nowell-smithianism. “The Nowell is redundant,” Grice would say. P. H.
Nowell-Smith adopted the “Nowell” after his father’s first name. In “Ethics,”
he elaborates on what he calls ‘contextual implication.’ The essay was widely
read, and has a freshness that other ‘meta-ethicist’ at Oxford seldom display.
His ‘contextual implication’ compares of course to Grice’s ‘conversational implicaturum.’
Indeed, by using ‘conversational implicaturum,’ Grice is following an Oxonian
tradition started with C. K. Grant and his ‘pragmatic implication,’ and P. H.
Nowell-Smith and his ‘contextual implication.’ At Oxford, they were obsessed
with these types of ‘implicatura,’ because it was the type of thing that a less
subtle philosopher would ignore. Grice’s cancellability priority for his type
of implicatura hardly applies to Nowell-Smith. Nowell-Smith never displays the
‘rationalist’ bent that Grice wants to endow to his principle of conversational
co-operation. Nowell-Smith, rather, calls his ‘principles’ “rules of
conversational etiquette.” If you revise the literature, you will see that
things like “avoid ambiguity,” “don’t play unnecessary with words,” are listed
indeed in what is called a ‘conversational manual,’ of ‘conversational
etiquette,’ that is. In his rationalist bent, Grice narrows down the use of
‘conversational’ to apply to ‘conversational maxim,’ which is only a
UNIVERSALISABLE one, towards the overarching goal of rational co-operation. In
this regard, many of the rules of ‘conversational etiquette’ (Grice even
mentions ‘moral rules,’ and a rule like ‘be polite’) to fall outside the
principle of conversational helpfulness, and thus, not exactly generating a
‘conversational implicaturum.’ While Grice gives room to allow such
non-conversational non-conventional implicatura to be ‘calculable,’ that is,
‘rationalizable, by ‘argument,’ he never showed any interest in giving one
example – for the simple reason that none of those ‘maxims’ generated the type
of ‘mistake’ on the part of this or that philosopher, as he was interested in
rectifying.
Numenius: Grecian Platonist philosopher of
neoPythagorean tendencies. Very little is known of his life, but his
philosophical importance is considerable. His system of three levels of
spiritual reality a primal god the Good,
the Father, who is almost supra-intellectual; a secondary, creator god the
demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus; and a world soul
largely anticipates that of Plotinus in the next century, though he was
more strongly dualist than Plotinus in his attitude to the physical world and
matter. He was much interested in religion. His most important work, fragments
of which are preserved by Eusebius, is a dialogue On the Good, but he also
wrote a polemic work On the Divergence of the Academics from Plato, which shows
him to be a lively controversialist. J
O
O: SUBJECT INDEX
O: NAME INDEX: ITALIAN
O: NAME INDEX: ITALIAN
OLIVI
O: NAME INDEX – ENGLISHMEN (Oxonian
philosophy dons)
affirmo-nego
distinction, the: O: particularis abdicativa. See Grice, “Circling the Square
of Opposition.”
Oakeshott, M.: H. P. Grice, “Oakeshott’s
conversational implicaturum,” English philosopher and political theorist
trained at Cambridge and in G.y. He taught first at Cambridge and Oxford; from
1 he was professor of political science at the London School of Economics and
Political Science. His works include Experience and Its Modes 3, Rationalism in
Politics 2, On Human Conduct 5, and On History 3. Oakeshott’s misleading
general reputation, based on Rationalism in Politics, is as a conservative
political thinker. Experience and Its Modes is a systematic work in the
tradition of Hegel. Human experience is exclusively of a world of ideas
intelligible insofar as it is coherent. This world divides into modes
historical, scientific, practical, and poetic experience, each being partly
coherent and categorially distinct from all others. Philosophy is the never
entirely successful attempt to articulate the coherence of the world of ideas
and the place of modally specific experience within that whole. His later works
examine the postulates of historical and practical experience, particularly
those of religion, morality, and politics. All conduct in the practical mode
postulates freedom and is an “exhibition of intelligence” by agents who
appropriate inherited languages and ideas to the generic activity of
self-enactment. Some conduct pursues specific purposes and occurs in
“enterprise associations” identified by goals shared among those who
participate in them. The most estimable forms of conduct, exemplified by
“conversation,” have no such purpose and occur in “civil societies” under the
purely “adverbial” considerations of morality and law. “Rationalists” illicitly
use philosophy to dictate to practical experience and subordinate human conduct
to some master purpose. Oakeshott’s distinctive achievement is to have melded
holistic idealism with a morality and politics radical in their affirmation of
individuality. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “The Oxbridge conversation,” H. P. Grice,
“The ancient stone walls of Oxford.”
objectivum
– Grice: “Kant thought he was being witty when he speaks of the Copernican
revolution – While I prefer ‘subjectification’ for what he meant, Strawson
likes ‘category shift.’ At Oxford, we never took good care of Number One!” -- Grice reads Meinong on objectivity and finds
it funny! Meinong distinguishes four classes of objects: ‘Objekt,’ simpliciter,
which can be real (like horses) or ideal (like the concepts of difference,
identity, etc.) and “Objectiv,” e.g. the affirmation of the being (Sein) or
non-being (Nichtsein), of a being-such (Sosein), or a being-with (Mitsein) -
parallel to existential, categorical and hypothetical judgements. An “Objectiv”
is close to what contemporary philosophers call states of affairs (where these
may be actual—may obtain—or not). The third class is the dignitative, e.g. the
true, the good, the beautiful. Finally, there is the desiderative, e.g. duties,
ends, etc. To these four classes of objects correspond four classes of
psychological acts: (re)presentation
(das Vorstellen), for objects thought (das Denken), for the objectives feeling
(das Fühlen), for dignitatives desire (das Begehren), for the desideratives.
Grice starts with subjectivity. Objectivity can be constructed as
non-relativised subjectivity. Grice discusses of Inventing right and wrong
by Mackie. In the proceedings, Grice quotes the artless sexism of Austin
in talking about the trouser words in Sense and Sensibilia. Grice tackles all
the distinctions Mackie had played with: objective/Subjectsive,
absolute/relative, categorical/hypothetical or suppositional. Grice quotes
directly from Hare: Think of one world into whose fabric values are objectively
built; and think of another in which those values have been annihilated. And
remember that in both worlds the people in them go on being concerned about the
same things—there is no difference in the Subjectsive value. Now I ask, what is
the difference between the states of affairs in these two worlds? Can any
answer be given except, none whatever? Grice uses the Latinate objective (from
objectum). Cf. Hare on what he thinks the oxymoronic sub-jective value. Grice
considered more seriously than Barnes did the systematics behind Nicolai
Hartmanns stratification of values. Refs.: the most explicit allusion is a
specific essay on “objectivity” in The H. P. Grice Papers. Most of the topic is
covered in “Conception,” Essay 1. BANC. objectivum.
Here the contrast is what what is subjective, or subjectivum. Notably value.
For Hartmann and Grice, a value is rational, objective and absolute, and
categorical (not relative). objectum.
For Grice the subjectum is prior. While ‘subject’ and ‘predicate’ are basic
Aristotelian categories, the idea of the direct object or indirect object seems
to have little philosophical relevance. (but cf. “What is the meaning of ‘of’?
Genitivus subjectivus versus enitivus objectivus. The usage that is more
widespread is a misnomer for ‘thing’. When an empiricist like Grice speaks of
an ‘obble’ or an ‘object,’ he means a thing. That is because, since Hume
there’s no such thing as a ‘subject’ qua self. And if there is no subject,
there is no object. No Copernican revolution for empiricists. the obiectum-quo/obiectum quod distinction: obiectum
quo:
Griceian for “the object by which an object is known.” Grice: “A sort of
meta-object, if you press me.” -- It should be understood in contrast with “obiectum
quod,” -- the object that is known. E. g. when Grice’s son knows WHAT ‘a shaggy
thing’ is, the shaggy thing is the obiectum quod and Grice’s son’s concept of
the shaggy thing is the obiectum quo. The concept (‘shaggy’) is thus instrumental
to knowing a shaggy thing, but the concept ‘shaggy’ is not itself what is
known. A human needs a concept in order to have knowledge, because a human’s
knowledge is receptive, in contrast with God’s which is productive. God creates
what he knows. Human knowledge is mediated; divine knowledge is immediate. J.
C. Wilson famously believed that the distinction between obiectum quod and
obiectum quo exposes the crucial mistake of Bradley’s neo-Hegelian idealism –
“that is destroying the little that’s left of philosophy at Oxford.” According
to an idealist such as Bradley, the object of knowledge, i.e., what Bradley
knows, is an idea. In contrast, the Scholastics maintain that an idealist such
as Bradley conflate the object of knowledge with the *means* (the obiectum quo)
by which human knowledge is made possible. Humans must be connected to the
object of knowledge by something obiectum quo, but what connects them is not
that to which they are connected – “autem natura est terminus ut quo, 3°
Obiectum ut qu9 l esi illud ipsum, ad quod potentia, vel scientia
spectat.Obiectiim ;t quo est propria raiio , propter qnam potentia, vel
scientia circa aliquid versatur. Vel obiectum quod cst illud , quod in scientia
demonstratur.0biectum quo consistit in mediis, quibus probantur conclusiones in
eadem scientia *, 4* l't quod significat subiecium , cui proprie convenit
aliquod attributurn , vel quaedam denominatio: ut quo indicat rationem ,
propter quam subiectum cst, vel denominatur tale ; e. g., hic terminus albus ,
si accipiatur sit quod, significal parietem, vel aliud, quod dicitur album; sin
autem ut quo denotat ipsam albitudinem. Hoc sensu terminus acceptus ut, quod
dicitur etiam usurpari in recto , ut quo, in obliquo *. 5° Denique: Species,
per quam fit cognitio alicuius rei, est obiectum, quo illa cognoscitur; res
antem a specie repraesentata est obiectum quod : « Species visibilis, ait s.
Thomas, non se habet, ut quod videtur, sed ut quo videtur *». Et alibi : «
Species intelligibiles, quibus intellectus possibilis fit in actu, non sunt
obiectum intelleclus, non enim se habent ad intellectum, sicut quod
intelligitur, sed sicut quo intelligit * ». Sane, species non est terminus, in
quem cognitio fertur , sed dumlaxat principium, ex quo facultas cognitrix
determinatur ad I .*, q. n,l;un r m ab ipsa specie repraesentatam, Quarc , etsi
auima cognoseat res pcr species, tamen illas in seipsis cognoscit : «
('ognoscere res per earum similitudines im cognoscente existentes, est
cognoscere eas in seipsis * ». Et B. Albcrtus M. • Sensus [*r hoc, quod species
est sensibilium, sensibilia imin-diato arripit.” Refs.: H. P. Grice: The
obiectum-quo/obiectum quod distinction: and what to do with it. objective
rightness. In meta-ethics, an action is objectively right for a person to
perform on some occasion if the agent’s performing it on that occasion really
is right, whether or not the agent, or anyone else, believes it is. An action
is subjectively right for a person to perform on some occasion if the agent
believes, or perhaps justifiably believes, of that action that it is
objectively right. For example, according to a version of utilitarianism, an
action is objectively right provided the action is optimific in the sense that the
consequences that would result from its per624 O 624 formance are at least as good as those
that would result from any alternative action the agent could instead perform.
Were this theory correct, then an action would be an objectively right action for
an agent to perform on some occasion if and only if that action is in fact
optimific. An action can be both objectively and subjectively right or neither.
But an action can also be subjectively right, but fail to be objectively right,
as where the action fails to be optimific again assuming that a utilitarian
theory is correct, yet the agent believes the action is objectively right. And
an action can be objectively right but not subjectively right, where, despite
the objective rightness of the action, the agent has no beliefs about its
rightness or believes falsely that it is not objectively right. This
distinction is important in our moral assessments of agents and their actions.
In cases where we judge a person’s action to be objectively wrong, we often
mitigate our judgment of the agent when we judge that the action was, for the
agent, subjectively right. This same objectivesubjective distinction applies to
other ethical categories such as wrongness and obligatoriness, and some
philosophers extend it to items other than actions, e.g., emotions.
obligatum – Grice: “This has
a deep connection with the Latin idea of ius, cf. iunctum – and lex from ligare
– “Perhaps Hare prefers ‘ought’ because it eye-rymes with ‘obligation.’” Deontology
-- duty, what a person is obligated or required to do. Duties can be moral,
legal, parental, occupational, etc., depending on their foundations or grounds.
Because a duty can have several different grounds, it can be, say, both moral
and legal, though it need not be of more than one type. Natural duties are
moral duties people have simply in virtue of being persons, i.e., simply in
virtue of their nature. There is a prima facie duty to do something if and only
if there is an appropriate basis for doing that thing. For instance, a prima
facie moral duty will be one for which there is a moral basis, i.e., some moral
grounds. This conDutch book duty 248
248 trasts with an all-things-considered duty, which is a duty one has
if the appropriate grounds that support it outweigh any that count against it.
Negative duties are duties not to do certain things, such as to kill or harm,
while positive duties are duties to act in certain ways, such as to relieve
suffering or bring aid. While the question of precisely how to draw the
distinction between negative and positive duties is disputed, it is generally
thought that the violation of a negative duty involves an agent’s causing some
state of affairs that is the basis of the action’s wrongness e.g., harm, death,
or the breaking of a trust, whereas the violation of a positive duty involves
an agent’s allowing those states of affairs to occur or be brought about.
Imperfect duties are, in Kant’s words, “duties which allow leeway in the
interest of inclination,” i.e., that permit one to choose among several
possible ways of fulfilling them. Perfect duties do not allow that leeway.
Thus, the duty to help those in need is an imperfect duty since it can be
fulfilled by helping the sick, the starving, the oppressed, etc., and if one
chooses to help, say, the sick, one can choose which of the sick to help.
However, the duty to keep one’s promises and the duty not to harm others are
perfect duties since they do not allow one to choose which promises to keep or
which people not to harm. Most positive duties are imperfect; most negative
ones, perfect. obligationes, the study of inferentially inescapable, yet
logically odd arguments, used by late medieval logicians in analyzing
inferential reasoning. In Topics VIII.3 Aristotle describes a respondent’s task
in a philosophical argument as providing answers so that, if they must defend
the impossible, the impossibility lies in the nature of the position, and not
in its logical defense. In Prior Analytics I.13 Aristotle argues that nothing
impossible follows from the possible. Burley, whose logic exemplifies early
fourteenth-century obligationes literature, described the resulting logical
exercise as a contest between interlocutor and respondent. The interlocutor
must force the respondent into maintaining contradictory statements in
defending a position, and the respondent must avoid this while avoiding
maintaining the impossible, which can be either a position logically
incompatible with the position defended or something impossible in itself.
Especially interesting to Scholastic logicians were the paradoxes of
disputation inherent in such disputes. Assuming that a respondent has
successfully defended his position, the interlocutor may be able to propose a
commonplace position that the respondent can neither accept nor reject, given
the truth of the first, successfully defended position. Roger Swineshead
introduced a controversial innovation to obligationes reasoning, later rejected
by Paul of Venice. In the traditional style of obligation, a premise was
relevant to the argument only if it followed from or was inconsistent with
either a the proposition defended or b all the premises consequent to the
former and prior to the premise in question. By admitting any premise that was
either consequent to or inconsistent with the proposition defended alone,
without regard to intermediate premises, Swineshead eliminated concern with the
order of sentences proposed by the interlocutor, making the respondent’s task
harder.
recte-obliquum
distinction, the:
casus obliquum -- oblique context. As explained by Frege in “Über Sinn und
Bedeutung” 2, a linguistic context is oblique ungerade if and only if an
expression e.g., proper name, dependent clause, or sentence in that context
does not express its direct customary sense. For Frege, the sense of an
expression is the mode of presentation of its nominatum, if any. Thus in direct
speech, the direct customary sense of an expression designates its direct
customary nominatum. For example, the context of the proper name ‘Kepler’ in 1
Kepler died in misery. is non-oblique i.e., direct since the proper name
expresses its direct customary sense, say, the sense of ‘the man who discovered
the elliptical planetary orbits’, thereby designating its direct customary
nominatum, Kepler himself. Moreover, the entire sentence expresses its direct
sense, namely, the proposition that Kepler died in misery, thereby designating
its direct nominatum, a truth-value, namely, the true. By contrast, in indirect
speech an expression neither expresses its direct sense nor, therefore,
designates its direct nominatum. One such sort of oblique context is direct
quotation, as in 2 ‘Kepler’ has six letters. The word appearing within the
quotation marks neither expresses its direct customary sense nor, therefore,
designates its direct customary nominatum, Kepler. Rather, it designates a
word, a proper name. Another sort of oblique context is engendered by the verbs
of propositional attitude. Thus, the context of the proper name ‘Kepler’ in 3
Frege believed Kepler died in misery. is oblique, since the proper name
expresses its indirect sense, say, the sense of the words ‘the man widely known
as Kepler’, thereby designating its indirect nominatum, namely, the sense of
‘the man who discovered the elliptical planetary orbits’. Note that the
indirect nominatum of ‘Kepler’ in 3 is the same as the direct sense of ‘Kepler’
in 1. Thus, while ‘Kepler’ in 1 designates the man Kepler, ‘Kepler’ in 3
designates the direct customary sense of the word ‘Kepler’ in 1. Similarly, in
3 the context of the dependent clause ‘Kepler died in misery’ is oblique since
the dependent clause expresses its indirect sense, namely, the sense of the
words ‘the proposition that Kepler died in misery’, thereby designating its
indirect nominatum, namely, the proposition that Kepler died in misery. Note
that the indirect nominatum of ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 3 is the same as the
direct sense of ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 1. Thus, while ‘Kepler died in
misery’ in 1 designates a truthvalue, ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 3 designates a
proposition, the direct customary sense of the words ‘Kepler died in misery’ in
1.
obversum: a sort of immediate inference
that allows a transformation of affirmative categorical A-propositions and
I-propositions into the corresponding negative E-propositions and
O-propositions, and of E- and O-propositions into the corresponding A- and
I-propositions, keeping in each case the order of the subject and predicate
terms, but changing the original predicate into its complement, i.e., into a
negated term. E. g. ‘Every man is mortal’
’No man is non-mortal’; ‘Some students are happy’ ‘Some students are not non-happy’; ‘No dogs
are jealous’ ‘All dogs are non-jealous’;
and ‘Some bankers are not rich’ ‘Some
bankers are not non-rich’. .
occasion:
“I will use ‘occasion,’ occasionally.” The etymology of ‘occasion’ is
fabuluous. It has to do with ‘casus,’ ptosis, fall. Grice struggled with the
lingo and he not necessarily arrived at the right choice. Occasion he uses in
the strange phrase “occasion-meaning” (sic). Surely not ‘occasional meaning.’
What is an occasion? Surely it’s a context. But Grice would rather be seen dead
than using a linguistic turn of phrase like Firth’s context-of-utterance! So
there you have the occasion-meaning. Basically, it’s the PARTICULARISED
implicaturum. On occasion o, E communicates that p. Grice allows that there is
occasion-token and occasion-type. occasionalism: a
theory of causation held by a number of important seventeenth-century Cartesian
philosophers, including Johannes Clauberg, Géraud de Cordemoy, Arnold Geulincx,
Louis de la Forge, and Nicolas Malebranche. In its most extreme version,
occasionalism is the doctrine that all finite created entities are devoid of
causal efficacy, and that God is the only true causal agent. Bodies do not
cause effects in other bodies nor in minds; and minds do not cause effects in
bodies nor even within themselves. God is directly, immediately, and solely
responsible for bringing about all phenomena. When a needle pricks the skin,
the physical event is merely an occasion for God to cause the relevant mental
state pain; a volition in the soul to raise an arm or to think of something is
only an occasion for God to cause the arm to rise or the ideas to be present to
the mind; and the impact of one billiard ball upon another is an occasion for
God to move the second ball. In all three contexts mindbody, bodybody, and mind alone God’s ubiquitous causal activity proceeds in
accordance with certain general laws, and except for miracles he acts only when
the requisite material or psychic conditions obtain. Less thoroughgoing forms
of occasionalism limit divine causation e.g., to mindbody or bodybody alone.
Far from being an ad hoc solution to a Cartesian mindbody problem, as it is
often considered, occasionalism is argued for from general philosophical
considerations regarding the nature of causal relations considerations that
later appear, modified, in Hume, from an analysis of the Cartesian concept of
matoblique intention occasionalism 626
626 ter and of the necessary impotence of finite substance, and, perhaps
most importantly, from theological premises about the essential ontological
relation between an omnipotent God and the created world that he sustains in
existence. Occasionalism can also be regarded as a way of providing a
metaphysical foundation for explanations in mechanistic natural philosophy.
Occasionalists are arguing that motion must ultimately be grounded in something
higher than the passive, inert extension of Cartesian bodies emptied of the
substantial forms of the Scholastics; it needs a causal ground in an active
power. But if a body consists in extension alone, motive force cannot be an
inherent property of bodies. Occasionalists thus identify force with the will
of God. In this way, they are simply drawing out the implications of
Descartes’s own metaphysics of matter and motion. Refs: H. P. Grice, “What’s
the case – and occasionalism.”
modified
occam’s razorr:
cf. Myro’s modified modified Occam razor – implicatura non sunt implicanda
praeter implicatura -- see H. P. Grice, “Modified Occam’s Razor” -- known as
the More than Subtle Doctor, English Scholastic philosopher known equally as
the father of nominalism and for his role in the Franciscan dispute with Pope
John XXII over poverty. Born at Occam in Surrey, he entered the Franciscan
order at an early age and studied at Oxford, attaining the rank of a B. A., i.
e. a “baccalarius formatus.” His brilliant but controversial career is cut
short when Lutterell, chancellor of Oxford, presented the pope with a list of 56
allegedly heretical theses extracted from Occam (Grice: “One was, ‘Senses are
not be multipled beyond necessity.’). The papal commission studies them for two
years and find 51 open to censure – “while five are ‘o-kay.’”-- , but none was
formally condemned. While in Avignon, Occam researches previous papal
concessions to the Franciscans regarding collective poverty, eventually
concluding that John XXII contradicted his predecessors and hence was ‘no
pope,’ or “no true pope.” After committing these charges to writing, Occam
flees with Cesena, then minister general of the order, first to Pisa and
ultimately to Munich, where he composes many treatises about church-state
relations. Although departures from his eminent predecessors have combined with
ecclesiastical difficulties to make Occam unjustly notorious, his thought
remains, by current lights, philosophically conservative – or as he would
expand, “irreverent, dissenting, rationalist conservative.” On most
metaphysical issues, Occam fancies himself the true interpreter of Aristotle.
Rejecting the doctrine that the universalse is a real thing other than a name
(‘flatus vocis’) or a concept as “the worst error of philosophy,” Occam
dismisses not only Platonism, but also “modern realist” doctrines according to
which a nature enjoys a double mode of existence and is universal in the
intellect but numerically multiplied in this or that particulare. Occam argues
that everything real is individual and particular. Universality is a property
pertaining only to the expression, sign, or name and that by virtue of its
signification (semantic) relation. Because Occam understands a ‘primary’ name
to be ‘psychological’, and thus a ‘naturally’ significant concept, his own
theory of the universale is best classified as a form of conceptualism. Occam
rejects atomism, and defends Aristotelian hylomorphism in physics and
metaphysics, complete with its distinction between substantial form and
accidental form. Yet, Occam opposes the reifying tendency of the “moderns”
unnamed contemporary opponents, who posited a distinct kind of ‘res’ for each
of Aristotle’s ten categories. Occam agues that from a purely philosophical
point of view it is indefensible to
posit anything besides this or that particular substance and this or that
particular quality. Occam follows the Franciscan school in recognizing a
plurality of substantial forms in living things in humans, the forms of
corporeity, sensory soul, and intellectual soul. Occam diverges from Duns
Scotus in asserting a real, not a formal, distinction among them. Aristotle had
reached behind regular correlations in nature to posit substance-things and
accident-things as primitive explanatory entities that essentially are or give
rise to powers virtus that produce the regularities. Similarly, Occam
distinguishes efficient causality properly speaking from sine qua non
causality, depending on whether the correlation between A’s and B’s is produced
by the power of A or by the will of another, and explicitly denies the
existence of any sine qua non causation in nature. Further, Ocam insists, in
Aristotelian fashion, that created substance- and accident-natures are
essentially the causal powers they are in and of themselves and hence
independently of their relations to anything else; so that not even God can
make heat naturally a coolant. Yet, if God cannot change, He shares with
created things the ability to obstruct such “Aristotelian” productive powers
and prevent their normal operation. Ockham’s nominalistic conceptualism about
universals does not keep him from endorsing the uniformity of nature principle,
because he holds that individual natures are powers and hence that co-specific
things are maximally similar powers. Likewise, he is conventional in appealing
to several other a priori causal principles: “Everything that is in motion is
moved by something,” “Being cannot come from non-being,” “Whatever is produced
by something is really conserved by something as long as it exists.” Occam even
recognizes a kind of necessary connection between created causes and
effects e.g., while God could act alone
to produce any created effect, a particular created effect could not have had
another created cause of the same species instead. Ockham’s main innovation on
the topic of causality is his attack on Duns Scotus’s distinction between “essential”
and “accidental” orders and contrary contention that every genuine efficient
cause is an immediate cause of its effects. Ockham is an Aristotelian
reliabilist in epistemology, taking for granted as he does that human cognitive
faculties the senses and intellect work always or for the most part. Occam
infers that since we have certain knowledge both of material things and of our
own mental acts, there must be some distinctive species of acts of awareness
intuitive cognitions that are the power to produce such evident judgments.
Ockham is matter-of-fact both about the disruption of human cognitive functions
by created obstacles as in sensory illusion and about divine power to intervene
in many ways. Such facts carry no skeptical consequences for Ockham, because he
defines certainty in terms of freedom from actual doubt and error, not from the
logical, metaphysical, or natural possibility of error. In action theory,
Ockham defends the liberty of indifference or contingency for all rational
beings, created or divine. Ockham shares Duns Scotus’s understanding of the
will as a self-determining power for opposites, but not his distaste for causal
models. Thus, Ockham allows that 1 unfree acts of will may be necessitated,
either by the agent’s own nature, by its other acts, or by an external cause;
and that 2 the efficient causes of free acts may include the agent’s
intellectual and sensory cognitions as well as the will itself. While
recognizing innate motivational tendencies in the human agent e.g., the inclination to seek sensory
pleasure and avoid pain, the affectio commodi tendency to seek its own
advantage, and the affectio iustitiae inclination to love things for their own
intrinsic worth he denies that these limit
the will’s scope. Thus, Ockham goes beyond Duns Scotus in assigning the will
the power, with respect to any option, to will for it velle, to will against it
nolle, or not to act at all. In particular, Ockham concludes that the will can
will against nolle the good, whether ignorantly or perversely by hating God or by willing against its own
happiness, the good-in-general, the enjoyment of a clear vision of God, or its
own ultimate end. The will can also will velle evils the opposite of what right reason dictates,
unjust deeds qua unjust, dishonest, and contrary to right reason, and evil
under the aspect of evil. Ockham enforces the traditional division of moral
science into non-positive morality or ethics, which directs acts apart from any
precept of a superior authority and draws its principles from reason and
experience; and positive morality, which deals with laws that oblige us to
pursue or avoid things, not because they are good or evil in themselves, but
because some legitimate superior commands them. The notion that Ockham sponsors
an unmodified divine command theory of ethics rests on conflation and
confusion. Rather, in the area of non-positive morality, Ockham advances what
we might label a “modified right reason theory,” which begins with the
Aristotelian ideal of rational self-government, according to which morally
virtuous action involves the agent’s free coordination of choice with right
reason. He then observes that suitably informed right reason would dictate that
God, as the infinite good, ought to be loved above all and for his own sake,
and that such love ought to be expressed by the effort to please him in every
way among other things, by obeying all his commands. Thus, if right reason is
the primary norm in ethics, divine commands are a secondary, derivative norm.
Once again, Ockham is utterly unconcerned about the logical possibility opened
by divine liberty of indifference, that these twin norms might conflict say, if
God commanded us to act contrary to right reason; for him, their de facto
congruence suffices for the moral life. In the area of soteriological merit and
demerit a branch of positive morality, things are the other way around: divine
will is the primary norm; yet because God includes following the dictates of
right reason among the criteria for divine acceptance thereby giving the moral
life eternal significance, right reason becomes a secondary and derivative norm
there. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Why I love Occam,” H. P. Grice, “Comments on
Occam’s ‘Summa Totius Logicae,’” H. P. Grice, “Occam on ‘significare.’” And then
there’s Occam’s razor. H. P. Grice, “Modified Occam’s Razor.” Also called the
principle of parsimony, a methodological principle commending a bias toward
simplicity in the construction of theories. The parameters whose simplicity is
singled out for attention have varied considerably, from kinds of entities to
the number of presupposed axioms to the nature of the curve drawn between data
points. Found already in Aristotle, the tag “entities should not be multiplied
beyond necessity” became associated with William Ockham although he never
states that version, and even if non-contradiction rather than parsimony is his
favorite weapon in metaphysical disputes, perhaps because it characterized the
spirit of his philosophical conclusions. Opponents, who thought parsimony was
being carried too far, formulated an “anti-razor”: where fewer entities do not
suffice, posit more!
ŒCONOMIA: Grice:
“The end of philosophy at Oxford came with the PPE – I mean, what does a
philosopher to do with the ‘laws’ of the ‘home’?” -- Cf. Grice on the principle
of oeconomia of rational effort. The Greeks used ‘oeconomia’ to mean thrifty.
Cf. effort. There were three branches of philosophia practica: philosophia
moralis, oeconomia and politica. Grice
would often refer to ‘no undue effort,’ ‘no unnecessary trouble,’ to go into
the effort, ‘not worth the energy,’ and so on. These utilitarian criteria
suggest he is more of a futilitarian than the avowed Kantian he says he is.
This Grice also refers to as ‘maximum,’ ‘maximal,’ optimal. It is part of his
principle of economy of rational effort. Grice leaves it open as how to
formulate this. Notably in “Causal,” he allows that ‘The pillar box seems red”
and “The pillar box is red” are difficult to formalise in terms in which we
legitimize the claim or intuition that ‘The pillar box IS red” is ‘stronger’
than ‘The pillar box seems red.’ If this were so, it would provide a rational
justification for going into the effort of uttering something STRONGER (and
thus less economical, and more effortful) under the circumstances. As in “My wife is in the kitchen or in the bedroom, and
the house has only two rooms (and no passages, etc.)” the reason why the
conversational implicaturum is standardly carried is to be found in the
operation of some such general principle as that giving preference to the
making of a STRONGER rather than a weaker statement in the absence of a reason
for not so doing. The implicaturum therefore is not of a part of the meaning of
the expression “seems.” There is however A VERY IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE between
the case of a ‘phenomenalist’ statement (Bar-Hillel it does not count as a
statement) and that of disjunctives, such as “My wife is in the kitchen or ind
the bedroom, and the house has only two rooms (and no passages, etc.).” A
disjunctive is weaker than either of its disjuncts in a straightforward LOGICAL
fashion, viz., a disjunctive is entailed (alla Moore) by, but does not entail,
each of its disjuncts. The statement “The pillar box is red” is NOT STRONGER
than the statement, if a statement it is, “The pillar box seems red,” in this
way. Neither statement entails the other. Grice thinks that he has,
neverthcless a strong inclination to regard the first of these statements as
STRONGER than the second. But Grice leaves it open the ‘determination’ of in what
fashion this might obtain. He suggests that there may be a way to provide a
reductive analysis of ‘strength’ THAT YIELDS that “The pillar box is red” is a
stronger conversational contribution than “The pillar box seems red.” Recourse
to ‘informativeness’ may not do, since Grice is willing to generalise over the
acceptum to cover informative and non-informative cases. While there is an
element of ‘exhibition’ in his account of the communicatum, he might not be
happy with the idea that it is the utterer’s INTENTION to INFORM his addressee
that he, the utterer, INTENDS that his addressee will believe that he, the
utterer, believes that it is raining. “Inform” seems to apply only to the
content of the propositional complexum, and not to the attending ‘animata.’
olivi: philosopher whose
views on the theory and practice of Franciscan poverty led to a long series of
investigations of his orthodoxy. Olivi’s preference for humility, as well as
the suspicion with which he was regarded, prevented his becoming a master of theology
at Paris. He was effectively vindicated and permitted to teach at Florence and
Montpellier. But after his death, probably in part because his remains were
venerated and his views were championed by the Franciscan Spirituals, his
orthodoxy was again examined. The Council of Vienne condemned three unrelated
tenets associated with Olivi. Finally, Pope John XXII condemned a series of
statements based on Olivi’s Apocalypse commentary. Olivi thought of himself
chiefly as a theologian, writing copious biblical commentaries; his philosophy
of history was influenced by Joachim of Fiore. His views on poverty inspired
the leader of the Franciscan Observant reform movement, St. Bernardino of
Siena. Apart from his views on poverty, Olivi is best known for his
philosophical independence from Aristotle, whom he condemned as a materialist.
Contrary to Aristotle’s theory of projectile motion, Olivi advocated a theory
of impetus. He undermined orthodox views on Aristotelian categories. His attack
on the category of relation was thought to have dangerous implications in
Trinitarian theology. Ockham’s theory of quantity is in part a defense of views
presented by Olivi. Olivi was critical of Augustinian as well as Aristotelian
views; he abandoned the theories of seminal reason and divine illumination. He
also argued against positing impressed sensible and intelligible species,
claiming that only the soul, not perceptual objects, played an active role in
perception. Bold as his philosophical views were, he presented them
tentatively. A voluntarist, he emphasized the importance of will. He claimed
that an act of understanding was not possible in the absence of an act of will.
He provided an important experiential argument for the freedom of the will. His
treatises on contracts revealed a sophisticated understanding of economics. His
treatise on evangelical poverty includes the first defense of a theory of papal
infallibility.
omega: the last letter
of the Grecian alphabet w. Following Canto,, it is used in lowercase as a
proper name for the first infinite ordinal number, which is the ordinal of the
natural ordering of the set of finite ordinals. By extension it is also used as
a proper name for the set of finite ordinals itself or even for the set of
natural numbers. Following Gödel 678, it is used as a prefix in names of
various logical properties of sets of sentences, most notably
omega-completeness and omega-consistency. Omega-completeness, in the original
sense due to Tarski, is a syntactical property of sets of sentences in a formal
arithmetic language involving a symbol ‘0’ for the number zero and a symbol ‘s’
for the so-called successor function, resulting in each natural number being
named by an expression, called a numeral, in the following series: ‘0’, ‘s0’, ‘ss0’,
and so on. For example, five is denoted by ‘sssss0’. A set of sentences is said
to be omegacomplete if it deductively yields every universal sentence all of
whose singular instances it yields. In this framework, as usual, every
universal sentence, ‘for every n, n has P’ yields each and every one of its
singular instances, ‘0 has P’, ‘s0 has P’, ‘ss0 has P’, etc. However, as had
been known by logicians at least since the Middle Ages, the converse is not
true, i.e., it is not in general the case that a universal sentence is
deducible from the set of its singular instances. Thus one should not expect to
find omega-completeness except in exceptional sets. The set of all true
sentences of arithmetic is such an exceptional set; the reason is the semantic
fact that every universal sentence whether or not in arithmetic is materially
equivalent to the set of all its singular instances. A set of sentences that is
not omega-complete is said to be omega-incomplete. The existence of
omega-incomplete sets of sentences is a phenomenon at the core of the 1 Gödel
incompleteness result, which shows that every “effective” axiom set for
arithmetic is omega-incomplete and thus has as theorems all singular instances
of a universal sentence that is not one of its theorems. Although this is a
remarkable fact, the existence of omega-incomplete sets per se is far from
remarkable, as suggested above. In fact, the empty set and equivalently the set
of all tautologies are omega-incomplete because each yields all singular
instances of the non-tautological formal sentence, here called FS, that
expresses the proposition that every number is either zero or a successor.
Omega-consistency belongs to a set that does not yield the negation of any
universal sentence all of whose singular instances it yields. A set that is not
omega-consistent is said to be omega-inconsistent. Omega-inconsistency of
course implies consistency in the ordinary sense; but it is easy to find
consistent sets that are not omega-consistent, e.g., the set whose only member
is the negation of the formal sentence FS mentioned above. Corresponding to the
syntactical properties just mentioned there are analogous semantic properties
whose definitions are obtained by substituting ‘semantically implies’ for
‘deductively yields’. The Grecian letter omega and its English name have many
other uses in modern logic. Carnap introduced a non-effective, non-logical
rule, called the omega rule, for “inferring” a universal sentence from its
singular instances; adding the omega rule to a standard axiomatization of
arithmetic produces a complete but non-effective axiomatization. An
omega-valued logic is a many-valued logic whose set of truth-values is or is
the same size as the set of natural numbers. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “I know that
there are infinitely many stars.”
one-at-a-time-sailor. Grice’s ‘universale’ – and ‘particulare.’ – the \/x versus
the /\x. For \/x Grice has “one-at-a-time sailor.” For /\x Grice has ‘the
altogether nice girl.” “He is loved by the altogether nice girl. Or grasshopper:
Grice’s one-at-a-time grasshopper. His rational reconstruction of ‘some’ and
‘all.’ “A simple proposal for the treatment of the two quantifiers, rendered
otiosely in English by “all” and “some (at least one),” – “the” is definable in
terms of “all” -- would call for the assignment to a predicate such as that of
‘being a grasshopper,” symbolized by “G,” besides its normal or standard
EXtension, two special things (or ‘object,’ if one must use Quine’s misnomer),
associated with quantifiers, an 'altogether' ‘substitute’, thing or object and
a 'one-at-a-time' non-substitute thing or object.”“To the predicate
'grasshopper' is assigned not only an individual, viz. a grasshopper, but also
what I call ‘The All-Together Grass-Hopper,’
or species-1and ‘The One-At-A-Time Grass-Hopper,’ or species-2. “I now
stipulate that an 'altogether' item satisfies such a predicate as “being a
grasshopper,” or G, just in case every normal or standard item associated with
“the all-to-gether” grasshopper satisfies the predicate in question. Analogously,
a 'one-at-a-time' item satisfies a predicate just in case “SOME (AT LEAST ONE)”
of the associated standard items satisfies that predicate.”“So ‘The
All-To-Gether Grass-Hopper izzes green just in case every individual grasshopper
is green.The one-at-a-time grasshopper izzes green just in case some (at least
one) individual grasshopper izzes green.”“We can take this pair of statements
about these two special grasshoppers as providing us with representations of
(respectively) the statements, ‘Every grass-hopper is green,’ and ‘Some (at
least one) grasshopper is green.’“The apparatus which Grice sketched is plainly
not, as it stands, adequate to provide a comprehensive treatment of
quantification.”“It will not, e. g. cope with well-known problems of multiple
quantification,” as in “Every Al-Together Nice Grass-Hopper Loves A Sailing
Grass-Hopper.”“It will not deliver for us distinct representations of the two
notorious (alleged) readings of ‘Every nice girl loves a sailor,” in one of
which (supposedly) the universal quantifier is dominant with respect to scope,
and in the other of which the existential quantifier is dominant.”The ambiguity
was made ambiguous by Marie Lloyd. For every time she said “a sailor,” she
pointed at herself – thereby disimplicating the default implicaturum that the
universal quantifier be dominant. “To cope with Marie Lloyd’s problem it might
be sufficient to explore, for semantic purposes, the device of exportation, and
to distinguish between, 'There exists a sailor such that every nice girl loves
him', which attributes a certain property to the one-at-a-time sailor, and (ii)
'Every nice girl is such that she loves some sailor', which attributes a
certain (and different) property to the altogether nice girl.Note that, as one
makes this move, that though exportation, when applied to statements about
individual objects, seems not to affect truth-value, whatever else may be its
semantic function, when it is applied to sentences about special objects it may,
and sometimes will, affect truth-value.”“But however effective this particular
shift may be, it is by no means clear that there are not further demands to be
met which would overtax the strength of the envisaged apparatus.It is not, for
example, clear whether it could be made adequate to deal with indefinitely long
strings of 'mixed' quantifiers.”“The proposal might also run into objections of
a more conceptual character from those who would regard the special objects
which it invokes as metaphysically disreputable – for where would an
‘altogether sailor” sail?, or an one-at-a-time grasshopper hop?“Should an
alternative proposal be reached or desired, one (or, indeed, more than one) is
available.”“One may be regarded as a replacement for, an extension of, or a
reinterpretation of the scheme just outlined, in accordance with whatever view
is finally taken of the potency and respectability of the ideas embodied in
that scheme.” “This proposal treats a propositional complexum as a sequence,
indeed as ordered pairs containing a subject-item and a predicate-item.It thus
offers a subject-predicate account of quantification (as opposed to what?, you
may wonder). However, it will not allow an individual, i. e. a sailor, or a
nice girl, to appear as COMPONENTS in a propositional complexum.The sailor and
the nice girl will always be reduced, ‘extensionally,’ or ‘extended,’ if you
wish, as a set or an attribute.“According to the class-theoretic version, we
associate with the subject-expression of a canonically formulated sentence a
class of (at least) a second order. If the subject expression is a singular
name, like “Grice,” its ontological correlatum will be the singleton of the
singleton of the entity which bears the name Grice, or Pop-Eye.” “The treatment
of a singular terms which are not names – e. g. ‘the sailor’ -- will be
parallel, but is here omitted. It involves the iota operator, about which
Russell would say that Frege knew a iota. If the subject-expression is an
indefinite quantificational phrase, like 'some (at least one) sailor’ ‘or some
(at least one) grasshopper', its ontological correlatum will be the set of all
singletons whose sole member is a member belonging to the extension of the
predicate to which the indefinite modifier “some (at least one)” is attached.So
the ontological correlatum of the phrase ‘some (at least one) sailor’ or 'some (at
least one) grasshopper' will be the class of all singletons whose sole member
is an individuum (sailor, grasshopper). If the subject expression is a universal
quantificational phrase, like ‘every nice girl’ its ontological correlatum will
be the singleton whose sole member is the class which forms the extension of
the predicate to which the universal modifier (‘every’) is attached.Thus, the correlate of the phrase 'every nice girl' will
be the singleton of the class of nice girls.The song was actually NOT written
by a nice girl – but by a bad boy.A predicate of a canonically formulated
sentence is correlated with the classes which form its extension.As for the predication-relation,
i. e., the relation which has to obtain between subject-element and
predicate-element in a propositional complex for that complex to be factive, a propositional
complexum is factive or value-satisfactory just in case its subject-element contains
as a member at least one item which is a sub-class of the predicate-element.”If
the ontological correlatum of 'a sailor,’ or, again, of 'every nice girl')
contains as a member at least one subset of the ontological correlata of the dyadic
predicate ' … loves … ' (viz. the class of love), the propositional complexum directly
associated with the sentence ‘A sailor loves every nice girl’ is factive, as is
its converse“Grice devotes a good deal of energy to the ‘one-at-a-time-sailor,’
and the ‘altogether nice girl’ and he convinced himself that it offered a
powerful instrument which, with or without adjustment, is capable of handling
not only indefinitely long sequences of ‘mixed’ quantificational phrases, but
also some other less obviously tractable problems, such as the ‘ground’ for
this being so: what it there about a sailor – well, you know what sailors are.
When the man o' war or merchant ship comes sailing into port/The jolly tar with
joy, will sing out, Land Ahoy!/With his pockets full of money and a parrot in a
cage/He smiles at all the pretty girls upon the landing stage/All the nice
girls love a sailor/All the nice girls love a tar/For there's something about a
sailor/(Well you know what sailors are!)/Bright and breezy, free and easy,/He's
the ladies' pride and joy!/He falls in love with Kate and Jane, then he's off
to sea again,/Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!/He will spend his money freely, and he's
generous to his pals,/While Jack has got a sou, there's half of it for you,/And
it's just the same in love and war, he goes through with a smile,/And you can
trust a sailor, he's a white man (meaning: honest man) all the while!“Before
moving on, however, I might perhaps draw attention to three features of the
proposal.”“First, employing a strategy which might be thought of as Leibnizian,
it treats a subject-element (even a lowly tar) as being of an order HIGHER than,
rather than an order LOWER than, the predicate element.”“Second, an individual
name, such as Grice, is in effect treated like a universal quantificational
phrase, thus recalling the practice of old-style traditionalism.“Third, and
most importantly, the account which is offered is, initially, an account of
propositional complexes, not of propositions; as I envisage them, propositions
will be regarded as families of propositional complexes.”“Now the propositional
complexum directly associated with the sentence “Every nice girl loves a
sailor” (WoW: 34) will be both logically equivalent to and numerically distinct
from the propositional complex directly associated with ‘It is not the case
that no nice girl loves no sailor.’ Indeed for any given propositional complex
there will be indefinitely many propositional complexes which are both
equipolent to yet numerically distinct from the original complexum. Strawson
used to play with this. The question of how tight or how relaxed are to be the
family ties which determine the IDENTITY of propositio 1 with propositio 2 remains to be decided. Such conditions will vary
according to context or purpose. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Every nice girl loves a
sailor: the implicatura.”
occam: Grice: “I hate it when people who wouldn’t know London
from their elbow pretentiously use ‘Ockham’ when Aquinas consistently uses
Occam.” -- a picturesque village in Surrey. His most notable resident is
William. When William left Occam, he was often asked, “Where are you from?” In
the vernacular, he would make an effort to aspirate the ‘h’ Ock-Home.’ His
French friends were unable to aspirate, and he ended up accepting that perhaps
he WAS from “Occam.” Vide Modified Occam’s Razor. occamism – Grice, “I’m not so much interested
in Occam as in the Occam Society, that I endured!” -- Occamism: d’Ailly,
P.: Ockhamist philosopher, prelate, and writer. Educated at the Collège de
Navarre, he was promoted to doctor in the Sorbonne in 1380, appointed
chancellor of Paris in 1389, consecrated
bishop in 1395, and made a cardinal in 1411. He was influenced by John of Mirecourt’s
nominalism. He taught Gerson. At the Council of Constance 141418, which
condemned Huss’s teachings, d’Ailly upheld the superiority of the council over
the pope conciliarism. The relation of astrology to history and theology
figures among his primary interests. His 1414 Tractatus de Concordia
astronomicae predicted the 1789
Revolution. He composed a De anima, a commentary on Boethius’s
Consolation of Philosophy, and another on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. His early
logical work, Concepts and Insolubles c.1472, was particularly influential. In
epistemology, d’Ailly contradistinguished “natural light” indubitable knowledge
from reason relative knowledge, and emphasized thereafter the uncertainty of
experimental knowledge and the mere probability of the classical “proofs” of
God’s existence. His doctrine of God differentiates God’s absolute power
potentia absoluta from God’s ordained power on earth potentia ordinata. His
theology anticipated fideism Deum esse sola fide tenetur, his ethics the spirit
of Protestantism, and his sacramentology Lutheranism.
one-off communicatum. The
condition for an action to be taken in a specific way in cases where the
audience must recognize the utterer’s intention (a ‘one-off predicament’). The
recognition of the C-intention does not have to occur ‘once we have habits of
taking utterances one way or another.’
Blackburn:
one of the few philosohpers from Pembroke that Grice respects! -- From one-off
AIIBp to one-off GAIIB. Surely we have to generalise the B into the
PSI. Plus, 'action' is too strong, and should be replaced by
'emitting'This yields From EIIψp
GEIIψp. According to this
assumption, an emissor who is not assuming his addressee shares any system of
communication is in the original situation that S. W. Blackburn, of Pembroke,
dubbs “the one-off
predicament, and one can provide a scenario where the Griciean conditions, as
they are meant to hold, do hold, and emissor E communicates that p i. e. C1,
C2, and C3, are fulfilled, be accomplished in the "one-off predicament" (in
which no linguistic or other conventional ...The Gricean mechanism with
its complex communicative intentions has a clear point in what Blackburn calls
“a one-off predicament”
- a . Simon
Blackburn's "one-off
predicament" of communicating without a shared language
illustrates how Grice's theory can be applied to iconic signals such as
the ...Blackburn's
"one-off predicament" of communicating without a shared language
illustrates how Grice's theory can be applied to iconic signals such as the
drawing of a skull to wam of danger. See his Spreading the Word. III. 112.Thus S may draw a pic- "one-off predicament"). ... Clarendon, 1976); and Simon Blackburn, Spreading the Word
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) ...by
Blackburn in “Spreading the word.” Since Grice’s main motivation is to progress
from one-off to philosophers’s mistakes, he does not explore the situation. He
gets close to it in “Meaning Revisited,” when proposing a ‘rational
reconstruction,’ FROM a one-off to a non-iconic system of communication, where
you can see his emphasis and motivation is in the last stage of the progress.
Since he is having the ‘end result,’ sometimes he is not careful in the
description of the ‘one-off,’ or dismissive of it. But as Blackburn notes, it
is crucial that Grice provides the ‘rudiments’ for a ‘meaning-nominalism,’
where an emissor can communicate that p in a one-off scenario. This is all
Grice needs to challenge those accounts based on ‘convention,’ or the idea of a
‘system’ of communication. There is possibly an implicaturum to the effect that
if something is a device is not a one-off, but that is easily cancellable. “He
used a one-off device, and it worked.”
one-piece-repertoire: of hops and rye, and he told me that in twenty-two years
neither the personnel of the three-piece band nor its one-piece
repertoire had undergone a change.
Unum:
One of the transcendentals – see Achillini -- see: one-many problem: also
called one-and-many problem, the question whether all things are one or many.
According to both Plato and Aristotle this was the central question for
pre-Socratic philosophers. Those who answered “one,” the monists, ascribed to
all things a single nature such as water, air, or oneness itself. They appear
not to have been troubled by the notion that numerically many things would have
this one nature. The pluralists, on the other hand, distinguished many
principles or many types of principles, though they also maintained the unity
of each principle. Some monists understood the unity of all things as a denial
of motion, and some pluralists advanced their view as a way of refuting this
denial. To judge from our sources, early Grecian metaphysics revolved around
the problem of the one and the many. In the modern period the dispute between
monists and pluralists centered on the question whether mind and matter
constitute one or two substances and, if one, what its nature is. Unum – see: one over many, a universale;
especially, a Platonic Form. According to Plato, if there are, e.g., many large
things, there must be some one largeness itself in respect of which they are
large; this “one over many” hen epi pollon is an intelligible entity, a Form,
in contrast with the sensible many. Plato himself recognizes difficulties explaining
how the one character can be present to the many and why the one and the many
do not together constitute still another many e.g., Parmenides 131a133b.
Aristotle’s sustained critique of Plato’s Forms Metaphysics A 9, Z 1315
includes these and other problems, and it is he, more than Plato, who regularly
uses ‘one over many’ to refer to Platonic Forms.
ontogenesis.
Grice taught his children “not to tell lies” – “as my father and my mother
taught me.” One of his favourite paintings was “When did you last see your
father?” “I saw him in my dreams,” – “Not a lie, you see.” it is interesting
that Grice was always enquiring his childrens playmates: Can a sweater be red
and green all over? No stripes allowed! One found a developmental account of
the princile of conversational helpfulness boring, or as he said,
"dull." Refs.: There is an essay on the semantics of children’s language,
BANC.
Esse – variations
on ‘esse’ give us Grice’s ontological marxism:
As opposed to ‘ontological laisssez-faire’ Note the use of ‘ontological’
in ‘ontological’ Marxism. Is not metaphysical Marxism, so Grice knows what he
is talking about. Many times when he uses ‘metaphysics,’ he means
‘ontological.’ Ontological for Grice is at
least liberal. He is hardly enamoured of some of the motivations which prompt
the advocacy of psycho-physical identity. He has in mind a concern to exclude
an entity such as as a ‘soul,’ an event of the soul, or a property of the soul.
His taste is for keeping open house for all sorts of conditions of entities,
just so long as when the entity comes in it helps with the housework, i. e.,
provided that Grice see the entity work, and provided that it is not detected
in illicit logical behaviour, which need not involve some degree of
indeterminacy, The entity works? Ergo, the entity exists. And, if it comes on
the recommendation of some transcendental argument the entity may even qualify
as an entium realissimum. To exclude an honest working entitiy is metaphysical
snobbery, a reluctance to be seen in the company of any but the best. A
category, a universalium plays a role in Grice’s meta-ethics. A principles or
laws of psychology may be self-justifying, principles connected with the
evaluation of ends. If these same principles play a role in determining
what we count as entia realissima, metaphysics, and an abstractum would be
grounded in part in considerations about value (a not unpleasant
project). This ontological Marxism is latter day. In “Some remarks,” he
expresses his disregard for what he calls a “Wittgensteinian” limitation in
expecting behavioural manifestation of an ascription about a soul. Yet in
“Method” he quotes almost verbatim from Witters, “No psychological postulation
without the behaviour the postulation is meant to explain.” It was possibly D.
K. Lewis who made him change his mind. Grice was obsessed with Aristotle on
‘being,’ and interpreted Aristotle as holding a thesis of unified semantic
‘multiplicity.’ This is in agreement with the ontological Marxism, in more than
one ways. By accepting a denotatum for a praedicatum like ‘desideratum,’ Grice
is allowing the a desideratum may be the subject of discourse. It is an
‘entity’ in this fashion. Marxism and laissez-faire both
exaggerate the role of the economy. Society needs a safety net to soften the
rough edges of free enterprise. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Ontological Marxism
and ontological laissez-faire.” Engels – studied by Grice for his “Ontological
Marxism” -- F, G. socialist and economist who, with Marx, was the founder of
what later was called Marxism. Whether there are significant differences
between Marx and Engels is a question much in dispute among scholars of
Marxism. Certainly there are differences in emphasis, but there was also a
division of labor between them. Engels, and not Marx, presented a Marxist
account of natural science and integrated Darwinian elements in Marxian theory.
But they also coauthored major works, including The Holy Family, The G.
Ideology 1845, and The Communist Manifesto 1848. Engels thought of himself as
the junior partner in their lifelong collaboration. That judgment is correct,
but Engels’s work is both significant and more accessible than Marx’s. He gave
popular articulations of their common views in such books as Socialism: Utopian
and Scientific and AntiDühring 1878. His work, more than Marx’s, was taken by
the Second International and many subsequent Marxist militants to be definitive
of Marxism. Only much later with some Western Marxist theoreticians did his
influence decline. Engels’s first major work, The Condition of the Working
Class in England 1845, vividly depicted workers’ lives, misery, and systematic
exploitation. But he also saw the working class as a new force created by the
industrial revolution, and he developed an account of how this new force would
lead to the revolutionary transformation of society, including collective
ownership and control of the means of production and a rational ordering of
social life; all this would supersede the waste and disparity of human
conditions that he took to be inescapable under capitalism. The G. Ideology,
jointly authored with Marx, first articulated what was later called historical
materialism, a conception central to Marxist theory. It is the view that the
economic structure of society is the foundation of society; as the productive
forces develop, the economic structure changes and with that political, legal,
moral, religious, and philosophical ideas change accordingly. Until the
consolidation of socialism, societies are divided into antagonistic classes, a
person’s class being determined by her relationship to the means of production.
The dominant ideas of a society will be strongly conditioned by the economic
structure of the society and serve the class interests of the dominant class.
The social consciousness the ruling ideology will be that which answers to the
interests of the dominant class. From the 1850s on, Engels took an increasing
interest in connecting historical materialism with developments in natural
science. This work took definitive form in his Anti-Dühring, the first general
account of Marxism, and in his posthumously published Dialectics of Nature.
AntiDühring also contains his most extensive discussion of morality. It was in
these works that Engels articulated the dialectical method and a systematic
communist worldview that sought to establish that there were not only social
laws expressing empirical regularities in society but also universal laws of
nature and thought. These dialectical laws, Engels believed, reveal that both
nature and society are in a continuous process of evolutionary though
conflict-laden development. Engels should not be considered primarily, if at
all, a speculative philosopher. Like Marx, he was critical of and ironical
about speculative philosophy and was a central figure in the socialist
movement. While always concerned that his account be warrantedly assertible,
Engels sought to make it not only true, but also a finely tuned instrument of
working-class emancipation which would lead to a world without classes. Refs.:
H. P. Grice, “Ontological Marxism.”
Esse – variations
on ‘esse’ give us ‘ontological,’ and thus, ontological commitment: the object or
objects common to the ontology fulfilling some regimented theory a term
fashioned by Quine. The ontology of a regimented theory consists in the objects
the theory assumes there to be. In order to show that a theory assumes a given
object, or objects of a given class, we must show that the theory would be true
only if that object existed, or if that class is not empty. This can be shown
in two different but equivalent ways: if the notation of the theory contains
the existential quantifier ‘Ex’ of first-order predicate logic, then the theory
is shown to assume a given object, or objects of a given class, provided that
object is required among the values of the bound variables, or additionally is
required among the values of the domain of a given predicate, in order for the
theory to be true. Thus, if the theory entails the sentence ‘Exx is a dog’,
then the values over which the bound variable ‘x’ ranges must include at least
one dog, in order for the theory to be true. Alternatively, if the notation of
the theory contains for each predicate a complementary predicate, then the
theory assumes a given object, or objects of a given class, provided some
predicate is required to be true of that object, in order for the theory to be
true. Thus, if the theory contains the predicate ‘is a dog’, then the extension
of ‘is a dog’ cannot be empty, if the theory is to be true. However, it is
possible for different, even mutually exclusive, ontologies to fulfill a theory
equally well. Thus, an ontology containing collies to the exclusion of spaniels
and one containing spaniels to the exclusion of collies might each fulfill a
theory that entails ‘Ex x is a dog’. It follows that some of the objects a
theory assumes in its ontology may not be among those to which the theory is
ontologically committed. A theory is ontologically committed to a given object
only if that object is common to all of the ontologies fulfilling the theory.
And the theory is ontologically committed to objects of a given class provided
that class is not empty according to each of the ontologies fulfilling the
theory.
casus obliquum
– Grice: “A bit of a redundancy: if it is a casus (ptosis), surely it fell
obliquely – the ‘casus rectum’ is an otiosity! Since ‘recte, ‘menans ‘not
oblique’! -- casus rectum (orthe ptosis) vs. ‘casus obliquus – plagiai ptoseis
– genike, dotike, aitiatike. “ptosis” is not
attested in Grecian before Plato. A noun of action based on the radical of
πίπτω, to fall, ptôsis means literally a fall: the fall of a die Plato,
Republic, X.604c, or of lightning Aristotle, Meteorology, 339a Alongside this
basic value and derived metaphorical values: decadence, death, and so forth, in
Aristotle the word receives a linguistic specification that was to have great
influence: retained even in modern Grecian ptôsê πτώση, its Roman Tr. casus allowed it to designate grammatical
case in most modern European languages. In fact, however, when it first appears
in Aristotle, the term does not initially designate the noun’s case inflection.
In the De Int. chaps. 2 and 3, it qualifies the modifications, both semantic
and formal casual variation of the verb and those of the noun: he was well, he
will be well, in relation to he is well; about Philo, to Philo, in relation to
Philo. As a modification of the noun—that is, in Aristotle, of its basic form,
the nominative—the case ptôsis differs from the noun insofar as, associated
with is, was, or will be, it does not permit the formation of a true or false
statement. As a modification of the verb, describing the grammatical tense, it
is distinguished from the verb that oversignifies the present: the case of the
verb oversignifies the time that surrounds the present. From this we must
conclude that to the meaning of a given verb e.g., walk the case of the verb
adds the meaning prossêmainei πϱοσσημαίνει of its temporal modality he will
walk. Thus the primacy of the present over the past and the future is affirmed,
since the present of the verb has no case. But the Aristotelian case is a still
broader, vaguer, and more elastic notion: presented as part of expression in
chapter 20 of the Poetics, it qualifies variation in number and modality. It
further qualifies the modifications of the noun, depending on the gender ch.21
of the Poetics; Top. as well as adverbs
derived from a substantive or an adjective, like justly, which is derived from
just. The notion of case is thus essential for the characterization of
paronyms. Aristotle did not yet have specialized names for the different cases
of nominal inflection. When he needs to designate them, he does so in a
conventional manner, usually by resorting to the inflected form of a pronoun—
τούτου, of this, for the genitive, τούτῳ, to this, for the dative, and so on —
and sometimes to that of a substantive or adjective. In the Prior Analytics,
Aristotle insists on distinguishing between the terms ὅϱοι that ought always to
be stated in the nominative ϰλῆσεις, e.g. man, good, contraries, but the
premisses ought to be understood with reference to the cases of each term—either
the dative, e.g. ‘equal to this’ toutôi, dative, or the genitive, e.g. ‘double
of this’ toutou, genitive, or the accusative, e.g. ‘that which strikes or v.s
this’ τούτο, accusative, or the nominative, e.g. ‘man is an animal’ οὗτος,
nominative, or in whatever other way the word falls πίπτει in the premiss Anal.
Post., I.36, 48b, 4 In the latter expression, we may find the origin of the
metaphor of the fall—which remains controversial. Some commentators relate the
distinction between what is direct and what is oblique as pertains to
grammatical cases, which may be direct orthê ptôsis or oblique plagiai ptôseis,
but also to the grand metaphoric and conceptual register that stands on this
distinction to falling in the game of jacks, it being possible that the jack
could fall either on a stable side and stand there—the direct case—or on three
unstable sides— the oblique cases. In an unpublished dissertation on the
principles of Stoic grammar, Hans Erich Müller proposes to relate the Stoic
theory of cases to the theory of causality, by trying to associate the
different cases with the different types of causality. They would thus
correspond in the utterance to the different causal postures of the body in the
physical field. For the Stoics, predication is a matter not of identifying an
essence ousia οὖσια and its attributes in conformity with the Aristotelian
categories, but of reproducing in the utterance the causal relations of action
and passion that bodies entertain among themselves. It was in fact with the
Stoics that cases were reduced to noun cases—in Dionysius Thrax TG, 13, the
verb is a word without cases lexis aptôton, and although egklisis means mode,
it sometimes means inflection, and then it covers the variations of the verb,
both temporal and modal. If Diogenes Laertius VII.192 is to be believed,
Chrysippus wrote a work On the Five Cases. It must have included, as Diogenes
VII.65 tells us, a distinction between the direct case orthê ptôsis—the case
which, constructed with a predicate, gives rise to a proposition axiôma,
VII.64—and oblique cases plagiai ptseis, which now are given names, in this
order: genitive genikê, dative dôtikê, and accusative aitiatikê. A
classification of predicates is reported by Porphyry, cited in Ammonius
Commentaire du De Int. d’Aristote, 44, 19f.. Ammonius 42, 30f. reports a
polemic between Aristotle and the Peripatetics, on the one hand, and the Stoics
and grammarians associated with them, on the other. For the former, the
nominative is not a case, it is the noun itself from which the cases are
declined; for the latter, the nominative is a full-fledged case: it is the
direct case, and if it is a case, that is because it falls from the concept,
and if it is direct, that is because it falls directly, just as the stylus can,
after falling, remain stable and straight. Although ptôsis is part of the
definition of the predicate—the predicate is what allows, when associated with
a direct case, the composition of a proposition—and figures in the part of
dialectic devoted to signifieds, it is neither defined nor determined as a
constituent of the utterance alongside the predicate. In Stoicism, ptôsis v.ms
to signify more than grammatical case alone. Secondary in relation to the
predicate that it completes, it is a philosophical concept that refers to the
manner in which the Stoics v.m to have criticized the Aristotelian notion of
substrate hupokeimenon ὑποϰειμένον as well as the distinction between substance
and accidents. Ptôsis is the way in which the body or bodies that our representation
phantasia φαντασία presents to us in a determined manner appear in the
utterance, issuing not directly from perception, but indirectly, through the
mediation of the concept that makes it possible to name it/them in the form of
an appellative a generic concept, man, horse or a name a singular concept,
Socrates. Cases thus represent the diverse ways in which the concept of the
body falls in the utterance though Stoic nominalism does not admit the
existence of this concept—just as here there is no Aristotelian category
outside the different enumerated categorial rubrics, there is no body outside a
case position. However, caring little for these subtleties, the scholiasts of
Technê v.m to confirm this idea in their own context when they describe the ptôsis
as the fall of the incorporeal and the generic into the specific ἔϰ τοῦ γενιϰοῦ
εἰς τὸ εἰδιϰόν. In the work of the grammarians, case is reduced to the
grammatical case, that is, to the morphological variation of nouns, pronouns,
articles, and participles, which, among the parts of speech, accordingly
constitute the subclass of casuels, a parts of speech subject to case-based
inflection πτωτιϰά. The canonical list of cases places the vocative klêtikê ϰλητιϰή
last, after the direct eutheia εὐθεῖα case and the three oblique cases, in
their Stoic order: genitive, dative, accusative. This order of the oblique
cases gives rise, in some commentators eager to rationalize Scholia to the
Technê, 549, 22, to a speculation inspired by localism: the case of the PARONYM
743 place from which one comes in Grecian , the genitive is supposed naturally
to precede that of the place where one is the dative, which itself naturally
precedes that of the place where one is going the accusative. Apollonius’s
reflection on syntax is more insightful; in his Syntax III.15888 he presents,
in this order, the accusative, the genitive, and the dative as expressing three
degrees of verbal transitivity: conceived as the distribution of activity and
passivity between the prime actant A in the direct case and the second actant B
in one of the three oblique cases in the process expressed by a biactantial
verb, the transitivity of the accusative corresponds to the division A all
active—B all passive A strikes B; the transitivity of the genitive corresponds
to the division A primarily active/passive to a small degree—B primarily
passive/active to a small degree A listens to B; and the transitivity of the
dative, to the division A and B equally active-passive A fights with The direct
case, at the head of the list, owes its prmacy to the fact that it is the case
of nomination: names are given in the direct case. The verbs of existence and
nomination are constructed solely with the direct case, without the function of
the attribute being thematized as such. Although Chrysippus wrote about five
cases, the fifth case, the vocative, v.ms to have escaped the division into
direct and oblique cases. Literally appelative prosêgorikon πϱοσηγοϱιϰόν, it
could refer not only to utterances of address but also more generally to
utterances of nomination. In the grammarians, the vocative occupies a marginal
place; whereas every sentence necessarily includes a noun and a verb, the
vocative constitutes a complete sentence by itself. Frédérique Ildefonse REFS.:
Aristotle. Analytica priorTr. J.
Jenkinson. In the Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, ed. and Tr.
W. D. Ross, E. M. Edghill, J. Jenkinson, G.R.G. Mure, and Wallace
Pickford. Oxford: Oxford , 192 . Poetics. Ed.
and Tr. Stephen Halliwell.
Cambridge: Harvard / Loeb Classical
Library, . Delamarre, Alexandre. La notion de ptōsis chez Aristote et les
Stoïciens. In Concepts et Catégories dans la pensée antique, ed. by Pierre Aubenque, 3214 : Vrin, . Deleuze,
Gilles. Logique du sens. : Minuit, . Tr.
Mark Lester with Charles Stivale: The Logic of Sense. Ed. by Constantin V. Boundas. : Columbia , .
Dionysius Thrax. Technē grammatikē. Book I, vol. 1 of Grammatici Graeci,
ed. by Gustav Uhlig. Leipzig: Teubner,
188 Eng. Tr. T. D. son: The Grammar. St. Louis, 187 Fr. Tr. J.
Lallot: La grammaire de Denys le Thrace. 2nd rev. and expanded ed. : CNRS
Éditions, . Frede, Michael. The Origins of Traditional Grammar. In Historical
and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology, and Phil. of Science, ed. by E. H. Butts and J. Hintikka, 517
Dordrecht, Neth.: Reiderl, . Reprinted, in M. Frede, Essays in Ancient Phil. ,
3385 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, . . The Stoic Notion of a
Grammatical Case. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the
University of 39 : 132 Hadot, Pierre. La notion de ‘cas’ dans la logique
stoïcienne. Pp. 10912 in Actes du XIIIe Congrès des sociétés de philosophie en
langue française. Geneva: Baconnière, . Hiersche, Rolf. Entstehung und
Entwicklung des Terminus πτῶσις, ‘Fall.’ Sitzungsberichte der deutschen
Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin: Klasse für Sprachen, Literatur und Kunst
3 1955: 51 Ildefonse, Frédérique. La naissance de la grammaire dans l’Antiquité
grecque. : Vrin, . Imbert, Claude. Phénoménologies et langues formularies. :
Presses Universitaires de France, . Pinborg, Jan. Classical Antiquity: Greece.
In Current Trends in Linguistics, ed. by
Th. Sebeok. Vol. 13 in Historiography of Linguistics series. The Hague and :
Mouton, .-- oratio obliqua: The idea of
‘oratio’ is central. Grice’s sentence. It expresses ‘a thought,’ a
‘that’-clause. Oratio recta is central, too. Grice’s example is “The dog is
shaggy.” The use of ‘oratio’ here Grice disliked. One can see a squarrel
grabbing a nut, Toby judges that a nut is to eat. So we would have a
‘that’-clause, and in a way, an ‘oratio obliqua,’ which is what the UTTERER
(not the squarrel) would produce as ‘oratio recta,’ ‘A nut is to eat,’ should
the circumstance obtains. At some points he allows things like “Snow is white”
means that snow is white. Something at the Oxford Philosohical Society he would
not. Grice is vague in this. If the verb is a ‘verbum dicendi,’ ‘oratio
obliqua’ is literal. If it’s a verbum sentiendi or percipiendi, volendi, credendi,
or cognoscenti, the connection is looser. Grice was especially concerned that
buletic verbs usually do not take a that-clause (but cf. James: I will that the
distant table sides over the floor toward me. It does not!). Also that seems
takes a that-clause in ways that might not please Maucalay. Grice had explored
that-clauses with Staal. He was concerned about the viability of an initially
appealing etymological approach by Davidson to the that-clause in terms of
demonstration. Grice had presupposed the logic of that-clauses from a much
earlier stage, Those spots mean that he has measles.The f. contains a copy of
Davidsons essay, On saying that, the that-clause, the that-clause, with Staal .
Davidson quotes from Murray et al. The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford.
Cf. Onions, An Advanced English Syntax, and remarks that first learned
that that in such contexts evolved from an explicit demonstrative from
Hintikkas Knowledge and Belief. Hintikka remarks that a similar development has
taken place in German Davidson owes the reference to the O.E.D. to Stiezel.
Indeed Davidson was fascinated by the fact that his conceptual inquiry repeated
phylogeny. It should come as no surprise that a that-clause
utterance evolves through about the stages our ruminations have just
carried us. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of that in a
that-clause is generally held to have arisen out of the demonstrative pronoun
pointing to the clause which it introduces. The sequence goes as follows. He
once lived here: we all know that; that, now this, we all know: he once lived
here; we all know that, or this: he once lived here; we all know that he once
lived here. As Hintikka notes, some pedants trying to display their knowledge
of German, use a comma before that: We all know, that he once lived here, to
stand for an earlier :: We all know: that he once lived here. Just like
the English translation that, dass can be omitted in a
sentence. Er glaubt, dass die Erde eine
Scheibe sei. He believes that the Earth is a disc. Er
glaubt, die Erde sei eine Scheibe. He believes the Earth is a disc. The
that-clause is brought to the fore by Davidson, who, consulting the OED,
reminds philosophers that the English that is very cognate with the German
idiom. More specifically, that is a demonstrative, even if the syntax, in
English, hides this fact in ways which German syntax doesnt. Grice needs
to rely on that-clauses for his analysis of mean, intend, and notably
will. He finds that Prichards genial discovery was the license to use
willing as pre-facing a that-clause. This allows Grice to deals with
willing as applied to a third person. I will that he wills that he wins the
chess match. Philosophers who disregard this third-person use may indulge in
introspection and Subjectsivism when they shouldnt! Grice said that Prichard
had to be given great credit for seeing that the accurate specification of
willing should be willing that and not willing to. Analogously, following
Prichard on willing, Grice does not
stipulate that the radix for an intentional (utterer-oriented or
exhibitive-autophoric-buletic) incorporate a reference to the utterer (be in
the first person), nor that the radix for an imperative (addressee-oriented or
hetero-phoric protreptic buletic) or desiderative in general, incorporate a
reference of the addressee (be in the second person). They shall not pass is a
legitimate intentional as is the ‘you shall not get away with it,’either
involves Prichards wills that, rather than wills to). And the sergeant is to
muster the men at dawn (uttered by a captain to a lieutenant) is a perfectly
good imperative, again involving Prichards wills that, rather than wills to. Refs.:
The allusions are scattered, but there are specific essays, one on the
‘that’-clause, and also discussions on Davidson on saying that. There is a
reference to ‘oratio obliqua’ and Prichard in “Uncertainty,” BANC.
open-close
distinction, the:
open formula: also called open sentence, a sentence with a free occurrence of a
variable. A closed sentence, sometimes called a ‘statement,’ has no free
occurrences of variables. In a language whose only variable-binding operators
are quantifiers, an occurrence of a variable in a formula is bound provided
that occurrence either is within the scope of a quantifier employing that
variable or is the occurrence in that quantifier. An occurrence of a variable
in a formula is free provided it is not bound. The formula ‘xy O’ is open because both ‘x’ and ‘y’ occur as
free variables. In ‘For some real number y, xy
O’, no occurrence of ‘y’ is free; but the occurrence of ‘x’ is free, so
the formula is open. The sentence ‘For every real number x, for some real
number y, xy O’ is closed, since none of
the variables occur free. Semantically, an open formula such as ‘xy 0’ is neither true nor false but rather true
of or false of each assignment of values to its free-occurring variables. For
example, ‘xy 0’ is true of each
assignment of two positive or two negative real numbers to ‘x’ and to ‘y’ and
it is false of each assignment of 0 to either and false at each assignment of a
positive real to one of the variables and a negative to the other. Refs.: H. P.
Grice, “Implicatura of free-variable utterances.”
porosität: porosity -- open texture, the possibility of
vagueness. Waismann “Verifiability,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
introduced the metaphor, claiming that open texture is a universal property of
empirical terms. Waismann claims that an inexhaustible source of vagueness
remains even after measures are taken to make an expression precise. His grounds
were, first, that there are an indefinite number of possibilities for which it
is indeterminate whether the expression applies i.e., for which the expression
is vague. There is, e.g., no definite answer whether a catlike creature that
repeatedly vanishes into thin air, then reappears, is a cat. Waismann’s
explanation is that when we define an empirical term, we frame criteria of its
applicability only for foreseeable circumstances. Not all possible situations
in which we may use the term, however, can be foreseen. Thus, in unanticipated
circumstances, real or merely possible, a term’s criteria of applicability may
yield no definite answer to whether it applies. Second, even for terms such as
‘gold’, for which there are several precise criteria of application specific
gravity, X-ray spectrograph, solubility in aqua regia, applying different
criteria can yield divergent verdicts, the result being vagueness. Waismann
uses the concept of open texture to explain why experiential statements are not
conclusively verifiable, and why phenomenalist attempts to translate material
object statements fail. Waismanns Konzept der offenen Struktur oder Porosität, hat
in der ... πόρος , ὁ, (πείρω, περάω) A.means of passing a river, ford,
ferry, Θρύον Ἀλφειοῖο π. Thryum the ford of the Alphëus, Il.2.592, h.Ap.423,
cf. h.Merc.398; “πόρον ἷξον Ξάνθου” Il.14.433; “Ἀξίου π.” A.Pers.493; ἀπικνέεται
ἐς τὸν π.τῆς διαβάσιος to the place of the passage, Hdt.8.115; “π. διαβὰς Ἅλυος”
A.Pers.864(lyr.); “τοῦ κατ᾽ Ὠρωπὸν π. μηδὲν πραττέσθω” IG12.40.22. 2. narrow
part of the sea, strait, “διαβὰς πόρον Ὠκεανοῖο” Hes.Th.292; “παρ᾽ Ὠκεανοῦ . . ἄσβεστον
π.” A.Pr.532 (lyr.); π. Ἕλλης (Dor. Ἕλλας), = Ἑλλήσποντος, Pi.Fr.189, A.Pers.
875(lyr.), Ar.V.308(lyr.); Ἰόνιος π. the Ionian Sea which is the passage-way
from Greece to Italy, Pi.N.4.53; “πέλαγος αἰγαίου πόρου” E.Hel.130; Εὔξεινος, ἄξενος
π. (cf. “πόντος” 11), Id.Andr.1262, IT253; διάραντες τὸν π., i.e. the sea
between Sicily and Africa, Plb.1.37.1; ἐν πόρῳ in the passage-way (of ships),
in the fair-way, Hdt.7.183, Th. 1.120, 6.48; “ἐν π. τῆς ναυμαχίης” Hdt.8.76; “ἕως
τοῦ π. τοῦ κατὰ τὸν ὅρμον τὸν Ἀφροδιτοπολίτην” PHib.1.38.5(iii B.C.). 3.
periphr., πόροι ἁλός the paths of the sea, i.e. the sea, Od.12.259; “Αἰγαίου
πόντοιο πλατὺς π.” D.P.131; “ἐνάλιοι π.” A.Pers.453; π.ἁλίρροθοι ib.367,
S.Aj.412(lyr.); freq. of rivers, π. Ἀλφεοῦ, Σκαμάνδρου, i.e. the Alphëus,
Scamander, etc., Pi.O.1.92, A.Ch.366(lyr.), etc.; “ῥυτοὶ π.” Id.Eu.452, cf.293;
Πλούτωνος π. the river Pluto, Id.Pr.806: metaph., βίου π. the stream of life,
Pi.I.8(7).15; “π. ὕμνων” Emp.35.1. 4. artificial passage over a river, bridge,
Hdt.4.136,140, 7.10.“γ́;” aqueduct, IG7.93(Megara, V A.D., restd.),
Epigr.Gr.1073.4 (Samos). 5. generally, pathway, way, A.Ag. 910, S.Ph.705(lyr.),
etc.; track of a wild beast, X.Cyr.1.6.40; αἰθέρα θ᾽ ἁγνὸν πόρον οἰωνῶν their
pathway, A.Pr.284(anap.); ἐν τῷ π.εἶναι to be in the way, Sammelb.7356.11(ii
A.D.): metaph., “πραπίδων πόροι” A.Supp.94(lyr.). 6. passage through a porous
substance, opening, Epicur.Ep.1pp.10,18 U.; esp. passage through the skin, οἱ
πόροι the pores or passages by which the ἀπορροαί passed, acc. to Empedocles,
“πόρους λέγετε εἰς οὓς καὶ δι᾽ ὧν αἱ ἀπορροαὶ πορεύονται” Pl.Men.76c, cf.
Epicur. Fr.250, Metrod. Fr.7,Ti.Locr.100e; “νοητοὶ π.” S.E.P.2.140; opp. ὄγκοι,
Gal. 10.268; so of sponges, Arist. HA548b31; of plants, Id.Pr. 905b8,
Thphr.CP1.2.4, HP1.10.5. b. of other ducts or openings of the body, π. πρῶτος,
of the womb, Hp. ap. Poll.2.222; πόροι σπερματικοί, θορικοὶ π., Arist.GA716b17,
720b13; π. “ὑστερικοί” the ovaries. Id.HA570a5, al.; τροφῆς π., of the
oesophagus, Id.PA650a15, al.; of the rectum, Id.GA719b29; of the urinal duct,
ib.773a21; of the arteries and veins, Id.HA510a14, etc. c. passages leading
from the organs of sensation to the brain, “ψυχὴ παρεσπαρμένη τοῖς π.”
Pl.Ax.366a; “οἱ π. τοῦ ὄμματος” Arist.Sens.438b14, cf. HA495a11, PA 656b17; ὤτων,
μυκτήρων, Id.GA775a2, cf. 744a2; of the optic nerves, Heroph. ap. Gal.7.89. II.
c. gen. rei, way or means of achieving, accomplishing, discovering, etc., “οὐκ ἐδύνατο
π. οὐδένα τούτου ἀνευρεῖν” Hdt.2.2; “οὐδεὶς π. ἐφαίνετο τῆς ἁλώσιος” Id.3.156;
“τῶν ἀδοκήτων π. ηὗρε θεός” E.Med.1418 (anap.); π. ὁδοῦ a means of performing
the journey, Ar.Pax124; “π. ζητήματος” Pl.Tht.191a; but also π. κακῶν a means
of escaping evils, a way out of them, E.Alc.213 (lyr.): c. inf., “πόρος νοῆσαι”
Emp.4.12; “π. εὐθαρσεῖν” And.2.16; “π. τις μηχανή τε . . ἀντιτείσασθαι”
E.Med.260: with Preps., “π. ἀμφί τινος” A.Supp.806 codd. (lyr.); περί τινος
dub. in Ar.Ec.653; “πόροι πρὸς τὸ πολεμεῖν” X. An.2.5.20. 2. abs., providing,
means of providing, opp. ἀπορία, Pl. Men.78d sq.; contrivance, device, “οἵας
τέχνας τε καὶ π. ἐμησάμην” A.Pr. 477; δεινὸς γὰρ εὑρεῖν κἀξ ἀμηχάνων πόρον
ib.59, cf. Ar.Eq.759; “μέγας π.” A.Pr.111; “τίνα π. εὕρω πόθεν;” E.IA356
(troch.). 3. π. χρημάτων a way of raising money, financial provision,
X.Ath.3.2, HG1.6.12, D.1.19, IG7.4263.2 (Oropus, iii B.C.), etc.; “ὁ π. τῶν
χρ.” D.4.29, IG12(5).1001.1 (Ios, iv B.C.); without χρημάτων, SIG284.23
(Erythrae, iv B.C.), etc.; “μηχανᾶσθαι προσόδου π.” X.Cyr.1.6.10, cf. PTeb.75.6
(ii B.C.): in pl., 'ways and means', resources, revenue, “πόροι χρημάτων” D.
18.309: abs., “πόρους πορίζειν” Hyp.Eux.37, cf. X.Cyr.1.6.9 (sg.), Arist.
Rh.1359b23; πόροι ἢ περὶ προσόδων, title of work by X.: sg., source of revenue,
endowment, OGI544.24 (Ancyra, ii A.D.), 509.12,14 (Aphrodisias, ii A.D.), etc.
b. assessable income or property, taxable estate, freq. in Pap., as BGU1189.11
(i A.D.), etc.; liability, PHamb.23.29 (vi A.D.), etc. III. journey, voyage,
“μακρᾶς κελεύθου π.” A. Th. 546; “παρόρνιθας π. τιθέντες” Id.Eu.770, cf.
E.IT116, etc.; ἐν τῷ π. πλοῖον ἀνατρέψαι on its passage, Aeschin.3.158. IV. Π
personified as father of Ἔρως, Pl.Smp.203b.
operationalism:
a program in philosophy of science that aims to interpret scientific concepts
via experimental procedures and observational outcomes. P. W. Bridgman
introduced the terminology when he required that theoretical concepts be
identified with the operations used to measure them. Logical positivism’s
criteria of cognitive significance incorporated the notion: Bridgman’s
operationalism was assimilated to the positivistic requirement that theoretical
terms T be explicitly defined via logically equivalent to directly observable
conditions O. Explicit definitions failed to accommodate alternative
measurement procedures for the same concept, and so were replaced by reduction
sentences that partially defined individual concepts in observational terms via
sentences such as ‘Under observable circumstances C, x is T if and only if O’.
Later this was weakened to allow ensembles of theoretical concepts to be
partially defined via interpretative systems specifying collective observable
effects of the concepts rather than effects peculiar to single concepts. These
cognitive significance notions were incorporated into various behaviorisms,
although the term ‘operational definition’ is rarely used by scientists in
Bridgman’s or the explicit definition senses: intervening variables are
theoretical concepts defined via reduction sentences and hypothetical
constructs are definable by interpretative systems but not reduction sentences.
In scientific contexts observable terms often are called dependent or
independent variables. When, as in science, the concepts in theoretical
assertions are only partially defined, observational consequences do not
exhaust their content, and so observational data underdetermines the truth of
such assertions in the sense that more than one theoretical assertion will be
compatible with maximal observational data.
Operatum
– “Unoriginally, I will use “O” to symbolise an ‘operator’” – Grice. if you
have an operaturm, you also have an operator – operans, operaturum, operandum,
operatum – The operans is like the operator: a one-place sentential connective;
i.e., an expression that may be prefixed to an open or closed sentence to
produce, respectively, a new open or closed sentence. Thus ‘it is not the case
that’ is a truth-functional operator. The most thoroughly investigated
operators are the intensional ones; an intensional operator O, when prefixed to
an open or closed sentence E, produces an open or closed sentence OE, whose
extension is determined not by the extension of E but by some other property of
E, which varies with the choice of O. For example, the extension of a closed
sentence is its truth-value A, but if the modal operator ‘it is necessary that’
is prefixed to A, the extension of the result depends on whether A’s extension
belongs to it necessarily or contingently. This property of A is usually
modeled by assigning to A a subset X of a domain of possible worlds W. If X % W
then ‘it is necessary that A’ is true, but if X is a proper subset of W, it is
false. Another example involves the epistemic operator ‘it is plausible that’.
Since a true sentence may be either plausible or implausible, the truth-value
of ‘it is plausible that A’ is not fixed by the truth-value of A, but rather by
the body of evidence that supports A relative to a thinker in a given context.
This may also be modeled in a possible worlds framework, by operant
conditioning operator 632 632
stipulating, for each world, which worlds, if any, are plausible relative to
it. The topic of intensional operators is controversial, and it is even
disputable whether standard examples really are operators at the correct level
of logical form. For instance, it can be argued that ‘it is necessary that’,
upon analysis, turns out to be a universal quantifier over possible worlds, or
a predicate of expressions. On the former view, instead of ‘it is necessary
that A’ we should write ‘for every possible world w, Aw’, and, on the latter,
‘A is necessarily true’.
adverb
– for the speculative grammarian like Alcuin, or Occam, a part of speech – pars
orationis – surely not one of Plato’s basic ones! -- operator theory of
adverbs, a theory that treats adverbs and other predicate modifiers as
predicate-forming operators on predicates. The theory expands the syntax of
first-order predicate calculus of identity – Sytem G, Gricese -- by adding
operators of various degrees, and makes corresponding additions to the
semantics. Romane Clark, Terence Parsons, and Richard Montague with Hans Kamp
developed the theory independently. Grice discusses it in “Actions and events.”
For example: ‘John runs quickly through the kitchen’ contains a simple
one-place predicate, ‘runs’ applied to John; a zero-place operator, ‘quickly’,
and a one-place operator, ‘through ’ with ‘the kitchen’ filling its place. The
semantics of the expression becomes [O1 1a [O2 0 [Pb]]], which can be read as “[through
the kitchen [quickly [runs John]]]. Semantically ‘quickly’ will be associated
with an operation that takes us from the extension of ‘runs’ to a subset of
that extension. ‘John runs quickly’ entails, but does not implicate, ‘John
runs’. ‘Through the kitchen’ and other operators are handled similarly. The
wide variety of predicate modifiers complicates the inferential conditions and
semantics of the operators. ‘John is finally done’ entails, but does not
implicate, ‘John is done’. Oddly, ‘John is nearly done’ or “John is hardly
done” entails, but does not implicate ‘John is not done’ (whereas “John is
hardly done” entails that it is not the case that John is done. Clark tries to
distinguish various types of predicate modifiers and provides a different
semantic analysis for operators of different sorts. The theory can easily
characterize syntactic aspects of predicate modifier iteration. In addition,
after being modified the original predicates remain as predicates, and maintain
their original degree. Further, there is no need to force John’s running into
subject position as might be the case if we try to make ‘quickly’ an ordinary
predicate. Refs.: Grice, “Actiosn and events,” H. P. Grice, “Why adverbs matter
to philosophy,” Grice, “The semantics of action.” Grice, “Austin on Mly.” --
optimum. Grice: “We must distinguish between the optimum, the
maximum, and the satisficing!” -- If (a) S accepts at t
an alethic acceptability-conditional C 1 , the antecedent of which favours, to
degree d, the consequent of C 1 , (b) S accepts at t the antecedent of C 1 ,
end p.81 (c) after due search by S for such a (further) conditional, there is
no conditional C 2 such that (1) S accepts at t C 2 and its antecedent, (2) and
the antecedent of C 2 is an extension of the antecedent of C 1 , (3) and the
consequent of C 2 is a rival (incompatible with) of the consequent of C 1 , (4)
and the antecedent of C 2 favours the consequent of C 2 more than it favours
the consequent of C 1 : then S may judge (accept) at t that the consequent of C
1 is acceptable to degree d. For convenience, we might abbreviate the complex
clause (C) in the antecedent of the above rule as 'C 1 is optimal for S at t';
with that abbreviation, the rule will run: "If S accepts at t an alethic
acceptability-conditional C 1 , the antecedent of which favours its consequent
to degree d, and S accepts at t the antecedent of C 1 , and C 1 is optimal for
S at C 1 , then S may accept (judge) at t that the consequent of C 1 is
acceptable to degree d." Before moving to the practical dimension, I have
some observations to make.See validum. For
Grice, the validum can attain different shapes or guises. One is the optimum.
He uses it for “Emissor E communicates thata p” which ends up denotating an
‘ideal,’ that can only be deemed, titularily, to be present ‘de facto.’ The
idea is that of the infinite, or rather self-reference regressive closure. Vide
Blackburn on “open GAIIB.” Grice uses ‘optimality’ as one guise of value.
Obviously, it is, as Short and Lewis have it, the superlative of ‘bonum,’ so
one has to be careful. Optimum is used in value theory and decision theory,
too. Cf. Maximum, and minimax. In terms
of the principle of least conversational effort, the optimal move is the least
costly. To utter, “The pillar box seems red” when you can utter, “The pillar
box IS red” is to go into the trouble when you shouldn’t. So this maximin
regulates the conversational exchange. The utterer is meant to be optimally efficient,
and the addressee is intended to recognise that.
order: the level of a
system as determined by the type of entity over which the free variables of
that logic range. Entities of the lowest type, usually called type O, are known
as individuals, and entities of higher type are constructed from entities of
lower type. For example, type 1 entities are i functions from individuals or
n-tuples of individuals to individuals, and ii n-place relations on
individuals. First-order logic is that logic whose variables range over
individuals, and a model for first-order logic includes a domain of individuals.
The other logics are known as higher-order logics, and the first of these is
second-order logic, in which there are variables that range over type 1
entities. In a model for second-order logic, the first-order domain determines
the second-order domain. For every sentence to have a definite truth-value,
only totally defined functions are allowed in the range of second-order
function variables, so these variables range over the collection of total
functions from n-tuples of individuals to individuals, for every value of n.
The second-order predicate variables range over all subsets of n-tuples of
individuals. Thus if D is the domain of individuals of a model, the type 1
entities are the union of the two sets {X: Dn: X 0 Dn$D}, {X: Dn: X 0 Dn}. Quantifiers
may bind second-order variables and are subject to introduction and elimination
rules. Thus whereas in first-order logic one may infer ‘Someone is wise,
‘DxWx’, from ‘Socrates is wise’, ‘Ws’, in second-order logic one may also infer
‘there is something that Socrates is’, ‘DXXs’. The step from first- to
second-order logic iterates: in general, type n entities are the domain of n !
1thorder variables in n ! 1th order logic, and the whole hierarchy is known as
the theory of types.
ordering: an arrangement of
the elements of a set so that some of them come before others. If X is a set,
it is useful to identify an ordering R of X with a subset R of X$X, the set of
all ordered pairs with members in X. If ‹ x,y
1 R then x comes before y in the ordering of X by R, and if ‹ x,y 2 R and ‹ y,x
2 R, then x and y are incomparable. Orders on X are therefore relations
on X, since a relation on a set X is any subset of X $ X. Some minimal
conditions a relation must meet to be an ordering are i reflexivity: ExRxx; ii
antisymmetry: ExEyRxy & Ryx / x % y; and iii transitivity: ExEyEzRxy &
Ryz / Rxz. A relation meeting these three conditions is known as a partial
order also less commonly called a semi-order, and if reflexivity is replaced by
irreflexivity, Ex-Rxx, as a strict partial order. Other orders are
strengthenings of these. Thus a tree-ordering of X is a partial order with a
distinguished root element a, i.e. ExRax, and that satisfies the backward
linearity condition that from any element there is a unique path back to a:
ExEyEzRyx & Rzx / Ryz 7 Rzy. A total order on X is a partial order
satisfying the connectedness requirement: ExEyRxy 7 Ryx. Total orderings are
sometimes known as strict linear orderings, contrasting with weak linear
orderings, in which the requirement of antisymmetry is dropped. The natural
number line in its usual order is a strict linear order; a weak linear ordering
of a set X is a strict linear order of levels on which various members of X may
be found, while adding antisymmetry means that each level contains only one
member. Two other important orders are dense partial or total orders, in which,
between any two elements, there is a third; and well-orders. A set X is said to
be well-ordered by R if R is total and every non-empty subset of Y of X has an
R-least member: EY 0 X[Y & / / Dz 1 YEw 1 YRzw]. Well-ordering rules out
infinite descending sequences, while a strict well-ordering, which is
irreflexive rather than reflexive, rules out loops. The best-known example is
the membership relation of axiomatic set theory, in which there are no loops
such as x 1 y 1 x or x 1 x, and no infinite descending chains . . . x2 1 x1 1
x0.
order
type omega: in mathematics, the order type of the infinite set of natural
numbers. The last letter of the Grecian alphabet, w, is used to denote this
order type; w is thus the first infinite ordinal number. It can be defined as
the set of all finite ordinal numbers ordered by magnitude; that is, w %
{0,1,2,3 . . . }. A set has order type w provided it is denumerably infinite,
has a first element but not a last element, has for each element a unique
successor, and has just one element with no immediate predecessor. The set of
even numbers ordered by magnitude, {2,4,6,8 . . . }, is of order type w. The
set of natural numbers listing first all even numbers and then all odd numbers,
{2,4,6,8 . . .; 1,3,5,7 . . . }, is not of order type w, since it has two
elements, 1 and 2, with no immediate predecessor. The set of negative integers
ordered by magnitude, { . . . 3,2,1}, is also not of order type w, since it has
no first element. V.K. ordinal logic, any means of associating effectively and
uniformly a logic in the sense of a formal axiomatic system Sa with each
constructive ordinal notation a. This notion and term for it was introduced by
Alan Turing in his paper “Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals” 9. Turing’s aim
was to try to overcome the incompleteness of formal systems discovered by Gödel
in 1, by means of the transfinitely iterated, successive adjunction of unprovable
but correct principles. For example, according to Gödel’s second incompleteness
theorem, for each effectively presented formal system S containing a modicum of
elementary number theory, if S is consistent then S does not prove the purely
universal arithmetical proposition Cons expressing the consistency of S via the
Gödelnumbering of symbolic expressions, even though Cons is correct. However,
it may be that the result S’ of adjoining Cons to S is inconsistent. This will
not happen if every purely existential statement provable in S is correct; call
this condition E-C. Then if S satisfies E-C, so also does S; % S ! Cons ; now
S; is still incomplete by Gödel’s theorem, though it is more complete than S.
Clearly the passage from S to S; can be iterated any finite number of times,
beginning with any S0 satisfying E-C, to form S1 % S; 0, S2 % S; 1, etc. But
this procedure can also be extended into the transfinite, by taking Sw to be
the union of the systems Sn for n % 0,1, 2 . . . and then Sw!1 % S;w, Sw!2 %
S;w!1, etc.; condition EC is preserved throughout. To see how far this and
other effective extension procedures of any effectively presented system S to
another S; can be iterated into the transfinite, one needs the notion of the
set O of constructive ordinal notations, due to Alonzo Church and Stephen C.
Kleene in 6. O is a set ordering ordinal logic 634 634 of natural numbers, and each a in O
denotes an ordinal a, written as KaK. There is in O a notation for 0, and with
each a in O is associated a notation sca in O with KscaK % KaK ! 1; finally, if
f is a number of an effective function {f} such that for each n, {f}n % an is
in O and KanK < Kan!1K, then we have a notation øf in O with KøfK %
limnKanK. For quite general effective extension procedures of S to S; and for
any given S0, one can associate with each a in O a formal system Sa satisfying
Ssca % S;a and Søf % the union of the S{f}n for n % 0,1, 2. . . . However, as
there might be many notations for each constructive ordinal, this ordinal logic
need not be invariant, in the sense that one need not have: if KaK % KbK then
Sa and Sb have the same consequences. Turing proved that an ordinal logic
cannot be both complete for true purely universal statements and invariant.
Using an extension procedure by certain proof-theoretic reflection principles,
he constructed an ordinal logic that is complete for true purely universal
statements, hence not invariant. The history of this and later work on ordinal
logics is traced by the undersigned in “Turing in the Land of Oz,” in The
Universal Turing Machine: A Half Century Survey, edited by Rolf Herken.
‘ordinary’-language
philosophy:
“I never knew what language Austin meant – Greek most likely, given his
background!” – Grice prefers ‘vernacular,’ which is charming. Back in Oxford,
Occam had to struggle against his vernacular (“Englysse”) and speak Roman! Then
Latin was the lingua franca, i.e . tongue of the Franks! vide, H. P. Grice, “Post-War Oxford
Philosophy,” a loosely structured philosophical movement holding that the
significance of concepts, including those central to traditional
philosophy e.g., the concepts of truth
and knowledge is fixed by linguistic
practice. Philosophers, then, must be attuned to the actual uses of words
associated with these concepts. The movement enjoyed considerable prominence
chiefly among English-speaking philosophers between the mid-0s and the early
0s. It was initially inspired by the work of Vitters, and later by John Wisdom,
Gilbert Ryle, Norman Malcolm, J. L. Austin and H. P. Grice, though its roots go
back at least to Moore and arguably to Socrates. ‘Ordinary’-language
philosophers do not mean to suggest that, to discover what truth is, we are to
poll our fellow speakers or consult dictionaries (“Naess philosopher is not” –
Grice). Rather, we are to ask how the word ‘truth’ functions in everyday,
nonphilosophical settings. A philosopher whose theory of truth is at odds with
ordinary usage has simply misidentified the concept. Philosophical error,
ironically, was thought by Vitters to arise from our “bewitchment” by language.
When engaging in philosophy, we may easily be misled by superficial linguistic
similarities. We suppose minds to be special sorts of entity, for instance, in
part because of grammatical parallels between ‘mind’ and ‘body’. When we fail
to discover any entity that might plausibly count as a mind, we conclude that
minds must be nonphysical entities. The cure requires that we remind ourselves
how ‘mind’ and its cognates are actually used by ordinary speakers. Refs.: H.
P. Grice, “Post-war Oxford philosophy,” “Conceptual analysis and the province
of philosophy.”
organic:
having parts that are organized and interrelated in a way that is the same as,
or analogous to, the way in which the parts of a living animal or other
biological organism are organized and interrelated. Thus, an organic unity or
organic whole is a whole that is organic in the above sense. These terms are
primarily used of entities that are not literally organisms but are supposedly
analogous to them. Among the applications of the concept of an organic unity
are: to works of art, to the state e.g., by Hegel, and to the universe as a
whole e.g., in absolute idealism. The principal element in the concept is
perhaps the notion of an entity whose parts cannot be understood except by
reference to their contribution to the whole entity. Thus to describe something
as an organic unity is typically to imply that its properties cannot be given a
reductive explanation in terms of those of its parts; rather, at least some of
the properties of the parts must themselves be explained by reference to the
properties of the whole. Hence it usually involves a form of holism. Other
features sometimes attributed to organic unities include a mutual dependence
between the existence of the parts and that of the whole and the need for a
teleological explanation of properties of the parts in terms of some end or
purpose associated with the whole. To what extent these characteristics belong
to genuine biological organisms is disputed.
organicism,
a theory that applies the notion of an organic unity, especially to things that
are not literally organisms. G. E. Moore, in Principia Ethica, proposed a
principle of organic unities, concerning intrinsic value: the intrinsic value
of a whole need not be equivalent to the sum of the intrinsic values of its
parts. Moore applies the principle in arguing that there is no systematic
relation between the intrinsic value of an element of a complex whole and the
difference that the presence of that element makes to the value of the whole.
E.g., he holds that although a situation in which someone experiences pleasure
in the contemplation of a beautiful object has far greater intrinsic goodness
than a situation in which the person contemplates the same object without
feeling pleasure, this does not mean that the pleasure itself has much
intrinsic value.
organism,
a carbon-based living thing or substance, e.g., a paramecium, a tree, or an
ant. Alternatively, ‘organism’ can mean, as in a typical Gricean gedenke
experiment, a hypothetical living thing
of another natural kind, e.g., a silicon-based living thing, in sum, a pirot –
“Pirots karulise elatically.” -- Defining conditions of a carbon-based living
thing, x, are as follows. 1 x has a layer made of m-molecules, i.e.,
carbonbased macromolecules of repeated units that have a high capacity for
selective reactions with other similar molecules. x can absorb and excrete
through this layer. 2 x can metabolize m-molecules. 3 x can synthesize
m-molecular parts of x by means of activities of a proper part of x that is a
nuclear molecule, i.e., an m-molecule that can copy itself. 4 x can exercise
the foregoing capacities in such a way that the corresponding activities are
causally interrelated as follows: x’s absorption and excretion causally
contribute to x’s metabolism; these processes jointly causally contribute to
x’s synthesizing; and x’s synthesizing causally contributes to x’s absorption,
excretion, and metabolism. 5 x belongs to a natural kind of compound physical
substance that can have a member, y, such that: y has a proper part, z; z is a
nuclear molecule; and y reproduces by means of z’s copying itself. 6 x is not
possibly a proper part of something that satisfies 16. The last condition
expresses the independence and autonomy of an organism. For example, a part of
an organism, e.g., a heart cell, is not an organism. It also follows that a
colony of organisms, e.g., a colony of ants, is not an organism.
Origen
(vide Patrologia – series Graeca – Migne) -- he became head of the catechetical
school in Alexandria. Like his mentor, Clement of Alexandria, he was influenced
by Middle Platonism. His principal works were Hexapla, On First Principles, and
Contra Celsum. The Hexapla, little of which survives, consisted of six Hebrew
and two Grecian versions of the Old Testament with Origen’s commentary. On
First Principles sets forth the most systematic Christian theology of the early
church, including some doctrines subsequently declared heretical, such as the
subordination of the Son “a secondary god” and Spirit to the Father,
preexisting human souls but not their transmigration, and a premundane fall
from grace of each human soul. The most famous of his views was the notion of
apocatastasis, universal salvation, the universal restoration of all creation
to God in which evil is defeated and the devil and his minions repent of their
sins. He interpreted hell as a temporary purgatory in which impure souls were
purified and made ready for heaven. His notion of subordination of the Son of
God to the Father was condemned by the church in 533. Origen’s Contra Celsum is
the first sustained work in Christian apologetics. It defends Christianity
before the pagan world. Origen was a leading exponent of the allegorical
interpretation of the Scriptures, holding that the text had three levels of
meaning corresponding to the three parts of human nature: body, soul, and
spirit. The first was the historical sense, sufficient for simple people; the
second was the moral sense; and the third was the mystical sense, open only to
the deepest souls.
Orphism – ovvero Orfeo a
Crotone -- or as Grice preferred Orpheusianism -- a religious movement in ancient Graeco-Roman
culture that may have influenced Plato and some of the pre-Socratics. Neither
the nature of the movement nor the scope of its influence is adequately
understood: ancient sources and modern scholars tend to confuse Orphism with the
Pythagoreanism school led by the native Crotonian “Filolao” at Crotone, and
with ancient mystery cults, especially the Bacchic or Dionysiac mysteries.
“Orphic poems,” i.e., poems attributed to Orpheus a mythic figure, circulated
as early as the mid-sixth century B.C. We have only indirect evidence of the
early Orphic poems; but we do have a sizable body of fragments from poems
composed in later antiquity. Central to both early and later versions is a
theogonic-cosmogonic narrative that posits Night (Nox) as the primal
entity ostensibly a revision of the
account offered by Hesiod and gives
major emphasis to the birth, death through dismemberment, and rebirth of the
god Dionysus, that the Romans called Bacchus. Plato gives us clear evidence of
the existence in his time of itinerant religious teachers who, drawing on the
“books of Orpheus,” performed and taught rituals of initiation and purification
intended to procure divine favor either in this life or in an afterlife. The
extreme skepticism of such scholars as Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and
I. M. Linforth concerning the importance of early Orphism for Graeco-Roman
religion and Graeco-Roman philosophy has been undermined by archaeological
findings in recent decades: the Derveni papyrus, which is a fragment of a
philosophical commentary on an Orphic theogony; and inscriptions with Orphic
instructions for the dead, from a funerary sites Crotone.
ostensum: In his
analysis of the two basic procedures, one involving the subjectum, and another
the praedicatum, Grice would play with the utterer OSTENDING that p. This
relates to his semiotic approach to communication, and avoiding to the maximum
any reference to a linguistic rule or capacity or faculty as different from
generic rationality. In WoW:134 Grice explores what he calls ‘ostensive
correlation.’ He is exploring communication scenarios where the Utterer is
OSTENDING that p, or in predicate terms, that the A is B. He is not so much
concerned with the B, but with the fact that “B” is predicated of a particular
denotatum of “the A,” and by what criteria. He is having in mind his uncle’s
dog, Fido, who is shaggy, i.e. fairy coated. So he is showing to Strawson that
that dog over there is the one that belongs to his uncle, and that, as Strawson
can see, is a shaggy dog, by which Grice means hairy coated. That’s the type of
‘ostensive correlation’ Grice is having in mind. In an attempted ostensive
correlation of the predicate B (‘shaggy’) with the feature or property of being
hairy coated, as per a standard act of communication in which Grice, uttering,
“Fido is shaggy’ will have Strawson believe that Uncle Grice’s dog is hairy
coated – (1) U will perform a number of acts in each of which he ostends a
thing (a1, a2, a3, etc.). (2)
Simultaneously with each ostension, he utters a token of the predicate “shaggy.”
(3) It is his intention TO OSTEND, and to be recognised as ostending, only
things which are either, in his view, plainly hairy-coated, or are, in his view,
plainly NOT hairy-coated. (4) In a model sequence these intentions are
fulfilled. Grice grants that this does not finely distinguish between ‘being
hairy-coated’ from ‘being such that the UTTERER believes to be unmistakenly
hairy coated.’ But such is a problem of any explicit correlation, which are
usually taken for granted – and deemed ‘implicit’ in standard acts of
communication. In primo actu non indiget volunta* diiectivo , sed sola_»
objecti ostensio ...
non potest errar* ciica finem in universali ostensum , potest tamen secundum eos
merton: Oxford
Calculators, a group of philosophers who flourished at Oxford. The name derives
from the “Liber calculationum.”. The author of this work, often called
“Calculator” by later Continental authors, is Richard Swineshead. The “Liber
calculationum” discussed a number of issues related to the quantification or
measurement of local motion, alteration, and augmentation for a fuller description
– v. Murdoch and Sylla, “Swineshead” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography. The
“Liber calculationum” has been studied mainly by historians of science and
grouped together with a number of other works discussing natural philosophical
topics by such authors as Bradwardine, Heytesbury, and Dumbleton. In earlier
histories many of the authors now referred to as Oxford Calculators are
referred to as “The Merton School,” since many of them were fellows of Merton .
But since some authors whose oeuvre appears to fit into the same intellectual
tradition e.g., Kilvington, whose “Sophismata” represents an earlier stage of
the tradition later epitomized by Heytesbury’s Sophismata have no known
connection with Merton , ‘Oxford Calculators’ would appear to be a more
accurate appellation. The works of the Oxford Calculators or Mertonians –
Grice: “I rather deem Kilvington a Mertonian than change the name of his
school!” -- were produced in the context of education in the Oxford arts
faculty – Sylla -- “The Oxford
Calculators,” in Kretzmann, Kenny, and Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of
Later Medieval Philosophy. At Oxford semantics is the centerpiece of the Lit.
Hum. curriculum. After semantics, Oxford came to be known for its work in
mathematics, astronomy, and natural philosophy. Students studying under the
Oxford faculty of arts not only heard lectures on the seven liberal arts and on
natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysics. They were also required
to take part in disputations. Heytesbury’s “Regule solvendi sophismatum” explicitly
and Swineshead’s “Liber calculationum” implicitly are written to prepare
students for these disputations. The three influences most formative on the
work of the Oxford Calculators were the tradition of commentaries on the works
of Aristotle; the developments in semantics, particularly the theories of
categorematic and syncategorematic terms and the theory of conseequentia,
implicate, and supposition; and and the theory of ratios as developed in
Bradwardine’s De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus. In addition to Swineshead,
Heytesbury, Bradwardine, Dumbleton, and Kilvington, other authors and works
related to the work of the Oxford Calculators are Burleigh, “De primo et ultimo
instanti, Tractatus Primus De formis accidentalibus, Tractatus Secundus De
intensione et remissione formarum; Swineshead, Descriptiones motuum; and Bode, “A
est unum calidum.” These and other works had a considerable later influence on
the Continent. Refs.: H. P. Grice,
“Sophismata in the Liber calculationum,” H. P. Grice, “My days at Merton.” – H.
P. Grice, “Merton made me.” – H. P. Grice, “Merton and post-war Oxford
philosophy.”
esse -- ousia: The abstractum
behind Grice’s ‘izz’ --. Grecian term traditionally tr. as ‘substance,’
although the strict transliteration is ‘essentia,’ a feminine abstract noun out
of the verb ‘esse.’ Formed from the participle for ‘being’, the term ousia
refers to the character of being, beingness, as if this were itself an entity.
Just as redness is the character that red things have, so ousia is the
character that beings have. Thus, the ousia of something is the character that
makes it be, its nature. But ousia also refers to an entity that possesses
being in its own right; for consider a case where the ousia of something is
just the thing itself. Such a thing possesses being by virtue of itself; because
its being depends on nothing else, it is self-subsistent and has a higher
degree of being than things whose being depends on something else. Such a thing
would be an ousia. Just which entities meet the criteria for ousia is a
question addressed by Aristotle. Something such as redness that exists only as
an attribute would not have being in its own right. An individual person is an
ousia, but Aristotle also argues that his form is more properly an ousia; and
an unmoved mover is the highest type of ousia. The traditional rendering of the
term into Latin as substantia and English as ‘substance’ is appropriate only in
contexts like Aristotle’s Categories where an ousia “stands under” attributes.
In his Metaphysics, where Aristotle argues that being a substrate does not
characterize ousia, and in other Grecian writers, ‘substance’ is often not an
apt translation.
outweighed rationality – the grammar – rationality of the
end, not just the means – extrinsic rationality – not intrinsic to the means. -- The intrinsic-extrinsic – outweigh --
extrinsic desire, a desire of something for its conduciveness to something else
that one desires. An extrinsic desire is distinguished from an intrinsic desire,
a desire of items for their own sake, or as an end. Thus, an individual might
desire financial security extrinsically, as a means to her happiness, and
desire happiness intrinsically, as an end. Some desires are mixed: their
objects are desired both for themselves and for their conduciveness to
something else. Jacques may desire to jog, e.g., both for its own sake as an
end and for the sake of his health. A desire is strictly intrinsic if and only
if its object is desired for itself alone. A desire is strictly extrinsic if
and only if its object is not desired, even partly, for its own sake. Desires
for “good news” e.g., a desire to hear
that one’s child has survived a car accident
are sometimes classified as extrinsic desires, even if the information
is desired only because of what it indicates and not for any instrumental value
that it may have. Desires of each kind help to explain action. Owing partly to
a mixed desire to entertain a friend, Martha might acquire a variety of
extrinsic desires for actions conducive to that goal. Less happily,
intrinsically desiring to be rid of his toothache, George might extrinsically
desire to schedule a dental appointment. If all goes well for Martha and
George, their desires will be satisfied, and that will be due in part to the
effects of the desires upon their behavior.
oxonian or oxford
aristototelian:
or the Oxonian peripatos – or the Peripatos in the Oxonian lycaeum -- 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.
oxonian
dialectic, or rather Mertonian dialectic – (“You need to go to Merton to do
dialectic” – Grice).- dialectic: H. P. Grice, “Athenian dialectic and Oxonian
dialectic,” an argumentative exchange involving contradiction or a technique or
method connected with such exchanges. The word’s origin is the Grecian
dialegein, ‘to argue’ or ‘converse’; in Aristotle and others, this often has
the sense ‘argue for a conclusion’, ‘establish by argument’. By Plato’s time,
if not earlier, it had acquired a technical sense: a form of argumentation
through question and answer. The adjective dialektikos, ‘dialectical’, would
mean ‘concerned with dialegein’ or of persons ‘skilled in dialegein’; the
feminine dialektike is then ‘the art of dialegein’. Aristotle says that Zeno of
Elea invented diagonalization dialectic 232
232 dialectic. He apparently had in mind Zeno’s paradoxical arguments
against motion and multiplicity, which Aristotle saw as dialectical because
they rested on premises his adversaries conceded and deduced contradictory
consequences from them. A first definition of dialectical argument might then
be: ‘argument conducted by question and answer, resting on an opponent’s
concessions, and aiming at refuting the opponent by deriving contradictory consequences’.
This roughly fits the style of argument Socrates is shown engaging in by Plato.
So construed, dialectic is primarily an art of refutation. Plato, however, came
to apply ‘dialectic’ to the method by which philosophers attain knowledge of
Forms. His understanding of that method appears to vary from one dialogue to
another and is difficult to interpret. In Republic VIVII, dialectic is a method
that somehow establishes “non-hypothetical” conclusions; in the Sophist, it is
a method of discovering definitions by successive divisions of genera into
their species. Aristotle’s concept of dialectical argument comes closer to
Socrates and Zeno: it proceeds by question and answer, normally aims at
refutation, and cannot scientifically or philosophically establish anything.
Aristotle differentiates dialectical arguments from demonstration apodeixis, or
scientific arguments, on the basis of their premises: demonstrations must have
“true and primary” premises, dialectical arguments premises that are
“apparent,” “reputable,” or “accepted” these are alternative, and disputed,
renderings of the term endoxos. However, dialectical arguments must be valid,
unlike eristic or sophistical arguments. The Topics, which Aristotle says is
the first art of dialectic, is organized as a handbook for dialectical debates;
Book VIII clearly presupposes a ruledirected, formalized style of disputation
presumably practiced in the Academy. This use of ‘dialectic’ reappears in the
early Middle Ages in Europe, though as Aristotle’s works became better known
after the twelfth century dialectic was increasingly associated with the
formalized disputations practiced in the universities recalling once again the
formalized practice presupposed by Aristotle’s Topics. In his Critique of Pure
Reason, Kant declared that the ancient meaning of ‘dialectic’ was ‘the logic of
illusion’ and proposed a “Transcendental Dialectic” that analyzed the
“antinomies” deductions of contradictory conclusions to which pure reason is
inevitably led when it extends beyond its proper sphere. This concept was
further developed by Fichte and Schelling into a traidic notion of thesis,
opposing antithesis, and resultant synthesis. Hegel transformed the notion of
contradiction from a logical to a metaphysical one, making dialectic into a
theory not simply of arguments but of historical processes within the
development of “spirit”; Marx transformed this still further by replacing
‘spirit’ with ‘matter’.
oxonian
Epicureanism, -- cf. Grice, “Il giardino di Epicuro a Roma.” -- Walter Pater,
“Marius, The Epicurean” -- one of the three leading movements constituting
Hellenistic philosophy. It was founded by Epicurus 341271 B.C., together with
his close colleagues Metrodorus c.331 278, Hermarchus Epicurus’s successor as
head of the Athenian school, and Polyaenus d. 278. He set up Epicurean
communities at Mytilene, Lampsacus, and finally Athens 306 B.C., where his
school the Garden became synonymous with Epicureanism. These groups set out to
live the ideal Epicurean life, detached from political society without actively
opposing it, and devoting themselves to philosophical discussion and the cult
of friendship. Their correspondence was anthologized and studied as a model of
the philosophical life by later Epicureans, for whom the writings of Epicurus
and his three cofounders, known collectively as “the Men,” held a virtually
biblical status. Epicurus wrote voluminously, but all that survives are three
brief epitomes the Letter to Herodotus on physics, the Letter to Pythocles on
astronomy, etc., and the Letter to Menoeceus on ethics, a group of maxims, and
papyrus fragments of his magnum opus On Nature. Otherwise, we are almost
entirely dependent on secondary citations, doxography, and the writings of his
later followers. The Epicurean physical theory is atomistic, developed out of
the fifth-century system of Democritus. Per se existents are divided into
bodies and space, each of them infinite in quantity. Space is, or includes,
absolute void, without which motion would be impossible, while body is
constituted out of physically indivisible particles, “atoms.” Atoms are
themselves further analyzable as sets of absolute “minima,” the ultimate quanta
of magnitude, posited by Epicurus to circumvent the paradoxes that Zeno of Elea
had derived from the hypothesis of infinite divisibility. Atoms themselves have
only the primary properties of shape, size, and weight. All secondary
properties, e.g. color, are generated out of atomic compounds; given their
dependent status, they cannot be added to the list of per se existents, but it
does not follow, as the skeptical tradition in atomism had held, that they are
not real either. Atoms are in constant rapid motion, epapoge Epicureanism
269 269 at equal speed since in the
pure void there is nothing to slow them down. Stability emerges as an overall
property of compounds, which large groups of atoms form by settling into
regular patterns of complex motion, governed by the three motive principles of
weight, collisions, and a minimal random movement, the “swerve,” which
initiates new patterns of motion and blocks the danger of determinism. Our
world itself, like the countless other worlds, is such a compound, accidentally
generated and of finite duration. There is no divine mind behind it, or behind
the evolution of life and society: the gods are to be viewed as ideal beings,
models of the Epicurean good life, and therefore blissfully detached from our
affairs. Canonic, the Epicurean theory of knowledge, rests on the principle
that “all sensations are true.” Denial of empirical cognition is argued to
amount to skepticism, which is in turn rejected as a self-refuting position.
Sensations are representationally not propositionally true. In the paradigm
case of sight, thin films of atoms Grecian eidola, Latin simulacra constantly
flood off bodies, and our eyes mechanically report those that reach them,
neither embroidering nor interpreting. Inference from these guaranteed
photographic, as it were data to the nature of external objects themselves
involves judgment, and there alone error can occur. Sensations thus constitute
one of the three “criteria of truth,” along with feelings, a criterion of
values and introspective information, and prolepseis, or naturally acquired
generic conceptions. On the basis of sense evidence, we are entitled to infer
the nature of microscopic or remote phenomena. Celestial phenomena, e.g.,
cannot be regarded as divinely engineered which would conflict with the
prolepsis of the gods as tranquil, and experience supplies plenty of models that
would account for them naturalistically. Such grounds amount to consistency
with directly observed phenomena, and are called ouk antimarturesis “lack of
counterevidence”. Paradoxically, when several alternative explanations of the
same phenomenon pass this test, all must be accepted: although only one of them
can be true for each token phenomenon, the others, given their intrinsic
possibility and the spatial and temporal infinity of the universe, must be true
for tokens of the same type elsewhere. Fortunately, when it comes to the basic
tenets of physics, it is held that only one theory passes this test of
consistency with phenomena. Epicurean ethics is hedonistic. Pleasure is our
innate natural goal, to which all other values, including virtue, are subordinated.
Pain is the only evil, and there is no intermediate state. Philosophy’s task is
to show how pleasure can be maximized, as follows: Bodily pleasure becomes more
secure if we adopt a simple way of life that satisfies only our natural and
necessary desires, with the support of like-minded friends. Bodily pain, when
inevitable, can be outweighed by mental pleasure, which exceeds it because it
can range over past, present, and future. The highest pleasure, whether of soul
or body, is a satisfied state, “katastematic pleasure.” The pleasures of
stimulation “kinetic pleasures”, including those resulting from luxuries, can
vary this state, but have no incremental value: striving to accumulate them
does not increase overall pleasure, but does increase our vulnerability to
fortune. Our primary aim should instead be to minimize pain. This is achieved
for the body through a simple way of life, and for the soul through the study
of physics, which achieves the ultimate katastematic pleasure, ”freedom from
disturbance” ataraxia, by eliminating the two main sources of human anguish,
the fears of the gods and of death. It teaches us a that cosmic phenomena do
not convey divine threats, b that death is mere disintegration of the soul,
with hell an illusion. To fear our own future non-existence is as irrational as
to regret the non-existence we enjoyed before we were born. Physics also
teaches us how to evade determinism, which would turn moral agents into
mindless fatalists: the swerve doctrine secures indeterminism, as does the
logical doctrine that future-tensed propositions may be neither true nor false.
The Epicureans were the first explicit defenders of free will, although we lack
the details of their positive explanation of it. Finally, although Epicurean
groups sought to opt out of public life, they took a keen and respectful
interest in civic justice, which they analyzed not as an absolute value, but as
a contract between humans to refrain from harmful activity on grounds of
utility, perpetually subject to revision in the light of changing
circumstances. Epicureanism enjoyed widespread popularity, but unlike its great
rival Stoicism it never entered the intellectual bloodstream of the ancient
world. Its stances were dismissed by many as philistine, especially its
rejection of all cultural activities not geared to the Epicurean good life. It
was also increasingly viewed as atheistic, and its ascetic hedonism was
misrepresented as crude sensualism hence the modern use of ‘epicure’. The
school nevertheless continued to flourish down to and well beyond the end of
the Hellenistic age. In the first century B.C. its exponents Epicureanism
Epicureanism 270 270 included
Philodemus, whose fragmentarily surviving treatise On Signs attests to
sophisticated debates on induction between Stoics and Epicureans, and
Lucretius, the Roman author of the great Epicurean didactic poem On the Nature
of Things. In the second century A.D. another Epicurean, Diogenes of Oenoanda,
had his philosophical writings engraved on stone in a public colonnade, and
passages have survived. Thereafter Epicureanism’s prominence declined. Serious
interest in it was revived by Renaissance humanists, and its atomism was an
important influence on early modern physics, especially through Gassendi. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e il giardino
di Epicuro a Roma,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library,
Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
oxonianism:
Grice was “university lecturer in philosophy” and “tutorial fellow in
philosophy” – that’s why he always saw philosophy, like virtue, as entire. He
would never accept a post like “professor of moral philosophy” or “professor of
logic,” or “professor of metaphysical philosophy,” or “reader in natural
theology,” or “reader in mental philosophy.” So he felt a responsibility
towards ‘philosophy undepartmentilised’ and he succeded in never disgressing
from this gentlemanly attitude to philosophy as a totum, and not a technically
specified field of ‘expertise.’ See playgroup. The playgroup was Oxonian. There
are aspects of Grice’s philosophy which are Oxonian but not playgroup-related,
and had to do with his personal inclinations. The fact that it was Hardie who
was his tutor and instilled on him a love for Aristotle. Grice’s rapport with
H. A. Prichard. Grice would often socialize with members of Ryle’s group, such
as O. P. Wood, J. D. Mabbott, and W. C. Kneale. And of course, he had a
knowleddge of the history of Oxford philosophy, quoting from J. C. Wilson, G.
F. Stout, H. H. Price, Bosanquet, Bradley. He even had his Oxonian ‘enemies,’
Dummett, Anscombe. And he would quote from independents, like A. J. P. Kenny.
But if he had to quote someone first, it was a member of his beloved playgroup:
Austin, Strawson, Warnock, Urmson, Hare, Hart, Hampshire. Grice cannot possibly
claim to talk about post-war Oxford philosophy, but his own! Cf. Oxfords
post-war philosophy. What were Grices first impressions when
arriving at Oxford. He was going to learn. Only the poor learn at Oxford was an
adage he treasured, since he wasnt one! Let us start with an alphabetical
listing of Grices play Group companions: Austin, Butler, Flew,
Gardiner, Grice, Hare, Hampshire, Hart, Nowell-Smith, Parkinson, Paul,
Pears, Quinton, Sibley, Strawson, Thomson, Urmson, and
Warnock. Grices main Oxonian association is St. Johns, Oxford.
By Oxford Philosophy, Grice notably refers to Austins Play Group, of which he
was a member. But Grice had Oxford associations pre-war, and after the
demise of Austin. But back to the Play Group, this, to some, infamous,
playgroup, met on Saturday mornings at different venues at Oxford, including
Grices own St. John’s ‒ apparently, Austins favourite venue. Austin
regarded himself and his kindergarten as linguistic or language botanists. The
idea was to list various ordinary uses of this or that philosophical
notion. Austin: They say philosophy is about language; well, then, let’s botanise! Grices
involvement with Oxford philosophy of course predated his associations with
Austins play group. He always said he was fortunate of having been a tutee to
Hardie at Corpus. Corpus, Oxford. Grice would occasionally refer to the
emblematic pelican, so prominently displayed at Corpus. Grice had an
interim association with the venue one associates most directly with philosophy,
Merton ‒: Grice, Merton, Oxford. While Grice loved to drop
Oxonian Namess, notably his rivals, such as Dummett or Anscombe, he knew when
not to. His Post-war Oxford philosophy, as opposed to more specific items in
The Grice Collection, remains general in tone, and intended as a defense of the
ordinary-language approach to philosophy. Surprisingly, or perhaps not (for
those who knew Grice), he takes a pretty idiosyncratic characterisation of
conceptual analysis. Grices philosophical problems emerge with Grices idiosyncratic
use of this or that expression. Conceptual analysis is meant to solve his
problems, not others, repr. in WOW . Grice finds it important to reprint
this since he had updated thoughts on the matter, which he displays in his
Conceptual analysis and the province of philosophy. The topic represents
one of the strands he identifies behind the unity of his philosophy. By
post-war Oxford philosophy, Grice meant the period he was interested
in. While he had been at Corpus, Merton, and St. Johns in the pre-war
days, for some reason, he felt that he had made history in the post-war
period. The historical reason Grice gives is understandable
enough. In the pre-war days, Grice was the good student and the new fellow
of St. Johns ‒ the other one was Mabbott. But he had not been able to
engage in philosophical discussion much, other than with other tutees of
Hardie. After the war, Grice indeed joins Austins more popular, less secretive
Saturday mornings. Indeed, for Grice, post-war means all philosophy after the
war (and not just say, the forties!) since he never abandoned the methods he
developed under Austin, which were pretty congenial to the ones he had himself
displayed in the pre-war days, in essays like Negation and Personal identity.
Grice is a bit of an expert on Oxonian philosophy. He sees himself as
a member of the school of analytic philosophy, rather than the abused term
ordinary-language philosophy. This is evident by the fact that he
contributed to such polemic ‒ but typically Oxonian ‒
volumes such as Butler, Analytic Philosophy, published by Blackwell (of all
publishers). Grice led a very social life at Oxford, and held frequent
philosophical discussions with the Play group philosophers (alphabetically
listed above), and many others, such as Wood. Post-war Oxford philosophy,
miscellaneous, Oxford philosophy, in WOW, II, Semantics and Met. , Essay. By
Oxford philosophy, Grice means his own. Grice went back to the topic of
philosophy and ordinary language, as one of his essays is precisely entitled,
Philosophy and ordinary language, philosophy and ordinary language, :
ordinary-language philosophy, linguistic botanising. Grice is not really
interested in ordinary language as a philologist might. He spoke
ordinary language, he thought. The point had been brought to the fore by
Austin. If they think philosophy is a play on words, well then, lets play
the game. Grices interest is methodological. Malcolm had been claiming
that ordinary language is incorrigible. While Grice agreed that language can be
clever, he knew that Aristotle was possibly right when he explored ta
legomena in terms of the many and the selected wise, philosophy and
ordinary language, philosophy and ordinary language, : philosophy, ordinary
language. At the time of writing, ordinary-language philosophy had become,
even within Oxford, a bit of a term of abuse. Grice tries to defend
Austins approach to it, while suggesting ideas that Austin somewhat ignored,
like what an utterer implies by the use of an ordinary-language expression,
rather than what the expression itself does. Grice is concerned, contra
Austin, in explanation (or explanatory adequacy), not taxonomy (or descriptive
adequacy). Grice disregards Austins piecemeal approach to ordinary
language, as Grice searches for the big picture of it all. Grice never used
ordinary language seriously. The phrase was used, as he explains, by those who
HATED ordinary-language philosophy. Theres no such thing as ordinary language.
Surely you cannot fairly describe the idiosyncratic linguistic habits of an Old
Cliftonian as even remotely ordinary. Extra-ordinary more likely! As far as the
philosophy bit goes, this is what Bergmann jocularly described as the
linguistic turn. But as Grice notes, the linguistic turn involves both the
ideal language and the ordinary language. Grice defends the choice by Austin of
the ordinary seeing that it was what he had to hand! While Grice seems to be in
agreement with the tone of his Wellesley talk, his idioms there in. Youre
crying for the moon! Philosophy need not be grand! These seem to contrast with
his more grandiose approach to philosophy. His struggle was to defend the
minutiæ of linguistic botanising, that had occupied most of his professional
life, with a grander view of the discipline. He blamed Oxford for that. Never
in the history of philosophy had philosophers shown such an attachment to
ordinary language as they did in post-war Oxford, Grice liked to say.
Having learned Grecian and Latin at Clifton, Grice saw in Oxford a way to go
back to English! He never felt the need to explore Continental modern languages
like German or French. Aristotle was of course cited in Greek, but Descartes is
almost not cited, and Kant is cited in the translation available to Oxonians
then. Grice is totally right that never has philosophy experienced such a
fascination with ordinary use except at Oxford. The ruthless and unswerving
association of philosophy with ordinary language has been peculiar to the
Oxford scene. While many found this attachment to ordinary usage insidious, as
Warnock put it, it fit me and Grice to a T, implicating you need a sort of
innate disposition towards it! Strawson perhaps never had it! And thats why
Grices arguments contra Strawson rest on further minutiæ whose detection by
Grice never ceased to amaze his tutee! In this way, Grice felt he WAS Austins
heir! While Grice is associated with, in chronological order, Corpus, Merton,
and St. Johns, it is only St. Johns that counts for the Griceian! For it is at
St. Johns he was a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy! And we love him as a
philosopher. Refs.: The obvious keyword is “Oxford.” His essay in WoW on
post-war Oxford philosophy is general – the material in the H. P. Grice papers
is more anecdotic. Also “Reply to Richards,” and references above under ‘linguistic
botany’ and ‘play group,’ in BANC.
P
P:
SUBJECT INDEX: PRAEDICATVM -- PERSON – POSSE -- PROBABILITY – PROPOSITVM --
P:
NAME INDEX: ITALIAN:
PARETO
PASSERI
PATRIZI
PEANO
PERA
PERONE
PICO
PICO
PIGLIUCCI
POMPONAZZI
PREVE
P:
NAME INDEX: ENGLISH: PEARS (Grice’s collaborator)
pacifism:
Grice fought in the second world war with the Royal Navy and earned the rank of
captain. 1 opposition to war, usually on moral or religious grounds, but
sometimes on the practical ground pragmatic pacifism that it is wasteful and
ineffective; 2 opposition to all killing and violence; 3 opposition only to war
of a specified kind e.g., nuclear pacifism. Not to be confused with passivism,
pacifism usually involves actively promoting peace, understood to imply
cooperation and justice among peoples and not merely absence of war. But some
usually religious pacifists accept military service so long as they do not
carry weapons. Many pacifists subscribe to nonviolence. But some consider
violence and/or killing permissible, say, in personal self-defense, law
enforcement, abortion, or euthanasia. Absolute pacifism rejects war in all
circumstances, hypothetical and actual. Conditional pacifism concedes war’s
permissibility in some hypothetical circumstances but maintains its wrongness
in practice. If at least some hypothetical wars have better consequences than
their alternative, absolute pacifism will almost inevitably be deontological in
character, holding war intrinsically wrong or unexceptionably prohibited by
moral principle or divine commandment. Conditional pacifism may be held on
either deontological or utilitarian teleological or sometimes consequentialist
grounds. If deontological, it may hold war at most prima facie wrong
intrinsically but nonetheless virtually always impermissible in practice
because of the absence of counterbalancing right-making features. If
utilitarian, it will hold war wrong, not intrinsically, but solely because of
its consequences. It may say either that every particular war has worse
consequences than its avoidance act utilitarianism or that general acceptance
of or following or compliance with a rule prohibiting war will have best
consequences even if occasional particular wars have best consequences rule
utilitarianism.
paine:
philosopher, revolutionary defender of democracy and human rights, and champion
of popular radicalism in three countries. Born in Thetford, England, he emigrated
to the colonies in 1774 (but was never
accepted by the descendants of the Mayfower), and moved to France, where he was
made a proper French citizen in 1792. In
1802 he returned to the United States (as that section of the New World was
then called), where he was rebuffed by the public because of his support for
the Revolution. Paine was the bestknown
polemicist for the Revolution. In many
incendiary pamphlets, he called for a new, more democratic republicanism. His
direct style and uncompromising egalitarianism had wide popular appeal. In
Common Sense 1776 Paine asserted that commoners were the equal of the landed
aristocracy, thus helping to spur colonial resentments sufficiently to support
independence from Britain. The sole basis of political legitimacy is universal,
active consent; taxation without representation is unjust; and people have the
right to resist when the contract between governor and governed is broken. He
defended the Revolution in The Rights of
Man 179, arguing against concentrating power in any one individual and against
a property qualification for suffrage. Since natural law and right reason as
conformity to nature are accessible to all rational persons, sovereignty
resides in human beings and is not bestowed by membership in class or nation.
Opposed to the extremist Jacobins, he helped write, with Condorcet, a
constitution to secure the Revolution. The Age of Reason 1794, Paine’s most
misunderstood work, sought to secure the social cohesion necessary to a
well-ordered society by grounding it in belief in a divinity. But in supporting
deism and attacking established religion as a tool of enslavement, he alienated
the very laboring classes he sought to enlighten. A lifelong adversary of
slavery and supporter of universal male suffrage, Paine argued for
redistributing property in Agrarian Justice 1797.
palæo-Griceian:
Within the Oxford group, Grice was the first, and it’s difficult to find a
precursor. It’s obviously Grice was not motivated to create or design his
manoeuvre to oppose a view by Ryle – who cared about Ryle in the playgroup?
None – It is obviously more clear that Grice cared a hoot about Vitters,
Benjamin, and Malcolm. So that leaves us with the philosophers Grice personally
knew. And we are sure he was more interested in criticizing Austin than his own
tutee Strawson. So ths leaves us with Austin. Grice’s manoeuvre was intended
for Austin – but he waited for Austin’s demise to present it. Even though the
sources were publications that were out there before Austin died (“Other
minds,” “A plea for excuses”). So Grice is saying that Austin is wrong, as he
is. In order of seniority, the next was Hart (who Grice mocked about
‘carefully’ in Prolegomena. Then came more or less same-generational Hare (who
was not too friendly with Grice) and ‘to say ‘x is good’ is to recommend x’ (a
‘performatory fallacy’) and Strawson with ‘true’ and, say, ‘if.’ So, back to
the palaeo-Griceian, surely nobody was in a position to feel a motivation to
criticise Austin, Hart, Hare, and Strawson! When philosophers mention this or
that palaeo-Griceian philosopher, surely the motivation was different. And a
philosophical manoevre COMES with a motivation. If we identify some previous
(even Oxonian) philosopher who was into the thing Grice is, it would not have
Austin, Hart, Hare or Strawson as ‘opponents.’ And of course it’s worse with
post-Griceians. Because, as Grice says, there was no othe time than post-war
Oxford philosophy where “my manoeuvre would have make sense.’ If it does, as it
may, post-Grice, it’s “as derivative” of “the type of thing we were doing back
in the day. And it’s no fun anymore.” “Neo-Griceian” is possibly a misnomer. As
Grice notes, “usually you add ‘neo-’ to sell; that’s why, jokingly, I call
Strawson a neo-traditionalist; as if he were a bit of a neo-con, another
oxymoron, as he was!’That is H. P. Grice was the first member of the play group
to come up with a system of ‘pragmatic rules.’ Or perhaps he wasn’t. In any
case, palaeo-Griceian refers to any attempt by someone who is an Oxonian
English philosopher who suggested something like H. P. Grice later did! There
are palaeo-Griceian suggestions in Bradley – “Logic” --, Bosanquet, J. C.
Wilson (“Statement and inference”) and a few others. Within those who
interacted with Grice to provoke him into the ‘pragmatic rule’ account were two
members of the play group. One was not English, but a Scot: G. A. Paul. Paul
had been to ‘the other place,’ and was at Oxford trying to spread Witters’s
doctrine. The bafflement one gets from “I certainly don’t wish to cast any
doubt on the matter, but that pillar box seems red to me; and the reason why it
is does, it’s because it is red, and its redness causes in my sense of vision
the sense-datum that the thing is red.” Grice admits that he first came out
with the idea when confronted with this example. Mainly Grice’s motivation is
to hold that such a ‘statement’ (if statement, it is, -- vide Bar-Hillel) is
true. The other member was English: P. F. Strawson. And Grice notes that it was
Strawson’s Introduction to logical theory that motivated him to apply a
technique which had proved successful in the area of the philosophy of
perception to this idea by Strawson that Whitehead and Russell are ‘incorrect.’
Again, Grice’s treatment concerns holding a ‘statement’ to be ‘true.’ Besides
these two primary cases, there are others. First, is the list of theses in
“Causal Theory.” None of them are assigned to a particular philosopher, so the
research may be conducted towards the identification of these. The theses are,
besides the one he is himself dealing, the sense-datum ‘doubt or denial’ implicaturum:
One, What is actual is not also possible. Two, What is known to be the case is
not also believed to be the case. Three, Moore was guilty of misusing the
lexeme ‘know.’ Four, To say that someone is responsible is to say that he is
accountable for something condemnable. Six, A horse cannot look like a horse.
Now, in “Prolegomena” he add further cases. Again, since this are
palaeo-Griceian, it may be a matter of tracing the earliest occurrences. In
“Prolegomena,” Grice divides the examples in Three Groups. The last is an easy
one to identity: the ‘performatory’ approach: for which he gives the example by
Strawson on ‘true,’ and mentions two other cases: a performatory use of ‘I
know’ for I guarantee; and the performatory use of ‘good’ for ‘I approve’
(Ogden). The second group is easy to identify since it’s a central concern and
it is exactly Strawson’s attack on Whitehead and Russell. But Grice is clear
here. It is mainly with regard to ‘if’ that he wants to discuss Strawson, and
for which he quotes him at large. Before talking about ‘if’, he mentions the
co-ordinating connectives ‘and’ and ‘or’, without giving a source. So, here
there is a lot to research about the thesis as held by other philosophers even
at Oxford (where, however, ‘logic’ was never considered a part of philosophy
proper). The first group is the most varied, and easier to generalise, because
it refers to any ‘sub-expression’ held to occur in a full expression which is
held to be ‘inappropriate.’ Those who judge the utterance to be inappropriate
are sometimes named. Grice starts with Ryle and The Concept of Mind –
palaeo-Griceian, in that it surely belongs to Grice’s previous generation. It
concerns the use of the adverb ‘voluntary’ and Grice is careful to cite Ryle’s
description of the case, using words like ‘incorrect,’ and that a ‘sense’
claimed by philosophers is an absurd one. Then there is a third member of the
playgroup – other than G. A. Paul and P. F. Strawson – the Master Who Wobbles,
J. L. Austin. Grice likes the way Austin offers himself as a good target –
Austin was dead by then, and Grice would otherwise not have even tried – Austin
uses variables: notably Mly, and a general thesis, ‘no modification without
aberration.’ But basically, Grice agrees that it’s all about the ‘philosophy of
action.’ So in describing an agent’s action, the addition of an adverb makes
the whole thing inappropriate. This may relate to at least one example in
“Causal” involving ‘responsible.’ While Grice there used the noun and
adjective, surely it can be turned into an adverb. The fourth member of the
playgroup comes next: H. L. A. Hart. Grice laughs at Hart’s idea that to add
‘carefully’ in the description of an action the utterer is committed to the
idea that the agent THINKS the steps taken for the performance are reasonable.
There is a thesis he mentions then which alla “Causal Theory,” gets uncredited
– about ‘trying.’ But he does suggest Witters. And then there is his own ‘doubt
or denial’ re: G. A. Paul, and another one in the field of the philosophy of perception
that he had already mentioned vaguely in “Causal”: a horse cannot look like a
horse. Here he quotes Witters in extenso, re: ‘seeing as.’ While Grice mentions
‘philosophy of action,’ there is at least one example involving ‘philosophical
psychology’: B. S. Benjamin on C. D. Broad on the factiveness of ‘remember.’
When one thinks of all the applications that the ‘conversational model’ has
endured, one realizes that unless your background is philosophical, you are
bound not to realise the centrality of Grice’s thesis for philosophical
methodology.
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.
paley: English moral philosopher and
theologian. He was born in Peterborough and educated at Cambridge, where he
lectured in moral philosophy, divinity, and Grecian New Testament before
assuming a series of posts in the C. of E., the last as archdeacon of Carlisle.
The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy first introduced
utilitarianism to a wide public. Moral obligation is created by a divine
command “coupled” with the expectation of everlasting rewards or punishments.
While God’s commands can be ascertained “from Scripture and the light of
nature,” Paley emphasizes the latter. Since God wills human welfare, the
rightness or wrongness of actions is determined by their “tendency to promote
or diminish the general happiness.” Horae Pauline: Or the Truth of the
Scripture History of St Paul Evinced appeared in 1790, A View of the Evidences
of Christianity in 1794. The latter defends the authenticity of the Christian
miracles against Hume. Natural Theology 1802 provides a design argument for
God’s existence and a demonstration of his attributes. Nature exhibits abundant
contrivances whose “several parts are framed and put together for a purpose.”
These contrivances establish the existence of a powerful, wise, benevolent
designer. They cannot show that its power and wisdom are unlimited, however,
and “omnipotence” and “omniscience” are mere “superlatives.” Paley’s Principles
and Evidences served as textbooks in England and America well into the
nineteenth century.
panpsychism, the doctrine that
the physical world is pervasively psychical, sentient or conscious understood
as equivalent. The idea, usually, is that it is articulated into certain
ultimate units or particles, momentary or enduring, each with its own distinct
charge of sentience or consciousness, and that some more complex physical units
possess a sentience emergent from the interaction between the charges of
sentience pertaining to their parts, sometimes down through a series of levels
of articulation into sentient units. Animal consciousness is the overall
sentience pertaining to some substantial part or aspect of the brain, while
each neuron may have its own individual charge of sentience, as may each
included atom and subatomic particle. Elsewhere the only sentient units may be
at the atomic and subatomic level. Two differently motivated versions of the
doctrine should be distinguished. The first implies no particular view about
the nature of matter, and regards the sentience pertaining to each unit as an
extra to its physical nature. Its point is to explain animal and human
consciousness as emerging from the interaction and perhaps fusion of more
pervasive sentient units. The better motivated, second version holds that the
inner essence of matter is unknown. We know only structural facts about the
physical or facts about its effects on sentience like our own. Panpsychists
hypothesize that the otherwise unknown inner essence of matter consists in
sentience or consciousness articulated into the units we identify externally as
fundamental particles, or as a supervening character pertaining to complexes of
such or complexes of complexes, etc. Panpsychists can thus uniquely combine the
idealist claim that there can be no reality without consciousness with
rejection of any subjectivist reduction of the physical world to human
experience of it. Modern versions of panpsychism e.g. of Whitehead, Hartshorne,
and Sprigge are only partly akin to hylozoism as it occurred in ancient
thought. Note that neither version need claim that every physical object
possesses consciousness; no one supposes that a team of conscious cricketers
must itself be conscious.
pantheism, the view that God
is identical with everything. It may be seen as the result of two tendencies:
an intense religious spirit and the belief that all reality is in some way
united. Pantheism should be distinguished from panentheism, the view that God
is in all things. Just as water might saturate a sponge and in that way be in
the entire sponge, but not be identical with the sponge, God might be in
everything without being identical with everything. Spinoza is the most
distinguished pantheist in Western philosophy. He argued that since substance
is completely self-sufficient, and only God is self-sufficient, God is the only
substance. In other words, God is everything. Hegel is also sometimes
considered a pantheist since he identifies God with the totality of being. Many
people think that pantheism is tantamount to atheism, because they believe that
theism requires that God transcend ordinary, sensible reality at least to some
degree. It is not obvious that theism requires a transcendent or Panaetius
pantheism 640 640 personal notion of
God; and one might claim that the belief that it does is the result of an
anthropomorphic view of God. In Eastern philosophy, especially the Vedic
tradition of philosophy, pantheism is
part of a rejection of polytheism. The apparent multiplicity of reality is
illusion. What is ultimately real or divine is Brahman. pantheismusstreit:
a debate primarily between Jacobi and Mendelssohn, although it also included
Lessing, Kant, and Goethe. The basic issue concerned what pantheism is and
whether every pantheists is an atheist. In particular, it concerned whether
Spinoza was a pantheist, and if so, whether he was an atheist; and how close
Lessing’s thought was to Spinoza’s. The standard view, propounded by Bayle and
Leibniz, was that Spinoza’s pantheism was a thin veil for his atheism. Lessing
and Goethe did not accept this harsh interpretation of him. They believed that
his pantheism avoided the alienating transcendence of the standard
Judeo-Christian concept of God. It was debated whether Lessing was a Spinozist
or some form of theistic pantheist. Lessing was critical of dogmatic religions
and denied that there was any revelation given to all people for rational
acceptance. He may have told Jacobi that he was a Spinozist; but he may also
have been speaking ironically or hypothetically.
paracelsus,
pseudonym of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, philosopher. He pursued
medical studies at various G. and Austrian universities, probably completing
them at Ferrara. Thereafter he had little to do with the academic world, apart
from a brief and stormy period as professor of medicine at Basle 152728.
Instead, he worked first as a military surgeon and later as an itinerant
physician in G.y, Austria, and Switzerland. His works were mainly in G. rather
than Latin, and only a few were published during his lifetime. His importance
for medical practice lay in his insistence on observation and experiment, and
his use of chemical methods for preparing drugs. The success of Paracelsian
medicine and chemistry in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was,
however, largely due to the theoretical background he provided. He firmly
rejected the classical medical inheritance, particularly Galen’s explanation of
disease as an imbalance of humors; he drew on a combination of biblical
sources, G. mysticism, alchemy, and Neoplatonic magic as found in Ficino to present
a unified view of humankind and the universe. He saw man as a microcosm,
reflecting the nature of the divine world through his immortal soul, the
sidereal world through his astral body or vital principle, and the terrestrial
world through his visible body. Knowledge requires union with the object, but
because elements of all the worlds are found in man, he can acquire knowledge
of the universe and of God, as partially revealed in nature. The physician
needs knowledge of vital principles called astra in order to heal. Disease is
caused by external agents that can affect the human vital principle as well as
the visible body. Chemical methods are employed to isolate the appropriate
vital principles in minerals and herbs, and these are used as antidotes. Paracelsus
further held that matter contains three principles, sulfur, mercury, and salt.
As a result, he thought it was possible to transform one metal into another by
varying the proportions of the fundamental principles; and that such
transformations could also be used in the production of drugs.
para-consistency: cf. paralogism --
the property of a logic in which one cannot derive all statements from a
contradiction. What is objectionable about contradictions, from the standpoint
of classical logic, is not just that they are false but that they imply any
statement whatsoever: one who accepts a contradiction is thereby committed to
accepting everything. In paraconsistent logics, however, such as relevance
logics, contradictions are isolated inferentially and thus rendered relatively
harmless. The interest in such logics stems from the fact that people sometimes
continue to work in inconsistent theories even after the inconsistency has been
exposed, and do so without inferring everything. Whether this phenomenon can be
explained satisfactorily by the classical logician or shows instead that the
underlying logic of, e.g., science and mathematics is some non-classical
paraconsistent logic, is disputed. Refs.: H. P. Grice: “Implicatura as
para-semantic.”
para-philosophy
– used by Austin, borrowed (but never returned) by Grice.
para-semantic
-- before vowels, par-, word-forming element,
originally in Greek-derived words, meaning "alongside, beyond; altered;
contrary; irregular, abnormal," from Greek para- from para (prep.)
"beside, near; issuing from; against, contrary to," from PIE *prea,
from root *per- (1) "forward," hence "toward, near;
against." Cognate with Old English for- "off, away." Mostly used
in scientific and technical words; not usually regarded as a naturalized
formative element in English.
paradigm-case argument:
Grice tries to give the general form of this argument, as applied to Urmson,
and Grice and Strawson. I wonder if Grice thought that STRAWSON’s appeal to
resentment to prove freewill is paradigm case? The idiom was coined by Grice’s
first tutee at St. John’s, G. N. A. Flew, and he applied it to ‘free will.’
Grice later used it to describe the philosophising by Urmson (in
“Retrospetive”). he issue of analyticity is, as Locke puts it, the issue of
whats trifle. That a triangle is trilateral Locke considers a trifling
proposition, like Saffron is yellow. Lewes (who calls mathematical propositions
analytic) describes the Kantian problem. The reductive analysis of meaning Grice
offers depends on the analytic. Few Oxonian philosophers would follow Loar, D.
Phil Oxon, under Warnock, in thinking of Grices conversational maxims as
empirical inductive generalisations over functional states! Synthesis may do in
the New World,but hardly in the Old! The locus classicus for the
ordinary-language philosophical response to Quine in Two dogmas of empiricism.
Grice and Strawson claim that is analytic does have an ordinary-language use,
as attached two a type of behavioural conversational response. To an
analytically false move (such as My neighbours three-year-old son is an adult)
the addressee A is bound to utter, I dont understand you! You are not being
figurative, are you? To a synthetically false move, on the other hand (such as
My neighbours three-year-old understands Russells Theory of Types), the
addressee A will jump with, Cant believe it! The topdogma of analyticity
is for Grice very important to defend. Philosophy depends on it! He
knows that to many his claim to fame is his In defence of a dogma, the topdogma
of analyticity, no less. He eventually turns to a pragmatist justification
of the distinction. This pragmatist justification is still in accordance
with what he sees as the use of analytic in ordinary language. His infamous
examples are as follows. My neighbours three-year old understands Russells
Theory of Types. A: Hard to believe, but I will. My neighbours three-year
old is an adult. Metaphorically? No. Then I dont understand you, and
what youve just said is, in my scheme of things, analytically false.
Ultimately, there are conversational criteria, based on this or that principle
of conversational helfpulness. Grice is also circumstantially concerned with
the synthetic a priori, and he would ask his childrens playmates: Can a
sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed! The distinction is
ultimately Kantian, but it had brought to the fore by the linguistic turn,
Oxonian and other! In defence of a dogma, Two dogmas of
empiricism, : the analytic-synthetic distinction. For Quine, there
are two. Grice is mainly interested in the first one: that there is a
distinction between the analytic and the synthetic. Grice considers Empiricism
as a monster on his way to the Rationalist City of Eternal Truth. Grice
came back time and again to explore the analytic-synthetic distinction. But his
philosophy remained constant. His sympathy is for the practicality of it, its
rationale. He sees it as involving formal calculi, rather than his own theory
of conversation as rational co-operation which does not presuppose the
analytic-synthetic distinction, even if it explains it! Grice would press the
issue here: if one wants to prove that such a theory of conversation as rational
co-operation has to be seen as philosophical, rather than some other way, some
idea of analyticity may be needed to justify the philosophical enterprise. Cf.
the synthetic a priori, that fascinated Grice most than anything Kantian else!
Can a sweater be green and red all over? No stripes allowed. With In defence of
a dogma, Grice and Strawson attack a New-World philosopher. Grice had
previously collaborated with Strawson in an essay on Met. (actually a three-part piece, with Pears as
the third author). The example Grice chooses to refute attack by Quine of the
top-dogma is the Aristotelian idea of the peritrope, as Aristotle refutes
Antiphasis in Met. (v. Ackrill, Burnyeat
and Dancy). Grice explores chapter Γ 8 of Aristotles Met.
. In Γ 8, Aristotle presents two self-refutation arguments
against two theses, and calls the asserter, Antiphasis, T1 = Everything is
true, and T2 = Everything is false, Metaph. Γ 8, 1012b13–18. Each thesis
is exposed to the stock objection that it eliminates itself. An utterer who
explicitly conveys that everything is true also makes the thesis opposite to
his own true, so that his own is not true (for the opposite thesis denies that
his is true), and any utterer U who explicitly conveys that everything is false
also belies himself. Aristotle does not seem to be claiming that, if
everything is true, it would also be true that it is false that everything is
true and, that, therefore, Everything is true must be false: the final, crucial
inference, from the premise if, p, ~p to the conclusion ~p is
missing. But it is this extra inference that seems required to have a
formal refutation of Antiphasiss T1 or T2 by consequentia mirabilis. The
nature of the argument as a purely dialectical silencer of Antiphasis is
confirmed by the case of T2, Everything is false. An utterer who explicitly
conveys that everything is false unwittingly concedes, by self-application,
that what he is saying must be false too. Again, the further and different
conclusion Therefore; it is false that everything is false is
missing. That proposal is thus self-defeating, self-contradictory (and
comparable to Grices addressee using adult to apply to three-year old, without
producing the creature), oxymoronic, and suicidal. This seems all that
Aristotle is interested in establishing through the self-refutation stock
objection. This is not to suggest that Aristotle did not believe that
Everything is true or Everything is false is false, or that he excludes that he
can prove its falsehood. Grice notes that this is not what Aristotle seems
to be purporting to establish in 1012b13–18. This holds for a περιτροπή
(peritrope) argument, but not for a περιγραφή (perigraphe) argument (συμβαίνει
δὴ καὶ τὸ θρυλούμενον πᾶσι τοῖς τοιούτοις λόγοις, αὐτοὺς ἑαυτοὺς ἀναιρεῖν. ὁ
μὲν γὰρ πάντα ἀληθῆ λέγων καὶ τὸν ἐναντίον αὑτοῦ λόγον ἀληθῆ ποιεῖ, ὥστε τὸν
ἑαυτοῦ οὐκ ἀληθῆ (ὁ γὰρ ἐναντίος οὔ φησιν αὐτὸν ἀληθῆ), ὁ δὲ πάντα ψευδῆ καὶ
αὐτὸς αὑτόν.) It may be emphasized that Aristotles argument does not
contain an explicit application of consequentia mirabilis. Indeed, no
extant self-refutation argument before Augustine, Grice is told by Mates,
contains an explicit application of consequentia mirabilis. This observation is
a good and important one, but Grice has doubts about the consequences one may
draw from it. One may take the absence of an explicit application of
consequentia mirabilis to be a sign of the purely dialectical nature of the
self-refutation argument. This is questionable. The formulation of a
self-refutation argument (as in Grices addressee, Sorry, I misused adult.) is
often compressed and elliptical and involves this or that implicaturum. One
usually assumes that this or that piece in a dialectical context has been
omitted and should be supplied (or worked out, as Grice prefers) by the
addressee. But in this or that case, it is equally possible to supply some
other, non-dialectical piece of reasoning. In Aristotles arguments from Γ
8, e.g., the addressee may supply an inference to the effect that the thesis
which has been shown to be self-refuting is not true. For if Aristotle
takes the argument to establish that the thesis has its own contradictory
version as a consequence, it must be obvious to Aristotle that the thesis is
not true (since every consequence of a true thesis is true, and two
contradictory theses cannot be simultaneously true). On the further
assumption (that Grice makes explicit) that the principle of bivalence is
applicable, Aristotle may even infer that the thesis is false. It is
perfectly plausible to attribute such an inference to Aristotle and to supply
it in his argument from Γ 8. On this account, there is no reason to think
that the argument is of an intrinsically dialectical nature and cannot be
adequately represented as a non-dialectical proof of the non-truth, or even
falsity, of the thesis in question. It is indeed difficult to see signs of
a dialectical exchange between two parties (of the type of which Grice and
Strawson are champions) in Γ8, 1012b13–18. One piece of evidence is
Aristotles reference to the person, the utterer, as Grice prefers who
explicitly conveys or asserts (ὁ λέγων) that T1 or that T2. This reference
by the Grecian philosopher to the Griceian utterer or asserter of the thesis
that everything is true would be irrelevant if Aristotles aim is to prove
something about T1s or T2s propositional content, independently of the act
by the utterer of uttering its expression and thereby explicitly conveying
it. However, it is not clear that this reference is essential to
Aristotles argument. One may even doubt whether the Grecian philosopher is
being that Griceian, and actually referring to the asserter of T1 or T2. The
*implicit* (or implicated) grammatical Subjects of Aristotles ὁ λέγων (1012b15)
might be λόγος, instead of the utterer qua asserter. λόγος is surely the
implicit grammatical Subjects of ὁ λέγων shortly after ( 1012b21–22.
8). The passage may be taken to be concerned with λόγοι ‒ this or
that statement, this or that thesis ‒ but not with its
asserter. In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle states that no thesis (A
three-year old is an adult) can necessarily imply its own contradictory (A
three-year old is not an adult) (2.4, 57b13–14). One may appeal to this
statement in order to argue for Aristotles claim that a self-refutation
argument should NOT be analyzed as involving an implicit application of
consequentia mirabilis. Thus, one should deny that Aristotles self-refutation
argument establishes a necessary implication from the self-refuting thesis to
its contradictory. However, this does not explain what other kind of
consequence relation Aristotle takes the self-refutation argument to establish
between the self-refuting thesis and its contradictory, although dialectical
necessity has been suggested. Aristotles argument suffices to establish that
Everything is false is either false or liar-paradoxical. If a thesis is
liar-paradoxical (and Grice loved, and overused the expression), the assumption
of its falsity leads to contradiction as well as the assumption of its
truth. But Everything is false is only liar-paradoxical in the unlikely,
for Aristotle perhaps impossible, event that everything distinct from this
thesis is false. So, given the additional premise that there is at least
one true item distinct from the thesis Everything is false, Aristotle can
safely infer that the thesis is false. As for Aristotles ὁ γὰρ λέγων τὸν ἀληθῆ
λόγον ἀληθῆ ἀληθής,, or eliding the γὰρ, ὁ λέγων τὸν
ἀληθῆ λόγον ἀληθῆ ἀληθής, (ho legon ton alethe logon alethe alethes) may be rendered
as either: The statement which states that the true statement is true is true,
or, more alla Grice, as He who says (or explicitly conveys, or indicates)
that the true thesis is true says something true. It may be argued that it
is quite baffling (and figurative or analogical or metaphoric) in this
context, to take ἀληθής to be predicated of the Griceian utterer, a
person (true standing for truth teller, trustworthy), to take it to mean
that he says something true, rather than his statement stating something true,
or his statement being true. But cf. L and S: ἀληθής [α^], Dor. ἀλαθής, [α^],
Dor. ἀλαθής, ές, f. λήθω, of persons, truthful, honest (not in Hom., v. infr.),
ἀ. νόος Pi. O.2.92; κατήγορος A. Th. 439; κριτής Th. 3.56; οἶνος ἀ. `in vino veritas,
Pl. Smp. 217e; ὁ μέσος ἀ. τις Arist. EN 1108a20. Admittedly, this or that
non-Griceian passage in which it is λόγος, and not the utterer, which is the
implied grammatical Subjects of ὁ λέγων can be found in Metaph. Γ7, 1012a24–25;
Δ6, 1016a33; Int. 14, 23a28–29; De motu an. 10, 703a4; Eth. Nic. 2.6, 1107a6–7.
9. So the topic is controversial. Indeed such a non-Griceian exegesis of
the passage is given by Alexander of Aphrodisias (in Metaph. 340. 26–29):9,
when Alexander observes that the statement, i.e. not the utterer, that says
that everything is false (ὁ δὲ πάντα ψευδῆ εἶναι λέγων λόγος) negates itself,
not himself, because if everything is false, this very statement, which, rather
than, by which the utterer, says that everything is false, would be false, and
how can an utterer be FALSE? So that the statement which, rather than the
utterer who, negates it, saying that not everything is false, would be true,
and surely an utterer cannot be true. Does Alexander misrepresent Aristotles
argument by omitting every Griceian reference to the asserter or utterer qua
rational personal agent, of the thesis? If the answer is negative, even if the
occurrence of ὁ λέγων at 1012b15 refers to the asserter, or utterer, qua
rational personal agent, this is merely an accidental feature of Aristotles
argument that cannot be regarded as an indication of its dialectical nature.
None of this is to deny that some self-refutation argument may be of an
intrinsically dialectical nature; it is only to deny that every one is This is
in line with Burnyeats view that a dialectical self-refutation, even if
qualified, as Aristotle does, as ancient, is a subspecies of self-refutation,
but does not exhaust it. Granted, a dialectical approach may provide a useful
interpretive framework for many an ancient self-refutation argument. A
statement like If proof does not exist, proof exists ‒ that occurs in an
anti-sceptical self-refutation argument reported by Sextus
Empiricus ‒ may receive an attractive dialectical re-interpretation.
It may be argued that such a statement should not be understood at the
level of what is explicated, but should be regarded as an elliptical reminder
of a complex dialectical argument which can be described as follows. Cf. If
thou claimest that proof doth not exist, thou must present a proof of what thou
assertest, in order to be credible, but thus thou thyself admitest that proof
existeth. A similar point can be made for Aristotles famous argument in the
Protrepticus that one must philosophise. A number of sources state that this
argument relies on the implicaturum, If one must not philosophize, one must
philosophize. It may be argued that this implicaturum is an elliptical reminder
of a dialectical argument such as the following. If thy position is that thou
must not philosophise, thou must reflect on this choice and argue in its
support, but by doing so thou art already choosing to do philosophy, thereby
admitting that thou must philosophise. The claim that every instance of an
ancient self-refutation arguments is of an intrinsically dialectical nature is
thus questionable, to put it mildly. V also 340.19–26, and A. Madigan, tcomm.,
Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotles Met.
4, Ithaca, N.Y., Burnyeat, Protagoras and Self-Refutation in Later Greek
Philosophy,. Grices implicaturum is that Quine should have learned Greek before
refuting Aristotle. But then *I* dont speak Greek! Strawson refuted. Refs.: The
obvious keyword is ‘analytic,’ in The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC. : For one,
Grice does not follow Aristotle, but Philo. the conditional If Alexander exists,
Alexander talks or If Alexander exists, he has such-and-such an age is not
true—not even if he is in fact of such-and-such an age when the proposition is
said. (in APr 175.34–176.6)⁴³ ⁴³
… δείκνυσιν ὅτι μὴ οἷόν τε δυνατῷ τι ἀδύνατον ἀκολουθεῖν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀνάγκη ἀδύνατον
εἶναι ᾧ τὸ ἀδύνατον ἀκολουθεῖ, ἐπὶ πάσης ἀναγκαίας ἀκολουθίας. ἔστι δὲ ἀναγκαία
ἀκολουθία οὐχ ἡ πρόσκαιρος, ἀλλὰ ἐν ᾗ ἀεὶ τὸ ἑπόμενον ἕπεσθαι ἔστι τῷ τὸ εἰλημμένον
ὡς ἡγούμενον εἶναι. οὐ γὰρ ἀληθὲς συνημμένον τὸ εἰ ᾿Αλέξανδρος ἔστιν, ᾿Αλέξανδρος
διαλέγεται, ἢ εἰ ᾿Αλέξανδρος ἔστι, τοσῶνδε ἐτῶν ἐστι, καὶ εἰ εἴη ὅτε λέγεται ἡ
πρότασις τοσούτων ἐτῶν. vide Barnes. ...
έχη δε και επιφοράν το 5 αντικείμενον τώ ήγουμένω, τότε ο τοιούτος γίνεται
δεύτερος αναπόδεικτος, ώς το ,,ει
ημέρα έστι, φώς έστιν ουχί δέ γε φώς έστιν ουκ άρα ...εί ημέρα εστι , φως έστιν ... eine unrichtige ( μοχθηρόν ) bezeichnet 142 ) , und Zwar
war es besonders Philo ...
οίον , , εί ημέρα εστι
, φως έστιν , ή άρχεται από ψεύδους και λήγει επί ψεύδος ... όπερ ήν λήγον .
bei der Obwaltende Conditional -
Nexus gar nicht in Betracht ...Philo:
If it is day, I am talking. One of Grice’s favorite paradoxes, that display the
usefulness of the implicaturum are the so-called ‘paradoxes of implication.’
Johnson, alas, uses ‘paradox’ in the singular. So there must be earlier
accounts of this in the history of philosophy. Notably in the ancient
commentators to Philo! (Greek “ei” and Roman “si”). Misleading but true – could
do.” Note that Grice has an essay on the ‘paradoxes of entailment’. As Strawson
notes, this is misleading. For Strawson these are not paradoxes. The things are
INCORRECT. For Grice, the Philonian paradoxes are indeed paradoxical because
each is a truth. Now, Strawson and Wiggins challenge this. For Grice, to utter
“if p, q” implicates that the utterer is not in a position to utter anything
stronger. He implicates that he has NON-TRUTH-FUNCTIONAL REASON or grounds to
utter “if p, q.” For Strawson, THAT is precisely what the ‘consequentialist’ is
holding. For Strawson, the utterer CONVENTIONALLY IMPLIES that the consequent
or apodosis follows, in some way, from the antecedent or protasis. Not for
Grice. For Grice, what the utterer explicitly conveys is that the conditions
that obtain are those of the Philonian conditional. He implicitly conveys that
there is n inferrability, and this is cancellable. If Strawson holds that it is
a matter of a conventional implicaturum, the issue of cancellation becomes
crucial. For Grice, to add that “But I don’t want to covey that there is any
inferrability between the protasis and the apodosis” is NOT a contradiction.
The utterer or emissor is NOT self-contradicting. And he isn’t! The first to
use the term ‘paracox’ here is a genius. Possibly Philo. It
was W. E. Johnson who first used
the expression 'paradox of
implication', explaining that a paradox of this sort arises when a
logician proceeds step by step, using accepted
principles, until a formula is reached which conflicts with common sense
[Johnson, 1921, 39].The
paradox of implication assumes many forms, some of which are not easily
recognised as involving mere varieties of the same fundamental principle.
But COMPOUND PROPOSITIONS 47 I believe that they
can all be resolved by the consideration that we cannot ivithotd qjialification
apply a com- posite and (in particular) an implicative proposition
to the further process of inference. Such application is possible
only when the composite has been reached irrespectively of any assertion
of the truth or falsity of its components. In other words, it is a
necessary con- dition for further inference that the components of
a composite should really have been entertained hypo- thetically
when asserting that composite. § 9. The theory of compound
propositions leads to a special development when in the conjunctives
the components are taken — not, as hitherto, assertorically — but
hypothetically as in the composites. The conjunc- tives will now be
naturally expressed by such words as possible or compatible, while the
composite forms which respectively contradict the conjunctives will be
expressed by such words as necessary or impossible. If we select
the negative form for these conjunctives, we should write as
contradictory pairs : Conjunctives {possible) Composites
{fiecessary) a. p does not imply q 1, p is not
implied by q c. p is not co-disjunct to q d. p is not
co-alternate to q a, p implies q b, p is implied
by q c, p is co-disjunct to q d, p is co-alternate to
q Or Otherwise, using the term 'possible' throughout,
the four conjunctives will assume the form that the several conjunctions
— pq^pq, pq ^-nd pq — are respectively /^i*- sidle. Here the word possible
is equivalent to being merely hypothetically entertained, so that the
several conjunctives are now qualified in the same way as are the
simple components themselves. Similarly the four CHAPTER HI
corresponding composites may be expressed negatively by using the
term 'impossible,' and will assume the form that the ^^;yunctions pq^ pq,
pq and pq are re- spectively impossible, or (which means the same)
that the ^zVjunctions/^, ^^, pq Rnd pq are necessary. Now just as 'possible*
here means merely 'hypothetically entertained/ so 'impossible' and
'necessary' mean re- spectively 'assertorically denied' and
'assertorically affirmed/ The above scheme leads to the
consideration of the determinate relations that could subsist of p to q
when these eight propositions (conjunctives and composites) are
combined in everypossibleway without contradiction. Prima facie there are
i6 such combinations obtained by selecting a or ay b or 3, c or c, d or J
for one of the four constituent terms. Out of these i6 combinations,
how- ever, some will involve a conjunction of supplementaries (see
tables on pp. 37, 38), which would entail the as- sertorical affirmation
or denial of one of the components / or q, and consequently would not exhibit
a relation of p to q. The combinations that, on this ground, must
be disallowed are the following nine : cihcd, abed, abed,
abed] abed, bacd, cabd, dabc\ abed. The combinations that remain to
be admitted are therefore the followino- seven : abld, cdab\
abed, bald, cdab^ dcab\ abed. In fact, under the imposed
restriction, since a or b cannot be conjoined with c or d, it follows
that we must always conjoin a with c and d\ b with e and d\ c with
a and b\ ^with a and b. This being understood, the COMPOUND
PROPOSITIONS 49 seven permissible combinations that remain are
properly to be expressed in the more simple forms: ab, cd\
ab, ba, cd, dc\ and abed These will be represented (but re-arranged
for purposes of symmetry) in the following table giving all the
possible relations of any proposition/ to any proposition q. The
technical names which 1 propose to adopt for the several relations are
printed in the second column of the table. Table of possible
relations of propositio7i p to proposition q. 1. {a,b)\ p
implies and is implied by q 2. (a, b) : p implies but is not
implied by q, 3. {b^d): p is implied by but does not imply q,
4. {djb^'c^d): p is neither implicans nor impli cate nor
co-disjunct nor co-alternate to g. 5. {dy c)\ /is co-alternate but
not co-disjunct to $r, 6. {Cyd):
/isco-disjunctbutnotco-alternateto$^. 7. {Cjd)'. p is co-disjunct
and co-alternate to q, p is co-implicant to q p is
super-implicant to q. p is sub-implicant to q. p is
independent of q p is sub-opponent to q p is
super-opponent to q, p is co-opponent to q, Here the symmetry
indicated by the prefixes, co-, super-, sub-, is brought out by reading
downwards and upwards to the middle line representing independence.
In this order the propositional forms range from the supreme degree of
consistency to the supreme degree of opponency, as regards the relation
of/ to ^. In tradi- tional logic the seven forms of relation are known
respec- tively by the names equipollent, superaltern, subaltern,
independent, sub-contrary, contrary, contradictory. This latter
terminology, however, is properly used to express the formal relations of
implication and opposition, whereas the terminology which I have adopted
will apply indifferently both for formal and for material relations. One of Grice’s claims to fame is his paradox, under ‘Yog
and Zog.’ Another paradox that Grice examines at length is paradox by Moore.
For Grice, unlike Nowell-Smith, an utterer who, by uttering The cat is on the
mat explicitly conveys that the cat is on the mat does not thereby implicitly
convey that he believes that the cat is on the mat. He, more crucially
expresses that he believes that the cat is on the mat ‒ and this is not
cancellable. He occasionally refers to Moores paradox in the buletic mode,
Close the door even if thats not my desire. An imperative still expresses
someones desire. The sergeant who orders his soldiers to muster at dawn because
he is following the lieutenants order. Grices first encounter with paradox remains
his studying Malcolms misleading exegesis of Moore. Refs.: The main sources
given under ‘heterologicality,’ above. ‘Paradox’ is a good keyword in The H. P.
Grice Papers, since he used ‘paradox’ to describe his puzzle about ‘if,’ but
also Malcolm on Moore on the philosopher’s paradox, and paradoxes of material
implication and paradoxes of entailment. Grice’s point is that a paradox is not
something false. For Strawson it is. “The so-called paradoxes of ‘entailment’
and ‘material implication’ are a misnomer. They statements are not paradoxical,
they are false.” Not for Grice! Cf. aporia. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Griceian paradigm, the-- paradigm:
as used by physicist – Grice: “Kuhn ain’t a philosopher – his BA was in
physics!” -- Kuhn in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” 2, a set of
scientific and metaphysical beliefs that make up a theoretical framework within
which scientific theories can be tested, evaluated, and if necessary revised.
Kuhn’s principal thesis, in which the notion of a paradigm plays a central
role, is structured around an argument against the logical empiricist view of
scientific theory change. Empiricists viewed theory change as an ongoing smooth
and cumulative process in which empirical facts, discovered through observation
or experimentation, forced revisions in our theories and thus added to our
ever-increasing knowledge of the world. It was claimed that, combined with this
process of revision, there existed a process of intertheoretic reduction that
enabled us to understand the macro in terms of the micro, and that ultimately
aimed at a unity of science. Kuhn maintains that this view is incompatible with
what actually happens in case after case in the history of science. Scientific
change occurs by “revolutions” in which an older paradigm is overthrown and is
replaced by a framework incompatible or even incommensurate with it. Thus the
alleged empirical “facts,” which were adduced to support the older theory,
become irrelevant to the new; the questions asked and answered in the new
framework cut across those of the old; indeed the vocabularies of the two
frameworks make up different languages, not easily intertranslatable. These
episodes of revolution are separated by long periods of “normal science,”
during which the theories of a given paradigm are honed, refined, and
elaborated. These periods are sometimes referred to as periods of “puzzle
solving,” because the changes are to be understood more as fiddling with the
details of the theories to “save the phenomena” than as steps taking us closer
to the truth. A number of philosophers have complained that Kuhn’s conception
of a paradigm is too imprecise to do the work he intended for it. In fact,
Kuhn, fifteen years later, admitted that at least two distinct ideas were
exploited by the term: i the “shared elements [that] account for the relatively
unproblematic character of professional communication and for the relative
unanimity of professional judgment,” and ii “concrete problem solutions,
accepted by the group [of scientists] as, in a quite usual sense, paradigmatic”
Kuhn, “Second Thoughts on Paradigms,” 7. Kuhn offers the terms ‘disciplinary
matrix’ and ‘exemplar’, respectively, for these two ideas. Refs.: H. P. Grice,
“Why Kuhn could never explain the ‘minor revolution’ in philosophy we had at
Oxford!; H. P. Grice, “The Griceian paradigm – crisis – revolution –
resolution: some implicatura from Kuhn (from Merton to St. John’s).”
paradigm-case argument: an argument
designed by A. G. N. Flew, Grice’s first tutee at St. John’s – almost -- to
yield an affirmative answer to the following general type of skeptically
motivated question: Are A’s really B? E.g., Do material objects really exist?
Are any of our actions really free? Does induction really provide reasonable
grounds for one’s beliefs? The structure of the argument is simple: in
situations that are “typical,” “exemplary,” or “paradigmatic,” standards for
which are supplied by common sense, or ordinary language, part of what it is to
be B essentially involves A. Hence it is absurd to doubt if A’s are ever B, or
to doubt if in general A’s are B. More commonly, the argument is encountered in
the linguistic mode: part of what it means for something to be B is that, in
paradigm cases, it be an A. Hence the question whether A’s are ever B is
meaningless. An example may be found in the application of the argument to the
problem of induction. See Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory, 2. When one
believes a generalization of the form ‘All F’s are G’ on the basis of good
inductive evidence, i.e., evidence constituted by innumerable and varied
instances of F all of which are G, one would thereby have good reasons for
holding this belief. The argument for this claim is based on the content of the
concepts of reasonableness and of strength of evidence. Thus according to
Strawson, the following two propositions are analytic: 1 It is reasonable to
have a degree of belief in a proposition that is proportional to the strength
of the evidence in its favor. 2 The evidence for a generalization is strong in
proportion as the number of instances, and the variety of circumstances in
which they have been found, is great. Hence, Strawson concludes, “to ask
whether it is reasonable to place reliance on inductive procedures is like
asking whether it is reasonable to proportion the degree of one’s convictions
to the strength of the evidence. Doing this is what ‘being reasonable’ means in
such a context” p. 257. In such arguments the role played by the appeal to
paradigm cases is crucial. In Strawson’s version, paradigm cases are
constituted by “innumerable and varied instances.” Without such an appeal the
argument would fail completely, for it is clear that not all uses of induction
are reasonable. Even when this appeal is made clear though, the argument
remains questionable, for it fails to confront adequately the force of the word
‘really’ in the skeptical challenges. paradigm case argument paradigm case
argument. H. P. Grice, “Paradigm-case arguments in Urmson and other play group
members,” H. P. Grice, “A. G. N. Flew and how I taught him the paradigm-case
argument for free-will.”
H.
P. Grice’s para-doxon -- παράδοξον, Liddell and
Scott render it as “contrary to expectation [doxa, belief], incredible,
[unbelievable]” – πaradoxos λόγος they render, unhelpfully, as “a paradox,” Pl.R.472a;
“πaradoxos τε καὶ ψεῦδος” – the paradoxical and the false -- Id.Plt.281a;
“παράδοξα λέγειν” – to utter a paradox -- X.Cyr.7.2.16; “ἂν παράδοξον εἴπω” D.3.10; ἐκ
τοῦ παραδόξου καὶ παραλόγου – Liddell and Scott render as “contrary to all
expectation,” contrary to all belief and dicta! -- ἐκ τοῦ παρα-δόξου καὶ
παρα-λόγου – cf. Kant’s paralogism -- -- -- Id.25.32, cf. Phld.Vit.p.23 J.; “πολλὰ
ποικίλλει χρόνος πaradoxa καὶ θαυμαστά” Men.593; “πaradoxon μοι τὸ πρᾶγμα”
Thphr.Char.1.6; “τὸ ἔνδοξον ἐκ τοῦ πaradoxon θηρώμενος” Plu.Pomp.14; παράδοξα
Stoical paradoxes, Id.2.1060b sq.: Comp., Phld.Mus.p.72 K., Plot.4.9.2: Sup.,
LXX Wi.16.17. Adv. “-ξως” Aeschin.2.40, Plb.1.21.11, Dsc.4.83: Sup. “-ότατα”
D.C.67.11; “-οτάτως” Gal.7.876. II. παράδοξος, title of distinguished athletes,
musicians, and artists of all kinds, the Admirable, IG3.1442, 14.916,
Arr.Epict.2.18.22, IGRom.4.468 (Pergam., iii A. D.), PHamb.21.3 (iv A. D.),
Rev.Ét.Gr.42.434 (Delph.), etc. For Grice, ‘unbelievable’ as opposed to
‘unthinkable’ or ‘unintelligible’ is the paradigm-case response for a
non-analytically false utterance. “Paradoxical, but true.”
para-doxon:
a seemingly sound piece of reasoning based on seemingly true assumptions that
leads to a contradiction or other obviously false conclusion. A paradox reveals
that either the principles of reasoning or the assumptions on which it is based
are faulty. It is said to be solved when the mistaken principles or assumptions
are clearly identified and rejected. The philosophical interest in paradoxes
arises from the fact that they sometimes reveal fundamentally mistaken
assumptions or erroneous reasoning techniques. Two groups of paradoxes have
received a great deal of attention in modern philosophy. Known as the semantic
paradoxes and the logical or settheoretic paradoxes, they reveal serious
difficulties in our intuitive understanding of the basic notions of semantics
and set theory. Other well-known paradoxes include the barber paradox and the
prediction or hangman or unexpected examination paradox. The barber paradox is
mainly useful as an example of a paradox that is easily resolved. Suppose we
are told that there is an Oxford barber who shaves all and only the Oxford men
who do not shave themselves. Using this description, we can apparently derive
the contradiction that this barber both shaves and does not shave himself. If
he does not shave himself, then according to the description he must be one of
the people he shaves; if he does shave himself, then according to the
description he is one of the people he does not shave. This paradox can be
resolved in two ways. First, the original claim that such a barber exists can
simply be rejected: perhaps no one satisfies the alleged description. Second,
the described barber may exist, but not fall into the class of Oxford men: a
woman barber, e.g., could shave all and only the Oxford men who do not shave
themselves. The prediction paradox takes a variety of forms. Suppose a teacher
tells her students on Friday that the following week she will give a single
quiz. But it will be a surprise: the students will not know the evening before
that the quiz will take place the following day. They reason that she cannot
give such a quiz. After all, she cannot wait until Friday to give it, since
then they would know Thursday evening. That leaves Monday through Thursday as
the only possible days for it. But then Thursday can be ruled out for the same
reason: they would know on Wednesday evening. Wednesday, Tuesday, and Monday
can be ruled out by similar reasoning. Convinced by this seemingly correct
reasoning, the students do not study for the quiz. On Wednesday morning, they
are taken by surprise when the teacher distributes it. It has been pointed out
that the students’ reasoning has this peculiar feature: in order to rule out
any of the days, they must assume that the quiz will be given and that it will
be a surprise. But their alleged conclusion is that it cannot be given or else
will not be a surprise, undermining that very assumption. Kaplan and Montague
have argued in “A Paradox Regained,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 0 that
at the core of this puzzle is what they call the knower paradox a paradox that arises when intuitively
plausible principles about knowledge and its relation to logical consequence
are used in conjunction with knowledge claims whose content is, or entails, a
denial of those very claims. Paradoxa A philosophical treatise of Cicero setting forth
six striking theorems of the Stoic system. It was composed in B.C. 46. Edited
by Orelli (with the Tusculans) (Zürich, 1829); and by Möser (Göttingen, 1846).
The three modals: Grice: “We
have, in all, then, three varieties of acceptability statement (each with
alethic and practical sub-types), associated with the modals "It is fully
acceptable that . . . " (non-defeasible), 'it is ceteris paribus
acceptable that . . . ', and 'it is to such-and-such a degree acceptable that .
. . ', both of the latter pair being subject to defeasibility. (I should
re-emphasize that, on the practical side, I am so far concerned to represent
only statements which are analogous with Kant's Technical Imperatives ('Rules
of Skill').) I am now visited by a
temptation, to which of course I shall yield, to link these varieties of
acceptability statement with common modals; however, to preserve a façade of
dignity I shall mark the modals I thus define with a star, to indicate that the
modals so defined are only candidates for identification with the common modals
spelled in the same way. I am tempted to introduce 'it must* be that' as a
modal whose sense is that of 'It is fully acceptable that' and 'it ought* to be
that' as a modal whose sense is that of 'It is ceteris paribus (other things
being equal) acceptable that'; for degree-variant acceptability I can think of
no appealing vernacular counterpart other than 'acceptable' itself. After such
introduction, we could allow the starred modals to become idiomatically
embedded in the sentences in which they occur; as in "A bishop must* get
fed up with politicians", and in "To keep his job, a bishop ought*
not to show his irritation with politicians". end p.78 But I now confess that
I am tempted to plunge even further into conceptual debauchery than I have
already; having just, at considerable pains, got what might turn out to be
common modals into my structures, I am at once inclined to get them out again.
For it seems to me that one might be able, without change of sense, to employ
forms of sentence which eliminate reference to acceptability, and so do not
need the starred modals. One might be able, to this end, to exploit
"if-then" conditionals (NB 'if . . . then', not just 'if') together
with suitable modifiers. One might, for example, be able to re-express "A
bishop must* get fed up with politicians" as "If one is a bishop,
then (unreservedly) one will get fed up with the politicians"; and
"To keep his job, a bishop ought* not to show his irritation with
politicians" as "If one is to keep one's job and if one is a bishop,
then, other things being equal, one is not to show one's irritation with
politicians". Of course, when it comes to applying detachment to
corresponding singular conditionals, we may need to have some way of indicating
the character of the generalization from which the detached singular
non-conditional sentence has been derived; the devising of such indices should
not be beyond the wit of man. So far as generalizations of these kinds are
concerned, it seems to me that one needs to be able to mark five features: (1)
conditionality; (2) generality; (3) type of generality (absolute, ceteris
paribus, etc., thereby, ipso facto, discriminating with respect to
defeasibility or indefeasibility); (4) mode; (5) (not so far mentioned) whether
or not the generalization in question has or has not been derived from a simple
enumeration of instances; because of their differences with respect to
direction of fit, any such index will do real work in the case of alethic
generalities, not in the case of practical generalities. So long as these
features are marked, we have all we need for our purposes. Furthermore, they
are all (in some legitimate and intelligible sense) formal features, and indeed
features which might be regarded as, in some sense, 'contained in' or 'required
by' the end p.79 concept of a rational being, since it would hardly be possible
to engage in any kind of reasoning without being familiar with them. So, on the
assumption that the starred modals are identifiable with their unstarred
counterparts, we would seem to have reached the following positions. (1) We
have represented practical and alethic generalizations, and their associated
conditionals, and with them certain common modals such as 'must' and 'ought',
under a single notion of acceptability (with specific variants). (2) We have
decomposed acceptability itself into formal features. (3) We have removed
mystery from the alleged logical fact that acceptable practical 'ought' statements
have to be derivable from an underlying generalization. (4) Though these
achievements (if such they be) might indeed not settle the 'univocality'
questions, they can hardly be irrelevant to them. I suspect that, if we were to
telephone the illustrious Kant at his Elysian country club in order to impart
to him this latest titbit of philosophical gossip, we might get the reply,
"Big deal! Isn't that what I've been telling you all along?"
paradoxes
of omnipotence – Grice: “a favourite with the second Wilde.” – Grice means
first Wilde, reader in philosophical psychology, second Wilde, reader in
natural religion -- a series of paradoxes in philosophical theology that
maintain that God could not be omnipotent because the concept is inconsistent,
alleged to result from the intuitive idea that if God is omnipotent, then God
must be able to do anything. 1 Can God perform logically contradictory tasks?
If God can, then God should be able to make himself simultaneously omnipotent
and not omnipotent, which is absurd. If God cannot, then it appears that there
is something God cannot do. Many philosophers have sought to avoid this
consequence by claiming that the notion of performing a logically contradictory
task is empty, and that question 1 specifies no task that God can perform or
fail to perform. 2 Can God cease to be omnipotent? If God can and were to do
so, then at any time thereafter, God would no longer be completely sovereign
over all things. If God cannot, then God cannot do something that others can
do, namely, impose limitations on one’s own powers. A popular response to
question 2 is to say that omnipotence is an essential attribute of a
necessarily existing being. According to this response, although God cannot
cease to be omnipotent any more than God can cease to exist, these features are
not liabilities but rather the lack of liabilities in God. 3 Can God create
another being who is omnipotent? Is it logically possible for two beings to be
omnipotent? It might seem that there could be, if they never disagreed in fact
with each other. If, however, omnipotence requires control over all possible
but counterfactual situations, there could be two omnipotent beings only if it
were impossible for them to disagree. 4 Can God create a stone too heavy for
God to move? If God can, then there is something that God cannot do move such a stone and if God cannot, then there is something
God cannot do create such a stone. One
reply is to maintain that ‘God cannot create a stone too heavy for God to move’
is a harmless consequence of ‘God can create stones of any weight and God can
move stones of any weight.’ paradox of
analysis: Grice: “One (not I, mind – I don’t take anything seriously) must take
the paradox of analysis very seriously.” an argument that it is impossible for
an analysis of a meaning to be informative for one who already understands the
meaning. Consider: ‘An F is a G’ e.g., ‘A circle is a line all points on which
are equidistant from some one point’ gives a correct analysis of the meaning of
‘F’ only if ‘G’ means the same as ‘F’; but then anyone who already understands
both meanings must already know what the sentence says. Indeed, that will be
the same as what the trivial ‘An F is an F’ says, since replacing one expression
by another with the same meaning should preserve what the sentence says. The
conclusion that ‘An F is a G’ cannot be informative for one who already
understands all its terms is paradoxical only for cases where ‘G’ is not only
synonymous with but more complex than ‘F’, in such a way as to give an analysis
of ‘F’. ‘A first cousin is an offspring of a parent’s sibling’ gives an
analysis, but ‘A dad is a father’ does not and in fact could not be informative
for one who already knows the meaning of all its words. The paradox appears to
fail to distinguish between different sorts of knowledge. Encountering for the
first time and understanding a correct analysis of a meaning one already grasps
brings one from merely tacit to explicit knowledge of its truth. One sees that
it does capture the meaning and thereby sees a way of articulating the meaning one
had not thought of before. Refs.: H. P. Grice: “Dissolving the paradox of
analysis via the principle of conversational helpfulness – How helpful is
‘unmarried male’ as an analysis of ‘bachelor’?”
paradox
of omniscience: Grice: “A favourite with the second Wilde,” i. e. the Wilde
reader in natural religion, as opposed to the Wilde reader in philosophical
psychology -- an objection to the possibility of omniscience, developed by
Patrick Grim, that appeals to an application of Cantor’s power set theorem.
Omniscience requires knowing all truths; according to Grim, that means knowing
every truth in the set of all truths. But there is no set of all truths.
Suppose that there were a set T of all truths. Consider all the subsets of T,
that is, all members of the power set 3T. Take some truth T1. For each member
of 3T either T1 is a member of that set or T1 is not a member of that set.
There will thus correspond to each member of 3T a further truth specifying
whether T1 is or is not a member of that set. Therefore there are at least as
many truths as there are members of 3T. By the power set theorem, there are
more members of 3T than there are of T. So T is not the set of all truths. By a
parallel argument, no other set is, either. So there is no set of all truths,
after all, and therefore no one who knows every member of that set. The
objection may be countered by denying that the claim ‘for every proposition p,
if p is true God knows that p’ requires that there be a set of all true
propositions.
paraphilosophy:
“I phoned Gellner: you chould entitle your essay, an attack on ordinary
language PARA-philosophy, since that is what Austin asks us to do.”
Paraphilosophy:
“Something Austin loved, and I not so much.” – Grice.
para-psychology, the study of certain
anomalous phenomena and ostensible causal connections neither recognized nor
clearly rejected by traditional science. Parapsychology’s principal areas of
investigation are extrasensory perception ESP, psychokinesis PK, and cases
suggesting the survival of mental functioning following bodily death. The study
of ESP has traditionally focused on two sorts of ostensible phenomena,
telepathy the apparent anomalous influence of one person’s mental states on
those of another, commonly identified with apparent communication between two
minds by extrasensory means and clairvoyance the apparent anomalous influence
of a physical state of affairs on a person’s mental states, commonly identified
with the supposed ability to perceive or know of objects or events not present
to the senses. The forms of ESP may be viewed either as types of cognition
e.g., the anomalous knowledge of another person’s mental states or as merely a
form of anomalous causal influence e.g., a distant burning house causing one to
have possibly incongruous thoughts about fire. The study of PK covers
the apparent ability to produce various physical effects independently of
familiar or recognized intermediate sorts of causal links. These effects
include the ostensible movement of remote objects, materializations the
apparently instantaneous production of matter, apports the apparently
instantaneous relocation of an object, and in laboratory experiments
statistically significant non-random behavior of normally random microscopic
processes such as radioactive decay. Survival research focuses on cases of
ostensible reincarnation and mental mediumship i.e., “channeling” of
information from an apparently deceased communicator. Cases of ostensible
precognition may be viewed as types of telepathy and clairvoyance, and suggest
the causal influence of some state of affairs on an earlier event an agent’s
ostensible precognitive experience. However, those opposed to backward
causation may interpret ostensible precognition either as a form of unconscious
inference based on contemporaneous information acquired by ESP, or else as a
form of PK possibly in conjunction with telepathic influence by which the precognizer
brings about the events apparently precognized. The data of parapsychology
raise two particularly deep issues. The evidence suggesting survival poses a
direct challenge to materialist theories of the mental. And the evidence for
ESP and PK suggests the viability of a “magical” worldview associated usually
with so-called primitive societies, according to which we have direct and
intimate access to and influence on the thoughts and bodily states of others. H. P. Grice: "When, in the late 1940s, J. L. Austin
instituted his *second* playgroup, for full-time philosophy dons -- my *first*,
in a way --, its official rationale, given by its founder, was that all its
members were hacks, spending our weekdays wrestling with the dissolution of
this or that philosophical pseudo-problem, and that we deserved to be spending
our Saturday mornings -- my Saturday afternoons were consacrated to the
Demi-Johns -- in restorative para-philosophy. And so we started on such
topics as maps and diagrams and (in another term) rules of games." Refs.: H. P. Grice, “What J. L Austin
meant by ‘paraphilosophy’!,” H. P. Grice, “Philosophy and para-philosophy.”
Pareto: one of the most important Italian
philosophers, born in Paris (“His mother was a French woman.” – Grice.). Pareto’s efficiency, also called Pareto
optimality, a state of affairs in which no one can be made better off without
making someone worse off. “If you are provided information, the one who gives
you information loses.” “If you give information, you lose.” “If you influence,
you win.” “If you get influenced,” you lose.” The economist Vilfredo Pareto referred to ‘optimality,’
as used by Grice, rather than efficiency, but usage has drifted toward the less
normative term, ‘efficiency.’ Pareto supposes that the utilitarian addition of
welfare across conversationalist A and conversationalist B is meaningless.
Pareto concludes that the only useful aggregate measures of welfare must be
ordinal. One state of affairs is what Pareto calls “Pareto-superior” to another
if conversationalist A cannot move to the second state without making his
co-conversationalist B worse off. Although Pareto’s criterion is generally
thought to be positive or descriptive (‘empiricist’) rather than normative
(‘quasi-contractual, or rational’), it is often used as a normative principles
for justifying particular changes or refusals to make changes. Some
philosophers, such as Grice’s tutee Nozick, for example, take the Pareto
criterion as a moral constraint and therefore oppose certain government
policies. In the context of a voluntary exchange, it makes sense to suppose that
every exchange is “Pareto-improving,” at least for the direct parties to the
exchange, conversationalists A and B. If, however, we fail to account for any
external effect of A’s and B’s conversational exchange on a third party, the
conversational exchange may *not* be Pareto-improving (Grice’s example, “Mrs.
Smith is a bag.”. Moreover, we may fail to provide collective, or
intersubjective benefits that require the co-operation or co-ordination of A’s
and B’s individual efforts (A may be more ready to volunteer than B, say).
Hence, even in a conversational exchange, we cannot expect to achieve “Pareto
efficiency,” but what Grice calls “Grice efficiency.” We might therefore
suppose we should invite thet intervention of the voice of reason to help us
helping each other. But in a typical conversational context, it is often hard
to believe that a significant policy change can be Pareto-improving: there are
sure to be losers from any change – “but the it’s gentlemanly to accept a loss.”
– H. P. Grice. Vilfredo
Federico Damaso Pareto (n. Parigi, 15 luglio 1848 – Céligny, 19 agosto 1923) è
stato un ingegnere, economista e sociologo italiano. Con Gaetano Mosca fu
tra i teorici della corrente politica dell'elitismo. Di grande versatilità
mentale, Pareto è stato tra le menti più eclettiche vissute nella seconda metà
dell'Ottocento e all'inizio Novecento. Le sue capacità spaziavano dall'economia
politica, alla teoria dei giochi, all'ingegneria, alla matematica, alla
statistica e alla filosofia. Pareto ha assunto un ruolo determinante nel
rafforzare con rigore scientifico e analitico i concetti cardine della teoria
neoclassica elaborata da Léon Walras, Carl Menger e William Stanley Jevons
nell'ambito delle scienze economiche, facendo sì che si affermasse rispetto
alle altre in sviluppo o precedenti, e che dominasse come scuola incontrastata
fino alla metà del '900. Ancora oggi, i contributi di Pareto sono centrali e
largamente discussi a livello internazionale in economia e in quasi tutti i
campi applicativi di essa, come la matematica, la statistica e la teoria dei
giochi. Fu lui il primo a utilizzare il termine élite in campo
sociologico.[senza fonte Nacque a Parigi da padre italiano, Raffaele
Pareto (1812-1882), un ingegnere in esilio volontario per motivi politici
appartenente a un'antica famiglia nobile genovese, e da madre francese, Marie
Métenier (1813-1889). Suo zio paterno era il celebre geologo Lorenzo Pareto
(1800-1865). Rientrò in Italia con la famiglia e si stabilì a Genova, nei primi
anni cinquanta dell'Ottocento. Pareto frequentò il Regio Istituto Tecnico e
l'Università a Torino, conseguendo il diploma di Scienze Matematiche presso
l'Università e laureandosi infine presso la Scuola di Applicazione per
Ingegneri nel 1870, con una tesi sui "Principi fondamentali della teoria
della elasticità dei corpi solidi e ricerche sulla integrazione delle equazioni
differenziali che ne definiscono l'equilibrio".[1] Dopo un periodo trascorso
come ingegnere straordinario, a Firenze, presso la Società anonima delle strade
ferrate, nel 1880 divenne direttore generale della Società delle ferriere
italiane, a San Giovanni Valdarno. In questo stesso periodo frequentò i
circoli culturali fiorentini e, con articoli su riviste italiane ed europee,
partecipò intensamente al dibattito politico su posizioni liberiste e
anti-protezionistiche. Nel 1880 e nel 1882 presentò la propria candidatura come
deputato, prima nel collegio di Montevarchi, poi nel collegio Pistoia-Prato-San
Marcello, ma non fu eletto. Intanto, coltivò i suoi interessi culturali,
approfondendo l'economia, la sociologia, gli studi letterari classici. Nel 1889
sposò la russa Alexandra Bakunin (non imparentata con l'anarchico rivoluzionario
Michail Bakunin).[2] Nel 1890 conobbe il già insigne economista Maffeo
Pantaleoni, cui restò legato da sincera amicizia per il resto della sua vita.
Anche grazie a Pantaleoni, nel 1894 fu nominato professore ordinario di
economia politica all'Università di Losanna, dove prima di lui aveva insegnato
Léon Walras. Lavorò allo sviluppo e alla sistemazione della teoria
dell'equilibrio economico tenendo, nel 1901, alcune conferenze a Parigi,
invitato da Georges Sorel, con il quale fu in ottimi rapporti. In questo
periodo fu abbandonato dalla moglie ed ereditò una grossa fortuna da uno zio.
Si legò more uxorio con Jeanne Régis, una giovane parigina conosciuta tramite
un'inserzione su un giornale. Intanto, diventava sempre più vivo l'interesse
per la teoria sociologica. Abbandonò progressivamente l'insegnamento, anche per
ragioni di salute, e si dedicò alla redazione del Trattato di sociologia
generale. Nel 1910 Pareto pubblicò Il mito virtuista e la letteratura immorale,
uno scritto mordace e satirico sul fenomeno Virtuista, nel quale l'autore
demitizza in maniera irriverente tutte le razionalizzazioni degli uomini
bigotti e ipocriti del suo tempo. Frattanto proseguì l'attività pubblicistica,
che s'intensificò dopo la pubblicazione del Trattato, avvenuta nel 1916.
Fu in rapporti di amicizia con Benito Mussolini, che conobbe tra il 1902 e il
1904 quando l'ancora agitatore socialista era rifugiato in Svizzera e
frequentava le lezioni dell'economista. Mussolini fece suoi i principi della
"filosofia della vita" di Pareto, che considererà Mussolini "un
grande statista". Nell'ottobre 1922 Pareto dalla Svizzera, con un acceso
telegramma in cui diceva "ora o mai più", inviò il proprio
incoraggiamento a Benito Mussolini a dare il via alla Marcia su Roma e prendere
il potere[3]. Alla fine del 1922 accettò l'invito fattogli da Benito Mussolini,
diventato capo del governo, a rappresentare l'Italia nella commissione per la
riduzione degli armamenti presso la Società delle Nazioni. Il 1º marzo del
1923, su proposta del governo fascista, fu nominato Senatore del Regno. La
nomina non poté essere portata a termine perché Pareto non consegnò alla
presidenza del Senato i documenti richiestigli. Il 19 giugno dello stesso anno,
ottenuto il divorzio da Alexandra Bakunin, sposò Jeanne Régis dopo una
convivenza ventennale.[2] Morì il 19 agosto successivo e fu sepolto nel
cimitero di Céligny. Nel corso della sua vita, oltre alle personalità già
menzionate, intrattenne rapporti d'amicizia e di scambi culturali, spesso
polemici, con Galileo Ferraris, Ubaldino ed Emilia Peruzzi, Ernest Naville,
Yves Guyot, Gustave de Molinari, Antonio De Viti De Marco, Domenico Comparetti,
Augusto Franchetti, Arturo Linaker, Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, William Ewart
Gladstone, Filippo Turati, James Bryce, Alfred de Foville, Francis Ysidro
Edgeworth, Adrien Naville, Ettore Ciccotti, Arturo Labriola, Benedetto Croce,
Luigi Einaudi, Giovanni Papini, Giovanni Vailati, Tullio Martello, Luigi
Amoroso, Joseph Schumpeter, L. V. Furlan, Napoleone Colajanni, Gaetano Salvemini,
Vittore Pansini, Olinto Barsanti, Robert Michels, Corrado Gini, Dino Grandi e
Carlo Placci. Il resoconto giornalistico di una sua conferenza, tenuta
nel giugno del 1891, sciolta d'autorità per l'intervento della polizia, dice:
«La scienza economica non considera la proprietà come un dogma, non ne nega i
difetti, la riconosce variabile nel tempo e nello spazio; ma seguendo il metodo
sperimentale crede che la sua disparizione farebbe oggi più danni che
vantaggi» Riguardo al suo contributo alla teoria economica, egli, assieme
a Johann Heinrich von Thünen, Hermann Heinrich Gossen, Carl Menger, William
Jevons e il già nominato Léon Walras, è stato tra i maggiori rappresentanti
dell'indirizzo marginalistico o neo-classico, in contrapposizione alla scuola classica
dei primi economisti che ha in Adam Smith e in David Ricardo i suoi
capostipiti. A questa impostazione, fondata sul tentativo di trasferire nella
scienza economica il metodo sperimentale delle scienze fisiche, con il
conseguente uso delle matematiche, e che poi ha dominato lungo tutto il
Novecento, si possono ricondurre concetti tipicamente paretiani come la curva
della distribuzione dei redditi, il concetto detto poi di ottimo paretiano, le
curve di indifferenza, il concetto di distribuzione paretiana. Restando
al concetto della curva della distribuzione dei redditi, o legge di Pareto,
essa è l'estrapolazione statistica operata da Pareto del fatto che, non solo il
numero di percettori di reddito medio è più elevato del numero di coloro che
percepiscono redditi molto sopra e molto sotto la media, ma anche del fatto
che, man mano che si considerano livelli di reddito sempre più alti, il numero
dei percettori diminuisce in un modo che è all'incirca uguale in tutti i paesi
e in tutte le epoche. Tale legge è stata poi variamente affinata e modificata
sia nella sua base empirica che nella formalizzazione matematica, ma è rimasto
il problema di sapere se la distribuzione dei redditi è probabilistica, e
dunque risultante dalle abilità naturali umane distribuite casualmente in una
popolazione, oppure influenzata da fattori ambientali che quindi generano
ingiustizie. In definitiva, come si vede, dal marginalismo, e in
particolare dagli sviluppi apportati da Pareto, viene fuori una metodologia
utile, al di là dei regimi economici preferiti, ad affrontare problemi di
remunerazione e di allocazione delle risorse. L'indice di Pareto è tuttora una
misura delle ineguaglianze della distribuzione dei redditi. Tuttavia, negli
ultimi decenni del XX secolo, l'impostazione marginalistica, e quindi anche
quella di Pareto, è stata soggetta a critiche stringenti. Si è infatti
obiettato che non sempre ciò che l'agente sceglie è ciò che egli preferisce,
nel senso che l'agente economico non è quell'attore perfettamente razionale che
l'approccio marginalista presuppone. I neoclassici rispondono che il loro
modello non si applica ad ogni individuo ma solo al consumatore rappresentativo
o medio. Per quanto concerne l'ottimo paretiano, una critica particolarmente
incisiva è stata quella di Amartya Sen che, tra l'altro in un suo lavoro del
1970, argomenta, sulla scorta del Teorema di Arrow, l'impossibilità matematica
del liberismo paretiano. Proprio sul terreno delle costanti della natura
umana e della razionalità dell'agente avviene il passaggio di Pareto
dall'economia alla sociologia. Lo studio statistico della distribuzione dei
redditi gli aveva fornito una prima evidenza della stabilità della natura umana
pur nel variare delle situazioni storico-geografiche. D'altra parte, l'osservazione
del comportamento non solo economico, ma più generalmente sociale, lo portava a
constatare come l'individuo sociale agisca solo raramente secondo una
razionalità strumentale di mezzi adeguati al fine. A suo modo, egli anticipa la
critica antimarginalista ma, invece di rispondervi restando nel recinto
dell'analisi economica, passa a fondare quella che egli chiamava la «sociologia
scientifica». Il punto di partenza di questa nuova sociologia che, a suo dire,
né Comte né Spencer erano stati in grado di concepire, è che nella maggior
parte dei casi, l'individuo sociale si comporta in maniera non logica, ovvero
senza uno scopo apparente e, comunque, senza una chiara coscienza dello scopo
perseguito. Un marinaio dell'antica Grecia che, apprestandosi a navigare,
compie un sacrificio agli dei, realizza un'azione in nulla adeguata o utile al
suo scopo di navigare. E quando parliamo, non abbiamo nessuna coscienza
esplicita delle competenze grammaticali che utilizziamo per raggiungere lo
scopo di enunciare frasi ben formate. Il problema è però che l'individuo
sociale, pur agendo in modo non logico, cosa che lo accomuna alle specie
animali, rispetto a queste ultime presenta la caratteristica di accompagnare i
propri comportamenti con delle formulazioni verbali, la cui funzione è quella
di fornire un motivo del comportamento stesso. Si muore in combattimento per
qualcosa che chiamiamo patria, e allo stesso tempo si sottoscrive al motto che
vuole che sia dolce e meritevole di lode il morire per la patria. La sociologia
scientifica dovrà allora spiegare quali sono le costanti del comportamento
sociale non logico, e quali sono le caratteristiche e la funzione del discorso
sociale. Da questo nucleo di problemi nasce la sociologia di Pareto,
costituita da quattro grandi contrafforti: la teoria dell'azione non logica, la
teoria dei residui e delle derivazioni, la teoria delle élite, la teoria
dell'equilibrio sociale. Quanto alla teoria dell'azione non logica, oltre a ciò
che si è già anticipato, si può aggiungere che essa costituisce una
classificazione dei comportamenti sociali nei suoi aspetti percettivo-motori e
linguistico-cognitivi. Un particolare interesse è rivolto verso i comportamenti
linguistici. Per Pareto, il linguaggio in quanto competenza grammaticale è il
tipo puro di azione non logica. La teoria dei residui e delle derivazioni
intende spiegare natura e funzionamento delle manifestazioni simboliche, o
derivate, che accompagnano il comportamento sociale, e in particolare natura e
funzionamento del discorso sociale. I motivi che l'individuo sociale adduce a
giustificazione dei suoi comportamenti, sono, secondo Pareto, arbitrari
rispetto alle effettive motivazioni dell'agire. Nonostante ciò, dalla grande
varietà di essi, è possibile risalire alle costanti della natura umana - in
termini più attuali, della mente sociale. Dai discorsi è possibile, dunque,
risalire ai residui, o motivazioni costanti dell'agire, e alle tecniche
verbali, o derivazioni, tramite le quali vengono prodotti i discorsi. In questo
senso, la teoria dei residui e delle derivazioni è, al tempo stesso, una teoria
della cognizione sociale e una teoria delle tecniche argomentative che
l'individuo sociale adopera nella costruzione dei suoi discorsi. Questo
schema analitico non sempre è perseguito in maniera limpida, soprattutto per i
residui. Tuttavia, ciò che emerge abbastanza chiaramente è che la cognizione
sociale, nei suoi scambi con l'ambiente, incorpora una tendenza alle
combinazioni e una tendenza agli aggregati. La prima genera le novità. La seconda
assicura la stabilità. Questo livello psicologico è duplicato da un livello
normativo che, a sua volta, presenta due tendenze, il mantenimento dell'ordine
e la sua trasformazione sulla base di istanze di giustizia. In questo modo, il
comportamento dell'individuo sociale, anche nei suoi aspetti più minuti e
ripetitivi, appare sempre cognitivamente marcato e normativamente orientato.
Uno dei difetti di questo sofisticato modello della cognizione sociale è,
tuttavia, quello di operare con un concetto di norma assai ristretto, che nega
l'incidenza pratica di ciò che Pareto chiama gli «equilibri ideali», ovvero ciò
che un filosofo come Kant chiamerebbe gli ideali della ragione universale.
L'agire dell'individuo sociale appare così rinchiuso entro un rapporto costrittivo
di conformismo e di eterodirezione. Gaetano Mosca: politologo
italiano Venendo alla teoria delle élite, essa è un'ulteriore conseguenza
dell'ipotesi di Pareto circa, non solo la costanza della natura umana, ma anche
di una sua preminenza sui fattori ambientali. In ogni ramo dell'attività
sociale, sostiene Pareto, vi sono individui che, sulla base di determinate
abilità, eccellono. Pertanto, in forza di questo fatto, costoro entrano a far
parte dell'élite corrispondente, pur in presenza di fattori distorsivi.
L'attenzione di Pareto si appunta sull'élite politica, ma la sua teoria delle
élite non è solo una teoria del rapporto tra governanti e governati, ma più
generalmente una teoria della stratificazione sociale su base naturale. Questo
è sicuramente ciò che la differenzia dalla coeva teoria della classe governante
di Gaetano Mosca, fra i fondatori della moderna scienza politica, cui lo si
associa ormai acriticamente, benché Pareto, a ragione, abbia sempre rivendicato
l'autonomia della sua teorizzazione. Tuttavia, come affermato, vi è in
Pareto una particolare attenzione per il rapporto tra l'élite di governo, cioè
coloro che eccellono nell'arte del comando politico, e i governati. La storia,
egli afferma, è un cimitero di élite, ovvero un susseguirsi di sempre nuovi ma,
nella loro struttura, sempre immodificabili rapporti unilaterali di rispetto
tra governanti e governati. Infine, a coronamento di questo grandioso edificio,
sta la teoria dell'equilibrio sociale. La quale, tuttavia, è la parte più
debole di tutta la sua costruzione. Pareto è conscio dell'impossibilità di una
formalizzazione matematica. Inoltre, la scelta di un concetto di equilibrio
come equilibrio meccanico, rende questa parte della sua sociologia una faticosa
argomentazione intorno ai vincoli sistemici dell'agire degli individui sociali.
Di notevole vi è sicuramente il tentativo di Pareto di spiegare il divenire
sociale senza rinunciare al presupposto della costanza della natura
umana. Ne deriva un pessimismo "ondulatorio" che non riesce
però a conciliare il susseguirsi dei cicli sociali con il fatto, pur
riconosciuto, del progressivo stabilirsi della «ragione» nelle attività umane.
Pur con questo e altri limiti, che si sono venuti man mano segnalando, Pareto,
nel suo tentativo di una «sociologia scientifica», desta ammirazione anzitutto
per la creatività e la grandezza di vedute con cui ha saputo districarsi dalle
difficoltà del paradigma economico marginalistico, alla cui piena ma
problematica maturità aveva contribuito egli stesso; in secondo luogo, per
averci assicurato una fra le più originali indagini intorno alla mente
dell'individuo sociale, la cui portata è ancora in larga parte da valutare e
sfruttare. Il rapporto di Pareto con la sociologia scientifica nell'età della
fondazione si innesta in modo paradigmatico nel momento in cui egli, partendo
proprio dall'economia politica, critica il positivismo come sistema
totalizzante e metafisico privo di un rigoroso metodo logico-sperimentale. In
questo senso si può leggere il destino della produzione paretiana all'interno
di una storia delle scienze sociali che continua a mostrare nel XXI secolo la
sua peculiarità e tutto l'interesse per i suoi contributi (Giovanni Busino,
Sugli studi paretiani all'alba del XXI secolo in Omaggio a Vilfredo Pareto
Numero monografico in memoria di Giorgio Sola a cura di Stefano Monti Bragadin,
"Storia Politica Società", Quaderni di Scienze Umane, anno IX, n. 15,
giugno-dicembre 2009, p. 1 e sg.). La vicenda di Pareto si colloca anche nell'alveo
della ricerca multidisciplinare di un modello scientifico che privilegia la
sociologia come critica dei modelli cumulativi di sapere nonché come disciplina
tendente all'affermazione di modelli relazionali della/nella scienza (Guglielmo
Rinzivillo, Vilfredo Pareto e i modelli interdisciplinari nella scienza,
"Sociologia", A. XXIX, n.1, Nuova Serie, 1995, pp. 207–222; si v.
anche in Una epistemologia senza storia, Roma, Nuova Cultura, 2013, pp. 13–29,
ISBN 978-88-6812-222-5). Niccolò Machiavelli Riguardo al suo pensiero
politico, Pareto fu il primo a introdurre il concetto di élite, che trascende
quello di classe politica e comprende l'analisi dei vari tipi di élite. È un
liberista, insegna per un certo periodo economia politica all'università di
Losanna. La sua teoria delle élite trae origine da un'analisi dell'eterogeneità
sociale e dalla constatazione delle disuguaglianze, in termini di ricchezza e
di potere, presenti nella società. Pareto intende studiare scientificamente
queste disuguaglianze, percepite da lui come naturali. Nel corso del suo
sviluppo, ogni società ha dovuto di volta in volta misurarsi con il problema
dello sfruttamento e delle distribuzione di risorse scarse. L'ottimizzazione di
queste risorse è quella che viene assicurata, in ogni ramo di attività, dagli
individui dotati di capacità superiori: l'élite. È interessato in
particolar modo alla circolazione delle élite: "la storia è un cimitero di
élite". A un certo punto l'élite non è più in grado di produrre elementi
validi per la società e decade; nelle élite si verificano due tipi di
movimenti: uno orizzontale (movimenti all'interno della stessa élite) e uno
verticale (ascesa dal basso o declassamento dall'élite). Altro punto cardine
della teoria paretiana è che l'umanità agisce principalmente secondo azioni non
logiche. Tali azioni non logiche (si badi, è una cosa diversa da illogiche)
prendono il nome di residui: manifestazione di qualcosa di non razionale che
condiziona la nostra vita. Fra le sei classi di residui individuate da Pareto
due sono fondamentali: l'istinto delle combinazioni (propensione al
cambiamento) e la persistenza degli aggregati (tendenza alla conservazione
delle tradizioni). Se in un'élite prevale l'istinto delle combinazioni
essa sarà aperta, propensa all'avvento di nuovi ingressi; se, viceversa,
prevale la persistenza degli aggregati sarà chiusa, propensa a scarsa
circolazione, ecc. Per giustificare a posteriori le proprie azioni e difendere
i propri interessi si fa ricorso alle derivazioni: attribuiscono all'agire
politico la connotazione di oggettiva necessità sociale (sono perciò, per sommi
capi, assimilabili alla nozione di formula politica di Gaetano Mosca). Pareto
si dichiara realista e seguace di Machiavelli, la sua è una descrizione della
realtà con sfondi piuttosto pessimistici. È conservatore, teme il suffragio
universale, in economia ha fiducia nel liberismo e nel libero mercato; è
antisocialista, anche alla luce di quanto accade nella Russia della rivoluzione
d'ottobre. Analizzando alcuni brani tratti da I sistemi socialisti si possono
trarre alcune considerazioni sull'impianto teorico di Pareto: Chi è al
potere è anche, necessariamente, il più ricco: chi sta in alto non gode solo di
potere politico, ma di tutta una serie di privilegi, L'élite svetta per le sue
qualità, che possono essere sia buone che cattive, Le élite sono tutte colpite
da una decadenza piuttosto rapida, Una élite che non si rigenera è destinata a
perire brevemente (traspaiono, qui, retaggi tipici del darwinismo sociale
[citazione?]), Elementi di ricambio per le élite possono provenire dalle classi
rurali, le quali subiscono una selezione più forte rispetto alle classi agiate;
le classi agiate tendono a salvare tutti i loro figli, facendo sì che rimangano
in vita anche elementi deboli e non adatti. Questo significa che l'élite al
potere avrà in sé anche gli elementi peggiori e ciò la destina a peggiorare,
Ricorso alla metafora del fiore: l'élite è come un fiore, appassisce, ma se la
pianta, cioè la società, è sana, essa farà subito nascere un altro fiore. La
filosofia della storia di Pareto si fonda sulla circolazione continua delle
élite. Non esiste per Pareto un'idea trionfante in politica, vede la storia
come un moto ondoso: l'idea che trionfa oggi domani decade, ma dopodomani potrà
tornare in auge. Analizzando alcuni brani tratti dal Trattato di sociologia
generale si possono trarre alcune considerazioni sul pensiero di Pareto:
Non c'è netta separazione tra azione logica e azione non logica: un'azione
concreta presenta in misura differente tratti di entrambe le categorie, I
residui fanno sì che i comportamenti umani si differenzino e non vi siano
piattezza e omologazione: permettono, quindi, la circolazione, Chi studia
l'eticità e la morale di un popolo lo fa sempre con interesse: egli dà una qualifica
alla morale perché la vuole imporre. In realtà la morale è qualcosa di molto
difficile da qualificare e da imporre: la morale non è logica ma residuale
(questo è certamente un discorso libertario). Chi governa non lo fa per il bene
della collettività ma esclusivamente per il proprio interesse: la necessità di
giustificarsi agli occhi dei governati lo fa ricorrere alle derivazioni. Le
clientele in democrazia hanno un ruolo simile a quello dei vassalli nel
feudalesimo. La democrazia così come la intendono i teorici (cioè come governo
popolare) non è altro che un "pio desiderio". Clientelismo e
consorterie non sono una degenerazione della democrazia: sono invece la realtà
della democrazia: non è mai esistita una democrazia non interessata da questi
fenomeni e la storia lo dimostra. Ci sarà sempre chi, stringendo un patto con
le élite al potere, ne trae personale beneficio a scapito degli altri. "Il
governare è l'arte di adoperare i sentimenti esistenti", questa frase
dimostra il pragmatismo di Pareto. Opere Compendio di
sociologia generale, 1920 (FR) Cours d'Économie politique professé a
l'Université de Lausanne, vol. I, 1896; vol. II, 1897. (FR) Les systèmes
socialistes, 1902. I sistemi socialisti, 2 voll., Milano, collana « Raccolta di
Breviari Intellettuali » n° 29, 1920. Manuale di economia politica con una
introduzione alla scienza sociale, Milano, 1906.[4] Il mito virtuista e la
letteratura immorale, 1911. Trattato di sociologia generale, 4 voll., 1916.
Giulio Farina (a cura di), Compendio di sociologia generale, Firenze, Barbèra,
1920. Fatti e teorie, Firenze, Vallecchi Editore, 1920. Trasformazione della
democrazia, Milano, Corbaccio, 1921. Lettere a Maffeo Pantaleoni. 1890-1896,
Roma, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, 1960. Lettere a Maffeo Pantaleoni. 1897-1906,
Roma, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, 1960. Lettere a Maffeo Pantaleoni. 1907-1923,
Roma, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, 1960. Borghesia, Élites, Fascismo, Roma,
Giovanni Volpe, 1981. (FR) Écrits politiques. Reazione, Libertà, Fascismo
(1896-1923), Ginevra, Droz, 1989. Le configurazioni del fascismo (1922-1923),
AR, 2009. Note ^ Luigi Amoroso, Vilfredo Pareto, in Econometrica, vol. 6, n. 1,
January 1938, pp. 1–21, DOI:10.2307/1910081, JSTOR 1910081. The
Encyclopedia Sponsored by Statistics and Probability Societies, StatProb, 19
agosto 1923. URL consultato il 4 novembre 2015 (archiviato dall'url originale
il 4 marzo 2016). «among a menagerie of cats that he and his French lover kept
[in their villa;] the local divorce laws prevented him from divorcing his wife
and remarrying until just a few months prior to his death.». ^ Mauro Canali,
Nascita di un italiano a Parigi: Pareto (15/07/1848), RAI Storia, Copia
archiviata, su raistoria.rai.it. URL consultato il 19 agosto 2011 (archiviato
dall'url originale il 13 agosto 2011). (consultata il 19/8/2011) ^ Recensione
di Federigo Enriques su Scientia. Bibliografia Aqueci, F. Le funzioni del
linguaggio secondo Pareto, Berne-Frankfurt/M.-New York-Paris, Peter Lang, 1991
Aron, R., Les étapes de la pensée sociologique, Paris, Gallimard, 1967 (nuova
edizione 1983) Barbieri, G, Vilfredo Pareto e il fascismo, Angeli, 2003 Bobbio,
N., Saggi sulla scienza politica in Italia, Bari-Roma, Laterza, 1969 (nuova
edizione accresciuta 1996) Bobbio, Norberto, Pareto e il sistema sociale,
Firenze, Sansoni, 1973 Borkenau, F., Modern Sociologists: Pareto, London,
Chapmann & Hall, 1936 Bousquet, G. H., Pareto (1848-1923), le savant et
l'homme, Lausanne, Payot, 1928 Bridel, P., Tatti, E. (éditeurs), L'équilibre
général. Entre économie et sociologie. Colloque du Centre d'études
interdisciplinaires Walras-Pareto de l'Université de Lausanne, "Revue
Européenne des Sciences Sociales", tome XXXVII, 1999, no. 116, Librairie
Droz, Genève-Paris Busino, G., Pareto, Croce, les socialismes et la sociologie,
Genève, Droz, 1983 Busino, G., Introduzione, Nota biografica, Nota
bibliografica, Nota al testo, Commento e Indici, in Pareto, V., Trattato di
sociologia generale (edizione critica a cura di G. Busino), Torino, UTET, 1988,
4 voll. Fagioli, S., Vilfredo Pareto nella Toscana del secondo Ottocento.
Un'antologia di scritti editi e inediti, Firenze, Polistampa, 2015. Federici,
M. C., Federici, R., Ciak si gira... Appunti di sociologia dello spettacolo,
2002, Morlacchi editore, Perugia. Forte, F., Silvestri, P., Pareto's
sociological maximum of utility of the community and the theory of the elites,
in J. G. Backhaus (ed.), Essentials of Fiscal Sociology. Conceptions of an
Encyclopedia, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2013, pp. 231–265. Gallo, Michele,
La logica delle scienze sociali in Vilfredo Pareto, Loffredo editore, Napoli
1990. Galmozzi, E. (a cura di), Pareto, in "Origini", nº11 anno 1995,
Società Editrice Barbarossa. Garzia, Mino B.C., Metodologia paretiana. Tomo I.
Differenziazione, non linearità, equilibrio, Peter Lang, Bern, 2006. Garzia,
Mino B.C., Metodologia paretiana. Tomo II. Stati psichici e costanti
dell'azione, Peter Lang, Bern, 2013. Garzia, Mino B.C., Metodologia paretiana.
Tomo III. Stati psichici e variabili dell'azione, Peter Lang, Bern, 2015.
Malandrino, C., Marchionatti, R., (a cura di), Economia, sociologia e politica
nell'opera di Vilfredo Pareto, Firenze, Olschki, 2000 Manca, G.(a cura di),
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923). L'uomo e lo scienziato, Milano, Libri Scheiwiller,
2002 Millefiorini, A., Mutamento e costruzione di senso nel Trattato di
Sociologia generale di Vilfredo Pareto, in (Id., a cura di), Fenomenologia del
disordine. Prospettive sull'irrazionale nella riflessione sociologica italiana,
Edizioni Nuova Cultura, Roma, 2015, pp. 123–164 Pareto, V. (a cura di Giovanni
Busino), Oeuvres complètes: Tome 23, Lettres 1860-1890, Genève: Droz, 1981
Ricossa, S., Dizionario di economia, Torino, UTET, 1982, ad voces Amartya K.
Sen, The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal, Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, n. 78, 1970, pp. 152–157 Ugo Spirito, Pareto,
edizioni Settimo Sigillo, Roma, 2000 Rutigliano Enzo, La ragione e i
sentimenti, Milano, Angeli, 1989 Rutigliano Enzo, Vilfredo Pareto, in Teorie
sociologiche classiche , Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2015/7 Voci correlate
Curva di indifferenza Diagramma di Pareto Microeconomia Distribuzione paretiana
Principio di Pareto Ottimo paretiano Charles Wright Mills Altri progetti
Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a Vilfredo
Pareto Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina in lingua francese
dedicata a Vilfredo Pareto Collabora a Wikiquote Wikiquote contiene citazioni
di o su Vilfredo Pareto Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene
immagini o altri file su Vilfredo Pareto Collegamenti esterni Vilfredo Pareto,
su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.
Modifica su Wikidata Vilfredo Pareto, in Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto
dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Vilfredo Pareto, in Dizionario
di storia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 2010. Modifica su Wikidata (IT,
DE, FR) Vilfredo Pareto, su hls-dhs-dss.ch, Dizionario storico della Svizzera.
Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Vilfredo Pareto, su Enciclopedia Britannica,
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Modifica su Wikidata Vilfredo Pareto, in
Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.
Modifica su Wikidata Vilfredo Pareto, su siusa.archivi.beniculturali.it, Sistema
Informativo Unificato per le Soprintendenze Archivistiche. Modifica su Wikidata
Opere di Vilfredo Pareto, su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. Modifica su
Wikidata (EN) Opere di Vilfredo Pareto, su Open Library, Internet Archive.
Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Opere di Vilfredo Pareto, su Progetto Gutenberg.
Modifica su Wikidata Fondo Vilfredo Pareto della Banca Popolare di Sondrio, su
popso.it. Controllo di autorità VIAF
(EN) 2475156 · ISNI (EN) 0000 0001 0862 4561 · SBN IT\ICCU\CFIV\063949 · LCCN
(EN) n79018804 · GND (DE) 118591711 · BNF (FR) cb11918602b (data) · BNE (ES)
XX1127319 (data) · NLA (EN) 35408738 · BAV (EN) 495/83862 · NDL (EN, JA)
00472732 · WorldCat Identities (EN) lccn-n79018804 Biografie Portale Biografie
Economia Portale Economia Ingegneria Portale Ingegneria Sociologia Portale
Sociologia Categorie: Ingegneri italiani del XIX secoloIngegneri italiani del
XX secoloEconomisti italianiSociologi italianiNati nel 1848Morti nel 1923Nati
il 15 luglioMorti il 19 agostoNati a ParigiMorti a CélignyPolitologi
italianiStoria del pensiero economicoStudenti del Politecnico di
TorinoAnticomunisti italianiProfessori dell'Università di LosannaMembri
dell'Accademia delle Scienze di Torino[altre]. Refs.: “Conversational
efficiency and conversational optimality: Pareto and I;” Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Pareto," per il
Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
Griceian-cum-Parfitian identity: “Parfait
identity” – Grice: “Oddly, the Strawsons enjoy to involve themselves with
issues of identity.” Parfit cites H. P. Grice on “Personal identity,”
philosopher internationally known for his major contributions to the
metaphysics of persons, moral theory, and practical reasoning. Parfit first
rose to prominence by challenging the prevalent view that personal identity is
a “deep fact” that must be all or nothing and that matters greatly in rational
and moral deliberations. Exploring puzzle cases involving fission and fusion,
Parfit propounded a reductionist account of personal identity, arguing that
what matters in survival are physical and psychological continuities. These are
a matter of degree, and sometimes there may be no answer as to whether some
future person would be me. Parfit’s magnum opus, Reasons and Persons 4, is a
strikingly original book brimming with startling conclusions that have
significantly reshaped the philosophical agenda. Part One treats different
theories of morality, rationality, and the good; blameless wrongdoing; moral
immorality; rational irrationality; imperceptible harms and benefits; harmless
torturers; and the self-defeatingness of certain theories. Part Two introduces
a critical present-aim theory of individual rationality, and attacks the standard
selfinterest theory. It also discusses the rationality of different attitudes
to time, such as caring more about the future than the past, and more about the
near than the remote. Addressing the age-old conflict between self-interest and
morality, Parfit illustrates that contrary to what the self-interest theory
demands, it can be rational to care about certain other aims as much as, or
more than, about our own future well-being. In addition, Parfit notes that the
self-interest theory is a hybrid position, neutral with respect to time but
partial with respect to persons. Thus, it can be challenged from one direction
by morality, which is neutral with respect to both persons and time, and from
the other by a present-aim theory, which is partial with respect to both
persons and time. Part Three refines Parfit’s views regarding personal identity
and further criticizes the self-interest theory: personal identity is not what
matters, hence reasons to be specially concerned about our future are not
provided by the fact that it will be our future. Part Four presents puzzles
regarding future generations and argues that the moral principles we need when
considering future people must take an impersonal form. Parfit’s arguments
deeply challenge our understanding of moral ideals and, some believe, the
possibility of comparing outcomes. Parfit has three forthcoming manuscripts,
tentatively titled Rediscovering Reasons, The Metaphysics of the Self, and On
What Matters. His current focus is the normativity of reasons. A reductionist
about persons, he is a non-reductionist about reasons. He believes in
irreducibily normative beliefs that are in a strong sense true. A realist about
reasons for acting and caring, he challenges the views of naturalists,
noncognitivists, and constructivists. Parfit contends that internalists
conflate normativity with motivating force, that contrary to the prevalent view
that all reasons are provided by desires, no reasons are, and that Kant poses a
greater threat to rationalism than Hume. Parfit is Senior Research Fellow of
All Souls , Oxford, and a regular visiting professor at both Harvard and New
York . Legendary for monograph-length criticisms of book manuscripts, he is
editor of the Oxford Ethics Series, whose goal is to make definite moral
progress, a goal Parfit himself is widely believed to have attained. Refs.: H.
P. Grice, “A parfit identity.”
Parmenide: “One of the most important
Italian philosophers, if only because Plato dedicated a dialogue to him!” –
Grice. a Grecian philosopher, the most influential of the pre-socratics, active
in Elea Roman and modern Velia, an Ionian Grecian colony in southern Italy. He
was the first Grecian thinker who can properly be called an ontologist or
metaphysician. Plato refers to him as “venerable and awesome,” as “having
magnificent depth” Theaetetus 183e 184a, and presents him in the dialogue
Parmenides as a searching critic in a
fictional and dialectical transposition
of Plato’s own theory of Forms. Nearly 150 lines of a didactic poem by
Parmenides have been preserved, assembled into about twenty fragments. The
first part, “Truth,” provides the earliest specimen in Grecian intellectual
history of a sustained deductive argument. Drawing on intuitions concerning
thinking, knowing, and language, Parmenides argues that “the real” or “what-is”
or “being” to eon must be ungenerable and imperishable, indivisible, and
unchanging. According to a Plato-inspired tradition, Parmenides held that “all
is one.” But the phrase does not occur in the fragments; Parmenides does not
even speak of “the One”; and it is possible that either a holistic One or a
plurality of absolute monads might conform to Parmenides’ deduction.
Nonetheless, it is difficult to resist the impression that the argument
converges on a unique entity, which may indifferently be referred to as Being,
or the All, or the One. Parmenides embraces fully the paradoxical consequence
that the world of ordinary experience fails to qualify as “what-is.”
Nonetheless, in “Opinions,” the second part of the poem, he expounds a dualist
cosmology. It is unclear whether this is intended as candid phenomenology a doctrine of appearances or as an ironic foil to “Truth.” It is
noteworthy that Parmenides was probably a physician by profession. Ancient
reports to this effect are borne out by fragments from “Opinions” with
embryological themes, as well as by archaeological findings at Velia that link
the memory of Parmenides with Romanperiod remains of a medical school at that
site. Parmenides’ own attitude notwithstanding, “Opinions” recorded four major
scientific breakthroughs, some of which, doubtless, were Parmenides’ own
discoveries: that the earth is a sphere; that the two tropics and the Arctic
and Antarctic circles divide the earth into five zones; that the moon gets its
light from the sun; and that the morning star and the evening star are the same
planet. The term Eleatic School is misleading when it is used to suggest a
common doctrine supposedly held by Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Melissus of Samos,
and anticipating Parmenides Xenophanes of Colophon. The fact is, many
philosophical groups and movements, from the middle of the fifth century
onward, were influenced, in different ways, by Parmenides, including the
“pluralists,” Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus. Parmenides’ deductions,
transformed by Zeno into a repertoire of full-blown paradoxes, provided the
model both for the eristic of the Sophists and for Socrates’ elenchus.
Moreover, the Parmenidean criteria for “whatis” lie unmistakably in the
background not only of Plato’s theory of Forms but also of salient features of
Aristotle’s system, notably, the priority of actuality over potentiality, the
unmoved mover, and the man-begets-man principle. Indeed, all philosophical and
scientific systems that posit principles of conservation of substance, of
matter, of matter-energy are inalienably the heirs to Parmenides’ deduction. Refs.:
H. P. Grice, “Negation and privation,” “Lectures on negation,” Wiggins, “Grice
and Parmenides;” Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Parmenide," per il Club
Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
parsing: the process of determining the
syntactic (strictly para-tactic) structure of a sentence according to the theorems
of a given system, say Gricese – or System G.This is to be distinguished from
the generally simpler task of recognition, which is merely the determination of
whether or not a given string is well-formed grammatical. In general, many
different parsing strategies can be employed for grammars of a particular type,
and a great deal of attention has been given to the relative efficiencies of
these techniques. The most thoroughly studied cases center on the contextfree
phrase structure grammars, which assign syntactic structures in the form of
singly-rooted trees with a left-to-right ordering of “sister” nodes. Parsing
procedures can then be broadly classified according to the sequence of steps by
which the parse tree is constructed: top-down versus bottom-up; depth-first
versus breadthfirst; etc. In addition, there are various strategies for
exploring alternatives agendas, backtracking, parallel processing and there are
devices such as “charts” that eliminate needless repetitions of previous steps.
Efficient parsing is of course important when language, whether natural or
artificial e.g., a programming language, is being processed by computer. Human
beings also parse rapidly and with apparently little effort when they
comprehend sentences of a natural language. Although little is known about the
details of this process, psycholinguists hope that study of mechanical parsing
techniques might provide insights. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Parsing in Gricese.”
partition: Grice: “the division of a set
into mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subsets (e. g., ‘philosopher’
and ‘non-philosopher’ – whether we define ‘philosopher’ as engaged in
philosophical exploration,’ or ‘addicted to general reflections about his
life.’ -- Derivatively, ‘partition’ can mean any set P whose members are
mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subsets of set S. Each subset of a
partition P is called a partition class of S with respect to P. Partitions are
intimately associated with equivalence relations, i.e. with relations that are
transitive, symmetric, and reflexive. Given an equivalence relation R defined
on a set S, R induces a partition P of S in the following natural way: members
s1 and s2 belong to the same partition class of P if and only if s1 has the
relation R to s2. Conversely, given a partition P of a set S, P induces an
equivalence relation R defined on S in the following natural way: members s1
and s2 are such that s1 has the relation R to s2 if and only if s1 and s2
belong to the same partition class of P. For obvious reasons, then, partition
classes are also known as equivalence classes. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “My love for
Venn.”
passeri: genua: essential
Italian philosopher. Marco Antonio Passeri (anche noto come Gènua) (Padova, 1491 –
Padova, 1563) è stato un filosofo italiano, appartenente all'Averroismo attivo
nel periodo del Rinascimento. Figlio di Niccolò Passeri, professore di
medicina all'Università di Padova morto nel 1522, Marco Antonio fu egli stesso
dal 1517 professore nell'università patavina nella cattedra di filosofia.
Autore di commentarii ad alcune opere di Aristotele, in particolare al De Anima
e alla Fisica, tentò di dimostrare la perfetta convergenza fra le idee di
Averroè e di Simplicio sulla dottrina dell'unità dell'intelletto. Marco
Antonio Passeri fu insegnante e zio del filosofo rinascimentale Giacomo
Zabarella. Opere Aristotelis De anima libri tres, cum Auerrois
commentariis et antiqua tralatione suae integritati restituta. His accessit
eorundem librorum Aristotelis noua traslatio, ad Graeci exemplaris veritatem,
et scholarum usum accomodata, Michaele Sophiano interprete. Adiecimus etiam
Marci Antonii Passeri Ianuae disputationem ex eius lectionibus excerptam, in
qua cum de' horum de Anima li brorum ordine, tum reliquorum naturalium serie
pertractatur. Venetiis: apud Iunctas, 1562. Disputatio de intellectus humani
immortalitate, ex disertationibus Marci Antonii Genuae Patauini peripatetici
insignis, In Monte Regali: excudebat Leonardus Torrentinus, 1565. Marcii
Antonii Passeri, cognomento Genuae, Patauini philosophi, sua tempestate facile
principis, et in Academia Patauina philosophiae publici professoris In tres
libros Aristo. de anima exactissimi commentarij Iacobi Pratellii Monteflorensis
medici, et Ioannis Caroli Saraceni diligentia recogniti, et repurgati. Necnon
locupletissimo indice, propter maiorem legentium facilitatem, vtilitatemque, ab
eodem Ioanne Carolo Saraceno amplificati. Venetijs: apud Gratiosum Perchacinum
& socios, 1576. Bibliografia Alba Paladini, La scienza animastica di Marco
Antonio Genua, Università degli Studi di Lecce, Volume 38, Galatina, Congedo,
2006. ISBN 88-8086-676-1 Voci correlate Averroismo Aristotele Altri progetti
Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file
su Marco Antonio Passeri Collegamenti esterni Marco Antonio Passeri, su Treccani.it
– Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su
Wikidata (EN) Opere di Marco Antonio Passeri, su Open Library, Internet
Archive. Modifica su Wikidata Controllo di autorità VIAF (EN) 76464089 · ISNI
(EN) 0000 0000 6129 9350 · SBN IT\ICCU\PUVV\308934 · LCCN (EN) no2006134344 ·
GND (DE) 132303965 · BNF (FR) cb134760543 (data) · CERL cnp01364762 · WorldCat
Identities (EN) lccn-no2006134344 Biografie Portale Biografie Filosofia Portale
Filosofia Categorie: Filosofi italiani del XVI secoloNati nel 1491Morti nel
1563Nati a PadovaMorti a PadovaPersone legate all'Università degli Studi di
Padova[altre]. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Genua," per Il
Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
paternalism, interference with the liberty
or autonomy of another person, with justifications referring to the promotion
of the person’s good or the prevention of harm to the person. More precisely, A
acts paternalistically toward B iff A is B’s father or P acts with the intent
of averting some harm or promoting some benefit for Q; and P acts contrary to
or is indifferent to the current preferences, desires or values of his ‘son;’
and P’s act is a limitation on his ‘son’ autonomy or liberty. The presence of both
autonomy and liberty in the lasst clause is to allow for the fact that lying to
someone is not clearly an interference with liberty. Notice that one can act ‘paternalistically’
by telling people the truth as when a doctor insists that a patient know the
exact nature of her illness, contrary to her wishes. Note also that the
definition does not settle any questions about the legitimacy or illegitimacy
of paternalistic interventions. Typical examples of paternalistic actions are laws
requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets; court orders allowing physicians to
transfuse Jehovah’s Witnesses against their wishes; deception of a patient by
physicians to avoid upsetting the patient; civil commitment of persons judged
dangerous to themselves; and laws forbidding swimming while lifeguards are not
on duty. Soft weak paternalism is the view that paternalism is justified only
when a ‘father’ is acting non-voluntarily or one needs time to determine
whether his ‘son’ is acting voluntarily or not. Hard strong paternalism is the
view that paternalism is sometimes justified even when the person being
interfered with is acting voluntarily. The analysis of the term is relative to
some set of problems. If one were interested in the organizational behavior of
large corporations, one might adopt a different definition than if one were
concerned with limits on the state’s right to exercise coercion. The typical
normative problems about paternalistic action are whether, and to what extent,
the welfare of individuals may outweigh the need to respect their desire to
lead their own lives and make their own decisions even when mistaken. Mill is
the best example of a virtually absolute ANTI-paternalism, at least with
respect to the right of the state to act paternalistically. Mill (whose father
was a devil) argues that unless we have reason to believe that my ‘son’ is not
acting voluntarily, as in the case of a man walking across a bridge that,
unknown to him, is about to collapse, we ought to allow an adult son the
freedom to act even if his act is harmful to himself.
Patrologia series latina -- patristic
authors – Includes Aelwhinec, Grice’s favourite speculative grammarian. Migne’s
Patrologia – Series Latina -- patrologia latina -- also called church fathers –
“the implicature is that one can have more than one father, I suppose.” –
Grice. a group of philosophers originally so named because they were considered
the “patres” of the Church of England to which Grice belongs.. The term
“patries ecclesiae” is now used more broadly to designate philosophers, orthodox
or heterodox, who were active in the first six centuries or so of the Christian
era. The chronological division is quite flexible, and it is regularly moved
several centuries later for particular purposes. Moreover, the study of these
philosophers has traditionally been divided variously, of which the principal
ones are of course, Grecian and Roman. The often sharp divisions among
patristic scholarships are partly a reflection of the different histories of
the regional churches, partly a reflection of the sociology of cholarship. The
patristic period in Grecian is usually taken as extending from the writers
after the so-called “New” Testament (such as “Paul,” after whom Grice was named
– he was named “Herbert” after a Viking ancestor), to such figures as Maximus
the Confessor or John of Damascus. The period is traditionally divided around
the Council of Nicea. PreNicean Grecian authors of importance to the history of
philosophy include Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. Important
Nicean and post-Nicean authors include Athanasius; the Cappadocians, i.e.,
Gregory of Nazianzum, Basil of Cesarea and his brother, Gregory of Nyssa, and John
Chrysostom. Philosophical topics and practices are constantly engaged by these
Grecian authors. Justin Martyr e.g., describes his conversion to Christianity
quite explicitly as a transit through lower forms of philosophy into the true
philosophy. Clement of Alexandria, again, uses the philosophic genre of the
protreptic and a host of ancient texts to persuade his pagan readers that they
ought to come to Christianity as to the true wisdom. Origen devotes his Against
Celsus to the detailed rebuttal of one pagan philosopher’s attack on Christianity.
More importantly, if more subtly, the major works of the Cappadocians
appropriate and transform the teachings of any number of philosophic
authors Plato and the Neoplatonists in
first place, but also Aristotle, the Stoics, and Galen. The Roman church came
to count four post-Nicean authors as its chief teachers in the “Patrologia
latina”: Ambrose Jerome, and Gregory the
Great. Other Roman authors of philosophical interest include Tertulliano, Lactanzio, Mario Vittorino, and Hilary of
Poitiers. The Roman patristic period is typically counted roughly from
Tertulliano (of “Credo quia assudrdo” infame) to Boezio, the translator of
Porfirio’s Isagoge.. The Roman ‘fathers’ share with their Grecian
contemporaries a range of relations to the pagan philosophic schools, both as
rival institutions and as sources of useful teaching. Tertullian’s Against the
Nations and Apology, e.. g., take up pagan accusations against Christianity and
then counterattack a number of pagan beliefs, including philosophical ones. By
contrast, the writings of Mario Vittorino, Ambrose, and Augustine enact
transformations of philosophic teachings, especially from the Neoplatonists.
Because philosophical erudition is generally less hellenistic among the Romans
as among the hellenes, they are, fortunately to us, both more eager to accept
philosophical doctrines and freer in improvising variations on them.
patrizi: Grice, “His
surname is Patrizi, his first name is Francesco – he was born on an island, but
taught at Rome -- important Italian philosopher, “even if he disliked
Aristotle.” “He shouldn’t count as Italian since he is of Croatian descent, but
he lived in what was then part of the republic of Venice, so that’s something.”
– Grice . Francesco Patrizi[1] (in latino: Franciscus Patricius, in croato:
Franjo Petriš/Frane Petrić; Cherso, Croazia, 25 aprile 1529 – Roma, 6 febbraio
1597) è stato un filosofo e scrittore italiano, di orientamento neoplatonico.
Non sono molte le notizie sulla sua vita; gli spunti tratti dalla sua opera furono
noti ai suoi successori solo attraverso altri pensatori. Della sua opera si
inizia a discutere solo verso l'Ottocento. Nel 1538 era già imbarcato su
una nave al comando dello zio Giovanni Giorgio Patrizi; dopo aver studiato a
Cherso con Petruccio da Bologna, nel 1544 fu a Venezia, dove studiò grammatica
con Andrea Fiorentino, passando poi a Ingolstadt, sotto la protezione del
cugino, il luterano Mattia Flacio Illirico. Nel 1547 era a Padova per
studiare filosofia con Bernardino Tomitano, Marco Antonio Passeri, detto
"Il Genua", Lazzaro Bonamico e Francesco Robortello; qui fu
presidente della Congrega degli Studenti Dalmati e pubblicò i suoi primi
scritti. In una tarda lettera, indirizzata il 12 gennaio 1587 all'amico
Baccio Valori, scrisse che a Padova aveva «trovato un Xenofonte greco e latino,
senza niuna guida o aiuto, si mise nella lingua greca, di che havea certi pochi
principi in Inghilstat, e fece tanto profitto che a principio di novembre e di
studio ardì di studiare e il testo di Aristotile e i commentatori sopra la
Loica greci. Andò ad udir il Tomitano, famoso loico, ma non gli pose mai
piacere, senza saper dire perché, onde studiò loica da sé. L'anno seguente
entrò alla filosofia di un certo Alberto e del Genoa e né anco questi gli
poterono piacere, onde studiò da sé. In fin di studio udì il Monte medico, e
gli piacque per il metodo di trattar le cose, e così Bassiano Lando, di cui fu
scolare mentre stette in istudio. E fra tanto, sentendo un frate di S.
Francesco sostentar conclusioni platoniche, se ne innamorò, e fatto poi seco
amicizia dimandogli che lo inviasse per la via di Platone. Gli propose come per
via ottima la Teologia del Ficino, a che si diede con grande avidità: E tale fu
il principio di quello che poi sempre ha seguitato». A Venezia nel 1553
pubblicò la Città felice, il Dialogo dell'Honore, il Discorso sulla diversità
dei furori poetici e le Lettere sopra un sonetto di Petrarca. Alla morte del
padre nel 1554 tornò a Cherso per occuparsi dell'eredità e vi rimase per
quattro anni. Tornato in Italia, intenzionato ad entrare nella corte del
duca di Ferrara Ercole II d'Este, gli presentò il suo poema, Eridano, scritto
negli innovativi versi martelliani tredecasillabi, senza tuttavia ottenere il
successo sperato. Passato allora a Venezia, sotto il patronato di Giorgio
Contarini, fondò con il poeta Bernardo Tasso, il padre di Torquato, l'Accademia
della Fama e scrisse i dieci Dialoghi della Historia nel 1560 e nel 1562 i
dieci Dialoghi della Retorica. Mandato a Cipro per curare gli interessi
del Contarini, si diede al commercio e all'acquisto di manoscritti greci e si
trovò a dover anche partecipare alla guerra turco-veneziana, imbarcato nella
flotta comandata da Andrea Doria. Passato al servizio dell'arcivescovo di Cipro
Filippo Mocenigo, nel 1568 ritornò in Italia, e si stabilì a Padova, precettore
di Zaccaria, nipote del Mocenigo e scrivendo le Discussioni peripatetiche il
cui primo volume fu pubblicato nel 1571 e interamente nel 1581 a Basilea,
dedicate a Zaccaria Mocenigo. Conquistata Cipro dai turchi, perdette il
patrimonio investito nell'isola; vendette allora i manoscritti greci a Filippo
II di Spagna e si trovò a dovere chiedere aiuto ad amici ai quali dedicò la sua
Amorosa filosofia. Dal 1577 al 1592 insegnò filosofia nell'università di
Ferrara, e fu membro dell'Accademia della Crusca nel 1587, continuando a
pubblicare scritti filosofici, letterari, di strategia militare, di ottica,
d'idraulica, di botanica; nel 1581 pubblicò le Discussioni peripatetiche, nel
1585 il Parere in difesa di Ludovico Ariosto, nel 1586 il Della Poetica, ove
sostenne la superiorità della lingua volgare sul latino, nel 1587 la Nuova
geometria dedicata a Carlo Emanuele I di Savoia, la Philosophia de rerum natura
e nel 1591 la Nova de universis philosophia, che fu temporaneamente messa
all'Indice dal Sant'Uffizio, per essere poi rimossa in seguito alle correzioni
fatte dello stesso Patrizi. Nel 1592 l'amico papa Clemente VIII lo nominò
professore presso lo Studium Urbis. A Roma pubblicò nel 1594 la sua ultima
opera, i Paralleli militari. Fu anche membro della confraternita di San
Girolamo di Roma, cui potevano accedere "illirici, dalmati e
schiavoni". È sepolto nella chiesa romana di Sant’Onofrio al
Gianicolo, nella stessa tomba di Torquato Tasso. Le Discussiones
peripateticae libri XV esaminano la tradizione aristotelica, confrontandola con
quella presocratica e platonica; immediata è la critica di Aristotele, a
partire dalla sua vita: «né i suoi costumi furono così santi, né così
magnifiche le sue azioni né così varie le sue azioni da ingenerare ammirazione»
(I, 2). Lo rimprovera di aver utilizzato scoperte di altri che tuttavia attaccò
polemicamente, senza mostrare alcuna riconoscenza. Il controverso
monumento innalzato di recente a Cherso, dove Francesco Patrizi è ribattezzato
Frane Petric. Nel merito, critica l'aristotelismo per aver teorizzato che le
cose derivino dalle altre attraverso il principio dei contrari; per il Patrizi,
ogni cose si origina da una simile, non già da una contraria; gli appare più
adeguata la filosofia naturalistica presocratica, a differenza dei principi
aristotelici che «non hanno nessuna forza, nessun vigore, nessuna capacità di
generare e non arrecano alcun contributo alla generazione di nessuna cosa. A
che serve infatti la freddezza al legno per riscaldare o bruciare col fuoco?
Che cosa la privazione della forma serve per produrre forma?» (IV, 1).
Nell'opera, il Patrizi fa sfoggio di molta erudizione con uno stile che si
compiace di non poca retorica, così dispiacendo al Bruno che la definì
"sterco di pedanti". Ma apprezzerà invece la successiva Nova de
Universis philosophia, del 1591, il cui titolo completo è Nova de Universis
philosophia, libris quinquaginta comprehensa: in qua Aristotelico methodo non
per motum, sed per lucem et lumina ad primam causam ascenditur. Deinde nova
quidam et peculiari methodo tota in contemplationem venit divinitas. Postremo
methodo platonico rerum universitas a conditore Deo deducitur. Fu pubblicata
con l'aggiunta degli oracoli di Zoroastro, Ermete Trismegisto, Asclepio, e
della Theologia Aristotelis, pubblicata in un'edizione romana nel 1519. È
divisa in quattro parti, la "Panaugia" o della luce, la
"Panarchia" o del principio delle cose, la "Pampsichya" o dell'animae
la "Pancosmia" o del mondo. Nella prima espone la teoria della luce
che, proveniente da Dio, «semplicissima tra le cose, non è duplice, sicché in
essa vi è forma e materia. Unica, è a se stessa materia e forma» e si diffonde,
con il calore e la materia fluida – il primaevus fluor - per lo spazio che,
come essa, è infinito; infatti, se la luce è infinita, anche lo spazio deve
essere infinito e così il mondo: «se lo spazio contiene tutto e così pure il
mondo, mondo e spazio saranno lo stesso per capacità e determinazione locale.
Dunque lo spazio è infinito sicché anche il mondo sarà infinito».
Continua la sua polemica antiaristotelica, sostenendo che la dottrina cristiana
si può ricavare dagli stessi dialoghi platonici e la teologia cristiana è già
presente in Plotino. Già i primi Padri della Chiesa «vedendo che con pochi
mutamenti i platonici potevano divenire facilmente cristiani, anteposero
Platone e i platonici a ogni altro e nominarono Aristotele solo con infamia. Ma
quasi quattrocento anni fa i teologi scolastici si sono comportati in modo
opposto fondando la fede sull'empietà aristotelica. Li scusiamo, perché non
poterono conoscere i platonici, non conoscendo il greco, ma non li scusiamo per
aver cercato di fondare la fede sull'empietà»[2]. Opere: Al molto magico
et magnanimo m. Giacomo Ragazzoni. In Giacomo Ragazzoni, Della Mercatura,
Venetia, 1573. In Chronica Magni Arueoli Cassiodori senatoris atque Patricii
prefatio. Sta in Speisshaimer, Iohan. Ioannis Cuspiani...de Consulibus. Basel
1553. L'Eridano. In nuovo verso heroico...Con i sostentamenti del detto verso,
Ferrara. Appresso Francesco de Rossi da Valenza 1557 Le rime di messer Luca
Contile...con discussioni e argomenti di M. Francesco Patritio, Venezia. F.
Sansovino, 1560 Della Historia dieci dialoghi, Venetia: Appresso Andrea
Arrivabene, 1560 Della retorica dieci dialoghi... nelli quali si favella
dell'arte oratoria con ragioni repugnanti all'opinione, che intorno a quella
hebbero gli antichi scrittori (Deset dijaloga o retorici) , Venetia: Appresso
Francesco Senese, 1562 Le imprese illustri con espositioni, et discorsi del
sor. Ieromimo Ruscelli. Con la giunta di altre imprese: tutto riordinato et
corretto da Franco. Patritio, In Venetia: Appresso Comin da Trino di
Monferrato, 1572 De historia dialogi X. In Artis historicae penus. Octodecim
scriptorum tam veterim quam recentiorum monumentis, Basileae, Ex officinia
Petri Paterna, 1579 Discussionum Peripateticarum tomi IV, quibus Aristotelicae
philosophiae universa Historia atque Dogmata cum Veterum Placitis collata,
eleganter et erudite declarantur, Basileae, 1581. Parere del s. Francesco
Patrici, in difesa di Lodovico Ariosto. All'Illustr. Sig. Giovanni Bardi di
Vernio, Ferrara, 1583 La militia Romana di Polibio, di Tito Livio, e di Dionigi
Alicarnasseo, Ferrara, 1583. Della poetica di Francesco Patricii la Deca
Istoriale, nella quale con diletteuole antica nouità, oltre a poeti e lor poemi
innumerabili, che ui si contano, si fan palesi tutte le cose compagne e seguaci
dell'antiche poesie. In Ferrara: per Vittorio Baldini, 1586. (on-line) Della
nvova geometria di Franc. Patrici libri XV. Ne' quali con mirabile ordine, e
con dimostrazioni à marauiglia più facili, e più forti delle usate si vede che
la matematiche per uia regia, e più piana che da gli antichi fatto non si è, si
possono trattare..., Ferrara, Vittorio Baldini, 1587.[3] Difesa di Francesco
Patrizi; dalle cento accuse dategli dal signor Iacopo Mazzoni, in Discorso
intorno alla Risposta del sig. F. Patrizio, Ferrara, 1587. Risposta di
Francesco Patrizi; a due opposizioni fattegli dal sign. Giacopo Mazzoni in
Della difesa della Comedia di Dante, Ferrara, Vitt. Baldini, 1587. De rerum
natura libri II priores. Aliter de spacio physico, aliter de spacio
mathematico, Victorius Baldinus, Ferrara, 1587. Zoroaster et eius CCCXX oracula
Chaldaica, eius opera e tenebris eruta et Latine reddita. Ferrara. Ex
Typographia Benedicti Mammarelli, 1591. Nova de universis philosophia. (Ad
calcem adiecta sunt Zoroastri oracula CCCXX ex Platonicis collecta, ecc.) , Ex
Typographia Benedicti Mammarelli, Ferrara, 1591; Venezia, 1593. Magia
philosophica, hoc est Francisci Patricij summi philosophi Zoroaster et eius 320
oracula Chaldaica. Asclepii dialogus, et philosophia magna: Hermetis
Trismegisti. Iam lat. reddita, Hamburg, 1593. Paralleli millitari, Roma, 1594.
Apologia ad censuram. La Città felice, Venezia, Griffio, 1553, in Utopisti
e Riformatori sociali del cinquecento, Bologna, 1941. L'amorosa filosofia,
Firenze, 1963. Della poetica. Edizione critica a cura di D. A. Barbali,
Bologna, 1971. Della retorica. Dieci dialoghi, a cura di A. L. Puliafito, 1994.
ISBN 8885979041 De spacio physico et mathematico, Libraire philosophique Vrin,
Paris, 1996. Studi P. M. Arcari, Il pensiero politico di Francesco Patrizi da
Cherso, Roma, 1905 N. Robb, Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance. London,
1935 B. Brickman, An Introduction to Francesco Patrizi's Nova de Universis
Philosophia, New York, 1941 T. Gregory, L'Apologia e le Declarationes di
Francesco Patrizi, in Medioevo e Rinascimento. Studi in onore di Bruno Nardi,
Firenze, 1955 Onoranze a Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Mostra bibliografica,
Trieste, 1957 La negazione delle sfere dell'astrobiologia di Francesco Patrizi,
in P. Rossi, Immagini della scienza, Roma, 1977 "Tra misticismo
neoplatonico e 'filosofia dei fiumi'. Il tema delle acque in Francesco
Patrizi", in G. Piaia, "Sapienza e follia. Per una storia
intellettuale del Rinascimento europeo", Pisa, 2015 Note ^ Varianti:
Patrizzi, Patrizio, Patrici, Patricio, de Petris. ^ F. Patricius, Nova de
universis philosophia, Ferrariæ, 1591: sect. I, fol. IIv (Ad Gregorium XIIII).
^ Francesco Patrizi, Della nuova geometria, In Ferrara, Vittorio Baldini, 1587.
URL consultato il 29 giugno 2015. Bibliografia Mario Frezza, Patrizi (o
Patrizio), Francesco, in Dizionario Letterario Bompiani. Autori, III, p. 104,
Milano, Bompiani, 1957. Voci correlate Storia della fantascienza italiana Altri
progetti Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a
Francesco Patrizi Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene
immagini o altri file su Francesco Patrizi Collegamenti esterni Francesco
Patrizi, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia
Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Francesco Patrizi, in Enciclopedia Italiana,
Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Francesco
Patrizi, su Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Modifica su
Wikidata Francesco Patrizi, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto
dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Francesco Patrizi, su
accademicidellacrusca.org, Accademia della Crusca. Modifica su Wikidata Opere
di Francesco Patrizi / Francesco Patrizi (altra versione), su openMLOL,
Horizons Unlimited srl. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Opere di Francesco Patrizi,
su Open Library, Internet Archive. Modifica su Wikidata Bibliografia italiana
di Francesco Patrizi, su Catalogo Vegetti della letteratura fantastica,
Fantascienza.com. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Fred Purnell, Francesco Patrizi, in
Edward N. Zalta (a cura di), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Center for
the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Università di Stanford. Francesco
Patrizi, su Filosofico.net. Biografia Controllo di autorità VIAF (EN) 49269849
· ISNI (EN) 0000 0001 0898 6618 · SBN IT\ICCU\CUBV\040938 · LCCN (EN) n79148979
· GND (DE) 118641522 · BNF (FR) cb121840069 (data) · BNE (ES) XX1319283 (data)
· NLA (EN) 35798078 · BAV (EN) 495/35345 · CERL cnp01302722 · WorldCat
Identities (EN) lccn-n79148979 Biografie Portale Biografie Filosofia Portale
Filosofia Letteratura Portale Letteratura Categorie: Filosofi italiani del XVI
secoloScrittori italiani del XVI secoloNati nel 1529Morti nel 1597Nati il 25
aprileMorti il 6 febbraioNati a Cherso (città)Morti a RomaFilosofi
cattoliciFilosofi croatiNeoplatoniciScrittori di fantascienza italiani[alter. Refs.:
Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Patrizio," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The
Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
peano: important Italian
philosopher. Peano’s postulates, also called Peano axioms, a list of
assumptions from which the integers can be defined from some initial integer,
equality, and successorship, and usually seen as defining progressions. The
Peano postulates for arithmetic were produced by G. Peano in 9. He took the set
N of integers with a first term 1 and an equality relation between them, and
assumed these nine axioms: 1 belongs to N; N has more than one member; equality
is reflexive, symmetric, and associative, and closed over N; the successor of
any integer in N also belongs to N, and is unique; and a principle of
mathematical induction applying across the members of N, in that if 1 belongs
to some subset M of N and so does the successor of any of its members, then in
fact M % N. In some ways Peano’s formulation was not clear. He had no explicit
rules of inference, nor any guarantee of the legitimacy of inductive
definitions which Dedekind established shortly before him. Further, the four
properties attached to equality were seen to belong to the underlying “logic”
rather than to arithmetic itself; they are now detached. It was realized by
Peano himself that the postulates specified progressions rather than integers
e.g., 1, ½, ¼, 1 /8, . . . , would satisfy them, with suitable interpretations of
the properties. But his work was significant in the axiomatization of
arithmetic; still deeper foundations would lead with Russell and others to a
major role for general set theory in the foundations of mathematics. In
addition, with O. Veblen, T. Skolem, and others, this insight led in the early
twentieth century to “non-standard” models of the postulates being developed in
set theory and mathematical analysis; one could go beyond the ‘. . .’ in the
sequence above and admit “further” objects, to produce valuable alternative
models of the postulates. These procedures were of great significance also to
model theory, in highlighting the property of the non-categoricity of an axiom
system. A notable case was the “non-standard analysis” of A. Robinson, where infinitesimals
were defined as arithmetical inverses of transfinite numbers without incurring
the usual perils of rigor associated with them.
Giuseppe Peano (Spinetta di Cuneo, 27 agosto
1858 – Cavoretto, 20 aprile 1932) è stato un matematico, logico e glottoteta
italiano. Fu l'ideatore del latino sine flexione, una lingua ausiliaria
internazionale derivata dalla semplificazione del latino
classico. Giuseppe Peano nacque il 27 agosto 1858 in una modesta fattoria
chiamata "Tetto Galant" presso la frazione di Spinetta di Cuneo. Fu
il secondogenito di Bartolomeo Peano e Rosa Cavallo; sette anni prima era nato
il fratello maggiore Michele e successivamente nacquero Francesco, Bartolomeo e
la sorella Rosa. Dopo un inizio estremamente difficile (doveva ogni mattina
fare svariati chilometri prima di raggiungere la scuola), la famiglia si
trasferì a Cuneo. Il fratello della madre, Giuseppe Michele Cavallo, accortosi
delle sue notevoli capacità intellettive, lo invitò a raggiungerlo a Torino,
dove continuò i suoi studi presso il Liceo classico Cavour. Assistente di
Angelo Genocchi all'Università di Torino, divenne professore di calcolo
infinitesimale presso lo stesso ateneo a partire dal 1890.[1] Vittima
della sua stessa eccentricità, che lo portava ad insegnare logica in un corso
di calcolo infinitesimale, fu più volte allontanato dall'insegnamento a
dispetto della sua fama internazionale, perché "più di una volta, perduto
dietro ai suoi calcoli, [..] dimenticò di presentarsi alle sessioni di
esame"[2]. Ricordi del grande matematico (e non solo della vita
familiare) sono raccontati con grazia e ammirazione nel romanzo biografico Una
giovinezza inventata della pronipote Lalla Romano, scrittrice e poetessa.
Il 24 dicembre del 1885 aderì alla massoneria, iniziato nella loggia Dante
Alighieri di Torino guidata dal socialista Giovanni Lerda.[3] Morì nella
sua casa di campagna a Cavoretto, presso Torino, per un attacco di cuore che lo
colse nella notte. Il matematico piemontese fu capostipite di una scuola
di matematici italiani, tra i quali possiamo annoverare Giovanni Vailati,
Filiberto Castellano, Cesare Burali-Forti, Alessandro Padoa, Giovanni Vacca,
Mario Pieri e Tommaso Boggio [4]. Peano precisò la definizione del limite
superiore e fornì il primo esempio di una curva che riempie una superficie (la
cosiddetta "curva di Peano", uno dei primi esempi di frattale),
mettendo così in evidenza come la definizione di curva allora vigente non fosse
conforme a quanto intuitivamente si intende per curva. Da questo lavoro
partì la revisione del concetto di curva, che fu ridefinito da Camille Jordan
(1838 – 1932) (curva secondo Jordan). Fu anche uno dei padri del calcolo
vettoriale insieme a Tullio Levi-Civita. Dimostrò importanti proprietà delle
equazioni differenziali ordinarie e ideò un metodo di integrazione per
successive approssimazioni. Sviluppò il Formulario mathematico, scritto
dapprima in francese e nelle ultime versioni in interlingua, come chiamava il
suo latino sine flexione, contenente oltre 4000 tra teoremi e formule, per la
maggior parte dimostrate. Come logico dette un eccezionale contributo
alla logica delle classi, elaborando un simbolismo di grande chiarezza e
semplicità. Diede una definizione assiomatica dei numeri naturali, i famosi
"assiomi di Peano" che vennero poi ripresi da Russell e Whitehead nei
loro Principia Mathematica per sviluppare la teoria dei tipi. I
contributi di Giuseppe Peano sulla logica furono osservati con molta attenzione
nel 1900 dal giovane Bertrand Russell, mentre i contributi di aritmetica e di
teoria dei numeri furono osservati con molta attenzione da Giovanni Vailati, il
quale sintetizzava in Italia il passaggio tra l'esame delle questioni
fondamentali e l'applicazione di metodiche di analisi del linguaggio
scientifico, tipica degli studi logici e matematici, e anche specificava gli
interessi di storia della scienza, allargando la prospettiva anche agli studi
sociali. Per questo Peano ebbe dei contatti molto stretti con il mondo degli
studiosi di logica e di filosofia del linguaggio nonché gli studiosi di scienze
sociali empiriche (Cfr. Guglielmo Rinzivillo, Giuseppe Peano, Giovanni Vailati.
Contributi invisibili in Guglielmo Rinzivillo, Una Epistemologia senza storia,
Roma Nuova Cultura, 2013, II, p. 165 e sg. - ISBN 978-88-6812-222-5).
Ebbe ampi riconoscimenti negli ambienti filosofici più aperti alle esigenze e
alle implicazioni critiche della nuova logica formale. Era affascinato
dall'ideale leibniziano della lingua universale e sviluppò il "latino sine
flexione", lingua con la quale cercò di tenere i suoi interventi ai
congressi internazionali di Londra e Toronto[4]. Tale lingua fu concepita
per semplificazione della grammatica ed eliminazione delle forme irregolari,
applicandola a un numero di vocaboli "minimo comune denominatore" tra
quelli principalmente di origine latina e greca rimasti in uso nelle lingue
moderne. Uno dei grandi meriti dell'opera di Peano sta nella ricerca della
chiarezza e della semplicità. Contributo fondamentale che gli si riconosce è la
definizione di notazioni matematiche entrate nell'uso corrente, come, per
esempio, il simbolo di appartenenza (es: x ∈ A) o il quantificatore esistenziale
"∃".
Tutta l'opera di Peano verte sulla ricerca della semplificazione, dello
sviluppo di una notazione sintetica, base del progetto del già citato
Formulario, fino alla definizione del Latino sine flexione. La ricerca del
rigore e della semplicità portarono Peano ad acquistare una macchina per la
stampa, allo scopo di comporre e verificare di persona i tipi per la Rivista di
Matematica (da lui diretta) e per le altre pubblicazioni. Peano raccolse una
serie di note per le tipografie relative alla stampa di testi di matematica,
uno per tutti il suo consiglio di stampare le formule su righe isolate, cosa
che ora viene data per scontata, ma che non lo era ai suoi tempi[5].
Onorificenze: 1905 - Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Corona d'Italia 1917 -
Ufficiale della Corona 1921 - Commendatore della corona L'asteroide 9987 Peano
è stato battezzato così in suo onore. Il dipartimento di Matematica della
facoltà di Scienze Matematiche, Fisiche e Naturali dell'Università degli Studi
di Torino è a lui dedicato[6]. Molti licei scientifici in Italia portano
il suo nome, come ad esempio a Roma, Cuneo, Tortona, Monterotondo, Cinisello Balsamo
(fino al 2013)[7] o Marsico Nuovo, così come la scuola elementare di Tetto
Canale, vicina alla sua città natale. Opere Giuseppe Peano, Aritmetica
generale e algebra elementare, Torino, Paravia, 1902. URL consultato il 30
giugno 2015. Aritmetica generale e algebra elementare (G.B. Paravia, 1902)
Giuseppe Peano, Formulario mathematico, Torino, Fratelli Bocca, 1908. URL
consultato il 30 giugno 2015. Calcolo differenziale e principii di calcolo
integrale (Torino: Fratelli Bocca, 1883) Lezioni di analisi infinitesimale (G.
Candeletti, 1893) Applicazioni geometriche del calcolo infinitesimale (Torino:
Fratelli Bocca, 1887) I principii di geometria logicamente esposti ... (Torino:
Fratelli Bocca, 1889) Giuseppe Peano, Arithmetices principia, nova methodo
exposita, Torino, Paravia, 1902. Giuseppe Peano. Giochi di aritmetica e
problemi interessanti. Paravia, Torino, 1925. Dissero di lui «Provai una grande
ammirazione per lui [Peano] quando lo incontrai per la prima volta al Congresso
di Filosofia del 1900, che fu dominato dall'esattezza della sua mente.»
(Bertrand Russell, 1932) Note ^ [1] ^ *Nicola D'Amico, Storia e storie della
scuola italiana. Dalle origini ai giorni nostri, Zanichelli, Bologna, 2009 (p.
43) ^ Celebrazioni di Giuseppe Peano nel 150° della nascita e nel 100° del
Formulario Mathematico a cura di Erika Luciano e Clara Silvia Roero Torino 2008
Dipartimento di Matematica dell’Università ISBN 8890087668 (.htm testo on
line). Hubert C. Kennedy, Peano - storia di un matematico. Boringhieri
1983 ^ Hubert C. Kennedy, Peano - storia di un matematico. Boringhieri 1983
pag. 200 ^ Dipartimento di Matematica "Giuseppe Peano": Home ^ Il
Giorno, Festa e lacrime: "Addio Peano" Il Liceo chiude i battenti, su
Il Giorno. URL consultato il 27 agosto 2019. Bibliografia Questo testo proviene
in parte dalla relativa voce del progetto Mille anni di scienza in Italia,
opera del Museo Galileo. Istituto Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze
(home page), pubblicata sotto licenza Creative Commons CC-BY-3.0 Kennedy Hubert
C., Peano: storia di un matematico, Boringhieri, 1983. Segre Michael, “Peano's
Axioms in their Historical Context,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 48
(1994): 201-342. Lalla Romano, Una giovinezza inventata, Torino, Einaudi, 1979.
Racconta episodi del rapporto con il prozio Giuseppe. Voci correlate Assiomi di
Peano Glottoteta Lingua artificiale Matematica Latino sine flexione Ugo Cassina
Calcolatori ternari Maria Gramegna Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource
Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a Giuseppe Peano Collabora a Wikiquote
Wikiquote contiene citazioni di o su Giuseppe Peano Collabora a Wikimedia
Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Giuseppe Peano
Collegamenti esterni Giuseppe Peano, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line,
Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Giuseppe Peano, in
Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su
Wikidata (EN) Giuseppe Peano, su Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia
Britannica, Inc. Modifica su Wikidata Giuseppe Peano, in Dizionario biografico
degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata (EN)
Giuseppe Peano, su MacTutor, University of St Andrews, Scotland. Modifica su
Wikidata (EN) Giuseppe Peano, su Mathematics Genealogy Project, North Dakota
State University. Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Giuseppe Peano, su Liber Liber.
Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Giuseppe Peano, su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited
srl. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Opere di Giuseppe Peano, su Open Library, Internet
Archive. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Opere di Giuseppe Peano, su Progetto
Gutenberg. Modifica su Wikidata E Giuseppe Peano stregò Bertrand Russell
articolo di Piergiorgio Odifreddi, SWIF - Sito Web Italiano per la Filosofia.
Presentazione e Documentazione del Comune di Cuneo Controllo di autorità. VIAF
(EN) 73925733 · ISNI (EN) 0000 0001 0858 5937 · SBN IT\ICCU\CFIV\002335 · LCCN
(EN) n80009883 · GND (DE) 11873976X · BNF (FR) cb123401300 (data) · NLA (EN)
35413747 · CERL cnp01506372 · NDL (EN, JA) 00452364 · WorldCat Identities (EN)
lccn-n80009883 Biografie Portale Biografie Lingue artificiali Portale Lingue
artificiali Matematica Portale Matematica Categorie: Matematici italiani del
XIX secoloMatematici italiani del XX secoloLogici italianiGlottoteti italianiNati
nel 1858Morti nel 1932Nati il 27 agostoMorti il 20 aprileMorti a CavorettoNati
in ItaliaAccademici dei LinceiMembri dell'Accademia delle Scienze di
TorinoProfessori dell'Università degli Studi di Torino[altre]. Refs.: H. P.
Grice, “Definite descriptions in Peano and in the vernacular,” Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Peano: semantica
filosofica," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa
Grice, Liguria, Italia.
pearsianism – after D. F. Pears, one of Grice’s collaborators in the
Play Group. “In them days, we would never publish, since the only philosophers
we were interested in communicating with we saw at least every Saturday!” –
With D. F. Pears, and J. F. Thomson, H. P. Grice explored topics in the
philosophy of action and ‘philosophical psychology.’ Actually, Grice carefully
writes ‘philosophy of action.’ Why? Well, because while with Pears and Thomson
he explored toopics like ‘intending’ and ‘deciding,’ it was always with a vew
towards ‘acting,’ or ‘doing.’ Grice is
very clear on this, “even fastidiously so,” as Blackburn puts it. In the
utterance of an imperative, or an intention, which may well be other-directed,
the immediate response or effect in your co-conversationalist is a
‘recognition,’ i. e. what Grice calls an ‘uptake,’ some sort of
‘understanding.’ In the case of these ‘desiderative’ moves, the recognition is
that the communicator WILLS something. Grice uses a ‘that’-clause attached to
‘will,’ so that he can formulate the proposition “p” – whose realization is in
question. Now, this ‘will’ on the part of the ‘communicator’ needs to be
‘transmitted.’ So the communicator’s will includes his will that his emissee
will adopt this will. “And eventually act upon it!” So, you see, while it looks
as if Pears and Thomson and Grice are into ‘philosophical psychology,’ they are
into ‘praxis.’ Not alla Althuser, but almost! Pears explored the idea of the
conversational implicaturum in connection, obviously, with action. There is a
particular type of conditional that relates to action. Grice’s example, “If I
COULD do it, I would climb Mt. Everest on hands and knees.” Grice and Pears, and indeed Thomson, analysed
this ‘if.’ Pears thinks that ‘if’ conversationally implicates ‘if and only if.’
Grice called that “Perfecct pears.”
pelagianism: or as Grice
preferred, Pelagusianism --. the doctrine in Christian theology that, through
the exercise of free will, human beings can attain moral perfection. A broad
movement devoted to this proposition was only loosely associated with its
eponymous leader. Pelagius c.354c.425, a lay theologian from Britain or
Ireland, taught in Rome prior to its sacking in 410. He and his disciple
Celestius found a forceful adversary in Augustine, whom they provoked to
stiffen his stance on original sin, the bondage of the will, and humanity’s
total reliance upon God’s grace and predestination for salvation. To Pelagius,
this constituted fatalism and encouraged moral apathy. God would not demand
perfection, as the Bible sometimes suggested, were that impossible to attain.
Rather grace made the struggle easier for a sanctity that would not be
unreachable even in its absence. Though in the habit of sinning, in consequence
of the fall, we have not forfeited the capacity to overcome that habit nor been
released from the imperative to do so. For all its moral earnestness this
teaching seems to be in conflict with much of the New Testament, especially as
interpreted by Augustine, and it was condemned as heresy in 418. The bondage of
the will has often been reaffirmed, perhaps most notably by Luther in dispute
with Erasmus. Yet Christian theology and practice have always had their
sympathizers with Pelagianism and with its reluctance to attest the loss of
free will, the inevitability of sin, and the utter necessity of God’s grace.
pera: important Italian philosopher. Marcello Pera (Lucca, 28 gennaio 1943) è un
filosofo, politico e accademico italiano, senatore per Forza Italia e Popolo
della Libertà dal 1996 al 2013, e Presidente del Senato nella XIV Legislatura.
Il 12 novembre 2018 è stato nominato presidente del Comitato
storico-scientifico per gli anniversari di interesse nazionale istituito presso
la Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri. Diplomatosi in ragioneria
all'Istituto "F. Carrara" di Lucca nel 1962, lavora prima alla Banca
Toscana e poi alla Camera di Commercio di Lucca. Quindi decide di studiare
filosofia. Si laurea all'Università di Pisa nel 1972, con 110 su 110 e
lode. Carriera accademica Incoraggiato dal suo maestro Francesco Barone,
inizia la carriera accademica nel 1976 come incaricato di Filosofia della
scienza a Pisa. In seguito diventa professore straordinario di Filosofia
teoretica a Catania (1989-1992) e ordinario di Filosofia della scienza
all'Università di Pisa (1992). In questi anni viene presentato da Lucio
Colletti al direttore editoriale della casa editrice Laterza, Enrico Mistretta,
iniziando subito una intensa attività di consulenza editoriale per la filosofia
della scienza. Con questa Casa editrice pubblica anche i suoi primi importanti
libri scientifici, allontanandosi dalle posizioni ideologiche dell'estrema
sinistra per accostarsi insieme a Lucio Colletti al dibattito culturale allora
presente nel Partito Socialista Italiano. Iniziato alla politica dallo
stesso Lucio Colletti, trasmigra con lui e altri intellettuali nel neonato
partito di Forza Italia fondato da Silvio Berlusconi. Comincia qui una nuova
fase, in cui si è distinto come saggista per l'attività a favore di un avvicinamento
della politica alla religione cattolica[1]. Convinto che le libertà civili e
politiche, lungi dall'essere fondate sulla relatività delle nostre conoscenze,
debbano ricondursi invece alla dignità intrinseca della persona umana, che
permane quale che sia la verità delle convinzioni di ciascuno, ha più volte
rilevato come sia sbagliato fare del relativismo culturale il fondamento della
società liberale. Questa, secondo Pera, ha potuto sorgere piuttosto grazie a
quel terreno fertile rappresentato dai principi della religione cristiana. Al
tempo, Pera si dichiarava ateo e non credente, venendo pertanto annoverato tra
gli atei devoti.[2]. Nel 2001, eletto in Parlamento tra le file di Forza
Italia, ascese alla seconda carica dello Stato, la presidenza del Senato, che
ha ricoperto fino alla fine della legislatura. Pera è stato collaboratore dei
quotidiani “Corriere della Sera”, “Il Messaggero”, “La Stampa” e dei
settimanali “L'Espresso” e “Panorama”. Studi di Filosofia della
scienza Karl Popper insieme a Melitta Mew e Marcello Pera a Kenley (Regno
Unito), nel 1986. Il filosofo Marcello Pera ha svolto un'intensa attività di
ricerca nel campo della filosofia della scienza a livello internazionale[3]. Il
suo primo saggio filosofico di rilievo del 1978 riguarda il metodo scientifico
e l'induzione. Pera ha poi concentrato i suoi studi filosofici su Karl Popper.
Corrispondente del filosofo austriaco teorico della "società aperta",
Marcello Pera è uno dei suoi massimi studiosi italiani.[4]. Su di lui ha scritto
l'opera Popper e la scienza su palafitte (1981). Prima di scrivere il
libro, pubblicò alcuni articoli divulgativi, inserendosi in un vasto movimento
critico, su "L'Espresso", dedicati ai filosofi che avevano tentato di
confutare Karl Marx, il primo dei quali fu dedicato a Popper. Ulteriori studi
di Pera furono dedicati alle teorie sui metodi di ricerca del filosofo scozzese
David Hume e ai metodi induttivi e scientifici del Settecento: nel 1982
pubblicò i due saggi "Hume, Kant e l'induzione" e "Apologia del
metodo". Nel 1986 Pera sviluppò ricerche sui primi studi di elettricità
compiuti nel settecento da Alessandro Volta e da Luigi Galvani[5]. Il
testo fondamentale di Marcello Pera "Popper e la scienza su
palafitte" del 1982 contiene un'analisi dettagliata delle posizioni di
numerosi filosofi europei sul rapporto tra scienza e filosofia, in particolare
di Francesco Bacone, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre
Lakatos ed altri studiosi. Il significato del termine "scienza su
palafitte" è un ironico riferimento al fatto che, come le palafitte
dell'uomo preistorico, la scienza contemporanea (in particolare la teoria della
relatività e la fisica atomica) non sono fondate su basi solide come la roccia,
ma sono soggette a frequenti modifiche e revisioni, a seguito della scoperta di
nuove particelle, di nuovi fenomeni, o di nuove leggi fisiche che in parte
modificano quelle precedenti della fisica classica. Il saggio di Pera
inizia con una celebre citazione di Popper sull'evoluzione delle teorie scientifiche,
secondo la quale la scienza non poggerebbe su fondamenti immutabili, ma su
principi che possono essere oggetto di ulteriori analisi ed
approfondimenti.[6]. Come Popper, anche Pera ritiene che le teorie scientifiche
abbiano una validità limitata a un determinato contesto: secondo questo
orientamento le teorie scientifiche sono parzialmente modificabili nel tempo.
Fra le revisioni di sistemi scientifici studiate da Pera vi è la rivoluzione
scientifica, convenzionalmente iniziata con Niccolò Copernico e conclusasi con
l'opera di Isaac Newton, che ha reso obsolete la fisica aristotelica e
tolemaica. Sono poi analizzate le teorie elettromagnetiche, a partire dalle
prime formulazioni empiriche di Alessandro Volta e Luigi Galvani fino alle
teorie fisico-matematiche di James Clerk Maxwell. Infine, nel corso del
Novecento si sono avuti rinnovamenti significativi della fisica classica, che
hanno portato alla fisica moderna con le teorie della relatività (ristretta e
generale) di Einstein e la meccanica quantistica. Pera analizza l'evoluzione di
queste teorie scientifiche in relazione a quella del metodo scientifico, basato
su procedimenti razionali ed induttivi. Metodo scientifico ed induzione
Marcello Pera ha sostenuto una posizione intermedia fra il pensiero di Karl
Popper che non accetta l'induzione, e quella di altri filosofi che convalidano
il metodo scientifico basato sull'induzione, definito da David Hume, uno dei
maggiori esponenti dell'empirismo nel settecento. Pera condivide il contributo
di Popper e degli altri esponenti del Circolo di Vienna alla filosofia della
scienza del XX secolo, pur cercando di superare certe loro posizioni che
considera troppo radicali, rivalutando così un certo ruolo dell'induzione nella
ricerca scientifica. Sulle differenze fra la posizione di Pera e di Popper
riguardo al metodo induttivo, si veda[7]. Altri saggi sui metodi
scientifici Marcello Pera ha dedicato numerosi articoli su riviste
specializzate a temi di Filosofia della scienza e sul Metodo scientifico, tra
cui: Pera M., "Induzione, scandalo dell'empirismo", in
"Introduzione a Feigl", (1979). Pera M., "La scoperta
scientifica: congetture selvagge o argomentazioni induttive?", in
"Medicina nei secoli", XVI, n.1, pp.51-70, (1979). Pera M., "È
scientifico il programma scientifico di Marx?", in "Studium",
75, 4, pp.441-463, (1979). Pera M., "Principi a priori e canoni di
razionalità scientifica", in "Physis", XXII, 2, pp.261-278,
(1980). Pera M., "Le teorie come metafore e l'induzione", in
"Physis", XXII, 3-4, (1980). Pera M., "Inductive Method and
Scientific Discovery", in collaborazione con Grmek, Cohen, Cimino, (1980).
Sulla storia della scienza ha pubblicato: Pera M., "La rana ambigua:
la controversia sull'elettricità animale tra Galvani e Volta", il Mulino
(1986) - Edizione inglese: Princeton University Press (1991). Pera M.,
"Scienza e retorica", Laterza (1992) - Edizione inglese: "The
Discourses of Science", The University of Chicago Press (1994). Attività
politica Attività politica nel PSI Negli anni ottanta e nei primi anni novanta,
Marcello Pera fa parte del Partito Socialista Italiano. A ricordo del suo
periodo di vicinanza al Partito Socialista, nel 2004 Pera si è recato ad
Hammamet in visita alla tomba di Bettino Craxi, che ha definito un "patrimonio
della Repubblica", che appartiene alla "storia della sinistra
italiana"[8]. Nel 1994 durante la stagione di Mani Pulite, Marcello
Pera si impegnò sulla questione morale con impeto giustizialista; espresse
severe critiche alla corruzione della politica, schierandosi senza riserve
dalla parte dei magistrati di Milano. Pera si impegnò anche nell'area
laica, nel movimento referendario di Massimo Severo Giannini con la lista Sì
Referendum[9]. Viene inoltre ingaggiato come commentatore dal quotidiano La
Stampa, per il quale tra 1992 e 1993 formula diverse critiche alla corruzione
politica in Italia e si esprime nei seguenti termini: «Come alla caduta
di altri regimi, occorre una nuova Resistenza, un nuovo riscatto e poi una
vera, radicale, impietosa epurazione [...] Il processo è già cominciato e per
buona parte dell'opinione pubblica già chiuso con una condanna» (La Stampa, 19
luglio 1992) «I partiti devono retrocedere e alzare le mani [...] subito e
senza le furbizie che accompagnano i rantoli della loro agonia. Questo sì
sarebbe un golpe contro la democrazia: cercare di resistere contro la volontà
popolare» (1º febbraio 1993) «Il garantismo, come ogni ideologia preconcetta, è
pernicioso» (29 marzo 1993). «I giudici devono andare avanti. Nessuno chiede
che gli inquisiti eccellenti abbiano un trattamento diverso dagli altri
inquisiti» (5 marzo 1993) «No e poi no, onorevole Bossi. Lei deve chiedere
scusa... I giudici fanno il loro dovere... Molti magistrati sono già stati
assassinati per aver fatto rispettare la legge... Lei mette in discussione i
fondamenti stessi dello Stato di diritto» (24 settembre 1993) *«la rivoluzione
ha regole ferree e tempi stretti» (26 settembre 1993) «Quei politici che, come
Craxi, attaccano i magistrati di Milano, mostrano di non capire la sostanza
grave, epocale, del fenomeno» Con Luigi Manconi nel 1995 firmò un appello per
l'uso delle droghe leggere[10]. Ancora nel 1994 Pera dichiarò:
"Berlusconi è a metà strada tra un cabarettista azzimato e un venditore
televisivo di stoviglie, una roba che avrebbe ispirato e angosciato il povero
Fellini"[11]. Senatore di Forza Italia Pera nel 1996. Nel 1994
Pera cambia radicalmente schieramento e aderisce a Forza Italia di cui diventa
coordinatore nazionale della Convenzione per la riforma liberale. Pera, in
questo periodo, si allontana dalle precedenti posizioni giustizialiste
temperandole in senso garantista. Pera iniziò a criticare gli
"eccessi" del pool di Milano e Palermo, che arrivò a definire
golpisti e invitò D'Alema a «fermare i giudici», indicando nel garantismo una
posizione intermedia fra giustizialismo e corruzione, e proponendo la
separazione delle carriere e l'obbligatorietà dell'azione penale. Pera
polemizzò inoltre con i magistrati di Milano per una vicenda che vedeva
coinvolto Paolo Berlusconi nel caso Simec, la società di gestione della
discarica di Cerro Maggiore[12]. Alle elezioni politiche italiane del
1996 Pera viene candidato al Senato per Forza Italia nella sua Lucca, ma viene
sconfitto all'uninominale dal senatore locale, Patrizio Petrucci dei DS. Viene
poi ripescato in quota proporzionale tramite il sistema dei resti ed eletto nel
gruppo Forza Italia al Senato, ed è nominato nel 1998 vicepresidente del Gruppo
di Forza Italia al Senato. Assieme a Marco Boato fonda la "Convenzione
per la giustizia", un movimento politico "virtuale" che consente
il finanziamento pubblico de Il Foglio di Giuliano Ferrara. In Parlamento, Pera
si occupa soprattutto dei problemi della Giustizia in Italia: è stato
ispiratore della riforma costituzionale sul "giusto processo",
approvata nella XIII Legislatura, che ha modificato l'articolo 111 della
Costituzione[13]. La Presidenza del Senato (2001-2006) Il
Presidente del Senato Marcello Pera e il Presidente della Camera Pier Ferdinando
Casini accolgono papa Giovanni Paolo II al Parlamento italiano, 14 novembre
2002. Nelle elezioni politiche del 2001 vince nel collegio uninominale di
Lucca, l'unico della Toscana andato al centro-destra. Viene eletto al primo
scrutinio Presidente del Senato della Repubblica, seconda carica dello Stato,
che manterrà fino al 2006. Nel suo "Discorso di insediamento al Senato
della Repubblica" del 30 marzo 2001 Marcello Pera ha dichiarato:
«Questo è il nucleo della democrazia... Non è soltanto il governo del popolo,
la democrazia; non è neppure soltanto il governo delle regole o della legge: è
qualcosa di più difficile, ma anche di più esaltante. La democrazia è quel
regime di governo che permette a chi si oppone di sostituire pacificamente chi
prende le decisioni a nome della maggioranza. Per questo la democrazia o lo
strumento della democrazia non è soltanto il voto, ma l'argomentazione, il
discorso, il confronto. Per sostituire chi governa, prima di votare occorre
confutare e criticare. Allo stesso modo per governare occorre argomentare e
convincere» In quegli anni è Presidente onorario della "Fondazione
Magna Carta"[14]. Senatore con Forza Italia (2006-2008) e con il
Popolo della Libertà (2008-2013) Lasciata la presidenza del Senato, alle
elezioni politiche italiane del 2006 è rieletto senatore nella lista di Forza
Italia nel collegio della Emilia Romagna e dal 2007 vice-capogruppo di Forza
Italia al Senato[15]. Al seguito della caduta del governo Prodi e delle
elezioni politiche italiane del 2008, è stato confermato al Senato come
capolista della circoscrizione Lazio per il Popolo della Libertà.
Politica locale in Toscana Marcello Pera ha partecipato anche ad alcuni temi di
politica locale, in particolare in Toscana e a Lucca. Inoltre ha svolto un
ruolo attivo nell'ambito della Camera di Commercio di Lucca negli anni sessanta
e settanta e poi soprattutto nelle istituzioni dell'Università di Pisa negli
anni ottanta e novanta. Nel 2005 Marcello Pera ha espresso alcune critiche ai
rapporti fra il Comune di Lucca e la Azienda Municipalizzata del Gas; Pera
viene quindi accusato in Consiglio comunale dall'allora sindaco Pietro Fazzi
(sostenuto da una maggioranza di centrodestra) di essersi intromesso nella
gestione amministrativa del Comune. La vicenda verteva su supposte pressioni del
senatore per la cessione di quote societarie di Gesam gas, azienda
municipalizzata per la somministrazione del gas, ad Enel gas spa. La polemica
ha portato allo scioglimento del Consiglio comunale di Lucca e alle dimissioni
del sindaco Pietro Fazzi, successivamente espulso dal suo partito[16].
Della vicenda si è interessata anche la Procura di Lucca, che nel 2007 ha
archiviato il caso[17]. A settembre 2016 Marcello Pera insieme a Giuliano
Urbani ha fondato il Comitato "Liberi Sì" per il Referendum 2016.
Questo comitato era molto vicino alle posizioni di Scelta Civica e Alleanza
Liberalpopolare-Autonomie, e raccoglieva al suo interno alcune personalità del
centrodestra come Giuliano Urbani ed Enzo Ghigo. In dicembre 2016 il suo
nome era tra i papabili come possibile Ministro nel nuovo Governo
Gentiloni. L'avvicinamento al mondo cattolico In passato Marcello Pera si
era definito un "non credente"; Pera si è poi avvicinato al pensiero
cristiano, accogliendo l'invito di papa Benedetto XVI a vivere "come se
Dio esistesse". Dice infatti Pera in Perché dobbiamo dirci cristiani
(2008): "Io suggerisco di accettare l'esortazione che il Papa ha fatto ai
non credenti: seguire la vecchia formula di Pascal e Kant di vivere ‘come se
Dio esistesse’ (velut si Deus daretur)". La frase citata e commentata da
Pera è tratta da: Immanuel Kant, Critica della ragion pratica, trad. it. di F.
Capra, riveduta da E. Garin, Roma-Bari, Laterza 1979, pag. 157. Pera ritiene
che sia una soluzione saggia, perché rende tutti moralmente più responsabili:
"Se Dio esiste, ci sono limiti morali alle mie azioni, comportamenti,
decisioni, progetti, leggi e così via...". Vedi in proposito il libro di
Pera Perché dobbiamo dirci cristiani (2008), al capitolo "Come se Dio
esistesse", pagine 54-58, in cui Pera indica due modi di avvicinarsi al
cristianesimo: quello della persona fermamente credente e quello della persona
che ammira i valori del cristianesimo (come Kant e Pascal) e che si avvicina al
messaggio cristiano vivendolo dal punto di vista etico. Per le posizioni
su questa tematica Pera è considerato un esponente del movimento
neoconservatore italiano e risulta essere attualmente il più autorevole
esponente Teocon in Italia. Nel periodo di presidenza del Senato nasce un
legame intellettuale tra Pera e il cardinale Joseph Ratzinger, il futuro
pontefice Benedetto XVI: i due si trovano in sintonia sull'analisi dei problemi
dell'Europa e manifestano comuni preoccupazioni per una civiltà occidentale
minata al suo interno dal relativismo e dal multiculturalismo.[18] Dopo
il 2000 Pera ha dedicato diversi articoli e saggi al rapporto fra la cultura
storica europea e il cattolicesimo. In generale Marcello Pera sostiene che il
denominatore culturale comune dei diversi stati europei non deve ravvisarsi nel
rinascimento o nell'illuminismo, ma nel Cristianesimo[19]. Pera in alcuni saggi
e interviste ha indicato l'esigenza di ricercare l'identità culturale del
continente europeo nel Vangelo e negli Atti degli Apostoli. In particolare Pera
ha sostenuto che le Lettere di S.Paolo e i racconti evangelici esprimono i
concetti di eguaglianza fra gli uomini e di solidarietà sociale, che sono oggi
alla base delle Costituzioni delle nazioni moderne e della stessa Comunità
Europea. Nel 2004 Pera è autore con l'allora cardinale Joseph Ratzinger
del libro “Senza radici”, sulla questione delle radici cristiane dell'Europa.
Nel libro, che contiene le due relazioni di Pera e Ratzinger sull'argomento e
uno scambio epistolare tra i due, denuncia il decadimento morale dell'Europa a
suo dire impoverita dal rifiuto delle sue radici cristiane e minacciata dal
terrorismo islamista. Nel libro Pera scrive: «Soffia sull'Europa un brutto
vento. Si tratta dell'idea che basta aspettare e i guai spariranno da soli, o
che si può essere accondiscendenti anche con chi ci minaccia e potremo
cavarcela. È lo stesso soffio del vento di Monaco nel 1938». In un'intervista
rilasciata alla Stampa dopo il no irlandese al trattato europeo, Pera
identifica il Papa, sulla scia di De Maistre, come unico riferimento possibile
per il Vecchio Continente.[20] Nel saggio Perché dobbiamo dirci cristiani
(2008) Pera condanna il relativismo e l'incertezza culturale della società
contemporanea e sviluppa il tema della vera identità dell'Europa da ricercarsi nella
forza etica e sociale del cristianesimo. Secondo Pera, la religione cattolica
non può essere una convinzione privata o tradizionale: l'impegno del cattolico
deve essere presente nella coerenza del suo comportamento etico. Secondo Pera,
il cristiano si deve impegnare in tutte le sfere della vita civile e
istituzionale, prestando la sua attenzione ai problemi di tutti i cittadini e
alla solidarietà sociale. Sul piano politico e culturale, Marcello Pera si
definisce un "conservatore liberale". Più precisamente “conservatore
sui valori da mantenere e liberale sulle riforme da fare”. Secondo Pera “si
tratta di una grande dottrina, una grande scuola, una grande tradizione
politica. Si basa soprattutto su due pilastri: attenzione e difesa della nostra
tradizione europea e occidentale, che è il riferimento da mantenere (da ciò il
conservatorismo); e custodia della nostra autonomia individuale, che è la
condizione su cui dobbiamo sempre vigilare (da ciò il nostro liberalismo)”.[21] Opere Induzione e metodo scientifico, Pisa,
Editrice Tecnico Scientifica, 1978. Popper e la scienza su palafitte,
Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1981. Hume, Kant e l'induzione, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1982.
Apologia del metodo, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1982. I modi del progresso. Teorie e
episodi della razionalita scientifica, a cura di e con Joseph Pitt, Milano, Il
Saggiatore, 1985. La rana ambigua. La controversia sull'elettricità animale tra
Galvani e Volta, Torino, Einaudi, 1986. ISBN 88-06-59310-2. Scienza e retorica,
Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1991. ISBN 88-420-3789-3. L'arte della persuasione
scientifica, a cura di e con William R. Shea, Milano, Guerini, 1992. ISBN
88-7802-330-2. La Martinella. 2001, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2003. ISBN
88-498-0544-6. La Martinella. 2002, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2003. ISBN
88-498-0641-8. La Martinella. 2003, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2004. ISBN
88-498-0868-2. Senza radici. Europa, relativismo, cristianesimo, islam, con
Joseph Ratzinger, Milano, Mondadori, 2004. ISBN 88-04-54474-0. La Martinella.
2004, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2005. ISBN 88-498-1078-4. Libertà e
laicità, a cura di, Siena, Cantagalli, 2006. ISBN 88-8272-266-X. La Martinella.
2005-2006, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2006. ISBN 88-498-1517-4. Perché
dobbiamo dirci cristiani. Il liberalismo, l'Europa, l'etica, Milano, Mondadori,
2008. ISBN 9788804588313. Alle origini del liberalismo. A proposito di
Pannunzio e Tocqueville, Torino, Centro Pannunzio, 2009. Onorificenze Gran
Decorazione d'Onore in Oro con Fascia dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica
Austriaca (Austria) - nastrino per uniforme ordinariaGran Decorazione d'Onore
in Oro con Fascia dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Austriaca (Austria) —
2002 Grand'Ufficiale dell'Ordine delle Tre Stelle (Lettonia) - nastrino per
uniforme ordinariaGrand'Ufficiale dell'Ordine delle Tre Stelle (Lettonia)
Compagno d'Onore Onorario dell'Ordine Nazionale al Merito (Malta) - nastrino
per uniforme ordinariaCompagno d'Onore Onorario dell'Ordine Nazionale al Merito
(Malta) — 20 gennaio 2004 Gran Croce dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica di
Polonia (Polonia) - nastrino per uniforme ordinariaGran Croce dell'Ordine al
Merito della Repubblica di Polonia (Polonia) — 2002 Gran Croce dell'Ordine
dell'Infante Dom Henrique (Portogallo) - nastrino per uniforme ordinariaGran
Croce dell'Ordine dell'Infante Dom Henrique (Portogallo) — 31 gennaio 2005
Cavaliere di Gran Croce dell'Ordine Piano (Santa Sede) - nastrino per uniforme
ordinaria Cavaliere
di Gran Croce dell'Ordine Piano (Santa Sede) — Roma, 11 luglio 2005[22] Gran
Croce - Classe Speciale - dell'Ordine pro Merito Melitensi (SMOM) - nastrino
per uniforme ordinariaGran Croce - Classe Speciale - dell'Ordine pro Merito
Melitensi (SMOM) — Roma, 10 marzo 2006[23][24] Note ^ Vedi i due saggi di
Marcello Pera "Senza Radici" del 2004 e "Perché dobbiamo dirci
cristiani: il liberalismo, l'Europa, l'etica" del 2008 ^ Marcello
Veneziani su Libero, 25 novembre 2008, da MarcelloPera.it ^ Visiting Fellow:
Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, 1984; Visiting
Fellow: The Van Leer Foundation, Gerusalemme, 1987; Visiting Fellow: Department
of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge in Massachusetts, 1990; Visiting
Fellow: Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, London School
of Economics, 1995-96) ^ vedi la prefazione del saggio di Pera "Popper e
la scienza su palafitte", Laterza 1982, pag IX, in cui Pera indica:
"Sono molto grato a Sir Karl Popper per avermi privatamente precisato
alcuni punti sui quali permangono divergenze di opinione. Per altri punti ho
motivi di gratitudine verso amici e colleghi italiani e stranieri" ^ cfr.
il saggio La rana ambigua: la controversia sull'elettricità animale fra Galvani
e Volta, 1986 ^ La scienza non poggia su un solido strato di roccia. L'ardita
struttura delle sue teorie si eleva, per così dire sopra una palude. È come un
edificio costruito su palafitte. Le palafitte vengono conficcate dall'alto giù
nella palude: ma non in una base naturale o "data"; e il fatto che desistiamo
dai nostri tentativi di conficcare le palafitte più a fondo non significa che
abbiamo trovato un terreno solido. Semplicemente, ci fermiamo quando siamo
soddisfatti e riteniamo che almeno per il momento i sostegni siano abbastanza
stabili da sorreggere la struttura. (Karl Popper); in Pera M., "Popper e
la scienza su palafitte", Introduzione "Una epistemologia di
frontiera tra positivismo logico e anarchismo metodologico", p.3 (1982). ^
Pera M., Popper e la scienza su palafitte, Prefazione, pp.VII-X (1982) ^ Pera
sulla tomba di Craxi "Un patrimonio della Repubblica", La Repubblica,
18 gennaio 2004 ^ "Campioni d'Italia", di Gianni Barbacetto, Marco
Tropea editore ^ Pera, il ragioniere che diventò presidente Un carattere
d'acciaio per il filosofo dalle mille e mille contraddizioni, Il Tirreno, 28
dicembre 2001 ^ Citato in Michele De Lucia, Siamo alla frutta, Kaos 2005. ISBN
8879531530 ^ Società civile.it ^ (Principi del giusto processo legge
costituzionale 23 novembre 1999, n. 2; G.U. n. 300 del 23 dicembre 1999) ^
Lettera al presidente del Senato Marcello Pera in occasione del convegno di
Norcia ^ senato.it - Scheda di attività di Marcello PERA - XV Legislatura ^
vedi la fonte giornalistica "Ha offeso Pera": Forza Italia espelle il
sindaco ^ La procura chiede l'archiviazione Archiviato il 18 gennaio 2007 in
Internet Archive. ^ vedi il libro scritto in collaborazione fra M. Pera e J.
Ratzinger Senza radici: Europa, Relativismo, Cristianesimo, Islam, Milano,
Mondadori, 2004 e anche il successivo saggio di Pera "Introduzione a
Ratzinger", 2005 ^ vedi in particolare il libro scritto in collaborazione
fra M. Pera ed il cardinale J. Ratzinger, Senza radici: Europa, Relativismo,
Cristianesimo, Islam, Milano, Mondadori, 2004, e il successivo libro di M.
Pera, Perché dobbiamo dirci cristiani. Il liberalismo, l'Europa, l'etica,
Milano, Mondadori, 2008. ^ "Visto? Non sta in piedi un'Unione senza
Dio"[collegamento interrotto] ^ il rapporto di vicinanza fra i movimenti
politici liberali europei e il cattolicesimo è sviluppato da Pera nel saggio
Perché dobbiamo dirci cristiani. Il liberalismo, l'Europa, l'etica, Milano,
Mondadori, 2008. ^ Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Commentarium officiale, Città del
Vaticano, n.1, 6 gennaio 2006, p.89. ^ Dal sito web del Sovrano Militare Ordine
di Malta. Archiviato l'8 dicembre 2015 in Internet Archive. ^ Marcello Pera
viene insignito da Fra' Andrew Bertie Archiviato il 7 novembre 2008 in Internet
Archive. Bibliografia Campioni d'Italia. G. Barbacetto, Marco Tropea
Editore, 2002, ISBN 8843803549. Siamo alla frutta. Ritratto di Marcello Pera.
M. De Lucia, Kaos Edizioni, 2005, ISBN 88-7953-153-0. "Tolleranza e radici
cristiane secondo Marcello Pera". F. Coniglione, in Iride. Filosofia e
discussione pubblica, 46, XVIII (2005), pp. 603–609 "La forza dell'Occidente.
Pera, Ratzinger e il relativismo della 'Vecchia Europa'”. F. Coniglione, in Il
Protagora, luglio-dicembre 2005, quinta serie, n. 6, pp. 7–46 *"Il sorriso
di Crizia. Il relativismo elitario di Marcello Pera". F. Coniglione, in La
filosofia generosa. Studi in onore di Anna Escher Di Stefano, Bonanno,
Acireale-Roma 2006, pp. 183–201 Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource
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dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Marcello Pera, su
openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Opere di Marcello
Pera, su Open Library, Internet Archive. Modifica su Wikidata Marcello Pera /
Marcello Pera (altra versione) / Marcello Pera (altra versione) / Marcello Pera
(altra versione), su senato.it, Senato della Repubblica. Modifica su Wikidata
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su Wikidata PredecessorePresidente del Senato della Repubblica SuccessoreLogo del Senato della Repubblica
Italiana.svg Nicola Mancino30 maggio 2001 – 27 aprile 2006Franco Marini V · D ·
M Presidenti del Senato italiano Controllo di autoritàVIAF (EN) 87352258 · ISNI
(EN) 0000 0001 0922 2994 · SBN IT\ICCU\CFIV\042841 · LCCN (EN) n81065125 · GND
(DE) 130476048 · BNF (FR) cb120250540 (data) · BNE (ES) XX1615120 (data) · BAV
(EN) 495/297554 · WorldCat Identities (EN) lccn-n81065125 Biografie Portale
Biografie Filosofia Portale Filosofia Politica Portale Politica Categorie:
Filosofi italiani del XX secoloFilosofi italiani del XXI secoloPolitici
italiani del XX secoloPolitici italiani del XXI secoloAccademici italiani del
XX secoloAccademici italiani del XXI secoloNati nel 1943Nati il 28 gennaioNati
a LuccaSenatori della XIII legislatura della Repubblica ItalianaSenatori della
XIV legislatura della Repubblica ItalianaSenatori della XV legislatura della
Repubblica ItalianaSenatori della XVI legislatura della Repubblica
ItalianaPresidenti del Senato della Repubblica ItalianaPolitici del Partito
Socialista ItalianoPolitici di Forza Italia (1994)Politici del Popolo della
LibertàFilosofi della scienzaStudenti dell'Università di PisaProfessori
dell'Università degli Studi di CataniaProfessori dell'Università di Pisa[altre]. Refs.:
Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Pera," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The
Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
izzing/hazzing
– per-essentiam/per-accidentem: literally, “by, as, or being an accident
or non-essential feature.” A “per accidens” predication Grice calls a hazzing
(not an izzing) and is one in which an accident is predicated of a substance.
The terminology is medieval. Note that the accident and substance themselves, and
not expressions standing for them, are the terms of the predication relation.
An “ens per accidentem” is either an accident or the “accidental unity” of a
substance and an accident. Descartes, e.g., insists that a person is not a “per
accidentem” union of body and mind. H. P. Grice, “Izzing, hazzing: the
per-essentiam/per-accidentem distinction.”
perceptum: vide Grice/Warnock, “Notes on visa.” -- myse-en-abyme,
drodde effect Dahlenmacher, speculative – mirror in front of mirror -- , the
traditional distinction is perceptum-conceptum: nihil est in intellectu quod
prius non fuerit in sensu. this is Grice on sense-datum. Grice feels that the
kettle is hot; Grice sees that the kettle is hot; Grice perceives that the
kettle is hot. WoW:251 uses this example. It may be argued that the use of
‘see’ is there NOT factive. Cf. “I feel hot but it’s not hot.” Grice modifies
the thing to read, “DIRECTLY PERCEIVING”: Grice only indirectly perceives that
the kettle is hot’ if what he is doing is ‘seeing’ that the kettle is hot. When
Grice sees that the kettle is hot, it is a ‘secondary’ usage of ‘see,’ because
it means that Grice perceives that the kettle has some visual property that
INDICATES the presence of hotness (Grice uses phi for the general formula). Cf.
sensum. Lewis and Short have “sentĭo,” which they render, aptly, as “to sense,” ‘to
discern by the senses; to feel, hear, see, etc.; to perceive, be sensible of
(syn. percipio).” Note that Price is also cited by
Grice in Personal identity. Grice: That pillar box seems red to me. The locus
classicus in the philosophical literature for Grices implicaturum. Grice
introduces a dout-or-denial condition for an utterance of a phenomenalist
report (That pillar-box seems red to me). Grice attacks neo-Wittgensteinian
approaches that regard the report as _false_. In a long excursus on
implication, he compares the phenomenalist report with utterances like He has
beautiful handwriting (He is hopeless at philosophy), a particularised
conversational implicaturum; My wife is in the kitchen or the garden (I have
non-truth-functional grounds to utter this), a generalised conversational implicaturum;
She was poor but she was honest (a Great-War witty (her poverty and her
honesty contrast), a conventional implicaturum; and Have you stopped beating
your wife? an old Oxonian conundrum. You have been beating your wife, cf.
Smith has not ceased from eating iron, a presupposition. More importantly, he
considers different tests for each concoction! Those for the conversational implicaturum
will become crucial: cancellability, calculability, non-detachability, and
indeterminacy. In the proceedings he plays with something like the principle of
conversational helpfulness, as having a basis on a view of conversation as
rational co-operation, and as giving the rationale to the implicaturum. Past
the excursus, and back to the issue of perception, he holds a conservative view
as presented by Price at Oxford. One interesting reprint of Grices essay is in
Daviss volume on Causal theories, since this is where it belongs! White’s
response is usually ignored, but shouldnt. White is an interesting Australian
philosopher at Oxford who is usually regarded as a practitioner of
ordinary-language philosophy. However, in his response, White hardly touches
the issue of the implicaturum with which Grice is primarily concerned. Grice
found that a full reprint from the PAS in a compilation also containing the
James Harvard would be too repetitive. Therefore, he omits the excursus on
implication. However, the way Grice re-formulates what that excursus covers is
very interesting. There is the conversational implicaturum, particularised
(Smith has beautiful handwriting) and generalised (My wife is in the kitchen or
in the garden). Then there is the præsuppositum, or presupposition (You havent
stopped beating your wife). Finally, there is the conventional implicaturum
(She was poor, but she was honest). Even at Oxford, Grices implicaturum goes,
philosophers ‒ even Oxonian philosophers ‒ use imply for all those different
animals! Warnock had attended Austins Sense and Sensibilia (not to be confused
with Sense and Sensibility by Austen), which Grice found boring, but Warnock
didnt because Austin reviews his "Berkeley." But Warnock, for
obvious reasons, preferred philosophical investigations with Grice. Warnock
reminisces that Grice once tells him, and not on a Saturday morning, either,
How clever language is, for they find that ordinary language does not need the
concept of a visum. Grice and Warnock spent lovely occasions exploring what
Oxford has as the philosophy of perception. While Grice later came to see
philosophy of perception as a bit or an offshoot of philosophical psychology,
the philosophy of perception is concerned with that treasured bit of the Oxonian
philosophers lexicon, the sense-datum, always in the singular! The cause
involved is crucial. Grice plays with an evolutionary justification of the
material thing as the denotatum of a perceptual judgement. If a material thing
causes the sense-datum of a nut, that is because the squarrel (or squirrel)
will not be nourished by the sense datum of the nut; only by the nut! There are
many other items in the Grice Collection that address the topic of perception –
notably with Warnock, and criticizing members of the Ryle group like Roxbee-Cox
(on vision, cf. visa ‒ taste, and perception, in general – And we should not
forget that Grice contributed a splendid essay on the distinction of the senses
to Butlers Analytic philosophy, which in a way, redeemed a rather old-fashioned
discipline by shifting it to the idiom of the day, the philosophy of
perception: a retrospective, with Warnock, the philosophy of perception, :
perception, the philosophy of perception, visum. Warnock was possibly the
only philosopher at Oxford Grice felt congenial enough to engage in different
explorations in the so-called philosophy of perception. Their joint adventures
involved the disimplicaturum of a visum. Grice later approached sense data in
more evolutionary terms: a material thing is to be vindicated transcendentally,
in the sense that it is a material thing (and not a sense datum or collection
thereof) that nourishes a creature like a human. Grice was particularly
grateful to Warnock. By reprinting the full symposium on “Causal theory” of
perception in his influential s. of Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Warnock had
spread Grices lore of implicaturum all over! In some parts of the draft he uses
more on visa, vision, vision, with Warnock, vision. Of the five senses,
Grice and Warnock are particularly interested in seeing. As Grice will put it
later, see is a factive. It presupposes the existence of the event reported
after the that-clause; a visum, however, as an intermediary between the
material thing and the perceiver does not seem necessary in ordinary discourse.
Warnock will reconsider Grices views too (On what is seen, in Sibley). While
Grice uses vision, he knows he is interested in Philosophers paradox concerning
seeing, notably Witters on seeing as, vision, taste and the philosophy of
perception, vision, seeing. As an Oxonian philosopher, Grice was of course
more interested in seeing than in vision. He said that Austin would criticise
even the use of things like sensation and volition, taste, The Grice Papers,
keyword: taste, the objects of the five senses, the philosophy of perception,
perception, the philosophy of perception; philosophy of perception, vision,
taste, perception. Mainly with Warnock. Warnock repr. Grice’s “Causal
theory” in his influential Reading in Philosophy, The philosophy of perception,
perception, with Warnock, with Warner; perception. Warnock learns about
perception much more from Grice than from Austin, taste, The philosophy of
perception, the philosophy of perception, notes with Warnock on visum, : visum,
Warnock, Grice, the philosophy of perception. Grice kept the lecture
notes to a view of publishing a retrospective. Warnock recalled Grice
saying, how clever language is! Grice took the offer by Harvard University
Press, and it was a good thing he repr. part of “Causal theory.” However, the
relevant bits for his theory of conversation as rational co-operation lie in
the excursus which he omitted. What is Grices implicaturum: that one should
consider the topic rather than the method here, being sense datum, and
causation, rather than conversational helpfulness. After all, That pillar box
seems red to me, does not sound very helpful. But the topic of Causal theory is
central for his view of conversation as rational co-operation. Why? P1 gets
an impression of danger as caused by the danger out there. He communicates the
danger to P1, causing in P2 some behaviour. Without
causation, or causal links, the very point of offering a theory of conversation
as rational co-operation seems minimized. On top, as a metaphysician, he was
also concerned with cause simpliciter. He was especially proud that Price’s
section on the casual theory of perception, from his Belief, had been repr.
along with his essay in the influential volume by Davis on “Causal theories.”
In “Actions and events,” Grice further explores cause now in connection with
Greek aitia. As Grice notes, the original usage of this very Grecian item is
the one we find in rebel without a cause, cause-to, rather than cause-because.
The two-movement nature of causing is reproduced in the conversational
exchange: a material thing causes a sense datum which causes an expression
which gets communicated, thus causing a psychological state which will cause a
behaviour. This causation is almost representational. A material thing or a
situation cannot govern our actions and behaviours, but a re-præsentatum of it
might. Govern our actions and behaviour is Grices correlate of what a team of
North-Oxfordshire cricketers can do for North-Oxfordshire: what North
Oxfordshire cannot do for herself, Namesly, engage in a game of cricket! In
Retrospective epilogue he casts doubts on the point of his causal approach. It
is a short paragraph that merits much exploration. Basically, Grice is saying
his causalist approach is hardly an established thesis. He also proposes a
similar serious objection to his view in Some remarks about the senses, the
other essay in the philosophy of perception in Studies. As he notes, both
engage with some fundamental questions in the philosophy of perception, which
is hardly the same thing as saying that they provide an answer to each
question! Grice: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be
thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are
several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined
in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis
which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general
kind. Examples which occur to me are the following six. You cannot see a knife
‘as’ a knife, though you may see what is not a knife ‘as’ a knife (keyword:
‘seeing as’). When he said he ‘knew’ that the objects before him were human
hands, Moore was guilty of misusing ‘know.’ For an occurrence to be properly
said to have a ‘cause,’ it must be something abnormal or unusual (keyword:
‘cause’). For an action to be properly described as one for which the agent is
‘responsible,’ it must be the sort of action for which people are condemned
(keyword: responsibility). What is actual is not also possible (keyword:
actual). What is known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to be
the case (keyword: ‘know’ – cf. Urmson on ‘scalar set’). And cf. with the extra
examples he presents in “Prolegomena.” I have no doubt that there will be other
candidates besides the six which I have mentioned. I must emphasize that I am
not saying that all these examples are importantly similar to the thesis which
I have been criticizing, only that, for all I know, they may be. To put the
matter more generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to
involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one
contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of
manoeuvre. I am merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is
to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the
linguistic nuances which we have detectcd, we should make sure that we are
reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are. “Causal theory”, knowledge and
belief, knowledge, belief, philosophical psychology. Grice: the doxastic implicaturum.
I know only implicates I do not believe. The following is a mistake by a
philosopher. What is known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to
be the case. The topic had attracted the attention of some Oxonian philosophers
such as Urmson in Parenthetical verbs. Urmson speaks of a scale: I know can be
used parenthetically, as I believe can. For Grice, to utter I believe is
obviously to make a weaker conversational move than you would if you utter
I know. And in this case, an approach to informativeness in terms of entailment
is in order, seeing that I know entails I believe. A is thus allowed to infer
that the utterer is not in a position to make the stronger claim. The mechanism
is explained via his principle of conversational helpfulness. Philosophers tend
two over-use these two basic psychological states, attitudes, or stances. Grice
is concerned with Gettier-type cases, and also the factivity of know versus the
non-factivity of believe. Grice follows the lexicological innovations by
Hintikka: the logic of belief is doxastic; the logic of knowledge is epistemic.
The last thesis that Grice lists in Causal theory that he thinks rests on a big
mistake he formulates as: What is known by me to be the case is NOT also
believed by me to be the case. What are his attending remarks? Grice writes:
The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine
point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are several philosophical
theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined in order to see whether
or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been
discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind. An example
which occurs to me is the following: What is known by me to be the case is not
also believed by me to be the case. I must emphasise that I am not saying that
this example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have been
criticising, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am merely
suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with
the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have
detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what SORT of nuances
they are! The ætiological implicaturum. Grice. For an occurrence to be
properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual. This
is an example Grice lists in Causal theory but not in Prolegomena. But cf.
‘responsible’ – and Hart and Honoré on accusation -- accusare "call
to account, make complaint against," from ad causa, from “ad,” with regard
to, as in ‘ad-’) + causa, a cause; a lawsuit,’ v. cause. For an occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it
must be something abnormal or unusual. Similar commentary to his example on
responsible/condemnable apply. The objector may stick with the fact that he is
only concerned with proper utterances. Surely Grice wants to go to a
pre-Humeian account of causation, possible Aristotelian, aetiologia. Where
everything has a cause, except, for Aristotle, God! What are his attending
remarks? Grice writes: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be
thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are
several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined
in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis
which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general
kind. An example which occurs to me is the following: What is known by me to be
the case is not also believed by me to be the case. I must emphasise that I am
not saying that this example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have
been criticizing, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophising. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am merely
suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with
the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have
detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances
they are! Causal theory, cause, causality, causation, conference, colloquium,
Stanford, cause, metaphysics, the abnormal/unusual implicaturum, ætiology,
ætiological implicaturum. Grice: the ætiological implicaturum. Grices
explorations on cause are very rich. He is concerned with some alleged misuse
of cause in ordinary language. If as Hume suggests, to cause is to will, one
would say that the decapitation of Charles I wills his death, which sounds
harsh, if not ungrammatical, too. Grice later relates cause to the Greek aitia,
as he should. He notes collocations like rebel without a cause. For the Greeks,
or Grecians, as he called them, and the Griceians, it is a cause to which one
should be involved in elucidating. A ‘cause to’ connects with the idea of
freedom. Grice was constantly aware of the threat of mechanism, and his idea
was to provide philosophical room for the idea of finality, which is not
mechanistically derivable. This leads him to discussion of overlap and priority
of, say, a physical-cum-physiological versus a psychological theory explaining
this or that piece of rational behaviour. Grice can be Wittgensteinian when
citing Anscombes translation: No psychological concept without the behaviour
the concept is brought to explain. It is best to place his later treatment
of cause with his earlier one in Causal theory. It is surprising Grice does not
apply his example of a mistake by a philosopher to the causal bit of his causal
theory. Grice states the philosophical mistake as follows: For an occurrence to
be properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual.
This is an example Grice lists in Causal theory but not in Prolegomena. For an
occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal
or unusual. A similar commentary to his example on responsible/condemnable
applies: The objector may stick with the fact that he is only concerned with
PROPER utterances. Surely Grice wants to embrace a pre-Humeian account of
causation, possible Aristotelian. Keyword: Aitiologia, where everything has a
cause, except, for Aristotle, God! What are his attending remarks? Grice
writes: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought rather
a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are several
philosophical theses or dicta which would Grice thinks need to be examined in
order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which
Grice has been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind.
One example which occurs to Grice is the following: For an occurrence to be
properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual. Grice
feels he must emphasise that he is not saying that this example is importantly
similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for all I know,
it may be. To put the matter more generally, the position adopted by my
objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of
more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind
of manoeuvre. I am merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution
is to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the
linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should make sure that we are
reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are! Re:
responsibility/condemnation. Cf. Mabbott, Flew on punishment, Philosophy. And
also Hart. At Corpus, Grice enjoys his tutor Hardies resourcefulness in the
defence of what may be a difficult position, a characteristic illustrated by an
incident which Hardie himself once told Grice about himself. Hardie had parked
his car and gone to a cinema. Unfortunately, Hardie had parked his car on top
of one of the strips on the street by means of which traffic-lights were, at
the time, controlled by the passing traffic. As a result, the lights are
jammed, and it requires four policemen to lift Hardies car off the strip. The
police decides to prosecute. Grice indicated to Hardie that this hardly
surprised him and asked him how he fared. Oh, Hardie says, I got off. Then
Grice asks Hardie how on earth he managed that! Quite simply, Hardie answers. I
just invoked Mills method of difference. The police charged me with causing an
obstruction at 4 p.m. I told the police that, since my car was parked at 2 p.m.,
it could not have been my car which caused the obstruction at 4 p.m. This
relates to an example in Causal theory that he Grice does not discuss in
Prolegomena, but which may relate to Hart, and closer to Grice, to Mabbotts
essay on Flew on punishment, in Philosophy. Grice states the philosophical
mistake as follows: For an action to be properly described as one for which the
agent is responsible, it must be thc sort of action for which people are
condemned. As applied to Hardie. Is Hardie irresponsible? In any case, while
condemnable, he was not! Grice writes: The issue with which I have been mainly
concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an
isolated one. There are several philosophical theses or dicta which would I
think need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently
parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment
of the same general kind. An example which occurs to me is the following: For
an action to be properly described as one for which the agent is responsible,
it must be the sort of action for which people are condemned. I must emphasise
that I am not saying that this example is importantly similar to the thesis
which I have been criticizing, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the
matter more generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to
involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one
contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre.
I am merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk
collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic
nuances which we have detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably
clear what sort of nuances they are. The modal example, what is actual is not
also possible, should discussed under Indicative conditonals, Grice on
Macbeth’s implicaturum: seeing a dagger as a dagger. Grice elaborates on this
in Prolegomena, but the austerity of Causal theory is charming, since he does
not give a quote or source. Obviously, Witters. Grice writes: Witters might say
that one cannot see a knife as a knife, though one may see what is not a knife
as a knife. The issue, Grice notes, with which I have been mainly concerned may
be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There
are several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be
examined in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the
thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same
general kind. An example which occurs to Grice is the following: You cannot see
a knife as a knife, though you may see what is not a knife as a knife. Grice
feels that he must emphasise that he is not saying that this example is
importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for
all I know, it may be. To put the matter more generally, the position adopted
by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic
of more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not condemning this
kind of manoeuvre. I am merely suggesting that to embark on it without due
caution is to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit
the linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should make sure that we are
reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are! Is this a dagger which I see
before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee
not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling
as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding
from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable as this
which now I draw. Thou marshallst me the way that I was going; and such an
instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o the other senses, Or
else worth all the rest; I see thee still, and on thy blade and dudgeon gouts
of blood, which was not so before. Theres no such thing: It is the bloody
business which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now oer the one halfworld Nature
seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtaind sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecates offerings, and witherd murder, Alarumd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howls his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With Tarquins
ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and
firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very
stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which
now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives: Words to the heat of deeds too
cold breath gives. I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not,
Duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell. The Moore
example is used both in “Causal theory” and “Prolegomena.” But the use in
“Causal Theory” is more austere: Philosophers mistake: Malcolm: When Moore said
he knew that the objects before him were human hands, he was guilty of misusing
the word know. Grice writes: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned
may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one.
There are several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be
examined in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the
thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same
general kind. An example which occurs to me is the following: When Moore said
he knew that the objects before him were human hands, he was guilty of misusing
the word know. I must emphasise that I am not saying that this example is
importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for
all I know, it may be. To put the matter more generally, the position adopted
by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is
characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not
condemning this kind of manoeuvre. Grice is merely suggesting that to embark on
it without due caution is to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead
to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should make sure
that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are! So surely Grice is
meaning: I know that the objects before me are human hands as uttered by Moore
is possibly true. Grice was amused by the fact that while at Madison, Wisc.,
Moore gave the example: I know that behind those curtains there is a window.
Actually he was wrong, as he soon realised when the educated Madisonians
corrected him with a roar of unanimous laughter. You see, the lecture hall of
the University of Wisconsin at Madison is a rather, shall we say, striking
space. The architect designed the lecture hall with a parapet running around
the wall just below the ceiling, cleverly rigged with indirect lighting to
create the illusion that sun light is pouring in through windows from outside.
So, Moore comes to give a lecture one sunny day. Attracted as he was to this
eccentric architectural detail, Moore gives an illustration of certainty as
attached to common sense. Pointing to the space below the ceiling, Moore
utters. We know more things than we think we know. I know, for example, that
the sunlight shining in from outside proves
At which point he was somewhat startled (in his reserved Irish-English
sort of way) when his audience burst out laughing! Is that a proof of anything?
Grice is especially concerned with I seem He needs a paradeigmatic sense-datum
utterance, and intentionalist as he was, he finds it in I seem to see a red
pillar box before me. He is relying on Paul. Grice would generalise a sense
datum by φ I seem to perceive that the alpha is phi. He agrees that while cause
may be too much, any sentence using because will do: At a circus: You seem to
be seeing that an elephant is coming down the street because an elephant is
coming down the street. Grice found the causalist theory of perception
particularly attractive since its objection commits one same mistake twice: he
mischaracterises the cancellable implicaturum of both seem and
cause! While Grice is approaching the philosophical item in the
philosophical lexicon, perceptio, he is at this stage more interested in
vernacular that- clauses such as sensing that, or even more vernacular ones
like seeming that, if not seeing that! This is of course philosophical (cf.
aesthetikos vs. noetikos). L and S have “perceptĭo,” f. perceptio, as used by
Cicero (Ac. 2, 7, 22) translating catalepsis, and which they render as “a
taking, receiving; a gathering in, collecting;’ frugum fruetuumque reliquorum,
Cic. Off. 2, 3, 12: fructuum;’ also as perception, comprehension, cf.: notio,
cognition; animi perceptiones, notions, ideas; cognitio aut perceptio, aut si
verbum e verbo volumus comprehensio, quam κατάληψιν illi vocant; in philosophy,
direct apprehension of an object by the mind, Zeno Stoic.1.20, Luc. Par. 4,
al.; τῶν μετεώρων;” ἀκριβὴς κ. Certainty; pl., perceptions, Stoic.2.30, Luc.
Herm.81, etc.; introduced into Latin by Cicero, Plu. Cic. 40. As for “causa”
Grice is even more sure he was exploring a time-honoured philosophical topic.
The entry in L and S is “causa,’ perh. root “cav-“ of “caveo,” prop. that which
is defended or protected; cf. “cura,” and that they render as, unhelpfully, as
“cause,” “that by, on account of, or through which any thing takes place or is
done;” “a cause, reason, motive, inducement;” also, in gen., an occasion,
opportunity; oeffectis; factis, syn.
with ratio, principium, fons, origo, caput; excusatio, defensio; judicium,
controversia, lis; partes, actio; condicio, negotium, commodum, al.);
correlated to aition, or aitia, cause, δι᾽ ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν,” cf. Pl. Ti.
68e, Phd. 97a sq.; on the four causes of Arist. v. Ph. 194b16, Metaph. 983a26:
αἰ. τοῦ γενέσθαι or γεγονέναι Pl. Phd. 97a; τοῦ μεγίστου ἀγαθοῦ τῇ πόλει αἰτία
ἡ κοινωνία Id. R. 464b: αἰτίᾳ for the sake of, κοινοῦ τινος ἀγαθοῦ.” Then there
is “αἴτιον” (cf. ‘αἴτιος’) is used like “αἰτία” in the sense of cause, not in
that of ‘accusation.’ Grice goes back to perception at a later stage,
reminiscing on his joint endeavours with akin Warnock, Ps karulise elatically,
potching and cotching obbles, Pirotese, Pirotese, creature construction,
philosophical psychology. Grice was fascinated by Carnaps Ps which
karulise elatically. Grice adds potching for something like perceiving and
cotching for something like cognising. With his essay Some remarks about
the senses, Grice introduces the question by which criterion we
distinguish our five senses into the contemporary philosophy of perception. The
literature concerning this question is not very numerous but the discussion is
still alive and was lately inspired by the volume The Senses2. There are four
acknowledged possible answers to the question how we distinguish the senses,
all of them already stated by Grice. First, the senses are distinguished by the
properties we perceive by them. Second, the senses are distinguished by the
phenomenal qualities of the perception itself or as Grice puts it “by the
special introspectible character of the experiences” Third, the senses are
distinguished by the physical stimuli that are responsible for the relevant
perceptions. Fourth, The senses are distinguished by the sense-organs that are
(causally) involved in the production of the relevant perceptions. Most
contributions discussing this issue reject the third and fourth answers in a
very short argumentation. Nearly all philosophers writing on the topic vote
either for the first or the second answer. Accordingly, most part of the debate
regarding the initial question takes the form of a dispute between these two
positions. Or” was a big thing in Oxford philosophy. The only known
published work of Wood, our philosophy tutor at Christ Church, was an essay in
Mind, the philosophers journal, entitled “Alternative Uses of “Or” ”, a work
which was every bit as indeterminate as its title. Several years later he
published another paper, this time for the Aristotelian Society, entitled On
being forced to a conclusion. Cf. Grice and Wood on the demands of
conversational reason. Wood, The force of linguistic rules. Wood, on the implicaturum
of or in review in Mind of Connor, Logic. The five senses, as Urmson notes, are
to see that the sun is shining, to hear that the car collided, to feel that her
pulse is beating, to smell that something has been smoking and to taste that.
An interesting piece in that it was commissioned by Butler, who knew Grice from
his Oxford days. Grice cites Wood and Albritton. Grice is concerned with a
special topic in the philosophy of perception, notably the identification of
the traditional five senses: vision, audition, taste, smell, and tact. He
introduces what is regarded in the philosophical literature as the first
thought-experiment, in terms of the senses that Martians may have. They have
two pairs of eyes: are we going to allow that they see with both pairs? Grice
introduces a sub-division of seeing: a Martian x-s an object with his upper
pair of eyes, but he y-s an object with the lower pair of eyes. In his
exploration, he takes a realist stance, which respects the ordinary discursive ways
to approach issues of perception. A second interesting point is that in
allowing this to be repr. in Butlers Analytic philosophy, Grice is
demonstrating that analytic philosophers should NOT be obsessed with ordinary
language. Butlers compilation, a rather dry one, is meant as a response to the
more linguistic oriented ones by Flew (Grices first tutee at St. Johns, as it
happens), also published by Blackwell, and containing pieces by Austin, and
company. One philosopher who took Grice very seriously on this was Coady, in
his The senses of the Martians. Grice provides a serious objection to his own
essay in Retrospective epilogue We see with our eyes. I.e. eye is
teleologically defined. He notes that his way of distinguishing the senses is
hardly an established thesis. Grice actually advances this topic in his earlier
Causal theory. Grice sees nothing absurd in the idea that a non-specialist
concept should contain, so to speak, a blank space to be filled in by the
specialist; that this is so, e.g., in the case of the concept of seeing is
perhaps indicated by the consideration that if we were in doubt about the
correctness of speaking of a certain creature with peculiar sense-organs as
seeing objects, we might well wish to hear from a specialist a comparative
account of the human eye and the relevant sense-organs of the creature in
question. He returns to the point in Retrospective epilogue with a bit of
doxastic humility, We see with our eyes is analytic ‒ but
philosophers should take that more seriously. Grice tested the
playmates of his children, aged 7 and 9, with Nothing can be green
and red all over. Instead, Morley Bunker preferred
philosophy undergrads. Aint that boring? To give examples:
Summer follows Spring was judged analytic by Morley-Bunkers informants, as
cited by Sampson, in Making sense (Clarendon) by highly significant majorities
in each group of Subjectss, while We see with our eyes was given near-even
split votes by each group. Over all, the philosophers were somewhat more
consistent with each other than the non-philosophers. But that global finding
conceals results for individual sentences that sometimes manifested the
opposed tendency. Thus, Thunderstorms are electrical disturbances in the
atmosphere is judged analytic by a highly significant majority of the
non-philosophers, while a non-significant majority of the philosophers deemed
it non-analytic or synthetic. In this case, it seems, philosophical training,
surely not brain-washing, induces the realisation that well-established results
of contemporary science are not necessary truths. In other cases, conversely,
cliches of current philosophical education impose their own mental blinkers on
those who undergo it: Nothing can be completely red and green all over is
judged analytic by a significant majority of philosophers but only by a
non-significant majority of non-philosophers. All in all, the results argue
strongly against the notion that our inability to decide consistently whether
or not some statement is a necessary truth derives from lack of skill in
articulating our underlying knowledge of the rules of our language. Rather, the
inability comes from the fact that the question as posed is unreal. We choose
to treat a given statement as open to question or as unchallengeable in the light
of the overall structure of beliefs which we have individually evolved in
order to make sense of our individual experience. Even the cases which seem
clearly analytic or synthetic are cases which individuals judge alike because
the relevant experiences are shared by the whole community, but even for such
cases one can invent hypothetical or suppositional future experiences which, if
they should be realised, would cause us to revise our judgements. This is not
intended to call into question the special status of the truths of
logic, such as either Either it is raining or it is not. He is of course
inclined to accept the traditional view according to which logical particles
such as not and or are distinct from the bulk of the vocabulary in that the former
really are governed by clear-cut inference rules. Grice does expand on the
point. Refs.: Under sense-datum, there are groups of essays. The obvious ones
are the two essays on the philosophy of perception in WOW. A second group
relates to his research with G. J. Warnock, where the keywords are ‘vision,’
‘taste,’ and ‘perception,’ in general. There is a more recent group with this
research with R. Warner. ‘Visum’ and ‘visa’ are good keywords, and cf. the use
of ‘senses’ in “Some remarks about the senses,” in BANC.Philo: Grice’s
favourite philosopher, after Ariskant. The [Greek: protos logos anapodeiktos]
of the Stoic logic ran thus [Greek: ei hemera esti, phos estin ... alla men
hemera estin phos ara estin] (Sext. _P.H._ II. 157, and other passages qu.
Zeller 114). This bears a semblance of inference and isnot so utterly tautological as Cic.'s translation, which
merges [Greek: phos] and [Greek: hemera] into one word, or that of Zeller (114,
note). Si
dies est lucet: a better trans of
Greek: ei phos estin, hemera estin] than was given in 96, where see n. _Aliter
Philoni_: not Philo of Larissa, but a noted dialectician, pupil of Diodorus the
Megarian, mentioned also in 75. The dispute between Diodorus and Philo is
mentioned in Sext. _A.M._ VIII. 115--117 with the same purpose as here, see
also Zeller 39. Conexi = Gr. “synemmenon,” cf. Zeller 109. This was the proper
term for the hypothetical judgment. _Superius_: the Greek: synemmenon consists
of two parts, the hypothetical part and the affirmative--called in Greek [Greek:
hegoumenon] and [Greek: legon]; if one is admitted the other follows of course.Philo's
criterion for the truth of “if p, q” is truth-functional. Philo’s
truth-functional criterion is generally accepted as a minimal condition.Philo
maintains that “If Smith is in London, he, viz. Smith, is attending the meeting
there, viz. in London” is true (i) when the antecedens (“Smith is in London”)
is true and the consequens (“Smith is in London at a meeting”) is true (row 1)
and (ii) when the antecedent is false (rows 3 and 4); false only when the antecedens
(“Smith is in London”) is true and the consequens (“Smith is in London, at a
meeting”) is false. (Sext. Emp., A.
M., 2.113-114). Philo’s “if p, q” is what Whitehead and Russell call,
misleadingly, ‘material’ implication, for it’s neither an implication, nor
materia.In “The Influence of Grice on Philo,” Shropshire puts forward the
thesis that Philo was aware of Griceian ideas on relative identity,
particularly time-relative identity. Accordingly, Philo uses subscript for
temporal indexes. Once famous discussion took place one long winter night.“If it
is day, it is night.”“False!” Diodorus screamed.“True,” his tutee Philo
courteously responded. “But true at night only.”Philo's suggestion is
remarkable – although not that remarkable if we assume he read the now lost
Griceian tract.Philo’s “if,” like Grice’s “if,” – on a bad day -- deviates
noticeably from what Austin (and indeed, Austen) used to refer to as ‘ordinary’
language.As Philo rotundly says: “The Griceian ‘if’ requires abstraction on the
basis of a concept of truth-functionality – and not all tutees will succeed in
GETTING that.” The hint was on Strawson.Philo's ‘if’ has been criticised on two
counts. First, as with Whitehead’s and Russell’s equally odd ‘if,’ – which they
symbolise with an ‘inverted’ C, to irritate Johnson, -- “They think ‘c’ stands
for either ‘consequentia’ or ‘contentum’ -- in the case of material
implication, for the truth of the conditional no connection (or better, Kant’s
relation) of content between antecedent and consequent is required. Uttered or
emitted during the day, e. g. ‘If virtue
benefits, it is day’ is Philonianly true. This introduces a variant of the
so-called ‘paradoxes’ of material implication (Relevance Logic, Conditionals 2.3;
also, English Oxonian philosopher Lemmon 59-60, 82). This or that ancient
philosopher was aware of what he thought was a ‘problem’ for Philo’s ‘if.’
Vide: SE, ibid. 113-117). On
a second count, due to the time-dependency or relativity of the ‘Hellenistic’ ‘proposition,’
Philo's truth-functional criterion implies that ‘if p, q’ changes its truth-value
over time, which amuses Grice, but makes Strawson sick. In Philo’s infamous
metalinguistic disquotational version that Grice finds genial:‘If it is day, it
is night’ is true if it is night, but false if it is day. This is
counter-intuitive in Strawson’s “London,” urban, idiolect (Grice is from the
Heart of England) as regards an utterance in ‘ordinary-language’ involving
‘if.’“We are not THAT otiose at busy London!On a third count, as the concept of
“if” (‘doubt’ in Frisian) also meant to provide for consequentia between from a
premise to a conclusio, this leads to the “rather” problematic result –
Aquinas, S. T. ix. 34) that an ‘argumentum,’ as Boethius calls it, can in
principle change from being valid to being invalid and vice versa, which did
not please the Saint Thomas (Aquinas), “or God, matter of fact.”From Sextus: A.
M., 2.113ffA non-simple proposition is such composed of a duplicated
proposition or of this or that differing proposition. A complex proposition is
controlled by this or that conjunction. 109. Of
these let us take the hypo-thetical proposition, so-called. This, then, is
composed of a duplicated proposition or of differing propositions, by means of
the conjunction “if” (Gr. ‘ei,’ L. ‘si’, German ‘ob’). Thus, e. g. from a
duplicated proposition and the conjunction “if” (Gr. ‘ei,’ L. ‘si,’ G.
‘ob’) there is composed such a hypothetical proposition as this. “If it is day,
it is day’ (110) and from differing
propositions, and by means of the conjunction “if” , one in this
form, “If it is day, it is light.” “Si dies est, lucet.” And of the two propositions
contained in the hypo-thetical proposition, or subordinating clause that which
is placed immediately AFTER the conjunction or subordinating particle “if”
is called “ante-cedent,” or “first;” and ‘if’ being ‘noncommutative,’ and
the other one “consequent” or “second,” EVEN if the whole proposition
is reversed IN ORDER OF EXPRESSION – this is a conceptual issue, not a
grammatical one! -- as thus — “It is light, if it is day.” For in this,
too, the proposition, “It is light,” (lucet) is called consequent although
it is UTTERED first, and ‘It is day’ antecedent, although it is UTTERED second,
owing to the fact that it is placed after the conjunction or subordinating
particle “if.” 111. Such
then is the construction of the hypothetical proposition, and a proposition of
this kind seems to “promise” (or suggest, or implicate) that the ‘consequent’
(or super-ordinated or main proposition) logically follows the ‘antecedens,’ or
sub-ordinated proposition. If the antecedens is true, the consequens is true.
Hence, if this sort of “promise,” suggestio, implicaturum, or what have you, is
fulfilled and the consequens follows the antecedent, the hypothetical
proposition is true. If the promise is not fulfilled, it is false (This is
something Strawson grants as a complication in the sentence exactly after the
passage that Grice extracts – Let’s revise Strawson’s exact wording. Strawson
writes:“There is much more to be noted about ‘if.’ In particular, about whether
the antecedens has to be a ‘GOOD’ antecedens, i. e. a ‘good’ ground – not
inadmissible evidence, say -- or good reason for accepting the consequens, and
whether THIS is a necessary condition for the whole ‘if’ utterance to be TRUE.’
Surely not for Philo. Philo’s criterion is that an ‘if’ utterance is true iff it
is NOT the case that the antecedens is true and it is not the case that the
consequens is true. 112. Accordingly,
let us begin at once with this problem, and consider whether any hypothetical
proposition can be found which is true and which fulfills the promise or
suggestio or implicaturum described. Now all philosophers agree that a hypothetical
proposition is true when the consequent follows the antecedent. As to when the
consequens follows from the antecedens philosophers such as Grice and his tutee
Strawson disagree with one another and propound conflicting criteria. 113. Philo and Grice declares
that the ‘if’ utterance is true whenever it is not the case that the
antecedens (“Smith is in London”) is true and it is not the case that the
consequens (“Smith is in London attending a meeting”) is true. So that,
according to Grice and Philo (vide, “The influence of Grice on Philo”), the
hypothetical is true in three ways or rows (row 1, row 3, and row 4) and false
in one way or row (second row, antecedens T and consequence F). For the first
row, whenever the ‘if’ utterance begins with truth and ends in truth it is
true. E. g. “If it is day, it is light.” “Si dies est, lux est.”For row 4: the
‘if’ utterance is also true whenever the antecedens is false and the consequens
is false. E. g. “If the earth flies, the earth has wings.” ει
πέταται ή γή, πτέρυγας έχει
ή γή (“ei petatai he ge, pteguras ekhei
he ge”) (Si terra volat, habet alas.”)114. Likewise
also that which begins with what is false and ends with what is true is true,
as thus — If the earth flies, the earth exists. “Si terra volat, est terra”.
dialecticis,
in quibus ſubtilitatem nimiam laudando, niſi fallimur, tradu xit Callimachus. 2
Cujus I. ſpecimen nobis fervavit se XTVS EMPI . RIC V S , a qui de Diodori,
Philonis & Chryſippi diſſenſu circa propofi tiones connexas prolixe
diſſerit. Id quod paucis ita comprehendit ci . CERO : 6 In hoc ipfo , quod in
elementis dialectici docent, quomodo judi care oporteat, verum falſumne fit ,
fi quid ita connexum eſt , ut hoc: fi dies eft, lucet, quanta contentio eft,
aliter Diodoro, aliter Philoni, Chry fappo aliter placet. Quæ ut clarius
intelligantur, obſervandum eſt, Dia lecticos in propofitionum conditionatarum ,
quas connexas vocabant, explicatione in eo convenisse, verum esse consequens,
si id vera consequentia deducatur ex antecedente; falsum, si non ſequatur; in
criterio vero , ex quo dijudicanda est consequentiæ veritas, definiendo inter
se diſſenſiſſe. Et Philo quidem veram esse propoſitionem connexam putabat, fi
& antecedens & consequens verum esset , & ſi antecedens atque conſequens
falsum eſſet, & fi a falſo incipiens in verum defineret, cujus primi
exemplum eſt : “Si dies est, lux est,” secondi. “Si terra volat, habet alas.”
Tertii. “Si terra volat, est terra.” Solum vero falsum , quando incipiens a
vero defineret in falſum . Diodorus autem hoc falſum interdum eſſe, quod
contingere pof ſet, afferens, omne quod contigit , ex confequentiæ complexu
removit , ficque, quod juxta Philonem verum eft, fi dies eſt, ego diſſero,
falſum eſſe pronunciavit, quoniam contingere poffit, ut quis, ſi dies fit, non
differat, ſed fileat. Ex qua Dialecticorum diſceptatione Sextus infert,
incertum eſſe criterium propoſitionum hypotheticarum . Ex quibus parca , ut de
bet, manu prolatis, judicium fieri poteſt , quam miſeranda facies fuerit shia
lecticæ eriſticæ , quæ ad materiam magis argumentorum , quam ad formam - &
ad verba magis, quam ideas, quæ ratiocinia conſtituunt refpiciens, non potuit
non innumeras ſine modo & ratione technias & difficultates ftruere,
facile fumi inſtar diſſipandas, fi ad ipſam ratiocinandi & ideas inter ſe
con ferendi & ex tertia judicandi formam attendatur. Quod fi enim inter ve
ritate conſequentiæ & confequentis, ( liceat pauliſper cum ſcholaſticis
barbare loqui diſtinxiffent, inanis diſputatio in pulverem abiiffet, & eva
nuiſſet; nam de prima Diodorus, de altera Philo , & hic quidem inepte &
minus accurate loquebatur. Sed hæc ws šv zapóów . Ceterum II. in fo phiſma t)
Coutra Gramm . S.309.Log. I. II.S. 115.Seqq. ) Catalogum Diodororum ſatis
longum exhi # Nominateas CLEM . ALE X. Strom . I. IV . ber FABRIC. Bibl.Gr.
vol. II. p . 775. pag. 522. % ) Cujusverſus vide apud LAERT. & SEXT. *
Contra Iovinian . I. I. conf. MENAG. ad l. c. H . cc. Laërt . & Hiſt. phil.
mal. Ø . 60 . ubi tamen quatuor A ) Adv. Logic. I. c . noininat, cum quinque
fuerint. b ) Acad. 29. I. IV . 6. 47. DE SECTAM E GARICA phiſinatibus ftruendis
Diodorum excelluiffe, non id folum argumentum eft, nuod is quibusdam auctor
argumenti, quod velatum dicitur , fuifle aflera tur, fed & quod argumentum
dominans invexerit, de quo, ne his nugis lectori moleſti fimus, Epictetum apud
ARRIANVM conſuli velimus. Er ad hæc quoque Dialecticæ peritiæ acumina
referendum eſt argumentum , quo nihilmoveri probabat. Quod ita sexTvs enarrat:
Si quid move tur, aut in eo , in quo eft , loco movetur, aut in eo , in quo non
eſt. At neque in quo eſt movetur, manet enim in eo , fi in eo eft ; nec vero ,
in quo non eſt,movetur; ubi enim aliquid non eſt, ibi neque agere quidquam ne
que pati poteft. Non ergo movetur quicquam . Quo argumento non ideo ufus eſt
Diodorus, quod putat Sextus, ut more Eleaticorum probaret : non darimotum in
rerum natura, & nec interire quicquam nec oriri ; fed ut ſubtilitatem
ingenii dialecticam oftenderet, verbisque circumveniret. Qua ratione Diodorum
mire depexum dedit Herophilusmedicus. Cum enim luxato humero ad eum veniffet
Diodorus, ut ipſum curaret , facete eum irriſit, eodem argumento probando
humerum non excidiffe : adeo ut precaretur fophifta , omiffis iis
cavillationibus adhiberet ei congruens ex artemedica remedium . f . . Tandem
& III . inter atomiſticæ p hiloſophiæ ſectatores numerari folet Diodorus,
eo quod énocy iso xei dueen CÁMata minima & indiviſibilia cor pora
Itatuerit,numero infinita , magnitudine finita , ut ex veteribus afferunt
præter SEXTVM , & EVSEBIVŠ, \ CHALCIDIVS, ISTOBAEVS k alii , quibus ex
recentioribus concinunt cvDWORTHVS 1 & FABRICIV'S. * Quia vero veteres non
addunt, an indiviſibilia & minima ifta corpuſcula , omnibus qualitatibus
præter figuram & fitum fpoliata poſuerit, fine formi dine oppoſiti inter
ſyſtematis atomiſtici fectatores numerari non poteſt. Nam alii quoque
philoſophi ejusmodi infecabilia corpuſcula admiſerunt ; nec tamen atomos
Democriticos ſtatuerunt. "Id quod acute monuit cel. MOSHEMIV S . n . irAnd it is false only in this one way, when it begins with
truth and ends in what is false, as in a proposition of this kind. “If it is
day, it is night.” “Si dies est, nox est”. (Cf. Cole Porter, “Night and day, day and
night!”.For if it IS day, the clause ‘It is day’ is true, and this is
the antecedent, but the clause ‘It is night,’ which is the consequens, is
false. But when uttered at night, it is true. 115. —
But Diodorus asserts that the hypothetical proposition is true which
neither admitted nor admits of beginning with truth and ending in
falsehood. And this is in conflict with the statement of Philo. For a
hypothetical of this kind — If it is day, I am conversing, when at
the present moment it is day and I am conversing, is true according to Philo
since it begins with the true clause It is day and ends with the
true I am conversing; but according to Diodorus it is false, for it admits
of beginning with a clause that is, at one time, true and ending in the false
clause I am conversing, when I have ceased speaking; also it admitted
of beginning with truth and ending with the falsehood I am
conversing, 116. for before I began to
converse it began with the truth It is day and ended in the
falsehood I am conversing. Again, a proposition in this form
— If it is night, I am conversing, when it is day and I am silent, is
likewise true according to Philo, for it begins with what is false and ends in
what is false; but according to Diodorus it is false, for it admits of
beginning with truth and ending in falsehood, after night has come on, and when
I, again, am not conversing but keeping silence. 117. Moreover,
the proposition If it is night, it is day, when it is day, is true
according to Philo for the reason that it begins with the false It is
night and ends in the true It is day; but according to Diodorus it is
false for the reason that it admits of beginning, when night comes on, with the
truth It is night and ending in the falsehood It is day.Philo is
sometimes called ‘Philo of Megara,’ where ‘of’ is used alla Nancy Mitford, of
Chatworth. Although no essay by Philo is preserved (if he wrote it), there are
a number of reports of his doctrine, not all positive!Some think Philo made a
groundbreaking contribution to the development of semantics (influencing
Peirce, but then Peirce was influenced by the World in its totality), in
particular to the philosophy of “as if” (als ob), or “if.”A conditional (sunêmmenon), as Philo calls it, is a
non-simple, i. e. molecular, non atomic, proposition composed of two
propositions, a main, or better super-ordinated proposition, or consequens, and
a sub-ordinated proposition, the antecedens, and the subordinator ‘if’. Philo
invented (possibly influenced by Frege) what he (Frege, not Philo) calls
truth-functionality.Philo puts forward a criterion of truth as he called what
Witters will have as a ‘truth table’ for ‘if’ (or ‘ob,’ cognate with Frisian
gif, doubt).A conditional is is true in three truth-value combinations, and
false when and only when its antecedent is true and
its consequent is false.The Philonian ‘if’ Whitehead and Russell re-labelled
‘material’ implication – irritating Johnson who published a letter in The
Times, “… and dealing with the paradox of implication.”For Philo, like Grice, a
proposition is a function of time that can have different truth-values at
different times—it may change its truth-value over time. In Philo’s
disquotational formula for ‘if’:“If it is day, ‘if it is day, it is night’ is
false; if it is night, ‘if it is day, it is night’ is true.”(Tarski translated
to Polish, in which language Grice read it).Philo’s ramblings on ‘if’ lead to
foreshadows of Whitehead’s and Russell’s ‘paradox of implication’ that
infuriated Johnson – In Russell’s response in the Times, he makes it plain:
“Johnson shouldn’t be using ‘paradox’ in the singular. Yours, etc. Baron
Russell, Belgravia.”Sextus Empiricus [S. E.] M. 8.109–117, gives a precis of Johnson’s paradox of
implication, without crediting Johnson. Philo and Diodorus each considered the
four modalities possibility, impossibility, necessity and non-necessity. These
were conceived of as modal properties or modal values of propositions, not as
modal operators. Philo defined them as follows: ‘Possible is that which is
capable of being true by the proposition’s own nature … necessary is that which
is true, and which, as far as it is in itself, is not capable of being false.
Non-necessary is that which as far as it is in itself, is capable of being
false, and impossible is that which by its own nature is not capable of being
true.’ Boethius fell in love with Philo, and he SAID it! (In Arist. De Int., sec. ed., 234–235
Meiser).Cf. (Epict. Diss.
II.19). Aristotle’s De
Interpretatione 9 (Aulus
Gellius 11.12.2–3). Grice: “Vision was always held by philosophers to be the
superior sense.” Grice:
“Perception is, strictly, the extraction and use of information about one’s
environment exteroception and one’s own body interoception. “ he various
external senses sight, hearing, touch,
smell, and taste though they overlap to
some extent, are distinguished by the kind of information e.g., about light,
sound, temperature, pressure they deliver. Proprioception, perception of the
self, concerns stimuli arising within, and carrying information about, one’s
own body e.g., acceleration, position,
and orientation of the limbs. There are distinguishable stages in the
extraction and use of sensory information, one an earlier stage corresponding
to our perception of objects and events, the other, a later stage, to the
perception of facts about these objects. We see, e.g., both the cat on the sofa
an object and that the cat is on the sofa a fact. Seeing an object or
event a cat on the sofa, a person on the
street, or a vehicle’s movement does not
require that the object event be identified or recognized in any particular way
perhaps, though this is controversial, in any way whatsoever. One can, e.g.,
see a cat on the sofa and mistake it for a rumpled sweater. Airplane lights are
often misidentified as stars, and one can see the movement of an object either
as the movement of oneself or under some viewing conditions as expansion or
contraction. Seeing objects and events is, in this sense, non-epistemic: one
can see O without knowing or believing that it is O that one is seeing. Seeing
facts, on the other hand, is epistemic; one cannot see that there is a cat on
the sofa without, thereby, coming to know that there is a cat on the sofa.
Seeing a fact is coming to know the fact in some visual way. One can see
objects the fly in one’s soup, e.g., without realizing that there is a fly in one’s
soup thinking, perhaps, it is a bean or a crouton; but to see a fact, the fact
that there is a fly in one’s soup is, necessarily, to know it is a fly. This
distinction applies to the other sense modalities as well. One can hear the
telephone ringing without realizing that it is the telephone perhaps it’s the
TV or the doorbell, but to hear a fact, that it is the telephone that is
ringing, is, of necessity, to know that it is the telephone that is ringing.
The other ways we have of describing what we perceive are primarily variations
on these two fundamental themes. In seeing where he went, when he left, who
went with him, and how he was dressed, e.g., we are describing the perception
of some fact of a certain sort without revealing exactly which fact it is. If
Martha saw where he went, then Martha saw hence, came to know some fact having
to do with where he went, some fact of the form ‘he went there’. In speaking of
states and conditions the condition of his room, her injury, and properties the
color of his tie, the height of the building, we sometimes, as in the case of
objects, mean to be describing a non-epistemic perceptual act, one that carries
no implications for what if anything is known. In other cases, as with facts,
we mean to be describing the acquisition of some piece of knowledge. One can
see or hear a word without recognizing it as a word it might be in a foreign
language, but can one see a misprint and not know it is a misprint? It
obviously depends on what one uses ‘misprint’ to refer to: an object a word
that is misprinted or a fact the fact that it is misprinted. In examining and
evaluating theories whether philosophical or psychological of perception it is
essential to distinguish fact perception from object perception. For a theory
might be a plausible theory about the perception of objects e.g., psychological
theories of “early vision” but not at all plausible about our perception of
facts. Fact perception, involving, as it does, knowledge and, hence, belief
brings into play the entire cognitive system memory, concepts, etc. in a way
the former does not. Perceptual relativity
e.g., the idea that what we perceive is relative to our language, our
conceptual scheme, or the scientific theories we have available to “interpret”
phenomena is quite implausible as a
theory about our perception of objects. A person lacking a word for, say,
kumquats, lacking this concept, lacking a scientific way of classifying these
objects are they a fruit? a vegetable? an animal?, can still see, touch, smell,
and taste kumquats. Perception of objects does not depend on, and is therefore
not relative to, the observer’s linguistic, conceptual, cognitive, and
scientific assets or shortcomings. Fact perception, however, is another matter.
Clearly one cannot see that there are kumquats in the basket as opposed to
seeing the objects, the kumquats, in the basket if one has no idea of, no
concept of, what a kumquat is. Seeing facts is much more sensitive and, hence,
relative to the conceptual resources, the background knowledge and scientific
theories, of the observer, and this difference must be kept in mind in
evaluating claims about perceptual relativity. Though it does not make objects
invisible, ignorance does tend to make facts perceptually inaccessible. There
are characteristic experiences associated with the different senses. Tasting a
kumquat is not at all like seeing a kumquat although the same object is
perceived indeed, the same fact that it
is a kumquat may be perceived. The
difference, of course, is in the subjective experience one has in perceiving
the kumquat. A causal theory of perception of objects holds that the perceptual
object, what it is we see, taste, smell, or whatever, is that object that
causes us to have this subjective experience. Perceiving an object is that
object’s causing in the right way one to have an experience of the appropriate
sort. I see a bean in my soup if it is, in fact whether I know it or not is
irrelevant, a bean in my soup that is causing me to have this visual
experience. I taste a bean if, in point of fact, it is a bean that is causing
me to have the kind of taste experience I am now having. If it is unknown to me
a bug, not a bean, that is causing these experiences, then I am unwittingly
seeing and tasting a bug perhaps a bug
that looks and tastes like a bean. What object we see taste, smell, etc. is
determined by the causal facts in question. What we know and believe, how we
interpret the experience, is irrelevant, although it will, of course, determine
what we say we see and taste. The same is to be said, with appropriate changes,
for our perception of facts the most significant change being the replacement
of belief for experience. I see that there is a bug in my soup if the fact that
there is a bug in my soup causes me to perception perception 655 655 believe that there is a bug in my soup.
I can taste that there is a bug in my soup when this fact causes me to have
this belief via some taste sensation. A causal theory of perception is more
than the claim that the physical objects we perceive cause us to have
experiences and beliefs. This much is fairly obvious. It is the claim that this
causal relation is constitutive of perception, that necessarily, if S sees O,
then O causes a certain sort of experience in S. It is, according to this
theory, impossible, on conceptual grounds, to perceive something with which one
has no causal contact. If, e.g., future events do not cause present events, if
there is no backward causation, then we cannot perceive future events and objects.
Whether or not future facts can be perceived or known depends on how liberally
the causal condition on knowledge is interpreted. Though conceding that there
is a world of mind-independent objects trees, stars, people that cause us to
have experiences, some philosophers
traditionally called representative realists argue that we nonetheless do not directly
perceive these external objects. What we directly perceive are the effects
these objects have on us an internal
image, idea, or impression, a more or less depending on conditions of
observation accurate representation of the external reality that helps produce
it. This subjective, directly apprehended object has been called by various
names: a sensation, percept, sensedatum, sensum, and sometimes, to emphasize
its representational aspect, Vorstellung G., ‘representation’. Just as the
images appearing on a television screen represent their remote causes the
events occurring at some distant concert hall or playing field, the images
visual, auditory, etc. that occur in the mind, the sensedata of which we are
directly aware in normal perception, represent or sometimes, when things are
not working right, misrepresent their external physical causes. The
representative realist typically invokes arguments from illusion, facts about
hallucination, and temporal considerations to support his view. Hallucinations
are supposed to illustrate the way we can have the same kind of experience we
have when as we commonly say we see a real bug without there being a real bug in
our soup or anywhere else causing us to have the experience. When we
hallucinate, the bug we “see” is, in fact, a figment of our own imagination, an
image i.e., sense-datum in the mind that, because it shares some of the
properties of a real bug shape, color, etc., we might mistake for a real bug.
Since the subjective experiences can be indistinguishable from that which we
have when as we commonly say we really see a bug, it is reasonable to infer the
representative realist argues that in normal perception, when we take ourselves
to be seeing a real bug, we are also directly aware of a buglike image in the
mind. A hallucination differs from a normal perception, not in what we are
aware of in both cases it is a sense-datum but in the cause of these experiences.
In normal perception it is an actual bug; in hallucination it is, say, drugs in
the bloodstream. In both cases, though, we are caused to have the same thing:
an awareness of a buglike sense-datum, an object that, in normal perception, we
naively take to be a real bug thus saying, and encouraging our children to say,
that we see a bug. The argument from illusion points to the fact that our
experience of an object changes even when the object that we perceive or say we
perceive remains unchanged. Though the physical object the bug or whatever
remains the same color, size, and shape, what we experience according to this
argument changes color, shape, and size as we change the lighting, our viewing
angle, and distance. Hence, it is concluded, what we experience cannot really
be the physical object itself. Since it varies with changes in both object and
viewing conditions, what we experience must be a causal result, an effect, of
both the object we commonly say we see the bug and the conditions in which we view
it. This internal effect, it is concluded, is a sense-datum. Representative
realists have also appealed to the fact that perceiving a physical object is a
causal process that takes time. This temporal lag is most dramatic in the case
of distant objects e.g., stars, but it exists for every physical object it
takes time for a neural signal to be transmitted from receptor surfaces to the
brain. Consequently, at the moment a short time after light leaves the object’s
surface we see a physical object, the object could no longer exist. It could
have ceased to exist during the time light was being transmitted to the eye or
during the time it takes the eye to communicate with the brain. Yet, even if
the object ceases to exist before we become aware of anything before a visual
experience occurs, we are, or so it seems, aware of something when the causal
process reaches its climax in the brain. This something of which we are aware,
since it cannot be the physical object it no longer exists, must be a
sense-datum. The representationalist concludes in this “time-lag argument,”
therefore, that even when the physperception perception 656 656 ical object does not cease to exist
this, of course, is the normal situation, we are directly aware, not of it, but
of its slightly later-occurring representation. Representative realists differ
among themselves about the question of how much if at all the sense-data of
which we are aware resemble the external objects of which we are not aware.
Some take the external cause to have some of the properties the so-called
primary properties of the datum e.g., extension and not others the so-called
secondary properties e.g., color. Direct
or naive realism shares with representative realism a commitment to a world of
independently existing objects. Both theories are forms of perceptual realism.
It differs, however, in its view of how we are related to these objects in
ordinary perception. Direct realists deny that we are aware of mental
intermediaries sensedata when, as we ordinarily say, we see a tree or hear the
telephone ring. Though direct realists differ in their degree of naïveté about
how and in what respect perception is supposed to be direct, they need not be
so naive as sometimes depicted as to deny the scientific facts about the causal
processes underlying perception. Direct realists can easily admit, e.g., that
physical objects cause us to have experiences of a particular kind, and that
these experiences are private, subjective, or mental. They can even admit that
it is this causal relationship between object and experience that constitutes
our seeing and hearing physical objects. They need not, in other words, deny a
causal theory of perception. What they must deny, if they are to remain direct
realists, however, is an analysis of the subjective experience that objects
cause us to have into an awareness of some object. For to understand this
experience as an awareness of some object is, given the wholly subjective
mental character of the experience itself, to interpose a mental entity what
the experience is an awareness of between the perceiver and the physical object
that causes him to have this experience, the physical object that is supposed
to be directly perceived. Direct realists, therefore, avoid analyzing a
perceptual experience into an act sensing, being aware of, being acquainted
with and an object the sensum, sense-datum, sensation, mental representation.
The experience we are caused to have when we perceive a physical object or
event is, instead, to be understood in some other way. The adverbial theory is
one such possibility. As the name suggests, this theory takes its cue from the
way nouns and adjectives can sometimes be converted into adverbs without loss
of descriptive content. So, for instance, it comes to pretty much the same
thing whether we describe a conversation as animated adjective or say that we
conversed animatedly an adverb. So, also, according to an adverbialist, when,
as we commonly say, we see a red ball, the red ball causes in us a moment later
an experience, yes, but not as the representative realist says an awareness
mental act of a sense-datum mental object that is red and circular adjectives.
The experience is better understood as one in which there is no object at all,
as sensing redly and circularly adverbs. The adverbial theorist insists that
one can experience circularly and redly without there being, in the mind or
anywhere else, red circles this, in fact, is what the adverbialist thinks
occurs in dreams and hallucinations of red circles. To experience redly is not
to have a red experience; nor is it to experience redness in the mind. It is,
says the adverbialist, a way or a manner of perceiving ordinary objects
especially red ones seen in normal light. Just as dancing gracefully is not a
thing we dance, so perceiving redly is not a thing and certainly not a red thing in the
mind that we experience. The adverbial
theory is only one option the direct realist has of acknowledging the causal
basis of perception while, at the same time, maintaining the directness of our
perceptual relation with independently existing objects. What is important is
not that the experience be construed adverbially, but that it not be
interpreted, as representative realists interpret it, as awareness of some
internal object. For a direct realist, the appearances, though they are
subjective mind-dependent are not objects that interpose themselves between the
conscious mind and the external world. As classically understood, both naive
and representative realism are theories about object perception. They differ
about whether it is the external object or an internal object an idea in the
mind that we most directly apprehend in ordinary sense perception. But they
need not although they usually do differ in their analysis of our knowledge of
the world around us, in their account of fact perception. A direct realist
about object perception may, e.g., be an indirect realist about the facts that
we know about these objects. To see, not only a red ball in front of one, but
that there is a red ball in front of one, it may be necessary, even on a direct
theory of object perception, to infer or in some way derive this fact from
facts that are known more directly perception perception about one’s
experiences of the ball. Since, e.g., a direct theorist may be a causal
theorist, may think that seeing a red ball is in part constituted by the having
of certain sorts of experience, she may insist that knowledge of the cause of
these experiences must be derived from knowledge of the experience itself. If
one is an adverbialist, e.g., one might insist that knowledge of physical
objects is derived from knowledge of how redly? bluely? circularly? squarely?
one experiences these objects. By the same token, a representative realist
could adopt a direct theory of fact perception. Though the objects we directly
see are mental, the facts we come to know by experiencing these subjective
entities are facts about ordinary physical objects. We do not infer at least at
no conscious level that there is a bug in our soup from facts known more
directly about our own conscious experiences from facts about the sensations
the bug causes in us. Rather, our sensations cause us, directly, to have
beliefs about our soup. There is no intermediate belief; hence, there is no
intermediate knowledge; hence, no intermediate fact perception. Fact perception
is, in this sense, direct. Or so a representative realist can maintain even
though committed to the indirect perception of the objects bug and soup
involved in this fact. This merely illustrates, once again, the necessity of
distinguishing object perception from fact perception. Refs.: H. P. Grice and
A. R. White, “The causal theory of perception,” a symposium for the
Aristotelian Socieety, in G. J. Warnock, “The philosophy of perception,” Oxford
readings in philosophy.
Percival: English physician and author of
Medical Ethics. He was central in bringing the Western traditions of medical
ethics from prayers and oaths e.g., the Hippocratic oath toward more detailed,
modern codes of proper professional conduct. His writing on the normative
aspects of medical practice was part ethics, part prudential advice, part
professional etiquette, and part jurisprudence. Medical Ethics treated
standards for the professional conduct of physicians relative to surgeons and
apothecaries pharmacists and general practitioners, as well as hospitals,
private practice, and the law. The issues Percival addressed include privacy,
truth telling, rules for professional consultation, human experimentation, public
and private trust, compassion, sanity, suicide, abortion, capital punishment,
and environmental nuisances. Percival had his greatest influence in England and
America. At its founding in 1847, the
Medical Association used Medical Ethics to guide its own first code of
medical ethics.
perdurance, endurance, continuance -- in one common philosophical use, the property
of being temporally continuous and having temporal parts. There are at least
two conflicting theories about temporally continuous substances. According to
the first, temporally continuous substances have temporal parts they perdure,
while according to the second, they do not. In one ordinary philosophical use,
endurance is the property of being temporally continuous and not having temporal
parts. There are modal versions of the aforementioned two theories: for
example, one version of the first theory is that necessarily, temporally
continuous substances have temporal parts, while another version implies that
possibly, they do not. Some versions of the first theory hold that a temporally
continuous substance is composed of instantaneous temporal parts or
“object-stages,” while on other versions these object-stages are not parts but
boundaries.
perfect competition: perfect co-operation:
the state of an ideal market under the following conditions: a every consumer
in the market is a perfectly rational maximizer of utility; every producer is a
perfect maximizer of profit; there is a very large ideally infinite number of
producers of the good in question, which ensures that no producer can set the
price for its output otherwise, an imperfect competitive state of oligopoly or
monopoly obtains; and every producer provides a product perfectly
indistinguishable from that of other producers if consumers could distinguish
products to the point that there was no longer a very large number of producers
for each distinguishable good, competition would again be imperfect. Under
these conditions, the market price is equal to the marginal cost of producing the
last unit. This in turn determines the market supply of the good, since each
producer will gain by increasing production when price exceeds marginal cost
and will generally cut losses by decreasing production when marginal cost
exceeds price. Perfect competition is sometimes thought to have normative
implications for political philosophy, since it results in Pareto optimality.
The concept of perfect competition becomes extremely complicated when a
market’s evolution is considered. Producers who cannot equate marginal cost
with the market price will have negative profit and must drop out of the
market. If this happens very often, then the number of producers will no longer
be large enough to sustain perfect competition, so new producers will need to
enter the market.
perfectus – finitum – complete -- perfectionism,
an ethical view according to which individuals and their actions are judged by
a maximal standard of achievement
specifically, the degree to which they approach ideals of aesthetic,
intellectual, emotional, or physical “perfection.” Perfectionism, then, may
depart from, or even dispense with, standards of conventional morality in favor
of standards based on what appear to be non-moral values. These standards
reflect an admiration for certain very rare levels of human achievement.
Perhaps the most characteristic of these standards are artistic and other forms
of creativity; but they prominently include a variety of other activities and
emotional states deemed “noble” e.g.,
heroic endurance in the face of great suffering. The perfectionist, then, would
also tend toward a rather non-egalitarian
even aristocratic view of
humankind. The rare genius, the inspired few, the suffering but courageous
artist these examples of human
perfection are genuinely worthy of our estimation, according to this view.
Although no fully worked-out system of “perfectionist philosophy” has been
attempted, aspects of all of these doctrines may be found in such philosophers
as Nietzsche. Aristotle, as well, appears to endorse a perfectionist idea in
his characterization of the human good. Just as the good lyre player not only
exhibits the characteristic activities of this profession but achieves
standards of excellence with respect to these, the good human being, for Aristotle,
must achieve standards of excellence with respect to the virtue or virtues
distinctive of human life in general.
peripatos at the lycaeum – Grice: “This is
a common word, and while it does mean that, being a covered pathway, you are
meant to walk about, it did not apply as per my type of identificatory
reference, to Aristotle. It was that bit of the gym created by Pericle and
iproved by Lycurgus in the ‘middle of nowhere’ mount of Licabetto. Aristotle
may have chosen the site because Socrate, his tutor’s tutor, used to walk all
the way form downtown to corrupt the athletes!” -- peripatetic – lycaeum -- School,
also called Peripatos, the philosophical playgroup founded by Aristotle at the
Lycaeum gymnasium in Athens. The derivation of ‘Peripatetic’ from the alleged
Aristotelian custom of “walking about, “peripatein,” is, while colourful,
wrong. ‘Peripatos’ is in Griceian a “covered walking hall” – which is among the
facilities, “as the excavations show,” as Grice notes. A scholarch or head-master
presided over roughly two classes of members. One is the “presbyteroi” or
seniors, who have this or that teaching dutu, and the “neaniskoi” or juniors. Grice:
“When Austin instituted the playgroup he saw himself as *the* presbyteros,
while I, like the others, was a ‘neaniskos.”” No females were allowed, to avoid
disruption. During Aristotle’s lifetime his own lectures, whether for the inner
circle of the school (what Aristotle calls ‘the gown’) or for Athens (‘the
town’) at large, are probably the key attraction and core activity. Given
Aristotle’s celebrated knack for organizing group research projects, we may
assume that Peripatetics spent much of their time working on their own specific
assignments either at the swimming-pool library, or at some kind of repository
for specimens used in zoological and botanical investigations. As a foreigner,
Aristotle cannot possibly own any property in Athens. When he left Athens (pretty much as when Austin died) Theophrastus
of Eresus (pretty much like Grice did) succeeded him as scholarch. Theophrastus
is s an able Aristotelian (whereas Grice started to criticise Austin) who wrote
extensively on metaphysics, psychology, physiology, botany, ethics, politics,
and the history of philosophy. With the help of the Peripatetic dictator
Demetrius of Phaleron, Theophrastus was able to secure property rights over the
physical facilities of the school. Under Theophrastus, the Peripatos continued
to flourish and is said to have had 2,000 students. Theophrastus’s successor,
Strato of Lampsakos, has much narrower interests and abandoned key Aristotelian
tenets (such as the syllogism – “I won’t force Aristotle to teach me how to
reason with a middle term in the middle!” – Diog. Laert. v. 673b-c. With
Strato, a progressive decline set in, to which the moving of Aristotle’s swimming-pool
library out of Athens (minus the swimming-pool) by Neleus of Skepsis, certainly
contributed. By the first century B.C. the Peripatos had ceased to exist. “Philosophers
of later periods sympathetic to Aristotle’s views have also been called
Peripatetics; I fact, *I* have, by A. D. Code, of all people!” – Refs.: H. P.
Grice, “How to become a Peripatetic – and not die in the attempt.”
Perone: important Italian
philosopher – Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Perone," per il Club
Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
idem: Grice: “A very,
untranslatable Roman notion – no translation – but cf. ‘ipse,’ ‘same,’ self’,
and ‘sameself,’ and Peano’s = may do.” personal identity: explored by H. P.
Grice in “Personal Identity,” Mind – and H. P. Grice, “The logical construction
theory of personal identity,” and “David Hume on the vagaries of personal
identity.” -- the numerical identity over time of persons. The question of what
personal identity consists in is the question of what it is what the necessary
and sufficient conditions are for a person existing at one time and a person
existing at another time to be one and the same person. Here there is no
question of there being any entity that is the “identity” of a person; to say
that a person’s identity consists in such and such is just shorthand for saying
that facts about personal identity, i.e., facts to the effect that someone
existing at one time is the same as someone existing at another time, consist
in such and such. This should not be confused with the usage, common in
ordinary speech and in psychology, in which persons are said to have
identities, and, sometimes, to seek, lose, or regain their identities, where
one’s “identity” intimately involves a set of values and goals that structure
one’s life. The words ‘identical’ and ‘same’ mean nothing different in
judgments about persons than in judgments about other things. The problem of
personal identity is therefore not one of defining a special sense of
‘identical,’ and it is at least misleading to characterize it as defining a
particular kind of identity. Applying Quine’s slogan “no entity without
identity,” one might say that characterizing any sort of entity involves
indicating what the identity conditions for entities of that sort are so, e.g.,
part of the explanation of the concept of a set is that sets having the same
members are identical, and that asking what the identity of persons consists in
is just a way of asking what sorts of things persons are. But the main focus in
traditional discussions of the topic has been on one kind of identity judgment
about persons, namely those asserting “identity over time”; the question has
been about what the persistence of persons over time consists in. What has made
the identity persistence of persons of special philosophical interest is partly
its epistemology and partly its connections with moral and evaluative matters.
The crucial epistemological fact is that persons have, in memory, an access to
their own past histories that is unlike the access they have to the histories
of other things including other persons; when one remembers doing or
experiencing something, one normally has no need to employ any criterion of
identity in order to know that the subject of the remembered action or
experience is i.e., is identical with oneself. The moral and evaluative matters
include moral responsibility someone can be held responsible for a past action
only if he or she is identical to the person who did it and our concern for our
own survival and future well-being since it seems, although this has been
questioned, that what one wants in wanting to survive is that there should
exist in the future someone who is identical to oneself. The modern history of
the topic of personal identity begins with Locke, who held that the identity of
a person consists neither in the identity of an immaterial substance as
dualists might be expected to hold nor in the identity of a material substance
or “animal body” as materialists might be expected to hold, and that it
consists instead in “same consciousness.” His view appears to have been that
the persistence of a person through time consists in the fact that certain
actions, thoughts, experiences, etc., occurring at different times, are somehow
united in memory. Modern theories descended from Locke’s take memory continuity
to be a special case of something more general, psychological continuity, and
hold that personal identity consists in this. This is sometimes put in terms of
the notion of a “person-stage,” i.e., a momentary “time slice” of the history
of a person. A series of person-stages will be psychologically continuous if
the psychological states including memories occurring in later members of the
series grow out of, in certain characteristic ways, those occurring in earlier
members of it; and according to the psychological continuity view of personal
identity, person-stages occurring at different times are stages of the same
person provided they belong to a single, non-branching, psychologically
continuous series of person-stages. Opponents of the Lockean and neo-Lockean
psychological continuity view tend to fall into two camps. Some, following
Butler and Reid, hold that personal identity is indefinable, and that nothing
informative can be said about what it consists in. Others hold that the
identity of a person consists in some sort of physical continuity perhaps the identity of a living human
organism, or the identity of a human brain. In the actual cases we know about
putting aside issues about non-bodily survival of death, psychological
continuity and physical continuity go together. Much of the debate between
psychological continuity theories and physical continuity theories has centered
on the interpretation of thought experiments involving brain transplants,
brain-state transfers, etc., in which these come apart. Such examples make
vivid the question of whether our fundamental criteria of personal identity are
psychological, physical, or both. Recently philosophical attention has shifted
somewhat from the question of what personal identity consists in to questions
about its importance. The consideration of hypothetical cases of “fission” in
which two persons at a later time are psychologically continuous with one
person at an earlier time has suggested to some that we can have survival or at any rate what matters in survival without personal identity, and that our
self-interested concern for the future is really a concern for whatever future
persons are psychologically continuous with us.
phantasia: Grice: “
“Phantasia,” as any Clifton schoolboy knows, is cognate with ‘phainomenon,’ as
Cant forgot!” -- Grecian, ‘appearance’, ‘imagination’, 1 the state we are in
when something appears to us to be the case; 2 the capacity in virtue of which
things appear to us. Although frequently used of conscious and imagistic
experiences, ‘phantasia’ is not limited to such states; in particular, it can
be applied to any propositional attitude where something is taken to be the
case. But just as the English ‘appears’ connotes that one has epistemic
reservations about what is actually the case, so ‘phantasia’ suggests the
possibility of being misled by appearances and is thus often a subject of
criticism. According to Plato, phantasia is a “mixture” of sensation and
belief; in Aristotle, it is a distinct faculty that makes truth and falsehood
possible. The Stoics take a phantasia to constitute one of the most basic
mental states, in terms of which other mental states are to be explained, and
in rational animals it bears the propositional content expressed in language.
This last use becomes prominent in ancient literary and rhetorical theory to
designate the ability of language to move us and convey subjects vividly as
well as to range beyond the bounds of our immediate experience. Here lie the
origins of the modern concept of imagination although not the Romantic
distinction between fancy and imagination. Later Neoplatonists, such as
Proclus, take phantasia to be necessary for abstract studies such as geometry,
by enabling us to envision spatial relations.
phenomenalism: one of the twelve
labours of H. P. Grice – very fashionable at Oxford – “until Austin demolished
it with his puritanical “Sense and sensibilia,” – Grice: “Strictly, it should
be ‘sense and sensibile,’ since ‘sensibilia’ is plural – which invokes Ryle’s
paradox of the speckled hen!” -- the view that propositions asserting the
existence of physical objects are equivalent in meaning to propositions
asserting that subjects would have certain sequences of sensations were they to
have certain others. The basic idea behind phenomenalism is compatible with a
number of different analyses of the self or conscious subject. A phenomenalist
might understand the self as a substance, a particular, or a construct out of
actual and possible experience. The view also is compatible with any number of
different analyses of the visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and
kinesthetic sensations described in the antecedents and consequents of the
subjunctive conditionals that the phenomenalist uses to analyze physical object
propositions as illustrated in the last paragraph. Probably the most common
analysis of sensations adopted by traditional phenomenalists is a sense-datum theory,
with the sense-data construed as mind-dependent entities. But there is nothing
to prevent a phenomenalist from accepting an adverbial theory or theory of
appearing instead. The origins of phenomenalism are difficult to trace, in part
because early statements of the view were usually not careful. In his
Dialogues, Berkeley hinted at phenomenalism when he had Philonous explain how
he could reconcile an ontology containing only minds and ideas with the story
of a creation that took place before the existence of people. Philonous
imagines that if he had been present at the creation he should have seen
things, i.e., had sensations, in the order described in the Bible. It can also
be argued, however, that J. S. Mill in An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s
Philosophy was the first to put forth a clearly phenomenalistic analysis when
he identified matter with the “permanent possibility of sensation.” When Mill
explained what these permanent possibilities are, he typically used
conditionals that describe the sensations one would have if one were placed in
certain conditions. The attraction of classical phenomenalism grew with the
rise of logical positivism and its acceptance of the verifiability criterion of
meaning. Phenomenalists were usually foundationalists who were convinced that
justified belief in the physical world rested ultimately on our
noninferentially justified beliefs about our sensations. Implicitly committed
to the view that only deductive and inductive inferences are legitimate, and
further assuming that to be justified in believing one proposition P on the
basis of another E, one must be justified in believing both E and that E makes
P probable, the phenomenalist saw an insuperable difficulty in justifying
belief in ordinary statements about the physical world given prevalent
conceptions of physical petitio principii phenomenalism 663 663 objects. If all we ultimately have as
our evidence for believing in physical objects is what we know about the occurrence
of sensation, how can we establish sensation as evidence for the existence of
physical objects? We obviously cannot deduce the existence of physical objects
from any finite sequence of sensations. The sensations could, e.g., be
hallucinatory. Nor, it seems, can we observe a correlation between sensation
and something else in order to generate the premises of an inductive argument
for the conclusion that sensations are reliable indicators of physical objects.
The key to solving this problem, the phenomenalist argues, is to reduce assertions
about the physical world to complicated assertions about the sequences of
sensations a subject would have were he to have certain others. The truth of
such conditionals, e.g., that if I have the clear visual impression of a cat,
then there is one before me, might be mind-independent in the way in which one
wants the truth of assertions about the physical world to be mind-independent.
And to the phenomenalist’s great relief, it would seem that we could justify
our belief in such conditional statements without having to correlate anything
but sensations. Many philosophers today reject some of the epistemological,
ontological, and metaphilosophical presuppositions with which phenomenalists
approached the problem of understanding our relation to the physical world
through sensation. But the argument that was historically most decisive in
convincing many philosophers to abandon phenomenalism was the argument from
perceptual relativity first advanced by Chisholm in “The Problem of
Perception.” Chisholm offers a strategy for attacking any phenomenalistic
analysis. The first move is to force the phenomenalist to state a conditional
describing only sensations that is an alleged consequence of a physical object
proposition. C. I. Lewis, e.g., in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation,
claims that the assertion P that there is a doorknob before me and to the left
entails C that if I were to seem to see a doorknob and seem to reach out and
touch it then I would seem to feel it. Chisholm argues that if P really did
entail C then there could be no assertion R that when conjoined with P did not
entail C. There is, however, such an assertion: I am unable to move my limbs
and my hands but am subject to delusions such that I think I am moving them; I
often seem to be initiating a grasping motion but with no feeling of contacting
anything. Chisholm argues, in effect, that what sensations one would have if
one were to have certain others always depends in part on the internal and
external physical conditions of perception and that this fact dooms any attempt
to find necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of a physical object
proposition couched in terms that describe only connections between
sensations.
phenomenology – Grice:
“Strictly, my area – the science of appearances!” -- referred ironically by J.
L. Austin as “linguistic phenomenology,”—Austin only accepted public-school
(“i. e. private-school) educated males at his Saturday mornings – “They share
my dialect, unlike others.” -- in the
twentieth century, the philosophy developed by Husserl and some of his
followers. The term has been used since the mideighteenth century and received
a carefully defined technical meaning in the works of both Kant and Hegel, but
it is not now used to refer to a homogeneous and systematically developed
philosophical position. The question of what phenomenology is may suggest that
phenomenology is one among the many contemporary philosophical conceptions that
have a clearly delineated body of doctrines and whose essential characteristics
can be expressed by a set of wellchosen statements. This notion is not correct,
however. In contemporary philosophy there is no system or school called
“phenomenology,” characterized by a clearly defined body of teachings.
Phenomenology is neither a school nor a trend in contemporary philosophy. It is
rather a movement whose proponents, for various reasons, have propelled it in
many distinct directions, with the result that today it means different things
to different people. While within the phenomenological movement as a whole
there are several related currents, they, too, are by no means homogeneous.
Though these currents have a common point of departure, they do not project
toward the same destination. The thinking of most phenomenologists has changed
so greatly that their respective views can be presented adequately only by
showing them in their gradual development. This is true not only for Husserl,
founder of the phenomenological movement, but also for such later
phenomenologists as Scheler, N. Hartmann, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty.
To anyone who studies the phenomenological movement without prejudice the
differences among its many currents are obvious. It has been phenomenal
property phenomenology 664 664 said
that phenomenology consists in an analysis and description of consciousness; it
has been claimed also that phenomenology simply blends with existentialism.
Phenomenology is indeed the study of essences, but it also attempts to place
essences back into existence. It is a transcendental philosophy interested only
in what is “left behind” after the phenomenological reduction is performed, but
it also considers the world to be already there before reflection begins. For
some philosophers phenomenology is speculation on transcendental subjectivity,
whereas for others it is a method for approaching concrete existence. Some use
phenomenology as a search for a philosophy that accounts for space, time, and
the world, just as we experience and “live” them. Finally, it has been said
that phenomenology is an attempt to give a direct description of our experience
as it is in itself without taking into account its psychological origin and its
causal explanation; but Husserl speaks of a “genetic” as well as a
“constitutive” phenomenology. To some people, finding such an abundance of
ideas about one and the same subject constitutes a strange situation; for
others it is annoying to contemplate the “confusion”; and there will be those
who conclude that a philosophy that cannot define its own scope does not
deserve the discussion that has been carried on in its regard. In the opinion
of many, not only is this latter attitude not justified, but precisely the
opposite view defended by Thevenaz should be adopted. As the term
‘phenomenology’ signifies first and foremost a methodical conception, Thevenaz
argues that because this method, originally developed for a very particular and
limited end, has been able to branch out in so many varying forms, it manifests
a latent truth and power of renewal that implies an exceptional fecundity.
Speaking of the great variety of conceptions within the phenomenological
movement, Merleau-Ponty remarked that the responsible philosopher must
recognize that phenomenology may be practiced and identified as a manner or a
style of thinking, and that it existed as a movement before arriving at a
complete awareness of itself as a philosophy. Rather than force a living
movement into a system, then, it seems more in keeping with the ideal of the
historian as well as the philosopher to follow the movement in its development,
and attempt to describe and evaluate the many branches in and through which it
has unfolded itself. In reality the picture is not as dark as it may seem at
first sight. Notwithstanding the obvious differences, most phenomenologists
share certain insights that are very important for their mutual philosophical
conception as a whole. In this connection the following must be mentioned: 1
Most phenomenologists admit a radical difference between the “natural” and the
“philosophical” attitude. This leads necessarily to an equally radical
difference between philosophy and science. In characterizing this difference
some phenomenologists, in agreement with Husserl, stress only epistemological
issues, whereas others, in agreement with Heidegger, focus their attention
exclusively on ontological topics. 2 Notwithstanding this radical difference,
there is a complicated set of relationships between philosophy and science.
Within the context of these relationships philosophy has in some sense a
foundational task with respect to the sciences, whereas science offers to
philosophy at least a substantial part of its philosophical problematic. 3 To
achieve its task philosophy must perform a certain reduction, or epoche, a
radical change of attitude by which the philosopher turns from things to their
meanings, from the ontic to the ontological, from the realm of the objectified
meaning as found in the sciences to the realm of meaning as immediately
experienced in the “life-world.” In other words, although it remains true that
the various phenomenologists differ in characterizing the reduction, no one
seriously doubts its necessity. 4 All phenomenologists subscribe to the
doctrine of intentionality, though most elaborate this doctrine in their own
way. For Husserl intentionality is a characteristic of conscious phenomena or
acts; in a deeper sense, it is the characteristic of a finite consciousness
that originally finds itself without a world. For Heidegger and most
existentialists it is the human reality itself that is intentional; as
Being-in-the-world its essence consists in its ek-sistence, i.e., in its
standing out toward the world. 5 All phenomenologists agree on the fundamental
idea that the basic concern of philosophy is to answer the question concerning
the “meaning and Being” of beings. All agree in addition that in trying to
materialize this goal the philosopher should be primarily interested not in the
ultimate cause of all finite beings, but in how the Being of beings and the
Being of the world are to be constituted. Finally, all agree that in answering
the question concerning the meaning of Being a privileged position is to be
attributed to subjectivity, i.e., to that being which questions the Being of
beings. Phenomenologists differ, however, the moment they have to specify what
is meant by subjectivity. As noted above, whereas Husserl conceives it as a
worldless monad, Heidegger and most later phenomenologists conceive it as
being-in-the-world. Referring to Heidegger’s reinterpretation of his
phenomenology, Husserl writes: one misinterprets my phenomenology backwards
from a level which it was its very purpose to overcome, in other words, one has
failed to understand the fundamental novelty of the phenomenological reduction
and hence the progress from mundane subjectivity i.e., man to transcendental
subjectivity; consequently one has remained stuck in an anthropology . . .
which according to my doctrine has not yet reached the genuine philosophical
level, and whose interpretation as philosophy means a lapse into
“transcendental anthropologism,” that is, “psychologism.” 6 All
phenomenologists defend a certain form of intuitionism and subscribe to what
Husserl calls the “principle of all principles”: “whatever presents itself in
‘intuition’ in primordial form as it were in its bodily reality, is simply to
be accepted as it gives itself out to be, though only within the limits in
which it then presents itself.” Here again, however, each phenomenologist
interprets this principle in keeping with his general conception of
phenomenology as a whole. Thus, while phenomenologists do share certain
insights, the development of the movement has nevertheless been such that it is
not possible to give a simple definition of what phenomenology is. The fact remains
that there are many phenomenologists and many phenomenologies. Therefore, one
can only faithfully report what one has experienced of phenomenology by reading
the phenomenologists. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “J. L. Austin’s linguistic
phenomenology – and conversational implicatura,” “Conversational
phenomenology.”
Philo Judaeus, philosopher who composed
the bulk of his work in the form of commentaries and discourses on Scripture.
He made the first known sustained attempt to synthesize its revealed teachings
with the doctrines of classical philosophy. Although he was not the first to
apply the methods of allegorical interpretation to Scripture, the number and
variety of his interpretations make Philo unique. With this interpretive tool,
he transformed biblical narratives into Platonic accounts of the soul’s quest
for God and its struggle against passion, and the Mosaic commandments into
specific manifestations of general laws of nature. Philo’s most influential
idea was his conception of God, which combines the personal, ethical deity of
the Bible with the abstract, transcendentalist theology of Platonism and
Pythagoreanism. The Philonic deity is both the loving, just God of the Hebrew
Patriarchs and the eternal One whose essence is absolutely unknowable and who
creates the material world by will from primordial matter which He creates ex
nihilo. Besides the intelligible realm of ideas, which Philo is the earliest
known philosopher to identify as God’s thoughts, he posited an intermediate
divine being which he called, adopting scriptural language, the logos. Although
the exact nature of the logos is hard to pin down Philo variously and, without any concern for
consistency, called it the “first-begotten Son of the uncreated Father,”
“Second God,” “idea of ideas,” “archetype of human reason,” and “pattern of
creation” its main functions are clear:
to bridge the huge gulf between the transcendent deity and the lower world and
to serve as the unifying law of the universe, the ground of its order and
rationality. A philosophical eclectic, Philo was unknown to medieval Jewish
philosophers but, beyond his anticipations of Neoplatonism, he had a lasting
impact on Christianity through Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Ambrose.
Filolao, pre-Socratic Grecian philosopher
from Crotone in southern Italy, the first Pythagorean to write a book. The
surviving fragments of it are the earliest primary texts for Pythagoreanism,
but numerous spurious fragments have also been preserved. Philolaus’s book
begins with a cosmogony and includes astronomical, medical, and psychological
doctrines. His major innovation was to argue that the cosmos and everything in
it is a combination not just of unlimiteds what is structured and ordered, e.g.
material elements but also of limiters structural and ordering elements, e.g.
shapes. These elements are held together in a harmonia fitting together, which
comes to be in accord with perspicuous mathematical relationships, such as the
whole number ratios that correspond to the harmonic intervals e.g. octave %
phenotext Philolaus 1 : 2. He argued that secure knowledge is possible insofar
as we grasp the number in accordance with which things are put together. His
astronomical system is famous as the first to make the earth a planet. Along
with the sun, moon, fixed stars, five planets, and counter-earth thus making
the perfect number ten, the earth circles the central fire a combination of the
limiter “center” and the unlimited “fire”. Philolaus’s influence is seen in
Plato’s Philebus; he is the primary source for Aristotle’s account of
Pythagoreanism. H. P. Grice,
“Pythagoras: the written and the unwritten doctrines,” Luigi Speranza, “Grice a
Crotone, ovvero, Filolao,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool
Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
vita – vitalism philosophical biology: Grice,
“What is ‘life’?” “How come the Grecians had two expressions for this: ‘zoon’
and ‘bios’?” “Why could the Romans just do with ‘vivere’?’ -- Grice liked to
regard himself as a philosophical biologist, and indeed philosophical
physiologist. bioethics, the subfield of ethics that concerns the ethical
issues arising in medicine and from advances in biological science. One central
area of bioethics is the ethical issues that arise in relations between health
care professionals and patients. A second area focuses on broader issues of
social justice in health care. A third area concerns the ethical issues raised
by new biological knowledge or technology. In relations between health care
professionals and patients, a fundamental issue is the appropriate role of each
in decision making about patient care. More traditional views assigning
principal decision-making authority to physicians have largely been replaced
with ideals of shared decision making that assign a more active role to
patients. Shared decision making is thought to reflect better the importance of
patients’ self-determination in controlling their care. This increased role for
patients is reflected in the ethical and legal doctrine of informed consent,
which requires that health care not be rendered without the informed and
voluntary consent of a competent patient. The requirement that consent be
informed places a positive responsibility on health care professionals to
provide their patients with the information they need to make informed
decisions about care. The requirement that consent be voluntary requires that
treatment not be forced, nor that patients’ decisions be coerced or
manipulated. If patients lack the capacity to make competent health care decisions,
e.g. young children or cognitively impaired adults, a surrogate, typically a
parent in the case of children or a close family member in the case of adults,
must decide for them. Surrogates’ decisions should follow the patient’s advance
directive if one exists, be the decision the patient would have made in the
circumstances if competent, or follow the patient’s best interests if the
patient has never been competent or his or her wishes are not known. A major
focus in bioethics generally, and treatment decision making in particular, is
care at or near the end of life. It is now widely agreed that patients are
entitled to decide about and to refuse, according to their own values, any
lifesustaining treatment. They are also entitled to have desired treatments
that may shorten their lives, such as high doses of pain medications necessary
to relieve severe pain from cancer, although in practice pain treatment remains
inadequate for many patients. Much more controversial is whether more active
means to end life such as physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia
are morally permissible in indibhavanga bioethics 88 88 vidual cases or justified as public
policy; both remain illegal except in a very few jurisdictions. Several other
moral principles have been central to defining professionalpatient
relationships in health care. A principle of truth telling requires that
professionals not lie to patients. Whereas in the past it was common,
especially with patients with terminal cancers, not to inform patients fully
about their diagnosis and prognosis, studies have shown that practice has
changed substantially and that fully informing patients does not have the bad
effects for patients that had been feared in the past. Principles of privacy
and confidentiality require that information gathered in the
professionalpatient relationship not be disclosed to third parties without
patients’ consent. Especially with highly personal information in mental health
care, or information that may lead to discrimination, such as a diagnosis of
AIDS, assurance of confidentiality is fundamental to the trust necessary to a
wellfunctioning professionalpatient relationship. Nevertheless, exceptions to
confidentiality to prevent imminent and serious harm to others are well
recognized ethically and legally. More recently, work in bioethics has focused
on justice in the allocation of health care. Whereas nearly all developed
countries treat health care as a moral and legal right, and ensure it to all
their citizens through some form of national health care system, in the United
States about 15 percent of the population remains without any form of health
insurance. This has fed debates about whether health care is a right or
privilege, a public or individual responsibility. Most bioethicists have
supported a right to health care because of health care’s fundamental impact on
people’s well-being, opportunity, ability to plan their lives, and even lives
themselves. Even if there is a moral right to health care, however, few defend
an unlimited right to all beneficial health care, no matter how small the
benefit and how high the cost. Consequently, it is necessary to prioritize or
ration health care services to reflect limited budgets for health care, and
both the standards and procedures for doing so are ethically controversial.
Utilitarians and defenders of cost-effectiveness analysis in health policy
support using limited resources to maximize aggregate health benefits for the
population. Their critics argue that this ignores concerns about equity,
concerns about how health care resources and health are distributed. For
example, some have argued that equity requires giving priority to treating the
worst-off or sickest, even at a sacrifice in aggregate health benefits;
moreover, taking account in prioritization of differences in costs of different
treatments can lead to ethically problematic results, such as giving higher
priority to providing very small benefits to many persons than very large but
individually more expensive benefits, including life-saving interventions, to a
few persons, as the state of Oregon found in its initial widely publicized
prioritization program. In the face of controversy over standards for rationing
care, it is natural to rely on fair procedures to make rationing decisions.
Other bioethics issues arise from dramatic advances in biological knowledge and
technology. Perhaps the most prominent example is new knowledge of human
genetics, propelled in substantial part by the worldwide Human Genome Project,
which seeks to map the entire human genome. This project and related research
will enable the prevention of genetically transmitted diseases, but already
raises questions about which conditions to prevent in offspring and which
should be accepted and lived with, particularly when the means of preventing
the condition is by abortion of the fetus with the condition. Looking further
into the future, new genetic knowledge and technology will likely enable us to
enhance normal capacities, not just prevent or cure disease, and to manipulate
the genes of future children, raising profoundly difficult questions about what
kinds of persons to create and the degree to which deliberate human design
should replace “nature” in the creation of our offspring. A dramatic example of
new abilities to create offspring, though now limited to the animal realm, was
the cloning in Scotland in 7 of a sheep from a single cell of an adult sheep;
this event raised the very controversial future prospect of cloning human
beings. Finally, new reproductive technologies, such as oocyte egg donation,
and practices such as surrogate motherhood, raise deep issues about the meaning
and nature of parenthood and families. Philosophical
biology -- euthanasia, broadly, the beneficent timing or negotiation of the death
of a sick person; more narrowly, the killing of a human being on the grounds
that he is better off dead. In an extended sense, the word ‘euthanasia’ is used
to refer to the painless killing of non-human animals, in our interests at
least as much as in theirs. Active euthanasia is the taking of steps to end a
person’s especially a patient’s life. Passive euthanasia is the omission or
termination of means of prolonging life, on the grounds that the person is
better off without them. The distinction between active and passive euthanasia
is a rough guide for applying the more fundamental distinction between
intending the patient’s death and pursuing other goals, such as the relief of
her pain, with the expectation that she will die sooner rather than later as a
result. Voluntary euthanasia is euthanasia with the patient’s consent, or at
his request. Involuntary euthanasia is euthanasia over the patient’s
objections. Non-voluntary euthanasia is the killing of a person deemed
incompetent with the consent of someone
say a parent authorized to speak
on his behalf. Since candidates for euthanasia are frequently in no condition
to make major decisions, the question whether there is a difference between
involuntary and non-voluntary euthanasia is of great importance. Few moralists
hold that life must be prolonged whatever the cost. Traditional morality
forbids directly intended euthanasia: human life belongs to God and may be
taken only by him. The most important arguments for euthanasia are the pain and
indignity suffered by those with incurable diseases, the burden imposed by
persons unable to take part in normal human activities, and the supposed right
of persons to dispose of their lives however they please. Non-theological
arguments against euthanasia include the danger of expanding the principle of
euthanasia to an everwidening range of persons and the opacity of death and its
consequent incommensurability with life, so that we cannot safely judge that a
person is better off dead. H. P. Grice, “The roman problem: ‘vita’ for ‘bios’
and ‘zoe.’”
philosophism: birrellism – general refelction on life. Grice defines a
philosopher as someone ‘addicted to general reflections on life,’ like Birrell
did. f. paraphilosophy – philosophical hacks. “Austin’s expressed view -- the
formulation of which no doubt involves some irony -- is that we ‘philosophical
hacks’ spend the week making, for the benefit of our tutees, direct attacks on
this or that philosophical issue, and that we need to be refreshed, at the
week-end, by some suitably chosen ‘para-philosophy’ in which some non-philosophical conception is to be
examined with the full rigour of the Austinian Code, with a view to an ultimate
analogical pay-off (liable never to be reached) in philosophical currency.” His feeling of superiority as a
philosopher is obvious in various fields. He certaintly would not get involved
in any ‘empirical’ survey (“We can trust this, qua philosophers, as given.”) Grice
held a MA (Lit. Hum.) – Literae Humaniores (Philosophy). So he knew what he was
talking about. The curriculum was an easy one. He plays with the fact that
empiricists don’t regard philosophy as a sovereign monarch: philosophia regina
scientiarum, provided it’s queen consort. In “Conceptual analysis and the
province of philosophy,” he plays with the idea that Philosophy is the Supreme
Science. Grice was somewhat obsessed as to what ‘philosohical’ stood for, which
amused the members of his play group! His play group once spends five weeks in
an effort to explain why, sometimes, ‘very’ allows, with little or no change of
meaning, the substitution of ‘highly’ (as in ‘very unusual’) and sometimes does
not (as in ‘very depressed’ or ‘very wicked’); and we reached no conclusion. This
episode was ridiculed by some as an ultimate embodiment of fruitless frivolity.
But that response is as out of place as a similar response to the medieval
question, ‘How many angels can dance on a needle’s point?’” A needless point?For
much as this medieval question is raised in order to display, in a vivid way, a
difficulty in the conception of an immaterial substance, so The Play Group
discussion is directed, in response to a worry from me, towards an examination,
in the first instance, of a conceptual question which is generally agreed among
us to be a strong candidate for being a question which had no philosophical
importance, with a view to using the results of this examination in finding a
distinction between philosophically important and philosophically unimportant
enquiries. Grice is fortunate that the Lit. Hum. programme does not have much
philosophy! He feels free! In fact, the lack of a philosophical background is
felt as a badge of honour. It is ‘too clever’ and un-English to ‘know’ things.
A pint of philosophy is all Grice wanted. Figurative. This is Harvardite Gordon’s
attempt to formulate a philosophy of the minimum fundamental ideas that all
people on the earth should come to know. Reviewed by A. M. Honoré: Short
measure. Gordon, a Stanley Plummer scholar, e: Bowdoin and Harvard, in The
Eastern Gazette. Grice would exclaim: I always loved Alfred Brooks Gordon!
Grice was slightly disapppointed that Gordon had not included the fundamental
idea of implicaturum in his pint. Short measure, indeed. Grice gives seminars
on Ariskant (“the first part of this individual interested some of my tutees;
the second, others.” Ariskant philosophised in Grecian, but also in the pure
Teutonic, and Grice collaborated with Baker in this area. Curiously, Baker majors
in French and philosophy and does research at the Sorbonne. Grice would
sometimes define ‘philoosphy.’ Oddly, Grice gives a nice example of
‘philosopher’ meaning ‘addicted to general, usually stoic, reflections about
life.’ In the context where it occurs, the implicaturum is Stevensonian. If
Stevenson says that an athlete is usually tall, a philosopher may occasionally
be inclined to reflect about life in general, as a birrelist would. Grice’s
gives an alternate meaning, intended to display circularity: ‘engaged in
philosophical studies.’ The idea of Grice of philosophy is the one the Lit.
Hum. instills. It is a unique
experience, unknown in the New World, our actually outside Oxford, or
post-Grice, where a classicist is not seen as a philosopher. Once a tutorial
fellow in philosophy (rather than classics) and later university lecturer in
philosophy (rather than classics) strengthens his attachment. Grice needs to
regarded by his tutee as a philosopher simpliciter, as oppoosed to a prof: the
Waynflete is a metaphysician; the White is a moralist, the Wykeham a logician,
and the Wilde a ‘mental’. For Grice’s “greatest living philosopher,” Heidegger,
‘philosophy’ is a misnomer. While philology merely discourses (logos) on love,
the philosopher claims to be a wizard (sophos) of love. Liddell and Scott have
“φιλοσοφία,” which they render as “love of knowledge, pursuit thereof,
speculation,” “ἡ φ. κτῆσις ἐπιστήμης.” Then there’s “ἡ πρώτη φ.,” with striking
originality, metaphysic, Arist. Metaph. 1026a24. Just one sense, but various
ambiguities remain in ‘philosopher,’ as per Grice’s two usages. As it happens, Grice is both addicted
to general, usually stoic, speculations about life, and he is a member of The
Oxford Philosophical Society.Refs.: The main sources in the Grice Papers are
under series III, of the doctrines. See also references under ‘lingusitic
botany,’ and Oxonianism. Grice liked to play with the adage of ‘philosophia’ as
‘regina scientiarum.’ A specific essay in his update of “post-war Oxford
philosophy,” in WoW on “Conceptual analysis and the province of philosophy,”
BANC, H. P. Grice, “My friend Birrell.”
philosophia
perennis:
a supposed body of truths that appear in the writings of the great
philosophers, or the truths common to opposed philosophical viewpoints. The
term is derived from the title of a book De perenni philosophia published by
Agostino Steuco of Gubbio in 1540. It suggests that the differences between
philosophers are inessential and superficial and that the common essential
truth emerges, however partially, in the major philosophical schools. Aldous
Huxley employed it as a title. L. Lavelle, N. Hartmann, and K. Jaspers also
employ the phrase. M. De Wulf and many others use the phrase to characterize
Neo-Thomism as the chosen vehicle of essential philosophical truths. Refs.: H.
P. Grice, “All that remains is mutability.”
philosophical
anthropology:
Grice hardly used ‘man,’ but preferred ‘human,’ and person. ‘Man’ is very
English, and that may be the reason why latinate Grice avoided it! “Human”
Grice thought cognate with “homo,” which rendered Grecian ‘anthropoos.’ “The
Grecians and the Roamns distinguished between a generic ‘anthropoos,’ and the
masculine ‘aner,’ Roman ‘vir.’ -- “What is man?” Grice: “I would distinguish
between what is human, and what is person.” -- philosophical inquiry concerning
human nature, often starting with the question of what generally characterizes
human beings in contrast to other kinds of creatures and things. Thus broadly
conceived, it is a kind of inquiry as old as philosophy itself, occupying
philosophers from Socrates to Sartre; and it embraces philosophical psychology,
the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and existentialism. Such inquiry
presupposes no immutable “essence of man,” but only the meaningfulness of
distinguishing between what is “human” and what is not, and the possibility
that philosophy as well as other disciplines may contribute to our
self-comprehension. It leaves open the question of whether other kinds of
naturally occurring or artificially produced entity may possess the hallmarks
of our humanity, and countenances the possibility of the biologically evolved,
historically developed, and socially and individually variable character of
everything about our attained humanity. More narrowly conceived, philosophical
anthropology is a specific movement in recent European philosophy associated
initially with Scheler and Helmuth Plessner, and subsequently with such figures
as Arnold Gehlen, Cassirer, and the later Sartre. It initially emerged in
Germany simultaneously with the existential philosophy of Heidegger and the
critical social theory of the Frankfurt School, with which it competed as G.
philosophers turned their attention to the comprehension of human life. This
movement was distinguished from the outset by its attempt to integrate the
insights of phenomenological analysis with the perspectives attainable through
attention to human and comparative biology, and subsequently to social inquiry
as well. This turn to a more naturalistic approach to the understanding of
ourselves, as a particular kind of living creature among others, is reflected
in the titles of the two works published in 8 that inaugurated the movement:
Scheler’s Man’s Place in Nature and Plessner’s The Levels of the Organic and
Man. For both Scheler and Plessner, however, as for those who followed them,
our nature must be understood by taking further account of the social,
cultural, and intellectual dimensions of human life. Even those like Gehlen,
whose Der Mensch 0 exhibits a strongly biological orientation, devoted much
attention to these dimensions, which our biological nature both constrains and
makes possible. For all of them, the relation between the biological and the
social and cultural dimensions of human life is a central concern and a key to
comprehending our human nature. One of the common themes of the later
philosophical-anthropological literature
e.g., Cassirer’s An Essay on Man 5 and Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical
Reason 0 as well as Plessner’s Contitio Humana 5 and Gehlen’s Early Man and
Late Culture 3 is the plasticity of
human nature, made possible by our biological constitution, and the resulting
great differences in the ways human beings live. Yet this is not taken to
preclude saying anything meaningful about human nature generally; rather, it
merely requires attention to the kinds of general features involved and
reflected in human diversity and variability. Critics of the very idea and possibility
of a philosophical anthropology e.g., Althusser and Foucault typically either
deny that there are any such general features or maintain that there are none
outside the province of the biological sciences to which philosophy can
contribute nothing substantive. Both claims, however, are open to dispute; and
the enterprise of a philosophical anthropology remains a viable and potentially
significant one. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Gehlen and the idea that man is sick –
homo infirmus.”
vita – vitalism -- animatum – Grice: “The
Romans saw a living body as the ‘animatum,’ since it’s the soul that makes a
body a living thing --. So the idea of ‘vita’ is conceptually linked to that of
a ‘soul.’ Grice was logically more interested in the verb, ‘vivere.’ “Most of Malcolm’s
sophismata on ‘dreaming’ apply to ‘living,’ surely “I live” implicates that I
live. Grice was fascinated by the fact that English ‘quick’ was cognate with
Roman ‘vivere.’ “as it should,” because if it’s quick, it’s most certainly
alive!” Old English cwic
"living, alive, animate," and figuratively, of mental qualities,
"rapid, ready," from Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz (source also of Old
Saxon and Old Frisian quik, Old Norse kvikr "living, alive," Dutch
kwik "lively, bright, sprightly," Old High German quec
"lively," German keck "bold"), from PIE root *gwei-
"to live." Sense of "lively, swift" developed by late 12c.,
on notion of "full of life." NE swift or the now more common fast may
apply to rapid motion of any duration, while in quick (in accordance with its
original sense of 'live, lively') there is a notion of 'sudden' or 'soon over.'
We speak of a fast horse or runner in a race, a quick starter but not a quick
horse. A somewhat similar feeling may distinguish NHG schnell and rasch or it
may be more a matter of local preference. [Carl Darling Buck, "A
Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages,"
1949] v. n. Sanscr. giv-, givami, live; Gr. βίος, life; Goth. quius, living; Germ. quicken; Engl.
quick, to live, be alive, have life (syn.
spiro).
philosophical biology: v. H. P. Grice, “The roman problem: doing with ‘vivere’
for ‘zoe’ and bios’” -- vide: H. P. Grice, “Philosophical biology and
philosophical psychology” -- the philosophy of science applied to biology. On a
conservative view of the philosophy of science, the same principles apply
throughout science. Biology supplies additional examples but does not provide
any special problems or require new principles. For example, the reduction of
Mendelian genetics to molecular biology exemplifies the same sort of relation
as the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, and the same
general analysis of reduction applies equally to both. More radical
philosophers argue that the subject matter of biology has certain unique
features; hence, the philosophy of biology is itself unique. The three features
of biology most often cited by those who maintain that philosophy of biology is
unique are functional organization, embryological development, and the nature
of selection. Organisms are functionally organized. They are capable of
maintaining their overall organization in the face of fairly extensive
variation in their envisonments. Organisms also undergo ontogenetic development
resulting from extremely complex interactions between the genetic makeup of the
organism and its successive environments. At each step, the course that an
organism takes is determined by an interplay between its genetic makeup, its
current state of development, and the environment it happens to confront. The
complexity of these interactions produces the naturenurture problem. Except for
human artifacts, similar organization does not occur in the non-living world.
The species problem is another classic issue in the philosophy of biology.
Biological species have been a paradigm example of natural kinds since Aristotle.
According to nearly all pre-Darwinian philosophers, species are part of the
basic makeup of the universe, like gravity and gold. They were held to be as
eternal, immutable, and discrete as these other examples of natural kinds. If
Darwin was right, species are not eternal. They come and go, and once gone can
no more reemerge than Aristotle can once again walk the streets of Athens. Nor
are species immutable. A sample of lead can be transmuted into a sample of
gold, but these elements as elements remain immutable in the face of such
changes. However, Darwin insisted that species themselves, not merely their
instances, evolved. Finally, because Darwin thought that species evolved
gradually, the boundaries between species are not sharp, casting doubt on the
essentialist doctrines so common in his day. In short, if species evolve, they
have none of the traditional characteristics of species. Philosophers and
biologists to this day are working out the consequences of this radical change
in our worldview. The topic that has received the greatest attention by
philosophers of biology in the recent literature is the nature of evolutionary
theory, in particular selection, adaptation, fitness, and the population
structure of species. In order for selection to operate, variation is
necessary, successive generations must be organized genealogically, and
individuals must interact differentially with their environments. In the
simplest case, genes pass on their structure largely intact. In addition, they
provide the information necessary to produce organisms. Certain of these
organisms are better able to cope with their environments and reproduce than
are other organisms. As a result, genes are perpetuated differentially through
successive generations. Those characteristics that help an organism cope with
its environments are termed adaptations. In a more restricted sense, only those
characteristics that arose through past selective advantage count as
adaptations. Just as the notion of IQ was devised as a single measure for a
combination of the factors that influence our mental abilities, fitness is a
measure of relative reproductive success. Claims about the tautological
character of the principle philosophical behaviorism philosophy of biology of
the survival of the fittest stem from the blunt assertion that fitness just is
relative reproductive success, as if intelligence just is what IQ tests
measure. Philosophers of biology have collaborated with biologists to analyze
the notion of fitness. This literature has concentrated on the role that
causation plays in selection and, hence, must play in any adequate explication
of fitness. One important distinction that has emerged is between replication
and differential interaction with the environment. Selection is a function of
the interplay between these two processes. Because of the essential role of
variation in selection, all the organisms that belong to the same species
either at any one time or through time cannot possibly be essentially the same.
Nor can species be treated adequately in terms of the statistical covariance of
either characters or genes. The populational structure of species is crucial.
For example, species that form numerous, partially isolated demes are much more
likely to speciate than those that do not. One especially controversial
question is whether species themselves can function in the evolutionary process
rather than simply resulting from it. Although philosophers of biology have
played an increasingly important role in biology itself, they have also
addressed more traditional philosophical questions, especially in connection
with evolutionary epistemology and ethics. Advocates of evolutionary
epistemology argue that knowledge can be understood in terms of the adaptive
character of accurate knowledge. Those organisms that hold false beliefs about
their environment, including other organisms, are less likely to reproduce
themselves than those with more accurate beliefs. To the extent that this
argument has any force at all, it applies only to humansized entities and
events. One common response to evolutionary epistemology is that sometimes
people who hold manifestly false beliefs flourish at the expense of those who
hold more realistic views of the world in which we live. On another version of
evolutionary epistemology, knowledge acquisition is viewed as just one more
instance of a selection process. The issue is not to justify our beliefs but to
understand how they are generated and proliferated. Advocates of evolutionary
ethics attempt to justify certain ethical principles in terms of their survival
value. Any behavior that increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction
is “good,” and anything that detracts from these ends is “bad.” The main
objection to evolutionary ethics is that it violates the isought distinction.
According to most ethical systems, we are asked to sacrifice ourselves for the
good of others. If these others were limited to our biological relatives, then
the biological notion of inclusive fitness might be adequate to account for
such altruistic behavior, but the scope of ethical systems extends past one’s
biological relatives. Advocates of evolutionary ethics are hard pressed to
explain the full range of behavior that is traditionally considered as
virtuous. Either biological evolution cannot provide an adequate justification
for ethical behavior or else ethical systems must be drastically reduced in
their scope. Refs.: Grice, “Philosophical biology: are we all emergentists?”
philosophical oeconomica: Grice: “The
oikos is the house – and a house is not a home unless there’s a cat around.” --
the study of methodological issues facing positive economic theory and
normative problems on the intersection of welfare economics and political
philosophy. Methodological issues. Applying approaches and questions in the
philosophy of science specifically to economics, the philosophy of economics
explores epistemological and conceptual problems raised by the explanatory aims
and strategy of economic theory: Do its assumptions about individual choice
constitute laws, and do they explain its derived generalizations about markets
and economies? Are these generalizations laws, and if so, how are they tested
by observation of economic processes, and how are theories in the various
compartments of economics
microeconomics, macroeconomics
related to one another and to econometrics? How are the various
schools neoclassical, institutional,
Marxian, etc. related to one another,
and what sorts of tests might enable us to choose between their theories?
Historically, the chief issue of interest in the development of the philosophy
of economics has been the empirical adequacy of the assumptions of rational
“economic man”: that all agents have complete and transitive cardinal or
ordinal utility rankings or preference orders and that they always choose that
available option which maximizes their utility or preferences. Since the actual
behavior of agents appears to disconfirm these assumptions, the claim that they
constitute causal laws governing economic behavior is difficult to sustain. On
the other hand, the assumption of preference-maximizing behavior is
indispensable to twentieth-century economics. These two considerations jointly
undermine the claim that economic theory honors criteria on explanatory power
and evidential probity drawn philosophy of economics philosophy of economics
669 669 from physical science. Much
work by economists and philosophers has been devoted therefore to disputing the
claim that the assumptions of rational choice theory are false or to disputing
the inference from this claim to the conclusion that the cognitive status of
economic theory as empirical science is thereby undermined. Most frequently it
has been held that the assumptions of rational choice are as harmless and as
indispensable as idealizations are elsewhere in science. This view must deal
with the allegation that unlike theories embodying idealization elsewhere in
science, economic theory gains little more in predictive power from these
assumptions about agents’ calculations than it would secure without any
assumptions about individual choice. Normative issues. Both economists and
political philosophers are concerned with identifying principles that will
ensure just, fair, or equitable distributions of scarce goods. For this reason
neoclassical economic theory shares a history with utilitarianism in moral
philosophy. Contemporary welfare economics continues to explore the limits of
utilitarian prescriptions that optimal economic and political arrangements
should maximize and/or equalize utility, welfare, or some surrogate. It also
examines the adequacy of alternatives to such utilitarian principles. Thus,
economics shares an agenda of interests with political and moral philosophy.
Utilitarianism in economics and philosophy has been constrained by an early
realization that utilities are neither cardinally measurable nor
interpersonally comparable. Therefore the prescription to maximize and/or
equalize utility cannot be determinatively obeyed. Welfare theorists have nevertheless
attempted to establish principles that will enable us to determine the equity,
fairness, or justice of various economic arrangements, and that do not rely on
interpersonal comparisons required to measure whether a distribution is maximal
or equal in the utility it accords all agents. Inspired by philosophers who
have surrendered utilitarianism for other principles of equality, fairness, or
justice in distribution, welfare economists have explored Kantian, social
contractarian, and communitarian alternatives in a research program that cuts
clearly across both disciplines. Political philosophy has also profited as much
from innovations in economic theory as welfare economics has benefited from
moral philosophy. Theorems from welfare economics that establish the efficiency
of markets in securing distributions that meet minimal conditions of optimality
and fairness have led moral philosophers to reexamine the moral status of
free-market exchange. Moreover, philosophers have come to appreciate that coercive
social institutions are sometimes best understood as devices for securing
public goods goods like police
protection that cannot be provided to those who pay for them without also
providing them to free riders who decline to do so. The recognition that
everyone would be worse off, including free riders, were the coercion required
to pay for these goods not imposed, is due to welfare economics and has led to
a significant revival of interest in the work of Hobbes, who appears to have
prefigured such arguments.
philosophy of education: Grice: “To teach
is not the opposite of learn, even if The Wind in The Willows thus suggests. –
“ “To teach is etymologically, to ‘show, -- the ensign – To educate is of
course to guide, to lead, to conduce. Grice: “I taught Peters all he needed to
know about this!” -- a branch of philosophy concerned with virtually every
aspect of the educational enterprise. It significantly overlaps other, more
mainstream branches especially epistemology and ethics, but even logic and
metaphysics. The field might almost be construed as a “series of footnotes” to
Plato’s Meno, wherein are raised such fundamental issues as whether virtue can
be taught; what virtue is; what knowledge is; what the relation between
knowledge of virtue and being virtuous is; what the relation between knowledge
and teaching is; and how and whether teaching is possible. While few people
would subscribe to Plato’s doctrine or convenient fiction, perhaps in Meno that
learning by being taught is a process of recollection, the paradox of inquiry
that prompts this doctrine is at once the root text of the perennial debate
between rationalism and empiricism and a profoundly unsettling indication that
teaching passeth understanding. Mainstream philosophical topics considered
within an educational context tend to take on a decidedly genetic cast. So,
e.g., epistemology, which analytic philosophy has tended to view as a
justificatory enterprise, becomes concerned if not with the historical origins
of knowledge claims then with their genesis within the mental economy of
persons generally in consequence of
their educations. And even when philosophers of education come to endorse
something akin to Plato’s classic account of knowledge as justified true
belief, they are inclined to suggest, then, that the conveyance of knowledge
via instruction must somehow provide the student with the justification along
with the true philosophy of education philosophy of education 670 670 belief
thereby reintroducing a genetic dimension to a topic long lacking one.
Perhaps, indeed, analytic philosophy’s general though not universal neglect of
philosophy of education is traceable in some measure to the latter’s almost
inevitably genetic perspective, which the former tended to decry as armchair
science and as a threat to the autonomy and integrity of proper philosophical
inquiry. If this has been a basis for neglect, then philosophy’s more recent,
postanalytic turn toward naturalized inquiries that reject any dichotomy
between empirical and philosophical investigations may make philosophy of
education a more inviting area. Alfred North Whitehead, himself a leading light
in the philosophy of education, once remarked that we are living in the period
of educational thought subject to the influence of Dewey, and there is still no
denying the observation. Dewey’s instrumentalism, his special brand of
pragmatism, informs his extraordinarily comprehensive progressive philosophy of
education; and he once went so far as to define all of philosophy as the
general theory of education. He identifies the educative process with the
growth of experience, with growing as developing where experience is to be understood more in
active terms, as involving doing things that change one’s objective environment
and internal conditions, than in the passive terms, say, of Locke’s
“impression” model of experience. Even traditionalistic philosophers of
education, most notably Maritain, have acknowledged the wisdom of Deweyan
educational means, and have, in the face of Dewey’s commanding philosophical
presence, reframed the debate with progressivists as one about appropriate
educational ends thereby insufficiently
acknowledging Dewey’s trenchant critique of the meansend distinction. And even
some recent analytic philosophers of education, such as R. S. Peters, can be
read as if translating Deweyan insights e.g., about the aim of education into
an analytic idiom. Analytic philosophy of education, as charted by Oxford
philosopher R. S. Peters, Israel Scheffler, and others in the Anglo-
philosophical tradition, has used the tools of linguistic analysis on a wide
variety of educational concepts learning, teaching, training, conditioning,
indoctrinating, etc. and investigated their interconnections: Does teaching
entail learning? Does teaching inevitably involve indoctrinating? etc. This
careful, subtle, and philosophically sophisticated work has made possible a
much-needed conceptual precision in educational debates, though the debaters
who most influence public opinion and policy have rarely availed themselves of
that precisification. Recent work in philosophy of education, however, has
taken up some major educational objectives
moral and other values, critical and creative thinking in a way that promises to have an impact on
the actual conduct of education. Philosophy of education, long isolated in
schools of education from the rest of the academic philosophical community, has
also been somewhat estranged from the professional educational mainstream.
Dewey would surely have approved of a change in this status quo. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Peters and I.”
philosophical historian: philosophical
historian – Grice as – longitudinal unity -- Danto, A. C. philosopher of art
and art history who has also contributed to the philosophies of history,
action, knowledge, science, and metaphilosophy. Among his influential studies
in the history of philosophy are books on Nietzsche, Sartre, and thought. Danto arrives at his philosophy of
art through his “method of indiscernibles,” which has greatly influenced
contemporary philosophical aesthetics. According to his metaphilosophy, genuine
philosophical questions arise when there is a theoretical need to differentiate
two things that are perceptually indiscernible
such as prudential actions versus moral actions Kant, causal chains
versus constant conjunctions Hume, and perfect dreams versus reality Descartes.
Applying the method to the philosophy of art, Danto asks what distinguishes an
artwork, such as Warhol’s Brillo Box, from its perceptually indiscernible,
real-world counterparts, such as Brillo boxes by Proctor and Gamble. His
answer his partial definition of
art is that x is a work of art only if 1
x is about something and 2 x embodies its meaning i.e., discovers a mode of
presentation intended to be appropriate to whatever subject x is about. These
two necessary conditions, Danto claims, enable us to distinguish between
artworks and real things between
Warhol’s Brillo Box and Proctor and Gamble’s. However, critics have pointed out
that these conditions fail, since real Brillo boxes are about something Brillo
about which they embody or convey meanings through their mode of presentation
viz., that Brillo is clean, fresh, and dynamic. Moreover, this is not an
isolated example. Danto’s theory of art confronts systematic difficulties in
differentiating real cultural artifacts, such as industrial packages, from
artworks proper. In addition to his philosophy of art, Danto proposes a
philosophy of art history. Like Hegel, Danto maintains that art history as a developmental, progressive process has ended. Danto believes that modern art has
been primarily reflexive i.e., about itself; it has attempted to use its own
forms and strategies to disclose the essential nature of art. Cubism and
abstract expressionism, for example, exhibit saliently the two-dimensional
nature of painting. With each experiment, modern art has gotten closer to
disclosing its own essence. But, Danto argues, with works such as Warhol’s
Brillo Box, artists have taken the philosophical project of self-definition as
far as they can, since once an artist like Warhol has shown that artworks can
be perceptually indiscernible from “real things” and, therefore, can look like
anything, there is nothing further that the artist qua artist can show through
the medium of appearances about the nature of art. The task of defining art
must be reassigned to philosophers to be treated discursively, and art
history as the developmental,
progressive narrative of self-definition
ends. Since that turn of events was putatively precipitated by Warhol in
the 0s, Danto calls the present period of art making “post-historical.” As an
art critic for The Nation, he has been chronicling its vicissitudes for a
decade and a half. Some dissenters, nevertheless, have been unhappy with
Danto’s claim that art history has ended because, they maintain, he has failed
to demonstrate that the only prospects for a developmental, progressive history
of art reside in the project of the self-definition of art. “There are two concerns
by the philosopher with history – the history of philosophy as a philosophical
discipline – and the philosophy of history per se. In the latter, in what way
can we say that decapitation willed the death of Charles II?” – Refs.: H. P.
Grice, “Philosophy’s Two Co-Ordinate Unities: Lat. and Long.,” “Kantotle or
Ariskant? The Co-Ordinate Unity of Philosophy.” Grice is more interested in
philosophical historiography than history itself! He makes some hypotheses
about the movement he belonged to, and he hoped that what he had to say related
to what he called Athenian dialectic! In stressing the ‘continuity,’ or unity,
of philosophy both latitudinal and longidtudinal, Grice is inviting
historiography as more than ancilla philosophiae. This at a time when analyticd
philowophers, mainly in the New World, “where they really lack a history,” were
propagating the slogan that to philosophise is NOT do to history of
philosophy!” philosophy of history, the philosophical study of human history
and of attempts to record and interpret it. ‘History’ in English and its
equivalent in most modern European languages has two primary senses: 1 the
temporal progression of large-scale human events and actions, primarily but not
exclusively in the past; and 2 the discipline or inquiry in which knowledge of
the human past is acquired or sought. This has led to two senses of ‘philosophy
of history’, depending on which “history” has been the object of philosophers’
attentions. Philosophy of history in the first sense is often called substantive
or speculative, and placed under metaphysics. Philosophy of history in the
second sense is called critical or analytic and can be placed in epistemology.
Substantive philosophy of history. In the West, substantive philosophy of
history is thought to begin only in the Christian era. In the City of God,
Augustine wonders why Rome flourished while pagan, yet fell into disgrace after
its conversion to Christiantity. Divine reward and punishment should apply to
whole peoples, not just to individuals. The unfolding of events in history
should exhibit a plan that is intelligible rationally, morally, and for
Augustine theologically. As a believer Augustine is convinced that there is
such a plan, though it may not always be evident. In the modern period, philosophers
such as Vico and Herder also sought such intelligibility in history. They also
believed in a long-term direction or purpose of history that is often opposed
to and makes use of the purposes of individuals. The most elaborate and
best-known example of this approach is found in Hegel, who thought that the
gradual realization of human freedom could be discerned in history even if much
slavery, tyranny, and suffering are necessary in the process. Marx, too,
claimed to know the laws in his case
economic according to which history
unfolds. Similar searches for overall “meaning” in human history have been
undertaken in the twentieth century, notably by Arnold Toynbee 95, author of
the twelve-volume Study of History, and Oswald Spengler 06, author of Decline
of the West. But the whole enterprise was denounced by the positivists and
neo-Kantians of the late nineteenth century as irresponsible metaphysical
speculation. This attitude was shared by twentieth-century neopositivists and
some of their heirs in the analytic tradition. There is some irony in this,
since positivism, explicitly in thinkers like Comte and implicitly in others,
involves belief in progressively enlightened stages of human history crowned by
the modern age of science. Critical philosophy of history. The critical
philosophy of history, i.e., the epistemology of historical knowledge, can be
traced to the late nineteenth century and has been dominated by the paradigm of
the natural sciences. Those in the positivist, neopositivist, and postpositivist
tradition, in keeping with the idea of the unity of science, believe that to
know the historical past is to explain events causally, and all causal
explanation is ultimately of the same sort. To explain human events is to
derive them from laws, which may be social, psychological, and perhaps
ultimately biological and physical. Against this reductionism, the neo-Kantians
and Dilthey argued that history, like other humanistic disciplines
Geisteswissenschaften, follows irreducible rules of its own. It is concerned
with particular events or developments for their own sake, not as instances of
general laws, and its aim is to understand, rather than explain, human actions.
This debate was resurrected in the twentieth century in the English-speaking
world. Philosophers like Hempel and Morton White b.7 elaborated on the notion
of causal explanation in history, while Collingwood and William Dray b.1
described the “understanding” of historical agents as grasping the thought
behind an action or discovering its reasons rather than its causes. The
comparison with natural science, and the debate between reductionists and
antireductionists, dominated other questions as well: Can or should history be
objective and valuefree, as science purportedly is? What is the significance of
the fact that historians can never perceive the events that interest them,
since they are in the past? Are they not limited by their point of view, their
place in history, in a way scientists are not? Some positivists were inclined
to exclude history from science, rather than make it into one, relegating it to
“literature” because it could never meet the standards of objectivity and
genuine explanation; it was often the anti-positivists who defended the
cognitive legitimacy of our knowledge of the past. In the non-reductionist
tradition, philosophers have increasingly stressed the narrative character of
history: to understand human actions generally, and past actions in particular,
is to tell a coherent story about them. History, according to W. B. Gallie b.2,
is a species of the genus Story. History does not thereby become fiction:
narrative remains a “cognitive instrument” Louis Mink, 183 just as appropriate
to its domain as theory construction is to science. Nevertheless, concepts
previously associated with fictional narratives, such as plot structure and
beginning-middle-end, are seen as applying to historical narratives as well.
This tradition is carried further by Hayden White b.8, who analyzes classical
nineteenth-century histories and even substantive philosophies of history such
as Hegel’s as instances of romance, comedy, tragedy, and satire. In White’s
work this mode of analysis leads him to some skepticism about history’s
capacity to “represent” the reality of the past: narratives seem to be imposed
upon the data, often for ideological reasons, rather than drawn from them. To
some extent White’s view joins that of some positivists who believe that
history’s literary character excludes it from the realm of science. But for
White this is hardly a defect. Some philosophers have criticized the emphasis
on narrative in discussions of history, since it neglects search and discovery,
deciphering and evaluating sources, etc., which is more important to historians
than the way they “write up” their results. Furthermore, not all history is
presented in narrative form. The debate between pro- and anti-narrativists
among philosophers of history has its parallel in a similar debate among
historians themselves. Academic history in recent times has seen a strong turn
away from traditional political history toward social, cultural, and economic
analyses of the human past. Narrative is associated with the supposedly
outmoded focus on the doings of kings, popes, and generals. These are
considered e.g. by the historian Fernand
Braudel, 285 merely surface ripples compared to the deeper-lying and
slower-moving currents of social and economic change. It is the methods and
concepts of the social sciences, not the art of the storyteller, on which the
historian must draw. This debate has now lost some of its steam and narrative
history has made something of a comeback among historians. Among philosophers
Paul Ricoeur has tried to show that even ostensibly non-narrative history
retains narrative features. Historicity. Historicity or historicality:
Geschichtlichkeit is a term used in the phenomenological and hermeneutic
tradition from Dilthey and Husserl through Heidegger and Gadamer to indicate an
essential feature of human existence. Persons are not merely in history; their
past, including their social past, figures in their conception of themselves
and their future possibilities. Some awareness of the past is thus constitutive
of the self, prior to being formed into a cognitive discipine. Modernism and
the postmodern. It is possible to view some of the debates over the modern and
postmodern in recent Continental philosophy as a new kind of philosophy of
history. Philosophers like Lyotard and Foucault see the modern as the period
from the Enlightenment and Romanticism to the present, characterized chiefly by
belief in “grand narratives” of historical progress, whether capitalist,
Marxist, or positivist, with “man” as the triumphant hero of the story. Such
belief is now being or should be abandoned, bringing modernism to an end. In
one sense this is like earlier attacks on the substantive philosophy of
history, since it unmasks as unjustified moralizing certain beliefs about
large-scale patterns in history. It goes even further than the earlier attack,
since it finds these beliefs at work even where they are not explicitly
expressed. In another sense this is a continuation of the substantive
philosophy of history, since it makes its own grand claims about largescale
historical patterns. In this it joins hands with other philosophers of our day
in a general historicization of knowledge e.g., the philosophy of science
merges with the history of science and even of philosophy itself. Thus the
later Heidegger and more recently
Richard Rorty view philosophy itself as
a large-scale episode in Western history that is nearing or has reached its
end. Philosophy thus merges with the history of philosophy, but only thanks to
a philosophical reflection on this history as part of history as a whole.
jus: prudentia iuris,
iuris-prudentia, iurisprudentia -- Jurisprudence – Grice: “The root of ‘juris’
is an interesting one – before Hart and his legalese, it was all about ethics’!”
The Roman expression ‘jus,’ not to be confused with
‘jus,’ which meant ‘juice,’ as in ‘orange juice,’ is kindred with Sanscrit,
“yu,” to join; cf. ζεύγνυμι, and jungo,
qs. the binding, obliging; in this way, it compares with “lex,” which derives
from “ligo,” -- right, law, justice. The ‘jungo’ gives the family of
expressions like ‘con-junctum,’ joined. The idea is that if you are bound, you
are obliged. -- Hartian
jurisprudence – Grice on Hartian jurisprudence -- philosophy of law, also
called general jurisprudence, the study of conceptual and theoretical problems
concerning the nature of law as such, or common to any legal system. Problems
in the philosophy of law fall roughly into two groups. The first contains
problems internal to law and legal systems as such. These include a the nature
of legal rules; the conditions under which they can be said to exist and to
influence practice; their normative character, as mandatory or advisory; and
the indeterminacy of their language; b the structure and logical character of
legal norms; the analysis of legal principles as a class of legal norms; and
the relation between the normative force of law and coercion; c the identity
conditions for legal systems; when a legal system exists; and when one legal
system ends and another begins; d the nature of the reasoning used by courts in
adjudicating cases; e the justification of legal decisions; whether legal
justification is through a chain of inferences or by the coherence of norms and
decisions; and the relation between intralegal and extralegal justification; f
the nature of legal validity and of what makes a norm a valid law; the relation
between validity and efficacy, the fact that the norms of a legal system are
obeyed by the norm-subjects; g properties of legal systems, including
comprehensiveness the claim to regulate any behavior and completeness the
absence of gaps in the law; h legal rights; under what conditions citizens
possess them; and their analytical structure as protected normative positions;
i legal interpretation; whether it is a pervasive feature of law or is found
only in certain kinds of adjudication; its rationality or otherwise; and its
essentially ideological character or otherwise. The second group of problems
concerns the philosophy of law philosophy of law 676 676 relation between law as one particular
social institution in a society and the wider political and moral life of that
society: a the nature of legal obligation; whether there is an obligation,
prima facie or final, to obey the law as such; whether there is an obligation
to obey the law only when certain standards are met, and if so, what those
standards might be; b the authority of law; and the conditions under which a
legal system has political or moral authority or legitimacy; c the functions of
law; whether there are functions performed by a legal system in a society that
are internal to the design of law; and analyses from the perspective of
political morality of the functioning of legal systems; d the legal concept of
responsibility; its analysis and its relation to moral and political concepts
of responsibility; in particular, the place of mental elements and causal
elements in the assignment of responsibility, and the analysis of those
elements; e the analysis and justification of legal punishment; f legal
liberty, and the proper limits or otherwise of the intrusion of the legal
system into individual liberty; the plausibility of legal moralism; g the
relation between law and justice, and the role of a legal system in the
maintenance of social justice; h the relation between legal rights and
political or moral rights; i the status of legal reasoning as a species of
practical reasoning; and the relation between law and practical reason; j law
and economics; whether legal decision making in fact tracks, or otherwise ought
to track, economic efficiency; k legal systems as sources of and embodiments of
political power; and law as essentially gendered, or imbued with race or class
biases, or otherwise. Theoretical positions in the philosophy of law tend to
group into three large kinds legal
positivism, natural law, and legal realism. Legal positivism concentrates on
the first set of problems, and typically gives formal or content-independent
solutions to such problems. For example, legal positivism tends to regard legal
validity as a property of a legal rule that the rule derives merely from its
formal relation to other legal rules; a morally iniquitous law is still for
legal positivism a valid legal rule if it satisfies the required formal
existence conditions. Legal rights exist as normative consequences of valid
legal rules; no questions of the status of the right from the point of view of
political morality arise. Legal positivism does not deny the importance of the
second set of problems, but assigns the task of treating them to other
disciplines political philosophy, moral
philosophy, sociology, psychology, and so forth. Questions of how society should
design its legal institutions, for legal positivism, are not technically
speaking problems in the philosophy of law, although many legal positivists
have presented their theories about such questions. Natural law theory and
legal realism, by contrast, regard the sharp distinction between the two kinds
of problem as an artifact of legal positivism itself. Their answers to the
first set of problems tend to be substantive or content-dependent. Natural law
theory, for example, would regard the question of whether a law was consonant
with practical reason, or whether a legal system was morally and politically
legitimate, as in whole or in part determinative of the issue of legal
validity, or of whether a legal norm granted a legal right. The theory would
regard the relation between a legal system and liberty or justice as in whole
or in part determinative of the normative force and the justification for that
system and its laws. Legal realism, especially in its contemporary politicized
form, sees the claimed role of the law in legitimizing certain gender, race, or
class interests as the prime salient property of law for theoretical analysis,
and questions of the determinacy of legal rules or of legal interpretation or
legal right as of value only in the service of the project of explaining the political
power of law and legal systems. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Does Oxford need a chair
of jurisprudence” – symposium with H. L. A. Hart, conducted on the Saturday
morning following Hart’s appointment as chair of jurisprudence.”
Literae humaniores. Grice took
‘literature’ seriously. “After all, I am a Lit. Hum. master! And previously a
Lit. Hum. BACHELOR” – He made a strict distinction, seeing that at Oxford, a
master can do things a bachelor cannot – like marry! philosophy of literature:
Grice: “When I got my Masters in Literae Humaniores, the more human letters, my
mather said – which are the less human ones?” -- literary theory. However,
while the literary theorist, who is often a literary critic, is primarily
interested in the conceptual foundations of practical criticism, philosophy of
literature, usually done by philosophers, is more often concerned to place
literature in the context of a philosophical system. Plato’s dialogues have
much to say about poetry, mostly by way of aligning it with Plato’s metaphysical,
epistemological, and ethico-political views. Aristotle’s Poetics, the earliest
example of literary theory in the West, is also an attempt to accommodate the
practice of Grecian poets to Aristotle’s philosophical system as a whole.
Drawing on the thought of philosophers like Kant and Schelling, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge offers in his Biographia Literaria a philosophy of literature that is
to Romantic poetics what Aristotle’s treatise is to classical poetics: a
literary theory that is confirmed both by the poets whose work it legitimates
and by the metaphysics that recommends it. Many philosophers, among them Hume,
Schopenhauer, Heidegger, and Sartre, have tried to make room for literature in
their philosophical edifices. Some philosophers, e.g., the G. Romantics, have
made literature and the other arts the cornerstone of philosophy itself. See
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute, 8.
Sometimes ‘philosophy of literature’ is understood in a second sense:
philosophy and literature; i.e., philosophy and literature taken to be distinct
and essentially autonomous activities that may nonetheless sustain determinate
relations to each other. Philosophy of literature, understood in this way, is
the attempt to identify the differentiae that distinguish philosophy from
literature and to specify their relationships to each other. Sometimes the two
are distinguished by their subject matter e.g., philosophy deals with objective
structures, literature with subjectivity, sometimes by their methods philosophy
is an act of reason, literature the product of imagination, inspiration, or the
unconscious, sometimes by their effects philosophy produces knowledge,
literature produces emotional fulfillment or release, etc. Their relationships
then tend to occupy the areas in which they are not essentially distinct. If
their subject matters are distinct, their effects may be the same philosophy
and literature both produce understanding, the one of fact and the other of
feeling; if their methods are distinct, they may be approaching the same
subject matter in different ways; and so on. For Aquinas, e.g., philosophy and
poetry may deal with the same objects, the one communicating truth about the
object in syllogistic form, the other inspiring feelings about it through
figurative language. For Heidegger, the philosopher investigates the meaning of
being while the poet names the holy, but their preoccupations tend to converge
at the deepest levels of thinking. For Sartre, literature is philosophy engagé,
existential-political activity in the service of freedom. ’Philosophy of
literature’ may also be taken in a third sense: philosophy in literature, the
attempt to discover matters of philosophical interest and value in literary
texts. The philosopher may undertake to identify, examine, and evaluate the
philosophical content of literary texts that contain expressions of
philosophical ideas and discussions of philosophical problems e.g., the debates on free will and theodicy
in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Many if not most courses on philosophy of literature are
taught from this point of view. Much interesting and important work has been
done in this vein; e.g., Santayana’s Three Philosophical Poets 0, Cavell’s
essays on Emerson and Thoreau, and Nussbaum’s Love’s Knowledge 9. It should be
noted, however, that to approach the matter in this way presupposes that
literature and philosophy are simply different forms of the same content: what
philosophy expresses in the form of argument literature expresses in lyric,
dramatic, or narrative form. The philosopher’s treatment of literature implies
that he is uniquely positioned to explicate the subject matter treated in both
literary and philosophical texts, and that the language of philosophy gives
optimal expression to a content less adequately expressed in the language of
literature. The model for this approach may well be Hegel’s Phenomenology of
Spirit, which treats art along with religion as imperfect adumbrations of a
truth that is fully and properly articulated only in the conceptual mode of
philosophical dialectic. Dissatisfaction with this presupposition and its
implicit privileging of philosophy over literature has led to a different view
of the relation between philosophy and literature and so to a different program
for philosophy of literature. The self-consciously literary form of
Kierkegaard’s writing is an integral part of his polemic against the
philosophical imperialism of the Hegelians. In this century, the work of
philosophers like Derrida and the philosophers and critics who follow his lead
suggests that it is mistaken to regard philosophy and literature as alternative
expressions of an identical content, and seriously mistaken to think of
philosophy as the master discourse, the “proper” expression of a content
“improperly” expressed in literature. All texts, on this view, have a
“literary” form, the texts of philosophers as well as the texts of novelists
and poets, and their content is internally determined by their “means of
expression.” There is just as much “literature in philosophy” as there is
“philosophy in literature.” Consequently, the philosopher of literature may no
longer be able simply to extract philosophical matter from literary form.
Rather, the modes of literary expression confront the philosopher with problems
that bear on the presuppositions of his own enterprise. E.g., fictional mimesis
especially in the works of postmodern writers raises questions about the
possibility and the prephilosophy of literature philosophy of literature
678 678 philosophy of logic philosophy
of logic 679 sumed normativeness of factual representation, and in so doing
tends to undermine the traditional hierarchy that elevates “fact” over
“fiction.” Philosophers’ perplexity over the truth-value of fictional
statements is an example of the kind of problems the study of literature can
create for the practice of philosophy see Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, 2,
ch. 7. Or again, the self-reflexivity of contemporary literary texts can lead
philosophers to reflect critically on their own undertaking and may seriously
unsettle traditional notions of self-referentiality. When it is not regarded as
another, attractive but perhaps inferior source of philosophical ideas,
literature presents the philosopher with epistemological, metaphysical, and
methodological problems not encountered in the course of “normal”
philosophizing. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Why a philosopher is a literary soul at
Oxford: the etymological meaning of ‘literae humaniores.’”
semantics – Grice, “Mathematics and the
synthetic a priorir,” Grice on Warnock’s Oxford readings in philosophy, ‘The
philosophy of mathematics,’ Austin on Frege’s arithmetic -- philosophical
geometer, philosophical mathematician –
H. P. Grice, “ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ;
or, The school of Plato.” philosophy of
mathematics, the study of ontological and epistemological problems raised by
the content and practice of mathematics. The present agenda in this field
evolved from critical developments, notably the collapse of Pythagoreanism, the
development of modern calculus, and an early twentieth-century foundational
crisis, which forced mathematicians and philosophers to examine mathematical
methods and presuppositions. Grecian mathematics. The Pythagoreans, who represented
the height of early demonstrative Grecian mathematics, believed that all
scientific relations were measureable by natural numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. or
ratios of natural numbers, and thus they assumed discrete, atomic units for the
measurement of space, time, and motion. The discovery of irrational magnitudes
scotched the first of these beliefs. Zeno’s paradoxes showed that the second
was incompatible with the natural assumption that space and time are infinitely
divisible. The Grecian reaction, ultimately codified in Euclid’s Elements,
included Plato’s separation of mathematics from empirical science and, within
mathematics, distinguished number theory
a study of discretely ordered entities
from geometry, which concerns continua. Following Aristotle and employing
methods perfected by Eudoxus, Euclid’s proofs used only “potentially infinite”
geometric and arithmetic procedures. The Elements’ axiomatic form and its
constructive proofs set a standard for future mathematics. Moreover, its
dependence on visual intuition whose consequent deductive gaps were already
noted by Archimedes, together with the challenge of Euclid’s infamous fifth
postulate about parallel lines, and the famous unsolved problems of compass and
straightedge construction, established an agenda for generations of
mathematicians. The calculus. The two millennia following Euclid saw new
analytical tools e.g., Descartes’s geometry that wedded arithmetic and
geometric considerations and toyed with infinitesimally small quantities.
These, together with the demands of physical application, tempted
mathematicians to abandon the pristine Grecian dichotomies. Matters came to a
head with Newton’s and Leibniz’s almost simultaneous discovery of the powerful
computational techniques of the calculus. While these unified physical science
in an unprecedented way, their dependence on unclear notions of infinitesimal
spatial and temporal increments emphasized their shaky philosophical
foundation. Berkeley, for instance, condemned the calculus for its unintuitability.
However, this time the power of the new methods inspired a decidedly
conservative response. Kant, in particular, tried to anchor the new mathematics
in intuition. Mathematicians, he claimed, construct their objects in the “pure
intuitions” of space and time. And these mathematical objects are the a priori
forms of transcendentally ideal empirical objects. For Kant this combination of
epistemic empiricism and ontological idealism explained the physical
applicability of mathematics and thus granted “objective validity” i.e.,
scientific legitimacy to mathematical procedures. Two nineteenth-century
developments undercut this Kantian constructivism in favor of a more abstract
conceptual picture of mathematics. First, Jànos Bolyai, Carl F. Gauss, Bernhard
Riemann, Nikolai Lobachevsky, and others produced consistent non-Euclidean
geometries, which undid the Kantian picture of a single a priori science of
space, and once again opened a rift between pure mathematics and its physical
applications. Second, Cantor and Dedekind defined the real numbers i.e., the
elements of the continuum as infinite sets of rational and ultimately natural
numbers. Thus they founded mathematics on the concepts of infinite set and
natural number. Cantor’s set theory made the first concept rigorously
mathematical; while Peano and Frege both of whom advocated securing rigor by
using formal languages did that for the second. Peano axiomatized number
theory, and Frege ontologically reduced the natural numbers to sets indeed sets
that are the extensions of purely logical concepts. Frege’s Platonistic
conception of numbers as unintuitable objects and his claim that mathematical
truths follow analytically from purely logical definitions the thesis of logicism are both highly anti-Kantian. Foundational
crisis and movements. But antiKantianism had its own problems. For one thing,
Leopold Kronecker, who following Peter Dirichlet wanted mathematics reduced to
arithmetic and no further, attacked Cantor’s abstract set theory on doctrinal
grounds. Worse yet, the discovery of internal antinomies challenged the very
consistency of abstract foundations. The most famous of these, Russell’s
paradox the set of all sets that are not members of themselves both is and
isn’t a member of itself, undermined Frege’s basic assumption that every
well-formed concept has an extension. This was a full-scale crisis. To be sure,
Russell himself together with Whitehead preserved the logicist foundational
approach by organizing the universe of sets into a hierarchy of levels so that
no set can be a member of itself. This is type theory. However, the crisis
encouraged two explicitly Kantian foundational projects. The first, Hilbert’s
Program, attempted to secure the “ideal” i.e., infinitary parts of mathematics
by formalizing them and then proving the resultant formal systems to be
conservative and hence consistent extensions of finitary theories. Since the
proof itself was to use no reasoning more complicated than simple numerical
calculations finitary reasoning the whole metamathematical project belonged
to the untainted “contentual” part of mathematics. Finitary reasoning was
supposed to update Kant’s intuition-based epistemology, and Hilbert’s
consistency proofs mimic Kant’s notion of objective validity. The second project,
Brouwer’s intuitionism, rejected formalization, and was not only
epistemologically Kantian resting mathematical reasoning on the a priori
intuition of time, but ontologically Kantian as well. For intuitionism
generated both the natural and the real numbers by temporally ordered conscious
acts. The reals, in particular, stem from choice sequences, which exploit
Brouwer’s epistemic assumptions about the open future. These foundational
movements ultimately failed. Type theory required ad hoc axioms to express the
real numbers; Hilbert’s Program foundered on Gödel’s theorems; and intuitionism
remained on the fringes because it rejected classical logic and standard
mathematics. Nevertheless the legacy of these movements their formal methods, indeed their philosophical
agenda still characterizes modern
research on the ontology and epistemology of mathematics. Set theory, e.g.
despite recent challenges from category theory, is the lingua franca of modern
mathematics. And formal languages with their precise semantics are ubiquitous
in technical and philosophical discussions. Indeed, even intuitionistic
mathematics has been formalized, and Michael Dummett has recast its ontological
idealism as a semantic antirealism that defines truth as warranted
assertability. In a similar semantic vein, Paul Benacerraf proposed that the
philosophical problem with Hilbert’s approach is inability to provide a uniform
realistic i.e., referential, non-epistemic semantics for the allegedly ideal
and contentual parts of mathematics; and the problem with Platonism is that its
semantics makes its objects unknowable. Ontological issues. From this modern
perspective, the simplest realism is the outright Platonism that attributes a
standard model consisting of “independent” objects to classical theories
expressed in a first-order language i.e., a language whose quantifiers range
over objects but not properties. But in fact realism admits variations on each
aspect. For one thing, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem shows that formalized
theories can have non-standard models. There are expansive non-standard models:
Abraham Robinson, e.g., used infinitary non-standard models of Peano’s axioms
to rigorously reintroduce infinitesimals. Roughly, an infinitesimal is the
reciprocal of an infinite element in such a model. And there are also
“constructive” models, whose objects must be explicitly definable. Predicative
theories inspired by Poincaré and Hermann Weyl, whose stage-by-stage
definitions refer only to previously defined objects, produce one variety of
such models. Gödel’s constructive universe, which uses less restricted
definitions to model apparently non-constructive axioms like the axiom of
choice, exemplifies another variety. But there are also views various forms of
structuralism which deny that formal theories have unique standard models at
all. These views inspired by the fact,
already sensed by Dedekind, that there are multiple equivalid realizations of
formal arithmetic allow a mathematical
theory to characterize only a broad family of models and deny unique reference
to mathematical terms. Finally, some realistic approaches advocate
formalization in secondorder languages, and some eschew ordinary semantics
altogether in favor of substitutional quantification. These latter are still
realistic, for they still distinguish truth from knowledge. Strict
finitists inspired by Vitters’s more
stringent epistemic constraints reject
even the open-futured objects admitted by Brouwer, and countenance only finite
or even only “feasible” objects. In the other direction, A. A. Markov and his
school in Russia introduced a syntactic notion of algorithm from which they
developed the field of “constructive analysis.” And the mathematician Errett Bishop, starting from a
Brouwer-like disenchantment with mathematical realism and with strictly formal
approaches, recovered large parts of classical analysis within a non-formal
constructive framework. All of these approaches assume abstract i.e., causally
isolated mathematical objects, and thus they have difficulty explaining the
wide applicability of mathematics constructive or otherwise within empirical
science. One response, Quine’s “indispensability” view, integrates mathematical
theories into the general network of empirical science. For Quine, mathematical
objects just like ordinary physical
objects exist simply in virtue of being
referents for terms in our best scientific theory. By contrast Hartry Field,
who denies that any abstract objects exist, also denies that any purely
mathematical assertions are literally true. Field attempts to recast physical
science in a relational language without mathematical terms and then use
Hilbert-style conservative extension results to explain the evident utility of
abstract mathematics. Hilary Putnam and Charles Parsons have each suggested
views according to which mathematics has no objects proper to itself, but
rather concerns only the possibilities of physical constructions. Recently,
Geoffrey Hellman has combined this modal approach with structuralism.
Epistemological issues. The equivalence proved in the 0s of several different
representations of computability to the reasoning representable in elementary
formalized arithmetic led Alonzo Church to suggest that the notion of finitary
reasoning had been precisely defined. Church’s thesis so named by Stephen
Kleene inspired Georg Kreisel’s investigations in the 0s and 70s of the general
conditions for rigorously analyzing other informal philosophical notions like
semantic consequence, Brouwerian choice sequences, and the very notion of a
set. Solomon Feferman has suggested more recently that this sort of piecemeal
conceptual analysis is already present in mathematics; and that this rather
than any global foundation is the true role of foundational research. In this
spirit, the relative consistency arguments of modern proof theory a
continuation of Hilbert’s Program provide information about the epistemic
grounds of various mathematical theories. Thus, on the one hand, proofs that a
seemingly problematic mathematical theory is a conservative extension of a more
secure theory provide some epistemic support for the former. In the other
direction, the fact that classical number theory is consistent relative to
intuitionistic number theory shows contra Hilbert that his view of constructive
reasoning must differ from that of the intuitionists. Gödel, who did not
believe that mathematics required any ties to empirical perception, suggested
nevertheless that we have a special nonsensory faculty of mathematical
intuition that, when properly cultivated, can help us decide among formally
independent propositions of set theory and other branches of mathematics.
Charles Parsons, in contrast, has examined the place of perception-like
intuition in mathematical reasoning. Parsons himself has investigated models of
arithmetic and of set theory composed of quasi-concrete objects e.g., numerals
and other signs. Others consistent with some of Parsons’s observations have
given a Husserlstyle phenomenological analysis of mathematical intuition.
Frege’s influence encouraged the logical positivists and other philosophers to
view mathematical knowledge as analytic or conventional. Poincaré responded
that the principle of mathematical induction could not be analytic, and Vitters
also attacked this conventionalism. In recent years, various formal
independence results and Quine’s attack on analyticity have encouraged
philosophers and historians of mathematics to focus on cases of mathematical
knowledge that do not stem from conceptual analysis or strict formal provability.
Some writers notably Mark Steiner and Philip Kitcher emphasize the analogies
between empirical and mathematical discovery. They stress such things as
conceptual evolution in mathematics and instances of mathematical
generalizations supported by individual cases. Kitcher, in particular,
discusses the analogy between axiomatization in mathematics and theoretical
unification. Penelope Maddy has investigated the intramathematical grounds
underlying the acceptance of various axioms of set theory. More generally, Imre
Lakatos argued that most mathematical progress stems from a concept-stretching
process of conjecture, refutation, and proof. This view has spawned a
historical debate about whether critical developments such as those mentioned
above represent Kuhn-style revolutions or even crises, or whether they are
natural conceptual advances in a uniformly growing science. Semantics -- philosophical mathematics:
Grice: “Not for nothing Plato’s academy motto was, “Lascite ogni non-geometria
voi ch’entrate!” ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ
– “a-gemetretos medeis eiseto” Grice thought that “7 + 5 = 12” was either
synthetic or analytic – “but hardly both”. Grice on real numbers -- continuum
problem, an open question that arose in Cantor’s theory of infinite cardinal
numbers. By definition, two sets have the same cardinal number if there is a
one-to-one correspondence between them. For example, the function that sends 0
to 0, 1 to 2, 2 to 4, etc., shows that the set of even natural numbers has the
same cardinal number as the set of all natural numbers, namely F0. That F0 is
not the only infinite cardinal follows from Cantor’s theorem: the power set of
any set i.e., the set of all its subsets has a greater cardinality than the set
itself. So, e.g., the power set of the natural numbers, i.e., the set of all
sets of natural numbers, has a cardinal number greater than F0. The first
infinite number greater than F0 is F1; the next after that is F2, and so on.
When arithmetical operations are extended into the infinite, the cardinal
number of the power set of the natural numbers turns out to be 2F0. By Cantor’s
theorem, 2F0 must be greater than F0; the conjecture that it is equal to F1 is
Cantor’s continuum hypothesis in symbols, CH or 2F0 % F1. Since 2F0 is also the
cardinality of the set of points on a continuous line, CH can also be stated in
this form: any infinite set of points on a line can be brought into one-to-one
correspondence either with the set of natural numbers or with the set of all
points on the line. Cantor and others attempted to prove CH, without success.
It later became clear, due to the work of Gödel and Cohen, that their failure
was inevitable: the continuum hypothesis can neither be proved nor disproved
from the axioms of set theory ZFC. The question of its truth or falsehood the continuum problem remains open.
Philosophical mathematics: Grice on “7 + 5 = 12” -- Dedekind, R. G.
mathematician, one of the most important figures in the mathematical analysis
of foundational questions that took place in the late nineteenth century.
Philosophically, three things are interesting about Dedekind’s work: 1 the
insistence that the fundamental numerical systems of mathematics must be
developed independently of spatiotemporal or geometrical notions; 2 the
insistence that the numbers systems rely on certain mental capacities
fundamental to thought, in particular on the capacity of the mind to “create”;
and 3 the recognition that this “creation” is “creation” according to certain
key properties, properties that careful mathematical analysis reveals as
essential to the subject matter. 1 is a concern Dedekind shared with Bolzano,
Cantor, Frege, and Hilbert; 2 sets Dedekind apart from Frege; and 3 represents
a distinctive shift toward the later axiomatic position of Hilbert and somewhat
away from the concern with the individual nature of the central abstract
mathematical objects which is a central concern of Frege. Much of Dedekind’s
position is sketched in the Habilitationsrede of 1854, the procedure there
being applied in outline to the extension of the positive whole numbers to the
integers, and then to the rational field. However, the two works best known to
philosophers are the monographs on irrational numbers Stetigkeit und
irrationale Zahlen, 1872 and on natural numbers Was sind und was sollen die
Zahlen?, 8, both of which pursue the procedure advocated in 1854. In both we
find an “analysis” designed to uncover the essential properties involved,
followed by a “synthesis” designed to show that there can be such systems, this
then followed by a “creation” of objects possessing the properties and nothing
more. In the 1872 work, Dedekind suggests that the essence of continuity in the
reals is that whenever the line is divided into two halves by a cut, i.e., into
two subsets A1 and A2 such that if p 1 A1 and q 1 A2, then p ‹ q and, if p 1 A1
and q ‹ p, then q 1 A1, and if p 1 A2 and q
p, then q 1 A2 as well, then there is real number r which “produces”
this cut, i.e., such that A1 % {p; p ‹ r}, and A2 % {p: r m p}. The task is
then to characterize the real numbers so that this is indeed true of them.
Dedekind shows that, whereas the rationals themselves do not have this
property, the collection of all cuts in the rationals does. Dedekind then
“defines” the irrationals through this observation, not directly as the cuts in
the rationals themselves, as was done later, but rather through the “creation”
of “new irrational numbers” to correspond to those rational cuts not hitherto
“produced” by a number. The 8 work starts from the notion of a “mapping” of one
object onto another, which for Dedekind is necessary for all exact thought.
Dedekind then develops the notion of a one-toone into mapping, which is then
used to characterize infinity “Dedekind infinity”. Using the fundamental notion
of a chain, Dedekind characterizes the notion of a “simply infinite system,”
thus one that is isomorphic to the natural number sequence. Thus, he succeeds
in the goal set out in the 1854 lecture: isolating precisely the characteristic
properties of the natural number system. But do simply infinite systems, in
particular the natural number system, exist? Dedekind now argues: Any infinite
system must Dedekind, Richard Dedekind, Richard 210 210 contain a simply infinite system Theorem
72. Correspondingly, Dedekind sets out to prove that there are infinite systems
Theorem 66, for which he uses an infamous argument reminiscent of Bolzano’s
from thirty years earlier involving “my thought-world,” etc. It is generally
agreed that the argument does not work, although it is important to remember
Dedekind’s wish to demonstrate that since the numbers are to be free creations
of the human mind, his proofs should rely only on the properties of the mental.
The specific act of “creation,” however, comes in when Dedekind, starting from
any simply infinite system, abstracts from the “particular properties” of this,
claiming that what results is the simply infinite system of the natural
numbers. Philosophical mathematics --
mathematical analysis, also called standard analysis, the area of mathematics
pertaining to the so-called real number system, i.e. the area that can be based
on an axiom set whose intended interpretation (standard model) has the set of
real numbers as its domain (universe of discourse). Thus analysis includes,
among its many subbranches, elementary algebra, differential and integral
calculus, differential equations, the calculus of variations, and measure
theory. Analytic geometry involves the application of analysis to geometry.
Analysis contains a large part of the mathematics used in mathematical physics.
The real numbers, which are representable by the ending and unending decimals,
are usefully construed as (or as corresponding to) distances measured, relative
to an arbitrary unit length, positively to the right and negatively to the left
of an arbitrarily fixed zero point along a geometrical straight line. In
particular, the class of real numbers includes as increasingly comprehensive
proper subclasses the natural numbers, the integers (positive, negative, and
zero), the rational numbers (or fractions), and the algebraic numbers (such as
the square root of two). Especially important is the presence in the class of
real numbers of non-algebraic (or transcendental) irrational numbers such as
pi. The set of real numbers includes arbitrarily small and arbitrarily large,
finite quantities, while excluding infinitesimal and infinite quantities.
Analysis, often conceived as the mathematics of continuous magnitude, contrasts
with arithmetic (natural number theory), which is regarded as the mathematics
of discrete magnitude. Analysis is often construed as involving not just the
real numbers but also the imaginary (complex) numbers. Traditionally analysis
is expressed in a second-order or higher-order language wherein its axiom set
has categoricity; each of its models is isomorphic to (has the same structure
as) the standard model. When analysis is carried out in a first-order language,
as has been increasingly the case since the 1950s, categoricity is impossible and
it has nonstandard mass noun mathematical analysis models in addition to its
standard model. A nonstandard model of analysis is an interpretation not
isomorphic to the standard model but nevertheless satisfying the axiom set.
Some of the nonstandard models involve objects reminiscent of the much-despised
“infinitesimals” that were essential to the Leibniz approach to calculus and
that were subject to intense criticism by Berkeley and other philosophers and
philosophically sensitive mathematicians. These non-standard models give rise
to a new area of mathematics, non-standard analysis, within which the
fallacious arguments used by Leibniz and other early analysts form the
heuristic basis of new and entirely rigorous proofs. -- mathematical function,
an operation that, when applied to an entity (set of entities) called its
argument(s), yields an entity known as the value of the function for that
argument(s). This operation can be expressed by a functional equation of the
form y % f(x) such that a variable y is said to be a function of a variable x
if corresponding to each value of x there is one and only one value of y. The x
is called the independent variable (or argument of the function) and the y the
dependent variable (or value of the function). (Some definitions consider the
relation to be the function, not the dependent variable, and some definitions
permit more than one value of y to correspond to a given value of x, as in x2 !
y2 % 4.) More abstractly, a function can be considered to be simply a special
kind of relation (set of ordered pairs) that to any element in its domain
relates exactly one element in its range. Such a function is said to be a
one-to-one correspondence if and only if the set {x,y} elements of S and {z,y}
elements of S jointly imply x % z. Consider, e.g., the function {(1,1), (2,4),
(3,9), (4,16), (5,25), (6,36)}, each of whose members is of the form (x,x2) –
the squaring function. Or consider the function {(0,1), (1,0)} – which we can
call the negation function. In contrast, consider the function for exclusive
alternation (as in you may have a beer or glass of wine, but not both). It is
not a one-to-one correspondence. For, 0 is the value of (0,1) and of (1,0), and
1 is the value of (0,0) and of (1,1). If we think of a function as defined on
the natural numbers – functions from Nn to N for various n (most commonly n % 1
or 2) – a partial function is a function from Nn to N whose domain is not
necessarily the whole of Nn (e.g., not defined for all of the natural numbers).
A total function from Nn to N is a function whose domain is the whole of Nn
(e.g., all of the natural numbers). -- mathematical induction, a method of
definition and a method of proof. A collection of objects can be defined
inductively. All members of such a collection can be shown to have a property
by an inductive proof. The natural numbers and the set of well-formed formulas
of a formal language are familiar examples of sets given by inductive
definition. Thus, the set of natural numbers is inductively defined as the
smallest set, N, such that: (B) 0 is in N and (I) for any x in N the successor
of x is in N. (B) is the basic clause and (I) the inductive clause of this
definition. Or consider a propositional language built on negation and
conjunction. We start with a denumerable class of atomic sentence symbols ATOM
= {A1, A2, . . .}. Then we can define the set of well-formed formulas, WFF, as
the smallest set of expressions such that: (B) every member of ATOM is in WFF
and (I) if x is in WFF then (- x) is in WFF and if x and y are in WFF then (x
& y) is in WFF. We show that all members of an inductively defined set have
a property by showing that the members specified by the basis have that
property and that the property is preserved by the induction. For example, we show
that all WFFs have an even number of parentheses by showing (i) that all ATOMs
have an even number of parentheses and (ii) that if x and y have an even number
of parentheses then so do (- x) and (x & y). This shows that the set of
WFFs with an even number of parentheses satisfies (B) and (I). The set of WFFs
with an even number of parentheses must then be identical to WFF, since – by
definition – WFF is the smallest set that satisfies (B) and (I). Ordinary proof
by mathematical induction shows that all the natural numbers, or all members of
some set with the order type of the natural numbers, share a property. Proof by
transfinite induction, a more general form of proof by mathematical induction,
shows that all members of some well-ordered set have a certain property. A set
is well-ordered if and only if every non-empty subset of it has a least
element. The natural numbers are well-ordered. It is a consequence of the axiom
of choice that every set can be well-ordered. Suppose that a set, X, is
well-ordered and that P is the subset of X whose mathematical constructivism
mathematical induction 541 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 541 members have
the property of interest. Suppose that it can be shown for any element x of X,
if all members of X less that x are in P, then so is x. Then it follows by
transfinite induction that all members of X have the property, that X % P. For
if X did not coincide with P, then the set of elements of x not in P would be
non-empty. Since X is well-ordered, this set would have a least element, x*.
But then by definition, all members of X less than x* are in P, and by
hypothesis x* must be in P after all.. -- mathematical intuitionism, a
twentieth-century movement that reconstructs mathematics in accordance with an
epistemological idealism and a Kantian metaphysics. Specifically, Brouwer, its
founder, held that there are no unexperienced truths and that mathematical
objects stem from the a priori form of those conscious acts which generate
empirical objects. Unlike Kant, however, Brouwer rejected the apriority of
space and based mathematics solely on a refined conception of the intuition of
time. Intuitionistic mathematics. According to Brouwer, the simplest
mathematical act is to distinguish between two diverse elements in the flow of
consciousness. By repeating and concatenating such acts we generate each of the
natural numbers, the standard arithmetical operations, and thus the rational
numbers with their operations as well. Unfortunately, these simple, terminating
processes cannot produce the convergent infinite sequences of rational numbers
that are needed to generate the continuum (the nondenumerable set of real
numbers, or of points on the line). Some “proto-intuitionists” admitted
infinite sequences whose elements are determined by finitely describable rules.
However, the set of all such algorithmic sequences is denumerable and thus can
scarcely generate the continuum. Brouwer’s first attempt to circumvent this –
by postulating a single intuition of an ever growing continuum – mirrored
Aristotle’s picture of the continuum as a dynamic whole composed of inseparable
parts. But this approach was incompatible with the set-theoretic framework that
Brouwer accepted, and by 1918 he had replaced it with the concept of an
infinite choice sequence. A choice sequence of rational numbers is, to be sure,
generated by a “rule,” but the rule may leave room for some degree of freedom
in choosing the successive elements. It might, e.g., simply require that the n
! 1st choice be a rational number that lies within 1/n of the nth choice. The
set of real numbers generated by such semideterminate sequences is demonstrably
non-denumerable. Following his epistemological beliefs, Brouwer admitted only
those properties of a choice sequence which are determined by its rule and by a
finite number of actual choices. He incorporated this restriction into his
version of set theory and obtained a series of results that conflict with
standard (classical) mathematics. Most famously, he proved that every function that
is fully defined over an interval of real numbers is uniformly continuous.
(Pictorially, the graph of the function has no gaps or jumps.) Interestingly,
one corollary of this theorem is that the set of real numbers cannot be divided
into mutually exclusive subsets, a property that rigorously recovers the
Aristotelian picture of the continuum. The clash with classical mathematics.
Unlike his disciple Arend Heyting, who considered intuitionistic and classical
mathematics as separate and therefore compatible subjects, Brouwer viewed them
as incompatible treatments of a single subject matter. He even occasionally
accused classical mathematics of inconsistency at the places where it differed
from intuitionism. This clash concerns the basic concept of what counts as a
mathematical object. Intuitionism allows, and classical mathematics rejects,
objects that may be indeterminate with respect to some of their properties.
Logic and language. Because he believed that mathematical constructions occur
in prelinguistic consciousness, Brouwer refused to limit mathematics by the
expressive capacity of any language. Logic, he claimed, merely codifies already
completed stages of mathematical reasoning. For instance, the principle of the
excluded middle stems from an “observational period” during which mankind
catalogued finite phenomena (with decidable properties); and he derided
classical mathematics for inappropriately applying this principle to infinitary
aspects of mathematics. Formalization. Brouwer’s views notwithstanding, in 1930
Heyting produced formal systems for intuitionistic logic (IL) and number
theory. These inspired further formalizations (even of the theory of choice
sequences) and a series of proof-theoretic, semantic, and algebraic studies
that related intuitionistic and classical formal systems. Stephen Kleene, e.g.,
interpreted IL and other intuitionistic formal systems using the classical
theory of recursive functions. Gödel, who showed that IL cannot coincide with
any finite many-valued logic, demonstrated its relation to the modal logic, S4;
and Kripke provided a formal semantics for IL similar to the possible worlds
semantics for S4. For a while the study of intuitionistic formal systems used
strongly classical methods, but since the 1970s intuitionistic methods have
been employed as well. Meaning. Heyting’s formalization reflected a theory of
meaning implicit in Brouwer’s epistemology and metaphysics, a theory that
replaces the traditional correspondence notion of truth with the notion of
constructive proof. More recently Michael Dummett has extended this to a
warranted assertability theory of meaning for areas of discourse outside of
mathematics. He has shown how assertabilism provides a strategy for combating
realism about such things as physical objects, mental objects, and the past. --
mathematical structuralism, the view that the subject of any branch of
mathematics is a structure or structures. The slogan is that mathematics is the
science of structure. Define a “natural number system” to be a countably
infinite collection of objects with one designated initial object and a
successor relation that satisfies the principle of mathematical induction.
Examples of natural number systems are the Arabic numerals and an infinite
sequence of distinct moments of time. According to structuralism, arithmetic is
about the form or structure common to natural number systems. Accordingly, a
natural number is something like an office in an organization or a place in a
pattern. Similarly, real analysis is about the real number structure, the form
common to complete ordered fields. The philosophical issues concerning
structuralism concern the nature of structures and their places. Since a
structure is a one-over-many of sorts, it is something like a universal.
Structuralists have defended analogues of some of the traditional positions on
universals, such as realism and nominalism. Philosophical mathematics --
metamathematics, the study and establishment, by restricted (and, in
particular, finitary) means, of the consistency or reliability of the various
systems of classical mathematics. The term was apparently introduced, with
pejorative overtones relating it to ‘metaphysics’, in the 1870s in connection
with the discussion of non-Euclidean geometries. It was introduced in the sense
given here, shorn of negative connotations, by Hilbert (see his “Neubegründung
der Mathematik. Erste Mitteilung,” 1922), who also referred to it as
Beweistheorie or proof theory. A few years later (specifically, in the 1930
papers “Über einige fundamentale Begriffe der Metamathematik” and “Fundamentale
Begriffe der Methodologie der deduktiven Wissenschaften. I”) Tarski fitted it
with a somewhat broader, less restricted sense: broader in that the scope of
its concerns was increased to include not only questions of consistency, but
also a host of other questions (e.g. questions of independence, completeness
and axiomatizability) pertaining to what Tarski referred to as the “methodology
of the deductive sciences” (which was his synonym for ‘metamathematics’); less
restricted in that the standards of proof were relaxed so as to permit other
than finitary – indeed, other than constructive – means. On this broader
conception of Tarski’s, formalized deductive disciplines form the field of
research of metamathematics roughly in the same sense in which spatial entities
form the field of research in geometry or animals that of zoology. Disciplines,
he said, are to be regarded as sets of sentences to be investigated from the
point of view of their consistency, axiomatizability (of various types),
completeness, and categoricity or degree of categoricity, etc. Eventually (see
the 1935 and 1936 papers “Grundzüge des Systemenkalkül, Erster Teil” and
“Grundzüge der Systemenkalkül, Zweiter Teil”) Tarski went on to include all
manner of semantical questions among the concerns of metamathematics, thus
diverging rather sharply from Hilbert’s original syntactical focus. Today, the
terms ‘metatheory’ and ‘metalogic’ are used to signify that broad set of
interests, embracing both syntactical and semantical studies of formal
languages and systems, which Tarski came to include under the general heading
of metamathematics. Those having to do specifically with semantics belong to
that more specialized branch of modern logic known as model theory, while those
dealing with purely syntactical questions belong to what has come to be known
as proof theory (where this latter is now, however, permitted to employ other
than finitary methods in the proofs of its theorems). Refs.: H. P. Grice,
“Philosophical geometry, Plato, and Walter Pater.” Refs.: H. P. Grice, “ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ; or, the school of Plato.”
philosophical
theology:
Grice: “At Oxford, pretentious as they are, they like ‘divinity’ – there are
doctors in divinity!” -- philosophy of religion, the subfield of philosophy
devoted to the study of religious phenomena. Although religions are typically
complex systems of theory and practice, including both myths and rituals,
philosophers tend to concentrate on evaluating religious truth claims. In the
major theistic traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the most important
of these claims concern the existence, nature, and activities of God. Such
traditions commonly understand God to be something like a person who is
disembodied, eternal, free, all-powerful, all-knowing, the creator and
sustainer of the universe, and the proper object of human obedience and
worship. One important question is whether this conception of the object of
human religious activity is coherent; another is whether such a being actually
exists. Philosophers of religion have sought rational answers to both
questions. The major theistic traditions draw a distinction between religious
truths that can be discovered and even known by unaided human reason and those
to which humans have access only through a special divine disclosure or
revelation. According to Aquinas, e.g., the existence of God and some things
about the divine nature can be proved by unaided human reason, but such
distinctively Christian doctrines as the Trinity and Incarnation cannot be thus
proved and are known to humans only because God has revealed them. Theists
disagree about how such divine disclosures occur; the main candidates for
vehicles of revelation include religious experience, the teachings of an
inspired religious leader, the sacred scriptures of a religious community, and
the traditions of a particular church. The religious doctrines Christian
traditions take to be the content of revelation are often described as matters
of faith. To be sure, such traditions typically affirm that faith goes beyond
mere doctrinal belief to include an attitude of profound trust in God. On most accounts,
however, faith involves doctrinal belief, and so there is a contrast within the
religious domain itself between faith and reason. One way to spell out the
contrast though not the only way is to imagine that the content of revelation
is divided into two parts. On the one hand, there are those doctrines, if any,
that can be known by human reason but are also part of revelation; the
existence of God is such a doctrine if it can be proved by human reason alone.
Such doctrines might be accepted by some people on the basis of rational
argument, while others, who lack rational proof, accept them on the authority
of revelation. On the other hand, there are those doctrines that cannot be
known by human reason and for which the authority of revelation is the sole
basis. They are objects of faith rather than reason and are often described as
mysteries of faith. Theists disagree about how such exclusive objects of faith
are related to reason. One prominent view is that, although they go beyond
reason, they are in harmony with it; another is that they are contrary to
reason. Those who urge that such doctrines should be accepted despite the fact
that, or even precisely because, they are contrary to reason are known as
fideists; the famous slogan credo quia absurdum ‘I believe because it is
absurd’ captures the flavor of extreme fideism. Many scholars regard
Kierkegaard as a fideist on account of his emphasis on the paradoxical nature
of the Christian doctrine that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate. Modern
philosophers of religion have, for the most part, confined their attention to
topics treatable without presupposing the truth of any particular tradition’s
claims about revelation and have left the exploration of mysteries of faith to
the theologians of various traditions. A great deal of philosophical work
clarifying the concept of God has been prompted by puzzles that suggest some
incoherence in the traditional concept. One kind of puzzle concerns the
coherence of individual claims about the nature of God. Consider the
traditional affirmation that God is allpowerful omnipotent. Reflection on this
doctrine raises a famous question: Can God make a stone so heavy that even God
cannot lift it? No matter how this is answered, it seems that there is at least
one thing that even God cannot do, i.e., make such a stone or lift such a
stone, and so it appears that even God cannot be all-powerful. Such puzzles
stimulate attempts by philosophers to analyze the concept of omnipotence in a
way that specifies more precisely the scope of the powers coherently
attributable to an omnipotent being. To the extent that such attempts succeed,
they foster a deeper understanding of the concept of God and, if God exists, of
the divine nature. Another sort of puzzle concerns the consistency of
attributing two or more properties to philosophy of religion philosophy of
religion 696 696 God. Consider the
claim that God is both immutable and omniscient. An immutable being is one that
cannot undergo internal change, and an omniscient being knows all truths, and
believes no falsehoods. If God is omniscient, it seems that God must first know
and hence believe that it is now Tuesday and not believe that it is now
Wednesday and later know and hence believe that it is now Wednesday and not
believe that it is now Tuesday. If so, God’s beliefs change, and since change
of belief is an internal change, God is not immutable. So it appears that God
is not immutable if God is omniscient. A resolution of this puzzle would
further contribute to enriching the philosophical understanding of the concept
of God. It is, of course, one thing to elaborate a coherent concept of God; it
is quite another to know, apart from revelation, that such a being actually
exists. A proof of the existence of God would yield such knowledge, and it is
the task of natural theology to evaluate arguments that purport to be such
proofs. As opposed to revealed theology, natural theology restricts the
assumptions fit to serve as premises in its arguments to things naturally
knowable by humans, i.e., knowable without special revelation from supernatural
sources. Many people have hoped that such natural religious knowledge could be
universally communicated and would justify a form of religious practice that
would appeal to all humankind because of its rationality. Such a religion would
be a natural religion. The history of natural theology has produced a
bewildering variety of arguments for the existence of God. The four main types
are these: ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, teleological
arguments, and moral arguments. The earliest and most famous version of the
ontological argument was set forth by Anselm of Canterbury in chapter 2 of his
Proslogion. It is a bold attempt to deduce the existence of God from the
concept of God: we understand God to be a perfect being, something than which
nothing greater can be conceived. Because we have this concept, God at least
exists in our minds as an object of the understanding. Either God exists in the
mind alone, or God exists both in the mind and as an extramental reality. But
if God existed in the mind alone, then we could conceive of a being greater
than that than which nothing greater can be conceived, namely, one that also
existed in extramental reality. Since the concept of a being greater than that
than which nothing greater can be conceived is incoherent, God cannot exist in
the mind alone. Hence God exists not only in the mind but also in extramental
reality. The most celebrated criticism of this form of the argument was Kant’s,
who claimed that existence is not a real predicate. For Kant, a real predicate
contributes to determining the content of a concept and so serves as a part of
its definition. But to say that something falling under a concept exists does
not add to the content of a concept; there is, Kant said, no difference in
conceptual content between a hundred real dollars and a hundred imaginary
dollars. Hence whether or not there exists something that corresponds to a
concept cannot be settled by definition. The existence of God cannot be deduced
from the concept of a perfect being because existence is not contained in the
concept or the definition of a perfect being. Contemporary philosophical
discussion has focused on a slightly different version of the ontological
argument. In chapter 3 of Proslogion Anselm suggested that something than which
nothing greater can be conceived cannot be conceived not to exist and so exists
necessarily. Following this lead, such philosophers as Charles Hartshorne,
Norman Malcolm, and Alvin Plantinga have contended that God cannot be a
contingent being who exists in some possible worlds but not in others. The
existence of a perfect being is either necessary, in which case God exists in
every possible world, or impossible, in which case God exists in no possible
worlds. On this view, if it is so much as possible that a perfect being exists,
God exists in every possible world and hence in the actual world. The crucial
premise in this form of the argument is the assumption that the existence of a
perfect being is possible; it is not obviously true and could be rejected
without irrationality. For this reason, Plantinga concedes that the argument
does not prove or establish its conclusion, but maintains that it does make it
rational to accept the existence of God. The key premises of various
cosmological arguments are statements of obvious facts of a general sort about
the world. Thus, the argument to a first cause begins with the observation that
there are now things undergoing change and things causing change. If something
is a cause of such change only if it is itself caused to change by something
else, then there is an infinitely long chain of causes of change. But, it is
alleged, there cannot be a causal chain of infinite length. Therefore there is
something that causes change, but is not caused to change by anything else,
i.e., a first cause. Many critics of this form of the argument deny its
assumption that there cannot be an infinite causal regress or chain of causes.
This argument also fails to show that there is only one first cause and does
not prove that a first cause must have such divine attributes as omniscience,
omnipotence, and perfect goodness. A version of the cosmological argument that
has attracted more attention from contemporary philosophers is the argument
from contingency to necessity. It starts with the observation that there are
contingent beings beings that could have
failed to exist. Since contingent beings do not exist of logical necessity, a
contingent being must be caused to exist by some other being, for otherwise
there would be no explanation of why it exists rather than not doing so. Either
the causal chain of contingent beings has a first member, a contingent being
not caused by another contingent being, or it is infinitely long. If, on the
one hand, the chain has a first member, then a necessary being exists and
causes it. After all, being contingent, the first member must have a cause, but
its cause cannot be another contingent being. Hence its cause has to be
non-contingent, i.e., a being that could not fail to exist and so is necessary.
If, on the other hand, the chain is infinitely long, then a necessary being
exists and causes the chain as a whole. This is because the chain as a whole,
being itself contingent, requires a cause that must be noncontingent since it
is not part of the chain. In either case, if there are contingent beings, a
necessary being exists. So, since contingent beings do exist, there is a
necessary being that causes their existence. Critics of this argument attack
its assumption that there must be an explanation for the existence of every
contingent being. Rejecting the principle that there is a sufficient reason for
the existence of each contingent thing, they argue that the existence of at
least some contingent beings is an inexplicable brute fact. And even if the
principle of sufficient reason is true, its truth is not obvious and so it
would not be irrational to deny it. Accordingly, William Rowe b.1 concludes
that this version of the cosmological argument does not prove the existence of
God, but he leaves open the question of whether it shows that theistic belief
is reasonable. The starting point of teleological arguments is the phenomenon
of goal-directedness in nature. Aquinas, e.g., begins with the claim that we
see that things which lack intelligence act for an end so as to achieve the
best result. Modern science has discredited this universal metaphysical
teleology, but many biological systems do seem to display remarkable
adaptations of means to ends. Thus, as William Paley 17431805 insisted, the eye
is adapted to seeing and its parts cooperate in complex ways to produce sight.
This suggests an analogy between such biological systems and human artifacts,
which are known to be products of intelligent design. Spelled out in mechanical
terms, the analogy grounds the claim that the world as a whole is like a vast
machine composed of many smaller machines. Machines are contrived by
intelligent human designers. Since like effects have like causes, the world as
a whole and many of its parts are therefore probably products of design by an
intelligence resembling the human but greater in proportion to the magnitude of
its effects. Because this form of the argument rests on an analogy, it is known
as the analogical argument for the existence of God; it is also known as the
design argument since it concludes the existence of an intelligent designer of
the world. Hume subjected the design argument to sustained criticism in his
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. If, as most scholars suppose, the
character Philo speaks for Hume, Hume does not actually reject the argument. He
does, however, think that it warrants only the very weak conclusion that the
cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to
human intelligence. As this way of putting it indicates, the argument does not
rule out polytheism; perhaps different minor deities designed lions and tigers.
Moreover, the analogy with human artificers suggests that the designer or designers
of the universe did not create it from nothing but merely imposed order on
already existing matter. And on account of the mixture of good and evil in the
universe, the argument does not show that the designer or designers are morally
admirable enough to deserve obedience or worship. Since the time of Hume, the
design argument has been further undermined by the emergence of Darwinian
explanations of biological adaptations in terms of natural selection that give
explanations of such adaptations in terms of intelligent design stiff
competition. Some moral arguments for the existence of God conform to the
pattern of inference to the best explanation. It has been argued that the
hypothesis that morality depends upon the will of God provides the best explanation
of the objectivity of moral obligations. Kant’s moral argument, which is
probably the best-known specimen of this type, takes a different tack.
According to Kant, the complete good consists of perfect virtue rewarded with
perfect happiness, and virtue deserves to be rewarded with proportional
happiness because it makes one worthy to be happy. If morality is to command
the allegiance of reason, the complete good must be a real possibility, and so
practical reason is entitled to postulate that the conditions necessary to
guarantee its possibility obtain. As far as anyone can tell, nature and its
laws do not furnish such a guarantee; in this world, apparently, the virtuous
often suffer while the vicious flourish. And even if the operation of natural
laws were to produce happiness in proportion to virtue, this would be merely
coincidental, and hence finite moral agents would not have been made happy just
because they had by their virtue made themselves worthy of happiness. So
practical reason is justified in postulating a supernatural agent with
sufficient goodness, knowledge, and power to ensure that finite agents receive
the happiness they deserve as a reward for their virtue, though theoretical
reason can know nothing of such a being. Critics of this argument have denied
that we must postulate a systematic connection between virtue and happiness in
order to have good reasons to be moral. Indeed, making such an assumption might
actually tempt one to cultivate virtue for the sake of securing happiness rather
than for its own sake. It seems therefore that none of these arguments by
itself conclusively proves the existence of God. However, some of them might
contribute to a cumulative case for the existence of God. According to Richard
Swinburne, cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments individually
increase the probability of God’s existence even though none of them makes it
more probable than not. But when other evidence such as that deriving from
providential occurrences and religious experiences is added to the balance,
Swinburne concludes that theism becomes more probable than its negation.
Whether or not he is right, it does appear to be entirely correct to judge the
rationality of theistic belief in the light of our total evidence. But there is
a case to be made against theism too. Philosophers of religion are interested
in arguments against the existence of God, and fairness does seem to require
admitting that our total evidence contains much that bears negatively on the
rationality of belief in God. The problem of evil is generally regarded as the
strongest objection to theism. Two kinds of evil can be distinguished. Moral
evil inheres in the wicked actions of moral agents and the bad consequences
they produce. An example is torturing the innocent. When evil actions are
considered theologically as offenses against God, they are regarded as sins.
Natural evils are bad consequences that apparently derive entirely from the
operations of impersonal natural forces, e.g. the human and animal suffering produced
by natural catastrophes such as earthquakes and epidemics. Both kinds of evil
raise the question of what reasons an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly
good being could have for permitting or allowing their existence. Theodicy is
the enterprise of trying to answer this question and thereby to justify the
ways of God to humans. It is, of course, possible to deny the presuppositions
of the question. Some thinkers have held that evil is unreal; others have
maintained that the deity is limited and so lacks the power or knowledge to
prevent the evils that occur. If one accepts the presuppositions of the
question, the most promising strategy for theodicy seems to be to claim that
each evil God permits is necessary for some greater good or to avoid some alternative
to it that is at least as bad if not worse. The strongest form of this doctrine
is the claim made by Leibniz that this is the best of all possible worlds. It
is unlikely that humans, with their cognitive limitations, could ever
understand all the details of the greater goods for which evils are necessary,
assuming that such goods exist; however, we can understand how some evils
contribute to achieving goods. According to the soul-making theodicy of John
Hick b.2, which is rooted in a tradition going back to Irenaeus, admirable
human qualities such as compassion could not exist except as responses to
suffering, and so evil plays a necessary part in the formation of moral
character. But this line of thought does not seem to provide a complete theodicy
because much animal suffering occurs unnoticed by humans and child abuse often
destroys rather than strengthens the moral character of its victims. Recent
philosophical discussion has often focused on the claim that the existence of
an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being is logically inconsistent
with the existence of evil or of a certain quantity of evil. This is the
logical problem of evil, and the most successful response to it has been the
free will defense. Unlike a theodicy, this defense does not speculate about
God’s reasons for permitting evil but merely argues that God’s existence is
consistent with the existence of evil. Its key idea is that moral good cannot
exist apart from libertarian free actions that are not causally determined. If
God aims to produce moral good, God must create free creatures upon whose
cooperation he must depend, and so divine omnipotence is limited by the freedom
God confers on creatures. Since such creatures are also free to do evil, it is
possible that God could not have created a world containing moral good but no
moral evil. Plantinga extends the defense from moral to natural evil by
suggesting that it is also possible that all natural evil is due to the free
actions of non-human persons such as Satan and his cohorts. Plantinga and
Swinburne have also addressed the probabilistic problem of evil, which is the
claim that the existence of evil disconfirms or renders improbable the
hypothesis that God exists. Both of them argue for the conclusion that this is
not the case. Finally, it is worth mentioning three other topics on which
contemporary philosophers of religion have worked to good effect. Important
studies of the meaning and use of religious language were stimulated by the
challenge of logical positivism’s claim that theological language is
cognitively meaningless. Defenses of such Christian doctrines as the Trinity,
Incarnation, and Atonement against various philosophical objections have
recently been offered by people committed to elaborating an explicitly
Christian philosophy. And a growing appreciation of religious pluralism has
both sharpened interest in questions about the cultural relativity of religious
rationality and begun to encourage progress toward a comparative philosophy of
religions. Such work helps to make philosophy of religion a lively and diverse
field of inquiry. Grice: “It is extremely important that in a dictionary entry
we keep the ‘philosophical’ – surely we are not lower ourselves to the level of
a theologian – if I am a theologican, I am a philosophical theologian. -- theodicy from Grecian theos, ‘God’, and dike,
‘justice’, a defense of the justice or goodness of God in the face of doubts or
objections arising from the phenomena of evil in the world ‘evil’ refers here
to bad states of affairs of any sort. Many types of theodicy have been proposed
and vigorously debated; only a few can be sketched here. 1 It has been argued
that evils are logically necessary for greater goods e.g., hardships for the
full exemplification of certain virtues, so that even an omnipotent being
roughly, one whose power has no logically contingent limits would have a
morally sufficient reason to cause or permit the evils in order to obtain the
goods. Leibniz, in his Theodicy 1710, proposed a particularly comprehensive
theodicy of this type. On his view, God had adequate reason to bring into
existence the actual world, despite all its evils, because it is the best of
all possible worlds, and all actual evils are essential ingredients in it, so
that omitting any of them would spoil the design of the whole. Aside from
issues about whether actual evils are in fact necessary for greater goods, this
approach faces the question whether it assumes wrongly that the end justifies
the means. 2 An important type of theodicy traces some or all evils to sinful
free actions of humans or other beings such as angels created by God.
Proponents of this approach assume that free action in creatures is of great
value and is logically incompatible with divine causal control of the creatures’
actions. It follows that God’s not intervening to prevent sins is necessary,
though the sins themselves are not, to the good of created freedom. This is
proposed as a morally sufficient reason for God’s not preventing them. It is a
major task for this type of theodicy to explain why God would permit those
evils that are not themselves free choices of creatures but are at most
consequences of such choices. 3 Another type of theodicy, both ancient and
currently influential among theologians, though less congenial to orthodox
traditions in the major theistic religions, proposes to defend God’s goodness
by abandoning the doctrine that God is omnipotent. On this view, God is
causally, rather than logically, unable to prevent many evils while pursuing sufficiently
great goods. A principal sponsor of this approach at present is the movement
known as process theology, inspired by Whitehead; it depends on a complex
metaphysical theory about the nature of causal relationships. 4 Other
theodicies focus more on outcomes than on origins. Some religious beliefs
suggest that God will turn out to have been very good to created persons by
virtue of gifts especially religious gifts, such as communion with God as
supreme Good that may be bestowed in a life Tetractys theodicy 910 910 after death or in religious experience
in the present life. This approach may be combined with one of the other types
of theodicy, or adopted by people who think that God’s reasons for permitting
evils are beyond our finding out. Then
there’s heologia naturalis Latin, ‘natural theology’, theology that uses the
methods of investigation and standards of rationality of any other area of
philosophy. Traditionally, the central problems of natural theology are proofs
for the existence of God and the problem of evil. In contrast with natural
theology, supernatural theology uses methods that are supposedly revealed by
God and accepts as fact beliefs that are similarly outside the realm of
rational acceptability. Relying on a prophet or a pope to settle factual
questions would be acceptable to supernatural, but not to natural, theology.
Nothing prevents a natural theologian from analyzing concepts that can be used
sanguinely by supernatural theologians, e.g., revelation, miracles,
infallibility, and the doctrine of the Trinity. Theologians often work in both
areas, as did, e.g., Anselm and Aquinas. For his brilliant critiques of
traditional theology, Hume deserves the title of “natural
anti-theologian.” Grice was totally
against “the philosophy of X” – never the philosophy of god – but philosophical
theology -- theological naturalism, the attempt to develop a naturalistic
conception of God. As a philosophical position, naturalism holds 1 that the
only reliable methods of knowing what there is are methods continuous with
those of the developed sciences, and 2 that the application of those methods
supports the view that the constituents of reality are either physical or are
causally dependent on physical things and their modifications. Since
supernaturalism affirms that God is purely spiritual and causally independent
of physical things, naturalists hold that either belief in God must be
abandoned as rationally unsupported or the concept of God must be reconstituted
consistently with naturalism. Earlier attempts to do the latter include the
work of Feuerbach and Comte. In twentieth-century naturalism the most significant attempts to
develop a naturalistic conception of God are due to Dewey and Henry Nelson
Wieman 45. In A Common Faith Dewey proposed a view of God as the unity of ideal
ends resulting from human imagination, ends arousing us to desire and action.
Supernaturalism, he argued, was the product of a primitive need to convert the
objects of desire, the greatest ideals, into an already existing reality. In
contrast to Dewey, Wieman insisted on viewing God as a process in the natural
world that leads to the best that humans can achieve if they but submit to its
working in their lives. In his earlier work he viewed God as a cosmic process
that not only works for human good but is what actually produced human life.
Later he identified God with creative interchange, a process that occurs only
within already existing human communities. While Wieman’s God is not a human
creation, as are Dewey’s ideal ends, it is difficult to see how love and
devotion are appropriate to a natural process that works as it does without
thought or purpose. Thus, while Dewey’s God ideal ends lacks creative power but
may well qualify as an object of love and devotion, Wieman’s God a process in
nature is capable of creative power but, while worthy of our care and
attention, does not seem to qualify as an object of love and devotion. Neither
view, then, satisfies the two fundamental features associated with the
traditional idea of God: possessing creative power and being an appropriate
object of supreme love and devotion. H.
P. Grice, “Why I never pursued a doctorate in divinity!” --. philosophical
theology: Grice: “My mother was High Church, but my father was a
non-conformist, and the fact that my resident paternal aunt was a converted
Roman certainly did not help!” -- Philosophical theology -- deism, the view
that true religion is natural religion. Some self-styled Christian deists
accepted revelation although they argued that its content is essentially the
same as natural religion. Most deists dismissed revealed religion as a fiction.
God wants his creatures to be happy and has ordained virtue as the means to it.
Since God’s benevolence is disinterested, he will ensure that the knowledge
needed for happiness is universally accessible. Salvation cannot, then, depend
on special revelation. True religion is an expression of a universal human
nature whose essence is reason and is the same in all times and places.
Religious traditions such as Christianity and Islam originate in credulity,
political tyranny, and priestcraft, which corrupt reason and overlay natural
religion with impurities. Deism is largely a seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century phenomenon and was most prominent in England. Among the more
important English deists were John Toland 16701722, Anthony Collins 16761729,
Herbert of Cherbury 15831648, Matthew Tindal 16571733, and Thomas Chubb
16791747. Continental deists included Voltaire and Reimarus. Thomas Paine and
Elihu Palmer 17641806 were prominent
deists. Orthodox writers in this period use ‘deism’ as a vague term of
abuse. By the late eighteenth century, the term came to mean belief in an
“absentee God” who creates the world, ordains its laws, and then leaves it to
its own devices. Philosophical theology -- de Maistre, Joseph-Marie, political
theorist, diplomat, and Roman Catholic exponent of theocracy. He was educated
by the Jesuits in Turin. His counterrevolutionary political philosophy aimed at
restoring the foundations of morality, the family, society, and the state in
postrevolutionary Europe. Against Enlightenment ideals, he reclaimed Thomism,
defended the hereditary and absolute monarchy, and championed ultramontanism
The Pope, 1821. Considerations on France 1796 argues that the decline of moral
and religious values was responsible for the “satanic” 1789 revolution. Hence
Christianity and Enlightenment philosophy were engaged in a fight to the death
that he claimed the church would eventually win. Deeply pessimistic about human
nature, the Essay on the Generating Principle of Political Constitutions 1810
traces the origin of authority in the human craving for order and discipline.
Saint Petersburg Evenings 1821 urges philosophy to surrender to religion and
reason to faith. Philosophical theology -- divine attributes, properties of
God; especially, those properties that are essential and unique to God. Among
properties traditionally taken to be attributes of God, omnipotence,
omniscience, and omnibenevolence are naturally taken to mean having,
respectively, power, knowledge, and moral goodness to the maximum degree. Here
God is understood as an eternal or everlasting being of immense power,
knowledge, and goodness, who is the creator and sustainer of the universe and
is worthy of human worship. Omnipotence is maximal power. Some philosophers,
notably Descartes, have thought that omnipotence requires the ability to do
absolutely anything, including the logically impossible. Most classical
theists, however, understood omnipotence as involving vast powers, while
nevertheless being subject to a range of limitations of ability, including the
inability to do what is logically impossible, the inability to change the past
or to do things incompatible with what has happened, and the inability to do
things that cannot be done by a being who has other divine attributes, e.g., to
sin or to lie. Omniscience is unlimited knowledge. According to the most
straightforward account, omniscience is knowledge of all true propositions. But
there may be reasons for recognizing a limitation on the class of true
propositions that a being must know in order to be omniscient. For example, if
there are true propositions about the future, omniscience would then include
foreknowledge. But some philosophers have thought that foreknowledge of human
actions is incompatible with those actions being free. This has led some to
deny that there are truths about the future and others to deny that such truths
are knowable. In the latter case, omniscience might be taken to be knowledge of
all knowable truths. Or if God is eternal and if there are certain tensed or
temporally indexical propositions that can be known only by someone who is in
time, then omniscience presumably does not extend to such propositions. It is a
matter of controversy whether omniscience includes middle knowledge, i.e.,
knowledge of what an agent would do if other, counterfactual, conditions were
to obtain. Since recent critics of middle knowledge in contrast to Báñez and
other sixteenth-century Dominican opponents of Molina usually deny that the
relevant counterfactual conditionals alleged to be the object of such knowledge
are true, denying the possibility of middle knowledge need not restrict the
class of true propositions a being must know in order to be omniscient.
Finally, although the concept of omniscience might not itself constrain how an
omniscient being acquires its knowledge, it is usually held that God’s
knowledge is neither inferential i.e., derived from premises or evidence nor
dependent upon causal processes. Omnibenevolenceis, literally, complete desire
for good; less strictly, perfect moral goodness. Traditionally it has been
thought that God does not merely happen to be good but that he must be so and
that he is unable to do what is wrong. According to the former claim God is
essentially good; according to the latter he is impeccable. It is a matter of
controversy whether God is perfectly good in virtue of complying with an
external moral standard or whether he himself sets the standard for goodness.
Divine sovereignty is God’s rule over all of creation. According to this
doctrine God did not merely create the world and then let it run on its own; he
continues to govern it in complete detail according to his good plan.
Sovereignty is thus related to divine providence. A difficult question is how
to reconcile a robust view of God’s control of the world with libertarian free
will. Aseity or perseity is complete independence. In a straightforward sense,
God is not dependent on anyone or anything for his existence. According to
stronger interpretation of aseity, God is completely independent of everything
else, including his properties. This view supports a doctrine of divine
simplicity according to which God is not distinct from his properties.
Simplicity is the property of having no parts of any kind. According to the
doctrine of divine simplicity, God not only has no spatial or temporal parts,
but there is no distinction between God and his essence, between his various
attributes in him omniscience and omnipotence, e.g., are identical, and between
God and his attributes. Attributing simplicity to God was standard in medieval
theology, but the doctrine has seemed to many contemporary philosophers to be
baffling, if not incoherent. divine command
ethics, an ethical theory according to which part or all of morality divine
attributes divine command ethics 240
240 depends upon the will of God as promulgated by divine commands. This
theory has an important place in the history of Christian ethics. Divine
command theories are prominent in the Franciscan ethics developed by John Duns
Scotus and William Ockham; they are also endorsed by disciples of Ockham such
as d’Ailly, Gerson, and Gabriel Biel; both Luther and Calvin adopt divine
command ethics; and in modern British thought, important divine command
theorists include Locke, Berkeley, and Paley. Divine command theories are
typically offered as accounts of the deontological part of morality, which
consists of moral requirements obligation, permissions rightness, and
prohibitions wrongness. On a divine command conception, actions forbidden by
God are morally wrong because they are thus forbidden, actions not forbidden by
God are morally right because they are not thus forbidden, and actions commanded
by God are morally obligatory because they are thus commanded. Many Christians
find divine command ethics attractive because the ethics of love advocated in
the Gospels makes love the subject of a command. Matthew 22:3740 records Jesus
as saying that we are commanded to love God and the neighbor. According to
Kierkegaard, there are two reasons to suppose that Christian love of neighbor
must be an obligation imposed by divine command: first, only an obligatory love
can be sufficiently extensive to embrace everyone, even one’s enemies; second,
only an obligatory love can be invulnerable to changes in its objects, a love
that alters not when it alteration finds. The chief objection to the theory is
that dependence on divine commands would make morality unacceptably arbitrary.
According to divine command ethics, murder would not be wrong if God did not
exist or existed but failed to forbid it. Perhaps the strongest reply to this
objection appeals to the doctrines of God’s necessary existence and essential
goodness. God could not fail to exist and be good, and so God could not fail to
forbid murder. In short, divine commands are not arbitrary fiats. divine foreknowledge, God’s knowledge of the
future. It appears to be a straightforward consequence of God’s omniscience
that he has knowledge of the future, for presumably omniscience includes
knowledge of all truths and there are truths about the future. Moreover, divine
foreknowledge seems to be required by orthodox religious commitment to divine
prophecy and divine providence. In the former case, God could not reliably
reveal what will happen if he does know what will happen. And in the latter
case, it is difficult to see how God could have a plan for what happens without
knowing what that will be. A problem arises, however, in that it has seemed to
many that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with human free action. Some
philosophers notably Boethius have reasoned as follows: If God knows that a
person will do a certain action, then the person must perform that action, but
if a person must perform an action, the person does not perform the action
freely. So if God knows that a person will perform an action, the person does
not perform the action freely. This reason for thinking that divine
foreknowledge is incompatible with human free action commits a simple modal
fallacy. What must be the case is the conditional that if God knows that a
person will perform an action then the person will in fact perform the action.
But what is required to derive the conclusion is the implausible claim that
from the assumption that God knows that a person will perform an action it
follows not simply that the person will perform the action but that the person
must perform it. Perhaps other attempts to demonstrate the incompatibility,
however, are not as easily dismissed. One response to the apparent dilemma is
to say that there really are no such truths about the future, either none at
all or none about events, like future free actions, that are not causally
necessitated by present conditions. Another response is to concede that there
are truths about the future but to deny that truths about future free actions
are knowable. In this case omniscience may be understood as knowledge, not of
all truths, but of all knowable truths. A third, and historically important,
response is to hold that God is eternal and that from his perspective
everything is present and thus not future. These responses implicitly agree
that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom, but they provide different
accounts of omniscience according to which it does not include foreknowledge,
or, at any rate, not foreknowledge of future free actions. Philosophical theology -- double truth, the
theory that a thing can be true in philosophy or according to reason while its
opposite is true in theology or according to faith. It serves as a response to
conflicts between reason and faith. For example, on one interpretation of
Aristotle, there is only one rational human soul, whereas, according to
Christian theology, there are many rational human souls. The theory of double
truth was attributed to Averroes and to Latin Averroists such as Siger of
Brabant and Boethius of Dacia by their opponents, but it is doubtful that they
actually held it. Averroes seems to have held that a single truth is
scientifically formulated in philosophy and allegorically expressed in
theology. Latin Averroists apparently thought that philosophy concerns what
would have been true by natural necessity absent special divine intervention,
and theology deals with what is actually true by virtue of such intervention.
On this view, there would have been only one rational human soul if God had not
miraculously intervened to multiply what by nature could not be multiplied. No
one clearly endorsed the view that rational human souls are both only one and
also many in number. H. P. Grice, “Must
the Articles be 39 – and if we add one more, what might it say?.”
Implicatuum – implicatura, implicans,
implicatum, implicandum – implicans, what implies, implicatum, what is implied,
implicaturum, what is to imply, implicandum, what is to be implied, implicatura, the act of the implying.
Scientism: One of the twelve labours of H.
P. Grice --. Grice: “When Cicero coined ‘scientia’ out of scire he didn’t know what
he was doing!” -- philosophy of science, the branch of philosophy that is
centered on a critical examination of the sciences: their methods and their
results. One branch of the philosophy of science, methodology, is closely
related to the theory of knowledge. It explores the methods by which science
arrives at its posited truths concerning the world and critically explores
alleged rationales for these methods. Issues concerning the sense in which
theories are accepted in science, the nature of the confirmation relation
between evidence and hypothesis, the degree to which scientific claims can be
falsified by observational data, and the like, are the concern of methodology.
Other branches of the philosophy of science are concerned with the meaning and content
of the posited scientific results and are closely related to metaphysics and
the philosophy of language. Typical problems examined are the nature of
scientific laws, the cognitive content of scientific theories referring to
unobservables, and the structure of scientific explanations. Finally,
philosophy of science explores specific foundational questions arising out of
the specific results of the sciences. Typical questions explored might be
metaphysical presuppositions of space-time theories, the role of probability in
statistical physics, the interpretation of measurement in quantum theory, the
structure of explanations in evolutionary biology, and the like. Concepts of
the credibility of hypotheses. Some crucial concepts that arise when issues of the
credibility of scientific hypotheses are in question are the following:
Inductivism is the view that hypotheses can receive evidential support from
their predictive success with respect to particular cases falling under them.
If one takes the principle of inductive inference to be that the future will be
like the past, one is subject to the skeptical objection that this rule is
empty of content, and even self-contradictory, if any kind of “similarity” of
cases is permitted. To restore content and consistency to the rule, and for
other methodological purposes as well, it is frequently alleged that only
natural kinds, a delimited set of “genuine” properties, should be allowed in
the formulation of scientific hypotheses. The view that theories are first arrived
at as creative hypotheses of the scientist’s imagination and only then
confronted, for justificatory purposes, with the observational predictions
deduced from them, is called the hypotheticodeductive model of science. This
model is contrasted with the view that the very discovery of hypotheses is
somehow “generated” out of accumulated observational data. The view that
hypotheses are confirmed to the degree that they provide the “best explanatory
account” of the data is often called abduction and sometimes called inference
to the best explanation. The alleged relation that evidence bears to
hypothesis, warranting its truth but not, generally, guaranteeing that truth,
is called confirmation. Methodological accounts such as inductivism countenance
such evidential warrant, frequently speaking of evidence as making a hypothesis
probable but not establishing it with certainty. Probability in the
confirmational context is supposed to be a relationship holding between
propositions that is quantitative and is described by the formal theory of
probability. It is supposed to measure the “degree of support” that one
proposition gives to another, e.g. the degree of support evidential statements
give to a hypothesis allegedly supported by them. Scientific methodologists often
claim that science is characterized by convergence. This is the claim that
scientific theories in their historical order are converging to an ultimate,
final, and ideal theory. Sometimes this final theory is said to be true because
it corresponds to the “real world,” as in realist accounts of convergence. In
pragmatist versions this ultimate theory is the defining standard of truth. It
is sometimes alleged that one ground for choosing the most plausible theory,
over and above conformity of the theory with the observational data, is the
simplicity of the theory. Many versions of this thesis exist, some emphasizing
formal elements of the theory and others, e.g., emphasizing paucity of
ontological commitment by the theory as the measure of simplicity. It is
sometimes alleged that in choosing which theory to believe, the scientific
community opts for theories compatible with the data that make minimal changes
in scientific belief necessary from those demanded by previously held theory.
The believer in methodological conservatism may also try to defend such
epistemic conservatism as normatively rational. An experiment that can
decisively show a scientific hypothesis to be false is called a crucial
experiment for the hypothesis. It is a thesis of many philosophers that for
hypotheses that function in theories and can only confront observational data
when conjoined with other theoretical hypotheses, no absolutely decisive
crucial experiment can exist. Concepts of the structure of hypotheses. Here are
some of the essential concepts encountered when it is the structure of
scientific hypotheses that is being explored: In its explanatory account of the
world, science posits novel entities and properties. Frequently these are
alleged to be not accessible to direct observation. A theory is a set of
hypotheses positing such entities and properties. Some philosophers of science
divide the logical consequences of a theory into those referring only to
observable things and features and those referring to the unobservables as
well. Various reductionist, eliminationist, and instrumentalist approaches to
theory agree that the full cognitive content of a theory is exhausted by its
observational consequences reported by its observation sentences, a claim
denied by those who espouse realist accounts of theories. The view that the
parts of a theory that do not directly relate observational consequences ought
not to be taken as genuinely referential at all, but, rather, as a “mere
linguistic instrument” allowing one to derive observational results from
observationally specifiable posits, is called instrumentalism. From this point
of view terms putatively referring to unobservables fail to have genuine
reference and individual non-observational sentences containing such terms are
not individually genuinely true or false. Verificationism is the general name
for the doctrine that, in one way or another, the semantic content of an
assertion is exhausted by the conditions that count as warranting the
acceptance or rejection of the assertion. There are many versions of
verificationist doctrines that try to do justice both to the empiricist claim
that the content of an assertion is its totality of empirical consequences and
also to a wide variety of anti-reductionist intuitions about meaning. The
doctrine that theoretical sentences must be strictly translatable into
sentences expressed solely in observational terms in order that the theoretical
assertions have genuine cognitive content is sometimes called operationalism.
The “operation” by which a magnitude is determined to have a specified value,
characterized observationally, is taken to give the very meaning of attributing
that magnitude to an object. The doctrine that the meanings of terms in
theories are fixed by the role the terms play in the theory as a whole is often
called semantic holism. According to the semantic holist, definitions of
theoretical terms by appeal to observational terms cannot be given, but all of
the theoretical terms have their meaning given “as a group” by the structure of
the theory as a whole. A related doctrine in confirmation theory is that
confirmation accrues to whole theories, and not to their individual assertions
one at a time. This is confirmational holism. To see another conception of
cognitive content, conjoin all the sentences of a theory together. Then replace
each theoretical term in the sentence so obtained with a predicate variable and
existentially quantify over all the predicate variables so introduced. This is
the Ramsey sentence for a finitely axiomatized theory. This sentence has the
same logical consequences framable in the observational vocabulary alone as did
the original theory. It is often claimed that the Ramsey sentence for a theory
exhausts the cognitive content of the theory. The Ramsey sentence is supposed
to “define” the meaning of the theoretical terms of the original theory as well
as have empirical consequences; yet by asserting the existence of the
theoretical properties, it is sometimes alleged to remain a realist construal
of the theory. The latter claim is made doubtful, however, by the existence of
“merely representational” interpretations of the Ramsey sentence. Theories are
often said to be so related that one theory is reducible to another. The study
of the relation theories bear to one another in this context is said to be the
study of intertheoretic reduction. Such reductive claims can have philosophical
origins, as in the alleged reduction of material objects to sense-data or of
spatiotemporal relations to causal relations, or they can be scientific
discoveries, as in the reduction of the theory of light waves to the theory of
electromagnetic radiation. Numerous “models” of the reductive relation exist,
appropriate for distinct kinds and cases of reduction. The term scientific realism
has many and varied uses. Among other things that have been asserted by those
who describe themselves as scientific realists are the claims that “mature”
scientific theories typically refer to real features of the world, that the
history of past falsifications of accepted scientific theories does not provide
good reason for persistent skepticism as to the truth claims of contemporary
theories, and that the terms of theories that putatively refer to unobservables
ought to be taken at their referential face value and not reinterpreted in some
instrumentalistic manner. Internal realism denies irrealist claims founded on
the past falsification of accepted theories. Internal realists are, however,
skeptical of “metaphysical” claims of “correspondence of true theories to the
real world” or of any notion of truth that can be construed in radically
non-epistemic terms. While theories may converge to some ultimate “true”
theory, the notion of truth here must be understood in some version of a
Peircian idea of truth as “ultimate warranted assertability.” The claim that
any theory that makes reference to posited unobservable features of the world
in its explanatory apparatus will always encounter rival theories incompatible
with the original theory but equally compatible with all possible observational
data that might be taken as confirmatory of the original theory is the claim of
the underdetermination thesis. A generalization taken to have “lawlike force”
is called a law of nature. Some suggested criteria for generalizations having
lawlike force are the ability of the generalization to back up the truth of
claims expressed as counterfactual conditions; the ability of the
generalization to be confirmed inductively on the basis of evidence that is
only a proper subset of all the particular instances falling under the
generality; and the generalization having an appropriate place in the simple,
systematic hierarchy of generalizations important for fundamental scientific
theories of the world. The application of a scientific law to a given actual
situation is usually hedged with the proviso that for the law’s predictions to
hold, “all other, unspecified, features of the situation are normal.” Such a
qualifying clause is called a ceteris paribus clause. Such “everything else
being normal” claims cannot usually be “filled out,” revealing important
problems concerning the “open texture” of scientific claims. The claim that the
full specification of the state of the world at one time is sufficient, along
with the laws of nature, to fix the full state of the world at any other time,
is the claim of determinism. This is not to be confused with claims of total
predictability, since even if determinism were true the full state of the world
at a time might be, in principle, unavailable for knowledge. Concepts of the
foundations of physical theories. Here, finally, are a few concepts that are
crucial in discussing the foundations of physical theories, in particular
theories of space and time and quantum theory: The doctrine that space and time
must be thought of as a family of spatial and temporal relations holding among
the material constituents of the universe is called relationism. Relationists
deny that “space itself” should be considered an additional constituent of the
world over and above the world’s material contents. The doctrine that “space
itself” must be posited as an additional constituent of the world over and
above ordinary material things of the world is substantivalism. Mach’s
principle is the demand that all physical phenomena, including the existence of
inertial forces used by Newton to argue for a substantivalist position, be
explainable in purely relationist terms. Mach speculated that Newton’s
explanation for the forces in terms of acceleration with respect to “space
itself” could be replaced with an explanation resorting to the acceleration of
the test object with respect to the remaining matter of the universe the “fixed
stars”. In quantum theory the claim that certain “conjugate” quantities, such
as position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously “determined” to arbitrary
degrees of accuracy is the uncertainty principle. The issue of whether such a
lack of simultaneous exact “determination” is merely a limitation on our
knowledge of the system or is, instead, a limitation on the system’s having
simultaneous exact values of the conjugate quantities, is a fundamental one in
the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem is a mathematical
result aimed at showing that the explanation of the statistical correlations
that hold between causally noninteractive systems cannot always rely on the
positing that when the systems did causally interact in the past independent
values were fixed for some feature of each of the two systems that determined
their future observational behavior. The existence of such “local hidden
variables” would contradict the correlational predictions of quantum mechanics.
The result shows that quantum mechanics has a profoundly “non-local” nature.
Can quantum probabilities and correlations be obtained as averages over
variables at some deeper level than those specifying the quantum state of a
system? If such quantities exist they are called hidden variables. Many
different types of hidden variables have been proposed: deterministic, stochastic,
local, non-local, etc. A number of proofs exist to the effect that positing
certain types of hidden variables would force probabilistic results at the
quantum level that contradict the predictions of quantum theory.
Complementarity was the term used by Niels Bohr to describe what he took to be
a fundamental structure of the world revealed by quantum theory. Sometimes it
is used to indicate the fact that magnitudes occur in conjugate pairs subject
to the uncertainty relations. Sometimes it is used more broadly to describe
such aspects as the ability to encompass some phenomena in a wave picture of
the world and other phenomena in a particle picture, but implying that no one
picture will do justice to all the experimental results. The orthodox
formalization of quantum theory posits two distinct ways in which the quantum
state can evolve. When the system is “unobserved,” the state evolves according
to the deterministic Schrödinger equation. When “measured,” however, the system
suffers a discontinuous “collapse of the wave packet” into a new quantum state
determined by the outcome of the measurement process. Understanding how to
reconcile the measurement process with the laws of dynamic evolution of the
system is the measurement problem. Conservation and symmetry. A number of
important physical principles stipulate that some physical quantity is
conserved, i.e. that the quantity of it remains invariant over time. Early
conservation principles were those of matter mass, of energy, and of momentum.
These became assimilated together in the relativistic principle of the
conservation of momentum-energy. Other conservation laws such as the
conservation of baryon number arose in the theory of elementary particles. A
symmetry in physical theory expressed the invariance of some structural feature
of the world under some transformation. Examples are translation and rotation
invariance in space and the invariance under transformation from one uniformly
moving reference frame to another. Such symmetries express the fact that
systems related by symmetry transformations behave alike in their physical
evolution. Some symmetries are connected with space-time, such as those noted
above, whereas others such as the symmetry of electromagnetism under socalled
gauge transformations are not. A very important result of the mathematician
Emma Noether shows that each conservation law is derivable from the existence
of an associated underlying symmetry. Chaos theory and chaotic systems. In the
history of the scientific study of deterministic systems, the paradigm of
explanation has been the prediction of the future states of a system from a
specification of its initial state. In order for such a prediction to be
useful, however, nearby initial states must lead to future states that are close
to one another. This is now known to hold only in exceptional cases. In general
deterministic systems are chaotic systems, i.e., even initial states very close
to one another will lead in short intervals of time to future states that
diverge quickly from one another. Chaos theory has been developed to provide a
wide range of concepts useful for describing the structure of the dynamics of
such chaotic systems. The theory studies the features of a system that will
determine if its evolution is chaotic or non-chaotic and provides the necessary
descriptive categories for characterizing types of chaotic motion. Randomness.
The intuitive distinction between a sequence that is random and one that is
orderly plays a role in the foundations of probability theory and in the
scientific study of dynamical systems. But what is a random sequence?
Subjectivist definitions of randomness focus on the inability of an agent to
determine, on the basis of his knowledge, the future occurrences in the
sequence. Objectivist definitions of randomness seek to characterize it without
reference to the knowledge of any agent. Some approaches to defining objective
randomness are those that require probability to be the same in the original
sequence and in subsequences “mechanically” selectable from it, and those that
define a sequence as random if it passes every “effectively constructible”
statistical test for randomness. Another important attempt to characterize
objective randomness compares the length of a sequence to the length of a computer
program used to generate the sequence. The basic idea is that a sequence is
random if the computer programs needed to generate the sequence are as long as
the sequence itself. H. P. Grice, “My
labour with Scientism.”
scire – scitum -- scientism: Grice: “Winch
is not only happy with natural science that he wants a social science –
linguistics included!” -- philosophy of the social sciences, the study of the
logic and methods of the social sciences. Central questions include: What are
the criteria of a good social explanation? How if at all are the social
sciences distinct from the natural sciences? Is there a distinctive method for
social research? Through what empirical procedures are social science
assertions to be evaluated? Are there irreducible social laws? Are there causal
relations among social phenomena? Do social facts and regularities require some
form of reduction to facts about individuals? What is the role of theory in
social explanation? The philosophy of social science aims to provide an
interpretation of the social sciences that answers these questions. The
philosophy of social science, like that of natural science, has both a
descriptive and a prescriptive side. On the one hand, the field is about the
social sciences the explanations,
methods, empirical arguments, theories, hypotheses, etc., that actually occur
in the social science literature. This means that the philosopher needs
extensive knowledge of several areas of social science research in order to be
able to formulate an analysis of the social sciences that corresponds
appropriately to scientists’ practice. On the other hand, the field is
epistemic: it is concerned with the idea that scientific theories and
hypotheses are put forward as true or probable, and are justified on rational
grounds empirical and theoretical. The philosopher aims to provide a critical
evaluation of existing social science methods and practices insofar as these
methods are found to be less truth-enhancing than they might be. These two
aspects of the philosophical enterprise suggest that philosophy of social
science should be construed as a rational reconstruction of existing social
science practice a reconstruction guided
by existing practice but extending beyond that practice by identifying faulty
assumptions, forms of reasoning, and explanatory frameworks. Philosophers have
disagreed over the relation between the social and natural sciences. One
position is naturalism, according to which the methods of the social sciences
should correspond closely to those of the natural sciences. This position is
closely related to physicalism, the doctrine that all higher-level phenomena
and regularities including social
phenomena are ultimately reducible to
physical entities and the laws that govern them. On the other side is the view
that the social sciences are inherently distinct from the natural sciences.
This perspective holds that social phenomena are metaphysically distinguishable
from natural phenomena because they are intentional they depend on the meaningful actions of
individuals. On this view, natural phenomena admit of causal explanation,
whereas social phenomena require intentional explanation. The anti-naturalist
position also maintains that there is a corresponding difference between the
methods appropriate to natural and social science. Advocates of the Verstehen
method hold that there is a method of intuitive interpretation of human action
that is radically distinct from methods of inquiry in the natural sciences. One
important school within the philosophy of social science takes its origin in
this fact of the meaningfulness of human action. Interpretive sociology
maintains that the goal of social inquiry is to provide interpretations of
human conduct within the context of culturally specific meaningful
arrangements. This approach draws an analogy between literary texts and social
phenomena: both are complex systems of meaningful elements, and the goal of the
interpreter is to provide an interpretation of the elements that makes sense of
them. In this respect social science involves a hermeneutic inquiry: it
requires that the interpreter should tease out the meanings underlying a
particular complex of social behavior, much as a literary critic pieces
together an interpretation of the meaning of a complex philosophy of the social
sciences philosophy of the social sciences 704 704 literary text. An example of this
approach is Weber’s treatment of the relation between capitalism and the
Protestant ethic. Weber attempts to identify the elements of western European
culture that shaped human action in this environment in such a way as to
produce capitalism. On this account, both Calvinism and capitalism are
historically specific complexes of values and meanings, and we can better
understand the emergence of capitalism by seeing how it corresponds to the
meaningful structures of Calvinism. Interpretive sociologists often take the
meaningfulness of social phenomena to imply that social phenomena do not admit
of causal explanation. However, it is possible to accept the idea that social
phenomena derive from the purposive actions of individuals without
relinquishing the goal of providing causal explanations of social phenomena.
For it is necessary to distinguish between the general idea of a causal
relation between two events or conditions and the more specific idea of “causal
determination through strict laws of nature.” It is true that social phenomena
rarely derive from strict laws of nature; wars do not result from antecedent
political tensions in the way that earthquakes result from antecedent
conditions in plate tectonics. However, since non-deterministic causal
relations can derive from the choices of individual persons, it is evident that
social phenomena admit of causal explanation, and in fact much social
explanation depends on asserting causal relations between social events and
processes e.g., the claim that the
administrative competence of the state is a crucial causal factor in
determining the success or failure of a revolutionary movement. A central goal
of causal explanation is to discover the conditions existing prior to the event
that, given the law-governed regularities among phenomena of this sort, were
sufficient to produce this event. To say that C is a cause of E is to assert
that the occurrence of C, in the context of a field of social processes and
mechanisms F, brought about E or increased the likelihood of the occurrence of
E. Central to causal arguments in the social sciences is the idea of a causal
mechanism a series of events or actions
leading from cause to effect. Suppose it is held that the extension of a
trolley line from the central city to the periphery caused the deterioration of
public schools in the central city. In order to make out such a claim it is
necessary to provide some account of the social and political mechanisms that
join the antecedent condition to the consequent. An important variety of causal
explanation in social science is materialist explanation. This type of
explanation attempts to explain a social feature in terms of features of the
material environment in the context of which the social phenomenon occurs.
Features of the environment that often appear in materialist explanations
include topography and climate; thus it is sometimes maintained that banditry
thrives in remote regions because the rugged terrain makes it more difficult
for the state to repress bandits. But materialist explanations may also refer
to the material needs of society e.g.,
the need to produce food and other consumption goods to support the population.
Thus Marx holds that it is the development of the “productive forces”
technology that drives the development of property relations and political
systems. In each case the materialist explanation must refer to the fact of
human agency the fact that human beings
are capable of making deliberative choices on the basis of their wants and
beliefs in order to carry out the
explanation; in the banditry example, the explanation depends on the fact that
bandits are prudent enough to realize that their prospects for survival are
better in the periphery than in the core. So materialist explanations too
accept the point that social phenomena depend on the purposive actions of
individuals. A central issue in the philosophy of social science involves the relation
between social regularities and facts about individuals. Methodological
individualism is the position that asserts the primacy of facts about
individuals over facts about social entities. This doctrine takes three forms:
a claim about social entities, a claim about social concepts, and a claim about
social regularities. The first version maintains that social entities are
reducible to ensembles of individuals as
an insurance company might be reduced to the ensemble of employees,
supervisors, managers, and owners whose actions constitute the company.
Likewise, it is sometimes held that social concepts must be reducible to
concepts involving only individuals
e.g., the concept of a social class might be defined in terms of
concepts pertaining only to individuals and their behavior. Finally, it is
sometimes held that social regularities must be derivable from regularities of
individual behavior. There are several positions opposed to methodological
individualism. At the extreme there is methodological holism the doctrine that social entities, facts, and
laws are autonomous and irreducible; for example, that social structures such
as the state have dynamic properties independent of the beliefs and purposes of
the particular persons who occupy positions within the structure. A third
position intermediate between these two holds that every social explanation
requires microfoundations an account of
the circumstances at the individual level that led individuals to behave in
such ways as to bring about the observed social regularities. If we observe
that an industrial strike is successful over an extended period of time, it is
not sufficient to explain this circumstance by referring to the common interest
that members of the union have in winning their demands. Rather, we need
information about the circumstances of the individual union member that induce
him or her to contribute to this public good. The microfoundations dictum does
not require, however, that social explanations be couched in non-social concepts;
instead, the circumstances of individual agents may be characterized in social
terms. Central to most theories of explanation is the idea that explanation
depends on general laws governing the phenomena in question. Thus the discovery
of the laws of electrodynamics permitted the explanation of a variety of
electromagnetic phenomena. But social phenomena derive from the actions of
purposive men and women; so what kinds of regularities are available on the
basis of which to provide social explanations? A fruitful research framework in
the social sciences is the idea that men and women are rational, so it is
possible to explain their behavior as the outcome of a deliberation about means
of achieving their individual ends. This fact in turn gives rise to a set of
regularities about individual behavior that may be used as a ground for social
explanation. We may explain some complex social phenomenon as the aggregate
result of the actions of a large number of individual agents with a
hypothesized set of goals within a structured environment of choice. Social
scientists have often been inclined to offer functional explanations of social
phenomena. A functional explanation of a social feature is one that explains
the presence and persistence of the feature in terms of the beneficial
consequences the feature has for the ongoing working of the social system as a
whole. It might be held, e.g., that sports clubs in working-class Britain exist
because they give working-class people a way of expending energy that would otherwise
go into struggles against an exploitative system, thus undermining social
stability. Sports clubs are explained, then, in terms of their contribution to
social stability. This type of explanation is based on an analogy between
biology and sociology. Biologists explain species traits in terms of their
contribution to reproductive fitness, and sociologists sometimes explain social
traits in terms of their contribution to “social” fitness. However, the analogy
is misleading, because there is a general mechanism establishing functionality
in the biological realm that is not present in the social realm. This is the
mechanism of natural selection, through which a species arrives at a set of
traits that are locally optimal. There is no analogous process at work in the
social realm, however; so it is groundless to suppose that social traits exist
because of their beneficial consequences for the good of society as a whole or
important subsystems within society. So functional explanations of social
phenomena must be buttressed by specific accounts of the causal processes that
underlie the postulated functional relationships. Grice: “It’s a good thing I
studied at Oxford: at other places you HAVE to learn a non-Indo-Euroopean
lingo!” –
.
physicalism: One of the twelve labours of
H. P. Grice. (“As different from Naturalism, you know.”) - Churchland, p. s.,
philosopher and advocate of neurophilosophy. She received her B.Phil. from
Oxford in 9 and held positions at the Unichün-tzu Churchland, Patricia Smith
140 140 versity of Manitoba and the
Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, settling at the
ofCalifornia,SanDiego, with appointments in philosophy and the Institute for
Neural Computation. Skeptical of philosophy’s a priori specification of mental
categories and dissatisfied with computational psychology’s purely top-down
approach to their function, Churchland began studying the brain at the of Manitoba medical school. The result was a
unique merger of science and philosophy, a “neurophilosophy” that challenged
the prevailing methodology of mind. Thus, in a series of articles that includes
“Fodor on Language Learning” 8 and “A Perspective on Mind-Brain Research” 0,
she outlines a new neurobiologically based paradigm. It subsumes simple
non-linguistic structures and organisms, since the brain is an evolved organ;
but it preserves functionalism, since a cognitive system’s mental states are
explained via high-level neurofunctional theories. It is a strategy of
cooperation between psychology and neuroscience, a “co-evolutionary” process
eloquently described in Neurophilosophy 6 with the prediction that genuine
cognitive phenomena will be reduced, some as conceptualized within the
commonsense framework, others as transformed through the sciences. The same
intellectual confluence is displayed through Churchland’s various
collaborations: with psychologist and computational neurobiologist Terrence
Sejnowski in The Computational Brain 2; with neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinas in
The Mind-Brain Continuum 6; and with philosopher and husband Paul Churchland in
On the Contrary 8 she and Paul Churchland are jointly appraised in R. McCauley,
The Churchlands and Their Critics, 6. From the viewpoint of neurophilosophy,
interdisciplinary cooperation is essential for advancing knowledge, for the
truth lies in the intertheoretic details. Churchland: Paul M. b.2, -born philosopher, leading proponent of eliminative
materialism. He received his Ph.D. from the
of Pittsburgh in 9 and held positions at the Universities of Toronto,
Manitoba, and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. He is professor
of philosophy and member of the Institute for Neural Computation at the of California, San Diego. Churchland’s
literary corpus constitutes a lucidly written, scientifically informed narrative
where his neurocomputational philosophy unfolds. Scientific Realism and the
Plasticity of Mind 9 maintains that, though science is best construed
realistically, perception is conceptually driven, with no observational given,
while language is holistic, with meaning fixed by networks of associated usage.
Moreover, regarding the structure of science, higher-level theories should be
reduced by, incorporated into, or eliminated in favor of more basic theories
from natural science, and, in the specific case, commonsense psychology is a
largely false empirical theory, to be replaced by a non-sentential,
neuroscientific framework. This skepticism regarding “sentential” approaches is
a common thread, present in earlier papers, and taken up again in “Eliminative
Material
ism and the Propositional Attitudes” 1.
When fully developed, the non-sentential, neuroscientific framework takes the
form of connectionist network or parallel distributed processing models. Thus,
with essays in A Neurocomputational Perspective 9, Churchland adds that genuine
psychological processes are sequences of activation patterns over neuronal
networks. Scientific theories, likewise, are learned vectors in the space of
possible activation patterns, with scientific explanation being prototypical
activation of a preferred vector. Classical epistemology, too, should be
neurocomputationally naturalized. Indeed, Churchland suggests a semantic view
whereby synonymy, or the sharing of concepts, is a similarity between patterns
in neuronal state-space. Even moral knowledge is analyzed as stored prototypes
of social reality that are elicited when an individual navigates through other
neurocomputational systems. The entire picture is expressed in The Engine of
Reason, the Seat of the Soul 6 and, with his wife Patricia Churchland, by the
essays in On the Contrary 8. What has emerged is a neurocomputational
embodiment of the naturalist program, a panphilosophy that promises to capture
science, epistemology, language, and morals in one broad sweep of its
connectionist net. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Physicalism and naturalism.” physicalism:
On second thoughts, Grice saw that naturalism and physicalism were synonymous,
but kept both! One of the twelve labours of Grice. in the widest sense of the
term, materialism applied to the question of the nature of mind. So construed,
physicalism is the thesis call it
ontological physicalism that whatever
exists or occurs is ultimately constituted out of physical entities. But
sometimes ‘physicalism’ is used to refer to the thesis that whatever exists or
occurs can be completely described in the vocabulary of physics. Such a view
goes with either reductionism or eliminativism about the mental. Here
reductionism is the view that psychological explanations, including
explanations in terms of “folk-psychological” concepts such as those of belief
and desire, are reducible to explanations formulable in a physical vocabulary,
which in turn would imply that entities referred to in psychological
explanations can be fully described in physical terms; and elminativism is the
view that nothing corresponds to the terms in psychological explanations, and
that the only correct explanations are in physical terms. The term
‘physicalism’ appears to have originated in the Vienna Circle, and the
reductionist version initially favored there was a version of behaviorism:
psychological statements were held to be translatable into behavioral
statements, mainly hypothetical conditionals, expressible in a physical
vocabulary. The psychophysical identity theory held by Herbert Feigl, Smart,
and others, sometimes called type physicalism, is reductionist in a somewhat
different sense. This holds that mental states and events are identical with
neurophysiological states and events. While it denies that there can be
analytic, meaning-preserving translations of mental statements into
physicalistic ones, it holds that by means of synthetic “bridge laws,”
identifying mental types with physical ones, mental statements can in principle
be tr. into physicalistic ones with which they are at least nomologically
equivalent if the terms in the bridge laws are rigid designators, the
equivalence will be necessary. The possibility of such a translation is
typically denied by functionalist accounts of mind, on the grounds that the
same mental state may have indefinitely many different physical realizations,
and sometimes on the grounds that it is logically possible, even if it never
happens, that mental states should be realized non-physically. In his classic
paper “The ‘mental’ and the ‘physical’ “ 8, Feigl distinguishes two senses of
‘physical’: ‘physical1’ and ‘physical2’. ‘Physical1’ is practically synonymous
with ‘scientific’, applying to whatever is “an essential part of the coherent
and adequate descriptive and explanatory account of the spatiotemporal world.”
‘Physical2’ refers to “the type of concepts and laws which suffice in principle
for the explanation and prediction of inorganic processes.” It would seem that
if Cartesian dualism were true, supposing that possible, then once an
integrated science of the interaction of immaterial souls and material bodies
had been developed, concepts for describing the former would count as
physical1. Construed as an ontological doctrine, physicalism says that whatever
exists or occurs is entirely constituted out of those entities that constitute
inorganic things and processes. Construed as a reductionist or elminativist
thesis about description and explanation, it is the claim that a vocabulary
adequate for describing and explaining inorganic things and processes is
adequate for describing and explaining whatever exists. While the second of
these theses seems to imply the first, the first does not imply the second. It
can be questioned whether the notion of a “full” description of what exists
makes sense. And many ontological physicalists materialists hold that a
reduction to explanations couched in the terminology of physics is impossible,
not only in the case of psychological explanations but also in the case of
explanations couched in the terminology of such special sciences as biology.
Their objection to such reduction is not merely that a purely physical
description of e.g. biological or psychological phenomena would be unwieldy; it
is that such descriptions necessarily miss important laws and generalizations,
ones that can only be formulated in terms of biological, psychological, etc.,
concepts. If ontological physicalists materialists are not committed to the
reducibility of psychology to physics, neither are they committed to any sort
of identity theory claiming that entities picked out by mental or psychological
descriptions are identical to entities fully characterizable by physical
descriptions. As already noted, materialists who are functionalists deny that
there are typetype identities between mental entities and physical ones. And
some deny that materialists are even committed to token-token identities,
claiming that any psychological event could have had a different physical
composition and so is not identical to any event individuated in terms of a
purely physical taxonomy. Refs.: H. P.
Grice, “From Physicalism to Naturalism – and Back: fighting two at once!”
natura: the Grecian
equivalent is “physis,” – whereas the Roman idea has to do with ‘birth,’ cf.
‘renaissance,’ the Grecian idea has to do with ‘growth,’ Grecian term for nature, primarily used to
refer to the nature or essence of a living thing Aristotle, Metaphysics V.4.
Physis is defined by Aristotle in Physics II.1 as a source of movement and rest
that belongs to something in virtue of itself, and identified by him primarily
with the form, rather than the matter, of the thing. The term is also used to
refer to the natural world as a whole. Physis is often contrasted with techne,
art; in ethics it is also contrasted with nomos, convention, e.g. by Callicles
in Plato’s Gorgias 482e ff., who distinguishes natural from conventional
justice.
physiologicum: Oddly, among the twelve isms that attack Grice on his
ascent to the city of eternal truth, there is Naturalism and Physicalism – but
Roman natura is Grecian physis. In “Some remarks about the senses,” Grice
distinguishes a physicalist identification of the senses (in terms of the
different stimuli and the mechanisms that connects the organs to the brain)
versus other criteria, notably one involving introspection and the nature of
‘experience’ – “providing,” he adds, that ‘seeing’ is an experience! Grice would
use ‘natural,’ relying on the idea that it’s Grecian ‘physis.’ Liddell and Scott
have “φύσις,” from “φύω,” and which they render as “origin.” the natural form
or constitution of a person or thing as the result of growth, and hence nature,
constitution, and nature as an originating power, “φ. λέγεται . . ὅθεν ἡ
κίνησις ἡ πρώτη ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν φύσει ὄντων” Arist.Metaph.1014b16; concrete, the
creation, 'Nature.’ Grice is casual in his use of ‘natural’ versus
‘non-natural’ in 1948 for the Oxford Philosophical Society. In later works,
there’s a reference to naturalism, which is more serious. Refs.: The keyword
should be ‘naturalism,’ but also Grice’s diatribes against ‘physicalism,’ and
of course the ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural,’ BANC.
lapis
philosophorum: alchemy:
a quasi-scientific practice and mystical art, mainly ancient and medieval, that
had two broad aims: to change baser metals into gold and to develop the elixir
of life, the means to immortality. Classical Western alchemy probably
originated in Egypt in the first three centuries A.D. with earlier Chin. and
later Islamic and variants and was
practiced in earnest in Europe by such figures as Paracelsus and Newton until
the eighteenth century. Western alchemy addressed concerns of practical
metallurgy, but its philosophical significance derived from an early Grecian
theory of the relations among the basic elements and from a
religious-allegorical understanding of the alchemical transmutation of ores
into gold, an understanding that treats this process as a spiritual ascent from
human toward divine perfection. The purification of crude ores worldly matter
into gold material perfection was thought to require a transmuting agent, the
philosopher’s stone, a mystical substance that, when mixed with alcohol and swallowed,
was believed to produce immortality spiritual perfection. The alchemical search
for the philosopher’s stone, though abortive, resulted in the development of
ultimately useful experimental tools e.g., the steam pump and methods e.g.,
distillation.
piaget: philosopher who profoundly
influenced questions, theories, and methods in the study of cognitive
development. The philosophical interpretation and implications of his work,
however, remain controversial. Piaget regarded himself as engaged in genetic
epistemology, the study of what knowledge is through an empirical investigation
of how our epistemic relations to objects are improved. Piaget hypothesized
that our epistemic relations are constructed through the progressive
organization of increasingly complex behavioral interactions with physical
objects. The cognitive system of the adult is neither learned, in the
Skinnerian sense, nor genetically preprogrammed. Rather, it results from the
organization of specific interactions whose character is shaped both by the
features of the objects interacted with a process called accommodation and by
the current cognitive system of the child a process called assimilation. The
tendency toward equilibrium results in a change in the nature of the
interaction as well as in the cognitive system. Of particular importance for
the field of cognitive development were Piaget’s detailed descriptions and
categorizations of changes in the organization of the cognitive system from
birth through adolescence. That work focused on changes in the child’s
understanding of such things as space, time, cause, number, length, weight, and
morality. Among his major works are The Child’s Conception of Number 1, Biology
and Knowledge 7, Genetic Epistemology 0, and Psychology and Epistemology 0.
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