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Wednesday, July 29, 2020

IMPLICATVRA -- in 16 volumes, vol. 12




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

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)³ ³ … 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 Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a Marcello Pera Collabora a Wikiquote Wikiquote contiene citazioni di o su Marcello Pera Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Marcello Pera Collegamenti esterni Sito ufficiale, su marcellopera.it. Modifica su Wikidata Marcello Pera, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Istituto 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 Marcello Pera, su Openpolis, Associazione Openpolis. Modifica su Wikidata Registrazioni di Marcello Pera, su RadioRadicale.it, Radio Radicale. Modifica 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 LogicConditionals 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 livebe alivehave 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!” –

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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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