,
it must be the sort of action for which people are condemned. I must emphasise
that I am not saying that this example is importantly similar to the thesis
which I have been criticizing, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the
matter more generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to
involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one
contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of
manoeuvre. I am merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is
to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the
linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should make sure that we are
reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are. The modal example, what is
actual is not also possible, should discussed under Indicative conditonals,
Grice on Macbeth’s implicaturum: seeing a dagger as a dagger. Grice elaborates
on this in Prolegomena, but the austerity of Causal theory is charming, since
he does not give a quote or source. Obviously, Witters. Grice writes: Witters
might say that one cannot see a knife as a knife, though one may see what is
not a knife as a knife. The issue, Grice notes, with which I have been mainly
concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an
isolated one. There are several philosophical theses or dicta which would I
think need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently
parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment
of the same general kind. An example which occurs to Grice is the following:
You cannot see a knife as a knife, though you may see what is not a knife as a
knife. Grice feels that he must emphasise that he is not saying that this
example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing,
only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter more generally, the
position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre
which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. I
am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am merely suggesting that to embark
on it without due caution is to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush
ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should make
sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are! Is this a
dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch
thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision,
sensible to feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false
creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as
palpable as this which now I draw. Thou marshallst me the way that I was going;
and such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o the other
senses, Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, and on thy blade and
dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before. Theres no such thing: It is
the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now oer the one halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtaind sleep; witchcraft
celebrates Pale Hecates offerings, and witherd murder, Alarumd by his sentinel,
the wolf, Whose howls his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With
Tarquins ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure
and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very
stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which
now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives: Words to the heat of deeds too
cold breath gives. I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not,
Duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell. The Moore
example is used both in “Causal theory” and “Prolegomena.” But the use in
“Causal Theory” is more austere: Philosophers mistake: Malcolm: When Moore said
he knew that the objects before him were human hands, he was guilty of misusing
the word know. Grice writes: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned
may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one.
There are several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be
examined in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the
thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same
general kind. An example which occurs to me is the following: When Moore said
he knew that the objects before him were human hands, he was guilty of misusing
the word know. I must emphasise that I am not saying that this example is
importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for
all I know, it may be. To put the matter more generally, the position adopted
by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is
characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not
condemning this kind of manoeuvre. Grice is merely suggesting that to embark on
it without due caution is to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush
ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should make
sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are! So surely
Grice is meaning: I know that the objects before me are human hands as uttered
by Moore is possibly true. Grice was amused by the fact that while at Madison,
Wisc., Moore gave the example: I know that behind those curtains there is a
window. Actually he was wrong, as he soon realised when the educated
Madisonians corrected him with a roar of unanimous laughter. You see, the
lecture hall of the University of Wisconsin at Madison is a rather, shall we
say, striking space. The architect designed the lecture hall with a parapet
running around the wall just below the ceiling, cleverly rigged with indirect
lighting to create the illusion that sun light is pouring in through windows
from outside. So, Moore comes to give a lecture one sunny day. Attracted as he
was to this eccentric architectural detail, Moore gives an illustration of
certainty as attached to common sense. Pointing to the space below the ceiling,
Moore utters. We know more things than we think we know. I know, for example,
that the sunlight shining in from outside proves At which point he was somewhat startled (in
his reserved Irish-English sort of way) when his audience burst out laughing!
Is that a proof of anything? Grice is especially concerned with I seem He needs
a paradeigmatic sense-datum utterance, and intentionalist as he was, he finds
it in I seem to see a red pillar box before me. He is relying on Paul. Grice
would generalise a sense datum by φ I seem to perceive that the alpha is phi.
He agrees that while cause may be too much, any sentence using because will do:
At a circus: You seem to be seeing that an elephant is coming down the street
because an elephant is coming down the street. Grice found the causalist theory
of perception particularly attractive since its objection commits one same
mistake twice: he mischaracterises the cancellable implicaturum of both seem
and cause! While Grice is approaching the philosophical item in the
philosophical lexicon, perceptio, he is at this stage more interested in
vernacular that- clauses such as sensing that, or even more vernacular ones
like seeming that, if not seeing that! This is of course philosophical (cf.
aesthetikos vs. noetikos). L and S have “perceptĭo,” f. perceptio, as used by
Cicero (Ac. 2, 7, 22) translating catalepsis, and which they render as “a
taking, receiving; a gathering in, collecting;’ frugum fruetuumque reliquorum,
Cic. Off. 2, 3, 12: fructuum;’ also as perception, comprehension, cf.: notio,
cognition; animi perceptiones, notions, ideas; cognitio aut perceptio, aut si
verbum e verbo volumus comprehensio, quam κατάληψιν illi vocant; in philosophy,
direct apprehension of an object by the mind, Zeno Stoic.1.20, Luc. Par. 4,
al.; τῶν μετεώρων;” ἀκριβὴς κ. Certainty; pl., perceptions, Stoic.2.30, Luc.
Herm.81, etc.; introduced into Latin by Cicero, Plu. Cic. 40. As for “causa”
Grice is even more sure he was exploring a time-honoured philosophical topic.
The entry in L and S is “causa,’ perh. root “cav-“ of “caveo,” prop. that which
is defended or protected; cf. “cura,” and that they render as, unhelpfully, as
“cause,” “that by, on account of, or through which any thing takes place or is
done;” “a cause, reason, motive, inducement;” also, in gen., an occasion,
opportunity; oeffectis; factis, syn.
with ratio, principium, fons, origo, caput; excusatio, defensio; judicium,
controversia, lis; partes, actio; condicio, negotium, commodum, al.);
correlated to aition, or aitia, cause, δι᾽ ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν,” cf. Pl. Ti.
68e, Phd. 97a sq.; on the four causes of Arist. v. Ph. 194b16, Metaph. 983a26:
αἰ. τοῦ γενέσθαι or γεγονέναι Pl. Phd. 97a; τοῦ μεγίστου ἀγαθοῦ τῇ πόλει αἰτία
ἡ κοινωνία Id. R. 464b: αἰτίᾳ for the sake of, κοινοῦ τινος ἀγαθοῦ.” Then there
is “αἴτιον” (cf. ‘αἴτιος’) is used like “αἰτία” in the sense of cause, not in
that of ‘accusation.’ Grice goes back to perception at a later stage,
reminiscing on his joint endeavours with akin Warnock, Ps karulise elatically,
potching and cotching obbles, Pirotese, Pirotese, creature construction,
philosophical psychology. Grice was fascinated by Carnaps Ps which karulise
elatically. Grice adds potching for something like perceiving and cotching for
something like cognising. With his essay Some remarks about the
senses, Grice introduces the question by which criterion we distinguish
our five senses into the contemporary philosophy of perception. The literature
concerning this question is not very numerous but the discussion is still alive
and was lately inspired by the volume The Senses2. There are four acknowledged
possible answers to the question how we distinguish the senses, all of them
already stated by Grice. First, the senses are distinguished by the properties
we perceive by them. Second, the senses are distinguished by the phenomenal
qualities of the perception itself or as Grice puts it “by the special
introspectible character of the experiences” Third, the senses are
distinguished by the physical stimuli that are responsible for the relevant
perceptions. Fourth, The senses are distinguished by the sense-organs that are
(causally) involved in the production of the relevant perceptions. Most
contributions discussing this issue reject the third and fourth answers in a
very short argumentation. Nearly all philosophers writing on the topic vote
either for the first or the second answer. Accordingly, most part of the debate
regarding the initial question takes the form of a dispute between these two
positions. Or” was a big thing in Oxford philosophy. The only known
published work of Wood, our philosophy tutor at Christ Church, was an essay in
Mind, the philosophers journal, entitled “Alternative Uses of “Or” ”, a work
which was every bit as indeterminate as its title. Several years later he
published another paper, this time for the Aristotelian Society, entitled On
being forced to a conclusion. Cf. Grice and Wood on the demands of
conversational reason. Wood, The force of linguistic rules. Wood, on the implicaturum
of or in review in Mind of Connor, Logic. The five senses, as Urmson notes, are
to see that the sun is shining, to hear that the car collided, to feel that her
pulse is beating, to smell that something has been smoking and to taste that.
An interesting piece in that it was commissioned by Butler, who knew Grice from
his Oxford days. Grice cites Wood and Albritton. Grice is concerned with a
special topic in the philosophy of perception, notably the identification of
the traditional five senses: vision, audition, taste, smell, and tact. He
introduces what is regarded in the philosophical literature as the first
thought-experiment, in terms of the senses that Martians may have. They have
two pairs of eyes: are we going to allow that they see with both pairs? Grice
introduces a sub-division of seeing: a Martian x-s an object with his upper
pair of eyes, but he y-s an object with the lower pair of eyes. In his
exploration, he takes a realist stance, which respects the ordinary discursive
ways to approach issues of perception. A second interesting point is that in
allowing this to be repr. in Butlers Analytic philosophy, Grice is
demonstrating that analytic philosophers should NOT be obsessed with ordinary
language. Butlers compilation, a rather dry one, is meant as a response to the
more linguistic oriented ones by Flew (Grices first tutee at St. Johns, as it
happens), also published by Blackwell, and containing pieces by Austin, and
company. One philosopher who took Grice very seriously on this was Coady, in
his The senses of the Martians. Grice provides a serious objection to his own
essay in Retrospective epilogue We see with our eyes. I.e. eye is
teleologically defined. He notes that his way of distinguishing the senses is
hardly an established thesis. Grice actually advances this topic in his earlier
Causal theory. Grice sees nothing absurd in the idea that a non-specialist
concept should contain, so to speak, a blank space to be filled in by the
specialist; that this is so, e.g., in the case of the concept of seeing is
perhaps indicated by the consideration that if we were in doubt about the
correctness of speaking of a certain creature with peculiar sense-organs as
seeing objects, we might well wish to hear from a specialist a comparative
account of the human eye and the relevant sense-organs of the creature in
question. He returns to the point in Retrospective epilogue with a bit of
doxastic humility, We see with our eyes is analytic ‒ but
philosophers should take that more seriously. Grice tested the
playmates of his children, aged 7 and 9, with Nothing can be green
and red all over. Instead, Morley Bunker preferred philosophy undergrads. Aint
that boring? To give examples: Summer follows Spring was judged analytic
by Morley-Bunkers informants, as cited by Sampson, in Making sense
(Clarendon) by highly significant majorities in each group of Subjectss, while
We see with our eyes was given near-even split votes by each group. Over all,
the philosophers were somewhat more consistent with each other than the
non-philosophers. But that global finding conceals results for individual
sentences that sometimes manifested the opposed tendency. Thus, Thunderstorms
are electrical disturbances in the atmosphere is judged analytic by a highly
significant majority of the non-philosophers, while a non-significant majority
of the philosophers deemed it non-analytic or synthetic. In this case, it
seems, philosophical training, surely not brain-washing, induces the
realisation that well-established results of contemporary science are not
necessary truths. In other cases, conversely, cliches of current philosophical
education impose their own mental blinkers on those who undergo it: Nothing can
be completely red and green all over is judged analytic by a significant
majority of philosophers but only by a non-significant majority of
non-philosophers. All in all, the results argue strongly against the notion
that our inability to decide consistently whether or not some statement is
a necessary truth derives from lack of skill in articulating our underlying
knowledge of the rules of our language. Rather, the inability comes from the
fact that the question as posed is unreal. We choose to treat a given statement
as open to question or as unchallengeable in the light of the overall structure
of beliefs which we have individually evolved in order to make sense of
our individual experience. Even the cases which seem clearly analytic or
synthetic are cases which individuals judge alike because the relevant
experiences are shared by the whole community, but even for such cases one can
invent hypothetical or suppositional future experiences which, if they should
be realised, would cause us to revise our judgements. This is not intended to
call into question the special status of the truths of logic, such as
either Either it is raining or it is not. He is of course inclined to accept
the traditional view according to which logical particles such as not and or
are distinct from the bulk of the vocabulary in that the former really are
governed by clear-cut inference rules. Grice does expand on the point.
Refs.: Under sense-datum, there are groups of essays. The obvious ones are the
two essays on the philosophy of perception in WOW. A second group relates to
his research with G. J. Warnock, where the keywords are ‘vision,’ ‘taste,’ and
‘perception,’ in general. There is a more recent group with this research with
R. Warner. ‘Visum’ and ‘visa’ are good keywords, and cf. the use of ‘senses’ in
“Some remarks about the senses,” in BANC.Philo: Grice’s favourite philosopher,
after Ariskant. The [Greek: protos logos anapodeiktos] of the Stoic logic ran
thus [Greek: ei hemera esti, phos estin ... alla men hemera estin phos ara
estin] (Sext. _P.H._ II. 157, and other passages qu. Zeller 114). This bears a
semblance of inference and isnot so
utterly tautological as Cic.'s translation, which merges [Greek: phos] and
[Greek: hemera] into one word, or that of Zeller (114, note). Si dies est lucet:
a better trans of Greek: ei phos estin, hemera estin]
than was given in 96, where see n. _Aliter Philoni_: not Philo of Larissa, but
a noted dialectician, pupil of Diodorus the Megarian, mentioned also in 75. The
dispute between Diodorus and Philo is mentioned in Sext. _A.M._ VIII. 115--117
with the same purpose as here, see also Zeller 39. Conexi = Gr. “synemmenon,”
cf. Zeller 109. This was the proper term for the hypothetical judgment. _Superius_:
the Greek: synemmenon consists of two parts, the hypothetical part and the
affirmative--called in Greek [Greek: hegoumenon] and [Greek: legon]; if one is
admitted the other follows of course.Philo's criterion for the truth of “if p,
q” is truth-functional. Philo’s truth-functional criterion is generally accepted
as a minimal condition.Philo maintains that “If Smith is in London, he, viz.
Smith, is attending the meeting there, viz. in London” is true (i) when the
antecedens (“Smith is in London”) is true and the consequens (“Smith is in
London at a meeting”) is true (row 1) and (ii) when the antecedent is false
(rows 3 and 4); false only when the antecedens (“Smith is in London”) is true
and the consequens (“Smith is in London, at a meeting”) is false. (Sext. Emp., A. M., 2.113-114).
Philo’s “if p, q” is what Whitehead
and Russell call, misleadingly, ‘material’ implication, for it’s neither an
implication, nor materia.In “The Influence of Grice on Philo,” Shropshire puts
forward the thesis that Philo was aware of Griceian ideas on relative identity,
particularly time-relative identity. Accordingly, Philo uses subscript for
temporal indexes. Once famous discussion took place one long winter night.“If
it is day, it is night.”“False!” Diodorus screamed.“True,” his tutee Philo
courteously responded. “But true at night only.”Philo's suggestion is
remarkable – although not that remarkable if we assume he read the now lost
Griceian tract.Philo’s “if,” like Grice’s “if,” – on a bad day -- deviates
noticeably from what Austin (and indeed, Austen) used to refer to as ‘ordinary’
language.As Philo rotundly says: “The Griceian ‘if’ requires abstraction on the
basis of a concept of truth-functionality – and not all tutees will succeed in
GETTING that.” The hint was on Strawson.Philo's ‘if’ has been criticised on two
counts. First, as with Whitehead’s and Russell’s equally odd ‘if,’ – which they
symbolise with an ‘inverted’ C, to irritate Johnson, -- “They think ‘c’ stands
for either ‘consequentia’ or ‘contentum’ -- in the case of material
implication, for the truth of the conditional no connection (or better, Kant’s
relation) of content between antecedent and consequent is required. Uttered or
emitted during the day, e. g. ‘If virtue
benefits, it is day’ is Philonianly true. This introduces a variant of the
so-called ‘paradoxes’ of material implication (Relevance Logic, Conditionals 2.3;
also, English Oxonian philosopher Lemmon 59-60, 82). This or that ancient
philosopher was aware of what he thought was a ‘problem’ for Philo’s ‘if.’
Vide: SE, ibid. 113-117). On
a second count, due to the time-dependency or relativity of the ‘Hellenistic’ ‘proposition,’
Philo's truth-functional criterion implies that ‘if p, q’ changes its truth-value
over time, which amuses Grice, but makes Strawson sick. In Philo’s infamous
metalinguistic disquotational version that Grice finds genial:‘If it is day, it
is night’ is true if it is night, but false if it is day. This is
counter-intuitive in Strawson’s “London,” urban, idiolect (Grice is from the
Heart of England) as regards an utterance in ‘ordinary-language’ involving
‘if.’“We are not THAT otiose at busy London!On a third count, as the concept of
“if” (‘doubt’ in Frisian) also meant to provide for consequentia between from a
premise to a conclusio, this leads to the “rather” problematic result –
Aquinas, S. T. ix. 34) that an ‘argumentum,’ as Boethius calls it, can in
principle change from being valid to being invalid and vice versa, which did
not please the Saint Thomas (Aquinas), “or God, matter of fact.”From Sextus: A.
M., 2.113ffA non-simple proposition is such composed of a duplicated
proposition or of this or that differing proposition. A complex proposition is
controlled by this or that conjunction. 109. Of
these let us take the hypo-thetical proposition, so-called. This, then, is
composed of a duplicated proposition or of differing propositions, by means of
the conjunction “if” (Gr. ‘ei,’ L. ‘si’, German ‘ob’). Thus, e. g. from a
duplicated proposition and the conjunction “if” (Gr. ‘ei,’ L. ‘si,’ G.
‘ob’) there is composed such a hypothetical proposition as this. “If it is day,
it is day’ (110) and from differing
propositions, and by means of the conjunction “if” , one in this
form, “If it is day, it is light.” “Si dies est, lucet.” And of the two propositions
contained in the hypo-thetical proposition, or subordinating clause that which
is placed immediately AFTER the conjunction or subordinating particle “if”
is called “ante-cedent,” or “first;” and ‘if’ being ‘noncommutative,’ and
the other one “consequent” or “second,” EVEN if the whole proposition
is reversed IN ORDER OF EXPRESSION – this is a conceptual issue, not a
grammatical one! -- as thus — “It is light, if it is day.” For in this,
too, the proposition, “It is light,” (lucet) is called consequent although
it is UTTERED first, and ‘It is day’ antecedent, although it is UTTERED second,
owing to the fact that it is placed after the conjunction or subordinating
particle “if.” 111. Such
then is the construction of the hypothetical proposition, and a proposition of
this kind seems to “promise” (or suggest, or implicate) that the ‘consequent’
(or super-ordinated or main proposition) logically follows the ‘antecedens,’ or
sub-ordinated proposition. If the antecedens is true, the consequens is true.
Hence, if this sort of “promise,” suggestio, implicaturum, or what have you, is
fulfilled and the consequens follows the antecedent, the hypothetical
proposition is true. If the promise is not fulfilled, it is false (This is
something Strawson grants as a complication in the sentence exactly after the
passage that Grice extracts – Let’s revise Strawson’s exact wording. Strawson
writes:“There is much more to be noted about ‘if.’ In particular, about whether
the antecedens has to be a ‘GOOD’ antecedens, i. e. a ‘good’ ground – not
inadmissible evidence, say -- or good reason for accepting the consequens, and
whether THIS is a necessary condition for the whole ‘if’ utterance to be TRUE.’
Surely not for Philo. Philo’s criterion is that an ‘if’ utterance is true iff it
is NOT the case that the antecedens is true and it is not the case that the
consequens is true. 112. Accordingly,
let us begin at once with this problem, and consider whether any hypothetical
proposition can be found which is true and which fulfills the promise or
suggestio or implicaturum described. Now all philosophers agree that a hypothetical
proposition is true when the consequent follows the antecedent. As to when the
consequens follows from the antecedens philosophers such as Grice and his tutee
Strawson disagree with one another and propound conflicting criteria. 113. Philo and Grice
declares that the ‘if’ utterance is true whenever it is not the case that
the antecedens (“Smith is in London”) is true and it is not the case that the
consequens (“Smith is in London attending a meeting”) is true. So that,
according to Grice and Philo (vide, “The influence of Grice on Philo”), the
hypothetical is true in three ways or rows (row 1, row 3, and row 4) and false
in one way or row (second row, antecedens T and consequence F). For the first
row, whenever the ‘if’ utterance begins with truth and ends in truth it is
true. E. g. “If it is day, it is light.” “Si dies est, lux est.”For row 4: the
‘if’ utterance is also true whenever the antecedens is false and the consequens
is false. E. g. “If the earth flies, the earth has wings.” ει
πέταται ή γή, πτέρυγας έχει
ή γή (“ei petatai he ge, pteguras ekhei
he ge”) (Si terra volat, habet alas.”)114. Likewise
also that which begins with what is false and ends with what is true is true,
as thus — If the earth flies, the earth exists. “Si terra volat, est
terra”. dialecticis,
in quibus ſubtilitatem nimiam laudando, niſi fallimur, tradu xit Callimachus. 2
Cujus I. ſpecimen nobis fervavit se XTVS EMPI . RIC V S , a qui de Diodori,
Philonis & Chryſippi diſſenſu circa propofi tiones connexas prolixe
diſſerit. Id quod paucis ita comprehendit ci . CERO : 6 In hoc ipfo , quod in
elementis dialectici docent, quomodo judi care oporteat, verum falſumne fit ,
fi quid ita connexum eſt , ut hoc: fi dies eft, lucet, quanta contentio eft,
aliter Diodoro, aliter Philoni, Chry fappo aliter placet. Quæ ut clarius
intelligantur, obſervandum eſt, Dia lecticos in propofitionum conditionatarum ,
quas connexas vocabant, explicatione in eo convenisse, verum esse consequens, si
id vera consequentia deducatur ex antecedente; falsum, si non ſequatur; in
criterio vero , ex quo dijudicanda est consequentiæ veritas, definiendo inter
se diſſenſiſſe. Et Philo quidem veram esse propoſitionem connexam putabat, fi
& antecedens & consequens verum esset , & ſi antecedens atque
conſequens falsum eſſet, & fi a falſo incipiens in verum defineret, cujus
primi exemplum eſt : “Si dies est, lux est,” secondi. “Si terra volat, habet
alas.” Tertii. “Si terra volat, est terra.” Solum vero falsum , quando
incipiens a vero defineret in falſum . Diodorus autem hoc falſum interdum eſſe,
quod contingere pof ſet, afferens, omne quod contigit , ex confequentiæ
complexu removit , ficque, quod juxta Philonem verum eft, fi dies eſt, ego
diſſero, falſum eſſe pronunciavit, quoniam contingere poffit, ut quis, ſi dies
fit, non differat, ſed fileat. Ex qua Dialecticorum diſceptatione Sextus
infert, incertum eſſe criterium propoſitionum hypotheticarum . Ex quibus parca
, ut de bet, manu prolatis, judicium fieri poteſt , quam miſeranda facies
fuerit shia lecticæ eriſticæ , quæ ad materiam magis argumentorum , quam ad
formam - & ad verba magis, quam ideas, quæ ratiocinia conſtituunt
refpiciens, non potuit non innumeras ſine modo & ratione technias &
difficultates ftruere, facile fumi inſtar diſſipandas, fi ad ipſam ratiocinandi
& ideas inter ſe con ferendi & ex tertia judicandi formam attendatur.
Quod fi enim inter ve ritate conſequentiæ & confequentis, ( liceat
pauliſper cum ſcholaſticis barbare loqui diſtinxiffent, inanis diſputatio in
pulverem abiiffet, & eva nuiſſet; nam de prima Diodorus, de altera Philo ,
& hic quidem inepte & minus accurate loquebatur. Sed hæc ws šv zapóów .
Ceterum II. in fo phiſma t) Coutra Gramm . S.309.Log. I. II.S. 115.Seqq. ) Catalogum
Diodororum ſatis longum exhi # Nominateas CLEM . ALE X. Strom . I. IV . ber
FABRIC. Bibl.Gr. vol. II. p . 775. pag. 522. % ) Cujusverſus vide apud LAERT.
& SEXT. * Contra Iovinian . I. I. conf. MENAG. ad l. c. H . cc. Laërt .
& Hiſt. phil. mal. Ø . 60 . ubi tamen quatuor A ) Adv. Logic. I. c .
noininat, cum quinque fuerint. b ) Acad. 29. I. IV . 6. 47. DE SECTAM E GARICA
phiſinatibus ftruendis Diodorum excelluiffe, non id folum argumentum eft, nuod
is quibusdam auctor argumenti, quod velatum dicitur , fuifle aflera tur, fed
& quod argumentum dominans invexerit, de quo, ne his nugis lectori moleſti
fimus, Epictetum apud ARRIANVM conſuli velimus. Er ad hæc quoque Dialecticæ
peritiæ acumina referendum eſt argumentum , quo nihilmoveri probabat. Quod ita
sexTvs enarrat: Si quid move tur, aut in eo , in quo eft , loco movetur, aut in
eo , in quo non eſt. At neque in quo eſt movetur, manet enim in eo , fi in eo
eft ; nec vero , in quo non eſt,movetur; ubi enim aliquid non eſt, ibi neque
agere quidquam ne que pati poteft. Non ergo movetur quicquam . Quo argumento
non ideo ufus eſt Diodorus, quod putat Sextus, ut more Eleaticorum probaret :
non darimotum in rerum natura, & nec interire quicquam nec oriri ; fed ut
ſubtilitatem ingenii dialecticam oftenderet, verbisque circumveniret. Qua
ratione Diodorum mire depexum dedit Herophilusmedicus. Cum enim luxato humero
ad eum veniffet Diodorus, ut ipſum curaret , facete eum irriſit, eodem
argumento probando humerum non excidiffe : adeo ut precaretur fophifta ,
omiffis iis cavillationibus adhiberet ei congruens ex artemedica remedium . f .
. Tandem & III . inter atomiſticæ p hiloſophiæ ſectatores numerari folet
Diodorus, eo quod énocy iso xei dueen CÁMata minima & indiviſibilia cor
pora Itatuerit,numero infinita , magnitudine finita , ut ex veteribus afferunt
præter SEXTVM , & EVSEBIVŠ, \ CHALCIDIVS, ISTOBAEVS k alii , quibus ex
recentioribus concinunt cvDWORTHVS 1 & FABRICIV'S. * Quia vero veteres non
addunt, an indiviſibilia & minima ifta corpuſcula , omnibus qualitatibus
præter figuram & fitum fpoliata poſuerit, fine formi dine oppoſiti inter
ſyſtematis atomiſtici fectatores numerari non poteſt. Nam alii quoque
philoſophi ejusmodi infecabilia corpuſcula admiſerunt ; nec tamen atomos
Democriticos ſtatuerunt. "Id quod acute monuit cel. MOSHEMIV S . n . irAnd it is false only in this one way, when it begins with
truth and ends in what is false, as in a proposition of this kind. “If it is
day, it is night.” “Si dies est, nox est”. (Cf. Cole Porter, “Night and day, day and
night!”.For if it IS day, the clause ‘It is day’ is true, and this is
the antecedent, but the clause ‘It is night,’ which is the consequens, is
false. But when uttered at night, it is true. 115. —
But Diodorus asserts that the hypothetical proposition is true which
neither admitted nor admits of beginning with truth and ending in
falsehood. And this is in conflict with the statement of Philo. For a
hypothetical of this kind — If it is day, I am conversing, when at
the present moment it is day and I am conversing, is true according to Philo
since it begins with the true clause It is day and ends with the
true I am conversing; but according to Diodorus it is false, for it admits
of beginning with a clause that is, at one time, true and ending in the false
clause I am conversing, when I have ceased speaking; also it admitted
of beginning with truth and ending with the falsehood I am
conversing, 116. for before I began to
converse it began with the truth It is day and ended in the
falsehood I am conversing. Again, a proposition in this form
— If it is night, I am conversing, when it is day and I am silent, is
likewise true according to Philo, for it begins with what is false and ends in
what is false; but according to Diodorus it is false, for it admits of
beginning with truth and ending in falsehood, after night has come on, and when
I, again, am not conversing but keeping silence. 117. Moreover,
the proposition If it is night, it is day, when it is day, is true
according to Philo for the reason that it begins with the false It is
night and ends in the true It is day; but according to Diodorus it is
false for the reason that it admits of beginning, when night comes on, with the
truth It is night and ending in the falsehood It is day.Philo is
sometimes called ‘Philo of Megara,’ where ‘of’ is used alla Nancy Mitford, of
Chatworth. Although no essay by Philo is preserved (if he wrote it), there are
a number of reports of his doctrine, not all positive!Some think Philo made a
groundbreaking contribution to the development of semantics (influencing
Peirce, but then Peirce was influenced by the World in its totality), in
particular to the philosophy of “as if” (als ob), or “if.”A conditional (sunêmmenon), as Philo calls it, is a
non-simple, i. e. molecular, non atomic, proposition composed of two
propositions, a main, or better super-ordinated proposition, or consequens, and
a sub-ordinated proposition, the antecedens, and the subordinator ‘if’. Philo
invented (possibly influenced by Frege) what he (Frege, not Philo) calls
truth-functionality.Philo puts forward a criterion of truth as he called what
Witters will have as a ‘truth table’ for ‘if’ (or ‘ob,’ cognate with Frisian
gif, doubt).A conditional is is true in three truth-value combinations, and
false when and only when its antecedent is true and
its consequent is false.The Philonian ‘if’ Whitehead and Russell re-labelled
‘material’ implication – irritating Johnson who published a letter in The
Times, “… and dealing with the paradox of implication.”For Philo, like Grice, a
proposition is a function of time that can have different truth-values at
different times—it may change its truth-value over time. In Philo’s
disquotational formula for ‘if’:“If it is day, ‘if it is day, it is night’ is
false; if it is night, ‘if it is day, it is night’ is true.”(Tarski translated
to Polish, in which language Grice read it).Philo’s ramblings on ‘if’ lead to
foreshadows of Whitehead’s and Russell’s ‘paradox of implication’ that
infuriated Johnson – In Russell’s response in the Times, he makes it plain: “Johnson
shouldn’t be using ‘paradox’ in the singular. Yours, etc. Baron Russell,
Belgravia.”Sextus Empiricus [S. E.] M.
8.109–117, gives a precis of Johnson’s paradox of implication, without
crediting Johnson. Philo and Diodorus each considered the four modalities
possibility, impossibility, necessity and non-necessity. These were conceived
of as modal properties or modal values of propositions, not as modal operators.
Philo defined them as follows: ‘Possible is that which is capable of being true
by the proposition’s own nature … necessary is that which is true, and which,
as far as it is in itself, is not capable of being false. Non-necessary is that
which as far as it is in itself, is capable of being false, and impossible is
that which by its own nature is not capable of being true.’ Boethius fell in
love with Philo, and he SAID it! (In
Arist. De Int., sec. ed., 234–235 Meiser).Cf. (Epict. Diss. II.19). Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 9 (Aulus Gellius 11.12.2–3).
perception, the
extraction and use of information about one’s environment exteroception and
one’s own body interoception. The various external senses sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste though they overlap to some extent, are
distinguished by the kind of information e.g., about light, sound, temperature,
pressure they deliver. Proprioception, perception of the self, concerns stimuli
arising within, and carrying information about, one’s own body e.g., acceleration, position, and orientation
of the limbs. There are distinguishable stages in the extraction and use of
sensory information, one an earlier stage corresponding to our perception of
objects and events, the other, a later stage, to the perception of facts about
these objects. We see, e.g., both the cat on the sofa an object and that the
cat is on the sofa a fact. Seeing an object or event a cat on the sofa, a person on the street, or
a vehicle’s movement does not require
that the object event be identified or recognized in any particular way
perhaps, though this is controversial, in any way whatsoever. One can, e.g.,
see a cat on the sofa and mistake it for a rumpled sweater. Airplane lights are
often misidentified as stars, and one can see the movement of an object either
as the movement of oneself or under some viewing conditions as Peirce’s law
perception 654 654 expansion or
contraction. Seeing objects and events is, in this sense, non-epistemic: one
can see O without knowing or believing that it is O that one is seeing. Seeing
facts, on the other hand, is epistemic; one cannot see that there is a cat on
the sofa without, thereby, coming to know that there is a cat on the sofa.
Seeing a fact is coming to know the fact in some visual way. One can see
objects the fly in one’s soup, e.g., without realizing that there is a fly in one’s
soup thinking, perhaps, it is a bean or a crouton; but to see a fact, the fact
that there is a fly in one’s soup is, necessarily, to know it is a fly. This
distinction applies to the other sense modalities as well. One can hear the
telephone ringing without realizing that it is the telephone perhaps it’s the
TV or the doorbell, but to hear a fact, that it is the telephone that is
ringing, is, of necessity, to know that it is the telephone that is ringing.
The other ways we have of describing what we perceive are primarily variations
on these two fundamental themes. In seeing where he went, when he left, who
went with him, and how he was dressed, e.g., we are describing the perception
of some fact of a certain sort without revealing exactly which fact it is. If
Martha saw where he went, then Martha saw hence, came to know some fact having
to do with where he went, some fact of the form ‘he went there’. In speaking of
states and conditions the condition of his room, her injury, and properties the
color of his tie, the height of the building, we sometimes, as in the case of
objects, mean to be describing a non-epistemic perceptual act, one that carries
no implications for what if anything is known. In other cases, as with facts,
we mean to be describing the acquisition of some piece of knowledge. One can
see or hear a word without recognizing it as a word it might be in a foreign
language, but can one see a misprint and not know it is a misprint? It
obviously depends on what one uses ‘misprint’ to refer to: an object a word
that is misprinted or a fact the fact that it is misprinted. In examining and
evaluating theories whether philosophical or psychological of perception it is
essential to distinguish fact perception from object perception. For a theory
might be a plausible theory about the perception of objects e.g., psychological
theories of “early vision” but not at all plausible about our perception of
facts. Fact perception, involving, as it does, knowledge and, hence, belief
brings into play the entire cognitive system memory, concepts, etc. in a way
the former does not. Perceptual relativity
e.g., the idea that what we perceive is relative to our language, our
conceptual scheme, or the scientific theories we have available to “interpret”
phenomena is quite implausible as a
theory about our perception of objects. A person lacking a word for, say,
kumquats, lacking this concept, lacking a scientific way of classifying these
objects are they a fruit? a vegetable? an animal?, can still see, touch, smell,
and taste kumquats. Perception of objects does not depend on, and is therefore
not relative to, the observer’s linguistic, conceptual, cognitive, and
scientific assets or shortcomings. Fact perception, however, is another matter.
Clearly one cannot see that there are kumquats in the basket as opposed to
seeing the objects, the kumquats, in the basket if one has no idea of, no
concept of, what a kumquat is. Seeing facts is much more sensitive and, hence,
relative to the conceptual resources, the background knowledge and scientific
theories, of the observer, and this difference must be kept in mind in
evaluating claims about perceptual relativity. Though it does not make objects
invisible, ignorance does tend to make facts perceptually inaccessible. There
are characteristic experiences associated with the different senses. Tasting a
kumquat is not at all like seeing a kumquat although the same object is
perceived indeed, the same fact that it
is a kumquat may be perceived. The
difference, of course, is in the subjective experience one has in perceiving
the kumquat. A causal theory of perception of objects holds that the perceptual
object, what it is we see, taste, smell, or whatever, is that object that
causes us to have this subjective experience. Perceiving an object is that
object’s causing in the right way one to have an experience of the appropriate
sort. I see a bean in my soup if it is, in fact whether I know it or not is
irrelevant, a bean in my soup that is causing me to have this visual
experience. I taste a bean if, in point of fact, it is a bean that is causing
me to have the kind of taste experience I am now having. If it is unknown to me
a bug, not a bean, that is causing these experiences, then I am unwittingly
seeing and tasting a bug perhaps a bug that
looks and tastes like a bean. What object we see taste, smell, etc. is
determined by the causal facts in question. What we know and believe, how we
interpret the experience, is irrelevant, although it will, of course, determine
what we say we see and taste. The same is to be said, with appropriate changes,
for our perception of facts the most significant change being the replacement
of belief for experience. I see that there is a bug in my soup if the fact that
there is a bug in my soup causes me to perception perception 655 655 believe that there is a bug in my soup.
I can taste that there is a bug in my soup when this fact causes me to have
this belief via some taste sensation. A causal theory of perception is more
than the claim that the physical objects we perceive cause us to have
experiences and beliefs. This much is fairly obvious. It is the claim that this
causal relation is constitutive of perception, that necessarily, if S sees O,
then O causes a certain sort of experience in S. It is, according to this
theory, impossible, on conceptual grounds, to perceive something with which one
has no causal contact. If, e.g., future events do not cause present events, if
there is no backward causation, then we cannot perceive future events and
objects. Whether or not future facts can be perceived or known depends on how
liberally the causal condition on knowledge is interpreted. Though conceding
that there is a world of mind-independent objects trees, stars, people that
cause us to have experiences, some philosophers
traditionally called representative realists argue that we nonetheless do not directly
perceive these external objects. What we directly perceive are the effects these
objects have on us an internal image,
idea, or impression, a more or less depending on conditions of observation
accurate representation of the external reality that helps produce it. This
subjective, directly apprehended object has been called by various names: a
sensation, percept, sensedatum, sensum, and sometimes, to emphasize its
representational aspect, Vorstellung G., ‘representation’. Just as the images
appearing on a television screen represent their remote causes the events
occurring at some distant concert hall or playing field, the images visual,
auditory, etc. that occur in the mind, the sensedata of which we are directly
aware in normal perception, represent or sometimes, when things are not working
right, misrepresent their external physical causes. The representative realist
typically invokes arguments from illusion, facts about hallucination, and
temporal considerations to support his view. Hallucinations are supposed to
illustrate the way we can have the same kind of experience we have when as we
commonly say we see a real bug without there being a real bug in our soup or
anywhere else causing us to have the experience. When we hallucinate, the bug
we “see” is, in fact, a figment of our own imagination, an image i.e.,
sense-datum in the mind that, because it shares some of the properties of a
real bug shape, color, etc., we might mistake for a real bug. Since the
subjective experiences can be indistinguishable from that which we have when as
we commonly say we really see a bug, it is reasonable to infer the
representative realist argues that in normal perception, when we take ourselves
to be seeing a real bug, we are also directly aware of a buglike image in the
mind. A hallucination differs from a normal perception, not in what we are
aware of in both cases it is a sense-datum but in the cause of these experiences.
In normal perception it is an actual bug; in hallucination it is, say, drugs in
the bloodstream. In both cases, though, we are caused to have the same thing:
an awareness of a buglike sense-datum, an object that, in normal perception, we
naively take to be a real bug thus saying, and encouraging our children to say,
that we see a bug. The argument from illusion points to the fact that our
experience of an object changes even when the object that we perceive or say we
perceive remains unchanged. Though the physical object the bug or whatever
remains the same color, size, and shape, what we experience according to this
argument changes color, shape, and size as we change the lighting, our viewing
angle, and distance. Hence, it is concluded, what we experience cannot really
be the physical object itself. Since it varies with changes in both object and
viewing conditions, what we experience must be a causal result, an effect, of
both the object we commonly say we see the bug and the conditions in which we
view it. This internal effect, it is concluded, is a sense-datum.
Representative realists have also appealed to the fact that perceiving a
physical object is a causal process that takes time. This temporal lag is most
dramatic in the case of distant objects e.g., stars, but it exists for every
physical object it takes time for a neural signal to be transmitted from
receptor surfaces to the brain. Consequently, at the moment a short time after
light leaves the object’s surface we see a physical object, the object could no
longer exist. It could have ceased to exist during the time light was being
transmitted to the eye or during the time it takes the eye to communicate with
the brain. Yet, even if the object ceases to exist before we become aware of
anything before a visual experience occurs, we are, or so it seems, aware of
something when the causal process reaches its climax in the brain. This
something of which we are aware, since it cannot be the physical object it no
longer exists, must be a sense-datum. The representationalist concludes in this
“time-lag argument,” therefore, that even when the physperception perception
656 656 ical object does not cease to
exist this, of course, is the normal situation, we are directly aware, not of
it, but of its slightly later-occurring representation. Representative realists
differ among themselves about the question of how much if at all the sense-data
of which we are aware resemble the external objects of which we are not aware.
Some take the external cause to have some of the properties the so-called
primary properties of the datum e.g., extension and not others the so-called
secondary properties e.g., color. Direct
or naive realism shares with representative realism a commitment to a world of
independently existing objects. Both theories are forms of perceptual realism.
It differs, however, in its view of how we are related to these objects in
ordinary perception. Direct realists deny that we are aware of mental
intermediaries sensedata when, as we ordinarily say, we see a tree or hear the
telephone ring. Though direct realists differ in their degree of naïveté about
how and in what respect perception is supposed to be direct, they need not be
so naive as sometimes depicted as to deny the scientific facts about the causal
processes underlying perception. Direct realists can easily admit, e.g., that
physical objects cause us to have experiences of a particular kind, and that
these experiences are private, subjective, or mental. They can even admit that
it is this causal relationship between object and experience that constitutes
our seeing and hearing physical objects. They need not, in other words, deny a
causal theory of perception. What they must deny, if they are to remain direct
realists, however, is an analysis of the subjective experience that objects
cause us to have into an awareness of some object. For to understand this
experience as an awareness of some object is, given the wholly subjective
mental character of the experience itself, to interpose a mental entity what
the experience is an awareness of between the perceiver and the physical object
that causes him to have this experience, the physical object that is supposed
to be directly perceived. Direct realists, therefore, avoid analyzing a
perceptual experience into an act sensing, being aware of, being acquainted
with and an object the sensum, sense-datum, sensation, mental representation.
The experience we are caused to have when we perceive a physical object or
event is, instead, to be understood in some other way. The adverbial theory is
one such possibility. As the name suggests, this theory takes its cue from the
way nouns and adjectives can sometimes be converted into adverbs without loss
of descriptive content. So, for instance, it comes to pretty much the same
thing whether we describe a conversation as animated adjective or say that we
conversed animatedly an adverb. So, also, according to an adverbialist, when,
as we commonly say, we see a red ball, the red ball causes in us a moment later
an experience, yes, but not as the representative realist says an awareness
mental act of a sense-datum mental object that is red and circular adjectives.
The experience is better understood as one in which there is no object at all,
as sensing redly and circularly adverbs. The adverbial theorist insists that
one can experience circularly and redly without there being, in the mind or
anywhere else, red circles this, in fact, is what the adverbialist thinks
occurs in dreams and hallucinations of red circles. To experience redly is not
to have a red experience; nor is it to experience redness in the mind. It is,
says the adverbialist, a way or a manner of perceiving ordinary objects
especially red ones seen in normal light. Just as dancing gracefully is not a
thing we dance, so perceiving redly is not a thing and certainly not a red thing in the
mind that we experience. The adverbial
theory is only one option the direct realist has of acknowledging the causal
basis of perception while, at the same time, maintaining the directness of our
perceptual relation with independently existing objects. What is important is
not that the experience be construed adverbially, but that it not be
interpreted, as representative realists interpret it, as awareness of some
internal object. For a direct realist, the appearances, though they are
subjective mind-dependent are not objects that interpose themselves between the
conscious mind and the external world. As classically understood, both naive
and representative realism are theories about object perception. They differ
about whether it is the external object or an internal object an idea in the
mind that we most directly apprehend in ordinary sense perception. But they
need not although they usually do differ in their analysis of our knowledge of
the world around us, in their account of fact perception. A direct realist
about object perception may, e.g., be an indirect realist about the facts that
we know about these objects. To see, not only a red ball in front of one, but
that there is a red ball in front of one, it may be necessary, even on a direct
theory of object perception, to infer or in some way derive this fact from
facts that are known more directly perception perception about one’s
experiences of the ball. Since, e.g., a direct theorist may be a causal
theorist, may think that seeing a red ball is in part constituted by the having
of certain sorts of experience, she may insist that knowledge of the cause of
these experiences must be derived from knowledge of the experience itself. If
one is an adverbialist, e.g., one might insist that knowledge of physical
objects is derived from knowledge of how redly? bluely? circularly? squarely?
one experiences these objects. By the same token, a representative realist
could adopt a direct theory of fact perception. Though the objects we directly
see are mental, the facts we come to know by experiencing these subjective
entities are facts about ordinary physical objects. We do not infer at least at
no conscious level that there is a bug in our soup from facts known more
directly about our own conscious experiences from facts about the sensations
the bug causes in us. Rather, our sensations cause us, directly, to have
beliefs about our soup. There is no intermediate belief; hence, there is no intermediate
knowledge; hence, no intermediate fact perception. Fact perception is, in this
sense, direct. Or so a representative realist can maintain even though
committed to the indirect perception of the objects bug and soup involved in
this fact. This merely illustrates, once again, the necessity of distinguishing
object perception from fact perception.
Percival, T.: English
physician and author of Medical Ethics 1803. He was central in bringing the
Western traditions of medical ethics from prayers and oaths e.g., the
Hippocratic oath toward more detailed, modern codes of proper professional
conduct. His writing on the normative aspects of medical practice was part
ethics, part prudential advice, part professional etiquette, and part
jurisprudence. Medical Ethics treated standards for the professional conduct of
physicians relative to surgeons and apothecaries pharmacists and general
practitioners, as well as hospitals, private practice, and the law. The issues
Percival addressed include privacy, truth telling, rules for professional
consultation, human experimentation, public and private trust, compassion,
sanity, suicide, abortion, capital punishment, and environmental nuisances.
Percival had his greatest influence in England and America. At its founding in
1847, the Medical Association used
Medical Ethics to guide its own first code of medical ethics.
perdurance, in one common
philosophical use, the property of being temporally continuous and having
temporal parts. There are at least two conflicting theories about temporally
continuous substances. According to the first, temporally continuous substances
have temporal parts they perdure, while according to the second, they do not.
In one ordinary philosophical use, endurance is the property of being temporally
continuous and not having temporal parts. There are modal versions of the
aforementioned two theories: for example, one version of the first theory is
that necessarily, temporally continuous substances have temporal parts, while
another version implies that possibly, they do not. Some versions of the first
theory hold that a temporally continuous substance is composed of instantaneous
temporal parts or “object-stages,” while on other versions these object-stages
are not parts but boundaries.
perfect competition, the
state of an ideal market under the following conditions: a every consumer in
the market is a perfectly rational maximizer of utility; b every producer is a
perfect maximizer of profit; c there is a very large ideally infinite number of
producers of the good in question, which ensures that no producer can set the
price for its output otherwise, an imperfect competitive state of oligopoly or
monopoly obtains; and d every producer provides a product perfectly
indistinguishable from that of other producers if consumers could distinguish
products to the point that there was no longer a very large number of producers
for each distinguishable good, competition would again be imperfect. Under
these conditions, the market price is equal to the marginal cost of producing
the last unit. This in turn determines the market supply of the good, since
each producer will gain by increasing production when price exceeds marginal
cost and will generally cut losses by decreasing production when marginal cost exceeds
price. Perfect competition is sometimes perceptual realism perfect competition
658 658 thought to have normative
implications for political philosophy, since it results in Pareto optimality.
The concept of perfect competition becomes extremely complicated when a
market’s evolution is considered. Producers who cannot equate marginal cost
with the market price will have negative profit and must drop out of the
market. If this happens very often, then the number of producers will no longer
be large enough to sustain perfect competition, so new producers will need to
enter the market.
perfectionism, an ethical
view according to which individuals and their actions are judged by a maximal
standard of achievement specifically,
the degree to which they approach ideals of aesthetic, intellectual, emotional,
or physical “perfection.” Perfectionism, then, may depart from, or even
dispense with, standards of conventional morality in favor of standards based
on what appear to be non-moral values. These standards reflect an admiration
for certain very rare levels of human achievement. Perhaps the most
characteristic of these standards are artistic and other forms of creativity;
but they prominently include a variety of other activities and emotional states
deemed “noble” e.g., heroic endurance in
the face of great suffering. The perfectionist, then, would also tend toward a
rather non-egalitarian even aristocratic view of humankind. The rare genius, the
inspired few, the suffering but courageous artist these examples of human perfection are
genuinely worthy of our estimation, according to this view. Although no fully
worked-out system of “perfectionist philosophy” has been attempted, aspects of
all of these doctrines may be found in such philosophers as Nietzsche.
Aristotle, as well, appears to endorse a perfectionist idea in his
characterization of the human good. Just as the good lyre player not only
exhibits the characteristic activities of this profession but achieves
standards of excellence with respect to these, the good human being, for
Aristotle, must achieve standards of excellence with respect to the virtue or
virtues distinctive of human life in general.
Peripatetic School, also
called Peripatos, the philosophical community founded by Aristotle at a public
gymnasium the Lyceum after his return to Athens in c.335 B.C. The derivation of
‘Peripatetic’ from the alleged Aristotelian custom of “walking about”
peripatein is probably wrong. The name should be explained by reference to a
“covered walking hall” peripatos among the school facilities. A scholarch or
headmaster presided over roughly two classes of members: the presbyteroi or
seniors, who probably had some teaching duties, and the neaniskoi or juniors.
No evidence of female philosophers in the Lyceum has survived. During
Aristotle’s lifetime his own lectures, whether for the inner circle of the
school or for the city at large, were probably the key attraction and core
activity; but given Aristotle’s knack for organizing group research projects,
we may assume that young and old Peripatetics spent much of their time working
on their own specific assignments either at the library, where they could
consult works of earlier writers, or at some kind of repository for specimens
used in zoological and botanical investigations. As a resident alien, Aristotle
could not own property in Athens and hence was not the legal owner of the
school. Upon his final departure from Athens in 322, his longtime collaborator
Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos c.370287 succeeded him as scholarch.
Theophrastus was an able Aristotelian who wrote extensively on metaphysics,
psychology, physiology, botany, ethics, politics, and the history of
philosophy. With the help of the Peripatetic dictator Demetrius of Phaleron, he
was able to secure property rights over the physical facilities of the school.
Under Theophrastus, the Peripatos continued to flourish and is said to have had
2,000 students, surely not all at the same time. His successor, Strato of
Lampsakos c.335269, had narrower interests and abandoned key Aristotelian
tenets. With him a progressive decline set in, to which the early loss of
Aristotle’s personal library, taken to Asia Minor by Neleus of Skepsis,
certainly contributed. By the first century B.C. the Peripatos had ceased to
exist. Philosophers of later periods sympathetic to Aristotle’s views have also
been called Peripatetics.
Perry, Ralph Barton
18767, philosopher who taught at
Harvard and wrote extensively in ethics,
social philosophy, and the theory of knowledge. He received a Pulitzer Prize in
6 for The Thought and Character of William James, a biography of his teacher
and colleague. Perry’s other major works include: The Moral Economy 9, General
Theory of Value 6, Puritanism and Democracy 4, and Realms of Value 4. He is
perhaps best known for his views on value. He writes in General Theory of
Value, “Any object, whatever it be, acquires value when any interest, whatever
it be, is taken in it; just as anything whatsoever becomes a target when anyone
whosoever aims at it.” Something’s having value is nothing but its being the
object of some interest, and to know whether it has value one need only know
whether it is the object of someone’s interest. Morality aims at the promotion
of the moral good, which he defines as “harmonious happiness.” This consists in
the reconciliation, harmonizing, and fulfillment of all interests. Perry’s
epistemological and metaphysical views were part of a revolt against idealism
and dualism. Along with five other philosophers, he wrote The New Realism 2.
The “New Realists” held that the objects of perception and memory are directly
presented to consciousness and are just what they appear to be; nothing
intervenes between the knower and the external world. The view that the objects
of perception and memory are presented by means of ideas leads, they argued, to
idealism, skepticism, and absurdity. Perry is also known for having developed,
along with E. B. Holt, the “specific response” theory, which is an attempt to
construe belief and perception in terms of bodily adjustment and behavior.
personal identity:
explored by H. P. Grice in “Personal Identity,” Mind – and H. P. Grice, “The
logical construction theory of personal identity,” and “David Hume on the
vagaries of personal identity.” -- the numerical identity over time of persons.
The question of what personal identity consists in is the question of what it
is what the necessary and sufficient conditions are for a person existing at
one time and a person existing at another time to be one and the same person.
Here there is no question of there being any entity that is the “identity” of a
person; to say that a person’s identity consists in such and such is just
shorthand for saying that facts about personal identity, i.e., facts to the effect
that someone existing at one time is the same as someone existing at another
time, consist in such and such. This should not be confused with the usage,
common in ordinary speech and in psychology, in which persons are said to have
identities, and, sometimes, to seek, lose, or regain their identities, where
one’s “identity” intimately involves a set of values and goals that structure
one’s life. The words ‘identical’ and ‘same’ mean nothing different in
judgments about persons than in judgments about other things. The problem of
personal identity is therefore not one of defining a special sense of
‘identical,’ and it is at least misleading to characterize it as defining a
particular kind of identity. Applying Quine’s slogan “no entity without
identity,” one might say that characterizing any sort of entity involves
indicating what the identity conditions for entities of that sort are so, e.g.,
part of the explanation of the concept of a set is that sets having the same
members are identical, and that asking what the identity of persons consists in
is just a way of asking what sorts of things persons are. But the main focus in
traditional discussions of the topic has been on one kind of identity judgment
about persons, namely those asserting “identity over time”; the question has
been about what the persistence of persons over time consists in. What has made
the identity persistence of persons of special philosophical interest is partly
its epistemology and partly its connections with moral and evaluative matters.
The crucial epistemological fact is that persons have, in memory, an access to
their own past histories that is unlike the access they have to the histories
of other things including other persons; when one remembers doing or
experiencing something, one normally has no need to employ any criterion of
identity in order to know that the subject of the remembered action or
experience is i.e., is identical with oneself. The moral and evaluative matters
include moral responsibility someone can be held responsible for a past action
only Peripatos personal identity 660
660 if he or she is identical to the person who did it and our concern
for our own survival and future well-being since it seems, although this has
been questioned, that what one wants in wanting to survive is that there should
exist in the future someone who is identical to oneself. The modern history of
the topic of personal identity begins with Locke, who held that the identity of
a person consists neither in the identity of an immaterial substance as
dualists might be expected to hold nor in the identity of a material substance
or “animal body” as materialists might be expected to hold, and that it
consists instead in “same consciousness.” His view appears to have been that
the persistence of a person through time consists in the fact that certain
actions, thoughts, experiences, etc., occurring at different times, are somehow
united in memory. Modern theories descended from Locke’s take memory continuity
to be a special case of something more general, psychological continuity, and
hold that personal identity consists in this. This is sometimes put in terms of
the notion of a “person-stage,” i.e., a momentary “time slice” of the history
of a person. A series of person-stages will be psychologically continuous if
the psychological states including memories occurring in later members of the
series grow out of, in certain characteristic ways, those occurring in earlier
members of it; and according to the psychological continuity view of personal identity,
person-stages occurring at different times are stages of the same person
provided they belong to a single, non-branching, psychologically continuous
series of person-stages. Opponents of the Lockean and neo-Lockean psychological
continuity view tend to fall into two camps. Some, following Butler and Reid,
hold that personal identity is indefinable, and that nothing informative can be
said about what it consists in. Others hold that the identity of a person
consists in some sort of physical continuity
perhaps the identity of a living human organism, or the identity of a
human brain. In the actual cases we know about putting aside issues about
non-bodily survival of death, psychological continuity and physical continuity
go together. Much of the debate between psychological continuity theories and
physical continuity theories has centered on the interpretation of thought
experiments involving brain transplants, brain-state transfers, etc., in which
these come apart. Such examples make vivid the question of whether our
fundamental criteria of personal identity are psychological, physical, or both.
Recently philosophical attention has shifted somewhat from the question of what
personal identity consists in to questions about its importance. The consideration
of hypothetical cases of “fission” in which two persons at a later time are
psychologically continuous with one person at an earlier time has suggested to
some that we can have survival or at any
rate what matters in survival without
personal identity, and that our self-interested concern for the future is
really a concern for whatever future persons are psychologically continuous
with us.
personalism, a version of
personal idealism that flourished in the United States principally at
Boston from the late nineteenth century
to the mid-twentieth century. Its principal proponents were Borden Parker Bowne
1847 0 and three of his students: Albert Knudson 18733; Ralph Flewelling 18710,
who founded The Personalist; and, most importantly, Edgar Sheffield Brightman
43. Their personalism was both idealistic and theistic and was influential in
philosophy and in theology. Personalism traced its philosophical lineage to
Berkeley and Leibniz, and had as its foundational insight the view that all
reality is ultimately personal. God is the transcendent person and the ground
or creator of all other persons; nature is a system of objects either for or in
the minds of persons. Both Bowne and Brightman considered themselves
empiricists in the tradition of Berkeley. Immediate experience is the starting
point, but this experience involves a fundamental knowledge of the self as a
personal being with changing states. Given this pluralism, the coherence,
order, and intelligibility of the universe are seen to derive from God, the
uncreated person. Bowne’s God is the eternal and omnipotent being of classical
theism, but Brightman argued that if God is a real person he must be construed
as both temporal and finite. Given the fact of evil, God is seen as gradually
gaining control over his created world, with regard to which his will is
intrinsically limited. Another version of personalism developed in France out
of the neo-Scholastic tradition. E. Mounier 550, Maritain, and Gilson
identified themselves as personalists, inasmuch as they viewed the infinite
person God and finite persons as the source and locus of intrinsic value. They
did not, however, view the natural order as intrinsically personal.
personhood, the condition
or property of being a person, especially when this is considered to entail
moral and/or metaphysical importance. Personhood has been thought to involve
various traits, including moral agency; reason or rationality; language, or the
cognitive skills language may support such as intentionality and
self-consciousness; and ability to enter into suitable relations with other
persons viewed as members of a self-defining group. Buber emphasized the
difference between the I-It relationship holding between oneself and an object,
and the IThou relationship, which holds between oneself and another person who
can be addressed. Dennett has construed persons in terms of the “intentional
stance,” which involves explaining another’s behavior in terms of beliefs,
desires, intentions, etc. Questions about when personhood begins and when it
ends have been central to debates about abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia,
since personhood has often been viewed as the mark, if not the basis, of a
being’s possession of special moral status.
Peter Lombard, theologian and author of the Book of
Sentences Liber sententiarum, a renowned theological sourcebook in the later
Middle Ages. Peter was educated at Bologna, Reims, and Paris before teaching in
the school of Notre Dame in Paris. He became a canon at Notre Dame in 114445
and was elected bishop of Paris in 1159. His extant works include commentaries
on the Psalms written in the mid-1130s and on the epistles of Paul c.113941; a
collection of sermons; and his one-volume summary of Christian doctrine, the
Sentences completed by 1158. The Sentences consists of four books: Book I, On
the Trinity; Book II, On the Creation of Things; Book III, On the Incarnation;
and Book IV, “On the Doctrine of Signs or Sacraments.” His discussion is
organized around particular questions or issues e.g., “On Knowledge,
Foreknowledge, and Providence” Book I, “Is God the Cause of Evil and Sin?” Book
II. For a given issue Peter typically presents a brief summary, accompanied by
short quotations, of main positions found in Scripture and in the writings of
the church fathers and doctors, followed by his own determination or
adjudication of the matter. Himself a theological conservative, Peter seems to
have intended this sort of compilation of scriptural and ancient doctrinal
teaching as a counter to the popularity, fueled by the recent recovery of
important parts of Aristotle’s logic, of the application of dialectic to
theological matters. The Sentences enjoyed wide circulation and admiration from
the beginning, and within a century of its composition it became a standard text
in the theology curriculum. From the midthirteenth through the mid-fourteenth
century every student of theology was required, as the last stage in obtaining
the highest academic degree, to lecture and comment on Peter’s text. Later
medieval thinkers often referred to Peter as “the Master” magister, thereby
testifying to the Sentences’ preeminence in theological training. In lectures
and commentaries, the greatest minds of this period used Peter’s text as a
framework in which to develop their own original positions and debate with
their contemporaries. As a result the Sentences-commentary tradition is an
extraordinarily rich repository of later medieval philosophical and theological
thought.
Peter of Spain. It is now
thought that there were two Peters of Spain. The prelate and philosopher was born in Lisbon,
studied at Paris, and taught medicine at Siena 124850. He served in various
ecclesiastical posts in Portugal and Italy 125073 before being elected pope as
John XXI in 1276. He wrote several books on philosophical psychology and
compiled the famous medical work Thesaurus pauperum. The second Peter of Spain
was a Dominican who lived during the
first half of the thirteenth century. His Tractatus, later called Summulae
logicales, received over 166 printings during subsequent centuries. The
Tractatus presents the essentials of Aristotelian logic propositions,
universals, categories, syllogism, dialectical topics, and the sophistical
fallacies and improves on the mnemonic verses of William Sherwood; he then
introduces the subjects of the so-called parva logicalia supposition,
relatives, ampliation, personality Peter of Spain 662 662 appellation, restriction, distribution,
all of which were extensively developed in the later Middle Ages. There is not
sufficient evidence to claim that Peter wrote a special treatise on
consequences, but his understanding of conditionals as assertions of necessary
connection undoubtedly played an important role in the rules of simple, as
opposed to as-of-now, consequences.
phantasia Grecian,
‘appearance’, ‘imagination’, 1 the state we are in when something appears to us
to be the case; 2 the capacity in virtue of which things appear to us. Although
frequently used of conscious and imagistic experiences, ‘phantasia’ is not limited
to such states; in particular, it can be applied to any propositional attitude
where something is taken to be the case. But just as the English ‘appears’
connotes that one has epistemic reservations about what is actually the case,
so ‘phantasia’ suggests the possibility of being misled by appearances and is
thus often a subject of criticism. According to Plato, phantasia is a “mixture”
of sensation and belief; in Aristotle, it is a distinct faculty that makes
truth and falsehood possible. The Stoics take a phantasia to constitute one of
the most basic mental states, in terms of which other mental states are to be
explained, and in rational animals it bears the propositional content expressed
in language. This last use becomes prominent in ancient literary and rhetorical
theory to designate the ability of language to move us and convey subjects
vividly as well as to range beyond the bounds of our immediate experience. Here
lie the origins of the modern concept of imagination although not the Romantic
distinction between fancy and imagination. Later Neoplatonists, such as
Proclus, take phantasia to be necessary for abstract studies such as geometry,
by enabling us to envision spatial relations.
Phenomenalism: one of the
twelve labours of H. P. Grice, the view that propositions asserting the
existence of physical objects are equivalent in meaning to propositions
asserting that subjects would have certain sequences of sensations were they to
have certain others. The basic idea behind phenomenalism is compatible with a
number of different analyses of the self or conscious subject. A phenomenalist
might understand the self as a substance, a particular, or a construct out of
actual and possible experience. The view also is compatible with any number of
different analyses of the visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and
kinesthetic sensations described in the antecedents and consequents of the
subjunctive conditionals that the phenomenalist uses to analyze physical object
propositions as illustrated in the last paragraph. Probably the most common
analysis of sensations adopted by traditional phenomenalists is a sense-datum
theory, with the sense-data construed as mind-dependent entities. But there is
nothing to prevent a phenomenalist from accepting an adverbial theory or theory
of appearing instead. The origins of phenomenalism are difficult to trace, in
part because early statements of the view were usually not careful. In his
Dialogues, Berkeley hinted at phenomenalism when he had Philonous explain how
he could reconcile an ontology containing only minds and ideas with the story
of a creation that took place before the existence of people. Philonous
imagines that if he had been present at the creation he should have seen
things, i.e., had sensations, in the order described in the Bible. It can also
be argued, however, that J. S. Mill in An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s
Philosophy was the first to put forth a clearly phenomenalistic analysis when
he identified matter with the “permanent possibility of sensation.” When Mill
explained what these permanent possibilities are, he typically used
conditionals that describe the sensations one would have if one were placed in
certain conditions. The attraction of classical phenomenalism grew with the rise
of logical positivism and its acceptance of the verifiability criterion of
meaning. Phenomenalists were usually foundationalists who were convinced that
justified belief in the physical world rested ultimately on our
noninferentially justified beliefs about our sensations. Implicitly committed
to the view that only deductive and inductive inferences are legitimate, and
further assuming that to be justified in believing one proposition P on the
basis of another E, one must be justified in believing both E and that E makes
P probable, the phenomenalist saw an insuperable difficulty in justifying
belief in ordinary statements about the physical world given prevalent
conceptions of physical petitio principii phenomenalism 663 663 objects. If all we ultimately have as
our evidence for believing in physical objects is what we know about the
occurrence of sensation, how can we establish sensation as evidence for the
existence of physical objects? We obviously cannot deduce the existence of
physical objects from any finite sequence of sensations. The sensations could,
e.g., be hallucinatory. Nor, it seems, can we observe a correlation between
sensation and something else in order to generate the premises of an inductive
argument for the conclusion that sensations are reliable indicators of physical
objects. The key to solving this problem, the phenomenalist argues, is to
reduce assertions about the physical world to complicated assertions about the
sequences of sensations a subject would have were he to have certain others.
The truth of such conditionals, e.g., that if I have the clear visual
impression of a cat, then there is one before me, might be mind-independent in
the way in which one wants the truth of assertions about the physical world to
be mind-independent. And to the phenomenalist’s great relief, it would seem
that we could justify our belief in such conditional statements without having
to correlate anything but sensations. Many philosophers today reject some of
the epistemological, ontological, and metaphilosophical presuppositions with
which phenomenalists approached the problem of understanding our relation to
the physical world through sensation. But the argument that was historically
most decisive in convincing many philosophers to abandon phenomenalism was the
argument from perceptual relativity first advanced by Chisholm in “The Problem
of Perception.” Chisholm offers a strategy for attacking any phenomenalistic
analysis. The first move is to force the phenomenalist to state a conditional
describing only sensations that is an alleged consequence of a physical object
proposition. C. I. Lewis, e.g., in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation,
claims that the assertion P that there is a doorknob before me and to the left
entails C that if I were to seem to see a doorknob and seem to reach out and
touch it then I would seem to feel it. Chisholm argues that if P really did
entail C then there could be no assertion R that when conjoined with P did not
entail C. There is, however, such an assertion: I am unable to move my limbs
and my hands but am subject to delusions such that I think I am moving them; I
often seem to be initiating a grasping motion but with no feeling of contacting
anything. Chisholm argues, in effect, that what sensations one would have if one
were to have certain others always depends in part on the internal and external
physical conditions of perception and that this fact dooms any attempt to find
necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of a physical object
proposition couched in terms that describe only connections between
sensations.
Phenomenology – referred
ironically by J. L. Austin as “linguistic phenomenology,” in the twentieth
century, the philosophy developed by Husserl and some of his followers. The
term has been used since the mideighteenth century and received a carefully
defined technical meaning in the works of both Kant and Hegel, but it is not
now used to refer to a homogeneous and systematically developed philosophical
position. The question of what phenomenology is may suggest that phenomenology
is one among the many contemporary philosophical conceptions that have a
clearly delineated body of doctrines and whose essential characteristics can be
expressed by a set of wellchosen statements. This notion is not correct,
however. In contemporary philosophy there is no system or school called
“phenomenology,” characterized by a clearly defined body of teachings.
Phenomenology is neither a school nor a trend in contemporary philosophy. It is
rather a movement whose proponents, for various reasons, have propelled it in
many distinct directions, with the result that today it means different things
to different people. While within the phenomenological movement as a whole
there are several related currents, they, too, are by no means homogeneous.
Though these currents have a common point of departure, they do not project
toward the same destination. The thinking of most phenomenologists has changed
so greatly that their respective views can be presented adequately only by showing
them in their gradual development. This is true not only for Husserl, founder
of the phenomenological movement, but also for such later phenomenologists as
Scheler, N. Hartmann, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. To anyone who
studies the phenomenological movement without prejudice the differences among
its many currents are obvious. It has been phenomenal property phenomenology
664 664 said that phenomenology
consists in an analysis and description of consciousness; it has been claimed
also that phenomenology simply blends with existentialism. Phenomenology is
indeed the study of essences, but it also attempts to place essences back into
existence. It is a transcendental philosophy interested only in what is “left
behind” after the phenomenological reduction is performed, but it also
considers the world to be already there before reflection begins. For some
philosophers phenomenology is speculation on transcendental subjectivity,
whereas for others it is a method for approaching concrete existence. Some use
phenomenology as a search for a philosophy that accounts for space, time, and
the world, just as we experience and “live” them. Finally, it has been said
that phenomenology is an attempt to give a direct description of our experience
as it is in itself without taking into account its psychological origin and its
causal explanation; but Husserl speaks of a “genetic” as well as a
“constitutive” phenomenology. To some people, finding such an abundance of
ideas about one and the same subject constitutes a strange situation; for
others it is annoying to contemplate the “confusion”; and there will be those
who conclude that a philosophy that cannot define its own scope does not
deserve the discussion that has been carried on in its regard. In the opinion
of many, not only is this latter attitude not justified, but precisely the
opposite view defended by Thevenaz should be adopted. As the term
‘phenomenology’ signifies first and foremost a methodical conception, Thevenaz
argues that because this method, originally developed for a very particular and
limited end, has been able to branch out in so many varying forms, it manifests
a latent truth and power of renewal that implies an exceptional fecundity.
Speaking of the great variety of conceptions within the phenomenological
movement, Merleau-Ponty remarked that the responsible philosopher must
recognize that phenomenology may be practiced and identified as a manner or a
style of thinking, and that it existed as a movement before arriving at a
complete awareness of itself as a philosophy. Rather than force a living
movement into a system, then, it seems more in keeping with the ideal of the
historian as well as the philosopher to follow the movement in its development,
and attempt to describe and evaluate the many branches in and through which it
has unfolded itself. In reality the picture is not as dark as it may seem at
first sight. Notwithstanding the obvious differences, most phenomenologists
share certain insights that are very important for their mutual philosophical
conception as a whole. In this connection the following must be mentioned: 1
Most phenomenologists admit a radical difference between the “natural” and the
“philosophical” attitude. This leads necessarily to an equally radical
difference between philosophy and science. In characterizing this difference
some phenomenologists, in agreement with Husserl, stress only epistemological
issues, whereas others, in agreement with Heidegger, focus their attention
exclusively on ontological topics. 2 Notwithstanding this radical difference,
there is a complicated set of relationships between philosophy and science.
Within the context of these relationships philosophy has in some sense a
foundational task with respect to the sciences, whereas science offers to
philosophy at least a substantial part of its philosophical problematic. 3 To
achieve its task philosophy must perform a certain reduction, or epoche, a
radical change of attitude by which the philosopher turns from things to their
meanings, from the ontic to the ontological, from the realm of the objectified
meaning as found in the sciences to the realm of meaning as immediately
experienced in the “life-world.” In other words, although it remains true that
the various phenomenologists differ in characterizing the reduction, no one
seriously doubts its necessity. 4 All phenomenologists subscribe to the
doctrine of intentionality, though most elaborate this doctrine in their own
way. For Husserl intentionality is a characteristic of conscious phenomena or acts;
in a deeper sense, it is the characteristic of a finite consciousness that
originally finds itself without a world. For Heidegger and most existentialists
it is the human reality itself that is intentional; as Being-in-the-world its
essence consists in its ek-sistence, i.e., in its standing out toward the
world. 5 All phenomenologists agree on the fundamental idea that the basic
concern of philosophy is to answer the question concerning the “meaning and
Being” of beings. All agree in addition that in trying to materialize this goal
the philosopher should be primarily interested not in the ultimate cause of all
finite beings, but in how the Being of beings and the Being of the world are to
be constituted. Finally, all agree that in answering the question concerning
the meaning of Being a privileged position is to be attributed to subjectivity,
i.e., to that being which questions the Being of beings. Phenomenologists
differ, however, the moment they have to specify what is meant by subjectivity.
As noted above, whereas Husserl conceives it as a worldless monad, Heidegger
and most later phenomenologists conceive it as being-in-the-world. Referring to
Heidegger’s reinterpretation of his phenomenology, Husserl writes: one
misinterprets my phenomenology backwards from a level which it was its very
purpose to overcome, in other words, one has failed to understand the
fundamental novelty of the phenomenological reduction and hence the progress
from mundane subjectivity i.e., man to transcendental subjectivity; consequently
one has remained stuck in an anthropology . . . which according to my doctrine
has not yet reached the genuine philosophical level, and whose interpretation
as philosophy means a lapse into “transcendental anthropologism,” that is,
“psychologism.” 6 All phenomenologists defend a certain form of intuitionism
and subscribe to what Husserl calls the “principle of all principles”:
“whatever presents itself in ‘intuition’ in primordial form as it were in its
bodily reality, is simply to be accepted as it gives itself out to be, though
only within the limits in which it then presents itself.” Here again, however,
each phenomenologist interprets this principle in keeping with his general
conception of phenomenology as a whole. Thus, while phenomenologists do share
certain insights, the development of the movement has nevertheless been such
that it is not possible to give a simple definition of what phenomenology is.
The fact remains that there are many phenomenologists and many phenomenologies.
Therefore, one can only faithfully report what one has experienced of
phenomenology by reading the phenomenologists.
Philo Judaeus c.20
B.C.A.D. 40, Jewish Hellenistic philosopher of Alexandria who composed the bulk
of his work in the form of commentaries and discourses on Scripture. He made
the first known sustained attempt to synthesize its revealed teachings with the
doctrines of classical philosophy. Although he was not the first to apply the
methods of allegorical interpretation to Scripture, the number and variety of
his interpretations make Philo unique. With this interpretive tool, he
transformed biblical narratives into Platonic accounts of the soul’s quest for
God and its struggle against passion, and the Mosaic commandments into specific
manifestations of general laws of nature. Philo’s most influential idea was his
conception of God, which combines the personal, ethical deity of the Bible with
the abstract, transcendentalist theology of Platonism and Pythagoreanism. The
Philonic deity is both the loving, just God of the Hebrew Patriarchs and the
eternal One whose essence is absolutely unknowable and who creates the material
world by will from primordial matter which He creates ex nihilo. Besides the
intelligible realm of ideas, which Philo is the earliest known philosopher to
identify as God’s thoughts, he posited an intermediate divine being which he
called, adopting scriptural language, the logos. Although the exact nature of
the logos is hard to pin down Philo variously
and, without any concern for consistency, called it the “first-begotten Son of
the uncreated Father,” “Second God,” “idea of ideas,” “archetype of human
reason,” and “pattern of creation” its
main functions are clear: to bridge the huge gulf between the transcendent
deity and the lower world and to serve as the unifying law of the universe, the
ground of its order and rationality. A philosophical eclectic, Philo was
unknown to medieval Jewish philosophers but, beyond his anticipations of
Neoplatonism, he had a lasting impact on Christianity through Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, and Ambrose.
Philolaus, pre-Socratic
Grecian philosopher from Croton in southern Italy, the first Pythagorean to
write a book. The surviving fragments of it are the earliest primary texts for
Pythagoreanism, but numerous spurious fragments have also been preserved.
Philolaus’s book begins with a cosmogony and includes astronomical, medical,
and psychological doctrines. His major innovation was to argue that the cosmos
and everything in it is a combination not just of unlimiteds what is structured
and ordered, e.g. material elements but also of limiters structural and
ordering elements, e.g. shapes. These elements are held together in a harmonia
fitting together, which comes to be in accord with perspicuous mathematical
relationships, such as the whole number ratios that correspond to the harmonic
intervals e.g. octave % phenotext Philolaus 666 666 1 : 2. He argued that secure knowledge
is possible insofar as we grasp the number in accordance with which things are put
together. His astronomical system is famous as the first to make the earth a
planet. Along with the sun, moon, fixed stars, five planets, and counter-earth
thus making the perfect number ten, the earth circles the central fire a
combination of the limiter “center” and the unlimited “fire”. Philolaus’s
influence is seen in Plato’s Philebus; he is the primary source for Aristotle’s
account of Pythagoreanism.
philosophical
biology: Grice liked to regard himself as a philosophical biologist, and indeed
philosophical physiologist. bioethics, the subfield of ethics that concerns the
ethical issues arising in medicine and from advances in biological science. One
central area of bioethics is the ethical issues that arise in relations between
health care professionals and patients. A second area focuses on broader issues
of social justice in health care. A third area concerns the ethical issues
raised by new biological knowledge or technology. In relations between health
care professionals and patients, a fundamental issue is the appropriate role of
each in decision making about patient care. More traditional views assigning
principal decision-making authority to physicians have largely been replaced
with ideals of shared decision making that assign a more active role to
patients. Shared decision making is thought to reflect better the importance of
patients’ self-determination in controlling their care. This increased role for
patients is reflected in the ethical and legal doctrine of informed consent,
which requires that health care not be rendered without the informed and
voluntary consent of a competent patient. The requirement that consent be
informed places a positive responsibility on health care professionals to
provide their patients with the information they need to make informed
decisions about care. The requirement that consent be voluntary requires that
treatment not be forced, nor that patients’ decisions be coerced or
manipulated. If patients lack the capacity to make competent health care
decisions, e.g. young children or cognitively impaired adults, a surrogate,
typically a parent in the case of children or a close family member in the case
of adults, must decide for them. Surrogates’ decisions should follow the
patient’s advance directive if one exists, be the decision the patient would
have made in the circumstances if competent, or follow the patient’s best
interests if the patient has never been competent or his or her wishes are not
known. A major focus in bioethics generally, and treatment decision making in
particular, is care at or near the end of life. It is now widely agreed that
patients are entitled to decide about and to refuse, according to their own
values, any lifesustaining treatment. They are also entitled to have desired
treatments that may shorten their lives, such as high doses of pain medications
necessary to relieve severe pain from cancer, although in practice pain
treatment remains inadequate for many patients. Much more controversial is
whether more active means to end life such as physician-assisted suicide and
voluntary euthanasia are morally permissible in indibhavanga bioethics 88 88 vidual cases or justified as public
policy; both remain illegal except in a very few jurisdictions. Several other
moral principles have been central to defining professionalpatient
relationships in health care. A principle of truth telling requires that
professionals not lie to patients. Whereas in the past it was common,
especially with patients with terminal cancers, not to inform patients fully
about their diagnosis and prognosis, studies have shown that practice has
changed substantially and that fully informing patients does not have the bad
effects for patients that had been feared in the past. Principles of privacy
and confidentiality require that information gathered in the
professionalpatient relationship not be disclosed to third parties without
patients’ consent. Especially with highly personal information in mental health
care, or information that may lead to discrimination, such as a diagnosis of
AIDS, assurance of confidentiality is fundamental to the trust necessary to a
wellfunctioning professionalpatient relationship. Nevertheless, exceptions to
confidentiality to prevent imminent and serious harm to others are well
recognized ethically and legally. More recently, work in bioethics has focused
on justice in the allocation of health care. Whereas nearly all developed
countries treat health care as a moral and legal right, and ensure it to all
their citizens through some form of national health care system, in the United
States about 15 percent of the population remains without any form of health
insurance. This has fed debates about whether health care is a right or
privilege, a public or individual responsibility. Most bioethicists have
supported a right to health care because of health care’s fundamental impact on
people’s well-being, opportunity, ability to plan their lives, and even lives
themselves. Even if there is a moral right to health care, however, few defend
an unlimited right to all beneficial health care, no matter how small the
benefit and how high the cost. Consequently, it is necessary to prioritize or
ration health care services to reflect limited budgets for health care, and
both the standards and procedures for doing so are ethically controversial.
Utilitarians and defenders of cost-effectiveness analysis in health policy
support using limited resources to maximize aggregate health benefits for the
population. Their critics argue that this ignores concerns about equity,
concerns about how health care resources and health are distributed. For
example, some have argued that equity requires giving priority to treating the
worst-off or sickest, even at a sacrifice in aggregate health benefits;
moreover, taking account in prioritization of differences in costs of different
treatments can lead to ethically problematic results, such as giving higher
priority to providing very small benefits to many persons than very large but
individually more expensive benefits, including life-saving interventions, to a
few persons, as the state of Oregon found in its initial widely publicized
prioritization program. In the face of controversy over standards for rationing
care, it is natural to rely on fair procedures to make rationing decisions.
Other bioethics issues arise from dramatic advances in biological knowledge and
technology. Perhaps the most prominent example is new knowledge of human
genetics, propelled in substantial part by the worldwide Human Genome Project,
which seeks to map the entire human genome. This project and related research
will enable the prevention of genetically transmitted diseases, but already
raises questions about which conditions to prevent in offspring and which
should be accepted and lived with, particularly when the means of preventing
the condition is by abortion of the fetus with the condition. Looking further
into the future, new genetic knowledge and technology will likely enable us to
enhance normal capacities, not just prevent or cure disease, and to manipulate
the genes of future children, raising profoundly difficult questions about what
kinds of persons to create and the degree to which deliberate human design
should replace “nature” in the creation of our offspring. A dramatic example of
new abilities to create offspring, though now limited to the animal realm, was
the cloning in Scotland in 7 of a sheep from a single cell of an adult sheep;
this event raised the very controversial future prospect of cloning human
beings. Finally, new reproductive technologies, such as oocyte egg donation,
and practices such as surrogate motherhood, raise deep issues about the meaning
and nature of parenthood and families. Philosophical
biology -- euthanasia, broadly, the beneficent timing or negotiation of the
death of a sick person; more narrowly, the killing of a human being on the
grounds that he is better off dead. In an extended sense, the word ‘euthanasia’
is used to refer to the painless killing of non-human animals, in our interests
at least as much as in theirs. Active euthanasia is the taking of steps to end
a person’s especially a patient’s life. Passive euthanasia is the omission or
termination of means of prolonging life, on the grounds that the person is
better off without them. The distinction between active and passive euthanasia
is a rough guide for applying the more fundamental distinction between
intending the patient’s death and pursuing other goals, such as the relief of
her pain, with the expectation that she will die sooner rather than later as a
result. Voluntary euthanasia is euthanasia with the patient’s consent, or at
his request. Involuntary euthanasia is euthanasia over the patient’s
objections. Non-voluntary euthanasia is the killing of a person deemed
incompetent with the consent of someone
say a parent authorized to speak
on his behalf. Since candidates for euthanasia are frequently in no condition
to make major decisions, the question whether there is a difference between
involuntary and non-voluntary euthanasia is of great importance. Few moralists
hold that life must be prolonged whatever the cost. Traditional morality
forbids directly intended euthanasia: human life belongs to God and may be
taken only by him. The most important arguments for euthanasia are the pain and
indignity suffered by those with incurable diseases, the burden imposed by
persons unable to take part in normal human activities, and the supposed right
of persons to dispose of their lives however they please. Non-theological
arguments against euthanasia include the danger of expanding the principle of
euthanasia to an everwidening range of persons and the opacity of death and its
consequent incommensurability with life, so that we cannot safely judge that a
person is better off dead.
philosophical
historian – Grice as – longitudinal unity -- Danto, A. C. philosopher of art
and art history who has also contributed to the philosophies of history,
action, knowledge, science, and metaphilosophy. Among his influential studies
in the history of philosophy are books on Nietzsche, Sartre, and thought. Danto arrives at his philosophy of
art through his “method of indiscernibles,” which has greatly influenced
contemporary philosophical aesthetics. According to his metaphilosophy, genuine
philosophical questions arise when there is a theoretical need to differentiate
two things that are perceptually indiscernible
such as prudential actions versus moral actions Kant, causal chains
versus constant conjunctions Hume, and perfect dreams versus reality Descartes.
Applying the method to the philosophy of art, Danto asks what distinguishes an
artwork, such as Warhol’s Brillo Box, from its perceptually indiscernible,
real-world counterparts, such as Brillo boxes by Proctor and Gamble. His
answer his partial definition of
art is that x is a work of art only if 1
x is about something and 2 x embodies its meaning i.e., discovers a mode of
presentation intended to be appropriate to whatever subject x is about. These
two necessary conditions, Danto claims, enable us to distinguish between
artworks and real things between
Warhol’s Brillo Box and Proctor and Gamble’s. However, critics have pointed out
that these conditions fail, since real Brillo boxes are about something Brillo
about which they embody or convey meanings through their mode of presentation
viz., that Brillo is clean, fresh, and dynamic. Moreover, this is not an
isolated example. Danto’s theory of art confronts systematic difficulties in
differentiating real cultural artifacts, such as industrial packages, from
artworks proper. In addition to his philosophy of art, Danto proposes a
philosophy of art history. Like Hegel, Danto maintains that art history as a developmental, progressive process has ended. Danto believes that modern art has
been primarily reflexive i.e., about itself; it has attempted to use its own
forms and strategies to disclose the essential nature of art. Cubism and
abstract expressionism, for example, exhibit saliently the two-dimensional
nature of painting. With each experiment, modern art has gotten closer to
disclosing its own essence. But, Danto argues, with works such as Warhol’s
Brillo Box, artists have taken the philosophical project of self-definition as
far as they can, since once an artist like Warhol has shown that artworks can
be perceptually indiscernible from “real things” and, therefore, can look like
anything, there is nothing further that the artist qua artist can show through
the medium of appearances about the nature of art. The task of defining art
must be reassigned to philosophers to be treated discursively, and art
history as the developmental,
progressive narrative of self-definition
ends. Since that turn of events was putatively precipitated by Warhol in
the 0s, Danto calls the present period of art making “post-historical.” As an
art critic for The Nation, he has been chronicling its vicissitudes for a
decade and a half. Some dissenters, nevertheless, have been unhappy with
Danto’s claim that art history has ended because, they maintain, he has failed
to demonstrate that the only prospects for a developmental, progressive history
of art reside in the project of the self-definition of art.
Philosophical
mathematics. Grice thought that “7 + 5 = 12” was either synthetic or analytic –
“but hardly both”. Grice on real numbers -- continuum problem, an open question
that arose in Cantor’s theory of infinite cardinal numbers. By definition, two
sets have the same cardinal number if there is a one-to-one correspondence
between them. For example, the function that sends 0 to 0, 1 to 2, 2 to 4, etc.,
shows that the set of even natural numbers has the same cardinal number as the
set of all natural numbers, namely F0. That F0 is not the only infinite
cardinal follows from Cantor’s theorem: the power set of any set i.e., the set
of all its subsets has a greater cardinality than the set itself. So, e.g., the
power set of the natural numbers, i.e., the set of all sets of natural numbers,
has a cardinal number greater than F0. The first infinite number greater than
F0 is F1; the next after that is F2, and so on. When arithmetical operations
are extended into the infinite, the cardinal number of the power set of the
natural numbers turns out to be 2F0. By Cantor’s theorem, 2F0 must be greater
than F0; the conjecture that it is equal to F1 is Cantor’s continuum hypothesis
in symbols, CH or 2F0 % F1. Since 2F0 is also the cardinality of the set of
points on a continuous line, CH can also be stated in this form: any infinite
set of points on a line can be brought into one-to-one correspondence either
with the set of natural numbers or with the set of all points on the line.
Cantor and others attempted to prove CH, without success. It later became
clear, due to the work of Gödel and Cohen, that their failure was inevitable:
the continuum hypothesis can neither be proved nor disproved from the axioms of
set theory ZFC. The question of its truth or falsehood the continuum problem remains open.
Philosophical mathematics: Grice on “7 + 5 = 12” -- Dedekind, R. G.
mathematician, one of the most important figures in the mathematical analysis
of foundational questions that took place in the late nineteenth century.
Philosophically, three things are interesting about Dedekind’s work: 1 the
insistence that the fundamental numerical systems of mathematics must be developed
independently of spatiotemporal or geometrical notions; 2 the insistence that
the numbers systems rely on certain mental capacities fundamental to thought,
in particular on the capacity of the mind to “create”; and 3 the recognition
that this “creation” is “creation” according to certain key properties,
properties that careful mathematical analysis reveals as essential to the
subject matter. 1 is a concern Dedekind shared with Bolzano, Cantor, Frege, and
Hilbert; 2 sets Dedekind apart from Frege; and 3 represents a distinctive shift
toward the later axiomatic position of Hilbert and somewhat away from the
concern with the individual nature of the central abstract mathematical objects
which is a central concern of Frege. Much of Dedekind’s position is sketched in
the Habilitationsrede of 1854, the procedure there being applied in outline to
the extension of the positive whole numbers to the integers, and then to the
rational field. However, the two works best known to philosophers are the
monographs on irrational numbers Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen, 1872 and on
natural numbers Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen?, 8, both of which pursue
the procedure advocated in 1854. In both we find an “analysis” designed to
uncover the essential properties involved, followed by a “synthesis” designed
to show that there can be such systems, this then followed by a “creation” of
objects possessing the properties and nothing more. In the 1872 work, Dedekind
suggests that the essence of continuity in the reals is that whenever the line
is divided into two halves by a cut, i.e., into two subsets A1 and A2 such that
if p 1 A1 and q 1 A2, then p ‹ q and, if p 1 A1 and q ‹ p, then q 1 A1, and if
p 1 A2 and q p, then q 1 A2 as well, then
there is real number r which “produces” this cut, i.e., such that A1 % {p; p ‹
r}, and A2 % {p: r m p}. The task is then to characterize the real numbers so
that this is indeed true of them. Dedekind shows that, whereas the rationals
themselves do not have this property, the collection of all cuts in the
rationals does. Dedekind then “defines” the irrationals through this
observation, not directly as the cuts in the rationals themselves, as was done
later, but rather through the “creation” of “new irrational numbers” to
correspond to those rational cuts not hitherto “produced” by a number. The 8
work starts from the notion of a “mapping” of one object onto another, which
for Dedekind is necessary for all exact thought. Dedekind then develops the
notion of a one-toone into mapping, which is then used to characterize infinity
“Dedekind infinity”. Using the fundamental notion of a chain, Dedekind
characterizes the notion of a “simply infinite system,” thus one that is
isomorphic to the natural number sequence. Thus, he succeeds in the goal set
out in the 1854 lecture: isolating precisely the characteristic properties of
the natural number system. But do simply infinite systems, in particular the
natural number system, exist? Dedekind now argues: Any infinite system must
Dedekind, Richard Dedekind, Richard 210
210 contain a simply infinite system Theorem 72. Correspondingly,
Dedekind sets out to prove that there are infinite systems Theorem 66, for
which he uses an infamous argument reminiscent of Bolzano’s from thirty years
earlier involving “my thought-world,” etc. It is generally agreed that the
argument does not work, although it is important to remember Dedekind’s wish to
demonstrate that since the numbers are to be free creations of the human mind,
his proofs should rely only on the properties of the mental. The specific act
of “creation,” however, comes in when Dedekind, starting from any simply
infinite system, abstracts from the “particular properties” of this, claiming
that what results is the simply infinite system of the natural numbers. Philosophical mathematics -- mathematical
analysis, also called standard analysis, the area of mathematics pertaining to
the so-called real number system, i.e. the area that can be based on an axiom
set whose intended interpretation (standard model) has the set of real numbers
as its domain (universe of discourse). Thus analysis includes, among its many
subbranches, elementary algebra, differential and integral calculus,
differential equations, the calculus of variations, and measure theory.
Analytic geometry involves the application of analysis to geometry. Analysis
contains a large part of the mathematics used in mathematical physics. The real
numbers, which are representable by the ending and unending decimals, are
usefully construed as (or as corresponding to) distances measured, relative to
an arbitrary unit length, positively to the right and negatively to the left of
an arbitrarily fixed zero point along a geometrical straight line. In
particular, the class of real numbers includes as increasingly comprehensive
proper subclasses the natural numbers, the integers (positive, negative, and
zero), the rational numbers (or fractions), and the algebraic numbers (such as
the square root of two). Especially important is the presence in the class of
real numbers of non-algebraic (or transcendental) irrational numbers such as
pi. The set of real numbers includes arbitrarily small and arbitrarily large,
finite quantities, while excluding infinitesimal and infinite quantities.
Analysis, often conceived as the mathematics of continuous magnitude, contrasts
with arithmetic (natural number theory), which is regarded as the mathematics
of discrete magnitude. Analysis is often construed as involving not just the
real numbers but also the imaginary (complex) numbers. Traditionally analysis
is expressed in a second-order or higher-order language wherein its axiom set
has categoricity; each of its models is isomorphic to (has the same structure
as) the standard model. When analysis is carried out in a first-order language,
as has been increasingly the case since the 1950s, categoricity is impossible
and it has nonstandard mass noun mathematical analysis models in addition to
its standard model. A nonstandard model of analysis is an interpretation not
isomorphic to the standard model but nevertheless satisfying the axiom set.
Some of the nonstandard models involve objects reminiscent of the much-despised
“infinitesimals” that were essential to the Leibniz approach to calculus and
that were subject to intense criticism by Berkeley and other philosophers and
philosophically sensitive mathematicians. These non-standard models give rise
to a new area of mathematics, non-standard analysis, within which the
fallacious arguments used by Leibniz and other early analysts form the heuristic
basis of new and entirely rigorous proofs. -- mathematical function, an
operation that, when applied to an entity (set of entities) called its
argument(s), yields an entity known as the value of the function for that
argument(s). This operation can be expressed by a functional equation of the
form y % f(x) such that a variable y is said to be a function of a variable x
if corresponding to each value of x there is one and only one value of y. The x
is called the independent variable (or argument of the function) and the y the
dependent variable (or value of the function). (Some definitions consider the
relation to be the function, not the dependent variable, and some definitions
permit more than one value of y to correspond to a given value of x, as in x2 !
y2 % 4.) More abstractly, a function can be considered to be simply a special
kind of relation (set of ordered pairs) that to any element in its domain
relates exactly one element in its range. Such a function is said to be a
one-to-one correspondence if and only if the set {x,y} elements of S and {z,y}
elements of S jointly imply x % z. Consider, e.g., the function {(1,1), (2,4),
(3,9), (4,16), (5,25), (6,36)}, each of whose members is of the form (x,x2) –
the squaring function. Or consider the function {(0,1), (1,0)} – which we can
call the negation function. In contrast, consider the function for exclusive
alternation (as in you may have a beer or glass of wine, but not both). It is
not a one-to-one correspondence. For, 0 is the value of (0,1) and of (1,0), and
1 is the value of (0,0) and of (1,1). If we think of a function as defined on
the natural numbers – functions from Nn to N for various n (most commonly n % 1
or 2) – a partial function is a function from Nn to N whose domain is not
necessarily the whole of Nn (e.g., not defined for all of the natural numbers).
A total function from Nn to N is a function whose domain is the whole of Nn
(e.g., all of the natural numbers). -- mathematical induction, a method of
definition and a method of proof. A collection of objects can be defined
inductively. All members of such a collection can be shown to have a property
by an inductive proof. The natural numbers and the set of well-formed formulas
of a formal language are familiar examples of sets given by inductive
definition. Thus, the set of natural numbers is inductively defined as the
smallest set, N, such that: (B) 0 is in N and (I) for any x in N the successor
of x is in N. (B) is the basic clause and (I) the inductive clause of this
definition. Or consider a propositional language built on negation and
conjunction. We start with a denumerable class of atomic sentence symbols ATOM
= {A1, A2, . . .}. Then we can define the set of well-formed formulas, WFF, as
the smallest set of expressions such that: (B) every member of ATOM is in WFF
and (I) if x is in WFF then (- x) is in WFF and if x and y are in WFF then (x
& y) is in WFF. We show that all members of an inductively defined set have
a property by showing that the members specified by the basis have that property
and that the property is preserved by the induction. For example, we show that
all WFFs have an even number of parentheses by showing (i) that all ATOMs have
an even number of parentheses and (ii) that if x and y have an even number of
parentheses then so do (- x) and (x & y). This shows that the set of WFFs
with an even number of parentheses satisfies (B) and (I). The set of WFFs with
an even number of parentheses must then be identical to WFF, since – by
definition – WFF is the smallest set that satisfies (B) and (I). Ordinary proof
by mathematical induction shows that all the natural numbers, or all members of
some set with the order type of the natural numbers, share a property. Proof by
transfinite induction, a more general form of proof by mathematical induction,
shows that all members of some well-ordered set have a certain property. A set
is well-ordered if and only if every non-empty subset of it has a least
element. The natural numbers are well-ordered. It is a consequence of the axiom
of choice that every set can be well-ordered. Suppose that a set, X, is
well-ordered and that P is the subset of X whose mathematical constructivism
mathematical induction 541 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 541 members have
the property of interest. Suppose that it can be shown for any element x of X,
if all members of X less that x are in P, then so is x. Then it follows by
transfinite induction that all members of X have the property, that X % P. For
if X did not coincide with P, then the set of elements of x not in P would be
non-empty. Since X is well-ordered, this set would have a least element, x*.
But then by definition, all members of X less than x* are in P, and by
hypothesis x* must be in P after all.. -- mathematical intuitionism, a
twentieth-century movement that reconstructs mathematics in accordance with an
epistemological idealism and a Kantian metaphysics. Specifically, Brouwer, its
founder, held that there are no unexperienced truths and that mathematical
objects stem from the a priori form of those conscious acts which generate
empirical objects. Unlike Kant, however, Brouwer rejected the apriority of
space and based mathematics solely on a refined conception of the intuition of
time. Intuitionistic mathematics. According to Brouwer, the simplest
mathematical act is to distinguish between two diverse elements in the flow of
consciousness. By repeating and concatenating such acts we generate each of the
natural numbers, the standard arithmetical operations, and thus the rational
numbers with their operations as well. Unfortunately, these simple, terminating
processes cannot produce the convergent infinite sequences of rational numbers
that are needed to generate the continuum (the nondenumerable set of real
numbers, or of points on the line). Some “proto-intuitionists” admitted
infinite sequences whose elements are determined by finitely describable rules.
However, the set of all such algorithmic sequences is denumerable and thus can
scarcely generate the continuum. Brouwer’s first attempt to circumvent this –
by postulating a single intuition of an ever growing continuum – mirrored
Aristotle’s picture of the continuum as a dynamic whole composed of inseparable
parts. But this approach was incompatible with the set-theoretic framework that
Brouwer accepted, and by 1918 he had replaced it with the concept of an
infinite choice sequence. A choice sequence of rational numbers is, to be sure,
generated by a “rule,” but the rule may leave room for some degree of freedom
in choosing the successive elements. It might, e.g., simply require that the n
! 1st choice be a rational number that lies within 1/n of the nth choice. The
set of real numbers generated by such semideterminate sequences is demonstrably
non-denumerable. Following his epistemological beliefs, Brouwer admitted only
those properties of a choice sequence which are determined by its rule and by a
finite number of actual choices. He incorporated this restriction into his
version of set theory and obtained a series of results that conflict with standard
(classical) mathematics. Most famously, he proved that every function that is
fully defined over an interval of real numbers is uniformly continuous.
(Pictorially, the graph of the function has no gaps or jumps.) Interestingly,
one corollary of this theorem is that the set of real numbers cannot be divided
into mutually exclusive subsets, a property that rigorously recovers the
Aristotelian picture of the continuum. The clash with classical mathematics.
Unlike his disciple Arend Heyting, who considered intuitionistic and classical
mathematics as separate and therefore compatible subjects, Brouwer viewed them
as incompatible treatments of a single subject matter. He even occasionally
accused classical mathematics of inconsistency at the places where it differed
from intuitionism. This clash concerns the basic concept of what counts as a
mathematical object. Intuitionism allows, and classical mathematics rejects,
objects that may be indeterminate with respect to some of their properties.
Logic and language. Because he believed that mathematical constructions occur
in prelinguistic consciousness, Brouwer refused to limit mathematics by the
expressive capacity of any language. Logic, he claimed, merely codifies already
completed stages of mathematical reasoning. For instance, the principle of the
excluded middle stems from an “observational period” during which mankind
catalogued finite phenomena (with decidable properties); and he derided
classical mathematics for inappropriately applying this principle to infinitary
aspects of mathematics. Formalization. Brouwer’s views notwithstanding, in 1930
Heyting produced formal systems for intuitionistic logic (IL) and number
theory. These inspired further formalizations (even of the theory of choice
sequences) and a series of proof-theoretic, semantic, and algebraic studies
that related intuitionistic and classical formal systems. Stephen Kleene, e.g.,
interpreted IL and other intuitionistic formal systems using the classical
theory of recursive functions. Gödel, who showed that IL cannot coincide with
any finite many-valued logic, demonstrated its relation to the modal logic, S4;
and Kripke provided a formal semantics for IL similar to the possible worlds
semantics for S4. For a while the study of intuitionistic formal systems used
strongly classical methods, but since the 1970s intuitionistic methods have
been employed as well. Meaning. Heyting’s formalization reflected a theory of
meaning implicit in Brouwer’s epistemology and metaphysics, a theory that
replaces the traditional correspondence notion of truth with the notion of
constructive proof. More recently Michael Dummett has extended this to a
warranted assertability theory of meaning for areas of discourse outside of
mathematics. He has shown how assertabilism provides a strategy for combating
realism about such things as physical objects, mental objects, and the past. --
mathematical structuralism, the view that the subject of any branch of
mathematics is a structure or structures. The slogan is that mathematics is the
science of structure. Define a “natural number system” to be a countably
infinite collection of objects with one designated initial object and a
successor relation that satisfies the principle of mathematical induction.
Examples of natural number systems are the Arabic numerals and an infinite
sequence of distinct moments of time. According to structuralism, arithmetic is
about the form or structure common to natural number systems. Accordingly, a
natural number is something like an office in an organization or a place in a
pattern. Similarly, real analysis is about the real number structure, the form
common to complete ordered fields. The philosophical issues concerning
structuralism concern the nature of structures and their places. Since a structure
is a one-over-many of sorts, it is something like a universal. Structuralists
have defended analogues of some of the traditional positions on universals,
such as realism and nominalism. Philosophical mathematics -- metamathematics,
the study and establishment, by restricted (and, in particular, finitary)
means, of the consistency or reliability of the various systems of classical
mathematics. The term was apparently introduced, with pejorative overtones
relating it to ‘metaphysics’, in the 1870s in connection with the discussion of
non-Euclidean geometries. It was introduced in the sense given here, shorn of
negative connotations, by Hilbert (see his “Neubegründung der Mathematik. Erste
Mitteilung,” 1922), who also referred to it as Beweistheorie or proof theory. A
few years later (specifically, in the 1930 papers “Über einige fundamentale
Begriffe der Metamathematik” and “Fundamentale Begriffe der Methodologie der
deduktiven Wissenschaften. I”) Tarski fitted it with a somewhat broader, less
restricted sense: broader in that the scope of its concerns was increased to
include not only questions of consistency, but also a host of other questions
(e.g. questions of independence, completeness and axiomatizability) pertaining
to what Tarski referred to as the “methodology of the deductive sciences”
(which was his synonym for ‘metamathematics’); less restricted in that the
standards of proof were relaxed so as to permit other than finitary – indeed,
other than constructive – means. On this broader conception of Tarski’s,
formalized deductive disciplines form the field of research of metamathematics
roughly in the same sense in which spatial entities form the field of research
in geometry or animals that of zoology. Disciplines, he said, are to be
regarded as sets of sentences to be investigated from the point of view of
their consistency, axiomatizability (of various types), completeness, and
categoricity or degree of categoricity, etc. Eventually (see the 1935 and 1936
papers “Grundzüge des Systemenkalkül, Erster Teil” and “Grundzüge der
Systemenkalkül, Zweiter Teil”) Tarski went on to include all manner of
semantical questions among the concerns of metamathematics, thus diverging
rather sharply from Hilbert’s original syntactical focus. Today, the terms
‘metatheory’ and ‘metalogic’ are used to signify that broad set of interests,
embracing both syntactical and semantical studies of formal languages and
systems, which Tarski came to include under the general heading of
metamathematics. Those having to do specifically with semantics belong to that
more specialized branch of modern logic known as model theory, while those
dealing with purely syntactical questions belong to what has come to be known
as proof theory (where this latter is now, however, permitted to employ other
than finitary methods in the proofs of its theorems).
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