boltzmann:
cited by Grice in his discussion of “Eddington’s Two Tables” -- physicist who
was a spirited advocate of the atomic theory and a pioneer in developing the
kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics. Boltzmann’s most famous
achievements were the transport equation, the H-theorem, and the probabilistic
interpretation of entropy. This work is summarized in his Vorlesungen über
Gastheorie “Lectures on the Theory of Gases,” 698. He held chairs in physics at
the universities of Graz, Vienna, Munich, and Leipzig before returning to
Vienna as professor of theoretical physics in 2. In 3 he succeeded Mach at
Boltzmann, Ludwig Boltzmann, Ludwig 92
92 Vienna and lectured on the philosophy of science. In the 0s the
atomic-kinetic theory was attacked by Mach and by the energeticists led by
Wilhelm Ostwald. Boltzmann’s counterattack can be found in his Populäre
Schriften “Popular Writings,” 5. Boltzmann agreed with his critics that many of
his mechanical models of gas molecules could not be true but, like Maxwell,
defended models as invaluable heuristic tools. Boltzmann also insisted that it
was futile to try to eliminate all metaphysical pictures from theories in favor
of bare equations. For Boltzmann, the goal of physics is not merely the
discovery of equations but the construction of a coherent picture of reality.
Boltzmann defended his H-theorem against the reversibility objection of
Loschmidt and the recurrence objection of Zermelo by conceding that a
spontaneous decrease in entropy was possible but extremely unlikely.
Boltzmann’s views that irreversibility depends on the probability of initial
conditions and that entropy increase determines the direction of time are defended
by Reichenbach in The Direction of Time 6.
bolzano:
b., an intentionalist philosopher considered by most as a pre-Griceian,
philosopher. He studied philosophy, mathematics, physics, and theology in
Prague; received the Ph.D.; was ordained a priest 1805; was appointed to a
chair in religion at Charles in 1806;
and, owing to his criticism of the Austrian constitution, was dismissed in
1819. He composed his two main works from 1823 through 1841: the
Wissenschaftslehre 4 vols., 1837 and the posthumous Grössenlehre. His ontology
and logical semantics influenced Husserl and, indirectly, Lukasiewicz, Tarski,
and others of the Warsaw School. His conception of ethics and social philosophy
affected both the cultural life of Bohemia and the Austrian system of education.
Bolzano recognized a profound distinction between the actual thoughts and
judgments Urteile of human beings, their linguistic expressions, and the
abstract propositions Sätze an sich and their parts which exist independently
of those thoughts, judgments, and expressions. A proposition in Bolzano’s sense
is a preexistent sequence of ideas-as-such Vorstellungen an sich. Only
propositions containing finite ideas-as-such are accessible to the mind. Real
things existing concretely in space and time have subsistence Dasein whereas
abstract objects such as propositions have only logical existence. Adherences,
i.e., forces, applied to certain concrete substances give rise to subjective
ideas, thoughts, or judgments. A subjective idea is a part of a judgment that
is not itself a judgment. The set of judgments is ordered by a causal relation.
Bolzano’s abstract world is constituted of sets, ideas-as-such, certain
properties Beschaffenheiten, and objects constructed from these. Thus, sentence
shapes are a kind of ideas-as-such, and certain complexes of ideas-as-such
constitute propositions. Ideas-as-such can be generated from expressions of a
language by postulates for the relation of being an object of something.
Analogously, properties can be generated by postulates for the relation of
something being applied to an object. Bolzano’s notion of religion is based on
his distinction between propositions and judgments. His Lehrbuch der
Religionswissenschaft 4 vols., 1834 distinguishes between religion in the
objective and subjective senses. The former is a set of religious propositions,
whereas the latter is the set of religious views of a single person. Hence, a
subjective religion can contain an objective one. By defining a religious
proposition as being moral and imperatives the rules of utilitarianism, Bolzano
integrated his notion of religion within his ontology. In the Grössenlehre
Bolzano intended to give a detailed, well-founded exposition of contemporary
mathematics and also to inaugurate new domains of research. Natural numbers are
defined, half a century before Frege, as properties of “bijective” sets the
members of which can be put in one-to-one correspondence, and real numbers are
conceived as properties of sets of certain infinite sequences of rational numbers.
The analysis of infinite sets brought him to reject the Euclidean doctrine that
the whole is always greater than any of its parts and, hence, to the insight
that a set is infinite if and only if it is bijective to a proper subset of
itself. This anticipates Peirce and Dedekind. Bolzano’s extension of the linear
continuum of finite numbers by infinitesimals implies a relatively constructive
approach to nonstandard analysis. In the development of standard analysis the
most remarkable result of the Grössenlehre is the anticipation of Weirstrass’s
discovery that there exist nowhere differentiable continuous functions. The
Wissenschaftslehre was intended to lay the logical and epistemological
foundations of Bolzano’s mathematics. A theory of science in Bolzano’s sense is
a collection of rules for delimiting the set of scientific textbooks. Whether a
Bolzano, Bernard Bolzano, Bernard 93 93
class of true propositions is a worthwhile object of representation in a
scientific textbook is an ethical question decidable on utilitarian principles.
Bolzano proceeded from an expanded and standardized ordinary language through
which he could describe propositions and their parts. He defined the semantic
notion of truth and introduced the function corresponding to a “replacement”
operation on propositions. One of his major achievements was his definition of
logical derivability logische Ableitbarkeit between sets of propositions: B is
logically derivable from A if and only if all elements of the sum of A and B
are simultaneously true for some replacement of their non-logical ideas-as-such
and if all elements of B are true for any such replacement that makes all
elements of A true. In addition to this notion, which is similar to Tarski’s
concept of consequence of 6, Bolzano introduced a notion corresponding to
Gentzen’s concept of consequence. A proposition is universally valid
allgemeingültig if it is derivable from the null class. In his proof theory
Bolzano formulated counterparts to Gentzen’s cut rule. Bolzano introduced a
notion of inductive probability as a generalization of derivability in a
limited domain. This notion has the formal properties of conditional
probability. These features and Bolzano’s characterization of probability
density by the technique of variation are reminiscent of Vitters’s inductive
logic and Carnap’s theory of regular confirmation functions. The replacement of
conceptual complexes in propositions would, if applied to a formalized
language, correspond closely to a substitutionsemantic conception of
quantification. His own philosophical language was based on a kind of free
logic. In essence, Bolzano characterized a substitution-semantic notion of
consequence with a finite number of antecedents. His quantification over
individual and general concepts amounts to the introduction of a non-elementary
logic of lowest order containing a quantification theory of predicate variables
but no set-theoretical principles such as choice axioms. His conception of
universal validity and of the semantic superstructure of logic leads to a
semantically adequate extension of the predicate-logical version of Lewis’s
system S5 of modal logic without paradoxes. It is also possible to simulate
Bolzano’s theory of probability in a substitution-semantically constructed theory
of probability functions. Hence, by means of an ontologically parsimonious
superstructure without possible-worlds metaphysics, Bolzano was able to delimit
essentially the realms of classical logical truth and additive probability
spaces. In geometry Bolzano created a new foundation from a topological point
of view. He defined the notion of an isolated point of a set in a way
reminiscent of the notion of a point at which a set is well-dimensional in the
sense of Urysohn and Menger. On this basis he introduced his topological notion
of a continuum and formulated a recursive definition of the dimensionality of
non-empty subsets of the Euclidean 3-space, which is closely related to the
inductive dimension concept of Urysohn and Menger. In a remarkable paragraph of
an unfinished late manuscript on geometry he stated the celebrated curve
theorem of Jordan.
bonaria –
a church on an Italian island – Grice sailed there during his Grand Tour to
Italy and Greece. He loved it! And he loved reading the Latin inscriptions and
practicing the Latin he had learned at Clifton.
bonaria:
H. P. Grice was going to visit the River Plate with Noel Coward, but he got
sick -- – or South American philosophy – “Bonaria” was settled by Italians
after the matron saint of sailors, “Bonaria,” – itself settled by Ligurians,
the first Italians to settle in Buenos Aires and the Argentine area of the
River Plate -- the philosophy of South America, which is European in origin and
constitutes a chapter in the history of Western philosophy (rather than say, Japanese – there was a strong emigration
of Japanese to Buenos Aires, but they remained mainly in the dry laundry
business). Pre-Columbian (“Indian”) indigenous cultures had developed ideas
about the world that have been interpreted by some scholars as philosophical,
but there is no evidence that any of those ideas were incorporated into the
philosophy later practiced in Latin America. It is difficult to characterize
Latin American philosophy in a way applicable to all of its 500-year history.
The most one can say is that, in contrast with European and Anglo-American
philosophy, it has maintained a strong human and social interest, has been
consistently affected by Scholastic and Catholic thought, and has significantly
affected the social and political institutions in the region. South American
philosophers (especially if NOT from Buenos Aires) tend to be active in the
educational, political, and social lives of their countries and deeply
concerned with their own cultural identity (except if they are from Buenos
Aires, who have their identity well settled in Europe, as European exiles or
expatriates that that they are) The history of philosophy in Latin America can
be divided into four periods: colonial, independentist, positivist, and contemporary.
Colonial period (c.1550–c.1750). This period was dominated by the type of
Scholasticism officially practiced in the Iberian peninsula. The texts studied
were those of medieval Scholastics, primarily Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and of
their Iberian commentators, Vitoria, Soto, Fonseca, and, above all, Suárez. The
university curriculum was modeled on that of major Iberian universities
(Salamanca, Alcalá, Coimbra), and instructors produced both systematic
treatises and commentaries on classical, medieval, and contemporary texts. The
philosophical concerns in the colonies were those prevalent in Spain and
Portugal and centered on logical and metaphysical issues inherited from the
Middle Ages and on political and legal questions raised by the discovery and colonization
of America. Among the former were issues involving the logic of terms and
propositions and the problems of universals and individuation; among the latter
were questions concerning the rights of Indians and the relations of the
natives with the conquerors. The main philosophical center during the early
colonial period was Mexico; Peru became important in the seventeenth century.
Between 1700 and 1750 other centers developed, but by that time Scholasticism
had begun to decline. The founding of the Royal and Pontifical University of
Mexico in 1553 inaugurated Scholastic instruction in the New World. The first
teacher of philosophy at the university was Alonso de la Vera Cruz (c.1504–84),
an Augustinian and disciple of Soto. He composed several didactic treatises on
La Peyrère, Isaac Latin American philosophy 483 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM
Page 483 logic, metaphysics, and science, including Recognitio summularum
(“Introductory Logic,” 1554), Dialectica resolutio (“Advanced Logic,” 1554),
and Physica speculatio (“Physics,” 1557). He also wrote a theologico-legal
work, the Speculum conjugiorum (“On Marriage,” 1572), concerned with the status
of precolonial Indian marriages. Alonso’s works are eclectic and didactic and
show the influence of Aristotle, Peter of Spain, and Vitoria in particular.
Another important Scholastic figure in Mexico was the Dominican Tomás de
Mercado (c.1530–75). He produced commentaries on the logical works of Peter of
Spain and Aristotle and a treatise on international commerce, Summa de tratos y
contratos (“On Contracts,” 1569). His other sources are Porphyry and Aquinas.
Perhaps the most important figure of the period was Antonio Rubio (1548–1615),
author of the most celebrated Scholastic book written in the New World, Logica
mexicana (“Mexican Logic,” 1605). It underwent seven editions in Europe and
became a logic textbook in Alcalá. Rubio’s sources are Aristotle, Porphyry, and
Aquinas, but he presents original treatments of several logical topics. Rubio
also commented on several of Aristotle’s other works. In Peru, two authors
merit mention. Juan Pérez Menacho (1565–1626) was a prolific writer, but only a
moral treatise, Theologia et moralis tractatus (“Treatise on Theology and
Morals”), and a commentary on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae remain. The
Chilean-born Franciscan, Alfonso Briceño (c.1587–1669), worked in Nicaragua and
Venezuela, but the center of his activities was Lima. In contrast with the
Aristotelian-Thomistic flavor of the philosophy of most of his contemporaries,
Briceño was a Scotistic Augustinian. This is evident in Celebriores
controversias in primum sententiarum Scoti (“On Scotus’s First Book of the
Sentences,” 1638) and Apologia de vita et doctrina Joannis Scotti (“Apology for
John Scotus,” 1642). Although Scholasticism dominated the intellectual life of
colonial Latin America, some authors were also influenced by humanism. Among
the most important in Mexico were Juan de Zumárraga (c.1468–1548); the
celebrated defender of the Indians, Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566); Carlos
Sigüenza y Góngora (1645–1700); and Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1651–95). The
last one is a famous poet, now considered a precursor of the feminist movement.
In Peru, Nicolás de Olea (1635–1705) stands out. Most of these authors were
trained in Scholasticism but incorporated the concerns and ideas of humanists
into their work. Independentist period (c.1750–c.1850). Just before and
immediately after independence, leading Latin American intellectuals lost
interest in Scholastic issues and became interested in social and political
questions, although they did not completely abandon Scholastic sources. Indeed,
the theories of natural law they inherited from Vitoria and Suárez played a
significant role in forming their ideas. But they also absorbed non-Scholastic
European authors. The rationalism of Descartes and other Continental
philosophers, together with the empiricism of Locke, the social ideas of
Rousseau, the ethical views of Bentham, the skepticism of Voltaire and other
Encyclopedists, the political views of Condorcet and Montesquieu, the
eclecticism of Cousin, and the ideology of Destutt de Tracy, all contributed to
the development of liberal ideas that were a background to the independentist
movement. Most of the intellectual leaders of this movement were men of action
who used ideas for practical ends, and their views have limited theoretical
value. They made reason a measure of legitimacy in social and governmental
matters, and found the justification for revolutionary ideas in natural law. Moreover,
they criticized authority; some, regarding religion as superstitious, opposed
ecclesiastical power. These ideas paved the way for the later development of
positivism. The period begins with the weakening hold of Scholasticism on Latin
American intellectuals and the growing influence of early modern philosophy,
particularly Descartes. Among the first authors to turn to modern philosophy
was Juan Benito Díaz de Gamarra y Dávalos (1745–83) in Mexico who wrote Errores
del entendimiento humano (“Errors of Human Understanding,” 1781) and Academias
filosóficas (“Philosophical Academies,” 1774). Also in Mexico was Francisco
Javier Clavijero (1731–87), author of a book on physics and a general history
of Mexico. In Brazil the turn away from Scholasticism took longer. One of the
first authors to show the influence of modern philosophy was Francisco de
Mont’Alverne (1784– 1858) in Compêndio de filosofia (1883). These first
departures from Scholasticism were followed by the more consistent efforts of
those directly involved in the independentist movement. Among these were Simón
Bolívar (1783–1830), leader of the rebellion against Spain in the Andean
countries of South America, and the Mexicans Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753–
1811), José María Morelos y Paván (1765– 1815), and José Joaquín Fernández de
Lizardi Latin American philosophy Latin American philosophy 484 4065h-l.qxd
08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 484 (1776–1827). In Argentina, Mariano Moreno
(1778–1811), Juan Crisóstomo Lafimur (d. 1823), and Diego Alcorta (d. 1808),
among others, spread the liberal ideas that served as a background for
independence. Positivist period (c.1850–c.1910). During this time, positivism
became not only the most popular philosophy in Latin America but also the
official philosophy of some countries. After 1910, however, positivism declined
drastically. Latin American positivism was eclectic, influenced by a variety of
thinkers, including Comte, Spencer, and Haeckel. Positivists emphasized the
explicative value of empirical science while rejecting metaphysics. According
to them, all knowledge is based on experience rather than theoretical
speculation, and its value lies in its practical applications. Their motto,
preserved on the Brazilian flag, was “Order and Progress.” This positivism left
little room for freedom and values; the universe moved inexorably according to
mechanistic laws. Positivism was a natural extension of the ideas of the
independentists. It was, in part, a response to the needs of the newly
liberated countries of Latin America. After independence, the concerns of Latin
American intellectuals shifted from political liberation to order, justice, and
progress. The beginning of positivism can be traced to the time when Latin
America, responding to these concerns, turned to the views of French socialists
such as Saint-Simon and Fourier. The Argentinians Esteban Echevarría (1805–51)
and Juan Bautista Alberdi (1812–84) were influenced by them. Echevarría’s Dogma
socialista (“Socialist Dogma,” 1846) combines socialist ideas with eighteenth-century
rationalism and literary Romanticism, and Alberdi follows suit, although he
eventually turned toward Comte. Alberdi is, moreover, the first Latin American
philosopher to worry about developing a philosophy adequate to the needs of
Latin America. In Ideas (1842), he stated that philosophy in Latin America
should be compatible with the economic, political, and social requirements of
the region. Another transitional thinker, influenced by both Scottish
philosophy and British empiricism, was the Venezuelan Andrés Bello (1781–1865).
A prolific writer, he is the most important Latin American philosopher of the
nineteenth century. His Filosofía del entendimiento (“Philosophy of
Understanding,” 1881) reduces metaphysics to psychology. Bello also developed
original ideas about language and history. After 1829, he worked in Chile,
where his influence was strongly felt. The generation of Latin American
philosophers after Alberdi and Bello was mostly positivistic. Positivism’s
heyday was the second half of the nineteenth century, but two of its most
distinguished advocates, the Argentinian José Ingenieros (1877–1925) and the
Cuban Enrique José Varona (1849–1933), worked well into the twentieth century.
Both modified positivism in important ways. Ingenieros left room for
metaphysics, which, according to him, deals in the realm of the
“yet-to-be-experienced.” Among his most important books are Hacia una moral sin
dogmas (“Toward a Morality without Dogmas,” 1917), where the influence of
Emerson is evident, Principios de psicologia (“Principles of Psychology,”
1911), where he adopts a reductionist approach to psychology, and El hombre
mediocre (“The Mediocre Man,” 1913), an inspirational book popular among Latin
American youths. In Conferencias filosóficas (“Philosophical Lectures,”
1880–88), Varona went beyond the mechanistic explanations of behavior common
among positivists. In Mexico the first and leading positivist was Gabino
Barreda (1818–81), who reorganized Mexican education under President Juárez. An
ardent follower of Comte, Barreda made positivism the basis of his educational
reforms. He was followed by Justo Sierra (1848–1912), who turned toward Spencer
and Darwin and away from Comte, criticizing Barreda’s dogmatism. Positivism was
introduced in Brazil by Tobias Barreto (1839–89) and Silvio Romero (1851– 1914)
in Pernambuco, around 1869. In 1875 Benjamin Constant (1836–91) founded the
Positivist Society in Rio de Janeiro. The two most influential exponents of
positivism in the country were Miguel Lemos (1854–1916) and Raimundo Teixeira
Mendes (1855–1927), both orthodox followers of Comte. Positivism was more than
a technical philosophy in Brazil. Its ideas spread widely, as is evident from
the inclusion of positivist ideas in the first republican constitution. The
most prominent Chilean positivists were José Victorino Lastarria (1817–88) and
Valentín Letelier (1852–1919). More dogmatic adherents to the movement were the
Lagarrigue brothers, Jorge (d. 1894), Juan Enrique (d. 1927), and Luis (d.
1953), who promoted positivism in Chile well after it had died everywhere else
in Latin America. Contemporary period (c.1910–present). Contemporary Latin
American philosophy began Latin American philosophy Latin American philosophy
485 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 485 with the demise of positivism. The
first part of the period was dominated by thinkers who rebelled against
positivism. The principal figures, called the Founders by Francisco Romero,
were Alejandro Korn (1860–1936) in Argentina, Alejandro Octavio Deústua
(1849–1945) in Peru, José Vasconcelos (1882–1959) and Antonio Caso (1883–1946)
in Mexico, Enrique Molina (1871– 1964) in Chile, Carlos Vaz Ferreira
(1872–1958) in Uruguay, and Raimundo de Farias Brito (1862–1917) in Brazil. In
spite of little evidence of interaction among these philosophers, their aims
and concerns were similar. Trained as positivists, they became dissatisfied
with positivism’s dogmatic intransigence, mechanistic determinism, and emphasis
on pragmatic values. Deústua mounted a detailed criticism of positivistic
determinism in Las ideas de orden y de libertad en la historia del pensamiento
humano (“The Ideas of Order and Freedom in the History of Human Thought,”
1917–19). About the same time, Caso presented his view of man as a spiritual
reality that surpasses nature in La existencia como economía, como desinterés y
como caridad (“Existence as Economy, Disinterestedness, and Charity,” 1916).
Following in Caso’s footsteps and inspired by Pythagoras and the Neoplatonists,
Vasconcelos developed a metaphysical system with aesthetic roots in El monismo
estético (“Aesthetic Monism,” 1918). An even earlier criticism of positivism is
found in Vaz Ferreira’s Lógica viva (“Living Logic,” 1910), which contrasts the
abstract, scientific logic favored by positivists with a logic of life based on
experience, which captures reality’s dynamic character. The earliest attempt at
developing an alternative to positivism, however, is found in Farias Brito.
Between 1895 and 1905 he published a trilogy, Finalidade do mundo (“The World’s
Goal”), in which he conceived the world as an intellectual activity which he
identified with God’s thought, and thus as essentially spiritual. The intellect
unites and reflects reality but the will divides it. Positivism was superseded
by the Founders with the help of ideas imported first from France and later
from Germany. The process began with the influence of Étienne Boutroux
(1845–1921) and Bergson and of French vitalism and intuitionism, but it was
cemented when Ortega y Gasset introduced into Latin America the thought of
Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, and other German philosophers during his visit to
Argentina in 1916. The influence of Bergson was present in most of the
founders, particularly Molina, who in 1916 wrote La filosofía de Bergson (“The
Philosophy of Bergson”). Korn was exceptional in turning to Kant in his search
for an alternative to positivism. In La libertad creadora (“Creative Freedom,”
1920–22), he defends a creative concept of freedom. In Axiología (“Axiology,”
1930), his most important work, he defends a subjectivist position. The impact
of German philosophy, including Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the
neo-Kantians, and of Ortega’s philosophical perspectivism and historicism, were
strongly felt in the generation after the founders. The Mexican Samuel Ramos
(1897–1959), the Argentinians Francisco Romero (1891–1962) and Carlos Astrada
(1894–1970), the Brazilian Alceu Amoroso Lima (1893–1982), the Peruvian José
Carlos Mariátegui (1895–1930), and others followed the Founders’ course,
attacking positivism and favoring, in many instances, a philosophical style
that contrasted with its scientistic emphasis. The most important of these
figures was Romero, whose Theory of Man (1952) developed a systematic philosophical
anthropology in the context of a metaphysics of transcendence. Reality is
arranged according to degrees of transcendence, the lowest of which is the
physical and the highest the spiritual. The bases of Ramos’s thought are found
in Ortega as well as in Scheler and N. Hartmann. Ramos appropriated Ortega’s
perspectivism and set out to characterize the Mexican situation in Profile of
Man and Culture in Mexico (1962). Some precedent existed for the interest in
the culturally idiosyncratic in Vasconcelos’s Raza cósmica (“Cosmic Race,”
1925), but Ramos opened the doors to a philosophical awareness of Latin
American culture that has been popular ever since. Ramos’s most traditional
work, Hacia un nuevo humanismo (“Toward a New Humanism,” 1940), presents a philosophical
anthropology of Orteguean inspiration. Astrada studied in Germany and adopted
existential and phenomenological ideas in El juego existential (“The
Existential Game,” 1933), while criticizing Scheler’s axiology. Later, he
turned toward Hegel and Marx in Existencialismo y crisis de la filosofía
(“Existentialism and the Crisis of Philosophy,” 1963). Amoroso Lima worked in
the Catholic tradition and his writings show the influence of Maritain. His O
espírito e o mundo (“Spirit and World,” 1936) and Idade, sexo e tempo (“Age,
Sex, and Time,” 1938) present a spiritual view of human beings, which he
contrasted with Marxist and existentialist views. Mariátegui is the most
distinguished representative of MarxLatin American phiism in Latin America. His
Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana (“Seven Essays on the
Interpretation of Peruvian Reality,” 1928) contains an important statement of
social philosophy, in which he uses Marxist ideas freely to analyze the
Peruvian sociopolitical situation. In the late 1930s and 1940s, as a
consequence of the political upheaval created by the Spanish Civil War, a
substantial group of peninsular philosophers settled in Latin America. Among
the most influential were Joaquín Xirau (1895– 1946), Eduardo Nicol (b.1907),
Luis Recaséns Siches (b.1903), Juan D. García Bacca (b.1901), and, perhaps most
of all, José Gaos (1900–69). Gaos, like Caso, was a consummate teacher,
inspiring many students. Apart from the European ideas they brought, these
immigrants introduced methodologically more sophisticated ways of doing
philosophy, including the practice of studying philosophical sources in the
original languages. Moreover, they helped to promote Pan-American
communication. The conception of hispanidad they had inherited from Unamuno and
Ortega helped the process. Their influence was felt particularly by the
generation born around 1910. With this generation, Latin American philosophy
established itself as a professional and reputable discipline, and
philosophical organizations, research centers, and journals sprang up. The core
of this generation worked in the German tradition. Risieri Frondizi (Argentina,
1910–83), Eduardo García Máynez (Mexico, b.1908), Juan Llambías de Azevedo
(Uruguay, 1907–72), and Miguel Reale (Brazil, b.1910) were all influenced by
Scheler and N. Hartmann and concerned themselves with axiology and
philosophical anthropology. Frondizi, who was also influenced by empiricist
philosophy, defended a functional view of the self in Substancia y función en
el problema del yo (“The Nature of the Self,” 1952) and of value as a Gestalt
quality in Qué son los valores? (“What is Value?” 1958). Apart from these
thinkers, there were representatives of other traditions in this generation.
Following Ramos, Leopoldo Zea (Mexico, b.1912) stimulated the study of the
history of ideas in Mexico and initiated a controversy that still rages
concerning the identity and possibility of a truly Latin American philosophy.
Representing existentialism was Vicente Ferreira da Silva (Brazil, b.1916), who
did not write much but presented a vigorous criticism of what he regarded as
Hegelian and Marxist subjectivism in Ensaios filosóficos (“Philosophical
Essays,” 1948). Before he became interested in existentialism, he had been
interested in logic, publishing the first textbook of mathematical logic
written in South America – Elementos de lógica matemática (“Elements of
Mathematical Logic,” 1940). A philosopher whose interest in mathematical logic
moved him away from phenomenology is Francisco Miró Quesada (Peru, b.1918). He
explored rationality and eventually the perspective of analytic philosophy.
Owing to the influence of Maritain, several members of this generation adopted
a NeoThomistic or Scholastic approach. The main figures to do so were Oswaldo
Robles (b.1904) in Mexico, Octavio Nicolás Derisi (b.1907) in Argentina,
Alberto Wagner de Reyna (b.1915) in Peru, and Clarence Finlayson (1913–54) in
Chile and Colombia. Even those authors who worked in this tradition addressed
issues of axiology and philosophical anthropology. There was, therefore,
considerable thematic unity in South American philosophy. The overall
orientation was not drastically different from the preceding period. The
Founders vitalism against positivism, and the following generation, with
Ortega’s help, took over the process, incorporating spiritualism and the new
ideas introduced by phenomenology and existentialism to continue in a similar
direction. As a result, the phenomenology amd existentialism dominated philosophy
in South America. To this must be added the renewed impetus of
neoScholasticism. Few philosophers worked outside these philosophical currents,
and those who did had no institutional power. Among these were sympathizers of
philosophical analysis, and those who contributed to the continuing development
of Marxism. This situation has begun to change substantially as a result of a
renewed interest in Marxism, the progressive influence of Oxford analytic
philosophy (with a number of philosophers from Buenos Aires studying usually
under British-Council scholarships, under P. F. Strawson, D. F. Pears, H. L. A.
Hart, and others – these later founded the Buenos-Aires-based Argentine Society
for Philosophical Analysis --. In Buenos Aires, English philosophy and culture
in general is rated higher than others, due to the influence of the British
emigration to the River-Plate area – The pragmatics of H. P. Grice is
particularly influential in that it brings a breath of fresh area to the more
ritualistic approach as favoured by his nemesis, J. L. Austin --. American
philosophers are uually read provided they, too, had the proper Oxonian
education or background -- and the development of a new philosophical current
called the philosophy of liberation. Moreover, the question raised by Zea
concerning the identity and possibility of a South American philosophy remains
a focus of attention and controversy. And, more recently, there has been
interest in postmodernism, the theory of communicative action,
deconstructionism, neopragmatism, and feminism. Socialist thought is not new to
South America. In this century, Emilio Frugoni (1880–1969) in Uruguay and
Mariátegui in Peru, among others, adopted a Marxist perspective, although a
heterodox one. But only in the last three decades has Marxism been taken
seriously in Latin American academic circles. Indeed, until recently Marxism
was a marginal philosophical movement in Latin America. The popularity of the
Marxist perspective has made possible its increasing institutionalization. Among
its most important thinkers are Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez (Spain, b.1915), Vicente
Lombardo Toledano (b.1894) and Eli de Gortari (b.1918) in Mexico, and Caio
Prado Júnior (1909–86) in Brazil. In contrast to Marxism, philosophical
analysis arrived late in Latin America and, owing to its technical and academic
character, has not yet influenced more than a relatively small number of
philosophers – and also because in the milieu of Buenos Aires, the influence of
French culture is considered to have much more prestige in mainstream culture
than the more parochial empiricist brand coming from the British Isles – unless
it’s among the Friends of the Argentine Centre for English Culture. German
philosophy is considered rough in contrast to the pleasing to the ear sounds of
French philosophy, and Buenos Aires locals find the very sound of the long
German philosophical terms a source of amusement and mirth. Since Buenos Aires
habitants are Italians, it is logical that they do not have much affinity for
Italian philosophy, which they think it’s too local and less extravagant than
the French. There was a strong immigration of German philosophers to Buenos
Aires after the end of the Second World War, too. Colonials from New Zealand,
Australia, Canada, or the former colonies in North America are never as
welcomed in Buenos Aires as those from the very Old World. The reason is
obvious: as being New-Worlders, if they are going to be educated, it is by
Older-Worlders – Nobody in Buenos Aires would follow a New-World philosopher or
a colonial philosopher – but at most a school which originated in the Continent
of Europe. The British are regarded as by nature unphilosophical and to follow
a British philosopher in Buenos Aires is considered an English joke!
Nonetheless, and thanks in part to its high theoretical caliber, analysis has
become one of the most forceful philosophical currents in the region. The
publication of journals with an analytic bent such as Crítica in Mexico,
Análisis Filosófico in Argentina, and Manuscrito in Brazil, the foundation of
The Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico (SADAF) in Argentina and the
Sociedad Filosófica Iberoamericana (SOFIA) in Mexico, and the growth of
analytic publications in high-profile journals of neutral philosophical
orientation, such as Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía, indicate that
philosophical analysis is well established in at least the most European bit of
the continent: the river Plate area of Buenos Aires. The main centers of
analytic activity are Buenos Aires, on the River Plate, and far afterwards, the
much less British-influenced centers like Mexico City, or the provincial
varsity of Campinas and São Paulo in Brazil. The interests of South American
philosophical analysts center on questions of pragmatics, rather than semantics,
-- and are generally sympathetic to Griceian developments -- ethical and legal
philosophy, the philosophy of science, and more recently cognitive science.
Among its most important proponents are Genaro R. Carrio (b.1922), Gregorio
Klimovsky (b.1922), and Tomas Moro Simpson (b.1929), E. A. Rabossi (b. Buenos
Aires), O. N. Guariglia (b. Buenos Aires), in Argentina – Strawson was a
frequent lecturer at the Argentine Society for Philosopohical Analysis, and
many other Oxonian philosophers on sabbatical leave. The Argentine Society for
Philosophical Analysis, usually in conjunction with the Belgravia-based
Anglo-Argentine Society organize seminars and symposia – when an Argentine
philosopher emigrates he ceases to be considered an Argentine philosopher –
students who earn their maximal degrees overseas are not counted either as
Argentine philosophers by Argentine (or specifically Buenos Aires) philosophers
(They called them braindrained, brainwashed!) Luis Villoro (Spain, b. 1922) in
Mexico; Francisco Miró Quesada in Peru; Roberto Torretti (Chile, b.1930) in
Puerto Rico; Mario Bunge (Argentina, b.1919), who emigrated to Canada; and
Héctor-Neri Castañeda (Guatemala, 1924–91). The philosophy of liberation is an
autochthonous Latin American movement that mixes an emphasis on Latin American
intellectual independence with Catholic and Marxist ideas. The historicist
perspective of Leopoldo Zea, the movement known as the theology of liberation,
and some elements from the national-popular Peronist ideology prepared the
ground for it. The movement started in the early 1970s with a group of
Argentinian philosophers, who, owing to the military repression of 1976–83 in
Argentina, went into exile in various countries of Latin America. This early
diaspora created permanent splits in the movement and spread its ideas
throughout the region. Although proponents of this viewpoint do not always
agree on their goals, they share the notion of liberation as a fundamental
concept: the liberation from the slavery imposed on Latin America by imported
ideologies and the development of a genuinely autochthonous thought resulting
from reflection on the South American reality. As such, their views are an
extension of the thought of Ramos and others who earlier in the century
initiated the discussion of the cultural identity of South America.
bonum: One of the four transcendentals, along with ‘unum,’
‘pulchrum,’ and ‘verum’. Grice makes fun of Hare n “Language of Morals.” To
what extent is Hare saying that to say ‘x is good’ means ‘I approve of x’? (Strictly:
“To say that something is good is to recommend it”). To say " I approve of x " is in part to do the same thing
as when we say " x is good " a statement of the
form " X
is good" strictly designates " I approve of X "
and suggests " Do so as well". It should be in Part II to
“Language of Morals”. Old Romans did not have an article, so for them it is
unum, bonum, verum, and pulchrum. They were trying to translate the very
articled Grecian things, ‘to agathon,’ ‘to alethes,’ and ‘to kallon.’ The three
references given by Liddell and Scott are good ones. τὸ ἀ., the good,
Epich.171.5, cf. Pl.R.506b, 508e, Arist.Metaph.1091a31, etc. The Grecian Grice
is able to return to the ‘article’. Grice has an early essay on ‘the good,’ and
he uses the same expression at Oxford for the Locke lectures when looking for a
‘desiderative’ equivalent to ‘the true.’ Hare had dedicated the full part of
his “Language of Morals” to ‘good,’ so Grice is well aware of the centrality of
the topic. He was irritated by what he called a performatory approach to the
good, where ‘x is good’ =df. ‘I approve of x.’ Surely that’s a conversational
implicatum. However, in his analysis of reasoning (the demonstratum – since he
uses the adverb ‘demonstrably’ as a marker of pretty much like ‘concusively,’
as applied to both credibility and desirability, we may focus on what Grice
sees as ‘bonum’ as one of the ‘absolutes,’ the absolute in the desirability
realm, as much as the ‘verum’ is the absolute in the credibility realm. Grice
has an excellent argument regarding ‘good.’ His example is ‘cabbage,’ but also
‘sentence.’ Grice’s argument is to turn the disimpicatum into an explicitum. To
know what a ‘cabbage,’ or a formula is, you need to know first what a ‘good’
cabbage is or a ‘well-formed formula,’ is. An ill-formed sentence is not deemed
by Grice a sentence. This means that we define ‘x’ as ‘optimum x.’ This is not
so strange, seeing that ‘optimum’ is actually the superlative of ‘bonum’ (via
the comparative). It does not require very
sharp eyes, but only the willingness to use the eyes one has, to see that our
speech and thought are permeated with the notion of purpose; to say what a
certain kind of thing is is only too frequently partly to say what it is for.
This feature applies to our talk and thought of, for example, ships, shoes,
sealing wax, and kings; and, possibly and perhaps most excitingly, it extends
even to cabbages.“There is a range of cases in which, so far from its
being the case that, typically, one first learns what it is to be a F and then,
at the next stage, learns what criteria distinguish a good F from a F which is
less good, or not good at all, one needs first to learn what it is to be a good
F, and then subsequently to learn what degree of approximation to being a good
F will qualify an item as a F; if the gap between some item x and good Fs is
sufficently horrendous, x is debarred from counting as a F at all, even as a
bad F.”“In the John Locke Lectures, I called a concept which exhibits this
feature as a ‘value-paradeigmatic’ concept. One example of a
value-paradeigmatic concept is the concept of reasoning; another, I now suggest,
is that of sentence. It may well be that the existence of value-oriented
concepts (¢b ¢ 2 . • • . ¢n) depends on the prior existence of pre-rational
concepts ( ¢~, ¢~ . . . . ¢~), such that an item x qualifies for the
application of the concept ¢ 2 if and only if x satisfies a rationally-approved
form or version of the corresponding pre-rational concept ¢'. We have a
(primary) example of a step in reasoning only if we have a transition of a
certain rationally approved kind from one thought or utterance to another. ---
bonum commune -- common good, a normative standard in Thomistic and
Neo-Thomistic ethics for evaluating the justice of social, legal, and political
arrangements, referring to those arrangements that promote the full flourishing
of everyone in the community. Every good can be regarded as both a goal to be
sought and, when achieved, a source of human fulfillment. A common good is any
good sought by and/or enjoyed by two or more persons as friendship is a good
common to the friends; the common good is the good of a “perfect” i.e.,
complete and politically organized human community a good that is the common goal of all who
promote the justice of that community, as well as the common source of
fulfillment of all who share in those just arrangements. ‘Common’ is an
analogical term referring to kinds and degrees of sharing ranging from mere
similarity to a deep ontological communion. Thus, any good that is a genuine
perfection of our common human nature is a common good, as opposed to merely
idiosyncratic or illusory goods. But goods are common in a deeper sense when
the degree of sharing is more than merely coincidental: two children engaged in
parallel play enjoy a good in common, but they realize a common good more fully
by engaging each other in one game; similarly, if each in a group watches the
same good movie alone at home, they have enjoyed a good in common but they
realize this good at a deeper level when they watch the movie together in a
theater and discuss it afterward. In short, common good includes aggregates of
private, individual goods but transcends these aggregates by the unique
fulfillment afforded by mutuality, shared activity, and communion of persons.
As to the sources in Thomistic ethics for this emphasis on what is deeply
shared over what merely coincides, the first is Aristotle’s understanding of us
as social and political animals: many aspects of human perfection, on this
view, can be achieved only through shared activities in communities, especially
the political community. The second is Christian Trinitarian theology, in which
the single Godhead involves the mysterious communion of three divine “persons,”
the very exemplar of a common good; human personhood, by analogy, is similarly
perfected only in a relationship of social communion. The achievement of such
intimately shared goods requires very complex and delicate arrangements of
coordination to prevent the exploitation and injustice that plague shared
endeavors. The establishment and maintenance of these social, legal, and
political arrangements is “the” common good of a political society, because the
enjoyment of all goods is so dependent upon the quality and the justice of
those arrangements. The common good of the political community includes, but is
not limited to, public goods: goods characterized by non-rivalry and
non-excludability and which, therefore, must generally be provided by public
institutions. By the principle of subsidiarity, the common good is best
promoted by, in addition to the state, many lower-level non-public societies,
associations, and individuals. Thus, religiously affiliated schools educating
non-religious minority chilcommission common good 161 161 dren might promote the common good
without being public goods.
booleian:
algebra: Peirce was irritated by the spelling “Boolean” “Surely it is
Booleian.” 1 an ordered triple B,†,3, where B is a set containing at least two
elements and † and 3 are unary and binary operations in B such that i a 3 b % b
3 a, ii a 3 b 3 c % a 3 b 3 c, iii a 3 † a % b 3 † b, and iv a 3 b = a if and
only if a 3 † b % a 3 † a; 2 the theboo-hurrah theory Boolean algebra 95 95 ory of such algebras. Such structures are
modern descendants of algebras published by the mathematician G. Boole in 1847
and representing the first successful algebraic treatment of logic.
Interpreting † and 3 as negation and conjunction, respectively, makes Boolean
algebra a calculus of propositions. Likewise, if B % {T,F} and † and 3 are the
truth-functions for negation and conjunction, then B,†,3 the truth table for those two
connectives forms a two-element Boolean
algebra. Picturing a Boolean algebra is simple. B,†,3 is a full subset algebra
if B is the set of all subsets of a given set and † and 3 are set
complementation and intersection, respectively. Then every finite Boolean
algebra is isomorphic to a full subset algebra, while every infinite Boolean
algebra is isomorphic to a subalgebra of such an algebra. It is for this reason
that Boolean algebra is often characterized as the calculus of classes.
bootstrap:
Grice certainly didn’t have a problem with meta-langauge paradoxes. Two of his
maxims are self refuting and ‘sic’-ed: “be perspicuous [sic]” and “be brief
(avoid unnecessary prolixity) [sic].” The principle introduced by Grice in
“Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P.
Grice,” to limit the power of the meta-language. The weaker your metalanguage
the easier you’ll be able to pull yourself by your own bootstraps. He uses
bootlaces in “Metaphysics, Philosophical Eschatology, and Plato’s Republic.”
border-line: case,
in the logical sense, a case that falls within the “gray area” or “twilight zone”
associated with a vague concept; in the pragmatic sense, a doubtful, disputed,
or arguable case. These two senses are not mutually exclusive, of course. A
moment of time near sunrise or sunset may be a borderline case of daytime or
nighttime in the logical sense, but not in the pragmatic sense. A sufficiently
freshly fertilized ovum may be a borderline case of a person in both senses.
Fermat’s hypothesis, or any of a large number of other disputed mathematical
propositions, may be a borderline case in the pragmatic sense but not in the
logical sense. A borderline case per se in either sense need not be a limiting
case or a degenerate case.
bosanquet: b.: Cited by H. P. Grice. Very English
philosopher (almost like Austin or Grice), the most systematic Oxford absolute
idealist and, with F. H. Bradley, the leading Oxford defender of absolute
idealism. Although he derived his last name from Huguenot ancestors, Bosanquet
was thoroughly English. Born at Altwick and educated at Harrow and Balliol,
Oxford, he was for eleven years a fellow of
University College, Oxford. The death of his father in 0 and the
resulting inheritance enabled Bosanquet to leave Oxford for London and a career
as a writer and social activist. While writing, he taught courses for the London
Ethical Society’s Center for Extension
and donated time to the Charity Organization Society. In 5 he married his
coworker in the Charity Organization Society, Helen Dendy, who was also the
translator of Christoph Sigwart’s Logic. Bosanquet was professor of moral
philosophy at St. Andrews from 3 to 8. He gave the Gifford Lectures in 1 and 2.
Otherwise he lived in London until his death. Bosanquet’s most comprehensive
work, his two-volume Gifford Lectures, The Principle of Individuality and Value
and The Value and Destiny of the Individual, covers most aspects of his
philosophy. In The Principle of Individuality and Value he argues that the
search for truth proceeds by eliminating contradictions in experience. For
Bosanquet a contradiction arises when there are incompatible interpretations of
the same fact. This involves making distinctions that harmonize the
incompatible interpretations in a larger body of knowledge. Bosanquet thought
there was no way to arrest this process short of recognizing that all human
experience forms a comprehensive whole which is reality. Bosanquet called this
totality “the Absolute.” Just as conflicting interpretations of the same fact
find harmonious places in the Absolute, so conflicting desires are also
included. The Absolute thus satisfies all desires and provides Bosanquet’s
standard for evaluating other objects. This is because in his view the value of
an object is determined by its ability to satisfy desires. From this Bosanquet
concluded that human beings, as fragments of the Absolute, acquire greater
value as they realize themselves by partaking more fully in the Absolute. In
The Value and Destiny of the Individual Bosanquet explained how human beings
could do this. As finite, human beings face obstacles they cannot overcome; yet
they desire the good i.e., the Absolute which for Bosanquet overcomes all
obstacles and satisfies all desires. Humans can best realize a desire for the
good, Bosanquet thinks, by surrendering their private desires for the sake of
the good. This attitude of surrender, which Bosanquet calls the religious
consciousness, relates human beings to what is permanently valuable in reality
and increases their own value and satisfaction accordingly. Bosanquet’s defense
of this metaphysical vision rests heavily on his first major work, Logic or the
Morphology of Knowledge 8; 2d ed., 1. As the subtitle indicates, Bosanquet took
the subject matter of Logic to be the structure of knowledge. Like Hegel, who
was in many ways his inspiration, Bosanquet thought that the nature of
knowledge was defined by structures repeated in different parts of knowledge.
He called these structures forms of judgment and tried to show that simple
judgments are dependent on increasingly complex ones and finally on an
all-inclusive judgment that defines reality. For example, the simplest element
of knowledge is a demonstrative judgment like “This is hot.” But making such a
judgment presupposes understanding the contrast between ‘this’ and ‘that’.
Demonstrative judgments thus depend on comparative judgments like “This is
hotter than that.” Since these judgments are less dependent on other judgments,
they more fully embody human knowledge. Bosanquet claimed that the series of
increasingly complex judgments are not arranged in a simple linear order but
develop along different branches finally uniting in disjunctive judgments that
attribute to reality an exhaustive set of mutually exclusive alternatives which
are themselves judgments. When one contained judgment is asserted on the basis
of another, a judgment containing both is an inference. For Bosanquet
inferences are mediated judgments that assert their conclusions based on
grounds. When these grounds are made fully explicit in a judgment containing
them, that judgment embodies the nature of inference: that one must accept the
conclusion or reject the whole of knowledge. Since for Bosanquet the difference
between any judgment and the reality it represents is that a judgment is
composed of ideas that abstract from reality, a fully comprehensive judgment
includes all aspects of reality. It is thus identical to reality. By locating
all judgments within this one, Bosanquet claimed to have described the
morphology of knowledge as well as to have shown that thought is identical to
reality. Bosanquet removed an objection to this identification in History of
Aesthetics 2, where he traces the development of the philosophy of the
beautiful from its inception through absolute idealism. According to Plato and
Aristotle beauty is found in imitations of reality, while in objective idealism
it is reality in sensuous form. Drawing heavily on Kant, Bosanquet saw this
process as an overcoming of the opposition between sense and reason by showing
how a pleasurable feeling can partake of reason. He thought that absolute
idealism explained this by showing that we experience objects as beautiful
because their sensible qualities exhibit the unifying activity of reason.
Bosanquet treated the political implications of absolute idealism in his
Philosophical Theory of the State 8; 3d ed., 0, where he argues that humans
achieve their ends only in communities. According to Bosanquet, all humans
rationally will their own ends. Because their ends differ from moment to
moment, the ends they rationally will are those that harmonize their desires at
particular moments. Similarly, because the ends of different individuals
overlap and conflict, what they rationally will are ends that harmonize their
desires, which are the ends of humans in communities. They are willed by the
general will, the realization of which is self-rule or liberty. This provides
the rational ground of political obligation, since the most comprehensive
system of modern life is the state, the end of which is the realization of the
best life for its citizens.
boscovich:
An example of minimalism, according to Grice. Roger Joseph, or Rudjer Josip Bos
v kovic’, philosopher. Born of Serbian and
parents, he was a Jesuit and polymath best known for his A Theory of
Natural Philosophy Reduced to a Single Law of the Actions Existing in Nature.
This work attempts to explain all physical phenomena in terms of the
attractions and repulsions of point particles puncta that are indistinguishable
in their intrinsic qualitative properties. According to Boscovich’s single law,
puncta at a certain distance attract, until upon approaching one another they
reach a point at which they repel, and eventually reach equilibrium. Thus,
Boscovich defends a form of dynamism, or the theory that nature is to be
understood in terms of force and not mass where forces are functions of time
and distance. By dispensing with extended substance, Boscovich avoided
epistemological difficulties facing Locke’s natural philosophy and anticipated
developments in modern physics. Among those influenced by Boscovich were Kant
who defended a version of dynamism, Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Lord
Kelvin. Boscovich’s theory has proved to be empirically inadequate to account
for phenomena such as light. A philosophical difficulty for Boscovich’s puncta,
which are physical substances, arises out of their zero-dimensionality. It is
plausible that any power must have a basis in an object’s intrinsic properties,
and puncta appear to lack such support for their powers. However, it is
extensional properties that puncta lack, and Boscovich could argue that the
categorial property of being an unextended spatial substance provides the
needed basis.
bouwsma:
o. k., philosopher, a practitioner of ordinary language philosophy and
celebrated teacher. Through work on Moore and contact with students such as
Norman Malcolm and Morris Lazerowitz, whom he sent from Nebraska to work with
Moore, Bouwsma discovered Vitters. He became known for conveying an
understanding of Vitters’s techniques of philosophical analysis through his own
often humorous grasp of sense and nonsense. Focusing on a particular pivotal
sentence in an argument, he provided imaginative surroundings for it, showing
how, in the philosopher’s mouth, the sentence lacked sense. He sometimes
described this as “the method of failure.” In connection with Descartes’s evil
genius, e.g., Bouwsma invents an elaborate story in which the evil genius tries
but fails to permanently deceive by means of a totally paper world. Our
inability to imagine such a deception undermines the sense of the evil genius
argument. His writings are replete with similar stories, analogies, and teases
of sense and nonsense for such philosophical standards as Berkeley’s idealism,
Moore’s theory of sensedata, and Anselm’s ontological argument. Bouwsma did not
advocate theories nor put forward refutations of other philosophers’ views. His
talent lay rather in exposing some central sentence in an argument as disguised
nonsense. In this, he went beyond Vitters, working out the details of the
latter’s insights into language. In addition to this appropriation of Vitters,
Bouwsma also appropriated Kierkegaard, understanding him too as one who
dispelled philosophical illusions those
arising from the attempt to understand Christianity. The ordinary language of religious
philosophy was that of scriptures. He drew upon this language in his many
essays on religious themes. His religious dimension made whole this person who
gave no quarter to traditional metaphysics. His papers are published under the
titles Philosophical Essays, Toward a New Sensibility, Without Proof or
Evidence, and Vitters Conversations 951. His philosophical notebooks are housed
at the Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas.
boyle: r.:
Grice was a closet corpularianist. a major figure in seventeenthcentury natural
philosophy. To his contemporaries he was “the restorer” in England of the
mechanical philosophy. His program was to replace the vacuous explanations
characteristic of Peripateticism the “quality of whiteness” in snow explains why
it dazzles the eyes by explanations employing the “two grand and most catholic
principles of bodies, matter and motion,” matter being composed of corpuscles,
with motion “the grand agent of all that happens in nature.” Boyle wrote
influentially on scientific methodology, emphasizing experimentation a Baconian
influence, experimental precision, and the importance of devising “good and
excellent” hypotheses. The dispute with Spinoza on the validation of
explanatory hypotheses contrasted Boyle’s experimental way with Spinoza’s way
of rational analysis. The 1670s dispute with Henry More on the ontological
grounds of corporeal activity confronted More’s “Spirit of Nature” with the
“essential modifications” motion and the “seminal principle” of activity with
which Boyle claimed God had directly endowed matter. As a champion of the
corpuscularian philosophy, Boyle was an important link in the development
before Locke of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. A
leading advocate of natural theology, he provided in his will for the
establishment of the Boyle Lectures to defend Protestant Christianity against
atheism and materialism.
bradley: One
of the few English philosophers who saw philosophy, correctly, as a branch of
literature! (Essay-writing, strictly). f. h., Cited by H. P. Grice in
“Prolegomena,” now repr. in “Studies in the Way of Words.” Also in Grice,
“Metaphysics,” in D. F. Pears, “The nature of metaphysics,” -- the most
original and influential nineteenth-century British idealist. Born at Clapham,
he was the fourth son of an evangelical minister. His younger brother A. C.
Bradley was a well-known Shakespearean critic. From 1870 until his death
Bradley was a fellow of Merton , Oxford. A kidney ailment, which first occurred
in 1871, compelled him to lead a retiring life. This, combined with his
forceful literary style, his love of irony, the dedication of three of his
books to an unknown woman, and acclaim as the greatest British idealist since
Berkeley, has lent an aura of mystery to his personal life. The aim of
Bradley’s first important work, Ethical Studies 1876, is not to offer guidance
for dealing with practical moral problems Bradley condemned this as casuistry,
but rather to explain what makes morality as embodied in the consciousness of
individuals and in social institutions possible. Bradley thought it was the
fact that moral agents take morality as an end in itself which involves
identifying their wills with an ideal provided in part by their stations in
society and then transferring that ideal to reality through action. Bradley
called this process “selfrealization.” He thought that moral agents could
realize their good selves only by suppressing their bad selves, from which he
concluded that morality could never be completely realized, since realizing a
good self requires having a bad one. For this reason Bradley believed that the
moral consciousness would develop into religious consciousness which, in his
secularized version of Christianity, required dying to one’s natural self through
faith in the actual existence of the moral ideal. In Ethical Studies Bradley
admitted that a full defense of his ethics would require a metaphysical system,
something he did not then have. Much of Bradley’s remaining work was an attempt
to provide the outline of such a system by solving what he called “the great
problem of the relation between thought and reality.” He first confronted this
problem in The Principles of Logic3, which is his description of thought. He
took thought to be embodied in judgments, which are distinguished from other
mental activities by being true or false. This is made possible by the fact
that their contents, which Bradley called ideas, represent reality. A problem
arises because ideas are universals and so represent kinds of things, while the
things themselves are all individuals. Bradley solves this problem by
distinguishing between the logical and grammatical forms of a judgment and
arguing that all judgments have the logical form of conditionals. They assert
that universal connections between qualities obtain in reality. The qualities
are universals, the connections between them are conditional, while reality is
one individual whole that we have contact with in immediate experience. All
judgments, in his view, are abstractions from a diverse but non-relational
immediate experience. Since judgments are inescapably relational, they fail to
represent accurately non-relational reality and so fail to reach truth, which
is the goal of thought. From this Bradley concluded that, contrary to what some
of his more Hegelian contemporaries were saying, thought is not identical to
reality and is never more than partially true. Appearance and Reality 3 is
Bradley’s description of reality: it is experience, all of it, all at once,
blended in a harmonious way. Bradley defended this view by means of his
criterion for reality. Reality, he proclaimed, does not contradict itself;
anything that does is merely appearance. In Part I of Appearance and Reality
Bradley relied on an infinite regress argument, now called Bradley’s regress,
to contend that relations and all relational phenomena, including thought, are
contradictory. They are appearance, not reality. In Part II he claimed that
appearances are contradictory because they are abstracted by thought from the
immediate experience of which they are a part. Appearances constitute the
content of this whole, which in Bradley’s view is experience. In other words,
reality is experience in its totality. Bradley called this unified, consistent
all-inclusive reality “the Absolute.” Today Bradley is mainly remembered for
his argument against the reality of relations, and as the philosopher who
provoked Russell’s and Moore’s revolution in philosophy. He would be better
remembered as a founder of twentiethcentury philosophy who based metaphysical
conclusions on his account of the logical forms of judgments.
brandt: R. B.,-- read by Grice for his ‘ideal observer
theory” or creature construction in “Method” moral philosopher, most closely
associated with rule utilitarianism which term he coined, earned degrees from
Denison and Cambridge , and obtained a
Ph.D. from Yale in 6. He taught at Swarthmore
from 7 to 4 and at the of
Michigan from 4 to 1. His six books and nearly one hundred articles included
work on philosophy of religion, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of
action, political philosophy, and philosophy of law. His greatest contributions
were in moral philosophy. He first defended rule utilitarianism in his textbook
Ethical Theory 9, but greatly refined his view in the 0s in a series of
articles, which were widely discussed and reprinted and eventually collected
together in Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights 2. Further refinements appear
in his A Theory of the Good and the Right 9 and Facts, Values, and Morality 6.
Brandt famously argued for a “reforming definition” of ‘rational person’. He
proposed that we use it to designate someone whose desires would survive
exposure to all relevant empirical facts and to correct logical reasoning. He also
proposed a “reforming definition” of ‘morally right’ that assigns it the
descriptive meaning ‘would be permitted by any moral code that all or nearly
all rational people would publicly favor for the agent’s society if they
expected to spend a lifetime in that society’. In his view, rational choice
between moral codes is determined not by prior moral commitments but by
expected consequences. Brandt admitted that different rational people may favor
different codes, since different rational people may have different levels of
natural benevolence. But he also contended that most rational people would
favor a rule-utilitarian code.
brentano:
f., philosopher, one of the most intellectually influential and personally
charismatic of his time. He is known especially for his distinction between
psychological and physical phenomena on the basis of intentionality or internal
object-directedness of thought, his revival of Aristotelianism and empirical
methods in philosophy and psychology, and his value theory and ethics supported
by the concept of correct pro- and anti-emotions or love and hate attitudes.
Brentano made noted contributions to the theory of metaphysical categories,
phenomenology, epistemology, syllogistic logic, and philosophy of religion. His
teaching made a profound impact on his students in Würzburg and Vienna, many of
whom became internationally respected thinkers in their fields, including
Meinong, Husserl, Twardowski, Christian von Ehrenfels, Anton Marty, and Freud.
Brentano began his study of philosophy at the Aschaffenburg Royal Bavarian
Gymnasium; in 185658 he attended the universities of Munich and Würzburg, and
then enrolled at the of Berlin, where he
undertook his first investigations of Aristotle’s metaphysics under the
supervision of F. A. Trendelenburg. In 1859 60, he attended the Academy in
Münster, reading intensively in the medieval Aristotelians; in 1862 he received
the doctorate in philosophy in absentia from the of Tübingen. He was ordained a Catholic
priest in 1864, and was later involved in a controversy over the doctrine of
papal infallibility, eventually leaving the church in 1873. He taught first as
Privatdozent in the Philosophical Faculty of the of Würzburg 186674, and then accepted a professorship
at the of Vienna. In 0 he decided to
marry, temporarily resigning his position to acquire Saxon citizenship, in
order to avoid legal difficulties in Austria, where marriages of former priests
were not officially recognized. Brentano was promised restoration of his
position after his circumvention of these restrictions, but although he was
later reinstated as lecturer, his appeals for reappointment as professor were
answered only with delay and equivocation. He left Vienna in 5, retiring to
Italy, his family’s country of origin. At last he moved to Zürich, Switzerland,
shortly before Italy entered World War I. Here he remained active both in
philosophy and psychology, despite his ensuing blindness, writing and revising
numerous books and articles, frequently meeting with former students and
colleagues, and maintaining an extensive philosophical-literary correspondence,
until his death. In Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt “Psychology from an
Empirical Standpoint,” 1874, Brentano argued that intentionality is the mark of
the mental, that every psychological experience contains an intended
object also called an intentional
object which the thought is about or
toward which the thought is directed. Thus, in desire, something is desired.
According to the immanent intentionality thesis, this means that the desired
object is literally contained within the psychological experience of desire.
Brentano claims that this is uniquely true of mental as opposed to physical or
non-psychological phenomena, so that the intentionality of the psychological
distinguishes mental from physical states. The immanent intentionality thesis
proBrentano, Franz Brentano, Franz 100
100 vides a framework in which Brentano identifies three categories of
psychological phenomena: thoughts Vorstellungen, judgments, and emotive
phenomena. He further maintains that every thought is also self-consciously
reflected back onto itself as a secondary intended object in what he called the
eigentümliche Verfleckung. From 5 through 1, with the publication in that year
of Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene, Brentano gradually
abandoned the immanent intentionality thesis in favor of his later philosophy
of reism, according to which only individuals exist, excluding putative
nonexistent irrealia, such as lacks, absences, and mere possibilities. In the
meantime, his students Twardowski, Meinong, and Husserl, reacting negatively to
the idealism, psychologism, and related philosophical problems apparent in the
early immanent intentionality thesis, developed alternative non-immanence
approaches to intentionality, leading, in the case of Twardowski and Meinong
and his students in the Graz school of phenomenological psychology, to the
construction of Gegenstandstheorie, the theory of transcendent existent and
nonexistent intended objects, and to Husserl’s later transcendental
phenomenology. The intentionality of the mental in Brentano’s revival of the
medieval Aristotelian doctrine is one of his most important contributions to
contemporary non-mechanistic theories of mind, meaning, and expression.
Brentano’s immanent intentionality thesis was, however, rejected by
philosophers who otherwise agreed with his underlying claim that thought is
essentially object-directed. Brentano’s value theory Werttheorie offers a
pluralistic account of value, permitting many different kinds of things to be
valuable although, in keeping with his
later reism, he denies the existence of an abstract realm of values. Intrinsic
value is objective rather than subjective, in the sense that he believes the
pro- and anti-emotions we may have toward an act or situation are objectively
correct if they present themselves to emotional preference with the same
apodicity or unquestionable sense of rightness as other selfevident matters of
non-ethical judgment. Among the controversial consequences of Brentano’s value
theory is the conclusion that there can be no such thing as absolute evil. The
implication follows from Brentano’s observation, first, that evil requires evil
consciousness, and that consciousness of any kind, even the worst imaginable
malice or malevolent ill will, is considered merely as consciousness
intrinsically good. This means that necessarily there is always a mixture of
intrinsic good even in the most malicious possible states of mind, by virtue
alone of being consciously experienced, so that pure evil never obtains.
Brentano’s value theory admits of no defense against those who happen not to
share the same “correct” emotional attitudes toward the situations he
describes. If it is objected that to another person’s emotional preferences
only good consciousness is intrinsically good, while infinitely bad
consciousness despite being a state of consciousness appears instead to contain
no intrinsic good and is absolutely evil, there is no recourse within
Brentano’s ethics except to acknowledge that this contrary emotive attitude
toward infinitely bad consciousness may also be correct, even though it
contradicts his evaluations. Brentano’s empirical psychology and articulation
of the intentionality thesis, his moral philosophy and value theory, his
investigations of Aristotle’s metaphysics at a time when Aristotelian realism
was little appreciated in the prevailing climate of post-Kantian idealism, his
epistemic theory of evident judgment, his suggestions for the reform of
syllogistic logic, his treatment of the principle of sufficient reason and
existence of God, his interpretation of a fourstage cycle of successive trends
in the history of philosophy, together with his teaching and personal moral
example, continue to inspire a variety of divergent philosophical
traditions.
broad:
cited by H. P. Grice in “Personal identity” and “Prolegomena” (re: Benjamin on
Broad on remembering). Charlie Dunbar 71, English epistemologist,
metaphysician, moral philosopher, and philosopher of science. He was educated
at Trinity , Cambridge, taught at several universities in Scotland, and then
returned to Trinity, first as lecturer in moral science and eventually as
Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy. His philosophical views are in the
broadly realist tradition of Moore and Russell, though with substantial
influence also from his teachers at Cambridge, McTaggart and W. E. Johnson.
Broad wrote voluminously and incisively on an extremely wide range of
philosophical topics, including most prominently the nature of perception, a
priori knowledge and concepts, the problem of induction, the mind Brentano’s
thesis Broad, Charlie Dunbar 101 101
body problem, the free will problem, various topics in moral philosophy, the
nature and philosophical significance of psychical research, the nature of
philosophy itself, and various historical figures such as Leibniz, Kant, and
McTaggart. Broad’s work in the philosophy of perception centers on the nature
of sense-data or sensa, as he calls them and their relation to physical
objects. He defends a rather cautious, tentative version of the causal theory
of perception. With regard to a priori knowledge, Broad rejects the empiricist
view that all such knowledge is of analytic propositions, claiming instead that
reason can intuit necessary and universal connections between properties or
characteristics; his view of concept acquisition is that while most concepts
are abstracted from experience, some are a priori, though not necessarily innate.
Broad holds that the rationality of inductive inference depends on a further
general premise about the world, a more complicated version of the thesis that
nature is uniform, which is difficult to state precisely and even more
difficult to justify. Broad’s view of the mindbody problem is a version of
dualism, though one that places primary emphasis on individual mental events,
is much more uncertain about the existence and nature of the mind as a
substance, and is quite sympathetic to epiphenomenalism. His main contribution
to the free will problem consists in an elaborate analysis of the libertarian
conception of freedom, which he holds to be both impossible to realize and at
the same time quite possibly an essential precondition of the ordinary conception
of obligation. Broad’s work in ethics is diverse and difficult to summarize,
but much of it centers on the issue of whether ethical judgments are genuinely
cognitive in character. Broad was one of the few philosophers to take psychical
research seriously. He served as president of the Society for Psychical
Research and was an occasional observer of experiments in this area. His
philosophical writings on this subject, while not uncritical, are in the main
sympathetic and are largely concerned to defend concepts like precognition
against charges of incoherence and also to draw out their implications for more
familiar philosophical issues. As regards the nature of philosophy, Broad
distinguishes between “critical” and “speculative” philosophy. Critical philosophy
is analysis of the basic concepts of ordinary life and of science, roughly in
the tradition of Moore and Russell. A very high proportion of Broad’s own work
consists of such analyses, often amazingly detailed and meticulous in
character. But he is also sympathetic to the speculative attempt to arrive at
an overall conception of the nature of the universe and the position of human
beings therein, while at the same time expressing doubts that anything even
remotely approaching demonstration is possible in such endeavors. The foregoing
catalog of views reveals something of the range of Broad’s philosophical
thought, but it fails to bring out what is most strikingly valuable about it.
Broad’s positions on various issues do not form anything like a system he
himself is reported to have said that there is nothing that answers to the
description “Broad’s philosophy”. While his views are invariably subtle,
thoughtful, and critically penetrating, they rarely have the sort of one-sided
novelty that has come to be so highly valued in philosophy. What they do have
is exceptional clarity, dialectical insight, and even-handedness. Broad’s skill
at uncovering and displaying the precise shape of a philosophical issue,
clarifying the relevant arguments and objections, and cataloging in detail the
merits and demerits of the opposing positions has rarely been equaled. One who
seeks a clear-cut resolution of an issue is likely to be impatient and
disappointed with Broad’s careful, measured discussions, in which unusual effort
is made to accord all positions and arguments their due. But one who seeks a
comprehensive and balanced understanding of the issue in question is unlikely
to find a more trustworthy guide.
brouwer: L.
E. J: Discussed by H. P. Grice in connection with ‘intuititionist negation’ and
the elimination of negation -- philosopher and founder of the intuitionist
school in the philosophy of mathematics. Educated at the Municipal of Amsterdam, where he received his doctorate
in 7, he remained there for his entire professional career, as Privaat-Docent
912 and then professor 255. He was among the preeminent topologists of his
time, proving several important results. Philosophically, he was also unique in
his strongly held conviction that philosophical ideas and arguments concerning
the nature of mathematics ought to affect and be reflected in its practice. His
general orientation in the philosophy of mathematics was Kantian. This was
manifested in his radical critique of the role accorded to logical reasoning by
classical mathematics; a role that Brouwer, following Kant, believed to be
incompatible with the role that intuition must properly play in mathematical
reasoning. The bestknown, if not the most fundamental, part of his Brouwer,
Luitzgen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, Luitzgen Egbertus Jan 102 102 critique of the role accorded to logic
by classical mathematics was his attack on the principle of the excluded middle
and related principles of classical logic. He challenged their reliability,
arguing that their unrestricted use leads to results that, intuitionistically
speaking, are not true. However, in its fundaments, Brouwer’s critique was not
so much an attack on particular principles of classical logic as a criticism of
the general role that classical mathematics grants to logical reasoning. He
believed that logical structure and hence logical inference is a product of the
linguistic representation of mathematical thought and not a feature of that
thought itself. He stated this view in the so-called First Act of Intuitionism,
which contains not only the chief critical idea of Brouwer’s position, but also
its core positive element. This positive element says, with Kant, that
mathematics is an essentially languageless activity of the mind. Brouwer went
on to say something with which Kant would only have partially agreed: that this
activity has its origin in the perception of a move of time. The critical
element complements this by saying that mathematics is thus to be kept wholly
distinct from mathematical language and the phenomena of language described by
logic. The so-called Second Act of Intuitionism then extends the positive part
of the First Act by stating that the “self-unfolding” of the primordial
intuition of a move of time is the basis not only of the construction of the
natural numbers but also of the intuitionistic continuum. Together, these two
ideas form the basis of Brouwer’s philosophy of mathematics a philosophy that is radically at odds with
most of twentieth-century philosophy of mathematics.
bruno:
g., apeculative philosopher. He was born in Naples, where he entered the
Dominican order in 1565. In 1576 he was suspected of heresy and abandoned his
order. He studied and taught in Geneva, but left because of difficulties with
the Calvinists. Thereafter he studied and taught in Toulouse, Paris, England,
various G. universities, and Prague. In 1591 he rashly returned to Venice, and
was arrested by the Venetian Inquisition in 1592. In 1593 he was handed over to
the Roman Inquisition, which burned him to death as a heretic. Because of his
unhappy end, his support for the Copernican heliocentric hypothesis, and his
pronounced anti-Aristotelianism, Bruno has been mistakenly seen as the
proponent of a scientific worldview against medieval obscurantism. In fact, he should
be interpreted in the context of Renaissance hermetism. Indeed, Bruno was so
impressed by the hermetic corpus, a body of writings attributed to the mythical
Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, that he called for a return to the magical
religion of the Egyptians. He was also strongly influenced by Lull, Nicholas of
Cusa, Ficino, and Agrippa von Nettesheim, an early sixteenth-century author of
an influential treatise on magic. Several of Bruno’s works were devoted to
magic, and it plays an important role in his books on the art of memory.
Techniques for improving the memory had long been a subject of discussion, but
he linked them with the notion that one could so imprint images of the universe
on the mind as to achieve special knowledge of divine realities and the magic
powers associated with such knowledge. He emphasized the importance of the
imagination as a cognitive power, since it brings us into contact with the
divine. Nonetheless, he also held that human ideas are mere shadows of divine
ideas, and that God is transcendent and hence incomprehensible. Bruno’s
best-known works are the dialogues he
wrote while in England, including the following, all published in 1584: The Ash
Wednesday Supper; On Cause, Principle and Unity; The Expulsion of the Triumphant
Beast; and On the Infinite Universe and Worlds. He presents a vision of the
universe as a living and infinitely extended unity containing innumerable
worlds, each of which is like a great animal with a life of its own. He
maintained the unity of matter with universal form or the World-Soul, thus
suggesting a kind of pantheism attractive to later G. idealists, such as
Schelling. However, he never identified the World-Soul with God, who remained
separate from matter and form. He combined his speculative philosophy of nature
with the recommendation of a new naturalistic ethics. Bruno’s support of
Copernicus in The Ash Wednesday Supper was related to his belief that a living
earth must move, and he specifically rejected any appeal to mere mathematics to
prove cosmological hypotheses. In later work he described the monad as a living
version of the Democritean atom. Despite some obvious parallels with both
Spinoza and Leibniz, he seems not to have had much direct influence on seventeenth-century
thinkers.
brunschvicg,
l.: H. P. Grice is very popular in France, and so is Brunschvicg, philosopher,
an influential professor at the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure of
Paris, and a founder of the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 3 and the
Société Française de Philosophie 1. In 0 he was forced by the Nazis to leave
Paris and sought refuge in the nonoccupied zone, where he died. A monistic
idealist, Brunschvicg unfolded a philosophy of mind Introduction to the Life of
the Mind, 0. His epistemology highlights judgment. Thinking is judging and
judging is acting. He defined philosophy as “the mind’s methodical
self-reflection.” Philosophy investigates man’s growing self-understanding. The
mind’s recesses, or metaphysical truth, are accessible through analysis of the
mind’s timely manifestations. His major works therefore describe the progress
of science as progress of consciousness: The Stages of Mathematical Philosophy
2, Human Experience and Physical Causality 2, The Progress of Conscience in
Western Philosophy 7, and Ages of Intelligence 4. An heir of Renouvier,
Cournot, and Revaisson, Brunschvicg advocated a moral and spiritual conception
of science and attempted to reconcile idealism and positivism.
buber: M. G.: H. P. Grice is all about ‘I’ and ‘thou,’
as Buber is. Jewish philosopher, theologian, and political leader. Buber’s
early influences include Hasidism and neo-Kantianism. Eventually he broke with
the latter and became known as a leading religious existentialist. His chief
philosophic works include his most famous book, Ich und du “I and Thou,” 3;
Moses 6; Between Man and Man 7; and Eclipse of God 2. The crux of Buber’s
thought is his conception of two primary relationships: I-Thou and I-It. IThou
is characterized by openness, reciprocity, and a deep sense of personal
involvement. The I confronts its Thou not as something to be studied, measured,
or manipulated, but as a unique presence that responds to the I in its
individuality. I-It is characterized by the tendency to treat something as an
impersonal object governed by causal, social, or economic forces. Buber rejects
the idea that people are isolated, autonomous agents operating according to
abstract rules. Instead, reality arises between agents as they encounter and
transform each other. In a word, reality is dialogical. Buber describes God as
the ultimate Thou, the Thou who can never become an It. Thus God is reached not
by inference but by a willingness to respond to the concrete reality of the
divine presence.
buchmanism: also
called the Moral Rearmament Movement, a non-creedal international movement that
sought to bring about universal brotherhood through a commitment to an
objectivist moral system derived largely from the Gospels. It was founded by
Frank Buchman 18781, an Lutheran
minister who resigned from his church in 8 in order to expand his ministry. To
promote the movement, Buchman founded the Oxford Group at Oxford. H. P. Grice
was a member.
bundle:
theory: Is Grice proposing a ‘bundle theory’ of “Personal identity”: He defines
“I” as an interlinked chain of mnemonic states, a view that accepts the idea
that concrete objects consist of properties but denies the need for introducing
substrata to account for their diversity. By contrast, one traditional view of
concrete particular objects is that they are complexes consisting of two more
fundamental kinds of entities: properties that can be exemplified by many
different objects and a substratum that exemplifies those properties belonging
to a particular object. Properties account for the qualitative identity of such
objects while substrata account for their numerical diversity. The bundle
theory is usually glossed as the view that a concrete object is nothing but a
bundle of properties. This gloss, however, is inadequate. For if a “bundle” of
properties is, e.g., a set of properties, then bundles of properties differ in
significant ways from concrete objects. For sets of properties are necessary
and eternal while concrete objects are contingent and perishing. A more
adequate statement of the theory holds that a concrete object is a complex of
properties which all stand in a fundamental contingent relation, call it
co-instantiation, to one another. On this account, complexes of properties are
neither necessary nor eternal. Critics of the theory, however, maintain that
such complexes have all their properties essentially and cannot change
properties, whereas concrete objects have some of their properties accidentally
and undergo change. This objection fails to recognize that there are two distinct
problems addressed by the bundle theory: a individuation and b identity through
time. The first problem arises for all objects, both momentary and enduring.
The second, however, arises only for enduring objects. The bundle theory
typically offers two different solutions to these problems. An enduring
concrete object is analyzed as a series of momentary objects which stand in
some contingent relation R. Different versions of the theory offer differing
accounts of the relation. For example, Hume holds that the self is a series of
co-instantiated impressions and ideas, whose members are related to one another
by causation and resemblance this is his bundle theory of the self. A momentary
object, however, is analyzed as a complex of properties all of which stand in
the relation of co-instantiation to one another. Consequently, even if one
grants that a momentary complex of properties has all of its members
essentially, it does not follow that an enduring object, which contains the
complex as a temporal part, has those properties essentially unless one
endorses the controversial thesis that an enduring object has its temporal
parts essentially. Similarly, even if one grants that a momentary complex of
properties cannot change in its properties, it does not follow that an enduring
object, which consists of such complexes, cannot change its properties. Critics
of the bundle theory argue that its analysis of momentary objects is also
problematic. For it appears possible that two different momentary objects have
all properties in common, yet there cannot be two different complexes with all
properties in common. There are two responses available to a proponent of the
theory. The first is to distinguish between a strong and a weak version of the
theory. On the strong version, the thesis that a momentary object is a complex
of co-instantiated properties is a necessary truth, while on the weak version
it is a contingent truth. The possibility of two momentary objects with all
properties in common impugns only the strong version of the theory. The second
is to challenge the basis of the claim that it is possible for two momentary
objects to have all their properties in common. Although critics allege that
such a state of affairs is conceivable, proponents argue that investigation
into the nature of conceivability does not underwrite this claim.
buridan –
and his ass – and the Griceian implicature -- j. philosopher. He was born in
Béthune and educated at the of Paris.
Unlike most philosophers of his time, Buridan spent his academic career as a
master in the faculty of arts, without seeking an advanced degree in theology.
He was also unusual in being a secular cleric rather than a member of a
religious order. Buridan wrote extensively on logic and natural philosophy,
although only a few of his works have appeared in modern editions. The most
important on logic are the Summulae de dialectica “Sum of Dialectic”, an
introduction to logic conceived as a revision of, and extended commentary on,
the Summulae logicales of Peter of Spain, a widely used logic textbook of the
period; and the Tractatus de consequentiis, a treatise on modes of inference.
Most of Buridan’s other writings are short literal commentaries expositiones
and longer critical studies quaestiones of Aristotle’s works. Like most
medieval nominalists, Buridan argued that universals have no real existence,
except as concepts by which the mind “conceives of many things indifferently.”
Likewise, he included only particular substances and qualities in his basic
ontology. But his nominalist program is distinctive in its implementation. He
differs, e.g., from Ockham in his accounts of motion, time, and quantity
appealing, in the latter case, to quantitative forms to explain the
impenetrability of bodies. In natural philosophy, Buridan is best known for
introducing to the West the non-Aristotelian concept of impetus, or impressed
force, to explain projectile motion. Although asses appear often in his
examples, the particular example that has come via Spinoza and others to be known
as “Buridan’s ass,” an ass starving to death between two equidistant and
equally tempting piles of hay, is unknown in Buridan’s writings. It may,
however, have originated as a caricature of Buridan’s theory of action, which
attempts to find a middle ground between Aristotelian intellectualism and
Franciscan voluntarism by arguing that the will’s freedom to act consists
primarily in its ability to defer choice in the absence of a compelling reason
to act one way or the other. Buridan’s intellectual legacy was considerable.
His works continued to be read and discussed in universities for centuries
after his death. Three of his students and disciples, Albert of Saxony,
Marsilius of Inghen, and Nicole Oresme, went on to become distinguished
philosophers in their own right.
burke:
e. discussed by H. P. Grice in his exploration on legal versus moral right,
statesman and one of the eighteenth century’s greatest political writers. Born
in Dublin, he moved to London to study law, then undertook a literary and political
career. He sat in the House of Commons from 1765 to 1794. In speeches and
pamphlets during these years he offered an ideological perspective on politics
that endures to this day as the fountain of conservative wisdom. The
philosophical stance that pervades Burke’s parliamentary career and writings is
skepticism, a profound distrust of political rationalism, i.e., the achievement
in the political realm of abstract and rational structures, ideals, and
objectives. Burkean skeptics are profoundly anti-ideological, detesting what
they consider the complex, mysterious, and existential givens of political life
distorted, criticized, or planned from a perspective of abstract, generalized,
and rational categories. The seminal expression of Burke’s skeptical conservatism
is found in the Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790. The conservatism
of the Reflections was earlier displayed, however, in Burke’s response to
radical demands in England for democratic reform of Parliament in the early
1780s. The English radicals assumed that legislators could remake governments,
when all wise men knew that “a prescriptive government never was made upon any
foregone theory.” How ridiculous, then, to put governments on Procrustean beds
and make them fit “the theories which learned and speculative men have made.”
Such prideful presumption required much more rational capacity than could be
found among ordinary mortals. One victim of Burke’s skepticism is the vaunted
liberal idea of the social contract. Commonwealths were neither constructed nor
ought they to be renovated according to a priori principles. The concept of an
original act of contract is just such a principle. The only contract in
politics is the agreement that binds generations past, present, and future, one
that “is but a clause in the great primeval contract of an eternal society.”
Burke rejects the voluntaristic quality of rationalist liberal contractualism.
Individuals are not free to create their own political institutions. Political
society and law are not “subject to the will of those who, by an obligation
above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that
law.” Men and groups “are not morally at liberty, at their pleasure, and on
their speculations of a contingent improvement” to rip apart their communities
and dissolve them into an “unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos.” Burke saw our
stock of reason as small; despite this people still fled their basic
limitations in flights of ideological fancy. They recognized no barrier to
their powers and sought in politics to make reality match their speculative
visions. Burke devoutly wished that people would appreciate their weakness,
their “subordinate rank in the creation.” God has “subjected us to act the part
which belongs to the place assigned us.” And that place is to know the limits
of one’s rational and speculative faculties. Instead of relying on their own
meager supply of reason, politicians should avail themselves “of the general
bank and capital of nations and of ages.” Because people forget this they weave
rational schemes of reform far beyond their power to implement. Buridan’s ass
Burke, Edmund 108 108 Burke stands as
the champion of political skepticism in revolt against Enlightenment rationalism
and its “smugness of adulterated metaphysics,” which produced the “revolution
of doctrine and theoretic dogma.” The sins of the were produced by the “clumsy subtlety of
their political metaphysics.” The “faith in the dogmatism of philosophers” led
them to rely on reason and abstract ideas, on speculation and a priori
principles of natural right, freedom, and equality as the basis for reforming
governments. Englishmen, like Burke, had no such illusions; they understood the
complexity and fragility of human nature and human institutions, they were not
“the converts of Rousseau . . . the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius [had] made
no progress amongst [them].”
burleigh:
W.
H. P. Grice preferred the spelling “Burleigh,” or “Burleighensis” if you must –
“That’s how we called him at Oxford!” English philosopher who taught philosophy
at Oxford and theology at Paris. An orthodox Aristotelian and a realist, he
attacked Ockham’s logic and his interpretation of the Aristotelian categories.
Burley commented on almost of all of Aristotle’s works in logic, natural
philosophy, and moral philosophy. An early Oxford Calculator, Burley began his
work as a fellow of Merton in 1301. By
1310, he was at Paris. A student of Thomas Wilton, he probably incepted before
1322; by 1324 he was a fellow of the Sorbonne. His commentary on Peter
Lombard’s Sentences has been lost. After leaving Paris, Burley was associated
with the household of Richard of Bury and the court of Edward III, who sent him
as an envoy to the papal curia in 1327. De vita et moribus philosophorum “On
the Life and Manners of Philosophers”, an influential, popular account of the
lives of the philosophers, has often been attributed to Burley, but modern
scholarship suggests that the attribution is incorrect. Many of Burley’s
independent works dealt with problems in natural philosophy, notably De
intensione et remissione formarum “On the Intension and Remission of Forms”, De
potentiis animae “On the Faculties of the Soul”, and De substantia orbis. De
primo et ultimo instanti “On First and Last Instants” discusses which temporal
processes have intrinsic, which extrinsic limits. In his Tractatus de formis
Burley attacks Ockham’s theory of quantity. Similarly, Burley’s theory of
motion opposed Ockham’s views. Ockham restricts the account of motion to the thing
moving, and the quality, quantity, and place acquired by motion. By contrast,
Burley emphasizes the process of motion and the quantitative measurement of
that process. Burley attacks the view that the forms successively acquired in
motion are included in the form finally acquired. He ridicules the view that
contrary qualities hot and cold could simultaneously inhere in the same subject
producing intermediate qualities warmth. Burley emphasized the formal character
of logic in his De puritate artis logicae “On the Purity of the Art of Logic”,
one of the great medieval treatises on logic. Ockham attacked a preliminary
version of De puritate in his Summa logicae; Burley called Ockham a beginner in
logic. In De puritate artis logicae, Burley makes syllogistics a subdivision of
consequences. His treatment of negation is particularly interesting for his
views on double negation and the restrictions on the rule that notnot-p implies
p. Burley distinguished between analogous words and analogous concepts and natures.
His theory of analogy deserves detailed discussion. These views, like the views
expressed in most of Burley’s works, have seldom been carefully studied by
modern philosophers.
butlerianism: J.,
cited by H. P. Grice, principle of conversational benevolence. English
theologian and Anglican bishop who made important contributions to moral
philosophy, to the understanding of moral agency, and to the development of
deontological ethics. Better known in his own time for The Analogy of Religion
1736, a defense, along broadly empiricist lines, of orthodox, “revealed”
Christian doctrine against deist criticism, Butler’s main philosophical legacy
was a series of highly influential arguments and theses contained in a
collection of Sermons 1725 and in two “Dissertations” appended to The
Analogy one on virtue and the other on
personal identity. The analytical method of these essays “everything is what it
is and not another thing” provided a model for much of English-speaking moral
philosophy to follow. For example, Butler is often credited with refuting
psychological hedonism, the view that all motives can be reduced to the desire
for pleasure or happiness. The sources of human motivation are complex and
structurally various, he argued. Appetites and passions seek their own peculiar
objects, and pleasure must itself be understood as involving an intrinsic
positive regard for a particular object. Other philosophers had maintained,
like Butler, that we can desire, e.g., the happiness of others intrinsically,
and not just as a means to our own happiness. And others had argued that the
person who aims singlemindedly at his own happiness is unlikely to attain it.
Butler’s distinctive contribution was to demonstrate that happiness and
pleasure themselves require completion by specific objects for which we have an
intrinsic positive regard. Self-love, the desire for our own happiness, is a
reflective desire for, roughly, the satisfaction of our other desires. But
self-love is not our only reflective desire; we also have “a settled reasonable
principle of benevolence.” We can consider the goods of others and come on
reflection to desire their welfare more or less independently of particular
emotional involvement such as compassion. In morals, Butler equally opposed
attempts to reduce virtue to benevolence, even of the most universal and
impartial sort. Benevolence seeks the good or happiness of others, whereas the
regulative principle of virtue is conscience, the faculty of moral approval or
disapproval of conduct and character. Moral agency requires, he argued, the
capacities to reflect disinterestedly on action, motive, and character, to
judge these in distinctively moral terms and not just in terms of their
relation to the non-moral good of happiness, and to guide conduct by such
judgments. Butler’s views about the centrality of conscience in the moral life
were important in the development of deontological ethics as well as in the
working out of an associated account of moral agency. Along the first lines, he
argued in the “Dissertation” that what it is right for a person to do depends,
not just on the non-morally good or bad consequences of an action, but on such
other morally relevant features as the relationships the agent bears to
affected others e.g., friend or beneficiary, or whether fraud, injustice,
treachery, or violence is involved. Butler thus distinguished analytically
between distinctively moral evaluation of action and assessing an act’s
relation to such non-moral values as happiness. And he provided succeeding deontological
theorists with a litany of examples where the right thing to do is apparently
not what would have the best consequences. Butler believed God instills a
“principle of reflection” or conscience in us through which we intrinsically
disapprove of such actions as fraud and injustice. But he also believed that
God, being omniscient and benevolent, fitted us with these moral attitudes
because “He foresaw this constitution of our nature would produce more
happiness, than forming us with a temper of mere general benevolence.” This
points, however, toward a kind of anti-deontological or consequentialist view,
sometimes called indirect consequentialism, which readily acknowledges that
what it is right to do does not depend on which act will have the best consequences.
It is entirely appropriate, according to indirect consequentialism, that
conscience approve or disapprove of acts on grounds other than a calculation of
consequences precisely because its doing so has the best consequences. Here we
have a version of the sort of view later to be found, for example, in Mill’s
defense of utilitarianism against the objection that it conflicts with justice
and rights. Morality is a system of social control that demands allegiance to
considerations other than utility, e.g., justice and honesty. But it is
justifiable only to the extent that the system itself has utility. This sets up
something of a tension. From the conscientious perspective an agent must
distinguish between the question of which action would have the best
consequences and the question of what he should do. And from that perspective,
Butler thinks, one will necessarily regard one’s answer to the second question
as authoritative for conduct. Conscience necessarily implicitly asserts its own
authority, Butler famously claimed. Thus, insofar as agents come to regard
their conscience as simply a method of social control with good consequences,
they will come to be alienated from the inherent authority their conscience
implicitly claims. A similar issue arises concerning the relation between
conscience and self-love. Butler says that both self-love and conscience are
“superior principles in the nature of man” in that an action will be unsuitable
to a person’s nature if it is contrary to either. This makes conscience’s
authority conditional on its not conflicting with self-love and vice versa.
Some scholars, moreover, read other passages as implying that no agent could
reasonably follow conscience unless doing so was in the agent’s interest. But
again, it would seem that an agent who internalized such a view would be
alienated from the authority that, if Butler is right, conscience implicitly
claims. For Butler, conscience or the principle of reflection is uniquely the
faculty of practical judgment. Unlike either self-love or benevolence, even
when these are added to the powers of inference and empirical cognition, only
conscience makes moral agency possible. Only a creature with conscience can
accord with or violate his own judgment of what he ought to do, and thereby be
a “law to himself.” This suggests a view that, like Kant’s, seeks to link
deontology to a conception of autonomous moral agency.
byzantine. This
is important since it displays Grice’s disrespect for stupid traditions. There
is Austin trying to lecture what he derogatorily called ‘philosophical hack’
(“I expect he was being ironic”) into learning through the Little Oxford
Dictionary. HARDLY Grice’s cup of tea. Austiin, or the ‘master,’ as Grice
ironically calls him, could patronize less patrician play group members, but
not him! In any case, Austin grew so tiresome, that Grice grabbed the Little
Dictionary. Austin had gave him license to go and refute Ryle on ‘feeling’.
“So, go and check with the dictionary, to see howmany things you can feel.” Grice
started with the A and got as far as the last relevant item under the ‘B,” he
hoped. “And then I realised it was all hopeless. A waste. Language botany,
indeed!” At a later stage, he grew more affectionate, especially when seeing
that this was part of his armoury (as Gellner had noted): a temperament, surely
not shared by Strawson, for subtleties and nuances. How Byzantine can Grice
feel? Vide ‘agitation.’ Does feeling Byzantine entail a feeling of BEING
Byzantine? originally used of the style of art
and architecture developed there 4c.-5c. C.E.; later in reference to the
complex, devious, and intriguing character of the royal court of Constantinople
(1937). Bȳzantĭum ,
ii, n., = Βυζάντιον,I.a city in Thrace, on
the Bosphorus, opposite
the Asiatic Chalcedon, later Constantinopolis, now Constantinople; among the
Turks, Istamboul or Stamboul (i.e. εις τὴν πόλιν), Mel. 2, 2, 6; Plin. 4, 11, 18, § 46; 9, 15, 20, § 50 sq.; Nep. Paus. 2, 2; Liv. 38, 16, 3 sq.; Tac. A. 12, 63 sq.; id. H. 2. 83; 3, 47 al.—II. Derivv.A. Bȳzantĭus ,
a, um, adj., of Byzantium, Byzantine: “litora,” the Strait of
Constantinople, Ov. Tr. 1, 10, 31: “portus,” Plin. 9, 15, 20, § 51.—Subst.: Bȳ-zantĭi ,
ōrum, m., the inhabitants of
Byzantium, Cic. Prov. Cons. 3, 5; 4, 6 sq.; Cic. Verr. 2, 2, 31, § 76; Nep. Timoth. 1, 2; Liv. 32, 33, 7.—B. Bȳzantĭăcus ,
a, um, adj., of Byzantium:
“lacerti,” Stat. S. 4, 9, 13. — C. Bȳzantīnus ,
a, um, adj., the same (post-class.): “Lygos,” Aus.
Clar. Urb. 2: “frigora,” Sid.
Ep. 7, 17. Byzantine feeling -- Einfühlung G., ‘feeling into’,
empathy. In contrast to sympathy, where one’s identity is preserved in feeling
with or for the other, in empathy or Einfühlung one tends to lose oneself in
the other. The concept of Einfühlung received its classical formulation in the
work of Theodor Lipps, who characterized it as a process of involuntary, inner
imitation whereby a subject identifies through feeling with the movement of
another body, whether it be the real leap of a dancer or the illusory upward
lift of an architectural column. Complete empathy is considered to be
aesthetic, providing a non-representational access to beauty. Husserl used a
phenomenologically purified concept of Einfühlung to account for the way the
self directly recognizes the other. Husserl’s student Edith Stein described
Einfühlung as a blind egoism Einfühlung 255
255 mode of knowledge that reaches the experience of the other without
possessing it. Einfühlung is not to be equated with Verstehen or human
understanding, which, as Dilthey pointed out, requires the use of all one’s
mental powers, and cannot be reduced to a mere mode of feeling. To understand
is not to apprehend something empathetically as the projected locus of an
actual experience, but to apperceive the meaning of expressions of experience
in relation to their context. Whereas understanding is reflective, empathy is
prereflective.
kabala –
cited by Grice “Perhaps Moses brought more than the ten commandments from
Sinai.” from Hebrew qabbala, ‘tradition’, a system of Jewish mysticism and
theosophy practiced from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century; loosely, all
forms of Jewish mysticism. Believed by its adherents to be a tradition
communicated to Moses at Sinai, the main body of cabalistic writing, the Zohar,
is thought to be the work primarily of Moses de León of Guadalajara, in the
thirteenth century, though he attributed it to the second-century rabbi Simon
bar Yohai. The Zohar builds on earlier Jewish mysticism, and is replete with
gnostic and Neoplatonic themes. It offers the initiated access to the mysteries
of God’s being, human destiny, and the meaning of the commandments. The
transcendent and strictly unitary God of rabbinic Judaism here encounters ten
apparently real divine powers, called sefirot, which together represent God’s
being and appearance in the cosmos and include male and female principles. Evil
in the world is seen as a reflection of a cosmic rupture in this system, and
redemption on earth entails restoration of the divine order. Mankind can assist
in this task through knowledge, piety, and observance of the law. Isaac Luria
in the sixteenth century developed these themes with graphic descriptions of
the dramas of creation, cosmic rupture, and restoration, the latter process
requiring human assistance more than ever.
cæteris paribus: Strawson and Wiggins:
that the principle holds ceteris paribus is a necessary condition for the very
existence of the activity in question. Central. Grice technically directs his
attenetion to this in his “Method”. There, he tries to introduce “WILLING” as a
predicate, i.e. a theoretical concept which is implicitly defined by the LAW in
a THEORY that it occurs. This theory is ‘psychology,’ but understood as a ‘folk
science.’ So the conditionals are ‘ceteris paribus.’ Schiffer and Cartwright
were aware of this. Especially Cartwright who attended seminars on this with
Grice on ‘as if.’ Schiffer was well aware of the topic via Loar and others.
Griceians who were trying to come up with a theory of content without relying
on semantic stuff would involve ‘caeteris paribus’ ‘laws.’ Grice in discussion
with Davidson comes to the same conclusion, hence his “A T C,’ all things
considered and prima facie. H. L. A. Hart, with his concept of ‘defeasibility’
relates. Vide Baker. And obviously those who regard ‘implicature’ as nonmonotonic.
Caeteris paribus -- Levinon “generalised implicature as by default” default
logic, a formal system for reasoning with defaults, developed by Raymond Reiter
in 0. Reiter’s defaults have the form ‘P:MQ1 , . . . , MQn/R’, read ‘If P is
believed and Q1 . . . Qn are consistent with one’s beliefs, then R may be
believed’. Whether a proposition is consistent with one’s beliefs depends on
what defaults have already been applied. Given the defaults P:MQ/Q and
R:M-Q/-Q, and the facts P and R, applying the first default yields Q while
applying the second default yields -Q. So applying either default blocks the
other. Consequently, a default theory may have several default extensions.
Normal defaults having the form P:MQ/Q, useful for representing simple cases of
nonmonotonic reasoning, are inadequate for more complex cases. Reiter produces
a reasonably clean proof theory for normal default theories and proves that
every normal default theory has an extension.
cairdianism: e. Oxford Hegelian of the type Grice saw mostly
every day! philosopher, a leading absolute idealist. Influential as both a
writer and a teacher, Caird was professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow and
master of Balliol , Oxford. His aim in philosophy was to overcome intellectual
oppositions. In his main work, The Critical Philosophy of Kant 9, he argued
that Kant had done this by using reason to synthesize rationalism and
empiricism while reconciling science and religion. In Caird’s view, Kant
unfortunately treated reason as subjective, thereby retaining an opposition
between self and world. Loosely following Hegel, Caird claimed that objective
reason, or the Absolute, was a larger whole in which both self and world were
fragments. In his Evolution of Religion 3 Caird argued that religion progressively
understands God as the Absolute and hence as what reconciles self and world.
This allowed him to defend Christianity as the highest evolutionary stage of
religion without defending the literal truth of Scripture.
cajetan,
original name, -- H. P. Grice thinks that Shropshire borrowed his proof for the
immortality of the soul from Cajetan -- Tommaso de Vio, prelate and theologian.
Born in Gaeta from which he took his name, he entered the Dominican order in
1484 and studied philosophy and theology at Naples, Bologna, and Padua. He
became a cardinal in 1517; during the following two years he traveled to G.y,
where he engaged in a theological controversy with Luther. His major work is a
Commentary on St. Thomas’ Summa of Theology 1508, which promoted a renewal of
interest in Scholastic and Thomistic philosophy during the sixteenth century.
In agreement with Aquinas, Cajetan places the origin of human knowledge in
sense perception. In contrast with Aquinas, he denies that the immortality of
the soul and the existence of God as our creator can be proved. Cajetan’s work
in logic was based on traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic but is
original in its discussion of the notion of analogy. Cajetan distinguishes
three types: analogy of inequality, analogy of attribution, and analogy of
proportion. Whereas he rejected the first two types as improper, he regarded
the last as the basic type of analogy and appealed to it in explaining how
humans come to know God and how analogical reasoning applied to God and God’s creatures
avoids being equivocal.
calculus: --
Hobbes uses ‘calculation – How latin is that? calcŭlo , āre, v. a. id., I.to calculate, compute, reckon (late Lat.). from
diminutive of ‘calx,’ a stone usef for reckon --- I. Lit., Prud. στεφ. 3, 131.—
II. Trop., to consider as, to esteem, Sid. Ep. 7, 9.Grice uses ‘calculus’
slightly different, in the phrase “first-order predicate calculus with
time-relative identity” -- a central branch of mathematics, originally
conceived in connection with the determination of the tangent or normal to a
curve and of the area between it and some fixed axis; but it also embraced the
calculation of volumes and of areas of curved surfaces, the lengths of curved
lines, and so on. Mathematical analysis is a still broader branch that subsumed
the calculus under its rubric see below, together with the theories of functions
and of infinite series. Still more general and/or abstract versions of analysis
have been developed during the twentieth century, with applications to other
branches of mathematics, such as probability theory. The origins of the
calculus go back to Grecian mathematics, usually in problems of determining the
slope of a tangent to a curve and the area enclosed underneath it by some fixed
axes or by a closed curve; sometimes related questions such as the length of an
arc of a curve, or the area of a curved surface, were considered. The subject
flourished in the seventeenth century when the analytical geometry of Descartes
gave algebraic means to extend the procedures. It developed further when the
problems of slope and area were seen to require the finding of new functions,
and that the pertaining processes were seen to be inverse. Newton and Leibniz
had these insights in the late seventeenth century, independently and in
different forms. In the Leibnizian differential calculus the differential dx
was proposed as an infinitesimal increment on x, and of the same dimension as
x; the slope of the tangent to a curve with y as a function of x was the ratio
dy/dx. The integral, ex, was infinitely large and of the dimension of x; thus
for linear variables x and y the area ey dx was the sum of the areas of
rectangles y high and dx wide. All these quantities were variable, and so could
admit higher-order differentials and integrals ddx, eex, and so on. This theory
was extended during the eighteenth century, especially by Euler, to functions
of several independent variables, and with the creation of the calculus of
variations. The chief motivation was to solve differential equations: they were
motivated largely by problems in mechanics, which was then the single largest
branch of mathematics. Newton’s less successful fluxional calculus used limits
in its basic definitions, thereby changing dimensions for the defined terms.
The fluxion was the rate of change of a variable quantity relative to “time”;
conversely, that variable was the “fluent” of its fluxion. These quantities
were also variable; fluxions and fluents of higher orders could be defined from
them. A third tradition was developed during the late eighteenth century by J.
L. Lagrange. For him the “derived functions” of a function fx were definable by
purely algebraic means from its Taylorian power-series expansion about any
value of x. By these means it was hoped to avoid the use of both infinitesimals
and limits, which exhibited conceptual difficulties, the former due to their
unclear ontology as values greater than zero but smaller than any orthodox
quantity, the latter because of the naive theories of their deployment. In the
early nineteenth century the Newtonian tradition died away, and Lagrange’s did
not gain general conviction; however, the LeibnizEuler line kept some of its
health, for its utility in physical applications. But all these theories
gradually became eclipsed by the mathematical analysis of A. L. Cauchy. As with
Newton’s calculus, the theory of limits was central, but they were handled in a
much more sophisticated way. He replaced the usual practice of defining the
integral as more or less automatically the inverse of the differential or
fluxion or whatever by giving independent definitions of the derivative and the
integral; thus for the first time the fundamental “theorem” of the calculus,
stating their inverse relationship, became a genuine theorem, requiring
sufficient conditions upon the function to ensure its truth. Indeed, Cauchy
pioneered the routine specification of necessary and/or sufficient conditions
for truth of theorems in analysis. His discipline also incorporated the theory
of discontinuous functions and the convergence or divergence of infinite
series. Again, general definitions were proffered and conditions sought for
properties to hold. Cauchy’s discipline was refined and extended in the second
half of the nineteenth century by K. Weierstrass and his followers at Berlin.
The study of existence theorems as for irrational numbers, and also technical
questions largely concerned with trigonometric series, led to the emergence of
set topology. In addition, special attention was given to processes involving
several variables changing in value together, and as a result the importance of
quantifiers was recognized for example,
reversing their order from ‘there is a y such that for all x . . .’ to ‘for all
x, there is a y . . .’. This developed later into general set theory, and then
to mathematical logic: Cantor was the major figure in the first aspect, while
G. Peano pioneered much for the second. Under this regime of “rigor,”
infinitesimals such as dx became unacceptable as mathematical objects. However,
they always kept an unofficial place because of their utility when applying the
calculus, and since World War II theories have been put forward in which the
established level of rigor and generality are preserved and even improved but
in which infinitesimals are reinstated. The best-known of these theories, the
non-standard analysis of A. Robinson, makes use of model theory by defining
infinitesimals as arithmetical inverses of the transfinite integers generated
by a “non-standard model” of Peano’s postulates for the natural numbers.
calvin:
j.: As C. of E., Grice was aware of the problems his father, a non-conformist,
brought to his High Anglican household, theologian and church reformer, a major
figure in the Protestant Reformation. He was especially important for the
so-called Reformed churches in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, G.y, Scotland,
and England. Calvin was a theologian in the humanist tradition rather than a
philosopher. He valued philosophy as “a noble gift of God” and cited
philosophers especially Plato when it suited his purposes; but he rejected
philosophical speculation about “higher things” and despised though sometimes exploiting its
resources the dominant Scholastic
philosophy of his time, to which he had been introduced at the of Paris. His eclectic culture also included
a variety of philosophical ideas, of whose source he was often unaware, that
inevitably helped to shape his thought. His Christianae religionis institutio
first ed. 1536 but repeatedly enlarged; in English generally cited as
Institutes, his theological treatises, his massive biblical commentaries, and
his letters, all of which were tr. into most European languages, thus helped to
transmit various philosophical motifs and attitudes in an unsystematic form
both to contemporaries and to posterity. He passed on to his followers impulses
derived from both the antiqui and the moderni. From the former he inherited an
intellectualist anthropology that conceived of the personality as a hierarchy
of faculties properly subordinated to reason, which was at odds with his
evangelical theology; and, though he professed to scorn Stoicism, a moralism
often more Stoic than evangelical. He also relied occasionally on the
Scholastic quaestio, and regularly treated substantives, like the antiqui, as
real entities. These elements in his thought also found expression in tendencies
to a natural theology based on an innate and universal religious instinct that
can discern evidences of the existence and attributes of God everywhere in
nature, and a conception of the Diety as immutable and intelligible. This side
of Calvinism eventually found expression in Unitarianism and universalism. It
was, however, in uneasy tension with other tendencies in his thought that
reflect both his biblicism and a nominalist and Scotist sense of the extreme
transcendence of God. Like other humanists, therefore, he was also profoundly
skeptical about the capacity of the human mind to grasp ultimate truth, an
attitude that rested, for him, on both the consequences of original sin and the
merely conventional origins of language. Corollaries of this were his sense of
the contingency of all human intellectual constructions and a tendency to
emphasize the utility rather than the truth even of such major elements in his
theology as the doctrine of predestination. It may well be no accident,
therefore, that later skepticism and pragmatism have been conspicuous in
thinkers nurtured by later Calvinism, such as Bayle, Hume, and James.
cambridge
change, a non-genuine change: Grice loved the phrase seeing
that, “while at Oxford we had a minor revolution, at Cambridge, if the place
counts, they didn’t. “I went to Oxford. You went to Cambridge. He went to the
London School of Economics.” If I turn pale, I am changing, whereas your
turning pale is only a Cambridge change in me. When I acquire the property of
being such that you are pale, I do not change. In general, an object’s
acquiring a new property is not a sufficient condition for that object to
change although some other object may genuinely change. Thus also, my being
such that you are pale counts only as a Cambridge property of me, a property
such that my gaining or losing it is only a Cambridge change. Cambridge
properties are a proper subclass of extrinsic properties: being south of
Chicago is considered an extrinsic property of me, but since my moving to Canada
would be a genuine change, being south of Chicago cannot, for me, be a
Cambridge property. The concept of a Cambridge change reflects a way of
thinking entrenched in common sense, but it is difficult to clarify, and its
philosophical value is controversial. Neither science nor formal semantics,
e.g., supports this viewpoint. Perhaps calculus, fluxional Cambridge changes
and properties are, for better or worse, inseparable from a vague, intuitive
metaphysics.
Grice and the
Aristotelian Society – his “Causal Theory of perception” was an invited
contribution, a ‘popularisation’ for this Society, which was founded in London
back in the day. The Aristotelian Society’s first president was S. H. Hodgson,
of Christ Church, Oxford. He was succeeded by Bernard Bosanquet.
oxford
aristototelian, Cambridge Platonists: If Grice adored
Aristotle, it was perhaps he hated the Cambridge platonists so! a group of
seventeenth-century philosopher-theologians at the of Cambridge, principally including Benjamin
Whichcote 160983, often designated the father of the Cambridge Platonists;
Henry More; Ralph Cudworth 161788; and John Smith 161652. Whichcote, Cudworth,
and Smith received their education in or
were at some time fellows of Emmanuel , a stronghold of the Calvinism in which
they were nurtured and against which they rebelled under mainly Erasmian,
Arminian, and Neoplatonic influences. Other Cambridge men who shared their
ideas and attitudes to varying degrees were Nathanael Culverwel 1618?51, Peter
Sterry 161372, George Rust d.1670, John Worthington 161871, and Simon Patrick
1625 1707. As a generic label, ‘Cambridge Platonists’ is a handy umbrella term
rather than a dependable signal of doctrinal unity or affiliation. The
Cambridge Platonists were not a self-constituted group articled to an explicit
manifesto; no two of them shared quite the same set of doctrines or values.
Their Platonism was not exclusively the pristine teaching of Plato, but was
formed rather from Platonic ideas supposedly prefigured in Hermes Trismegistus,
in the Chaldean Oracles, and in Pythagoras, and which they found in Origen and
other church fathers, in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus, and in the
Florentine Neoplatonism of Ficino. They took contrasting and changing positions
on the important belief originating in Florence with Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola that Pythagoras and Plato derived their wisdom ultimately from Moses
and the cabala. They were not equally committed to philosophical pursuits, nor
were they equally versed in the new philosophies and scientific advances of the
time. The Cambridge Platonists’ concerns were ultimately religious and
theological rather than primarily philosophical. They philosophized as
theologians, making eclectic use of philosophical doctrines whether Platonic or
not for apologetic purposes. They wanted to defend “true religion,” namely,
their latitudinarian vision of Anglican Christianity, against a variety of
enemies: the Calvinist doctrine of predestination; sectarianism; religious
enthusiasm; fanaticism; the “hide-bound, strait-laced spirit” of Interregnum
Puritanism; the “narrow, persecuting spirit” that followed the Restoration;
atheism; and the impieties incipient in certain trends in contemporary science
and philosophy. Notable among the latter were the doctrines of the mechanical
philosophers, especially the materialism and mechanical determinism of Hobbes
and the mechanistic pretensions of the Cartesians. The existence of God, the
existence, immortality, and dignity of the human soul, the existence of spirit
activating the natural world, human free will, and the primacy of reason are
among the principal teachings of the Cambridge Platonists. They emphasized the
positive role of reason in all aspects of philosophy, religion, and ethics,
insisting in particular that it is irrationality that endangers the Christian
life. Human reason and understanding was “the Candle of the Lord” Whichcote’s
phrase, perhaps their most cherished image. In Whichcote’s words, “To go
against Reason, is to go against God . . . Reason is the Divine Governor of
Man’s Life; it is the very Voice of God.” Accordingly, “there is no real
clashing at all betwixt any genuine point of Christianity and what true
Philosophy and right Reason does determine or allow” More. Reason directs us to
the self-evidence of first principles, which “must be seen in their own light,
and are perceived by an inward power of nature.” Yet in keeping with the
Plotinian mystical tenor of their thought, they found within the human soul the
“Divine Sagacity” More’s term, which is the prime cause of human reason and
therefore superior to it. Denying the Calvinist doctrine that revelation is the
only source of spiritual light, they taught that the “natural light” enables us
to know God and interpret the Scriptures. Cambridge Platonism was
uncompromisingly innatist. Human reason has inherited immutable intellectual,
moral, and religious notions, “anticipations of the soul,” which negate the
claims of empiricism. The Cambridge Platonists were skeptical with regard to certain
kinds of knowledge, and recognized the role of skepticism as a critical
instrument in epistemology. But they were dismissive of the idea that
Pyrrhonism be taken seriously in the practical affairs of the philosopher at
work, and especially of the Christian soul in its quest for divine knowledge
and understanding. Truth is not compromised by our inability to devise
apodictic demonstrations. Indeed Whichcote passed a moral censure on those who
pretend “the doubtfulness and uncertainty of reason.” Innatism and the natural
light of reason shaped the Cambridge Platonists’ moral philosophy. The
unchangeable and eternal ideas of good and evil in the divine mind are the
exemplars of ethical axioms or noemata that enable the human mind to make moral
judgments. More argued for a “boniform faculty,” a faculty higher than reason
by which the soul rejoices in reason’s judgment of the good. The most
philosophically committed and systematic of the group were More, Cudworth, and
Culverwel. Smith, perhaps the most intellectually gifted and certainly the most
promising note his dates, defended Whichcote’s Christian teaching, insisting
that theology is more “a Divine Life than a Divine Science.” More exclusively
theological in their leanings were Whichcote, who wrote little of solid
philosophical interest, Rust, who followed Cudworth’s moral philosophy, and
Sterry. Only Patrick, More, and Cudworth all fellows of the Royal Society were
sufficiently attracted to the new science especially the work of Descartes to
discuss it in any detail or to turn it to philosophical and theological
advantage. Though often described as a Platonist, Culverwel was really a
neo-Aristotelian with Platonic embellishments and, like Sterry, a Calvinist. He
denied innate ideas and supported the tabula rasa doctrine, commending “the
Platonists . . . that they lookt upon the spirit of a man as the Candle of the
Lord, though they were deceived in the time when ‘twas lighted.” The Cambridge
Platonists were influential as latitudinarians, as advocates of rational
theology, as severe critics of unbridled mechanism and materialism, and as the
initiators, in England, of the intuitionist ethical tradition. In the England
of Locke they are a striking counterinstance of innatism and non-empirical
philosophy.
camera
obscura: cited by H. P. Grice and G. J. Warnock on “Seeing” –
and the Causal Theory of Seeing – “visa” -- a darkened enclosure that focuses
light from an external object by a pinpoint hole instead of a lens, creating an
inverted, reversed image on the opposite wall. The adoption of the camera
obscura as a model for the eye revolutionized the study of visual perception by
rendering obsolete previous speculative philosophical theories, in particular
the emanation theory, which explained perception as due to emanated copy-images
of objects entering the eye, and theories that located the image of perception
in the lens rather than the retina. By shifting the location of sensation to a
projection on the retina, the camera obscura doctrine helped support the
distinction of primary and secondary sense qualities, undermining the medieval
realist view of perception and moving toward the idea that consciousness is
radically split off from the world.
campanella:
t. H. P. Grice enjoyed his philosophical poems.- 15681639,
theologian, philosopher, and poet. He joined the Dominican order in
1582. Most of the years between 1592 and 1634 he spent in prison for heresy and
for conspiring to replace rule in
southern Italy with a utopian republic. He fled to France in 1634 and spent his
last years in freedom. Some of his best poetry was written while he was chained
in a dungeon; and during less rigorous confinement he managed to write over a
hundred books, not all of which survive. His best-known work, The City of the Sun
1602; published 1623, describes a community governed in accordance with
astrological principles, with a priest as head of state. In later political
writings, Campanella attacked Machiavelli and called for either a universal monarchy with the pope as spiritual head or a
universal theocracy with the pope as both spiritual and temporal leader. His
first publication was Philosophy Demonstrated by the Senses 1591, which
supported the theories of Telesio and initiated his lifelong attack on
Aristotelianism. He hoped to found a new Christian philosophy based on the two
books of nature and Scripture, both of which are manifestations of God. While
he appealed to sense experience, he was not a straightforward empiricist, for
he saw the natural world as alive and sentient, and he thought of magic as a
tool for utilizing natural processes. In this he was strongly influenced by
Ficino. Despite his own difficulties with Rome, he wrote in support of
Galileo.
campbell:
n. r. – H. P. Grice drew some ideas on scientific laws from Campbell -- British physicist and philosopher of science.
A successful experimental physicist, Campbell with A. Wood discovered the
radioactivity of potassium. His analysis of science depended on a sharp
distinction between experimental laws and theories. Experimental laws are
generalizations established by observations. A theory has the following
structure. First, it requires a largely arbitrary hypothesis, which in itself
is untestable. To render it testable, the theory requires a “dictionary” of
propositions linking the hypothesis to scientific laws, which can be
established experimentally. But theories are not merely logical relations
between hypotheses and experimental laws; they also require concrete analogies
or models. Indeed, the models suggest the nature of the propositions in the
dictionary. The analogies are essential components of the theory, and, for
Campbell, are nearly always mechanical. His theory of science greatly
influenced Nagel’s The Structure of Science 1.
camus,
A.: H. P. Grice said that Martin Heidegger is the greatest philosopher alive –
He was aware that he was contesting with Camus – but Grice saw Camus moer as a
‘novelist’ than a philosopher. --
philosophical novelist and essayist who was also a prose poet and the
conscience of his times. He was born and raised in Algeria, and his experiences
as a fatherless, tubercular youth, as a young playwright and journalist in
Algiers, and later in the anti-G. resistance in Paris during World War II
informed everything he wrote. His best-known writings are not overtly
political; his most famous works, the novel The Stranger written in 0,
published in 2 and his book-length essay The Myth of Sisyphus written in 1,
published in 3 explore the notion of “the absurd,” which Camus alternatively
describes as the human condition and as “a widespread sensitivity of our
times.” The absurd, briefly defined, is the confrontation between
ourselves with our demands for
rationality and justice and an
“indifferent universe.” Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to the endless,
futile task of rolling a rock up a mountain whence it would roll back down of
its own weight, thus becomes an exemplar of the human condition, struggling
hopelessly and pointlessly to achieve something. The odd antihero of The
Stranger, on the other hand, unconsciously accepts the absurdity of life. He
makes no judgments, accepts the most repulsive characters as his friends and
neighbors, and remains unmoved by the death of his mother and his own killing
of a man. Facing execution for his crime, he “opens his heart to the benign
indifference of the universe.” But such stoic acceptance is not the message of
Camus’s philosophy. Sisyphus thrives he is even “happy” by virtue of his scorn
and defiance of the gods, and by virtue of a “rebellion” that refuses to give
in to despair. This same theme motivates Camus’s later novel, The Plague7, and
his long essay The Rebel 1. In his last work, however, a novel called The Fall
published in 6, the year before he won the Nobel prize for literature, Camus
presents an unforgettably perverse character named Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who
exemplifies all the bitterness and despair rejected by his previous characters
and in his earlier essays. Clamence, like the character in The Stranger,
refuses to judge people, but whereas Meursault the “stranger” is incapable of
judgment, Clamence who was once a lawyer makes it a matter of philosophical
principle, “for who among us is innocent?” It is unclear where Camus’s thinking
was heading when he was killed in an automobile accident with his publisher,
Gallimard, who survived.
canguilhem:
g. H. P. Grice drew some ideas on scientific laws from Canguillhem -- historian
and philosopher of science. Canguilhem succeeded Gaston Bachelard as director
of the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques at the of Paris. He developed and sometimes revised
Bachelard’s view of science, extending it to issues in the biological and
medical sciences, where he focused particularly on the concepts of the normal
and the pathological The Normal and the Pathological, 6. On his account norms
are not objective in the sense of being derived from value-neutral scientific
inquiry, but are rooted in the biological reality of the organisms that they
regulate. Canguilhem also introduced an important methodological distinction
between concepts and theories. Rejecting the common view that scientific
concepts are simply functions of the theories in which they are embedded, he
argued that the use of concepts to interpret data is quite distinct from the
use of theories to explain the data. Consequently, the same concepts may occur
in very different theoretical contexts. Canguilhem made particularly effective
use of this distinction in tracing the origin of the concept of reflex action.
infinitum
-- cantor, G. Grice thought that “I know there are infinitely many stars” is a
stupid thing to say -- one of a number of late nineteenthcentury philosophers
including Frege, Dedekind, Peano, Russell, and Hilbert who transformed both
mathematics and the study of its philosophical foundations. The philosophical
import of Cantor’s work is threefold. First, it was primarily Cantor who turned
arbitrary collections into objects of mathematical study, sets. Second, he
created a coherent mathematical theory of the infinite, in particular a theory
of transfinite numbers. Third, linking these, he was the first to indicate that
it might be possible to present mathematics as nothing but the theory of sets,
thus making set theory foundational for mathematics. This contributed to the
Camus, Albert Cantor, Georg 116 116
view that the foundations of mathematics should itself become an object of
mathematical study. Cantor also held to a form of principle of plenitude, the belief
that all the infinities given in his theory of transfinite numbers are
represented not just in mathematical or “immanent” reality, but also in the
“transient” reality of God’s created world. Cantor’s main, direct achievement
is his theory of transfinite numbers and infinity. He characterized as did
Frege sameness of size in terms of one-to-one correspondence, thus accepting
the paradoxical results known to Galileo and others, e.g., that the collection
of all natural numbers has the same cardinality or size as that of all even
numbers. He added to these surprising results by showing 1874 that there is the
same number of algebraic and thus rational numbers as there are natural
numbers, but that there are more points on a continuous line than there are
natural or rational or algebraic numbers, thus revealing that there are at
least two different kinds of infinity present in ordinary mathematics, and
consequently demonstrating the need for a mathematical treatment of these
infinities. This latter result is often expressed by saying that the continuum
is uncountable. Cantor’s theorem of 2 is a generalization of part of this, for
it says that the set of all subsets the power-set of a given set must be
cardinally greater than that set, thus giving rise to the possibility of
indefinitely many different infinities. The collection of all real numbers has
the same size as the power-set of natural numbers. Cantor’s theory of
transfinite numbers 0 97 was his developed mathematical theory of infinity,
with the infinite cardinal numbers the F-, or aleph-, numbers based on the
infinite ordinal numbers that he introduced in 0 and 3. The F-numbers are in
effect the cardinalities of infinite well-ordered sets. The theory thus
generates two famous questions, whether all sets in particular the continuum
can be well ordered, and if so which of the F-numbers represents the
cardinality of the continuum. The former question was answered positively by
Zermelo in 4, though at the expense of postulating one of the most
controversial principles in the history of mathematics, the axiom of choice.
The latter question is the celebrated continuum problem. Cantor’s famous
continuum hypothesis CH is his conjecture that the cardinality of the continuum
is represented by F1, the second aleph. CH was shown to be independent of the usual
assumptions of set theory by Gödel 8 and Cohen 3. Extensions of Cohen’s methods
show that it is consistent to assume that the cardinality of the continuum is
given by almost any of the vast array of F-numbers. The continuum problem is
now widely considered insoluble. Cantor’s conception of set is often taken to
admit the whole universe of sets as a set, thus engendering contradiction, in
particular in the form of Cantor’s paradox. For Cantor’s theorem would say that
the power-set of the universe must be bigger than it, while, since this
powerset is a set of sets, it must be contained in the universal set, and thus
can be no bigger. However, it follows from Cantor’s early 3 considerations of
what he called the “absolute infinite” that none of the collections discovered
later to be at the base of the paradoxes can be proper sets. Moreover,
correspondence with Hilbert in 7 and Dedekind in 9 see Cantor, Gesammelte
Abhandlungen mathematischen und philosophischen Inhalts, 2 shows clearly that
Cantor was well aware that contradictions will arise if such collections are
treated as ordinary sets.
captainship. Strawson calls Grice his captain. In the inaugural
lecture. . A struggle on what seems to be such a From Meaning and Truth
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970) TRUTH AND MEANING central issue in
philosophy should have something of a Homeric quality; and a Homeric struggle
calls for gods and heroes. I can at least, though tentatively, name some living
captains and benevolent shades: on the one side, say, Grice, Austin, and the
later Wittgenstein; on the other, Chomsky, Frege, and the earlier Wittgenstein.
cardinal
-- H. P. Grice and The cardinal virtues, prudence prudential (in ratione)
practical wisdom, courage (fortitude in irascibili), temperance (temperantia in
concuspicibili), and justice (iustitia in voluntate). Grice thought them
oxymoronic: “Virtue is entire, surely!” -- Medievals deemed them cardinal from
Latin cardo, ‘hinge’ because of their important or pivotal role in human
flourishing. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates explains them through a doctrine of
the three parts of the soul, suggesting that a person is prudent when knowledge
of how to live wisdom informs her reason, courageous when informed reason
governs her capacity for wrath, temperate when it also governs her appetites,
and just when each part performs its proper task with informed reason in
control. Development of thought on the cardinal virtues was closely tied to the
doctrine of the unity of the virtues, i.e., that a person possessing one virtue
will have them all.
carlyleianim:,
T.: When Grice was feeling that his mode operators made for poor prose he would
wonder, “what Carlyle might think of this!” -- Scottish-born essayist,
historian, and social critic, one of the most popular writers and lecturers in
nineteenth-century Britain. His works include literary criticism, history, and
cultural criticism. With respect to philosophy, his views on the theory of
history are his most significant contributions. According to Carlyle, great
personages are the most important causal factor in history. On Heroes,
Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History 1841 asserts, “Universal History, the
history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of
the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great
ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the
general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see
standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the
practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men
sent into the world: the soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be
considered, were the history of these.” Carlyle’s doctrine has been challenged
from many different directions. Hegelian and Marxist philosophers maintain that
the so-called great men of history are not really the engine of history, but
merely reflections of deeper forces, such as economic ones, while contemporary
historians emphasize the priority of “history from below” the social history of everyday people as far more representative of the historical
process.
carnapianism: r:
the inventor, with Russell, of the pirot. -- G.-born philosopher, one of the leaders of the Vienna
Circle, a movement loosely called logical positivism or logical empiricism. He
made fundamental contributions to semantics and the philosophy of science, as
well as to the foundations of probability and inductive logic. He was a staunch
advocate of, and active in, the unity of science movement. Carnap received his
Ph.D. in philosophy from the of Jena in
1. His first major work was Die Logische Aufbau der Welt 8, in which he sought
to apply the new logic recently developed by Frege and by Russell and Whitehead
to problems in the philosophy of science. Although influential, it was not tr.
until 7, when it appeared as The Logical Structure of the World. It was
important as one of the first clear and unambiguous statements that the
important work of philosophy concerned logical structure: that language and its
logic were to be the focus of attention. In 5 Carnap left his native G.y for
the United States, where he taught at the
of Chicago and then at UCLA. Die Logiche Syntax der Sprach 4 was rapidly
tr. into English, appearing as The Logical Syntax of Language 7. This was
followed in 1 by Introduction to Semantics, and in 2 by The Formalization of
Logic. In 7 Meaning and Necessity appeared; it provided the groundwork for a
modal logic that would mirror the meticulous semantic development of
first-order logic in the first two volumes. One of the most important concepts
introduced in these volumes was that of a state description. A state
description is the linguistic counterpart of a possible world: in a given
language, the most complete description of the world that can be given. Carnap
then turned to one of the most pervasive and important problems to arise in
both the philosophy of science and the theory of meaning. To say that the
meaning of a sentence is given by the conditions under which it would be
verified as the early positivists did or that a scientific theory is verified
by predictions that turn out to be true, is clearly to speak loosely. Absolute
verification does not occur. To carry out the program of scientific philosophy
in a realistic way, we must be able to speak of the support given by
inconclusive evidence, either in providing epistemological justification for
scientific knowledge, or in characterizing the meanings of many of the terms of
our scientific language. This calls for an understanding of probability, or as
Carnap preferred to call it, degree of confirmation. We must distinguish
between two senses of probability: what he called probability1, corresponding
to credibility, and probability2, corresponding to the frequency or empirical
conception of probability defended by Reichenbach and von Mises. ‘Degree of
confirmation’ was to be the formal concept corresponding to credibility. The
first book on this subject, written from the same point of view as the works on
semantics, was The Logical Foundations of Probability 0. The goal was a logical
definition of ‘ch,e’: the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis h, relative to
a body of evidence e, or the degree of rational belief that one whose total
evidence was e should commit to h. Of course we must first settle on a formal
language in which to express the hypothesis and the evidence; for this Carnap
chooses a first-order language based on a finite number of one-place
predicates, and a countable number of individual constants. Against this
background, we perform the following reductions: ‘ch,e’ represents a
conditional probability; thus it can be represented as the ratio of the
absolute probabilCarlyle, Thomas Carnap, Rudolf 118 118 ity of h & e to the absolute
probability of e. Absolute probabilities are represented by the value of a
measure function m, defined for sentences of the language. The problem is to
define m. But every sentence in Carnap’s languages is equivalent to a
disjunction of state descriptions; the measure to be assigned to it must,
according to the probability calculus, be the sum of the measures assigned to
its constituent state descriptions. Now the problem is to define m for state
descriptions. Recall that state descriptions were part of the machinery Carnap
developed earlier. The function c† is a confirmation function based on the
assignment of equal measures to each state description. It is inadequate,
because if h is not entailed by e, c†h,e % m†h, the a priori measure assigned
to h. We cannot “learn from experience.” A measure that does not have that
drawback is m*, which is based on the assignment of equal measures to each
structure description. A structure description is a set of state descriptions;
two state descriptions belong to the same structure description just in case
one can be obtained from the other by a permutation of individual constants.
Within the structure description, equal values are assigned to each state
description. In the next book, The Continuum of Inductive Methods, Carnap takes
the rate at which we learn from experience to be a fundamental parameter of his
assignments of probability. Like measures on state descriptions, the values of
the probability of the singular predictive inference determine all other probabilities.
The “singular predictive inference” is the inference from the observation that
individual 1 has one set of properties, individual 2 has another set of
properties, etc., to the conclusion: individual j will have property k.
Finally, in the last works Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, vols. I
[1] and II [0], edited with Richard Jeffrey Carnap offered two long articles
constituting his Basic System of Inductive Logic. This system is built around a
language having families of attributes e.g., color or sound that can be
captured by predicates. The basic structure is still monadic, and the logic
still lacks identity, but there are more parameters. There is a parameter l
that reflects the “rate of learning from experience”; a parameter h that reflects
an inductive relation between values of attributes belonging to families. With
the introduction of arbitrary parameters, Carnap was edging toward a subjective
or personalistic view of probability. How far he was willing to go down the
subjectivist garden path is open to question; that he discovered more to be
relevant to inductive logic than the “language” of science seems clear.
Carnap’s work on probability measures on formal languages is destined to live
for a long time. So too is his work on formal semantics. He was a staunch
advocate of the fruitfulness of formal studies in philosophy, of being clear
and explicit, and of offering concrete examples. Beyond the particular
philosophical doctrines he advocated, these commitments characterize his contribution
to philosophy.
cartesianism:
The word ‘Cartesianism’ shows that the ‘de’ that the English adored (“How to
become a Brit” – Mykes) is mostly otiose! -- Descartes, R.: v. H. P. Grice,
“Descartes on clear and distinct perception,” -- philosopher, a founder of the
“modern age” and perhaps the most important figure in the intellectual
revolution of the seventeenth century in which the traditional systems of
understanding based on Aristotle were challenged and, ultimately, overthrown.
His conception of philosophy was all-embracing: it encompassed mathematics and
the physical sciences as well as psychology and ethics, and it was based on
what he claimed to be absolutely firm and reliable metaphysical foundations.
His approach to the problems of knowledge, certainty, and the nature of the
human mind played a major part in shaping the subsequent development of
philosophy. Life and works. Descartes was born in a small town near Tours that
now bears his name. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother his mother
having died soon after his birth, and at the age of ten he was sent to the
recently founded Jesuit of La Flèche in
Anjou, where he remained as a boarding pupil for nine years. At La Flèche he
studied classical literature and traditional classics-based subjects such as
history and rhetoric as well as natural philosophy based on the Aristotelian
system and theology. He later wrote of La Flèche that he considered it “one of
the best schools in Europe,” but that, as regards the philosophy he had learned
there, he saw that “despite being cultivated for many centuries by the best
minds, it contained no point which was not disputed and hence doubtful.” At age
twenty-two having taken a law degree de re Descartes, René 223 223 at Poitiers, Descartes set out on a
series of travels in Europe, “resolving,” as he later put it, “to seek no
knowledge other than that which could be found either in myself or the great
book of the world.” The most important influence of this early period was
Descartes’s friendship with the Dutchman Isaac Beeckman, who awakened his
lifelong interest in mathematics a
science in which he discerned precision and certainty of the kind that truly
merited the title of scientia Descartes’s term for genuine systematic knowledge
based on reliable principles. A considerable portion of Descartes’s energies as
a young man was devoted to pure mathematics: his essay on Geometry published in
1637 incorporated results discovered during the 1620s. But he also saw
mathematics as the key to making progress in the applied sciences; his earliest
work, the Compendium Musicae, written in 1618 and dedicated to Beeckman,
applied quantitative principles to the study of musical harmony and dissonance.
More generally, Descartes saw mathematics as a kind of paradigm for all human
understanding: “those long chains composed of very simple and easy reasonings,
which geometers customarily use to arrive at their most difficult
demonstrations, gave me occasion to suppose that all the things which fall
within the scope of human knowledge are interconnected in the same way”
Discourse on the Method, Part II. In the course of his travels, Descartes found
himself closeted, on November 10, 1619, in a “stove-heated room” in a town in
southern G.y, where after a day of intense meditation, he had a series of vivid
dreams that convinced him of his mission to found a new scientific and
philosophical system. After returning to Paris for a time, he emigrated to
Holland in 1628, where he was to live though with frequent changes of address
for most of the rest of his life. By 1633 he had ready a treatise on cosmology
and physics, Le Monde; but he cautiously withdrew the work from publication
when he heard of the condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition for rejecting
as Descartes himself did the traditional geocentric theory of the universe. But
in 1637 Descartes released for publication, in , a sample of his scientific
work: three essays entitled the Optics, Meteorology, and Geometry. Prefaced to
that selection was an autobiographical introduction entitled Discourse on the
Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and reaching the truth in the
sciences. This work, which includes discussion of a number of scientific issues
such as the circulation of the blood, contains in Part IV a summary of
Descartes’s views on knowledge, certainty, and the metaphysical foundations of
science. Criticisms of his arguments here led Descartes to compose his
philosophical masterpiece, the Meditations on First Philosophy, published in
Latin in 1641 a dramatic account of the
voyage of discovery from universal doubt to certainty of one’s own existence,
and the subsequent struggle to establish the existence of God, the nature and
existence of the external world, and the relation between mind and body. The
Meditations aroused enormous interest among Descartes’s contemporaries, and six
sets of objections by celebrated philosophers and theologians including
Mersenne, Hobbes, Arnauld, and Gassendi were published in the same volume as
the first edition a seventh set, by the Jesuit Pierre Bourdin, was included in
the second edition of 1642. A few years later, Descartes published, in Latin, a
mammoth compendium of his metaphysical and scientific views, the Principles of
Philosophy, which he hoped would become a
textbook to rival the standard texts based on Aristotle. In the later
1640s, Descartes became interested in questions of ethics and psychology,
partly as a result of acute questions about the implications of his system
raised by Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia in a long and fruitful correspondence.
The fruits of this interest were published in 1649 in a lengthy treatise entitled The Passions of the Soul.
The same year, Descartes accepted after much hesitation an invitation to go to
Stockholm to give philosophical instruction to Queen Christina of Sweden. He
was required to provide tutorials at the royal palace at five o’clock in the
morning, and the strain of this break in his habits he had maintained the
lifelong custom of lying in bed late into the morning led to his catching
pneumonia. He died just short of his fifty-fourth birthday. The Cartesian
system. In a celebrated simile, Descartes described the whole of philosophy as
like a tree: the roots are metaphysics, the trunk physics, and the branches are
the various particular sciences, including mechanics, medicine, and morals. The
analogy captures at least three important features of the Cartesian system. The
first is its insistence on the essential unity of knowledge, which contrasts
strongly with the Aristotelian conception of the sciences as a series of
separate disciplines, each with its own methods and standards of precision. The
sciences, as Descartes put it in an early notebook, are all “linked together”
in a sequence that is in principle as simple and straightforward as the series
of numbers. The second point conveyed by the tree simile is the utility of
philosophy for ordinary living: the tree is valued for its fruits, and these
are gathered, Descartes points out, “not from the roots or the trunk but from
the ends of the branches” the practical
sciences. Descartes frequently stresses that his principal motivation is not
abstract theorizing for its own sake: in place of the “speculative philosophy
taught in the Schools,” we can and should achieve knowledge that is “useful in
life” and that will one day make us “masters and possessors of nature.” Third,
the likening of metaphysics or “first philosophy” to the roots of the tree
nicely captures the Cartesian belief in what has come to be known as
foundationalism the view that knowledge
must be constructed from the bottom up, and that nothing can be taken as
established until we have gone back to first principles. Doubt and the
foundations of belief. In Descartes’s central work of metaphysics, the
Meditations, he begins his construction project by observing that many of the
preconceived opinions he has accepted since childhood have turned out to be
unreliable; so it is necessary, “once in a lifetime” to “demolish everything
and start again, right from the foundations.” Descartes proceeds, in other
words, by applying what is sometimes called his method of doubt, which is
explained in the earlier Discourse on the Method: “Since I now wished to devote
myself solely to the search for truth, I thought it necessary to . . . reject
as if absolutely false everything in which one could imagine the least doubt,
in order to see if I was left believing anything that was entirely
indubitable.” In the Meditations we find this method applied to produce a
systematic critique of previous beliefs, as follows. Anything based on the
senses is potentially suspect, since “I have found by experience that the
senses sometimes deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who
have deceived us even once.” Even such seemingly straightforward judgments as
“I am sitting here by the fire” may be false, since there is no guarantee that
my present experience is not a dream. The dream argument as it has come to be
called leaves intact the truths of mathematics, since “whether I am awake or asleep
two and three make five”; but Descartes now proceeds to introduce an even more
radical argument for doubt based on the following dilemma. If there is an
omnipotent God, he could presumably cause me to go wrong every time I count two
and three; if, on the other hand, there is no God, then I owe my origins not to
a powerful and intelligent creator, but to some random series of imperfect
causes, and in this case there is even less reason to suppose that my basic
intuitions about mathematics are reliable. By the end of the First Meditation,
Descartes finds himself in a morass of wholesale doubt, which he dramatizes by
introducing an imaginary demon “of the utmost power and cunning” who is
systematically deceiving him in every possible way. Everything I believe
in “the sky, the earth and all external
things” might be illusions that the
demon has devised in order to trick me. Yet this very extremity of doubt, when
pushed as far as it will go, yields the first indubitable truth in the
Cartesian quest for knowledge the
existence of the thinking subject. “Let the demon deceive me as much as he may,
he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I think I am
something. . . . I am, I exist, is certain, as often as it is put forward by me
or conceived in the mind.” Elsewhere, Descartes expresses this cogito argument
in the famous phrase “Cogito ergo sum” “I am thinking, therefore I exist”.
Having established his own existence, Descartes proceeds in the Third
Meditation to make an inventory of the ideas he finds within him, among which
he identifies the idea of a supremely perfect being. In a much criticized
causal argument he reasons that the representational content or “objective
reality” of this idea is so great that it cannot have originated from inside
his own imperfect mind, but must have been planted in him by an actual perfect
being God. The importance of God in the
Cartesian system can scarcely be overstressed. Once the deity’s existence is
established, Descartes can proceed to reinstate his belief in the world around
him: since God is perfect, and hence would not systematically deceive, the
strong propensity he has given us to believe that many of our ideas come from
external objects must, in general, be sound; and hence the external world exists
Sixth Meditation. More important still, Descartes uses the deity to set up a
reliable method for the pursuit of truth. Human beings, since they are finite
and imperfect, often go wrong; in particular, the data supplied by the senses
is often, as Descartes puts it, “obscure and confused.” But each of us can
nonetheless avoid error, provided we remember to withhold judgment in such
doubtful cases and confine ourselves to the “clear and distinct” perceptions of
the pure intellect. A reliable intellect was God’s gift to man, and if we use
it with the greatest posDescartes, René Descartes, René 225 225 sible care, we can be sure of avoiding
error Fourth Meditation. In this central part of his philosophy, Descartes
follows in a long tradition going back to Augustine with its ultimate roots in
Plato that in the first place is skeptical about the evidence of the senses as
against the more reliable abstract perceptions of the intellect, and in the
second place sees such intellectual knowledge as a kind of illumination derived
from a higher source than man’s own mind. Descartes frequently uses the ancient
metaphor of the “natural light” or “light of reason” to convey this notion that
the fundamental intuitions of the intellect are inherently reliable. The label
‘rationalist’, which is often applied to Descartes in this connection, can be
misleading, since he certainly does not rely on reason alone: in the
development of his scientific theories he allows a considerable role to
empirical observation in the testing of hypotheses and in the understanding of
the mechanisms of nature his “vortex theory” of planetary revolutions is based
on observations of the behavior of whirlpools. What is true, nonetheless, is
that the fundamental building blocks of Cartesian science are the innate ideas
chiefly those of mathematics whose reliability Descartes takes as guaranteed by
their having been implanted in the mind by God. But this in turn gives rise to
a major problem for the Cartesian system, which was first underlined by some of
Descartes’s contemporaries notably Mersenne and Arnauld, and which has come to
be known as the Cartesian circle. If the reliability of the clear and distinct
perceptions of the intellect depends on our knowledge of God, then how can that
knowledge be established in the first place? If the answer is that we can prove
God’s existence from premises that we clearly and distinctly perceive, then
this seems circular; for how are we entitled, at this stage, to assume that our
clear and distinct perceptions are reliable? Descartes’s attempts to deal with
this problem are not entirely satisfactory, but his general answer seems to be
that there are some propositions that are so simple and transparent that, so
long as we focus on them, we can be sure of their truth even without a divine
guarantee. Cartesian science and dualism. The scientific system that Descartes
had worked on before he wrote the Meditations and that he elaborated in his
later work, the Principles of Philosophy, attempts wherever possible to reduce
natural phenomena to the quantitative descriptions of arithmetic and geometry:
“my consideration of matter in corporeal things,” he says in the Principles,
“involves absolutely nothing apart from divisions, shapes and motions.” This
connects with his metaphysical commitment to relying only on clear and distinct
ideas. In place of the elaborate apparatus of the Scholastics, with its
plethora of “substantial forms” and “real qualities,” Descartes proposes to
mathematicize science. The material world is simply an indefinite series of
variations in the shape, size, and motion of the single, simple, homogeneous
matter that he terms res extensa “extended substance”. Under this category he
includes all physical and biological events, even complex animal behavior, which
he regards as simply the result of purely mechanical processes for non-human
animals as mechanical automata, see Discourse, Part V. But there is one class
of phenomena that cannot, on Descartes’s view, be handled in this way, namely
conscious experience. Thought, he frequently asserts, is completely alien to,
and incompatible with, extension: it occupies no space, is unextended and
indivisible. Hence Descartes puts forward a dualistic theory of substance: in
addition to the res extensa that makes up the material universe, there is res
cogitans, or thinking substance, which is entirely independent of matter. And
each conscious individual is a unique thinking substance: “This ‘I’ that is, the soul, by which I am what I am,
is entirely distinct from the body, and would not fail to be what it is even if
the body did not exist.” Descartes’s arguments for the incorporeality of the
soul were challenged by his contemporaries and have been heavily criticized by
subsequent commentators. In the Discourse and the Second Meditation, he lays
great stress on his ability to form a conception of himself as an existing
subject, while at the same time doubting the existence of any physical thing;
but this, as the critics pointed out, seems inadequate to establish the conclusion
that he is a res cogitans a being whose
whole essence consists simply in thought. I may be able to imagine myself
without a body, but this hardly proves that I could in reality exist without
one see further the Synopsis to the Meditations. A further problem is that our
everyday experience testifies to the fact that we are not incorporeal beings,
but very much creatures of flesh and blood. “Nature teaches me by the
sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on,” Descartes admits in the Sixth
Meditation, “that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in
a ship, but that I am very closely Descartes, René Descartes, René 226 226 joined and as it were intermingled with
it.” Yet how can an incorporeal soul interact with the body in this way? In his
later writings, Descartes speaks of the “union of soul and body” as a
“primitive notion” see letters to Elizabeth of May 21 and June 28, 1643; by
this he seems to have meant that, just as there are properties such as length
that belong to body alone, and properties such as understanding that belong to mind alone, so there are items
such as sensations that are irreducibly psychophysical, and that belong to me
insofar as I am an embodied consciousness. The explanation of such
psychophysical events was the task Descartes set himself in his last work, The
Passions of the Soul; here he developed his theory that the pineal gland in the
brain was the “seat of the soul,” where data from the senses were received via
the nervous system, and where bodily movements were initiated. But despite the
wealth of physiological detail Descartes provides, the central philosophical
problems associated with his dualistic account of humans as hybrid entities
made up of physical body and immaterial soul are, by common consent, not
properly sorted out. Influence. Despite the philosophical difficulties that
beset the Cartesian system, Descartes’s vision of a unified understanding of
reality has retained a powerful hold on scientists and philosophers ever since.
His insistence that the path to progress in science lay in the direction of
quantitative explanations has been substantially vindicated. His attempt to
construct a system of knowledge by starting from the subjective awareness of
the conscious self has been equally important, if only because so much of the
epistemology of our own time has been a reaction against the autocentric
perspective from which Descartes starts out. As for the Cartesian theory of the
mind, it is probably fair to say that the dualistic approach is now widely
regarded as raising more problems than it solves. But Descartes’s insistence
that the phenomena of conscious experience are recalcitrant to explanation in
purely physical terms remains deeply influential, and the cluster of profound
problems that he raised about the nature of the human mind and its relation to
the material world are still very far from being adequately resolved. Cartesianism -- Elizabeth of Bohemia 160, G.
Princess whose philosophical reputation rests on her correspondence with Descartes.
The most heavily discussed portion of this correspondence focuses on the
relationship between the mind and the body and on Descartes’s claim that the
mind-body union is a simple notion. Her discussions of free will and of the
nature of the sovereign good also have philosophical interest.
cassirer: philosopher
and intellectual historian. He was born in the G. city of Breslau now Wroclaw,
Poland and educated at various G. universities. He completed his studies iat
Marburg under Hermann Cohen, founder of the Marburg School of neo-Kantianism.
Cassirer lectured at Berlin before accepting a professorship at the newly
founded of Hamburg. With the rise of
Nazism he left Germany, going first to a visiting appointment at (of all
places), All Souls, Oxford and then to a professorship at Göteborg, Sweden.
Seeing that Oxford didn’t care for him nor he for Oxford, he went to the New
World; he taught first at Yale in New Haven, on the Long Island Sound, and then
at Columbia. Cassirer’s oeuvre may be divided into those in the history of
philosophy and culture and those that present his own systematic thought. The
former include major editions of Leibniz and Kant; “The Problem of Knowledge,” which
traces the subject from Nicholas of Cusa to the twentieth century; and individual
works on Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Rousseau, Goethe, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment,
and English Platonism, of all movements. The latter, systematic, oeuvre,
include his masterpiece, “Symbolic Form,” which presents culture based on types
of symbolism and individual oeuvre concerned with problems in philosophy. Two
of his best-known essays are “An Essay on Man” and “The Myth of the State.” Cassirer
did not consider his systematic philosophy and his historical studies as
separate endeavors; each grounded the other. Because of his involvement with
the Marburg School, his philosophical position is frequently but mistakenly
typed as neo-Kantian. Kant is an important influence on him, but so are Hegel,
Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Goethe, Leibniz, and Vico. Cassirer derives his
principal philosophical concept, that of “symbolic form,” most directly from
Heinrich Hertz’s conception of notation in mechanics and the conception of the “symbol”
in art of the Hegelian aesthetician, Friedrich Theodor Vischer. In a wider
sense his conception of a “symbolic form” is a transformation of “idea” and
“form” within the whole tradition of philosophical idealism. Cassirer’s
conception of the “symbolic form” is NOT based, as Grice’s and Peirce’s isn’t,
on a distinction between the symbolic form and the literal form. In Cassirer’s view
all human knowledge depends on the power to form experience through some type
of “symbol.”. The forms of human knowledge are coextensive with forms of human
culture. The form Cassirer most often analyzes is language. Language as a
symbolic form yields to a total system of human knowledge and culture that is
the subject matter of philosophy. conception of the “symbol form” has influenced
a few Griceian with continental tendendies. His studies of the Renaissance and
the Enlightenment still stand as groundbreaking works in intellectual
history.
griceian
casuistry: the case-analysis approach to the interpretation of
general moral rules. Casuistry starts with paradigm cases of how and when a given
general moral rule should be applied, and then reasons by analogy to cases in
which the proper application of the rule is less obvious e.g., a case in which lying is the only way
for a priest not to betray a secret revealed in confession. The point of
considering the series of cases is to ascertain the morally relevant
similarities and differences between cases. Casuistry’s heyday was the first
half of the seventeenth century. Reacting against casuistry’s popularity with
the Jesuits and against its tendency to qualify general moral rules, Pascal
penned a polemic against casuistry from which the term never recovered see his
Provincial Letters, 1656. But the kind of reasoning to which the term refers is
flourishing in contemporary practical ethics.
categorical
theory: H. P. Grice lectured at Oxford on Aristotle’s
Categories in joint seminars with J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson, a theory all of whose models are isomorphic.
Because of its weak expressive power, in first-order logic with identity only
theories with a finite model can be categorical; without identity no theories
are categorical. A more interesting property, therefore, is being categorical
in power: a theory is categorical in power a when the theory has, up to
isomorphism, only one model with a domain of cardinality a. Categoricity in
power shows the capacity to characterize a structure completely, only limited
by cardinality. For example, the first-order theory of dense order without
endpoints is categorical in power w the cardinality of the natural numbers. The
first-order theory of simple discrete orderings with initial element, the
ordering of the natural numbers, is not categorical in power w. There are
countable discrete orders, not isomorphic to the natural numbers, that are
elementary equivalent to it, i.e., have the same elementary, first-order
theory. In first-order logic categorical theories are complete. This is not
necessarily true for extensions of first-order logic for which no completeness
theorem holds. In such a logic a set of axioms may be categorical without
providing an informative characterization of the theory of its unique model.
The term ‘elementary equivalence’ was introduced around 6 by Tarski for the
property of being indistinguishable by elementary means. According to Oswald
Veblen, who first used the term ‘categorical’ in 4, in a discussion of the
foundations of geometry, that term was suggested to him by the pragmatist John Dewey.
categoricity:
Grice distinguishes a meta-category, as categoricity, from category itself. He
gave seminars on Aristotle’s categories at Oxford in joint seminars with J. L.
Austin and P. F. Strawson. the semantic property belonging to a set of
sentences, a “postulate set,” that implicitly defines completely describes, or
characterizes up to isomorphism the structure of its intended interpretation or
standard model. The best-known categorical set of sentences is the postulate
set for number theory attributed to Peano, which completely characterizes the
structure of an arithmetic progression. This structure is exemplified by the
system of natural numbers with zero as distinguished element and successor
addition of one as distinguished function. Other exemplifications of this
structure are obtained by taking as distinguished element an arbitrary integer,
taking as distinguished function the process of adding an arbitrary positive or
negative integer and taking as universe of discourse or domain the result of
repeated application of the distinguished function to the distinguished
element. See, e.g., Russell’s Introduction to the Mathematical Philosophy, 8.
More precisely, a postulate set is defined to be categorical if every two of
its models satisfying interpretations or realizations are isomorphic to each
other, where, of course, two interpretations are isomorphic if between their
respective universes of discourse there exists a one-to-one correspondence by
which the distinguished elements, functions, relations, etc., of the one are
mapped exactly onto those of the other. The importance of the analytic geometry
of Descartes involves the fact that the system of points of a geometrical line
with the “left-of relation” distinguished is isomorphic to the system of real
numbers with the “less-than” relation distinguished. Categoricity, the ideal
limit of success for the axiomatic method considered as a method for
characterizing subject matter rather than for reorganizing a science, is known
to be impossible with respect to certain subject matters using certain formal
languages. The concept of categoricity can be traced back at least as far as
Dedekind; the word is due to Dewey.
category:
H. P. Grice and J. L. Austin, “Categories.” H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson,
“Categories.” an ultimate class. Categories are the highest genera of entities
in the world. They may contain species but are not themselves species of any
higher genera. Aristotle, the first philosopher to discuss categories
systematically, listed ten, including substance, quality, quantity, relation,
place, and time. If a set of categories is complete, then each entity in the
world will belong to a category and no entity will belong to more than one
category. A prominent example of a set of categories is Descartes’s dualistic
classification of mind and matter. This example brings out clearly another
feature of categories: an attribute that can belong to entities in one category
cannot be an attribute of entities in any other category. Thus, entities in the
category of matter have extension and color while no entity in the category of
mind can have extension or color.
category
mistake. Grice’s example: You’re the cream in my coffee.
Usually a metaphor is a conversational implicatum due to a category mistake –
But since obviously the mistake is intentional it is not really a mistake!
Grice prefers to speak of ‘categorial falsity.’ What Ryle has in mind is
different and he does mean ‘mistake.’ the placing of an entity in the wrong
category. In one of Ryle’s examples, to place the activity of exhibiting team
spirit in the same class with the activities of pitching, batting, and catching
is to make a category mistake; exhibiting team spirit is not a special function
like pitching or batting but instead a way those special functions are
performed. A second use of ‘category mistake’ is to refer to the attribution to
an entity of a property which that entity cannot have not merely does not
happen to have, as in ‘This memory is violet’ or, to use an example from
Carnap, ‘Caesar is a prime number’. These two kinds of category mistake may
seem different, but both involve misunderstandings of the natures of the things
being talked about. It is thought that they go beyond simple error or ordinary
mistakes, as when one attributes a property to a thing which that thing could
have but does not have, since category mistakes involve attributions of
properties e.g., being a special function to things e.g., team spirit that
those things cannot have. According to Ryle, the test for category differences
depends on whether replacement of one expression for another in the same
sentence results in a type of unintelligibility that he calls “absurdity.”
category
theory, H. P. Grice lectured on Aristotle’s categories in
joint seminars at Oxford with J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson, a mathematical
theory that studies the universal properties of structures via their
relationships with one another. A category C consists of two collections Obc
and Morc , the objects and the morphisms of C, satisfying the following
conditions: i for each pair a, b of objects there is associated a collection
Morc a, b of morphisms such that each member of Morc belongs to one of these
collections; ii for each object a of Obc , there is a morphism ida , called the
identity on a; iii a composition law associating with each morphism f: a P b
and each morphism g: b P c a morphism gf:a P c, called the composite of f and
g; iv for morphisms f: a P b, g: b P c, and h: c P d, the equation hgf % hgf
holds; v for any morphism f: a P b, we have idbf % f and fida % f. Sets with
specific structures together with a collection of mappings preserving these
structures are categories. Examples: 1 sets with functions between them; 2
groups with group homomorphisms; 3 topological spaces with continuous
functions; 4 sets with surjections instead of arbitrary maps constitute a
different category. But a category need not be composed of sets and
set-theoretical maps. Examples: 5 a collection of propositions linked by the
relation of logical entailment is a category and so is any preordered set; 6 a
monoid taken as the unique object and its elements as the morphisms is a
category. The properties of an object of a category are determined by the
morphisms that are coming out of and going in this object. Objects with a
universal property occupy a key position. Thus, a terminal object a is
characterized by the following universal property: for any object b there is a
unique morphism from b to a. A singleton set is a terminal object in the
category of sets. The Cartesian product of sets, the product of groups, and the
conjunction of propositions are all terminal objects in appropriate categories.
Thus category theory unifies concepts and sheds a new light on the notion of
universality.
Grice’s four
conversational categories – the category of conversational mode: While Grice could be jocular, in an English way,
about the number of maxims within each category – he surely would not like to
joke as far as to be cavalier about the NUMBER of categories: Four was the
number of functions from which the twelve categories rramify, Kant, or “Ariskant,”
but Grice takes the function for the category -- four is for Ariskantian Grice.
This is Aristotle’s hexis. This category posed a special conceptual problem to
Grice. Recall that his categories are invoked only by their power to generate
conversational implciata. But a conversational implicatum is non-detachable.
That is, being based on universalistic principles of general rationality, it
cannot attach to an EXPRESSION, less so to the ‘meaning’ of an EXPRESSION: “if”
and “provided” are REALISATIONS of the concept of the conditionality. Now, the
conversational supra-maxim, ‘be perspicuous’ [sic], is supposed to apply NOT to
the content, or matter, but to the FORM. (Strictly, quantitas and qualitas
applies to matter, RELATIO applies to the link between at least two matters).
Grice tweaks things in such a way that he is happy, and so am I. This is a pun
on Aristkant’s Kategorie (Ammonius, tropos, Boëthius,
modus, Kant Modalitat). Gesichtspuncte der Modalität in assertorische,
apodiktische und problematische hat sich aus der Aristotelischen Eintheilung
hervorgebildet (Anal. Dr. 1, 2): 7@ợc gócois atv n 100 incozy h kỹ kvayxns
Úndozav û toù {VJÉZEo fai Úndozev: Doch geht diese Aristotelische Stelle
vielmehr auf die analogen objectiven Verhältnisse, als auf den subjectiven
Gewissheitsgrad. Der Zusatz Svvatóv, įvsezóuevov, és åviyans, jedoch auch eine
adverbiale Bestimmung wie taméws in dem Satze ý σελήνη ταχέως αποκαθίσταται,
heisst bei Ammonius τρόπος (zu περί ερμ. Cap. 12) und bei Boëthius modus. Kant
(Kritik der r. Vern. § 9-11; Prolegom. $ 21, Log. § 30) gründet die Eintheilung
nach der Modalität auf die modalen Kategorien: Möglichkeit und Unmöglichkeit,
Dasein und Nichtsein, Nothwendigkeit und Zufälligkeit, wobei jedoch die
Zusammenstellung der Unmöglichkeit, die eine negative Nothwendigkeit ist, mit
der Möglichkeit, und ebenso der Zufälligkeit, die das nicht als nothwendig
erkannte Dasein bezeichnet, mit der Nothwendigkeit eine Ungenauigkeit enthält:
die Erkenntniss der Unmöglichkeit ist nicht ein problematisches, sondern ein
(negativ-) apodiktisches Urtheil (was Kant in der Anwendung selbst anerkennt,
indem er z. B. Krit. der r. V. S. 191 die Formel: es ist unmöglich etc. als
Ausdruck einer apodiktischen Gewissheit betrachtet), und die Erkenntniss des Zufälligen
ist nicht ein apodiktisches, sondern ein assertorisches Urtheil. Ausserdem aber
hat Kant das subjective und objective Element in den Kategorien der Qualität
und Modalität nicht bestimmt genug unterschieden.
Grice’s four
conversational categories – the category of conversational quality: While Grice could be cavalier about the number of
maxims falling under the category of conversational quality, he surely would
not be cavalier about the number of categories themselves. Four were the
functions from which the twelve categories ramify for Ariskant, and four were
for Grice: he takes the function from Kant, but the spirit from Aristotle. This is Aristotle’s universal, poiotes. This
was originally the desideratum of conversational candour. At that point, there
was no Kantian scheme of categories in the horizon. Candour Grice arbitrarily
contrasts with clarity – and so the desideratum of conversational candour
sometimes clashes with the desideratum of conversational clarity. One may not
be able to provide a less convoluted utterance (“It is raining”) but use the
less clear, but more candid, “It might be raining, for all I know.” A pun on
Aristkan’s Kategorie, poiotes, qualitas, Qualitat. Expressions which are in no way composite
signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state,
action, or affection. To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are
'man' or 'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two cubits long' or 'three
cubits long', of quality, such attributes as 'white', 'grammatical'.
Grice’s four
conversational categories – the category of conversational quantity: While Grice could be cavalier about the number of
maxims falling under quantity, he was not about the number of categories
itself. Four was the number of functions out of which the twelve categories
spring for Ariskant, and four was for Grice. He takes the function (the letter)
from Kant, but the spirit from Aristotle. This is Aristotle’s universal,
posotes. Grice would often use ‘a fortiori,’ and then it dawned on him. “All I
need is a principle of conversational fortitude. This will give the Oxonians
the Graeco-Roman pedigree they deserve.’
a pun on Ariskant’s Kategorie, posotes, quantitas, Quantitat. Grice
expands this as ‘quantity of information,’ or ‘informative content’ – which
then as he recognises overlaps with the category of conversational quality,
because ‘false information’ is a misnomer. Expressions which are in no way
composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position,
state, action, or affection. To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of
substance are 'man' or 'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two cubits
long' or 'three cubits long'
Grice’s four
conversational categories – the category of conversational relation: While Grice could be cavalier about the number of
maxims under the category of relation, he was not about the number of
categories: four were the number of functions out of which the twelve
categories spring for Ariskant and four were for Grice: he takes the letter
(function) from Kant, and the spirit from Aristotle. This is Aristotle’s ‘pros
ti.’ f there are categories of being, and categories of thought, and categories
of expression, surely there is room for the ‘conversational category.’ A pun on
Ariskant’s Kategorie (pros ti, ad aliquid, Relation). Surely a move has to
relate to the previous move, and should include a tag as to what move will
relate. Expressions which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity,
quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection. To
sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are 'man' or 'the horse', of
quantity, such terms as 'two cubits long' or 'three cubits long', of quality,
such attributes as 'white', 'grammatical'. 'Double', 'half', 'greater', fall
under the category of relation.
causatum: Is the causatum involved in the communicatum. Grice
relies on this only in Meaning Revisited, where he presents a transcendental
argument for the justification. This is what is referred in the literature as
“H. P. Grice’s Triangle.” Borrowing from Aristotle in De Interpretatione, Grice
speaks of three corners of the triangle and correspondences obtaining between
them. There’s a psychophysical correspondence between the soul of the emissor,
the soul of the emissee, and the shared experience of the denotata of the
communication device the emissor employs. Then there’s the psychosemiotic
correspondence between the communication device and the state of the soul in
the emissor that is transferred, in a soul-to-soul transfer to the emissee. And
finally, there is a semiophyiscal correspondence between the communication
device and the world. When it comes to the causation, the belief that there is
fire is caused by there being fire. The emissor wants to transfer his belief,
and utters. “Smoke!”. The soul-to-soul transfer is effected. The fire that
caused the smoke that caused the belief in the the emissor now causes a belief
in the emissee. If that’s not a causal account of communication, I don’t know what
it is. Grice is no expressionist in that a solipsistic telementational model is
of no use if there is no ‘hookup’ as he puts it with the world that causes this
‘shared experience’ that is improved by the existence of a communication
device. Grice’s idea of ‘cause’ is his
‘bite’ on reality. He chooses ‘Phenomenalism’ as an enemy. Causal realism is at
the heart of Grice’s programme. As an Oxonian, he was well aware that to trust
a cause is to be anti-Cambridge, where they follow Hume’s and Kant’s scepticism.
Grice uses ‘cause’ rather casually. His most serious joke is “Charles I’s
decapitation willed his death” – but it is not easy to trace a philosopher who
explicitly claim that ‘to cause’ is ‘to will.’ For
in God the means and
the end preexist in the cause as willed together. Causation
figures large in Grice, notably re: the perceptum. The agent perceives that the
pillar box is red. The cause is that the pillar box is red. Out of that, Grice
constructs a whole theory of conversation. Why would someone just report what a
THING SEEMS to him when he has no doubt that it was THE THING that caused the
thing to SEEM red to him? Applying some sort of helpfulness, it works: the
addressee is obviously more interested in what the thing IS, not what it seems.
A sense-datum is not something you can eat. An apple is. So, the assumption is
that a report of what a thing IS is more relevant than a report about what a
thing SEEMS. So, Grice needs to find a
rationale that justifies, ceteris paribus, the utterance of “The thing seems
phi.” Following helpfulness, U utters “The thing seems phi” when the U is not
in a position to say what the thing IS phi. The denial, “The thing is not phi”
is in the air, and also the doubt, “The thing may not be phi.” Most without a
philosophical background who do not take Grice’s joke of echoing Kant’s
categories (Kant had 12, not 4!) play with quantitas, qualitas, relatio and
modus. Grice in “Causal” uses ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ but grants he won’t
‘determine’ in what way ‘the thing seems phi’ is ‘weaker’ than ‘the thing is
phi.’ It might well be argued that it’s STRONGER: the thing SEEEMS TO BE phi.’
In the previous “Introduction to Logical Theory,” Strawson just refers to
Grice’s idea of a ‘pragmatic rule’ to the effect that one utter the LOGICALLY
stronger proposition. Let’s revise dates. Whereas Grice says that his
confidence in the success of “Causal,” he ventured with Strawson’s “Intro,”
Strawson is citing Grice already. Admittedly, Strawson adds, “in a different
context.” But Grice seems pretty sure that “The thing seems phi” is WEAKER than
“The thing is phi.” In 1961 he is VERY CLEAR that while what he may have said
to Strawson that Strawson reported in that footnote was in terms of LOGICAL
STRENGTH (in terms of entailment, for extensional contexts). In “Causal,” Grice
is clear that he does not think LOGICAL STRENGTH applies to intensional
contexts. In later revisions, it is not altogether clear how he deals with the
‘doubt or denial.’ He seems to have been more interested in refuting G. A. Paul
(qua follower of Witters) than anything else. In his latest reformulation of
the principle, now a conversational category, he is not specific about
phenomenalist reports. A causal law is a statement describing a regular and
invariant connection between types of events or states, where the connections
involved are causal in some sense. When one speaks of causal laws as
distinguished from laws that are not 123 category mistake causal law 123 causal, the intended distinction may
vary. Sometimes, a law is said to be causal if it relates events or states
occurring at successive times, also called a law of succession: e.g.,
‘Ingestion of strychnine leads to death.’ A causal law in this sense contrasts
with a law of coexistence, which connects events or states occurring at the
same time e.g., the Wiedemann-Franz law relating thermal and electric
conductivity in metals. One important kind of causal law is the deterministic
law. Causal laws of this kind state exceptionless connections between events,
while probabilistic or statistical laws specify probability relationships
between events. For any system governed by a set of deterministic laws, given
the state of a system at a time, as characterized by a set of state variables,
these laws will yield a unique state of the system for any later time or,
perhaps, at any time, earlier or later. Probabilistic laws will yield, for a
given antecedent state of a system, only a probability value for the occurrence
of a certain state at a later time. The laws of classical mechanics are often
thought to be paradigmatic examples of causal laws in this sense, whereas the
laws of quantum mechanics are claimed to be essentially probabilistic. Causal
laws are sometimes taken to be laws that explicitly specify certain events as
causes of certain other events. Simple laws of this kind will have the form
‘Events of kind F cause events of kind G’; e.g., ‘Heating causes metals to
expand’. A weaker related concept is this: a causal law is one that states a
regularity between events which in fact are related as cause to effect,
although the statement of the law itself does not say so laws of motion
expressed by differential equations are perhaps causal laws in this sense.
These senses of ‘causal law’ presuppose a prior concept of causation. Finally,
causal laws may be contrasted with teleological laws, laws that supposedly
describe how certain systems, in particular biological organisms, behave so as
to achieve certain “goals” or “end states.” Such laws are sometimes claimed to
embody the idea that a future state that does not as yet exist can exert an
influence on the present behavior of a system. Just what form such laws take
and exactly how they differ from ordinary laws have not been made wholly clear,
however. Grice was not too happy with
the causal theory of proper names, the view that proper names designate what
they name by virtue of a kind of causal connection to it. Perhaps his antipathy
was due to the fact that he was Herbert Grice, and so was his father. This led
Grice to start using once at Clifton and Oxford, “H. P.” and eventually,
dropping the “Herbert” altogether and become “Paul Grice.” This view is a
special case, and in some instances an unwarranted interpretation, of a direct
reference view of names. On this approach, proper names, e.g., ‘Machiavelli’,
are, as J. S. Mill wrote, “purely denotative. . . . they denote the individuals
who are called by them; but they do not indicate or imply any attributes as
belonging to those individuals” A System of Logic, 1879. Proper names may
suggest certain properties to many competent speakers, but any such associated
information is no part of the definition of the name. Names, on this view, have
no definitions. What connects a name to what it names is not the latter’s
satisfying some condition specified in the name’s definition. Names, instead,
are simply attached to things, applied as labels, as it were. A proper name,
once attached, becomes a socially available device for making the relevant name
bearer a subject of discourse. On the other leading view, the descriptivist
view, a proper name is associated with something like a definition.
‘Aristotle’, on this view, applies by definition to whoever satisfies the
relevant properties e.g., is ‘the teacher
of Alexander the Great, who wrote the Nicomachean Ethics’. Russell, e.g.,
maintained that ordinary proper names which he contrasted with logically proper
or genuine names have definitions, that they are abbreviated definite
descriptions. Frege held that names have sense, a view whose proper interpretation
remains in dispute, but is often supposed to be closely related to Russell’s
approach. Others, most notably Searle, have defended descendants of the
descriptivist view. An important variant, sometimes attributed to Frege, denies
that names have articulable definitions, but nevertheless associates them with
senses. And the bearer will still be, by definition as it were, the unique
thing to satisfy the relevant mode of presentation. causal overdetermination
causal theory of proper names 124 124
The direct reference approach is sometimes misleadingly called the causal
theory of names. But the key idea need have nothing to do with causation: a
proper name functions as a tag or label for its bearer, not as a surrogate for
a descriptive expression. Whence the allegedly misleading term ‘causal theory
of names’? Contemporary defenders of Mill’s conception like Keith Donnellan and
Kripke felt the need to expand upon Mill’s brief remarks. What connects a
present use of a name with a referent? Here Donnellan and Kripke introduce the
notion of a “historical chains of communication.” As Kripke tells the story, a
baby is baptized with a proper name. The name is used, first by those present
at the baptism, subsequently by those who pick up the name in conversation,
reading, and so on. The name is thus propagated, spread by usage “from link to
link as if by a chain” Naming and Necessity, 0. There emerges a historical
chain of uses of the name that, according to Donnellan and Kripke, bridges the
gap between a present use of the name and the individual so named. This
“historical chain of communication” is occasionally referred to as a “casual
chain of communication.” The idea is that one’s use of the name can be thought
of as a causal factor in one’s listener’s ability to use the name to refer to
the same individual. However, although Kripke in Naming and Necessity does
occasionally refer to the chain of communication as causal, he more often
simply speaks of the chain of communication, or of the fact that the name has
been passed “by tradition from link to link” p. 106. The causal aspect is not
one that Kripke underscores. In more recent writings on the topic, as well as
in lectures, Kripke never mentions causation in this connection, and Donnellan
questions whether the chain of communication should be thought of as a causal
chain. This is not to suggest that there is no view properly called a “causal
theory of names.” There is such a view, but it is not the view of Kripke and
Donnellan. The causal theory of names is a view propounded by physicalistically
minded philosophers who desire to “reduce” the notion of “reference” to
something more physicalistically acceptable, such as the notion of a causal
chain running from “baptism” to later use. This is a view whose motivation is
explicitly rejected by Kripke, and should be sharply distinguished from the
more popular anti-Fregean approach sketched above. Causation is the relation
between cause and effect, or the act of bringing about an effect, which may be
an event, a state, or an object say, a statue. The concept of causation has
long been recognized as one of fundamental philosophical importance. Hume
called it “the cement of the universe”: causation is the relation that connects
events and objects of this world in significant relationships. The concept of
causation seems pervasively present in human discourse. It is expressed by not
only ‘cause’ and its cognates but by many other terms, such as ‘produce’,
‘bring about’, ‘issue’, ‘generate’, ‘result’, ‘effect’, ‘determine’, and
countless others. Moreover, many common transitive verbs “causatives”, such as
‘kill’, ‘break’, and ‘move’, tacitly contain causal relations e.g., killing
involves causing to die. The concept of action, or doing, involves the idea
that the agent intentionally causes a change in some object or other;
similarly, the concept of perception involves the idea that the object
perceived causes in the perceiver an appropriate perceptual experience. The
physical concept of force, too, appears to involve causation as an essential
ingredient: force is the causal agent of changes in motion. Further, causation
is intimately related to explanation: to ask for an explanation of an event is,
often, to ask for its cause. It is sometimes thought that our ability to make
predictions, and inductive inference in general, depends on our knowledge of
causal connections or the assumption that such connections are present: the
knowledge that water quenches thirst warrants the predictive inference from ‘X
is swallowing water’ to ‘X’s thirst will be quenched’. More generally, the
identification and systematic description of causal relations that hold in the
natural world have been claimed to be the preeminent aim of science. Finally,
causal concepts play a crucial role in moral and legal reasoning, e.g., in the
assessment of responsibilities and liabilities. Event causation is the
causation of one event by another. A sequence of causally connected events is
called a causal chain. Agent causation refers to the act of an agent person,
object in bringing about a change; thus, my opening the window i.e., my causing
the window to open is an instance of agent causation. There is a controversy as
to whether agent causation is reducible to event causation. My opening the
window seems reducible to event causation since in reality a certain motion of
my arms, an event, causes the window to open. Some philosophers, however, have
claimed that not all cases of agent causation are so reducible. Substantival
causation is the creation of a genuinely new substance, or object, rather than
causing changes in preexisting substances, or merely rearranging them. The
possibility of substantival causation, at least in the natural world, has been
disputed by some philosophers. Event causation, however, has been the primary
focus of philosophical discussion in the modern and contemporary period. The
analysis of event causation has been controversial. The following four
approaches have been prominent: the regularity analysis, the counterfactual
analysis, the manipulation analysis, and the probabilistic analysis. The heart
of the regularity or nomological analysis, associated with Hume and J. S. Mill,
is the idea that causally connected events must instantiate a general
regularity between like kinds of events. More precisely: if c is a cause of e,
there must be types or kinds of events, F and G, such that c is of kind F, e is
of kind G, and events of kind F are regularly followed by events of kind G.
Some take the regularity involved to be merely de facto “constant conjunction”
of the two event types involved; a more popular view is that the regularity
must hold as a matter of “nomological necessity” i.e., it must be a “law.” An even stronger
view is that the regularity must represent a causal law. A law that does this
job of subsuming causally connected events is called a “covering” or
“subsumptive” law, and versions of the regularity analysis that call for such
laws are often referred to as the “covering-law” or “nomic-subsumptive” model
of causality. The regularity analysis appears to give a satisfactory account of
some aspects of our causal concepts: for example, causal claims are often
tested by re-creating the event or situation claimed to be a cause and then
observing whether a similar effect occurs. In other respects, however, the
regularity account does not seem to fare so well: e.g., it has difficulty
explaining the apparent fact that we can have knowledge of causal relations
without knowledge of general laws. It seems possible to know, for instance, that
someone’s contraction of the flu was caused by her exposure to a patient with
the disease, although we know of no regularity between such exposures and
contraction of the disease it may well be that only a very small fraction of
persons who have been exposed to flu patients contract the disease. Do I need
to know general regularities about itchings and scratchings to know that the
itchy sensation on my left elbow caused me to scratch it? Further, not all
regularities seem to represent causal connections e.g., Reid’s example of the
succession of day and night; two successive symptoms of a disease.
Distinguishing causal from non-causal regularities is one of the main problems
confronting the regularity theorist. According to the counterfactual analysis,
what makes an event a cause of another is the fact that if the cause event had
not occurred the effect event would not have. This accords with the idea that
cause is a condition that is sine qua non for the occurrence of the effect. The
view that a cause is a necessary condition for the effect is based on a similar
idea. The precise form of the counterfactual account depends on how
counterfactuals are understood e.g., if counterfactuals are explained in terms
of laws, the counterfactual analysis may turn into a form of the regularity
analysis. The counterfactual approach, too, seems to encounter various
difficulties. It is true that on the basis of the fact that if Larry had
watered my plants, as he had promised, my plants would not have died, I could
claim that Larry’s not watering my plants caused them to die. But it is also
true that if George Bush had watered my plants, they would not have died; but
does that license the claim that Bush’s not watering my plants caused them to
die? Also, there appear to be many cases of dependencies expressed by
counterfactuals that, however, are not cases of causal dependence: e.g., if
Socrates had not died, Xanthippe would not have become a widow; if I had not
raised my hand, I would not have signaled. The question, then, is whether these
non-causal counterfactuals can be distinguished from causal counterfactuals
without the use of causal concepts. There are also questions about how we could
verify counterfactuals in particular,
whether our knowledge of causal counterfactuals is ultimately dependent on
knowledge of causal laws and regularities. Some have attempted to explain
causation in terms of action, and this is the manipulation analysis: the cause
is an event or state that we can produce at will, or otherwise manipulate, to
produce a certain other event as an effect. Thus, an event is a cause of
another provided that by bringing about the first event we can bring about the
second. This account exploits the close connection noted earlier between the
concepts of action and cause, and highlights the important role that knowledge
of causal connections plays in our control of natural events. However, as an
analysis of the concept of cause, it may well have things backward: the concept
of action seems to be a richer and more complex concept that presupposes the
concept of cause, and an analysis of cause in terms of action could be accused
of circularity. The reason we think that someone’s exposure to a flu patient
was the cause of her catching the disease, notwithstanding the absence of an
appropriate regularity even one of high probability, may be this: exposure to
flu patients increases the probability of contracting the disease. Thus, an
event, X, may be said to be a probabilistic cause of an event, Y, provided that
the probability of the occurrence of Y, given that X has occurred, is greater
than the antecedent probability of Y. To meet certain obvious difficulties,
this rough definition must be further elaborated e.g., to eliminate the
possibility that X and Y are collateral effects of a common cause. There is
also the question whether probabilistic causation is to be taken as an analysis
of the general concept of causation, or as a special kind of causal relation,
or perhaps only as evidence indicating the presence of a causal relationship.
Probabilistic causation has of late been receiving increasing attention from
philosophers. When an effect is brought about by two independent causes either
of which alone would have sufficed, one speaks of causal overdetermination.
Thus, a house fire might have been caused by both a short circuit and a
simultaneous lightning strike; either event alone would have caused the fire,
and the fire, therefore, was causally overdetermined. Whether there are actual
instances of overdetermination has been questioned; one could argue that the
fire that would have been caused by the short circuit alone would not have been
the same fire, and similarly for the fire that would have been caused by the
lightning alone. The steady buildup of pressure in a boiler would have caused
it to explode but for the fact that a bomb was detonated seconds before,
leading to a similar effect. In such a case, one speaks of preemptive, or
superseding, cause. We are apt to speak of causes in regard to changes;
however, “unchanges,” e.g., this table’s standing here through some period of
time, can also have causes: the table continues to stand here because it is
supported by a rigid floor. The presence of the floor, therefore, can be called
a sustaining cause of the table’s continuing to stand. A cause is usually
thought to precede its effect in time; however, some have argued that we must
allow for the possibility of a cause that is temporally posterior to its
effect backward causation sometimes
called retrocausation. And there is no universal agreement as to whether a
cause can be simultaneous with its effect
concurrent causation. Nor is there a general agreement as to whether
cause and effect must, as a matter of conceptual necessity, be “contiguous” in
time and space, either directly or through a causal chain of contiguous
events contiguous causation. The attempt
to “analyze” causation seems to have reached an impasse; the proposals on hand
seem so widely divergent that one wonders whether they are all analyses of one
and the same concept. But each of them seems to address some important aspect
of the variegated notion that we express by the term ‘cause’, and it may be
doubted whether there is a unitary concept of causation that can be captured in
an enlightening philosophical analysis. On the other hand, the centrality of
the concept, both to ordinary practical discourse and to the scientific
description of the world, is difficult to deny. This has encouraged some
philosophers to view causation as a primitive, one that cannot be further
analyzed. There are others who advocate the extreme view causal nihilism that
causal concepts play no role whatever in the advanced sciences, such as
fundamental physical theories of space-time and matter, and that the very
notion of cause is an anthropocentric projection deriving from our confused
ideas of action and power. Causatum -- Dretske, Fred b.2, philosopher best known for his externalistic
representational naturalism about experience, belief, perception, and
knowledge. Educated at Purdue and
the of Minnesota, he has taught at
the of Wisconsin 088 and Stanford 898. In Seeing and Knowing 9 Dretske develops
an account of non-epistemic seeing, denying that seeing is believing that for a subject S to see a dog, say, S
must apply a concept to it dog, animal, furry. The dog must look some way to S
S must visually differentiate the dog, but need not conceptually categorize it.
This contrasts with epistemic seeing, where for S to see that a dog is before
him, S would have to believe that it is a dog. In Knowledge and the Flow of
Information 1, a mind-independent objective sense of ‘information’ is applied
to propositional knowledge and belief content. “Information” replaced Dretske’s
earlier notion of a “conclusive reason” 1. Knowing that p requires having a
true belief caused or causally sustained by an event that carries the
information that p. Also, the semantic content of a belief is identified with
the most specific digitally encoded piece of information to which it becomes
selectively sensitive during a period of learning. In Explaining Behavior 8,
Dretske’s account of representation and misrepresentation takes on a
teleological flavor. The semantic meaning of a structure is now identified with
its indicator function. A structure recruited for a causal role of indicating
F’s, and sustained in that causal role by this ability, comes to mean F thereby providing a causal role for the
content of cognitive states, and avoiding epiphenomenalism about semantic
content. In Naturalizing the Mind 5, Dretske’s theory of meaning is applied to
the problems of consciousness and qualia. He argues that the empirically
significant features of conscious experience are exhausted by their functional
and hence representational roles of indicating external sensible properties. He
rejects the views that consciousness is composed of a higher-order hierarchy of
mental states and that qualia are due to intrinsic, non-representational
features of the underlying physical systems. Dretske is also known for his
contributions on the nature of contrastive statements, laws of nature,
causation, and epistemic non-closure, among other topics. CAUSATUM -- Ducasse, C. J., philosopher of
mind and aesthetician. He arrived in the United States in 0, received his Ph.D.
from Harvard 2, and taught at the of
Washington 226 and Brown 658. His most
important work is Nature, Mind and Death 1. The key to his general theory is a
non-Humean view of causation: the relation of causing is triadic, involving i
an initial event, ii the set of conditions under which it occurs, and iii a
resulting event; the initial event is the cause, the resulting event is the
effect. On the basis of this view he constructed a theory of categories an explication of such concepts as those of
substance, property, mind, matter, and body. Among the theses he defended were
that minds are substances, that they causally interact with bodies, and that
human beings are free despite every event’s having a cause. In A Critical
Examination of the Belief in a Life after Death 1, he concluded that “the
balance of the evidence so far obtained is on the side of . . . survival.” Like
Schopenhauer, whom he admired, Ducasse was receptive to the religious and
philosophical writings of the Far East. He wrote with remarkable objectivity on
the philosophical problems associated with so-called paranormal phenomena.
Ducasse’s epistemological views are developed in Truth, Knowledge and Causation
8. He sets forth a realistic theory of perception he says, about
sense-qualities, “Berkeley is right and the realists are wrong” and, of
material things, “the realists are right and Berkeley is wrong”. He provides
the classical formulation of the “adverbial theory” or sense-qualities,
according to which such qualities are not objects of experience or awareness
but ways of experiencing or of being aware. One does not perceive a red
material object by sensing a red sense-datum; for then perceiving would involve
three entities i the perceiving subject,
ii the red sense-datum, and iii the red material object. But one may perceive a
red material object by sensing redly; then the only entities involved are i the
perceiving subject and ii the material object. Ducasse observes that,
analogously, although it may be natural to say “dancing a waltz,” it would be
more accurate to speak of “dancing waltzily.”
causa
sui:
an expression used by Grice’s mother, a High Church, as applied to God to mean
in part that God owes his existence to nothing other than himself. It does not
mean that God somehow brought himself into existence. The idea is that the very
nature of God logically requires that he exists. What accounts for the
existence of a being that is causa sui is its own nature.
cavellian
implicature: c. s.,
b.6, philosopher whose work has
explored skepticism and its consequences. He was Walter M. Cabot Professor of
Aesthetics and General Value Theory at Harvard from 3 until 7. Central to
Cavell’s thought is the view that skepticism is not a theoretical position to
be refuted by philosophical theory or dismissed as a mere misuse of ordinary
language; it is a reflection of the fundamental limits of human knowledge of
the self, of others, and of the external world, limits that must be
accepted in his term “acknowledged” because the refusal to do so results in illusion
and risks tragedy. Cavell’s work defends J. L. Austin from both positivism and
deconstructionism Must We Mean What We Say?, 9, and The Pitch of Philosophy, 4,
but not because Cavell is an “ordinary language” philosopher. Rather, his
defense of Austin has combined with his response to skepticism to make him a
philosopher of the ordinary: he explores the conditions of the possibility and
limits of ordinary language, ordinary knowledge, ordinary action, and ordinary
human relationships. He uses both the resources of ordinary language and the
discourse of philosophers, such as Vitters, Heidegger, Thoreau, and Emerson,
and of the arts. Cavell has explored the ineliminability of skepticism in Must
We Mean What We Say?, notably in its essay on King Lear, and has developed his
analysis in his 9 magnum opus, The Claim of Reason. He has examined the
benefits of acknowledging the limits of human self-understanding, and the costs
of refusing to do so, in a broad range of contexts from film The World Viewed,
1; Pursuits of Happiness, 1; and Contesting Tears, 6 to philosophy The Senses of Walden, 2; and the
chapters on Emerson in This New Yet Unapproachable America, 9, and Conditions
Handsome and Unhandsome, 0. A central argument in The Claim of Reason develops
Cavell’s approach by looking at Vitters’s notion of criteria. Criteria are not
rules for the use of our words that can guarantee the correctness of the claims
we make by them; rather, criteria bring out what we claim by using the words we
do. More generally, in making claims to knowledge, undertaking actions, and
forming interpersonal relationships, we always risk failure, but it is also
precisely in that room for risk that we find the possibility of freedom. This
argument is indebted not only to Vitters but also to Kant, especially in the
Critique of Judgment. Cavell has used his view as a key to understanding
classics of the theater and film. Regarding such tragic figures as Lear, he
argues that their tragedies result from their refusal to accept the limits of
human knowledge and human love, and their insistence on an illusory absolute
and pure love. The World Viewed argues for a realistic approach to film,
meaning that we should acknowledge that our cognitive and emotional responses
to films are responses to the realities of the human condition portrayed in
them. This “ontology of film” prepared the way for Cavell’s treatment of the
genre of comedies of remarriage in Pursuits of Happiness. It also grounds his
treatment of melodrama in Contesting Tears, which argues that human beings must
remain tragically unknown to each other if the limits to our knowledge of each
other are not acknowledged. In The Claim of Reason and later works Cavell has
also contributed to moral philosophy by his defense against Rawls’s critique of “moral
perfectionism” of “Emersonian
perfectionism”: the view that no general principles of conduct, no matter how
well established, can ever be employed in practice without the ongoing but
never completed perfection of knowledge of oneself and of the others on and
with whom one acts. Cavell’s Emersonian perfectionism is thus another
application of his Vittersian and Kantian recognition that rules must always be
supplemented by the capacity for judgment.
cavendish:
m. duchess of Newcastle, English author of some dozen works in a variety of
forms. Her central philosophical interest was the developments in natural
science of her day. Her earliest works endorsed a kind of atomism, but her
settled view, in Philosophical Letters 1664, Observations upon Experimental
Philosophy 1666, and Grounds of Natural Philosophy 1668, was a kind of organic
materialism. Cavendish argues for a hierarchy of increasingly fine matter,
capable of self-motion. Philosophical Letters, among other matters, raises
problems for the notion of inert matter found in Descartes, and Observations
upon Experimental Philosophy criticizes microscopists such as Hooke for
committing a double error, first of preferring the distortions introduced by
instruments to unaided vision and second of preferring sense to reason.
celsus:
philosopher known only as the author of a work called “Alethes logos,” which is
quoted extensively by Origen of Alexandria in his response, Against Celsus.
“Alethes logos” is mainly important because it is the first anti-Christian
polemic of which we have significant knowledge. Origen considers Celsus to be
an Epicurean, but he is uncertain about this. There are no traces of
Epicureanism in Origen’s quotations from Celsus, which indicate instead that he
is a platonist, whose conception of an unnameable first deity transcending
being and knowable only by “synthesis, analysis, or analogy” is based on Plato’s
description of the Good in Rep. VI. In accordance with the Timaeus, Celsus
believes that God created “immortal things” and turned the creation of “mortal
things” over to them. According to him, the universe has a providential
organization in which humans hold no special place, and its history is one of
eternally repeating sequences of events separated by catastrophes.
certum: While Grice plays with ‘certum,’ he is happier with
UNcertum. To be certain is to have dis-cerned. Oddly, Grice ‘evolved’ from an
interest in the certainty and incorrigibility that ‘ordinary’ and the
first-person gives to situations of ‘conversational improbability’ and
indeterminate implicata under conditions of ceteris paribus risk and
uncertainty in survival. “To be certain that p” is for Grice one of those
‘diaphanous’ verbs. While it is best to improve Descartes’s fuzzy lexicon – and
apply ‘certus’ to the emissor, if Grice is asked, “What are you certain of?,”
“I have to answer, ‘p’”. certum:
certitude, from ecclesiastical medieval Roman “certitudo,” designating in
particular Christian conviction, is heir to two meanings of “certum,” one objective
and the other subjective: beyond doubt, fixed, positive, real, regarding a
thing or knowledge, or firm in his resolutions, decided, sure, authentic,
regarding an individual. Although certitudo has no Grecian equivalent, the
Roman verb “cernere,” (cf. discern), from which “certum” is derived, has the
concrete meaning of pass through a sieve, discern, like the Grecian “ϰρίνειν,”
select, sieve, judge, which comes from the same root. Thus begins the
relationship between certitude, judgment, and truth, which since Descartes has
been connected with the problematics of the subject and of self-certainty. The
whole terminological system of truth is thus involved, from unveiling and
adequation to certitude and obviousness. Then there’s Certainty, Objectivity,
Subjectivity, and Linguistic Systems The
objective aspect manifests itself first, “certitudo” translating e. g. the determined nature of objects or known
properties as the commentaries on Aristotle’s Met. translated into Roman, or
the incontestably true nature of principles. With the revolution of the subject
inaugurated by Cartesian Phil. , the second aspect comes to the fore: some
reasons, ideas, or propositions are true and certain, or true and evident, but
the most certain and the most evident of all, and thus in a sense the truest,
is the certitude of my own existence, a certainty that the subject attributes
to itself: The thematics of certainty precedes that of consciousness both
historically and logically, but it ends up being incorporated and subordinated
by it. Certainty thus becomes a quality or disposition of the subject that
reproduces, in the field of rational knowledge, the security or assurance that
the believer finds in religious faith, and that shields him from the wavering
of the soul. It will be noted that Fr.
retains the possibility of reversing the perspective by exploiting the
Roman etymology, as Descartes does in the Principles of Phil. when he transforms the certitudo probabilis
of the Scholastics Aquinas into moral certainty. On the other hand, Eng. tends
to objectify “certainty” to the maximum in opposition to belief v. BELIEF,
whereas G. hears in “Gewissheit” the
root “wissen,” to know, to have learned and situates it in a series with Bewusstsein
and Gewissen, clearly marking the constitutive relationship to the subject in
opposition to Glaube on the one hand, and to Wahrheit and Wahrscheinlichkeit
lit., appearance of truth, i.e., probability on the other. Then there’s Knots
of Problems On the relations between
certainty and belief, the modalities of subjective experience. On the relation
between individual certainty and the wise man’s constancy. On the relations
between certainty and truth, the confrontation between subjectivity and
objectivity in the development of knowledge. On the relations between certainty
and probability, the modalities of objective knowledge insofar as it is related
to a subject’s experience. uncertainty.
This is Grice’s principle of uncertainty. One of Grice’s problem is with ‘know’
and ‘certainty.’ He grants that we only know that 2 + 2 = 4. He often
identifies ‘knowledge’ with ‘certainty.’ He does not explore a cancellation
like, “I am certain but I do not know.” The reason being that he defends common
sense against the sceptic, and so his attitude towards certainty has to be very
careful. The second problem is that he wants ‘certainty’ to deal within the
desiderative realm. To do that, he divides an act of intending into two: an act
of accepting and act of willing. The ‘certainty’ is found otiose if the
intender is seen as ‘willing that p’ and accepting that the willing will be the
cause for the desideratum to obtain. n
WoW:141, Grice proposes that ‘A is certain that p’ ENTAILS either ‘A is certain
that he is certain that p, OR AT LEAST that it is not the case that A is
UNCERTAIN that A is certain that p.” ‘Certainly,’ appears to apply to
utterances in the credibility and the desirability realm. Grice sometimes uses
‘to be sure.’ He notoriously wants to distinguish it from ‘know.’ Grice
explores the topic of incorrigibility and ends up with corrigibility which
almost makes a Popperian out of him. In the end, its all about the
converational implciata and conversation as rational co-operation. Why does P2
should judge that P1 is being more or less certain about what he is talking?
Theres a rationale for that. Our conversation does not consist of idle remarks.
Grices example: "The Chairman of the British Academy has a corkscrew in
his pocket. Urmsons example: "The king is visiting Oxford tomorrow. Why?
Oh, for no reason at all. As a philosophical psychologist, and an empiricist
with realist tendencies, Grice was obsessed with what he called (in a nod to
the Kiparskys) the factivity of know. Surely, Grices preferred collocation,
unlike surely Ryles, is "Grice knows that p." Grice has no problem in
seeing this as involving three clauses: First, p. Second, Grice believes that
p, and third, p causes Grices belief. No mention of certainty. This is the
neo-Prichardian in Grice, from having been a neo-Stoutian (Stout was obsessed,
as a few Oxonians like Hampshire and Hart were, with certainty). If the
three-prong analysis of know applies to the doxastic, Grices two-prong analysis
of intending in ‘Intention and UNcertainty,’ again purposively avoiding
certainty, covers the buletic realm. This does not mean that Grice, however
proud he was of his ignorance of the history of philosophy (He held it as a
badge of honour, his tuteee Strawson recalls), had read some of the
philosophical classics to realise that certainty had been an obsession of what
Ryle abusively (as he himself puts it) called Descartes and the Establishments
"official doctrine"! While ps true in Grices analysis of know is
harmless enough, there obviously is no correlate for ps truth in the buletic
case. Grices example is Grice intending to scratch his head, via his willing
that Grice scratches his head in t2. In this case, as he notes, the doxastic
eleent involves the uniformity of nature, and ones more or less relying that if
Grice had a head to be scratched in t1, he will have a head to be sratched in
t2, when his intention actually GETS satisfied, or fulfilled. Grice was never
worried about buletic satisfaction. As the intentionalist that Suppes showed us
Grice was, Grice is very much happy to say that if Smith intends to give Joness
a job, the facct as to whether Jones actually gets the job is totally
irrelevant for most philosophical purposes. He gets more serious when he is
happier with privileged access than incorrigibility in “Method.” But he is less
strict than Austin. For Austin, "That is a finch implies that the utterer
KNOWS its a finch. While Grice has a maxim, do not say that for which you lack
adequate evidence (Gettiers analysandum) and a super-maxim, try to make
your contribution one that is true, the very phrasing highlights Grices
cavalier to this! Imagine Kant turning on his grave. "Try!?". Grice
is very clever in having try in the super-maxim, and a prohibition as the
maxim, involving falsehood avoidance, "Do not say what you believe to be false."
Even here he is cavalier. "Cf. "Do not say what you KNOW to be
false." If Gettier were wrong, the combo of maxims yields, "Say what
you KNOW," say what you are certain about! Enough for Sextus Empiricus
having one single maxim: "Either utter a phenomenalist utterance, a
question or an order, or keep your mouth shut!." (cf. Grice, "My lips
are sealed," as cooperative or helfpul in ways -- "At least he is not
lying."). Hampshire, in the course of some recent remarks,l advances
the view that self-prediction is (logically) impossible. When I say I know that
I shall do X (as against, e.g., X will happen to me, or You will do X), I am
not contemplating myself, as I might someone else, and giving tongue to a
conjecture about myself and my future acts, as I might be doing about someone
else or about the behaviour ofan animal -for that would be tantamount (if I
understand him rightly) to looking upon myself from outside, as it were, and
treating my own acts as mere caused events. In saying that I know that I shall
do X, I am, on this view, saying that I have decided to do X: for to predict
that I shall in certain circumstances in fact do X or decide to do X, with no
reference to whether or not I have already decided to do it - to say I can tell
you now that I shall in fact act in manner X, although I am, as a matter of
fact, determined to do the very opposite - does not make sense. Any man who
says I know myself too well to believe that, whatever I now decide, I shall do
anything other than X when the circumstances actually arise is in fact, if I
interpret Hampshires views correctly, saying that he does not really, i.e.
seriously, propose to set himself against doing X, that he does not propose
even to try to act otherwise, that he has in fact decided to let events take
their course. For no man who has truly decided to try to avoid X can, in good
faith, predict his own failure to act as he has decided. He may fail to avoid
X, and he may predict this; but he cannot both decide to try to avoid X and
predict that he will not even try to do this; for he can always try; and he
knows this: he knows that this is what distinguishes him from non-human
creatures in nature. To say that he will fail even to try is tantamount to
saying that he has decided not to try. In this sense I know means I have
decided and (Murdoch, Hampshire, Gardiner and Pears, Freedom and Knowledge, in
Pears, Freedom and the Will) cannot in principle be predictive. That, if I have
understood it, is Hampshires position, and I have a good deal of sympathy with
it, for I can see that self-prediction is often an evasive way of disclaiming
responsibility for difficult decisions, while deciding in fact to let events
take their course, disguising this by attributing responsibility for what
occurs to my own allegedly unalterable nature. But I agree with Hampshires
critics in the debate, whom I take to be maintaining that, although the
situation he describes may often occur, yet circumstances may exist in which it
is possible for me both to say that I am, at this moment, resolved not to do X,
and at the same time to predict that I shall do X, because I am not hopeful
that, when the time comes, I shall in fact even so much as try to resist doing
X. I can, in effect, say I know myself well. When the crisis comes, do not rely
on me to help you. I may well run away; although I am at this moment genuinely
resolved not to be cowardly and to do all I can to stay at your side. My
prediction that my resolution will not in fact hold up is based on knowledge of
my own character, and not on my present state of mind; my prophecy is not a
symptom of bad faith (for I am not, at this moment, vacillating) but, on the
contrary, of good faith, of a wish to face the facts. I assure you in all
sincerity that my present intention is to be brave and resist. Yet you would
run a great risk if you relied too much on my present decision; it would not be
fair to conceal my past failures of nerve from you. I can say this about
others, despite the most sincere resolutions on their part, for I can foretell
how in fact they will behave; they can equally predict this about me. Despite
Hampshires plausible and tempting argument, I believe that such objective
self-knowledge is possible and occur. From Descartes to Stout and back.
Stout indeed uses both intention and certainty, and in the same paragraph.
Stout notes that, at the outset, performance falls far short of intention. Only
a certain s. of contractions of certain muscles, in proper proportions and in a
proper order, is capable of realising the end aimed at, with the maximum of
rapidity and certainty, and the minimum of obstruction and failure, and
corresponding effort. At the outset of the process of acquisition, muscles are
contracted which are superfluous, and which therefore operate as disturbing
conditions. Grices immediate trigger, however, is Ayer on sure that, and
having the right to be sure, as his immediate trigger later will be Hampshire
and Hart. Grice had high regard for Hampshires brilliant Thought and
action. He was also concerned with Stouts rather hasty UNphilosophical,
but more scientifically psychologically-oriented remarks about assurance in
practical concerns. He knew too that he was exploring an item of the
philosophers lexicon (certus) that had been brought to the forum when Anscombe
and von Wright translate Witters German expression Gewißheit in Über
Gewißheit as Certainty. The Grecians were never sure about being sure. But
the modernist turn brought by Descartes meant that Grice now had to deal with
incorrigibility and privileged access to this or that P, notably himself (When
I intend to go, I dont have to observe myself, Im on the stage, not in the
audience, or Only I can say I will to London, expressing my intention to do so.
If you say, you will go you are expressing yours! Grice found Descartes
very funny ‒ in a French way. Grice is interested in contesting Ayer and other
Oxford philosophers, on the topic of a criterion for certainty. In so
doing, Grice choses Descartess time-honoured criterion of clarity and distinction,
as applied to perception. Grice does NOT quote Descartes in
French! In the proceedings, Grice distinguishes between two kinds of
certainty apparently ignored by Descartes: (a) objective
certainty: Ordinary-language variant: It is certain that p, whatever it
refers to, cf. Grice, it is an illusion; what is it? (b) Subjective
certainty: Ordinary-language variant: I am certain that p. I
being, of course, Grice, in my bestest days, of course! There are further
items on Descartes in the Grice Collection, notably in the last s. of topics
arranged alphabetically. Grice never cared to publish his views on
Descartes until he found an opportunity to do so when compiling his WOW. Grice
is not interested in an exegesis of Descartess thought. He doesnt care to give
a reference to any edition of Descartess oeuvre. But he plays with certain. It
is certain that p is objective certainty, apparently. I am certain that p is
Subjectsive certainty, rather. Oddly, Grice will turn to UNcertainty as it
connects with intention in his BA lecture. Grices interest in Descartes
connects with Descartess search for a criterion of certainty in terms of
clarity and distinction of this or that perception. Having explored the
philosophy of perception with Warnock, its only natural he wanted to give
Descartess rambles a second and third look! Descartes on clear and distinct
perception, in WOW, II semantics and metaphysics, essay, Descartes on clear and
distinct perception and Malcom on dreaming, perception, Descartes, clear and
distinct perception, Malcolm, dreaming. Descartes meets Malcolm, and vice
versa. Descartes on clear and distinct perception, in WOW, Descartes
on clear and distinct perception, Descartes on clear and distinct perception,
in WOW, part II, semantics and metaphysics, essay. Grice gives a short overview
of Cartesian metaphysics for the BBC 3rd programme. The best example,
Grice thinks, of a metaphysical snob is provided by Descartes, about
whose idea of certainty Grice had philosophised quite a bit, since it is in
total contrast with Moore’s. Descartes is a very scientifically
minded philosopher, with very clear ideas about the proper direction for science. Descartes,
whose middle Names seems to have been Euclid, thinks that mathematics, and in
particular geometry, provides the model for a scientific procedure, or
method. And this determines all of Descartess thinking in two ways. First,
Descartes thinks that the fundamental method in science is the axiomatic
deductive method of geometry, and this Descartes conceives (as Spinoza morality
more geometrico) of as rigorous reasoning from a self-evident axiom (Cogito,
ergo sum.). Second, Descartes thinks that the Subjects matter of physical
science, from mechanics to medicine, must be fundamentally the same as the
Subjects matter of geometry! The only characteristics that the objects studied
by geometry poses are spatial characteristics. So from the point of view of
science in general, the only important features of things in the physical world
were also their spatial characteristics, what he called extensio, res extensa.
Physical science in general is a kind of dynamic, or kinetic, geometry.
Here we have an exclusive preference for a certain type of scientific
method, and a certain type of scientific explanation: the method is deductive,
the type of explanation mechanical. These beliefs about the right way to do
science are exactly reflected in Descartess ontology, one of the two branches
of metaphysics; the other is philosophical eschatology, or the study of
categories), and it is reflected in his doctrine, that is, about what really
exists. Apart from God, the divine substance, Descartes recognises just
two kinds of substance, two types of real entity. First, there is material
substance, or matter; and the belief that the only scientifically important
characteristics of things in the physical world are their spatial
characteristics goes over, in the language of metaphysics, into the doctrine
that these are their only characteristics. Second, and to Ryle’s horror,
Descartes recognizes the mind or soul, or the mental substance, of which the
essential characteristic is thinking; and thinking itself, in its pure form at
least, is conceived of as simply the intuitive grasping of this or
that self-evident axiom and this or that of its deductive consequence. These
restrictive doctrines about reality and knowledge naturally call for
adjustments elsewhere in our ordinary scheme of things. With the help of the
divine substance, these are duly provided. It is not always obvious that
the metaphysicians scheme involves this kind of ontological preference, or
favoritism, or prejudice, or snobbery this tendency, that is, to promote one or
two categories of entity to the rank of the real, or of the ultimately real, to
the exclusion of others, Descartess entia realissima. One is taught at Oxford
that epistemology begins with the Moderns such as Descartes, which is not true.
Grice was concerned with “certain,” which was applied in Old Roman times to
this or that utterer: the person who is made certain in reference to a thing,
certain, sure. Lewis and Short have a few quotes: “certi sumus periisse omnia;”
“num quid nunc es certior?,” “posteritatis, i. e. of posthumous fame,”
“sententiæ,” “judicii,” “certus de suā geniturā;” “damnationis;” “exitii,” “spei,”
“matrimonii,” “certi sumus;” in the phrase “certiorem facere aliquem;” “de
aliquā re, alicujus rei, with a foll, acc. and inf., with a rel.-clause or
absol.;” “to inform, apprise one of a thing: me certiorem face: “ut nos facias
certiores,” “uti Cæsarem de his rebus certiorem faciant;” “qui certiorem me sui
consilii fecit;” “Cæsarem certiorem faciunt, sese non facile ab oppidis vim
hostium prohibere;” “faciam te certiorem quid egerim;” with subj. only,
“milites certiores facit, paulisper intermitterent proelium,” pass., “quod
crebro certior per me fias de omnibus rebus,” “Cæsar certior factus est, tres
jam copiarum partes Helvetios id flumen transduxisse;” “factus certior, quæ res
gererentur,” “non consulibus certioribus factis,” also in posit., though rarely;
“fac me certum quid tibi est;” “lacrimæ suorum tam subitæ matrem certam fecere
ruinæ,” uncertainty, Grice loved the OED, and its entry for will was his
favourite. But he first had a look to shall. For Grice, "I shall climb Mt.
Everest," is surely a prediction. And then Grice turns to the auxiliary he
prefers, will. Davidson, Intending, R. Grandy and Warner, PGRICE.
“Uncertainty,” “Aspects.” “Conception,” Davidson on intending, intending and
trying, Brandeis.”Method,” in “Conception,” WOW . Hampshire and Hart. Decision,
intention, and certainty, Mind, Harman, Willing and intending in PGRICE.
Practical reasoning. Review of Met. 29.
Thought, Princeton, for functionalist approach alla Grice’s “Method.”
Principles of reasoning. Rational action and the extent of intention. Social
theory and practice. Jeffrey, Probability kinematics, in The logic of decision,
cited by Harman in PGRICE. Kahneman and Tversky, Judgement under uncertainty,
Science, cited by Harman in PGRICE. Nisbet and Ross, Human inference, cited by
Harman in PGRICE. Pears, Predicting and deciding. Prichard, Acting, willing,
and desiring, in Moral obligations, Oxford ed. by Urmson Speranza, The Grice Circle Wants You. Stout,
Voluntary action. Mind 5, repr in Studies in philosophy and psychology,
Macmillan, cited by Grice, “Uncertainty.” Urmson, ‘Introduction’ to Prichard’s
‘Moral obligations.’ I shant but Im not certain I wont – Grice. How
uncertain can Grice be? This is the Henriette Herz BA lecture, and as such
published in The Proceedings of the BA. Grice calls himself a
neo-Prichardian (after the Oxford philosopher) and cares to quote from a few
other philosophers ‒ some of whom he was not necessarily associated
with: such as Kenny and Anscombe, and some of whom he was, notably
Pears. Grices motto: Where there is a neo-Prichardian willing, there is a
palæo-Griceian way! Grice quotes Pears, of Christ Church, as the philosopher he
found especially congenial to explore areas in what both called philosophical
psychology, notably the tricky use of intending as displayed by a few
philosophers even in their own circle, such as Hampshire and Hart in Intention,
decision, and certainty. The title of Grices lecture is meant to provoke
that pair of Oxonian philosophers Grice knew so well and who were too ready to
bring in certainty in an area that requires deep philosophical
exploration. This is the Henriette Herz Trust annual lecture. It
means its delivered annually by different philosophers, not always Grice! Grice
had been appointed a FBA earlier, but he took his time to deliver his
lecture. With your lecture, you implicate, Hi! Grice, and indeed Pears,
were motivated by Hampshires and Harts essay on intention and certainty in
Mind. Grice knew Hampshire well, and had actually enjoyed his Thought and
Action. He preferred Hampshires Thought and action to Anscombes Intention.
Trust Oxford being what it is that TWO volumes on intending are published in
the same year! Which one shall I read first? Eventually, neither ‒ immediately.
Rather, Grice managed to unearth some sketchy notes by Prichard (he calls
himself a neo-Prichardian) that Urmson had made available for the Clarendon
Press ‒ notably Prichards essay on willing that. Only a Corpus-Christi genius
like Prichard will distinguish will to, almost unnecessary, from will that, so
crucial. For Grice, wills that , unlike
wills to, is properly generic, in that p, that follows the that-clause,
need NOT refer to the Subjects of the sentence. Surely I can will that Smith wins
the match! But Grice also quotes Anscombe (whom otherwise would not count,
although they did share a discussion panel at the American Philosophical
Association) and Kenny, besides Pears. Of Anscombe, Grice borrows (but
never returns) the direction-of-fit term of art, actually Austinian. From Kenny,
Grice borrows (and returns) the concept of voliting. His most congenial
approach was Pearss. Grice had of course occasion to explore disposition
and intention on earlier occasions. Grice is especially concerned with a
dispositional analysis to intending. He will later reject it in
“Uncertainty.” But that was Grice for you! Grice is especially interested
in distinguishing his views from Ryles over-estimated dispositional account of
intention, which Grice sees as reductionist, and indeed eliminationist, if not
boringly behaviourist, even in analytic key. The logic of dispositions is
tricky, as Grice will later explore in connection with rationality, rational
propension or propensity, and metaphysics, the as if operator). While Grice
focuses on uncertainty, he is trying to be funny. He knew that Oxonians like
Hart and Hampshire were obsessed with certainty. I was so surprised that
Hampshire and Hart were claiming decision and intention are psychological
states about which the agent is certain, that I decided on the spot that
that could certainly be a nice topic for my BA lecture! Grice granted that in
some cases, a declaration of an intention can be authorative in a certain
certain way, i. e. as implicating certainty. But Grice wants us to consider:
Marmaduke Bloggs intends to climb Mt. Everest. Surely he cant be certain
hell succeed. Grice used the same example at the APA, of all
places. To amuse Grice, Davidson, who was present, said: Surely thats
just an implicature! Just?! Grice was almost furious in his British
guarded sort of way. Surely not just! Pears, who was also present,
tried to reconcile: If I may, Davidson, I think Grice would take it that,
if certainty is implicated, the whole thing becomes too social to be
true. They kept discussing implicature versus entailment. Is
certainty entailed then? Cf. Urmson on certainly vs. knowingly, and believably.
Davidson asked. No, disimplicated! is Grices curt reply. The next
day, he explained to Davidson that he had invented the concept of disimplicature
just to tease him, and just one night before, while musing in the hotel room!
Talk of uncertainty was thus for Grice intimately associated with his concern
about the misuse of know to mean certain, especially in the exegeses that
Malcolm made popular about, of all people, Moore! V. Scepticism and common
sense and Moore and philosophers paradoxes above, and Causal theory and
Prolegomena for a summary of Malcoms misunderstanding Moore! Grice manages to
quote from Stouts Voluntary action and Brecht. And he notes that not all
speakers are as sensitive as they should be (e.g. distinguishing modes, as
realised by shall vs. will). He emphasizes the fact that Prichard has to be
given great credit for seeing that the accurate specification of willing should
be willing that and not willing to. Grice is especially interested in proving
Stoutians (like Hampshire and Hart) wrong by drawing from Aristotles
prohairesis-doxa distinction, or in his parlance, the buletic-doxastic
distinction. Grice quotes from Aristotle. Prohairesis cannot be opinion/doxa.
For opinion is thought to relate to all kinds of things, no less to eternal
things and impossible things than to things in our own power; and it is
distinguished by its falsity or truth, not by its badness or goodness, while choice
is distinguished rather by these. Now with opinion in general perhaps no one
even says it is identical. But it is not identical even with any kind of
opinion; for by choosing or deciding, or prohairesis, what is good or bad we
are men of a certain character, which we are not by holding this or that
opinion or doxa. And we choose to get or avoid something good or bad, but we
have opinions about what a thing is or whom it is good for or how it is good
for him; we can hardly be said to opine to get or avoid anything. And choice is
praised for being related to the right object rather than for being rightly
related to it, opinion for being truly related to its object. And we choose
what we best know to be good, but we opine what we do not quite know; and it is
not the same people that are thought to make the best choices and to have the
best opinions, but some are thought to have fairly good opinions, but by reason
of vice to choose what they should not. If opinion precedes choice or
accompanies it, that makes no difference; for it is not this that we are
considering, but whether it is identical with some kind of opinion. What, then,
or what kind of thing is it, since it is none of the things we have mentioned?
It seems to be voluntary, but not all that is voluntary to be an object of
choice. Is it, then, what has been decided on by previous deliberation? At any
rate choice involves a rational principle and thought. Even the Names seems to
suggest that it is what is chosen before other things. His final analysis of G
intends that p is in terms of, B1, a buletic condition, to the effect that G
wills that p, and D2, an attending doxastic condition, to the effect that G
judges that B1 causes p. Grice ends this essay with a nod to Pears and an open
point about the justifiability (other than evidential) for the acceptability of
the agents deciding and intending versus the evidential justifiability of the
agents predicting that what he intends will be satisfied. It is important to
note that in his earlier Disposition and intention, Grice dedicates the first
part to counterfactual if general. This is a logical point. Then as an account
for a psychological souly concept ψ. If G does A, sensory input, G does B,
behavioural output. No ψ without the behavioural output that ψ is meant to
explain. His problem is with the first person. The functionalist I does not
need a black box. The here would be both
incorrigibility and privileged access. Pology only explains their evolutionary
import. Certum -- Certainty: cf. H. P. Grice, “Intention and uncertainty.” the
property of being certain, which is either a psychological property of persons
or an epistemic feature of proposition-like objects e.g., beliefs, utterances,
statements. We can say that a person, S, is psychologically certain that p
where ‘p’ stands for a proposition provided S has no doubt whatsoever that p is
true. Thus, a person can be certain regardless of the degree of epistemic
warrant for a proposition. In general, philosophers have not found this an
interesting property to explore. The exception is Peter Unger, who argued for
skepticism, claiming that 1 psychological certainty is required for knowledge
and 2 no person is ever certain of anything or hardly anything. As applied to
propositions, ‘certain’ has no univocal use. For example, some authors e.g.,
Chisholm may hold that a proposition is epistemically certain provided no
proposition is more warranted than it. Given that account, it is possible that
a proposition is certain, yet there are legitimate reasons for doubting it just
as long as there are equally good grounds for doubting every equally warranted
proposition. Other philosophers have adopted a Cartesian account of certainty
in which a proposition is epistemically certain provided it is warranted and
there are no legitimate grounds whatsoever for doubting it. Both Chisholm’s and
the Cartesian characterizations of epistemic certainty can be employed to
provide a basis for skepticism. If knowledge entails certainty, then it can be
argued that very little, if anything, is known. For, the argument continues,
only tautologies or propositions like ‘I exist’ or ‘I have beliefs’ are such
that either nothing is more warranted or there are absolutely no grounds for
doubt. Thus, hardly anything is known. Most philosophers have responded either
by denying that ‘certainty’ is an absolute term, i.e., admitting of no degrees,
or by denying that knowledge requires certainty Dewey, Chisholm, Vitters, and
Lehrer. Others have agreed that knowledge does entail absolute certainty, but
have argued that absolute certainty is possible e.g., Moore. Sometimes
‘certain’ is modified by other expressions, as in ‘morally certain’ or
‘metaphysically certain’ or ‘logically certain’. Once again, there is no
universally accepted account of these terms. Typically, however, they are used
to indicate degrees of warrant for a proposition, and often that degree of
warrant is taken to be a function of the type of proposition under
consideration. For example, the proposition that smoking causes cancer is
morally certain provided its warrant is sufficient to justify acting as though
it were true. The evidence for such a proposition may, of necessity, depend
upon recognizing particular features of the world. On the other hand, in order
for a proposition, say that every event has a cause, to be metaphysically
certain, the evidence for it must not depend upon recognizing particular
features of the world but rather upon recognizing what must be true in order
for our world to be the kind of world it is
i.e., one having causal connections. Finally, a proposition, say that
every effect has a cause, may be logically certain if it is derivable from
“truths of logic” that do not depend in any way upon recognizing anything about
our world. Since other taxonomies for these terms are employed by philosophers,
it is crucial to examine the use of the terms in their contexts. Refs.: The main source is his BA lecture on
‘uncertainty,’ but using the keyword ‘certainty’ is useful too. His essay on
Descartes in WoW is important, and sources elsehere in the Grice Papers, such
as the predecessor to the “Uncertainty” lecture in “Disposition and intention,”
also his discussion of avowal (vide references above), incorrigibility and
privileged access in “Method,” repr. in “Conception,” BANC
character, mid-14c., carecter, "symbol marked or branded on the
body;" mid-15c., "symbol or drawing used in sorcery;" late 15c.,
"alphabetic letter, graphic symbol standing for a sound or syllable;"
from Old French caratere "feature, character" (13c., Modern French
caractère), from Latin character, from Greek kharaktēr "engraved
mark," also "symbol or imprint on the soul," properly
"instrument for marking," from kharassein "to engrave,"
from kharax "pointed stake," a word of uncertain etymology which
Beekes considers "most probably Pre-Greek." The Latin ch-
spelling was restored from 1500s. The meaning of Greek kharaktēr was
extended in Hellenistic times by metaphor to "a defining quality,
individual feature." In English, the meaning "sum of qualities that
define a person or thing and distinguish it from another" is from 1640s.
That of "moral qualities assigned to a person by repute" is from
1712. You remember Eponina, who kept her husband alive in an underground
cavern so devotedly and heroically? The force of character she showed in
keeping up his spirits would have been used to hide a lover from her husband if
they had been living quietly in Rome. Strong characters need strong
nourishment. [Stendhal "de l'Amour," 1822] Sense of
"person in a play or novel" is first attested 1660s, in reference to
the "defining qualities" he or she is given by the author. Meaning
"a person" in the abstract is from 1749; especially "eccentric
person" (1773). Colloquial sense of "chap, fellow" is from 1931.
Character-actor, one who specializes in characters with marked peculiarities,
is attested from 1861; character-assassination is from 1888; character-building
(n.) from 1886. -- the comprehensive set of ethical and intellectual
dispositions of a person. Intellectual virtues
like carefulness in the evaluation of evidence promote, for one, the practice of seeking
truth. Moral or ethical virtues including
traits like courage and generosity
dispose persons not only to choices and actions but also to attitudes
and emotions. Such dispositions are generally considered relatively stable and
responsive to reasons. Appraisal of character transcends direct evaluation of
particular actions in favor of examination of some set of virtues or the
admirable human life as a whole. On some views this admirable life grounds the
goodness of particular actions. This suggests seeking guidance from role
models, and their practices, rather than relying exclusively on rules. Role
models will, at times, simply perceive the salient features of a situation and
act accordingly. Being guided by role models requires some recognition of just
who should be a role model. One may act out of character, since dispositions do
not automatically produce particular actions in specific cases. One may also have
a conflicted character if the virtues one’s character comprises contain
internal tensions between, say, tendencies to impartiality and to friendship.
The importance of formative education to the building of character introduces
some good fortune into the acquisition of character. One can have a good
character with a disagreeable personality or have a fine personality with a bad
character because personality is not typically a normative notion, whereas
character is.
charron:
p., H. P. Grice, “Do not multiply truths beyond necessity.” theologian who
became the principal expositor of Montaigne’s ideas, presenting them in
didactic form. His first work, The Three Truths 1595, presented a negative
argument for Catholicism by offering a skeptical challenge to atheism,
nonChristian religions, and Calvinism. He argued that we cannot know or
understand God because of His infinitude and the weakness of our faculties. We
can have no good reasons for rejecting Christianity or Catholicism. Therefore,
we should accept it on faith alone. His second work, On Wisdom 1603, is a
systematic presentation of Pyrrhonian skepticism coupled with a fideistic
defense of Catholicism. The skepticism of Montaigne and the Grecian skeptics is
used to show that we cannot know anything unless God reveals it to us. This is
followed by offering an ethics to live by, an undogmatic version of Stoicism.
This is the first modern presentation of a morality apart from any religious
considerations. Charron’s On Wisdom was extremely popular in France and
England. It was read and used by many philosophers and theologians during the
seventeenth century. Some claimed that his skepticism opened his defense of
Catholicism to question, and suggested that he was insincere in his fideism. He
was defended by important figures in the
Catholic church.
chiliagon: referred to by Grice in “Some remarks about the
senses.’ In geometry, a chiliagon, or 1000-gon is a polygon with 1,000 sides. Philosophers commonly refer to chiliagons
to illustrate ideas about the nature and workings of thought, meaning, and
mental representation. A chiliagon is a regular
chiliagon Polygon 1000.svg A regular chiliagon Type Regular polygon Edges and
vertices 1000 Schläfli symbol {1000}, t{500}, tt{250}, ttt{125} Coxeter diagram
CDel node 1.pngCDel 10.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel node.png CDel node
1.pngCDel 5.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel node 1.png Symmetry group Dihedral
(D1000), order 2×1000 Internal angle (degrees) 179.64° Dual polygon Self
Properties Convex, cyclic, equilateral, isogonal, isotoxal A whole
regular chiliagon is not visually discernible from a circle. The lower section
is a portion of a regular chiliagon, 200 times as large as the smaller one,
with the vertices highlighted. In geometry, a chiliagon (/ˈkɪliəɡɒn/) or
1000-gon is a polygon with 1,000 sides. Philosophers commonly refer to
chiliagons to illustrate ideas about the nature and workings of thought,
meaning, and mental representation. Contents 1 Regular chiliagon 2
Philosophical application 3 Symmetry 4 Chiliagram 5 See also 6 References
Regular chiliagon A regular chiliagon is represented by Schläfli symbol {1,000}
and can be constructed as a truncated 500-gon, t{500}, or a twice-truncated
250-gon, tt{250}, or a thrice-truncated 125-gon, ttt{125}. The measure of
each internal angle in a regular chiliagon is 179.64°. The area of a regular
chiliagon with sides of length a is given by {\displaystyle
A=250a^{2}\cot {\frac {\pi }{1000}}\simeq 79577.2\,a^{2}}A=250a^{2}\cot
{\frac {\pi }{1000}}\simeq 79577.2\,a^{2} This result differs from the
area of its circumscribed circle by less than 4 parts per million. Because
1,000 = 23 × 53, the number of sides is neither a product of distinct Fermat
primes nor a power of two. Thus the regular chiliagon is not a constructible
polygon. Indeed, it is not even constructible with the use of neusis or an
angle trisector, as the number of sides is neither a product of distinct
Pierpont primes, nor a product of powers of two and three. Philosophical
application René Descartes uses the chiliagon as an example in his Sixth
Meditation to demonstrate the difference between pure intellection and imagination.
He says that, when one thinks of a chiliagon, he "does not imagine the
thousand sides or see them as if they were present" before him – as he
does when one imagines a triangle, for example. The imagination constructs a
"confused representation," which is no different from that which it
constructs of a myriagon (a polygon with ten thousand sides). However, he does
clearly understand what a chiliagon is, just as he understands what a triangle
is, and he is able to distinguish it from a myriagon. Therefore, the intellect
is not dependent on imagination, Descartes claims, as it is able to entertain
clear and distinct ideas when imagination is unable to. Philosopher Pierre
Gassendi, a contemporary of Descartes, was critical of this interpretation,
believing that while Descartes could imagine a chiliagon, he could not
understand it: one could "perceive that the word 'chiliagon' signifies a
figure with a thousand angles [but] that is just the meaning of the term, and
it does not follow that you understand the thousand angles of the figure any
better than you imagine them." The example of a chiliagon is also
referenced by other philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant. David Hume points out
that it is "impossible for the eye to determine the angles of a chiliagon
to be equal to 1996 right angles, or make any conjecture, that approaches this
proportion."[4] Gottfried Leibniz comments on a use of the chiliagon by
John Locke, noting that one can have an idea of the polygon without having an
image of it, and thus distinguishing ideas from images. Henri Poincaré uses the
chiliagon as evidence that "intuition is not necessarily founded on the
evidence of the senses" because "we can not represent to ourselves a
chiliagon, and yet we reason by intuition on polygons in general, which include
the chiliagon as a particular case." Inspired by Descartes's chiliagon example,
Grice, R. M. Chisholm and other 20th-century philosophers have used similar
examples to make similar points. Chisholm's ‘speckled hen,’ which need not have
a determinate number of speckles to be successfully imagined, is perhaps the
most famous of these. Symmetry The symmetries of a regular chiliagon.
Light blue lines show subgroups of index 2. The 4 boxed subgraphs are
positionally related by index 5 subgroups. The regular chiliagon has Dih1000
dihedral symmetry, order 2000, represented by 1,000 lines of reflection. Dih100
has 15 dihedral subgroups: Dih500, Dih250, Dih125, Dih200, Dih100, Dih50,
Dih25, Dih40, Dih20, Dih10, Dih5, Dih8, Dih4, Dih2, and Dih1. It also has 16
more cyclic symmetries as subgroups: Z1000, Z500, Z250, Z125, Z200, Z100, Z50,
Z25, Z40, Z20, Z10, Z5, Z8, Z4, Z2, and Z1, with Zn representing π/n radian
rotational symmetry. John Conway labels these lower symmetries with a
letter and order of the symmetry follows the letter.[8] He gives d (diagonal)
with mirror lines through vertices, p with mirror lines through edges
(perpendicular), i with mirror lines through both vertices and edges, and g for
rotational symmetry. a1 labels no symmetry. These lower symmetries allow
degrees of freedom in defining irregular chiliagons. Only the g1000 subgroup
has no degrees of freedom but can be seen as directed edges. Chiliagram A
chiliagram is a 1,000-sided star polygon. There are 199 regular forms[9] given
by Schläfli symbols of the form {1000/n}, where n is an integer between 2 and
500 that is coprime to 1,000. There are also 300 regular star figures in the
remaining cases. For example, the regular {1000/499} star polygon is
constructed by 1000 nearly radial edges. Each star vertex has an internal angle
of 0.36 degrees.[10] {1000/499} Star polygon 1000-499.svg Star polygon
1000-499 center.png Central area with moiré patterns See also Myriagon Megagon
Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Language References Meditation VI by
Descartes (English translation). Sepkoski, David (2005). "Nominalism
and constructivism in seventeenth-century mathematical philosophy".
Historia Mathematica. 32: 33–59. doi:10.1016/j.hm.2003.09.002. Immanuel
Kant, "On a Discovery," trans. Henry Allison, in Theoretical
Philosophy After 1791, ed. Henry Allison and Peter Heath, Cambridge UP, 2002
[Akademie 8:121]. Kant does not actually use a chiliagon as his example,
instead using a 96-sided figure, but he is responding to the same question
raised by Descartes. David Hume, The Philosophical Works of David Hume,
Volume 1, Black and Tait, 1826, p. 101. Jonathan Francis Bennett (2001),
Learning from Six Philosophers: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley,
Hume, Volume 2, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198250924, p. 53. Henri
Poincaré (1900) "Intuition and Logic in Mathematics" in William Bragg
Ewald (ed) From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of
Mathematics, Volume 2, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 0198505361, p.
1015. Roderick Chisholm, "The Problem of the Speckled Hen",
Mind 51 (1942): pp. 368–373. "These problems are all descendants of
Descartes's 'chiliagon' argument in the sixth of his Meditations" (Joseph
Heath, Following the Rules: Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint, Oxford:
OUP, 2008, p. 305, note 15). The Symmetries of Things, Chapter 20
199 = 500 cases − 1 (convex) − 100 (multiples of 5) − 250 (multiples of 2) + 50
(multiples of 2 and 5) 0.36 = 180 (1 - 2 /(1000 / 499) ) = 180 ( 1 – 998 /
1000 ) = 180 ( 2 / 1000 ) = 180 / 500 chiliagon vte Polygons (List) Triangles
Acute Equilateral Ideal IsoscelesObtuseRight Quadrilaterals Antiparallelogram Bicentric
CyclicEquidiagonalEx-tangentialHarmonic Isosceles
trapezoidKiteLambertOrthodiagonal Parallelogram Rectangle Right kite Rhombus Saccheri
SquareTangentialTangential trapezoidTrapezoid By number of sides Monogon
(1) Digon (2) Triangle (3) Quadrilateral (4) Pentagon (5) Hexagon (6) Heptagon
(7) Octagon (8) Nonagon (Enneagon, 9) Decagon (10) Hendecagon (11) Dodecagon
(12) Tridecagon (13) Tetradecagon (14) Pentadecagon (15) Hexadecagon (16) Heptadecagon
(17) Octadecagon (18) Enneadecagon (19)Icosagon (20)Icosihenagon [de]
(21)Icosidigon (22) Icositetragon (24) Icosihexagon (26) Icosioctagon (28) Triacontagon
(30) Triacontadigon (32) Triacontatetragon (34) Tetracontagon (40) Tetracontadigon
(42)Tetracontaoctagon (48)Pentacontagon (50) Pentacontahenagon [de] (51) Hexacontagon
(60) Hexacontatetragon (64) Heptacontagon (70)Octacontagon (80) Enneacontagon
(90) Enneacontahexagon (96) Hectogon (100) 120-gon257-gon360-gonChiliagon
(1000) Myriagon (10000) 65537-gonMegagon (1000000) 4294967295-gon [ru;
de]Apeirogon (∞) Star polygons Pentagram Hexagram Heptagram Octagram Enneagram Decagram
Hendecagram Dodecagram Classes Concave Convex Cyclic Equiangular Equilateral Isogonal
Isotoxal Pseudotriangle Regular Simple SkewStar-shaped Tangential Categories:
Polygons1000 (number).
choice,
v. rational choice. choice sequence, a variety of infinite sequence introduced
by L. E. J. Brouwer to express the non-classical properties of the continuum
the set of real numbers within intuitionism. A choice sequence is determined by
a finite initial segment together with a “rule” for continuing the sequence.
The rule, however, may allow some freedom in choosing each subsequent element.
Thus the sequence might start with the rational numbers 0 and then ½, and the
rule might require the n ! 1st element to be some rational number within ½n of
the nth choice, without any further restriction. The sequence of rationals thus
generated must converge to a real number, r. But r’s definition leaves open its
exact location in the continuum. Speaking intuitionistically, r violates the
classical law of trichotomy: given any pair of real numbers e.g., r and ½, the
first is either less than, equal to, or greater than the second. From the 0s
Brouwer got this non-classical effect without appealing to the apparently
nonmathematical notion of free choice. Instead he used sequences generated by
the activity of an idealized mathematician the creating subject, together with
propositions that he took to be undecided. Given such a proposition, P e.g. Fermat’s last theorem that for n 2 there is no general method of finding
triplets of numbers with the property that the sum of each of the first two
raised to the nth power is equal to the result of raising the third to the nth
power or Goldbach’s conjecture that every even number is the sum of two prime
numbers we can modify the definition of
r: The n ! 1st element is ½ if at the nth stage of research P remains
undecided. That element and all its successors are ½ ! ½n if by that stage P is
proved; they are ½ † ½n if P is refuted. Since he held that there is an endless
supply of such propositions, Brouwer believed that we can always use this
method to refute classical laws. In the early 0s Stephen Kleene and Richard
Vesley reproduced some main parts of Brouwer’s theory of the continuum in a
formal system based on Kleene’s earlier recursion-theoretic interpretation of
intuitionism and of choice sequences. At about the same time but in a different and occasionally
incompatible vein Saul Kripke formally
captured the power of Brouwer’s counterexamples without recourse to recursive
functions and without invoking either the creating subject or the notion of
free choice. Subsequently Georg Kreisel, A. N. Troelstra, Dirk Van Dalen, and
others produced formal systems that analyze Brouwer’s basic assumptions about
open-futured objects like choice sequences.
Church’s
thesis, thesis, proposed by A. Church at a meeting of
the Mathematical Society “that the
notion of an effectively calculable function of positive integers should be
identified with that of a recursive function. . . .” This proposal has been
called Church’s thesis since Kleene uses that name in his Introduction to
Metamathematics. The informal notion of an effectively calculable function
effective procedure, or algorithm had been used in mathematics and logic to
indicate that a class of problems is solvable in a “mechanical fashion” by
following fixed elementary rules. Underlying epistemological concerns came to
the fore when modern logic moved in the late nineteenth century from axiomatic
to formal presentations of theories. Hilbert suggested in 4 that such formally
presented theories be taken as objects of mathematical study, and
metamathematics has been pursued vigorously and systematically since the 0s. In
its pursuit, concrete issues arose that required for their resolution a
delimitation of the class of effective procedures. Hilbert’s important
Entscheidungsproblem, the decision problem for predicate logic, was one such
issue. It was solved negatively by Church and Turing relative to the precise notion of
recursiveness; the result was obtained independently by Church and Turing, but
is usually called Church’s theorem. A second significant issue was the general
formulation of the incompleteness theorems as applying to all formal theories
satisfying the usual representability and derivability conditions, not just to specific
formal systems like that of Principia Mathematica. According to Kleene, Church
proposed in 3 the identification of effective calculability with
l-definability. That proposal was not published at the time, but in 4 Church
mentioned it in conversation to Gödel, who judged it to be “thoroughly
unsatisfactory.” In his Princeton Lectures of 4, Gödel defined the concept of a
recursive function, but he was not convinced that all effectively calculable
functions would fall under it. The proof of the equivalence between
l-definability and recursiveness by Church and Kleene led to Church’s first
published formulation of the thesis as quoted above. The thesis was reiterated
in Church’s “An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory” 6. Turing
introduced, in “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the
Entscheidungsproblem” 6, a notion of computability by machines and maintained
that it captures effective calculability exactly. Post’s paper “Finite
Combinatory Processes, Formulation 1” 6 contains a model of computation that is
strikingly similar to Turing’s. However, Post did not provide any analysis; he
suggested considering the identification of effective calculability with his
concept as a working hypothesis that should be verified by investigating ever
wider formulations and reducing them to his basic formulation. The classic
papers of Gödel, Church, Turing, Post, and Kleene are all reprinted in Davis,
ed., The Undecidable, 5. In his 6 paper Church gave one central reason for the
proposed identification, namely that other plausible explications of the
informal notion lead to mathematical concepts weaker than or equivalent to
recursiveness. Two paradigmatic explications, calculability of a function via
algorithms or in a logic, were considered by Church. In either case, the steps
taken in determining function values have to be effective; and if the
effectiveness of steps is, as Church put it, interpreted to mean recursiveness,
then the function is recursive. The fundamental interpretative difficulty in Church’s
“step-by-step argument” which was turned into one of the “recursiveness
conditions” Hilbert and Bernays used in their 9 characterization of functions
that can be evaluated according to rules was bypassed by Turing. Analyzing
human mechanical computations, Turing was led to finiteness conditions that are
motivated by the human computer’s sensory limitations, but are ultimately based
on memory limitations. Then he showed that any function calculable by a human
computer satisfying these conditions is also computable by one of his machines.
Both Church and Gödel found Turing’s analysis convincing; indeed, Church wrote
in a 7 review of Turing’s paper that Turing’s notion makes “the identification
with effectiveness in the ordinary not explicitly defined sense evident
immediately.” This reflective work of partly philosophical and partly
mathematical character provides one of the fundamental notions in mathematical
logic. Indeed, its proper understanding is crucial for judging the
philosophical significance of central metamathematical results like Gödel’s incompleteness theorems or
Church’s theorem. The work is also crucial for computer science, artificial
intelligence, and cognitive psychology, providing in these fields a basic
theoretical notion. For example, Church’s thesis is the cornerstone for Newell
and Simon’s delimitation of the class of physical symbol systems, i.e.
universal machines with a particular architecture; see Newell’s Physical Symbol
Systems 0. Newell views the delimitation “as the most fundamental contribution
of artificial intelligence and computer science to the joint enterprise of
cognitive science.” In a turn that had been taken by Turing in “Intelligent
Machinery” 8 and “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” 0, Newell points out
the basic role physical symbol systems take on in the study of the human mind:
“the hypothesis is that humans are instances of physical symbol systems, and,
by virtue of this, mind enters into the physical universe. . . . this
hypothesis sets the terms on which we search for a scientific theory of
mind.”
Ciceronian
implicatum: Marcus Tullius, Roman statesman, orator, essayist,
and letter writer. He was important not so much for formulating individual
philosophical arguments as for expositions of the doctrines of the major
schools of Hellenistic philosophy, and for, as he put it, “teaching philosophy
to speak Latin.” The significance of the latter can hardly be overestimated.
Cicero’s coinages helped shape the philosophical vocabulary of the
Latin-speaking West well into the early modern period. The most characteristic
feature of Cicero’s thought is his attempt to unify philosophy and rhetoric.
His first major trilogy, On the Orator, On the Republic, and On the Laws,
presents a vision of wise statesmen-philosophers whose greatest achievement is
guiding political affairs through rhetorical persuasion rather than violence.
Philosophy, Cicero argues, needs rhetoric to effect its most important
practical goals, while rhetoric is useless without the psychological, moral,
and logical justification provided by philosophy. This combination of eloquence
and philosophy constitutes what he calls humanitas a coinage whose enduring influence is
attested in later revivals of humanism
and it alone provides the foundation for constitutional governments; it
is acquired, moreover, only through broad training in those subjects worthy of
free citizens artes liberales. In philosophy of education, this Ciceronian
conception of a humane education encompassing poetry, rhetoric, history, morals,
and politics endured as an ideal, especially for those convinced that
instruction in the liberal disciplines is essential for citizens if their
rational autonomy is to be expressed in ways that are culturally and
politically beneficial. A major aim of Cicero’s earlier works is to appropriate
for Roman high culture one of Greece’s most distinctive products, philosophical
theory, and to demonstrate Roman superiority. He thus insists that Rome’s laws
and political institutions successfully embody the best in Grecian political
theory, whereas the Grecians themselves were inadequate to the crucial task of
putting their theories into practice. Taking over the Stoic conception of the
universe as a rational whole, governed by divine reason, he argues that human
societies must be grounded in natural law. For Cicero, nature’s law possesses
the characteristics of a legal code; in particular, it is formulable in a
comparatively extended set of rules against which existing societal
institutions can be measured. Indeed, since they so closely mirror the
requirements of nature, Roman laws and institutions furnish a nearly perfect
paradigm for human societies. Cicero’s overall theory, if not its particular
details, established a lasting framework for anti-positivist theories of law
and morality, including those of Aquinas, Grotius, Suárez, and Locke. The final
two years of his life saw the creation of a series of dialogue-treatises that
provide an encyclopedic survey of Hellenistic philosophy. Cicero himself
follows the moderate fallibilism of Philo of Larissa and the New Academy.
Holding that philosophy is a method and not a set of dogmas, he endorses an
attitude of systematic doubt. However, unlike Cartesian doubt, Cicero’s does
not extend to the real world behind phenomena, since he does not envision the
possibility of strict phenomenalism. Nor does he believe that systematic doubt
leads to radical skepticism about knowledge. Although no infallible criterion
for distinguishing true from false impressions is available, some impressions,
he argues, are more “persuasive” probabile and can be relied on to guide
action. In Academics he offers detailed accounts of Hellenistic epistemological
debates, steering a middle course between dogmatism and radical skepticism. A
similar strategy governs the rest of his later writings. Cicero presents the
views of the major schools, submits them to criticism, and tentatively supports
any positions he finds “persuasive.” Three connected works, On Divination, On
Fate, and On the Nature of the Gods, survey Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic
arguments about theology and natural philosophy. Much of the treatment of
religious thought and practice is cool, witty, and skeptically detached much in the manner of eighteenth-century
philosophes who, along with Hume, found much in Cicero to emulate. However, he
concedes that Stoic arguments for providence are “persuasive.” So too in
ethics, he criticizes Epicurean, Stoic, and Peripatetic doctrines in On Ends 45
and their views on death, pain, irrational emotions, and happiChurch-Turing
thesis Cicero, Marcus Tullius 143 143
ness in Tusculan Disputations 45. Yet, a final work, On Duties, offers a
practical ethical system based on Stoic principles. Although sometimes dismissed
as the eclecticism of an amateur, Cicero’s method of selectively choosing from
what had become authoritative professional systems often displays considerable
reflectiveness and originality.
circulus –
Grice’s circle -- Grice’s circle -- circular reasoning, reasoning that, when
traced backward from its conclusion, returns to that starting point, as one
returns to a starting point when tracing a circle. The discussion of this topic
by Richard Whatley in his Logic sets a high standard of clarity and
penetration. Logic textbooks often quote the following example from Whatley: To
allow every man an unbounded freedom of speech must always be, on the whole,
advantageous to the State; for it is highly conducive to the interests of the
Community, that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited, of
expressing his sentiments. This passage illustrates how circular reasoning is
less obvious in a language, such as English, that, in Whatley’s words, is
“abounding in synonymous expressions, which have no resemblance in sound, and
no connection in etymology.” The premise and conclusion do not consist of just
the same words in the same order, nor can logical or grammatical principles
transform one into the other. Rather, they have the same propositional content:
they say the same thing in different words. That is why appealing to one of
them to provide reason for believing the other amounts to giving something as a
reason for itself. Circular reasoning is often said to beg the question.
‘Begging the question’ and petitio principii are translations of a phrase in
Aristotle connected with a game of formal disputation played in antiquity but
not in recent times. The meanings of ‘question’ and ‘begging’ do not in any
clear way determine the meaning of ‘question begging’. There is no simple argument
form that all and only circular arguments have. It is not logic, in Whatley’s
example above, that determines the identity of content between the premise and
the conclusion. Some theorists propose rather more complicated formal or
syntactic accounts of circularity. Others believe that any account of circular
reasoning must refer to the beliefs of those who reason. Whether or not the
following argument about articles in this dictionary is circular depends on why
the first premise should be accepted: 1 The article on inference contains no
split infinitives. 2 The other articles contain no split infinitives.
Therefore, 3 No article contains split infinitives. Consider two cases. Case I:
Although 2 supports 1 inductively, both 1 and 2 have solid outside support
independent of any prior acceptance of 3. This reasoning is not circular. Case
II: Someone who advances the argument accepts 1 or 2 or both, only because he
believes 3. Such reasoning is circular, even though neither premise expresses
just the same proposition as the conclusion. The question remains controversial
whether, in explaining circularity, we should refer to the beliefs of
individual reasoners or only to the surrounding circumstances. One purpose of
reasoning is to increase the degree of reasonable confidence that one has in
the truth of a conclusion. Presuming the truth of a conclusion in support of a
premise thwarts this purpose, because the initial degree of reasonable
confidence in the premise cannot then exceed the initial degree of reasonable
confidence in the conclusion. Circulus -- diallelon from ancient Grecian di
allelon, ‘through one another’, a circular definition. A definition is circular
provided either the definiendum occurs in the definiens, as in ‘Law is a lawful
command’, or a first term is defined by means of a second term, which in turn
is defined by the first term, as in ‘Law is the expressed wish of a ruler, and
a ruler is one who establishes laws.’ A diallelus is a circular argument: an
attempt to establish a conclusion by a premise that cannot be known unless the
conclusion is known in the first place. Descartes, e.g., argued: I clearly and
distinctly perceive that God exists, and what I clearly and distinctly perceive
is true. Therefore, God exists. To justify the premise that clear and distinct
perceptions are true, however, he appealed to his knowledge of God’s existence.
civil
disobedience: explored by H. P. Grice in his analysis
of moral vs. legal right -- a deliberate violation of the law, committed in
order to draw attention to or rectify perceived injustices in the law or
policies of a state. Illustrative questions raised by the topic include: how
are such acts justified, how should the legal system respond to such acts when
justified, and must such acts be done publicly, nonviolently, and/or with a
willingness to accept attendant legal sanctions?
clarke:
s. Grice analyses Clark’s proof of the
existence of God in “Aspects of reasoning” -- English philosopher, preacher,
and theologian. Born in Norwich, he was educated at Cambridge, where he came
under the influence of Newton. Upon graduation Clarke entered the established
church, serving for a time as chaplain to Queen Anne. He spent the last twenty
years of his life as rector of St. James, Westminster. Clarke wrote extensively
on controversial theological and philosophical issues the nature of space and time, proofs of the
existence of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the incorporeality and natural
immortality of the soul, freedom of the will, the nature of morality, etc. His
most philosophical works are his Boyle lectures of 1704 and 1705, in which he
developed a forceful version of the cosmological argument for the existence and
nature of God and attacked the views of Hobbes, Spinoza, and some proponents of
deism; his correspondence with Leibniz 171516, in which he defended Newton’s
views of space and time and charged Leibniz with holding views inconsistent
with free will; and his writings against Anthony Collins, in which he defended
a libertarian view of the agent as the undetermined cause of free actions and
attacked Collins’s arguments for a materialistic view of the mind. In these
works Clarke maintains a position of extreme rationalism, contending that the
existence and nature of God can be conclusively demonstrated, that the basic
principles of morality are necessarily true and immediately knowable, and that
the existence of a future state of rewards and punishments is assured by our
knowledge that God will reward the morally just and punish the morally wicked.
class:
the class for those philosophers whose class have no members -- a term
sometimes used as a synonym for ‘set’. When the two are distinguished, a class
is understood as a collection in the logical sense, i.e., as the extension of a
concept e.g. the class of red objects. By contrast, sets, i.e., collections in
the mathematical sense, are understood as occurring in stages, where each stage
consists of the sets that can be formed from the non-sets and the sets already
formed at previous stages. When a set is formed at a given stage, only the
non-sets and the previously formed sets are even candidates for membership, but
absolutely anything can gain membership in a class simply by falling under the
appropriate concept. Thus, it is classes, not sets, that figure in the
inconsistent principle of unlimited comprehension. In set theory, proper
classes are collections of sets that are never formed at any stage, e.g., the
class of all sets since new sets are formed at each stage, there is no stage at
which all sets are available to be collected into a set.
republicanism: cf. Cato
-- Grice was a British subject and found classical republicanism false -- also
known as civic humanism, a political outlook developed by Machiavelli in
Renaissance Italy and by James Harrington in England, modified by
eighteenth-century British and Continental writers and important for the
thought of the founding fathers. Drawing
on Roman historians, Machiavelli argued that a state could hope for security
from the blows of fortune only if its male citizens were devoted to its
well-being. They should take turns ruling and being ruled, be always prepared
to fight for the republic, and limit their private possessions. Such men would
possess a wholly secular virtù appropriate to political beings. Corruption, in
the form of excessive attachment to private interest, would then be the most
serious threat to the republic. Harrington’s utopian Oceana 1656 portrayed
England governed under such a system. Opposing the authoritarian views of
Hobbes, it described a system in which the well-to-do male citizens would elect
some of their number to govern for limited terms. Those governing would propose
state policies; the others would vote on the acceptability of the proposals.
Agriculture was the basis of economics, civil rights classical republicanism
145 145 but the size of estates was to
be strictly controlled. Harringtonianism helped form the views of the political
party opposing the dominance of the king and court. Montesquieu in France drew
on classical sources in discussing the importance of civic virtue and devotion
to the republic. All these views were well known to Jefferson, Adams, and
other colonial and revolutionary
thinkers; and some contemporary communitarian critics of culture return to classical republican
ideas.
clemens: formative
teacher in the early Christian church who, as a “Christian gnostic,” combined
enthusiasm for Grecian philosophy with a defense of the church’s faith. He
espoused spiritual and intellectual ascent toward that complete but hidden
knowledge or gnosis reserved for the truly enlightened. Clement’s school did
not practice strict fidelity to the authorities, and possibly the teachings, of
the institutional church, drawing upon the Hellenistic traditions of Alexandria,
including Philo and Middle Platonism. As with the law among the Jews, so, for
Clement, philosophy among the pagans was a pedagogical preparation for Christ,
in whom logos, reason, had become enfleshed. Philosophers now should rise above
their inferior understanding to the perfect knowledge revealed in Christ.
Though hostile to gnosticism and its speculations, Clement was thoroughly
Hellenized in outlook and sometimes guilty of Docetism, not least in his
reluctance to concede the utter humanness of Jesus.
Clifford:
W. K., -- H. P. Grice was attracted to Clifford’s idea of the ‘ethics of
belief,’ -- philosopher. Educated at King’s , London, and Trinity , Cambridge,
he began giving public lectures in 1868, when he was appointed a fellow of
Trinity, and in 1870 became professor of applied mathematics at , London. His academic career ended
prematurely when he died of tuberculosis. Clifford is best known for his
rigorous view on the relation between belief and evidence, which, in “The
Ethics of Belief,” he summarized thus: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for
anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence.” He gives this example.
Imagine a shipowner who sends to sea an emigrant ship, although the evidence
raises strong suspicions as to the vessel’s seaworthiness. Ignoring this
evidence, he convinces himself that the ship’s condition is good enough and,
after it sinks and all the passengers die, collects his insurance money without
a trace of guilt. Clifford maintains that the owner had no right to believe in
the soundness of the ship. “He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning
it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.” The right Clifford is
alluding to is moral, for what one believes is not a private but a public
affair and may have grave consequences for others. He regards us as morally
obliged to investigate the evidence thoroughly on any occasion, and to withhold
belief if evidential support is lacking. This obligation must be fulfilled
however trivial and insignificant a belief may seem, for a violation of it may
“leave its stamp upon our character forever.” Clifford thus rejected
Catholicism, to which he had subscribed originally, and became an agnostic.
James’s famous essay “The Will to Believe” criticizes Clifford’s view. According
to James, insufficient evidence need not stand in the way of religious belief,
for we have a right to hold beliefs that go beyond the evidence provided they
serve the pursuit of a legitimate goal.
Griceian anti-sneak
closure. A set of objects, O, is said to exhibit closure or to be closed under
a given operation, R, provided that for every object, x, if x is a member of O
and x is R-related to any object, y, then y is a member of O. For example, the
set of propositions is closed under deduction, for if p is a proposition and p
entails q, i.e., q is deducible from p, then q is a proposition simply because
only propositions can be entailed by propositions. In addition, many subsets of
the set of propositions are also closed under deduction. For example, the set
of true propositions is closed under deduction or entailment. Others are not.
Under most accounts of belief, we may fail to believe what is entailed by what
we do, in fact, believe. Thus, if knowledge is some form of true, justified
belief, knowledge is not closed under deduction, for we may fail to believe a
proposition entailed by a known proposition. Nevertheless, there is a related
issue that has been the subject of much debate, namely: Is the set of justified
propositions closed under deduction? Aside from the obvious importance of the
answer to that question in developing an account of justification, there are
two important issues in epistemology that also depend on the answer. Subtleties
aside, the so-called Gettier problem depends in large part upon an affirmative
answer to that question. For, assuming that a proposition can be justified and
false, it is possible to construct cases in which a proposition, say p, is
justified, false, but believed. Now, consider a true proposition, q, which is
believed and entailed by p. If justification is closed under deduction, then q
is justified, true, and believed. But if the only basis for believing q is p,
it is clear that q is not known. Thus, true, justified belief is not sufficient
for knowledge. What response is appropriate to this problem has been a central
issue in epistemology since E. Gettier’s publication of “Is Justified True
Belief Knowledge?” Analysis, 3. Whether justification is closed under deduction
is also crucial when evaluating a common, traditional argument for skepticism.
Consider any person, S, and let p be any proposition ordinarily thought to be
knowable, e.g., that there is a table before S. The argument for skepticism
goes like this: 1 If p is justified for S, then, since p entails q, where q is
‘there is no evil genius making S falsely believe that p’, q is justified for
S. 2 S is not justified in believing q. Therefore, S is not justified in
believing p. The first premise depends upon justification being closed under
deduction.
cockburn:
c. English philosopher and playwright who made a significant contribution to
the debates on ethical rationalism sparked by Clarke’s Boyle lectures 170405.
The major theme of her writings is the nature of moral obligation. Cockburn
displays a consistent, non-doctrinaire philosophical position, arguing that
moral duty is to be rationally deduced from the “nature and fitness of things”
Remarks, 1747 and is not founded primarily in externally imposed sanctions. Her
writings, published anonymously, take the form of philosophical debates with
others, including Samuel Rutherforth, William Warburton, Isaac Watts, Francis
Hutcheson, and Lord Shaftesbury. Her best-known intervention in contemporary
philosophical debate was her able defense of Locke’s Essay in 1702.
cogito
ergo sum – Example given by Grice of Descartes’s conventional
implicature. “What Descartes said was, “je pense; donc, j’existe.” The ‘donc’
implicatum is an interesting one to analyse. cited by Grice in “Descartes on
clear and distinct perception.” ‘I think, therefore I am’, the starting point
of Descartes’s system of knowledge. In his Discourse on the Method 1637, he
observes that the proposition ‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’ je pense, donc
je suis is “so firm and sure that the most extravagant suppositions of the
skeptics were incapable of shaking it.” The celebrated phrase, in its
better-known Latin version, also occurs in the Principles of Philosophy 1644,
but is not to be found in the Meditations 1641, though the latter contains the
fullest statement of the reasoning behind Descartes’s certainty of his own
existence.
potching
and cotching: Grice coined ‘cotching’ because he was
irritated to hear that Chomsky couldn’t stand ‘know’ and how to coin ‘cognise’
to do duty for it! cognition -- cognitive dissonance, mental discomfort arising
from conflicting beliefs or attitudes held simultaneously. Leon Festinger, who
originated the theory of cognitive dissonance in a book of that title 7,
suggested that cognitive dissonance has motivational characteristics. Suppose a
person is contemplating moving to a new city. She is considering both
Birmingham and Boston. She cannot move to both, so she must choose. Dissonance
is experienced by the person if in choosing, say, Birmingham, she acquires
knowledge of bad or unwelcome features of Birmingham and of good or welcome
aspects of Boston. The amount of dissonance depends on the relative intensities
of dissonant elements. Hence, if the only dissonant factor is her learning that
Boston is cooler than Birmingham, and she does not regard climate as important,
she will experience little dissonance. Dissonance may occur in several sorts of
psychological states or processes, although the bulk of research in cognitive
dissonance theory has been on dissonance in choice and on the justification and
psychological aftereffects of choice. Cognitive dissonance may be involved in
two phenomena of interest to philosophers, namely, self-deception and weakness
of will. Why do self-deceivers try to get themselves to believe something that,
in some sense, they know to be false? One may resort to self-deception when
knowledge causes dissonance. Why do the weak-willed perform actions they know
to be wrong? One may become weak-willed when dissonance arises from the expected
consequences of doing the right thing. -- cognitive psychotherapy, an
expression introduced by Brandt in A Theory of the Good and the Right to refer
to a process of assessing and adjusting one’s desires, aversions, or pleasures
henceforth, “attitudes”. This process is central to Brandt’s analysis of
rationality, and ultimately, to his view on the justification of morality.
Cognitive psychotherapy consists of the agent’s criticizing his attitudes by
repeatedly representing to himself, in an ideally vivid way and at appropriate
times, all relevant available information. Brandt characterizes the key
definiens as follows: 1 available information is “propositions accepted by the
science of the agent’s day, plus factual propositions justified by publicly
accessible evidence including testimony of others about themselves and the
principles of logic”; 2 information is relevant provided, if the agent were to
reflect repeatedly on it, “it would make a difference,” i.e., would affect the
attitude in question, and the effect would be a function of its content, not an
accidental byproduct; 3 relevant information is represented in an ideally vivid
way when the agent focuses on it with maximal clarity and detail and with no
hesitation or doubt about its truth; and 4 repeatedly and at appropriate times
refer, respectively, to the frequency and occasions that would result in the
information’s having the maximal attitudinal impact. Suppose Mary’s desire to
smoke were extinguished by her bringing to the focus of her attention, whenever
she was about to inhale smoke, some justified beliefs, say that smoking is
hazardous to one’s health and may cause lung cancer; Mary’s desire would have
been removed by cognitive psychotherapy. According to Brandt, an attitude is
rational for a person provided it is one that would survive, or be produced by,
cognitive psychotherapy; otherwise it is irrational. Rational attitudes, in
this sense, provide a basis for moral norms. Roughly, the correct moral norms
are those of a moral code that persons would opt for if i they were motivated
by attitudes that survive the process of cognitive psychotherapy; and ii at the
time of opting for a moral code, they were fully aware of, and vividly
attentive to, all available information relevant to choosing a moral code for a
society in which they are to live for the rest of their lives. In this way,
Brandt seeks a value-free justification for moral norms one that avoids the problems of other
theories such as those that make an appeal to intuitions. -- cognitive science, an interdisciplinary
research cluster that seeks to account for intelligent activity, whether
exhibited by living organisms especially adult humans or machines. Hence,
cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence constitute its core. A number
of other disciplines, including neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, and
philosophy, as well as other fields of psychology e.g., developmental
psychology, are more peripheral contributors. The quintessential cognitive
scientist is someone who employs computer modeling techniques developing
computer programs for the purpose of simulating particular human cognitive
activities, but the broad range of disciplines that are at least peripherally
constitutive of cognitive science have lent a variety of research strategies to
the enterprise. While there are a few common institutions that seek to unify
cognitive science e.g., departments, journals, and societies, the problems
investigated and the methods of investigation often are limited to a single
contributing discipline. Thus, it is more appropriate to view cognitive science
as a cross-disciplinary enterprise than as itself a new discipline. While
interest in cognitive phenomena has historically played a central role in the
various disciplines contributing to cognitive science, the term properly
applies to cross-disciplinary activities that emerged in the 0s. During the
preceding two decades each of the disciplines that became part of cogntive
science gradually broke free of positivistic and behavioristic proscriptions
that barred systematic inquiry into the operation of the mind. One of the
primary factors that catalyzed new investigations of cognitive activities was
Chomsky’s generative grammar, which he advanced not only as an abstract theory
of the structure of language, but also as an account of language users’ mental
knowledge of language their linguistic competence. A more fundamental factor
was the development of approaches for theorizing about information in an
abstract manner, and the introduction of machines computers that could
manipulate information. This gave rise to the idea that one might program a
computer to process information so as to exhibit behavior that would, if
performed by a human, require intelligence. If one tried to formulate a unifying
question guiding cognitive science research, it would probably be: How does the
cognitive system work? But even this common question is interpreted quite
differently in different disciplines. We can appreciate these differences by
looking just at language. While psycholinguists generally psychologists seek to
identify the processing activities in the mind that underlie language use, most
linguists focus on the products of this internal processing, seeking to
articulate the abstract structure of language. A frequent goal of computer
scientists, in contrast, has been to develop computer programs to parse natural
language input and produce appropriate syntactic and semantic representations.
These differences in objectives among the cognitive science disciplines
correlate with different methodologies. The following represent some of the
major methodological approaches of the contributing disciplines and some of the
problems each encounters. Artificial intelligence. If the human cognition
system is viewed as computational, a natural goal is to simulate its
performance. This typically requires formats for representing information as
well as procedures for searching and manipulating it. Some of the earliest
AIprograms drew heavily on the resources of first-order predicate calculus,
representing information in propositional formats and manipulating it according
to logical principles. For many modeling endeavors, however, it proved
important to represent information in larger-scale structures, such as frames
Marvin Minsky, schemata David Rumelhart, or scripts Roger Schank, in which
different pieces of information associated with an object or activity would be
stored together. Such structures generally employed default values for specific
slots specifying, e.g., that deer live in forests that would be part of the
representation unless overridden by new information e.g., that a particular
deer lives in the San Diego Zoo. A very influential alternative approach,
developed by Allen Newell, replaces declarative representations of information
with procedural representations, known as productions. These productions take
the form of conditionals that specify actions to be performed e.g., copying an
expression into working memory if certain conditions are satisfied e.g., the expression
matches another expression. Psychology. While some psychologists develop
computer simulations, a more characteristic activity is to acquire detailed
data from human subjects that can reveal the cognitive system’s actual
operation. This is a challenging endeavor. While cognitive activities transpire
within us, they frequently do so in such a smooth and rapid fashion that we are
unaware of them. For example, we have little awareness of what occurs when we
recognize an object as a chair or remember the name of a client. Some cognitive
functions, though, seem to be transparent to consciousness. For example, we
might approach a logic problem systematically, enumerating possible solutions
and evaluating them serially. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon have refined
methods for exploiting verbal protocols obtained from subjects as they solve
such problems. These methods have been quite fruitful, but their limitations
must be respected. In many cases in which we think we know how we performed a
cognitive task, Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson have argued that we are
misled, relying on folk theories to describe how our minds work rather than
reporting directly on their operation. In most cases cognitive psychologists
cannot rely on conscious awareness of cognitive processes, but must proceed as
do physiologists trying to understand metabolism: they must devise experiments
that reveal the underlying processes operative in cognition. One approach is to
seek clues in the errors to which the cognitive system cognitive science
cognitive science is prone. Such errors might be more easily accounted for by
one kind of underlying process than by another. Speech errors, such as
substituting ‘bat cad’ for ‘bad cat’, may be diagnostic of the mechanisms used
to construct speech. This approach is often combined with strategies that seek
to overload or disrupt the system’s normal operation. A common technique is to
have a subject perform two tasks at once
e.g., read a passage while watching for a colored spot. Cognitive
psychologists may also rely on the ability to dissociate two phenomena e.g.,
obliterate one while maintaining the other to establish their independence.
Other types of data widely used to make inferences about the cognitive system
include patterns of reaction times, error rates, and priming effects in which
activation of one item facilitates access to related items. Finally,
developmental psychologists have brought a variety of kinds of data to bear on
cognitive science issues. For example, patterns of acquisition times have been
used in a manner similar to reaction time patterns, and accounts of the origin
and development of systems constrain and elucidate mature systems. Linguistics.
Since linguists focus on a product of cognition rather than the processes that produce
the product, they tend to test their analyses directly against our shared
knowledge of that product. Generative linguists in the tradition of Chomsky,
for instance, develop grammars that they test by probing whether they generate
the sentences of the language and no others. While grammars are certainly G.e
to developing processing models, they do not directly determine the structure
of processing models. Hence, the central task of linguistics is not central to
cognitive science. However, Chomsky has augmented his work on grammatical
description with a number of controversial claims that are psycholinguistic in
nature e.g., his nativism and his notion of linguistic competence. Further, an
alternative approach to incorporating psycholinguistic concerns, the cognitive
linguistics of Lakoff and Langacker, has achieved prominence as a contributor
to cognitive science. Neuroscience. Cognitive scientists have generally assumed
that the processes they study are carried out, in humans, by the brain. Until
recently, however, neuroscience has been relatively peripheral to cognitive
science. In part this is because neuroscientists have been chiefly concerned
with the implementation of processes, rather than the processes themselves, and
in part because the techniques available to neuroscientists such as single-cell
recording have been most suitable for studying the neural implementation of
lower-order processes such as sensation. A prominent exception was the
classical studies of brain lesions initiated by Broca and Wernicke, which
seemed to show that the location of lesions correlated with deficits in
production versus comprehension of speech. More recent data suggest that
lesions in Broca’s area impair certain kinds of syntactic processing. However,
other developments in neuroscience promise to make its data more relevant to
cognitive modeling in the future. These include studies of simple nervous
systems, such as that of the aplysia a genus of marine mollusk by Eric Kandel,
and the development of a variety of techniques for determining the brain
activities involved in the performance of cognitive tasks e.g., recording of
evoked response potentials over larger brain structures, and imaging techniques
such as positron emission tomography. While in the future neuroscience is
likely to offer much richer information that will guide the development and
constrain the character of cognitive models, neuroscience will probably not
become central to cognitive science. It is itself a rich, multidisciplinary
research cluster whose contributing disciplines employ a host of complicated
research tools. Moreover, the focus of cognitive science can be expected to
remain on cognition, not on its implementation. So far cognitive science has
been characterized in terms of its modes of inquiry. One can also focus on the
domains of cognitive phenomena that have been explored. Language represents one
such domain. Syntax was one of the first domains to attract wide attention in
cognitive science. For example, shortly after Chomsky introduced his
transformational grammar, psychologists such as George Miller sought evidence
that transformations figured directly in human language processing. From this
beginning, a more complex but enduring relationship among linguists,
psychologists, and computer scientists has formed a leading edge for much
cognitive science research. Psycholinguistics has matured; sophisticated
computer models of natural language processing have been developed; and
cognitive linguists have offered a particular synthesis that emphasizes
semantics, pragmatics, and cognitive foundations of language. Thinking and
reasoning. These constitute an important domain of cognitive science that is
closely linked to philosophical interests. Problem cognitive science cognitive
science solving, such as that which figures in solving puzzles, playing games,
or serving as an expert in a domain, has provided a prototype for thinking.
Newell and Simon’s influential work construed problem solving as a search
through a problem space and introduced the idea of heuristics generally reliable but fallible simplifying
devices to facilitate the search. One arena for problem solving, scientific
reasoning and discovery, has particularly interested philosophers. Artificial intelligence
researchers such as Simon and Patrick Langley, as well as philosophers such as
Paul Thagard and Lindley Darden, have developed computer programs that can
utilize the same data as that available to historical scientists to develop and
evaluate theories and plan future experiments. Cognitive scientists have also
sought to study the cognitive processes underlying the sorts of logical
reasoning both deductive and inductive whose normative dimensions have been a
concern of philosophers. Philip JohnsonLaird, for example, has sought to account
for human performance in dealing with syllogistic reasoning by describing a
processing of constructing and manipulating mental models. Finally, the process
of constructing and using analogies is another aspect of reasoning that has
been extensively studied by traditional philosophers as well as cognitive
scientists. Memory, attention, and learning. Cognitive scientists have
differentiated a variety of types of memory. The distinction between long- and
short-term memory was very influential in the information-processing models of
the 0s. Short-term memory was characterized by limited capacity, such as that
exhibited by the ability to retain a seven-digit telephone number for a short
period. In much cognitive science work, the notion of working memory has superseded
short-term memory, but many theorists are reluctant to construe this as a
separate memory system as opposed to a part of long-term memory that is
activated at a given time. Endel Tulving introduced a distinction between
semantic memory general knowledge that is not specific to a time or place and
episodic memory memory for particular episodes or occurrences. More recently,
Daniel Schacter proposed a related distinction that emphasizes consciousness:
implicit memory access without awareness versus explicit memory which does
involve awareness and is similar to episodic memory. One of the interesting
results of cognitive research is the dissociation between different kinds of
memory: a person might have severely impaired memory of recent events while having
largely unimpaired implicit memory. More generally, memory research has shown
that human memory does not simply store away information as in a file cabinet.
Rather, information is organized according to preexisting structures such as
scripts, and can be influenced by events subsequent to the initial storage.
Exactly what gets stored and retrieved is partly determined by attention, and
psychologists in the information-processing tradition have sought to construct
general cognitive models that emphasize memory and attention. Finally, the
topic of learning has once again become prominent. Extensively studied by the
behaviorists of the precognitive era, learning was superseded by memory and
attention as a research focus in the 0s. In the 0s, artificial intelligence
researchers developed a growing interest in designing systems that can learn;
machine learning is now a major problem area in AI. During the same period,
connectionism arose to offer an alternative kind of learning model. Perception
and motor control. Perceptual and motor systems provide the inputs and outputs
to cognitive systems. An important aspect of perception is the recognition of
something as a particular kind of object or event; this requires accessing
knowledge of objects and events. One of the central issues concerning
perception questions the extent to which perceptual processes are influenced by
higher-level cognitive information top-down processing versus how much they are
driven purely by incoming sensory information bottom-up processing. A related
issue concerns the claim that visual imagery is a distinct cognitive process
and is closely related to visual perception, perhaps relying on the same brain
processes. A number of cognitive science inquiries e.g., by Roger Shepard and
Stephen Kosslyn have focused on how people use images in problem solving and
have sought evidence that people solve problems by rotating images or scanning
them. This research has been extremely controversial, as other investigators
have argued against the use of images and have tried to account for the
performance data that have been generated in terms of the use of
propositionally represented information. Finally, a distinction recently has
been proposed between the What and Where systems. All of the foregoing issues
concern the What system which recognizes and represents objects as exemplars of
categories. The Where system, in contrast, concerns objects in their
environment, and is particularly adapted to the dynamics of movement. Gibson’s
ecological psychology is a long-standing inquiry into this aspect of
perception, and work on the neural substrates is now attracting the interest of
cognitive scientists as well. Recent developments. The breadth of cognitive
science has been expanding in recent years. In the 0s, cognitive science
inquiries tended to focus on processing activities of adult humans or on
computer models of intelligent performance; the best work often combined these
approaches. Subsequently, investigators examined in much greater detail how
cognitive systems develop, and developmental psychologists have increasingly
contributed to cognitive science. One of the surprising findings has been that,
contrary to the claims of William James, infants do not seem to confront the
world as a “blooming, buzzing confusion,” but rather recognize objects and
events quite early in life. Cognitive science has also expanded along a
different dimension. Until recently many cognitive studies focused on what
humans could accomplish in laboratory settings in which they performed tasks
isolated from reallife contexts. The motivation for this was the assumption
that cognitive processes were generic and not limited to specific contexts.
However, a variety of influences, including Gibsonian ecological psychology
especially as interpreted and developed by Ulric Neisser and Soviet activity
theory, have advanced the view that cognition is much more dynamic and situated
in real-world tasks and environmental contexts; hence, it is necessary to study
cognitive activities in an ecologically valid manner. Another form of expansion
has resulted from a challenge to what has been the dominant architecture for
modeling cognition. An architecture defines the basic processing capacities of
the cognitive system. The dominant cognitive architecture has assumed that the
mind possesses a capacity for storing and manipulating symbols. These symbols
can be composed into larger structures according to syntactic rules that can
then be operated upon by formal rules that recognize that structure. Jerry Fodor
has referred to this view of the cognitive system as the “language of thought
hypothesis” and clearly construes it as a modern heir of rationalism. One of
the basic arguments for it, due to Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn, is that thoughts,
like language, exhibit productivity the unlimited capacity to generate new
thoughts and systematicity exhibited by the inherent relation between thoughts
such as ‘Joan loves the florist’ and ‘The florist loves Joan’. They argue that
only if the architecture of cognition has languagelike compositional structure
would productivity and systematicity be generic properties and hence not
require special case-by-case accounts. The challenge to this architecture has
arisen with the development of an alternative architecture, known as
connectionism, parallel distributed processing, or neural network modeling,
which proposes that the cognitive system consists of vast numbers of neuronlike
units that excite or inhibit each other. Knowledge is stored in these systems
by the adjustment of connection strengths between processing units;
consequently, connectionism is a modern descendant of associationism.
Connectionist networks provide a natural account of certain cognitive phenomena
that have proven challenging for the symbolic architecture, including pattern
recognition, reasoning with soft constraints, and learning. Whether they also
can account for productivity and systematicity has been the subject of debate.
Philosophical theorizing about the mind has often provided a starting point for
the modeling and empirical investigations of modern cognitive science. The
ascent of cognitive science has not meant that philosophers have ceased to play
a role in examining cognition. Indeed, a number of philosophers have pursued
their inquiries as contributors to cognitive science, focusing on such issues
as the possible reduction of cognitive theories to those of neuroscience, the
status of folk psychology relative to emerging scientific theories of mind, the
merits of rationalism versus empiricism, and strategies for accounting for the
intentionality of mental states. The interaction between philosophers and other
cognitive scientists, however, is bidirectional, and a number of developments
in cognitive science promise to challenge or modify traditional philosophical
views of cognition. For example, studies by cognitive and social psychologists
have challenged the assumption that human thinking tends to accord with the
norms of logic and decision theory. On a variety of tasks humans seem to follow
procedures heuristics that violate normative canons, raising questions about
how philosophers should characterize rationality. Another area of empirical
study that has challenged philosophical assumptions has been the study of
concepts and categorization. Philosophers since Plato have widely assumed that
concepts of ordinary language, such as red, bird, and justice, should be
definable by necessary and sufficient conditions. But celebrated studies by
Eleanor Rosch and her colleagues indicated that many ordinary-language concepts
had a prototype structure instead. On this view, the categories employed in
human thinking are characterized by prototypes the clearest exemplars and a
metric that grades exemplars according to their degree of typicality. Recent
investigations have also pointed to significant instability in conceptual
structure and to the role of theoretical beliefs in organizing categories. This
alternative conception of concepts has profound implications for philosophical
methodologies that portray philosophy’s task to be the analysis of
concepts.
palæo-Kantian, Kantian, neo-Kantian.
Cohen, Hermann – Grice liked to think of himself as a neo-Kantian (“rather than
a palaeo-Kantian, you see”) --
philosopher who originated and led, with Paul Natorp, the Marburg School
of neo-Kantianism. He taught at Marburg. Cohen wrote commentaries on Kant’s
Critiques prior to publishing System der Philosophie 212, which consisted of
parts on logic, ethics, and aesthetics. He developed a Kantian idealism of the
natural sciences, arguing that a transcendental analysis of these sciences
shows that “pure thought” his system of Kantian a priori principles
“constructs” their “reality.” He also developed Kant’s ethics as a democratic
socialist ethics. He ended his career at a rabbinical seminary in Berlin,
writing his influential Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums
“Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism,” 9, which explicated Judaism
on the basis of his own Kantian ethical idealism. Cohen’s ethical-political
views were adopted by Kurt Eisner 18679, leader of the Munich revolution of 8,
and also had an impact on the revisionism of orthodox Marxism of the G. Social
Democratic Party, while his philosophical writings greatly influenced Cassirer.
coherence – since H. P.
Grice was a correspondentist, he hated Bradley. -- theory of truth, the view that either the
nature of truth or the sole criterion for determining truth is constituted by a
relation of coherence between the belief or judgment being assessed and other
beliefs or judgments. As a view of the nature of truth, the coherence theory
represents an alternative to the correspondence theory of truth. Whereas the
correspondence theory holds that a belief is true provided it corresponds to
independent reality, the coherence theory holds that it is true provided it
stands in a suitably strong relation of coherence to other beliefs, so that the
believer’s total system of beliefs forms a highly or perhaps perfectly coherent
system. Since, on such a characterization, truth depends entirely on the
internal relations within the system of beliefs, such a conception of truth
seems to lead at once to idealism as regards the nature of reality, and its
main advocates have been proponents of absolute idealism mainly Bradley,
Bosanquet, and Brand Blanshard. A less explicitly metaphysical version of the
coherence theory was also held by certain members of the school of logical
positivism mainly Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel. The nature of the intended
relation of coherence, often characterized metaphorically in terms of the
beliefs in question fitting together or dovetailing with each other, has been
and continues to be a matter of uncertainty and controversy. Despite occasional
misconceptions to the contrary, it is clear that coherence is intended to be a
substantially more demanding relation than mere consistency, involving such
things as inferential and explanatory relations within the system of beliefs.
Perfect or ideal coherence is sometimes described as requiring that every
belief in the system of beliefs entails all the others though it must be
remembered that those offering such a characterization do not restrict
entailments to those that are formal or analytic in character. Since actual
human systems of belief seem inevitably to fall short of perfect coherence,
however that is understood, their truth is usually held to be only approximate
at best, thus leading to the absolute idealist view that truth admits of
degrees. As a view of the criterion of truth, the coherence theory of truth
holds that the sole criterion or standard for determining whether a belief is
true is its coherence with other beliefs or judgments, with the degree of
justification varying with the degree of coherence. Such a view amounts to a
coherence theory of epistemic justification. It was held by most of the
proponents of the coherence theory of the nature of truth, though usually
without distinguishing the two views very clearly. For philosophers who hold
both of these views, the thesis that coherence is the sole criterion of truth
is usually logically prior, and the coherence theory of the nature of truth is
adopted as a consequence, the clearest argument being that only the view that
perfect or ideal coherence is the nature of truth can make sense of the appeal
to degrees of coherence as a criterion of truth. -- coherentism, in epistemology, a theory of
the structure of knowledge or justified beliefs according to which all beliefs
representing knowledge are known or justified in virtue of their relations to
other beliefs, specifically, in virtue of belonging to a coherent system of
beliefs. Assuming that the orthodox account of knowledge is correct at least in
maintaining that justified true belief is necessary for knowledge, we can
identify two kinds of coherence theories of knowledge: those that are
coherentist merely in virtue of incorporating a coherence theory of
justification, and those that are doubly coherentist because they account for
both justification and truth in terms of coherence. What follows will focus on
coherence theories of justification. Historically, coherentism is the most
significant alternative to foundationalism. The latter holds that some beliefs,
basic or foundational beliefs, are justified apart from their relations to other
beliefs, while all other beliefs derive their justification from that of
foundational beliefs. Foundationalism portrays justification as having a
structure like that of a building, with certain beliefs serving as the
foundations and all other beliefs supported by them. Coherentism rejects this
image and pictures justification as having the structure of a raft. Justified
beliefs, like the planks that make up a raft, mutually support one another.
This picture of the coherence theory is due to the positivist Otto Neurath.
Among the positivists, Hempel shared Neurath’s sympathy for coherentism. Other
defenders of coherentism from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
were idealists, e.g., Bradley, Bosanquet, and Brand Blanshard. Idealists often held
the sort of double coherence theory mentioned above. The contrast between
foundationalism and coherentism is commonly developed in terms of the regress
argument. If we are asked what justifies one of our beliefs, we
characteristically answer by citing some other belief that supports it, e.g.,
logically or probabilistically. If we are asked about this second belief, we
are likely to cite a third belief, and so on. There are three shapes such an
evidential chain might have: it could go on forever, if could eventually end in
some belief, or it could loop back upon itself, i.e., eventually contain again
a belief that had occurred “higher up” on the chain. Assuming that infinite
chains are not really possible, we are left with a choice between chains that end
and circular chains. According to foundationalists, evidential chains must
eventually end with a foundational belief that is justified, if the belief at
the beginning of the chain is to be justified. Coherentists are then portrayed
as holding that circular chains can yield justified beliefs. This portrayal is,
in a way, correct. But it is also misleading since it suggests that the
disagreement between coherentism and foundationalism is best understood as
concerning only the structure of evidential chains. Talk of evidential chains
in which beliefs that are further down on the chain are responsible for beliefs
that are higher up naturally suggests the idea that just as real chains
transfer forces, evidential chains transfer justification. Foundationalism then
sounds like a real possibility. Foundational beliefs already have
justification, and evidential chains serve to pass the justification along to
other beliefs. But coherentism seems to be a nonstarter, for if no belief in
the chain is justified to begin with, there is nothing to pass along. Altering
the metaphor, we might say that coherentism seems about as likely to succeed as
a bucket brigade that does not end at a well, but simply moves around in a
circle. The coherentist seeks to dispel this appearance by pointing out that
the primary function of evidential chains is not to transfer epistemic status,
such as justification, from belief to belief. Indeed, beliefs are not the
primary locus of justification. Rather, it is whole systems of belief that are
justified or not in the primary sense; individual beliefs are justified in
virtue of their membership in an appropriately structured system of beliefs.
Accordingly, what the coherentist claims is that the appropriate sorts of
evidential chains, which will be circular
indeed, will likely contain numerous circles constitute justified systems of belief. The
individual beliefs within such a system are themselves justified in virtue of
their place in the entire system and not because this status is passed on to
them from beliefs further down some evidential chain in which they figure. One
can, therefore, view coherentism with considerable accuracy as a version of
foundationalism that holds all beliefs to be foundational. From this
perspective, the difference between coherentism and traditional foundationalism
has to do with what accounts for the epistemic status of foundational beliefs,
with traditional foundationalism holding that such beliefs can be justified in
various ways, e.g., by perception or reason, while coherentism insists that the
only way such beliefs can be justified is by being a member of an appropriately
structured system of beliefs. One outstanding problem the coherentist faces is
to specify exactly what constitutes a coherent system of beliefs. Coherence
clearly must involve much more than mere absence of mutually contradictory
beliefs. One way in which beliefs can be logically consistent is by concerning
completely unrelated matters, but such a consistent system of beliefs would not
embody the sort of mutual support that constitutes the core idea of
coherentism. Moreover, one might question whether logical consistency is even
necessary for coherence, e.g., on the basis of the preface paradox. Similar
points can be made regarding efforts to begin an account of coherence with the
idea that beliefs and degrees of belief must correspond to the probability
calculus. So although it is difficult to avoid thinking that such formal
features as logical and probabilistic consistency are significantly involved in
coherence, it is not clear exactly how they are involved. An account of
coherence can be drawn more directly from the following intuitive idea: a
coherent system of belief is one in which each belief is epistemically
supported by the others, where various types of epistemic support are
recognized, e.g., deductive or inductive arguments, or inferences to the best
explanation. There are, however, at least two problems this suggestion does not
address. First, since very small sets of beliefs can be mutually supporting,
the coherentist needs to say something about the scope a system of beliefs must
have to exhibit the sort of coherence required for justification. Second, given
the possibility of small sets of mutually supportive beliefs, it is apparently possible
to build a system of very broad scope out of such small sets of mutually
supportive beliefs by mere conjunction, i.e., without forging any significant
support relations among them. Yet, since the interrelatedness of all truths
does not seem discoverable by analyzing the concept of justification, the
coherentist cannot rule out epistemically isolated subsystems of belief
entirely. So the coherentist must say what sorts of isolated subsystems of
belief are compatible with coherence. The difficulties involved in specifying a
more precise concept of coherence should not be pressed too vigorously against
the coherentist. For one thing, most foundationalists have been forced to grant
coherence a significant role within their accounts of justification, so no
dialectical advantage can be gained by pressing them. Moreover, only a little
reflection is needed to see that nearly all the difficulties involved in
specifying coherence are manifestations within a specific context of quite
general philosophical problems concerning such matters as induction,
explanation, theory choice, the nature of epistemic support, etc. They are,
then, problems that are faced by logicians, philosophers of science, and
epistemologists quite generally, regardless of whether they are sympathetic to
coherentism. Coherentism faces a number of serious objections. Since according
to coherentism justification is determined solely by the relations among
beliefs, it does not seem to be capable of taking us outside the circle of our
beliefs. This fact gives rise to complaints that coherentism cannot allow for
any input from external reality, e.g., via perception, and that it can neither
guarantee nor even claim that it is likely that coherent systems of belief will
make contact with such reality or contain true beliefs. And while it is widely
granted that justified false beliefs are possible, it is just as widely
accepted that there is an important connection between justification and truth,
a connection that rules out accounts according to which justification is not
truth-conducive. These abstractly formulated complaints can be made more vivid,
in the case of the former, by imagining a person with a coherent system of
beliefs that becomes frozen, and fails to change in the face of ongoing sensory
experience; and in the case of the latter, by pointing out that, barring an
unexpected account of coherence, it seems that a wide variety of coherent
systems of belief are possible, systems that are largely disjoint or even
incompatible.
collier:
a., Grice found the Clavis Universalis
quite fun (“to read”). -- English philosopher, a Wiltshire parish priest whose
Clavis Universalis 1713 defends a version of immaterialism closely akin to
Berkeley’s. Matter, Collier contends, “exists in, or in dependence on mind.” He
emphatically affirms the existence of bodies, and, like Berkeley, defends
immaterialCoimbra commentaries Collier, Arthur 155 155 ism as the only alternative to
skepticism. Collier grants that bodies seem to be external, but their
“quasi-externeity” is only the effect of God’s will. In Part I of the Clavis
Collier argues as Berkeley had in his New Theory of Vision, 1709 that the
visible world is not external. In Part II he argues as Berkeley had in the
Principles, 1710, and Three Dialogues, 1713 that the external world “is a being
utterly impossible.” Two of Collier’s arguments for the “intrinsic repugnancy”
of the external world resemble Kant’s first and second antinomies. Collier
argues, e.g., that the material world is both finite and infinite; the
contradiction can be avoided, he suggests, only by denying its external
existence. Some scholars suspect that Collier deliberately concealed his debt
to Berkeley; most accept his report that he arrived at his views ten years
before he published them. Collier first refers to Berkeley in letters written
in 171415. In A Specimen of True Philosophy 1730, where he offers an
immaterialist interpretation of the opening verse of Genesis, Collier writes
that “except a single passage or two” in Berkeley’s Dialogues, there is no
other book “which I ever heard of” on the same subject as the Clavis. This is a
puzzling remark on several counts, one being that in the Preface to the
Dialogues, Berkeley describes his earlier books. Collier’s biographer reports
seeing among his papers now lost an outline, dated 1708, on “the question of
the visible world being without us or not,” but he says no more about it. The
biographer concludes that Collier’s independence cannot reasonably be doubted;
perhaps the outline would, if unearthed, establish this.
collingwood:
r. g.—cited by H. P. Grice in “Metaphysics,” in D. F. Pears, “The nature of
metaphysics.” – Like Grice, Collingwood was influenced by J. C. Wilson’s
subordinate interrogation. English philosopher and historian. His father, W. G.
Collingwood, John Ruskin’s friend, secretary, and biographer, at first educated
him at home in Coniston and later sent him to Rugby School and then Oxford.
Immediately upon graduating in 2, he was elected to a fellowship at Pembroke ;
except for service with admiralty intelligence during World War I, he remained
at Oxford until 1, when illness compelled him to retire. Although his
Autobiography expresses strong disapproval of the lines on which, during his
lifetime, philosophy at Oxford developed, he was a varsity “insider.” He was
elected to the Waynflete Professorship, the first to become vacant after he had
done enough work to be a serious candidate. He was also a leading archaeologist
of Roman Britain. Although as a student Collingwood was deeply influenced by
the “realist” teaching of John Cook Wilson, he studied not only the British
idealists, but also Hegel and the contemporary
post-Hegelians. At twenty-three, he published a translation of Croce’s book
on Vico’s philosophy. Religion and Philosophy 6, the first of his attempts to
present orthodox Christianity as philosophically acceptable, has both idealist
and Cook Wilsonian elements. Thereafter the Cook Wilsonian element steadily
diminished. In Speculum Mentis4, he investigated the nature and ultimate unity
of the four special ‘forms of experience’
art, religion, natural science, and history and their relation to a fifth comprehensive
form philosophy. While all four, he
contended, are necessary to a full human life now, each is a form of error that
is corrected by its less erroneous successor. Philosophy is error-free but has
no content of its own: “The truth is not some perfect system of philosophy: it
is simply the way in which all systems, however perfect, collapse into
nothingness on the discovery that they are only systems.” Some critics
dismissed this enterprise as idealist a description Collingwood accepted when
he wrote, but even those who favored it were disturbed by the apparent
skepticism of its result. A year later, he amplified his views about art in
Outlines of a Philosophy of Art. Since much of what Collingwood went on to
write about philosophy has never been published, and some of it has been
negligently destroyed, his thought after Speculum Mentis is hard to trace. It will
not be definitively established until the more than 3,000 s of his surviving
unpublished manuscripts deposited in the Bodleian Library in 8 have been
thoroughly studied. They were not available to the scholars who published
studies of his philosophy as a whole up to 0. Three trends in how his
philosophy developed, however, are discernible. The first is that as he
continued to investigate the four special forms of experience, he came to
consider each valid in its own right, and not a form of error. As early as 8,
he abandoned the conception of the historical past in Speculum Mentis as simply
a spectacle, alien to the historian’s mind; he now proposed a theory of it as
thoughts explaining past actions that, although occurring in the past, can be
rethought in the present. Not only can the identical thought “enacted” at a
definite time in the past be “reenacted” any number of times after, but it can
be known to be so reenacted if colligation physical evidence survives that can
be shown to be incompatible with other proposed reenactments. In 334 he wrote a
series of lectures posthumously published as The Idea of Nature in which he
renounced his skepticism about whether the quantitative material world can be
known, and inquired why the three constructive periods he recognized in
European scientific thought, the Grecian, the Renaissance, and the modern,
could each advance our knowledge of it as they did. Finally, in 7, returning to
the philosophy of art and taking full account of Croce’s later work, he showed
that imagination expresses emotion and becomes false when it counterfeits
emotion that is not felt; thus he transformed his earlier theory of art as
purely imaginative. His later theories of art and of history remain alive; and
his theory of nature, although corrected by research since his death, was an
advance when published. The second trend was that his conception of philosophy
changed as his treatment of the special forms of experience became less
skeptical. In his beautifully written Essay on Philosophical Method 3, he
argued that philosophy has an object the
ens realissimum as the one, the true, and the good of which the objects of the special forms of
experience are appearances; but that implies what he had ceased to believe,
that the special forms of experience are forms of error. In his Principles of
Art 8 and New Leviathan 2 he denounced the idealist principle of Speculum
Mentis that to abstract is to falsify. Then, in his Essay on Metaphysics 0, he
denied that metaphysics is the science of being qua being, and identified it
with the investigation of the “absolute presuppositions” of the special forms
of experience at definite historical periods. A third trend, which came to
dominate his thought as World War II approached, was to see serious philosophy
as practical, and so as having political implications. He had been, like
Ruskin, a radical Tory, opposed less to liberal or even some socialist measures
than to the bourgeois ethos from which they sprang. Recognizing European
fascism as the barbarism it was, and detesting anti-Semitism, he advocated an
antifascist foreign policy and intervention in the civil war in support of the republic. His
last major publication, The New Leviathan, impressively defends what he called
civilization against what he called barbarism; and although it was neglected by
political theorists after the war was won, the collapse of Communism and the
rise of Islamic states are winning it new readers.
Grice’s
combinatory logic, a branch of logic that deals with formal
systems designed for the study of certain basic operations for constructing and
manipulating functions as rules, i.e. as rules of calculation expressed by
definitions. The notion of a function was fundamental in the development of
modern formal or mathematical logic that was initiated by Frege, Peano,
Russell, Hilbert, and others. Frege was the first to introduce a generalization
of the mathematical notion of a function to include propositional functions,
and he used the general notion for formally representing logical notions such
as those of a concept, object, relation, generality, and judgment. Frege’s
proposal to replace the traditional logical notions of subject and predicate by
argument and function, and thus to conceive predication as functional
application, marks a turning point in the history of formal logic. In most
modern logical systems, the notation used to express functions, including
propositional functions, is essentially that used in ordinary mathematics. As
in ordinary mathematics, certain basic notions are taken for granted, such as
the use of variables to indicate processes of substitution. Like the original
systems for modern formal logic, the systems of combinatory logic were designed
to give a foundation for mathematics. But combinatory logic arose as an effort
to carry the foundational aims further and deeper. It undertook an analysis of
notions taken for granted in the original systems, in particular of the notions
of substitution and of the use of variables. In this respect combinatory logic
was conceived by one of its founders, H. B. Curry, to be concerned with the
ultimate foundations and with notions that constitute a “prelogic.” It was
hoped that an analysis of this prelogic would disclose the true source of the
difficulties connected with the logical paradoxes. The operation of applying a
function to one of its arguments, called application, is a primitive operation
in all systems of combinatory logic. If f is a function and x a possible
argument, then the result of the application operation is denoted fx. In
mathematics this is usually written fx, but the notation fx is more convenient
in combinatory logic. The G. logician M. Schönfinkel, who started combinatory
logic in 4, observed that it is not necessary to introduce color realism
combinatory logic functions of more than one variable, provided that the idea
of a function is enlarged so that functions can be arguments as well as values
of other functions. A function Fx,y is represented with the function f, which
when applied to the argument x has, as a value, the function fx, which, when
applied to y, yields Fx,y, i.e. fxy % Fx,y. It is therefore convenient to omit
parentheses with association to the left so that fx1 . . . xn is used for . . . fx1 . . . xn. Schönfinkel’s main result
was to show how to make the class of functions studied closed under explicit
definition by introducing two specific primitive functions, the combinators S
and K, with the rules Kxy % x, and Sxyz % xzyz. To illustrate the effect of S
in ordinary mathematical notation, let f and g be functions of two and one
arguments, respectively; then Sfg is the function such that Sfgx % fx,gx.
Generally, if ax1, . . . ,xn is an expression built up from constants and the
variables shown by means of the application operation, then there is a function
F constructed out of constants including the combinators S and K, such that Fx1
. . . xn % ax1, . . . , xn. This is essentially the meaning of the combinatory
completeness of the theory of combinators in the terminology of H. B. Curry and
R. Feys, Combinatory Logic 8; and H. B. Curry, J. R. Hindley, and J. P. Seldin,
Combinatory Logic, vol. II 2. The system of combinatory logic with S and K as
the only primitive functions is the simplest equation calculus that is
essentially undecidable. It is a type-free theory that allows the formation of
the term ff, i.e. self-application, which has given rise to problems of
interpretation. There are also type theories based on combinatory logic. The
systems obtained by extending the theory of combinators with functions
representing more familiar logical notions such as negation, implication, and
generality, or by adding a device for expressing inclusion in logical
categories, are studied in illative combinatory logic. The theory of
combinators exists in another, equivalent form, namely as the type-free
l-calculus created by Church in 2. Like the theory of combinators, it was
designed as a formalism for representing functions as rules of calculation, and
it was originally part of a more general system of functions intended as a
foundation for mathematics. The l-calculus has application as a primitive
operation, but instead of building up new functions from some primitive ones by
application, new functions are here obtained by functional abstraction. If ax is
an expression built up by means of application from constants and the variable
x, then ax is considered to define a function denoted lx.a x, whose value for
the argument b is ab, i.e. lx.a xb % ab. The function lx.ax is obtained from ax
by functional abstraction. The property of combinatory completeness or closure
under explicit definition is postulated in the form of functional abstraction.
The combinators can be defined using functional abstraction i.e., K % lx.ly.x
and S % lx.ly.lz.xzyz, and conversely, in the theory of combinators, functional
abstraction can be defined. A detailed presentation of the l-calculus is found
in H. Barendregt, The Lambda Calculus, Its Syntax and Semantics 1. It is
possible to represent the series of natural numbers by a sequence of closed
terms in the lcalculus. Certain expressions in the l-calculus will then
represent functions on the natural numbers, and these l-definable functions are
exactly the general recursive functions or the Turing computable functions. The
equivalence of l-definability and general recursiveness was one of the
arguments used by Church for what is known as Church’s thesis, i.e., the
identification of the effectively computable functions and the recursive
functions. The first problem about recursive undecidability was expressed by
Church as a problem about expressions in the l calculus. The l-calculus thus
played a historically important role in the original development of recursion
theory. Due to the emphasis in combinatory logic on the computational aspect of
functions, it is natural that its method has been found useful in proof theory
and in the development of systems of constructive mathematics. For the same
reason it has found several applications in computer science in the
construction and analysis of programming languages. The techniques of
combinatory logic have also been applied in theoretical linguistics, e.g. in
so-called Montague grammar. In recent decades combinatory logic, like other
domains of mathematical logic, has developed into a specialized branch of
mathematics, in which the original philosophical and foundational aims and
motives are of little and often no importance. One reason for this is the
discovery of the new technical applications, which were not intended
originally, and which have turned the interest toward several new mathematical
problems. Thus, the original motives are often felt to be less urgent and only
of historical significance. Another reason for the decline of the original
philosophical and foundational aims may be a growing awareness in the
philosophy of mathematics of the limitations of formal and mathematical methods
as tools for conceptual combinatory logic combinatory logic clarification, as
tools for reaching “ultimate foundations.”
commitment: Grice’s commitment to the 39
Articles. An utterer is committed to those and
only those entities to which the bound variables of his utterance must be
capable of referring in order that the utterance made be true.” Cf. Grice on
substitutional quantification for his feeling Byzantine, and ‘gap’ sign in the
analysis.
common-ground status assignment: While
Grice was invited to a symposium on ‘mutual knowledge,’ he never was for
‘regressive accounts’ of ‘know,’ perhaps because he had to be different, and
the idea of the mutual or common knowledge was the obvious way to deal with his
account of communication. He rejects it and opts for an anti-sneak clause. In
the common-ground he uses the phrase, “What the eye no longer sees, the heart
no longer grieves for.” What does he mean? He means that in the case of some
recognizable divergence between the function of a communication device in a
rational calculus and in the vernacular, one may have to assign ‘common ground
status’ to certain features, e. g. [The king of France is] bald. By using the
square brackets, or subscripts, in “Vacuous names and descriptions,” the
material within their scope is ‘immune’ to refutation. It has some sort of
conversational ‘inertia.’ So the divergence, for which Grice’s heart grieved,
is no more to be seen by Grice’s eye. Strwson and Wiggins view that this is
only tentative for Grice. the regulations for common-ground assignment have to
do with general rational constraints on conversation. Grice is clear in
“Causal,” and as Strawson lets us know, he was already clear in “Introduction”
when talking of a ‘pragmatic rule.’ Strawson states the rule in terms of making
your conversational contribution the logically strongest possible. If we abide by an
imperative of conversational helpfulness, enjoining the maximally giving and
receiving of information and the influencing and being influenced by others in
the institution of a decisions, the sub-imperative follows to the effect, ‘Thou
shalt NOT make a weak move compared to the stronger one that thou canst truthfully
make, and with equal or greater economy of means.’“Causal”
provides a more difficult version, because it deals with non-extensional
contexts where ‘strong’ need not be interpreted as ‘logical strength’ in terms
of entailment. Common ground status assignment springs from the principle of
conversational helpfulness or conversational benevolence. What would be the
benevolent point of ‘informing’ your addressee what you KNOW your addressee
already knows? It is not even CONCEPTUALLY possible. You are not ‘informing’
him if you are aware that he knows it. So, what Strawson later calls the
principle of presumption of ignorance and the principle of the presumption of
knowledge are relevant. There is a balance between the two. If Strawson asks
Grice, “Is the king of France bald?” Grice is entitled to assume that Strawson
thinks two things Grice will perceive as having been assigned a ‘common-ground’
status as uncontroversial topic not worth conversing about. First, Strawson
thinks that there is one king. (∃x)Fx. Second, Strawson thinks that there is at most one
king. (x)(y)((Fx.Fy)⊃ x=y).
That the king is bald is NOT assigned common-ground status, because Grice
cannot expect that Strawson thinks that Grice KNOWS that. Grice symbolises the
common-ground status by means of subscripts. He also uses square-bracekts, so
that anything within the scope of the square brackets is immune to controversy,
or as Grice also puts it, conversationally _inert_: things we don’t talk about.
communication device: Grice always has ‘or communication
devices’ at the tip of his tongue. “Language or communication devices” (WoW:
284). A device is produced. A device can be misunderstood.
communicatum: With the linguistic turn, as Grice notes, it was all
about ‘language.’ But at Oxford they took a cavalier attitude to language, that
Grice felt like slightly rectifying, while keeping it cavalier as we like it at
Oxford. The colloquialism of ‘mean’ does not translate well in the Graeco-Roman
tradition Grice was educated via his Lit. Hum. (Philos.) and at Clifton.
‘Communicate’ might do. On top, Grice does use ‘communicate’ on various
occasions in WoW. By psi-transmission,
something that belonged in the emissor becomes ‘common property,’ ‘communion’
has been achived. Now the recipient KNOWS that it is raining (shares the belief
with the emissor) and IS GOING to bring that umbrella (has formed a desire). “Communication”
is cognate with ‘communion,’ while conversation is cognate with ‘sex’! When
Grice hightlights the ‘common ground’ in ‘communication’ he is being slightly
rhetorical, so it is good when he weakens the claim from ‘common ground’ to
‘non-trivial.’ A: I’m going to the concert. My uncle’s brother went to that
concert. The emissor cannot presume that his addressee KNEW that he had an unlce
let alone that his uncle had a brother (the emissor’s father). But any
expansion would trigger the wrong implicatum. One who likes ‘communication’ is
refined Strawson (I’m using refined as J. Barnes does it, “turn Plato into
refined Strawson”). Both in his rat-infested example and at the inaugural
lecture at Oxford. Grice, for one, has given us reason to think that, with
sufficient care, and far greater refinement than I have indicated, it is
possible to expound such a concept of communication-intention or, as he calls
it, utterer's meaning, which is proof against objection. it is a commonplace that Grice belongs, as
most philosophers of the twentieth century, to the movement of the linguistic
turn. Short and Lewis have “commūnĭcare,” earlier “conmunicare,” f. communis,
and thus sharing the prefix with “conversare.” Now “communis” is an interesting
lexeme that Grice uses quite centrally in his idea of the ‘common ground’ –
when a feature of discourse is deemed to have been assigned ‘common-ground
status.’ “Communis” features the “cum-” prefix, commūnis (comoinis); f. “con” and
root “mu-,” to bind; Sanscr. mav-; cf.: immunis, munus, moenia. The
‘communicatum’ (as used by Tammelo in
social philosophy) may well cover what Grice would call the total
‘significatio,’ or ‘significatum.’ Grice takes this seriously. Let us start
then by examining what we mean by ‘linguistic,’ or ‘communication.’ It is
curious that while most Griceians overuse ‘communicative’ as applied to
‘intention,’ Grice does not. Communicator’s intention, at most. This is the
Peirce in Grice’s soul. Meaning provides an excellent springboard for Grice to
centre his analysis on psychological or soul-y verbs as involving the agent and
the first person: smoke only figuratively means fire, and the expression smoke
only figuratively (or metabolically) means that there is fire. It is this or
that utterer (say, Grice) who means, say, by uttering Where theres smoke theres
fire, or ubi fumus, ibi ignis, that where theres smoke theres fire. A
means something by uttering x, an utterance-token is roughly equivalent to
utterer U intends the utterance of x to produce some effect in his addressee A
by means of the recognition of this intention; and we may add that to ask what
U means is to ask for a specification of the intended effect - though, of
course, it may not always be possible to get a straight answer involving a
that-clause, for example, a belief that
He does provide a more specific example involving the that-clause at a
later stage. By uttering x, U means that-ψb-dp ≡ (Ǝφ)(Ǝf)(Ǝc) U
utters x intending x to be such that anyone who
has φ think that x has f, f is correlated in way c
with ψ-ing that p, and (Ǝφ') U intends x to be such
that anyone who has φ' think, via thinking that x has
f and that f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing that p, that U ψ-s that
p, and in view of (Ǝφ') U intending x to be such
that anyone who has φ' think, via thinking that x has
f, and f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing that p, that U ψ-s that
p, U ψ-s that p, and, for some
substituends of ψb-d, U utters x
intending that, should there actually be anyone who
has φ, he will, via thinking in view of (Ǝφ') U
intending x to be such that anyone who has φ' think, via
thinking that x has f, and f is correlated in way c
with ψ-ing that p, that U ψ-s that p, U ψ-s that
p himself ψ that p, and it is not
the case that, for some inference element E, U intends x to be such
that anyone who has φ both rely on E in coming to ψ, or think that U ψ-s, that p and think that (Ǝφ) U intends x to be
such that anyone who has φ come to ψ (or think that U ψ-s) that
p without relying on E. Besides St. John The Baptist, and Salome, Grice
cites few Namess in Meaning. But he makes a point about Stevenson! For
Stevenson, smoke means fire. Meaning develops out of an interest by Grice on
the philosophy of Peirce. In his essays on Peirce, Grice quotes from many other
authors, including, besides Peirce himself (!), Ogden, Richards, and Ewing, or
A. C. Virtue is not a fire-shovel Ewing, as Grice calls him, and this or that
cricketer. In the characteristic Oxonian fashion of a Lit. Hum., Grice has no
intention to submit Meaning to publication. Publishing is vulgar. Bennett,
however, guesses that Grice decides to publish it just a year after his Defence
of a dogma. Bennett’s argument is that Defence of a dogma pre-supposes some
notion of meaning. However, a different story may be told, not necessarily
contradicting Bennetts. It is Strawson who submits the essay by Grice to The
Philosophical Review (henceforth, PR) Strawson attends Grices talk on Meaning
for The Oxford Philosophical Society, and likes it. Since In defence of a dogma
was co-written with Strawson, the intention Bennett ascribes to Grice is
Strawsons. Oddly, Strawson later provides a famous alleged counter-example to
Grice on meaning in Intention and convention in speech acts, following J. O.
Urmson’s earlier attack to the sufficiency of Grices analysans -- which has
Grice dedicating a full James lecture (No. 5) to it. there is Strawsons
rat-infested house for which it is insufficient. An interesting fact,
that confused a few, is that Hart quotes from Grices Meaning in his critical
review of Holloway for The Philosophical Quarterly. Hart quotes Grice
pre-dating the publication of Meaning. Harts point is that Holloway should have
gone to Oxford! In Meaning, Grice may be seen as a practitioner of
ordinary-language philosophy: witness his explorations of the factivity (alla
know, remember, or see) or lack thereof of various uses of to mean. The second
part of the essay, for which he became philosophically especially popular,
takes up an intention-based approach to semantic notions. The only authority
Grice cites, in typical Oxonian fashion, is, via Ogden and Barnes, Stevenson,
who, from The New World (and via Yale, too!) defends an emotivist theory of ethics,
and making a few remarks on how to mean is used, with scare quotes, in
something like a causal account (Smoke means fire.). After its publication
Grices account received almost as many alleged counterexamples as
rule-utilitarianism (Harrison), but mostly outside Oxford, and in The New
World. New-World philosophers seem to have seen Grices attempt as reductionist
and as oversimplifying. At Oxford, the sort of counterexample Grice received,
before Strawson, was of the Urmson-type: refined, and subtle. I think your
account leaves bribery behind. On the other hand, in the New World ‒ in what
Grice calls the Latter-Day School of Nominalism, Quine is having troubles with
empiricism. Meaning was repr. in various collections, notably in Philosophical
Logic, ed. by Strawson. It should be remembered that it is Strawson who has the
thing typed and submitted for publication. Why Meaning should be repr. in a
collection on Philosophical Logic only Strawson knows. But Grice does say that
his account may help clarify the meaning of entails! It may be Strawsons
implicature that Parkinson should have repr. (and not merely credited) Meaning
by Grice in his series for Oxford on The theory of meaning. The preferred
quotation for Griceians is of course The Oxford Philosophical Society quote, seeing
that Grice recalled the exact year when he gave the talk for the Philosophical
Society at Oxford! It is however, the publication in The Philosophi, rather
than the quieter evening at the Oxford Philosophical Society, that occasioned a
tirade of alleged counter-examples by New-World philosophers. Granted, one or
two Oxonians ‒ Urmson and Strawson ‒ fell in! Urmson criticises the sufficiency
of Grices account, by introducing an alleged counter-example involving bribery.
Grice will consider a way out of Urmsons alleged counter-example in his fifth
Wiliam James Lecture, rightly crediting and thanking Urmson for this! Strawsons
alleged counter-example was perhaps slightly more serious, if regressive. It
also involves the sufficiency of Grices analysis. Strawsons rat-infested house
alleged counter-example started a chain which required Grice to avoid,
ultimately, any sneaky intention by way of a recursive clause to the effect
that, for utterer U to have meant that p, all meaning-constitutive intentions
should be above board. But why this obsession by Grice with mean? He is being
funny. Spots surely dont mean, only mean.They dont have a mind. Yet Grice opens
with a specific sample. Those spots mean, to the doctor, that you, dear, have
measles. Mean? Yes, dear, mean, doctors orders. Those spots mean measles. But
how does the doctor know? Cannot he be in the wrong? Not really, mean is
factive, dear! Or so Peirce thought. Grice is amazed that Peirce thought that
some meaning is factive. The hole in this piece of cloth means that a bullet
went through is is one of Peirce’s examples. Surely, as Grice notes, this is an
unhappy example. The hole in the cloth may well have caused by something else,
or fabricated. (Or the postmark means that the letter went through the post.)
Yet, Grice was having Oxonian tutees aware that Peirce was krypto-technical.
Grice chose for one of his pre-Meaning seminars on Peirce’s general theory of
signs, with emphasis on general, and the correspondence of Peirce and Welby.
Peirce, rather than the Vienna circle, becomes, in vein with Grices dissenting
irreverent rationalism, important as a source for Grices attempt to English
Peirce. Grices implicature seems to be that Peirce, rather than Ayer, cared for
the subtleties of meaning and sign, never mind a verificationist theory about
them! Peirce ultra-Latinate-cum-Greek taxonomies have Grice very nervous,
though. He knew that his students were proficient in the classics, but still. Grice
thus proposes to reduce all of Peirceian divisions and sub-divisions (one
sub-division too many) to mean. In the proceedings, he quotes from Ogden,
Richards, and Ewing. In particular, Grice was fascinated by the correspondence of
Peirce with Lady Viola Welby, as repr. by Ogden/Richards in, well, their study
on the meaning of meaning. Grice thought the science of symbolism pretentious,
but then he almost thought Lady Viola Welby slightly pretentious, too, if youve
seen her; beautiful lady. It is via Peirce that Grice explores examples such as
those spots meaning measles. Peirce’s obsession is with weathercocks almost as
Ockham was with circles on wine-barrels. Old-World Grices use of New-World
Peirce is illustrative, thus, of the Oxonian linguistic turn focused on
ordinary language. While Peirce’s background was not philosophical, Grice
thought it comical enough. He would say that Peirce is an amateur, but then he
said the same thing about Mill, whom Grice had to study by heart to get his B.
A. Lit. Hum.! Plus, as Watson commented, what is wrong with amateur? Give me an
amateur philosopher ANY day, if I have to choose from professional Hegel! In
finding Peirce krypo-technical, Grice is ensuing that his tutees, and indeed
any Oxonian philosophy student (he was university lecturer) be aware that to
mean should be more of a priority than this or that jargon by this or that (New
World?) philosopher!? Partly! Grice wanted his students to think on their own,
and draw their own conclusions! Grice cites Ewing, Ogden/Richards, and many
others. Ewing, while Oxford-educated, had ended up at Cambridge (Scruton almost
had him as his tutor) and written some points on Meaninglessness! Those spots
mean measles. Grice finds Peirce krypto-technical and proposes to English him
into an ordinary-language philosopher. Surely it is not important whether we
consider a measles spot a sign, a symbol, or an icon. One might just as well
find a doctor in London who thinks those spots symbolic. If Grice feels like
Englishing Peirce, he does not altogether fail! meaning, reprints, of
Meaning and other essays, a collection of reprints and offprints of Grices
essays. Meaning becomes a central topic of at least two strands in
Retrospective epilogue. The first strand concerns the idea of the centrality of
the utterer. What Grice there calls meaning BY (versus meaning TO), i.e. as he
also puts it, active or agents meaning. Surely he is right in defending an
agent-based account to meaning. Peirce need not, but Grice must, because he is
working with an English root, mean, that is only figurative applicable to
non-agentive items (Smoke means rain). On top, Grice wants to conclude that
only a rational creature (a person) can meanNN properly. Non-human animals may
have a correlate. This is a truly important point for Grice since he surely is
seen as promoting a NON-convention-based approach to meaning, and also defending
from the charge of circularity in the non-semantic account of propositional
attitudes. His final picture is a rationalist one. P1 G wants
to communicate about a danger to P2. This presupposes there IS a
danger (item of reality). Then P1 G believes there is a danger,
and communicates to P2 G2 that there is a danger. This simple
view of conversation as rational co-operation underlies Grices account of
meaning too, now seen as an offshoot of philosophical psychology, and indeed
biology, as he puts it. Meaning as yet another survival mechanism. While he
would never use a cognate like significance in his Oxford Philosophical Society
talk, Grice eventually starts to use such Latinate cognates at a later stage of
his development. In Meaning, Grice does not explain his goal. By sticking with
a root that the Oxford curriculum did not necessarily recognised as
philosophical (amateur Peirce did!), Grice is implicating that he is starting
an ordinary-language botanising on his own repertoire! Grice was amused by the
reliance by Ewing on very Oxonian examples contra Ayer: Surely Virtue aint a
fire-shovel is perfectly meaningful, and if fact true, if, Ill admit, somewhat
misleading and practically purposeless at Cambridge. Again, the dismissal by
Grice of natural meaning is due to the fact that natural meaning prohibits its
use in the first person and followed by a that-clause. ‘I mean-n that p’ sounds
absurd, no communication-function seems in the offing, there is no ‘sign for,’
as Woozley would have it. Grice found, with Suppes, all types of primacy
(ontological, axiological, psychological) in utterers meaning. In Retrospective
epilogue, he goes back to the topic, as he reminisces that it is his
suggestion that there are two allegedly distinguishable meaning concepts, even
if one is meta-bolical, which may be called natural meaning and non-natural
meaning. There is this or that test (notably factivity-entailment vs.
cancelation, but also scare quotes) which may be brought to bear to distinguish
one concept from the other. We may, for example, inquire whether a particular
occurrence of the predicate mean is factive or non-factive, i. e., whether for
it to be true that [so and so] means that p, it does or does not have to be the
case that it is true that p. Again, one may ask whether the use of quotation
marks to enclose the specification of what is meant would be inappropriate or
appropriate. If factivity, as in know, remember, and see, is present and
quotation marks, oratio recta, are be inappropriate, we have a case of natural
meaning. Otherwise the meaning involved is non-natural meaning. We may now ask
whether there is a single overarching idea which lies behind both members of
this dichotomy of uses to which the predicate meaning that seems to be
Subjects. If there is such a central idea it might help to indicate to us which
of the two concepts is in greater need of further analysis and elucidation and
in what direction such elucidation should proceed. Grice confesses that he has
only fairly recently come to believe that there is such an overarching idea and
that it is indeed of some service in the proposed inquiry. The idea behind both
uses of mean is that of consequence, or consequentia, as Hobbes has it. If x
means that p, something which includes p or the idea of p, is a consequence of
x. In the metabolic natural use of meaning that p, p, this or that consequence,
is this or that state of affairs. In the literal, non-metabolic, basic,
non-natural use of meaning that p, (as in Smith means that his neighbour’s
three-year child is an adult), p, this or that consequence is this or that
conception or complexus which involves some other conception. This perhaps
suggests that of the two concepts it is, as it should, non-natural meaning
which is more in need of further elucidation. It seems to be the more
specialised of the pair, and it also seems to be the less determinate. We may,
e. g., ask how this or that conception enters the picture. Or we may ask
whether what enters the picture is the conception itself or its justifiability.
On these counts Grice should look favorably on the idea that, if further
analysis should be required for one of the pair, the notion of non-natural
meaning would be first in line. There are factors which support the suitability
of further analysis for the concept of non-natural meaning. MeaningNN that
p (non-natural meaning) does not look as if it Namess an original feature of
items in the world, for two reasons which are possibly not mutually
independent. One reason is that, given suitable background conditions, meaning,
can be changed by fiat. The second reason is that the presence of meaningNN is
dependent on a framework provided by communication, if that is not too
circular. Communication is in the philosophical lexicon. Lewis and
Short have “commūnĭcātĭo,” f. communicare,"(several times in Cicero,
elsewhere rare), and as they did with negatio and they will with significatio,
Short and Lewis render, unhelpfully, as a making common, imparting,
communicating. largitio et communicatio civitatis;” “quaedam societas et
communicatio utilitatum,” “consilii communicatio, “communicatio sermonis,” criminis
cum pluribus; “communicatio nominum, i. e. the like appellation of several objects;
“juris; “damni; In rhetorics, communicatio, trading on the communis, a figure,
translating Grecian ἀνακοίνωσις, in accordance with which the utterer turns to
his addressee, and, as it were, allows him to take part in the inquiry. It
seems to Grice, then, at least reasonable and possibly even emphatically
mandatory, to treat the claim that a communication vehicle, such as this and
that expression means that p, in this transferred, metaphoric, or meta-bolic
use of means that as being reductively analysable in terms of this or that
feature of this or that utterer, communicator, or user of this or that expression.
The use of meaning that as applied to this or that expression is posterior
to and explicable through the utterer-oriented, or utterer-relativised use,
i.e. involving a reference to this or that communicator or user of this or that
expression. More specifically, one should license a metaphorical use of mean,
where one allows the claim that this or that expression means that p, provided
that this or that utterer, in this or that standard fashion, means that p, i.e.
in terms of this or that souly statee toward this or that propositional
complexus this or that utterer ntends, in a standardly fashion, to produce by
his uttering this or that utterance. That this or that expression means (in
this metaphorical use) that p is thus explicable either in terms of this
or that souly state which is standardly intended to produce in this or that
addressee A by this or that utterer of this or that expression, or in this or
that souly staken up by this or that utterer toward this or that activity or
action of this or that utterer of this or that expression. Meaning was in
the air in Oxfords linguistic turn. Everybody was talking meaning. Grice
manages to quote from Hares early “Mind” essay on the difference between
imperatives and indicatives, also Duncan-Jones on the fugitive
proposition, and of course his beloved Strawson. Grice was also concerned
by the fact that in the manoeuvre of the typical ordinary-language philosopher,
there is a constant abuse of mean. Surely Grice wants to stick with the
utterers meaning as the primary use. Expressions mean only derivatively. To do
that, he chose Peirce to see if he could clarify it with meaning that. Grice
knew that the polemic was even stronger in London, with Ogden and Lady Viola
Welby. In the more academic Oxford milieu, Grice knew that a proper examination
of meaning, would lead him, via Kneale and his researches on the history of
semantics, to the topic of signification that obsessed the modistae (and their
modus significandi). For what does L and S say about about this? This is
Grice’s reply to popular Ogden. They want to know what the meaning of meaning
is? Here is the Oxononian response by Grice, with a vengeance. Grice is not an
animist nor a mentalist, even modest. While he allows for natural
phenomena to mean (smoke means fire), meaning is best ascribed to some utterer,
where this meaning is nothing but the intentions behind his
utterance. This is the fifth James lecture. Grice was careful enough to
submit it to PR, since it is a strictly philosophical development of the views
expressed in Meaning which Strawson had submitted on Grice’s behalf to the same
Review and which had had a series of responses by various philosophers. Among
these philosophers is Strawson himself in Intention and convention in the the
theory of speech acts, also in PR. Grice quotes from very many other
philosophers in this essay, including: Urmson, Stampe,
Strawson, Schiffer, and Searle. Strawson is especially relevant since
he started a series of alleged counter-examples with his infamous example of
the rat-infested house. Grice particularly treasured Stampes alleged
counter-example involving his beloved bridge! Avramides earns a D. Phil Oxon.
on that, under Strawson! This is Grices occasion to address some of the criticisms ‒
in the form of alleged counter-examples, typically, as his later reflections on
epagoge versus diagoge note ‒ by Urmson, Strawson, and other
philosophers associated with Oxford, such as Searle, Stampe, and Schiffer. The
final analysandum is pretty complex (of the type that he did find his analysis
of I am hearing a sound complex in Personal identity ‒ hardly an
obstacle for adopting it), it became yet another target of attack by especially
New-World philosophers in the pages of Mind, Nous, and other journals, This is
officially the fifth James lecture. Grice takes up the analysis of meaning he
had presented way back at the Oxford Philosophical Society. Motivated mainly by
the attack by Urmson and by Strawson in Intention and convention in speech
acts, that offered an alleged counter-example to the sufficiency of Grices
analysis, Grice ends up introducing so many intention that he almost trembled.
He ends up seeing meaning as a value-paradeigmatic concept, perhaps never
realisable in a sublunary way. But it is the analysis in this particular essay
where he is at his formal best. He distinguishes between protreptic and
exhibitive utterances, and also modes of correlation (iconic, conventional). He
symbolises the utterer and the addressee, and generalises over the type of
psychological state, attitude, or stance, meaning seems to range (notably
indicative vs. imperative). He formalises the reflexive intention, and more
importantly, the overtness of communication in terms of a self-referential
recursive intention that disallows any sneaky intention to be brought into the
picture of meaning-constitutive intentions. Grice thought he had dealt with
Logic and conversation enough! So he feels of revising his Meaning. After all,
Strawson had had the cheek to publish Meaning by Grice and then go on to
criticize it in Intention and convention in speech acts. So this is Grices
revenge, and he wins! He ends with the most elaborate theory of mean that an
Oxonian could ever hope for. And to provoke the informalists such as Strawson
(and his disciples at Oxford – led by Strawson) he pours existential
quantifiers like the plague! He manages to quote from Urmson, whom he loved! No
word on Peirce, though, who had originated all this! His implicature: Im not
going to be reprimanted in informal discussion about my misreading Peirce at
Harvard! The concluding note is about artificial substitutes for iconic
representation, and meaning as a human institution. Very grand. This is Grices
metabolical projection of utterers meaning to apply to anything OTHER than
utterers meaning, notably a token of the utterers expression and a TYPE of the
utterers expression, wholly or in part. Its not like he WANTS to do it, he
NEEDS it to give an account of implicatum. The phrase utterer is meant to
provoke. Grice thinks that speaker is too narrow. Surely you can mean by just
uttering stuff! This is the sixth James lecture, as published in “Foundations
of Language” (henceforth, “FL”), or “The foundations of language,” as he
preferred. As it happens, it became a popular lecture, seeing that Searle
selected this from the whole set for his Oxford reading in philosophy on the
philosophy of language. It is also the essay cited by Chomsky in his
influential Locke lectures. Chomsky takes Grice to be a behaviourist, even
along Skinners lines, which provoked a reply by Suppes, repr. in PGRICE. In The
New World, the H. P. is often given in a more simplified form. Grice wants to
keep on playing. In Meaning, he had said x means that p is surely reducible to
utterer U means that p. In this lecture, he lectures us as to how to proceed.
In so doing he invents this or that procedure: some basic, some resultant. When
Chomsky reads the reprint in Searles Philosophy of Language, he cries:
Behaviourist! Skinnerian! It was Suppes who comes to Grices defence. Surely the
way Grice uses expressions like resultant procedure are never meant in the
strict behaviourist way. Suppes concludes that it is much fairer to
characterise Grice as an intentionalist. Published in FL, ed. by Staal, Repr.in
Searle, The Philosophy of Language, Oxford, the sixth James Lecture, FL,
resultant procedure, basic procedure. Staal asked Grice to publish the
sixth James lecture for a newish periodical publication of whose editorial
board he was a member. The fun thing is Grice complied! This is Grices
shaggy-dog story. He does not seem too concerned about resultant procedures. As
he will ll later say, surely I can create Deutero-Esperanto and become its
master! For Grice, the primacy is the idiosyncratic, particularized utterer in
this or that occasion. He knows a philosopher craves for generality, so he
provokes the generality-searcher with divisions and sub-divisions of mean. But
his heart does not seem to be there, and he is just being overformalistic and
technical for the sake of it. I am glad that Putnam, of all people, told me in
an aside, you are being too formal, Grice. I stopped with symbolism since!
Communication. This is Grice’s clearest anti-animist attack by Grice. He had
joins Hume in mocking causing and willing: The decapitation of Charles I as
willing Charles Is death. Language semantics alla Tarski. Grice know sees his
former self. If he was obsessed, after Ayer, with mean, he now wants to see if
his explanation of it (then based on his pre-theoretic intuition) is
theoretically advisable in terms other than dealing with those pre-theoretical
facts, i.e. how he deals with a lexeme like mean. This is a bit like Grice:
implicatum, revisited. An axiological approach to meaning. Strictly a reprint
of Grice, which should be the preferred citation. The date is given by Grice
himself, and he knew! Grice also composed some notes on Remnants on meaning, by
Schiffer. This is a bit like Grices meaning re-revisited. Schiffer had been
Strawsons tutee at Oxford as a Rhode Scholar in the completion of his D.
Phil. on Meaning, Clarendon. Eventually, Schiffer grew sceptic, and let Grice
know about it! Grice did not find Schiffers arguments totally destructive, but
saw the positive side to them. Schiffers arguments should remind any
philosopher that the issues he is dealing are profound and bound to involve
much elucidation before they are solved. This is a bit like Grice: implicatum,
revisited. Meaning revisited (an ovious nod to Evelyn Waughs Yorkshire-set novel)
is the title Grice chose for a contribution to a symposium at Brighton
organised by Smith. Meaning revisited (although Grice has earlier drafts
entitled Meaning and philosophical psychology) comprises three sections. In the
first section, Grice is concerned with the application of his modified Occam’s
razor now to the very lexeme, mean. Cf. How many senses does sense have? Cohen:
The Senses of Senses. In the second part, Grice explores an evolutionary model
of creature construction reaching a stage of non-iconic representation.
Finally, in the third section, motivated to solve what he calls a major problem ‒
versus the minor problem concerning the transition from the meaning by the
utterer to the meaning by the expression. Grice attempts to construct meaning
as a value-paradeigmatic notion. A version was indeed published in the
proceedings of the Brighton symposium, by Croom Helm, London. Grice has a
couple of other drafts with variants on this title: philosophical psychology
and meaning, psychology and meaning. He keeps, meaningfully, changing the order.
It is not arbitrary that the fascinating exploration by Grice is in three
parts. In the first, where he applies his Modified Occams razor to mean, he is
revisiting Stevenson. Smoke means fire and I mean love, dont need different senses
of mean. Stevenson is right when using scare quotes for smoke ‘meaning’ fire
utterance. Grice is very much aware that that, the rather obtuse terminology of
senses, was exactly the terminology he had adopted in both Meaning and the
relevant James lectures (V and VI) at Harvard! Now, its time to revisit and to
echo Graves, say, goodbye to all that! In the second part he applies Pology.
While he knows his audience is not philosophical ‒ it is not Oxford ‒ he
thinks they still may get some entertainment! We have a P feeling pain,
simulating it, and finally uttering, I am in pain. In the concluding section,
Grice becomes Plato. He sees meaning as an optimum, i.e. a value-paradeigmatic
notion introducing value in its guise of optimality. Much like Plato thought
circle works in his idiolect. Grice played with various titles, in the Grice
Collection. Theres philosophical psychology and meaning. The reason is obvious.
The lecture is strictly divided in sections, and it is only natural that Grice
kept drafts of this or that section in his collection. In WOW Grice notes that
he re-visited his Meaning re-visited at a later stage, too! And he meant it!
Surely, there is no way to understand the stages of Grice’s development of his
ideas about meaning without Peirce! It is obvious here that Grice thought that
mean two figurative or metabolical extensions of use. Smoke means fire and Smoke
means smoke. The latter is a transferred use in that impenetrability means lets
change the topic if Humpty-Dumpty m-intends that it and Alice are to change the
topic. Why did Grice feel the need to add a retrospective epilogue? He loved to
say that what the “way of words” contains is neither his first, nor his last
word. So trust him to have some intermediate words to drop. He is at his most
casual in the very last section of the epilogue. The first section is more of a
very systematic justification for any mistake the reader may identify in the
offer. The words in the epilogue are thus very guarded and qualificatory. Just
one example about our focus: conversational implicate and conversation as
rational co-operation. He goes back to Essay 2, but as he notes, this was
hardly the first word on the principle of conversational helpfulness, nor
indeed the first occasion where he actually used implicature. As regards
co-operation, the retrospective epilogue allows him to expand on a causal
phrasing in Essay 2, “purposive, indeed rational.” Seeing in retrospect how the
idea of rationality was the one that appealed philosophers most – since it
provides a rationale and justification for what is otherwise an arbitrary
semantic proliferation. Grice then distinguishes between the thesis that
conversation is purposive, and the thesis that conversation is rational. And,
whats more, and in excellent Griceian phrasing, there are two theses here, too.
One thing is to see conversation as rational, and another, to use his very
phrasing, as rational co-operation! Therefore, when one discusses the secondary
literature, one should be attentive to whether the author is referring to
Grices qualifications in the Retrospective epilogue. Grice is careful to date
some items. However, since he kept rewriting, one has to be careful. These
seven folder contain the material for the compilation. Grice takes the
opportunity of the compilation by Harvard of his WOW, representative of the
mid-60s, i. e. past the heyday of ordinary-language philosophy, to review the
idea of philosophical progress in terms of eight different strands which
display, however, a consistent and distinctive unity. Grice keeps playing with
valediction, valedictory, prospective and retrospective, and the different
drafts are all kept in The Grice Papers. The Retrospective epilogue, is divided
into two sections. In the first section, he provides input for his eight
strands, which cover not just meaning, and the assertion-implication
distinction to which he alludes to in the preface, but for more substantial
philosophical issues like the philosophy of perception, and the defense of
common sense realism versus the sceptial idealist. The concluding section
tackles more directly a second theme he had idenfitied in the preface, which is
a methodological one, and his long-standing defence of ordinary-language
philosophy. The section involves a fine distinction between the Athenian
dialectic and the Oxonian dialectic, and tells the tale about his fairy
godmother, G*. As he notes, Grice had dropped a few words in the preface explaining
the ordering of essays in the compilation. He mentions that he hesitated to
follow a suggestion by Bennett that the ordering of the essays be
thematic and chronological. Rather, Grice chooses to publish the whole set
of seven James lectures, what he calls the centerpiece, as part I. II, the
explorations in semantics and metaphysics, is organised more or less
thematically, though. In the Retrospective epilogue, Grice takes up this
observation in the preface that two ideas or themes underlie his Studies: that
of meaning, and assertion vs. implication, and philosophical methodology. The
Retrospective epilogue is thus an exploration on eight strands he identifies in
his own philosophy. Grices choice of strand is careful. For Grice, philosophy,
like virtue, is entire. All the strands belong to the same knit, and therefore
display some latitudinal, and, he hopes, longitudinal unity, the latter made
evidence by his drawing on the Athenian dialectic as a foreshadow of the
Oxonian dialectic to come, in the heyday of the Oxford school of analysis, when
an interest in the serious study of ordinary language had never been since and
will never be seen again. By these two types of unity, Grice means the obvious
fact that all branches of philosophy (philosophy of language, or semantics,
philosophy of perception, philosophical psychology, metaphysics, axiology,
etc.) interact and overlap, and that a historical regard for ones philosophical
predecessors is a must, especially at Oxford. Why is Grice obsessed with
asserting? He is more interested, technically, in the phrastic, or dictor.
Grice sees a unity, indeed, equi-vocality, in the buletic-doxastic continuum.
Asserting is usually associated with the doxastic. Since Grice is always ready
to generalise his points to cover the buletic (recall his Meaning, “theres by
now no reason to stick to informative cases,”), it is best to re-define his
asserting in terms of the phrastic. This is enough of a strong point. As Hare
would agree, for emotivists like Barnes, say, an utterance of buletic force may
not have any content whatsoever. For Grice, there is always a content, the
proposition which becomes true when the action is done and the desire is
fulfilled or satisfied. Grice quotes from Bennett. Importantly, Grice focuses
on the assertion/non-assertion distinction. He overlooks the fact that for this
or that of his beloved imperative utterance, asserting is out of the question,
but explicitly conveying that p is not. He needs a dummy to stand for a
psychological or souly state, stance, or attitude of either boule or doxa, to
cover the field of the utterer mode-neutrally conveying explicitly that his
addressee A is to entertain that p. The explicatum or explicitum sometimes does
the trick, but sometimes it does not. It is interesting to review the Names
index to the volume, as well as the Subjects index. This is a huge collection,
comprising 14 folders. By contract, Grice was engaged with Harvard, since it is
the President of the College that holds the copyrights for the James lectures.
The title Grice eventually chooses for his compilation of essays, which goes
far beyond the James, although keeping them as the centerpiece, is a tribute to
Locke, who, although obsessed with his idealist and empiricist new way of
ideas, leaves room for both the laymans and scientists realist way of things,
and, more to the point, for this or that philosophical semiotician to offer
this or that study in the way of words. Early in the linguistic turn minor
revolution, the expression the new way of words, had been used derogatorily.
WOW is organised in two parts: Logic and conversation and the somewhat
pretentiously titled Explorations in semantics and metaphysics, which offers
commentary around the centerpiece. It also includes a Preface and a very rich
and inspired Retrospective epilogue. From part I, the James lectures, only
three had not been previously published. The first unpublished lecture is
Prolegomena, which really sets the scene, and makes one wonder what the few
philosophers who quote from The logic of grammar could have made from the
second James lecture taken in isolation. Grice explores Aristotle’s “to
alethes”: “For the true and the false exist with respect to synthesis and
division (peri gar synthesin kai diaireisin esti to pseudos kai to alethes).”
Aristotle insists upon the com-positional form of truth in several texts: cf.
De anima, 430b3 ff.: “in truth and falsity, there is a certain composition (en
hois de kai to pseudos kai to alethes, synthesis tis)”; cf. also Met. 1027b19
ff.: the true and the false are with respect to (peri) composition and
decomposition (synthesis kai diaresis).” It also shows that Grices style is
meant for public delivery, rather than reading. The second unpublished lecture
is Indicative conditionals. This had been used by a few philosophers, such as
Gazdar, noting that there were many mistakes in the typescript, for which Grice
is not to be blamed. The third is on some models for implicature. Since this
Grice acknowledges is revised, a comparison with the original handwritten
version of the final James lecture retrieves a few differences From Part II, a
few essays had not been published before, but Grice, nodding to the
longitudinal unity of philosophy, is very careful and proud to date
them. Commentary on the individual essays is made under the appropriate
dates. Philosophical correspondence is quite a genre. Hare would express in a
letter to the Librarian for the Oxford Union, “Wiggins does not want to be
understood,” or in a letter to Bennett that Williams is the worse offender of
Kantianism! It was different with Grice. He did not type. And he wrote only
very occasionally! These are four folders with general correspondence, mainly
of the academic kind. At Oxford, Grice would hardly keep a correspondence, but
it was different with the New World, where academia turns towards the
bureaucracy. Grice is not precisely a good, or reliable, as The BA puts it,
correspondent. In the Oxford manner, Grice prefers a face-to-face interaction,
any day. He treasures his Saturday mornings under Austins guidance, and he
himself leads the Play Group after Austins demise, which, as Owen reminisced,
attained a kind of cult status. Oxford is different. As a tutorial fellow in
philosophy, Grice was meant to tutor his students; as a University Lecturer he
was supposed to lecture sometimes other fellowss tutees! Nothing about this
reads: publish or perish! This is just one f. containing Grices own favourite
Griceian references. To the historian of analytic philosophy, it is of
particular interest. It shows which philosophers Grice respected the most, and
which ones the least. As one might expect, even on the cold shores of Oxford,
as one of Grices tutees put it, Grice is cited by various Oxford philosophers.
Perhaps the first to cite Grice in print is his tutee Strawson, in “Logical
Theory.” Early on, Hart quotes Grice on meaning in his review in The
Philosophical Quarterly of Holloways Language and Intelligence before Meaning
had been published. Obviously, once Grice and Strawson, In defense of a dogma
and Grice, Meaning are published by The Philosophical Review, Grice is
discussed profusely. References to the implicatum start to appear in the
literature at Oxford in the mid-1960s, within the playgroup, as in Hare and
Pears. It is particularly intriguing to explore those philosophers Grice picks
up for dialogue, too, and perhaps arrange them alphabetically, from Austin to
Warnock, say. And Griceian philosophical references, Oxonian or other, as they
should, keep counting! The way to search the Grice Papers here is using
alternate keywords, notably “meaning.” “Meaning” s. II, “Utterer’s meaning and
intentions,” s. II, “Utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning, and word meaning,” s.
II, “Meaning revisited,” s. II. – but also “Meaning and psychology,” s. V,
c.7-ff. 24-25. While Grice uses
“signification,” and lectured on Peirce’s “signs,” “Peirce’s general theory of
signs,” (s. V, c. 8-f. 29), he would avoid such pretentiously sounding
expressions. Searching under ‘semantic’ and ‘semantics’ (“Grammar and semantics,”
c. 7-f. 5; “Language semantics,” c. 7-f.20, “Basic Pirotese, sentence semantics
and syntax,” c. 8-f. 30, “Semantics of children’s language,” c. 9-f. 10,
“Sentence semantics” (c. 9-f. 11); “Sentence semantics and propositional
complexes,” c. 9-f.12, “Syntax and semantics,” c. 9-ff. 17-18) may help, too. Folder
on Schiffer (“Schiffer,” c. 9-f. 9), too.
Grice on the compactness
theorem, a theorem for first-order logic: if every finite subset of a given
infinite theory T is consistent, then the whole theory is consistent. The
result is an immediate consequence of the completeness theorem, for if the
theory were not consistent, a contradiction, say ‘P and not-P’, would be
provable from it. But the proof, being a finitary object, would use only finitely
many axioms from T, so this finite subset of T would be inconsistent. This
proof of the compactness theorem is very general, showing that any language
that has a sound and complete system of inference, where each rule allows only
finitely many premises, satisfies the theorem. This is important because the
theorem immediately implies that many familiar mathematical notions are not
expressible in the language in question, notions like those of a finite set or
a well-ordering relation. The compactness theorem is important for other
reasons as well. It is the most frequently applied result in the study of
first-order model theory and has inspired interesting developments within set
theory and its foundations by generating a search for infinitary languages that
obey some analog of the theorem.
Grice’s complementary
class, the class of all things not in a given class. For example, if C is the
class of all red things, then its complementary class is the class containing
everything that is not red. This latter class includes even non-colored things,
like numbers and the class C itself. Often, the context will determine a less
inclusive complementary class. If B 0 A, then the complement of B with respect
to A is A B. For example, if A is the
class of physical objects, and B is the class of red physical objects, then the
complement of B with respect to A is the class of non-red physical
objects.
Grice on completeness, a
property that something typically, a set
of axioms, a logic, a theory, a set of well-formed formulas, a language, or a
set of connectives has when it is strong
enough in some desirable respect. 1 A set of axioms is complete for the logic L
if every theorem of L is provable using those axioms. 2 A logic L has weak
semantical completeness if every valid sentence of the language of L is a
theorem of L. L has strong semantical completeness or is deductively complete
if for every set G of sentences, every logical consequence of G is deducible
from G using L. A propositional logic L is Halldén-complete if whenever A 7 B
is a theorem of L, where A and B share no variables, either A or B is a theorem
of L. And L is Post-complete if L is consistent but no stronger logic for the
same language is consistent. Reference to the “completeness” of a logic, without
further qualification, is almost invariably to either weak or strong semantical
completeness. One curious exception: second-order logic is often said to be
“incomplete,” where what is meant is that it is not axiomatizable. 3 A theory T
is negation-complete often simply complete if for every sentence A of the
lancommon notions completeness 162 162
guage of T, either A or its negation is provable in T. And T is omega-complete
if whenever it is provable in T that a property f / holds of each natural
number 0, 1, . . . , it is also provable that every number has f. Generalizing
on this, any set G of well-formed formulas might be called omega complete if
vA[v] is deducible from G whenever A[t] is deducible from G for all terms t,
where A[t] is the result of replacing all free occurrences of v in A[v] by t. 4
A language L is expressively complete if each of a given class of items is
expressible in L. Usually, the class in question is the class of twovalued
truth-functions. The propositional language whose sole connectives are - and 7
is thus said to be expressively or functionally complete, while that built up
using 7 alone is not, since classical negation is not expressible therein. Here
one might also say that the set {-,7} is expressively or functionally complete,
while {7} is not.
completion: Grice speaks of ‘complete’ and ‘incomplete. Consider
“Fido is shaggy.” That’s complete. “Fido” is incomplete – like pig. “is shaggy”
is incomplete. This is Grice’s Platonism, hardly the nominalism that Bennett
abuses Grice with! For the rational pirot (not the parrot) has access to a
theory of complete --. When lecturing on Peirce, Grice referred to Russell’s
excellent idea of improving on Peirce. “Don’t ask for the meaning of ‘red,’ ask
for the meaning of ‘x is red.” Cf. Plato, “Don’t try to see horseness, try to
see ‘x is a horse. Don’t be stupid.” Now “x is red” is a bit incomplete. Surely
it can be rendered by the complete, “Something, je-ne-sais-quoi, to use Hume’s
vulgarism, is red.” So, to have an act of referring without an act of
predicating is incomplete. But still useful for philosophical analysis.
complexum: versus the ‘simplex.’ Grice starts with the simplex. All
he needs is a handwave to ascribe ‘the emissor communicates that he knows the
route.’ The proposition which is being transmitted HAS to be complex: Subject,
“The emissor”, copula, “is,” ‘predicate: “a knower of the route.”Grice allows
for the syntactically unstructured handwave to be ‘ambiguous’ so that the
intention on the emissor’s part involves his belief that the emissee will take
this rather than that proposition as being transmitted: Second complex:
“Subject: Emissor, copula: is, predicate: about to leave the emissee.”Vide the
altogether nice girl, and the one-at-a-time sailor. The topic is essential in
seeing Grice within the British empiricist tradition. Empiricists always loved
a simplex, like ‘red.’ In his notes on ‘Meaning’ and “Peirce,’ Grice notes that
for a ‘simplex’ like “red,” the best way to deal with it is via a Russellian
function, ‘x is red.’ The opposite of ‘simplex’ is of course a ‘complexum.’ hile
Grice does have an essay on the ‘complexum,’ he is mostly being jocular. His
dissection of the proposition proceds by considering ‘the a,’ and its
denotatum, or reference, and ‘is the b,’ which involves then the predication.
This is Grice’s shaggy-dog story. Once we have ‘the dog is shaggy,’ we have a
‘complexum,’ and we can say that the utterer means, by uttering ‘Fido is
shaggy,’ that the dog is hairy-coated. Simple, right? It’s the jocular in
Grice. He is joking on philosophers who look at those representative of the
linguistic turn, and ask, “So what do you have to say about reference and
predication,’ and Grice comes up with an extra-ordinary analysis of what is to
believe that the dog is hairy-coat, and communicating it. In fact, the
‘communicating’ is secondary. Once Grice has gone to metabolitical extension of
‘mean’ to apply to the expression, communication becomes secondary in that it
has to be understood in what Grice calls the ‘atenuated’ usage involving this
or that ‘readiness’ to have this or that procedure, basic or resultant, in
one’s repertoire! Bealer is one of Grices most brilliant tutees in the New
World. The Grice collection contains a full f. of correspondence with Bealer. Bealer
refers to Grice in his influential Clarendon essay on content. Bealer is
concerned with how pragmatic inference may intrude in the ascription of a
psychological, or souly, state, attitude, or stance. Bealer loves to quote from
Grice on definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular, the
implicature being that Russell is impenetrable! Bealers mentor is Grices close
collaborator Myro, so he knows what he is talking about. Grice explored the
matter of subperception at Oxford only with G. J. Warnock.
Grice’s complexe
significabile plural: -- Grice used to say jocularly that he wasn’t commited to
propositions; only to propositional complexes -- complexe significabilia, also
called complexum significabile, in medieval philosophy, what is signified only
by a complexum a statement or declarative sentence, by a that-clause, or by a
dictum an accusative ! infinitive construction, as in: ‘I want him to go’. It
is analogous to the modern proposition. The doctrine seems to have originated
with Adam de Wodeham in the early fourteenth century, but is usually associated
with Gregory of Rimini slightly later. Complexe significabilia do not fall
under any of the Aristotelian categories, and so do not “exist” in the ordinary
way. Still, they are somehow real. For before creation nothing existed except
God, but even then God knew that the world was going to exist. The object of
this knowledge cannot have been God himself since God is necessary, but the
world’s existence is contingent, and yet did not “exist” before creation.
Nevertheless, it was real enough to be an object of knowledge. Some authors who
maintained such a view held that these entities were not only signifiable in a
complex way by a statement, but were themselves complex in their inner structure;
the term ‘complexum significabile’ is unique to their theories. The theory of
complexe significabilia was vehemently criticized by late medieval
nominalists. Refs.: The main reference is in
‘Reply to Richards.’ But there is “Sentence semantics and propositional
complexes,” c. 9-f. 12, BANC.
possibile –
“what is actual is not also possible – grave mistake!” – H. P. Grice.
compossible, capable of existing or occurring together. E.g., two individuals
are compossible provided the existence of one of them is compatible with the
existence of the other. In terms of possible worlds, things are compossible
provided there is some possible world to which all of them belong; otherwise
they are incompossible. Not all possibilities are compossible. E.g., the
extinction of life on earth by the year 3000 is possible; so is its
continuation until the year 10,000; but since it is impossible that both of
these things should happen, they are not compossible. Leibniz held that any
non-actualized possibility must be incompossible with what is actual.
intensio
-- comprehension, as applied to a term, the set of attributes implied by a
term. The comprehension of ‘square’, e.g., includes being four-sided, having
equal sides, and being a plane figure, among other attributes. The comprehension
of a term is contrasted with its extension, which is the set of individuals to
which the term applies. The distinction between the extension and the
comprehension of a term was introduced in the Port-Royal Logic by Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole in 1662. Current practice is to use the expression ‘intension’
rather than ‘comprehension’. Both expressions, however, are inherently somewhat
vague.
iron-age
physics: Grice on Russellian compresence, an unanalyzable
relation in terms of which Russell, in his later writings especially in Human
Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, 8, took concrete particular objects to be
analyzable. Concrete particular objects are analyzable in terms of complexes of
qualities all of whose members are compresent. Although this relation can be
defined only ostensively, Russell states that it appears in psychology as
“simultaneity in one experience” and in physics as “overlapping in space-time.”
Complete complexes of compresence are complexes of qualities having the
following two properties: 1 all members of the complex are compresent; 2 given
anything not a member of the complex, there is at least one member of the
complex with which it is not compresent. He argues that there is strong
empirical evidence that no two complete complexes have all their qualities in
common. Finally, space-time pointinstants are analyzed as complete complexes of
compresence. Concrete particulars, on the other hand, are analyzed as series of
incomplete complexes of compresence related by certain causal laws.
Grice’s
computatio sive logica -- computability, roughly, the
possibility of computation on a Turing machine. The first convincing general
definition, A. N. Turing’s 6, has been proved equivalent to the known plausible
alternatives, so that the concept of computability is generally recognized as
an absolute one. Turing’s definition referred to computations by imaginary
tape-processing machines that we now know to be capable of computing the same
functions whether simple sums and products or highly complex, esoteric
functions that modern digital computing machines could compute if provided with
sufficient storage capacity. In the form ‘Any function that is computable at
all is computable on a Turing machine’, this absoluteness claim is called
Turing’s thesis. A comparable claim for Alonzo Church’s 5 concept of
lcomputability is called Church’s thesis. Similar theses are enunciated for
Markov algorithms, for S. C. Kleene’s notion of general recursiveness, etc. It
has been proved that the same functions are computable in all of these ways.
There is no hope of proving any of those theses, for such a proof would require
a definition of ‘computable’ a
definition that would simply be a further item in the list, the subject of a
further thesis. But since computations of new kinds might be recognizable as
genuine in particular cases, Turing’s thesis and its equivalents, if false,
might be decisively refuted by discovery of a particular function, a way of
computing it, and a proof that no Turing machine can compute it. The halting
problem for say Turing machines is the problem of devising a Turing machine
that computes the function hm, n % 1 or 0 depending on whether or not Turing
machine number m ever halts, once started with the number n on its tape. This
problem is unsolvable, for a machine that computed h could be modified to
compute a function gn, which is undefined the machine goes into an endless loop
when hn, n % 1, and otherwise agrees with hn, n. But this modified machine Turing machine number k, say would have contradictory properties: started
with k on its tape, it would eventually halt if and only if it does not. Turing
proved unsolvability of the decision problem for logic the problem of devising
a Turing machine that, applied to argument number n in logical notation,
correctly classifies it as valid or invalid by reducing the halting problem to
the decision problem, i.e., showing how any solution to the latter could be
used to solve the former problem, which we know to be unsolvable. computer theory, the theory of the design,
uses, powers, and limits of modern electronic digital computers. It has
important bearings on philosophy, as may be seen from the many philosophical
references herein. Modern computers are a radically new kind of machine, for
they are active physical realizations of formal languages of logic and
arithmetic. Computers employ sophisticated languages, and they have reasoning
powers many orders of magnitude greater than those of any prior machines.
Because they are far superior to humans in many important tasks, they have
produced a revolution in society that is as profound as the industrial
revolution and is advancing much more rapidly. Furthermore, computers
themselves are evolving rapidly. When a computer is augmented with devices for
sensing and acting, it becomes a powerful control system, or a robot. To
understand the implications of computers for philosophy, one should imagine a
robot that has basic goals and volitions built into it, including conflicting
goals and competing desires. This concept first appeared in Karel C v apek’s
play Rossum’s Universal Robots 0, where the word ‘robot’ originated. A computer
has two aspects, hardware and programming languages. The theory of each is
relevant to philosophy. The software and hardware aspects of a computer are
somewhat analogous to the human mind and body. This analogy is especially
strong if we follow Peirce and consider all information processing in nature
and in human organisms, not just the conscious use of language. Evolution has produced
a succession of levels of sign usage and information processing: self-copying
chemicals, self-reproducing cells, genetic programs directing the production of
organic forms, chemical and neuronal signals in organisms, unconscious human
information processing, ordinary languages, and technical languages. But each
level evolved gradually from its predecessors, so that the line between body
and mind is vague. The hardware of a computer is typically organized into three
general blocks: memory, processor arithmetic unit and control, and various
inputoutput devices for communication between machine and environment. The
memory stores the data to be processed as well as the program that directs the
processing. The processor has an arithmetic-logic unit for transforming data,
and a control for executing the program. Memory, processor, and input-output
communicate to each other through a fast switching system. The memory and
processor are constructed from registers, adders, switches, cables, and various
other building blocks. These in turn are composed of electronic components:
transistors, resistors, and wires. The input and output devices employ
mechanical and electromechanical technologies as well as electronics. Some
input-output devices also serve as auxiliary memories; floppy disks and
magnetic tapes are examples. For theoretical purposes it is useful to imagine
that the computer has an indefinitely expandable storage tape. So imagined, a
computer is a physical realization of a Turing machine. The idea of an
indefinitely expandable memory is similar to the logician’s concept of an
axiomatic formal language that has an unlimited number of proofs and theorems.
The software of a modern electronic computer is written in a hierarchy of
programming languages. The higher-level languages are designed for use by human
programmers, operators, and maintenance personnel. The “machine language” is
the basic hardware language, interpreted and executed by the control. Its words
are sequences of binary digits or bits. Programs written in intermediate-level
languages are used by the computer to translate the languages employed by human
users into the machine language for execution. A programming language has
instructional means for carrying out three kinds of operations: data operations
and transfers, transfers of control from one part of the program to the other,
and program self-modification. Von Neumann designed the first modern
programming language. A programming language is general purpose, and an
electronic computer that executes it can in principle carry out any algorithm
or effective procedure, including the simulation of any other computer. Thus
the modern electronic computer is a practical realization of the abstract
concept of a universal Turing machine. What can actually be computed in
practice depends, of course, on the state of computer technology and its
resources. It is common for computers at many different spatial locations to be
interconnected into complex networks by telephone, radio, and satellite
communication systems. Insofar as users in one part of the network can control
other parts, either legitimately or illegitimately e.g., by means of a
“computer virus”, a global network of computers is really a global computer.
Such vast computers greatly increase societal interdependence, a fact of
importance for social philosophy. The theory of computers has two branches,
corresponding to the hardware and software aspects of computers. The
fundamental concept of hardware theory is that of a finite automaton, which may
be expressed either as an idealized logical network of simple computer
primitives, or as the corresponding temporal system of input, output, and
internal states. A finite automaton may be specified as a logical net of
truth-functional switches and simple memory elements, connected to one another
by computer theory computer theory idealized wires. These elements function
synchronously, each wire being in a binary state 0 or 1 at each moment of time
t % 0, 1, 2, . . . . Each switching element or “gate” executes a simple
truth-functional operation not, or, and, nor, not-and, etc. and is imagined to
operate instantaneously compare the notions of sentential connective and truth
table. A memory element flip-flop, binary counter, unit delay line preserves
its input bit for one or more time-steps. A well-formed net of switches and
memory elements may not have cycles through switches only, but it typically has
feedback cycles through memory elements. The wires of a logical net are of
three kinds: input, internal, and output. Correspondingly, at each moment of
time a logical net has an input state, an internal state, and an output state.
A logical net or automaton need not have any input wires, in which case it is a
closed system. The complete history of a logical net is described by a
deterministic law: at each moment of time t, the input and internal states of
the net determine its output state and its next internal state. This leads to
the second definition of ‘finite automaton’: it is a deterministic finite-state
system characterized by two tables. The transition table gives the next
internal state produced by each pair of input and internal states. The output
table gives the output state produced by each input state and internal state.
The state analysis approach to computer hardware is of practical value only for
systems with a few elements e.g., a binary-coded decimal counter, because the
number of states increases as a power of the number of elements. Such a rapid
rate of increase of complexity with size is called the combinatorial explosion,
and it applies to many discrete systems. However, the state approach to finite
automata does yield abstract models of law-governed systems that are of
interest to logic and philosophy. A correctly operating digital computer is a
finite automaton. Alan Turing defined the finite part of what we now call a
Turing machine in terms of states. It seems doubtful that a human organism has
more computing power than a finite automaton. A closed finite automaton
illustrates Nietzsche’s law of eternal return. Since a finite automaton has a
finite number of internal states, at least one of its internal states must
occur infinitely many times in any infinite state history. And since a closed
finite automaton is deterministic and has no inputs, a repeated state must be
followed by the same sequence of states each time it occurs. Hence the history
of a closed finite automaton is periodic, as in the law of eternal return.
Idealized neurons are sometimes used as the primitive elements of logical nets,
and it is plausible that for any brain and central nervous system there is a
logical network that behaves the same and performs the same functions. This
shows the close relation of finite automata to the brain and central nervous
system. The switches and memory elements of a finite automaton may be made
probabilistic, yielding a probabilistic automaton. These automata are models of
indeterministic systems. Von Neumann showed how to extend deterministic logical
nets to systems that contain selfreproducing automata. This is a very basic
logical design relevant to the nature of life. The part of computer programming
theory most relevant to philosophy contains the answer to Leibniz’s conjecture
concerning his characteristica universalis and calculus ratiocinator. He held
that “all our reasoning is nothing but the joining and substitution of
characters, whether these characters be words or symbols or pictures.” He
thought therefore that one could construct a universal, arithmetic language
with two properties of great philosophical importance. First, every atomic
concept would be represented by a prime number. Second, the truth-value of any
logically true-or-false statement expressed in the characteristica universalis
could be calculated arithmetically, and so any rational dispute could be
resolved by calculation. Leibniz expected to do the computation by hand with
the help of a calculating machine; today we would do it on an electronic
computer. However, we know now that Leibniz’s proposed language cannot exist,
for no computer or computer program can calculate the truth-value of every
logically true-orfalse statement given to it. This fact follows from a logical
theorem about the limits of what computer programs can do. Let E be a modern
electronic computer with an indefinitely expandable memory, so that E has the
power of a universal Turing machine. And let L be any formal language in which
every arithmetic statement can be expressed, and which is consistent. Leibniz’s
proposed characteristica universalis would be such a language. Now a computer
that is operating correctly is an active formal language, carrying out the
instructions of its program deductively. Accordingly, Gödel’s incompleteness
theorems for formal arithmetic apply to computer E. It follows from these
theorems that no program can enable computer E to decide of an arbitrary
statecomputer theory computer theory 166
166 ment of L whether or not that statement is true. More strongly,
there cannot even be a program that will enable E to enumerate the truths of
language L one after another. Therefore Leibniz’s characteristica universalis
cannot exist. Electronic computers are the first active or “live” mathematical
systems. They are the latest addition to a long historical series of
mathematical tools for inquiry: geometry, algebra, calculus and differential
equations, probability and statistics, and modern mathematics. The most
effective use of computer programs is to instruct computers in tasks for which
they are superior to humans. Computers are being designed and programmed to
cooperate with humans so that the calculation, storage, and judgment
capabilities of the two are synthesized. The powers of such humancomputer
combines will increase at an exponential rate as computers continue to become
faster, more powerful, and easier to use, while at the same time becoming
smaller and cheaper. The social implications of this are very important. The
modern electronic computer is a new tool for the logic of discovery Peirce’s
abduction. An inquirer or inquirers operating a computer interactively can use
it as a universal simulator, dynamically modeling systems that are too complex
to study by traditional mathematical methods, including non-linear systems.
Simulation is used to explain known empirical results, and also to develop new
hypotheses to be tested by observation. Computer models and simulations are
unique in several ways: complexity, dynamism, controllability, and visual
presentability. These properties make them important new tools for modeling and
thereby relevant to some important philosophical problems. A humancomputer
combine is especially suited for the study of complex holistic and hierarchical
systems with feedback cf. cybernetics, including adaptive goal-directed
systems. A hierarchical-feedback system is a dynamic structure organized into
several levels, with the compounds of one level being the atoms or building
blocks of the next higher level, and with cyclic paths of influence operating
both on and between levels. For example, a complex human institution has
several levels, and the people in it are themselves hierarchical organizations
of selfcopying chemicals, cells, organs, and such systems as the pulmonary and
the central nervous system. The behaviors of these systems are in general much more
complex than, e.g., the behaviors of traditional systems of mechanics. Contrast
an organism, society, or ecology with our planetary system as characterized by
Kepler and Newton. Simple formulas ellipses describe the orbits of the planets.
More basically, the planetary system is stable in the sense that a small
perturbation of it produces a relatively small variation in its subsequent
history. In contrast, a small change in the state of a holistic hierarchical
feedback system often amplifies into a very large difference in behavior, a
concern of chaos theory. For this reason it is helpful to model such systems on
a computer and run sample histories. The operator searches for representative
cases, interesting phenomena, and general principles of operation. The
humancomputer method of inquiry should be a useful tool for the study of
biological evolution, the actual historical development of complex adaptive
goal-directed systems. Evolution is a logical and communication process as well
as a physical and chemical process. But evolution is statistical rather than
deterministic, because a single temporal state of the system results in a
probabilistic distribution of histories, rather than in a single history. The
genetic operators of mutation and crossover, e.g., are probabilistic operators.
But though it is stochastic, evolution cannot be understood in terms of
limiting relative frequencies, for the important developments are the repeated
emergence of new phenomena, and there may be no evolutionary convergence toward
a final state or limit. Rather, to understand evolution the investigator must
simulate the statistical spectra of histories covering critical stages of the
process. Many important evolutionary phenomena should be studied by using
simulation along with observation and experiment. Evolution has produced a
succession of levels of organization: selfcopying chemicals, self-reproducing
cells, communities of cells, simple organisms, haploid sexual reproduction,
diploid sexuality with genetic dominance and recessiveness, organisms composed
of organs, societies of organisms, humans, and societies of humans. Most of
these systems are complex hierarchical feedback systems, and it is of interest
to understand how they emerged from earlier systems. Also, the interaction of
competition and cooperation at all stages of evolution is an important subject,
of relevance to social philosophy and ethics. Some basic epistemological and
metaphysical concepts enter into computer modeling. A model is a well-developed
concept of its object, representing characteristics like structure and
funccomputer theory computer theory 167
167 tion. A model is similar to its object in important respects, but
simpler; in mathematical terminology, a model is homomorphic to its object but
not isomorphic to it. However, it is often useful to think of a model as
isomorphic to an embedded subsystem of the system it models. For example, a gas
is a complicated system of microstates of particles, but these microstates can
be grouped into macrostates, each with a pressure, volume, and temperature
satisfying the gas law PV % kT. The derivation of this law from the detailed
mechanics of the gas is a reduction of the embedded subsystem to the underlying
system. In many cases it is adequate to work with the simpler embedded
subsystem, but in other cases one must work with the more complex but complete
underlying system. The law of an embedded subsystem may be different in kind
from the law of the underlying system. Consider, e.g., a machine tossing a coin
randomly. The sequence of tosses obeys a simple probability law, while the
complex underlying mechanical system is deterministic. The random sequence of
tosses is a probabilistic system embedded in a deterministic system, and a
mathematical account of this embedding relation constitutes a reduction of the
probabilistic system to a deterministic system. Compare the compatibilist’s
claim that free choice can be embedded in a deterministic system. Compare also
a pseudorandom sequence, which is a deterministic sequence with adequate
randomness for a given finite simulation. Note finally that the probabilistic
system of quantum mechanics underlies the deterministic system of mechanics.
The ways in which models are used by goaldirected systems to solve problems and
adapt to their environments are currently being modeled by humancomputer
combines. Since computer software can be converted into hardware, successful
simulations of adaptive uses of models could be incorporated into the design of
a robot. Human intentionality involves the use of a model of oneself in
relation to others and the environment. A problem-solving robot using such a
model would constitute an important step toward a robot with full human powers.
These considerations lead to the central thesis of the philosophy of logical
mechanism: a finite deterministic automaton can perform all human functions.
This seems plausible in principle and is treated in detail in Merrilee Salmon,
ed., The Philosophy of Logical Mechanism: Essays in Honor of Arthur W. Burks,0.
A digital computer has reasoning and memory powers. Robots have sensory inputs
for collecting information from the environment, and they have moving and
acting devices. To obtain a robot with human powers, one would need to put
these abilities under the direction of a system of desires, purposes, and
goals. Logical mechanism is a form of mechanism or materialism, but differs
from traditional forms of these doctrines in its reliance on the logical powers
of computers and the logical nature of evolution and its products. The modern
computer is a kind of complex hierarchical physical system, a system with
memory, processor, and control that employs a hierarchy of programming
languages. Humans are complex hierarchical systems designed by evolution with structural levels of chemicals, cells,
organs, and systems e.g., circulatory, neural, immune and linguistic levels of
genes, enzymes, neural signals, and immune recognition. Traditional
materialists did not have this model of a computer nor the contemporary understanding
of evolution, and never gave an adequate account of logic and reasoning and
such phenomena as goaldirectedness and self-modeling.
conatum: Aristotle
distinguishes three types of living beings: vegetables, φυτά, which possess
only the ability to nourish themselves τὸ θϱεπτιϰόν; animals, ζαῷ, which
possess the faculty of sensing τὸ αἰσθητιϰόν, which opens onto that of
desiring, τὸ ὀϱεϰτιϰόν, to orektikon, (desdideratum); and man and — he says—any
other similar or superior being, who possess in addition the ability to think,
“τὸ διανοητιϰόν τε ϰαὶ νοῦς.” -- De An., 414a 29-b.orme, the technical Stoic
definition of πάθος, viz. as a particular kind of conation, or
impulse (ορμή). ... 4 ' This definition (amorem ipsum conatum amicitiae
faeiendae ex ... emotion and moral self-management in Galen's philosophical psychology', ..cōnātum ,
i, usu. in plur.: cōnāta ,
ōrum, n., v. conor.. The term is used by an the
Wilde Reader at Oxford, that Grice once followed – until he became a
neo-Prichardian instead.(philosophy) The power or act which directs or impels to
effort of any kind, whether muscular or psychical. quotations 1899, George
Frederick Stout, A Manual of Psychology, page
234:Any pleasing
sense-experience, when it has once taken place, will, on subsequent occasions,
give rise to a conation,
when its conditions are only partially repeated...
conceptus: Grice obviously uses Frege’s
notion of a ‘concept.’ One of Grice’s metaphysical routines is meant to produce
a logical construction of a concept or generate a new concept. Aware of the
act/product distinction, Grice distinguishes between the conceptum, or concept,
and the conception, or conceptio. Grice allows that ‘not’ may be a ‘concept,’
so he is not tied to the ‘equine’ idea by Frege of the ‘horse.’ Since an agent
can fail to conceive that his neighbour’s three-year old is an adult, Grice
accepts that ‘conceives’ may take a ‘that’-clause. In ‘ordinary’ language, one
does not seem to refer, say, to the concept that e = mc2, but that may be a
failure or ‘ordinary’ language. In the canonical cat-on-the-mat, we have Grice
conceiving that the cat is on the mat, and also having at least four concepts:
the concept of ‘cat,’ the concept of ‘mat,’ the concept of ‘being on,’ and the
concept of the cat being on the mat. Griceian Meinongianism --
conceivability, capability of being conceived or imagined. Thus, golden
mountains are conceivable; round squares, inconceivable. As Descartes pointed
out, the sort of imaginability required is not the ability to form mental
images. Chiliagons, Cartesian minds, and God are all conceivable, though none
of these can be pictured “in the mind’s eye.” Historical references include
Anselm’s definition of God as “a being than which none greater can be
conceived” and Descartes’s argument for dualism from the conceivability of
disembodied existence. Several of Hume’s arguments rest upon the maxim that
whatever is conceivable is possible. He argued, e.g., that an event can occur
without a cause, since this is conceivable, and his critique of induction
relies on the inference from the conceivability of a change in the course of
nature to its possibility. In response, Reid maintained that to conceive is
merely to understand the meaning of a proposition. Reid argued that
impossibilities are conceivable, since we must be able to understand
falsehoods. Many simply equate conceivability with possibility, so that to say
something is conceivable or inconceivable just is to say that it is possible or
impossible. Such usage is controversial, since conceivability is broadly an
epistemological notion concerning what can be thought, whereas possibility is a
metaphysical notion concerning how things can be. The same controversy can
arise regarding the compossible, or co-possible, where two states of affairs
are compossible provided it is possible that they both obtain, and two
propositions are compossible provided their conjunction is possible.
Alternatively, two things are compossible if and only if there is a possible
world containing both. Leibniz held that two things are compossible provided
they can be ascribed to the same possible world without contradiction. “There
are many possible universes, each collection of compossibles making one of
them.” Others have argued that non-contradiction is sufficient for neither
possibility nor compossibility. The claim that something is inconceivable is
usually meant to suggest more than merely an inability to conceive. It is to
say that trying to conceive results in a phenomenally distinctive mental
repugnance, e.g. when one attempts to conceive of an object that is red and
green all over at once. On this usage the inconceivable might be equated with
what one can “just see” to be impossible. There are two related usages of
‘conceivable’: 1 not inconceivable in the sense just described; and 2 such that
one can “just see” that the thing in question is possible. Goldbach’s
conjecture would seem a clear example of something conceivable in the first
sense, but not the second. Grice was also interested in conceptualism as an
answer to the problem of the universale. conceptualism, the view that there are
no universals and that the supposed classificatory function of universals is
actually served by particular concepts in the mind. A universal is a property
that can be instantiated by more than one individual thing or particular at the
same time; e.g., the shape of this , if identical with the shape of the next ,
will be one property instantiated by two distinct individual things at the same
time. If viewed as located where the s are, then it would be immanent. If
viewed as not having spatiotemporal location itself, but only bearing a
connection, usually called instantiation or exemplification, to things that
have such location, then the shape of this
would be transcendent and presumably would exist even if exemplified by
nothing, as Plato seems to have held. The conceptualist rejects both views by
holding that universals are merely concepts. Most generally, a concept may be understood
as a principle of classification, something that can guide us in determining
whether an entity belongs in a given class or does not. Of course, properties
understood as universals satisfy, trivially, this definition and thus may be
called concepts, as indeed they were by Frege. But the conceptualistic
substantive views of concepts are that concepts are 1 mental representations,
often called ideas, serving their classificatory function presumably by
resembling the entities to be classified; or 2 brain states that serve the same
function but presumably not by resemblance; or 3 general words adjectives,
common nouns, verbs or uses of such words, an entity’s belonging to a certain
class being determined by the applicability to the entity of the appropriate
word; or 4 abilities to classify correctly, whether or not with the aid of an
item belonging under 1, 2, or 3. The traditional conceptualist holds 1.
Defenders of 3 would be more properly called nominalists. In whichever way
concepts are understood, and regardless of whether conceptualism is true, they
are obviously essential to our understanding and knowledge of anything, even at
the most basic level of cognition, namely, recognition. The classic work on the
topic is Thinking and Experience 4 by H. H. Price, who held 4.
conditionalis: The conditional is of special interest to Grice because
his ‘impilcature’ has a conditional form. In other words, ‘implicature’ is a
variant on ‘implication,’ and the conditionalis has been called ‘implication’ –
‘even a material one, versus a formal one by Whitehead and Russell. So it is of
special philosophical interest. Since Grice’s overarching interest is
rationality, ‘conditionalis’ features in the passage from premise to
conclusion, deemed tautological: the ‘associated conditional” of a valid piece
of reasoning. “This is an interesting Latinism,” as Grice puts it. For those in
the know, it’s supposed to translate ‘hypothetical,’ that Grice also uses. But
literally, the transliteration of ‘hypothetica’ is ‘sub-positio,’ i.e.
‘suppositio,’ so infamous in the Dark Ages! So one has to be careful. For some
reason, Boethius disliked ‘suppositio,’ and preferred to add to the Latinate
philosophical vocabulary, with ‘conditionalis,’ the hypothetical, versus the
categoric, become the ‘conditionale.’ And the standard was not the Diodoran,
but the Philonian, also known, after Whitehead, as the ‘implicatio materialis.’
While this sounds scholastic, it isn’t. Cicero may have used ‘implicatio
materialis.’ But Whitehead’s and Russell’s motivation is a different one. They
start with the ‘material’, by which they mean a proposition WITH A TRUTH VALUE.
For implication that does not have this restriction, they introduce ‘implicatio
formalis,’ or ‘formal implication.’ In their adverbial ways, it goes p formally
implies q. trictly, propositio conditionalis:
vel substitutive, versus propositio praedicativa in Apuleius. Classical Latin condicio was
confused in Late Latin with conditio "a making," from conditus,
past participle of condere "to put together." The sense
evolution in Latin apparently was from "stipulation" to
"situation, mode of being."
Grice lists ‘if’ as the third binary functor in his response to Strawson. The
relations between “if” and “⊃” have already, but only in part,
been discussed. 1 The sign “⊃” is called the Material Implication
sign a name I shall consider later. Its meaning is given by the rule that any
statement of the form ‘p⊃q’ is false in the case in which the first of its constituent
statements is true and the second false, and is true in every other case
considered in the system; i. e., the falsity of the first constituent statement
or the truth of the second are, equally, sufficient conditions of the truth of
a statement of material implication ; the combination of truth in the first
with falsity in the second is the single, necessary and sufficient, condition
(1 Ch. 2, S. 7) of its falsity. The standard or primary -- the importance of
this qualifying phrase can scarcely be overemphasized. There are uses of “if …
then … ” which do not answer to the
description given here,, or to any other descriptions given in this chapter
-- use of an “if … then …” sentence,
on the other hand, we saw to be in circumstances where, not knowing whether
some statement which could be made by the use of a sentence corresponding in a
certain way to the first clause of the hypothetical is true or not, or
believing it to be false, we nevertheless consider that a step in reasoning
from that statement to a statement related in a similar way to the second
clause would be a sound or reasonable step ; the second statement also being
one of whose truth we are in doubt, or which we believe to be false. Even in
such circumstances as these we may sometimes hesitate to apply the word ‘true’
to hypothetical statements (i.e., statements which could be made by the use of
“if ... then …,” in its standard significance), preferring to call them
reasonable or well-founded ; but if we apply ‘true’ to them at all, it will be
in such circumstances as these. Now one of the sufficient conditions of the
truth of a statement of material implication may very well be fulfilled without
the conditions for the truth, or reasonableness, of the corresponding
hypothetical statement being fulfilled ; i.e., a statement of the form ‘p⊃q’ does not entail the corresponding statement of the form
“if p then q.” But if we are prepared to accept the hypothetical statement, we
must in consistency be prepared to deny the conjunction of the statement
corresponding to the first clause of the sentence used to make the hypothetical
statement with the negation of the statement corresponding to its second clause
; i.e., a statement of the form “if p then q” does entail the corresponding statement
of the form ‘p⊃q.’ The force of “corresponding” needs elucidation. Consider
the three following very ordinary specimens of hypothetical sentences. If the
Germans had invaded England in 1940, they would have won the war. If Jones were
in charge, half the staff would have been dismissed. If it rains, the match will
be cancelled. The sentences which could be used to make statements
corresponding in the required sense to the subordinate clauses can be
ascertained by considering what it is that the speaker of each hypothetical
sentence must (in general) be assumed either to be in doubt about or to believe
to be not the case. Thus, for (1) to (8), the corresponding pairs of sentences
are as follows. The Germans invaded England in 1940; they won the war. Jones is
in charge; half the staff has been dismissed. It will rain; the match will be
cancelled. Sentences which could be used to make the statements of material
implication corresponding to the hypothetical statements made by these
sentences can now be framed from these pairs of sentences as follows. The Germans
invaded England in 1940 ⊃ they won the war. Jones is in charge ⊃ half the staff has been, dismissed. It will rain ⊃ the match will be cancelled. The very fact that these
verbal modifications are necessary, in order to obtain from the clauses of the
hypothetical sentence the clauses of the corresponding material implication
sentence is itself a symptom of the radical difference between hypothetical
statements and truth-functional statements. Some detailed differences are also
evident from these examples. The falsity of a statement made by the use of ‘The
Germans invaded England in 1940’ or ‘Jones is in charge’ is a sufficient
condition of the truth of the corresponding statements made by the use of (Ml)
and (M2) ; but not, of course, of the corresponding statements made by the use
of (1) and (2). Otherwise, there would normally be no point in using sentences
like (1) and (2) at all; for these sentences would normally carry – but not
necessarily: one may use the pluperfect or the imperfect subjunctive when one
is simply working out the consequences of an hypothesis which one may be
prepared eventually to accept -- in the tense or mood of the verb, an
implication of the utterer's belief in the falsity of the statements
corresponding to the clauses of the hypothetical. It is not raining is
sufficient to verify a statement made by the use of (MS), but not a
statement made by the use of (3). Its not raining Is also sufficient to verify
a statement made by the use of “It will rain ⊃
the match will not be cancelled.” The formulae ‘p revise ⊃q’ and ‘q revise⊃
q' are consistent with one another, and the joint assertion of corresponding
statements of these forms is equivalent to the assertion of the corresponding
statement of the form * *-~p. But “If it rains, the match will be cancelled” is
inconsistent with “If it rains, the match will not be cancelled,” and their
joint assertion in the same context is self-contradictory. Suppose we call the
statement corresponding to the first clause of a sentence used to make a
hypothetical statement the antecedent of the hypothetical statement; and the
statement corresponding to the second clause, its consequent. It is sometimes
fancied that whereas the futility of identifying conditional statements with
material implications is obvious in those cases where the implication of the
falsity of the antecedent is normally carried by the mood or tense of the verb
(e.g., (I) or (2)), there is something to be said for at least a partial
identification in cases where no such implication is involved, i.e., where the
possibility of the truth of both antecedent and consequent is left open (e.g.,
(3). In cases of the first kind (‘unfulfilled’ or ‘subjunctive’ conditionals)
our attention is directed only to the last two lines of the truth-tables for *
p ⊃ q ', where the antecedent has the truth-value, falsity; and
the suggestion that ‘~p’ entails ‘if p, then q’ is felt to be obviously wrong.
But in cases of the second kind we may inspect also the first two lines, for
the possibility of the antecedent's being fulfilled is left open; and the
suggestion that ‘p . q’ entails ‘if p, then q’ is not felt to be obviously
wrong. This is an illusion, though engendered by a reality. The fulfilment of
both antecedent and consequent of a hypothetical statement does not show that
the man who made the hypothetical statement was right; for the consequent might
be fulfilled as a result of factors unconnected with, or in spite of, rather
than because of, the fulfilment of the antecedent. We should be prepared to say
that the man who made the hypothetical statement was right only if we were also
prepared to say that the fulfilment of the antecedent was, at least in part,
the explanation of the fulfilment of the consequent. The reality behind the
illusion is complex : en. 3 it is, partly, the fact that, in many cases, the
fulfilment of both antecedent and consequent may provide confirmation for the
view that the existence of states of affairs like those described by the
antecedent is a good reason for expecting states of affairs like those
described by the consequent ; and it is, partly, the fact that a man whosays,
for example, 4 If it rains, the match will be cancelled * makes a prediction
(viz.. that the match will be cancelled) under a proviso (viz., that it rains),
and that the cancellation of the match because of the rain therefore leads us
to say, not only that the reasonableness of the prediction was confirmed, but
also that the prediction itself was confirmed. Because a statement of the form
“p⊃q” does not entail the corresponding statement of the form '
if p, then q ' (in its standard employment), we shall expect to find, and have
found, a divergence between the rules for '⊃'
and the rules for ' if J (in its standard employment). Because ‘if p, then q’
does entail ‘p⊃q,’ we shall also expect to find some degree of parallelism
between the rules; for whatever is entailed by ‘p "3 q’ will be entailed
by ‘if p, then q,’ though not everything which entails ‘p⊃q’ will entail ‘if p, then q.’ Indeed, we find further
parallels than those which follow simply from the facts that ‘if p, then q’
entails ‘p⊃q’ and that entailment is transitive. To laws (19)-(23)
inclusive we find no parallels for ‘if.’ But for (15) (p⊃j).JJ⊃? (16) (P ⊃q).~qZ)~p (17) p'⊃q s ~q1)~p (18) (?⊃j).(?
⊃r) ⊃ (p⊃r) we find that, with certain reservations, 1 the following
parallel laws hold good : (1 The reservations are important. It is, e. g.,
often impossible to apply entailment-rule (iii) directly without obtaining
incorrect or absurd results. Some modification of the structure of the clauses
of the hypothetical is commonly necessary. But formal logic gives us no guide
as to which modifications are required. If we apply rule (iii) to our specimen
hypothetical sentences, without modifying at all the tenses or moods of the
individual clauses, we obtain expressions which are scarcely English. If we
preserve as nearly as possible the tense-mood structure, in the simplest way
consistent with grammatical requirements, we obtain the sentences : If the
Germans had not won the war, they would not have invaded England in
1940.) If half the staff had not been dismissed, Jones would not be in
charge. If the match is not cancelled, it will not rain. But these sentences,
so far from being logically equivalent to the originals, have in each case a
quite different sense. It is possible, at least in some such cases, to frame
sentences of more or less the appropriate pattern for which one can imagine a
use and which do stand in the required logical relationship to the original
sentences (e.g., ‘If it is not the case that half the staff has been dismissed,
then Jones can't be in charge;’ or ‘If the Germans did not win the war, it's
only because they did not invade England in 1940;’ or even (should historical
evidence become improbably scanty), ‘If the Germans did not win the war, it
can't be true that they invaded England in 1940’). These changes reflect
differences in the circumstances in which one might use these, as opposed to
the original, sentences. Thus the sentence beginning ‘If Jones were in charge
…’ would normally, though not necessarily, be used by a man who antecedently
knows that Jones is not in charge : the sentence beginning ‘If it's not the
case that half the staff has been dismissed …’ by a man who is working towards
the conclusion that Jones is not in charge. To say that the sentences are
nevertheless logically equivalent is to point to the fact that the grounds for
accepting either, would, in different circumstances, have been grounds for accepting
the soundness of the move from ‘Jones is in charge’ to ‘Half the staff has been
dismissed.’) (i) (if p, then q; and p)^q
(ii) (if p, then qt and not-g) Dnot-j? (iii) (if p, then f) ⊃ (if not-0, then not-j?) (iv) (if p, then f ; and iff, then
r) ⊃(if j>, then r) (One must remember that calling the
formulae (i)-(iv) is the same as saying that, e.g., in the case of (iii), c if
p, then q ' entails 4 if not-g, then not-j> '.) And similarly we find that,
for some steps which would be invalid for 4 if ', there are corresponding steps
that would be invalid for “⊃,” e. g. (p^q).q :. p are invalid inference-patterns,
and so are if p, then q ; and q /. p if p, then ; and not-j? /. not-f .The
formal analogy here may be described by saying that neither * p 13 q ' nor * if
j?, then q * is a simply convertible formula. We have found many laws (e.g.,
(19)-(23)) which hold for “⊃” and not for “if.” As an example of
a law which holds for “if,” but not for
“⊃,” we may give the analytic formula “ ~[(if p, then q) * (if
p, then not-g)]’. The corresponding formula 4 ~[(P 3 ?) * (j? 3 ~?}]’ is not
analytic, but (el (28)) is equivalent to the contingent formula ‘~~p.’ The
rules to the effect that formulae such as (19)-{23) are analytic are sometimes
referred to as ‘paradoxes of implication.’ This is a misnomer. If ‘⊃’ is taken as identical either with ‘entails’ or, more
widely, with ‘if ... then …’ in its
standard use, the rules are not paradoxical, but simply incorrect. If ‘⊃’ is given the meaning it has in the system of truth functions,
the rules are not paradoxical, but simple and platitudinous consequences of the
meaning given to the symbol. Throughout this section, I have spoken of a
‘primary or standard’ use of “if … then …,” or “if,” of which the main
characteristics were: that for each hypothetical statement made by this use of
“if,” there could be made just one statement which would be the antecedent of
the hypothetical and just one statement which would be its consequent; that the
hypothetical statement is acceptable (true, reasonable) if the antecedent
statement, if made or accepted, would, in the circumstances, be a good ground
or reason for accepting the consequent statement; and that the making of the
hypothetical statement carries the implication either of uncertainty about, or
of disbelief in, the fulfilment of both antecedent and consequent. (1 Not all
uses of * if ', however, exhibit all these characteristics. In particular,
there is a use which has an equal claim to rank as standard and which is
closely connected with the use described, but which does not exhibit the first
characteristic and for which the description of the remainder must consequently
be modified. I have in mind what are sometimes called 'variable' or 'general’
hypothetical : e.g., ‘lf ice is left in the sun, it melts,’ ‘If the side of a
triangle is produced, the exterior angle is equal to the sum of the two
interior and opposite angles ' ; ' If a child is very strictly disciplined in
the nursery, it will develop aggressive tendencies in adult life,’ and so on.
To a statement made by the use of a sentence such as these there corresponds no
single pair of statements which are, respectively, its antecedent and
consequent. On the other 1 There is much more than this to be said about this
way of using ‘if;’ in particular, about the meaning of the question whether the
antecedent would be a good ground or reason for accepting the consequent and
about the exact way in which this question is related to the question of
whether the hypothetical is true {acceptable, reasonable) or not hand, for
every such statement there is an indefinite number of non-general hypothetical
statements which might be called exemplifications, applications, of the
variable hypothetical; e.g., a statement made by the use of the sentence ‘If
this piece of ice is left in the sun, it will melt.’ To the subject of variable
hypothetical I may return later. 1 Two relatively uncommon uses of ‘if’ may be
illustrated respectively by the sentences ‘If he felt embarrassed, he showed no
signs of it’ and ‘If he has passed his exam, I’m a Dutchman (I'll eat my hat,
&c.)’ The sufficient and necessary condition of the truth of a statement
made by the first is that the man referred to showed no sign of embarrassment.
Consequently, such a statement cannot be treated either as a standard
hypothetical or as a material implication. Examples of the second kind are
sometimes erroneously treated as evidence that ‘if’ does, after all, behave
somewhat as ‘⊃’ behaves. The evidence for this is, presumably, the facts
(i) that there is no connexion between antecedent and consequent; (ii) that the
consequent is obviously not (or not to be) fulfilled ; (iii) that the intention
of the speaker is plainly to give emphatic expression to the conviction that
the antecedent is not fulfilled either ; and (iv) the fact that “(p ⊃ q) . ~q” entails “~p.” But this is a strange piece of
logic. For, on any possible interpretation, “if p then q” has, in respect of
(iv), the same logical powers as ‘p⊃q;’
and it is just these logical powers that we are jokingly (or fantastically)
exploiting. It is the absence of connexion referred to in (i) that makes it a
quirk, a verbal flourish, an odd use of ‘if.’ If hypothetical statements were
material implications, the statements would be not a quirkish oddity, but a
linguistic sobriety and a simple truth. Finally, we may note that ‘if’ can be employed not simply in making
statements, but in, e.g., making provisional announcements of intention (e.g.,
‘If it rains, I shall stay at home’) which, like unconditional announcements of
intention, we do not call true or false but describe in some other way. If the
man who utters the quoted sentence leaves home in spite of the rain, we do not
say that what he said was false, though we might say that he lied (never really
intended to stay in) ; or that he changed his mind. There are further uses of
‘if’ which I shall not discuss. 1 v. ch. 7, I. The safest way to read the
material implication sign is, perhaps, ‘not both … and not …’ The material
equivalence sign ‘≡’ has the meaning given by the
following definition : p q =df=⊃/'(p⊃ff).(sOj)'
and the phrase with which it is sometimes identified, viz., ‘if and only if,’
has the meaning given by the following definition: ‘p if and only if q’ =df ‘if
p then g, and if q then p.’ Consequently, the objections which hold against the
identification of ‘p⊃q” with ‘if p then q’ hold with double force against the
identification of “p≡q’ with ‘p if and only if q.’ ‘If’
is of particular interest to Grice. The interest in the ‘if’ is double in
Grice. In doxastic contexts, he needs it for his analysis of ‘intending’
against an ‘if’-based dispositional (i.e. subjective-conditional) analysis. He
is of course, later interested in how Strawson misinterpreted the ‘indicative’
conditional! It is later when he starts to focus on the ‘buletic’ mode marker,
that he wants to reach to Paton’s categorical (i.e. non-hypothetical)
imperative. And in so doing, he has to face the criticism of those Oxonian
philosophers who were sceptical about the very idea of a conditional buletic
(‘conditional command – what kind of a command is that?’. Grice would refere to
the protasis, or antecedent, as a relativiser – where we go again to the
‘absolutum’-‘relativum’ distinction. The conditional is also paramount in
Grice’s criticism of Ryle, where the keyword would rather be ‘disposition.’
Then ther eis the conditional and disposition. Grice is a philosophical
psychologist. Does that make sense? So are Austin (Other Minds), Hampshire
(Dispositions), Pears (Problems in philosophical psychology) and Urmson
(Parentheticals). They are ALL against Ryle’s silly analysis in terms of
single-track disposition" vs. "many-track disposition," and
"semi-disposition." If I hum and walk, I can either hum or walk. But
if I heed mindfully, while an IN-direct sensing may guide me to YOUR soul, a
DIRECT sensing guides me to MY soul. When Ogden consider attacks to meaning,
theres what he calls the psychological, which he ascribes to Locke Grices
attitude towards Ryle is difficult to assess. His most favourable assessment
comes from Retrospective epilogue, but then he is referring to Ryle’s fairy
godmother. Initially, he mentions Ryle as a philosopher engaged in, and
possibly dedicated to the practice of the prevailing Oxonian methodology, i.e.
ordinary-language philosophy. Initially, then, Grice enlists Ryle in
the regiment of ordinary-language philosophers. After introducing Athenian
dialectic and Oxonian dialectic, Grice traces some parallelisms, which should
not surprise. It is tempting to suppose that Oxonian dialectic reproduces some
ideas of Athenian dialectic. It would actually be surprising if there
were no parallels. Ryle was, after all, a skilled and enthusiastic student of
Grecian philosophy. Interestingly, Grice then has Ryles fairy godmother as
proposing the idea that, far from being a basis for rejecting the
analytic-synthetic distinction, opposition that there are initially two
distinct bundles of statements, bearing the labels analytic and synthetic,
lying around in the world of thought waiting to be noticed, provides us with
the key to making the analytic-synthetic distinction acceptable. The
essay has a verificationist ring to it. Recall Ayer and the
verificationists trying to hold water with concepts like fragile and the
problem of counterfactual conditionals vis-a-vis observational and
theoretical concepts. Grices essay has two parts: one on disposition as
such, and the second, the application to a type of psychological
disposition, which would be phenomenalist in a way, or verificationist, in
that it derives from introspection of, shall we say, empirical
phenomena. Grice is going to analyse, I want a sandwich. One person
wrote in his manuscript, there is something with the way Grice goes to work.
Still. Grice says that I want a sandwich (or I will that I eat a sandwich)
is problematic, for analysis, in that it seems to refer to experience that is
essentially private and unverifiable. An analysis of intending that p in terms
of being disposed that p is satisfied solves this. Smith wants a sandwich, or
he wills that he eats a sandwich, much as Toby needs nuts, if Smith opens the
fridge and gets one. Smith is disposed to act such that p is satisfied.
This Grice opposes to the ‘special-episode’ analysis of intending that p. An
utterance like I want a sandwich iff by uttering the utterance, the utterer is
describing this or that private experience, this or that private
sensation. This or that sensation may take the form of a highly specific
souly sate, like what Grice calls a sandwich-wanting-feeling. But then, if
he is not happy with the privacy special-episode analysis, Grice is also
dismissive of Ryles behaviourism in The concept of mind, fresh from
the press, which would describe the utterance in terms purely of this or that observable
response, or behavioural output, provided this or that sensory input. Grice
became friendlier with functionalism after Lewis taught him how. The
problem or crunch is with the first person. Surely, Grice claims, one does not
need to wait to observe oneself heading for the fridge before one is in a
position to know that he is hungry. Grice poses a problem for the
protocol-reporter. You see or observe someone else, Smith, that Smith wants a
sandwich, or wills that he eats a sandwich. You ask for evidence. But when it
is the agent himself who wants the sandwich, or wills that he eats a
sandwich, Grice melodramatically puts it, I am not in the
audience, not even in the front row of the stalls; I am on the
stage. Genial, as you will agree. Grice then goes on to offer an
analysis of intend, his basic and target attitude, which he has just used to
analyse and rephrase Peirces mean and which does relies on this or that piece
of dispositional evidence, without divorcing itself completely from the privileged
status or access of first-person introspective knowledge. In “Uncertainty,”
Grice weakens his reductive analysis of intending that, from neo-Stoutian,
based on certainty, or assurance, to neo-Prichardian, based on predicting. All
very Oxonian: Stout was the sometime Wilde reader in mental philosophy (a post
usually held by a psychologist, rather than a philosopher ‒ Stouts favourite
philosopher is psychologist James! ‒ and Prichard was Cliftonian and the proper
White chair of moral philosophy. And while in “Uncertainty” he allows that
willing that may receive a physicalist treatment, qua state, hell later turn a
functionalist, discussed under ‘soul, below, in his “Method in
philosophical psychology (from the banal to the bizarre” (henceforth, “Method”),
in the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association,
repr. in “Conception.” Grice can easily relate to Hamsphires "Thought and
Action," a most influential essay in the Oxonian scene. Rather than Ryle!
And Grice actually addresses further topics on intention drawing on Hampshire,
Hart, and his joint collaboration with Pears. Refs.: The main reference is
Grice’s early essay on disposition and intention, The H. P. Grice. Refs.: The
main published source is Essay 4 in WOW, but there are essays on ‘ifs and
cans,’ so ‘if’ is a good keyword, on ‘entailment,’ and for the connection with
‘intending,’ ‘disposition and intention,’ BANC.
confirmatum –
disconfirmatum -- confirmation, an evidential relation between evidence and any
statement especially a scientific hypothesis that this evidence supports. It is
essential to distinguish two distinct, and fundamentally different, meanings of
the term: 1 the incremental sense, in which a piece of evidence contributes at
least some degree of support to the hypothesis in question e.g., finding a fingerprint of the suspect at
the scene of the crime lends some weight to the hypothesis that the suspect is
guilty; and 2 the absolute sense, in which a body of evidence provides strong
support for the hypothesis in question
e.g., a case presented by a prosecutor making it practically certain
that the suspect is guilty. If one thinks of confirmation in terms of
probability, then evidence that increases the probability of a hypothesis
confirms it incrementally, whereas evidence that renders a hypothesis highly
probable confirms it absolutely. In each of the two foregoing senses one can
distinguish three types of confirmation: i qualitative, ii quantitative, and
iii comparative. i Both examples in the preceding paragraph illustrate
qualitative confirmation, for no numerical values of the degree of confirmation
were mentioned. ii If a gambler, upon learning that an opponent holds a certain
card, asserts that her chance of winning has increased from 2 /3 to ¾, the claim
is an instance of quantitative incremental confirmation. If a physician states
that, on the basis of an X-ray, the probability that the patient has
tuberculosis is .95, that claim exemplifies quantitative absolute confirmation.
In the incremental sense, any case of quantitative confirmation involves a
difference between two probability values; in the absolute sense, any case of
quantitative confirmation involves only one probability value. iii Comparative
confirmation in the incremental sense would be illustrated if an investigator
said that possession of the murder weapon weighs more heavily against the
suspect than does the fingerprint found at the scene of the crime. Comparative
confirmation in the absolute sense would occur if a prosecutor claimed to have
strong cases against two suspects thought to be involved in a crime, but that
the case against one is stronger than that against the other. Even given
recognition of the foregoing six varieties of confirmation, there is still
considerable controversy regarding its analysis. Some authors claim that
quantitative confirmation does not exist; only qualitative and/or comparative
confirmation are possible. Some authors maintain that confirmation has nothing
to do with probability, whereas others
known as Bayesians analyze
confirmation explicitly in terms of Bayes’s theorem in the mathematical
calculus of probability. Among those who offer probabilistic analyses there are
differences as to which interpretation of probability is suitable in this
context. Popper advocates a concept of corroboration that differs fundamentally
from confirmation. Many real or apparent paradoxes of confirmation have been
posed; the most famous is the paradox of the ravens. It is plausible to suppose
that ‘All ravens are black’ can be incrementally confirmed by the observation
of one of its instances, namely, a black crow. However, ‘All ravens are black’
is logically equivalent to ‘All non-black things are non-ravens.’ By parity of
reasoning, an instance of this statement, namely, any nonblack non-raven e.g.,
a white shoe, should incrementally confirm it. Moreover, the equivalence
condition whatever confirms a hypothesis
must equally confirm any statement logically equivalent to it seems eminently reasonable. The result
appears to facilitate indoor ornithology, for the observation of a white shoe
would seem to confirm incrementally the hypothesis that all ravens are black.
Many attempted resolutions of this paradox can be found in the literature.
conjunctum: One has to be careful because the
scholastic vocabulary also misleadingly has ‘copulatum’ for this. The
‘copulatum’ should be restricted to other usages, which Grice elaborates on
‘izzing’ and hazing. traditional parlance, one ‘pars orationis.’ Aulus Gellius writes; “What the Greeks call
“sympleplegmenon” we call conjunctum or copulatum, copulative sentence. For
example. The Stoic copulative sentence — sumpleplegmenon axioma — is translated
by “conjunctum” or “copulatum,” for example: „P. Scipio, son of Paulus, was a
consul twice and was given the honour of triumph and also performed the
function of censor and was the colleague of L. Mummius during his censorship”.
Here, Aulus Gellius made a noteworthy remark, referring to the value of truth
of the composing propositions ■ (a Stoic problem). In keeping with the Stoics,
he wrote: “If one element of the copulative sentence is false, even if all the
other elements are true, the copulative sentence is false” (“in omni aiitem
conjuncto si unum est mendacium etiamsi, caetera vera sunt, totum esse
mendacium dicitur”). In the identification of ‘and’ with ‘Λ’ there
is already a considerable distortion of the facts. ‘And’ can perform many jobs
which ‘Λ’
cannot perform. It can, for instance, be used to couple nouns (“Tom and William
arrived”), or adjectives (“He was hungry and thirsty”), or adverbs (“He walked
slowly and painfully”); while ' . ' can be used only to couple expressions
which could appear as separate sentences. One might be tempted to say that
sentences in which “and” coupled words or phrases, were short for sentences in
which “and” couples clauses; e.g., that “He was hungry and thirsty” was short
for “He was hungry and he was thirsty.” But this is simply false. We do not
say, of anyone who uses sentences like “Tom and William arrived,” that he is
speaking elliptically, or using abbreviations. On the contrary, it is one of
the functions of “and,” to which there is no counterpart In the case of “.,” to
form plural subjects or compound predicates. Of course it is true of many
statements of the forms “x and y” are/* or ' x is /and g \ that they are logically
equivalent to corresponding statements of the" form * x Is /and yisf'oT^x
is /and x is g \ But, first, this is a fact about the use, in certain contexts,
of “and,” to which there corresponds no
rule for the use of * . '. And, second, there are countless contexts for which
such an equivalence does not hold; e.g. “Tom and Mary made friends” is not
equivalent to “Tom made friends and Mary made friends.” They mean, usually,
quite different things. But notice that one could say “Tom and Mary made friends;
but not with one another.” The implication of mutuality in the first phrase is
not so strong but that it can be rejected without self-contradiction; but it is
strong enough to make the rejection a slight shock, a literary effect. Nor does
such an equivalence hold if we replace “made friends” by “met yesterday,” “were
conversing,” “got married,” or “were playing chess.” Even “Tom and William
arrived” does not mean the same as “Tom arrived and William arrived;” for the
first suggests “together” and the second an order of arrival. It might be
conceded that “and” has functions which “ .” has not (e.g., may carry in
certain contexts an implication of mutuality which ‘.’ does not), and yet claimed that the rules
which hold for “and,” where it is used to couple clauses, are the same as the
rules which hold for “.” Even this is not true. By law (11), " p , q ' is
logically equivalent to * q . p ' ; but “They got married and had a child” or
“He set to work and found a job” are by no means logically equivalent to “They
had a child and got married” or “He found a job and set to work.” One might try
to avoid these difficulties by regarding ‘.’ as having the function, not of '
and ', but of what it looks like, namely a full stop. We should then have to
desist from talking of statements of the forms ' p .q\ * p . J . r * &CM
and talk of sets-of-statements of these forms instead. But this would not
avoid all, though it would avoid some, of the difficulties. Even in a passage
of prose consisting of several indicative sentences, the order of the sentences
may be in general vital to the sense, and in particular, relevant (in a way
ruled out by law (II)) to the truth-conditions of a set-of-statements made by
such a passage. The fact is that, in general, in ordinary speech and writing,
clauses and sentences do not contribute to the truthconditions of things said
by the use of sentences and paragraphs in which they occur, in any such simple
way as that pictured by the truth-tables for the binary connectives (' D ' * .
', 4 v ', 35 ') of the system, but in far more subtle, various, and complex
ways. But it is precisely the simplicity of the way in which, by the definition
of a truth-function, clauses joined by these connectives contribute to the
truth-conditions of sentences resulting from the junctions, which makes
possible the stylized, mechanical neatness of the logical system. It will not
do to reproach the logician for his divorce from linguistic realities, any more
than it will do to reproach the abstract painter for not being a
representational artist; but one may justly reproach him if he claims to be a
representational artist. An abstract painting may be, recognizably, a painting
of something. And the identification of “.” with ‘and,’ or with a full stop, is
not a simple mistake. There is a great deal of point in comparing them. The
interpretation of, and rules for, “.”define a minimal linguistic operation,
which we might call ‘simple conjunction’ and roughly describe as the joining
together of two (or more) statements in the process of asserting them both (or
all). And this is a part of what we often do with ' and ', and with the full
stop. But we do not string together at random any assertions we consider true;
we bring them together, in spoken or written sentences or paragraphs, only when
there is some further reason for the rapprochement, e.g., when they record
successive episodes in a single narrative. And that for the sake of which we
conjoin may confer upon the sentences embodying the conjunction logical
features at variance with the rules for “.” Thus we have seen that a statement
of the form “p and q” may carry an implication of temporal order incompatible
with that carried by the corresponding statement of the form “q and p.” This is
not to deny that statements corresponding to these, but of the forms ‘pΛq’
and ‘qΛp’would
be, if made, logically equivalent; for such statements would carry no
implications, and therefore no incompatible implications, of temporal order.
Nor is it to deny the point, and merit, of the comparison; the statement of the
form ‘pΛq’
means at least a part of what is meant by the corresponding statement of the
form ‘p and q.’ We might say: the form
‘p q’ is an abstraction from the different uses of the form ‘p and q.’ Simple conjunction is a minimal element in
colloquial conjunction. We may speak of ‘. ‘ as the conjunctive sign; and read
it, for simplicity's sake, as “and” or “both … and … “I have already remarked
that the divergence between the meanings given to the truth-functional
constants and the meanings of the ordinary conjunctions with which they are
commonly identified is at a minimum in the cases of ' ~ ' and ‘.’ We have seen,
as well, that the remaining constants of the system can be defined in terms of
these two. Other interdefinitions are equally possible. But since ^’ and ‘.’ are more nearly identifiable with ‘not’ and
‘and’ than any other constant with any other English word, I prefer to
emphasize the definability of the remaining constants in terms of ‘ .’ and ‘~.’
It is useful to remember that every rule or law of the system can be expressed
in terms of negation and simple conjunction. The system might, indeed, be
called the System of Negation and Conjunction. Grice lists ‘and’ as the first
binary functor in his response to Strawson. Grice’s conversationalist
hypothesis applies to this central ‘connective.’ Interestingly, in his essay on
Aristotle, and discussing, “French poet,” Grice distinguishes between
conjunction and adjunction. “French” is adjuncted to ‘poet,’ unlike ‘fat’ in ‘fat
philosopher.’ And Grice:substructural
logics, metainference, implicature. Grice explores some of the
issues regarding pragmatic enrichment and substructural logics with a special
focus on the first dyadic truth-functor, ‘and.’ In particular, attention is
given to a sub-structural “rule” pertaining to the commutativeness of
conjunction, applying a framework that sees Grice as clarifying the extra
material that must be taken into account, and which will referred to as the
‘implicatum.’ Grice is thus presented as defending a “classical-logical” rule
that assigns commutativeness to conjunction while accounting for Strawson-type
alleged counterexamples to the effect that some utterances of the schema “p and
q” hardly allow for a ‘commutative’ “inference” (“Therefore, q and p”). How to
proceed conservatively while allowing room for pluralism? Embracing the
“classical-logical” syntactic introduction-cum-elimination and semantic
interpretation of “and,” the approach by Cook Wilson in “Statement and
inference” to the inferential métier of “and” is assessed. If Grice grants that
there is some degree of artificiality in speaking of the meaning or sense of
“and,” the polemic brings us to the realm of ‘pragmatic inference,’ now
contrasted to a ‘logical inference.’ The endorsement by Grice of an
‘impoverished’ reading of conjunction appears conservative vis-à-vis not just
Strawson’s ‘informalist’ picture but indeed the formalist frameworks of
relevant, linear, and ordered logic. An external practical decision à la Carnap
is in order, that allows for an enriched, stronger, reading, if not in terms of
a conventional implicatum, as Strawson suggests. A ‘classical-logic’ reading in
terms of a conversational implicatum agrees with Grice’s ‘Bootstrap,’ a
methodological principle constraining the meta-language/object-language divide.
Keywords: conjunction, pragmatic
enrichment, H. Paul Grice, Bootstrap. “[I]n recent years, my disposition to
resort to formalism has markedly diminished. This retreat may well have been
accelerated when, of all people, Hilary Putnam remarked to me that I was too
formal!”H.P. Grice, ‘Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and
opinions of Paul Grice,’ in Grandy & Warner, 1986:61 Keywords:
metainference, substructural logics, classical logic, conjunction, H. Paul
Grice, pragmatic inference; Rudolf Carnap, bootstrap, modernism, formalism,
neotraditionalism, informalism, pragmatics, inference, implicature, extensional
conjunction, intensional conjunction, multiplicative conjunction, additive conjunction.
Grice’s approach consistent with Rudolf Carnap’s logical pluralism that allows
room for the account put forward by H. Paul Grice in connection with a specific
meta-inference (or second-order “… yields …”) as it may help us take an
‘external’ practical decision as to how to recapture a structural ‘rule’ of
classical logic. The attempt involves a reconsideration, with a special focus
on the sub-structural classical logic rules for conjunction of Grice’s
ultimately metaphilosophical motivation in the opening paragraphs to “Logic and
Conversation.” Grice explores stick the
first dyadic truth-functor Grice lists. In fact, it’s the first alleged
divergence, between “p and q” and “p. . q” that Grice had quotes in
“Prolegomena” to motivate his audience, and the example he brings up vis-à-vis
an ‘alleged’ “linguistic offence” (a paradox?) that an utterer may incur by
uttering “He got into bed and took his clothes off, but I don’t mean to suggest
he did it in that order” (Grice 1981:186). Implicata are cancellable.
In the present scheme, which justifies substructural logics, this amounts to
any ‘intensional’ reading of a connective (e. g. ‘and’) being susceptible of
being turned or ‘trans-formed’
into
the correlative extensional one in light of the cancelling clause, which brings
new information to the addressee A. This is hardly problematic if we consider
that sub-structural logics
do
not aim to capture the ‘semantics’ of a logical constant, and that the
sub-structural logical ‘enrichment’ is relevant, rather, for the constant’s
‘inferential role.’Neither is it problematic that the fact that the
‘inferential role’ of a logical constant (such as ‘and’) may change (allowing
this ‘trans-formation’ from classical-logical extensional to sub-structural
logical intension, given new information which will be used by the addressee A
to ‘work out’ the utterer U’s meaning. The obvious, but worthemphasizing, entailment in Grice’s
assertion about the “mistake” shared by Formalism and Informalism is that
FORMALISM (as per the standard presentations of ‘classical logic’) does commit
a mistake! Re-capturing the FORMALISM of classical logic is hardly as direct in
the Griceian programme as one would assume. Grice’s ultimate meta-philosophical
motivation, though, seems to be more in agreement with FORMALISM. Formalism can
repair the mistake, Grice thinks, not by allowing a change in the assigning of
an ‘interpretation’ rule of an empoverished “and” (““p and q” is 1 iff both p
and q are 1, 0 otherwise.” (Cfr. Pap: “Obviously,
I cannot prove that “(p and q) ≡ (q and p)”
is tautologous (and that therefore “He got into bed
and took off his clothes’ iff ‘he took of his clothes and got into bed,’)
unless I first construct an
adequate truth-table defining the use of “and.” But surely one of the points of
constructing such a table is to ‘reproduce’ or capture’ the meaning of ‘and’ in
a natural language! The proposal seems circular!) and a deductive ‘syntactics’ rule, involving the
Gentzen-type elimination of ‘and’ (“ “p and q” yields “p”; and its reciprocal,
“ “p and q” yields “q”.” To avoid commiting the mistake, formalism must
recognise the conversational implicatum ceteris paribus derived from some
constraint of rational co-operation (in particular, the desideratum or
conversational maxim, “be orderly!”) and allow for some syntactical scope
device to make the implicatum obvious, an ‘explicatum,’ almost (without the
need to reinforce “and” into “and then”). In Grice’s examples, it may not even
be a VIOLATION, but a FLOUT, of a conversational maxim or desideratum, within
the observance of an overarching co-operation principle (A violation goes
unnoticed; a flout is a rhetorical device. Cfr. Quintilian’s observation that
Homer would often use “p & q” with the implicatum “but not in that order”
left to the bard’s audience to work out). Grice’s attempt is to recapture
“classical-logic” “and,” however pragmatically ‘enriched,’ shares some features
with other sub-structural logics, since we have allowed for a syntactical tweak
of the ‘inference’ rules; which we do via the pragmatist (rather than
pragmatic) ‘implicatural’ approach to logic, highlighting one pragmatic aspect
of a logic without CUT. Grice grants
that “p and q” should read “p . q” “when [“p . q” is] interpreted in the
classical two-valued way.” His wording is thus consistent with OTHER ways
(notably relevant logic, linear and ordered logic). Grice seems to have as one
of his ‘unspeakable truths’ things like “He got into bed and took his clothes
off,” “said of a man who proceeds otherwise.” After
mentioning “and” “interpreted in the classical two-valued way,” Grice dedicates
a full paragraph to explore the
classical logic’s manifesto. The idea is to provide a SYSTEM that will give us
an algorithm to decide which formulae are theorems. The ‘logical consequence’
(or “… yields …”) relation is given a precise definition.Grice
notes that “some logicians [whom he does not mention] may at some time have
wanted to claim that there are in fact no such divergences [between “p and q”
and “p . q”]; but such claims, if made at all, have been somewhat rashly made,
and those suspected of making them have been subjected to some pretty rough
handling.” “Those who concede that such
divergences [do] exist” are the formalists. “An outline of a not
uncharacteristic FORMALIST position may be given as follows,” Grice notes. We
proceed to number the thesis since it sheds light on what makes a
sub-structural logic sub-structural“Insofar as logicians are concerned with the
formulation of very general patterns of VALID INFERENCE (“… yields…”) the
formal device (“p . q”) possesses a decisive advantage over their natural
counterpart (“p and q.”) For it will be possible to construct in terms of the
formal device (“p . q”) a system of very general formulas, a considerable
number of which can be regarded as, or are closely related to, a pattern of
inferences the expression of which involves the device.”“Such a system may
consist of a certain set of simple formulas that MUST BE ACCEPTABLE if the
device has the MEANING (or sense) that has been ASSIGNED to it, and an
indefinite number of further formulas, many of them less obviously acceptable
(“q . p”), each of which can be shown to be acceptable if the members of the
original set are acceptable.”“We have, thus, a way of handling dubiously acceptable
patterns of inference (“q. p,” therefore, “p. q”) and if, as is sometimes
possible, we can apply A DECISION PROCEDURE, we have an even better
way.”“Furthermore, from a PHILOSOPHICAL point of view, the possession by the
natural counterpart (“p and q”) of that element in their meaning (or sense),
which they do NOT share with the corresponding formal device, is to be regarded
as an IMPERFECTION; the element in question is an undesirable excrescence. For
the presence of this element has the result that the CONCEPT within which it
appears cannot be precisely/clearly defined, and that at least SOME statements
involving it cannot, in some circumstances, be assigned a definite TRUTH VALUE;
and the indefiniteness of this concept is not only objectionable in itself but
leaves open the way to METAPHYSICS: we cannot be certain that the
natural-language expression (“p and q”) is METAPHYSICALLY ‘LOADED.’”“For these
reasons, the expression, as used in natural speech (“p and q”), CANNOT be
regarded as finally acceptable, and may tum out to be, finally, not fully
intelligible.” “The proper course is to conceive and begin to construct an
IDEAL language, incorporating the formal device (“p . q”), the sentences of
which will be clear, determinate in TRUTH-VALUE, and certifiably FREE FROM
METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS.”“The foundations of SCIENCE will now be
PHILOSOPHICALLY SECURE, since the statements of the scientist will be
EXPRESSIBLE (though not necessarily actually expressed) within this ideal
language.”What kind of enrichment are we talking
about? It may be understood as a third conjunct ptn-l & qtn
& (tn > tn-l) FIRST
CONJUNCT + SECOND CONJUNCT + “TEMPORAL SUCCESSION” p AND THEN q To
buttress the buttressing of ‘and,’ Grice uses ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ for other
operators like ‘disjunction – and his rationale for the Modified Occam’s razor
would be: “A STRONGER SENSE for a truth-functional dyadic operator SHOULD NOT
BE POSTULATED when A WEAK (or minimal) SENSE does, provided we add the
CANCELLABLE IMPLICATUM.” Grice SIMPLIFIES semantics, but there’s no free lunch,
since he now has to explain how the IMPLICATUM arises. Let’s revise the way “and,” the
first ‘dyadic’ device in “Logic and Conversation,” is invoked by Grice in
“Prolegomena.” “He got into bed and took his clothes off,” “said of a someone
who took his clothes off and got into bed.”
Cfr. theorems ∧I
= ` ∀ φ ψ• [φ; ψ] |= φ ∧ ψ ∧E
= ` ∀ φ ψ• ([φ ∧ ψ] |= φ) ∧ ([φ ∧ ψ] |= ψ)We have: He got into bed and took his clothes
off (Grice, 1989:9). He took his clothes off and got into bed (Grice, 1989:9). He got into bed and took his clothes
off but I don’t want to suggest that he did those things in that order (Grice,
1981:186). He
first took his clothes off and then got into bed (Grice 1989:9). In invoking
Strawson’s Introduction to Logical Theory, is Grice being fair? Strawson had
noted, provocatively: “[The formula] “p . q’ is logically
equivalent to ‘q . p’; but [the English] ‘They got married and had a child’ or
‘He set to work and found a job’ are by no means logically equivalent to ‘They
had a child and got married’ or ‘He found a job and set to work.’”How easier
things would have gone should Strawson have used the adjective ‘pragmatic’ that
he mentions later in his treatise in connection with Grice. Strawson is
sticking with the truth-functionality and thinking of ‘equivalence’ in terms of
‘iff’ – but his remark may be rephrased as involving a notion of ‘inference.’ In
terms of LOGICAL INFERENCE, the premise “He got into bed and took his clothes
off” YIELDS “He took off his clothes and got into bed,” even if that does NOT
‘yield’ in terms of ceteris paribus PRAGMATIC inference. It would have pleased Grice to read the above as: “[The formula] “p
. q’ is equivalentL to ‘q . p’; but [the English] ‘They got married
and had a child’ or ‘He set to work and found a job’ are by no means equivalentP
to ‘They had a child and got married’ or ‘He found a job and set to work.’” By appealing to a desideratum of
rational co-operative discourse, “be orderly,” Grice thinks he can restore
“and” to its truth-functional sense, while granting that the re-inforced “then”
(or an alleged extra sense of “temporal succession,” as he has it in
“Prolegomena”) is merely and naturally (if cancellable on occasion)
conversationally implicated (even if under a generalised way) under the
assumption that the addressee A will recognise that the utterer U is observing
the desideratum, and is being orderly. But witness variants to the cancellation
(3) above. There is an indifferent, indeterminate form: He got into bed and
took off his clothes, though I don’t mean to imply that he did that in that
order.versus the less indeterminate He got into bed and took his clothes off,
but not in that order. +> i.e. in the reverse one.Postulating a pragmatic
desideratum allows Grice to keep any standard sub-structural classical rule for
“and” and “&” (as s he does when he goes more formalist in “Vacuous Names,”
his tribute to Quine).How are to interpret the Grice/Strawson ‘rivalry’ in
meta-inference? Using Frege’s assertion “⊦LK” as our operator to read “…
yields…” we have:p & q ⊦LK q & p
and q & p ⊦LK
p & q.
In “Prolegomena,” then, Grice
introduces:“B. Examples involve an area of special interest to me [since he was
appointed logic tutor at St. John’s], namely
that of expressions which are candidates for being natural analogues to logical
constants and which may, or may not, ‘diverge’ in meaning [not use] from the
related constants (considered as elements in a classical logic, standardly
interpreted). It has, for example, been suggested that because it would be
incorrect or inappropriate [or misleading, even false?] to say “He got into bed
and took off his clothes” of [someone] who first took off his clothes and then
got into bed, it is part of the meaning [or sense] or part of one meaning
[sub-sense] of “and” to convey temporal succession” (Grice 1989:8). The
explanation in terms of a reference to “be orderly” is mentioned in
“Presupposition and conversational implicature” (Grice 1981:186). Grice
notes: “It has been suggested by [an informalist like] Strawson, in [An]
Introduction to Logical Theory [by changing the title of Strawson’s essay,
Grice seems to be implicating that Strawson need not sound pretentious] that
there is a divergence between the ordinary use or meaning of ‘and’ and the
conjunction sign [“.”] of propositional or predicate calculus because “He took
off his clothes and got into to bed” does not seem to have the same meaning as
“He got into bed and took off his clothes.”” Grice goes on: “[Strawson’s] suggestion here is, of course, that, in order properly
to represent the ordinary use of [the
word] “and,” one would have to allow a special sense (or sub-sense) for [the word] “and” which contained
some reference to the idea that what was
mentioned before [the word] “and” was temporally prior to what was mentioned
after it, and that, on that supposition,
one could deal with this case.”Grice goes on: “[Contra Strawson,] I want to
suggest in reply that it is not necessary
[call him an Occamist, minimalist] if one operates on some general principle
[such as M. O. R., or Modified Occam’s Razor] of keeping down, as far as possible, the number of special sense
[sic] of words that one has to invoke, to give countenance to the
alleged divergence of meaning.” The
constraint is not an arbitrary assignation of sense, but a rational one derived
from the nature of conversation:“It is just that there is a general supposition
[which would be sub-sidiary to the general maxim of Manner or ‘Modus’ (‘be
perspicuous! [sic]’) that one presents one's material in an orderly manner and, if what one is engaged upon is a narration (if
one is talking about events), then the
most orderly manner for a narration of events is an order that corresponds to the order in which they took
place.”Grice concludes: “So, the meaning of the expression ‘He took off his
clothes and he got into bed” and the
corresponding expression with a [classical] logician's constant
"&" [when given a standard two-valued interpretation] (i.e. “He took his clothes off & he got into
bed") would be exactly the same.”Grice’s
indifference with what type of formalism to adopt is obvious: “And, indeed, if
anybody actually used in ordinary speech the "&" as a piece of vocabulary instead of as a formal(ist)
device, and used it to connect together sentences of this type, they would collect just the same
[generalised conversational] implicata as the ordinary English sentences have without any extra explanation
of the meaning of the word ‘and’.” It is
then that Grice goes on to test the ‘cancellability,’ producing the
typical Gricean idiom, above:He took his
clothes off and got into bed but I don't mean to suggest that he did those
things in that order. Grice goes on: “I should say that I did suggest, in
[my essay] on implicature, two sorts of
tests by which one might hope to
identify a conversational implicature. [...] I did not mean to suggest that
these tests were final, only that they were useful. One test was the
possibility of cancellation; that is to say, could one without [classical]
logical absurdity [when we have a standard two-valued interpretation], attach a
cancellation clause. For instance, could I say (9)?” Grice: “If that is not a
linguistic offense [and ‘false’], or does not seem to be, then, so far as it
goes, it is an indication that what one has here is a conversational
implicature, and that the original [alleged meaning, sense, or] suggestion of
temporal succession [is] not part of the conventional meaning of the sentence.”
Grice (1981, p. 186). Formalising the temporal succession is
never enough but it may help, and (9) becomes (10):p & q and ptn-l &
qtn where “tn-l” is a temporal index
for a time prior to “tn”. It is interesting to note that Chomsky, of all
people, in 1966, a year before Grice’s William James lectures, in Aspects of
the theory of syntax refers to “A [sic] P. Grice” as propounding that temporal
succession be considered implicature (Since this pre-dates the William James
lectures by a year, it was via the seminars at Oxford that reached Chomsky at
MIT via some of Grice’s tutees).Let us revise Urmson’s wording in his treatment
of the ‘clothes’ example, to check if Grice is being influenced by Urmson’s
presentation of the problem to attack Strawson. Urmson notes: “In
formal[ist] logic, the connective[…] ‘and’ [is] always given a minimum
[empoverished] meaning, as [I] have done above, such that any complex
[molecular sentence] formed by the use of [it] alone is [always] a
truth-function of its constituents.”Urmson goes on to sound almost like
Strawson, whose Introduction to Logical Theory he credits. Urmson notes: “In
ordinary discourse the connective[… ‘and]] often [has] a *richer* meaning.”Urmson
must be credited, with this use of ‘richer’ as the father of pragmatic
enRICHment!Urmson goes on: “Thus ‘He took his clothes off and got into bed’
implies temporal succession and has a different meaning from [the impoverished,
unreinforced] ‘He got into bed and took off his clothes.’” Urmson does not play
with Grice’s reinforcement: “He first got into bed and then took his clothes
off.’ Urmson goes on, however, in his concluding remark, to side with Grice
versus Strawson, as he should! Urmson notes: “[Formal(ist) l]ogicians would
justify their use of the minimum [impoverished, unreinforced, weak] meaning by
pointing out that it is the common element in all our uses [or every use] of
‘and.’” (Urmson,
1956:9-10). The
commutativeness of ‘and’ in the examples he gives is rejected by Strawson. How does Strawson reflect this in his sub-structural rule
for ‘and’? As Humberstone puts it, “It
is possible to define a version of the calculus, which defines most of the
syntax of the logical operators by means of axioms, and which uses only one
inference rule.”Axioms: Let φ, χ and ψ stand for
well-formed formulae. The wff's themselves would not contain any Greek letters,
but only capital Roman letters, connective operators, and parentheses. The
axioms include:ANDFIRST-CONJUNCT: φ ∧ χ → φ and ANDSECOND-CONJUNCT:
φ ∧ χ → χ. Our (13) and (14)
correspond to Gentzen’s “conjunction elimination” (or (& -), as Grice has
it in “Vacuous Names.”). The relation
between (13) and (14) reflects the commutativity of the conjunction operator.
Cfr. Cohen 1971: “Another conversational maxim
of Grice's, “be orderly”, is
intended to govern such matters as the formalist can show that it was not
appropriate to postulate a special non-commutative temporal
conjunction.”“The locus classicus for complaints of this nature being Strawson (1952).”
Note that the commutative “and” is derived from Grice’s elimination of
conjunction, “p & q ⊦ p” and “p & q ⊦ q -- as used by Grice in his system Q.Also note that the
truth-evaluation would be for Grice ‘semantic,’ rather than ‘syntactic’ as the
commutative (understood as part of elimination). Grice has it as: If phi and
psi are formulae, “φ and ” is 1 iff both φ and ψ are true, 0 otherwise. Grice grants
that however “baffling” (or misleading) would be to utter or assert (7)
if no one has doubts about the
temporal order of the reported the events, due to the expectation that the
utterer is observing the conversational maxim “be orderly” subsumed under the
conversational category of ‘Modus’ (‘be perspicuous! [sic]” – cfr. his earlier
desideratum of conversational clarity). Relevant logic (which was emerging by
the time Grice was delivering his William James lectures) introduces two
different formal signs for ‘conjunction’: the truth-functional conjunction
relevant logicians call ‘extensional’ conjunction, and they represent by (13).
Non-truth-functional conjunction is represented by ‘X’ and termed fusion or
‘intensional’ conjunction: p ^ q versus p X q.
The truth-table for Strawson’s enriched uses of
“and” is not the standard one, since we require the additional condition that
“p predates q,” or that one conjunct predates the other. Playing with structural and
substructural logical rules is something Carnap would love perhaps more than
Grice, and why not, Strawson? They liked to play with ‘deviant’ logics. For
Carnap, the choice of a logic is a pragmatic ‘external’ decision – vide his
principle of tolerance and the rather extensive bibliography on Carnap as a
logic pluralist. For Grice, classical logic is a choice guided by his respect
for ordinary language, WHILE attempting to PROVOKE the Oxonian establishment by
rallying to the defense of an under-dogma and play the ‘skilful heretic’
(turning a heterodoxy into dogma). Strawson is usually more difficult to
classify! In his contribution to Grandy & Warner (1986), he grants that
Grice’s theory may be ‘more beautiful,’ and more importantly, seems to suggest
that his view be seen as endorsing Grice’s account of a CONVENTIONAL
implicature (For Strawson, ‘if’ (used for unasserted antecedent and
consequence) conventionally implicates the same inferrability condition that
‘so’ does for asserted equivalents. The aim
is to allow for a logically pluralist thesis, almost alla Carnap about the
‘inferential role’ of a logical constant such as ‘and’, which embraces
‘classical,’ (or ‘formalist,’ or ‘modernist’), relevant, linear and ordered
logic. PLURALISM (versus MONISM) has it that, for any logical constant c (such as “and”), “c” has more
than one *correct* inferential “role.” The pluralist thesis depends on a
specific interpretation of the vocabulary of sub-structural logics. According
to this specific interpretation, a classical logic captures the literal, or
EXPLICIT, explicatum, or truth-functional or truth-conditonal meaning, or what
Grice would have as ‘dictiveness’ of a logical constant. A sub-structural logic
(relevant logic, linear and ordered logic), on the other hand, encodes a
pragmatically,” i.e. not SEMANTICALLY, “-enriched sense” of a logical constant
such as “and.” Is this against the spirit of Grice’s overall thesis as
formulated in his “M. O. R.,” Modified Occam’s Razor, “Senses [of ‘and’] are
not to be multiplied beyond necessity”? But it’s precisely Grice’s Occamism (as
Neale calls it) that is being put into question. At Oxford, at the time, EVERYBODY (except
Grice!) was an informalist. He is coming to the defense of Russell, Oxford’s
underdog! (underdogma!). Plus, it’s important to understand the INFORMALISM
that Grice is attacking – Oxford’s ORTHO-doxy – seriously. Grice is being the
‘skilful HERETIC,’ in the words of his successor as Tutorial Fellow at Oxford,
G. P. Baker. We may proceed by four stages.
First, introduce the philosophical motivation for the pluralist thesis.
It sounds good to be a PLURALIST. Strawson was not. He was an informalist.
Grice was not, he was a post-modernist. But surely we not assuming that one
would want to eat the cake and have it! Second, introduce the calculus for the
different (or ‘deviant,’ as Haack prefers) logics endorsed in the pluralist
thesis – classical itself, relevant, linear and ordered logic. Third, shows how
the different “behaviours” of an item of logical vocabulary (such as “and”) of
each of these logics (and they all have variants for ‘conjunction.’ In the case
of ‘relevant’ logic, beyond Grice’s “&,” or classical conjunction, there is
“extensional conjunction,” FORMALISED as “p X q”, or fusion, and “INTENSIONAL
conjunction,” formalized by “p O q”. These can be, not semantically
(truth-functionally, or truth-conditional, or at the level of the EXPLICATUM),
but pragmatically interpreted (at the level of the IMPLICATUM). Fourth, shows
how the *different* (or ‘deviant,’ or pluralist), or alternative inferential
“roles” (that justifies PLURALISM) that *two* sub-structural logics (say,
Grice’s classical “&” the Strawson’s informalist “and”) attribute to a
logical constant “c” can co-exist – hence pluralism. A particular version of
logical “pluralism” can be argued from the plurality of at least *two*
alterative equally legitimate formalisations of the logical vocabulary, such as
the first dyadic truth-functor, or connective, “and,” which is symbolized by
Grice as “&,” NOT formalized by Strawson (he sticks with “and”) and
FORMALISED by relevant logicians as ‘extensional’ truth-functional conjunction
(fision, p X a) and intentional non-truth-functional conjunction (p O q). In particular, it can be argued that the
apparent “rivalry” between classical logic (what Grice has as Modernism, but he
himself is a post-modernist) and relevant logic (but consider Grice on
Strawson’s “Neo-Traditionalism,” first called INFORMALISM by Grice) can be
resolved, given that both logics capture and formalise normative and legitimate
alternative senses of ‘logical consequence.’ A revision of
the second paragraph to “Logic and Conversation” should do here. We can
distinguish between two operators for “… yields …”: ├ and ├: “A1, A2, … An├MODERNISM/FORMALISM-PAUL B” and “A1, A2, … An├NEO-TRADITIONALISM/INFORMALISM-PETER
B. As Paoli has it: “[U]pholding weakening amounts to failing to
take at face value the [slightly Griceian] expression ‘assertable on the basis
of’.’”Paoli goes on:“If I am in a
position to assert [the conclusion q, “He took his clothes off and got into
bed”] on the basis of the information provided by [the premise p, “He got into
bed and took his clothes off”], I need NOT be in a position to assert the
conclusion P [“He took his clothes off and got into bed”] on the basis of both
p (“He got into bed and took off his clothes” and an extra premise C - where C
is just an idle assumption (“The events took place in the order reported”) ,
irrelevant to my conclusion.”Can we regard Strawson as holding that
UNFORMALISED “and” is an INTENSIONAL CONJUNCTION? Another option is to see
Strawson as holding that the UNFORMALISED “and” can be BOTH truth-functional
and NON-truth-functional (for which case, the use of a different expression,
“and THEN,” is preferred). The Gricean theory of implicature is capable of
explaining this mismatch (bewtween “and” and “&”).Grice argues that the
[truth-conditional, truth-functional] semantics [DICTUM or EXPLICATUM, not
IMPLICATUM – cfr. his retrospective epilogue for his view on DICTIVENESS] of
“and” corresponds [or is identical, hence the name of ‘identity’ thesis versus
‘divergence’ thesis] to the classical “∧,”
& of Russell/Whitehead, and Quine, and Suppes, and that the
[truth-functional semantics of “if [p,] [q]” corresponds to the classical p ⊃ q.” There is scope for
any theory capable of resolving or [as Grice would have it] denying the
apparent disagreement [or ‘rivalry’] among two or more logics.” What Grice does
is DENY THE APPARENT DISAGREEMENT. It’s
best to keep ‘rivalry’ for the fight of two ‘warring camps’ like FORMALISM and
INFORMALISM, and stick with ‘disagreement’ or ‘divergence’ with reference to
specific constants. For Strawson, being a thorough-bred Oxonian, who perhaps
never read the Iliad in Greek – he was Grice’s PPE student – the RIVALRY is not
between TWO different formalisations, but between the ‘brusque’ formalisation
of the FORMALISTS (that murder his English!) and NO FORMALISATION at all. Grice
calls this ‘neo-traditionalist,’ perhaps implicating that the
‘neo-traditionalists’ WOULD accept some level of formalisation (Aristotle did!)
ONLY ONE FORMALISATION, the Modernism. INFORMALISM or Neo-Traditionalism aims
to do WITHOUT formalisation, if that means using anything, but, say, “and” and
“and then”. Talk of SENSES helps. Strawson may say that “and” has a SENSE which
differs from “&,” seeing that he would find “He drank the poison and died,
though I do not mean to imply in that order” is a CONTRADICTION. That is why
Strawson is an ‘ordinary-LANGUAGE philosopher,” and not a logician! (Or should
we say, an ‘ordinary-language logician’? His “Introduction to Logical Theory”
was the mandatory reading vademecum for GENERATIONS of Oxonians that had to
undergo a logic course to get their M. A. Lit. Hum.Then there’s what we can
call “the Gricean picture,” only it’s not too clear who painted it!We may agree
that there is an apparent “mismatch,” as opposed to a perfect “match” that
Grice would love! Grice thought with Russell that grammar is a pretty good
guide to logical form. If the utterer says “and” and NOT “and then,” there is
no need to postulate a further SENSE to ‘and.’Russell would criticize
Strawson’s attempt to reject modernist “&” as a surrogate for “and” as
Strawson’s attempt to regress to a stone-age metaphysics. Grice actually at
this point, defended Strawson: “stone-age PHYSICS!” And this relates to “…
yields…” and Frege’s assertion “/-“ as ‘Conclusion follows from Premise’ where
‘Premise yields Conclusion’ seems more natural in that we preserve the order
from premise to conclusion. We shouldn’t underestimate one crucial feature of
an implicatum: its cancellability, on which Grice expands quite a bit in 1981: “He
got into bed and took his clothes off, although I don’t intend to suggest, in
any shape or form, that he proceed to do those things in the order I’ve just
reported!”The lack of any [fixed, rigid, intolerant] structural rule implies
that AN INSTANCE I1 of the a logical constant (such as “and”) that *violate*
any of Grice’s conversational maxim (here “be orderly!”) associated with the
relevant structural rule [here we may think of ADDITION AND SIMPLIFICATION as
two axioms derived from the Gentzen-type elimination of “and”, or the
‘interpretation’ of ‘p & q’ as 1 iff both p and q are 1, but 0 otherwise]
and for which the derived conversational implicature is false [“He went to bed
and took his clothes off, but not in that order!”] should be distinguished from
ANY INSTANCE I2 that does NOT violate the relevant maxim (“be orderly”) and for
which the conversational IMPLICATUM (“tn > tn-l”) is true.” We may nitpick
here.Grice would rather prefer, ‘when the IMPLICATUM applies.” An implicatum is
by definition cancellable (This is clear when Grice expands in the excursus “A
causal theory of perception.” “I would hardly be said to have IMPLIED that
Smith is hopeless in philosophy should I utter, “He has beautiful handwriting;
I don’t mean to imply he is hopeless in philosophy,” “even if that is precisely
what my addressee ends up thinking!”When it comes to “and,” we are on clearer
ground. The kinds of “and”-implicatures may be captured by a distinction of two
‘uses’ of conjunctions in a single substructural system S that does WITHOUT a
‘structural rule’ such as exchange, contraction or both. Read, relies, very
UNLIKE Strawson, on wo FORMALISATIONS besides “and” (for surely English “and”
does have a ‘form,’ too, pace Strawson) in Relevant Logic: “p ^ q” and “p X q.” “p ^ q” and “p X q” have each a different
inferential role. If the reason the UTTERER has to assert it – via the DICTUM
or EXPLICATUM [we avoid ‘assert’ seeing that we want logical constants to trade
on ‘imperative contexts,’ too – Grice, “touch the beast and it will bite you!”
-- is the utterer’s belief that Smith took his clothes AND THEN got into bed,
it would be illegitimate, unwarranted, stupid, otiose, incorrect,
inappropriate, to infer that Smith did not do these two things in that order
upon discovering that he in fact DID those things in the order reported. The very discovery that Smith did the things
in the order reported would “just spoil” or unwarrant the derivation that would
justify our use of “… yields …” (¬A ¬(A u B) A ¬B”). As Read notes, we have ADJUNCTION ‘p and q’ follows from p and q
– or p and q yields ‘p and q.’ And we have SIMPLIFICATION: p and q
follow from ‘p and q,’ or ‘p and q’ yields p, and ‘p and q’ yields q.” Stephen
Read: “From adjunction and simplification we can infer, by transitivity, that q
follows from p and q, and so by the Deduction Equivalence, ‘if p, q’ follows
from q.’” “However, […] this has the unacceptable consequence that ‘if’ is
truth-functional.” “How can this
consequence be avoided?” “Many options are open.” “We can reject the
transitivity of entailment, the deduction equivalence, adjunction, or
simplification. Each has been tried; and each seems contrary to intuition.” “We
are again in the paradoxical situation that each of these conceptions seems
intuitively soundly based; yet their combination appears to lead to something
unacceptable.” “Are we nonetheless forced to reject one of these plausible
principles?” “Fortunately, there is a fifth option.” Read: “There is a familiar
truth-functional conjunction, expressed by ‘p and q’, which entails each of p
and q, and so for the falsity (Grice’s 0) of which the falsity of either
conjunct suffices, and the truth of both for the truth of the whole.” “But
there is also a NON-truth-functional conjunction, a SENSE of ‘p and q’ whose
falsity supports the inference from p to ‘~q’.” “These two SENSES of
‘conjunction’ cannot be the same, for, if the ground for asserting ‘not-(p and
q)’ (e.g. “It is not the case that he got into bed and took off his clothes”)
is simply that ‘p’ is false, to learn that p is true, far from enabling one to
proceed to ‘~q’, undercuts the warrant for asserting ‘~(p & q)’ in the
first place.” “In this sense, ‘~(p & q)’ is weaker than both ‘~p’ and ‘~q’,
and does not, even with the addition of p, entail ‘~q’, even though one
possible ground for asserting ‘~(p & q))’, viz ‘~q’, clearly does.” Stephen
Read: “The intensional sense of ‘and’ is often referred to as fusion; I will
use the symbol ‘×’ for it. Others write ‘◦.’”We add some relevant observations
by a palaeo-Griceian: Ryle. Ryle often felt
himself to be an outsider. His remarks on “and” are however illuminating in the
context of our discussion of meta-inference in substructural logic.Ryle writes:
“I have spoken as if our ordinary ‘and’ […] [is] identical with the logical
constant with which the formal logician operates.”“But this is not true.”“The
logician’s ‘and’ […] [is] not our familiar civilian term[…].”“It is [a]
conscript term, in uniform and under military discipline, with memories, indeed,
of [its] previous more free and easy civilian life, though it is not leaving
that life now.”“If you hear on good authority that she took arsenic and fell
ill you will reject the rumour that she fell ill and took arsenic.”“This
familiar use of ‘and’ carries with it the temporal notion expressed by ‘and
subsequently’ and even the causal notion expressed by ‘and in
consequence.’”“The logician’s conscript ‘and’ does only its appointed duty – a
duty in which ‘she took arsenic and fell ill’ is an absolute paraphrase of ‘she
fell ill and took arsenic.’ This might be call the minimal force of ‘and.’”
(Ryle,, 1954:118). When we speaks of PRAGMATIC enrichment, we obviously
don’t mean SEMANTIC enrichment. There is a distinction, obviously, between the
‘pragmatic enrichment’ dimension, as to whether the ‘enriched’ content is
IMPLICATED or, to use a neologism, ‘EX-plicated.’ Or cf. as Kent Bach would
prefer, “IMPLICITATED” (vide his “Implciture.”) Commutative
law: p & q iff q & p. “Axiom AND-1” and “Axiom AND-2” correspond
to "conjunction elimination". The relation between “AND-1” and
“AND-2” reflects the commutativity of the conjunction operator. A VERY IMPORTANT POINT to consider is Grice’s
distinction between ‘logical inference’ and ‘pragmatic inference.’ He does so
in “Retrospective Epilogue” in 1987. “A few years after the appearance of […]
Introduction to Logical Theory, I was devoting much attention to what might be
loosely called the distinction between logical and pragmatic inferences. …
represented as being a matter not of logical but of pragmatic import.” (Grice
1987:374).Could he be jocular? He is emphasizing the historical role of his
research. He mentions FORMALISM and INFORMALISM and notes that his own interest
in maxims or desiderata of rational discourse arose from his interest to
distinguish between matters of “logical inference” from those of “pragmatic
inference.” Is Grice multiplying ‘inference’ beyond necessity? It would seem
so. So it’s best to try to reformulate his proposal, in agreement with logical
pluralism.By ‘logical inference’ Grice must mean ‘practical/alethic
satisfactoriness-based inference,’ notably the syntactics and semantics
(‘interpretative’) modules of his own System Q. By ‘pragmatic inference’ he
must mean a third module, the pragmatic module, with his desiderata. We may say
that for Grice ‘logical inference’ is deductive (and inductive), while
‘pragmatic inference’ is abductive. Let us apply this to the ‘clothes off’
exampleThe Utterer said: “Smith got into bed and took his clothes off, but I’m
reporting the events in no particular order.” The ‘logical inference’ allows to
treat ‘and’ as “&.” The ‘pragmatic inference’ allows the addressee to
wonder what the utterer is meaning! Cf. Terres on “⊢k” for “logical inference” and “⊢r,” “⊢l,” and “⊢o,” for pragmatic inference, and where the
subscripts “k,” “r,” “l” and “o” stand for ‘classical,’ ‘relevant,’ ‘linear’
and ‘ordered’ logic respectively, with each of the three
sub-structural notions of “follows from” or “… yields …” require the pragmatic enrichment of a logical constant, that ‘classical logical’
inference may retain the ‘impoverished’ version (Terres, 2019, Inquiry, p. 13). Grice himself mentions
this normative dimension:
“I would like to be able to think of the standard type of conversational
practice not merely
as something that all or most do IN FACT follow but as something that it is REASONABLE for us to
follow, that we SHOULD NOT abandon.”Grice, 1989a, p.48]However, the fact that
we should observe the conversational maxims may not yet be a reason for endorsing the allegedly
‘deviant’ inferential role of a logical constant in the three sub-structural
logics under examination.The legitimacy of the ‘deviant’ ‘inferential role’ of
each constant in each sub-structural logic emerges, rather from at least two
sources.A first source is a requirement for logic (or reasoning) to be
normative: that its truth-bearers [or satisfactoriness-bearers, to allow for
‘imperative’-mode inferences) are related to what Grice calls ‘psychological
attitudes’ of ‘belief’ (indicative-mode inference) and ‘desire’
(imperative-mode inference) (Grice, 1975, cfr. Terres, Inquiry, 2019, p. 13).
As Steinberg puts it:“Presumably, if logic is normative for thinking or
reasoning, its normative force will stem, at least in part, from the fact that
truth bearers which act as the relata of our consequence relation and the
bearers of other logical properties are identical to (or at least are very
closely related in some other way) to the objects of thinking or reasoning: the
contents of one’s mental states or acts such as the content of one’s beliefs or
inferences, for example.”[Steinberger, 2017a – and cf. Loar’s similar approach
when construing Grice’s maxims as ‘empirical generalisations’ of ‘functional
states’ for a less committed view of the embedding of logical and pragmatic
inference within the scope of psychological-attitude ascriptions). A second
source for the legitimacy of the ‘deviant’ inferential role is the fact that
the pragmatic enrichment of the logical vocabulary (both a constant and ‘…
yields …) is part, or a ‘rational-construction,’ of our psychological
representation of certain utterances involving the natural counterparts of
those constants. This may NOT involve a new sense of ‘and’ which is with what Grice is
fighting. While the relevant literature emphasizes “reasons to assert”
(vide Table on p. 9, Terres, 2019), it is worth pointing out that the model
should be applicable to what we might broadly construe as ‘deontic’ reasoning
(e.g. Grice on “Arrest the intruder!” in Grice 1989, and more generally his
practical syllogisms in Grice 2001). We seem to associate “assert” with
‘indicative-mode’ versions only of premise and conclusion. “Reasons to express”
or “reasons to make it explicit” may serve as a generalization to cover both
“indicative-mode” and “imperative-mode” versions of the inferences to hand. When
Grice says that, contra Strawson, he wants to see things in terms of ‘pragmatic
inference,’ not ‘logical inference,’ is he pulling himself up by his own
bootstraps? Let us clarify.When
thinking of what META-language need be used to formulate both Grice’s final
account vis-à-vis Strawson’s, it is relevant to mention that Grice once invoked
what he called the “Bootstrap” principle. In the course of considering a ‘fine
distinction’ in various levels of conceptual priority, slightly out of the
blue, he adds – this is from “Prejudices and predilections, which become, the
life and opinions of Paul Grice,” so expect some informality, and willingness
to amuse: “It is perhaps reasonable to regard such fine distinctions as
indispensable if we are to succeed in the business of pulling ourselves up by
our own bootstraps,” Grice writes. And then trust him to add: “In this
connection, it will be relevant for me to say that I once invented (though I
did not establish its validity) a principle which I labelled as ‘Bootstrap.’”
Trust him to call with a good title. “The principle,” Grice goes on, “laid down
that, when one is introducing some primitive concept [such as conjunction] of a
theory [or calculus or system] formulated in an object-language [G1],
one has freedom to use any concept from a battery of concepts expressible in
the meta-language [System G2], subject to the condition that a
*counterpart* of such a concept [say, ‘conjunction’] is sub-sequently
definable, or otherwise derivable, in the object-language [System G1].”Grice
concludes by emphasizing the point of the manoeuvre: “So, the more economically one introduces a
primitive object-language concept, the less of a task one leaves oneself for
the morrow.” [Grice 1986]. With uncharacteristic humbleness,
Grice notes that while he was able to formulate and label “Bootstrap,” he never
cared to establish its ‘validity.’ We hope we have! “Q. E. D.,” as they say! Cf.
Terres, 2019, Inquiry, p. 17: In conclusion, the pragmatic interpretation of
substructural logics may be a new and interesting research field for the
logical pluralist who wishes to endorse classical and/or substructural logics,
but also for the logical monist who aims to interpret their divergence with a
pluralist logician. The possibility is also open of an interesting dialogue
between philosophical logicians and philosophers of language as they explore
the pragmatic contributions of a logical constant to the meaning of a complete
utterance, given that a substructural logic encodes what has been discussed by
philosophers of language, the enriched ‘explicatum’ of the logical constant.
And Grice. References: Werner Abraham, ‘A linguistic
approach to metaphor.’ in Abraham, Ut videam: contributions to an understanding
of linguistics. Jeffrey C. Beall and Greg Restall.
‘Logical consequence,’ in Edward N. Zalta, editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. Fall 2009 edition, 2009. Rudolf
Carnap, 1942. Introduction to Semantics. L.J.
Cohen, 1971. Grice on the logical particles of natural language, in Bar-Hillel,
Pragmatics of Natural language, repr. in Cohen, Language and knowledge.L.J.
Cohen, 1977. ‘Can the conversationalist hypothesis be defended?’ Philosophical
Studies, repr. in Cohen, Logic and knowledge. Davidson, Donald and J. Hintikka
(1969). Words and objections: essays on the work of W. V. Quine. Dordrecht:
Reidel. Bart Geurts, Quantity implicatures.Bart Geurts and Nausicaa
Pouscoulous. Embedded implicatures?!? Semantics and pragmatics, 2:4–1,
2009.Jean-Yves Girard. Linear logic: its syntax and semantics. London
Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series, pp. 1–42, 1995.H.P. Grice. 1967a.
‘Prolegomena,’ in Studies in the Way of Words.H.P. Grice. 1967b. Logic and
conversation. Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
MA, pages 22–40, 1989.H.P. Grice. 1967c. ‘Indicative conditionals. Studies in
the Way of Words, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pages 58–85, 1989.H.P. Grice. 1969. ‘Vacuous Names,’ in Words and
objections: essays on the work of W. V. Quine, edited by Donald Davidson and
Jaako Hintikka, Dordrecht: Reidel. H.P. Grice, 1981. ‘Presupposition and
conversational implicature,’ in Paul Cole, Radical Pragmatics, New York,
Academic Press. H.P.
Grice, 1986. ‘Reply to Richards,’ in Philosophical Grounds of Rationality:
Intentions, Categories, Ends, ed. by Richard Grandy and Richard Warner, Oxford:
The Clarendon Press.H.P. Grice. 2001. Aspects of reason, being the John Locke
Lectures delivered at Oxford, Oxford: Clarendon. H.P. Grice, n.d. ‘Entailment,’
The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley. Loar, B. F. Meaning and mind.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mates, Benson, Elementary Logic. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.George Myro, 1986. ‘Time and identity,’ in Richard Grandy and
Richard Warner, Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories,
Ends. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Francesco Paoli, Substructural logic. Arthur
Pap. 1949. ‘Are all necessary propositions analytic?’, repr. in The limits of
logical empiricism.Peacocke, Christopher A. B. (1976), What is a logical
constant? The Journal of Philosophy.Quine, W. V. O. 1969. ‘Reply to H. P.
Grice,’ in Davidson and Hintikka, Words and objections: esssays on the work of
W. V. Quine. Dordrecht: Reidel. Stephen Read, A philosophical approach to
inference. A.Rieger, A simple theory of conditionals. Analysis,
2006.Robert van Rooij. 2010.
‘Conversational implicatures,’Gilbert Ryle. 1954. ‘Formal and Informal logic,’ in Dilemmas,
The Tarner Lectures 1953. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 8. Florian Steinberger. The
normative status of logic. In Edward N. Zalta, editor, The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University,
spring 2017 edition, 2017.P.
F. Strawson (1952). Introduction to Logical Theory. London: Methuen.P. F.
Strawson (1986). ‘‘If’ and ‘⊃’’
R. Grandy and R. O. Warner, Philosophical Grounds of Rationality, Intentions,
Categories, Ends, repr. in his “Entity and Identity, and Other Essays. Oxford:
Clarendon PressJ.O. Urmson. Philosophical analysis: its development between the
two world wars. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956. R. C. S. Walker. “Conversational
implicature,” in S. W. Blackburn, Meaning, reference, and
necessity. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975, pp. 133-81A. N.
Whitehead and B. A. W. Russell, 1913. Principia Mathematica. Cambridge
University Press. Conjunctum --
conjunction, the logical operation on a pair of propositions that is typically
indicated by the coordinating conjunction ‘and’. The truth table for
conjunction is Besides ‘and’, other coordinating conjunctions, including ‘but’,
‘however’, ‘moreover’, and ‘although’, can indicate logical conjunction, as can
the semicolon ‘;’ and the comma ‘,’.
conjunction elimination. 1 The argument form ‘A and B; therefore, A or
B’ and arguments of this form. 2 The rule of inference that permits one to
infer either conjunct from a conjunction. This is also known as the rule of
simplification or 8-elimination.
conjunction introduction. 1 The argument form ‘A, B; therefore, A and B’
and arguments of this form. 2 The rule of inference that permits one to infer a
conjunction from its two conjuncts. This is also known as the rule of
conjunction introduction, 8-introduction, or adjunction. Conjunctum -- Why
Grice used inverse V as symbol for “and” Conjunctum -- De Morgan, A. prolific
British mathematician, logician, and philosopher of mathematics and logic. He is
remembered chiefly for several lasting contributions to logic and philosophy of
logic, including discovery and deployment of the concept of universe of
discourse, the cofounding of relational logic, adaptation of what are now known
as De Morgan’s laws, and several terminological innovations including the
expression ‘mathematical induction’. His main logical works, the monograph
Formal Logic 1847 and the series of articles “On the Syllogism” 184662,
demonstrate wide historical and philosophical learning, synoptic vision,
penetrating originality, and disarming objectivity. His relational logic
treated a wide variety of inferences involving propositions whose logical forms
were significantly more complex than those treated in the traditional framework
stemming from Aristotle, e.g. ‘If every doctor is a teacher, then every
ancestor of a doctor is an ancestor of a teacher’. De Morgan’s conception of
the infinite variety of logical forms of propositions vastly widens that of his
predecessors and even that of his able contemporaries such as Boole, Hamilton,
Mill, and Whately. De Morgan did as much as any of his contemporaries toward
the creation of modern mathematical logic.
-- De Morgan’s laws, the logical principles - A 8 B S - A 7 - B, - A 7 B
S - A 8 - B, - -A 8 - B S A 7 B, and - - A 7 - B S A 8 B, though the term is
occasionally used to cover only the first two. Refs.The main published source is “Studies in the Way of
Words” (henceforth, “WOW”), I (especially Essays 1 and 4), “Presupposition and
conversational implicature,” in P. Cole, and the two sets on ‘Logic and
conversation,’ in The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
connectum
-- connected, said of a relation R where, for any two distinct elements x and y
of the domain, either xRy or yRx. R is said to be strongly connected if, for
any two elements x and y, either xRy or yRx, even if x and y are identical.
Given the domain of positive integers, for instance, the relation ‹ is
connected, since for any two distinct numbers a and b, either a ‹ b or b ‹ a. ‹
is not strongly connected, however, since if a % b we do not have either a ‹ b
or b ‹ a. The relation o, however, is Confucius connected 174 174 strongly connected, since either a o b
or b o a for any two numbers, including the case where a % b. An example of a
relation that is not connected is the subset relation 0, since it is not true
that for any two sets A and B, either A 0 B or B 0 A. connectionism, an approach to modeling
cognitive systems which utilizes networks of simple processing units that are
inspired by the basic structure of the nervous system. Other names for this
approach are neural network modeling and parallel distributed processing.
Connectionism was pioneered in the period 065 by researchers such as Frank
Rosenblatt and Oliver Selfridge. Interest in using such networks diminished
during the 0s because of limitations encountered by existing networks and the
growing attractiveness of the computer model of the mind according to which the
mind stores symbols in memory and registers and performs computations upon
them. Connectionist models enjoyed a renaissance in the 0s, partly as the
result of the discovery of means of overcoming earlier limitations e.g.,
development of the back-propagation learning algorithm by David Rumelhart,
Geoffrey Hinton, and Ronald Williams, and of the Boltzmann-machine learning
algorithm by David Ackley, Geoffrey Hinton, and Terrence Sejnowski, and partly
as limitations encountered with the computer model rekindled interest in
alternatives. Researchers employing connectionist-type nets are found in a
variety of disciplines including psychology, artificial intelligence,
neuroscience, and physics. There are often major differences in the endeavors
of these researchers: psychologists and artificial intelligence researchers are
interested in using these nets to model cognitive behavior, whereas
neuroscientists often use them to model processing in particular neural
systems. A connectionist system consists of a set of processing units that can
take on activation values. These units are connected so that particular units
can excite or inhibit others. The activation of any particular unit will be
determined by one or more of the following: inputs from outside the system, the
excitations or inhibitions supplied by other units, and the previous activation
of the unit. There are a variety of different architectures invoked in
connectionist systems. In feedforward nets units are clustered into layers and
connections pass activations in a unidirectional manner from a layer of input
units to a layer of output units, possibly passing through one or more layers
of hidden units along the way. In these systems processing requires one pass of
processing through the network. Interactive nets exhibit no directionality of
processing: a given unit may excite or inhibit another unit, and it, or another
unit influenced by it, might excite or inhibit the first unit. A number of
processing cycles will ensue after an input has been given to some or all of
the units until eventually the network settles into one state, or cycles
through a small set of such states. One of the most attractive features of
connectionist networks is their ability to learn. This is accomplished by
adjusting the weights connecting the various units of the system, thereby
altering the manner in which the network responds to inputs. To illustrate the
basic process of connectionist learning, consider a feedforward network with
just two layers of units and one layer of connections. One learning procedure
commonly referred to as the delta rule first requires the network to respond,
using current weights, to an input. The activations on the units of the second
layer are then compared to a set of target activations, and detected
differences are used to adjust the weights coming from active input units. Such
a procedure gradually reduces the difference between the actual response and
the target response. In order to construe such networks as cognitive models it
is necessary to interpret the input and output units. Localist interpretations
treat individual input and output units as representing concepts such as those
found in natural language. Distributed interpretations correlate only patterns
of activation of a number of units with ordinary language concepts. Sometimes
but not always distributed models will interpret individual units as
corresponding to microfeatures. In one interesting variation on distributed
representation, known as coarse coding, each symbol will be assigned to a
different subset of the units of the system, and the symbol will be viewed as
active only if a predefined number of the assigned units are active. A number
of features of connectionist nets make them particularly attractive for
modeling cognitive phenomena in addition to their ability to learn from
experience. They are extremely efficient at pattern-recognition tasks and often
generalize very well from training inputs to similar test inputs. They can
often recover complete patterns from partial inputs, making them good models
for content-addressable memory. Interactive networks are particularly useful in
modeling cognitive tasks in which multiple constraints must be satisfied
simultaneously, or in which the goal is to satisfy competing constraints as
well as possible. In a natural manner they can override some constraints on a
problem when it is not possible to satisfy all, thus treating the constraints
as soft. While the cognitive connectionist models are not intended to model
actual neural processing, they suggest how cognitive processes can be realized
in neural hardware. They also exhibit a feature demonstrated by the brain but
difficult to achieve in symbolic systems: their performance degrades gracefully
as units or connections are disabled or the capacity of the network is
exceeded, rather than crashing. Serious challenges have been raised to the
usefulness of connectionism as a tool for modeling cognition. Many of these
challenges have come from theorists who have focused on the complexities of
language, especially the systematicity exhibited in language. Jerry Fodor and
Zenon Pylyshyn, for example, have emphasized the manner in which the meaning of
complex sentences is built up compositionally from the meaning of components,
and argue both that compositionality applies to thought generally and that it
requires a symbolic system. Therefore, they maintain, while cognitive systems
might be implemented in connectionist nets, these nets do not characterize the
architecture of the cognitive system itself, which must have capacities for
symbol storage and manipulation. Connectionists have developed a variety of
responses to these objections, including emphasizing the importance of
cognitive functions such as pattern recognition, which have not been as
successfully modeled by symbolic systems; challenging the need for symbol
processing in accounting for linguistic behavior; and designing more complex
connectionist architectures, such as recurrent networks, capable of responding
to or producing systematic structures.
connotatum –
intension -- connotation. 1 The ideas and associations brought to mind by an
expression used in contrast with ‘denotation’ and ‘meaning’. 2 In a technical
use, the properties jointly necessary and sufficient for the correct
application of the expression in question.
sequentia:
consequentia -- consequentialism, the doctrine that the moral rightness of an
act is determined solely by the goodness of the act’s consequences. Prominent
consequentialists include J. S. Mill, Moore, and Sidgwick. Maximizing versions
of consequentialism the most common sort hold that an act is morally right if and only
if it produces the best consequences of those acts available to the agent.
Satisficing consequentialism holds that an act is morally right if and only if
it produces enough good consequences on balance. Consequentialist theories are
often contrasted with deontological ones, such as Kant’s, which hold that the
rightness of an act is determined at least in part by something other than the
goodness of the act’s consequences. A few versions of consequentialism are
agentrelative: that is, they give each agent different aims, so that different
agents’ aims may conflict. For instance, egoistic consequentialism holds that
the moral rightness of an act for an agent depends solely on the goodness of
its consequences for him or her. However, the vast majority of consequentialist
theories have been agent-neutral and consequentialism is often defined in a
more restrictive way so that agentrelative versions do not count as
consequentialist. A doctrine is agent-neutral when it gives to each agent the
same ultimate aims, so that different agents’ aims cannot conflict. For
instance, utilitarianism holds that an act is morally right if and only if it
produces more happiness for the sentient beings it affects than any other act available
to the agent. This gives each agent the same ultimate aim, and so is
agent-neutral. Consequentialist theories differ over what features of acts they
hold to determine their goodness. Utilitarian versions hold that the only
consequences of an act relevant to its goodness are its effects on the
happiness of sentient beings. But some consequentialists hold that the
promotion of other things matters too
achievement, autonomy, knowledge, or fairness, for instance. Thus
utilitarianism, as a maximizing, agent-neutral, happiness-based view is only
one of a broad range of consequentialist theories. consequentia mirabilis, the logical principle
that if a statement follows from its own negation it must be true. Strict consequentia
mirabilis is the principle that if a statement follows logically from its own
negation it is logically true. The principle is often connected with the
paradoxes of strict implication, according to which any statement follows from
a contradiction. Since the negation of a tautology is a contradiction, every
tautology follows from its own negation. However, if every expression of the
form ‘if p then q’ implies ‘not-p or q’ they need not be equivalent, then from
‘if not-p then p’ we can derive ‘not-not-p or p’ and by the principles of double
negation and repetition derive p. Since all of these rules are unexceptionable
the principle of consequentia mirabilis is also unexceptionable. It is,
however, somewhat counterintuitive, hence the name ‘the astonishing
implication’, which goes back to its medieval discoverers or
rediscoverers.
Consistentia:
consistency, in traditional Aristotelian logic, a semantic notion: two or more
statements are called consistent if they are simultaneously true under some
interpretation cf., e.g., W. S. Jevons, Elementary Lessons in Logic, 1870. In
modern logic there is a syntactic definition that also fits complex e.g.,
mathematical theories developed since Frege’s Begriffsschrift 1879: a set of
statements is called consistent with respect to a certain logical calculus, if
no formula ‘P & P’ is derivable from those statements by the rules of the
calculus; i.e., the theory is free from contradictions. If these definitions
are equivalent for a logic, we have a significant fact, as the equivalence
amounts to the completeness of its system of rules. The first such completeness
theorem was obtained for sentential or propositional logic by Paul Bernays in 8
in his Habilitationsschrift that was partially published as Axiomatische
Untersuchung des Aussagen-Kalküls der “Principia Mathematica,” 6 and,
independently, by Emil Post in Introduction to a General Theory of Elementary
Propositions, 1; the completeness of predicate logic was proved by Gödel in Die
Vollständigkeit der Axiome des logischen Funktionenkalküls, 0. The crucial step
in such proofs shows that syntactic consistency implies semantic consistency.
Cantor applied the notion of consistency to sets. In a well-known letter to
Dedekind 9 he distinguished between an inconsistent and a consistent
multiplicity; the former is such “that the assumption that all of its elements
‘are together’ leads to a contradiction,” whereas the elements of the latter
“can be thought of without contradiction as ‘being together.’ “ Cantor had
conveyed these distinctions and their motivation by letter to Hilbert in 7 see
W. Purkert and H. J. Ilgauds, Georg Cantor, 7. Hilbert pointed out explicitly
in 4 that Cantor had not given a rigorous criterion for distinguishing between
consistent and inconsistent multiplicities. Already in his Über den Zahlbegriff
9 Hilbert had suggested a remedy by giving consistency proofs for suitable
axiomatic systems; e.g., to give the proof of the “existence of the totality of
real numbers or in the terminology of G.
Cantor the proof of the fact that the
system of real numbers is a consistent complete set” by establishing the
consistency of an axiomatic characterization of the reals in modern terminology, of the theory of
complete, ordered fields. And he claimed, somewhat indeterminately, that this
could be done “by a suitable modification of familiar methods.” After 4,
Hilbert pursued a new way of giving consistency proofs. This novel way of
proceeding, still aiming for the same goal, was to make use of the
formalization of the theory at hand. However, in the formulation of Hilbert’s
Program during the 0s the point of consistency proofs was no longer to
guarantee the existence of suitable sets, but rather to establish the
instrumental usefulness of strong mathematical theories T, like axiomatic set
theory, relative to finitist mathematics. That focus rested on the observation
that the statement formulating the syntactic consistency of T is equivalent to
the reflection principle Pra, ‘s’ P s; here Pr is the finitist proof predicate
for T, s is a finitistically meaningful statement, and ‘s’ its translation into
the language of T. If one could establish finitistically the consistency of T,
one could be sure on finitist
grounds that T is a reliable instrument
for the proof of finitist statements. There are many examples of significant
relative consistency proofs: i non-Euclidean geometry relative to Euclidean,
Euclidean geometry relative to analysis; ii set theory with the axiom of choice
relative to set theory without the axiom of choice, set theory with the
negation of the axiom of choice relative to set theory; iii classical
arithmetic relative to intuitionistic arithmetic, subsystems of classical
analysis relative to intuitionistic theories of constructive ordinals. The
mathematical significance of relative consistency proofs is often brought out
by sharpening them to establish conservative extension results; the latter may
then ensure, e.g., that the theories have the same class of provably total
functions. The initial motivation for such arguments is, however, frequently
philosophical: one wants to guarantee the coherence of the original theory on
an epistemologically distinguished basis.
The English constitution
– an example Grice gives of a ‘vacuous name’ -- constitution, a relation
between concrete particulars including objects and events and their parts,
according to which at some time t, a concrete particular is said to be
constituted by the sum of its parts without necessarily being identical with
that sum. For instance, at some specific time t, Mt. Everest is constituted by
the various chunks of rock and other matter that form Everest at t, though at t
Everest would still have been Everest even if, contrary to fact, some
particular rock that is part of the sum had been absent. Hence, although Mt.
Everest is not identical to the sum of its material parts at t, it is
constituted by them. The relation of constitution figures importantly in recent
attempts to articulate and defend metaphysical physicalism naturalism. To
capture the idea that all that exists is ultimately physical, we may say that
at the lowest level of reality, there are only microphysical phenomena,
governed by the laws of microphysics, and that all other objects and events are
ultimately constituted by objects and events at the microphysical level.
context:
while Grice jocularly echoes Firth with his ‘context of utterance,’ he thought
the theory of context was ‘totally lacking in context.’ H. P. Grice, “The
general theory of context,” -- contextualism, the view that inferential
justification always takes place against a background of beliefs that are
themselves in no way evidentially supported. The view has not often been
defended by name, but Dewey, Popper, Austin, and Vitters are arguably among its
notable exponents. As this list perhaps suggests, contextualism is closely
related to the “relevant alternatives” conception of justification, according
to which claims to knowledge are justified not by ruling out any and every
logically possible way in which what is asserted might be false or inadequately
grounded, but by excluding certain especially relevant alternatives or
epistemic shortcomings, these varying from one context of inquiry to another.
Formally, contextualism resembles foundationalism. But it differs from
traditional, or substantive, foundationalism in two crucial respects. First,
foundationalism insists that basic beliefs be self-justifying or intrinsically
credible. True, for contemporary foundationalists, this intrinsic credibility
need not amount to incorrigibility, as earlier theorists tended to suppose: but
some degree of intrinsic credibility is indispensable for basic beliefs.
Second, substantive foundational theories confine intrinsic credibility, hence
the status of being epistemologically basic, to beliefs of some fairly narrowly
specified kinds. By contrast, contextualists reject all forms of the doctrine
of intrinsic credibility, and in consequence place no restrictions on the kinds
of beliefs that can, in appropriate circumstances, function as contextually
basic. They regard this as a strength of their position, since explaining and
defending attributions of intrinsic credibility has always been the
foundationalist’s main problem. Contextualism is also distinct from the
coherence theory of justification, foundationalism’s traditional rival.
Coherence theorists are as suspicious as contextualists of the
foundationalist’s specified kinds of basic beliefs. But coherentists react by
proposing a radically holistic model of inferential justification, according to
which a belief becomes justified through incorporation into a suitably coherent
overall system of beliefs or “total view.” There are many well-known problems
with this approach: the criteria of coherence have never been very clearly
articulated; it is not clear what satisfying such criteria has to do with
making our beliefs likely to be true; and since it is doubtful whether anyone
has a very clear picture of his system of beliefs as a whole, to insist that
justification involves comparing the merits of competing total views seems to
subject ordinary justificatory practices to severe idealization. Contextualism,
in virtue of its formal affinity with foundationalism, claims to avoid all such
problems. Foundationalists and coherentists are apt to respond that
contextualism reaps these benefits by failing to show how genuinely epistemic
justification is possible. Contextualism, they charge, is finally
indistinguishable from the skeptical view that “justification” depends on
unwarranted assumptions. Even if, in context, these are pragmatically
acceptable, epistemically speaking they are still just assumptions. This
objection raises the question whether contextualists mean to answer the same
questions as more traditional theorists, or answer them in the same way.
Traditional theories of justification are framed so as to respond to highly
general skeptical questions e.g., are we
justified in any of our beliefs about the external world? It may be that
contextualist theories are or should be advanced, not as direct answers to
skepticism, but in conjunction with attempts to diagnose or dissolve
traditional skeptical problems. Contextualists need to show how and why
traditional demands for “global” justification misfire, if they do. If
traditional skeptical problems are taken at face value, it is doubtful whether
contextualism can answer them.
continental
breakfast: Grice enjoyed a continental breakfast at Oxford, and
an English breakfast in Rome – As for ‘continental’ “philosophy,” Grice applied
it to the gradually changing spectrum of philosophical views that in the
twentieth century developed in Continental Europe and that are notably
different from the various forms of analytic philosophy that during the same
period flourished at Oxford. Immediately after World War II the expression “philosophie
continentale” was more or less synonymous with ‘phenomenology’. The latter
term, already used earlier in G. idealism, received a completely new meaning in
the work of Husserl. Later on “phainomenologie” was also applied, often with
substantial changes in meaning, to the thought of a great number of other
Continental philosophers such as Scheler, Alexander Pfander, Hedwig Conrad-Martius,
and Nicolai Hartmann. For Husserl the aim of philosophy is to prepare humankind
for a genuinely philosophical form of life, in and through which each human
being gives him- or herself a rule through reason. Since the Renaissance, many
philosophers have tried in vain to materialize this aim. In Husserl’s view, the
reason was that philosophers failed to use the proper philosophical method.
Husserl’s phenomenology was meant to provide philosophy with the method needed.
Among those deeply influenced by Husserl’s ideas the so-called existentialists
must be mentioned first. If ‘existentialism’ is construed strictly, it refers
mainly to the philosophy of Sartre and Beauvoir. In a very broad sense
‘existentialism’ refers to the ideas of an entire group of thinkers influenced
methodologically by Husserl and in content by Marcel, Heidegger, Sartre, or
Merleau-Ponty, and one may go and include S. N. Hampshire into the bargain. In
this case one often speaks of existential phenomenology. When Heidegger’s
philosophy became better known at Oxford, ‘continental philosophy’ received
again a new meaning. From Heidegger’s first publication, Being and Time 7, it
was clear that his conception of phenomenology differs from that of Husserl in
several important respects. That is why he qualified the term and spoke of
hermeneutic phenomenology and clarified the expression by examining the “original”
meaning of the Grecian words from which the term was formed. In his view
phenomenology must try “to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in
the very way in which it shows itself from itself.” Heidegger applied the
method first to the mode of being of man with the aim of approaching the
question concerning the meaning of being itself through this phenomenological
interpretation. Of those who took their point of departure from Heidegger, but
also tried to go beyond him, Gadamer and Ricoeur must be mentioned. The
structuralist movement in France added another connotation to ‘Continental
philosophy’. The term structuralism above all refers to an activity, a way of
knowing, speaking, and acting that extends over a number of distinguished
domains of human activity: linguistics, aesthetics, anthropology, psychology,
psychoanalysis, mathematics, philosophy of science, and philosophy itself.
Structuralism, which became a fashion in Paris and later in Western Europe
generally, reached its high point on the Continent between 0 and 0. It was
inspired by ideas first formulated by Russian formalism 626 and Czech
structuralism 640, but also by ideas derived from the works of Marx and Freud.
In France Foucault, Barthes, Althusser, and Derrida were the leading figures.
Structuralism is not a new philosophical movement; it must be characterized by
structuralist activity, which is meant to evoke ever new objects. This can be
done in a constructive and a reconstructive manner, but these two ways of
evoking objects can never be separated. One finds the constructive aspect
primarily in structuralist aesthetics and linguistics, whereas the
reconstructive aspect is more apparent in philosophical reflections upon the
structuralist activity. Influenced by Nietzschean ideas, structuralism later
developed in a number of directions, including poststructuralism; in this
context the works of Gilles Deleuze, Lyotard, Irigaray, and Kristeva must be
mentioned. After 0 ‘Continental philosophy’ received again a new connotation:
deconstruction. At first deconstruction presented itself as a reaction against
philosophical hermeneutics, even though both deconstruction and hermeneutics
claim their origin in Heidegger’s reinterpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology.
The leading philosopher of the movement is Derrida, who at first tried to think
along phenomenological and structuralist lines. Derrida formulated his “final”
view in a linguistic form that is both complex and suggestive. It is not easy
in a few sentences to state what deconstruction is. Generally speaking one can
say that what is being deconstructed is texts; they are deconstructed to show
that there are conflicting conceptions of meaning and implication in every text
so that it is never possible definitively to show what a text really means.
Derrida’s own deconstructive work is concerned mainly with philosophical texts,
whereas others apply the “method” predominantly to literary texts. What
according to Derrida distinguished philosophy is its reluctance to face the
fact that it, too, is a product of linguistic and rhetorical figures.
Deconstruction is here that process of close reading that focuses on those
elements where philosophers in their work try to erase all knowledge of its own
linguistic and rhetorical dimensions. It has been said that if construction
typifies modern thinking, then deconstruction is the mode of thinking that
radically tries to overcome modernity. Yet this view is simplistic, since one
also deconstructs Plato and many other thinkers and philosophers of the premodern
age. People concerned with social and political philosophy who have sought
affiliation with Continental philosophy often appeal to the so-called critical
theory of the Frankfurt School in general, and to Habermas’s theory of
communicative action in particular. Habermas’s view, like the position of the
Frankfurt School in general, is philosophically eclectic. It tries to bring
into harmony ideas derived from Kant, G. idealism, and Marx, as well as ideas
from the sociology of knowledge and the social sciences. Habermas believes that
his theory makes it possible to develop a communication community without
alienation that is guided by reason in such a way that the community can stand
freely in regard to the objectively given reality. Critics have pointed out
that in order to make this theory work Habermas must substantiate a number of
assumptions that until now he has not been able to justify.
Grice’s
contingency planning -- “What is actual is not also possible”
“What is necessary is not also contingent” -- contingent, neither impossible
nor necessary; i.e., both possible and non-necessary. The modal property of
being contingent is attributable to a proposition, state of affairs, event,
or more debatably an object. Muddles about the relationship
between this and other modal properties have abounded ever since Aristotle, who
initially conflated contingency with possibility but later realized that
something that is possible may also be necessary, whereas something that is
contingent cannot be necessary. Even today many philosophers are not clear
about the “opposition” between contingency and necessity, mistakenly supposing
them to be contradictory notions probably because within the domain of true
propositions the contingent and the necessary are indeed both exclusive and
exhaustive of one another. But the contradictory of ‘necessary’ is
‘non-necessary’; that of ‘contingent’ is ‘non-contingent’, as the following
extended modal square of opposition shows: These logico-syntactical
relationships are preserved through various semantical interpretations, such as
those involving: a the logical modalities proposition P is logically contingent
just when P is neither a logical truth nor a logical falsehood; b the causal or
physical modalities state of affairs or event E is physically contingent just
when E is neither physically necessary nor physically impossible; and c the
deontic modalities act A is morally indeterminate just when A is neither
morally obligatory nor morally forbidden. In none of these cases does ‘contingent’
mean ‘dependent,’ as in the phrase ‘is contingent upon’. Yet just such a notion
of contingency seems to feature prominently in certain formulations of the
cosmological argument, all created objects being said to be contingent beings
and God alone to be a necessary or non-contingent being. Conceptual clarity is
not furthered by assimilating this sense of ‘contingent’ to the others.
contrapositum: the
immediate logical operation on any categorical proposition that is accomplished
by first forming the complements of both the subject term and the predicate
term of that proposition and then interchanging these complemented terms. Thus,
contraposition applied to the categorical proposition ‘All cats are felines’
yields ‘All non-felines are non-cats’, where ‘nonfeline’ and ‘non-cat’ are,
respectively, the complements or complementary terms of ‘feline’ and ‘cat’. The
result of applying contraposition to a categorical proposition is said to be
the contrapositive of that proposition.
contraries, any pair of propositions that cannot both be true but can
both be false; derivatively, any pair of properties that cannot both apply to a
thing but that can both fail to apply to a thing. Thus the propositions ‘This
object is red all over’ and ‘This object is green all over’ are contraries, as
are the properties of being red all over and being green all over.
Traditionally, it was considered that the categorical A-proposition ‘All S’s
are P’s’ and the categorical E-proposition ‘No S’s are P’s’ were contraries; but
according to De Morgan and most subsequent logicians, these two propositions
are both true when there are no S’s at all, so that modern logicians do not
usually regard the categorical A- and E-propositions as being true contraries. contravalid, designating a proposition P in a
logical system such that every proposition in the system is a consequence of P.
In most of the typical and familiar logical systems, contravalidity coincides
with self-contradictoriness.
voluntary
and rational control – the power structure of the soul --
Grice’s intersubjective conversational control, -- for Grice only what is under
one’s control is communicated – spots mean measles only metaphorically, the
spots don’t communicate measles. An involuntary cry does not ‘mean.’ Only a simulated
cry of pain is a vehicle by which an emissor may mean that he is in pain. an
apparently causal phenomenon closely akin to power and important for such
topics as intentional action, freedom, and moral responsibility. Depending upon
the control you had over the event, your finding a friend’s stolen car may or
may not be an intentional action, a free action, or an action for which you
deserve moral credit. Control seems to be a causal phenomenon. Try to imagine
controlling a car, say, without causing anything. If you cause nothing, you
have no effect on the car, and one does not control a thing on which one has no
effect. But control need not be causally deterministic. Even if a genuine
randomizer in your car’s steering mechanism gives you only a 99 percent chance
of making turns you try to make, you still have considerable control in that
sphere. Some philosophers claim that we have no control over anything if causal
determinism is true. That claim is false. When you drive your car, you normally
are in control of its speed and direction, even if our world happens to be
deterministic.
conversational
avowal: The phrase is a Ryleism, but
Grice liked it. Grice’s point is with corrigibility or lack thereof. He recalls
his tutorials with Strawson. “I want you to bring me a paper on Friday.” “You
mean The Telegraph?” “You know what I mean.”
“But perhaps you don’t.” Grice’s favourite conversational avowal,
mentioned by Grice, is a declaration of an intention.. Grice starts using the
phrase ‘conversational avowal’ after exploring Ryle’s rather cursory
exploration of them in The Concept of Mind. This is interesting because in
general Grice is an anti-ryleist. The verb is of course ‘to avow,’ which
is ultimately a Latinate from ‘advocare.’ A processes or event of the soul is,
on the official view, supposed to be played out in a private theatre. Such an
event is known directly by the man who has them either through the faculty of
introspection or the ‘phosphorescence’ of consciousness. The subject is, on
this view, incorrigible—his avowals of the state of his soul cannot be
corrected by others—and he is infallible—he cannot be wrong about which states
he is in. The official doctrine mistakenly construes an avowals or a
report of such an episode as issuing from a special sort of observation or
perception of shadowy existents. We should consider some differences
between two sorts of 'conversational' avowals: (i) I feel a tickle and (ii) I
feel ill. If a man feels a tickle, he has a tickle, and if he has a tickle, he
feels it. But if he feels ill, he may not be ill, and if he is ill, he may
not feel ill. Doubtless a man’s feeling ill is some evidence for his being
ill. But feeling a tickle is not evidence for his having a tickle, any more
than striking a blow is evidence for the occurrence of a blow. In ‘feel a
tickle’ and ‘strike a blow’, ‘tickle’ and ‘blow’ are cognate accusatives to the
verbs ‘feel’ and ‘strike’. The verb and its accusative are two expressions
for the same thing, as are the verbs and their accusatives in ‘I dreamt a
dream’ and ‘I asked a question’. But ‘ill’ and ‘capable of climbing the tree’
are not cognate accusatives to the verb ‘to feel.' So they are not in grammar
bound to signify feelings, as ‘tickle’ is in grammar bound to signify a feeling. Another
purely grammatical point shows the same thing. It is indifferent whether I say
‘I feel a tickle’ or ‘I have a tickle’; but ‘I have . . .’ cannot be completed
by ‘. . . ill’, (cf. ‘I have an illness’), ‘. . . capable of climbing the
tree’, (cf. I have a capability to climb that tree’) ‘. . . happy’ (cf. ‘I have
a feeling of happiness’ or ‘I have happiness in my life’) or ‘. . .
discontented’ (cf. ‘I have a feeling of strong discontent towards
behaviourism’). If we try to restore the verbal parallel by bringing in the
appropriate abstract nouns, we find a further incongruity; ‘I feel happiness’(I
feel as though I am experiencing happiness), ‘I feel illness’ (I feel as though
I do have an illness’) or ‘I feel ability to climb the tree’ (I feel that I am
endowed with the capability to climb that tree), if they mean anything, they do
not mean at all what a man means by uttering ‘I feel happy,’ or ‘I feel ill,’
or ‘I feel capable of climbing the tree’. On the other hand, besides these
differences between the different uses of ‘I feel . . .’ there are important
CONVERSATIONAL analogies as well. If a man says that he has a tickle, his
co-conversationalist does not ask for his evidence, or requires him to make
quite sure. Announcing a tickle is not proclaiming the results of an
investigation. A tickle is not something established by careful
witnessing, or something inferred from a clue, nor do we praise for his powers
of observation or reasoning a man who let us know that he feels tickles, tweaks
and flutters. Just the same is true of avowals of moods. If a man makes a
conversational contribution, such as‘I feel bored’, or ‘I feel depressed’, his
co-conversationalist does not usually ask him for his evidence, or request him
to make sure. The co-conversationalist may accuse the man of shamming to him or
to himself, but the co-conversationalist does not accuse him of having been
careless in his observations or rash in his inferences, since a
co-conversationalist would not usually think that his conversational avowal is
a report of an observation or a conclusion. He has not been a good or a
bad detective; he has not been a detective at all. Nothing would surprise us
more than to hear him say ‘I feel depressed’ in the alert and judicious tone of
voice of a detective, a microscopist, or a diagnostician, though this tone of
voice is perfectly congruous with the NON-AVOWAL past-tense ‘I WAS feeling
depressed’ or the NON-AVOWAL third-person report, ‘HE feels depressed’. If the
avowal is to do its conversational job, it must be said in a depressed tone of
voice. The conversational avowal must be blurted out to a sympathizer, not
reported to an investigator. Avowing ‘I feel depressed’ is doing one of the
things, viz. one CONVERSATIONAL thing, that depression is the mood to do. It is
not a piece of scientific premiss-providing, but a piece of ‘conversational
moping.’That is why, if the co-conversationalist is suspicious, he does not ask
‘Fact or fiction?’, ‘True or false?’, ‘Reliable or unreliable?’, but ‘Sincere
or shammed?’ The CONVERSATIONAL avowal of moods requires not acumen, but
openness. It comes from the heart, not from the head. It is not
discovery, but voluntary non-concealment. Of course people have to learn how to
use avowal expressions appropriately and they may not learn these lessons very
well. They learn them from ordinary discussions of the moods of others and from
such more fruitful sources as novels and the theatre. They learn from the same
sources how to cheat both other people and themselves by making a sham
conversational avowal in the proper tone of voice and with the other proper
histrionic accompaniments. If we now raise the question ‘How does a man find
out what mood he is in?’ one can answer that if, as may not be the case, he
finds it out at all, he finds it out very much as we find it out. As we have
seen, he does not groan ‘I feel bored’ because he has found out that he is
bored, any more than the sleepy man yawns because he has found out that he is
sleepy. Rather, somewhat as the sleepy man finds out that he is sleepy by
finding, among other things, that he keeps on yawning, so the bored man finds
out that he is bored, if he does find this out, by finding that among other
things he glumly says to others and to himself ‘I feel bored’ and ‘How bored I
feel’. Such a blurted avowal is not merely one fairly reliable index among
others. It is the first and the best index, since being worded and voluntarily
uttered, it is meant to be heard and it is meant to be understood. It calls for
no sleuth-work.In some respects a conversational avowal of a moods, like ‘I
feel cheerful,’ more closely resemble announcements of sensations like ‘I feel
a tickle’ than they resemble utterances like ‘I feel better’ or ‘I feel capable
of climbing the tree’. Just as it would be absurd to say ‘I feel a tickle but
maybe I haven’t one’, so, in ordinary cases, it would be absurd to say ‘I feel
cheerful but maybe I am not’. But there would be no absurdity in saying ‘I FEEL
better but, to judge by the doctor’s attitude, perhaps I am WORSE’, or ‘I do
FEEL as if I am capable of climbing the tree but maybe I cannot climb it.’This
difference can be brought out in another way. Sometimes it is natural to say ‘I
feel AS IF I could eat a horse’, or ‘I feel AS IF my temperature has returned
to normal’. But, more more immediate conversational avowals, it would seldom if
ever be natural to say ‘I feel AS IF I were in the dumps’, or ‘I feel AS IF I
were bored’, any more than it would be natural to say ‘I feel AS IF I had a
pain’. Not much would be gained by discussing at length why we use ‘feel’ in
these different ways. There are hosts of other ways in which it is also used. I
can say ‘I felt a lump in the mattress’, ‘I felt cold’, ‘I felt queer’, ‘I felt
my jaw-muscles stiffen’, ‘I felt my gorge rise’, ‘I felt my chin with my
thumb’, ‘I felt in vain for the lever’, ‘I felt as if something important was
about to happen’, ‘I felt that there was a flaw somewhere in the argument’, ‘I
felt quite at home’, ‘I felt that he was angry’. A feature common to most
of these uses of ‘feel’ is that the utterer does not want further questions to
be put. They would be either unanswerable questions, or unaskable questions.
That he felt it is enough to settle some debates.That he merely felt it is
enough to show that debates should not even begin. Names of moods, then, are
not the names of feelings. But to be in a particular mood is to be in the mood,
among other things, to feel certain sorts of feelings in certain sorts of
situations. To be in a lazy mood, is, among other things, to tend to have
sensations of lassitude in the limbs when jobs have to be done, to have cosy
feelings of relaxation when the deck-chair is resumed, not to have electricity
feelings when the game begins, and so forth. But we are not thinking primarily
of these feelings when we say that we feel lazy; in fact, we seldom pay much
heed to sensations of these kinds, save when they are abnormally acute. Is
a name of a mood a name of an emotion?
The only tolerable reply is that of course they are, in that some people some
of the time use ‘emotion’. But then we must add that in this usage an emotion
is not something that can be segregated from thinking, daydreaming, voluntarily
doing things, grimacing or feeling pangs and itches. To have the emotion, in this
usage, which we ordinarily refer to as ‘being bored’, is to be in the mood to
think certain sorts of thoughts, and not to think other sorts, to yawn and not
to chuckle, to converse with stilted politeness, and not to talk with
animation, to feel flaccid and not to feel resilient. Boredom is not some
unique distinguishable ingredient, scene or feature of all that its victim is
doing and undergoing. Rather it is the temporary complexion of that totality.
It is not like a gust, a sunbeam, a shower or the temperature; it is like the
morning’s weather. An unstudied conversational utterance may embody an
explicit interest phrase, or a conversational avowal, such as ‘I want it’, ‘I
hope so’, ‘That’s what I intend’, ‘I quite dislike it’, ‘Surely I am depressed’,
‘I do wonder, too’, ‘I guess so’ and ‘I am feeling hungry.’The surface grammar
(if not logical form) makes it tempting to misconstrue all the utterances as a
description. But in its primary employment such a conversational avowal as ‘I
want it’ is not used to convey information.‘I want it’ is used to make a
request or demand. ‘I want it’ is no more meant as a contribution to general
knowledge than ‘please’. For a co-conversationalist to respond with the tag ‘Do
you?’ or worse, as Grice’s tutee, with ‘*how* do you *know* that you want it?’
is glaringly inappropriate. Nor, in their primary employment, are
conversational avowals such as ‘I hate it’ or ‘That’s what I I intend’ used for
the purpose of telling one’s addressee facts about the utterer; or else we should
not be surprised to hear them uttered in the cool, informative tones of voice
in which one says ‘HE hates it’ and ‘That’s what he intends’. We expect a
conversational avowal, on the contrary, to be spoken in a revolted and a
resolute tone of voice respectively. It is an utterances of a man in a revolted
and resolute frame of mind. A conversational avowal is a thing said in
detestation and resolution and not a thing said in order to advance
biographical knowledge about detestations and resolutions. A man who
notices the unstudied utterances of the utterer, who may or may not be himself,
is, if his interest in the utterer has the appropriate direction, especially
well situated to pass comments upon the qualities and frames of mind of its
author.‘avowal’ as a philosophical lexeme may not invite an immediate correlate
in the Graeco-Roman, ultimately Grecian, tradition. ‘Confessio’ springs to
mind, but this is not what Grice is thinking about. He is more concerned with
issues of privileged access and incorrigibility, or corrigibility, rather, as
per the alleged immediacy of a first-person report of the form, “I feel that …”
. Grice does use ‘avowal’ often especially in the early stages, when the
logical scepticism about incorrigibility comes under attack. Just to be
different, Grice is interested in the corrigibility of the avowal. The issue is
of some importance in his account of the act of communication, and how one can
disimplicate what one means. Grice loves to play with his tutee doubting as to
whether he means that p or q. Except at Oxford, the whole thing has a
ridiculous ring to it. I want you to bring me a paper by Friday. You mean the
newspaper? You very well know what I mean. But perhaps you do not. Are you sure
you mean a philosophy paper when you utter, ‘I want you to bring a paper by
Friday’? As Grice notes, in case of self-deception and egcrateia, it may well
be that the utterer does not know what he desires, if not what he intends, if
anything. Freud and Foucault run galore. The topic will interest a collaborator
of Grice’s, Pears, with his concept of ‘motivated irrationality.’ Grice likes
to discuss a category mistake. I may be categorically mistaken but I am
not categorically confused. Now when it comes to avowal-avowal, it is only
natural that if he is interested in Aristotle on ‘hedone,’ Grice would be
interested in Aristotle on ‘lupe.’ This is very philosophical, as Urmson
agrees. Can one ‘fake’ pain? Why would one fake pain? Oddly, this is for Grice
the origin of language. Is pleasure just the absence of pain? Liddell and Soctt
have “λύπη” and render it as pain of body, oἡδον; also, sad plight or
condition, but also pain of mind, grief; “ά; δῆγμα δὲ λύπης οὐδὲν ἐφ᾽ ἧπαρ
προσικνεῖται; τί γὰρ καλὸν ζῆν βίοτον, ὃς λύπας φέρει; ἐρωτικὴ λ.’ λύπας προσβάλλειν;”
“λ. φέρειν τινί; oχαρά.” Oddly, Grice goes back to pain in Princeton, since it
is explored by Smart in his identity thesis. Take pain. Surely, Grice
tells the Princetonians, it sounds harsh, to echo Berkeley, to say that it is
the brain of Smith being in this or that a state which is justified by
insufficient evidence; whereas it surely sounds less harsh that it is the
C-fibres that constitute his ‘pain,’ which he can thereby fake. Grice
distinguishes between a complete unstructured utterance token – “Ouch” – versus
a complete syntactically structured erotetic utterance of the type, “Are you in
pain?”. At the Jowett, Corpus Barnes has read Ogden and says ‘Ouch’ (‘Oh’)
bears an ‘emotional’ or ‘emotive’ communicatum provided there is an intention there
somewhere. Otherwise, no communicatum occurs. But if there is an intention, the
‘Oh’ can always be a fake. Grice distinguishes between a ‘fake’ and a ‘sneak.’
If U intends A to perceive ‘Oh’ as a fake, U means that he is in pain. If there
is a sneaky intention behind the utterance, which U does NOT intend his A to
recognise, there is no communicatum. Grice criticises emotivism as rushing
ahead to analyse a nuance before exploring what sort of a nuance it is. Surely
there is more to the allegedly ‘pseudo-descriptive’ ‘x is good,’ than U meaning
that U emotionally approves of x. In his ‘myth,’ Grice uses pain magisterially
as an excellent example for a privileged-access allegedly incorrigible avowal,
and stage 0 in his creature progression. By uttering ‘Oh!,’ under voluntary
control, Barnes means, iconically, that he is in pain. Pain fall under the
broader keyword: emotion, as anger does. Cf. Aristotle on the emotion in De
An., Rhet., and Eth. Nich. Knowing that at Oxford, if you are a classicist, you
are not a philosopher, Grice never explores the Stoic, say, approach to pain,
or lack thereof (“Which is good, since Walter Pater did it for me!”). Refs.:
“Can I have a pain in my tail?” The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The
Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley.
conversational benevolence: In Grice it’s not benevolence per
se but as a force in a two-force model, with self-love on the other side. The
fact that he later subsumed everything under ONE concept: that of co-operation
(first helpfulness) testifies that he is placing more conceptual strength on
‘benevolence’ than ‘self love.’ But the self-love’ remains in all the caveats
and provisos that Grice keeps guarding his claims with: ‘ceteris paribus,’
‘provided there’s not much effort involved,’ ‘if no unnecessary trouble
arises,’ and so on. It’s never benevolence simpliciter or tout court. When it
comes to co-operation, the self-love remains: the mutual goal of that
co-operation is in the active and the passive voice – You expect me to be
helpful as much as I expect you to be helpful. We are in this together. The
active/passive voice formulation is emphatic in Grice: informing AND BEING
INFORMED; influencing AND BEING INFLUENCED. The self-love goes: I won’t inform
you unless you’ll inform me. I won’t influence you unless you influence me. The
‘influence’ bit does not seem to cooperative. But the ‘inform’ side does. By
‘inform,’ the idea is that the psi-transmission concerns a true belief. “I’ll
be truthful if you will.” This is the sort of thing that Nietzsche found
repugnant and identified with the golden rule was totally immoral. – It was
felt by Russell to be immoral enough that he cared to mention in a letter to
The Times about how abusive Nietzsche can be – yet what a gem “Beyond good and
evil” still is! In the hypocritical milieu that Grice expects his tuttees know
they are engaged in, Grice does not find Nietzsche pointing to a repugnant
fact, but a practical, even jocular way of taking meta-ethics in a light way. There
is nothing other-oriented about benevolence. What Grice needs is conversational
ALTRUISM, or helpfulness – ‘cooperation’ has the advantage, with the ‘co-’, of
avoiding the ‘mutuality’ aspect, which is crucial (“What’s the good of helping
you – I’m not your servant! – if thou art not going to help me!” It may be said
that when Butler uses ‘benevolentia’ he means others. “It is usually understood
that one is benevolent towards oneself, if that makes sense.” Grice writes.
Then there’s Smith promising Jones a job – and the problem that comes with it.
For Grice, if Smith promised a job to Jones, and Jones never gets it – “that’s
Jones’s problem.” So we need to distinguish beneficentia and benevolentia. The
opposite is malevolentia and maleficientia. Usually Grice states his maxims as
PROHIBITIONS: “Do not say what you believe to be false” being the wittiest! So,
he might just as well have appealed to or invoked a principle of absence of
conversational ill-will. Grice uses ‘conversational benevolence’ narrowly, to
refer to the assumption that conversationalists will agree to make a
contribution appropriate to the shared purposes of the exhcnage. It contrasts
with the limiting conversational self-love, which is again taken narrowly to
indicate that conversationalists are assumed to be conversationally
‘benevolent,’ in the interpretation above, provided doing that does not get
them into unnecessary trouble. The type of rationality that Grice sees in
conversational is one that sees conversation as ‘rational co-operation.’ So it
is obvious that he has to invoke some level of benevolence. When tutoring his
rather egoistic tutees he had to be careful, so he hastened to add a principle
of conversational self-love. It was different when lecturing outside a
tutorial! In fact ‘benevolence’ here is best understood as ‘altruism’. So, if
there is a principle of conversational egoism, there is a correlative principle
of conversational altruism. If Grice uses ‘self-love,’ there is nothing about
‘love,’ in ‘benevolence.’ Butler may have used ‘other-love’! Even if of course
we must start with the Grecians! We must not forget that Plato and Aristotle
despised "autophilia", the complacency and self-satisfaction making
it into the opposite of "epimeleia heautou” in Plato’s Alcibiades.
Similarly, to criticize Socratic ethics as a form of egoism in opposition to a
selfless care of others is inappropriate. Neither a self-interested seeker of
wisdom nor a dangerous teacher of self-love, Socrates, as the master of
epimeleia heautou, is the hinge between the care of self and others. One has to
be careful here. A folk-etymological connection between ‘foam’ may not be
needed – when the Romans had to deal with Grecian ‘aphrodite.’ This requires
that we look for another linguistic botany for Grecian ‘self-love’ that Grice
opposes to ‘benevolentia.’ Hesiod derives Aphrodite from “ἀφρός,” ‘sea-foam,’ interpreting
the name as "risen from the foam", but most modern scholars regard
this as a spurious folk etymology. Early modern scholars of classical mythology
attempted to argue that Aphrodite's name was of Griceain or Indo-European
origin, but these efforts have now been mostly abandoned. Aphrodite's name is
generally accepted to be of non-Greek, probably Semitic, origin, but its exact
derivation cannot be determined. Scholars in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, accepting Hesiod's "foam" etymology as genuine,
analyzed the second part of Aphrodite's name as -odítē "wanderer" or -dítē
"bright". Janda, also accepting Hesiod's etymology, has argued in
favor of the latter of these interpretations and claims the story of a birth
from the foam as an Indo-European mytheme. Similarly, an Indo-European compound
abʰor-, very" and dʰei- "to shine" have been proposed, also
referring to Eos. Other have argued that these hypotheses are unlikely since
Aphrodite's attributes are entirely different from those of both Eos and the
Vedic deity Ushas.A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have also been
suggested. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian ‘barīrītu,’
the name of a female demon that appears in Middle Babylonian and Late
Babylonian texts. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing eprϑni
"lord", an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις.This
would make the theonym in origin an honorific, "the lady".Most
scholars reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite
actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru (from Greek Aphrō, clipped
form of Aphrodite). The medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a highly contrived
etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos (ἁβροδίαιτος),
"she who lives delicately", from habrós and díaita. The alteration
from b to ph is explained as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek
"obvious from the Macedonians". It is much easier with the Romans. Lewis and Short have ‘ămor,’ old form “ămŏs,”
“like honos, labos, colos, etc.’ obviously from ‘amare,’ and which they render
as ‘love,’ as in Grice’s “conversational self-love.” Your tutor will reprimand
you if you spend too much linguistic botany on ‘eros.’ “Go straight to
‘philos.’” But no. There are philosophical usages of ‘eros,’ especially when it
comes to the Grecian philosophers Grice is interested in: Aristotle reading
Plato, which becomes Ariskant reading Plathegel. So, Liddell and Scott have
“ἔρως” which of course is from a verb, or two: “ἕραμαι,” “ἐράω,” and which they
render as “love, mostly of the sexual passion, ““θηλυκρατὴς ἔ.,” “ἐρῶσ᾽ ἔρωτ᾽
ἔκδημον,” “ἔ. τινός love for one, S.Tr.433, “παίδων” E. Ion67, and “generally,
love of a thing, desire for it,” ““πατρῴας γῆς” “δεινὸς εὐκλείας ἔ.” “ἔχειν
ἔμφυτον ἔρωτα περί τι” Plato, Lg. 782e ; “πρὸς τοὺς λόγους” (love of law),
“ἔρωτα σχὼν τῆς Ἑλλάδος τύραννος γενέσθαι” Hdt.5.32 ; ἔ. ἔχει με c. inf.,
A.Supp.521 ; “θανόντι κείνῳ συνθανεῖν ἔρως μ᾽ ἔχει” S.Fr.953 ; “αὐτοῖς ἦν ἔρως
θρόνους ἐᾶσθαι” Id.OC367 ; ἔ. ἐμπίπτει μοι c. inf., A.Ag.341, cf. Th.6.24 ; εἰς
ἔρωτά τινος ἀφικέσθαι, ἐλθεῖν, Antiph.212.3,Anaxil.21.5 : pl., loves, amours,
“ἀλλοτρίων” Pi.N.3.30 ; “οὐχ ὅσιοι ἔ.” E.Hipp.765 (lyr.) ; “ἔρωτες ἐμᾶς πόλεως”
Ar.Av.1316 (lyr.), etc. ; of dolphins, “πρὸς παῖδας” Arist.HA631a10 :
generally, desires, S.Ant.617 (lyr.). 2. object of love or desire, “ἀπρόσικτοι
ἔρωτες” Pi.N.11.48, cf. Luc.Tim.14. 3. passionate joy, S.Aj.693 (lyr.); the god
of love, Anacr.65, Parm.13, E.Hipp.525 (lyr.), etc.“Έ. ἀνίκατε μάχαν” S.Ant.781
(lyr.) : in pl., Simon.184.3, etc. III. at Nicaea, a funeral wreath, EM379.54.
IV. name of the κλῆρος Ἀφροδίτης, Cat.Cod.Astr.1.168 ; = third κλῆρος,
Paul.Al.K.3; one of the τόποι, Vett.Val.69.16. And they’ll point to you that
the Romans had ‘amor’ AND ‘cupidus’ (which they meant as a transliteration of
epithumia). If for Kant and Grice it is the intention that matters, ill-will
counts. If Smith does not want Jones have a job, Smith has ill-will towards
Jones. This is all Kant and Grice need to call Smith a bad person. It means it
is the ill-will that causes Joness not having a job. A conceptual elucidation.
Interesting from a historical point of view seeing that Grice had introduced a
principle of conversational benevolence (i.e. conversational goodwill) pretty
early. Malevolentia was over-used by Cicero, translating the Grecian. Grice
judges that if Jones fails to get the job that benevolent Smith promised, Smith
may still be deemed, for Kant, if not Aristotle, to have given him the
job. A similar elucidation was carried by Urmson with his idea of
supererogation (heroism and sainthood). For a hero or saint, someones goodwill
but not be good enough! Which does not mean it is ill, either! Conversational
benevolence -- Self-love Philosophical theology -- Edwards, J., philosopher and
theologian. He was educated at Yale, preached in New York City, and in 1729
assumed a Congregational pastorate in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he
became a leader in the Great Awakening. Because of a dispute with his
parishioners over qualifications for communion, he was forced to leave in 1750.
In 1751, he took charge of congregations in Stockbridge, a frontier town sixty
miles to the west. He was elected third president of Princeton in 1757 but died
shortly after inauguration. Edwards deeply influenced Congregational and
Presbyterian theology in America for over a century, but had little impact on
philosophy. Interest in him revived in the middle of the twentieth century,
first among literary scholars and theologians and later among philosophers.
While most of Edwards’s published work defends the Puritan version of Calvinist
orthodoxy, his notebooks reveal an interest in philosophical problems for their
own sake. Although he was indebted to Continental rationalists like
Malebranche, to the Cambridge Platonists, and especially to Locke, his own
contributions are sophisticated and original. The doctrine of God’s absolute
sovereignty is explicated by occasionalism, a subjective idealism similar to
Berkeley’s, and phenomenalism. According to Edwards, what are “vulgarly” called
causal relations are mere constant conjunctions. True causes necessitate their
effects. Since God’s will alone meets this condition, God is the only true
cause. He is also the only true substance. Physical objects are collections of
ideas of color, shape, and other “corporeal” qualities. Finite minds are series
of “thoughts” or “perceptions.” Any substance underlying perceptions, thoughts,
and “corporeal ideas” must be something that “subsists by itself, stands
underneath, and keeps up” physical and mental qualities. As the only thing that
does so, God is the only real substance. As the only true cause and the only
real substance, God is “in effect being in general.” God creates to communicate
his glory. Since God’s internal glory is constituted by his infinite knowledge
of, love of, and delight in himself as the highest good, his “communication ad
extra” consists in the knowledge of, love of, and joy in himself which he
bestows upon creatures. The essence of God’s internal and external glory is
“holiness” or “true benevolence,” a disinterested love of being in general
i.e., of God and the beings dependent on him. Holiness constitutes “true
beauty,” a divine splendor or radiance of which “secondary” ordinary beauty is
an imperfect image. God is thus supremely beautiful and the world is suffused
with his loveliness. Vindications of Calvinist conceptions of sin and grace are
found in Freedom of the Will 1754 and Original Sin 1758. The former includes
sophisticated defenses of theological determinism and compatibilism. The latter
contains arguments for occasionalism and interesting discussions of identity.
Edwards thinks that natural laws determine kinds or species, and kinds or
species determine criteria of identity. Since the laws of nature depend on
God’s “arbitrary” decision, God establishes criteria of identity. He can thus,
e.g., constitute Adam and his posterity as “one thing.” Edwards’s religious
epistemology is developed in A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections 1746
and On the Nature of True Virtue 1765. The conversion experience involves the
acquisition of a “new sense of the heart.” Its core is the mind’s apprehension
of a “new simple idea,” the idea of “true beauty.” This idea is needed to
properly understand theological truths. True Virtue also provides the fullest
account of Edwards’s ethics a moral
sense theory that identifies virtue with benevolence. Although indebted to
contemporaries like Hutcheson, Edwards criticizes their attempts to construct
ethics on secular foundations. True benevolence embraces being in general.
Since God is, in effect, being in general, its essence is the love of God. A
love restricted to family, nation, humanity, or other “private systems” is a
form of self-love. Refs.: The source is Grice’s seminar
in the first set on ‘Logic and conversation.’ The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
conversational category: used jocularly by Grice. But can it be used
non-jocularly? How can the concept of ‘category,’ literally, apply to what
Grice says it applies, so that we have, assuming Kant is using ‘quantity,’
‘quality,’ ‘relation’ and ‘mode,’ as SUPRA-categories (functions, strictly) for
his twelve categories? Let’s revise, the quantity applies to the quantification
(in Frege’s terms) or what Boethius applied to Aristotle’s posotes – and there
are three categories involved, but the three deal with the ‘quantum: ‘every,’
‘some,’ and ‘one.’ ‘some’ Russell would call an indefinite. Strictly, if Grice
wants to have a category of conversational quantity – it should relate to the
‘form’ of the ‘conversational move.’ “Every nice girl loves a sailor” would be
the one with most ‘quantity.’ Grice sees a problem there, and would have that
rather translated as ‘The altogether nice girl loves the one-at-a-time sailor.’
But that would be the most conversational move displaying ‘most quantity.’ (It
can be argued it isn’t). When it comes to the category of conversational quality,
the three categories by Kant under the ‘function’ of qualitas involves the well
known trio, the affirmative, the negative, and the infinite. In terms of the
‘quality’ of a conversational move, it may be argued that a move in negative
form (as in Grice, “I’m not hearing any noise,” “That pillar box is not blue”
seem to provide ‘less’ quality than the affirmative counterparts. But as in
quantity, it is not sure Kant has some ordering in mind. It seems he does. It
seems he ascribes more value to the first category in each of the four
functions. When it comes to the category of conversational relation, the
connection with Kant could be done. Since this involves the categoric, the
hypothetic, and the disjunctive. So here we may think that a conversational move
will be either a categoric response – A: Mrs Smith is a wind bag. B: The
weather has been delightful. Or a hypothetical. A: Mrs Smith is a wind bag. B:
If that’s what you think. Or a dijunctive: Mrs. Smith is a wind bag. B: Or she
is not. When it comes, lastly, to the category of conversational mode, we have
just three strict categories under this ‘function’ in Kant, which relate to the
strength of the copula: ‘must be,’ must not be’ and ‘may.’ A conversational
move that states a necessity would be the expected move. “You must do it.”
Impossibility involves negation, so it is more problematic. And ‘may be’ is an
open conversational move. So there IS a way to justify the use of
‘conversational category’ to apply to the four functions that Kant decides the
Aristotelian categories may subsumed into. He knows that Kant has TWELVE
categories, but he keeps lecturing the Harvardites about Kant having FOUR
categories. On top, he finds ‘modus’ boring, and, turned a manierist, changes
the idiom. This is what Austin called a ‘philosophical hack’ searching for some
para-philosophy! One has to be careful here. Grice does speak of this or that
‘conversational category.’ Seeing that he is ‘echoing,’ as he puts it,
Ariskant, we migt just as well have an entry for each of the four. These would
be the category of conversational quantity, the category of conversational
quality, the category of conversational relation, and the category of
conversational modality. Note that in this rephrasing Grice applies
‘conversational’ directly to the category. As Boethius pointed out (and Grice
loved to read Minio-Paullelo’s edition of Boethus’s commentary on the
Categories), the motivation by Aristotle to posit this or that category was
expository. A mind cannot know a multitude of things, so we have to ‘reduce’
things. It is important to note that while ‘quantitas,’ ‘qualitas’ ‘relatio’
and ‘modus’ are used by Kant, he actually augments the number of categories.
These four would be supra-categories. The sub-categories, or categories themselves
turn out to be twelve. Kant proposed 12 categories: unity, plurality, and
totality for concept of quantity; reality, negation, and limitation, for the
concept of quality; inherence and subsistence, cause and effect, and community
for the concept of relation; and possibility-impossibility,
existence-nonexistence, and necessity and contingency. Kategorien sind
nach Kant apriorisch und unmittelbar gegeben. Sie sind Werkzeuge des Urteilens
und Werkzeuge des Denkens. Als solche dienen sie nur der Anwendung und haben
keine Existenz. Sie bestehen somit nur im menschlichen Verstand. Sie sind nicht
an Erfahrung gebunden.[5] Durch ihre Unmittelbarkeit sind sie auch nicht an
Zeichen gebunden.[6] Kants erkenntnistheoretisches Ziel ist es, über
die Bedingungen der Geltungskraft von Urteilen Auskunft zu geben. Ohne diese
Auskunft können zwar vielerlei Urteile gefällt werden, sie müssen dann
allerdings als „systematische Doktrin(en)“ bezeichnet werden.[7] Kant kritisiert damit das rein analytische Denken
der Wissenschaft als falsch und stellt ihm die Notwendigkeit des
synthetisierenden Denkens gegenüber.[8] Kant begründet die Geltungskraft mit dem Transzendentalen Subjekt.[9] Das Transzendentalsubjekt ist dabei ein reiner
Reflexionsbegriff, welcher das synthetisierende Dritte darstellt (wie in
späteren Philosophien Geist (Hegel), Wille, Macht, Sprache und Wert (Marx)),
das nicht durch die Sinne wahrnehmbar ist. Kant sucht hier die Antwort auf die
Frage, wie der Mensch als vernunftbegabtes Wesen konstituiert werden kann,
nicht in der Analyse, sondern in einer Synthesis.[10]Bei Immanuel Kant, der somit als bedeutender Erneuerer der bis dahin
„vorkritischen“ Kategorienlehre gilt, finden sich zwölf „Kategorien der reinen
Vernunft“. Für Kant sind diese Kategorien Verstandesbegriffe, nicht aber Ausdruck des tatsächlichen Seins
der Dinge an sich. Damit wandelt sich die ontologische Sichtweise der Tradition in eine erkenntnistheoretische Betrachtung, weshalb Kants „kritische“
Philosophie (seit der Kritik der
reinen Vernunft) oft
auch als „Kopernikanische
Wende in der
Philosophie“ bezeichnet wird.Quantität, Qualität, Relation und Modalität sind die vier grundlegenden Urteilsfunktionen des
Verstandes, nach denen die Kategorien gebildet werden. Demnach sind z. B.
der Urteilsfunktion „Quantität“ die Kategorien bzw. Urteile „Einheit“,
„Vielheit“ und „Allheit“ untergeordnet, und der Urteilsfunktion „Relation“ die
Urteile der „Ursache“ und der „Wirkung“.Siehe auch: Kritik der
reinen Vernunft und Transzendentale
AnalytikBereits
bei Friedrich
Adolf Trendelenburg findet
man den Hinweis auf die verbreitete Kritik, dass Kant die den Kategorien
zugrunde liegenden Urteilsformen nicht systematisch hergeleitet und damit als
notwendig begründet hat. Einer der Kritikpunkte ist dabei, dass die Kategorien
sich teilweise auf Anschauungen (Einzelheit, Realität, Dasein), teilweise auf
Abstraktionen wie Zusammenfassen, Begrenzen oder Begründen (Vielheit, Allheit,
Negation, Limitation, Möglichkeit, Notwendigkeit) beziehen.
conversational
compact: conversational pact in Grice’s conversational
quasi-contractualism, contractarianism, a family of moral and political
theories that make use of the idea of a social contract. Traditionally English
philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke used the social contract idea to justify
certain conceptions of the state. In the twentieth century philosophers such as
G. R. Grice, H. P. Grice, and John Rawls have used the social contract notion (‘quasi-contractualism’
in Grice’s sense) to define and defend moral conceptions both conceptions of
political justice and individual morality, often but not always doing so in
addition to developing social contract theories of the state. The term
‘contractarian’ most often applies to this second type of theory. There are two
kinds of moral argument that the contract image has spawned, the first rooted
in Hobbes and the second rooted in Kant. Hobbesians start by insisting that
what is valuable is what a person desires or prefers, not what he ought to
desire or prefer for no such prescriptively powerful object exists; and
rational action is action that achieves or maximizes the satisfaction of
desires or preferences. They go on to insist that moral action is rational for
a person to perform if and only if such action advances the satisfaction of his
desires or preferences. And they argue that because moral action leads to
peaceful and harmonious living conducive to the satisfaction of almost
everyone’s desires or preferences, moral actions are rational for almost
everyone and thus “mutually agreeable.” But Hobbesians believe that, to ensure
that no cooperative person becomes the prey of immoral aggressors, moral
actions must be the conventional norms in a community, so that each person can
expect that if she behaves cooperatively, others will do so too. These
conventions constitute the institution of morality in a society. So the
Hobbesian moral theory is committed to the idea that morality is a human-made
institution, which is justified only to the extent that it effectively furthers
human interests. Hobbesians explain the existence of morality in society by
appealing to the convention-creating activities of human beings, while arguing
that the justification of morality in any human society depends upon how well
its moral conventions serve individuals’ desires or preferences. By considering
“what we could agree to” if we reappraised and redid the cooperative
conventions in our society, we can determine the extent to which our present
conventions are “mutually agreeable” and so rational for us to accept and act
on. Thus, Hobbesians invoke both actual agreements or rather, conventions and
hypothetical agreements which involve considering what conventions would be
“mutually agreeable” at different points in their theory; the former are what
they believe our moral life consists in; the latter are what they believe our
moral life should consist in i.e., what
our actual moral life should model. So the notion of the contract does not do
justificational work by itself in the Hobbesian moral theory: this term is used
only metaphorically. What we “could agree to” has moral force for the
Hobbesians not because make-believe promises in hypothetical worlds have any
binding force but because this sort of agreement is a device that merely
reveals how the agreed-upon outcome is rational for all of us. In particular,
thinking about “what we could all agree to” allows us to construct a deduction
of practical reason to determine what policies are mutually advantageous. The
second kind of contractarian theory is derived from the moral theorizing of
Kant. In his later writings Kant proposed that the “idea” of the “Original
Contract” could be used to determine what policies for a society would be just.
When Kant asks “What could people agree to?,” he is not trying to justify
actions or policies by invoking, in any literal sense, the consent of the
people. Only the consent of real people can be legitimating, and Kant talks
about hypothetical agreements made by hypothetical people. But he does believe
these make-believe agreements have moral force for us because the process by
which these people reach agreement is morally revealing. Kant’s contracting
process has been further developed by subsequent philosophers, such as Rawls,
who concentrates on defining the hypothetical people who are supposed to make
this agreement so that their reasoning will not be tarnished by immorality,
injustice, or prejudice, thus ensuring that the outcome of their joint
deliberations will be morally sound. Those contractarians who disagree with
Rawls define the contracting parties in different ways, thereby getting
different results. The Kantians’ social contract is therefore a device used in
their theorizing to reveal what is just or what is moral. So like Hobbesians,
their contract talk is really just a way of reasoning that allows us to work
out conceptual answers to moral problems. But whereas the Hobbesians’ use of
contract language expresses the fact that, on their view, morality is a human invention
which if it is well invented ought to be mutually advantageous, the Kantians’
use of the contract language is meant to show that moral principles and
conceptions are provable theorems derived from a morally revealing and
authoritative reasoning process or “moral proof procedure” that makes use of
the social contract idea. Both kinds of contractarian theory are
individualistic, in the sense that they assume that moral and political
policies must be justified with respect to, and answer the needs of,
individuals. Accordingly, these theories have been criticized by communitarian
philosophers, who argue that moral and political policies can and should be
decided on the basis of what is best for a community. They are also attacked by
utilitarian theorists, whose criterion of morality is the maximization of the
utility of the community, and not the mutual satisfaction of the needs or
preferences of individuals. Contractarians respond that whereas utilitarianism
fails to take seriously the distinction between persons, contractarian theories
make moral and political policies answerable to the legitimate interests and
needs of individuals, which, contra the communitarians, they take to be the
starting point of moral theorizing.
conversational co-öperation: Grice is perfectly right that ‘helpfulness’ does not
‘equate’ cooperation. His earlier principle of conversational helpfulness
becomes the principle of conversational co-operation.Tthere is a distinction
between mutual help and cooperation. First, the Romans never knew. Their
‘servants’ were ‘help’ – and this remains in the British usage of ‘civil
servant,’ one who helps. Some philosophical tutees by Hare were often reminded,
in the midst of their presenting their essays, “Excuse me for interrupting,
Smith, but have you considered a career in the civil service?” Then some Romans
found Christianism fashionable, and they were set to translate the Bible. So
when this Hebrew concept appeared, they turned it into ad-judicatum, which was
translated by Wycliff as ‘help.’ Now ‘operatio’ is quite a different animal.
It’s the ‘opus’ of the Romans, who also had ‘labor.’ Surely to ‘co-laborate’ is
to ‘co-operate.’ There is an idea that ‘operate,’ can be more otiose, in the
view of Rogers Albritton. “He is operating the violin,” was his favourite
utterance. “Possibly his opus 5.” The fact that English needs a hyphen and an
umlaut does not make it very ‘ordinary’ in Austin’s description. Grice is more
interested in the conceptualization of this, notably as it relates to rationality.
Can cooperation NOT be rational? For most libertarians, cooperation IS
“irrational,” rather. But Grice points is subtler. He is concerned with an
emissor communicating that p. The least thing he deserves is a rational
recipient. “Otherwise I might just as well scream to the walls!” Used by Grice
WOW:368 – previously, ‘rational cooperation’ – what cooperation is not
rational? Grice says that if Smith promised Jones a job; Jones doesn’t get it.
Smith must be DEEMED to have given the job to Jones. It’s the intention, as
Kant shows, the pure motive, that matters. Ditto for communication. If
Blackburn draws a skull, he communicates that there is danger. If his addressee
fails to recognise the emissor’s intention the emissor will still be deemed to
have communicated that there is danger. So communication does NOT require
co-operation. His analysis of “emissor communicates that p” is not one of
“emissor successfully communicates that p,” because “communicates” reduces to
“intends” not to ‘fulfilled intention.’ Cooperation enters when we go beyond
ONE act of communication. To communicate is to give information and to
influence another, and it is also to receive information and to be influenced
by another. When these communicative objectives are made explicit, helpfulness
or cooperation becomes essential. He uses ‘converational cooperation” and
“supreme principle of conversational cooperation” (369). He uses ‘supreme
conversational principle” of “cooperativeness” (369), to avoid seeing the
conversational imperatives as an unorganized heap of conversational
obligations. Another variant is Grice’s use of “principle of conversational
co-operation.” He also uses “principle of conversational rational
co-operation.” Note that irrational or non-rational co-operation is not an
oxymoron. Another expression is conversational cooperative rationality. So
Grice was amused that you can just as well refer to ‘cooperative rationality”
or “rational cooperation,” “a category shift if ever there was one.”
conversational explicitum: To be explicit is bad manners at Oxford if not in Paris or
MIT. The thing is to imply! Englishmen are best at implying – their love for
understatement is unequalled in the world. Grice needs the explicatio, or
explicit. Because the mistake the philosopher makes is at the level of the
implicatio, as Nowell-Smith, and C. K. Grant had noted. It is not OBVIOUSLY at
the explicit level. Grice was never interested in the explicit level, and takes
a very cavalier attitude to it. “This brief indication of my use of say leaves
it open whether a man who says (today) Harold Wilson is a great man and another
who says (also today) The British Prime Minister is a great man would, if each
knew that the two singular terms had the same reference, have said the same
thing. But whatever decision is made about this question, the apparatus that I
am about to provide will be capable of accounting for any implicatures that
might depend on the presence of one rather than another of these singular terms
in the sentence uttered. Such implicatures would merely be related to different
maxims.”Rephrase: “A brief indication of my use of ‘the explicit’ leaves it
open whether a man who states (today), ‘Harold Wilson is a great man’ thereby
stating that Wilson is a great man, and another who states (also today),‘The
British Prime Minister is a great man,’ viz. that the Prime Minister is a great
mand, would, if each singular term, ‘the Prime Minister’ and ‘Wilson’ has the
same denotatum (co-relata) have put forward in an explicit fashion the same
propositional complex, and have stated the same thing. On the face of it, it
would seem they have not. But cf. ‘Wilson will be the prime minister’ versus
‘Wilson shall be the prime minister.’ Again, a subtler question arises as to
whether the first emissor who has stated that Wilson will be the next prime
minster and the other one who has stated that Wilson *shall* be the next prime
minster, have both but forward the same proposition. If the futurm indicatum is
ENTAILED by the futurum intentionale, the question is easy to settle. Whatever
methodological decision or stipulation I end up making about the ‘explicitum,’ the
apparatus that I rely on is capable of accounting for any implicatum that might
depend on the presence of this or that singular term in the utterance. Such an
implicatum would merely be related to a different conversational maxims. Urmson
has elaborated on this, “Mrs. Smith’s husband just passed by.” “You mean the
postman! Why did you use such contrived ‘signular term’?” If the emissor draws
a skull what he explicitly conveys is that this is a skull. This is the
EPLICITUM. If he communicates that there is danger, that’s via some further
reasoning. That associates a skull with death. Grice’s example is Grice
displaying his bandaged leg. Strictly, he communicates that he has a bandaged
leg. Second, that his leg is bandaged (the bandage may be fake). And third,
that he cannot play cricket. It all started in Oxford when they started to use
‘imply’ in a sense other than the ‘logical’ one. This got Grice immersed in a
deep exploration of types of ‘implication.’ There is the implicatum, and the
implicitum, both from ‘implico.’ As correlative there is the explicatio, which
yields both the explicatum and the explicitum. Grice has under the desideratum
of conversational clarity that a conversationalist is assumed to make the point
of his conversational contribution ‘explicit.’ So in his polemic with G. A.
Paul, Grice knows that the ‘doubt-or-denial’ condition will be at the level NOT
of the explicitum or explicatum. Surely an implicatum can be CANCELLED
explicitly. Grice uses ‘contextual’ or ‘explicit,’ here but grants that the
‘contextual’ may be subsumed under the ‘explicit.’ It is when the sub-perceptual utterance is
copulated with the formulation of the explicatum of the implicatum that Grice
shows G. A. Paul that the statement is still ‘true,’ and which Grice sees as a
reivindication of the causal theory of perception. In the twenty or so examples
of philosophical mistakes, both in “Causal” and “Prolegomena,” all the mistakes
can be rendered back to the ‘explicatum’ versus ‘implicatum’ distinction.
Unfortunately, each requires a philosophical background to draw all the
‘implications,’ and Grice has been read by people without a philosophical background
who go on to criticise him for ignoring things where he never had focused his
attention on. His priority is to deal with these philosophical mistakes. He
also expects the philosopher to come up with a general methodological
statement. Grice distinguishes between the conversational explicitum and the
conversational explicatum. Grice plays with ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’ at
various places. He often uses ‘explicit’and ‘implicit’ adverbially: the utterer
explicitly conveys that p versus the utterer implicitly conveys that p (hints
that p, suggests that p, indicates that p, implicates that p, implies that p).
Grice regards that both dimensions form part of the total act of signification,
accepting as a neutral variant, that the utterer has signified that p.
conversational game: In a conversational game, you don’t say “The pillar box
seems red” if you know it IS red. So, philosophers at Oxford (like Austin,
Strawson, Hare, Hampshire, and Hart) are all victims of ignoring the rules of
the game, and just not understanding that a game is being played. the expression is used by Grice
systematically. He speaks of players making the conversational move in the
conversational game following the conversational rule, v. rational choice
conversational
haggle -- bargaining theory, the branch of game theory that
treats agreements, e.g., wage agreements between labor and management. In the
simplest bargaining problems there are two bargainers. They can jointly realize
various outcomes, including the outcome that occurs if they fail to reach an
agreement, i.e. if they fail to help each other or co-operate. Each bargainer
assigns a certain amount of utility to each outcome. The question is, what
outcome will they realise if each conversationalist is rational? Methods of
solving bargaining problems are controversial. The best-known proposals are Grice’s
and Nash’s and Kalai and Smorodinsky’s. Grice proposes that if you want to get
a true answer to your question, you should give a true answer to you
co-conversationalist’s question (“ceteris paribus”). Nash proposes maximizing
the product of utility gains with respect to the disagreement point. Kalai and
Smorodinsky propose maximsiing utility gains with respect to the disagreement
point, subject to the constraint that the ratio of utility gains equals the
ratio of greatest possible gains. These three methods of selecting an outcome
have been axiomatically characterized. For each method, there are certain
axioms of outcome selection such that that method alone satisfies the axioms. The
axioms incorporate principles of rationality from cooperative game theory. They
focus on features of outcomes rather than bargaining strategies. For example,
one axiom requires that the outcome selected be Pareto-optimal, i.e., be an
outcome such that no alternative is better for one of the bargainers and not
worse for the other. A bargaining problem may become more complicated in
several ways. First, there may be more than two bargainers (“Suppose Austin
joins in.”). If unanimity is not required for beneficial agreements, splinter
groups or co-alitions may form. Second, the protocol for offers, counte-roffers
(“Where does C live?” “Why do you want to know?”) etc., may be relevant. Then
principles of *non-cooperative* but competitive game theory concerning war
strategies (“l’art de la guerre”) are needed to justify this or that solution.
Third, the context of a bargaining problem may be relevant. For instance,
opportunities for side payments, differences in bargaining power, and
interpersonal comparisons of utility may influence the solution. Fourth,
simplifying assumptions, such as the assumption that bargainers have complete
information about their bargaining situation, may be discarded. Bargaining
theory is part of the philosophical study of rationality. It is also important
in ethics as a foundation for contractarian theories of morality and for
certain theories of distributive justice.
conversational helpfulness. It’s not clear if ‘helpfulness’ has a Graeco-Roman
counterpart! The Grecians and the Romans could be VERY individualistic! – adiuvare,
(adiuare, old for adiūverare), iūtus, āre,” which Lewis and Short render as “to
help, assist, aid, support, further, sustain. “fortīs fortuna adiuvat, T.:
maerorem orationis meae lacrimis suis: suā sponte eos, N.: pennis adiutus
amoris, O.: in his causis: alqm ad percipiendam virtutem: si quid te adiuero,
poet ap. C.: ut alqd consequamur, adiuvisti: multum eorum opinionem adiuvabat,
quod, etc., Cs.—With ellips. of obj, to be of assistance, help: ad verum
probandum: non multum, Cs.: quam ad rem humilitas adiuvat, is convenient,
Cs.—Supin. acc.: Nectanebin adiutum profectus, N.—P. pass.: adiutus a
Demosthene, N.—Fig.: clamore militem, cheer, L.: adiuvat hoc quoque, this too
is useful, H.: curā adiuvat illam (formam), sets off his beauty, O. Grice is right that ‘cooperation’ does NOT equate
‘helpfulness’ and he appropriately changes
his earlier principle of conversational helpfulness to a principle of
conversational co-operation. Was there a Graeco-Roman equivalent for
Anglo-Saxon ‘help’? helpmeet (n.) a ghost word from the 1611 translation of the
Bible, where it originally was a two-word noun-adjective phrase translating
Latin adjutorium simile sibi [Genesis ii.18] as "an help meet for
him," and meaning literally "a helper like himself." See help
(n.) + meet (adj.). By 1670s it was hyphenated help-meet and mistaken as a
modified noun. Compare helpmate. The original Hebrew is 'ezer keneghdo. Related
entries & more aid (v.) "to
assist, help," c. 1400, from Old French aidier "help, assist"
(Modern French aider), from Latin adiutare, frequentative of adiuvare (past
participle adiutus) "to give help to," from ad "to" (see
ad-) + iuvare "to help, assist, give strength, support, sustain,"
which is from a PIE source perhaps related to the root of iuvenis "young
person" (see young (adj.)). Related: Aided; aiding. Related entries &
more succor (n.) c. 1200, socour,
earlier socours "aid, help," from Anglo-French succors "help,
aid," Old French socors, sucurres "aid, help, assistance"
(Modern French secours), from Medieval Latin succursus "help,
assistance," from past participle of Latin succurrere "run to help,
hasten to the aid of," from assimilated form of sub "up to" (see
sub-) + currere "to run" (from PIE root *kers- "to run").
Final -s mistaken in English as a plural inflection and dropped late 13c.
Meaning "one who aids or helps" is from c. 1300. There is a fashion
in which to help is to cooperate, but co-operate, strictly, requires operation
by A and operation by B. We do use cooperate loosely. “She is very
cooperative.” “Help” seems less formal. One can help without ever engaging or
honouring the other’s goal. I can help you buy a house, say. So the principle
of conversational cooperation is stricter and narrower than the principle of
conversational helpfulness. Cooperation involves reciprocity and mutuality in a
way that helpfulness does not. That’s why Grice needs to emphasise that there
is an expectation of MUTUAL helpfulness. One is expected to be helpful, and one
expects the other to be helpful. Grice was doubtful about the implicature of
‘co-operative,’ – after all, who at Oxford wants a ‘co-operative.’ It sounds
anti-Oxonian. So Grice elaborates on ‘helping others’ and ‘assuming others will
help you’ in the event that we ‘are doing something together.’ Does this equate
cooperation, he wonders. Just in case, he uses ‘helpfulness’ as a variant.
There are other concepts he plays with, notably ‘altruism,’ and ‘benevolence,’
or other-love.’Helpfulness is Grice’s favourite virtue. Grice is clear that
reciprocity is essential here. One exhibits helpfulness and expects helpfulness
from his conversational partner. He dedicates a set of seven lectures to it,
entitled as follows. Lecture 1, Prolegomena; Lecture 2: Logic and Conversation;
Lecture 3: Further notes on logic and conversation; Lecture 4: Indicative
conditionals; Lecture 5: Us meaning and intentions; Lecture 6: Us meaning,
sentence-meaning, and word-meaning; and Lecture 7: Some models for implicature.
I hope they dont expect me to lecture on James! Grice admired James, but
not vice versa. Grice entitled the set as being Logic and Conversation.
That is the title, also, of the second lecture. Grice keeps those titles seeing
that it was way the whole set of lectures were frequently cited, and that the
second lecture had been published under that title in Davidson and
Harman, The Logic of Grammar. The content of each lecture is
indicated below. In the first, Grice manages to quote from
Witters. In the last, he didnt! The original set consisted of
seven lectures. To wit: Prolegomena, Logic and conversation, Further notes on
logic and conversation, Indicative Conditionals, Us meaning and intentions, Us
meaning, sentence-meaning, and word meaning, and Some models for implicature.
They were pretty successful at Oxford. While the notion of an implicatum had
been introduced by Grice at Oxford, even in connection with a principle of
conversational helpfulness, he takes the occasion now to explore the type of
rationality involved. Observation of the principle of conversational
helpfulness is rational (reasonable) along the following lines: anyone who
cares about the two central goals to conversation (give/receive information,
influence/be influened) is expected to have an interest in participating in a
conversation that is only going to be profitable given that it is conducted
along the lines set by the principle of conversational helpfulness. In
Prolegomena he lists Austin, Strawson, Hare, Hart, and himself, as victims of a
disregard for the implicatum. In the third lecture he introduces his razor,
Senses are not to be muliplied beyond necessity. In Indicative conditionals he
tackles Strawson on if as not representing the horse-shoe of Whitehead and Russell.
The next two lectures on the meaning by the utterer and intentions, and meaning
by the utterer, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning refine his earlier, more
austere, account of this particularly Peirceian phenomenon. He concludes the
lectures with an exploration on the relevance of the implicatum to
philosophical psychology. Grice was well aware that many philosophers had
become enamoured with the s. and would love to give it a continuous perusal.
The set is indeed grandiose. It starts with a Prolegomena to set the scene: He
notably quotes himself in it, which helps, but also Strawson, which sort of
justifies the general title. In the second lecture, Logic and Conversation, he
expands on the principle of conversational helpfulness and the
explicitum/implicatum distinction – all very rationalist! The third lecture is
otiose in that he makes fun of Ockham: Senses are not to be multiplied beyond
necessity. The fourth lecture, on Indicative conditionals, is indeed on MOST of
the formal devices he had mentioned on Lecture II, notably the functors (rather
than the quantifiers and the iota operator, with which he deals in
Presupposition and conversational implicature, since, as he notes, they refer
to reference). This lecture is the centrepiece of the set. In the fifth
lecture, he plays with mean, and discovers that it is attached to the
implicatum or the implicitum. In the sixth lecture, he becomes a nominalist, to
use Bennetts phrase, as he deals with dog and shaggy in terms of this or that
resultant procedure. Dont ask me what they are! Finally, in “Some models for
implicature,” he attacks the charge of circularity, and refers to
nineteenth-century explorations on the idea of thought without language alla
Wundt. I dont think a set of James lectures had even been so comprehensive!
Conversational helpfulness. This is Grice at his methodological best. He was
aware that the type of philosophying he was about to criticise wass a bit
dated, but whats wrong with being old-fashioned? While this may be seen as a
development of his views on implicature at that seminal Oxford seminar, it may
also be seen as Grice popularising the views for a New-World, non-Oxonian
audience. A discussion of Oxonian philosophers of the play group of Grice,
notably Austin, Hare, Hart, and Strawson. He adds himself for good measure
(“Causal theory”). Philosophers, even at Oxford, have to be careful with the
attention that is due to general principles of discourse. Grice quotes
philosophers of an earlier generation, such as Ryle, and some interpreters or
practitioners of Oxonian analysis, such as Benjamin and Searle. He even manages
to quote from Witterss Philosophical investigations, on seeing a banana as a
banana. There are further items in the Grice collection that address Austins
manoeuvre, Austin on ifs and cans, Ifs and cans, : conditional, power. Two
of Grices favourites. He opposed Strawsons view on if. Grice thought that if
was the horseshoe of Whitehead and Russell, provided we add an implicatum to an
entailment. The can is merely dispositional, if not alla Ryle, alla Grice!
Ifs and cans, intention, disposition. Austin had brought the topic to the
fore as an exploration of free will. Pears had noted that conversational
implicature may account for the conditional perfection (if yields iff). Cf.
Ayers on Austin on if and can. Recall that for Grice the most idiomatic
way to express a disposition is with the Subjectsive mode, the if, and the can
‒ The ice can break. Cf. the mistake: It is not the case that what you must do,
you can do. The can-may distinction is one Grice played with too. As with will
and shall, the attachment of one mode to one of the lexemes is pretty arbitrary
and not etymologically justified ‒ pace Fowler on it being a privilege of this
or that Southern Englishman as Fowler is. If he calls it Prolegomena, he is
being jocular. Philosophers Mistakes would have been too provocative. Benjamin,
or rather Broad, erred, and so did Ryle, and Ludwig Witters, and my friends,
Austin (the mater that wobbled), and in order of seniority, Hart (I heard him
defend this about carefully – stopping at every door in case a dog comes out at
breakneck speed), Hare (To say good is to approve), and Strawson (“Logical
theory”: To utter if p, q is to implicate some inferrability, To say true! is
to endorse – Analysis). If he ends with Searle, he is being jocular. He quotes
Searle from an essay in British philosophy in Lecture I, and from an essay in
Philosophy in America in Lecture V. He loved Searle, and expands on the Texas
oilmens club example! We may think of Grice as a linguistic botanizer or a
meta-linguistic botanizer: his hobby was to collect philosophers mistakes, and
he catalogued them. In Causal theory he produces his first list of seven. The
pillar box seems red to me. One cannot see a dagger as a dagger. Moore didnt
know that the objects before him were his own hands. What is actual is not also
possible. For someone to be called responsible, his action should be
condemnable. A cause must be given only of something abnormal or unusual (cf.
ætiology). If you know it, you dont believe it. In the Prolegomena, the
taxonomy is more complicated. Examples A (the use of an expression, by Austin, Benjamin,
Grice, Hart, Ryle, Wittgenstein), Examples B (Strawson on and, or, and
especially if), and Examples C (Strawson on true and Hare on good – the
performative theories). But even if his taxonomy is more complicated, he makes
it more SO by giving other examples as he goes on to discuss how to assess the
philosophical mistake. Cf. his elaboration on trying, I saw Mrs. Smith cashing
a cheque, Trying to cash a cheque, you mean. Or cf. his remarks on remember,
and There is an analogy here with a case by Wittgenstein. In summary, he wants
to say. Its the philosopher who makes his big mistake. He has detected, as
Grice has it, some conversational nuance. Now he wants to exploit it. But
before rushing ahead to exploit the conversational nuance he has detected, or
identified, or collected in his exercise of linguistic botanising, the
philosopher should let us know with clarity what type of a nuance it is. For
Grice wants to know that the nuance depends on a general principle (of
goal-directed behaviour in general, and most likely rational) governing
discourse – that participants in a conversation should be aware of, and not on
some minutiæ that has been identified by the philosopher making the mistake,
unsystematically, and merely descriptively, and taxonomically, but without ONE
drop of explanatory adequacy. The fact that he directs this to his junior
Strawson is the sad thing. The rest are all Grices seniors! The point is of
philosophical interest, rather than other. And he keeps citing philosophers,
Tarski or Ramsey, in the third James leture, to elaborate the point about true
in Prolegomena. He never seems interested in anything but an item being of
philosophical interest, even if that means HIS and MINE! On top, he is being
Oxonian: Only at Oxford my colleagues were so obsessed, as it has never been
seen anywhere else, about the nuances of conversation. Only they were all
making a big mistake in having no clue as to what the underlying theory of
conversation as rational co-operation would simplify things for them – and how!
If I introduce the explicatum as a concession, I shall hope I will be pardoned!
Is Grices intention epagogic, or diagogic in Prolegomena? Is he trying to educate
Strawson, or just delighting in proving Strawson wrong? We think the former.
The fact that he quotes himself shows that Grice is concerned with something he
still sees, and for the rest of his life will see, as a valid philosophical
problem. If philosophy generated no problems it would be dead. Refs.: H. P.
Grice, “Whence I took helpfulness,’; the main sources are the two sets on
‘logic and conversation.’ There are good paraphrases in other essays when he
summarises his own views, as he did at Urbana. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
conversational imperative: Grice is loose in the use of ‘imperative.’ It obviously
has to do with the will in command mode! -- The problem with ‘command’ is that
for Habermas, it springs from ‘power,’ and we need to have it sprung from
‘auctoritas,’ rather – the voice of reason, that is – “Impero” gives also
pre-pare. “Imperare, prepare, etc. What was the Greek for ‘imperative mode’? προστακτική
prostaktike. προσ-τακτικός , ή, όν, A.of or for
commanding, imperative, imperious, τὸ π. [ἡ ψυχή], opp. τὸ ὑπηρετικόν (of the
body), Arist.Top.128b19; “π. τινῶν” Corn.ND16; “λόγος” Plu.2.1037f;
Προστακτικός (sc. λόγος), title of work by Protagoras, D.L.9.55; “βραχυλογία”
Plu.Phoc.5; also of persons, “ἄρχων” Max.Tyr.13.2 (Sup.). II. Gramm., ἡ -κὴ
ἔγκλισις the imperative mood, D.T.638.7, A.D.Synt.31.20; π. ἐκφορὰ τῶν ῥημάτων
ib.69.20; “τὸ π. σχῆμα” Anon.Fig.24; also “τὸ -κόν” D.L. 7.66,67, Ps.-Plu.Vit.Hom.53.
Adv. “-κῶς” in the imperative mood, D.H.4.18, Sch.Ar.Av.1163.Grice became
famous for his ‘maxims,’ which in Nowell-Smith’s view they are more like rules
of etiquette for sylish conversation. As such, many had been proposed. But
Grice proposes them AS A PHILOSOPHER would, and ONLY TO REBUFF the mistake made
by this or that philosopher who would rather EXPLAIN the phenomenon in terms
OTHER than involving as PART OF THE DATA, i. e. as a datum (as he says) or
assumption, that there are these ‘assumptions,’ which guide behaviour. Grice is
having in mind Kant’s “Imperativ.” He also uses ‘conversational objective.” In
most versions that Grice provides of the ‘general expectations’ of rational
discourse, he chooses the obvious imperative form. On occasion he does use
‘imperative.’ Grice is vague as to the term of choice for this or that
‘expectation.’ According to Strawson, Grice even once used ‘conversational
rule,’ and he does use ‘conversational rule of the conversational game of
making this or that conversational move.’ Notably, he also uses ‘conversational
principle,’ and ‘conversational desideratum.’ And ‘maxim’! And ‘conversational
directive (371), and ‘conversational obligation’ (369). By ‘conversational
maxim,’ he means ‘conversational maxim.’ He uses ‘conversational sub-maxim’
very occasionally. He rather uses ‘conversational super-maxim.’ He uses
‘immanuel,’ and he uses ‘conversational immanuel.’ It is worth noting that the
choice of word influences the exegesis. Loar takes these things to be ‘empirical
generalisations over functional states’! And Grice agrees that there is a dull,
empiricist way, in which these things can be seen as things people conform to.
There is a quasi-contractualist approach to: things people convene on. And
there is an Ariskantian approach: things people SHOULD abide by. Surely Grice
is not requiring that the conversationalists ARE explicitly or consciously
AWARE of these things. There is a principle of effort of economical reason to
cope with that!
conversational implicatum. Grice plays with the ambiguity of ‘implication’ as a
logical term, and ‘implicitness’ as a rhetorical one. He wants to make a
distinction between ‘dicere,’ to convey explicitly that p, and to convey
implicitly, or ‘imply’ (always applied to the emissor) that q. A joke. Surely
if he is going to use ‘implicatum’ in Roman, this would be ‘implicatum
conversationale,’ if there were such thing. And there were! The Roman is formed
from cum- plus ‘verso.’ So there’s Roman ‘conversatio.’ And –alis, ale is a productive
suffix. Or implicitum. Grice is being
philosophical and sticking with ‘implicatio’ as used by logicians. Implicitum
does not have much of a philosophical pedigree. But even ‘implicatio’ was not
THAT used, ‘consequentia’ was preferred, as in ‘non sequitur, and seguitur,
quod demonstrandumm erat. Strawson criticism of ‘the,’ only tentative by Grice,
unlike ‘if,’ so forgivable! See common-ground status. Grice loved an
implicatum. The use of ‘conversational’ by Grice is NEVER emphatic. In his
detailed, even fastidious, taxonomy of ‘implication,’ he decisively does not
want to have a mere conventional implicatum (as in “She was poor but she was
honest”) as conversational. Not even a “Thank you”, generated by the maxim “be
polite.” That would be an implicatum which is nonconventional and yet NOT
conversational, because ‘be polite’ is NOT a conversational maxim (moral,
aesthetic, and social maxims are not). And an implicature. An elaboration of
his Oxonian seminar on Logic and conversation. Theres a principle of
conversational helpfulness, which includes a desideratum of conversational
candour and a desideratum of conversational clarity, and the sub-principle of
conversational self-interest clashing with the sub-principle of conversational
benevolence. The whole point of the manoeuvre is to provide a rational basis
for a conversational implicatum, as his term of art goes. Observation of the
principle of conversational helpfulness is rational/reasonable along the
following lines: anyone who is interested in the two goals conversation is
supposed to serve ‒ give/receive information, influence/be influenced ‒ should
only care to enter a conversation that will be only profitable under the
assumption that it is conducted in accordance with the principle of conversational
helfpulness, and attending desiderata and sub-principles. Grice takes special
care in listing tests for the proof that an implicatum is conversational in
this rather technical usage: a conversational implicatum is rationally
calculable (it is the content of a psychological state, attitude or stance that
the addressee assigns to the utterer on condition that he is being helpful),
non-detachable, indeterminate, and very cancellable, thus never part of the
sense and never an entailment of this or that piece of philosophical
vocabulary, in Davidson and Harman, the logic of Grammar, also in Cole and
Morgan, repr. in a revised form in Grice, logic and conversation, the second
James lecture, : principle of conversational helpfulness, implicatum, cancellability. While
the essay was also repr. by Cole and Morgan. Grice always cites it from the two-column
reprint in The Logic of Grammar, ed. by Davidson and Harman. Most people
without a philosophical background first encounter Grice through this essay. A
philosopher usually gets first acquainted with his In defence of a dogma, or
Meaning. In Logic and Conversation, Grice re-utilises the notion of an
implicatum and the principle of conversational helpfulness that he introduced
at Oxford to a more select audience. The idea Grice is that
the observation of the principle of conversational helfpulness is rational
(reasonable) along the following lines: anyone who is concerned with the
two goals which are central to conversation (to give/receive information,
to influence/be influenced) should be interested in participating in a
conversation that is only going to be profitable on the assumption that it
is conducted along the lines of the principle of conversational
helfpulness. Grices point is methodological. He is not at all interested
in conversational exchanges as such. Unfortunately, the essay starts in
media res, and skips Grices careful list of Oxonian examples of disregard
for the key idea of what a conversant implicates by the conversational
move he makes. His concession is that there is an explicatum or explicitum
(roughly, the logical form) which is beyond pragmatic constraints. This
concession is easily explained in terms of his overarching irreverent,
conservative, dissenting rationalism. This lecture alone had been read by
a few philosophers leaving them confused. I do not know what Davidson and
Harman were thinking when they reprinted just this in The logic of grammar. I
mean: it is obviously in media res. Grice starts with the logical devices, and
never again takes the topic up. Then he explores metaphor, irony, and
hyperbole, and surely the philosopher who bought The logic of grammar must be
left puzzled. He has to wait sometime to see the thing in full completion.
Oxonian philosophers would, out of etiquette, hardly quote from unpublished
material! Cohen had to rely on memory, and thats why he got all his Grice
wrong! And so did Strawson in If and the horseshoe. Even Walker responding to
Cohen is relying on memory. Few philosophers quote from The logic of grammar.
At Oxford, everybody knew what Grice was up to. Hare was talking implicature in
Mind, and Pears was talking conversational implicature in Ifs and cans. And
Platts was dedicating a full chapter to “Causal Theory”. It seems the Oxonian
etiquette was to quote from Causal Theory. It was obvious that Grices
implication excursus had to read implicature! In a few dictionaries of
philosophy, such as Hamlyns, under implication, a reference to Grices locus
classicus Causal theory is made – Passmore quotes from Causal theory in Hundred
years of philosophy. Very few Oxonians would care to buy a volume published in
Encino. Not many Oxonian philosophers ever quoted The logic of grammar, though.
At Oxford, Grices implicata remained part of the unwritten doctrines of a few.
And philosophers would not cite a cajoled essay in the references. The
implicatum allows a display of truth-functional Grice. For
substitutional-quantificational Grice we have to wait for his treatment of the.
In Prolegomena, Grice had quoted verbatim from Strawsons infamous idea that
there is a sense of inferrability with if. While the lecture covers much more
than if (He only said if; Oh, no, he said a great deal more than that! the
title was never meant to be original. Grice in fact provides a rational
justification for the three connectives (and, or, and if) and before that, the
unary functor not. Embedding, Indicative conditionals: embedding, not and If,
Sinton on Grice on denials of indicative conditionals, not, if. Strawson
had elaborated on what he felt was a divergence between Whiteheads and Russells
horseshoe, and if. Grice thought Strawsons observations could be understood in
terms of entailment + implicatum (Robbing Peter to Pay Paul). But problems, as
first noted to Grice, by Cohen, of Oxford, remain, when it comes to the scope
of the implicatum within the operation of, say, negation. Analogous problems
arise with implicata for the other earlier dyadic functors, and and or, and
Grice looks for a single explanation of the phenomenon. The qualification
indicative is modal. Ordinary language allows for if utterances to be in modes
other than the imperative. Counter-factual, if you need to be philosophical
krypto-technical, Subjectsive is you are more of a classicist! Grice took a
cavalier to the problem: Surely it wont do to say You couldnt have done that,
since you were in Seattle, to someone who figuratively tells you hes spend the
full summer cleaning the Aegean stables. This, to philosophers, is the
centerpiece of the lectures. Grice takes good care of not, and, or, and
concludes with the if of the title. For each, he finds a métier, alla Cook
Wilson in Statement and Inference. And they all connect with rationality. So he
is using material from his Oxford seminars on the principle of conversational
helpfulness. Plus Cook Wilson makes more sense at Oxford than at Harvard! The
last bit, citing Kripke and Dummett, is meant as jocular. What is important is
the teleological approach to the operators, where a note should be made about
dyadicity. In Prolegomena, when he introduces the topic, he omits not (about
which he was almost obsessed!). He just gives an example for and (He went to
bed and took off his dirty boots), one for or (the garden becomes Oxford and
the kitchen becomes London, and the implicatum is in terms, oddly, of ignorance:
My wife is either in town or country,making fun of Town and Country), and if.
His favourite illustration for if is Cock Robin: If the Sparrow did not kill
him, the Lark did! This is because Grice is serious about the erotetic, i.e.
question/answer, format Cook Wilson gives to things, but he manages to bring
Philonian and Megarian into the picture, just to impress! Most importantly, he
introduces the square brackets! Hell use them again in Presupposition and Conversational
Implicature and turns them into subscripts in Vacuous Namess. This is central.
For he wants to impoverish the idea of the implicatum. The explicitum is
minimal, and any divergence is syntactic-cum-pragmatic import. The scope
devices are syntactic and eliminable, and as he knows: what the eye no longer
sees, the heart no longer grieves for! The modal implicatum. Since
Grice uses indicative, for the title of his third James lecture (Indicative
Conditionals) surely he implicates subjunctive ‒ i.e. that someone
might be thinking that he should give an account of indicative-cum-subjective. This
relates to an example Grice gives in Causal theory, that he does not reproduce
in Prolegomena. Grice states the philosophical mistake as follows. What is
actual is not also possible. Grice seems to be suggesting that a subjective
conditional would involve one or other of the modalities, he is not interested
in exploring. On the other hand, Mackie has noted that Grices conversationalist
hypothesis (Mackie quotes verbatim from Grices principle of conversational
helpfulness) allows for an explanation of the Subjectsive if that does not
involve Kripke-type paradoxes involving possible worlds, or other. In Causal
Theory, Grice notes that the issue with which he has 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 he 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. An examples which occurs to me is the following. What is actual is not
also possible. 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 Grices objector seems to Grice to involve a type of manoeuvre which is
characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. He is not
condemning that kind of manoeuvre. He 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. If was also of
special interest to Grice for many other reasons. He defends a dispositional
account of intending that in terms of ifs and cans. He considers akrasia
conditionally. He explored the hypothetical-categorical distinction in the
buletic mode. He was concerned with therefore as involved with the associated
if of entailment. Refs.: “Implicatum” is introduced in Essay 2 in WoW –
but there are scattered references elsewhere. He often uses the plural
‘implicata’ too, as in “Retrospective Epilogue,” The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
An implicatum requires a complexum. Frege was the topic of the explorations by
Dummett. A tutee of Grices once brought Dummetts Frege to a tutorial and told
Grice that he intended to explore this. Have you read it? No I havent,
Grice answered. And after a pause, he went on: And I hope I will not. Hardly
promising, the tutee thought. Some authors, including Grice, but alas, not
Frege, have noted some similarities between Grices notion of a conventional
implicature and Freges schematic and genial rambles on colouring. Aber Farbung,
as Frege would state! Grice was more interested in the idea of a Fregeian
sense, but he felt that if he had to play with Freges aber he should! One of
Grices metaphysical construction-routines, the Humeian projection, is aimed at
the generation of concepts, in most cases the rational reconstruction of an
intuitive concept displayed in ordinary discourse. We arrive at something
like a Fregeian sense. Grice exclaimed, with an intonation of Eureka, almost.
And then he went back to Frege. Grices German was good, so he could read
Frege, in the vernacular. For fun, he read Frege to his children (Grices, not
Freges): In einem obliquen Kontext, Frege says, Grice says, kann ja z. B. die
Ersetzung eines „aber durch ein „und, die in einem direkten Kontext keinen
Unterschied des Wahrheitswerts ergibt, einen solchen Unterschied bewirken. Ill
make that easy for you, darlings: und is and, and aber is but. But surely,
Papa, aber is not cognate with but! Its not. That is Anglo-Saxon, for you. But
is strictly Anglo-Saxon short for by-out; we lost aber when we sailed the North
Sea. Grice went on: Damit wird eine Abgrenzung von Sinn und Färbung (oder Konnotationen)
eines Satzes fragwürdig. I. e. he is saying that She was poor but she was
honest only conventionally implicates that there is a contrast between her
poverty and her honesty. I guess he heard the ditty during the War? Grice
ignored that remark, and went on: Appell und Kundgabe wären ferner von Sinn und
Färbung genauer zu unterscheiden. Ich weiß so auf interessante Bedeutungs
Komponenten hin, bemüht sich aber nicht, sie genauer zu differenzieren, da er
letztlich nur betonen will, daß sie in der Sprache der Logik keine Rolle
spielen. They play a role in the lingo, that is! What do? Stuff like but. But
surely they are not rational conversational implicata!? No, dear, just
conventional tricks you can ignore on a nice summer day! Grice however was never
interested in what he dismissively labels the conventional implicatum. He
identifies it because he felt he must! Surely, the way some Oxonian
philosophers learn to use stuff like, on the one hand, and on the other, (or
how Grice learned how to use men and de in Grecian), or so, or therefore, or
but versus and, is just to allow that he would still use imply in such cases.
But surely he wants conversational to stick with rationality: conversational
maxim and converational implicatum only apply to things which can be justified
transcendentally, and not idiosyncrasies of usage! Grice follows Church in
noting that Russell misreads Frege as being guilty of ignoring the use-mention
distinction, when he doesnt. One thing that Grice minimises is that Freges
assertion sign is composite. Tha is why Baker prefers to use the dot “.” as the
doxastic correlative for the buletic sign ! which is NOT composite. The sign
„├‟ is composite. Frege explains his Urteilstrich, the vertical component of
his sign ├ as conveying assertoric force. The principal role of the horizontal
component as such is to prevent the appearance of assertoric force belonging to
a token of what does not express a thought (e.g. the expression 22). ─p
expresses a thought even if p does not.) cf. Hares four sub-atomic particles:
phrastic (dictum), neustic (dictor), tropic, and clistic. Cf. Grice on the
radix controversy: We do not want the “.” in p to become a vanishing sign. Grices
Frege, Frege, Words, and Sentences, Frege, Farbung, aber. Frege was one of Grices
obsessions. A Fregeian sense is an explicatum, or implicitum, a concession to
get his principle of conversational helpfulness working in the generation of
conversational implicata, that can only mean progress for philosophy! Fregeian
senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. The employment of the
routine of Humeian projection may be expected to deliver for us, as its result,
a concept – the concept(ion) of value, say, in something like a
Fregeian sense, rather than an object. There is also a strong affinity
between Freges treatment of colouring (of the German particle aber, say) and
Grices idea of a convetional implicatum (She was poor, but she was honest,/and
her parents were the same,/till she met a city feller,/and she lost her honest
Names, as the vulgar Great War ditty went). Grice does not seem interested in
providing a philosophical exploration of conventional implicata, and there is a
reason for this. Conventional implicata are not essentially connected, as
conversational implicata are, with rationality. Conventional implicata cannot
be calculable. They have less of a philosophical interest, too, in that they
are not cancellable. Grice sees cancellability as a way to prove some
(contemporary to him, if dated) ordinary-language philosophers who analyse an
expression in terms of sense and entailment, where a cancellable conversational
implicatum is all there is (to it). He mentions Benjamin in Prolegomena,
and is very careful in noting how Benjamin misuses a Fregeian sense. In his
Causal theory, Grice lists another mistake: What is known to be the case is not
believed to be the case. Grice gives pretty few example of a conventional
implicatum: therefore, as in the utterance by Jill: Jack is an Englishman; he
is, therefore, brave. This is interesting because therefore compares to so
which Strawson, in PGRICE, claims is the asserted counterpart to if. But
Strawson is never associated with the type of linguistic botany that Grice is.
Grice also mentions the idiom, on the one hand/on the other hand, in some
detail in “Epilogue”: My aunt was a nurse in the Great War; my sister, on the
other hand, lives on a peak at Darien. Grice thinks that Frege misuses the
use-mention distinction but Russell corrects that. Grice bases this on Church.
And of course he is obsessed with the assertion sign by Frege, which Grice
thinks has one stroke tooo many. The main reference is give above for
‘complexum.’ Those without a philosophical background tend to ignore a joke by
Grice. His echoing Kant in the James is a joke, in the sense that he is using
Katns well-known to be pretty artificial quartet of ontological caegories to
apply to a totally different phenomenon: the taxonomy of the maxims! In his
earlier non-jocular attempts, he applied more philosophical concepts with a
more serious rationale. His key concept, conversation as rational co-operation,
underlies all his attempts. A pretty worked-out model is in terms then of this
central, or overarching principle of conversational helpfulness (where
conversation as cooperation need not be qualified as conversation as rational
co-operation) and being structured by two contrasting sub-principles: the
principle of conversational benevolence (which almost overlaps with the
principle of conversational helpfulness) and the slightly more jocular
principle of conversational self-love. There is something oxymoronic about
self-love being conversational, and this is what leads to replace the two
subprinciples by a principle of conversational helfpulness (as used in WoW:IV)
simpliciter. His desideratum of conversational candour is key. The clash
between the desideratum of conversational candour and the desideratum of
conversational clarity (call them supermaxims) explains why I believe that p
(less clear than p) shows the primacy of candour over clarity. The idea remains
of an overarching principle and a set of more specific guidelines. Non-Oxonian
philosophers would see Grices appeal to this or that guideline as ad hoc, but
not his tutees! Grice finds inspiration in Joseph Butler’s sermon on benevolence
and self-love, in his sermon 9, upon the love of our neighbour, preached on
advent Sunday. And if there be any other commandment, it is briefly
comprehended in this saying, Namesly, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,
Romans xiii. 9. It is commonly observed, that there is a disposition in
men to complain of the viciousness and corruption of the age in which they
live, as greater than that of former ones: which is usually followed with this
further observation, that mankind has been in that respect much the same in all
times. Now, to determine whether this last be not contradicted by the accounts
of history: thus much can scarce be doubted, that vice and folly takes
different turns, and some particular kinds of it are more open and avowed in
some ages than in others; and, I suppose, it may be spoken of as very much the
distinction of the present, to profess a contracted spirit, and greater regards
to self-interest, than appears to have been done formerly. Upon this account it
seems worth while to inquire, whether private interest is likely to be promoted
in proportion to the degree in which self-love engrosses us, and prevails over
all other principles; "or whether the contracted affection may not
possibly be so prevalent as to disappoint itself, and even contradict its own
end, private good?" Repr. in revised form as WOW, I. Grice felt
the need to go back to his explantion (cf. Fisher, Never contradict. Never
explain) of the nuances about seem and cause (“Causal theory”.). Grice uses ‘My
wife is in the kitchen or the bedroom,’ by Smith, as relying on a requirement
of discourse. But there must be more to it. Variations on a theme by Grice.
Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by
the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are
engaged. Variations on a theme by Grice. I wish to represent a
certain subclass of non-conventional implicaturcs, which I shall
call conversational implicaturcs, as being essentially connected with
certain general features of discourse; so my next step is to try to say what
these features are. The following may provide a first approximation to a
general principle. Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession
of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are
characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each
participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of
purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. This purpose or direction
may be fixed from the start (e.g., by an initial proposal of a question for
discussion), or it may evolve during the exchange; it may be fairly definite,
or it may be so indefinite as to leave very considerable latitude to the
participants, as in a casual conversation. But at each stage, some possible
conversational moves would be excluded as conversationally unsuitable. We might
then formulate a rough general principle which participants will be expected
ceteris paribus to observe, viz.: Make your conversational contribution such as
is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or
direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. One might label this
the co-operative principle. We might then formulate a rough general principle
which participants will be expected ceteris paribus to
observe, viz.: Make your contribution such as is required, at the
stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk
exchange in which you are engaged. One might label this the Cooperative
Principle. Strictly, the principle itself is not co-operative: conversants
are. Less literary variant: Make your move such as is required by the
accepted goal of the conversation in which you are engaged. But why logic and
conversation? Logica had been part of the trivium for ages ‒ Although they
called it dialectica, then. Grice on the seven liberal arts. Moved by
Strawsons treatment of the formal devices in “Introduction to logical theory”
(henceforth, “Logical theory”), Grice targets these, in their
ordinary-discourse counterparts. Strawson indeed characterizes Grice as his
logic tutor – Strawson was following a PPE., and his approach to logic is
practical. His philosophy tutor was Mabbott. For Grice, with a M. A. Lit.
Hum. the situation is different. Grice knows that the Categoriae and De Int. of
his beloved Aristotle are part of the Logical Organon which had been so
influential in the history of philosophy. Grice attempts to reconcile
Strawsons observations with the idea that the formal devices reproduce some
sort of explicatum, or explicitum, as identified by Whitehead and Russell in
Principia Mathematica. In the proceedings, Grice has to rely on some general
features of discourse, or conversation as a rational co-operation. The
alleged divergence between the ordinary-language operators and their formal
counterparts is explained in terms of the conversational implicata, then.
I.e. the content of the psychological attitude that the addressee A has to
ascribe to the utterer U to account for any divergence between the formal
device and its alleged ordinary-language counterpart, while still assuming that
U is engaged in a co-operative transaction. The utterer and his
addressee are seen as caring for the mutual goals of conversation ‒
the exchange of information and the institution of decisions ‒ and
judging that conversation will only be profitable (and thus reasonable and
rational) if conducted under some form of principle of conversational
helpfulness. The observation of a principle of conversational
helpfulness is reasonable (rational) along the following lines: anyone
who cares about the goals that are central to conversation/communication
(such as giving and receiving information, influencing and being influenced by
others) must be expected to have an interest, given suitable circumstances, in
participating in a conversation that will be profitable ONLY on the assumption
that it is conducted in general accordance with a principle of conversational
helpfulness. In titling his seminar Logic and conversation, Grice is
thinking Strawson. After all, in the seminal “Logical theory,” that every
Oxonian student was reading, Strawson had the cheek to admit that he never
ceased to learn logic from his tutor, Grice. Yet he elaborates a totally anti
Griceian view of things. To be fair to Strawson, the only segment where he
acknwoledges Grices difference of opinion is a brief footnote, concerning the
strength or lack thereof, of this or that quantified utterance. Strawson uses
an adjective that Grice will seldom do, pragmatic. On top, Strawson attributes
the adjective to rule. For Grice, in Strawsons wording, there is this or that
pragmatic rule to the effect that one should make a stronger rather than a
weaker conversational move. Strawsons Introduction was published before Grice
aired his views for the Aristotelian Society. In this seminar then Grice takes
the opportunity to correct a few misunderstandings. Important in that it
is Grices occasion to introduce the principle of conversational helpfulness as
generating implicata under the assumption of rationality. The lecture makes it
obvious that Grices interest is methodological, and not philological. He is not
interest in conversation per se, but only as the source for his principle of
conversational helpfulness and the notion of the conversational implicatum,
which springs from the distinction between what an utterer implies and what his
expression does, a distinction apparently denied by Witters and all too
frequently ignored by Austin. Logic and conversation, an Oxford seminar,
implicatum, principle of conversational helpfulness, eywords: conversational
implicature, conversational implicatum. Conversational
Implicature Grices main invention, one which trades on the distinction
between what an utterer implies and what his expression does. A
distinction apparently denied by Witters, and all too frequently ignored by, of
all people, Austin. Grice is implicating that Austins sympathies were for
the Subjectsification of Linguistic Nature. Grice remains an obdurate
individualist, and never loses sight of the distinction that gives rise to the
conversational implicatum, which can very well be hyper-contextualised,
idiosyncratic, and perfectly particularized. His gives an Oxonian example. I
can very well mean that my tutee is to bring me a philosophical essay next week
by uttering It is raining.Grice notes that since the object of the present
exercise, is to provide a bit of theory which will explain, for a
certain family of cases, why is it that a particular
implicature is present, I would suggest that the final test of
the adequacy and utility of this model should be: can it be used to construct
an explanation of the presence of such an implicature, and is it more
comprehensive and more economical than any rival? is the no
doubt pre-theoretical explanation which one would be prompted to give
of such an implicature consistent with, or better still a favourable pointer
towards the requirements involved in the model? cf. Sidonius: Far otherwise:
whoever disputes with you will find those protagonists of heresy, the Stoics,
Cynics, and Peripatetics, shattered with their own arms and their
own engines; for their heathen followers, if they resist the doctrine and
spirit of Christianity, will, under your teaching, be caught in their own
familiar entanglements, and fall headlong into their own toils; the barbed
syllogism of your arguments will hook the glib tongues of the
casuists, and it is you who will tie up their slippery
questions in categorical clews, after the manner of a clever
physician, who, when compelled by reasoned thought, prepares antidotes for
poison even from a serpent.qvin potivs experietvr qvisqve conflixerit stoicos
cynicos peripateticos hæresiarchas propriis armis propriis qvoqve concvti machiNamesntis
nam sectatores eorum Christiano dogmati ac sensvi si repvgnaverint mox te
magistro ligati vernaculis implicaturis in retia sua præcipites
implagabvntur syllogismis tuæ propositionis vncatis volvbilem tergiversantvm
lingvam inhamantibvs dum spiris categoricis lubricas qvæstiones tv potivs
innodas acrivm more medicorvm qui remedivm contra venena cum ratio compellit et
de serpente conficivnt. If he lectured on Logic and Conversation on
implicature, Grice must have thought that Strawsons area was central. Yet, as
he had done in Causal theory and as he will at Harvard, Grice kept collecting
philosophers mistakes. So its best to see Grice as a methodologist, and as
using logic and conversation as an illustration of his favourite manoeuvre,
indeed, central philosophical manoeuver that gave him a place in the history of
philosophy. Restricting this manoeuvre to just an area minimises it. On the
other hand, there has to be a balance: surely logic and conversation is a topic
of intrinsic interest, and we cannot expect all philosophers – unless they are
Griceians – to keep a broad unitarian view of philosophy as a virtuous
whole. Philosophy, like virtue, is entire. Destructive implicature to it: Mr.
Puddle is our man in æsthetics implicates that he is not good at it. What is
important to Grice is that the mistakes of these philosophers (notably
Strawson!) arise from some linguistic phenomena, or, since we must use singular
expressions this or that linguistic phenomenon. Or as Grice puts it, it is this
or that linguistic phenomenon which provides the material for the philosopher
to make his mistake! So, to solve it, his theory of conversation as rational
co-operation is posited – technically, as a way to explain (never merely
describe, which Grice found boring ‒ if English, cf. never explain, never
apologise ‒ Jacky Fisher: Never contradict. Never explain.) these phenomena –
his principle of conversational helpfulness and the idea of a conversational
implicatum. The latter is based not so much on rationality per se, but on the
implicit-explicit distinction that he constantly plays with, since his earlier
semiotic-oriented explorations of Peirce. But back to this or that linguistic
phenomenon, while he would make fun of Searle for providing this or that
linguistic phenomenon that no philosopher would ever feel excited about, Grice
himself was a bit of a master in illustrating this a philosophical point with
this or that linguistic phenomenon that would not be necessarily connected with
philosophy. Grice rarely quotes authors, but surely the section in “Causal
theory,” where he lists seven philosophical theses (which are ripe for an
implicatum treatment) would be familiar enough for anybody to be able to drop a
names to attach to each. At Harvard, almost every example Grice gives of this
or that linguistic phenomenon is UN-authored (and sometimes he expands on his
own view of them, just to amuse his audience – and show how committed to this
or that thesis he was), but some are not unauthored. And they all belong to the
linguistic turn: In his three groups of examples, Grice quotes from Ryle (who
thinks he knows about ordinary language), Witters, Austin (he quotes him in
great detail, from Pretending, Plea of excuses, and No modification without
aberration,), Strawson (in “Logical theory” and on Truth for Analysis), Hart
(as I have heard him expand on this), Grice, Searle, and Benjamin. Grice
implicates Hare on ‘good,’ etc. When we mention the explicit/implicit
distinction as source for the implicatum, we are referring to Grices own
wording in Retrospective epilogue where he mentions an utterer as conveying in
some explicit fashion this or that, as opposed to a gentler, more (midland or
southern) English, way, via implicature, or implIciture, if you mustnt. Cf.
Fowler: As a southern Englishman, Ive stopped trying teaching a northern
Englishman the distinction between ought and shall. He seems to get it always
wrong. It may be worth exploring how this connects with rationality. His point
would be that that an assumption that the rational principle of conversational
helpfulness is in order allows P-1 not just to convey in a direct explicit
fashion that p, but in an implicit fashion that q, where q is the implicatum.
The principle of conversational helpfulness as generator of this or that
implicata, to use Grices word (generate). Surely, He took off his boots and
went to bed; I wont say in which order sounds hardly in the vein of
conversational helpfulness – but provided Grice does not see it as logically
incoherent, it is still a rational (if not reasonable) thing to say. The point
may be difficult to discern, but you never know. The utterer may be conveying,
Viva Boole. Grices point about rationality is mentioned in his later
Prolegomena, on at least two occasions. Rational behaviour is the phrase he
uses (as applied first to communication and then to discourse) and in stark
opposition with a convention-based approach he rightly associates with Austin.
Grice is here less interested here as he will be on rationality, but coooperation
as such. Helpfulness as a reasonable expecation (normative?), a mutual one
between decent chaps, as he puts it. His charming decent chap is so Oxonian.
His tutee would expect no less ‒ and indeed no more! A rather obscure
exploration on the connection of semiotics and philosophical psychology. Grice
is aware that there is an allegation in the air about a possible vicious circle
in trying to define category of expression in terms of a category of
representation. He does not provide a solution to the problem which hell take
up in his Method in philosophical psychology, in his role of President of the
APA. It is the implicatum behind the lecture that matters, since Grice
will go back to it, notably in the Retrospective Epilogue. For Grice, its all
rational enough. Theres a P, in a situation, say of danger – a bull ‒. He
perceives the bull. The bulls attack causes this perception. Bull! the P1 G1
screams, and causes in P2 G2 a rearguard movement. So where is
the circularity? Some pedants would have it that Bull cannot be understood in a
belief about a bull which is about a bull. Not Grice. It is nice that he
brought back implicature, which had become obliterated in the lectures, back to
title position! But it is also noteworthy, that these are not explicitly rationalist
models for implicature. He had played with a model, and an explanatory one at
that, for implicature, in his Oxford seminar, in terms of a principle of
conversational helpfulness, a desideratum of conversational clarity, a
desideratum of conversational candour, and two sub-principles: a principle of
conversational benevolence, and a principle of conversational self-interest!
Surely Harvard could be spared of the details! Implicature. Grice disliked a
presupposition. BANC also contains a folder for Odd ends: Urbana and
non-Urbana. Grice continues with the elaboration of a formal calculus. He
originally baptised it System Q in honour of Quine. At a later stage, Myro
will re-Names it System G, in a special version, System GHP, a highly powerful/hopefully
plausible version of System G, in gratitude to Grice. Odd Ends: Urbana and
Not Urbana, Odds and ends: Urbana and not Urbana, or not-Urbana, or Odds and
ends: Urbana and non Urbana, or Oddents, urbane and not urbane, semantics,
Urbana lectures. The Urbana lectures are on language and reality. Grice
keeps revising them, as these items show. Language and reality, The
University of Illinois at Urbana, The Urbana Lectures, Language and reference,
language and reality, The Urbana lectures, University of Illinois at Urbana,
language, reference, reality. Grice favours a transcendental approach to
communication. A beliefs by a communicator worth communicating has to be
true. An order by a communicator worth communicating has to be
satisfactory. The fourth lecture is the one Grice dates in WOW . Smith has not
ceased from beating his wife, presupposition and conversational implicature, in
Radical pragmatics, ed. by R. Cole, repr. in a revised form in Grice, WOW, II,
Explorations in semantics and metaphysics, essay, presupposition and
implicature, presupposition, conversational implicature, implicature, Strawson.
Grice: The loyalty examiner will not summon you, do not worry. The cancellation
by Grice could be pretty subtle. Well, the loyalty examiner will not be summoning
you at any rate. Grice goes back to the issue of negation and not. If, Grice
notes, is is a matter of dispute whether the government has a very undercover
person who interrogates those whose loyalty is suspect and who, if he existed,
could be legitimately referred to as the loyalty examiner; and if, further, I
am known to be very sceptical about the existence of such a person, I could
perfectly well say to a plainly loyal person, Well, the loyalty examiner will
not be summoning you at any rate, without, Grice would think, being taken
to imply that such a person exists. Further, if the utterer U is well known to
disbelieve in the existence of such a person, though others are inclined to
believe in him, when U finds a man who is apprised of Us position, but who is
worried in case he is summoned, U may try to reassure him by uttering, The
loyalty examiner will not summon you, do not worry. Then it would be clear that
U uttered this because U is sure there is no such person. The lecture was
variously reprinted, but the Urbana should remain the preferred citation. There
are divergences in the various drafts, though. The original source of this
exploration was a seminar. Grice is interested in re-conceptualising Strawsons
manoeuvre regarding presupposition as involving what Grice disregards as a
metaphysical concoction: the truth-value gap. In Grices view, based on a
principle of conversational tailoring that falls under his principle of
conversational helpfulness ‒ indeed under the desideratum of
conversational clarity (be perspicuous [sic]). The king of France is bald
entails there is a king of France; while The king of France aint bald merely
implicates it. Grice much preferred Collingwoods to Strawsons
presuppositions! Grice thought, and rightly, too, that if his notion of the
conversational implicatum was to gain Oxonian currency, it should supersede
Strawsons idea of the præ-suppositum. Strawson, in his attack to Russell,
had been playing with Quines idea of a truth-value gap. Grice shows that
neither the metaphysical concoction of a truth-value gap nor the philosophical
tool of the præ-suppositum is needed. The king of France is bald entails that there
is a king of France. It is part of what U is logically committed to by what he
explicitly conveys. By uttering, The king of France is not bald on the other
hand, U merely implicitly conveys or implicates that there is a king of France.
A perfectly adequate, or impeccable, as Grice prefers, cancellation, abiding
with the principle of conversational helpfulness is in the offing. The king of
France ain’t bald. What made you think he is? For starters, he ain’t real!
Grice credits Sluga for having pointed out to him the way to deal with the
definite descriptor or definite article or the iota quantifier the formally.
One thing Russell discovered is that the variable denoting function is to be
deduced from the variable propositional function, and is not to be taken as an
indefinable. Russell tries to do without the iota i as an indefinable, but
fails. The success by Russell later, in On denoting, is the source of all his
subsequent progress. The iota quantifier consists of an inverted iota to be
read the individuum x, as in (℩x).F(x). Grice opts for the
Whiteheadian-Russellian standard rendition, in terms of the iota operator.
Grices take on Strawson is a strong one. The king of France is bald; entails
there is a king of France, and what the utterer explicitly conveys is
doxastically unsatisfactory. The king of France aint bald does not. By uttering
The king of France aint bald U only implicates that there is a king of France,
and what he explicitly conveys is doxastically satisfactory. Grice knew he was
not exactly robbing Peter to pay Paul, or did he? It is worth placing the
lecture in context. Soon after delivering in the New World his exploration on
the implicatum, Grice has no better idea than to promote Strawsons philosophy
in the New World. Strawson will later reflect on the colder shores of the Old
World, so we know what Grice had in mind! Strawsons main claim to fame in the
New World (and at least Oxford in the Old World) was his On referring, where he
had had the cheek to say that by uttering, The king of France is not bald, the
utterer implies that there is a king of France (if not that, as Grice has it,
that what U explicitly conveys is doxastically satisfactory. Strawson later
changed that to the utterer presupposes that there is a king of France. So
Grice knows what and who he was dealing with. Grice and Strawson had
entertained Quine at Oxford, and Strawson was particularly keen on that turn of
phrase he learned from Quine, the truth-value gap. Grice, rather, found it
pretty repulsive: Tertium exclusum! So, Grice goes on to argue that by uttering
The king of France is bald, one entailment of what U explicitly conveys is
indeed There is a king of France. However, in its negative co-relate, things
change. By uttering The king of France aint bald, the utterer merely implicitly
conveys or implicates (in a pretty cancellable format) that there is a king of
France. The king of France aint bald: theres no king of France! The loyalty
examiner is like the King of France, in ways! The piece is crucial for Grices
re-introduction of the square-bracket device: [The king of France] is bald;
[The king of France] aint bald. Whatever falls within the scope of the square
brackets is to be read as having attained common-ground status and therefore,
out of the question, to use Collingwoods jargon! Grice was very familiar with
Collingwood on presupposition, meant as an attack on Ayer. Collingwoods
reflections on presuppositions being either relative or absolute may well lie
behind Grices metaphysical construction of absolute value! The earliest
exploration by Grice on this is his infamous, Smith has not ceased from beating
his wife, discussed by Ewing in Meaninglessness for Mind. Grice goes back to
the example in the excursus on implying that in Causal Theory, and it is best
to revisit this source. Note that in the reprint in WOW Grice does NOT go, one
example of presupposition, which eventually is a type of conversational
implicature. Grices antipathy to Strawsons presupposition is metaphysical: he
dislikes the idea of a satisfactory-value-gap, as he notes in the second
paragraph to Logic and conversation. And his antipathy crossed the
buletic-doxastic divide! Using φ to
represent a sentence in either mode, he stipulate that ~φ is satisfactory
just in case ⌈φ⌉ is unsatisfactory. A crunch,
as he puts it, becomes obvious: ~ ⊢The king of France is bald may perhaps be
treated as equivalent to ⊢~(The king of
France is bald). But what about ~!Arrest the intruder? What do we say in cases
like, perhaps, Let it be that I now put my hand on my head or Let it be that my
bicycle faces north, in which (at least on occasion) it seems to be that
neither !p nor !~p is either satisfactory or unsatisfactory? If !p is neither
satisfactory nor unsatisfactory (if that make sense, which doesnt to me), does
the philosopher assign a third buletically satisfactory value (0.5) to !p
(buletically neuter, or indifferent). Or does the philosopher say that we have
a buletically satisfactory value gap, as Strawson, following Quine, might
prefer? This may require careful consideration; but I cannot see that the
problem proves insoluble, any more than the analogous problem connected with
Strawsons doxastic presupposition is insoluble. The difficulty is not so much
to find a solution as to select the best solution from those which present
themselves. The main reference is Essay 2 in WoW, but there are scattered
references elsewhere. Refs.: The main sources are the two
sets of ‘logic and conversation,’ in BANC, but there are scattered essays on
‘implicature’ simpliciter, too -- “Presupposition
and conversational implicature,” c. 2-f. 25; and “Convesational implicature,”
c. 4-f. 9, “Happiness, discipline, and implicatures,” c. 7-f. 6;
“Presupposition and implicature,” c. 9-f. 3, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
conversational manual: -- Grice was fascinated by the etymology of ‘etiquette’ – from
Frankish *stikkan, cognate with Old English stician "to pierce," from
Proto-Germanic *stikken "to be stuck," stative form from PIE *steig-
"to stick; pointed" (It.
etichetta) -- of conversational rational etiquette -- conversational iimmanuel,
cnversational manual. Before playing with ‘immanuel,’ Grice does use ‘manual’
more technically. A know-how. “Surely, I can have a manual, but don’t know how
to play bridge.” “That’s not how I’m using ‘manual.’” It should be pointed out
that it’s the visual thing that influenced. When people (especially
non-philosophers) saw the list of maxims, they thought: “Washington!” “A
manual!”. In the Oxford seminrs, Grice was never so ‘additive.’ His desideratum
of conversational clarity, his desideratum of conversational candour, his
principle of conversational self-love and his principle of conversational
benevolence, plus his principle of conversational helpfulness, were meant as
‘philosophical’ leads to explain this or that philosophical mistake. The
seminars were given for philosophy tutees. And Grice is playing on the ‘manuals
of etiquette’ – conversational etiquette. If you do not BELONG to this targeted
audience, it is likely that you’ll misconstrue Grice’s point, and you will!
Especially R. T. L.!The Gentlemen's Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness
Being a Complete Guide for a Gentleman's Conduct in All His Relations Towards
Society by Cecil B. Hartley. Wit and vivacity are two highly important
ingredients in the conversation of a man in polite society, yet a straining for
effect, or forced wit, is in excessively bad taste. There is no one more
insupportable in society than the everlasting talkers who scatter puns,
witticisms, and jokes with so profuse a hand that they become as tiresome as a
comic newspaper, and whose loud laugh at their own wit drowns other voices
which might speak matter more interesting. The really witty man does not shower
forth his wit so indiscriminately; his charm consists in wielding his powerful
weapon delicately and easily, and making each highly polished witticism come in
the right place and moment to be effectual. While real wit is a most delightful
gift, and its use a most charming accomplishment, it is, like many other bright
weapons, dangerous to use too often. You may wound where you meant only to
amuse, and remarks which you mean only in for general applications, may be
construed into personal affronts, so, if you have the gift, use it wisely, and
not too freely. The most important requisite for a good conversational power is
education, and, by this is meant, not merely the matter you may store in your
memory from observation or books, though this is of vast importance, but it
also includes the developing of the mental powers, and, above all, the
comprehension. An English writer says, “A man should be able, in order to enter
into conversation, to catch rapidly the meaning of anything that is advanced;
for instance, though you know nothing of science, you should not be obliged to
stare and be silent, when a man who does understand it is explaining a new
discovery or a new theory; though you have not read a word of Blackstone, your
comprehensive powers should be sufficiently acute to enable you to take in the
statement that may be made of a recent cause; though you may not have read some
particular book, you should be capable of appreciating the criticism which you
hear of it. Without such power—simple enough, and easily attained by attention
and practice, yet too seldom met with in general society—a conversation which
departs from the most ordinary topics cannot be maintained without the risk of
lapsing into a lecture; with such power, society becomes instructive as well as
amusing, and you have no remorse at an evening’s end at having wasted three or
four hours in profitless banter, or simpering platitudes. This facility of
comprehension often startles us in some women, whose education we know to have
been poor, and whose reading is limited. If they did not rapidly receive your
ideas, they could not, therefore, be fit companions for intellectual men, and
it is, perhaps, their consciousness of a deficiency which leads them to pay the
more attention to what you say. It is this which makes married women so much
more agreeable to men of thought than young ladies, as a rule, can be, for they
are accustomed to the society of a husband, and the effort to be a companion to
his mind has engrafted the habit of attention and ready reply.”
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