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Wednesday, July 29, 2020

IMPLICATVRA -- in 16 volumes, vol. 2


sIMPLICATVRA

acri: acri, Italian philosopher, author of an essay on Plato’s and Vico’s theory of ideas. “Abbozzo” essential Italian philosopher. Grice: “I love Acri’s rendition of the Cratilo into the vernacular!” Francesco Acri (n. Catanzaro), filosofo. Opere  Del sistema in genere -- Alcune prose giovanili -- Abbozzo d'una teorica delle idee / scritto da Francesco Acri, Palermo : Stab. tip. Lao, -- In memoria di Alfonso della Valle di Casanova --  Su la natura della storia della filosofia : discorso letto all'Università di Bologna / di Francesco Acri, Bologna : presso Nicola Zanichelli successore alli Mrsigli e Rocchi, --  Critone 1  di Platone (IV secolo a.C.), traduzione dal greco -- Timeo 75%.svg  di Platone (IV secolo a.C.), traduzione dal greco (XIX secolo) -- L'apologia di Socrate 75%.svg  di Platone (IV secolo a.C.), traduzione dal greco (XIX secolo) Scarica in formato ePub Eutifrone 75%.svg  di Platone (IV secolo a.C.), traduzione dal greco (XIX secolo) Categorie: Nati a CatanzaroMorti a BolognaNati  secoloAutori del XX secoloAutori italiani del XIX secoloAutori italiani del XX secoloFilosofiFilosofi del XIX secoloFilosofi del XX secoloAutori italianiFilosofi italianiAutori citati in opere pubblicateAutori presenti sul Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. IL CRATILO. Due solenni questioni intorno all'origine della lingua toglie ad esaminare Platone in questo dialogo; se cioè i vocaboli o i nomi abbiano in sè da natura lor propria ragione, o vera mente se retto sia il nome che da chiunque a cosa qualunque vien posto. Cratilo segue la prima sentenza: Ermogene la seconda. Platone ammette alcun che di vero in amendue, sebben apertamente nol dica e le confuti anzi tuttadue. Pertanto facendo capo dalla seconda, in per sona di Socrate, così contro di Ermogene la argomenta. Il nome parte è del discorso. Or potendosi tenere discorso vero e falso, chiaro è che sia possibil dir anco un nome vero ed un falso. Se dunque la sentenza di Ermogene stesse vera, che ogni nome da chiunque posto Due solenni questioni intorno all'origine della lingua toglie ad esaminare Platone in questo dialogo; se cioè i vocaboli o i nomi abbiano in sè da natura lor propria ragione, o vera mente se retto sia il nome che da chiunque a cosa qualunque vien posto. Cratilo segue la prima sentenza: Ermogene la seconda. Platone ammette alcun che di vero in amendue, sebben apertamente nol dica e le confuti anzi tuttadue. Pertanto facendo capo dalla seconda, in per sona di Socrate, così contro di Ermogene la argomenta. Il nome parte è del discorso. Or potendosi tenere discorso vero e falso, chiaro è che sia possibil dir anco un nome vero ed un falso. Se dunque la sentenza di Ermogene stesse vera, che ogni nome da chiunque posto a qualunque cosa sia retto, deriverebbe che tutti i nomi, sì veri che falsi, sarebbono del pari retti, e che la cosa medesima potrebbe aver nomi altrettanti, quanti individualmente dagli uomini le fossimo posti, e che tosto anzi gli avesse, che quel sopressa li pronunciassero. Inoltre, se le cose non han già sol esse una stabilità lor propria da natura (contro il dir di Protagora, esser elle a mo' ch'a noi paiono; giacchè se così fosse, non potrebb'esser uno più sapiente di un altro); ma stabilità pari ad esse han pure le azioni loro, per modo che, se uno p. e ha da tagliare una cosa, per ret tamente ciò fare, ei non la dee tagliare a ca priccio suo, ma nel modo che la natura della medesima richiede di tagliarla e che taglisi e con quello con che debbe tagliarsi; così pur segue che il nominare le cose, send'un'azione, noi non le dobbiamo nominare a libito nostro, ma nel modo che la lor natura richiede di nominarle e che nomininosi e con che deb bonsi nominare. Arroge, che se il giudicare poi di quello con che fassi una cosa, cioè del suo stromento, se sia ben fatto, non pertiene al l'artefice che lo fa, ma a colui che ne usa a modo (giacchè il giudicar di un pettine se sia ben fatto e acconcio al tessere, non per tiene a falegname, ma a tessitore, e il giu dicar di una nave, di una cetra, se sian ben ſatte, non pertiene ai loro fabbricatori, ma a piloto e a citarista); così pur segue, che il giudicare del nome di cosa qualunque, se sia ben fatto, cioè se la indichi ed insegni vera mente, non pertenga a chiunque nè a chi lo pone, ma a colui che a modo ne usa, al dia lettico; e per conseguenza rimane chiaro che il porlo non è opra di chiunque, ma di solo colui, che ragguardando al nome che in ispezie a ciascuna cosa da natura conviene, colle let tere e colle sillabe è in grado di render l'idea del medesimo. A questo discorso non sapendo Ermogene che rispondere, prega Socrate, che voglia spie gargli e fargli conoscere cotesta ragione, che il nome ha in sè da propria natura; e quindi soggiugnendogli ch'ei non ammettendo la sen tenza di Protagora, esser le cose come paiono a ciascuno, non poteva tener vero quello che in virtù di tal opinione Protagora affermava dei nomi, Socrate allora il conforta a ricorrere ad Omero, il quale distingue nelle cose stesse i nomi ad esse dati dagli Dei da quelli dati dagli uomini; avvegnachè gli Dei chiamino le cose con nomi, che ad esse rettamente convengono. E così movendosi a spiegare Socrate, secondo Omero, come ad Astianatte, Ettore, Oreste, Agamemnone, Atreo, Pelope e Tantalo bene stieno que nomi ch'hanno, dalla menzione di quest'ultimo naturalmente viene condotto a spiegar la ragione del nome pur del suo padre, cioè di Giove, e quindi sale a quello di Saturno e di Urano. Intanto rispetto ai nomi che sono posti agli uomini ed agli eroi, egli avverte di non doversene troppo fidare, perchè molti di essi, dicegli, sono stati presi da que de pro pri progenitori, o sono stati posti secondo gli auspici e voti per loro, come Eutichide, for tunato, Sosia, salvato, ecc., e per ciò dando l'addio a tali nomi, passa a spiegare quelli delle cose che sono sempre nello stesso modo ed immutabili, vale a dire ai nomi Dii, demoni, eroi, uomini, ed al nome corpo ed anima, dai quali l'uomo è composto. Ma desideroso Ermogene, nel modo che aveva inteso la ra gione del nome di Giove, di saper anche quella del nome degli altri Dei, Socrate, dopo aver formalmente protestato, che per riguardo agli Dei, affatto nulla di loro ei sapeva nè con quai nomi tra loro si chiamassero, nondimeno dice, che si accingeva a dar la spiegazione di tai nomi, secondo l'opinione ch'ei credeva avere avuto gli uomini nel porre i nomi ai medesimi; e così fra questi pel primo comincia da quello di Vesta. - Il nome per esser retto, come si disse, bi sogna ch'esso abbia una certa natural conve nevolezza con quello ch'ei nomina; per dunque conoscere se un nome sia retto e stia bene colla cosa da esso nominata, bisogna pur conoscere l'essere della cosa medesima. Or intorno all'es tempi di Socrate e di Platone; l'una degli Eraclitiani, che credevano le cose esser sempre in moto; l'altra degli Eleatici, i quali opinavano, che fossero sempre in riposo. Secondo il proprio sistema ciascuno spiegava pure i nomi; onde Socrate, nel dar l'etimologia del nome Vesta, riferisce anche la sentenza di queste due scuole filosofiche dicendo, che gli Eleatici il nome di Vesta, Eatix (Hestia), perchè, second'essi, in antico in vece di obaix (ousia), essenza, en tezza, si diceva anche aix, esia, il derivavano da siva (einai), essere, mentre gli Eraclitiani, prendendolo per sinonimo di oaix, osia, il de rivavano da 33siv (othein), cacciare, spingere. Dopo questo passa ai nomi degli altri Dei, e quindi a quello del sole, della luna, delle stelle, della terra, dell'aria, delle stagioni e dell'anno; e quantunque la maggior parte di questi paia spiegarli secondo il sistema di Eraclito; tuttavia havvene alcuno, la cui spiegazione può anche convenire al sistema degli Eleatici; finchè ve nendo ai nomi della prudenza, scienza, sa pienza, giustizia, fortezza, virtù, vizio, ecc., e a quelli della tristezza, del diletto e a tanti altri, quasi tutti ei li spiega un po' lepidamente ed ironicamente, ridendosi degli Eraclitiani, col riferire tutto al loro modo, come se le cose fossero sempre in moto. Ma questo modo di dichiarar la ragione del nomi, come facevano gli Eraclitiani, semplice mente per mezzo di una superficiale e succes siva decomposizione del medesimi in altri nomi, non appagava intieramente Socrate. Impercioc chè, dice egli, se uno interroga intorno alle parole, da cui è composto un nome, e poi di nuovo intorno a quelle, da cui sono composte queste medesime, e così continua sempre oltre ad interrogare, è necessario venire alla fine ad una parola, la quale non si può più decom porre, e di cui nulla più sappia quegli che ha a rispondere. D'altra parte però se uno non sa dar la ragione dei primi nomi, non sa certo darla del derivati, che si debbono spiegare per mezzo del primi. Per la qual cosa a rintracciar la ragione del primi nomi ei si fa nel seguente modo. I nomi tutti, sì primi che derivati, deb bon dichiarare come veramente ciascuna cosa è. Ora se noi non avessimo nè voce nè lingua, e dovessimo indicare le cose, certo, come i muti, colle mani e col capo e con tutto l'altro del corpo noi tenteremmo di significarle, elevando le mani verso del cielo per indicar quel che è alto e leggiero, e per l'opposito abbassandole verso terra per indicar quel che è basso e grave. Dal che rettamente ei conchiude che il nome per esser retto, cioè per poter indicare come vera mente una cosa è, dee pur anco essere un'imi tazione, che la voce fa di quella cosa, ch'uno per mezzo della voce toglie ad imitare onde fi gura e il color delle cose, la musica il loro suono, così l'arte del nominare imita la loro es senza per mezzo di sillabe e lettere. E per di mostrare poi come per mezzo di sillabe e let tere uno possa ciò fare, oltre al distinguere egli le lettere in consonanti e vocali e semi vocali ecc., ei fa pur osservare in molte di esse un valor loro proprio, facendo avvertire nel l'elemento r il valore d'indicare il moto e ciò che è aspro e duro, nell'elemento l quello d'in dicar ciò ch'è liscio e molle, e così un proprio valore dà egli a molte altre lettere. E di que sta cognizione pertanto intorno al valor delle lettere, come anche della cognizione della na tura delle cose fornito lo istitutore dei nomi, afferma Socrate, che in quel modo, che i pit tori per render l'immagine che vogliono effi giare, or adoprano un colore or un altro ed or ne mescolano molti insieme, così egli nel far ciascun nome per ciascuna cosa, adope rando l'elemento or di una lettera or di un'al tra ed or mescolandone più insieme, secondo che l'immagine della cosa ch'ei voleva nominare pareva richiedere, abbia formato i primi nomi; e quindi da questi primi, sempre coll'imita zione per mezzo di sillabe e lettere, abbia pur composti tutti gli altri, e che questa sia la vera ragion de nomi. Secondo un tale ragionamento pare che Socrate, che è quanto dir Platone, propenda per la sentenza di Cratilo, il quale affermava, avere gli esseri in sè da natura la ragion del loro nome. Nondimeno non esser tutti i nomi retta mente posti conforme alla natura delle cose, che nominano, il dimostra poi nel seguente modo. Il nome, dice egli, è uno stromento, il qual si fa per indicar e insegnar le cose come veracemente sono. Or ogni stromento sup pone un artefice; e buono essendo quello che è fatto da un buon artefice, e cattivo quel che è fatto da un cattivo, ne segue che anche i nomi saranno altri bene, altri mal fatti. Cratilo pretende che tutti i nomi, come tali, cioè in quanto son nomi, son tutti ben fatti e retti; per modo che se uno dà a qualcuno il nome che non gli conviene, costui parrà sì ben averlo, ma esso appartiene propriamente a colui, la cui natura viene dichiarata dal nome. Dun que se tutti i nomi sono retti, ripiglia Socrate, non più anco si potrà dire il falso. No, non si può dire il falso, soggiugne Cratilo, perchè dire il falso è dir quel che non è; or quel che non è, non si può pensare nè dire. E che dunque, replica Socrate, fa colui che ti chia masse o ti salutasse col nome di Ermogene, mentre che tu sei Cratilo? costui non chiame rebbe, non saluterebbe te, ma un altro? di rebbe egli qualche cosa o direbbe nulla? Costui, risponde Cratilo, non farebbe altro, ch'un van un'altra prova. Il nome, dice egli, secondo quel che da noi si è ammesso, è una imitazione, la quale si fa per mezzo delle lettere e delle sillabe, come la pittura imita coi colori; e per ciò in quel modo che la pittura, se, nello effigiare le cose, vi adatta i convenienti colori, effettua bene e belle le loro immagini; così pure l'arte del nominare, se per mezzo delle lettere e delle sillabe imitando l'essenza delle cose, saprà ad esse adattare tutto quello che conviene e che loro è simile, bella ne effettuerà l'immagine; che se no, effettuerà sì bene un'immagine, ma non già bella, per conseguenza i nomi ch'essa fa, gli uni saranno ben fatti, e gli altri no. Cratilo a questo energicamente si oppone, di cendo che se in un nome si muta, si traspone, o si toglie o si aggiugne una lettera, non so lamente non iscriviam bene tal nome, ma non lo scriviamo affatto, anzi esso diventa subito un'altra cosa che il nome. Socrate concede ciò aver luogo ne numeri, a quali se uno toglie od aggiugne un'unità, subito diventan essi un altro numero da quel che eran prima, ma non già nelle qualità e nelle immagini delle cose; poichè se le immagini dovesser aver tutto quello che ha la cosa di cui son immagini, non sa rebbero più immagini, ma rimarrebbero la cosa stessa di cui elle appunto sono le immagini; e per ciò neanco i nomi debbono aver tutto quel che ha la cosa di cui sono nomi, nè es serle in tutto e per tutto simili; perchè, se così fosse, ne avverrebbe, che gli esseri sarebbero tutti doppi, e non si saprebbe più dire qual fosse proprio la cosa e qual solo il nome. Per la qual cosa a giudicare se un nome sia ben fatto, basta che in esso si trovi il tipo della cosa di cui esso è nome; e quantunque si debba concedere, che più retti e belli sian que nomi, che per la gran parte son composti di lettere convenienti; tuttavia non si può sostenere, che un nome, il quale non abbia le lettere simili alla cosa che nomina, non possa indicare la medesima. Ed in conferma di questo Socrate adduce il nome azXood:ng (sclerotes), durezza, nella cui composizione in vece di entrarvi il p. r, il cui valore è appunto d'indicare ciò che è duro e aspro, v'entra anzi il X, l, che indica tutto il contrario, ciò che è molle e liscio; nondimeno quand'uno il pronuncia, tutti sanno quello ch'ei vuole dire e quello ch'egli ha in mente; così che fa pur d'uopo conchiudere, che le cose s'indicano non solo per mezzo dell'imi tazione delle medesime, che si fa colle lettere e colle sillabe, ma ancora per mezzo dell'uso e della convenzione. Che se dunque tutti i nomi non son posti convenientemente secondo la natura della cosa che nominano, ei si vede quanto senza fonda somi glianza tra essi e quelle, che chi conosce i nomi conosce anche le cose. Del resto, anche dato, continua Socrate, che per mezzo del nomi si possano conoscere le cose; tuttavia essendo essi, anche quelli che rettamente conforme la natura delle cose sono posti, solamente imma gini delle medesime, il miglior modo di cono scerle sarà investigarle per esse, una per l'altra a vicenda, se a sorte cognate sono, e ciasche duna per sè, e così venirle a contemplare nella verità loro, e non solo nelle loro immagini. Intanto come questa verità, questa cognizione si possa conseguire lasciando ad investigare un'altra volta, pel presente ei si contenta di far vedere, che qualcosa di stabile e fermo è nelle cose, e che oltre ad esservi p. e un viso bello, ei v'ha poi un bello in sè, che non è passeggiero nè soggetto a movimento o flusso, ma immu tabile e sempre lo stesso; pel che rettamente conchiude dicendo, che non retta gli pareva la sentenza di Eraclito, il quale voleva che tutto fosse in centinuo flusso. Cratilo però alle ra gioni di lui non si acqueta, onde Socrate il prega, che più attentamente volesse ancora esaminare la cosa, e, quando gli venisse fatto di trovare la verità, si piacesse di fargliene partecipe. - Così termina il dialogo, dal quale si vede, come già in principio di questo argomento dicevamo, che Socrate, e nella sua persona Pla tone, quantunque confuti la sentenza di Ermo gene e quella di Cratilo, nondimeno, ancorchè espressamente nol dica, molto di vero ei rico nosce in amendue, anzi le rettifica. In fatti, se concede a Ermogene esser lecito agli uomini porre nomi alle cose; non gli concede però ciò essere lecito a tutti, com'ei pretendeva, ed afº ferma non potersi porre a capriccio, se hanno ad essere ben posti, ma richiedersi un'arte, e per ciò esser opra di solo colui, che è in istato di rendere per mezzo del nome l'idea della cosa che vuol nominare; come dall'altra parte, se ammette con Cratilo avere i nomi da natura lor ragione, non conviene però che tutti sieno rettamente posti e stieno a capello; e se pur gli concede migliori essere i nomi che per mezzo di lettere e di sillabe esprimono la na tura delle cose che nominano; tuttavia non gli consente, che assolutamente non abbiansi a chiamare nomi quelli che non sono così for mati; giacchè l'esperienza ci dimostra esservi nomi, i quali, senza che abbiano alcuna lettera simile o corrispondente alla natura della cosa da lor nominata, per via del solo uso noi ve niamo posti in grado di ottimamente intenderli e riferirli a cose, che non hanno punto di si mile col medesimi. Chi è versato nella lettura delle opere di Pla tone facilmente si persuaderà, che questo divino oltre all'addurre le prove dell'immortalità dell'anima umana, scopo suo fu pur anco di rappresen tarci il quadro del filosofo morente; nel Gorgia, oltre lo scopo di far vedere i difetti dell'oratoria politica e sofistica, ebbe pur anco quello di far la difesa di se stesso, perchè non si fosse dato alla vita pubblica; noi dunque ora nel Cratilo dobbiamo pure investigare, se egli oltre al di mostrare, che la vera origine e ragion de nomi non si dee derivare nè dalla stessa natura sola nè dal solo arbitrio umano, abbia pur avuto intenzione di dimostrare ancora qualch'altra cosa pratica. Erano ai tempi di Platone intorno allo essere delle cose, come abbiam già detto, due sentenze, l'una degli Eraclitiani, i quai credevano ch'esse fossero in un continuo flusso o moto; e l'altra degli Eleatici, i quali opina vano, che fossero sempre in riposo. Ciascuna di queste due scuole (come tutti in ogni tempo, e come anche vediamo aver fatto il nostro Vico), per confermare le loro dottrine, i loro sistemi, ricorrevano all'etimologie delle parole, credendo in queste trovare la ragione di quelli. Ma, quantunque lo studio delle etimologie talora conduca alla cognizione delle cose, Platone tut tavia non vi aveva molta fede, sì perchè ne nomi stabiliti a sorte dall'uso e dalla consue tudine, di rado e forse quasi mai è possibile trovar la loro ragione e la verità di quello che nominano; sì perchè nemmanco sulla strada più vera e più sicura ci mettono quelli, che dall'in gegno e dalla potenza umana fur posti. Imper ciocchè chi pose i primi nomi alle cose, com'egli dice, li pose, quali credeva che queste fossero; or sei non aveva una retta opinione delle cose, e ad esse pose i nomi secondo l'opinione ch'ei n'aveva, noi rimarremo ingannati, se il se guiremo. Per far vedere adunque in che vano e fragile fondamento si appoggiassero le scuole filosofiche che così facevano, e metter in chiaro l'insufficienza di questo loro metodo per venire alla cognizione delle cose, Platone in questo dialogo facendo una lunga esposizione di etimologie, sebben acute ma strane, di cui molte forse raccolse da vari libri, mise in ridi colo l'abuso di tale studio, validamente dimo strando, che le cose debbonsi piuttosto cono scere per mezzo d'esse medesime, che per mezzo de' nomi, che sono soltanto una loro adombra zione; e così, come metodo a ciò acconcio ed efficace, colloca poi egli alla fine del dialogo, come opposta diametralmente alle opinioni degli l'iraclitiani, la sua dottrina delle idee. Che se a questo avessero badato certi eru diti (!), non mai avrebbero creduto che Platone (1) Proclo spezialmente fra gli antichi, e fra i moderni il Menagio, ad Diogen. Laert., pag. 149, e il Tiedemann, Argum. dialogg. Plat., pag. 84 e seguente. etimologie, che espone in questo dialogo. E nel vero, an corchè sia difficile il distinguere dappertutto quello ch'ei dice per gioco e quello che dice da senno; tuttavia al veder, che nello spiegar la ragione de nomi di Teti, di Poseidone (Nettuno), di Demetra (Cerere) e d'altri, ei lascia le etimologie prossime e ovvie, e in vece ne arreca delle rimote, anzi talvolta ne inventa delle strane e bizzarre, spezialmente quando adduce quella oltremodo ridicola di Dioniso (Bacco), niun certo può disconoscere ch'ei non ischerzi. Arroge, che il protestaregli, per bocca di Socrate, che quello che per riguardo all'eti mologia de nomi dichiarava, il diceva non come cosa sua propria e che sapesse, ma come cosa che teneva per ispirazione della musa di Euti frone, ognuno avrebbe dovuto accorgersi o al men sospettare, che Platone non poteva far buono tutto quello che per ispirazione della musa di questo sciocco e superstizioso fanatico ei diceva. Per la qual cosa lo Schleiermacher è di parere che Platone avesse in mira di bef farsi in questo dialogo di Antistene; ma, oltre che molte cose in esso occorrono che mala mente si potrebbero attribuire a questo filosofo Socratico, come rettamente osserva lo Stallbaum, ei si dee ancora avvertire che gli studi di An tistene erano piuttosto dialettici e retorici, che grammatici, e non si trova documento veruno, il qual ne accerti ch'ei si occupasse anche della ragione de nomi. E se poi non si può assolu tamente negare, che nelle sue giocose etimologie abbia pur egli avuto in mira Prodico, perchè questi nel dar la ragione della differenza de nomi, di necessità spesso doveva anche spie garne le etimologie; scopo suo però fu piut tosto di beffarsi di tutti quel filosofi, che, come abbiam detto, nelle etimologie de nomi cre devan trovar confermati i loro sistemi, e spe zialmente di mettere in canzone i sofisti, che in coteste arguzie ponevano molto studio e tanto si dilettavano, i quali appunto egli dileggia, quando ironicamente spiegando il loro nome, afferma che significa eroi. E in fatti che Protagora molto attendesse anche all'interpretazione degli scrit tori spezialmente poeti, abbiam già veduto nel dialogo del Protagora, intitolato dal suo nome, nel quale insieme con Prodico ed Ippia ed altri espone a Socrate il suo sentimento intorno ad un passo oscuro d una canzone di Simonide. E che, oltre all'aver lasciato precetti intorno alla retorica, come ci attesta Cicerone nel Bruto. i 2: « scriptae fuerunt et paratae a Protagora rerum illustrium disputationes, quae nunc com munes appellantur loci, º molto pure si occu passe intorno alla proprietà dei nomi e della collocazione delle parole per rendere bella l'elo cuzione, lo aſſerma lo stesso Platone nel Fedro, pag. 267, C, ed Aristotele nclla Retorica, lib, ini, ori gine e ragione de nomi abbia pure disputato. Questo pare chiaramente indicato nel Cratilo, alla pag. 295 (Stef 391. C), anzi da quel, che ivi dice Ermogene, sembra che tal questione facesse parte del suo libro della Verità, reo A), 3sizg, come vedremo. I seguaci di cotesto sofista adunque sono quelli, contro dei quali è diretta spezialmente l'ironia e lo scherzo di que sto dialogo, poichè cotesti sono quelli, che, come il loro maestro Protagora, approvando la sentenza di Eraclito, il quale stabiliva, che tutte le cose perpetuamente scorressero, come un fiume, avevano ad essa accoppiata la loro, cioè che l'uomo fosse la misura di tutto e che le cose fossero come a lui appariscono; e per ciò credendo che tutto continuamente fluisse e che i nostri sensi a questa mutazione delle cose si accomodassero in guisa, che sempre esse fos sero come a loro apparivano, venivano pur a credere tali essere i nomi delle cose, quali dal senso e dall'intelligenza di ciascheduno venivano percepiti, cioè naturali. Da questo si vede che in cotesti Eraclitiani-Protagoristi non si deb bono comprendere, gli antichi e veri seguaci di Eraclito, ma solo i posteriori, che, material mente intendendo Eraclito, facevano una cattiva e falsa applicazione dei suoi principii. E se dum que di tutte le sette filosofiche, come sappiamo, era anticamente costume di riferire i loro sistemi ai sapienti più antichi e spezialmente ad Omero, non dee dunque far maraviglia, se i detti nuovi Eraclitiani-Protagoristi, chiamati appunto Omeriani da Platone nel Teeteto (pag. 179. E), tentassero pur di derivare le loro spie gazioni e interpretazioni de nomi da Omero ed anche da Esiodo, e se in questo dialogo conforti poi Socrate Ermogene, se non ammet teva la verità di Protagora, a ricorrere ad Omero, e se quindi egli pure, secondo questo poeta, gli faccia parecchie spiegazioni del nomi. Il Cratilo, interlocutore di questo dialogo e da cui anzi lo stesso dialogo s'intitola, Aristotele (Metaph. 1, 6), Apuleio (de dogm. Plat., p. 2), e Diogene Laerzio (III, 6), narrano essere stato, prima di Socrate, maestro di Platone, e che gli abbia insegnato le opinioni e dottrine di Eraclito. L'Ast però (Platons Leben und Schri ſten, pag. 19) opina, che il Cratilo interlocu tore del presente dialogo sia diverso dal Cratilo che fu maestro di Platone, affermando non altro potersi raccogliere dallo stesso dialogo, se non che il Cratilo, ivi interlocutore, era se guace di Eraclito, e non già che sia stato mae stro di filosofia e che abbia avuto Platone per discepolo; e per ciò pretende non esser pro babile, se così fosse, che Platone l'avesse messo così in canzone senza riguardo veruno. Questa sentenza a noi non pare di gran momento; poichè hoi non abbiamo sufficienti argomenti Cratili, amendue filosofi e della scuola di Eraclito, onde poter dubitare qual di loro sia stato maestro di Platone. D'altra parte, Aristotele, Apuleio e Diogene Laerzio avevan certo notizia e del Cratilo maestro di Platone, e del Cratilo inter locutore di questo dialogo; non avendogli essi di stinti, rimane chiaro che sì quello che questo sono il medesimo Cratilo. Per riguardo poi a quello, ch'ei dice non esser probabile, che Platone abbia messo in canzone così ingratamente il suo maestro, noi facciamo osservare, che Pla tone non gli fa dire da Socrate alcuna cosa dura, anzi l'ironia, che regna nella esposizione delle etimologie, è pur così coperta, che può anche sfuggire a non mediocri ingegni. Volendo Platone render conto, perchè si fosse scostato dalle opinioni eraclitiane del suo primo mae stro Cratilo, ed avesse poi seguito quelle di Socrate, ei non poteva più giurare in verbo del suo primo maestro Cratilo, nè rappresen tarcelo superiore a Socrate nelle ricerche e di scussioni didattiche, ma sì bene rappresentar celo, come veramente egli era, e cercar, per quanto poteva, di farci conoscere il modo di verso dell'esposizione scientifica d'amendue, come anche intieramente il loro carattere. Per questo appunto Platone non si contenta già di far abbattere da Socrate in questo dialogo le opinioni, che Cratilo aveva intorno alla ragion de nomi, ma il fa udire ancora una lunga ſi lastrocca di spinose etimologie, che Socrate espone ad Ermogene, la quale se par essere un dileggio verso coloro a cui viene fatta, non è però fuor di proposito, perchè Cratilo era così dato alle dottrine di Eraclito, che tutto contento ed incantato beccava qualunque cosa gli fosse detta in confermazione di quelle, e tanta era la sua ostinatezza in quel che soste neva, che dicendogli Socrate alla fine del dia logo migliore essere il metodo di conoscere le cose per mezzo di esse stesse nella verità loro, che solamente per mezzo delle loro immagini, cioè per mezzo dei loro nomi, a tal patente ragione ei non si arrende ancora. L'altro interlocutore del dialogo, anzi il primo che entra in discorso con Socrate, è Ermogene, figliuolo d'Ipponico e fratello di Callia. Anche questo afferma Diogene Laerzio (nel luogo ci tato) essere stato maestro di Platone nelle dot trine della scuola di Elea. Ma questa asser zione viene rigettata dall'Ast (nell'opera citata, pag. 2o), e dal Groen Van Prinsterer (Pro sopographia Platonica, pag. 225), il qual ul timo crede, e con lui concorda lo Stallbaum, che il testo di Diogene Laerzio sia stato cor rotto da un ignorante, il quale abbia intruso il nome di Ermogene dopo quello di Cratilo, nell'opinione, che siccome dei due rappresen Platone, così il fosse anche stato quello dell'Eleatica, Ermogene. A questo aggiungasi ancora, che Aristotele ed Apuleio, i quali affermano essere stato Cratilo istitutor di Platone, ciò non di cono più di Ermogene. Altro è che questi fosse seguace delle dottrine degli Eleatici, altro è che in esse abbia pure istruito Platone; giacchè trattandosi di un fatto, sì per istabilire la sua verità, come per abbatterla, è del tutto neces saria una prova positiva, la quale, quando manca, è nullo tutto ciò, che pro o contrada qualunque si dice. Per la qual cosa, se l'unica e dubbia autorità di Diogene Laerzio non si dee tenere da tanto per farci credere vero tal fatto, neanco per negarlo pare a noi esser suf ficiente la prova negativa dello Stallbaum e del Groen Van Prinsterer, i quai dicono, il poco ingegno e la poca dottrina di Ermogene essere un argomento bastante a far sì, che niuno il possa creder essere stato maestro di Platone. Imperciocchè come veramente stesse di dottrina Ermogene, non è poi cosa facile a dichiarare, stante che il merito scientifico degl'interlocu tori, che Platone mette ne suoi dialoghi in iscena, non si dee giudicare dal grado, in cui egli ce li rappresenta e ce li fa parlare; giac chè quando si tratta di coloro ch'ei vuol con futare, ei fa da loro anche dire cose strane ed assurde, le quali essi mai non sognarono, ma ch'egli però dalle loro dottrine deduce, per sempre far maggiormente spiccare il contrasto della verità, ch'ei difende. D'altra parte poi, se si dovesse giudicare da questo dialogo, pare che per niuna parte Ermogene la ceda a Cra tilo. E nel vero, per non dire che la discus sione, fatta in principio tra Ermogene e So crate, è sottile anzi che no, e suppone in Ermogene un non mediocre ingegno, bisogna avvertire che la lunga esposizione delle etimo logie secondo il sistema di Eraclito, è diretta a mettere in canzone non altri, che coloro che tal sistema seguivano; e per ciò pare anzi che d'in gegno un po' tardo ben si potrebbe tacciare Cratilo, che non mai in udirle di tal corbelleria s'accorga, ma non Ermogene, il quale, udendole, scorgendo per mezzo di esse beffarsi Socrate dei seguaci delle dottrine di Eraclito, veniva sempre più confermato in quelle contrarie degli Eleatici, ch'ei sosteneva. Del resto ch'Ermogene non pigliasse tutte per vere le etimologie di Socrate, non solo si vede da quello, che in udirle non mai egli fa alcun segno d'ammira zione o di contentezza, come se fosse giunto alla cognizione di qualcosa grande e nuova, ma nemmanco di piena approvazione; giacchè, appena che ha udito l'etimologia di un nome, senza più, quasi sempre passa subito a inter rogar Socrate di quella di un altro, e se talor mostra d'averne per buona alcuna, la sua con a Socrate, Pare che un po' ci tocchi o ci cogli ecc., daivet, xtvòvvsústg o doxsig rt Xéyetv. Ma, che ancora? Che Ermogene più per curiosità e diletto che per altro, se ne stesse ad ascoltar l'espo sizione delle etimologie di Socrate, argomento certo n'è, ch'ei pure celia collo stesso Socrate, come (per non citar altri luoghi) quando udita l'etimologia del nome ivtavróg, anno, ironica mente gli dice, che aveva già fatto molti passi nella sapienza, e spezialmente quando Socrate, nello spiegare il vocabolo 3) aſºspdv (blaberon), nocevole, dicendogli che propriamente si do vrebbe chiamare 3ov) arrrepoijv, boulapteroun, ei gli soggiugne che all'udirlo pronunziar così bel nome, gli pareva veramente che zufolasse il preludio dell'aria di Minerva. Il timore e la superstizione, che dà a dive dere Socrate in questo dialogo, nel protestare che per riguardo agli Dei e ai loro nomi, ei punto non ne sapeva, ma che solo diceva quello che ebbero in opinione gli uomini in porre loro i nomi, indicano manifestamente, che l'Euti frone, per ispirazione della cui musa, ei dice tenere le spiegazioni, che dà dei nomi, è quello, da cui è pure intitolato un dialogo di Platone. Così appunto opinano l'Ast e lo Stallbaum. Quest'uomo è il tipo della leggerezza e della superstizione; ei si vantava di saper meglio che alcun altro le cose divine, e tanto era il suo entusiasmo, come dice egli stesso (!), quando di esse parlava e mandava fuori i suoi oracoli, che eccitava il riso e pareva maniaco. Verisimil mente dunque nell'interpretare la mitologia degli antichi poeti e spezialmente di Omero, e nel cercar la ragion de nomi degli Dei e nel darne la spiegazione, vi poneva molto studio e vi met teva pur lo stesso entusiasmo e furore, come nel mandar fuori gli oracoli. Forse sarà anche stato della scuola di Eraclito. Onde piacevole e grazioso pare lo scherzo di Platone, in far per bocca di Socrate dar l'etimologia de nomi a Cratilo, il qual non era men entusiasta e maniaco in beccar ciò, che parevagli confer mare le sue dottrine eraclitiane (giacchè, quanto a Ermogene, egli stava, come abbiam veduto, a udirle più per curiosità e diletto, che per altro); mentre così facendo Platone, a chi era di perspicace ingegno dava, per mezzo dell'ironia, a divedere, che a lui non andava a grado, anzi disapprovava il poco ragionevol modo degli Eraclitiani, nello spiegare i nomi e nel pretendere di trovare quasi in ciascun verso di Omero qualche cosa di oscuro e mi sterioso, togliendovi quel suo proprio colore, semplice e naturale. In qual tempo sia stato composto questo dia logo da Platone, e qual loco gli si debba as ri mane ancora a vedere. Lo Schleiermacher il pone dopo il Teeteto, il Menone e l'Eutidemo, e pretende che debba servire di compimento a quel primo; ma ognun vede che l'argomento della scienza, che trattasi nel Teeteto, non viene ampliato nè discusso nel Cratilo; anzi tutto il contrario, quel che affatto alla fine del Cra tilo è appena indicato, viene poi diffusamente discusso nel Teeteto; chiaro dunque egli è, che questo il dee seguire e non precedere. L'Ast il colloca non solo dopo il Teeteto, ma anche dopo il Sofista, il Politico e il Parmenide; anzi crede che il Cratilo faccia parte ed appartenga ad una trilogia o tetralogia, che non fu da Platone compiuta; e per prova ne adduce le prime parole del dialogo: Brami tu dunque che in cotesta questione anche qui Socrate c'entri' le quali ei dice essere del tutto nude, secche e immotivate. Inoltre che quest'opera non sia un lavoro compiuto, seguita egli, si vede da quello, che nell'ultima sua parte i passaggi da una cosa all'altra sono scuciti e duri, e molto, che non ista in immediata relazione con quel che precede, vien posto senza alcuno appa recchio e introduzione, mentre le ricerche, che si connettono coll'argomento principale e che eccitano un grande interesse, vengono al l'improvviso abbandonate. Ma checchè ne voglia dire l'Ast, quantunque le prime parole del dialogo indichino a precedente discussione tra Er mogene e Cratilo, tuttavia di questa trilogia o tetralogia incompiuta, ch'ei pretende, non s'in contra indizio veruno nelle opere di Platone, nè si trova che l'argomento del Cratilo venga da lui trattato in qualche altro suo dialogo. Questo scritto può stare da sè, ed io non veggo la ragione, perchè l'Ast il voglia far seguire al Sofista, al Politico e al Parmenide, e non anzi a tutti questi precedere. E nel vero, per non dire, che l'irrisione, che domina nell'espo sizione delle etimologie nel Cratilo, non troppo acconciamente può stare vicina alle gravità e serietà, con cui sono trattati il Sofista, il Po litico e il Parmenide, l'argomento del Cratilo non ha che fare con quello di questi; nè si ravvisano ancor in esso vestigia della scuola pitagorica, come nel Parmenide, ma appena si fa menzione in un suo luogo dell'armonia de corpi celesti; nè appare ch'ei segua il me todo dell'investigazione tenuto dai filosofi Me garici, i quali erano versatissimi in trattare le quistioni di questo genere, come lo segue nel Sofista, nel Politico e nel Parmenide; nè fi nalmente si vede ch'egli molto insista sulla sua dottrina delle idee, ma appena ne fa cenno alla fine del dialogo, e la dà soltanto ancora come un suo sogno. Per l'opposito, niuno può disconoscere, che tra il Protagora, l'Eu tidemo e il Cratilo vi regni un'affinità quasi irri sione drammaticamente ci rappresenta Platone il vano fasto di Protagora e di tutti que sofisti che si millantavano essere maestri di virtù, e se nell'Eutidemo poi egli si beffa delle meschi nità delle arguzie e de lacciuoli dialettici pur de' seguaci di Protagora, anche nel Cratilo, come abbiam veduto, con ischerzo e con ironia viene egli a dimostrare l'inutile sforzo de' Pro tagoristi-Eraclitiani, che per mezzo dell'inter pretazione del vocaboli tentavano di venire alla cognizione delle cose e di stabilire i loro sistemi. Per la qual cosa, sebben l'autore in quest'opera sia lungi dal comico che domina nel Protagora e nell'Ippia Maggiore, l'andamento però e la condotta della medesima, come anche la molti plicità degli esempi e le minutezze, con cui, secondo il metodo di Socrate, procede Platone in principio di essa, e finalmente ancora lo scherzo e l'ironia che si scorge nell'esposizione delle etimologie, danno a bastanza a divedere, ch'ella moltissimo si approssima ai dialoghi po polari Socratici, ch'egli scrisse i primi, e che da lui sia stata composta in una età, in cui egli non era ancora del tutto scevro da pro tervia e petulanza giovanile. Non pertanto, quan tunque da solo quello, che si fa menzione in questo dialogo delle vocali a ed o, le quali furono introdotte in Atene, sotto l'arcontato di Euclide (l'anno 2 della 94 olimpiade, 4o3 prima dell'era volgare, e 26 dell'età di Platone), non si possa di certo conchiudere, che dopo tal anno sia stato questo scritto composto, per la ra gione, come ottimamente osserva lo Stallbaum, che queste vocali potevano già essere in vigore in uso privato, prima che pubblicamente fos sero sancite e passate ne' monumenti pubblici (ved. il Matthiae Gramm. Ampl., tom. 1, pag. 22, annot.); tuttavia non si può dubitare, che questo dialogo da Platone sia stato disteso in quel tempo, in cui egli aveva già concepito i principii della sua dottrina delle idee e deter minato con essa di confutare i Protagorei e gli Eraclitiani. Or tanto le cognizioni richiedentisi per poter ciò ben fare, quanto le sottili inve stigazioni circa la ragion de nomi, che in que st'opera si ravvisano, paiono indicare esserelle un lavoro di Platone non così giovane, ma sì bene di lui d'alquanto già più maturo. Che se poi tra il Protagora e il Cratilo, che hanno tra di loro un'affinità che non si può disconoscere, noi abbiamo inserito l'Ippia Mag giore ed il Gorgia, non è già che crediamo il Gorgia essere anteriore al Cratilo (anzi la di fesa che nel Gorgia fa Platone di se stesso, perchè non si fosse dato alla vita pubblica, ma alla filosofica, indica chiaramente che tale scritto è un lavoro di un uomo più che maturo), ma non per altro così ci parve di fare, se non perchè abbiam voluto far seguire l'un dopo celebri sofisti della Grecia, Protagora, Ippia e Gorgia, ne quali Platone graziosamente smaschera il loro vano sapere ed acremente li frusta. Però se uno bada, che i Protagoristi-Eraclitiani, che Platone dileggia in questo dialogo canzonando le loro etimologie, questi medesimi poi con con cludenti ragioni validamente egli confuta nel Teeteto, facilmente ei si persuaderà, che il Cratilo a questo dee stare unito e precederlo, anzi che susseguirlo; e per conseguenza che noi, nell'assegnargli il posto che gli assegniamo, nel suo vero l'abbiam collocato. Resf.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice ed Acri," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

ACTVM -- or ACTVM, as Grice would spell it. Grice’s theory is action-oriented. He often used ‘pragmatic’ to that effect. This is most evident in his account of meaning. In the phrastic, “The door is closed, please,” the ultimate intention is that the recipient performs the action of closing the door. Grice saw action theory as the study of the ontological structure of human action, the process by which it originates, and the ways in which it is explained. Most human actions are acts of commission: they constitute a class of events in which a subject the agent brings about some change or changes. Thus, in moving one’s finger, one brings it about that one’s finger moves. When the change brought about is an ongoing process e.g., the continuing appearance of words on a , the behavior is called an activity writing. An action of omission occurs when an agent refrains from performing an action of commission. Since actions of commission are events, the question of their ontology is in part a matter of the general ontology of change. An important issue here is whether what occurs when an action is performed should be viewed as abstract or concrete. On the first approach, actions are understood either as proposition-like entities e.g., Booth’s moving a finger, or as a species of universal  namely, an act-type moving a finger. What “occurred” when Booth moved his finger in Ford’sTheater on April 14, 1865, is held to be the abstract entity in question, and the entity is viewed as repeatable: that is, precisely the same entity is held to have occurred on every other occasion of Booth’s moving his finger. When actions are viewed as concrete, on the other hand, Booth’s moving his finger in Ford’s Theater is understood to be a non-repeatable particular, accidental property action theory 6 4065A-   6 and the movement of the finger counts as an acttoken, which instantiates the corresponding acttype. Concrete actions are time-bound: each belongs to a single behavioral episode, and other instantiations of the same act-type count as distinct events. A second important ontological issue concerns the fact that by moving his finger, Booth also fired a gun, and killed Lincoln. It is common for more than one thing to be accomplished in a single exercise of agency, and how such doings are related is a matter of debate. If actions are understood as abstract entities, the answer is essentially foregone: there must be as many different actions on Booth’s part as there are types exemplified. But if actions are viewed as particulars the same token can count as an instance of more than one type, and identity claims become possible. Here there is disagreement. Fine-grained theories of act individuation tend to confine identity claims to actions that differ only in ways describable through different modifications of the same main verb  e.g., where Placido both sings and sings loudly. Otherwise, different types are held to require different tokens: Booth’s action of moving his finger is held to have generated or given rise to distinct actions of firing the gun and killing Lincoln, by virtue of having had as causal consequences the gun’s discharge and Lincoln’s death. The opposite, coarse-grained theory, however, views these causal relations as grounds for claiming Booth’s acts were precisely identical. On this view, for Booth to kill Lincoln was simply for him to do something that caused Lincoln’s death  which was in fact nothing more than to move his finger  and similarly for his firing the gun. There is also a compromise account, on which Booth’s actions are related as part to whole, each consisting in a longer segment of the causal chain that terminates with Lincoln’s death. The action of killing Lincoln consisted, on this view, in the entire sequence; but that of firing the gun terminated with the gun’s discharge, and that of moving the finger with the finger’s motion. When, as in Booth’s case, more than one thing is accomplished in a single exercise of agency, some are done by doing others. But if all actions were performed by performing others, an infinite regress would result. There must, then, be a class of basic actions  i.e., actions fundamental to the performance of all others, but not themselves done by doing something else. There is disagreement, however, on which actions are basic. Some theories treat bodily movements, such as Booth’s moving his finger, as basic. Others point out that it is possible to engage in action but to accomplish less than a bodily movement, as when one tries to move a limb that is restrained or paralyzed, and fails. According to these accounts, bodily actions arise out of a still more basic mental activity, usually called volition or willing, which is held to constitute the standard means for performing all overt actions. The question of how bodily actions originate is closely associated with that of what distinguishes them from involuntary and reflex bodily events, as well as from events in the inanimate world. There is general agreement that the crucial difference concerns the mental states that attend action, and in particular the fact that voluntary actions typically arise out of states of intending on the part of the agent. But the nature of the relation is difficult, and there is the complicating factor that intention is sometimes held to reduce to other mental states, such as the agent’s desires and beliefs. That issue aside, it would appear that unintentional actions arise out of more basic actions that are intentional, as when one unintentionally breaks a shoelace by intentionally tugging on it. But how intention is first tr. into action is much more problematic, especially when bodily movements are viewed as basic actions. One cannot, e.g., count Booth’s moving his finger as an intentional action simply because he intended to do so, or even on the ground if it is true that his intention caused his finger to move. The latter might have occurred through a strictly autonomic response had Booth been nervous enough, and then the moving of the finger would not have counted as an action at all, much less as intentional. Avoiding such “wayward causal chains” requires accounting for the agent’s voluntary control over what occurs in genuinely intentional action  a difficult task when bodily actions are held to be basic. Volitional accounts have greater success here, since they can hold that movements are intentional only when the agent’s intention is executed through volitional activity. But they must sidestep another threatened regress: if we call for an activity of willing to explain why Booth’s moving his finger counts as intentional action, we cannot do the same for willing itself. Yet on most accounts volition does have the characteristics of intentional behavior. Volitional theories of action must, then, provide an alternative account of how mental activity can be intentional. Actions are explained by invoking the agent’s reasons for performing them. Characteristically, a reason may be understood to consist in a positive attitude of the agent toward one or another action theory action theory 7 4065A-   7 outcome, and a belief to the effect that the outcome may be achieved by performing the action in question. Thus Emily might spend the summer in France out of a desire to learn , and a belief that spending time in France is the best way to do so. Disputed questions about reasons include how confident the agent must be that the action selected will in fact lead to the envisioned outcome, and whether obligation represents a source of motivation that can operate independently of the agent’s desires. Frequently, more than one course of action is available to an agent. Deliberation is the process of searching out and weighing the reasons for and against such alternatives. When successfully concluded, deliberation usually issues in a decision, by which an intention to undertake one of the contemplated actions is formed. The intention is then carried out when the time for action comes. Much debate has centered on the question of how reasons are related to decisions and actions. As with intention, an agent’s simply having a reason is not enough for the reason to explain her behavior: her desire to learn  notwithstanding, Emily might have gone to France simply because she was transferred there. Only when an agent does something for a reason does the reason explain what is done. It is frequently claimed that this bespeaks a causal relation between the agent’s strongest reason and her decision or action. This, however, suggests a determinist stance on the free will problem, leading some philosophers to balk. An alternative is to treat reason explanations as teleological explanations, wherein an action is held to be reasonable or justified in virtue of the goals toward which it was directed. But positions that treat reason explanations as non-causal require an alternative account of what it is to decide or act for one reason rather than another.  Grice would often wonder about the pervasiveness of the intentiona idiom in the description of action. He would use the phrase ‘action verb,’ i. e. a verb applied to an agent and describing an activity, an action, or an attempt at or a culmination of an action. Verbs applying to agents may be distinguished in two basic ways: by whether they can take the progressive continuous form and by whether or not there is a specific moment of occurrence/completion of the action named by the verb. An activity verb is one describing something that goes on for a time but with no inherent endpoint, such as ‘drive’, ‘laugh’, or ‘meditate’. One can stop doing such a thing but one cannot complete doing it. Indeed, one can be said to have done it as soon as one has begun doing it. An accomplishment verb is one describing something that goes on for a time toward an inherent endpoint, such as ‘paint’ a fence, ‘solve’ a problem, or ‘climb’ a mountain. Such a thing takes a certain time to do, and one cannot be said to have done it until it has been completed. An achievement verb is one describing either the culmination of an activity, such as ‘finish’ a job or ‘reach’ a goal; the effecting of a change, such as ‘fire’ an employee or ‘drop’ an egg; or undergoing a change, such as ‘hear’ an explosion or ‘forget’ a name. An achievement does not go on for a period of time but may be the culmination of something that does. Ryle singled out achievement verbs and state verbs see below partly in order to disabuse philosophers of the idea that what psychological verbs name must invariably be inner acts or activities modeled on bodily actions or activities. A task verb is an activity verb that implies attempting to do something named by an achievement verb. For example, to seek is to attempt to find, to sniff is to attempt to smell, and to treat is to attempt to cure. A state verb is a verb not an action verb describing a condition, disposition, or habit rather than something that goes on or takes place. Examples include ‘own’, ‘weigh’, ‘want’, ‘hate’, ‘frequent’, and ‘teetotal’. These differences were articulated by Zeno Vendler in Linguistics and Philosophy 7. Taking them into account, linguists have classified verbs and verb phrases into four main aspectual classes, which they distinguish in respect to the availability and interpretation of the simple present tense, of the perfect tenses, of the progressive construction, and of various temporal adverbials, such as adverbs like ‘yesterday’, ‘finally’, and ‘often’, and prepositional phrases like ‘for a long time’ and ‘in a while’. Many verbs belong to more than one category by virtue of having several related uses. For example, ‘run’ is both an activity and an accomplishment verb, and ‘weigh’ is both a state and an accomplishment verb. Linguists single out a class of causative verbs, such as ‘force’, ‘inspire’, and ‘persuade’, some of which are achievement and some accomplishment verbs. Such causative verbs as ‘break’, ‘burn’, and ‘improve’ have a correlative intransitive use, so that, e.g., to break something is to cause it to break. Grice denies the idea of an ‘act’ of the soul. In this way, it is interesting to contrast his views to those philosophers, even at Oxford, like Occam or Geach, who speak of an act of the soul. And then there’s act-content-object psychology, or ‘act-object psychology,’ for short, a philosophical theory that identifies in every psychological state a mental act, a lived-through phenomenological content, such as a mental image or description of properties, and an intended object that the mental act is about or toward which it is directed by virtue of its content. The distinction between the act, content, and object of thought originated with Alois Höfler’s Logik 0, written in collaboration with Meinong. But the theory is historically most often associated with its development in Kazimierz Twardowski’s Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellung “On the Content and Object of Presentations,” 4, despite Twardowski’s acknowledgment of his debt to Höfler. Act-object psychology arose as a reaction to Franz Brentano’s immanent intentionality thesis in his influential Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt “Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,” 1874, in which Brentano maintains that intentionality is “the mark of the mental,” by contrast with purely physical phenomena. Brentano requires that intended objects belong immanently to the mental acts that intend them  a philosophical commitment that laid Brentano open to charges of epistemological idealism and psychologism. Yet Brentano’s followers, who accepted the intentionality of thought but resisted what they came to see as its detachable idealism and psychologism, responded by distinguishing the act-immanent phenomenological content of a psychological state from its act-transcendent intended object, arguing that Brentano had wrongly and unnecessarily conflated mental content with the external objects of thought. Twardowski goes so far as to claim that content and object can never be identical, an exclusion in turn that is vigorously challenged by Husserl in his Logische Untersuchungen “Logical Investigations,” 3, 2, and by others in the phenomenological tradition who acknowledge the possibility that a self-reflexive thought can sometimes be about its own content as intended object, in which content and object are indistinguishable. Act-object psychology continues to be of interest to contemporary philosophy because of its relation to ongoing projects in phenomenology, and as a result of a resurgence of study of the concept of intentionality and qualia in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, and Gegenstandstheorie, or existent and non-existent intended object theory, in philosophical logic and semantics.  Grice was fascinated by the metaphysically wrong theory of agent-causation. He would make fun of it. His example, “The cause of the death of Charles I is decapitation; therefore, decapitation willed the death of Charles I. Grice would refer to transeunt causation in “Actions and events.” In Grice’s terms, agent causation is the convoluted idea that the primary cause of an event is a substance; more specifically, causation by a substance, as opposed to an event. Thus a brick a substance may be said to be the cause of the breaking of the glass. The expression is also used more narrowly by Reid and others for the view that an action or event is caused by an exertion of power by some agent endowed with will and understanding. Thus, a person may be said to be the cause of her action of opening the door. In this restricted sense Reid called it “the strict and proper sense”, an agent-cause must have the power to cause the action or event and the power not to cause it. Moreover, it must be “up to” the agent whether to cause the event or not to cause it. It is not “up to” the brick whether to cause or not to cause the breaking of the glass. The restricted sense of agent causation developed by Reid is closely tied to the view that the agent possesses free will. Medieval philosophers distinguished the internal activity of the agent from the external event produced by that activity. The former was called “immanent causation” and the latter “transeunt causation.” These terms have been adapted by Chisholm and others to mark the difference between agent causation and event causation. The idea is that the internal activity is agentcaused by the person whose activity it is; whereas the external event is event-caused by the internal activity of the agent.  His “Death of Charles I” example is meant as a reductio ad sbsurdum of ‘agent causation.’ The philosopher cannot possibly be meaning to communicate such absurdity. The ‘actus’ is less obviously related to the actum, but it should. When Grice says, “What is actual is not also possible” as a mistake – he is not thinking of HUMAN rational agency – but some kind of agency, though. It may be thought that ‘actum’ is still phrased after a ‘that’-clause, even if what is reported is something that is actual, e. g. It is actually raining (versus It is possibly raining in Cambridge). – potentia -- energeia, Grecian term coined by Aristotle and often tr. as ‘activity’, ‘actuality’, and even ‘act’, but more literally rendered ‘a state of functioning’. Since for Aristotle the function of an object is its telos or aim, energeia can also be described as an entelecheia or realization another coined term he uses interchangeably with energeia. So understood, it can denote either a something’s being functional, though not in use at the moment, and b something’s actually functioning, which Aristotle describes as a “first realization” and “second realization” respectively On the Soul II.5. In general, every energeia is correlative to some dunamis, a capability or power to function in a certain way, and in the central books of the Metaphysics Aristotle uses the linkage between these two concepts to explain the relation of form to matter. He also distinguishes between energeia and kinesis change or motion Metaphysics IX.6; Nicomachean Ethics X.4. A kinesis is defined by reference to its terminus e.g., learning how to multiply and is thus incomplete at any point before reaching its conclusion. An energeia, in contrast, is a state complete in itself e.g., seeing. Thus, Aristotle says that at any time that I am seeing, it is also true that I have seen; but it is not true that at any time I am learning that I have learned. In Grecian, this difference is not so much one of tense as of encrateia energeia 264   264 aspect: the perfect tense marks a “perfect” or complete state, and not necessarily prior activity.  energeticism, also called energetism or energism, the doctrine that energy is the fundamental substance underlying all change. Its most prominent champion was the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. In his address “Die Überwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialismus” “The Conquest of Scientific Materialism”, delivered at Lübeck in 5, Ostwald chastised the atomic-kinetic theory as lacking progress and claimed that a unified science, energetics, could be based solely on the concept of energy. Many of Ostwald’s criticisms of materialism and mechanistic reductionism derived from Mach. Ostwald’s attempts to deduce the fundamental equations of thermodynamics and mechanics from the principles of energy conservation and transformation were indebted to the writings of Georg Helm 18749, especially Die Lehre von Energie “The Laws of Energy,” 7 and Die Energetik “Energetics,” 8. Ostwald defended Helm’s factorization thesis that all changes in energy can be analyzed as a product of intensity and capacity factors. The factorization thesis and the attempt to derive mechanics and thermodynamics from the principles of energetics were subjected to devastating criticisms by Boltzmann and Max Planck. Boltzmann also criticized the dogmatism of Ostwald’s rejection of the atomickinetic theory. Ostwald’s program to unify the sciences under the banner of energetics withered in the face of these criticisms.” actum: -- behaviourism. Grice was amused that what Ryle thought was behaviouristic was already pervaded wiith mentalistic talk! Referred to by H. P. Grice in his criticism of Gilbert Ryle. Ironically, Chomsky misjudged Grice as a behaviourist, but Chomsky’s critique was demolished by P. Suppes, broadly, the view that behavior is fundamental in understanding mental phenomena. The term applies both to a scientific research Beauvoir, Simone de behaviorism 76   76 program in psychology and to a philosophical doctrine. Accordingly, we distinguish between scientific psychological, methodological behaviorism and philosophical logical, analytical behaviorism. Scientific behaviorism. First propounded by the  psychologist J. B. Watson who introduced the term in 3 and further developed especially by C. L. Hull, E. C. Tolman, and B. F. Skinner, it departed from the introspectionist tradition by redefining the proper task of psychology as the explanation and prediction of behavior  where to explain behavior is to provide a “functional analysis” of it, i.e., to specify the independent variables stimuli of which the behavior response is lawfully a function. It insisted that all variables  including behavior as the dependent variable  must be specifiable by the experimental procedures of the natural sciences: merely introspectible, internal states of consciousness are thus excluded from the proper domain of psychology. Although some behaviorists were prepared to admit internal neurophysiological conditions among the variables “intervening variables”, others of more radical bent e.g. Skinner insisted on environmental variables alone, arguing that any relevant variations in the hypothetical inner states would themselves in general be a function of variations in past and present environmental conditions as, e.g., thirst is a function of water deprivation. Although some basic responses are inherited reflexes, most are learned and integrated into complex patterns by a process of conditioning. In classical respondent conditioning, a response already under the control of a given stimulus will be elicited by new stimuli if these are repeatedly paired with the old stimulus: this is how we learn to respond to new situations. In operant conditioning, a response that has repeatedly been followed by a reinforcing stimulus reward will occur with greater frequency and will thus be “selected” over other possible responses: this is how we learn new responses. Conditioned responses can also be unlearned or “extinguished” by prolonged dissociation from the old eliciting stimuli or by repeated withholding of the reinforcing stimuli. To show how all human behavior, including “cognitive” or intelligent behavior, can be “shaped” by such processes of selective reinforcement and extinction of responses was the ultimate objective of scientific behaviorism. Grave difficulties in the way of the realization of this objective led to increasingly radical liberalization of the distinctive features of behaviorist methodology and eventually to its displacement by more cognitively oriented approaches e.g. those inspired by information theory and by Chomsky’s work in linguistics. Philosophical behaviorism. A semantic thesis about the meaning of mentalistic expressions, it received its most sanguine formulation by the logical positivists particularly Carnap, Hempel, and Ayer, who asserted that statements containing mentalistic expressions have the same meaning as, and are thus translatable into, some set of publicly verifiable confirmable, testable statements describing behavioral and bodily processes and dispositions including verbalbehavioral dispositions. Because of the reductivist concerns expressed by the logical positivist thesis of physicalism and the unity of science, logical behaviorism as some positivists preferred to call it was a corollary of the thesis that psychology is ultimately via a behavioristic analysis reducible to physics, and that all of its statements, like those of physics, are expressible in a strictly extensional language. Another influential formulation of philosophical behaviorism is due to Ryle The Concept of Mind, 9, whose classic critique of Cartesian dualism rests on the view that mental predicates are often used to ascribe dispositions to behave in characteristic ways: but such ascriptions, for Ryle, have the form of conditional, lawlike statements whose function is not to report the occurrence of inner states, physical or non-physical, of which behavior is the causal manifestation, but to license inferences about how the agent would behave if certain conditions obtained. To suppose that all declarative uses of mental language have a fact-stating or -reporting role at all is, for Ryle, to make a series of “category mistakes”  of which both Descartes and the logical positivists were equally guilty. Unlike the behaviorism of the positivists, Ryle’s behaviorism required no physicalistic reduction of mental language, and relied instead on ordinary language descriptions of human behavior. A further version of philosophical behaviorism can be traced to Vitters Philosophical Investigations, 3, who argues that the epistemic criteria for the applicability of mentalistic terms cannot be private, introspectively accessible inner states but must instead be intersubjectively observable behavior. Unlike the previously mentioned versions of philosophical behaviorism, Vitters’s behaviorism seems to be consistent with metaphysical mindbody dualism, and is thus also non-reductivist. behaviorism behaviorism 77   77 Philosophical behaviorism underwent severe criticism in the 0s and 0s, especially by Chisholm, Charles Taylor, Putnam, and Fodor. Nonetheless it still lives on in more or less attenuated forms in the work of such diverse philosophers as Quine, Dennett, Armstrong, David Lewis, U. T. Place, and Dummett. Though current “functionalism” is often referred to as the natural heir to behaviorism, functionalism especially of the Armstrong-Lewis variety crucially differs from behaviorism in insisting that mental predicates, while definable in terms of behavior and behavioral dispositions, nonetheless designate inner causal states  states that are apt to cause certain characteristic behaviors.   -- behavior therapy, a spectrum of behavior modification techniques applied as therapy, such as aversion therapy, extinction, modeling, redintegration, operant conditioning, and desensitization. Unlike psychotherapy, which probes a client’s recollected history, behavior therapy focuses on immediate behavior, and aims to eliminate undesired behavior and produce desired behavior through methods derived from the experimental analysis of behavior and from reinforcement theory. A chronic problem with psychotherapy is that the client’s past is filtered through limited and biased recollection. Behavior therapy is more mechanical, creating systems of reinforcement and conditioning that may work independently of the client’s long-term memory. Collectively, behavior-therapeutic techniques compose a motley set. Some behavior therapists adapt techniques from psychotherapy, as in covert desensitization, where verbally induced mental images are employed as reinforcers. A persistent problem with behavior therapy is that it may require repeated application. Consider aversion therapy. It consists of pairing painful or punishing stimuli with unwelcome behavior. In the absence, after therapy, of the painful stimulus, the behavior may recur because association between behavior and punishment is broken. Critics charge that behavior therapy deals with immediate disturbances and overt behavior, to the neglect of underlying problems and irrationalities.  Behaviourism. Chomsky, a. n. – cites H. P. Grice as “A. P. Grice” -- preeminent  philosopher, and political activist who has spent his professional career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky’s best-known scientific achievement is the establishment of a rigorous and philosophically compelling foundation for the scientific study of the grammar of natural language. With the use of tools from the study of formal languages, he gave a far more precise and explanatory account of natural language grammar than had previously been given Syntactic Structures, 7. He has since developed a number of highly influential frameworks for the study of natural language grammar e.g., Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 5; Lectures on Government and Binding, 1; The Minimalist Program, 5. Though there are significant differences in detail, there are also common themes that underlie these approaches. Perhaps the most central is that there is an innate set of linguistic principles shared by all humans, and the purpose of linguistic inquiry is to describe the initial state of the language learner, and account for linguistic variation via the most general possible mechanisms. On Chomsky’s conception of linguistics, languages are structures in the brains of individual speakers, described at a certain level of abstraction within the theory. These structures occur within the language faculty, a hypothesized module of the human brain. Universal Grammar is the set of principles hard-wired into the language faculty that determine the class of possible human languages. This conception of linguistics involves several influential and controversial theses. First, the hypothesis of a Universal Grammar entails the existence of innate linguistic principles. Secondly, the hypothesis of a language faculty entails that our linguistic abilities, at least so far as grammar is concerned, are not a product of general reasoning processes. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, since having one of these structures is an intrinsic property of a speaker, properties of languages so conceived are determined solely by states of the speaker. On this individualistic conception of language, there is no room in scientific linguistics for the social entities determined by linguistic communities that are languages according to previous anthropological conceptions of the discipline. Many of Chomsky’s most significant contributions to philosophy, such as his influential rejection of behaviorism “Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior,” Language, 9, stem from his elaborations and defenses of the above consequences cf. also Cartesian Linguistics, 6; Reflections on Language, 5; Rules and Representations, 0; Knowledge of Language, 6. Chomsky’s philosophical writings are characterized by an adherence to methodological naturalism, the view that the mind should be studied like any other natural phenomenon. In recent years, he has also argued that reference, in the sense in which it is used in the philosophy of language, plays no role in a scientific theory of language “Language and Nature,” Mind, 5. 

Ad-biter – Grice: “How can a choice not be free?” -- liberum arbitrium – Grice: “I would place the traditional proble of the freedom of the will within the philosophy of action, of the type I engaged in only with two Englishmen, both students at Christ Church, or ‘The House,’: J. F. Thomson, and D. F. Pears.  free: “ “Free” is one of the trickiest adjectives in English. My favourite is ‘alcohol-free’. And then there’s ‘free logic.”” Free logic, a system of quantification theory, with or without identity, that allows for non-denoting singular terms. In classical quantification theory, all singular terms free variables and individual constants are assigned a denotation in all models. But this condition appears counterintuitive when such systems are applied to natural language, where many singular terms seem to be non-denoting ‘Pegasus’, ‘Sherlock Holmes’, and the like. Various solutions of this problem have been proposed, ranging from Frege’s chosen object theory assign an arbitrary denotation to each non-denoting singular term to Russell’s description theory deny singular term status to most expressions used as such in natural language, and eliminate them from the “logical form” of that language to a weakening of the quantifiers’ “existential import,” which allows for denotations to be possible, but not necessarily actual, objects. All these solutions preserve the structure of classical quantification theory and make adjustments at the level of application. Free logic is a more radical solution: it allows for legitimate singular terms to be denotationless, maintains the quantifiers’ existential import, but modifies both the proof theory and the semantics of first-order logic. Within proof theory, the main modification consists of eliminating the rule of existential generalization, which allows one to infer ‘There exists a flying horse’ from ‘Pegasus is a flying horse’. Within semantics, the main problem is giving truth conditions for sentences containing non-denoting singular terms, and there are various ways of accomplishing this. Conventional semantics assigns truth-values to atomic sentences containing non-denoting singular terms by convention, and then determines the truth-values of complex sentences as usual. Outer domain semantics divides the domain of interpretation into an inner and an outer part, using the inner part as the range of quantifiers and the outer part to provide for “denotations” for non-denoting singular terms which are then not literally denotationless, but rather left without an existing denotation. Supervaluational semantics, when considering a sentence A, assigns all possible combinations of truth-values to the atomic components of A containing non-denoting singular terms, evaluates A on the basis of each of those combinations, and then assigns to A the logical product of all such evaluations. Thus both ‘Pegasus flies’ and ‘Pegasus does not fly’ turn out truth-valueless, but ‘Pegasus flies or Pegasus does not fly’ turns out true since whatever truth-value is assigned to its atomic component ‘Pegasus flies’ the truth-value for the whole sentence is true. A free logic is inclusive if it allows for the possibility that the range of quantifiers be empty that there exists nothing at all; it is exclusive otherwise.  Then there’s the free rider, a person who benefits from a social arrangement without bearing an appropriate share of the burdens of maintaining that arrangement, e.g. one who benefits from government services without paying one’s taxes that support them. The arrangements from which a free rider benefits may be either formal or informal. Cooperative arrangements that permit free riders are likely to be unstable; parties to the arrangement are unlikely to continue to bear the burdens of maintaining it if others are able to benefit without doing their part. As a result, it is common for cooperative arrangements to include mechanisms to discourage free riders, e.g. legal punishment, or in cases of informal conventions the mere disapproval of one’s peers. It is a matter of some controversy as to whether it is always morally wrong to benefit from an arrangement without contributing to its maintenance. Then there’s the free will problem, the problem of the nature of free agency and its relation to the origins and conditions of responsible behavior. For those who contrast ‘free’ with ‘determined’, a central question is whether humans are free in what they do or determined by external events beyond their control. A related concern is whether an agent’s responsibility for an action requires that the agent, the act, or the relevant decision be free. This, in turn, directs attention to action, motivation, deliberation, choice, and intention, and to the exact sense, if any, in which our actions are under our control. Use of ‘free will’ is a matter of traditional nomenclature; it is debated whether freedom is properly ascribed to the will or the agent, or to actions, choices, deliberations, etc. Controversy over conditions of responsible behavior forms the predominant historical and conceptual background of the free will problem. Most who ascribe moral responsibility acknowledge some sense in which agents must be free in acting as they do; we are not responsible for what we were forced to do or were unable to avoid no matter how hard we tried. But there are differing accounts of moral responsibility and disagreements about the nature and extent of such practical freedom a notion also important in Kant. Accordingly, the free will problem centers on these questions: Does moral responsibility require any sort of practical freedom? If so, what sort? Are people practically free? Is practical freedom consistent with the antecedent determination of actions, thoughts, and character? There is vivid debate about this last question. Consider a woman deliberating about whom to vote for. From her first-person perspective, she feels free to vote for any candidate and is convinced that the selection is up to her regardless of prior influences. But viewing her eventual behavior as a segment of larger natural and historical processes, many would argue that there are underlying causes determining her choice. With this contrast of intuitions, any attempt to decide whether the voter is free depends on the precise meanings associated with terms like ‘free’, ‘determine’, and ‘up to her’. One thing event, situation determines another if the latter is a consequence of it, or necessitated by it, e.g., the voter’s hand movements by her intention. As usually understood, determinism holds that whatever happens is determined by antecedent conditions, where determination is standardly conceived as causation by antecedent events and circumstances. So construed, determinism implies that at any time the future is already fixed and unique, with no possibility of alternative development. Logical versions of determinism declare each future event to be determined by what is already true, specifically, by the truth that it will occur then. Typical theological variants accept the predestination of all circumstances and events inasmuch as a divine being knows in advance or even from eternity that they will obtain. Two elements are common to most interpretations of ‘free’. First, freedom requires an absence of determination or certain sorts of determination, and second, one acts and chooses freely only if these endeavors are, properly speaking, one’s own. From here, accounts diverge. Some take freedom liberty of indifference or the contingency of alternative courses of action to be critical. Thus, for the woman deliberating about which candidate to select, each choice is an open alternative inasmuch as it is possible but not yet necessitated. Indifference is also construed as motivational equilibrium, a condition some find essential to the idea that a free choice must be rational. Others focus on freedom liberty of spontaneity, where the voter is free if she votes as she chooses or desires, a reading that reflects the popular equation of freedom with “doing what you want.” Associated with both analyses is a third by which the woman acts freely if she exercises her control, implying responsiveness to free rider free will problem 326   326 intent as well as both abilities to perform an act and to refrain. A fourth view identifies freedom with autonomy, the voter being autonomous to the extent that her selection is self-determined, e.g., by her character, deeper self, higher values, or informed reason. Though distinct, these conceptions are not incompatible, and many accounts of practical freedom include elements of each. Determinism poses problems if practical freedom requires contingency alternate possibilities of action. Incompatibilism maintains that determinism precludes freedom, though incompatibilists differ whether everything is determined. Those who accept determinism thereby endorse hard determinism associated with eighteenthcentury thinkers like d’Holbach and, recently, certain behaviorists, according to which freedom is an illusion since behavior is brought about by environmental and genetic factors. Some hard determinists also deny the existence of moral responsibility. At the opposite extreme, metaphysical libertarianism asserts that people are free and responsible and, a fortiori, that the past does not determine a unique future  a position some find enhanced by developments in quantum physics. Among adherents of this sort of incompatibilism are those who advocate a freedom of indifference by describing responsible choices as those that are undetermined by antecedent circumstances Epicureans. To rebut the charge that choices, so construed, are random and not really one’s “own,” it has been suggested that several elements, including an agent’s reasons, delimit the range of possibilities and influence choices without necessitating them a view held by Leibniz and, recently, by Robert Kane. Libertarians who espouse agency causation, on the other hand, blend contingency with autonomy in characterizing a free choice as one that is determined by the agent who, in turn, is not caused to make it a view found in Carneades and Reid. Unwilling to abandon practical freedom yet unable to understand how a lack of determination could be either necessary or desirable for responsibility, many philosophers take practical freedom and responsibility to be consistent with determinism, thereby endorsing compatibilism. Those who also accept determinism advocate what James called soft determinism. Its supporters include some who identify freedom with autonomy the Stoics, Spinoza and others who champion freedom of spontaneity Hobbes, Locke, Hume. The latter speak of liberty as the power of doing or refraining from an action according to what one wills, so that by choosing otherwise one would have done otherwise. An agent fails to have liberty when constrained, that is, when either prevented from acting as one chooses or compelled to act in a manner contrary to what one wills. Extending this model, liberty is also diminished when one is caused to act in a way one would not otherwise prefer, either to avoid a greater danger coercion or because there is deliberate interference with the envisioning of alternatives manipulation. Compatibilists have shown considerable ingenuity in responding to criticisms that they have ignored freedom of choice or the need for open alternatives. Some apply the spontaneity, control, or autonomy models to decisions, so that the voter chooses freely if her decision accords with her desires, is under her control, or conforms to her higher values, deeper character, or informed reason. Others challenge the idea that responsibility requires alternative possibilities of action. The so-called Frankfurt-style cases developed by Harry G. Frankfurt are situations where an agent acts in accord with his desires and choices, but because of the presence of a counterfactual intervener  a mechanism that would have prevented the agent from doing any alternative action had he shown signs of acting differently  the agent could not have done otherwise. Frankfurt’s intuition is that the agent is as responsible as he would have been if there were no intervener, and thus that responsible action does not require alternative possibilities. Critics have challenged the details of the Frankfurt-style cases in attempting to undermine the appeal of the intuition. A different compatibilist tactic recognizes the need for open alternatives and employs versions of the indifference model in describing practical freedom. Choices are free if they are contingent relative to certain subsets of circumstances, e.g. those the agent is or claims to be cognizant of, with the openness of alternatives grounded in what one can choose “for all one knows.” Opponents of compatibilism charge that since these refinements leave agents subject to external determination, even by hidden controllers, compatibilism continues to face an insurmountable challenge. Their objections are sometimes summarized by the consequence argument so called by Peter van Inwagen, who has prominently defended it: if everything were determined by factors beyond one’s control, then one’s acts, choices, and character would also be beyond one’s control, and consequently, agents would never be free and there would be nothing free will problem free will problem 327   327 for which they are responsible. Such reasoning usually employs principles asserting the closure of the practical modalities ability, control, avoidability, inevitability, etc. under consequence relations. However, there is a reason to suppose that the sort of ability and control required by responsibility involve the agent’s sense of what can be accomplished. Since cognitive states are typically not closed under consequence, the closure principles underlying the consequence argument are disputable.  From liber (‘eleutheros) is also liberatum: liberum arbitrium – vide ‘arbitrium’ How can arbitrium not be free? Oddly this concerns rationality. For Grice, as for almost everyone, a rational agent is an autonomous agent. Freewill is proved grammatically. The Romans had a ‘modus deliberativus’, and even a ‘modus optativus’ (ortike ktesis) “in imitationem Graecis.”If you utter “Close the door!” you rely on free will. It would be otiose for a language or system of communication to have as its goal to inform/get informed, and influence/being influenced if determinism and fatalism were true.  freedom: Like identity, crucial in philosophy in covering everything. E cannot communicate that p, unless E is FREE. An amoeba cannot communicate thatp. End setting, unweighed rationality, rationality about the ends, autonomy. Grice was especially concerned with Kants having brought back the old Greek idea of eleutheria for philosophical discussion. Refs.: the obvious keywords are “freedom” and “free,” but most of the material is in “Actions and events,” in PPQ, and below under ‘kantianism’ – The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.Bratman, of Stanford, much influenced by Grice (at Berkeley then) thanks to their Hands-Across-the-Bay programme, helps us to understand this Pological progression towards the idea of strong autonomy or freedom. Recall that Grices Ps combine Lockes very intelligent parrots with Russells and Carnaps nonsensical Ps of which nothing we are told other than they karulise elatically. Grices purpose is to give a little thought to a question. What are the general principles exemplified, in creature-construction, in progressing from one type of P to a higher type? What kinds of steps are being made? The kinds of step with which Grice deals are those which culminate in a licence to include, within the specification of the content of the psychological state of this or that type of P, a range of expressions which would be inappropriate with respect to this lower-type P. Such expressions include this or that connective, this or that quantifier, this or that temporal modifier, this or that mode indicator, this or that modal operator, and (importantly) this or that expression to refer to this or that souly state like  … judges that … and … will that … This or that expression, that is, the availability of which leads to the structural enrichment of the specification of content. In general, these steps will be ones by which this or that item or idea which has, initially, a legitimate place outside the scope of this or that souly instantiable (or, if you will, the expressions for which occur legitimately outside the scope of this or that souly predicate) come to have a legitimate place within the scope of such an instantiable, a step by which, one might say, this or that item or ideas comes to be internalised. Grice is disposed to regard as prototypical the sort of natural disposition or propension which Hume attributes to a person, and which is very important to Hume, viz. the tendency of the soul to spread itself upon objects, i.e. to project into the world items which, properly or primitively considered, is a feature of this or that souly state. Grice sets out in stages the application of aspects of the genitorial programme. We then start with a zero-order, with a P equipped to satisfy unnested, or logically amorphous, judging and willing, i.e. whose contents do not involve judging or willing. We soon reach our first P, G1. It would be advantageous to a P0 if it could have this or that judging and this or that willing, which relate to its own judging or willing. Such G1 could be equipped to control or regulate its own judgings and willings. It will presumably be already constituted so as to conform to the law that, cæteris paribus, if it wills that p and judge that ~p, if it can, it makes it the case that p in its soul To give it some control over its judgings and willings, we need only extend the application of this law to the Ps judging and willing. We equip the P so that, cæteris paribus, if it wills that it is not the case that it wills that p and it judges that they do will that p, if it can, it makes it the case that it does not will that p. And we somehow ensure that sometimes it can do this. It may be that the installation of this kind of control would go hand in had with the installation of the capacity for evaluation. Now, unlike it is the case with a G1, a G2s intentional effort depends on the motivational strength of its considered desire at the time of action. There is a process by which this or that conflicting considered desire motivates action as a broadly causal process, a process that reveals motivational strength. But a G2 might itself try to weigh considerations provided by such a conflicting desire B1 and B2 in deliberation about this or that pro and this or that con of various alternatives. In the simplest case, such weighing treats each of the things desired as a prima facie justifying end. In the face of conflict, it weighs this and that desired end, where the weights correspond to the motivational strength of the associated considered desire. The outcome of such deliberation, Aristotle’s prohairesis, matches the outcome of the causal motivational process envisioned in the description of G2. But, since the weights it invokes in such deliberation correspond to the motivational strength of this or that relevant considered desire (though perhaps not to the motivational strength of this or that relevant considered desire), the resultant activitiy matches those of a corresponding G2 (each of whose desires, we are assuming, are considered). To be more realistic, we might limit ourselves to saying that a P2 has the capacity to make the transition from this or that unconsidered desire to this or that considered desire, but does not always do this. But it will keep the discussion more manageable to simplify and to suppose that each desire is considered. We shall not want this G2 to depend, in each will and act in ways that reveal the motivational strength of this or that considered desire at the time of action, but for a G3 it will also be the case that in this or that, though not each) case, it acts on the basis of how it weights this or that end favoured by this or that conflicting considered desire. This or that considered desire will concern matters that cannot be achieved simply by action at a single time. E. g. G3 may want to nurture a vegetable garden, or build a house. Such matters will require organized and coordinated action that extends over time. What the G3 does now will depend not only on what it now desires but also on what it now expects it will do later given what it does now. It needs a way of settling now what it will do later given what it does now. The point is even clearer when we remind ourselves that G3 is not alone. It is, we may assume, one of some number of G3; and in many cases it needs to coordinate what it does with what other G3 do so as to achieve ends desired by all participants, itself included. These costs are magnified for G4 whose various plans are interwoven so that a change in one element can have significant ripple effects that will need to be considered. Let us suppose that the general strategies G4 has for responding to new information about its circumstances are sensitive to these kinds of costs. Promoting in the long run the satisfaction of its considered desires and preferences. G4 is a somewhat sophisticated planning agent but it has a problem. It can expect that its desires and preferences may well change over time and undermine its efforts at organizing and coordinating its activities over time. Perhaps in many cases this is due to the kind of temporal discounting. So for example G4 may have a plan to exercise every day but may tend to prefer a sequence of not exercising on the present day but exercising all days in the future, to a uniform sequence the present day included. At the end of the day it returns to its earlier considered preference in favour of exercising on each and every day. Though G4, unlike G3, has the capacity to settle on prior plans or plaices concerning exercise, this capacity does not yet help in such a case. A creature whose plans were stable in ways in part shaped by such a no-regret principle would be more likely than G4 to resist temporary temptations. So let us build such a principle into the stability of the plans of a G5, whose plans and policies are not derived solely from facts about its limits of time, attention, and the like. It is also grounded in the central concerns of a planning agent with its own future, concerns that lend special significance to anticipated future regret. So let us add to G5 the capacity and disposition to arrive at such hierarchies of higher-order desires concerning its will. This gives us creature G6. There is a problem with G6, one that has been much discussed. It is not clear why a higher-order desire  ‒ even a higher-order desire that a certain desire be ones will  ‒ is not simply one more desire in the pool of desires (Berkeley Gods will problem). Why does it have the authority to constitute or ensure the agents (i. e. the creatures) endorsement or rejection of a first-order desire? Applied to G6 this is the question of whether, by virtue solely of its hierarchies of desires, it really does succeed in taking its own stand of endorsement or rejection of various first-order desires. Since it was the ability to take its own stand that we are trying to provide in the move to P6, we need some response to this challenge. The basic point is that G6 is not merely a time-slice agent. It is, rather, and understands itself to be, a temporally persisting planning agent, one who begins, and continues, and completes temporally extended projects. On a broadly Lockean view, its persistence over time consists in relevant psychological continuities (e.g., the persistence of attitudes of belief and intention) and connections (e.g., memory of a past event, or the later intentional execution of an intention formed earlier). Certain attitudes have as a primary role the constitution and support of such Lockean continuities and connections. In particular, policies that favour or reject various desires have it as their role to constitute and support various continuities both of ordinary desires and of the politicos themselves. For this reason such policies are not merely additional wiggles in the psychic stew. Instead, these policies have a claim to help determine where the agent ‒ i.e., the temporally persisting agent ‒ stands with respect to its desires, or so it seems to me reasonable to say. The psychology of G7 continues to have the hierarchical structure of pro-attitudes introduced with G6. The difference is that the higher-order pro-attitudes of G6 were simply characterized as desires in a broad, generic sense, and no appeal was made to the distinctive species of pro-attitude constituted by plan-like attitudes. That is the sense in which the psychology of G7 is an extension of the psychology of G6. Let us then give G7 such higher-order policies with the capacity to take a stand with respect to its desires by arriving at relevant higher-order policies concerning the functioning of those desires over time. Gexhibits a merger of hierarchical and planning structures. Appealing to planning theory and ground in connection to the temporally extended structure of agency to be ones will. G7 has higher-order policies that favour or challenge motivational roles of its considered desires. When G7 engages in deliberative weighing of conflicting, desired ends it seems that the assigned weights should reflect the policies that determine where it stands with respect to relevant desires. But the policies we have so far appealed to ‒ policies concerning what desires are to be ones will ‒ do not quite address this concern. The problem is that one can in certain cases have policies concerning which desires are to motivate and yet these not be policies that accord what those desires are for a corresponding justifying role in deliberation. G8. A solution is to give our creature, G8, the capacity to arrive at policies that express its commitment to be motivated by a desire by way of its treatment of that desire as providing, in deliberation, a justifying end for action. Ghas policies for treating (or not treating) certain desires as providing justifying ends, as, in this way, reason-providing, in motivationally effective deliberation. Let us call such policies self-governing policies. We will suppose that these policies are mutually compatible and do not challenge each other. In this way G8 involves an extension of structures already present in G7. The grounds on which G8 arrives at (and on occasion revises) such self-governing policies will be many and varied. We can see these policies as crystallizing complex pressures and concerns, some of which are grounded in other policies or desires. These self-governing policies may be tentative and will normally not be immune to change. If we ask what G8 values in this case, the answer seems to be: what it values is constituted in part by its higher-order self-governing policies. In particular, it values exercise over nonexercise even right now, and even given that it has a considered, though temporary, preference to the contrary. Unlike lower Ps, what P8 now values is not simply a matter of its present, considered desires and preferences. Now this model of P8 seems in relevant aspects to be a partial) model of us, in our better moments, of course. So we arrive at the conjecture that one important kind of valuing of which we are capable involves, in the cited ways, both our first-order desires and our higher order self-governing policies. In an important sub-class of cases our valuing involves reflexive polices that are both first-order policies of action and higher-order policies to treat the first-order policy as reason providing in motivationally effective deliberation. This may seem odd. Valuing seems normally to be a first-order attitude. One values honesty, say. The proposal is that an important kind of valuing involves higher-order policies. Does this mean that, strictly speaking, what one values (in this sense) is itself a desire ‒ not honesty, say, but a desire for honesty? No, it does not. What I value in the present case is honesty; but, on the theory, my valuing honesty in art consists in certain higher-order self-governing policies. An agents reflective valuing involves a kind of higher-order willing. Freud challenged the power structure of the soul in Plato: it is the libido that takes control, not the logos. Grice takes up this polemic. Aristotle takes up Platos challenge, each type of soul is united to the next by the idea of life. The animal soul, between the vegetative and the rational, is not detachable.


ADDITVM -- additum: or, ADDITVM, as Grice would spell it --  f. addo , dĭdi, dĭtum, 3, v. a. 2. do (addues for addideris, Paul. ex Fest. p. 27 Müll.),addition. Strawson Wiggins p. 520. The utterer implies something more or different from what he explicitly conveys. Cfr. Disimplicaturum, ‘less’ under ‘different from’ How seriously are we taking the ‘more.’ Not used by Grice. They seem cross-categorial. If emissor draws a skull and then a cross he means that there is danger and death in the offing. He crosses the cross, so it means death is avoidable. Urmson says that Warnock went to bed and took off his boots. He implicates in that order. So he means MORE than the ‘ampersand.” The “and” is expanded into “and then.” But in not every case things are so easy that it’s a matter of adding stuff. Cf. summatum, conjunctum. And then there’s the ‘additive implicaturum.’  By uttering ‘and,’ Russell means the Boolean adition. Whitehead means ‘and then’. Whithead’s implicaturum is ADDITIVE, as opposed to diaphoron. Grice considers the conceptual possibilities here: One may explicitly convey that p, and implicitly convey q, where q ADDS to p (e. g. ‘and’ implicates ‘and then’). Sometimes it does not, “He is a fine fine,” (or a ‘nice fellow,’ Lecture IV) implying, “He is a scoundrel.” Sometimes it has nothing to do with it, “The weather has been nice” implying, “you committed a gaffe.” With disimplicaturum, you implicate LESS than you explicitly convey. When did you last see your father? “Yesterday night, in my drams.” Grice sums this up with the phrase, “more or other.” By explicitly conveying that p, the emissor implicates MORE OR OTHER than he explicitly conveys.

AD-PARITVM -- adparitum: or ADPARTIVUM, as Grice would spell it --  apparitio – Latin for ‘appear’ – ADPARITUM -- theory of appearing, the theory that to perceive an object is simply for that object to appear present itself to one as being a certain way, e.g., looking round or like a rock, smelling vinegary, sounding raucous, or tasting bitter. Nearly everyone would accept this formulation on some interpretation. But the theory takes this to be a rock-bottom characterization of perception, and not further analyzable. It takes “appearing to subject S as so-and-so” as a basic, irreducible relation, one readily identifiable in experience but not subject to definition in other terms. The theory preserves the idea that in normal perception we are directly aware of objects in the physical environment, not aware of them through non-physical sense-data, sensory impressions, or other intermediaries. When a tree looks to me a certain way, it is the tree and nothing else of which I am directly aware. That involves “having” a sensory experience, but that experience just consists of the tree’s looking a certain way to me. After enjoying a certain currency early in this century the theory was largely abandoned under the impact of criticisms by Price, Broad, and Chisholm. The most widely advertised difficulty theoretical underdetermination is this. What is it that appears to the subject in completely hallucinatory experience? Perhaps the greatest strength of the theory is its fidelity to what perceptual experience seems to be. ap-pārĕo (adp- , Ritschl, Fleck., B. and K.; app- , Lachm., Merk., Weissenb., Halm, Rib.), ui, itum, 2, v. n.,  I.to come in sight, to appear, become visible, make one's appearance (class. in prose and poetry). I. A.. Lit.: “ego adparebo domi,” Plaut. Capt. 2, 3, 97: “ille bonus vir nusquam adparet,” Ter. Eun. 4, 3, 18; Lucr. 3, 25; so id. 3, 989: “rem contra speculum ponas, apparet imago,” id. 4, 157: unde tandem adpares, Cic. Fragm. ap. Prisc. p. 706 P.; id. Fl. 12 fin.: “equus mecum una demersus rursus adparuit,” id. Div. 2, 68; so id. Sull. 2, 5: “cum lux appareret (Dinter, adpeteret),” Caes. B. G. 7, 82: “de sulcis acies apparuit hastae,” Ov. M. 3, 107: “apparent rari nantes,” Verg. A. 1, 118, Hor. C. S. 59 al.—With dat.: “anguis ille, qui Sullae adparuit immolanti,” Cic. Div. 2, 30 fin.; id. Clu. 53: “Quís numquam candente dies adparuit ortu,” Tib. 4, 1, 65.—Once in Varro with ad: quod adparet ad agricolas, R. R. 1, 40.— B. In gen., to be seen, to show one's self, be in public, appear: “pro pretio facio, ut opera adpareat Mea,” Plaut. Ps. 3, 2, 60: “fac sis nunc promissa adpareant,” Ter. Eun. 2, 3, 20; cf. id. Ad. 5, 9, 7: “illud apparere unum,” that this only is apparent, Lucr. 1, 877; Cato, R. R. 2, 2: “ubi merces apparet? i. e. illud quod pro tantā mercede didiceris,” Cic. Phil. 2, 34: “quo studiosius opprimitur et absconditur, eo magis eminet et apparet,” id. Rosc. Am. 41 fin.: “Galbae orationes evanuerunt, vix jam ut appareant,” id. Brut. 21, 82: “apparet adhuc vetus mde cicatrix,” Ov. M. 12, 444; 2, 734: “rebus angustis animosus atque fortis appare,” Hor. C. 2, 10, 22: “cum lamentamur, non apparere labores Nostros,” are not noticed, considered, id. Ep. 2, 1, 224, so id. ib. 2, 1, 250 al.; Plaut. Men. 2, 1, 14; cf. id. Am. 2, 2, 161 and 162.—Hence, apparens (opp. latens), visible, evident: “tympana non apparentia Obstrepuere,” Ov. M. 4, 391: “apparentia vitia curanda sunt,” Quint. 12, 8, 10; so id. 9, 2, 46.— II. Trop.: res apparet, and far more freq. impers. apparet with acc. and inf. or rel.-clause, the thing (or it) is evident, clear, manifest, certain, δῆλόν ἐστι, φαίνεται (objective certainty, while videtur. δοκεῖ, designates subjective belief, Web. Uebungssch. 258): “ratio adparet,” Plaut. Trin. 2, 4, 17: “res adparet, Ter Ad. 5, 9, 7: apparet id etiam caeco, Liv 32, 34. cui non id apparere, id actum esse. etc.,” id. 22, 34; 2, 31 fin.: “ex quo adparet antiquior origo,” Plin. 36, 26, 67, § 197 al.: “adparet servom nunc esse domini pauperis,” Ter. Eun. 3, 2, 33: “non dissimulat, apparet esse commotum,” Cic. Phil. 2, 34: apparet atque exstat, utrum simus earum (artium) rudes, id. de Or. 1, 16, 72: “quid rectum sit, adparet,” id. Fam. 5, 19; 4, 7: “sive confictum est, ut apparet, sive, etc.,” id. Fl. 16 fin.; Nep. Att. 4, 1; Liv. 42, 43: “quo adparet antiquiorem hanc fuisse scientiam,” Plin. 35, 12, 44, § 153 al.—Also with dat. pers.: “quas impendere jam apparebat omnibus,” Nep. Eum. 10, 3; and, by attraction, with nom. and inf., as in Gr. δῆλός ἐστι, Varr. R. R. 1, 6, 2: “membra nobis ita data sunt, ut ad quandam rationem vivendi data esse adpareant,” Cic. Fin. 3, 7, 23, ubi v. Otto: “apparet ita degenerāsse Nero,” Suet. Ner. 1; or without the inf., with an adj. as predicate: “apparebat atrox cum plebe certamen (sc. fore, imminere, etc.),” Liv. 2, 28; Suet. Rhet. 1.— III. To appear as servant or aid (a lictor, scribe, etc.), to attend, wait upon, serve; cf. apparitor (rare): “sacerdotes diis adparento,” Cic. Leg. 2, 8, 21: “cum septem annos Philippo apparuisset,” Nep. Eum. 13, 1: “cum appareret aedilibus,” Liv. 9, 46 Drak.: “lictores apparent consulibus,” id. 2, 55: “collegis accensi,” id. 3, 33: tibi appareo atque aeditumor in templo tuo, Pompon. ap. Gell. 12, 10: “Jovis ad solium Apparent,” Verg. A. 12, 850 (= praestant ad obsequium, Serv.). Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Bradley and the misuses of ‘appearance.’”

Ælfric: important English philosopher, like Grice. Cf. Alcuinus. --.

æqui-pollens: -- from ‘aequipollentia,’ a term used by Grice, après Sextus Empiricus, to express the view that there are arguments of equal strength on all sides of any question and that therefore we should suspend judgment on every question that can be raised. 

æqui-probabile: a neuter – as used by Grice, having the same probability. Sometimes used in the same way as ‘equipossible’, the term is associated with Laplace’s the “classical” interpretation of probability, where the probability of an event is the ratio of the number of equipossibilities favorable to the event to the total number of equipossibilities. For example, the probability of rolling an even number with a “fair” six-sided die is ½  there being three equipossibilities 2, 4, 6 favorable to even, and six equipossibilities 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in all and 3 /6 % ½. The concept is now generally thought not to be widely applicable to the interpretation of probability, since natural equipossibilities are not always at hand as in assessing the probability of a thermonuclear war tomorrow. 

æqui-valens: -- from aequi-valentia – i. ee. mutual inferability. The following are main kinds: two statements are materially equivalent provided they have the same truthvalue, and logically equivalent provided each can be deduced from the other; two sentences or words are equivalent in meaning provided they can be substituted for each other in any context without altering the meaning of that context. In truth-functional logic, two statements are logically equivalent if they can never have truthvalues different from each other. In this sense of ‘logically equivalent’ all tautologies are equivalent to each other and all contradictions are equivalent to each other. Similarly, in extensional set theory, two classes are equivalent provided they have the same numbers, so that all empty classes are regarded as equivalent. In a non-extensional set theory, classes would be equivalent only if their conditions of membership were logically equivalent or equivalent in meaning.

æqui-vocale: A neuter form -- Grice preferred Cicero’s rendition of ‘synonymia’ (cf. paronymia, and homonympia) --. Grice’s æqui-vocality thesis -- aequivocation, the use of an expression in two or more different senses in a single context. For example, in ‘The end of anything is its perfection. But the end of life is death; so death is the perfection of life’, the expression ‘end’ is first used in the sense of ‘goal or purpose,’ but in its second occurrence ‘end’ means ‘termination.’ The use of the two senses in this context is an equivocation. Where the context in which the expression used is an argument, the fallacy of equivocation may be committed.

ÆSTHETICVM: or AESTHETICVM, as Grice would spell it – “A hybrid,” – Grice is aware that the old Roman form is ‘sensus’ – which Cicero uses to translate the rather convoluted Grecian idea of the ‘aesthesis’ – or ‘aesthetikos’ versus ‘noetikos.’ -- Grice is well aware that ‘aesthetica,’ qua discipline, was meant to refer to the ‘sensibile,’ as opposed to the ‘intellectus.’ With F. N. Sibley (who credits Grice profusely), Grice explored the ‘second-order’ quality of the so-called ‘aesthetic properties.’ It influenced Scruton. The aesthetic attitude is the appropriate attitude or frame of mind for approaching art or nature or other objects or events so that one might both appreciate its intrinsic perceptual qualities, and as a result have an aesthetic experience. The aesthetic attitude has been construed in many ways: 1 as disinterested, so that one’s experience of the work is not affected by any interest in its possible practical uses, 2 as a “distancing” of oneself from one’s own personal concerns, 3 as the contemplation of an object, purely as an object of sensation, as it is in itself, for its own sake, in a way unaffected by any cognition or knowledge one may have of it. These different notions of aesthetic attitude have at times been combined within a single theory. There is considerable doubt about whether there is such a thing as an aesthetic attitude. There is neither any special kind of action nor any special way of performing an ordinary action that ensures that we see a work as it “really is,” and that results in our having an aesthetic experience. Furthermore, there are no purely sensory experiences, divorced from any cognitive content whatsoever. Criticisms of the notion of aesthetic attitude have reinforced attacks on aesthetics as a separate field of study within philosophy. On the other hand, there’s aesthetic formalism, non-iconic, the view that in our interactions with works of art, form should be given primacy. Rather than taking ‘formalism’ as the name of one specific theory in the arts, it is better and more typical to take it to name that type of theory which emphasizes the form of the artwork. Or, since emphasis on form is something that comes in degrees, it is best to think of theories of art as ranged on a continuum of more formalist and less formalist. It should be added that theories of art are typically complex, including definitions of art, recommendations concerning what we should attend to in art, analyses of the nature of the aesthetic, recommendations concerning the making of aesthetic evaluations, etc.; and each of these components may be more formalist or less so. Those who use the concept of form mainly wish to contrast the artifact itself with its relations to entities outside itself  with its representing various things, its symbolizing various things, its being expressive of various things, its being the product of various intentions of the artist, its evoking various states in beholders, its standing in various relations of influence and similarity to preceding, succeeding, and contemporary works, etc. There have been some, however, who in emphasizing form have meant to emphasize not just the artifact but the perceptible form or design of the artifact. Kant, e.g., in his theory of aesthetic excellence, not only insisted that the only thing relevant to determining the beauty of an object is its appearance, but within the appearance, the form, the design: in visual art, not the colors but the design that the colors compose; in music, not the timbre of the individual sounds but the formal relationships among them. It comes as no surprise that theories of music have tended to be much more formalist than theories of literature and drama, with theories of the visual arts located in between. While Austin’s favourite aesthetic property is ‘dumpty,’ Grice is more open minded, and allows for more of a property or quality such as being dainty, garish, graceful, balanced, charming, majestic, trite, elegant, lifeless, ugly, or beautiful. By contrast, non-aesthetic properties are properties that require no special sensitivity or perceptiveness to perceive  such as a painting’s being predominantly blue, its having a small red square in a corner or a kneeling figure in the foreground, or that the music becomes louder at a given point. Sometimes it is argued that a special perceptiveness or taste is needed to perceive a work’s aesthetic qualities, and that this is a defining feature of a property’s being aesthetic. A corollary of this view is that aesthetic qualities cannot be defined in terms of non-aesthetic qualities, though some have held that aesthetic qualities supervene on non-aesthetic qualities. As a systematic philosopher, Grice goes back to the etymological root of the aesthetic as the philosophy of the sensible. He would make fun of the specialization. “If at the philosophy department I am introduced to Mr. Puddle, our man in nineteenth-century continental aesthetics, I can grasp he is either underdescribed or not good at nineteenth-century continental aesthetics!’ The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of art and the character of our adventitious ideas and experience of art and of the natural environment. It emerged as a separate field of philosophical inquiry during the eighteenth century in England and on the Continent. Recognition of aesthetics as a separate branch of philosophy coincided with the development of theories of art that grouped together painting, poetry, sculpture, music, and dance and often landscape gardening as the same kind of thing, les beaux arts, or the fine arts. Baumgarten coined the term ‘aesthetics’ in his Reflections on Poetry 1735 as the name for one of the two branches of the study of knowledge, i.e., for the study of sensory experience coupled with feeling, which he argued provided a different type of knowledge from the distinct, abstract ideas studied by “logic.” He derived it from the ancient Grecian aisthanomai ‘to perceive’, and “the aesthetic” has always been intimately connected with sensory experience and the kinds of feelings it arouses. Questions specific to the field of aesthetics are: Is there a special attitude, the aesthetic attitude, which we should take toward works of art and the natural environment, and what is it like? Is there a distinctive type of experience, an aesthetic experience, and what is it? Is there a special object of attention that we can call the aesthetic object? Finally, is there a distinctive value, aesthetic value, comparable with moral, epistemic, and religious values? Some questions overlap with those in the philosophy of art, such as those concerning the nature of beauty, and whether there is a faculty of taste that is exercised in judging the aesthetic character and value of natural objects or works of art. Aesthetics also encompasses the philosophy of art. The most central issue in the philosophy of art has been how to define ‘art’. Not all cultures have, or have had, a concept of art that coincides with the one that emerged in Western Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What justifies our applying our concept to the things people in these other cultures have produced? There are also many pictures including paintings, songs, buildings, and bits of writing, that are not art. What distinguishes those pictures, musical works, etc., that are art from those that are not? Various answers have been proposed that identify the distinguishing features of art in terms of form, expressiveness, intentions of the maker, and social roles or uses of the object. Since the eighteenth century there have been debates about what kinds of things count as “art.” Some have argued that architecture and ceramics are not art because their functions are primarily utilitarian, and novels were for a long time not listed among the “fine arts” because they are not embodied in a sensuous medium. Debates continue to arise over new media and what may be new art forms, such as film, video, photography, performance art, found art, furniture, posters, earthworks, and computer and electronic art. Sculptures these days may be made out of dirt, feces, or various discarded and mass-produced objects, rather than marble or bronze. There is often an explicit rejection of craft and technique by twentieth-century artists, and the subject matter has expanded to include the banal and everyday, and not merely mythological, historical, and religious subjects as in years past. All of these developments raise questions about the relevance of the category of “fine” or “high” art. Another set of issues in philosophy of art concerns how artworks are to be interpreted, appreciated, and understood. Some views emphasize that artworks are products of individual efforts, so that a work should be understood in light of the producer’s knowledge, skill, and intentions. Others see the meaning of a work as established by social conventions and practices of the artist’s own time, but which may not be known or understood by the producer. Still others see meaning as established by the practices of the users, even if they were not in effect when the work was produced. Are there objective criteria or standards for evaluating individual artworks? There has been much disagreement over whether value judgments have universal validity, or whether there can be no disputing about taste, if value judgments are relative to the tastes and interests of each individual or to some group of individuals who share the same tastes and interests. A judgment such as “This is good” certainly seems to make a claim about the work itself, though such a claim is often based on the sort of feeling, understanding, or experience a person has obtained from the work. A work’s aesthetic or artistic value is generally distinguished from simply liking it. But is it possible to establish what sorts of knowledge or experiences any given work should provide to any suitably prepared perceiver, and what would it be to be suitably prepared? It is a matter of contention whether a work’s aesthetic and artistic values are independent of its moral, political, or epistemic stance or impact. Philosophy of art has also dealt with the nature of taste, beauty, imagination, creativity, repreaesthetics aesthetics 12 4065A-   12 sentation, expression, and expressiveness; style; whether artworks convey knowledge or truth; the nature of narrative and metaphor; the importance of genre; the ontological status of artworks; and the character of our emotional responses to art. Work in the field has always been influenced by philosophical theories of language or meaning, and theories of knowledge and perception, and continues to be heavily influenced by psychological and cultural theory, including versions of semiotics, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, feminism, and Marxism. Some theorists in the late twentieth century have denied that the aesthetic and the “fine arts” can legitimately be separated out and understood as separate, autonomous human phenomena; they argue instead that these conceptual categories themselves manifest and reinforce certain kinds of cultural attitudes and power relationships. These theorists urge that aesthetics can and should be eliminated as a separate field of study, and that “the aesthetic” should not be conceived as a special kind of value. They favor instead a critique of the roles that images not only painting, but film, photography, and advertising, sounds, narrative, and three-dimensional constructions have in expressing and shaping human attitudes and experiences. 

agape: Grice would often contrast ‘self-love’ with ‘agape’ and ‘benevolence.’ Strictly, agape, “a lovely Grecian word,” is best rendered as the unselfish love for all persons. An ethical theory according to which such love is the chief virtue, and actions are good to the extent that they express it, is sometimes called agapism. Agape is the Grecian word most often used for love in the New Testament, and is often used in modern languages to signify whatever sort of love the writer takes to be idealized there. In New Testament Grecian, however, it was probably a quite general word for love, so that any ethical ideal must be found in the text’s substantive claims, rather than in the linguistic meaning of the word. R.M.A. agathon, Grecian word meaning ‘a good’ or ‘the good’. From Socrates onward, agathon was taken to be a central object of philosophical inquiry; it has frequently been assumed to be the goal of all rational action. Plato in the simile of the sun in the Republic identified it with the Form of the Good, the source of reality, truth, and intelligibility. Aristotle saw it as eudaimonia, intellectual or practical virtue, a view that found its way, via Stoicism and Neoplatonism, into Christianity. Modern theories of utility can be seen as concerned with essentially the same Socratic question.

AGITATVM -- agitation: or AGITATUM, as Grice would spell it --  a Byzantine feeling is a Ryleian agitation. If Grice were to advance the not wholly plausible thesis that ‘to feel Byzantine’ is just to have a an anti-rylean agitation which is caused by the thought that Grice is or might *be* Byzantine, it would surely be ridiculous to criticise Grice on the grounds that Grice saddles himself with an ontological commitment to feelings, or to modes of feeling. And why? Well, because, alla Parsons, if a quantifier is covertly involved at all, it will only be a universal quantifier which in such a case as this is more than adequately handled by a substitutional account of quantification. Grice’s situation vis-a-vis the ‘proposition’ is in no way different. In the idiolect of Ryle, “a serious student of Grecian philosophy,” as Grice puts it, ‘emotion’ designates at least three or four different kinds of things, which Ryle calls an ‘inclination, or ‘motive,’ a ‘mood’, an ‘agitation,’ or a ‘commotion,’ and a ‘feeling.’ An inclination or a mood, including an agitation, is not occurrences and doest not therefore take place either publicly or privately. It is a propensity, not an act or state. An inclination is, however, a propensity of this or that kind, and the kind is important. A feeling, on the other hand, IS an occurrence, but the place that mention of it should take in a description of human behaviour is very different from that which the standard theories accord to it. A susceptibility to a specific agitation is on the same general footing with an inclination, viz. that each is a general propensity and not an occurrence. An agitation is not a motive. But an agitation does presuppose a motive, or rather an agitataion presupposes a behaviour trend of which a motive is for us the most interesting sort. There is however a matter of expression which is the source of some confusion, even among Oxonian Wilde readers, and that did confuse philosophical psychologists of the ability of G. F. Stout. An expression may signify both an inclination and an agitation. But an expression may signify anything but an agitations. Again, some other expression may signify anything but an inclination. An expression like ‘uneasy’, ‘anxious’, ‘distressed’, ‘excited’, ‘startled’ always signifies an agitations. An expression like ‘fond of fishing’, ‘keen on gardening’, ‘bent on becoming a bishop’ never signifies an agitation. But an expression like ‘love’, ‘want’, ‘desire’, ‘proud’, ‘eager,’ or many others, stands sometimes for a simple inclination and sometimes for an agitations which is resultant upon the inclinations and interferences with the exercise of it. Thus ‘hungry’ for ‘having a good appetite’ means roughly ‘is eating or would eat heartily and without sauces, etc..’ This is different from ‘hungry’ in which a person might be said to be ‘too hungry to concentrate on his work’. Hunger in this second expression is a distress, and requires for its existence the conjunction of an appetite with the inability to eat. Similarly the way in which a boy is proud of his school is different from the way in which he is speechless with pride on being unexpectedly given a place in a school team. To remove a possible misapprehension, it must be pointed out that an agitation may be quite agreeable. A man may voluntarily subject himself to suspense, fatigue, uncertainty, perplexity, fear and surprise in such practices as angling, rowing, travelling, crossword puzzles, rock-climbing and joking. That a thing like a thrill, a rapture, a surprise, an amusement and an relief is an agitation is shown by the fact that we can say that someone is too much thrilled, amused or relieved to act, think or talk coherently. It is helpful to notice that, anyhow commonly, the expression which completes  ‘pang of . . .’ or ‘chill of . . .’ denotes an agitation. A feeling, such as a man feeling Byzantine, is intrinsically connected with an agitation. But a feeling, e. g. of a man who is feeling Byzantine, is not intrinsically connected with an inclination, save in so far as the inclination is a factor in the agitation. This is no novel psychological hypothesis; It is part of the logic of our descriptions of a feeling that a feeling (such as a man feeling Byzantine) is a sign of an agitation and is not an exercise of an inclination. A feeling, such as a man feeling Byzantine, in other words, is not a thing of which it makes sense to ask from what motive it issues. The same is true, for the same reasons, of any sign of any agitation. This point shows why we were right to suggest above that a feeling (like a man feeling Byzantine) does not belong directly to a simple inclination. An inclination is a certain sort of proneness or readiness to do certain sorts of things on purpose. These things are therefore describable as being done from that motive. They are the exercises of the disposition that we call ‘a motive’. A feeling (such as a man feeling Byzantine) is not from a motive and is therefore not among the possible exercise of such a propensiy. The widespread theory that a motive such as vanity, or affection, is in the first instance a disposition to experience certain specific feeling is therefore absurd. There may be, of course, a tendency to have a feeling, such as feeling Byzantine; being vertiginous and rheumatic are such tendencies. But we do not try to modify a tendency of these kinds by a sermon. What a feeling, such as being Byzantine, does causally belong to is the agitation. A feeling (such as feeling Byzantine) is a sign of an agitation in the same sort of way as a stomach-ache is a sign of indigestion. Roughly, we do not, as the prevalent theory holds, act purposively because we experience a feeling (such as feeling Byzantine); we experience a feeling (such as feeling Byzantine), as we wince and shudder, because we are inhibited from acting purposively. A sentimentalist is a man who indulges in this or that induced feeling (such as feeling Byzantine) without acknowledging the fictitiousness of his agitation. It seems to be generally supposed that ‘pleasure’ or ‘desire’ is always used to signify a feeling. And there certainly are feelings which can be described as a feeling of pleasure or desire. Some thrills, shocks, glows and ticklings are feelings of delight, surprise, relief and amusement; and things like a hankering, an itche, a gnawing and a yearning is a sign that something is both wanted and missed. But the transports, surprises, reliefs and distresses of which such a feeling is diagnosed, or mis-diagnosed, as a sign is not itself a feeling. It is an agitation or a mood, just as are the transports and distresses which a child betrays by his skips and his whimpers. Nostalgia is an agitation and one which can be called a ‘desire’; but it is not merely a feeling or series of feelings. There is the sense of ‘pleasure’ in which it is commonly replaced by such expressions as ‘delight’, ‘transport’, ‘rapture’, ‘exultation’ and ‘joy’. These are expressions of this or that mood signifying this or that agitation. There are two quite different usages of ‘emotion’, in which we explain people’s behaviour by reference to emotions. In the first usage of ‘emotion,’ we are referring to the motives or inclinations from which more or less intelligent actions are done. In a second usage we are referring to a mood, including the agitation or perturbation of which some aimless movement may be a sign. In neither of these usages are we asserting or implicating that the overt behaviour is the effect of a felt turbulence in the agent’s stream of consciousness. In a third usage of ‘emotion’, pangs and twinges are feelings or emotions, but they are not, save per accidens, things by reference to which we explain behaviour. They are things for which diagnoses are required, not things required for the diagnoses of behaviour. Since a convulsion of merriment is not the state of mind of the sober experimentalist, the enjoyment of a joke is also not an introspectible happening. States of mind such as these more or less violent agitations can be examined only in retrospect. Yet nothing disastrous follows from this restriction. We are not shorter of information about panic or amusement than about other states of mind. If retrospection can give us the data we need for our knowledge of some states of mind, there is no reason why it should not do so for all. And this is just what seems to be suggested by the popular phrase ‘to catch oneself doing so and so’. We catch, as we pursue and overtake, what is already running away from us. I catch myself daydreaming about a mountain walk after, perhaps very shortly after, I have begun the daydream; or I catch myself humming a particular air only when the first few notes have already been hummed. Retrospection, prompt or delayed, is a genuine process and one which is exempt from the troubles ensuing from the assumption of multiply divided attention; it is also exempt from the troubles ensuing from the assumption that violent agitations could be the objects of cool, contemporary scrutiny. One may be aware that he is whistling ‘Tipperary’ and not know that he is whistling it in order to give tte appearance of a sang-froid which he does not feel. Or, again, he may be aware that he is shamming sang-froid without knowing that the tremors which he is trying to hide derive from the agitation of a guilty conscience.

agnoiologicum: Grice loved a negative prefix. He was proud that he was never vulgar in publishing, like some of his tutees – and that the number of his unpublications by far exceed the number of his publications. To refute Hampshire with this intention and certainty, he regaled the British Academy with the annual philosophical lecture on intention and Uncertainty. While Grice thought that ‘knowledge’ was overreated at Oxford (“Surely an examinee can be said to know that date of the battle of Waterloo”) he could be agnoiological at times. From Grecian agnoia, ‘ignorance’, the study of ignorance, its quality, and its conditions. And then there’s ‘agnosticism,’ from Grecian a-, ‘not’, and gnastos, ‘known’, term invented by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869 to denote the philosophical and religious attitude of those who claim that metaphysical ideas can be neither proved nor disproved. Huxley wrote, “I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it. I have no a priori objection to the doctrine.” Agnosticism is a form of skepticism applied to metaphysics, especially theism. The position is sometimes attributed to Kant, who held that we cannot have knowledge of God or immortality but must be content with faith. Agnosticism should not be confused with atheism, the belief that no god exists.

alberti: alberti – Italian philosopher, on ‘aesthetics.’ Cf. Grice on sensation. Grice: “No one can fail to be enchanted by Lusini’s great likeness of Alberti at the loggiato of the uffizi! Ah, if we had the same at Oxford!” -- Genova-born essential Italian philosopher – Grice, “I love his “De statua” – it’s more philosophical anthropology than aesthetics!” «Ci è un uomo che per la sua universalità parrebbe volesse abbracciarlo tutto, dico Leon Battista Alberti, pittore, architetto, poeta, erudito, filosofo e letterato»  (Francesco de Sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana)  Leon Battista Alberti Leon Battista Alberti (Genova, 14 febbraio 1404 – Roma, 25 aprile 1472) è stato un architetto, scrittore, matematico, umanista, crittografo, linguista, filosofo, musicista e archeologo italiano; fu una delle figure artistiche più poliedriche del Rinascimento. Il suo primo nome si trova spesso, soprattutto in testi stranieri, come Leone.  Alberti fa parte della seconda generazione di umanisti (quella successiva a Vergerio, Bruni, Bracciolini, Francesco Barbaro), di cui fu una figura emblematica per il suo interesse nelle più varie discipline.  Un suo costante interesse era la ricerca delle regole, teoriche o pratiche, in grado di guidare il lavoro degli artisti. Nelle sue opere menzionò alcuni canoni, ad esempio: nel "De statua" espose le proporzioni del corpo umano, nel "De pictura" fornì la prima definizione della prospettiva scientifica e infine nel "De re aedificatoria" (opera cui lavorò fino alla morte, nel 1472), descrisse tutta la casistica relativa all'architettura moderna, sottolineando l'importanza del progetto e le diverse tipologie di edifici a seconda della loro funzione. Tale opera lo renderà immortale nei secoli e motivo di studio a livello internazionale da artisti come Eugène Viollet-le-Duc e John Ruskin. Come architetto, Alberti viene considerato, accanto a Brunelleschi, il fondatore dell'architettura rinascimentale.  L'aspetto innovativo delle sue proposte, soprattutto sia in ambito architettonico che umanistico, consisteva nella rielaborazione moderna dell'antico, cercato come modello da emulare e non semplicemente da replicare.  La classe sociale a cui Alberti faceva riferimento è comunque un'aristocrazia e alta "borghesia" illuminata. Egli lavorò per committenti quali i Gonzaga a Mantova e (per la tribuna della SS. Annunziata) a Firenze, i Malatesta a Rimini, i Rucellai a Firenze.   Indice 1 Biografia 1.1 La formazione umanistica 1.2 A Roma 1.3 Le prime opere letterarie 1.4 A Firenze 1.5 De pictura 1.6 La questione del volgare 1.7 Ritorno a Roma 1.8 Il De re aedificatoria 1.9 L'attività come architetto a Firenze 1.9.1 Palazzo Rucellai 1.9.2 Facciata di Santa Maria Novella 1.9.3 Altre opere 1.10 Ferrara 1.11 Rimini 1.12 Mantova 1.12.1 San Sebastiano 1.12.2 Sant'Andrea 1.13 I caratteri dell'architettura albertiana 1.14 Il De statua 1.15 Il Crittografo 1.16 De iciarchia 2 Opere 2.1 Scritti 2.2 Opere architettoniche 2.3 Manoscritti 3 Note 4 Bibliografia 5 Voci correlate 6 Altri progetti 7 Collegamenti esterni Biografia La formazione umanistica  Presunto autoritratto su placchetta, (Parigi, Cabinet des Medailles). Leon Battista nacque a Genova, figlio di Lorenzo Alberti, di una ricca famiglia di mercanti e banchieri fiorentini banditi dalla città toscana a partire dal 1388 per motivi politici, e da Bianca Fieschi, appartenente ad una delle più nobili casate genovesi.  I primi studi furono di tipo letterario, dapprima a Venezia e poi a Padova, alla scuola dell'umanista Gasparino Barzizza, dove apprese il latino e forse anche il greco.[1] Si trasferì poi a Bologna dove studiò diritto, coltivando parallelamente il suo amore per molte altre discipline artistiche quali la musica, la pittura, la scultura, la matematica, la grammatica e la letteratura in generale. Si dedicò all'attività letteraria sin da giovane: a Bologna, infatti, già intorno ai vent'anni scrisse una commedia autobiografica in latino, la Philodoxeos fabula. Compose in latino il Momus, un originalissimo e avvincente romanzo mitologico, e le Intercoenales; in volgare, compose un'importante serie di dialoghi (De familia, Theogenius, Profugiorum ab ærumna libri, Cena familiaris, De iciarchia, dai titoli rigorosamente in latino) e alcuni scritti amatori, tra cui la Deiphira, ove raccoglie i precetti utili a fuggire da un amore mal iniziato.  Dopo la morte del padre, avvenuta nel 1421, l'Alberti trascorse alcuni anni di difficoltà, entrando in forte contrasto con i parenti che non volevano riconoscere i suoi diritti ereditari né favorire i suoi studi. In questi anni coltivò soprattutto gli studi scientifici, astronomici e matematici.[1] Sembra si sia tuttavia concretamente laureato in diritto nel 1428 a Bologna, o forse a Ferrara, nonostante le difficoltà economiche e di salute. Tra Padova e Bologna intrecciò amicizie con molti importanti intellettuali, come Paolo Dal Pozzo Toscanelli, Tommaso Parentuccelli, futuro papa Nicolò V e probabilmente Niccolò Cusano.  Per gli anni 1428-1431 poco si sa, benché debba escludersi che si sia recato a Firenze dopo il ritiro del bandi contro gli Alberti, nel 1428, e sia del pari assai poco probabile che al seguito del cardinal Albergati abbia viaggiato in Francia e nel Nord Europa.[1]  A Roma Nel 1431 diventò segretario del patriarca di Grado e, trasferitosi a Roma con questi, nel 1432 fu nominato abbreviatore apostolico (il cui ruolo consisteva per l'appunto nel redigere i brevi apostolici). Così entrò nel prestigioso ambiente umanistico della curia di papa Eugenio IV, che lo nominò (1432) titolare della pieve di San Martino a Gangalandi a Lastra a Signa, nei pressi di Firenze, beneficio di cui godette fino alla morte.[1]  Vivendo prevalentemente a Roma ma spostandosi per periodi anche lunghi e per varie incombenze a Ferrara, Bologna, Venezia, Firenze, Mantova, Rimini e Napoli.  Le prime opere letterarie Tra il 1433 e il 1434, scrisse in pochi mesi i primi tre libri de Familia, un dialogo in volgare completato con un quarto libro nel 1437. Il dialogo è ambientato a Padova, nel 1421; vi partecipano vari componenti della famiglia Alberti, personaggi realmente esistiti, scontrandosi su due visioni diverse: da un lato c'è la mentalità moderna e borghese e dall'altro la tradizione, aristocratica e legata al passato. L'analisi che il libro offre è una visione dei principali aspetti e istituzioni della vita sociale dell'epoca, quali il matrimonio, la famiglia, l'educazione, la gestione economica, l'amicizia e in genere i rapporti sociali: l'Alberti esprime qui un punto di vista "filosofico" pienamente umanistico, che ricorre in tutte le sue opere di carattere morale e che consiste nella convinzione che gli uomini siano responsabili della propria sorte e che la virtù sia insita nell'uomo e debba essere realizzata attraverso l'operosità, la volontà e la ragione.[1]  A Firenze  Statua di Leon Battista Alberti, piazza degli Uffizi a Firenze. Tra il 1434 e il 1443 l'Alberti visse prevalentemente a Firenze e Ferrara, al seguito della curia papale che fra l'altro partecipò al Concilio, ossia alle sedute ferrarese e fiorentina del concilio ecumenico (1438-39) che dovevano riappacificare la chiesa latina e le chiese cristiano-orientali, in particolare quella greca.  In questo periodo l'Alberti assimila parte della cultura fiorentina, cercando (invero con moderato successo) d'inserirsi nell'ambiente intellettuale e artistico della città; sono verosimilmente gli anni in cui nascono i suoi interessi artistici, che si traducono da subito nella duplice redazione (latina e volgare) del De pictura (1435-36). Nel prologo della versione in volgare, dedica l'opera a Brunelleschi e menziona anche i grandi innovatori delle arti del tempo: Donatello, Masaccio (morto già nel 1428) e i Della Robbia.  Intorno al 1443, al seguito del pontefice Eugenio IV lasciò Firenze, ma con la città continuò ad avere intensi rapporti legati anche ai cantieri dei suoi progetti.  De pictura Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svg Lo stesso argomento in dettaglio: De pictura. Del 1435-1436 è il De pictura, scritto verosimilmente dapprima in latino e tradotto poi in volgare; se la redazione latina, senza ombra di dubbio la più importante e ricca, sarà dedicata al Gonzaga marchese di Mantova, per quella volgare l'Alberti redasse una dedica al Brunelleschi che, trasmessa da un solo codice strettamente legato al laboratorio personale dell'Alberti, forse non fu mai inviata. Il De pictura rappresenta la prima trattazione di una disciplina artistica non intesa solo come tecnica manuale, ma anche come ricerca intellettuale e culturale, e sarebbe difficile immaginarla fuori dallo straordinario contesto fiorentino e scritta da un autore diverso dall'Alberti, grande intellettuale umanista e artista egli stesso, anche se la sua attività nel campo delle arti figurative—attestata (benché in modi non lusinghieri) già dal Vasari—dovette essere ridotta. Il trattato è organizzato in tre "libri".[1][2] Il primo contiene la più antica trattazione della prospettiva. Nel secondo libro l'Alberti tratta di “circoscrizione, composizione, e ricezione dei lumi”, cioè dei tre principi che regolano l'arte pittorica:  la circumscriptio consiste nel tracciare il contorno dei corpi; la compositio è il disegno delle linee che uniscono i contorni dei corpi e perciò la disposizione narrativa della scena pittorica, la cui importanza è qui espressa per la prima volta con piena lucidità intellettuale; la receptio luminum tratta dei colori e della luce. Il terzo libro è relativo alla figura del pittore di cui si rivendica il ruolo di vero artista e non, semplicemente, di artigiano. Con questo trattato Alberti influenzerà non solo il Rinascimento ma tutto quanto si sarebbe detto sulla pittura sino ai nostri giorni.  La questione del volgare Pur scrivendo numerosi testi in latino, lingua alla quale riconosceva il valore culturale e le specifiche qualità espressive, l'Alberti fu un fervente sostenitore del volgare. La duplice redazione in latino e in volgare del De pictura manifesta il suo interesse per il dibattito allora in corso tra gli umanisti sulla possibilità di usare il volgare nella trattazione di ogni materia. In un dibattito avvenuto a Firenze tra gli umanisti della curia, Flavio Biondo aveva affermato la diretta discendenza del volgare dal latino e l'Alberti, ne dimostra genialmente la tesi componendo la prima grammatica del volgare (1437-41), e ne riprende gli argomenti difendendo l'uso del volgare nella dedicatoria del libro III de Familia a Francesco d'Altobianco Alberti (1435-39 circa).[1]  Da qui deriva la significativa esperienza del Certame coronario, una gara di poesia sul tema dell'amicizia, organizzata a Firenze nell'ottobre 1441 dall'Alberti con il più o meno tacito concorso di Piero de' Medici, una gara che doveva servire all'affermazione del volgare, soprattutto in poesia, e alla quale va associata la composizione dei sedici Esametri sull'amicizia da parte dell'Alberti – Esametri ora pubblicati fra le sue Rime, innovative tanto nello stile quanto nella metrica, che costituiscono uno dei primissimi tentativi di adattare i metri greco-latini alla poesia volgare (metrica «barbara»).[1]  Nonostante ciò, l'Alberti continuò a scrivere naturalmente in latino, come fece per gli Apologi centum, una sorta di breviario della sua filosofia di vita, composti intorno al 1437.  Ritorno a Roma Chiusosi il concilio a Firenze, nel 1443, l'Alberti ritornò con la curia papale a Roma. continuando a ricoprire il ruolo di abbreviatore apostolico per ben 34 anni, fino al 1464, quando il collegio degli abbreviatori fu soppresso. Durante la permanenza a Roma ebbe modo di coltivare i propri interessi propriamente architettonici, che lo indussero a proseguire lo studio delle rovine della Roma classica, come dimostra la stessa Descriptio urbis Romae, risalente al 1450 circa, in cui l'Alberti tentò con successo, per la prima volta nella storia, una ricostruzione della topografia di Roma antica, mediante un sistema di coordinate polari e radiali che permettono di ricostruire il disegno da lui tracciato. I suoi interessi archeologici lo portarono anche a tentare il recupero delle navi romane affondate nel lago di Nemi.  Questi interessi per l'architettura che diventeranno prevalenti negli ultimi due decenni della sua vita, non impedirono una ricchissima produzione letteraria. Tra il 1443 e la morte compone una delle sue opere più interessanti, il Momus, un romanzo satirico in lingua latina, che tratta in maniera abbastanza amara e disincantata della società umana e degli stessi esseri umani.  Dopo l'elezione di Niccolò V, l'Alberti, come antico conoscente, entrò nella cerchia ristretta del papa, dal quale ricevette anche la carica di priore di Borgo San Lorenzo. Tuttavia i rapporti con il papa sono considerati piuttosto controversi dagli storici, sia per quel che riguarda gli aspetti politici che per l'adesione o la collaborazione dell'Alberti al vasto programma di rinnovamento urbano voluto da Niccolò V. Forse venne impiegato durante il restauro del palazzo papale e dell'acquedotto romano e della fontana dell'Acqua Vergine, disegnata in maniera semplice e lineare, creando la base sulla quale, in età Barocca, sarebbe stata costruita la Fontana di Trevi.  Intorno al 1450 Alberti cominciò ad occuparsi più attivamente di architettura con numerosi progetti da eseguire fuori Roma, a Firenze, Rimini e Mantova, città in cui si recò varie volte durante gli ultimi decenni della sua vita.  In tal modo dopo la metà del secolo l'Alberti fu la figura-guida dell'architettura. Questo riconosciuto primato rende anche difficile distinguere, nella sua opera, l'attività di progettazione dalle tante consulenze e dall'influenza più o meno diretta che dovette avere, per esempio, sulle opere promosse a Roma, sotto Niccolò V, come il restauro di Santa Maria Maggiore e Santo Stefano Rotondo o come la costruzione di Palazzo Venezia, il rinnovamento della basilica di San Pietro, del Borgo e del Campidoglio. Potrebbe forse essere stato il consulente che indica alcune linee-guida o, ma ben più difficilmente, aver avuto un ruolo anche meno indiretto. Sicuramente il prestigio della sua opera e del suo pensiero teorico condizionarono direttamente l'opera di progettisti come Francesco del Borgo e Bernardo Rossellino, influenzando anche Giuliano da Sangallo.[3]  Morì a Roma, all'età di 68 anni.  Il De re aedificatoria  Frontespizio  Matteo de' Pasti, Medaglia di Leon Battista Alberti (1446-1450 circa). Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svg Lo stesso argomento in dettaglio: De re aedificatoria. Le sue riflessioni teoriche trovarono espressione nel De re aedificatoria, un trattato di architettura in latino, scritto prevalentemente a Roma, cui l'Alberti lavorò fino alla morte e che è rivolto anche al pubblico colto di educazione umanistica. Il trattato fu concepito sul modello del De architectura di Vitruvio. L'opera, considerata il trattato architettonico più significativo della cultura umanistica, è divisa anch'essa in dieci libri: nei primi tre si parla della scelta del terreno, dei materiali da utilizzare e delle fondazioni (potrebbero corrispondere alla categoria vitruviana della firmitas); i libri IV e V si soffermano sui vari tipi di edifici in relazione alla loro funzione (utilitas); il libro VI tratta la bellezza architettonica (venustas), intesa come un'armonia esprimibile matematicamente grazie alla scienza delle proporzioni, con l'aggiunta di una trattazione sulle macchine per costruire; i libri VII, VIII e IX parlano della costruzione dei fabbricati, suddividendoli in chiese, edifici pubblici ed edifici privati; il libro X tratta dell'idraulica.  Nel trattato si trova anche uno studio basato sulle misurazioni dei monumenti antichi per proporre nuovi tipi di edifici moderni ispirati all'antico, fra i quali le prigioni, che cercò di rendere più umane, gli ospedali e altri luoghi di pubblica utilità.  Il trattato fu stampato a Firenze nel 1485, con una prefazione del Poliziano a Lorenzo il Magnifico, e poi a Parigi (1512) e a Strasburgo (1541); venne in seguito tradotto in varie lingue e diventò ben presto imprescindibile nella cultura architettonica moderna e contemporanea.  Nel De re aedificatoria, l'Alberti affronta anche il tema delle architetture difensive e intuisce come le armi da fuoco rivoluzioneranno l'aspetto delle fortificazioni. Per aumentare l'efficacia difensiva indica che le difese dovrebbero essere "costruite lungo linee irregolari, come i denti di una sega" anticipando così i principi della fortificazione alla moderna.  L'attività come architetto a Firenze A Firenze lavorò come architetto soprattutto per Giovanni Rucellai, ricchissimo mercante e mecenate,[4] intimo amico suo e della sua famiglia. Le opere fiorentine saranno le sole dell'Alberti a essere compiute prima della sua morte.  Palazzo Rucellai  Facciata di palazzo Rucellai. Forse sin dal 1439-1442 gli venne commissionata la costruzione del palazzo della famiglia Rucellai, da ricavarsi da una serie di case-torri acquistate da Giovanni Rucellai in via della Vigna Nuova. Il suo intervento si concentrò sulla facciata, posta su un basamento che imita l'opus reticulatum romano, realizzata tra il 1450 e il 1460. È formata da tre piani sovrapposti, separati orizzontalmente da cornici marcapiano e ritmati verticalmente da lesene di ordine diverso; la sovrapposizione degli ordini è di origine classica come nel Colosseo o nel Teatro di Marcello, ed è quella teorizzata da Vitruvio:[5] al piano terreno lesene doriche, ioniche al piano nobile e corinzie al secondo. Esse inquadrano porzioni di muro bugnato a conci levigati, in cui si aprono finestre in forma di bifora nel piano nobile e nel secondo piano. Le lesene decrescono progressivamente verso i piani superiori, in modo da creare nell'osservatore l'illusione che il palazzo sia più alto di quanto non sia in realtà. Al di sopra di un forte cornicione aggettante si trova un attico, caratteristicamente arretrato rispetto al piano della facciata. Il palazzo creò un modello per tutte le successive dimore signorili del Rinascimento, venendo addirittura citato pedissequamente da Bernardo Rossellino, suo collaboratore, per il suo palazzo Piccolomini a Pienza (post 1459).  Attribuita all'Alberti è anche l'antistante Loggia Rucellai, o per lo meno il suo disegno. Loggia e palazzo andavano così costituendo una sorta di piazzetta celebrante la casata, che viene riconosciuta come uno dei primi interventi urbanistici rinascimentali.  Facciata di Santa Maria Novella  Facciata di Santa Maria Novella, Firenze. Su commissione del Rucellai, progettò anche il completamento della facciata della basilica di Santa Maria Novella, rimasta incompiuta nel 1365 al primo ordine di arcatelle, caratterizzate dall'alternarsi di fasce di marmo bianco e di marmo verde, secondo la secolare tradizione fiorentina. I lavori iniziarono intorno al 1457. Si presentava il problema di integrare, in un disegno generale e classicheggiante, i nuovi interventi con gli elementi esistenti di epoca precedente: in basso vi erano gli avelli inquadrati da archi a sesto acuto e i portali laterali, sempre a sesto acuto, mentre nella parte superiore era già aperto il rosone, seppur spoglio di ogni decorazione. Alberti inserì al centro della facciata inferiore un portale di proporzioni classiche, inquadrato da semicolonne, in cui inserì incrostazioni in marmo rosso per rompere la bicromia. Per terminare la fascia inferiore pose una serie di archetti a tutto sesto a conclusione delle lesene. Poiché la parte superiore della facciata risultava arretrata rispetto al basamento (un tema molto comune nell'architettura albertiana, derivata dai monumenti della romanità) inserì una fascia di separazione a tarsie marmoree che recano una teoria di vele gonfie al vento, l'insegna personale di Giovanni Rucellai; il livello superiore, scandito da un secondo ordine di lesene che non hanno corrispondenza in quella inferiore, sorregge un timpano triangolare. Ai lati, due doppie volute raccordano l'ordine inferiore, più largo, all'ordine superiore più alto e stretto, conferendo alla facciata un moto ascendente conforme alle proporzioni; non mascherano come spesso si è detto erroneamente gli spioventi laterali che risultano più bassi, come si evince osservando la facciata dal lato posteriore. La composizione con incrostazioni a tarsia marmorea ispirate al romanico fiorentino, necessaria in questo caso per armonizzare le nuove parti al già costruito, rimase una costante nelle opere fiorentine dell'Alberti.  Secondo Rudolf Wittkower: "L'intero edificio sta rispetto alle sue parti principali nel rapporto di uno a due, vale a dire nella relazione musicale dell'ottava, e questa proporzione si ripete nel rapporto tra la larghezza del piano superiore e quella dell'inferiore". La facciata si inscrive infatti in un quadrato avente per lato la base della facciata stessa. Dividendo in quattro tale quadrato, si ottengono quattro quadrati minori; la zona inferiore ha una superficie equivalente a due quadrati, quella superiore a un quadrato. Altri rapporti si possono trovare nella facciata tanto da realizzare una perfetta proporzione. Secondo Franco Borsi: "L'esigenza teorica dell'Alberti di mantenere in tutto l'edificio la medesima proporzione è qui stata osservata ed è appunto la stretta applicazione di una serie continua di rapporti che denuncia il carattere non medievale di questa facciata pseudo-protorinascimentale e ne fa il primo grande esempio di eurythmia classica del Rinascimento".  Altre opere  Il tempietto del Santo Sepolcro. Attribuito all'Alberti è il progetto dell'abside della pieve di San Martino a Gangalandi presso Lastra a Signa. L'Alberti fu rettore di San Martino dal 1432 fino alla sua morte. La chiesa, di origine medievale, ha il suo punto focale nell'abside, chiusa in alto da un arco a tutto sesto con decorazione a motivi di candelabro e con lesene in pietra serena sorreggenti un architrave che reca un'iscrizione a lettere capitali dorate, ornata alle due estremità dalle arme degli Alberti. L'abside è ricordata incepta et quasi perfecta nel testamento di Leon Battista Alberti, e fu infatti terminata dopo la sua morte, tra il 1472 e il 1478.[1]  Del 1467 è un'altra opera per i Rucellai, il tempietto del Santo Sepolcro nella chiesa di San Pancrazio a Firenze, costruito secondo un parallelepipedo spartito da paraste corinzie. La decorazione è a tarsie marmoree, con figure geometriche in rapporto aureo; le decorazioni geometriche, come per la facciata di Santa Maria Novella, secondo l'Alberti inducono a meditare sui misteri della fede.  Ferrara  Il campanile del duomo di Ferrara. L'Alberti fu a Ferrara a varie riprese, e sicuramente tra il 1438 e il 1439, stringendo amicizie alla corte estense. Vi ritorna nel 1441 e forse nel 1443, chiamato a giudicare la gara per un monumento equestre a Niccolò III d'Este.[6] In tale occasione forse dette indicazioni per il rinnovo della facciata del Palazzo Municipale, allora residenza degli Estensi.  A lui è stato attribuito da insigni storici dell'arte, ma esclusivamente su basi stilistiche, anche l'incompleto campanile del duomo, dai volumi nitidi e dalla bicromia di marmi rosa e bianchi.  Rimini  Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini. Nel 1450 l'Alberti venne chiamato a Rimini da Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta per trasformare la chiesa di San Francesco in un tempio in onore e gloria sua e della sua famiglia. Alla morte del signore (1468) il tempio fu lasciato incompiuto mancando della parte superiore della facciata, della fiancata sinistra e della tribuna. Conosciamo il progetto albertiano attraverso una medaglia incisa da Matteo de' Pasti, l'architetto a cui erano stati affidati gli ampliamenti interni della chiesa e in generale tutto il cantiere.   Tempio malatestiano sulla medaglia di Matteo de' Pasti. L'Alberti ideò un involucro marmoreo che lasciasse intatto l'edificio preesistente. L'opera prevedeva in facciata una tripartizione con archi scanditi da semicolonne corinzie, mentre nella parte superiore era previsto una specie di frontone con arco al centro affiancato da paraste e forse due volute curve. Punto focale era il portale centrale, con timpano triangolare e riccamente ornato da lastre marmoree policrome nello stile della Roma imperiale. Ai lati due archi minori avrebbero dovuto inquadrare i sepolcri di Sigismondo e della moglie Isotta, ma furono poi tamponati.  Le fiancate invece sono composte da una sequenza di archi su pilastri, ispirati alla serialità degli acquedotti romani, destinati ad accogliere i sarcofagi dei più alti dignitari di corte. Fianchi e facciata sono unificati da un alto zoccolo che isola la costruzione dallo spazio circostante. Ricorre la ghirlanda circolare, emblema dei Malatesta, qui usata come oculo. Interessante è notare come Alberti traesse spunto dall'architettura classica, ma affidandosi a spunti locali, come l'arco di Augusto, il cui modulo è triplicato in facciata.[7] Una particolarità di questo intervento è che il rivestimento non tiene conto delle precedenti aperture gotiche: infatti, il passo delle arcate laterali non è lo stesso delle finestre ogivali, che risultano posizionate in maniera sempre diversa. Del resto Alberti scrive a Matteo de' Pasti che «queste larghezze et altezze delle Chappelle mi perturbano».  Per l'abside era prevista una grande rotonda coperta da cupola emisferica simile a quella del Pantheon. Se completata, la navata avrebbe allora assunto un ruolo di semplice accesso al maestoso edificio circolare e sarebbe stata molto più evidente la funzione celebrativa dell'edificio, anche in rapporto allo skyline cittadino.[7]  Mantova  Chiesa di San Sebastiano, Mantova.  Basilica di Sant'Andrea, Mantova. Nel 1459 Alberti fu chiamato a Mantova da Ludovico III Gonzaga, nell'ambito dei progetti di abbellimento cittadino per il Concilio di Mantova.  San Sebastiano Il primo intervento mantovano riguardò la chiesa di San Sebastiano, cappella privata dei Gonzaga, iniziata nel 1460. L'edificio fece da fondamento per le riflessioni rinascimentali sugli edifici a croce greca: è infatti diviso in due piani, uno dei quali interrato, con tre bracci absidati attorno ad un corpo cubico con volta a crociera; il braccio anteriore è preceduto da un portico, oggi con cinque aperture.[8]  La parte superiore della facciata, spartita da lesene di ordine gigante, è originale del progetto albertiano e ricorda un'elaborazione del tempio classico, con architrave spezzata, timpano e un arco siriaco, a testimonianza dell'estrema libertà con cui l'architetto disponeva gli elementi. Forse l'ispirazione fu un'opera tardo-antica, come l'arco di Orange.[8] I due scaloni di collegamento che permettono l'accesso al portico non fanno parte del progetto originario, ma furono aggiunte posteriori.  Sant'Andrea Il secondo intervento, sempre su commissione dei Gonzaga, fu la basilica di Sant'Andrea, eretta in sostituzione di un precedente sacrario in cui si venerava una reliquia del sangue di Cristo. L'Alberti creò il suo progetto «... più capace più eterno più degno più lieto ...» ispirandosi al modello del tempio etrusco ripreso da Vitruvio e contrapponendosi al precedente progetto di Antonio Manetti. Innanzitutto mutò l'orientamento della chiesa allineandola all'asse viario che collegava Palazzo Ducale al Tè.[8]  La chiesa a croce latina, iniziata nel 1472, è a navata unica coperta a botte con lacunari, con cappelle laterali a base rettangolare con la funzione di reggere e scaricare le spinte della volta, inquadrate negli ingressi da un arco a tutto sesto, inquadrato da un lesene architravate. Il tema è ripreso dall'arco trionfale classico ad un solo fornice come l'arco di Traiano ad Ancona. La grande volta della navata e quelle del transetto e degli atri d'ingresso si ispiravano a modelli romani, come la Basilica di Massenzio.  Per caratterizzare l'importante posizione urbana, venne data particolare importanza alla facciata, dove ritorna il tema dell'arco: l'alta apertura centrale è affiancata da setti murari, con archetti sovrapposti tra lesene corinzie sopra i due portali laterali. Il tutto, coronato da un timpano triangolare a cui si sovrappone, per non lasciare scoperta l'altezza della volta, un nuovo arco. Questa soluzione, che enfatizza la solennità dell'arco di trionfo e il suo moto ascensionale, permetteva anche l'illuminazione della navata. Sotto l'arco venne a formarsi uno spesso atrio, diventato il punto di filtraggio tra interno ed esterno.[8]  La facciata è inscrivibile in un quadrato e tutte le misure della navata, sia in pianta che in alzato, si conformano ad un preciso modulo metrico. La tribuna e la cupola (comunque prevista da Alberti) vennero completate nei secoli successivi, secondo un disegno estraneo all'Alberti.  I caratteri dell'architettura albertiana Le opere più mature di Alberti evidenziano una forte evoluzione verso un classicismo consapevole e maturo in cui, dallo studio dei monumenti antichi romani, l'Alberti ricavò un senso delle masse murarie ben diverso dalla semplicità dello stile brunelleschiano. I modi originali albertiani precorsero l'arte del Bramante. I caratteri innovativi di Alberti furono: La colonna deve sostenere la trabeazione e deve essere usata come ornamento per le fabbriche; l'arco deve essere costruito sopra i pilastri.  Il De statua Il trattato, scritto in latino, è relativo alla teoria della scultura e risale al1450 circa. Nel De statua, l'Alberti rielaborò profondamente le concezioni e le teorie relative alla scultura tenendo conto delle innovazioni artistiche del Rinascimento, attingendo anche ad una rilettura critica delle fonti classiche e riconoscendo, tra i primi dignità intellettuale alla scultura, prima di allora sempre condizionata dal pregiudizio verso un'attività tanto manuale.  Nel trattato che si compone di 19 capitoli, l'Alberti parte, sulla scorta di Plinio, dalla definizione dell'arte plastica tridimensionale distinguendo la scultura o per via di porre o per via di levare, dividendola secondo la tecnica utilizzata:  togliere e aggiungere: sculture con materie molli, terra e cera eseguita dai "modellatori" levare: scultura in pietra, eseguita dagli "scultori" Tale distinzione fu determinante nella concezione artistica di molti scultori come Michelangelo e non era mai stata espressa con tanta chiarezza.[9]   Il definitor, lo strumento inventato da Leon Battista Alberti. Relativamente al metodo da utilizzare per raggiungere il fine ultimo della scultura che è l'imitazione della natura, l'Alberti distingue:  la dimensio (misura) che definisce le proporzioni generali dell'oggetto rappresentato mediante l’exempeda, una riga diritta modulare atta a rilevare le lunghezze e squadre mobili a forma di compassi (normae), con cui misurare spessori, distanze e diametri.[10] la finitio, definizione individuale dei particolari e dei movimenti dell'oggetto rappresentato, per la quale Alberti suggerisce uno strumento da lui ideato: il definitor o finitorium, un disco circolare cui è fissata un'asta graduata rotante, da cui pende un filo a piombo. Con esso si può determinare qualsiasi punto sul modello mediante una combinazione di coordinate polari e assiali, rendendo possibile un trasferimento meccanico dal modello alla scultura.[9] Alberti sembra anticipare i temi relativi alla raffigurazione 'scientifica' della figura umana che è uno dei temi che percorre la cultura figurativa rinascimentale.[11] e addirittura aspetti dell'industrializzazione e addirittura della digitalizzazione, visto che il definitor trasformava i punti rilevati sul modello in dati alfanumerici.[12]  L'opera fu tradotta in volgare nel 1568 da Cosimo Bartoli. Il testo latino originale fu stampato solo alla fine del XIX secolo, mentre solo recentemente sono state pubblicate traduzioni moderne.[11] I sistemi di definizione meccanica dei volumi proposti dall'Alberti, appassionarono Leonardo che approntò, come si può rilevare dai suoi disegni, dei sistemi alternativi, sviluppati a partire dal trattato albertiano[9] e utilizzò le "Tabulae dimensionum hominis" del "De statua" per realizzare il celeberrimo "Uomo vitruviano".  Il Crittografo Alberti fu inoltre un geniale crittografo e inventò un metodo per generare messaggi criptati con l'aiuto di un apparecchio, il disco cifrante. Sua fu infatti l'idea di passare da una crittografia con tecnica "monoalfabetica" (Cifrario di Cesare) ad una con tecnica "polialfabetica", codificata teoricamente parecchi anni dopo da Blaise de Vigenère.[13] In The Codebreakers. The Story of Secret Writing[14], lo storico della crittologia David Kahn attribuisce all'Alberti il titolo di Father of Western Cryptology (Padre della crittologia occidentale). Kahn ribadisce questa definizione, sottolineando le ragioni che la giustificano, nella prefazione all'edizione italiana del testo albertiano: «Questo volume elegante e sottile riproduce il testo più importante di tutta la storia della crittologia; un primato che il De cifris di Leon Battista Alberti ben si merita per i tre temi cruciali che tratta: l'invenzione della sostituzione polialfabetica, l'uso della crittanalisi, la descrizione di un codice sopracifrato.»  Tra le altre attività di Alberti ci fu anche la musica, per la quale fu considerato uno dei primi organisti della sua epoca. Disegnò anche delle mappe e collaborò con il grande cartografo Paolo Toscanelli.  De iciarchia Iciarco e Iciarchia sono due termini usati dall'Alberti nel dialogo De iciarchia composto nel 1470 circa, pochi anni prima della sua morte (avvenuta nel 1472) e ambientato nella Firenze medicea di quegli anni. Le due parole sono di origine greca ("Pogniàngli nome tolto da' Greci, iciarco: vuol dire supremo omo e primario principe della famiglia sua", libro III), e sono formate da oîkos o oikía "casa, famiglia" e arkhós "capo supremo, principe, principio".  Il nome stesso di iciarco vuole esprimere quello che secondo il parere dell'autore è il governante ideale: colui che sia come un padre di famiglia nei confronti dello Stato. Secondo le parole dell'Alberti, "il suo compito sarà (...) provedere alla salute, quiete, e onestamento di tutta la famiglia, (...) fare sì che amando e benificando è suoi, tutti amino lui, e tutti lo reputino e osservino come padre" (ivi).  Questo ruolo di "padre di famiglia" del governante ideale era finalizzato, nella sua visione politica, ad una stabilità, in definitiva "conservatrice", che permetterebbe di governare senza discordie che, dilaniando lo Stato, nuocerebbero a tutto il corpo sociale ("Inoltre la prima cura sua sarà che la famiglia sia senza niuna discordia unitissima. Non esser unita la famiglia circa le cose (...) che giovano, nuoce sopra modo molto., ivi).  Il termine iciarco, nato coll'Alberti e strettamente legato alla sua visione "paternalistica" del governo dello Stato, non ebbe comunque alcun seguito e non risulta che sia mai più stato impiegato nel lessico politico.  Opere Scritti Apologi centum Cena familiaris De amore De equo animante (Il cavallo vivo) De Iciarchia De componendis cifris Deiphira De pictura Porcaria coniuratio De re aedificatoria De statua Descriptio urbis Romae Ecatomphile Elementa picturae Epistola consolatoria Grammatica della lingua toscana (meglio nota come Grammatichetta vaticana[15]) Intercoenales De familia libri IV Ex ludis rerum mathematicorum Momus Philodoxeos fabula Profugiorum ab ærumna libri III Sentenze pitagoriche Sophrona Theogenius Villa Opere architettoniche Palazzo Rucellai, 1446-1451, Firenze, Via della Vigna Nuova Loggia Rucellai, 145?-1460, Firenze, Via della Vigna Nuova Facciata di Santa Maria Novella, 1458-1478, Firenze, Santa Maria Novella Abside di San Martino, 1472-1478, Lastra a Signa, Pieve di San Martino a Gangalandi Tempietto del Santo Sepolcro, 1457-1467, Firenze, Chiesa di San Pancrazio Tempio Malatestiano (incompiuto), iniziato nel 1450 circa, Rimini, Tempio Malatestiano Chiesa di San Sebastiano, 1460 circa, Mantova, Chiesa di San Sebastiano Basilica di Sant'Andrea, 1472-1732, Mantova, Basilica di Sant'Andrea (Mantova) Palazzo Romei, Vibo Valentia[16] Manoscritti Liber de iure, scriptus Bononiae anno 1437, XV secolo, Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Fondo manoscritti, ms. I 193 inf., ff. 1v-13r. Trivia senatoria, XV secolo, Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Fondo manoscritti, ms. I 193 inf., ff. 13v-19v. Note  Cecil Grayson, Studi su Leon Battista Alberti, Firenze, Olschki, 1998, pag.419-433 ^ L.B. Alberti, De pictura, a cura di C. Grayson, Laterza, 1980: versione on line Copia archiviata, su liberliber.it. URL consultato il 27 novembre 2010 (archiviato dall'url originale il 16 novembre 2010). ^ Christoph L. Frommel, Architettura e committenza da Alberti a Bramante, Olschki, 2006, ISBN 978-88-222-5582-2 ^ Bernardo Rucellai, De bello italico, a cura di Donatella Coppini, Firenze University Press, 2011, ISBN 88-6453-224-2. ^ De re Aedificatoria ^ In tale occasione manifestò il suo interesse per la morfologia e l'allevamento dei cavalli con il breve trattato De equo animante dedicato a Leonello d'Este.  De Vecchi-Cerchiari, cit., p. 95.  De Vecchi-Cerchiari, cit., p. 104  Rudolf Wittkower, op. cit. 1993 ^ Rudolf Wittkower,op. cit. 1993  Leon Battista Alberti, De statua, a cura di M. Collareta, 1998 ^ Mario Carpo, L'architettura dell'età della stampa: oralità, scrittura, libro stampato e riproduzione meccanica dell'immagine nella storia delle teorie architettoniche, 1998. ^ Simon Singh, Codici e Segreti, p. 45 ^ (EN) David Kahn, The Codebreakers, Scribner, 1996. ^ Il nome deriva dal fatto che il libello, di appena 16 carte, è conservato in una copia del 1508 in un codice in ottavo della Biblioteca vaticana. Lo scritto non ha epigrafe, pertanto il titolo è stato assegnato in seguito: fu riscoperto infatti nel 1850 e dato alle stampe solo nel 1908. ^ viviamolacalabria.blogspot.com, https://viviamolacalabria.blogspot.com/2017/09/esempio-tangibile-di-palazzo-nobiliare.html?m=1. Bibliografia (LA) Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria, Argentorati, excudebat M. Iacobus Cammerlander Moguntinus, 1541. (LA) Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria, Florentiae, accuratissime impressum opera magistri Nicolai Laurentii Alamani. Leon Battista Alberti, Opere volgari. 1, Firenze, Tipografia Galileiana, 1843. Leon Battista Alberti, Opere volgari. 2, Firenze, Tipografia Galileiana, 1844. Leon Battista Alberti, Opere volgari. 4, Firenze, Tipografia Galileiana, 1847. Leon Battista Alberti, Opere volgari. 5, Firenze, Tipografia Galileiana, 1849. Leon Battista Alberti, Opere, Florentiae, J. C. Sansoni, 1890. Leon Battista Alberti, Trattati d'arte, Bari, Laterza, 1973. Leon Battista Alberti, Ippolito e Leonora, Firenze, Bartolomeo de' Libri, prima del 1495. Leon Battista Alberti, Ecatonfilea, Stampata in Venesia, per Bernardino da Cremona, 1491. Leon Battista Alberti, Deifira, Padova, Lorenzo Canozio, 1471. Leon Battista Alberti, Teogenio, Milano, Leonard Pachel, circa 1492. Leon Battista Alberti, Libri della famiglia, Bari, G. Laterza, 1960. Leon Battista Alberti, Rime e trattati morali, Bari, Laterza, 1966. Albertiana, Rivista della Société Intérnationale Leon Battista Alberti, Firenze, Olschki, 1998 sgg. Franco Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti: Opera completa, Electa, Milano, 1973; Giovanni Ponte, Leon Battista Alberti: Umanista e scrittore, Tilgher, Genova, 1981; Paolo Marolda, Crisi e conflitto in Leon Battista Alberti , Bonacci, Roma, 1988; Roberto Cardini, Mosaici: Il nemico dell'Alberti, Bulzoni, Roma 1990; Rosario Contarino, Leon Battista Alberti moralista, presentazione di Francesco Tateo, S. Sciascia, Caltanissetta 1991; Pierluigi Panza, Leon Battista Alberti: Filosofia e teoria dell'arte, introduzione di Dino Formaggio, Guerini, Milano 1994; Pierluigi Panza, introduzione a "De Amore" di Leon Battista Alberti, in Estetica. Le scritture dell’eros, annuario a cura di S. Zecchi, Il Mulino, Bologna. ISBN 88-15-04790-5. Pierluigi Panza, "Lui geometra, lui musico, lui astronomo”. Leon Battista Alberti e le discipline liberali", in Le arti e le scienze.  Annuario di Estetica, a cura di S. Zecchi, Bologna ISBN 88-15-05268-2. Cecil Grayson, Studi su Leon Battista Alberti, a cura di Paola Claut, Olschki, Firenze 1998; Stefano Borsi, Momus, o Del principe: Leon Battista Alberti, i papi, il giubileo, Polistampa, Firenze 1999; Luca Boschetto, Leon Battista Alberti e Firenze: Biografia, storia, letteratura, Olschki, Firenze 2000; Alberto G. Cassani, La fatica del costruire: Tempo e materia nel pensiero di Leon Battista Alberti, Unicopli, Milano 2000; Pierluigi Panza, “Alberti e il mondo naturale”, in AA.VV., Lettere e arti nel Rinascimento,  Atti del X Convegno internazionale Chianciano-Pienza, 20-23 luglio 1998, a cura di Luisa Secchi Tarugi, Franco Cesati editore, Firenze, vol. 1, pp.167-180, ISBN 88-7667-096-3 Elisabetta Di Stefano, L'altro sapere: Bello, arte, immagine in Leon Battista Alberti, Centro internazionale studi di estetica, Palermo 2000; Rinaldo Rinaldi, Melancholia Christiana. Studi sulle fonti di Leon Battista Alberti, Firenze, Olschki, 2002; Francesco Furlan, Studia albertiana: Lectures et lecteurs de L.B. Alberti, N. Aragno-J. Vrin, Torino-Parigi 2003; Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Un genio universale, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2003; D. Mazzini, S. Martini. Villa Medici a Fiesole. Leon Battista Alberti e il prototipo di villa rinascimentale, Centro Di, Firenze 2004; Michel Paoli, Leon Battista Alberti 1404-1472, Parigi, Editions de l'Imprimeur, 2004, ISBN 2-910735-88-5, ora tradotto in italiano: Michel Paoli, Leon Battista Alberti, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2007, 124 p. + 40 ill., ISBN 978-88-339-1755-9. Anna Siekiera, Bibliografia linguistica albertiana, Firenze, Edizioni Polistampa, 2004 (Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Leon Battista Alberti, Serie «Strumenti», 2); Francesco P. Fiore: La Roma di Leon Battista Alberti. Umanisti, architetti e artisti alla scoperta dell'antico nella città del Quattrocento, Skira, Milano 2005, ISBN 88-7624-394-1; Leon Battista Alberti architetto, a cura di Giorgio Grassi e Luciano Patetta, testi di Giorgio Grassi et alii, Banca CR, Firenze 2005; Restaurare Leon Battista Alberti: il caso di Palazzo Rucellai, a cura di Simonetta Bracciali, presentazione di Antonio Paolucci, Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, Firenze 2006, ISBN 88-89264-81-0; Stefano Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti e Napoli, Polistampa, Firenze 2006; ISBN 88-88967-58-3 Gabriele Morolli, Leon Battista Alberti. Firenze e la Toscana, Maschietto Editore, Firenze, 2006. F. Canali, "Leon Battista Alberti "Camaleonta" e l'idea del Tempio Malatestiano dalla Storiografia al Restauro, in Il Tempio della Meraviglia, a cura di F. Canali, C. Muscolino, Firenze, 2007. F. Canali, La facciata del Tempio Malatestiano, in Il Tempio della Meraviglia, a cura di F. Canali, C. Muscolino, Firenze, 2007. V. C. Galati, "Ossa" e "illigamenta" nel De Re aedificatoria. Caratteri costruttivi e ipotesi strutturali nella lettura della tecnologia antiquaria del cantiere del Tempio Malatestiano, in Il Tempio della Meraviglia, a cura di F. Canali, C. Muscolino, Firenze, 2007 “Il mito dell’Egitto in Alberti”, in AA.VV., Leon Battista Alberti teorico delle arti e gli impegni civili del “De re aedificatoria”, Atti dei Convegni internazionali di studi del Comitato Nazionale per le celebrazioni albertiane, Mantova, 17-19/10/2002-23-25/10/2003, a cura di Arturo Calzona, Francesco Paolo Fiore, Alberto Tenenti, Cesare Vasoli, Firenze, Olschki, 2007, Isbn: 978-88-222-5605-8. Alberti e la cultura del Quattrocento, Atti del Convegno internazionale di Studi, (Firenze, Palazzo Vecchio, Salone dei Dugento, 16-17-18 dicembre 2004), a cura di R. Cardini e M. Regoliosi, Firenze, Edizioni Polistampa, 2007. AA.VV, Brunelleschi, Alberti e oltre, a cura di F. Canali, «Bollettino della Società di Studi Fiorentini», 16-17, 2008. F. Canali, R Tracce albertiane nella Romagna umanistica tra Rimini e Faenza, in Brunelleschi, Alberti e oltre, a cura di F. Canali, «Bollettino della Società di Studi Fiorentini», 16-17, 2008. V. C. Galati, Riflessioni sulla Reggia di Castelnuovo a Napoli: morfologie architettoniche e tecniche costruttive. Un univoco cantiere antiquario tra Donatello e Leon Battista Alberti?, in Brunelleschi, Alberti e oltre, a cura di F. Canali, «Bollettino della Società di Studi Fiorentini», 16-17, 2008. F. Canali, V. C. Galati, Leon Battista Alberti, gli 'Albertiani' e la Puglia umanistica, in Brunelleschi, Alberti e oltre, a cura di F. Canali, «Bollettino della Società di Studi Fiorentini», 16-17, 2008. G. Morolli, Alberti: la triiplice luce della pulcritudo, in Brunelleschi, Alberti e oltre, a cura di F. Canali, «Bollettino della Società di Studi Fiorentini», 16-17, 2008. G. Morolli, Pienza e Alberti, in Brunelleschi, Alberti e oltre, a cura di F. Canali, «Bollettino della Società di Studi Fiorentini», 16-17, 2008. Christoph Luitpold Frommel, Alberti e la porta trionfale di Castel Nuovo a Napoli, in «Annali di architettura» n° 20, Vicenza 2008 leggere l'articolo; Massimo Bulgarelli, Leon Battista Alberti, 1404-1472: Architettura e storia, Electa, Milano 2008; Caterina Marrone, I segni dell'inganno. Semiotica della crittografia, Stampa Alternativa&Graffiti, Viterbo 2010; Pierluigi Panza, “Animalia: La zoologia nel De Re Aedificatoria", Convegno 29-30 marzo 2008 Facoltà di Architettura Civile, Milano, in Albertiana, vol.13, pp.87-100, Issn 1126-9588 S. Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti e Napoli, Firenze, 2011. V. Galati, Il Torrione quattrocentesco di Bitonto dalla committenza di Giovanni Ventimiglia e Marino Curiale; dagli adeguamenti ai dettami del De Re aedificatoria di Leon Battista Alberti alle proposte di Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1450-1495), in Defensive Architecture of the Mediterranean XV to XVIII centuries, a cura di G. Verdiani,, Firenze, 2016, vol.III. V. Galati, Tipologie di Saloni per le udienze nel Quattrocento tra Ferrara e Mantova. Oeci, Basiliche, Curie e "Logge all'antica" tra Vitruvio e Leon Battista Alberti nel "Salone dei Mesi di Schifanoia a Ferrara e nella "Camera Picta" di Palazzo Ducale a Mantova, in Per amor di Classicismo, a cura di F. Canali «Bollettino della Società di Studi Fiorentini», 24-25, 2016. S. Borsi, Leon Battista, Firenze, 2018. Roberto Rossellini gli ha dedicato un film- documentario per la TV nel 1973, intitolato "L'età di Cosimo dei Medici" (88').  Voci correlate Architettura rinascimentale Rinascimento fiorentino Rinascimento riminese Rinascimento mantovano Medaglia di Leon Battista Alberti Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a Leon Battista Alberti Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina in lingua latina dedicata a Leon Battista Alberti Collabora a Wikiquote Wikiquote contiene citazioni di Leon Battista Alberti Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Leon Battista Alberti Collegamenti esterni Leon Battista Alberti, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Leon Battista Alberti, in Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Leon Battista Alberti, su Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Modifica su Wikidata Leon Battista Alberti, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Leon Battista Alberti, su MacTutor, University of St Andrews, Scotland. Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Leon Battista Alberti, su Liber Liber. Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Leon Battista Alberti, su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Opere di Leon Battista Alberti, su Open Library, Internet Archive. Modifica su Wikidata (FR) Bibliografia su Leon Battista Alberti, su Les Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Leon Battista Alberti, in Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Company. Modifica su Wikidata La bibliografia aggiornata degli studi albertiani dal 1995 in poi, e le informazioni più recenti sulla ricerca albertiana, su alberti.wordpress.com. Il sito della Société Internationale Leon Battista Alberti, su silba-online.eu. Biografia breve, su imss.fi.it. Fondazione Centro Studi Leon Battista Alberti - Mantova, su fondazioneleonbattistaalberti.it. Momus, (testo in latino, Roma 1520), facsimile, progetto CAMENA Controllo di autorità VIAF (EN) 29559625 · ISNI (EN) 0000 0001 2095 8329 · SBN IT\ICCU\CFIV\042377 · Europeana agent/base/60136 · LCCN (EN) n79005570 · GND (DE) 11850147X · BNF (FR) cb12083793k (data) · BNE (ES) XX1108703 (data) · ULAN (EN) 500002025 · NLA (EN) 35002626 · BAV 495/19463 · CERL cnp01302039 · NDL (EN, JA) 00431158 · WorldCat Identities (EN) lccn-n79005570 Architettura Portale Architettura Biografie Portale Biografie Crittografia Portale Crittografia Letteratura Portale Letteratura Matematica Portale Matematica Categorie: Architetti italiani del XV secoloScrittori italiani del XV secoloMatematici italiani del XV secoloNati nel 1404Morti nel 1472Nati il 14 febbraioMorti il 25 aprileNati a GenovaMorti a RomaPersonalità commemorate nella Basilica di Santa CroceLeon Battista AlbertiAlberti (famiglia)Personaggi della Camera degli SposiUomini universaliArchitetti alla corte dei GonzagaArchitetti alla corte degli EstensiArchitetti rinascimentaliTeorici dell'architettura italianiTeorici dell'arteArtisti di scuola fiorentinaCrittografi italianiTeorici della musica italianiUmanisti italianiStudenti dell'Università di BolognaDrammaturghi italianiMembri dell'Accademia neoplatonica[altre]. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice ed Alberti," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

alethic: Grice could not find a good word for ‘verum,’ and so he borrowed ‘alethic’ from, but never returned it to, von Wright. Under the alethic modalities, Grice, as historically, included the four central ways or modes in which a given proposition might be true or false: necessity, contingency, possibility, and impossibility. The term ‘alethic’ derives from Grecian aletheia, ‘truth’. These modalities, and their logical interconnectedness, can be characterized as follows. A proposition that is true but possibly false is contingently true e.g., that Aristotle taught Alexander; one that is true and not-possibly i.e., “impossibly” false is necessarily true e.g., that red things are colored. Likewise, a proposition that is false but possibly true is contingently false e.g., that there are no tigers; and one that is false and not-possibly true is necessarily false e.g., that seven and five are fourteen. Though any one of the four modalities can be defined in terms of any other, necessity and possibility are generally taken to be the more fundamental notions, and most systems of alethic modal logic take one or the other as basic. Distinct modal systems differ chiefly in regard to their treatment of iterated modalities, as in the proposition It is necessarily true that it is possibly true that it is possibly true that there are no tigers. In the weakest of the most common systems, usually called T, every iterated modality is distinct from every other. In the stronger system S4, iterations of any given modality are redundant. So, e.g., the above proposition is equivalent to It is necessarily true that it is possibly true that there are no tigers. In the strongest and most widely accepted system S5, all iteration is redundant. Thus, the two propositions above are both equivalent simply to It is possibly true that there are no tigers. 

alexanderian: s.– what Grice called “A Balliol hegelian,” philosopher, tuteed at Balliol by A. C. Bradley, Oxford, and taught for most of his career at the  of Manchester. His aim, which he most fully realized in Space, Time, and Deity 0, was to provide a realistic account of the place of mind in nature. He described nature as a series of levels of existence where irreducible higher-level qualities emerge inexplicably when lower levels become sufficiently complex. At its lowest level reality consists of space-time, a process wherein points of space are redistributed at instants of time and which might also be called pure motion. From complexities in space-time matter arises, followed by secondary qualities, life, and mind. Alexander thought that the still-higher quality of deity, which characterizes the whole universe while satisfying religious sentiments, is now in the process of emerging from mind. 

alexanderian: related to Alexander de Aphrodisias: ““Alexander of Aphrodisias” should not be confused with Samuel Alexander, a fellow of Bradley, even if they are next in your philosophical dictionary!” – Grice. Grecian philosopher, one of the foremost commentators on Aristotle in late antiquity. He exercised considerable influence on later Grecian and Roman philosophy through to the Renaissance. On the problem of universals, Alexander endorses a brand of conceptualism: although several particulars may share a single, common nature, this nature does not exist as a universal except while abstracted in thought from the circumstances that accompany its particular instantiations. Regarding Aristotle’s notorious distinction between the “agent” and “patient” intellects in On the Soul III.5, Alexander identifies the agent intellect with God, who, as the most intelligible entity, makes everything else intelligible. As its own self-subsistent object, this intellect alone is imperishable; the human intellect, in contrast, perishes at death. Of Alexander’s many commentaries, only those on Aristotle’s Metaphysics Ad, Prior Analytics I, Topics, On the Senses, and Meterologics are extant. We also have two polemical treatises, On Fate and On Mixture, directed against the Stoics; a psychological treatise, the De anima based on Aristotle’s; as well as an assortment of essays including the De intellectu and his Problems and Solutions. Nothing is known of Alexander’s life apart from his appointment by the emperor Severus to a chair in Aristotelian philosophy between  and 209. 

algarotti: Grice: “Nobody can fail to be enchanted by the drawing by Richardson of Algarotti!” -- essential Italian philosopher. Grice: “I don’t have a monicker, but Algarotti had two: il cigno di Padova and il Socrate veneziano.  Il conte Francesco Algarotti (n. Venezia) è stato un filosofo, poeta. Spirito illuminista, erudito dotato di conoscenze che spaziavano dal newtonianismo all'architettura, alla musica, era amico delle personalità più grandi dell'epoca: Voltaire, Jean-Baptiste Boyer d'Argens, Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Tra i suoi corrispondenti vi erano Lord Chesterfield, Thomas Gray, George Lyttelton, Thomas Hollis, Metastasio, Benedetto XIV, Heinrich von Brühl, Federico II di Prussia.   Saggi, 1963 (testo completo) Nacque a Venezia, da una famiglia di commercianti. Dopo un primo periodo di studio a Roma, dove poté studiare sotto la guida del Lodoli, continuò gli studi a Bologna, dove affrontò le diverse discipline scientifiche nella loro vastità, soprattutto l'astronomia sotto la guida di Eustachio Manfredi e di Francesco Maria Zanotti. Si trasferì a Firenze per completare la propria preparazione letteraria.  Iniziò a viaggiare per l'Europa, raggiungendo Parigi, città nella quale ebbe modo di conoscere diverse autorevoli personalità.  Ad esse poté presentare il proprio Newtonianismo per le dame, piccola opera di divulgazione scientifica brillante ispirata al lavoro dello scrittore francese Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle. L'opera fu prima apprezzata, e poi denigrata da Voltaire, che dal lavoro del suo Caro cigno di Padova — come era solito appellarlo — trasse alcuni temi dei suoi Elementi della filosofia di Newton. Voltaire e Algarotti si erano conosciuti personalmente a Cirey nello stesso periodo in cui l'italiano preparava il saggio  Dopo il periodo trascorso in Francia, Algarotti si recò in Inghilterra, per soggiornare per qualche tempo a Londra, dove fu accolto nella Royal Society, prestigiosa accademia scientifica. Tornato in Italia si poté dedicare alla pubblicazione del Newtonianesimo e subito dopo partì. Dopo un breve ritorno a Londra, andò a visitare alcune zone della Russia (fermandosi in particolare a San Pietroburgo) e della Prussia.  Dice il De Tipaldo, nelle sue biografie degli italiani illustri: "Quando Federico si recò a Königsberg a incoronarsi, l'Algarotti si trovò in mezzo gli applausi e il giubilo di quella potente e valorosa nazione misto e confuso coi principi della famiglia reale, e stette nel palco col re, spargendo al popolo sottoposto le monete con l'immagine di Federico. Fu in tale congiuntura che questi conferì a lui, quanto al fratello Bonomo e ai discendenti della famiglia Algarotti, il titolo di conte, meno vano quando è premio del sapere, e dal 1747 lo fece suo ciambellano e cavaliere dell'ordine del merito, mentr'era alla corte di Dresda col titolo di consigliere intimo di guerra. Dal momento che Algarotti conobbe Federico sino alla sua morte, cioè pel corso di venticinque anni, né l'amicizia, né la stima del re, né la gratitudine, la devozione e il sincero affetto del cortigiano vennero meno, né soffersero mai alcuna alterazione." Secondo il De Tipaldo, l'amicizia fra i due era estesa anche alla sfera più intima; dice infatti: "…lo volle non solo a compagno degli studi e dei viaggi, ma altresì dei suoi più segreti piaceri, essendoché della corte di Potsdam, ora egli faceva un Peripato, ed ora la convertiva in un tempio di Gnido" - il che significa: in un tempio di Venere.  Trascorse alla corte del re oltre un decennio, per fare ritorno nel paese natale. Utilizzò la propria influenza anche a favore degli "oppositori" filosofici come Gregorio Bressani Il resto della vita lo trascorse tra Venezia e Bologna per fermarsi a Pisa, dove morì all'età di cinquantatré anni mentre preparava la pubblicazione di tutte le sue opere, fra cui Lettere sulla Russia e Il Congresso di Citera, un romanzo dedicato ai costumi galanti e amorosi rivisitati secondo quanto osservato nelle diverse nazioni in cui aveva soggiornato.  Malato di tubercolosi, a Pisa col diletto amico Mauro Antonio Tesi, chiamato "Maurino", si preparò alla morte; come epitaffio, volle Algarottus, sed non omnis. Malignamente, l'abate Galiani notò che questo era epitaffio più di evirato cantore che di dotto.  Fu sepolto nel camposanto di Pisa, in un monumento disegnato dall'illustre architetto Carlo Bianconi e dallo stesso "Maurino" Tesi in uno stile archeologizzante, tradotto in marmo dall'allora celebre abate Giovanni Antonio Cybei di Carrara. L'epitaffio è quello che per lui dettò il re di Prussia: "Algarotto Ovidii aemulo, Neutoni discipulo, Federicus rex", tranne che gli eredi cambiarono quel rex in magnus. Commenta il De Tipaldo: "Egli medesimo si era preparato, in compagnia del Maurino, il disegno del sepolcro e l'epitafio, non già per orgoglio, ma spinto dal sacro amore delle arti belle, che anche in faccia alla morte non poteva intiepidirsi nel suo petto."  Personalità e influenza culturale  Domenico Michelessi, Memorie intorno alla vita e agli scritti del conte Francesco Algarotti, 1770 Aperto al progresso e alla conoscenza razionale, esperto di arti (si prodigò come fautore di Palladio), fu - rispetto alla scienza - un grande assertore delle teorie di Isaac Newton (sul conto del quale scrisse uno dei suoi più noti saggi, Il newtonianesimo per le dame).  Viene considerato una sorta di Socrate veneziano e per comprendere la sua statura di insigne studioso con un'infinita sete di sapere e divulgare è sufficiente porsi davanti al suo innumerevole campo di interessi. Al di là del suo ruolo di spicco nell'illuminismo letterario, fu anche un diplomatico e un procacciatore d'arte. In particolare viaggiò cercando opere d'arte per conto di Augusto III di Sassonia. È noto che fu Algarotti a comprare a Venezia il capolavoro di Liotard, il pastello de La cioccolataia, che poi divenne una delle perle della Galleria di Dresda.  Uomo di bell'aspetto, dotato di un aristocratico naso aquilino (esiste al Rijksmuseum di Amsterdam uno suo ritratto a pastello, sempre di Liotard, che è riprodotto nell’incipit della presente voce), l'Algarotti nel Saggio sopra Orazio non perdeva occasione di far notare come questi fosse ambidestro, e tanto lodava i vantaggi di questa disposizione, che c'è chi suppone che egli la condividesse col poeta. Ebbe a scrivere praticamente su tutto, affrontando - con l'acuta attenzione dello scienziato - pressoché ogni aspetto dello scibile umano. Basti ricordare i saggi che scrisse a proposito della pittura (Sopra la pittura), dell'architettura (Sopra l'architettura), dell'opera lirica (Sopra l'opera in musica), del commercio (Sopra il commercio).   La tomba di Algarotti al Camposanto di Pisa.Opera di Giovanni Antonio Cybei Opere Francesco Algarotti, Saggi, Scrittori d'Italia 226, Bari, Laterza, 1963. URL consultato il 29 giugno 2015. Saggi, a cura di Giovanni da Pozzo, Ediz.Laterza (1963), testo integrale dalla collana digitalizzata "Scrittori d'Italia" F.Algarotti e S.Bettinelli " Opere " a cura di Ettore Bonora, Milano-Napoli Ricciardi, 1969 Il newtonianismo per le dame, 1737. The International Centre for the History of Universities and Science (CIS), Università di Bologna, su 137.204.24.205. URL consultato il 13 ottobre 2010 (archiviato dall'url originale il 13 giugno 2011). Il Congresso di Citera, Parigi 1768., su archive.org. Il Congresso di Citera, note, bibliografia e commento a cura di Daniela Mangione, Bologna, Millennium, 2003 Viaggi di Russia, Milano, Garzanti, 2006 Poesie, Torino, Nino Aragno editore, 2010 Saggi su Francesco Algarotti:  Daniela Mangione, Il demone ben temperato. Francesco Algarotti tra scienza e letteratura, Italia ed Europa, Sinestesie, 2018 Note ^ Umberto Renda e Piero Operti, Dizionario storico della letteratura italiana, Torino, Paravia, 1952, p. 26. ^ Ugo Baldini, BRESSANI, Gregorio, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 14, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1972. Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a Francesco Algarotti Collabora a Wikiquote Wikiquote contiene citazioni di o su Francesco Algarotti Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Francesco Algarotti Collegamenti esterni Francesco Algarotti, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Francesco Algarotti, in Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Francesco Algarotti, su Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Modifica su Wikidata Francesco Algarotti, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Francesco Algarotti, su Find a Grave. Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Francesco Algarotti, su Liber Liber. Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Francesco Algarotti / Francesco Algarotti (altra versione), su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Opere di Francesco Algarotti, su Open Library, Internet Archive. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Spartiti o libretti di Francesco Algarotti, su International Music Score Library Project, Project Petrucci LLC. Modifica su Wikidata Progetto per ridurre a compimento il Regio Museo di Dresda (1742), su horti-hesperidum.com. Sito Algarotti dell'Università di Treviri, su algarotti.uni-trier.de. La casa di Francesco Algarotti è aperta da settembre 2011 come alloggio turistico. Algarotti e Palladio (PDF), su cisapalladio.org. Il newtonianismo per le dame, su google.com. Opere del conte Algarotti, su google.com. Corrispondenza con Federico II di Prussia (testo francese e tedesco) V · D · M Illuministi italiani Controllo di autorità VIAF (EN) 68955699 · ISNI (EN) 0000 0001 2138 0493 · SBN IT\ICCU\CFIV\057168 · LCCN (EN) n82110127 · GND (DE) 119086395 · BNF (FR) cb12090007q (data) · ULAN (EN) 500021142 · NLA (EN) 36040192 · BAV 495/86206 · CERL cnp00403740 · WorldCat Identities (EN) lccn-n82110127 Arte Portale Arte Biografie Portale Biografie LGBT Portale LGBT Letteratura Portale Letteratura Teatro Portale Teatro Categorie: Scrittori italiani del XVIII secoloSaggisti italiani del XVIII secoloCollezionisti d'arte italianiNati nel 1712Morti nel 1764Nati l'11 dicembreMorti il 3 maggioNati a VeneziaMorti a PisaTeorici del restauroIlluministiScrittori trattanti tematiche LGBTMembri della Royal SocietyViaggiatori italianiMercanti d'arte italiani[altre]. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice ed Algarotti," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

algorithm: Grice’s term for ‘decision procedure,’ a clerical or effective procedure that can be applied to any of a class of certain symbolic inputs and that will in a finite time and number of steps eventuate in a result in a corresponding symbolic output. A function for which an algorithm sometimes more than one can be given is an algorithmic function. The following are common examples: a given n, finding the nth prime number; b differentiating a polynomial; c finding the greatest common divisor of x and y the Euclidean algorithm; and d given two numbers x, y, deciding whether x is a multiple of y. When an algorithm is used to calculate values of a numerical function, as in a, b, and c, the function can also be described as algorithmically computable, effectively computable, or just computable. Algorithms are generally agreed to have the following properties  which made them essential to the theory of computation and the development of the Church-Turing thesis  i an algorithm can be given by a finite string of instructions, ii a computation device or agent can carry out or compute in accordance with the instructions, iii there will be provisions for computing, storing, and recalling steps in a computation, iv computations can be carried out in a discrete and stepwise fashion in, say, a digital computer, and v computations can be carried out in a deterministic fashion in, say, a deterministic version of a Turing machine.

alighieri, dante. “The Commedia and philosophy.” Refs.: “Philosophical references in Dante’s Commedia.”

allais’s paradox: a puzzle about rationality, discussed by H. P. Grice, “Aspects of reason,” devised by Maurice Allais b. 1. Leonard Savage  advanced the sure-thing principle, which states that a rational agent’s ranking of a pair of gambles having the same consequence in a state S agrees with her ranking of any other pair of gambles the same as the first pair except for having some other common consequence in S. Allais devised an apparent counterexample with four gambles involving a 100-ticket lottery. The table lists prizes in units of $100,000. Ticket Numbers Gambles 1 2  11 12  100 A 5 5 5 B 0 25 5 C 5 5 0 D 0 25 0 Changing A’s and B’s common consequence for tickets 12100 from 5 to 0 yields C and D respectively. Hence the sure-thing principle prohibits simultaneously preferring A to B, and D to C. Yet most people have these preferences, which seem coherent. This conflict generates the paradox. Savage presented the sure-thing principle in The Foundations of Statistics 4. Responding to preliminary drafts of that work, Allais formulated his counterexample in “The Foundations of a Positive Theory of Choice Involving Risk and a Criticism of the Postulates and Axioms of the  School” 2. 

allegedly ‘wayward’ causal chain: Grice: “What is the antonym of ‘wayward’?’ A causal chain, referred to in a proposed causal analysis of a key concept, that goes awry. Causal analyses have been proposed for key concepts  e.g., reference, action, explanation, knowledge, artwork. There are two main cases of wayward or deviant causal chains that defeat a causal analysis: 1 those in which the prescribed causal route is followed, but the expected event does not occur; and 2 those in which the expected event occurs, but the prescribed causal route is not followed. Consider action. One proposed analysis is that a person’s doing something is an action if and only if what he does is caused by his beliefs and desires. The possibility of wayward causal chains defeats this analysis. For case 1, suppose, while climbing, John finds he is supporting another man on a rope. John wants to rid himself of this danger, and he believes that he can do so by loosening his grip. His belief and desire unnerve him, causing him to loosen his hold. The prescribed causal route was followed, but the ensuing event, his grip loosening, is not an action. For case 2, suppose Harry wants to kill his rich uncle, and he believes that he can find him at home. His beliefs and desires so agitate him that he drives recklessly. He hits and kills a pedestrian, who, by chance, is his uncle. The killing occurs, but without following the prescribed causal route; the killing was an accidental consequence of what Harry did.  Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Aetiologica: from Roman ‘causa’ to Anglo-Saxon ‘for’”, Woodfield, “Be-*cause* he thought she had insulted him,” H. P. Grice, “A philosophical mistake: ‘cause’ is called for for unusual events only.” Grice: “What is the antonym of ‘wayward’?” -- a causal chain, referred to in a proposed causal analysis of a key concept, that goes awry. Causal analyses have been proposed for key concepts – e.g., reference, action, explanation, knowledge, artwork. There are two main cases of wayward (or deviant) causal chains that defeat a causal analysis: (1) those in which the prescribed causal route is followed, but the expected event does not occur; and (2) those in which the expected event occurs, but the prescribed causal route is not followed. Consider action. One proposed analysis is that a person’s doing something is an action if and only if what he does is caused by his beliefs and desires. The possibility of wayward causal chains defeats this analysis. For case (1), suppose, while climbing, John finds he is supporting another man on a rope. John wants to rid himself of this danger, and he believes that he can do so by loosening his grip. His belief and desire unnerve him, causing him to loosen his hold. The prescribed causal route was followed, but the ensuing event, his grip loosening, is not an action. For case (2), suppose Harry wants to kill his rich uncle, and he believes that he can find him at home. His beliefs and desires so agitate him that he drives recklessly. He hits and kills a pedestrian, who, by chance, is his uncle. The killing occurs, but without following the prescribed causal route; the killing was an accidental consequence of what Harry did. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Aetiologica: from Roman ‘cause’ to Anglo-Saxon ‘for’” – Woodfield, “Be-*cause* she thought he had insulted him.’”

alnwick: English Franciscan theologian. William studied under Duns Scotus at Paris, and wrote the Reportatio Parisiensia, a central source for Duns Scotus’s teaching. In his own works, William opposed Scotus on the univocity of being and haecceitas. Some of his views were attacked by Ockham. English Franciscan theologian from Northumbria -- William studied under Duns Scotus at Paris, and wrote the Reportatio Parisiensia, a central source for Duns Scotus’s teaching. In his own works, William opposed Scotus on the univocity of being and haecceitas. Some of his views were attacked by Ockham.  

altogether nice girl: Or Grice’s altogether nice girl. Grice quotes from the music-hall ditty, “Every [sic] nice girl loves a sailor” (WoW:33). He uses this for his account of multiple quantification. There is a reading where the emissor may implicate that every nice girl is such that he loves one sailor, viz. Grice. But if the existential quantifier is not made dominant, the uniqueness is disimplicated. Grice admits that not every nominalist will be contented with the ‘metaphysical’ status of ‘the altogether nice girl.’ The ‘one-at-a-time sailor’ is her counterpart. And they inhabit the class of LOVE.

AMBROGIO -- ambrosius: saint. Grice: I prefer the spelling “Ambrogio,” or if not “Aurelio Ambrosius” – To call him Ambrosisus is like calling me Gree.” Grice: “Not to be confused with Ambrose and his orchestra – sweet!” – on altruism. known as Ambrose of Milan. Roman church leader and theologian. While bishop of Milan, he not only led the struggle against the Arian heresy and its political manifestations, but offered new models for preaching, for Scriptural exegesis, and for hymnody. His works also contributed to medieval Latin philosophy. Ambrose’s appropriation of Neoplatonic doctrines was noteworthy in itself, and it worked powerfully on and through Augustine. Ambrose’s commentary on the account of creation in Genesis, his Hexaemeron, preserved for medieval readers many pieces of ancient natural history and even some elements of physical explanation. Perhaps most importantly, Ambrose engaged ancient philosophical ethics in the search for moral lessons that marks his exegesis of Scripture; he also reworked Cicero’s De officiis as a treatise on the virtues and duties of Christian living.

amicus: philia and eros – Grice on Aristotle’s aporia of friendship -- Eros, the Grecian god of erotic love. Eros came to be symbolic of various aspects of love, first appearing in Hesiod in opposition to reason. In general, however, Eros was seen by Grecians e.g., Parmenides as a unifying force. In Empedocles, it is one of two external forces explaining the history of the cosmos, the other being Strife. These forces resemble the “hidden harmony” of Heraclitus. The Symposium of Plato is the best-known ancient discussion of Eros, containing speeches from various standpoints  mythical, sophistic, etc. Socrates says he has learned from the priestess Diotima of a nobler form of Eros in which sexual desire can be developed into the pursuit of understanding the Form of beauty. The contrast between agape and Eros is found first in Democritus. This became important in Christian accounts of love. In Neoplatonism, Eros referred to the mystical union with Being sought by philosophers. Eros has become important recently in the work of Continental writers. 

ammonio: Or as Strawson preferred, “Ammonius.” Ssaccas early third century A.D., Platonist philosopher. He apparently served early in the century as the teacher of the philosopher Origen. He attracted the attention of Plotinus, who came to the city in 232 in search of philosophical enlightenment Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 3. Ammonius the epithet ‘Saccas’ seems to mean ‘the bagman’ was undoubtedly a charismatic figure, but it is not at all clear what, if any, were his distinctive doctrines, though he seems to have been influenced by Numenius. He wrote nothing, and may be thought of, in E. R. Dodds’s words, as the Socrates of Neoplatonism. There is a good edition in Bibliotheca Scriptores Graeci e Romani.

ANA-LYTICVM -- : Grice: Etyologically, a compound – ana-lusis --. Cf. catalysis --. Porphyry couldn’t find a Latinate for ‘analyticum’ – ‘analyisis’ is like ‘se-paratio.’ But even in Grecian, ‘analysis’ and synthesis are not real opposite – since ‘synthesis’ neatly comes as ‘compositio’ -- analysis, the process of breaking up a concept, proposition, linguistic complex, or fact into its simple or ultimate constituents. That on which the analysis is done is called the analysandum, and that which does the analysis is called the analysans. A number of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, including Russell, Moore, and the early Vitters, have argued that philosophical analysis is the proper method of philosophy. But the practitioners of analytic philosophy have disagreed about what kind of thing is to be analyzed. For example, Moore tried to analyze sense-data into their constituent parts. Here the analysandum is a complex psychological fact, the having of a sense-datum. More commonly, analytic philosophers have tried to analyze concepts or propositions. This is conceptual analysis. Still others have seen it as their task to give an analysis of various kinds of sentences  e.g., those involving proper names or definite descriptions. This is linguistic analysis. Each of these kinds of analysis faces a version of a puzzle that has come to be called the paradox of analysis. For linguistic analyses, the paradox can be expressed as follows: for an analysis to be adequate, the analysans must be synonymous with the analysandum; e.g., if ‘male sibling’ is to analyze ‘brother’, they must mean the same; but if they are synonymous, then ‘a brother is a male sibling’ is synonymous with ‘a brother is a brother’; but the two sentences do not seem synonymous. Expressed as a dilemma, the paradox is that any proposed analysis would seem to be either inadequate because the analysans and the analysandum are not synonymous or uninformative because they are synonymous.  Analytic philosophy is an umbrella term currently used to cover a diverse assortment of philosophical techniques and tendencies. As in the case of chicken-sexing, it is relatively easy to identify analytic philosophy and philosophers, though difficult to say with any precision what the criteria are. Analytic philosophy is sometimes called Oxford philosophy or linguistic philosophy, but these labels are, at least, misleading. Whatever else it is, analytic philosophy is manifestly not a school, doctrine, or body of accepted propositions. At Cambridge, analytic philosophers are the intellectual heirs of Russell, Moore, and Vitters, philosophers who self-consciously pursued “philosophical analysis” in the early part of the twentieth century. Analysis, as practiced by Russell and Moore, concerned not language per se, but concepts and propositions. In their eyes, while it did not exhaust the domain of philosophy, analysis provided a vital tool for laying bare the logical form of reality. Vitters, in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, contended, though obliquely, that the structure of language reveals the structure of the world; every meaningful sentence is analyzable into atomic constituents that designate the finegrained constituents of reality. This “Tractarian” view was one Vitters was to renounce in his later work, but it had considerable influence within the Vienna Circle in the 0s, and in the subsequent development of logical positivism in the 0s and 0s. Carnap and Ayer, both exponents of positivism, held that the task of philosophy was not to uncover elusive metaphysical truths, but to provide analyses of scientific sentences. Other sentences, those in ethics, for instance, were thought to lack “cognitive significance.” Their model was Russell’s theory of descriptions, which provided a technique for analyzing away apparent commitments to suspicious entities. Meanwhile, a number of former proponents of analysis, influenced by Vitters, had taken up what came to be called ordinary language philosophy. Philosophers of this persuasion focused on the role of words in the lives of ordinary speakers, hoping thereby to escape long-standing philosophical muddles. These muddles resulted, they thought, from a natural tendency, when pursuing philosophical theses, to be misled by the grammatical form of sentences in which those questions were posed. A classic illustration might be Heidegger’s supposition that ‘nothing’ must designate something, though a very peculiar something. Today, it is difficult to find much unanimity in the ranks of analytic philosophers. There is, perhaps, an implicit respect for argument and clarity, an evolving though informal agreement as to what problems are and are not tractable, and a conviction that philosophy is in some sense continuous with science. The practice of analytic philosophers to address one another rather than the broader public has led some to decry philosophy’s “professionalization” and to call for a return to a pluralistic, community-oriented style of philosophizing. Analytic philosophers respond by pointing out that analytic techniques and standards have been well represented in the history of philosophy. Analyticity. H. P. Grice, “In defence of a dogma,” in Studies in the way of words. the analyticsynthetic distinction, the distinction, made famous by Kant, according to which an affirmative subject-predicate statement proposition, judgment is called analytic if the predicate concept is contained in the subject concept, and synthetic otherwise. The statement ‘All red roses are red’ is analytic, since the concept ‘red’ is contained in the concept ‘red roses’. ‘All roses are red’ is synthetic, since the concept ‘red’ is not contained in the concept ‘roses’. The denial of an affirmative subject-predicate statement entails a contradiction if it is analytic. E.g., ‘Not all red roses are red’ entails ‘Some roses are both red and not red’. One concept may be contained in another, in Kant’s sense, even though the terms used to express them are not related as part to whole. Since ‘biped’ means ‘two-footed animal’, the concept ‘two-footed’ is contained in the concept ‘biped’. It is accordingly analytic that all bipeds are two-footed. The same analytic statement is expressed by the synonymous sentences ‘All bipeds are two-footed’ and ‘All two-footed animals are two-footed’. Unlike statements, sentences cannot be classified as analytic or synthetic except relative to an interpretation. analytical jurisprudence analyticsynthetic distinction 26 4065A-   26 Witness ‘All Russian teachers are Russian’, which in one sense expresses the analytic statement ‘All teachers that are Russian are Russian’, and in another the synthetic statement ‘All teachers of Russian are Russian’. Kant’s innovation over Leibniz and Hume lay in separating the logicosemantic analyticsynthetic distinction from the epistemological a prioria posteriori distinction and from the modalmetaphysical necessarycontingent distinction. It seems evident that any analytic statement is a priori knowable without empirical evidence and necessary something that could not be false. The converse is highly controversial. Kant and his rationalist followers maintain that some a priori and necessary statements are synthetic, citing examples from logic ‘Contradictions are impossible’, ‘The identity relation is transitive’, mathematics ‘The sum of 7 and 5 is 12’, ‘The straight line between two points is the shortest’, and metaphysics ‘Every event is caused’. Empiricists like J. S. Mill, Carnap, Ayer, and C. I. Lewis argue that such examples are either synthetic a posteriori or analytic a priori. Philosophers since Kant have tried to clarify the analyticsynthetic distinction, and generalize it to all statements. On one definition, a sentence is analytic on a given interpretation provided it is “true solely in virtue of the meaning or definition of its terms.” The truth of any sentence depends in part on the meanings of its terms. `All emeralds are green’ would be false, e.g., if ‘emerald’ meant ‘ruby’. What makes the sentence synthetic, it is claimed, is that its truth also depends on the properties of emeralds, namely, their being green. But the same holds for analytic sentences: the truth of ‘All red roses are red’ depends on the properties of red roses, namely, their being red. Neither is true solely in virtue of meaning. A more adequate generalization defines an analytic statement as a formal logical truth: one “true in virtue of its logical form,” so that all statements with the same form are true. In terms of sentences under an interpretation, an analytic truth is an explicit logical truth one whose surface structure represents its logical form or one that becomes an explicit logical truth when synonyms are substituted. The negative statement that tomorrow is not both Sunday and not Sunday is analytic by this definition, because all statements of the form : p & - p are true. Kant’s definition is obtained as a special case by stipulating that the predicate of an affirmative subjectpredicate statement is contained in the subject provided the statement is logically true. On a third generalization, ‘analytic’ denotes any statement whose denial entails a contradiction. Subject S contains predicate P provided being S entails being P. Whether this is broader or narrower than the second generalization depends on how ‘entailment’, ‘logical form’, and ‘contradiction’ are defined. On some construals, ‘Red is a color’ counts as analytic on the third generalization its denial entails ‘Something is and is not a color’ but not on the second ‘red’ and ‘colored’ are logically unstructured, while the rulings are reversed for a counterfactual conditional like ‘If this were a red rose it would be red’. Following Quine, many have denied any distinction between analytic and synthetic statements. Some arguments presume the problematic “true by meaning” definition. Others are that: 1 the distinction cannot be defined without using related notions like ‘meaning’, ‘concept’, and ‘statement’, which are neither extensional nor definable in terms of behavior; 2 some statements like ‘All cats are animals’ are hard to classify as analytic or synthetic; and 3 no statement allegedly is immune from rejection in the face of new empirical evidence. If these arguments were sound, however, the distinction between logical truths and others would seem equally dubious, a conclusion seldom embraced. Some describe a priori truths, both synthetic and analytic, as conceptual truths, on the theory that they are all true in virtue of the nature of the concepts they contain. Conceptual truths are said to have no “factual content” because they are about concepts rather than things in the actual world. While it is natural to classify a priori truths together, the proffered theory is questionable. As indicated above, all truths hold in part because of the identity of their concepts, and in part because of the nature of the objects they are about. It is a fact that all emeralds are emeralds, and this proposition is about emeralds, not concepts.  analyticum-a-priori: For Grice, an oxymoron, since surely ‘analyticum-a-posteriori’ is an oxymoron. R. A. Wollheim. London-born philosopher, BPhil Oxon, Balliol (under D. Marcus) and All Souls.  Examined by H. P. Grice. “What’s two times two?” Wollheim treasured that examination. It was in the context of a discussion of J. S. Mill and I. Kant, for whom addition and multiplication are ‘synthetic’ – a priori for Kant, a posteriori for Mill. Grice was trying to provide a counterexample to Mill’s thesis that all comes via deduction or induction.


anaxagoras: Grecian and pre-Griceian philosopher who was the first of the pre-Socratics to teach in Athens, where he influenced leading intellectuals such as Pericles and Euripides. He left Athens when he was prosecuted for impiety. Writing in response to Parmenides, he elaborated a theory of matter according to which nothing comes into being or perishes. The ultimate realities are stuffs such as water and earth, flesh and bone, but so are contraries such as hot and cold, likewise treated as stuffs. Every phenomenal substance has a portion of every elemental stuff, and there are no minimal parts of anything, but matter takes on the phenomenal properties of whatever predominates in the mixture. Anaxagoras posits an indefinite number of elemental stuffs, in contrast to his contemporary Empedocles, who requires only four elements; but Anaxagoras follows Parmenides more rigorously, allowing no properties or substances to emerge that were not already present in the cosmos as its constituents. Thus there is no ultimate gap between appearance and reality: everything we perceive is real. In Anaxagoras’s cosmogony, an initial chaos of complete mixture gives way to an ordered world when noûs mind begins a vortex motion that separates cosmic masses of ether the bright upper air, air, water, and earth. Mind is finer than the stuffs and is found in living things, but it does not mix with stuffs. Anaxagoras’s theory of mind provides the first hint of a mindmatter dualism. Plato and Aristotle thought his assigning a cosmic role to mind made him sound like “a sober man” among his contemporaries, but they were disappointed that he did not exploit his idea to provide teleological explanations of natural phenomena. 

anaximander:: Grecian and pre-Griceian philosopher and cosmologist, reputedly the student and successor of Thales in the Milesian school. He described the cosmos as originating from apeiron the boundless by a process of separating off; a disk-shaped earth was formed, surrounded by concentric heavenly rings of fire enclosed in air. At “breathing holes” in the air we see jets of fire, which are the stars, moon, and sun. The earth stays in place because there is no reason for it to tend one way or another. The seasons arise from alternating periods where hot and dry or wet and anaphor Anaximander 28 4065A-   28 cold powers predominate, governed by a temporal process figuratively portrayed as the judgment of Time. Anaximander drew a map of the world and explained winds, rain, and lightning by naturalistic hypotheses. He also described the emergence of life in a way that prefigures the theory of evolution. Anaximander’s interest in cosmology and cosmogony and his brilliant conjectures set the major questions for later preSocratics. 

anaximenes: of Miletus: Grecian and  pre-Griceian philosopher, a pre-Socratic who, following in the tradition of the Milesians Thales and Anaximander, speculated about cosmology and meteorology. The source arche of the cosmos is air aer, originally mist, which by a process of rarefaction becomes fire, and by a process of condensation becomes wind, clouds, water, earth, and stones. Air is divine and causes life. The earth is flat and rides on a cushion of air, while a heavenly firmament revolves about it like a felt cap. Anaximenes also explained meteorological phenomena and earthquakes. Although less innovative than his predecessor Anaximander, he made progress in naturalistic explanations by appealing to a quantitative process of rarefaction and condensation rather than to mythical processes involving quasi-personal agents.

ancestry: Studied by H. P. Grice. Of a given relation R, the relation also called the transitive closure of R that relates one given individual to a second if and only if the first can be “reached” from the second by repeated “applications” of the given relation R. The “ancestor” relation is the ancestral of the parent relation since one person is an ancestor of a second if the first is a parent of the second or the first is a parent of a parent of the second or the first is a parent of a parent of a parent of the second, and so on. Frege discovered a simple method of giving a materially adequate and formally correct definition of the ancestral of a given relation in terms of the relation itself plus logical concepts. This method is informally illustrated as follows. In order for one person A to be an ancestor of a second person B it is necessary and sufficient for A to have every property that belongs to every parent of B and that belongs to every parent of any person to whom it belongs. This and other similar methods made possible the reduction of all numerical concepts to those of zero and successor, which Frege then attempted to reduce to concepts of pure logic. Frege’s definition of the ancestral has become a paradigm in modern analytic philosophy as well as a historical benchmark of the watershed between traditional logic and modern logic. It demonstrates the exactness of modern logical analysis and, in comparison, the narrowness of traditional logic. 

andronicus: Grecian philosopher, a leading member of the Lyceum who was largely responsible for establishing the canon of Aristotle’s works still read today. He also edited the works of Theophrastus. At the time, Aristotle was known primarily for his philosophical dialogues, only fragments of which now survive; his more methodical treatises had stopped circulating soon after his death. By producing the first systematic edition of Aristotle’s corpus, Andronicus revived study of the treatises, and the resulting critical debates dramatically affected the course of philosophy. Little is recorded about Andronicus’s labors; but besides editing the texts and discussing titles, arrangement, and authenticity, he sought to explicate and assess Aristotle’s thought. In so doing, he and his colleagues initiated the exegetical tradition of Aristotelian commentaries. Nothing he wrote survives; a summary account of emotions formerly ascribed to him is spurious. 

angst: Grice discusses this as an ‘implicatural emotion.’ G. term for a special form of anxiety, an emotion seen by existentialists as both constituting and revealing the human condition. Angst plays a key role in the writings of Heidegger, whose concept is closely related to Kierkegaard’s angest and Sartre’s angoisse. The concept is first treated in this distinctive way in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety 1844, where anxiety is described as “the dizziness of freedom.” Anxiety here represents freedom’s self-awareness; it is the psychological precondition for the individual’s attempt to become autonomous, a possibility that is seen as both alluring and disturbing. 

ANIMA, ANIMATVM -- animatum -- animal: pirotese. Durrell’s Family Conversations. Durrelly’s family conversation. When H. P. Grice was presented with an ‘overview’ of his oeuvre for PGRICE (Grandy and Warner, 1986), he soon found out.  “There’s something missing.”  Indeed, there is a very infamous objection, Grice thought, which is not mentioned by ‘Richards,’ as he abbreviates Richard Grandy and Richard Warner’s majestically plural ‘overview,’ which seems to Grice to be one to which Grice must respond. And he shall! The objection Grice states as follows. One of the leading strands in Grice’s reductive analysis of the circumstances or scenario in which an emissor (E) communicates that p is that the scenario, call it “C,” is not to be regarded exclusively, “or even primarily,” as a ‘feature’ of an E that is using what philosophers of language (since Plato’s “Cratylus”) have been calling ‘language’ (glossa, la lingua latina, la lingua italiana, la langue française, the English tongue, de nederlands taal, die Deutsche Sprache, etc.). The emissum (e) may be an ‘utterance’ which is not ‘linguistic.’ Grice finds the issue crucial after discussing the topic with his colleague at Berkeley, Davidson. For Davidson reminds Grice: “[t]here is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers […] have supposed” (Davidson, 1986: 174). “I’m happy you say ‘many,’ Davidson,” Grice commented. Grice continues formulating what he obviously found to be an insidious, fastidious, objection. There are many instances of “NOTABLY NON-‘linguistic’” vehicles or devices of communication, within a communication-system, even a one-off system, which fulfil this or that communication-function. I am using ‘communication-function’ alla Grice (1961:138, repr. 1989:235). These vehicles or devices are mostly syntactically un-structured or amorphous – Grice’s favourite example being a ‘sort of hand-wave’ meaning that it is not the case that the emissor knows the route or that the emissor is about to leave his addressee (1967:VI, repr. 1989:126).  Sometimes, a device may exhibit at least “some rudimentary syntactic” structure – as Grice puts it, giving a nod to Morris’s tripartite semiotics -- in that we may perhaps distinguish and identify a ‘totum’ or complexum (say, Plato’s ‘logos’) from a pars or simplex (say, Plato’s ‘onoma’ and ‘rhema’). Grice’s intention-based reductive analysis of a communicatum, based on Aristotle, Locke, and Peirce, is designed, indeed its very raison d'être being, to allow for the possibility that a non-“linguistic,” and, further, indeed a non-“conventional” 'utterance,’ perhaps unrepeatable token, not even manifesting any degree of syntactic structure, but a block of an amorphous signal, be within the ‘repertoire’ of ‘procedures,’ perhaps unrepeatable ones, of this or that organism, or creature, or agent, even if not relying on any apparatus for communication of the kind that that we may label ‘linguistic’ or otherwise ‘conventional,’ will count as an emissor E ‘doing’ this or that ‘thing,’ thereby ‘communicating’ that p. To provide for this conceptual scenario, it is plainly necessary, Grice grants, that the key ingredient in any representation or conceptualization, or reductive analysis of ‘communicating,’ viz. intending that p, for Grice, should be a ‘state’ of the emissor’s “soul” (Grice is translating Grecian ψυχή the capacity for which does not require what we may label the ‘possession’ of, shall we say, ‘faculty,’ of what philosophers since Cratylus have been calling ‘γλῶσσα Ἑλληνίδα,’ ‘lingua latina,’ ‘lingua italiana,’ ‘langue française,’ ‘English tongue,’ ‘Nederlands taal,’ ‘die Deutsche Sprache.’ (Grice always congratulated Kant for never distinguishing between ‘die Deutsche Sprache’ and ‘Sprache’ as ‘eine Fakultät.’). Now a philosopher, relying on this or that neo-Prichardian reductive analysis of ‘intending that p,’ (Oxonian Grice will quote Oxonian if he can) may not be willing to allow the possibility of such, shall we grant, pre-linguistic intending that p, or non-linguistic intending that p. Surely, if the emissor E realizes that his addressee or recipient R does not ‘share’ say, what the Germans call ‘die Deutsche Sprache,” E may still communicate, by doing so-and-so, that such-and-such, viz. p. E may make this sort of hand wave communicating that E knows the route or that E is about to leave R. Against that objection, Grice surely wins the day. There’s nothing in Prichard account of ‘willing that p,’ itself a borrowing from William James (“I will that the distant table slides over the floor toward me. It does not.”) which is about ‘die Deutsche Sprache.’ But Grice hastens to declare that winning ‘the’ day may not be winning ‘all’ day. And that is because of Oxonian philosophy being what it is. Because, as far as Grice’s Oxonian explorations on communication go, in a succession of increasingly elaborate moves – ending with a a clause which closes the succession o-- designed to thwart this or that scenario, later deemed illegitimate, involving two rational agents where the emissor E relies on an ‘inference-element’ that it is not the case that E intends his recipient R will recogise – Grice is led to narrow the ‘intending’ the reductive analysis of ‘Emissor E communicates that p’ to C-intending.  Grice expects that whatever may be the case in general with regard to ‘intending,’ C-intending seems for some reason to Grice to be unsophisticatedly, viz. plainly, too sophisticated a ‘state’ of a soul (or ψυχή) to be found in an organism, ‘pirot,’ creature, that we may not want to deem ‘rational,’ or as the Germans would say, a creature that is plainly destitute of “Die Deutsche Sprache.” We seem to be needing a pirot to be “very intelligent, indeed rational.” (Who other than Grice would genially combine Locke with Carnap?). Some may regret, Grice admits, that his unavoidable rear-guard action just undermines the raison d'etre of his campaign. However, Grice goes on to provide an admittedly brief reply which will have to suffice under the circumstances. There is SOME limit for Oxonian debate! A full treatment that would satisfy Grice requires delving deep into crucial problems about the boundary between vicious and virtuous conceptual circularity. Which is promising. It is not something UNATTAINABLE a priori – and there is nothing wrong with leaving it for the morrow. It reduces to the philosopher trying to show himself virtuously circular, if not, like Lear, spherical. But why need the circle be virtuous. Well, as August would put it, unless a ‘circulus’ is not ‘virtuosus,’ one would hardly deem it a ‘circulus’ in the first place. A circle is virtuous if it is not a bad circle. One may even say, with The Carpenter, that, like a cabbage or a king, if a circle is not virtuous is not even a circle! (Grice 2001:35). In this case, to borrow from former Oxonian student S. R. Schiffer, we need the ‘virtuous circle’ because we are dealing with ‘a loop’ (Schiffer, 1988:v) -- a ‘conceptual loop,’ that is. Schiffer is not interested in ‘communicating;’ only ‘meaning,’ but his point can be easily transliterated. Schiffer is saying that ‘U,’ or utterer, our ‘E,’ means that p’ surely relies on ‘U intends that p,’ but mind the loop: ‘U intends that p’ may rely on ‘U means that p.’In Grice’s most generic, third-person terms, we have a creature, call it a pirot, P1, that, by doing thing D1, communicates that p. We are talking of Grice qua ethologist, who OBSERVES the scenario. As it happens, Grice’s favourite pirot is the parrot, and call Grice a snob, but his favourite parrot was Prince Maurice’s Parrot. Prince Maurice’s Parrot. Grice reads Locke, and adapts it slightly.  Since I think I may be confident, that, whoever should see a CREATURE of his own shape or make, though it had no more reason all its life than a PARROT, would call him still A MAN; or whoever should hear a parrot discourse, reason, and philosophise, would call or think it nothing but a PARROT; and say, the one was A DULL IRRATIONAL MAN, and the other A VERY INTELLIGENT RATIONAL PARROT. “A relation we have in an author of great note, is sufficient to countenance the supposition of A RATIONAL PARROT. “The author’s words are as follows.”““I had a mind to know, from Prince Maurice's own mouth, the account of a common, but much credited story, that I had heard so often from many others, of a parrot he has, that speaks, and asks, and answers common questions, like A REASONABLE CREATURE.””““So that those of his train there generally conclude it to be witchery or possession; and one of his chaplains, would never from that time endure A PARROT, but says all PARROTS have a devil in them.””““I had heard many particulars of this story, and as severed by people hard to be discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there is of it.””““Prince Maurice says, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there is something true, but a great deal false of what is reported.””““I desired to know of him what there was of the first. Prince Maurice tells me short and coldly, that he had HEARD of such A PARROT; and though he believes nothing of it, and it was a good way off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for the parrot: that it was a very great parrot; and when the parrot comes first into the room where Prince Maurice is, with a great many men about him, the parrot says presently, ‘What a nice company is here.’”” ““ One of the men asks the parrot, ‘What thinkest thou that man is?,’ ostending his finger, and pointing to Prince Maurice.”“The parrot answers, ‘Some general -- or other.’ When the man brings the parrot close to Prince Maurice, Prince Maurice asks the parrot, ‘D'ou venez-vous?’”““The parrot answers, ‘De Marinnan.’ Then Prince Maurice goes on, and poses a second question to the parrot.””““‘A qui estes-vous?’ The Parrot answers: ‘A un Portugais.’”““Prince Maurice then asks a third question: ‘Que fais-tu la?’““The parrot answers: “Je garde les poulles.’ Prince Maurice smiles, which pleases the Parrot.”““Prince Maurice, violating a Griceian maxim, and being just informed that p, asks whether p. This is incidentally the Prince’s fourth question to the parrot – the first idiotic one. ‘Vous gardez les poulles?’”” ““The Parrot answers, ‘Oui, moi; et je scai bien faire.’ Then the parrott appeals to Peirce’s iconic system and makes the chuck four or five times that a man uses to make to chickens when a man calls them. I set down the words of this worthy dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me. I ask Prince Maurice in what ‘tongue’ the parrot speaks.””““Prince Maurice says that the parrot speaks in the Brazilian tongue.””““ I ask Prince William whether he understands the Brazilian tongue.”” ““Prince Maurice says: No, but he has taken care to have TWO interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke the Brazilian tongue, and the other a Brazilian that spoke the Dutch tongue; that Prince Maurice asked them separately and privately, and both of them AGREED in telling Prince Maurice just the same thing that the parrot had said.””““I could not but tell this ODD story, because it is so much out of the way, and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one; for I dare say Prince Maurice at least believed himself in all he told me, having ever passed for a very honest and pious man.””““I leave it to naturalists to reason, and to other men to believe, as they please upon it. However, it is not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such digressions, whether to the purpose or no.””Locke takes care “that the reader should have the story at large in the author's own words, because he seems to me not to have thought it incredible.”“For it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he, who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of himself, should take so much pains, in a place where it had nothing to do, to pin so close, not only on a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a prince in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story which, if he himself thought incredible, he could not but also think RIDICULOUS.”“Prince Maurice, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author, who relates it from him, both of them call this talker A PARROT.”Locke asks “any one else who thinks such a story fit to be told, whether, if this PARROT, and all of its kind, had always talked, as we have a prince's word for it this one did,- whether, I say, they would not have passed for a race of RATIONAL ANIMALS; but yet, whether, for all that, they would have been allowed to be MEN, and not PARROTS?”“For I presume it is not the idea of A THINKING OR RATIONAL BEING alone that makes the idea of A MAN in most people's sense: but of A BODY, so and so shaped, joined to it: and if that be the idea of a MAN, the same successive body not shifted all at once, must, as well as THE SAME IMMATERIAL SPIRIT, go to the making of the same MAN.So back to Grice’s pirotology, or Pirotologia. But first a precis Grice needs a dossier with a précis, so that he can insert the parrot’s conversational implicatura – and Prince Maurice’s. PARROT: What a nice company is here.MAN (pointing to Prince Maurice): What thinkest thou that man is?PARROT: Some general -- or other. Grice’s gloss: The he parrot displays what Grice calls ‘up-take.’ The parrot recognizes the man’s c-intention. So far is ability to display uptake.PRINCE MAURICE: D'ou venez-vous?PARROT: De Marinnan.PRINCE MAURICE: A qui estes-vous?PARROT: A un Portugais.PRINCE MAURICE: Que fais-tu la?PARROT: Je garde les poulles.PRINCE MAURICE SMILES and flouts a Griceian maxim: Vous gardez les poulles?PARROT (losing patience, and grasping the Prince’s implicaturum that he doubts it): Oui, moi. Et je scai bien faire.Grice’s gloss: The Parrott appeals to Peirce’s iconic system and makes the chuck five times that a man uses to make to chickens when a man calls them.According to his “most recent speculations” about communication, Grice goes on in his ‘Reply to Richards,’ one should distinguish, as he engages in a bit of legalese, between two sides of the scenario under conceptual reduction, E communicates that p. One side is the ‘de facto’ side, a side which, as in name implies, in fact contains any communication-relevant feature which obtains or is present in the circumstances. But then there is a ‘de jure’ side to the scenario, viz. the nested C-intending which is only deemed to be present, as a vicious circle with good intentions may become a virtuous one. By the ‘nesting,’ Grice means the three sub-intentions, involved in a scenario where Emissor E communicates that (psi*) p, reducible to the Emissor E c-intending that A recognises that E psi-s that p.First, there is the ‘exhibitive’ intention, C1. Emissor E intends A to recognise that A psi-s that p.Second, there is the ‘reflexive’ intention, C2.Emissor intends that A recognise C1 by A recognising C2Third, there is the ‘openness’ intention, C3. There is no inference-element which is C-constitutive such that Emissor relies on it and yet does not intend A to recognise.The “de jure” side to the state of affairs involves self-reference But since this self-referential circle, a mere ‘loop,’ is meant to BLOCK an utterly vicious circle of a regressus ad infinitum (or ‘ho eis apeiron ekballon,’ if you must), the self-referential circle may well be deemed virtuous. The ‘de jure’ side to the scenario is trying to save state of affairs which in, in Grice’s words, “infinitely complex,” and such that no reasonable philosopher should expect to be realised ‘de facto.’ “In which case,” Grice remarks, “it seems to serve little, if any, purpose” to assume that this very INCONCEIVABLE ‘de facto’ instantiation of a ‘de jure’ ascription of an emissor communicating that p would only be detectable, as it isn’t, by appeal to something like ‘die Deutsche Sprache’!“At its most meagre,” to use Grice’s idiom, the ‘de facto’ side should consist, merely, in any pre-rational ‘counterpart’ to the state of affairs describable by having an Emissor E communicating that p,This might amount to no more than making a certain sort of utterance – our doing D1 -- in order thereby to get some recipient creature R, our second pirot, P2, to think or want some particular thing, our p. This meagre condition hardly involves reference to anything like ‘die Deutsche Sprache.’Let’s reformulate the condition.It’s just a pirot, at a ‘pre-rational’ level. The pirot does a thing T IN ORDER THEREBY to get some other pirot to think or do some particular thing. To echo Hare,Die Tur ist geschlossen, ja.Die Tur ist geschlossen, bitte.Grice continues as a corollary: “Maybe in a less straightforward instance of “Emissor E communicates that p” there is actually present the C-intention whose feasibility as an ‘intention’ suggests some ability to use ‘die Deutsche Sprache.’And if it does, Grice adds, it looks like anything like ‘die Deutsche Sprache’ ends up being an aid to the conceptualizing about communication, not communication itself! ReferencesDavidson, Donald 1986. A nice derangement of epitaphs, in Grandy and Warner, pp. 157-74.Durrell, My family and other animals. Grandy, R. E. and R. O. Warner. 1986. Philosophical grounds of rationality: intentions, categories, ends. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. Grice, H. P. 1986. Reply to Richards, in Grandy and Warner, pp. 45-106Grice, H. P. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. London and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Grice, H. P. 2001. Aspects of reason. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. Locke, J. 1690. An essay concerning humane [sic] understanding. Oxford: The Bodleian. Schiffer, S. R. 1988. Meaning. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press.  animatum: Grice thinks of communication as what he calls ‘soul-to-soul transfer.’ Very Aristotelian.  Grice was interested in what he called the ‘rational soul’ (psyche logike). In an act of communication, Emissor communicates that p, there is a psi involved, therefore a soul, therefore what the Romans called an ‘anima,’ and the Greeks called the ‘psyche.’ For surely there can be no psi-transmission without a psi. Grice loved to abbreviate this as the psi, since Lady Asquith, who was a soul, would not have desired any less from Grice. Grice, like Plato and Aristotle, holds a tripartite theory of the soul. Where, ‘part’ (Aristotelian ‘meros’) is taken very seriously. Anything thought. From ‘psyche,’ anima. Grice uses the symbol of the letter psi here which he renders as ‘animatum.’ Why Grice prefers ‘soul’ to mind. The immortality of a the chicken soul. By Shropshire. Shropshire claims that the immortality of the soul is proved by the fact that, if you cut off a chicken's head, the chicken will run round the yard for a quarter of an hour before dropping. Grice has an an 'expansion' of Shropshire's ingenious argument.If the soul is not dependent on the body, it is immortal. If the soul is dependent on the body, it is dependent on that part of the body in which it is located. If the soul is located in the body, it is located in the head. If the chicken's soul were located in its head, the chicken's soul would be destroyed if the head were rendered inoperative by removal from the body. The chicken runs round the yard after head-removal. It could do this only if animated, and controlled by its soul. So the chicken's soul is not located in, and not dependent on, the chicken's head. So the chicken's soul is not dependent on the chicken's body. So the chicken's soul is immortal. end p.11 If the chicken's soul is immortal, a fortiori the human soul is immortal. So the soul is immortal. The question I now ask myself is this: why is it that I should be quite prepared to believe that the Harvard students ascribed their expansion of Botvinnik's proof, or at least some part of it, to Botvinnik (as what he had in mind), whereas I have no inclination at all to ascribe any part of my expansion to Shropshire? Considerations which at once strike me as being likely to be relevant are: (1) that Botvinnik's proof without doubt contained more steps than Shropshire's claim; (2) that the expansion of Botvinnik's proof probably imported, as extra premisses, only propositions which are true, and indeed certain; whereas my expansion imports premisses which are false or dubious; (3) that Botvinnik was highly intelligent and an accomplished logician; whereas Shropshire was neither very intelligent nor very accomplished as a philosopher. No doubt these considerations are relevant, though one wonders whether one would be much readier to accord Shropshire's production the title of 'reasoning' if it had contained some further striking 'deductions', such as that since the soul is immortal moral principles have absolute validity; and one might also ask whether the effect of (3) does not nullify that of (2), since, if Shropshire was stupid, why should not one ascribe to him a reconstructed argument containing plainly unacceptable premisses? But, mainly, I would like some further light on the following question: if such considerations as those which I have just mentioned are relevant, why are they relevant? I should say a word about avowals. The following contention might be advanced. If you want to know whether someone R, who has produced what may be an incomplete piece of reasoning, has a particular completion in mind, the direct way to find out is to ask him. That would settle the matter. If, however, you are unable to ask him, then indirect methods will have to be used, which may well be indecisive. Indeterminacy springs merely from having to rely on indirect methods. I have two comments to make. First: it end p.12 is far from clear to what extent avowals do settle the matter. Anyone who has taught philosophy is familiar with the situation in which, under pressure to expand an argument they have advanced, students, particularly beginners, make statements which, one is inclined to say, misrepresent their position. This phenomenon is perhaps accounted for by my much more important second point: that avowals in this kind of context generally do not have the character which one might without reflection suppose them to have; they are not so much reportive as constructive. If I ask someone if he thinks that so-and-so is a consequence of such-and-such, what I shall receive will be primarily a defence of this supposition, not a report on what, historically, he had in mind in making it. We are in general much more interested in whether an inferential step is a good one to make than we are in what a particular person had in mind at the actual moment at which he made the step. One might perhaps see an analogy between avowals in this area and the specification of plans. If someone has propounded a plan for achieving a certain objective, and I ask him what he proposes to do in such-and-such a contingency, I expect him to do the best he can to specify for me a way of meeting that contingency, rather than to give a historically correct account of what thoughts he had been entertaining. This feature of what I might call inferential avowals is one for which we shall have to account.Let us take stock. The thesis which we proposed for examination has needed emendation twice, once in the face of the possibility of bad reasoning, and once to allow for informal and incomplete reasoning. The reformulation needed to accommodate the latter is proving difficult to reach. Let us take s and s′ to be sequences consisting of a set of premisses and a conclusion (or, perhaps it would be better to say, a set of propositions and a further proposition), or a sequence (sorites) of such sequences. (This is not fully accurate, but will serve.) Let us suppose that x has produced s (in speech or in thought). Let "formally cogent" mean "having true premisses, and being such that steps from premisses to conclusions are formally valid". (1) We cannot define "s is a piece of reasoning by x" as "x thinks s to be formally cogent", because if s is an incomplete piece of reasoning s is not, and could not reasonably be thought by x to be, formally cogent. end p.13 (2) We cannot define "s is a piece of reasoning by x" as "(s′) (s′ is an expansion of s and s′ is formally cogent)" because (a) it does not get in the idea that x thinks s′ formally cogent and (b) it would exclude bad reasoning. (3) We cannot define "s is a piece of reasoning by x" as "x thinks that (s′) (s′ is an expansion of s and s′ is formally cogent)", for this is too weak, and would allow as reasoning any case in which x believed (for whatever reason, or lack of reason) that an informal sequence had some formally cogent expansion or other. (Compare perhaps Shropshire.).” In Latin indeed, ‘animus’ and ‘anima’ make a world of a difference, as Shropshire well knows. Psyche transliterates as ‘anima’ only; ‘animus’ the Greeks never felt the need for. Of course a chicken is an animal, as in man. “Homo animalis rationalis.” Grice prefers ‘human,’ but sometimes he uses ‘animal,’ as opposed to ‘vegetal, sometimes, when considering stages of freedom. A stone (mineral) displays a ‘free’ fall, which is metabolical. And then, a vegetable is less free than an animal, which can move, and a non-human animal (that Grice calls ‘a beast’) is less free than man, who is a rational animal. Grice notes that back in the day, when the prince came from a hunt, “I brought some animals,” since these were ‘deer,’ ‘deer’ was taken as meaning ‘animal,’ when the implicaturum was very much cancellable. The Anglo-Saxons soon dropped the ‘deer’ and adopted the Latinate ‘animal.’ They narrowed the use of ‘deer’ for the ‘cervus cervus.’ But not across the North Sea where the zoo is still called a ‘deer-garden.’ When Aelfric studied philosophy he once thought man was a rational deer. animatum – vide: H. P. Grice, “Psychology, folk psychology, etc.” -- philosophy of psychology, the philosophical study of psychology. Psychology began to separate from philosophy with the work of the nineteenth-century G. experimentalists, especially Fechner 180187, Helmholtz 1821 94, and Wundt 18320. In the first half of the twentieth century, the separation was completed in this country insofar as separate psychology departments were set up in most universities, psychologists established their own journals and professional associations, and experimental methods were widely employed, although not in every area of psychology the first experimental study of the effectiveness of a psychological therapy did not occur until 3. Despite this achievement of autonomy, however, issues have remained about the nature of the connections, if any, that should continue between psychology and philosophy. One radical view, that virtually all such connections should be severed, was defended by the behaviorist John Watson in his seminal 3 paper “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.” Watson criticizes psychologists, even the experimentalists, for relying on introspective methods and for making consciousness the subject matter of their discipline. He recommends that psychology be a purely objective experimental branch of natural science, that its theoretical goal be to predict and control behavior, and that it discard all reference to consciousness. In making behavior the sole subject of psychological inquiry, we avoid taking sides on “those time-honored relics of philosophical speculation,” namely competing theories about the mindbody problem, such as interactionism and parallelism. In a later work, published in 5, Watson claimed that the success of behaviorism threatened the very existence of philosophy: “With the behavioristic point of view now becoming dominant, it is hard to find a place for what has been called philosophy. Philosophy is passing  has all but passed, and unless new issues arise which will give a foundation for a new philosophy, the world has seen its last great philosopher.” One new issue was the credibility of behaviorism. Watson gave no argument for his view that prediction and control of behavior should be the only theoretical goals of psychology. If the attempt to explain behavior is also legitimate, as some anti-behaviorists argue, then it would seem to be an empirical question whether that goal can be met without appealing to mentalistic causes. Watson and his successors, such as B. F. Skinner, cited no credible empirical evidence that it could, but instead relied primarily on philosophical arguments for banning postulation of mentalistic causes. As a consequence, behaviorists virtually guaranteed that philosophers of psychology would have at least one additional task beyond wrestling with traditional mind body issues: the analysis and criticism of behaviorism itself. Although behaviorism and the mindbody problem were never the sole subjects of philosophy of psychology, a much richer set of topics developed after 0 when the so-called cognitive revolution occurred in  psychology. These topics include innate knowledge and the acquisition of transformational grammars, intentionality, the nature of mental representation, functionalism, mental imagery, the language of thought, and, more recently, connectionism. Such topics are of interest to many cognitive psychologists and those in other disciplines, such as linguistics and artificial intelligence, who contributed to the emerging discipline known as cognitive science. Thus, after the decline of various forms of behaviorism and the consequent rise of cognitivism, many philosophers of psychology collaborated more closely with psychologists. This increased cooperation was probably due not only to a broadening of the issues, but also to a methodological change in philosophy. In the period roughly between 5 and 5, conceptual analysis dominated both  and English philosophy of psychology and the closely related discipline, the philosophy of mind. Many philosophers took the position that philosophy was essentially an a priori discipline. These philosophers rarely cited the empirical studies of psychologists. In recent decades, however, philosophy of psychology has become more empirical, at least in the sense that more attention is being paid to the details of the empirical studies of psychologists. The result is more interchanges between philosophers and psychologists. Although interest in cognitive psychology appears to predominate in recent  philosophy of psychology, the new emphasis on empirical studies is also reflected in philosophic work on topics not directly related to cognitive psychology. For example, philosophers of psychology have written books in recent years on the clinical foundations of psychoanalysis, the foundations of behavior therapy and behavior modification, and self-deception. The emphasis on empirical data has been taken one step further by naturalists, who argue that in epistemology, at least, and perhaps in all areas of philosophy, philosophical questions should either be replaced by questions from empirical psychology or be answered by appeal to empirical studies in psychology and related disciplines. It is philosophy of psychology philosophy of psychology 695    695 still too early to predict the fruitfulness of the naturalist approach, but this new trend might well have pleased Watson. Taken to an extreme, naturalism would make philosophy dependent on psychology instead of the reverse and thus would further enhance the autonomy of psychology that Watson desired. animatum -- philosophical psychology, -- vide H. P. Grice: “Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre” – in “Conception of Value,” Oxford, Clarendon Press. -- philosophy of mind, the branch of philosophy that includes the philosophy of psychology, philosophical psychology, and the area of metaphysics concerned with the nature of mental phenomena and how they fit into the causal structure of reality. Philosophy of psychology, a branch of the philosophy of science, examines what psychology says about the nature of psychological phenomena; examines aspects of psychological theorizing such as the models used, explanations offered, and laws invoked; and examines how psychology fits with the social sciences and natural sciences. Philosophical psychology investigates folk psychology, a body of commonsensical, protoscientific views about mental phenomena. Such investigations attempt to articulate and refine views found in folk psychology about conceptualization, memory, perception, sensation, consciousness, belief, desire, intention, reasoning, action, and so on. The mindbody problem, a central metaphysical one in the philosophy of mind, is the problem of whether mental phenomena are physical and, if not, how they are related to physical phenomena. Other metaphysical problems in the philosophy of mind include the free will problem, the problem of personal identity, and the problem of how, if at all, irrational phenomena such as akrasia and self-deception are possible. Mindbody dualism Cartesian dualism. The doctrine that the soul is distinct from the body is found in Plato and discussed throughout the history of philosophy, but Descartes is considered the father of the modern mindbody problem. He maintained that the essence of the physical is extension in space. Minds are unextended substances and thus are distinct from any physical substances. The essence of a mental substance is to think. This twofold view is called Cartesian dualism. Descartes was well aware of an intimate relationship between mind and the brain. There is no a priori reason to think that the mind is intimately related to the brain; Aristotle, e.g., did not associate them. Descartes mistakenly thought the seat of the relationship was in the pineal gland. He maintained, however, that our minds are not our brains, lack spatial location, and can continue to exist after the death and destruction of our bodies. Cartesian dualism invites the question: What connects the mind and brain? Causation is Descartes’s answer: states of our minds causally interact with states of our brains. When bodily sensations such as aches, pains, itches, and tickles cause us to moan, wince, scratch, or laugh, they do so by causing brain states events, processes, which in turn cause bodily movements. In deliberate action, we act on our desires, motives, and intentions to carry out our purposes; and acting on these mental states involves their causing brain states, which in turn cause our bodies to move, thereby causally influencing the physical world. The physical world, in turn, influences our minds through its influence on our brains. Perception of the physical world with five senses  sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch  involves causal transactions from the physical to the mental: what we perceive i.e., see, hear, etc. causes a sense experience i.e., a visual experience, aural experience, etc.. Thus, Descartes held that there is two-way psychophysical causal interaction: from the mental to the physical as in action and from the physical to the mental as in perception. The conjunction of Cartesian dualism and the doctrine of two-way psychophysical causal interaction is called Cartesian interactionism. Perhaps the most widely discussed difficulty for this view is how states of a non-spatial substance a mind can causally interact with states of a substance that is in space a brain. Such interactions have seemed utterly mysterious to many philosophers. Mystery would remain even if an unextended mind is locatable at a point in space say, the center of the pineal gland. For Cartesian interactionism would still have to maintain that causal transactions between mental states and brain states are fundamental, i.e., unmediated by any underlying mechanism. Brain states causally interact with mental states, but there is no answer to the question of how they do so. The interactions are brute facts. Many philosophers, including many of Descartes’s contemporaries, have found that difficult to accept. Parallelism. Malebranche and Leibniz, among others, rejected the possibility of psychophysical causal interaction. They espoused versions of parallelism: the view that the mental and physical realms run in parallel, in that types of mental phenomena co-occur with certain types of physical phenomena, but these co-occurrences never involve causal interactions. On all extant versions, the parallels hold because of God’s creation. Leibniz’s parallelism is preestablished harmony: the explanation of why mental types and certain physical types co-occur is that in the possible world God actualized i.e., this world they co-occur. In discussing the relation between the mental and physical realms, Leibniz used the analogy of two synchronized but unconnected clocks. The analogy is, however, somewhat misleading; suggesting causal mechanisms internal to each clock and intramental and intraphysical causal transactions. But Leibniz’s monadology doctrine excludes the possibility of such transactions: mental and physical phenomena have no effects even within their own realms. Malebranche is associated with occasionalism, according to which only God, through his continuous activities, causes things to happen: non-divine phenomena never cause anything. Occasionalism differs from preestablished harmony in holding that God is continually engaged in acts of creation; each moment creating the world anew, in such a way that the correlations hold. Both brands of parallelism face formidable difficulties. First, both rest on highly contentious, obscure theological hypotheses. The contention that God exists and the creation stories in question require extensive defense and explanation. God’s relationship to the world can seem at least as mysterious as the relationship Descartes posits between minds and brains. Second, since parallelism denies the possibility of psychophysical interaction, its proponents must offer alternatives to the causal theory of perception and the causal theory of action or else deny that we can perceive and that we can act intentionally. Third, since parallelism rejects intramental causation, it must either deny that reasoning is possible or explain how it is possible without causal connections between thoughts. Fourth, since parallelism rejects physical transactions, it is hard to see how it can allow, e.g., that one physical thing ever moves another; for that would require causing a change in location. Perhaps none of these weighty difficulties is ultimately insuperable; in any case, parallelism has been abandoned. Epiphenomenalism. Empirical research gives every indication that the occurrence of any brain state can, in principle, be causally explained by appeal solely to other physical states. To accommodate this, some philosophers espoused epiphenomenalism, the doctrine that physical states cause mental states, but mental states do not cause anything. This thesis was discussed under the name ‘conscious automatism’ by Huxley and Hogeson in the late nineteenth century. William James was the first to use the term ‘epiphenomena’ to mean phenomena that lack causal efficacy. And James Ward coined the term ‘epiphenomenalism’ in 3. Epiphenomenalism implies that there is only one-way psychophysical action  from the physical to the mental. Since epiphenomenalism allows such causal action, it can embrace the causal theory of perception. However, when combined with Cartesian dualism, epiphenomenalism, like Cartesian interactionism, implies the problematic thesis that states of an extended substance can affect states of an unextended substance. An epiphenomenalist can avoid this problem by rejecting the view that the mind is an unextended substance while maintaining that mental states and events are nonetheless distinct from physical states and events. Still, formidable problems would remain. It is hard to see how epiphenomenalism can allow that we are ever intentional agents. For intentional agency requires acting on reasons, which, according to the causal theory of action, requires a causal connection between reasons and actions. Since epiphenomenalism denies that such causal connections are possible, it must either maintain that our sense of agency is illusory or offer an alternative to the causal theory of action. Similarly, it must explain how thinking is possible given that there are no causal connections between thoughts. Monism The dual-aspect theory. Many philosophers reject Descartes’s bifurcation of reality into mental and physical substances. Spinoza held a dualattribute theory  also called the dual-aspect theory  according to which the mental and the physical are distinct modes of a single substance, God. The mental and the physical are only two of infinitely many modes of this one substance. Many philosophers opted for a thoroughgoing monism, according to which all of reality is really of one kind. Materialism, idealism, and neutral monism are three brands of monism. Hobbes, a contemporary of Descartes, espoused materialism, the brand of monism according to which everything is material or physical. Berkeley is associated with idealism, the brand of monism according to which everything is mental. He held that both mental and physical phenomena are perceptions in the mind of God. For Hegel’s idealism, everything is part of the World Spirit. The early twentieth-century British philosophers Bradley and McTaggart also held a version of idealism. Neutral monism is the doctrine that all of reality is ultimately of one kind, which is neither mental nor physical. Hume was a neutral monist, maintaining that mental and physical substances are really just bundles of the neutral entities. Versions of neutral monism were later held by Mach and, for a short time, Russell. Russell called his neutral entities sensibilia and claimed that minds and physical objects are logical constructions out of them. Phenomenalism. This view, espoused in the twentieth century by, among others, Ayer, argues that all empirical statements are synonymous with statements solely about phenomenal appearances. While the doctrine is about statements, phenomenalism is either a neutral monism or an idealism, depending on whether phenomenal appearances are claimed to be neither mental nor physical or, instead, mental. The required translations of physical statements into phenomenal ones proved not to be forthcoming, however. Chisholm offered a reason why they would not be: what appearances a physical state of affairs e.g., objects arrayed in a room has depends both on physical conditions of observation e.g., lighting and physical conditions of the perceiver e.g., of the nervous system. At best, a statement solely about phenomenal appearances is equivalent to one about a physical state of affairs, only when certain physical conditions of observation and certain physical conditions of the perceiver obtain. Materialism. Two problems face any monism: it must characterize the phenomena it takes as basic, and it must explain how the fundamental phenomena make up non-basic phenomena. The idealist and neutral monist theories proposed thus far have faltered on one or both counts. Largely because of scientific successes of the twentieth century, such as the rebirth of the atomic theory of matter, and the successes of quantum mechanics in explaining chemistry and of chemistry in turn in explaining much of biology, many philosophers today hold that materialism will ultimately succeed where idealism and neutral monism apparently failed. Materialism, however, comes in many different varieties and each faces formidable difficulties. Logical behaviorism. Ryle ridiculed Cartesianism as the view that there is a ghost in the machine the body. He claimed that the view that the mind is a substance rests on a category mistake: ‘mind’ is a noun, but does not name an object. Cartesianism confuses the logic of discourse about minds with the logic of discourse about bodies. To have a mind is not to possess a special sort of entity; it is simply to have certain capacities and dispositions. Compare the thesis that to be alive is to possess not a certain entity, an entelechy or élan vital, but rather certain capacities and dispositions. Ryle maintained, moreover, that it was a mistake to regard mental states such as belief, desire, and intention as internal causes of behavior. These states, he claimed, are dispositions to behave in overt ways. In part in response to the dualist point that one can understand our ordinary psychological vocabulary ‘belief’, ‘desire’, ‘pain’, etc. and know nothing about the physical states and events in the brain, logical behaviorism has been proposed as a materialist doctrine that explains this fact. On this view, talk of mental phenomena is shorthand for talk of actual and potential overt bodily behavior i.e., dispositions to overt bodily behavior. Logical behaviorism was much discussed from roughly the 0s until the early 0s. While Ryle is sometimes counted as a logical behaviorist, he was not committed to the thesis that all mental talk can be tr. into behavioral talk. The translations promised by logical behaviorism appear unachievable. As Putnam and others pointed out, one can fake being in pain and one can be in pain and yet not behave or be disposed to behave as if one were in pain e.g., one might be paralyzed or might be a “super-spartan”. Logical behaviorism faces similar difficulties in translating sentences about what Russell called propositional attitudes i.e., beliefs that p, desires that p, hopes that p, intentions that p, and the like. Consider the following sample proposal similar to one offered by Carnap: one believes that the cat is on the mat if and only if one is disposed to assent to ‘The cat is on the mat’. First, the proposed translation meets the condition of being purely behavioral only if assenting is understandable in purely behavioral terms. That is doubtful. The proposal also fails to provide a sufficient or a necessary condition: someone may assent to ‘The cat is on the mat’ and yet not believe the cat is on the mat for the person may be trying to deceive; and a belief that the cat is on the mat will dispose one to assent to ‘The cat is on the mat’ only if one understands what is being asked, wants to indicate that one believes the cat is on the mat, and so on. But none of these conditions is required for believing that the cat is on the mat. Moreover, to invoke any of these mentalistic conditions defeats the attempt to provide a purely behavioral translation of the belief sentence. Although the project of translation has been abandoned, in recent years Dennett has defended a view in the spirit of logical behaviorism, intentional systems theory: belief-desire talk functions to characterize overall patterns of dispositions to overt behavior in an environmental context for the purposes of predicting overt behavior. The theory is sometimes characterized as supervenient behaviorism since it implies that whether an individual has beliefs, desires, intentions and the like supervenes on his dispositions to overt behavior: if two individuals are exactly alike in respect of their dispositions to overt behavior, the one has intentional states if and only if the other does. This view allows, however, that the contents of an individual’s intentional states  what the individual believes, desires, etc.  may depend on environmental factors. So it is not committed to the supervenience of the contents of intentional states on dispositions to overt behavior.the discussion of content externalism below. One objection to this view, due to Ned Block, is that it would mistakenly count as an intentional agent a giant look-up table  “a Blockhead”  that has the same dispositions to peripheral behavior as a genuine intentional agent. A look-up table is a simple mechanical device that looks up preprogrammed responses. Identity theories. In the early 0s, Herbert Feigl claimed that mental states are brain states. He pointed out that if mental properties or state types are merely nomologically correlated with physical properties or state types, the connecting laws would be “nomological danglers”: irreducible to physical laws, and thus additional fundamental laws. According to the identity theory, the connecting laws are not fundamental laws and so not nomological danglers since they can be explained by identifying the mental and physical properties in question. In the late 0s and the early 0s, the philosopher Smart and the psychologist U. T. Place defended the materialist view that sensations are identical with brain processes. Smart claimed that while mental terms differ in meaning from physical terms, scientific investigation reveals that they have the same referents as certain physical terms. Compare the fact that while ‘the Morning Star’ and ‘the Evening Star’ differ in meaning empirical investigation reveals the same referent: Venus. Smart and Place claimed that feeling pain, e.g., is some brain process, exactly which one to be determined by scientific investigation. Smart claimed that sensation talk is paraphraseable in topic-neutral terms; i.e., in terms that leave open whether sensational properties are mental or physical. ‘I have an orange afterimage’ is paraphraseable roughly as: ‘There is something going on like what is going on when I have my eyes open, am awake, and there is an orange illuminated in good light in front of me, i.e., when I really see an orange’. The description is topic-neutral since it leaves open whether what is going on is mental or physical. Smart maintained that scientific investigation reveals that what in fact meets the topic-neutral description is a brain process. He held that psychophysical identity statements such as ‘Pain is C-fiber firing’ are contingent, likening these to, e.g., ‘Lightning is electrical discharge’, which is contingent and knowable only through empirical investigation. Central state materialism. This brand of materialism was defended in the late 0s and the early 0s by Armstrong and others. On this view, mental states are states that are apt to produce a certain range of behavior. Central state materialists maintain that scientific investigation reveals that such states are states of the central nervous system, and thus that mental states are contingently identical with states of the central nervous system. Unlike logical behaviorism, central state materialism does not imply that mental sentences can be tr. into physical sentences. Unlike both logical behaviorism and philosophy of mind philosophy of mind 687    687 intentional systems theory, central state materialism implies that mental states are actual internal states with causal effects. And unlike Cartesian interactionism, it holds that psychophysical interaction is just physical causal interaction. Some central state materialists held in addition that the mind is the brain. However, if the mind were the brain, every change in the brain would be a change in the mind; and that seems false: not every little brain change amounts to a change of mind. Indeed, the mind ceases to exist when brain death occurs, while the brain continues to exist. The moral that most materialists nowadays draw from such considerations is that the mind is not any physical substance, since it is not a substance of any sort. To have a mind is not to possess a special substance, but rather to have certain capacities  to think, feel, etc. To that extent, Ryle was right. However, central state materialists insist that the properly functioning brain is the material seat of mental capacities, that the exercise of mental capacities consists of brain processes, and that mental states are brain states that can produce behavior. Epistemological objections have been raised to identity theories. As self-conscious beings, we have a kind of privileged access to our own mental states. The exact avenue of privileged access, whether it is introspection or not, is controversial. But it has seemed to many philosophers that our access to our own mental states is privileged in being open only to us, whereas we lack any privileged access to the states of our central nervous systems. We come to know about central nervous system states in the same way we come to know about the central nervous system states of others. So, against central state materialism and the identity theory, it is claimed that mental states cannot be states of our central nervous systems. Taking privileged access to imply that we have incorrigible knowledge of our conscious mental states, and despairing of squaring privileged access so understood with materialism, Rorty advocated eliminative materialism, the thesis that there actually are no mental phenomena. A more common materialist response, however, is to deny that privileged access entails incorrigibility and to maintain that privileged access is compatible with materialism. Some materialists maintain that while certain types of mental states e.g., sensations are types of neurological states, it will be knowable only by empirical investigation that they are. Suppose pain is a neural state N. It will be only a posteriori knowable that pain is N. Via the avenue of privileged access, one comes to believe that one is in a pain state, but not that one is in an N-state. One can believe one is in a pain state without believing that one is in an N-state because the concept of pain is different from the concept of N. Nevertheless, pain is N. Compare the fact that while water is H2O, the concept of water is different from that of H2O. Thus, while water is H2O, one can believe there is water in the glass without believing that there is H2O in it. The avenue of privileged access presents N conceptualized as pain, but never as neurological state N. The avenue of privileged access involves the exercise of mental, but not neurophysiological, concepts. However, our mental concepts answer to  apply in virtue of  the same properties state types as do certain of our neurophysiological concepts. The identity theory and central state materialism both hold that there are contingent psychophysical property and type identities. Some theorists in this tradition tried to distinguish a notion of theoretical identity from the notion of strict identity. They held that mental states are theoretically, but not strictly, identical with brain states. Against any such distinction, Kripke argued that identities are metaphysically necessary, i.e., hold in every possible world. If A % B, then necessarily A % B. Kripke acknowledged that there can be contingent statements of identity. But such statements, he argued, will employ at least one term that is not a rigid designator, i.e., a term that designates the same thing in every world in which it designates anything. Thus, since ‘the inventor of bifocals’ is a non-rigid designator, ‘Benjamin Franklin is the inventor of bifocals’ is contingent. While Franklin is the inventor of bifocals, he might not have been. However, statements of identity in which the identity sign is flanked by rigid designators are, if true, metaphysically necessary. Kripke held that proper names are rigid designators, and hence, the true identity statement ‘Cicero is Tully’ is metaphysically necessary. Nonetheless, a metaphysically necessary identity statement can be knowable only a posteriori. Indeed, ‘Cicero is Tully’ is knowable only a posteriori. Both ‘water’ and ‘H2O’, he maintained, are rigid designators: each designates the same kind of stuff in every possible world. And he thus maintained that it is metaphysically necessary that water is H2O, despite its not being a priori knowable that water is H2O. On Kripke’s view, any psychophysical identity statement that employs mental terms and physical terms that are rigid designators will also be metaphysically necessary, if true. Central state materialists maintain that mental concepts are equivalent to concepts whose descriptive content is the state that is apt to produce such-and-such behavior in such-and-such circumstances. These defining descriptions for mental concepts are intended to be meaning-giving, not contingent reference-fixing descriptions; they are, moreover, not rigid designators. Thus, the central state materialists can concede that all identities are necessary, but maintain that psychophysical claims of identity are contingent claims of identity since the mental terms that figure in those statements are not rigid designators. However, Kripke maintained that our concepts of sensations and other qualitative states are not equivalent to the sorts of descriptions in question. The term ‘pain’, he maintained, is a rigid designator. This position might be refuted by a successful functional analysis of the concept of pain in physical and/or topic-neutral terms. However, no successful analysis of this sort has yet been produced. See the section on consciousness below. A materialist can grant Kripke that ‘pain’ is a rigid designator and claim that a statement such as ‘Pain is C-fiber firing’ will be metaphysically necessary if true, but only a posteriori knowable. However, Kripke raised a formidable problem for this materialism. He pointed out that if a statement is metaphysically necessary but only a posteriori knowable, its appearance of contingency calls for explanation. Despite being metaphysically necessary, ‘Water is H2O’ appears contingent. According to Kripke, we explain this appearance by noting that one can coherently imagine a world in which something has all the phenomenal properties of water, and so is an “epistemic counterpart” of it, yet is not H2O. The fact that we can coherently imagine such epistemic counterparts explains why ‘Water is H2O’ appears contingent. But no such explanation is available for e.g. ‘Pain is C-fiber firing’. For an epistemic counterpart of pain, something with the phenomenal properties of pain  the feel of pain  is pain. Something can look, smell, taste, and feel like water yet not be water. But whatever feels like pain is pain: pain is a feeling. In contrast, we can explain the apparent contingency of claims like ‘Water is H2O’ because water is not constituted by its phenomenal properties; our concept of water allows that it may have a “hidden essence,” i.e., an essential microstructure. If Kripke is right, then anyone who maintains that a statement of identity concerning a type of bodily sensation and a type of physical state is metaphysically necessary yet a posteriori, must explain the appearance of contingency in a way that differs from the way Kripke explains the appearance of contingency of ‘Water is H2O’. This is a formidable challenge. The final section, on consciousness, sketches some materialist responses to it. The general issue of property and state type identity is controversial. The claim that water is H2O despite the fact that the concept of water is distinct from the concept of H2O seems plausible. However, property or state type identity is more controversial than the identity of types of substances. For properties or state types, there are no generally accepted “non-duplication principles”  to use a phrase of David Lewis’s. A nonduplication principle for A’s will say that no two A’s can be exactly alike in a certain respect; e.g., no two sets can have exactly the same members. It is widely denied, for instance, that no two properties can be possessed by exactly the same things. Two properties, it is claimed, can be possessed by the same things; likewise, two state types can occur in the same space-time regions. Even assuming that mental concepts are distinct from physical concepts, the issue of whether mental state types are physical state types raises the controversial issue of the non-duplication principle for state types. Token and type physicalisms. Token physicalism is the thesis that every particular is physical. Type physicalism is the thesis that every type or kind of entity is physical; thus, the identity thesis and central state materialism are type physicalist theses since they imply that types of mental states are types of physical states. Type physicalism implies token physicalism: given the former, every token falls under some physical type, and therefore is token-token identical with some token of a physical type. But token physicalism does not imply type physicalism; the former leaves open whether physical tokens fall under non-physical types. Some doctrines billed as materialist or physicalist embrace token epiphenomenalism, but reject type physicalism. Non-reductive materialism. This form of materialism implies token physicalism, but denies type physicalism and, as well, that mental types properties, etc. are reducible to physical types. This doctrine has been discussed since at least the late nineteenth century and was widely discussed in the first third of the twentieth century. The British philosophers George Henry Lewes, Samuel Alexander, Lloyd Morgan, and C. D. Broad all held or thought plausible a certain version of non-reductive materialism. They held or sympathized with the view that every substance philosophy of mind philosophy of mind 689    689 either is or is wholly made up of physical particles, that the well-functioning brain is the material seat of mental capacities, and that token mental states events, processes, etc. are token neurophysiological states events, processes, etc.. However, they either held or thought plausible the view that mental capacities, properties, etc., emerge from, and thus do not reduce to, physical capacities, properties, etc. Lewes coined the term ‘emergence’; and Broad later labeled the doctrine emergent materialism. Emergent materialists maintain that laws correlating mental and physical properties are irreducible. These laws would be what Feigl called nomological danglers. Emergentists maintain that, despite their untidiness, such laws must be accepted with natural piety. Davidson’s doctrine of anomalous monism is a current brand of non-reductive materialism. He explicitly formulates this materialist thesis for events; and his irreducibility thesis is restricted to intentional mental types  e.g., believings, desirings, and intendings. Anomalous monism says that every event token is physical, but that intentional mental predicates and concepts ones expressing propositional attitudes do not reduce, by law or definition, to physical predicates or concepts. Davidson offers an original argument for this irreducibility thesis. Mental predicates and concepts are, he claims, governed by constitutive principles of rationality, but physical predicates and concepts are not. This difference, he contends, excludes the possibility of reduction of mental predicates and concepts to physical ones. Davidson denies, moreover, that there are strict psychological or psychophysical laws. He calls the conjunction of this thesis and his irreducibility thesis the principle of the anomalism of the mental. His argument for token physicalism for events appeals to the principle of the anomalism of the mental and to the principle of the nomological character of causality: when two events are causally related, they are subsumed by a strict law. He maintains that all strict laws are physical. Given that claim, and given the principle of the nomological character of causality, it follows that every event that is a cause or effect is a physical event. On this view, psychophysical causation is just causation between physical events. Stephen Schiffer has also maintained a non-reductive materialism, one he calls ontological physicalism and sentential dualism: every particular is physical, but mental truths are irreducible to physical truths. Non-reductive materialism presupposes that mental state event tokens can fall under physical state types and, thereby, count as physical state tokens. This presupposition is controversial; no uncontroversial non-duplication principle for state tokens settles the issue. Suppose, however, that mental state tokens are physical state tokens, despite mental state types not being physical state types. The issue of how mental state types and physical state types are related remains. Suppose that some physical token x is of a mental type M say, a belief that the cat is on the mat and some other physical token y is not of type M. There must, it seems, be some difference between x and y in virtue of which x is, and y is not, of type M. Otherwise, it is simply a brute fact that x is and y is not of type M. That, however, seems implausible. The claim that certain physical state tokens fall under mental state types simply as a matter of brute fact would leave the difference in question utterly mysterious. But if it is not a brute fact, then there is some explanation of why a certain physical state is a mental state of a certain sort. The non-reductive materialist owes us an explanation that does not imply psychophysical reduction. Moreover, even though the non-reductive materialist can claim that mental states are causes because they are physical states with physical effects, there is some question whether mental state types are relevant to causal relations. Suppose every state is a physical state. Given that physical states causally interact in virtue of falling under physical types, it follows that whenever states causally interact they do so in virtue of falling under physical types. That raises the issue of whether states are ever causes in virtue of falling under mental types. Type epiphenomenalism is the thesis that no state can cause anything in virtue of falling under a mental type. Token epiphenomenalism, the thesis that no mental state can cause anything, implies type epiphenomenalism, but not conversely. Nonreductive materialists are not committed to token physicalism. However, token epiphenomenalism may be false but type epiphenomenalism true since mental states may be causes only in virtue of falling under physical types, never in virtue of falling under mental types. Broad raised the issue of type epiphenomenalism and discussed whether emergent materialism is committed to it. Ted Honderich, Jaegwon Kim, Ernest Sosa, and others have in recent years raised the issue of whether non-reductive materialism is committed to type epiphenomenalism. Brian McLaughlin has argued that the claim that an event acts as a cause in virtue of falling under a certain physical type is consistent with the claim that it also acts as a cause in virtue of falling under a certain mental type, even when the mental type is not identical with the physical type. But even if this is so, the relationship between mental types and physical types must be addressed. Ernest LePore and Barry Loewer, Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, Stephen Yablo, and others have attempted to characterize a relation between mental types and physical types that allows for the causal relevance of mental types. But whether there is a relation between mental and physical properties that is both adequate to secure the causal relevance of mental properties and available to non-reductive materialists remains an open question. Davidson’s anomalous monism may appear to be a kind of dual-aspect theory: there are events and they can have two sorts of autonomous aspects, mental and physical. However, while Davidson holds that mental properties or types do not reduce to physical ones, he also holds that the mental properties of an event depend on its physical properties in that the former supervene on the latter in this sense: no two events can be exactly alike in every physical respect and yet differ in some mental respect. This proposal introduced the notion of supervenience into contem- porary philosophy of mind. Often nonreductive materialists argue that mental properties types supervene on physical properties types. Kim, however, has distinguished various supervenience relations, and argues that some are too weak to count as versions of materialism as opposed to, say, dual-aspect theory, while other supervenience relations are too strong to use to formulate non-reductive materialism since they imply reducibility. According to Kim, non-reductive materialism is an unstable position. Materialism as a supervenience thesis. Several philosophers have in recent years attempted to define the thesis of materialism using a global supervenience thesis. Their aim is not to formulate a brand of non-reductive materialism; they maintain that their supervenience thesis may well imply reducibility. Their aim is, rather, to formulate a thesis to which anyone who counts as a genuine materialist must subscribe. David Lewis has maintained that materialism is true if and only if any non-alien possible worlds that are physically indiscernible are mentally indiscernible as well. Non-alien possible worlds are worlds that have exactly the same perfectly natural properties as the actual world. Frank Jackson has offered this proposal: materialism is true if and only if any minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a duplicate simpliciter of the actual world. A world is a physical duplicate of the actual world if and only if it is exactly like the actual world in every physical respect physical particular for physical particular, physical property for physical property, physical relation for physical relation, etc.; and a world is a duplicate simpliciter of the actual world if and only if it is exactly like the actual world in every respect. A minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a physical duplicate that contains nothing else by way of particulars, kinds, properties, etc. than it must in order to be a physical duplicate of the actual world. Two questions arise for any formulation of the thesis of materialism. Is it adequate to materialism? And, if it is, is it true? Functionalism. The nineteenth-century British philosopher George Henry Lewes maintained that while not every neurological event is mental, every mental event is neurological. He claimed that what makes certain neurological events mental events is their causal role in the organism. This is a very early version of functionalism, nowadays a leading approach to the mindbody problem. Functionalism implies an answer to the question of what makes a state token a mental state of a certain kind M: namely, that it is an instance of some functional state type identical with M. There are two versions of this proposal. On one, a mental state type M of a system will be identical with the state type that plays a certain causal role R in the system. The description ‘the state type that plays R in the system’ will be a nonrigid designator; moreover, different state types may play R in different organisms, in which case the mental state is multiply realizable. On the second version, a mental state type M is identical with a second-order state type, the state of being in some first-order state that plays causal role R. More than one first-order state may play role R, and thus M may be multiply realizable. On either version, if the relevant causal roles are specifiable in physical or topic-neutral terms, then the functional definitions of mental state types will be, in principle, physically reductive. Since the roles would be specified partly in topic-neutral terms, there may well be possible worlds in which the mental states are realized by non-physical states; thus, functionalism does not imply token physicalism. However, functionalists typically maintain that, on the empirical evidence, mental states are realized in our world only by physical states. Functionalism comes in many varieties. philosophy of mind philosophy of mind 691    691 Smart’s topic-neutral analysis of our talk of sensations is in the spirit of functionalism. And Armstrong’s central state materialism counts as a kind of functionalism since it maintains that mental states are states apt to produce a certain range of behavior, and thus identifies states as mental states by their performing this causal role. However, functionalists today typically hold that the defining causal roles include causal roles vis-à-vis input state types, as well as output state types, and also vis-à-vis other internal state types of the system in question. In the 0s David Lewis proposed a functionalist theory, analytical functionalism, according to which definitions of mental predicates such as ‘belief’, ‘desire’, and the like though not predicates such as ‘believes that p’ or ‘desires that q’ can be obtained by conjoining the platitudes of commonsense psychology and formulating the Ramsey sentence for the conjunction. The relevant Ramsey sentence is a second-order quantificational sentence that quantifies over the mental predicates in the conjunction of commonsense psychological platitudes, and from it one can derive definitions of the mental predicates. On this view, it will be analytic that a certain mental state e.g., belief is the state that plays a certain causal role vis-à-vis other states; and it is a matter of empirical investigation what state plays the role. Lewis claimed that such investigation reveals that the state types that play the roles in question are physical states. In the early 0s, Putnam proposed a version of scientific functionalism, machine state functionalism: according to this view, mental states are types of Turing machine table states. Turing machines are mechanical devices consisting of a tape with squares on it that either are blank or contain symbols, and an executive that can move one square to the left, or one square to the right, or stay where it is. And it can either write a symbol on a square, erase a symbol on a square, or leave the square as it is. According to the Church-Turing thesis, every computable function can be computed by a Turing machine. Now there are two functions specifying such a machine: one from input states to output states, the other from input states to input states. And these functions are expressible by counterfactuals e.g., ‘If the machine is in state s 1 and receives input I, it will emit output O and enter state s2’. Machine tables are specified by the counterfactuals that express the functions in question. So the main idea of machine state functionalism is that any given mental type is definable as the state type that participates in certain counterfactual relationships specified in terms of purely formal, and so not semantically interpreted, state types. Any system whose inputs, outputs, and internal states are counterfactually related in the way characterized by a machine table is a realization of that table. This version of machine state functionalism has been abandoned: no one maintains that the mind has the architecture of a Turing machine. However, computational psychology, a branch of cognitive psychology, presupposes a scientific functionalist view of cognitive states: it takes the mind to have a computational architecture. See the section on cognitive psychology below. Functionalism  the view that what makes a state a realization of a mental state is its playing a certain causal role  remains a leading theory of mind. But functionalism faces formidable difficulties. Block has pinpointed one. On the one hand, if the input and output states that figure in the causal role alleged to define a certain mental state are specified in insufficient detail, the functional definition will be too liberal: it will mistakenly classify certain states as of that mental type. On the other hand, if the input and output states are specified in too much detail, the functional definition will be chauvinistic: it will fail to count certain states as instances of the mental state that are in fact such instances. Moreover, it has also been argued that functionalism cannot capture conscious states since types of conscious states do not admit of functional definitions. Cognitive psychology, content, and consciousness Cognitive psychology. Many claim that one aim of cognitive psychology is to provide explanations of intentional capacities, capacities to be in intentional states e.g., believing and to engage in intentional activities e.g., reasoning. Fodor has argued that classical cognitive psychology postulates a cognitive architecture that includes a language of thought: a system of mental representation with a combinatorial syntax and semantics, and computational processes defined over these mental representations in virtue of their syntactic structures. On this view, cognition is rule-governed symbol manipulation. Mental symbols have meanings, but they participate in computational processes solely in virtue of their syntactic or formal properties. The mind is, so to speak, a syntactic engine. The view implies a kind of content parallelism: syntaxsensitive causal transitions between symbols will preserve semantic coherence. Fodor has mainphilosophy of mind philosophy of mind 692    692 tained that, on this language-of-thought view of cognition the classical view, being in a beliefthat-p state can be understood as consisting in bearing a computational relation one that is constitutive of belief to a sentence in the language of thought that means that p; and similarly for desire, intention, and the like. The explanation of intentional capacities will be provided by a computational theory for mental sentences in conjunction with a psychosemantic theory, a theory of meaning for mental sentences. A research program in cognitive science called connectionism postulates networks of neuron-like units. The units can be either on or off, or can have continuous levels of activation. Units are connected, the connections have various degrees of strength, and the connections can be either inhibitory or excitatory. Connectionism has provided fruitful models for studying how neural networks compute information. Moreover, connectionists have had much success in modeling pattern recognition tasks e.g., facial recognition and tasks consisting of learning categories from examples. Some connectionists maintain that connectionism will yield an alternative to the classical language-of-thought account of intentional states and capacities. However, some favor a mixed-models approach to cognition: some cognitive capacities are symbolic, some connectionist. And some hold that connectionism will yield an implementational architecture for a symbolic cognitive architecture, one that will help explain how a symbolic cognitive architecture is realized in the nervous system. Content externalism. Many today hold that Twin-Earth thought experiments by Putnam and Tyler Burge show that the contents of a subject’s mental states do not supervene on intrinsic properties of the subject: two individuals can be exactly alike in every intrinsic respect, yet be in mental states with different contents. In response to Twin-Earth thought experiments, some philosophers have, however, attempted to characterize a notion of narrow content, a kind of content that supervenes on intrinsic properties of thinkers. Content, externalists claim, depends on extrinsic-contextual factors. If externalism is correct, then a psychosemantic theory must examine the relation between mental symbols and the extrinsic, contextual factors that determine contents. Stephen Stich has argued that psychology should eschew psychosemantics and concern itself only with the syntactic properties of mental sentences. Such a psychology could not explain intentional capacities. But Stich urges that computational psychology also eschew that explanatory goal. If, however, psychology is to explain intentional capacities, a psychosemantic theory is needed. Dretske, Fodor, Ruth Millikan, and David Papineau have each independently attempted to provide, in physicalistically respectable terms, foundations for a naturalized externalist theory of the content of mental sentences or internal physical states. Perhaps the leading problem for these theories of content is to explain how the physical and functional facts about a state determine a unique content for it. Appealing to work by Quine and by Kripke, some philosophers argue that such facts will not determine unique contents. Both causal and epistemic concerns have been raised about externalist theories of content. Such theories invite the question whether the property of having a certain content is ever causally relevant. If content is a contextual property of a state that has it, can states have effects in virtue of their having a certain content? This is an important issue because intentional states figure in explanations not only in virtue of their intentional mode whether they are beliefs, or desires, etc. but also in virtue of their contents. Consider an everyday belief-desire explanation. The fact that the subject’s belief was that there was milk in the refrigerator and the fact that the subject’s desire was for milk are both essential to the belief and desire explaining why the subject went to the refrigerator. Dretske, who maintains that content depends on a causal-historical context, has attempted to explain how the property of having a certain content can be causally relevant even though the possession of the property depends on causal-historical factors. And various other philosophers have attempted to explain how the causal relevance of content can be squared with the fact that it fails to supervene on intrinsic properties of the subject. A further controversial question is whether externalism is consistent with our having privileged access to what we are thinking. Consciousness. Conscious states such as pain states, visual experiences, and so on, are such that it is “like” something for the subject of the state to be in them. Such states have a qualitative aspect, a phenomenological character. The what-it-is-like aspects of experiences are called qualia. Qualia pose a serious difficulty for physicalism. Broad argued that one can know all the physical properties of a chemical and how it causally interacts with other physical phenomena and yet not know what it is like to smell it. He concluded that the smell of the chemical is philosophy of mind philosophy of mind 693    693 not itself a physical property, but rather an irreducible emergent property. Frank Jackson has recently defended a version of the argument, which has been dubbed the knowledge argument. Jackson argues that a super-scientist, Mary, who knows all the physical and functional facts about color vision, light, and matter, but has never experienced redness since she has spent her entire life in a black and white room, would not know what it is like to visually experience red. He concludes that the physical and functional topic-neutral facts do not entail all the facts, and thus materialism is false. In response, Lawrence Nemirow, David Lewis, and others have argued that knowing what it is like to be in a certain conscious state is, in part, a matter of know-how e.g., to be able to imagine oneself in the state rather than factual knowledge, and that the failure of knowledge of the physical and functional facts to yield such know-how does not imply the falsity of materialism. Functionalism seems unable to solve the problem of qualia since qualia seem not to be functionally definable. In the 0s, Fodor and Ned Block argued that two states can have the same causal role, thereby realizing the same functional state, yet the qualia associated with each can be inverted. This is called the problem of inverted qualia. The color spectrum, e.g., might be inverted for two individuals a possibility raised by Locke, despite their being in the same functional states. They further argued that two states might realize the same functional state, yet the one might have qualia associated with it and the other not. This is called the problem of absent qualia. Sydney Shoemaker has argued that the possibility of absent qualia can be ruled out on functionalist grounds. However, he has also refined the inverted qualia scenario and further articulated the problem it poses for functionalism. Whether functionalism or physicalism can avoid the problems of absent and inverted qualia remains an open question. Thomas Nagel claims that conscious states are subjective: to fully understand them, one must understand what it is like to be in them, but one can do that only by taking up the experiential point of view of a subject in them. Physical states, in contrast, are objective. Physical science attempts to characterize the world in abstraction from the experiential point of view of any subject. According to Nagel, whether phenomenal mental states reduce to physical states turns on whether subjective states reduce to objective states; and, at present, he claims, we have no understanding of how they could. Nagel has suggested that consciousness may be explainable only by appeal to as yet undiscovered basic nonmental, non-physical properties  “proto-mental properties”  the idea being that experiential points of view might be constituted by protomental properties together with physical properties. He thus claims that panphysicism is worthy of serious consideration. Frank Jackson, James Van Cleve, and David Chalmers have argued that conscious properties are emergent, i.e., fundamental, irreducible macro-properties; and Chalmers sympathizes with a brand of panphysicism. Colin McGinn claims that while conscious properties are likely reductively explainable by brain properties, our minds seem conceptually closed to the explaining properties: we are unable to conceptualize them, just as a cat is unable to conceptualize a square root. Dennett attempts to explain consciousness in supervenient behaviorist terms. David Rosenthal argues that consciousness is a special case of intentionality  more specifically, that conscious states are just states we can come in a certain direct way to believe we are in. Dretske, William Lycan, and Michael Tye argue that conscious properties are intentional properties and physicalistically reducible. Patricia Churchland argues that conscious phenomena are reducible to neurological phenomena. Brian Loar contends that qualia are identical with either functional or neurological states of the brain; and Christopher Hill argues specifically that qualia are identical with neurological states. Loar and Hill attempt to explain away the appearance of contingency of psychophysical identity claims, but in a way different from the way Kripke attempts to explain the appearance of contingency of ‘Water is H2O’, since they concede that that mode of explanation is unavailable. They appeal to differences in the conceptual roles of neurological and functional concepts by contrast with phenomenal concepts. They argue that while such concepts are different, they answer to the same properties. The nature of consciousness thus remains a matter of dispute. Animatum -- philosophical psychology – Grice: “Someone at Oxford had the bad idea of calling the Wilde lecturer the Wilde lecturer in mental philosophy – and the sad thing is that Ryle did nothing to stop it!” -- Eckhart, Johannes, called Meister Eckhart c.12601328, G. mystic, theologian, and preacher. Eckhart entered the Dominican order early and began an academic circuit that took him several times to Paris as a student and master of theology and that initiated him into ways of thinking much influenced by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. At Paris, Eckhart wrote the required commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and finished for publication at least three formal disputations. But he had already held office within the Dominicans, and he continued to alternate work as administrator and as teacher. Eckhart preached throughout these years, and he continued to write spiritual treatises in the vernacular, of which the most important is the Book of Divine Consolation. Only about a third of Eckhart’s main project in Latin, the Opus tripartitum, seems ever to have been completed. Beginning in the early 1320s, questions were raised about Eckhart’s orthodoxy. The questions centered on what was characteristic of his teaching, namely the emphasis on the soul’s attaining “emptiness” so as to “give birth to God.” The soul is ennobled by its emptying, and it can begin to “labor” with God to deliver a spark that enacts the miraculous union-and-difference of their love. After being acquitted of heresy once, Eckhart was condemned on 108 propositions drawn from his writings by a commission at Cologne. The condemnation was appealed to the Holy See, but in 1329 Eckhart was there judged “probably heretical” on 17 of 28 propositions drawn from both his academic and popular works. The condemnation clearly limited Eckhart’s explicit influence in theology, though he was deeply appropriated not only by mystics such as Johannes Tauler and Henry Suso, but by church figures such as Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther. He has since been taken up by thinkers as different as Hegel, Fichte, and Heidegger. Philosophical psychology – “soul-to-soul transfer” – the problem of other minds, the question of what rational basis a person can have for the belief that other persons are similarly conscious and have minds. Every person, by virtue of being conscious, is aware of her own state of consciousness and thus knows she has a mind; but the mental states of others are not similarly apparent to her. An influential attempt to solve this problem was made by philosophical behaviorists. According to Ryle in “The Concept of Mind,”(first draft entitled, “The concept of psyche,” second draft, “The concept of the soul” -- a mind (Ryle means ‘soul’) is not a ghost in the physical machine but roughly speaking an aggregate of dispositions to behave intelligently and to respond overtly to sensory stimulation. Since the behavior distinctive of these mentalistic dispositions is readily observable in other human beings, the so-called problem of other minds is easily solved: it arose from mere confusion about the concept of mind. Ryle’s opponents were generally willing to concede that such dispositions provide proof that another person has a “mind” or is a sentient being, but they were not willing to admit that those dispositions provide proof that other people actually have feelings, thoughts, and sensory experiences. Their convictions on this last matter generated a revised version of the otherminds problem; it might be called the problem of other-person experiences. Early efforts to solve the problem of other minds can be viewed as attempts to solve the problem of other-person experiences. According to J. S. Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy,  one can defend one’s conviction that others have feelings and other subjective experiences by employing an argument from analogy. To develop that analogy one first attends to how one’s own experiences are related to overt or publicly observable phenomena. One might observe that one feels pain when pricked by a pin and that one responds to the pain by wincing and saying “ouch.” The next step is to attend to the behavior and circumstances of others. Since other people are physically very similar to oneself, it is reasonable to conclude that if they are pricked by a pin and respond by wincing and saying “ouch,” they too have felt pain. Analogous inferences involving other sorts of mental states and other sorts of behavior and circumstances add strong support, Mill said, to one’s belief in other-person experiences. Although arguments from analogy are generally conceded to provide rationally acceptable evidence for unobserved phenomena, the analogical argument for other-person experiences was vigorously attacked in the 0s by philosophers influenced by Vitters’s Philosophical Investigations 3. Their central contention was that anyone employing the argument must assume that, solely from her own case, she knows what feelings and thoughts are. This assumption was refuted, they thought, by Vitters’s private language argument, which proved that we learn what feelings and thoughts are only in the process of learning a publicly understandable language containing an appropriate psychological vocabulary. To understand this latter vocabulary, these critics said, one must be able to use its ingredient words correctly in relation to others as well as to oneself; and this can be ascertained only because words like ‘pain’ and ‘depression’ are associated with behavioral criteria. When such criteria are satisfied by the behavior of others, one knows that the words are correctly applied to them and that one is justified in believing that they have the experiences in question. The supposed problem of other-person experiences is thus “dissolved” by a just appreciation of the preconditions for coherent thought about psychological states. Vitters’s claim that, to be conceivable, “an inner process stands in need of external criteria,” lost its hold on philosophers during the 0s. An important consideration was this: if a feeling of pain is a genuine reality different from the behavior that typically accompanies it, then so-called pain behavior cannot be shown to provide adequate evidence for the presence of pain by a purely linguistic argument; some empirical inductive evidence is needed. Since, contrary to Vitters, one knows what the feeling of pain is like only by having that feeling, one’s belief that other people occasionally have feelings that are significantly like the pain one feels oneself apparently must be supported by an argument in which analogy plays a central role. No other strategy seems possible.  Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Method in philosophical psychology: from the bizarre to the banal,” repr. in “The Conception of Value,” Oxford, Clarendon Press. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre,” in The Conception of Value, Oxford, Clarendon.

annullatum –Grice: Etymologically, ‘ad-nullatum.’ --  annullability: a synonym for ‘cancellability,’ used in “Causal.” Perhaps clear than ‘cancel.’ The etymology seems clear, because it involves the negative – “Cancel” seems like a soft sophisticated way of annulling, render something nix. Short and Lewis has ‘nullus’ as ne-ullus, not any, none, no. which is indeed a diminutive for ‘unus,’ [for unulus, dim. of unus], anyany one (usu. in neg. sentences; corresp. with aliquis in affirmations).

anniceris: Grecian and pre-Griceian philosopher, vide. H. P. Grice, “Pleasure.” A pupil of Antipater, he established a separate branch of the Cyrenaic school known as the Anniceraioi. He subscribed to typical Cyrenaic hedonism, arguing that the end of each action should be one’s own pleasure, since we can know nothing of others’ experiences. He tempered the implications of hedonism with the claim that a wise man attaches weight to respect for parents, patriotism, gratitude, and friendship, perhaps influencing Epicurus in this regard. Anniceris also played down the Cyrenaic stress on the intellect’s role in hedonistic practical rationality, taking the Aristotelian view that cultivation of the right habits is indispensable.

AOSTA – ANSELMO D’AOSTA -- anselmus:  “I would call him ‘Canterbury,’ only he was an Italian!” – H. P. Grice. Saint, called Anselm of Canterbury, philosopher theologian. A Benedictine monk and the second Norman archbishop of Canterbury, he is best known for his distinctive method  fides quaerens intellectum; his “ontological” argument for the existence of God in his treatise Proslogion; and his classic formulation of the satisfaction theory of the Atonement in the Cur Deus homo. Like Augustine before him, Anselm is a Christian Platonist in metaphysics. He argues that the most accessible proofs of the existence of God are through value theory: in his treatise Monologion, he deploys a cosmological argument, showing the existence of a source of all goods, which is the Good per se and hence supremely good; that same thing exists per se and is the Supreme Being. In the Proslogion, Anselm begins with his conception of a being a greater than which cannot be conceived, and mounts his ontological argument that a being a greater than which cannot be conceived exists in the intellect, because even the fool understands the phrase when he hears it; but if it existed in the intellect alone, a greater could be conceived that existed in reality. This supremely valuable object is essentially whatever it is  other things being equal  that is better to be than not to be, and hence living, wise, powerful, true, just, blessed, immaterial, immutable, and eternal per se; even the paradigm of sensory goods  Beauty, Harmony, Sweetness, and Pleasant Texture, in its own ineffable manner. Nevertheless, God is supremely simple, not compounded of a plurality of excellences, but “omne et unum, totum et solum bonum,” a being a more delectable than which cannot be conceived. Everything other than God has its being and its well-being through God as efficient cause. Moreover, God is the paradigm of all created natures, the latter ranking as better to the extent that they more perfectly resemble God. Thus, it is better to be human than to be horse, to be horse than to be wood, even though in comparison with God everything else is “almost nothing.” For every created nature, there is a that-for-which-it-ismade ad quod factum est. On the one hand, Anselm thinks of such teleology as part of the internal structure of the natures themselves: a creature of type F is a true F only insofar as it is/does/exemplifies that for which F’s were made; a defective F, to the extent that it does not. On the other hand, for Anselm, the telos of a created nature is that-for-which-God-made-it. Because God is personal and acts through reason and will, Anselm infers that prior in the order of explanation to creation, there was, in the reason of the maker, an exemplar, form, likeness, or rule of what he was going to make. In De veritate Anselm maintains that such teleology gives rise to obligation: since creatures owe their being and well-being to God as their cause, so they owe their being and well-being to God in the sense of having an obligation to praise him by being the best beings they can. Since every creature is of some nature or other, each can be its best by being that-for-which-God-made-it. Abstracting from impediments, non-rational natures fulfill this obligation and “act rightly” by natural necessity; rational creatures, when they exercise their powers of reason and will to fulfill God’s purpose in creating them. Thus, the goodness of a creature how good a being it is is a function of twin factors: its natural telos i.e., what sort of imitation of divine nature it aims for, and its rightness in exercising its natural powers to fulfill its telos. By contrast, God as absolutely independent owes no one anything and so has no obligations to creatures. In De casu diaboli, Anselm underlines the optimism of his ontology, reasoning that since the Supreme Good and the Supreme Being are identical, every being is good and every good a being. Two further conclusions follow. First, evil is a privation of being, the absence of good in something that properly ought to have it e.g., blindness in normally sighted animals, injustice in humans or angels. Second, since all genuine powers are given to enable a being to fulfill its natural telos and so to be the best being it can, all genuine metaphysically basic powers are optimific and essentially aim at goods, so that evils are merely incidental side effects of their operation, involving some lack of coordination among powers or between their exercise and the surrounding context. Thus, divine omnipotence does not, properly speaking, include corruptibility, passibility, or the ability to lie, because the latter are defects and/or powers in other things whose exercise obstructs the flourishing of the corruptible, passible, or potential liar. Anselm’s distinctive action theory begins teleologically with the observation that humans and angels were made for a happy immortality enjoying God, and to that end were given the powers of reason to make accurate value assessments and will to love accordingly. Anselm regards freedom and imputability of choice as essential and permanent features of all rational beings. But freedom cannot be defined as a power for opposites the power to sin and the power not to sin, both because neither God nor the good angels have any power to sin, and because sin is an evil at which no metaphysically basic power can aim. Rather, freedom is the power to preserve justice for its own sake. Choices and actions are imputable to an agent only if they are spontaneous, from the agent itself. Creatures cannot act spontaneously by the necessity of their natures, because they do not have their natures from themselves but receive them from God. To give them the opportunity to become just of themselves, God furnishes them with two motivaAnselm Anselm 31   31 tional drives toward the good: an affection for the advantageous affectio commodi or a tendency to will things for the sake of their benefit to the agent itself; and an affection for justice affectio justitiae or a tendency to will things because of their own intrinsic value. Creatures are able to align these drives by letting the latter temper the former or not. The good angels, who preserved justice by not willing some advantage possible for them but forbidden by God for that time, can no longer will more advantage than God wills for them, because he wills their maximum as a reward. By contrast, creatures, who sin by refusing to delay gratification in accordance with God’s will, lose both uprightness of will and their affection for justice, and hence the ability to temper their pursuit of advantage or to will the best goods. Justice will never be restored to angels who desert it. But if animality makes human nature weaker, it also opens the possibility of redemption. Anselm’s argument for the necessity of the Incarnation plays out the dialectic of justice and mercy so characteristic of his prayers. He begins with the demands of justice: humans owe it to God to make all of their choices and actions conform to his will; failure to render what was owed insults God’s honor and makes the offender liable to make satisfaction; because it is worse to dishonor God than for countless worlds to be destroyed, the satisfaction owed for any small sin is incommensurate with any created good; it would be maximally indecent for God to overlook such a great offense. Such calculations threaten certain ruin for the sinner, because God alone can do/be immeasurably deserving, and depriving the creature of its honor through the eternal frustration of its telos seems the only way to balance the scales. Yet, justice also forbids that God’s purposes be thwarted through created resistance, and it was divine mercy that made humans for a beatific immortality with him. Likewise, humans come in families by virtue of their biological nature which angels do not share, and justice allows an offense by one family member to be compensated by another. Assuming that all actual humans are descended from common first parents, Anselm claims that the human race can make satisfaction for sin, if God becomes human and renders to God what Adam’s family owes. When Anselm insists that humans were made for beatific intimacy with God and therefore are obliged to strive into God with all of their powers, he emphatically includes reason or intellect along with emotion and will. God, the controlling subject matter, is in part permanently inaccessible to us because of the ontological incommensuration between God and creatures and our progress is further hampered by the consequences of sin. Our powers will function best, and hence we have a duty to follow right order in their use: by submitting first to the holistic discipline of faith, which will focus our souls and point us in the right direction. Yet it is also a duty not to remain passive in our appreciation of authority, but rather for faith to seek to understand what it has believed. Anselm’s works display a dialectical structure, full of questions, objections, and contrasting opinions, designed to stir up the mind. His quartet of teaching dialogues  De grammatico, De veritate, De libertate arbitrii, and De casu diaboli as well as his last philosophical treatise, De concordia, anticipate the genre of the Scholastic question quaestio so dominant in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His discussions are likewise remarkable for their attention to modalities and proper-versus-improper linguistic usage.  Refs.: Grice, “Anselmo’s “De grammatico” and paronymy.” Speranza, “Grice and Anselm on paronymy: a ‘quaestio subtilissima.’”

ANTI-LOGISMVS -- antilogismus: A compound. “Although pro-logismus sounds otiose.” Grice: “Not to be confused with the mere implicatural ‘para-logism.’ -- an inconsistent triad of propositions, two of which are the premises of a valid categorical syllogism and the third of which is the contradictory of the conclusion of this valid categorical syllogism. An antilogism is a special form of antilogy or self-contradiction. 

ANTI-NOMINANISM -- antinomianism: “A compound, although pro-nomy sounds otiose.” Grice. as a Kantian, Grice overused the idea of a nomos or law, and then there’s antinominaism, the view that one is not bound by moral law; specifically, the view that Christians are by grace set free from the need to observe moral laws. During the Reformation, antinomianism was believed by some but not Martin Luther to follow from the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone. 

antiochus: Grecian philosopher and the last prominent member of the New Academy. He played the major role in ending its two centuries of Skepticism and helped revive interest in doctrines from the Old Academy, as he called Plato, Aristotle, and their associates. The impulse for this decisive shift came in epistemology, where the Skeptical Academy had long agreed with Stoicism that knowledge requires an infallible “criterion of truth” but disputed the Stoic claim to find this criterion in “cognitive perception.” Antiochus’s teacher, Philo of Larissa, broke with this tradition and proposed that perception need not be cognitive to qualify as knowledge. Rejecting this concession, Antiochus offered new arguments for the Stoic claim that some perception is cognitive, and hence knowledge. He also proposed a similar accommodation in ethics, where he agreed with the Stoics that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness but insisted with Aristotle that virtue is not the only good. These and similar attempts to mediate fundamental disputes have led some to label Antiochus an eclectic or syncretist; but some of his proposals, especially his appeal to the Old Academy, set the stage for Middle Platonism, which also sought to reconcile Plato and Aristotle. No works by Antiochus survive, but his students included many eminent Romans, most notably Cicero, who summarizes Antiochus’s epistemology in the Academica, his critique of Stoic ethics in De finibus IV, and his purportedly Aristotelian ethics in De finibus V. 

anti-realism: Grice: “Sometimes I use contra-, sometimes I use anti-.” If Grice was a realist, he hated anti-realism, the rejection, in one or another form or area of inquiry, of realism, the view that there are knowable mind-independent facts, objects, or properties. Metaphysical realists make the general claim that there is a world of mind-independent objects. Realists in particular areas make more specific or limited claims. Thus moral realists hold that there are mind-independent moral properties, mathematical realists that there are mind-independent mathematical facts, scientific realists that scientific inquiry reveals the existence of previously unknown and unobservable mind-independent entities and properties. Antirealists deny either that facts of the relevant sort are mind-independent or that knowledge of such facts is possible. Berkeley’s subjective idealism, which claims that the world consists only of minds and their contents, is a metaphysical anti-realism. Constructivist anti-realists, on the other hand, deny that the world consists only of mental phenomena, but claim that it is constituted by, or constructed from, our evidence or beliefs. Many philosophers find constructivism implausible or even incoherent as a metaphysical doctrine, but much more plausible when restricted to a particular domain, such as ethics or mathematics. Debates between realists and anti-realists have been particularly intense in philosophy of science. Scientific realism has been rejected both by constructivists such as Kuhn, who hold that scientific facts are constructed by the scientific community, and by empiricists who hold that knowledge is limited to what can be observed. A sophisticated version of the latter doctrine is Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, which allows scientists free rein in constructing scientific models, but claims that evidence for such models confirms only their observable implications. 

A-PAGOGE – vs. E-PAGOGE, and DIA-GOGE. apagoge: distinguished by Grice from both ‘epagoge,’ and his favoured ‘diagoge.’ A shifting of the basis of argument: hence of argument based on a probable or agreed assumption, Arist.APr.69a20, cf. Anon.in SE65.35; reduction, “ἡ εἰς τὸ ἀδύνατον ἀ.” reductio per impossibile, APr. 29b6; “ἡ ἀ. μετάβασίς ἐστιν ἀπ᾽ ἄλλου προβλήματος ἢ θεωρήματος ἐπ᾽ ἄλλο, οὗ γνωσθέντος ἢ πορισθέντος καὶ τὸ προκείμενον ἔσται καταφανές” Procl. in Euc.p.212F.; τῶν ἀπορουμένων διαγραμμάτων τὴν ἀ. ποιήσασθαι ib. p.213F. b. reduction of a disputant (cf. ἀπάγω v. 1c), “ἡ ἐπὶ τὸ ἄδηλον ἀ.” S.E.P.2.234.

APO-CATASTASIS -- apocatastasis: a branch of Grice’s eschatology -- from Grecian, ‘reestablishment’, the restoration of all souls, including Satan’s and his minions’, in the kingdom of God. God’s goodness will triumph over evil, and through a process of spiritual education souls will be brought to repentance and made fit for divine life. The theory originates with Origen but was also held by Gregory of Nyssa. In modern times F. D. Maurice 180572 and Karl Barth 6 8 held this position. 

A-PORIA -- aporia: cf. aporetic, cognate with porosity. No porosity, and you get an impasse. While aware of Baker’s and Deutsch’s treatment of the ‘aporia’ in Aristotle’s account of ‘philos,’ Grice explores ‘aporia’ in Plato in the Thrasymachus on ‘legal justice’ prior to ‘moral justice’ in Republic. in Dialectic, question for discussion, difficulty, puzzle, “ἀπορίᾳ σχόμενος” Pl.Prt.321c; ἀ. ἣν ἀπορεῖς ib.324d; “ἡ ἀ. ἰσότης ἐναντίων λογισμῶν” Arist. Top.145b1, al.; “ἔχει ἀπορίαν περί τινος” Id.Pol.1285b28; “αἱ μὲν οὖν ἀ. τοιαῦταί τινες συμβαίνουσιν” Id.EN1146b6; “οὐδεμίαν ποιήσει ἀ.” Id.Metaph.1085a27; ἀ. λύειν, διαλύειν, Id.MM 1201b1, Metaph.1062b31; “ἀπορίᾳ ἀπορίαν λύειν” D.S.1.37.Discussion with the Sophist Thrasymachus can only lead to aporia. And the more I trust you, the more I sink into an aporia of sorts. —Aha! roared Thrasymachus to everyone's surprise. There it is! Socratic aporia is back! Charge! neither Socrates' company nor Socrates himself gives any convincing answer. So, he says, finding himself in a real aporia, he visits Thrasymachus as well, and ... I argue that a combination of these means in form that I call “provocative-aporetic” better accounts for the means that Plato uses to exert a protreptic effect on readers. Aporia is a simultaneously intellectual and affective experience, and the way that readers choose to respond to aporia has a greater protreptic effect than either affective or intellectual means alone. When Socrates says he can 'transfer' the use of "just" to things related to the 'soul,' what kind of conversational game is that? Grice took Socrates's manoeuvre very seriously.Socrates relies on the tripartite theory of the soul. Plato, actually -- since Socrates is a drammatis persona! In "Philosophical Eschatology, Metaphysics, and Plato's Republic," H. P. Grice's purpose is to carry out a provocative-aporetic reading Book I Grice argues that it is a dispute between two ways of understanding 'just' which causes the aporia when Socrates tries to analyse 'just.' Although Socrates will not argue for the complexity and tripartition of the soul until Bk. IV, we can at least note the contrast with Thrasymachus' “idealize user” theory.For Socrates, agents are complex, and justice coordinates the parts of the agent.For Thrasymachus, agents are simple “users,” and justice is a tool for use. (2 - 3) Justice makes its possessor happy; the function (telos, metier) argument. To make the argument that justice is an excellence (virtus, arete) of soul (psyche) that makes its possessor happy, Socrates relies on a method for discovering the function (ἔργον, ergon, 352e1, cf. telos, metier, causa finalis) of any object whatsoever. Socrates begins by differentiating between an exclusive functions and an optimal function, so that we may discover the functions in different types of objects, i.e., natural and artificial objects. We can say an object performs some function (ergon) if one of the following conditions holds.If the object is the only one that can do the work in question, or If it is the object that does that work best.Socrates then provides examples from different part-whole complexes to make his point. The eye's exclusive function is to see, because no other organ is specialized so as to perform just that function. A horse's work is to carry riders into battle. Even though this might not be a horse's EXCLUSIVE function, it may be its “optimal” function in that the horse is best suited or designed by God to the task. Finally, the pruning knife is best for tending to vines, not because it cannot cut anything else, but because it is optimally suited for that task. Socrates' use of the pruning knife of as an example of a thing's function resembles a return to the technē model, since a craftsman must make the knife for a gardener to Socrates asks, “Would you define this as the function of a horse and of anything else, as that which someone does either through that thing alone, or best?” (...τοῦτο ἄν θείης καὶ ἵππου καὶ ἄλλου ὁτουοῦν ἔργον, ὅ ἄν ἤ μόνῳ ἐκείνῳ ποιῇ τις ἤ ἄριστα; 352e1-2) Thrasymachus agrees to this definition of function. 91 use.But his use of the eye — a bodily organ — should dissuade us from this view. One may use these examples to argue that Socrates is in fact offering a new method to investigate the nature of justice: 1) Find out what the functions of such objects are2) determine (by observation, experiment, or even thought experiment) cases where objects of such a kind perform their functions well and cases where they perform them poorly; and 3) finally find out the qualities that enable them to perform such functions well (and in the absence of which they perform poorly), and these are their virtues.A crucial difference between this method and technē model of justice lies in the interpretation that each assigns to the realm of human artifacts. Polemarchus and Thrasymachus both assume that the technē is unique as a form of knowledge for the power and control that it offers users. In Polemarchus' case, the technē of justice, “helping friends and harming enemies,” may be interpreted as a description of a method for gaining political power within a traditional framework of communal life, which assumes the oikos as the basic unit of power. Those families that help their friends and harm their enemies thrive. Thrasymachus, on the other hand, emphasizes the ways that technai grant users the power to exploit nature to further their own, distinctively individual ends. Thus, the shepherd exploits the sheep to make a livelihood for himself. Socrates' approach differs from these by re-casting “mastery” over nature as submission to norms that structure the natural world. For example, many factors contribute to making This points to a distinction Socrates draws in Book X between producers and users of artifacts. He uses the example of the blacksmith who makes a bridle and the horseman who uses the bridle to argue that production and use correspond to two gradations of knowledge (601c). The ultimate purpose of the example is to provide a metaphor — using the craft analogy — for identifying gradations of knowledge on a copy-original paradigm of the form-participant relation. the pruning knife the optimal tool for cutting vines: the shape of the human hand, the thickness and shape of the vines, and the metal of the blade. Likewise, in order for horses to optimally perform their “work,” they must be "healthy" and strong. The conditions that bring about their "health" and strength are not up to us, however."Control” only comes about through the recognition of natural norms. Thus technē is a type of knowledge that coordinates structures in nature.It is not an unlimited source of power. Socrates' inclusion of the human soul (psyche) among those things that have a function is the more controversial aspect of function argument.Socrates says that the functions (erga) of the soul (psyche) are “to engage in care-taking, ruling, and deliberation” and, later, simply that the ergon (or function) of the soul (or psyche) is “to live” (τὸ ζῆν, "to zen," 353d6). But the difficulty seems to be this: the functions of pruning knives, horses, and bodily organs are determined with respect to a limited and fairly unambiguous context that is already defined for them. But what is this context with respect to the soul (psyche) of a human individual? One answer might be that the social world — politics — provides the context that defines the soul's function, just as the needs of the human organism define the context in which the eye can perform a function. But here a challenger might reply that in aristocracies, oligarchies, and democracies, “care-taking, ruling, and deliberation” are utilized for different ends.In these contexts, individual souls might have different functions, according to the “needs” that these different regimes have. Alternatively, one might deny altogether that the human soul has a function: the distinctive feature of human beings might be their position “outside” of nature. Thus, even if Socrates' description of the soul's function is accurate, it is too general to be really informative.Socrates must offer more details for the function argument to be convincing. Nonetheless, the idea that justice is a condition that lets the soul perform its functions is a significant departure from the technē model of justice, and one that will remain throughout the argument of the Republic. […] τὸ ἐπιμελεῖσθαι καὶ ἄρχειν καὶ βουλεύεσθαι (353d3). As far as Bk. I is concerned, “justice” functions as a place-holder for that condition of the soul which permits the soul to perform its functions well. What that condition is, however, remains unknown.For this reason, Plato has Socrates concludes Bk. I by likening himself to a “glutton” (ὥσπερ οἱ λίχνοι, 354b1), who takes another dish before “moderately enjoying the previous” serving (πρὶν τοῦ προτέρου μετρίως ἀπολαύσαι, 354b2-3). For Socrates wants to know what effects the optimal condition of soul brings about before knowing what the condition itself is. Thus Bk. I concludes in "aporia," but not in a way that betrays the dialogue's lack of unity.The “separatist” thesis concerning Bk. I goes back to Hermann in "Geschichte und System der Platonischen Philosophie." One can argue on behalf of the “separatist” view as well. One can argue against the separatist thesis, even granting some evidence in favour of the separatist thesis. To the contrary, the "aporia" clearly foreshadows the argument that Socrates makes about the soul in Bk. IV, viz. that the soul (psyche) is a complex whole of parts -- an implicaturum in the “justice is stronger” argument -- and that 'just' is the condition that allows this complex whole be integrated to an optimal degree. Thus, Bk. I does not conclude negatively, but rather provides the resources for going beyond the "technē" model of justice, which is the primary cause of Polemarchus's and Thrasymachus's encounter with "aporia" in Bk. I. Throughout conversation of "The Republic," Socrates does not really alter the argument he gives for justice in Bk. I, but rather states the same argument in a different way.  My gratitude to P. N. Moore. Refs: Wise guys and smart alecks in Republic 1 and 2; Proleptic composition in the Republic, or why Bk. 1 was never a separate dialogue, The Classical Quarterly; "Socrates: ironist and moral philosopher." Strictly an ‘aporia’ in Griceian, is a ‘puzzle’, ‘question for discussion’, ‘state of perplexity’. The aporetic method  the raising of puzzles without offering solutions  is typical of the elenchus in the early Socratic dialogues of Plato. These consist in the testing of definitions and often end with an aporia, e.g., that piety is both what is and what is not loved by the gods. Compare the paradoxes of Zeno, e.g., that motion is both possible and impossible. In Aristotle’s dialectic, the resolution of aporiai discovered in the views on a subject is an important source of philosophical understanding. The beliefs that one should love oneself most of all and that self-love is shameful, e.g., can be resolved with the right understanding of ‘self’. The possibility of argument for two inconsistent positions was an important factor in the development of Skepticism. In modern philosophy, the antinomies that Kant claimed reason would arrive at in attempting to prove the existence of objects corresponding to transcendental ideas may be seen as aporiai. 

AD-PLICATVM -- applicatum. Grice: “Etymologically, ad-plicatum. So we have im-plicatum, ex-plicatum, dis-im-plicatum, and ad-plicatum. While we have implicatum and implicitum, we also have adplicatum and adplicitum.   While Bennett uses the rather ‘abusive’ “nominalist” to refer to Grice, Grice isn’t. It’s all about the ‘applied.’ Grice thinks a rational creature – not a parrot, but a rational intelligent pirot – can have an abstract idea. So there is this “Communication Device,” with capital C and capital D. The emissor APPLIES it to a given occasion. Cf. complete and incomplete. What’s the antonym of applied? Plato’s idea! applied – grice used ‘applied’ for ‘meaning’ – but ‘applied’ can be used in other contxts too. In ethics, the domain of ethics that includes professional ethics, such as business ethics, engineering ethics, and medical ethics, as well as practical ethics such as environmental ethics, which is applied, and thus practical as opposed to theoretical, but not focused on any one discipline. One of the major disputes among those who work in applied ethics is whether or not there is a general and universal account of morality applicable both to the ethical issues in the professions and to various practical problems. Some philosophers believe that each of the professions or each field of activity develops an ethical code for itself and that there need be no apellatio applied ethics 34   34 close relationship between e.g. business ethics, medical ethics, and environmental ethics. Others hold that the same moral system applies to all professions and fields. They claim that the appearance of different moral systems is simply due to certain problems being more salient for some professions and fields than for others. The former position accepts the consequence that the ethical codes of different professions might conflict with one another, so that a physician in business might find that business ethics would require one action but medical ethics another. Engineers who have been promoted to management positions sometimes express concern over the tension between what they perceive to be their responsibility as engineers and their responsibility as managers in a business. Many lawyers seem to hold that there is similar tension between what common morality requires and what they must do as lawyers. Those who accept a universal morality hold that these tensions are all resolvable because there is only one common morality. Underlying both positions is the pervasive but false view of common morality as providing a unique right answer to every moral problem. Those who hold that each profession or field has its own moral code do not realize that common morality allows for conflicts of duties. Most of those who put forward moral theories, e.g., utilitarians, Kantians, and contractarians, attempt to generate a universal moral system that solves all moral problems. This creates a situation that leads many in applied ethics to dismiss theoretical ethics as irrelevant to their concerns. An alternative view of a moral theory is to think of it on the model of a scientific theory, primarily concerned to describe common morality rather than generate a new improved version. On this model, it is clear that although morality rules out many alternatives as unacceptable, it does not provide unique right answers to every controversial moral question. On this model, different fields and different professions may interpret the common moral system in somewhat different ways. For example, although deception is always immoral if not justified, what counts as deception is not the same in all professions. Not informing a patient of an alternative treatment counts as deceptive for a physician, but not telling a customer of an alternative to what she is about to buy does not count as deceptive for a salesperson. The professions also have considerable input into what special duties are incurred by becoming a member of their profession. Applied ethics is thus not the mechanical application of a common morality to a particular profession or field, but an independent discipline that clarifies and analyzes the practices in a field or profession so that common morality can be applied. 

a priori: Obviously contrasted to ‘a posteriori,’ but not necessarily in termporal terms -- Grice was fascinated by the apriori, both analytic but more so the synthetic. He would question his children’s playmates with things like, “Can a sweater be green and red all over? No striped allowed.” a priori, prior to or independent of experience; contrasted with ‘a posteriori’ empirical. These two terms are primarily used to mark a distinction between 1 two modes of epistemic justification, together with derivative distinctions between 2 kinds of propositions, 3 kinds of knowledge, and 4 kinds of argument. They are also used to indicate a distinction between 5 two ways in which a concept or idea may be acquired. 1 A belief or claim is said to be justified a priori if its epistemic justification, the reason or warrant for thinking it to be true, does not depend at all on sensory or introspective or other sorts of experience; whereas if its justification does depend at least in part on such experience, it is said to be justified a posteriori or empirically. This specific distinction has to do only with the justification of the belief, and not at all with how the constituent concepts are acquired; thus it is no objection to a claim of a priori justificatory status for a particular belief that experience is required for the acquisition of some of the constituent concepts. It is clear that the relevant notion of experience includes sensory and introspective experience, as well as such things as kinesthetic experience. Equally clearly, to construe experience in the broadest possible sense of, roughly, a conscious undergoing of any sort would be to destroy the point of the distinction, since even a priori justification presumably involves some sort of conscious process of awareness. The construal that is perhaps most faithful to the traditional usage is that which construes experience as any sort of cognitive input that derives, presumably causally, from features of the actual world that may not hold in other possible worlds. Thus, e.g., such things as clairvoyance or telepathy, if they were to exist, would count as forms of experience and any knowledge resulting therefrom as a posteriori; but the intuitive apprehension of properties or numbers or other sorts of abstract entities that are the same in all possible worlds, would not. Understood in this way, the concept of a priori justification is an essentially negative concept, specifying as it does what the justification of the belief does not depend on, but saying nothing a priori a priori 35   35 about what it does depend on. Historically, the main positive conception was that offered by proponents of rationalism such as Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, according to which a priori justification derives from the intuitive apprehension of necessary facts pertaining to universals and other abstract entities. Although Kant is often regarded as a rationalist, his restriction of substantive a priori knowledge to the world of appearances represents a major departure from the main rationalist tradition. In contrast, proponents of traditional empiricism, if they do not repudiate the concept of a priori justification altogether as does Quine, typically attempt to account for such justification by appeal to linguistic or conceptual conventions. The most standard formulation of this empiricist view a development of the view of Hume that all a priori knowledge pertains to “relations of ideas” is the claim typical of logical positivism that all a priori knowable claims or propositions are analytic. A rationalist would claim in opposition that at least some a priori claims or propositions are synthetic. 2 A proposition that is the content of an a priori justified belief is often referred to as an a priori proposition or an a priori truth. This usage is also often extended to include any proposition that is capable of being the content of such a belief, whether it actually has this status or not. 3 If, in addition to being justified a priori or a posteriori, a belief is also true and satisfies whatever further conditions may be required for it to constitute knowledge, that knowledge is derivatively characterized as a priori or a posteriori empirical, respectively. Though a priori justification is often regarded as by itself guaranteeing truth, this should be regarded as a further substantive thesis, not as part of the very concept of a priori justification. Examples of knowledge that have been classically regarded as a priori in this sense are mathematical knowledge, knowledge of logical truths, and knowledge of necessary entailments and exclusions of commonsense concepts ‘Nothing can be red and green all over at the same time’, ‘If A is later than B and B is later than C, then A is later than C’; but many claims of metaphysics, ethics, and even theology have also been claimed to have this status. 4 A deductively valid argument that also satisfies the further condition that each of the premises or sometimes one or more particularly central premises are justified a priori is referred to as an a priori argument. This label is also sometimes applied to arguments that are claimed to have this status, even if the correctness of this claim is in question. 5 In addition to the uses just catalogued that derive from the distinction between modes of justification, the terms ‘a priori’ and ‘a posteriori’ are also employed to distinguish two ways in which a concept or idea might be acquired by an individual person. An a posteriori or empirical concept or idea is one that is derived from experience, via a process of abstraction or ostensive definition. In contrast, an a priori concept or idea is one that is not derived from experience in this way and thus presumably does not require any particular experience to be realized though the explicit realization of such a concept might still require experience as a “trigger”. The main historical account of such concepts, again held mainly by rationalists, construes them as innate, either implanted in the mind by God or, in the more contemporary version of the claim held by Chomsky, Fodor, and others, resulting from evolutionary development. Concepts typically regarded as having this sort of status include the concepts of substance, causation, God, necessity, infinity, and many others. Empiricists, in contrast, typically hold that all concepts are derived from experience. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “The synthetic a priori.”

AQUINO -- aquino: “Perhaps the Italian most studied at Oxford!” – Grice. Aquino and intentionality – Clark – Armini -- aquino – keyword: “medieval pragmatics”! -- thomism, the theology and philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. The term is applied broadly to various thinkers from different periods who were heavily influenced by Aquinas’s thought in their own philosophizing and theologizing. Here three different eras and three different groups of thinkers will be distinguished: those who supported Aquinas’s thought in the fifty years or so following his death in 1274; certain highly skilled interpreters and commentators who flourished during the period of “Second Thomism” sixteenthseventeenth centuries; and various late nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers who have been deeply influenced in their own work by Aquinas. Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Thomism. Although Aquinas’s genius was recognized by many during his own lifetime, a number of his views were immediately contested by other Scholastic thinkers. Controversies ranged, e.g., over his defense of only one substantial form in human beings; his claim that prime matter is purely potential and cannot, therefore, be kept in existence without some substantial form, even by divine power; his emphasis on the role of the human intellect in the act of choice; his espousal of a real distinction betweeen the soul and its powers; and his defense of some kind of objective or “real” rather than a merely mind-dependent composition of essence and act of existing esse in creatures. Some of Aquinas’s positions were included directly or indirectly in the 219 propositions condemned by Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris in 1277, and his defense of one single substantial form in man was condemned by Archbishop Robert Kilwardby at Oxford in 1277, with renewed prohibitions by his successor as archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, in 1284 and 1286. Only after Aquinas’s canonization in 1323 were the Paris prohibitions revoked insofar as they touched on his teaching in 1325. Even within his own Dominican order, disagreement about some of his views developed within the first decades after his death, notwithstanding the order’s highly sympathetic espousal of his cause. Early English Dominican defenders of his general views included William Hothum d.1298, Richard Knapwell d.c.1288, Robert Orford b. after 1250, fl.129095, Thomas Sutton d. c.1315?, and William Macclesfield d.1303.  Dominican Thomists included Bernard of Trilia d.1292, Giles of Lessines in present-day Belgium d.c.1304?, John Quidort of Paris d. 1306, Bernard of Auvergne d. after 1307, Hervé Nédélec d.1323, Armand of Bellevue fl. 131634, and William Peter Godin d.1336. The secular master at Paris, Peter of Auvergne d. 1304, while remaining very independent in his own views, knew Aquinas’s thought well and completed some of his commentaries on Aristotle. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Thomism. Sometimes known as the period of Second Thomism, this revival gained impetus from the early fifteenth-century writer John Capreolus 13801444 in his Defenses of Thomas’s Theology Defensiones theologiae Divi Thomae, a commentary on the Sentences. A number of fifteenth-century Dominican and secular teachers in G. universities also contributed: Kaspar Grunwald Freiburg; Cornelius Sneek and John Stoppe in Rostock; Leonard of Brixental Vienna; Gerard of Heerenberg, Lambert of Heerenberg, and John Versor all at Cologne; Gerhard of Elten; and in Belgium Denis the Carthusian. Outstanding among various sixteenth-century commentators on Thomas were Tommaso de Vio Cardinal Cajetan, Francis Sylvester of Ferrara, Francisco de Vitoria Salamanca, and Francisco’s disciples Domingo de Soto and Melchior Cano. Most important among early seventeenth-century Thomists was John of St. Thomas, who lectured at Piacenza, Madrid, and Alcalá, and is best known for his Cursus philosophicus and his Cursus theologicus. Theravada Buddhism Thomism 916   916 The nineteenth- and twentieth-century revival. By the early to mid-nineteenth century the study of Aquinas had been largely abandoned outside Dominican circles, and in most Roman Catholic s and seminaries a kind of Cartesian and Suarezian Scholasticism was taught. Long before he became Pope Leo XIII, Joachim Pecci and his brother Joseph had taken steps to introduce the teaching of Thomistic philosophy at the diocesan seminary at Perugia in 1846. Earlier efforts in this direction had been made by Vincenzo Buzzetti, by Buzzetti’s students Serafino and Domenico Sordi, and by Taparelli d’Aglezio, who became director of the Collegio Romano Gregorian  in 1824. Leo’s encyclical Aeterni Patris1879 marked an official effort on the part of the Roman Catholic church to foster the study of the philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas. The intent was to draw upon Aquinas’s original writings in order to prepare students of philosophy and theology to deal with problems raised by contemporary thought. The Leonine Commission was established to publish a critical edition of all of Aquinas’s writings; this effort continues today. Important centers of Thomistic studies developed, such as the Higher Institute of Philosophy at Louvain founded by Cardinal Mercier, the Dominican School of Saulchoir in France, and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. Different groups of Roman, Belgian, and  Jesuits acknowledged a deep indebtedness to Aquinas for their personal philosophical reflections. There was also a concentration of effort in the United States at universities such as The Catholic  of America, St. Louis , Notre Dame, Fordham, Marquette, and Boston , to mention but a few, and by the Dominicans at River Forest. A great weakness of many of the nineteenthand twentieth-century Latin manuals produced during this effort was a lack of historical sensitivity and expertise, which resulted in an unreal and highly abstract presentation of an “Aristotelian-Thomistic” philosophy. This weakness was largely offset by the development of solid historical research both in the thought of Aquinas and in medieval philosophy and theology in general, championed by scholars such as H. Denifle, M. De Wulf, M. Grabmann, P. Mandonnet, F. Van Steenberghen, E. Gilson and many of his students at Toronto, and by a host of more recent and contemporary scholars. Much of this historical work continues today both within and without Catholic scholarly circles. At the same time, remarkable diversity in interpreting Aquinas’s thought has emerged on the part of many twentieth-century scholars. Witness, e.g., the heavy influence of Cajetan and John of St. Thomas on the Thomism of Maritain; the much more historically grounded approaches developed in quite different ways by Gilson and F. Van Steenberghen; the emphasis on the metaphysics of participation in Aquinas in the very different presentations by L. Geiger and C. Fabro; the emphasis on existence esse promoted by Gilson and many others but resisted by still other interpreters; the movement known as Transcendental Thomism, originally inspired by P. Rousselot and by J. Marechal in dialogue with Kant; and the long controversy about the appropriateness of describing Thomas’s philosophy and that of other medievals as a Christian philosophy. An increasing number of non-Catholic thinkers are currently directing considerable attention to Aquinas, and the varying backgrounds they bring to his texts will undoubtedly result in still other interesting interpretations and applications of his thought to contemporary concerns.   : --a strange genitive for “Aquino,” the little village where the saint was born. while Grice, being C. of E., would avoid Aquinas like the rats, he was aware of Aquinas’s clever ‘intention-based semantics’ in his commentary of Aristotle’s De Interpretatione. Saint Thomas 122574,  philosopher-theologian, the most influential thinker of the medieval period. He produced a powerful philosophical synthesis that combined Aristotelian and Neoplatonic elements within a Christian context in an original and ingenious way. Life and works. Thomas was born at Aquino castle in Roccasecca, Italy, and took early schooling at the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino. He then studied liberal arts and philosophy at the  of Naples 123944 and joined the Dominican order. While going to Paris for further studies as a Dominican, he was detained by his family for about a year. Upon being released, he studied with the Dominicans at Paris, perhaps privately, until 1248, when he journeyed to a priori argument Aquinas, Saint Thomas 36   36 Cologne to work under Albertus Magnus. Thomas’s own report reportatio of Albertus’s lectures on the Divine Names of Dionysius and his notes on Albertus’s lectures on Aristotle’s Ethics date from this period. In 1252 Thomas returned to Paris to lecture there as a bachelor in theology. His resulting commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard dates from this period, as do two philosophical treatises, On Being and Essence De ente et essentia and On the Principles of Nature De principiis naturae. In 1256 he began lecturing as master of theology at Paris. From this period 125659 date a series of scriptural commentaries, the disputations On Truth De veritate, Quodlibetal Questions VIIXI, and earlier parts of the Summa against the Gentiles Summa contra gentiles; hereafter SCG. At different locations in Italy from 1259 to 1269, Thomas continued to write prodigiously, including, among other works, the completion of the SCG; a commentary on the Divine Names; disputations On the Power of God De potentia Dei and On Evil De malo; and Summa of Theology Summa theologiae; hereafter ST, Part I. In January 1269, he resumed teaching in Paris as regent master and wrote extensively until returning to Italy in 1272. From this second Parisian regency date the disputations On the Soul De anima and On Virtues De virtutibus; continuation of ST; Quodlibets IVI and XII; On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas; most if not all of his commentaries on Aristotle; a commentary on the Book of Causes Liber de causis; and On the Eternity of the World De aeternitate mundi. In 1272 Thomas returned to Italy where he lectured on theology at Naples and continued to write until December 6, 1273, when his scholarly work ceased. He died three months later en route to the Second Council of Lyons. Doctrine. Aquinas was both a philosopher and a theologian. The greater part of his writings are theological, but there are many strictly philosophical works within his corpus, such as On Being and Essence, On the Principles of Nature, On the Eternity of the World, and the commentaries on Aristotle and on the Book of Causes. Also important are large sections of strictly philosophical writing incorporated into theological works such as the SCG, ST, and various disputations. Aquinas clearly distinguishes between strictly philosophical investigation and theological investigation. If philosophy is based on the light of natural reason, theology sacra doctrina presupposes faith in divine revelation. While the natural light of reason is insufficient to discover things that can be made known to human beings only through revelation, e.g., belief in the Trinity, Thomas holds that it is impossible for those things revealed to us by God through faith to be opposed to those we can discover by using human reason. For then one or the other would have to be false; and since both come to us from God, God himself would be the author of falsity, something Thomas rejects as abhorrent. Hence it is appropriate for the theologian to use philosophical reasoning in theologizing. Aquinas also distinguishes between the orders to be followed by the theologian and by the philosopher. In theology one reasons from belief in God and his revelation to the implications of this for created reality. In philosophy one begins with an investigation of created reality insofar as this can be understood by human reason and then seeks to arrive at some knowledge of divine reality viewed as the cause of created reality and the end or goal of one’s philosophical inquiry SCG II, c. 4. This means that the order Aquinas follows in his theological Summae SCG and ST is not the same as that which he prescribes for the philosopher cf. Prooemium to Commentary on the Metaphysics. Also underlying much of Aquinas’s thought is his acceptance of the difference between theoretical or speculative philosophy including natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics and practical philosophy. Being and analogy. For Aquinas the highest part of philosophy is metaphysics, the science of being as being. The subject of this science is not God, but being, viewed without restriction to any given kind of being, or simply as being Prooemium to Commentary on Metaphysics; In de trinitate, qu. 5, a. 4. The metaphysician does not enjoy a direct vision of God in this life, but can reason to knowledge of him by moving from created effects to awareness of him as their uncreated cause. God is therefore not the subject of metaphysics, nor is he included in its subject. God can be studied by the metaphysician only indirectly, as the cause of the finite beings that fall under being as being, the subject of the science. In order to account for the human intellect’s discovery of being as being, in contrast with being as mobile studied by natural philosophy or being as quantified studied by mathematics, Thomas appeals to a special kind of intellectual operation, a negative judgment, technically named by him “separation.” Through this operation one discovers that being, in order to be realized as such, need not be material and changAquinas, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Thomas 37   37 ing. Only as a result of this judgment is one justified in studying being as being. Following Aristotle and Averroes, Thomas is convinced that the term ‘being’ is used in various ways and with different meanings. Yet these different usages are not unrelated and do enjoy an underlying unity sufficient for being as being to be the subject of a single science. On the level of finite being Thomas adopts and adapts Aristotle’s theory of unity by reference to a first order of being. For Thomas as for Aristotle this unity is guaranteed by the primary referent in our predication of being  substance. Other things are named being only because they are in some way ordered to and dependent on substance, the primary instance of being. Hence being is analogous. Since Thomas’s application of analogy to the divine names presupposes the existence of God, we shall first examine his discussion of that issue. The existence of God and the “five ways.” Thomas holds that unaided human reason, i.e., philosophical reason, can demonstrate that God exists, that he is one, etc., by reasoning from effect to cause De trinitate, qu. 2, a. 3; SCG I, c. 4. Best-known among his many presentations of argumentation for God’s existence are the “five ways.” Perhaps even more interesting for today’s student of his metaphysics is a brief argument developed in one of his first writings, On Being and Essence c.4. There he wishes to determine how essence is realized in what he terms “separate substances,” i.e., the soul, intelligences angels of the Christian tradition, and the first cause God. After criticizing the view that created separate substances are composed of matter and form, Aquinas counters that they are not entirely free from composition. They are composed of a form or essence and an act of existing esse. He immediately develops a complex argument: 1 We can think of an essence or quiddity without knowing whether or not it actually exists. Therefore in such entities essence and act of existing differ unless 2 there is a thing whose quiddity and act of existing are identical. At best there can be only one such being, he continues, by eliminating multiplication of such an entity either through the addition of some difference or through the reception of its form in different instances of matter. Hence, any such being can only be separate and unreceived esse, whereas esse in all else is received in something else, i.e., essence. 3 Since esse in all other entities is therefore distinct from essence or quiddity, existence is communicated to such beings by something else, i.e., they are caused. Since that which exists through something else must be traced back to that which exists of itself, there must be some thing that causes the existence of everything else and that is identical with its act of existing. Otherwise one would regress to infinity in caused causes of existence, which Thomas here dismisses as unacceptable. In qu. 2, a. 1 of ST I Thomas rejects the claim that God’s existence is self-evident to us in this life, and in a. 2 maintains that God’s existence can be demonstrated by reasoning from knowledge of an existing effect to knowledge of God as the cause required for that effect to exist. The first way or argument art. 3 rests upon the fact that various things in our world of sense experience are moved. But whatever is moved is moved by something else. To justify this, Thomas reasons that to be moved is to be reduced from potentiality to actuality, and that nothing can reduce itself from potency to act; for it would then have to be in potency if it is to be moved and in act at the same time and in the same respect. This does not mean that a mover must formally possess the act it is to communicate to something else if it is to move the latter; it must at least possess it virtually, i.e., have the power to communicate it. Whatever is moved, therefore, must be moved by something else. One cannot regress to infinity with moved movers, for then there would be no first mover and, consequently, no other mover; for second movers do not move unless they are moved by a first mover. One must, therefore, conclude to the existence of a first mover which is moved by nothing else, and this “everyone understands to be God.” The second way takes as its point of departure an ordering of efficient causes as indicated to us by our investigation of sensible things. By this Thomas means that we perceive in the world of sensible things that certain efficient causes cannot exercise their causal activity unless they are also caused by something else. But nothing can be the efficient cause of itself, since it would then have to be prior to itself. One cannot regress to infinity in ordered efficient causes. In ordered efficient causes, the first is the cause of the intermediary, and the intermediary is the cause of the last whether the intermediary is one or many. Hence if there were no first efficient cause, there would be no intermediary and no last cause. Thomas concludes from this that one must acknowledge the existence of a first efficient cause, “which everyone names God.” The third way consists of two major parts. Some Aquinas, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Thomas 38   38 textual variants have complicated the proper interpretation of the first part. In brief, Aquinas appeals to the fact that certain things are subject to generation and corruption to show that they are “possible,” i.e., capable of existing and not existing. Not all things can be of this kind revised text, for that which has the possibility of not existing at some time does not exist. If, therefore, all things are capable of not existing, at some time there was nothing whatsoever. If that were so, even now there would be nothing, since what does not exist can only begin to exist through something else that exists. Therefore not all beings are capable of existing and not existing. There must be some necessary being. Since such a necessary, i.e., incorruptible, being might still be caused by something else, Thomas adds a second part to the argument. Every necessary being either depends on something else for its necessity or it does not. One cannot regress to infinity in necessary beings that depend on something else for their necessity. Therefore there must be some being that is necessary of itself and that does not depend on another cause for its necessity, i.e., God. The statement in the first part to the effect that what has the possibility of not existing at some point does not exist has been subject to considerable dispute among commentators. Moreover, even if one grants this and supposes that every individual being is a “possible” and therefore has not existed at some point in the past, it does not easily follow from this that the totality of existing things will also have been nonexistent at some point in the past. Given this, some interpreters prefer to substitute for the third way the more satisfactory versions found in SCG I ch. 15 and SCG II ch. 15. Thomas’s fourth way is based on the varying degrees of perfection we discover among the beings we experience. Some are more or less good, more or less true, more or less noble, etc., than others. But the more and less are said of different things insofar as they approach in varying degrees something that is such to a maximum degree. Therefore there is something that is truest and best and noblest and hence that is also being to the maximum degree. To support this Thomas comments that those things that are true to the maximum degree also enjoy being to the maximum degree; in other words he appeals to the convertibility between being and truth of being. In the second part of this argument Thomas argues that what is supremely such in a given genus is the cause of all other things in that genus. Therefore there is something that is the cause of being, goodness, etc., for all other beings, and this we call God. Much discussion has centered on Thomas’s claim that the more and less are said of different things insofar as they approach something that is such to the maximum degree. Some find this insufficient to justify the conclusion that a maximum must exist, and would here insert an appeal to efficient causality and his theory of participation. If certan entities share or participate in such a perfection only to a limited degree, they must receive that perfection from something else. While more satisfactory from a philosophical perspective, such an insertion seems to change the argument of the fourth way significantly. The fifth way is based on the way things in the universe are governed. Thomas observes that certain things that lack the ability to know, i.e., natural bodies, act for an end. This follows from the fact that they always or at least usually act in the same way to attain that which is best. For Thomas this indicates that they reach their ends by “intention” and not merely from chance. And this in turn implies that they are directed to their ends by some knowing and intelligent being. Hence some intelligent being exists that orders natural things to their ends. This argument rests on final causality and should not be confused with any based on order and design. Aquinas’s frequently repeated denial that in this life we can know what God is should here be recalled. If we can know that God exists and what he is not, we cannot know what he is see, e.g., SCG I, c. 30. Even when we apply the names of pure perfections to God, we first discover such perfections in limited fashion in creatures. What the names of such perfections are intended to signify may indeed be free from all imperfection, but every such name carries with it some deficiency in the way in which it signifies. When a name such as ‘goodness’, for instance, is signified abstractly e.g., ‘God is goodness’, this abstract way of signifying suggests that goodness does not subsist in itself. When such a name is signified concretely e.g., ‘God is good’, this concrete way of signifying implies some kind of composition between God and his goodness. Hence while such names are to be affirmed of God as regards that which they signify, the way in which they signify is to be denied of him. This final point sets the stage for Thomas to apply his theory of analogy to the divine names. Names of pure perfections such as ‘good’, ‘true’, ‘being’, etc., cannot be applied to God with Aquinas, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Thomas 39   39 exactly the same meaning they have when affirmed of creatures univocally, nor with entirely different meanings equivocally. Hence they are affirmed of God and of creatures by an analogy based on the relationship that obtains between a creature viewed as an effect and God its uncaused cause. Because some minimum degree of similarity must obtain between any effect and its cause, Thomas is convinced that in some way a caused perfection imitates and participates in God, its uncaused and unparticipated source. Because no caused effect can ever be equal to its uncreated cause, every perfection that we affirm of God is realized in him in a way different from the way we discover it in creatures. This dissimilarity is so great that we can never have quidditative knowledge of God in this life know what God is. But the similarity is sufficient for us to conclude that what we understand by a perfection such as goodness in creatures is present in God in unrestricted fashion. Even though Thomas’s identification of the kind of analogy to be used in predicating divine names underwent some development, in mature works such as On the Power of God qu. 7, a. 7, SCG I c.34, and ST I qu. 13, a. 5, he identifies this as the analogy of “one to another,” rather than as the analogy of “many to one.” In none of these works does he propose using the analogy of “proportionality” that he had previously defended in On Truth qu. 2, a. 11. Theological virtues. While Aquinas is convinced that human reason can arrive at knowledge that God exists and at meaningful predication of the divine names, he does not think the majority of human beings will actually succeed in such an effort SCG I, c. 4; ST IIIIae, qu. 2, a. 4. Hence he concludes that it was fitting for God to reveal such truths to mankind along with others that purely philosophical inquiry could never discover even in principle. Acceptance of the truth of divine revelation presupposes the gift of the theological virtue of faith in the believer. Faith is an infused virtue by reason of which we accept on God’s authority what he has revealed to us. To believe is an act of the intellect that assents to divine truth as a result of a command on the part of the human will, a will that itself is moved by God through grace ST II IIae, qu. 2, a. 9. For Thomas the theological virtues, having God the ultimate end as their object, are prior to all other virtues whether natural or infused. Because the ultimate end must be present in the intellect before it is present to the will, and because the ultimate end is present in the will by reason of hope and charity the other two theological virtues, in this respect faith is prior to hope and charity. Hope is the theological virtue through which we trust that with divine assistance we will attain the infinite good  eternal enjoyment of God ST IIIIae, qu. 17, aa. 12. In the order of generation, hope is prior to charity; but in the order of perfection charity is prior both to hope and faith. While neither faith nor hope will remain in those who reach the eternal vision of God in the life to come, charity will endure in the blessed. It is a virtue or habitual form that is infused into the soul by God and that inclines us to love him for his own sake. If charity is more excellent than faith or hope ST II IIae, qu. 23, a. 6, through charity the acts of all other virtues are ordered to God, their ultimate end qu. 23, a. 8.  Refs.: Grice, “Intentionality in Aquino,” Speranza, “Grice and Aquino on the taxonomy of intentions.”

ars: as in ars liberalis, the seven liberal arts – philosophy is NOT one of them, but the trivium and quadrivium are – So, while logic or dialectica or witcraft is an art, or technique, philosophy is free from those constraints. The philosopher is insulted if considered a craftman!   techne Grecian, ‘art’, ‘craft’, a human skill based on general principles and capable of being taught. In this sense, a manual craft such as carpentry is a techne, but so are sciences such as medicine and arithmetic. According to Plato Gorgias 501a, a genuine techne understands its subject matter and can give a rational account of its activity. Aristotle Metaphysics I.1 distinguishes technefrom experience on the grounds that techne involves knowledge of universals and causes, and can be taught. Sometimes ‘techne’ is restricted to the productive as opposed to theoretical and practical arts, as at Nicomachean Ethics VI.4. Techne and its products are often contrasted with physis, nature Physics II.1. 

arbitrium: Grice: “One problem Lewis has with his analysis of ‘arbitrariness’ is that neither he nor I know what it means – and neither did Plautus.” from ad "to" (see ad-) + baetere "to come, go," a word of unknown etymology. Grice: “However, Lewis and Short are helpful. They say ‘beto’ is kindred with ‘vado’ and ‘baino,’ and means ‘go.’ bēto (baeto ; in Plaut. bīto ), ĕre, v. n. kindr. with vado and βαίνω, I.to go (with its derivatives, abito, adbito, ebito, interbito, perbito, praeterbito, rebito, bitienses, only ante-class.): in pugnam baetite, Pac. ap. Non. p. 77, 21 (Trag. Rel. v. 255 Rib.): “si ire conor, prohibet betere,” id. ib.; “Varr. ib.: ad aliquem,” Plaut. Curc. 1, 2, 52: “ad portum ne bitas,” id. Merc. 2, 3, 127. cfr. choose. arminius, Jacobus 15601609, Dutch theologian who, as a Dutch Reformed pastor and later professor at the  of Leiden, challenged Calvinist orthodoxy on predestination and free will. After his death, followers codified Arminius’s views in a document asserting that God’s grace is necessary for salvation, but not irresistible: the divine decree depends on human free choice. This became the basis for Arminianism, which was condemned by the Dutch ReAristotle, commentaries on Arminius, Jacobus 51   51 formed synod but vigorously debated for centuries among Protestant theologians of different denominations. The term ‘Arminian’ is still occasionally applied to theologians who defend a free human response to divine grace against predestinationism. Grice: “We should place due relevance to ‘arbitrium’ because it’s out way to ‘freedom/’.”

arcesilas: Or as Strawson would prefer, arcelisaus -- Grecian, pre-Griceian, sceptic philosopher, founder of the Middle Academy. Influenced by Socratic elenchus, he claimed that, unlike Socrates, he was not even certain that he was certain of nothing. He shows the influence of Pyrrho in attacking the Stoic doctrine that the subjective certainty of the wise is the criterion of truth. At the theoretical level he advocated epoche, suspension of rational judgment; at the practical, he argued that eulogon, probability, can justify action  an early version of coherentism. His ethical views were not extreme; he held, e.g., that one should attend to one’s own life rather than external objects. Though he wrote nothing except verse, he led the Academy into two hundred years of Skepticism.

archytas: Grecian, pre-Griceian, Pythagorean philosopher from Tarentum in southern Italy. He was elected general seven times and sent a ship to rescue Plato from Dionysius II of Syracuse in 361. He is famous for solutions to specific mathematical problems, such as the doubling of the cube, but little is known about his general philosophical principles. His proof that the numbers in a superparticular ratio have no mean proportional has relevance to music theory, as does his work with the arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic means. He gave mathematical accounts of the diatonic, enharmonic, and chromatic scales and developed a theory of acoustics. Fragments 1 and 2 and perhaps 3 are authentic, but most material preserved in his name is spurious. 

aretaic: sometimes used by Grice for ‘virtuosum’. arete, ancient Grecian term meaning ‘virtue’ or ‘excellence’. In philosophical contexts, the term was used mainly of virtues of human character; in broader contexts, arete was applicable to many different sorts of excellence. The cardinal virtues in the classical period were courage, wisdom, temperance sophrosune, piety, and justice. Sophists such as Protagoras claimed to teach such virtues, and Socrates challenged their credentials for doing so. Several early Platonic dialogues show Socrates asking after definitions of virtues, and Socrates investigates arete in other dialogues as well. Conventional views allowed that a person can have one virtue such as courage but lack another such as wisdom, but Plato’s Protagoras shows Socrates defending his thesis of the unity of arete, which implies that a person who has one arete has them all. Platonic accounts of the cardinal virtues with the exception of piety are given in Book IV of the Republic. Substantial parts of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle are given over to discussions of arete, which he divides into virtues of character and virtues of intellect. This discussion is the ancestor of most modern theories of virtue ethics. 

argumentum: Grice; “We should start with an etymology.” “To argue means, arguably, to make clear, which clarifies things.” arguere "make clear, make known, prove, declare, demonstrate," from PIE *argu-yo-, suffixed form of root *arg- "to shine; white." The transmission to French might be via arguere in a Medieval Latin sense of "to argue," or from Latin argutare "to prattle, prate," frequentative of arguere.  De Vaan says arguere is probably "a denominative verb 'to make bright, enlighten' to an adj. *argu- 'bright' as continued in argutus and outside Italic." He cites a closely similar formation in Hittite arkuuae- "to make a plea." Dodgson: “I thought I saw an argument.” cited by Grice in “Aspects of reason.” Grice was Strawson’s tutor for the Logic Paper, and he had to go with him over the ‘boring theory of the syllogism – Barbara, Celarent, and the reset of them!” -- syllogism, in Aristotle’s words, “a discourse in which, a certain thing being stated, something other than what is stated follows of necessity from being so” Prior Analytics, 24b 18. Three types of syllogism were usually distinguished: categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive. Each will be treated in that order. The categorical syllogism. This is an argument consisting of three categorical propositions, two serving as premises and one serving as conclusion. E.g., ‘Some  students are happy; all  students are high school graduates; therefore, some high school graduates are happy’. If a syllogism is valid, the premises must be so related to the conclusion that it is impossible for both premises to be true and the conclusion false. There are four types of categorical propositions: universal affirmative or A-propositions  ‘All S are P’, or ‘SaP’; universal negative or E-propositions  ‘No S are P’, or ‘SeP’; particular affirmative or I-propositions  ‘Some S are P’, or ‘SiP’; and particular negative or O-propositions: ‘Some S are not P’, or ‘SoP’. The mediate basic components of categorical syllogism are terms serving as subjects or predicates in the premises and the conclusion. There must be three and only three terms in any categorical syllogism, the major term, the minor term, and the middle term. Violation of this basic rule of structure is called the fallacy of four terms quaternio terminorum; e.g., ‘Whatever is right is useful; only one of my hands is right; therefore only one of my hands is useful’. Here ‘right’ does not have the same meaning in its two occurrences; we therefore have more than three terms and hence no genuine categorical syllogism. The syllogistic terms are identifiable and definable with reference to the position they have in a given syllogism. The predicate of the conclusion is the major term; the subject of the conclusion is the minor term; the term that appears once in each premise but not in the conclusion is the middle term. As it is used in various types of categorical propositions, a term is either distributed stands for each and every member of its extension or undistributed. There is a simple rule regarding the distribution: universal propositions SaP and SeP distribute their subject terms; negative propositions SeP and SoP distribute their predicate terms. No terms are distributed in an I-proposition. Various sets of rules governing validity of categorical syllogisms have been offered. The following is a “traditional” set from the popular Port-Royal Logic 1662. R1: The middle term must be distributed at least once. Violation: ‘All cats are animals; some animals do not eat liver; therefore some cats do not eat liver’. The middle term ‘animals’ is not distributed either in the first or minor premise, being the predicate of an affirmative proposition, nor in the second or major premise, being the subject of a particular proposition; hence, the fallacy of undistributed middle. R2: A term cannot be distributed in the conclusion if it is undistributed in the premises. Violation: ‘All dogs are carnivorous; no flowers are dogs; therefore, no flowers are carnivorous’. Here the major, ‘carnivorous’, is distributed in the conclusion, being the predicate of a negative proposition, but not in the premise, serving there as predicate of an affirmative proposition; hence, the fallacy of illicit major term. Another violation of R2: ‘All students are happy individuals; no criminals are students; therefore, no happy individuals are criminals’. Here the minor, ‘happy individuals’, is distributed in the conclusion, but not distributed in the minor premise; hence the fallacy of illicit minor term. R3: No conclusion may be drawn from two negative premises. Violation: ‘No dogs are cats; some dogs do not like liver; therefore, some cats do not like liver’. Here R1 is satisfied, since the middle term ‘dogs’ is distributed in the minor premise; R2 is satisfied, since both the minor term ‘cats’ as well as the major term ‘things that like liver’ are distributed in the premises and thus no violation of distribution of terms occurs. It is only by virtue of R3 that we can proclaim this syllogism to be invalid. R4: A negative conclusion cannot be drawn where both premises are affirmative. Violation: ‘All educated people take good care of their children; all syllogism syllogism 894   894 who take good care of their children are poor; therefore, some poor people are not educated’. Here, it is only by virtue of the rule of quality, R4, that we can proclaim this syllogism invalid. R5: The conclusion must follow the weaker premise; i.e., if one of the premises is negative, the conclusion must be negative, and if one of them is particular, the conclusion must be particular. R6: From two particular premises nothing follows. Let us offer an indirect proof for this rule. If both particular premises are affirmative, no term is distributed and therefore the fallacy of undistributed middle is inevitable. To avoid it, we have to make one of the premises negative, which will result in a distributed predicate as middle term. But by R5, the conclusion must then be negative; thus, the major term will be distributed in the conclusion. To avoid violating R2, we must distribute that term in the major premise. It could not be in the position of subject term, since only universal propositions distribute their subject term and, by hypothesis, both premises are particular. But we could not use the same negative premise used to distribute the middle term; we must make the other particular premise negative. But then we violate R3. Thus, any attempt to make a syllogism with two particular premises valid will violate one or more basic rules of syllogism. This set of rules assumes that A- and Epropositions have existential import and hence that an I- or an O-proposition may legitimately be drawn from a set of exclusively universal premises. Categorical syllogisms are classified according to figure and mood. The figure of a categorical syllogism refers to the schema determined by the possible position of the middle term in relation to the major and minor terms. In “modern logic,” four syllogistic figures are recognized. Using ‘M’ for middle term, ‘P’ for major term, and ‘S’ for minor term, they can be depicted as follows: Aristotle recognized only three syllogistic figures. He seems to have taken into account just the two premises and the extension of the three terms occurring in them, and then asked what conclusion, if any, can be derived from those premises. It turns out, then, that his procedure leaves room for three figures only: one in which the M term is the subject of one and predicate of the other premise; another in which the M term is predicated in both premises; and a third one in which the M term is the subject in both premises. Medievals followed him, although all considered the so-called inverted first i.e., moods of the first figure with their conclusion converted either simply or per accidens to be legitimate also. Some medievals e.g., Albalag and most moderns since Leibniz recognize a fourth figure as a distinct figure, considering syllogistic terms on the basis not of their extension but of their position in the conclusion, the S term of the conclusion being defined as the minor term and the P term being defined as the major term. The mood of a categorical syllogism refers to the configuration of types of categorical propositions determined on the basis of the quality and quantity of the propositions serving as premises and conclusion of any given syllogism; e.g., ‘No animals are plants; all cats are animals; therefore no cats are plants’, ‘MeP, SaM /, SeP’, is a syllogism in the mood EAE in the first figure. ‘All metals conduct electricity; no stones conduct electricity; therefore no stones are metals’, ‘PaM, SeM /, SeP’, is the mood AEE in the second figure. In the four syllogistic figures there are 256 possible moods, but only 24 are valid only 19 in modern logic, on the ground of a non-existential treatment of A- and E-propositions. As a mnemonic device and to facilitate reference, names have been assigned to the valid moods, with each vowel representing the type of categorical proposition. William Sherwood and Peter of Spain offered the famous list designed to help students to remember which moods in any given figure are valid and how the “inevident” moods in the second and third figures are provable by reduction to those in the first figure: barbara, celarent, darii, ferio direct Fig. 1; baralipton, celantes, dabitis, fapesmo, frisesomorum indirect Fig. 1; cesare, camestres, festino, baroco Fig. 2; darapti, felapton, disamis, datisi, bocardo, ferison Fig. 3. The hypothetical syllogism. The pure hypothetical syllogism is an argument in which both the premises and the conclusion are hypothetical, i.e. conditional, propositions; e.g., ‘If the sun is shining, it is warm; if it is warm, the plants will grow; therefore if the sun is shining, the plants will grow’. Symbolically, this argument form can be represented by ‘A P B, B P C /, A P C’. It was not recognized as such by Aristotle, but Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus foreshadowed it, even syllogism syllogism 895   895 though it is not clear from his example of it  ‘If man is, animal is; if animal is, then substance is; if therefore man is, substance is’  whether this was seen to be a principle of term logic or a principle of propositional logic. It was the MegaricStoic philosophers and Boethius who fully recognized hypothetical propositions and syllogisms as principles of the most general theory of deduction. Mixed hypothetical syllogisms are arguments consisting of a hypothetical premise and a categorical premise, and inferring a categorical proposition; e.g., ‘If the sun is shining, the plants will grow; the sun is shining; therefore the plants will grow’. Symbolically, this is represented by ‘P P Q, P /, Q’. This argument form was explicitly formulated in ancient times by the Stoics as one of the “indemonstrables” and is now known as modus ponens. Another equally basic form of mixed hypothetical syllogism is ‘P P Q, -Q /, ~P’, known as modus tollens. The disjunctive syllogism. This is an argument in which the leading premise is a disjunction, the other premise being a denial of one of the alternatives, concluding to the remaining alternative; e.g., ‘It is raining or I will go for a walk; but it is not raining; therefore I will go for a walk’. It is not always clear whether the ‘or’ of the disjunctive premise is inclusive or exclusive. Symbolic logic removes the ambiguity by using two different symbols and thus clearly distinguishes between inclusive or weak disjunction, ‘P 7 Q’, which is true provided not both alternatives are false, and exclusive or strong disjunction, ‘P W Q’, which is true provided exactly one alternative is true and exactly one false. The definition of ‘disjunctive syllogism’ presupposes that the lead premise is an inclusive or weak disjunction, on the basis of which two forms are valid: ‘P 7 Q, -P /, Q’ and ‘P 7 Q, -Q /, P’. If the disjunctive premise is exclusive, we have four valid argument forms, and we should speak here of an exclusive disjunctive syllogism. This is defined as an argument in which either from an exclusive disjunction and the denial of one of its disjuncts we infer the remaining disjunct  ’P W Q, -P /,Q’, and ‘P W Q, -Q /, P’ modus tollendo ponens; or else, from an exclusive disjunction and one of its disjuncts we infer the denial of the remaining disjunct  ’P W Q, P /, -Q’, and ‘P W Q, Q /,-P’ modus ponendo tollens.  “Strictly, ‘argumetum’ is ‘what is argued,’ the passive perfect participle – arguens is the present active participle, ‘argumentatio’ the feminine abstract noun, and ‘argumentarus,’ and ‘argumentarum’ the neuter active future participle. – there is the argumenttaturum, too.”“I thought I saw an argument, it turned to be some soap” (Dodgson). Term that Grice borrows from (but “never returned” to) Boethius, the Roman philosopher. Strictly, Grice is interested in the ‘arguer.’ Say Blackburn goes to Grice and, not knowing Grice speaks English, writes a skull. Blackburn intends Grice to think that there is danger, somewhere, even deadly danger. So there is arguing on Blackburn’s part. And there is INTENDED arguing on Blackburn’s recipient, Grice, as it happens. For Grice, the truth-value of “Blackburn communicates (to Grice) that there is danger” does not REQUIRE the uptake.” “Why, one must just as well require that Jones GETS his job to deem Smith having GIVEN it to him if that’s what he’s promised. The arguer is invoked in a self-psi-transmission. For he must think P, and he must think C, and he must think that P yields C. And this thought that C must be CAUSED by the fact that he thinks that P yields C. -- f. argŭo , ŭi, ūtum (ŭĭtum, hence arguiturus, Sall. Fragm. ap. Prisc. p. 882 P.), 3, v. a. cf. ἀργής, white; ἀργός, bright; Sanscr. árgunas, bright; ragatas, white; and rag, to shine (v. argentum and argilla); after the same analogy we have clarus, bright; and claro, to make bright, to make evident; and the Engl. clear, adj., and to clear = to make clear; v. Georg Curtius p. 171.  I. A.. In gen., to make clear, to show, prove, make known, declare, assert, μηνύειν: “arguo Eam me vidisse intus,” Plaut. Mil. 2, 3, 66: “non ex auditu arguo,” id. Bacch. 3, 3, 65: “M. Valerius Laevinus ... speculatores, non legatos, venisse arguebat,” Liv. 30, 23: “degeneres animos timor arguit,” Verg. A. 4, 13: “amantem et languor et silentium Arguit,” Hor. Epod. 11, 9; id. C. 1, 13, 7.—Pass., in a mid. signif.: “apparet virtus arguiturque malis,” makes itself known, Ov. Tr. 4, 3, 80: “laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus,” betrays himself, Hor. Ep. 1, 19, 6.— B. Esp. a. With aliquem, to attempt to show something, in one's case, against him, to accuse, reprove, censure, charge with: Indicāsse est detulisse; “arguisse accusāsse et convicisse,” Dig. 50, 16, 197 (cf. Fest. p. 22: Argutum iri in discrimen vocari): tu delinquis, ego arguar pro malefactis? Enn. (as transl. of Eurip. Iphig. Aul. 384: Εἶτ̓ ἐγὼ δίκην δῶ σῶν κακῶν ὁ μὴ σφαλείς) ap. Rufin. § “37: servos ipsos neque accuso neque arguo neque purgo,” Cic. Rosc. Am. 41, 120: “Pergin, sceleste, intendere hanc arguere?” Plaut. Mil. 2, 4, 27; 2, 2, 32: “hae tabellae te arguunt,” id. Bacch. 4, 6, 10: “an hunc porro tactum sapor arguet oris?” Lucr. 4, 487: “quod adjeci, non ut arguerem, sed ne arguerer,” Vell. 2, 53, 4: “coram aliquem arguere,” Liv. 43, 5: “apud praefectum,” Tac. A. 14, 41: “(Deus) arguit te heri,” Vulg. Gen. 31, 42; ib. Lev. 19, 17; ib. 2 Tim. 4, 2; ib. Apoc. 3, 19 al.— b. With the cause of complaint in the gen.; abl. with or without de; with in with abl.; with acc.; with a clause as object; or with ut (cf. Ramsh. p. 326; Zumpt, § 446). (α). With gen.: “malorum facinorum,” Plaut. Ps. 2, 4, 56 (cf. infra, argutus, B. 2.): “aliquem probri, Stupri, dedecoris,” id. Am. 3, 2, 2: “viros mortuos summi sceleris,” Cic. Rab. Perd. 9, 26: “aliquem tanti facinoris,” id. Cael. 1: “criminis,” Tac. H. 1, 48: “furti me arguent,” Vulg. Gen. 30, 33; ib. Eccl. 11, 8: “repetundarum,” Tac. A. 3, 33: “occupandae rei publicae,” id. ib. 6, 10: “neglegentiae,” Suet. Caes. 53: “noxae,” id. Aug. 67: “veneni in se comparati,” id. Tib. 49: “socordiae,” id. Claud. 3: “mendacii,” id. Oth. 10: “timoris,” Verg. A. 11, 384: “sceleris arguemur,” Vulg. 4 Reg. 7, 9; ib. Act. 19, 40 al.— (β). With abl.: “te hoc crimine non arguo,” Cic. Verr. 2, 5, 18; Nep. Paus. 3 fin.— (γ). With de: “de eo crimine, quo de arguatur,” Cic. Inv 2, 11, 37: “de quibus quoniam verbo arguit, etc.,” id. Rosc. Am. 29 fin.: “Quis arguet me de peccato?” Vulg. Joan. 8, 46; 16, 8.— (δ). With in with abl. (eccl. Lat.): “non in sacrificiis tuis arguam te,” Vulg. Psa. 49, 8.—ε) With acc.: quid undas Arguit et liquidam molem camposque natantīs? of what does he impeach the waves? etc., quid being here equivalent to cujus or de quo, Lucr. 6, 405 Munro.—ζ) With an inf.-clause as object: “quae (mulier) me arguit Hanc domo ab se subripuisse,” Plaut. Men. 5, 2, 62; id. Mil. 2, 4, 36: “occidisse patrem Sex. Roscius arguitur,” Cic. Rosc. Am. 13, 37: “auctor illius injuriae fuisse arguebatur?” Cic. Verr. 2, 1, 33: “qui sibimet vim ferro intulisse arguebatur,” Suet. Claud. 16; id. Ner. 33; id. Galb. 7: “me Arguit incepto rerum accessisse labori,” Ov. M. 13, 297; 15, 504.—η) With ut, as in Gr. ὡς (post-Aug. and rare), Suet. Ner. 7: “hunc ut dominum et tyrannum, illum ut proditorem arguentes,” as being master and tyrant, Just. 22, 3.— II. Transf. to the thing. 1. To accuse, censure, blame: “ea culpa, quam arguo,” Liv. 1, 28: “peccata coram omnibus argue,” Vulg. 1 Tim. 5, 20: “tribuni plebis dum arguunt in C. Caesare regni voluntatem,” Vell. 2, 68; Suet. Tit. 5 fin.: “taciturnitatem pudoremque quorumdam pro tristitiā et malignitate arguens,” id. Ner. 23; id. Caes. 75: “arguebat et perperam editos census,” he accused of giving a false statement of property, census, id. Calig. 38: “primusque animalia mensis Arguit imponi,” censured, taught that it was wrong, Ov. M. 15, 73: “ut non arguantur opera ejus,” Vulg. Joan. 3, 20.— 2. Trop., to denounce as false: “quod et ipsum Fenestella arguit,” Suet. Vit. Ter. p. 292 Roth.—With reference to the person, to refute, confute: “aliquem,” Suet. Calig. 8.—Hence, argūtus , a, um, P. a. A. Of physical objects, clear. 1. To the sight, bright, glancing, lively: “manus autem minus arguta, digitis subsequens verba, non exprimens,” not too much in motion, Cic. de Or. 3, 59, 220 (cf. id. Or. 18, 59: nullae argutiae digitorum, and Quint. 11, 3, 119-123): “manus inter agendum argutae admodum et gestuosae,” Gell. 1, 5, 2: “et oculi nimis arguti, quem ad modum animo affecti sumus, loquuntur,” Cic. Leg. 1, 9, 27: “ocelli,” Ov. Am. 3, 3, 9; 3, 2, 83: “argutum caput,” a head graceful in motion, Verg. G. 3, 80 (breve, Servius, but this idea is too prosaic): aures breves et argutae, ears that move quickly (not stiff, rigid), Pall. 4, 13, 2: “argutā in soleā,” in the neat sandal, Cat. 68, 72.— 2. a.. To the hearing, clear, penetrating, piercing, both of pleasant and disagreeable sounds, clear-sounding, sharp, noisy, rustling, whizzing, rattling, clashing, etc. (mostly poet.): linguae, Naev. ap. Non. p. 9, 24: “aves,” Prop. 1, 18, 30: “hirundo,” chirping, Verg. G. 1, 377: “olores,” tuneful, id. E. 9, 36: ilex, murmuring, rustling (as moved by the wind), id. ib. 7, 1: “nemus,” id. ib. 8, 22 al.—Hence, a poet. epithet of the musician and poet, clear-sounding, melodious: “Neaera,” Hor. C. 3, 14, 21: “poëtae,” id. Ep. 2, 2, 90: “fama est arguti Nemesis formosa Tibullus,” Mart. 8, 73, 7: forum, full of bustle or din, noisy, Ov. A.A. 1, 80: “serra,” grating, Verg. G. 1, 143: “pecten,” rattling, id. ib. 1, 294; id. A. 7, 14 (cf. in Gr. κερκὶς ἀοιδός, Aristoph. Ranae, v. 1316) al.—Hence, of rattling, prating, verbose discourse: “sine virtute argutum civem mihi habeam pro preaeficā, etc.,” Plaut. Truc. 2, 6, 14: “[Neque mendaciloquom neque adeo argutum magis],” id. Trin. 1, 2, 163 Ritschl.— b. Trop., of written communications, rattling, wordy, verbose: “obviam mihi litteras quam argutissimas de omnibus rebus crebro mittas,” Cic. Att. 6, 5: vereor, ne tibi nimium arguta haec sedulitas videatur, Cael. ap. Cic. Fam. 8, 1. —Transf. to omens, clear, distinct, conclusive, clearly indicative, etc.: “sunt qui vel argutissima haec exta esse dicant,” Cic. Div. 2, 12 fin.: “non tibi candidus argutum sternuit omen Amor?” Prop. 2, 3, 24.— 3. To the smell; sharp, pungent: “odor argutior,” Plin. 15, 3, 4, § 18.— 4. To the taste; sharp, keen, pungent: “sapor,” Pall. 3, 25, 4; 4, 10, 26.— B. Of mental qualities. 1. In a good sense, bright, acute, sagacious, witty: “quis illo (sc. Catone) acerbior in vituperando? in sententiis argutior?” Cic. Brut. 17, 65: “orator,” id. ib. 70, 247: “poëma facit ita festivum, ita concinnum, ita elegans, nihil ut fieri possit argutius,” id. Pis. 29; so, “dicta argutissima,” id. de Or. 2, 61, 250: “sententiae,” id. Opt. Gen. 2: “acumen,” Hor. A. P. 364: “arguto ficta dolore queri,” dexterously-feigned pain, Prop. 1, 18, 26 al.— 2. In a bad sense, sly, artful, cunning: “meretrix,” Hor. S. 1, 10, 40: calo. id. Ep. 1, 14, 42: “milites,” Veg. Mil. 3, 6.—As a pun: ecquid argutus est? is he cunning? Ch. Malorum facinorum saepissime (i.e. has been accused of), Plaut. Ps. 2, 4, 56 (v. supra, I. B. a.).—Hence, adv.: argūtē (only in the signif. of B.). a. Subtly, acutely: “respondere,” Cic. Cael. 8: “conicere,” id. Brut. 14, 53: “dicere,” id. Or. 28, 98.—Comp.: “dicere,” Cic. Brut. 11, 42.— Sup.: “de re argutissime disputare,” Cic. de Or. 2, 4, 18.— b. Craftily: “obrepere,” Plaut. Trin. 4, 2, 132; Arn. 5, p. 181. For Grice, an argumentum is a sequence of statements such that some of them the premises purport to give reason to accept another of them, the conclusion. Since we speak of bad arguments and weak arguments, the premises of an argument need not really support the conclusion, but they must give some appearance of doing so or the term ‘argument’ is misapplied. Logic is mainly concerned with the question of validity: whether if the premises are true we would have reason to accept the conclusion. A valid argument with true premises is called sound. A valid deductive argument is one such that if we accept the premises we are logically bound to accept the conclusion and if we reject the conclusion we are logically bound to reject one or more of the premises. Alternatively, the premises logically entail the conclusion. A good inductive argument  some would reserve ‘valid’ for deductive arguments  is one such that if we accept the premises we are logically bound to regard the conclusion as probable, and, in addition, as more probable than it would be if the premises should be false. A few arguments have only one premise and/or more than one conclusion.  Then there’s the argumentum a fortiori: According to Grice, an argument that moves from the premises that everything which possesses a certain characteristics will possess some further characteristics and that certain things possess the relevant characteristics to an eminent degree to the conclusion that a fortiori even more so these things will possess the further characteristics. The second premise is often left implicit – or implicated, as Grice prefers, so a fortiori arguments are often enthymemes. A favourite illustration by Grice of an a fortiori argument can be found in Plato’s Crito. We owe gratitude and respect to our parents and so should do nothing to harm them. However, athenians owe even greater gratitude and respect to the laws of Athens. Therefore, a fortiori, Athenians should do nothing to harm those laws. 

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