T
T SUBJECT INDEX: TRANSCENDENTALE
T: NAME INDEX ITALIAN: TELESIO – TERTULLIANO -- TRABIA
T: NAME INDEX ENGLISH: THOMSON (Grice’s collaborator)
-- TURING TOULMIN
tautologum: The difference between a truth and a tautological
truth is part of the dogma Grice defends. “A three-year old cannot understand
Russell’s theory of types” is possibly true. “It is not the case that a
three-year old is an adult” is TAUTOLOGICALLY true. As Strawson and Wiggins
note, by coining implicaturum Grice is mainly interested in having the MAN
implying this or that, as opposed to what the man implies implying this or
that. So, in Strawson and Wiggins’s rephrasing, the implicaturum is to be
distinguished with the logical and necessary implication, i. e., the
‘tautological’ implication. Grice uses ‘tautological’ variously. It is
tautological that we smell smells, for example. This is an extension of
‘paradigm-case,’ re: analyticity. Without ‘analytic’ there is no
‘tautologicum.’ tautŏlŏgĭa , ae, f., = ταυτολογία,I.a repetition of the same meaning in different words, tautology, Mart. Cap. 5, § 535; Charis,
p. 242 P. ταὐτολογ-έω ,A.repeat what has been
said, “περί τινος” Plb.1.1.3; “ὑπέρ τινος” Id.1.79.7; “τ. τὸν λόγον” Str.12.3.27:—abs., Plb.36.12.2, Phld. Po.Herc.994.30, Hermog.Inv.3.15.
Oddly why Witters restricts tautology to truth-table propositional logic,
Grice’s two examples are predicate calculus: Women are women and war is war.
4.46 GER [→OGD | →P/M] Unter den möglichen Gruppen von Wahrheitsbedingungen
gibt es zwei extreme Fälle. In dem einen Fall ist der Satz für sämtliche
Wahrheitsmöglichkeiten der Elementarsätze wahr. Wir sagen, die
Wahrheitsbedingungen sind t a u t o l o g i s c h. Im zweiten Fall ist der Satz
für sämtliche Wahrheitsmöglichkeiten falsch: Die Wahrheitsbedingungen sind k o
n t r a d i k t o r i s c h. Im ersten Fall nennen wir den Satz eine
Tautologie, im zweiten Fall eine Kontradiktion. 4.461 GER [→OGD | →P/M] Der
Satz zeigt was er sagt, die Tautologie und die Kontradiktion, dass sie nichts
sagen. Die Tautologie hat keine Wahrheitsbedingungen, denn sie ist
bedingungslos wahr; und die Kontradiktion ist unter keiner Bedingung wahr.
Tautologie und Kontradiktion sind sinnlos. (Wie der Punkt, von dem zwei Pfeile
in entgegengesetzter Richtung auseinandergehen.) (Ich weiß z. B. nichts über
das Wetter, wenn ich weiß, dass es regnet oder nicht regnet.) 4.4611 GER [→OGD
| →P/M] Tautologie und Kontradiktion sind aber nicht unsinnig; sie gehören zum
Symbolismus, und zwar ähnlich wie die „0“ zum Symbolismus der Arithmetik. 4.462
GER [→OGD | →P/M] Tautologie und Kontradiktion sind nicht Bilder der
Wirklichkeit. Sie stellen keine mögliche Sachlage dar. Denn jene lässt j e d e
mögliche Sachlage zu, diese k e i n e. In der Tautologie heben die Bedingungen
der Übereinstimmung mit der Welt—die darstellenden Beziehungen—einander auf, so
dass sie in keiner darstellenden Beziehung zur Wirklichkeit steht. 4.463 GER
[→OGD | →P/M] Die Wahrheitsbedingungen bestimmen den Spielraum, der den Tatsachen
durch den Satz gelassen wird. (Der Satz, das Bild, das Modell, sind im
negativen Sinne wie ein fester Körper, der die Bewegungsfreiheit der anderen
beschränkt; im positiven Sinne, wie der von fester Substanz begrenzte Raum,
worin ein Körper Platz hat.) Die Tautologie lässt der Wirklichkeit den
ganzen—unendlichen—logischen Raum; die Kontradiktion erfüllt den ganzen
logischen Raum und lässt der Wirklichkeit keinen Punkt. Keine von beiden kann
daher die Wirklichkeit irgendwie bestimmen. 4.464 GER [→OGD | →P/M] Die
Wahrheit der Tautologie ist gewiss, des Satzes möglich, der Kontradiktion
unmöglich. (Gewiss, möglich, unmöglich: Hier haben wir das Anzeichen jener
Gradation, die wir in der Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre brauchen.) 4.465 GER [→OGD |
→P/M] Das logische Produkt einer Tautologie und eines Satzes sagt dasselbe, wie
der Satz. Also ist jenes Produkt identisch mit dem Satz. Denn man kann das
Wesentliche des Symbols nicht ändern, ohne seinen Sinn zu ändern. 4.466 GER
[→OGD | →P/M] Einer bestimmten logischen Verbindung von Zeichen entspricht eine
bestimmte logische Verbindung ihrer Bedeutungen; j e d e b e l i e - b i g e
Verbindung entspricht nur den unverbundenen Zeichen. Das heißt, Sätze, die für
jede Sachlage wahr sind, können überhaupt keine Zeichenverbindungen sein, denn
sonst könnten ihnen nur bestimmte Verbindungen von Gegenständen entsprechen.
(Und keiner logischen Verbindung entspricht k e i n e Verbindung der
Gegenstände.) Tautologie und Kontradiktion sind die Grenzfälle der
Zeichenverbindung, nämlich ihre Auflösung. 4.4661 GER [→OGD | →P/M] Freilich
sind auch in der Tautologie und Kontradiktion die Zeichen noch mit einander
verbunden, d. h. sie stehen in Beziehungen zu einander, aber diese Beziehungen
sind bedeu- tungslos, dem S y m b o l unwesentlich. 4.46 OGD [→GER | →P/M]
Among the possible groups of truthconditions there are two extreme cases. In
the one case the proposition is true for all the truth-possibilities of the
elementary propositions. We say that the truth-conditions are tautological. In the
second case the proposition is false for all the truth-possibilities. The
truth-conditions are self-contradictory. In the first case we call the
proposition a tautology, in the second case a contradiction. 4.461 OGD [→GER |
→P/M] The proposition shows what it says, the tautology and the contradiction
that they say nothing. The tautology has no truth-conditions, for it is
unconditionally true; and the contradiction is on no condition true. Tautology
and contradiction are without sense. (Like the point from which two arrows go
out in opposite directions.) (I know, e.g. nothing about the weather, when I
know that it rains or does not rain.) 4.4611 OGD [→GER | →P/M] Tautology and
contradiction are, however, not nonsensical; they are part of the symbol- ism, in
the same way that “0” is part of the symbolism of Arithmetic. 4.462 OGD [→GER |
→P/M] Tautology and contradiction are not pictures of the reality. They present
no possible state of affairs. For the one allows every possible state of
affairs, the other none. In the tautology the conditions of agreement with the
world—the presenting relations— cancel one another, so that it stands in no
presenting relation to reality. 4.463 OGD [→GER | →P/M] The truth-conditions
determine the range, which is left to the facts by the proposition. (The
proposition, the picture, the model, are in a negative sense like a solid body,
which restricts the free movement of another: in a positive sense, like the
space limited by solid substance, in which a body may be placed.) Tautology
leaves to reality the whole infinite logical space; contradiction fills the
whole logi- cal space and leaves no point to reality. Neither of them,
therefore, can in any way determine reality. 4.464 OGD [→GER | →P/M] The truth
of tautology is certain, of propositions possible, of contradiction impossible.
(Certain, possible, impossible: here we have an indication of that gradation
which we need in the theory of probability.) 4.465 OGD [→GER | →P/M] The
logical product of a tautology and a proposition says the same as the
proposition. Therefore that product is identical with the proposition. For the
essence of the symbol cannot be altered without altering its sense. 4.466 OGD
[→GER | →P/M] To a definite logical combination of signs corresponds a definite
logical combination of their meanings; every arbitrary combination only
corresponds to the unconnected signs. That is, propositions which are true for
ev- ery state of affairs cannot be combinations of signs at all, for otherwise
there could only correspond to them definite combinations of objects. (And to
no logical combination corresponds no combination of the objects.) Tautology
and contradiction are the limiting cases of the combination of symbols, namely
their dissolution. 4.4661 OGD [→GER | →P/M] Of course the signs are also
combined with one another in the tautology and contradiction, i.e. they stand
in relations to one another, but these relations are meaningless, unessential
to the symbol. 4.46 P/M [→GER | →OGD] Among the possible groups of truthconditions
there are two extreme cases. In one of these cases the proposition is true for
all the truth-possibilities of the elementary propositions. We say that the
truth-conditions are tautological. In the second case the proposition is false
for all the truth-possibilities: the truth-conditions are contradictory. In the
first case we call the proposition a tautology; in the second, a contradiction.
4.461 P/M [→GER | →OGD] Propositions show what they say: tautolo- gies and
contradictions show that they say nothing. A tautology has no truth-conditions,
since it is unconditionally true: and a contradiction is true on no condition.
Tautologies and contradictions lack sense. (Like a point from which two arrows
go out in opposite directions to one another.) (For example, I know nothing
about the weather when I know that it is either raining or not raining.) 4.4611
P/M [→GER | →OGD] Tautologies and contradictions are not, however, nonsensical.
They are part of the symbolism, much as ‘0’ is part of the symbolism of arithmetic.
4.462 P/M [→GER | →OGD] Tautologies and contradictions are not pictures of
reality. They do not represent any possible situations. For the former admit
all possible situations, and latter none. In a tautology the conditions of
agreement with the world—the representational relations—cancel one another, so
that it does not stand in any representational relation to reality. 4.463 P/M
[→GER | →OGD] The truth-conditions of a proposition determine the range that it
leaves open to the facts. (A proposition, a picture, or a model is, in the
negative sense, like a solid body that restricts the freedom of movement of
others, and, in the positive sense, like a space bounded by solid substance in
which there is room for a body.) A tautology leaves open to reality the
whole—the infinite whole—of logical space: a contradiction fills the whole of
logical space leaving no point of it for reality. Thus neither of them can
determine reality in any way. 4.464 P/M [→GER | →OGD] A tautology’s truth is
certain, a proposition’s possible, a contradiction’s impossible. (Certain,
possible, impossible: here we have the first indication of the scale that we
need in the theory of probability.) 4.465 P/M [→GER | →OGD] The logical product
of a tautology and a proposition says the same thing as the proposition. This
product, therefore, is identical with the proposition. For it is impossible to
alter what is essential to a symbol without altering its sense. 4.466 P/M [→GER
| →OGD] What corresponds to a determinate logical combination of signs is a
determinate logical combination of their meanings. It is only to the uncombined
signs that absolutely any combination corresponds. In other words, propositions
that are true for every situation cannot be combinations of signs at all, since,
if they were, only determinate combinations of objects could correspond to
them. (And what is not a logical combination has no combination of objects
corresponding to it.) Tautology and contradiction are the limiting cases—indeed
the disintegration—of the combination of signs. 4.4661 P/M [→GER | →OGD]
Admittedly the signs are still combined with one another even in tautologies
and contradictions—i.e. they stand in certain relations to one another: but
these relations have no meaning, they are not essential to the symbol. Grice
would often use ‘tautological,’ and ‘self-contradiction’ presupposes
‘analyticity,’ or rather the analytic-synthetic distinction. Is it
contradictory, or a self-contradiction, to say that one’s neighbour’s
three-year-old child is an adult? Is there an implicaturum for ‘War is not
war’? Grice refers to Bayes in WOW re Grices paradox, and to crazy Bayesy, as
Peter Achinstein does (Newton was crazy, but not Bayesy). We can
now, in principle, characterize the desirability of the action a 1 , relative
to each end (E1 and E2), and to each combination of ends (here just E1 and E2),
as a function of the desirability of the end and the probability that the
action a 1 will realize that end, or combination of ends. If we envisage a
range of possible actions, which includes a 1 together with other actions, we
can imagine that each such action has a certain degree of desirability relative
to each end (E1 and (or) E2) and to their combination. If we suppose that, for
each possible action, these desirabilities can be compounded (perhaps added),
then we can suppose that one particular possible action scored higher (in
actiondesirability relative to these ends) than any alternative possible
action; and that this is the action which wins out; that is, is the action
which is, or at least should, end p.105 be performed. (The computation would in
fact be more complex than I have described, once account is taken of the fact
that the ends involved are often not definite (determinate) states of
affairs (like becoming President), but are variable in respect of the
degree to which they might be realized (if ones end is to make a profit from a
deal, that profit might be of a varying magnitude); so one would have to
consider not merely the likelihood of a particular actions realizing the end of
making a profit, but also the likelihood of its realizing that end to this or
that degree; and this would considerably complicate the computational problem.)
No doubt most readers are far too sensible ever to have entertained any picture
even remotely resembling the "Crazy-Bayesy" one I have just
described. Grice was fascinated by the fact that paradox translates the
Grecian neuter paradoxon. Some of the paradoxes of entailment, entailment and
paradoxes. This is not the first time Grice uses paradox. As a classicist, he
was aware of the nuances between paradox (or paradoxon, as he preferred, via
Latin paradoxum, and aporia, for example. He was interested in Strawsons
treatment of this or that paradox of entailment. He even called his own paradox
involving if and probablility Grices paradox. tautologicum: Grice gives two examples: War is war, and Women are
women – “Note that “Men are men” sounds contingent.” tautology, a proposition
whose negation is inconsistent, or self- contradictory, e.g. ‘Socrates is
Socrates’, ‘Every human is either male or nonmale’, ‘No human is both male and
non-male’, ‘Every human is identical to itself’, ‘If Socrates is human then
Socrates is human’. A proposition that is or is logically equivalent to the
negation of a tautology is called a self-contradiction. According to classical
logic, the property of being Tao Te Ching tautology 902 902 implied by its own negation is a
necessary and sufficient condition for being a tautology and the property of
implying its own negation is a necessary and sufficient condition for being a
contradiction. Tautologies are logically necessary and contradictions are
logically impossible. Epistemically, every proposition that can be known to be
true by purely logical reasoning is a tautology and every proposition that can
be known to be false by purely logical reasoning is a contradiction. The
converses of these two statements are both controversial among classical
logicians. Every proposition in the same logical form as a tautology is a
tautology and every proposition in the same logical form as a contradiction is
a contradiction. For this reason sometimes a tautology is said to be true in
virtue of form and a contradiction is said to be false in virtue of form; being
a tautology and being a contradiction tautologousness and contradictoriness are
formal properties. Since the logical form of a proposition is determined by its
logical terms ‘every’, ‘some’, ‘is’, etc., a tautology is sometimes said to be
true in virtue of its logical terms and likewise mutatis mutandis for a
contradiction. Since tautologies do not exclude any logical possibilities they
are sometimes said to be “empty” or “uninformative”; and there is a tendency
even to deny that they are genuine propositions and that knowledge of them is
genuine knowledge. Since each contradiction “includes” implies all logical
possibilities which of course are jointly inconsistent, contradictions are
sometimes said to be “overinformative.” Tautologies and contradictions are sometimes
said to be “useless,” but for opposite reasons. More precisely, according to
classical logic, being implied by each and every proposition is necessary and
sufficient for being a tautology and, coordinately, implying each and every
proposition is necessary and sufficient for being a contradiction. Certain
developments in mathematical logic, especially model theory and modal logic,
seem to support use of Leibniz’s expression ‘true in all possible worlds’ in
connection with tautologies. There is a special subclass of tautologies called
truth-functional tautologies that are true in virtue of a special subclass of
logical terms called truthfunctional connectives ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘if’,
etc.. Some logical writings use ‘tautology’ exclusively for truth-functional
tautologies and thus replace “tautology” in its broad sense by another
expression, e.g. ‘logical truth’. Tarski, Gödel, Russell, and many other
logicians have used the word in its broad sense, but use of it in its narrow
sense is widespread and entirely acceptable. Propositions known to be
tautologies are often given as examples of a priori knowledge. In philosophy of
mathematics, the logistic hypothesis of logicism is the proposition that every
true proposition of pure mathematics is a tautology. Some writers make a sharp
distinction between the formal property of being a tautology and the non-formal
metalogical property of being a law of logic. For example, ‘One is one’ is not
metalogical but it is a tautology, whereas ‘No tautology is a contradiction’ is
metalogical but is not a tautology.
telementationalism: see psi-transmission. The coinage is interesting.
Since Grice has an essay on ‘modest mentalism,’ and would often use ‘mental’
for ‘psychological,’ it does make sense. ‘Ideationalism’ is analogous. this is
a special note, or rather, a very moving proem, on Grices occasion of
delivering his lectures on ‘Aspects of reason and reasoning’ at Oxford as the
Locke Lectures at Merton. Particularly apt in mentioning, with humility, his
having failed, *thrice* [sic] to obtain the Locke lectureship, Strawson did, at
once, but feeling safe under the ægis of that great English philosopher (viz.
Locke! always implicated, never explicited) now. Grice starts the proem in a
very moving, shall we say, emotional, way: I find it difficult to convey to you
just how happy I am, and how honoured I feel, in being invited to give these
lectures. Difficult, but not impossible. I think of this university and this
city, it has a cathedral, which were my home for thirty-six years, as my
spiritual and intellectual parents. The almost majestic plural is Grices
implicaturum to the town and gown! Whatever I am was originally fashioned here;
I never left Oxford, Oxford made me, and I find it a moving experience to be,
within these splendid and none too ancient walls, once more engaged in my old
occupation of rendering what is clear obscure, by flouting the desideratum of
conversational clarity and the conversational maxim, avoid obscurity of
expression, under be perspicuous [sic]!. Grices implicaturum on none too
ancient seems to be addressed to the truly ancient walls that saw Athenian
dialectic! On the other hand, Grices funny variant on the obscurum per
obscurius ‒ what Baker found as Grices skill in rendering an orthodoxy into a
heterodoxy! Almost! By clear Grice implicates Lewis and his clarity is not
enough! I am, at the same time, proud of my mid-Atlantic [two-world] status,
and am, therefore, delighted that the Old World should have called me in, or
rather recalled me, to redress, for once, the balance of my having left her for
the New. His implicaturum seems to be: Strictly, I never left? Grice concludes
his proem: I am, finally, greatly heartened by my consciousness of the fact
that that great English philosopher, under whose ægis I am now speaking, has in
the late afternoon of my days extended to me his Lectureship as a gracious
consolation for a record threefold denied to me, in my early morning, of his
Prize. I pray that my present offerings may find greater favour in his sight
than did those of long ago. They did! Even if Locke surely might have found
favour to Grices former offerings, too, Im sure. Refs.: The allusions to Locke
are in “Aspects.” Good references under ‘ideationalism,’ above, especially in
connection with Myro’s ‘modest mentalism,’ The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
telesio: philosopher whose empiricism influences Francis Bacon
and Galileo. Telesio studies in Padova, where he completed his doctorate, and practiced philosophy in Naples and Cosenza
without holding any academic position. His major oeuvre, “De rerum natura iuxta
propria principia,” contains an attempt to interpret nature on the basis of its
own principles, which Telesio identifies with the two incorporeal active forces
of heat and cold, and the corporeal and passive physical substratum. As the two
active forces permeate all of nature and are endowed with sensation, Telesio
argues that all of nature possesses some degree of sensation. Human beings
share with animals a material substance produced by heat and coming into
existence with the body, called spirit. They are also given a mind by God.
Telesio knew various interpretations of Aristotle. However, Telesio broke with foreign exegeses, criticizing
Aristotle’s Physics and claiming that nature is investigated better by the
senses than by the intellect. Bernardino Telesio (n.
Cosenza) è stato un filosofo. Mentre le sue teorie naturali sono state
successivamente smentite, la sua enfasi sull'osservazione fece il "primo
dei moderni" che alla fine hanno sviluppato il metodo
scientifico. Telesio è nato da genitori nobili in Cosenza , una
città in Calabria, Italia meridionale. È stato istruito a Milano dallo zio,
Antonio, lui stesso uno studioso e poeta di eminenza, e poi a Roma e Padova . I
suoi studi hanno incluso tutta la vasta gamma di argomenti, classici , scienza
e filosofia, che costituivano il curriculum degli rinascimentali sapienti. Così
equipaggiata, ha iniziato il suo attacco sul aristotelismo medievale che poi
fiorì a Padova e Bologna . Nel 1553 si sposò e si stabilì a Cosenza, diventando
il fondatore dell'Accademia Cosentina . Per un certo periodo ha vissuto nella
casa di Alfonso III Carafa , duca di Nocera. Nel 1563, o forse due anni più
tardi, apparve la sua grande opera De Rerum Natura Iuxta Propria Principia (
Sulla natura delle cose secondo i loro propri principi ), seguito da un gran
numero di opere scientifiche e filosofiche di importanza sussidiaria. Le
opinioni eterodosse, che ha mantenuto suscitato l'ira della Chiesa per conto
del suo amato aristotelismo , e poco tempo dopo la sua morte i suoi libri sono
stati immessi sul Index. Steepto Teoria della materia, calore e
freddo Invece di postulare materia e forma, si basa l'esistenza sulla materia e
la forza. Questa forza ha due elementi opposti: calore, che si espande, e
fredde, che i contratti. Questi due processi rappresentano tutte le diverse
forme e tipi di esistenza, mentre la massa su cui opera la forza rimane la
stessa. L'armonia del tutto consiste nel fatto che ogni cosa separata sviluppa
in sé e per sé conformemente alla sua natura e allo stesso tempo il suo moto
avvantaggia il resto. I difetti evidenti di questa teoria, (1) che solo i sensi
possono non comprendere materia stessa, (2) che non è chiaro come la
molteplicità dei fenomeni potrebbe derivare da queste due forze, pensato non è
meno convincente di Aristotles caldo / freddo , secca spiegazione / umido, e
(3) che ha addotto alcuna prova per dimostrare l'esistenza di queste due forze,
sono stati sottolineato a suo tempo dal suo allievo, Patrizzi . Inoltre,
la sua teoria della terra fredda a riposo e il sole caldo in moto era destinato
a confutazione per mano di Copernico . Allo stesso tempo, la teoria era sufficientemente
coerente per fare una grande impressione sul pensiero italiano. Va ricordato,
però, che la sua obliterazione di una distinzione tra superlunar e fisica
sublunare era certamente abbastanza preveggente anche se non riconosciuto dai
suoi successori come particolarmente degno di nota. Quando Telesio ha
continuato a spiegare la relazione tra mente e materia, era ancora più
eterodossa. Forze materiali sono, per ipotesi, in grado di sentire; questione
deve anche essere stato fin dal primo dotato di coscienza. Per la coscienza
esiste, e non avrebbe potuto essere sviluppato dal nulla. Questo lo porta a una
forma di ilozoismo . Anche in questo caso, l'anima è influenzato dalle
condizioni materiali; di conseguenza, l'anima deve avere un esistenza
materiale. Ha inoltre dichiarato che tutta la conoscenza è sensazione (
"non-ratione sensu sed") e che l'intelligenza è, quindi, un
agglomerato di dati isolati, in sensi. Non lo fa, però, riesce a spiegare come
solo i sensi possono percepire la differenza e identità. Alla fine del
suo schema, probabilmente in ossequio alla teologiche pregiudizi, ha aggiunto
un elemento che era completamente estraneo, vale a dire, un impulso più alto,
un'anima sovrapposta da Dio, in virtù della quale ci sforziamo di là del mondo
sensibile. Questa anima divina non è affatto un concetto completamente nuovo,
se visto nel contesto di Averroestic o tommasiana teoria percettiva.
L'intero sistema di Telesio mostra lacune nella sua tesi, e l'ignoranza dei
fatti, ma allo stesso tempo è un precursore di tutte le successive
dell'empirismo , scientifico e filosofico, e segna chiaramente il periodo di
transizione da autorità e la ragione di sperimentare e individuale
responsabilità. Il ricorso a dati sensoriali Statua di Bernardino
Telesio in Piazza XV Marzo, Cosenza Telesio era il capo del grande movimento
italiano del sud, che ha protestato contro l'autorità accettata della ragione
astratta e semina i semi da cui spuntavano i metodi scientifici di Tommaso
Campanella e Giordano Bruno , di Francis Bacon e René Descartes , con i loro
risultati ampiamente divergenti. Egli, quindi, ha abbandonato la sfera
puramente intellettuale e ha proposto un'indagine sui dati forniti dai sensi,
dai quali ha ricoperto che tutta la vera conoscenza viene veramente (la sua teoria
della percezione sensoriale era essenzialmente una rielaborazione della teoria
di Aristotele dal De anima ). Telesio scrive all'inizio del Proemio del
primo libro della terza edizione del De Rerum Natura Iuxta propria principia
Libri Ix ... "che la costruzione del mondo e la grandezza dei corpi in
esso contenuti, e la natura del mondo, è da ricercare non dalla ragione, come è
stato fatto dagli antichi, ma è da intendersi per mezzo di osservazione."
( Mundi constructionem, corporumque in eo contentorum magnitudinem, naturamque
non ratione, quod antiquioribus factum est, inquirendam, sed sensu
percipiendam. ) Questa affermazione, che si trova sulla prima pagina, riassume
ciò che molti studiosi moderni hanno generalmente considerato filosofia
telesiana, e spesso sembra che molti non leggere oltre per nella pagina
successiva si imposta il suo caldo teoria / freddo della materia informata, una
teoria che non è chiaramente informato dalla nostra idea moderna di
osservazione. Per Telesio, l'osservazione ( sensu percipiendam ) è un processo
mentale molto più grande di una semplice registrazione dei dati, l'osservazione
comprende anche il pensiero analogico. Anche se Francis Bacon è
generalmente accreditato al giorno d'oggi, con la codificazione di un induttiva
metodo che sottoscrive pienamente l'osservazione come procedura primaria per
l'acquisizione di conoscenze, non era certamente il primo a suggerire che la
percezione sensoriale dovrebbe essere la fonte primaria per la conoscenza. Tra
i filosofi naturali del Rinascimento, questo onore è generalmente conferito a
Telesio. Bacone si riconosce Telesio come "il primo dei moderni" ( De
Telesio autem bene sentimus, atque eum ut amantem veritatis, e Scientiis
utilem, e nonnullorum Placitorum emendatorem & novorum hominum primum
agnoscimus. , Da Bacon De principiis atque originibus ) per mettere
l'osservazione di sopra di tutti gli altri metodi di acquisizione delle
conoscenze sul mondo naturale. Questa frase spesso citata da Bacon, però, è
fuorviante, perché semplifica eccessivamente e travisa l'opinione di Bacone di
Telesio. La maggior parte del saggio di Bacon è un attacco a Telesio e questa
frase, invariabilmente fuori contesto, ha facilitato un malinteso generale
della filosofia naturale telesiana dando ad essa un timbro baconiana di
approvazione, che era lontano dalle intenzioni originali di Bacon. Bacone vede
in Telesio un alleato nella lotta contro l'antica autorità, ma ha poco positivo
da dire su specifiche teorie di Telesio. Ciò che forse colpisce di più De
Rerum Natura è il tentativo di Telesio di meccanizzare il più possibile.
Telesio si sforza di spiegare tutto chiaramente in termini di materia informati
dalla calda e fredda e per mantenere i suoi argomenti il più semplice
possibile. Quando i suoi colloqui si rivolgono agli esseri umani che introduce
un istinto di auto-conservazione per spiegare le loro motivazioni. E quando
discute la mente umana e la sua capacità di ragionare in astratto su argomenti
immateriali e divine, aggiunge un'anima. Per senza anima, tutto il pensiero,
dal suo ragionamento, sarebbe limitato alle cose materiali. Ciò renderebbe Dio
impensabile e chiaramente questo non era il caso, per l'osservazione dimostra
che la gente pensa di Dio. Telesii, Bernardini (1586). De Rerum Natura Iuxta
Propia Principii, Libri IX . Horatium Saluianum, Napoli. Oltre a De Rerum
Natura , ha scritto: de Somno De la quae in aere fiunt de Mari De cometis
et Circulo Lactea respirationis De USU. Gli appunti Riferimenti Neil C. Van
Deusen, Telesio: primo dei moderni (New York, 1932) link esterno
Wikimedia Commons ha mezzi relativi a Bernardino Telesio . Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry De La sua, Quae in aere Sunt, & de
Terraemotibus - piena facsimile digitale a Linda Hall Library. Refs.:
Luigi Speranza, “Telesio e Grice,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The
Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
Trutfetter
tempus: cited by Grice and Myro in the Grice-Myro theory of
identity. tense logic, an extension of classical logic introduced by Arthur
Prior Past, Present, and Future, 7, involving operators P and F for the past
and future tenses, or ‘it was the case that . . .’ and ‘it will be the case
that . . .’. Classical or mathematical logic was developed as a logic of
unchanging mathematical truth, and can be applied to tensed discourse only by
artificial regimentation inspired by mathematical physics, introducing quantification
over “times” or “instants.” Thus ‘It will have been the case that p,’ which
Prior represents simply as FPp, classical logic represents as ‘There [exists]
an instant t and there [exists] an instant tH such that t [is] later than the
present and tH [is] earlier than t, and at tH it [is] the case that pH, or
DtDtH t o‹t8tH ‹t8ptH, where the brackets indicate that the verbs are to be
understood as tenseless. Prior’s motives were in part linguistic to produce a
formalization less removed from natural language than the classical and in part
metaphysical to avoid ontological commitment to such entities as instants. Much
effort was devoted to finding tense-logical principles equivalent to various
classical assertions about the structure of the earlierlater order among
instants; e.g., ‘Between any two instants there is another instant’ corresponds
to the validity of the axioms Pp P PPp and Fp P FFp. Less is expressible using
P and F than is expressible with explicit quantification over instants, and
further operators for ‘since’ and ‘until’ or ‘now’ and ‘then’ have been
introduced by Hans Kamp and others. These are especially important in
combination with quantification, as in ‘When he was in power, all who now
condemn him then praised him.’ As tense is closely related to mood, so tense
logic is closely related to modal logic. As Kripke models for modal logic
consist each of a set X of “worlds” and a relation R of ‘x is an alternative to
y’, so for tense logic they consist each of a set X of “instants” and a relation
R of ‘x is earlier than y’: Thus instants, banished from the syntax or proof
theory, reappear in the semantics or model theory. Modality and tense are both
involved in the issue of future contingents, and one of Prior’s motives was a
desire to produce a formalism in which the views on this topic of ancient,
medieval, and early modern logicians from Aristotle with his “sea fight
tomorrow” and Diodorus Cronos with his “Master Argument” through Ockham to
Peirce could be represented. The most important precursor to Prior’s work on
tense logic was that on many-valued logics by Lukasiewicz, which was motivated
largely by the problem of future contingents. Also related to tense and mood is
aspect, and modifications to represent this grammatical category evaluating
formulas at periods rather than instants of time have also been introduced.
Like modal logic, tense logic has been the object of intensive study in
theoretical computer science, especially in connection with attempts to develop
languages in which properties of programs can be expressed and proved; variants
of tense logic under such labels as “dynamic logic” or “process logic” have
thus been extensively developed for technological rather than philosophical
motives. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “D. H. Mellor on real and irreal time.” applied by
H. P. Grice and G. Myro in the so-called “Grice-Myro theory of identity,” a
time-relative identity, drawing from A. N. Prior, of Oxford, D. Wiggins,
Wykeham professor of logic at Oxford, and Geach (married to an Oxonian donna), time, “a moving image of eternity” Plato;
“the number of movements in respect of the before and after” Aristotle; “the
Life of the Soul in movement as it passes from one stage of act or experience
to another” Plotinus; “a present of things past, memory, a present of things
present, sight, and a present of things future, expectation” Augustine. These
definitions, like all attempts to encapsulate the essence of time in some neat
formula, are unhelpfully circular because they employ temporal notions. Although
time might be too basic to admit of definition, there still are many questions
about time that philosophers have made some progress in answering by analysis
both of how we ordinarily experience and talk about time, and of the
deliverances of science, thereby clarifying and deepening our understanding of
what time is. What follows gives a sample of some of the more important of
these issues. Temporal becoming and the A- and B-theories of time. According to
the B-theory, time consists in nothing but a fixed “B-series” of events running
from earlier to later. The A-theory requires that these events also form an
“A-series” going from the future through the present into the past and,
moreover, shift in respect to these determinations. The latter sort of change,
commonly referred to as “temporal becoming,” gives rise to well-known
perplexities concerning both what does the shifting and the sort of shift
involved. Often it is said that it is the present or now that shifts to
ever-later times. This quickly leads to absurdity. ‘The present’ and ‘now’,
like ‘this time’, are used to refer to a moment of time. Thus, to say that the
present shifts to later times entails that this very moment of time the present
will become some other moment of time and thus cease to be identical
with itself! Sometimes the entity that shifts is the property of nowness or
presentness. The problem is that every event has this property at some time,
namely when it occurs. Thus, what must qualify some event as being now
simpliciter is its having the property of nowness now; and this is the start of
an infinite regress that is vicious because at each stage we are left with an
unexpurgated use of ‘now’, the very term that was supposed to be analyzed in
terms of the property of nowness. If events are to change from being future to
present and from present to past, as is required by temporal becoming, they
must do so in relation to some mysterious transcendent entity, since temporal
relations between events and/or times cannot change. The nature of the shift is
equally perplexing, for it must occur at a particular rate; but a rate of
change involves a comparison between one kind of change and a change of time.
Herein, it is change of time that is compared to change of time, resulting in
the seeming tautology that time passes or shifts at the rate of one second per
second, surely an absurdity since this is not a rate of change at all. Broad
attempted to skirt these perplexities by saying that becoming is sui generis
and thereby defies analysis, which puts him on the side of the mystically
inclined Bergson who thought that it could be known only through an act of
ineffable intuition. To escape the clutches of both perplexity and mysticism,
as well as to satisfy the demand of science to view the world
non-perspectivally, the B-theory attempted to reduce the A-series to the
B-series via a linguistic reduction in which a temporal indexical proposition
reporting an event as past, present, or future is shown to be identical with a
non-indexical proposition reporting a relation of precedence or simultaneity
between it and another event or time. It is generally conceded that such a
reduction fails, since, in general, no indexical proposition is identical with
any non-indexical one, this being due to the fact that one can have a
propositional attitude toward one of them that is not had to the other; e.g., I
can believe that it is now raining without believing that it rains tenselessly
at t 7. The friends of becoming have drawn the wrong moral from this failure that there is a mysterious Mr. X out there
doing “The Shift.” They have overlooked the fact that two sentences can express
different propositions and yet report one and the same event or state of
affairs; e.g., ‘This is water’ and ‘this is a collection of H2O molecules’,
though differing in sense, report the same state of affairs this being water is nothing but this being a
collection of H2O molecules. It could be claimed that the same holds for the
appropriate use of indexical and non-indexical sentences; the tokening at t 7
of ‘Georgie flies at this time at present’ is coreporting with the
non-synonymous ‘Georgie flies tenselessly at t 7’, since Georgie’s flying at
this time is the same event as Georgie’s flying at t 7, given that this time is
t 7. This effects the same ontological reduction of the becoming of events to
their bearing temporal relations to each other as does the linguistic
reduction. The “coreporting reduction” also shows the absurdity of the
“psychological reduction” according to which an event’s being present, etc.,
requires a relation to a perceiver, whereas an event’s having a temporal
relation to another event or time does not require a relation to a perceiver.
Given that Georgie’s flying at this time is identical with Georgie’s flying at
t 7, it follows that one and the same event both does and does not have the
property of requiring relation to a perceiver, thereby violating Leibniz’s law
that identicals are indiscernible. Continuous versus discrete time. Assume that
the instants of time are linearly ordered by the relation R of ‘earlier than’.
To say that this order is continuous is, first, to imply the property of
density or infinite divisibility: for any instants i 1 and i 2 such that Ri1i
2, there is a third instant i 3, such that Ri1i 3 and Ri3i 2. But continuity
implies something more since density allows for “gaps” between the instants, as
with the rational numbers. Think of R as the ‘less than’ relation and the i n
as rationals. To rule out gaps and thereby assure genuine continuity it is
necessary to require in addition to density that every convergent sequence of
instants has a limit. To make this precise one needs a distance measure d
, on pairs of instants, where di m, i n
is interpreted as the lapse of time between i m and i n. The requirement of
continuity proper is then that for any sequence i l , i 2, i 3, . . . , of
instants, if di m i n P 0 as m, n P C, there is a limit instant i ø such that
di n, iø P 0 as n P C. The analogous
property obviously fails for the rationals. But taking the completion of the
rationals by adding in the limit points of convergent sequences yields the real
number line, a genuine continuum. Numerous objections have been raised to the
idea of time as a continuum and to the very notion of the continuum itself.
Thus, it was objected that time cannot be composed of durationless instants
since a stack of such instants cannot produce a non-zero duration. Modern
measure theory resolves this objection. Leibniz held that a continuum cannot be
composed of points since the points in any finite closed interval can be put in
one-to-one correspondence with a smaller subinterval, contradicting the axiom
that the whole is greater than any proper part. What Leibniz took to be a
contradictory feature is now taken to be a defining feature of infinite
collections or totalities. Modern-day Zenoians, while granting the viability of
the mathematical doctrine of the continuum and even the usefulness of its
employment in physical theory, will deny the possibility of its applying to
real-life changes. Whitehead gave an analogue of Zeno’s paradox of the
dichotomy to show that a thing cannot endure in a continuous manner. For if i
1, i 2 is the interval over which the thing is supposed to endure, then the
thing would first have to endure until the instant i 3, halfway between i 1 and
i 2; but before it can endure until i 3, it must first endure until the instant
i 4 halfway between i 1 and i 3, etc. The seductiveness of this paradox rests
upon an implicit anthropomorphic demand that the operations of nature must be
understood in terms of concepts of human agency. Herein it is the demand that
the physicist’s description of a continuous change, such as a runner traversing
a unit spatial distance by performing an infinity of runs of ever-decreasing
distance, could be used as an action-guiding recipe for performing this feat,
which, of course, is impossible since it does not specify any initial or final
doing, as recipes that guide human actions must. But to make this anthropomorphic
demand explicit renders this deployment of the dichotomy, as well as the
arguments against the possibility of performing a “supertask,” dubious.
Anti-realists might deny that we are committed to real-life change being
continuous by our acceptance of a physical theory that employs principles of
mathematical continuity, but this is quite different from the Zenoian claim
that it is impossible for such change to be continuous. To maintain that time
is discrete would require not only abandoning the continuum but also the
density property as well. Giving up either conflicts with the intuition that
time is one-dimensional. For an explanation of how the topological analysis of
dimensionality entails that the dimension of a discrete space is 0, see W.
Hurewicz, Dimension Theory, 1. The philosophical and physics literatures
contain speculations about a discrete time built of “chronons” or temporal
atoms, but thus far such hypothetical entities have not been incorporated into
a satisfactory theory. Absolute versus relative and relational time. In a
scholium to the Principia, Newton declared that “Absolute, true and
mathematical time, of itself and from its own nature, flows equably without
relation to anything external.” There are at least five interrelated senses in which
time was absolute for Newton. First, he thought that there was a
frame-independent relation of simultaneity for events. Second, he thought that
there was a frame-independent measure of duration for non-simultaneous events.
He used ‘flows equably’ not to refer to the above sort of mysterious “temporal
becoming,” but instead to connote the second sense of absoluteness and partly
to indicate two further kinds of absoluteness. To appreciate the latter, note
that ‘flows equably’ is modified by ‘without relation to anything external’.
Here Newton was asserting third sense of ‘absolute’ that the lapse of time
between two events would be what it is even if the distribution and motions of
material bodies were different. He was also presupposing a related form of
absoluteness fourth sense according to which the metric of time is intrinsic to
the temporal interval. Leibniz’s philosophy of time placed him in agreement
with Newton as regards the first two senses of ‘absolute’, which assert the
non-relative or frame-independent nature of time. However, Leibniz was very
much opposed to Newton on the fourth sense of ‘absolute’. According to
Leibniz’s relational conception of time, any talk about the length of a
temporal interval must be unpacked in terms of talk about the relation of the
interval to an extrinsic metric standard. Furthermore, Leibniz used his
principles of sufficient reason and identity of indiscernibles to argue against
a fifth sense of ‘absolute’, implicit in Newton’s philosophy of time, according
to which time is a substratum in which physical events are situated. On the
contrary, the relational view holds that time is nothing over and above the
structure of relations of events. Einstein’s special and general theories of
relativity have direct bearing on parts of these controversies. The special
theory necessitates the abandonment of frame-independent notions of
simultaneity and duration. For any pair of spacelike related events in
Minkowski space-time there is an inertial frame in which the events are simultaneous,
another frame in which the first event is temporally prior, and still a third
in which the second event is temporally prior. And the temporal interval
between two timelike related events depends on the worldline connecting them.
In fact, for any e 0, no matter how
small, there is a worldline connecting the events whose proper length is less
than e. This is the essence of the so-called twin paradox. The general theory
of relativity abandons the third sense of absoluteness since it entails that the
metrical structure of space-time covaries with the distribution of mass-energy
in a manner specified by Einstein’s field equations. But the heart of the
absoluterelational controversy as
focused by the fourth and fifth senses of ‘absolute’ is not settled by relativistic
considerations. Indeed, opponents from both sides of the debate claim to find
support for their positions in the special and general theories. H. P. Grice,
“D. H. Mellor on real and irreal time.” Tempus is ne of Arsitotle’s categories,
along with space – cfr. Kant – and Grice on Strawson’s “Individuals” -- time
slice: used by Grice in two different contexts: personal identity, and identity
in general. In identity in general, Grice draws from Geach and Wiggins, and
with the formal aid of Myro, construct a system of a first-order predicate
calculus with time-relative identity -- a temporal part or stage of any
concrete particular that exists for some interval of time; a three-dimensional
cross section of a fourdimensional object. To think of an object as consisting
of time slices or temporal stages is to think of it as related to time in much
the way that it is related to space: as extending through time as well as
space, rather than as enduring through it. Just as an object made up of spatial
parts is thought of as a whole made up of parts that exist at different
locations, so an object made up of time slices is thought of as a whole made up
of parts or stages that exist at successive times; hence, just as a spatial
whole is only partly present in any space that does not include all its spatial
parts, so a whole made up of time slices is only partly present in any stretch
of time that does not include all its temporal parts. A continuant, by
contrast, is most commonly understood to be a particular that endures through
time, i.e., that is wholly present at each moment at which it exists. To
conceive of an object as a continuant is to conceive of it as related to time
in a very different way from that in which it is related to space. A continuant
does not extend through time as well as space; it does not exist at different
times by virtue of the existence of successive parts of it at those times; it
is the continuant itself that is wholly present at each such time. To conceive
an object as a continuant, therefore, is to conceive it as not made up of
temporal stages, or time slices, at all. There is another, less common, use of
‘continuant’ in which a continuant is understood to be any particular that
exists for some stretch of time, regardless of whether it is the whole of the
particular or only some part of it that is present at each moment of the
particular’s existence. According to this usage, an entity that is made up of
time slices would be a kind of continuant rather than some other kind of
particular. Philosophers have disputed whether ordinary objects such as
cabbages and kings endure through time are continuants or only extend through
time are sequences of time slices. Some argue that to understand the possibility
of change one must think of such objects as sequences of time slices; others
argue that for the same reason one must think of such objects as continuants.
If an object changes, it comes to be different from itself. Some argue that
this would be possible only if an object consisted of distinct, successive
stages; so that change would simply consist in the differences among the
successive temporal parts of an object. Others argue that this view would make
change impossible; that differences among the successive temporal parts of a
thing would no more imply the thing had changed than differences among its
spatial parts would. H. P. Grice, “D. H.
Mellor on real and irreal time.”
terminus – horos – Cicero’s transliteration of the Greianism
--. terminist logic, a school of semantics until its demise in the humanistic
reforms. The chief goal of ‘terminisim’ – or terministic semantics -- is the
elucidation (or conceptual analysis) of the
form, the “exposition,” of a proposition advanced in the context of
Scholastic disputation. The cntral theory of terminisitc semantics concerns
this or that property of this or that term, especially the suppositum.
Terminisic semantics does the work of modern quantification theory. Important
semanticists in the school include Peter of Spain, Sherwood, Burleigh
(Burlaeus), Heytesbury, and Paolo Veneto. terminus
a quo-terminus a quem distinction, the: used by Grice for the starting
point of some process, as opposed to the terminus ad quem, the ending point. E.
g., change is a process that begins from some state, the terminus a quo, and
proceeds to some state at which it ends, the terminus ad quem. In particular,
in the ripening of an apple, the green apple is the terminus a quo and the red
apple is the terminus ad quem.
tertulliano: Roman – Grice says that ‘you’re the cream in my
coffee’ is absurd – “Can you believe it?” -- Adored by Grice because he
believed what he thought was absurd.
theologian, an early father of the Christian church. A layman from
Carthage, he laid the conceptual and linguistic basis for the doctrine of the
Trinity. Though appearing hostile to philosophy “What has Athens to do with
Jerusalem?” and to rationality “It is certain because it is impossible”,
Tertullian was steeped in Stoicism. He denounced all eclecticism not governed
by the normative tradition of Christian doctrine, yet commonly used
philosophical argument and Stoic concepts e.g., the corporeality of God and the
soul. Despite insisting on the sole authority of the New Testament apostles, he
joined with Montanism, which taught that the Holy Spirit was still inspiring
prophecy concerning moral discipline. Reflecting this interest in the Spirit,
Tertullian pondered the distinctions to which he gave the neologism trinitas
within God. God is one “substance” but three “persons”: a plurality without
division. The Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct, but share equally in the
one Godhead. This threeness is manifest only in the “economy” of God’s temporal
action toward the world; later orthodoxy e.g. Athanasius, Basil the Great,
Augustine, would postulate a Triunity that is eternal and “immanent,” i.e.,
internal to God’s being.
testing: Grice: “A token proving testability.” Grice: “We need
a meta-test: a test for a test for implicatura.” late
14c., "small vessel used in assaying precious metals," from Old
French test, from Latin testum "earthen pot," related to testa
"piece of burned clay, earthen pot, shell" (see tete). Sense of
"trial or examination to determine the correctness of something" is
recorded from 1590s. The connecting notion is "ascertaining the quality of
a metal by melting it in a pot." Test Act was the name given to various
laws in English history meant to exclude Catholics and Nonconformists from
office, especially that of 1673, repealed 1828. Test drive (v.) is first
recorded 1954. In the sciences, capacity of a theory to undergo
experimental testing. Theories in the natural sciences are regularly subjected
to experimental tests involving detailed and rigorous control of variable
factors. Not naive observation of the workings of nature, but disciplined,
designed intervention in such workings, is the hallmark of testability.
Logically regarded, testing takes the form of seeking confirmation of theories
by obtaining positive test results. We can represent a theory as a conjunction
of a hypothesis and a statement of initial conditions, H • A. This conjunction
deductively entails testable or observational consequences O. Hence, H • A P O.
If O obtains, H • A is said to be confirmed, or rendered probable. But such
confirmation is not decisive; O may be entailed by, and hence explained by,
many other theories. For this reason, Popper insisted that the testability of
theories should seek disconfirmations or falsifications. The logical schema H •
A P O not-O not-H • A is deductively valid, hence apparently decisive. On this
view, science progresses, not by finding the truth, but by discarding the
false. Testability becomes falsifiability. This deductive schema modus tollens
is also employed in the analysis of crucial tests. Consider two hypotheses H1
and H2, both introduced to explain some phenomenon. H1 predicts that for some
test condition C, we have the test result ‘if C then e1’, and H2, the result
‘if C then e2’, where e1 and e2 are logically incompatible. If experiment
falsifies ‘if C then e1’ e1 does not actually occur as a test result, the
hypothesis H1 is false, which implies that H2 is true. It was originally
supposed that the experiments of J. B. L. Foucault constituted a decisive
falsifcation of the corpuscular theory of the nature of light, and thus
provided a decisive establishment of the truth of its rival, the wave theory of
light. This account of crucial experiments neglects certain points in logic and
also the role of auxiliary hypotheses in science. As Duhem pointed term, minor
testability 908 908 out, rarely, if
ever, does a hypothesis face the facts in isolation from other supporting
assumptions. Furthermore, it is a fact of logic that the falsification of a
conjunction of a hypothesis and its auxiliary assumptions and initial
conditions not-H • A is logically equivalent to not-H or not-A, and the test
result itself provides no warrant for choosing which alternative to reject.
Duhem further suggested that rejection of any component part of a complex
theory is based on extra-evidential considerations factors like simplicity and
fruitfulness and cannot be forced by negative test results. Acceptance of
Duhem’s view led Quine to suggest that a theory must face the tribunal of
experience en bloc; no single hypothesis can be tested in isolation. Original
conceptions of testability and falsifiability construed scientific method as
hypothetico-deductive. Difficulties with these reconstructions of the logic of
experiment have led philosophers of science to favor an explication of
empirical support based on the logic of probability. Grice: “Linguists never
take ‘testability’ too conceptually, as one can witness in Saddock’s hasty
proofs!” – Refs: H. P. Grice, “On testing for testing for conversational
implicatura.”
testis:
n., pl. testes; Latin
testis "testicle," usually regarded as a special application of
testis "witness" (see testament), presumably because it "bears
witness to male virility" [Barnhart]. Stories that trace the use of the
Latin word to some supposed swearing-in ceremony are modern and
groundless. Compare Greek parastatai "testicles," from
parastates "one that stands by;" and French slang témoins, literally
"witnesses." But Buck thinks Greek parastatai "testicles"
has been wrongly associated with the legal sense of parastates "supporter,
defender" and suggests instead parastatai in the sense of twin
"supporting pillars, props of a mast," etc. Or it might be a
euphemistic use of the word in the sense "comrades." OED, meanwhile,
points to Walde's suggestion of a connection between testis and testa
"pot, shell, etc." (see tete). testis "witness," from PIE *tri-st-i- "third
person standing by," from root *tris- "three" (see three) on the
notion of "third person, disinterested witness." -- as Grice
notes, “it is etymologically -- or
etymythologically -- related to ‘testicles,’” -- Grice proposes an analysis of ‘testify’ in
terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, “t is a testimony iff t is an act
of telling, including any assertion apparently intended to impart information,
regardless of social setting.” In an extended use, personal letters and
messages, books, and other published material purporting to contain factual
information also constitute testimony. As Grice notes, “testimony may be
sincere or insincere” -- and may express knowledge or baseless prejudice. When
it expresses knowledge, and it is rightly believed, this knowledge is
disseminated to its recipient, near or remote. Second-hand knowledge can be
passed on further, producing long chains of testimony; but these chains always
begin with the report of an eye-witness or expert. In any social group with a
common language there is potential for the sharing, through testimony, of the
fruits of individuals’ idiosyncratic acquisition of knowledge through
perception and inference. In advanced societies specialization in the gathering
and production of knowledge and its wider dissemination through spoken and
written testimony is a fundamental socio-epistemic fact, and a very large part
of each person’s body of knowledge and belief stems from testimony. Thus, the
question when a person may properly believe what another tells her, and what
grounds her epistemic entitlement to do so, is a crucial one in epistemology.
Reductionists about testimony insist that this entitlement must derive from our
entitlement to believe what we perceive to be so, and to draw inferences from
this according to familiar general principles. See e.g., Hume’s classic
discussion, in his “Enquiry into Human Understanding,” section X. On this view,
I can perceive that someone has told me that p, but can thereby come to know
that p only by means of an inference one
that goes via additional, empirically grounded knowledge of the trustworthiness
of that person. Anti-reductionists insist, by contrast, that there is a general
entitlement to believe what one is told just as such defeated by knowledge of
one’s informant’s lack of trustworthiness her mendacity or incompetence, but
not needing to be bolstered positively by empirically based knowledge of her
trustworthiness. Anti-reductionists thus see testimony as an autonomous source
of knowledge on a par with perception, inference, and memory. One argument
adduced for anti-reductionism is transcendental: We have many beliefs acquired
from testimony, and these beliefs are knowledge; their status as knowledge
cannot be accounted for in the way required by the reductionist, i. e., the
reliability of testimony cannot be independently confirmed; therefore, the
reductionist’s insistence on this is mistaken. However, while it is perhaps
true that the reliability of all the beliefs one has that depend on past
testimony cannot be simultaneously confirmed, one can certainly sometimes
ascertain, without circularity, that a specific assertion by a particular
person is likely to be correct if,
e.g.,one’s own experience has established that that person has a good track
record of reliability about that kind of thing. Grice: “Sometimes I use
testimonium.” Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Trust and rationality.”
thales: Grice: “We call him Greek, but he certainly weren’t
[sic] born in Greece!” -- called by Grice the first Grecian philosopher
(“Oddly, we call him a Ionian, but the Ionian is quite a way from where he was
born!”) – who poisted a ‘philosophical’ why-explanation. Grecian philosopher who was regarded as one
of the Seven Sages of Greece. He was also considered the first philosopher,
founder of the Milesians. Thales is also reputed to have been an engineer,
astronomer, mathematician, and statesman. His doctrines even early Grecian
sources know only by hearsay: he said that water is the arche, and that the
earth floats on water like a raft. The magnet has a soul, and all things are
full of the gods. Thales’ attempt to explain natural phenomena in natural
rather than exclusively supernatural terms bore fruit in his follower
Anaximander.
‘that’: a demonstrative. Since Grice would make so many
references to the ‘that’-clause, he is aware that ‘that’ is etymologically a
demonstrative, that has lost its efficacy there. But the important etymological
lesson is that what follows a ‘that’-clause (cf. the classical languages Grice
learned at Clifton, Greek and Latin) is a ‘propositio’ just because the ‘that’
POINTS at the proposition. Sometimes he refers to ‘obliquus casus,’ and ‘oratio
obliqua,’ but he is more at home with things like ‘verba percipienda,’ verba
volendi, etc. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Bradley on this and that and thisnesss and
thatness.’-- ‘that’-clause: Grice’s
priority for the ‘that’-clause is multiple. He dislikes what he calls an
‘amorphous’ propositional complex. His idea is to have at least ‘The S is P,’
one act involving a subjectum or denotatum, and one involving the praedicatum.
There is also what he calls sub-perceptual utterances. They do look like
structured (“That red pillar seems red”) but they are not perceptual reports
like “I perceive that the pillar box is red.” At points he wanst to restrict
utterer’s communucatum to a ‘that’-clause; but ignoring Austin’s remark that to
wonder about what a ‘word’ ‘means’ is senseless, Grice sometimes allows for
things like ‘The cat sat on the mat’ to ‘mean’ that the cat sat on the mat.
Grice thinks that his account of ‘the red-seeming pillar box’ succeeded, and
that it was this success that prompted him to apply the thing to other areas,
notably Strawson, but one hopes, all the theses he presents in “Causal” and
“Prolegomena.” But he does not go back to the is/seems example, other than
perhaps the tie is/seems blue. The reason is that the sense-datum theory is
very complex. Note “seems.” “It seems to me that…” but the ‘that’-clause not as
a content of a state of the agent. If the pillar box seems red to Grice because
it is red, what ‘that’-clause are we talking about to involve in the implicaturum?
And what generates the implicaturum. “By uttering “The pillar box seems red,” U
conversationally implicates that there is a denial or doubt, somewhere as to
whether the pillar box IS red.” Grice thought of Staal as particularly good at
this type of formalistic philosophy, which was still adequate to reflect the
subtleties of ordinary language. How do we define a Griceian action?
How do we define a Griceian event? This is Grices examination and criticism of
Davidson, as a scientific realist, followed by a Kantian approach to freedom
and causation. Grice is especially interested in the logical form, or
explicitum, so that he can play with the implicaturum. One of his favourite
examples: He fell on his sword, having tripped as he crossed the Galliæ. Grice manages
to quote from many and varied authors (some of which you would not expect him
to quote) such as Reichenbach, but also Robinson, of Oriel, of You Names it
fame (for any x, if you can Names it, x exists). Robinson has a brilliant essay
on parts of Cook Wilsons Statement and inference, so he certainly knows what he
is talking about. Grice also quotes from von Wright and Eddington. Grice offers
a linguistic botanic survey of autonomy and free (sugar-free, free fall,
implicaturum-free) which some have found inspirational. His favourite is
Finnegans alcohol-free. Finnegans obvious implicaturum is that everything is
alcohol-laden. Grice kept a copy of Davidsons The logical form of action
sentences, since surely Davidson, Grice thought, is making a primary philosophical
point. Horses run fast; therefore, horses run. A Davidsonian problem, and there
are more to come! Smith went fishing. Grices category shift allows us
to take Smiths fishing as the grammatical Subjects of an action sentence.
Cf. indeed the way to cope with entailment in The horse runs fast; therefore,
the horse runs. Grices Actions and events is Davidsonian in motivation, but
Kantian in method, one of those actions by Grice to promote a Griceian event!
Davidson had published, Grice thought, some pretty influential (and
provocative, anti-Quineian) stuff on actions and events, or events and actions,
actually, and, worse, he was being discussed at Oxford, too, over which Grice
always keeps an eye! Davidsons point, tersely put, is that while p.q (e.g. It
is raining, and it is pouring) denotes a concatenation of events. Smith is
fishing denotes an action, which is a kind of event, if you are following him
(Davidson, not Smith). However, Davidson is fighting against the intuition, if
you are a follower of Whitehead and Russell, to symbolise the Smith is fishing
as Fs, where s stands for Smith and F for fishing. The logical form of a report
of an event or an action seems to be slightly more complicated. Davidsons point
specifically involves adverbs, or adverbial modifiers, and how to play with
them in terms of entailment. The horse runs fast; therefore, the horse runs.
Symbolise that! as Davidson told Benson Mates! But Mates had gone to the
restroom. Grice explores all these and other topics and submits the thing for
publication. Grice quotes, as isnt his wont, from many and various
philosophers, not just Davidson, whom he saw every Wednesday, but others he
didnt, like Reichenbach, Robinson, Kant, and, again even a physicist like
Eddington. Grice remarks that Davidson is into hypothesis, suppositio, while he
is, as he should, into hypostasis, substantia. Grice then expands on the
apparent otiosity of uttering, It is a fact that grass is green. Grice goes on
to summarise what he ironically dubs an ingenious argument. Let
σ abbreviate the operator consists
in the fact that , which, when prefixed to a sentence, produces a
predicate or epithet. Let S abbreviate Snow is white, and
let G abbreviate Grass is green. In that case, xσS is 1 just in
case xσ(y(y=y and S) = y(y=y) is 1, since the first part of the
sub-sentence which follows σ in the main sentence is logically equivalent
logically equivalent to the second part. And xσ(y(y=y and S) =
y(y=y) is 1 just in case xσ(y(if y=y, G) = y(y=y) is 1,
since y(if y=y, S) and y(if y=y, G) are each a singular term, which, if
S and G are both true, each refers to y(y=y), and are therefore
co-referential and inter-substitutable. And xσ(y(if y=y, G) =
y(y=y) is true just in case xσG is 1, since G is logically equivalent
to the sub-sentence which follows σ. So, this fallacy goes, provided that
S and G are both 1, regardless of what an utterer explicitly conveys by
uttering a token of it, any event which consists of the otiose fact that S also
consists of the otiose fact that G, and vice versa, i. e. this randomly
chosen event is identical to any other randomly chosen event. Grice hastens to
criticise this slingshot fallacy licensing the inter-substitution of this or
that co-referential singular term and this or that logically equivalent
sub-sentence as officially demanded because it is needed to license a
patently valid, if baffling, inference. But, if in addition to providing
this benefit, the fallacy saddles the philosopher with a commitment to a
hideous consequence, the rational course is to endeavour to find a way of
retaining the benefit while eliminating the disastrous accompaniment, much
as in set theory it seems rational to seek as generous a comprehension
axiom as the need to escape this or that paradox permits. Grice proposes
to retain the principle of co-reference, but prohibit is
use after the principle of logical equivalence has been
used. Grice finds such a measure to have some intuitive appeal. In
the fallacy, the initial deployment of the principle of logical equivalence seems
tailored to the production of a sentence which provides opportunity for
trouble-raising application of the principle of
co-referentiality. And if that is what the game is, why not stop
it? On the assumption that this or that problem which originally prompts
this or that analysis is at least on their way towards independent
solution, Grice turns his attention to the possibility of providing a
constructivist treatment of things which might perhaps have more intuitive
appeal than a naïve realist approach. Grice begins with a class of
happenstance attributions, which is divided into this or that basic
happenstance attribution, i.e. ascriptions to a Subjects-item of an
attribute which is metabolically expressible, and this or that non-basic
resultant happenstance attribution, in which the attribute ascribed,
though not itself metabolically expressible, is such that its possession
by a Subjects item is suitably related to the possession by that or by some
other Subjects item, of this or that attribute which is metabolically
expressible. Any member of the class of happenstance attributions may be
used to say what happens, or happens to be the case, without talking about
any special entity belonging to a class of a happening or a happenstance. A
next stage involves the introduction of the operator consists of the fact that This
operator, when prefixed to a sentence S that makes a happen-stance
attribution to a Subjects-item, yields a predicate which is satisfied by an
entity which is a happenstance, provided that sentence S is doxastically
satisfactory, i. e., 1, and that some further metaphysical condition obtains,
which ensures the metaphysical necessity of the introduction into reality of
the category of a happenstance, thereby ensuring that this new category is
not just a class of this or that fiction. As far as the slingshot fallacy,
and the hideous consequence that all facts become identical to one Great Big
Fact, in the light of a defence of Reichenbach against the realist attack,
Grice is reasonably confident that a metaphysical extension of reality will not
saddle him with an intolerable paradox, pace the caveat that, to some, the
slingshot is not contradictory in the way a paradox is, but merely an
unexpected consequence ‒ not seriously hideous, at that. What this
metaphysical condition would be which would justify the metaphysical extension
remains, alas, to be determined. It is tempting to think that the
metaphysical condition is connected with a theoretical need to have this or
that happenstance as this or that item in, say, a causal relation. Grice goes
on to provide a progression of linguistic botanising
including free. Grice distinguishes four elements or stages in the
step-by-step development of freedom. A first stage is the transeunt
causation one finds in inanimate objects, as when we experience a stone in free
fall. This is Hume’s realm, the atomistss realm. This is external or transeunt
casuation, when an object is affected by processes in other objects. A second
stage is internal or immanent causation, where a process in an object is the
outcome of previous stages in that process, as in a freely moving body. A third
stage is the internal causation of a living being, in which changes are
generated in a creature by internal features of the creature which are not
earlier stages of the same change, but independent items, the function or
finality of which is to provide for the good of the creature in question. A
fourth stage is a culminating stage at which the conception of a certain mode
by a human of something as being for that creatures good is sufficient to
initiate the doing of that thing. Grice expands on this interesting last stage.
At this stage, it is the case that the creature is liberated from every factive
cause. There is also a discussion of von Wrights table of adverbial modifiers,
or Grices pentagram. Also an exploration of specificity: Jack buttering a
parsnip in the bathroom in the presence of Jill. Grice revisits some of his
earlier concerns, and these are discussed in the appropriate places, such as
his exploration on the Grecian etymology of aition. “That”-clause should be
preferred to ‘oratio obliqua,’ since the latter is a misnomer when you ascribe
a psychological state rather than an utterance. Refs.: The main sources are given
under ‘oratio obliqua’ above, The BANC.
theism: as an
Aristotelian scholar, H. P. Grice is aware of the centrality of God, nous
nouseos, in Aristotle’s philosophy -- atheism from Grecian a-, ‘not’, and
theos, ‘god’, the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes
merely not believing in God and is consistent with agnosticism. A stricter
sense denotes a belief that there is no God; this use has become the standard
one. In the Apology Socrates is accused of atheism for not believing in the official
Athenian gods. Some distinguish between theoretical atheism and practical
atheism. A theoretical atheist is one who self-consciously denies the existence
of a supreme being, whereas a practical atheist may believe that a supreme
being exists but lives as though there were no god. -- theology -- Grice’s
philosophical theology -- concursus dei, God’s concurrence. The notion derives
from a theory from medieval philosophical theology, according to which any case
of causation involving created substances requires both the exercise of genuine
causal powers inherent in creatures and the exercise of God’s causal activity.
In particular, a person’s actions are the result of the person’s causal powers,
often including the powers of deliberation and choice, and God’s causal
endorsement. Divine concurrence maintains that the nature of God’s activity is
more determinate than simply conserving the created world in existence.
Although divine concurrence agrees with occasionalism in holding God’s power to
be necessary for any event to occur, it diverges from occasionalism insofar as
it regards creatures as causally active.
-- theosophia: any philosophical mysticism, especially those that
purport to be mathematically or scientifically based, such as Pythagoreanism,
Neoplatonism, or gnosticism. Vedic Hinduism, and certain aspects of Buddhism,
Taoism, and Islamic Sufism, can also be considered theosophical. In narrower
senses, ‘theosophy’ may refer to the philosophy of Swedenborg, Steiner, or
Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky 183. Swedenborg’s theosophy originally
consisted of a rationalistic cosmology, inspired by certain elements of
Cartesian and Leibnizian philosophy, and a Christian mysticism. Swedenborg
labored to explain the interconnections between soul and body. Steiner’s
theosophy is a reaction to standard scientific theory. It purports to be as
rigorous as ordinary science, but superior to it by incorporating spiritual
truths about reality. According to his theosophy, reality is organic and
evolving by its own resource. Genuine knowledge is intuitive, not discursive.
Madame Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. Her views were
eclectic, but were strongly influenced by mystical elements of philosophy.
thema: a term Grice borrows from Stoic logic, after
attending a seminar on the topic by Benson Mates – a ‘thema’ is a ground rule
used to reduce argument forms to basic forms. The Stoics analyzed arguments by
their form schema, or tropos. They represented forms using numbers to represent
claims; for example, ‘if the first, the second; but the first; therefore the
second’. Grice uses “so-and-so” for ‘the first’ and ‘such and such’ for the
‘second’. “If so and so, such and such, but so and so; therefore, such and
such.” Some forms were undemonstrable; others were reduced to the
undemonstrable argument forms by ground rules themata; e.g., if R follows from
P & Q, -Q follows from P & -R. The five undemonstrable arguments are: 1
modus ponendo ponens; 2 modus tollendo tollens; 3 not both P and Q, P, so
not-Q; 4 P or Q but not both, P, so not-Q; and 5 disjunctive syllogism. The
evidence about the four ground rules is incomplete, but a sound and consistent
system for propositional logic can be developed that is consistent with the
evidence we have. See Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, for an
introduction to the Stoic theory of arguments; other evidence is more
scattered.
theseus’s
ship. Grice sails on Theseus’s ship. Theseus’ ship: Example used by Grice to relativise
‘identity.’ After the hero Theseus accomplished his mission to sail to Crete to
kill the Minotaur, his ship (Ship 1) was put on display in Athens. As the time
went by, its original planks and other parts were replaced one by one with new
materials until one day all of its parts were new, with none of its original
parts remaining. Do we want to say that the completely rebuilt ship (Ship 2) is
the same as the original or that it is
a different ship? The case is further complicated. If all the original
materials were kept and eventually used to construct a ship (Ship 3), would
this ship be the same as the original? This example has inspired much
discussion concerning the problems of identity and individuation. “To be
something later is to be its closest continuer. Let us apply this view to one
traditional puzzle about identity over time: the puzzle of the ship of
Theseus.” Nozick, Philosophical Explanation. Grice basically formalized this
with G. Myro. Refs.: Collingwood, translation of Benedetto Croce, “Il paradosso
della nave di Teseo,” H. P. Grice, “Relative identity,” The Grice Papers, BANC.
θ: or theta -- Grice’s symbol for a theory. Grice uses
small-case theta for a token of a theory, and capital theta for a type of
theory.– Grice couldn’t quite stand some type of attitude he found in people
like J. M. Rountree – Rountree was claiming that one needs a ‘theory’ of
meaning. Grice responded: “ Rountree is wrong: if meaning is a matter of
theory, it cannot be a matter of intuition; and I’m sure it should be a matter
of intuition for Rountree!” theoretical term – Grice was once attracted to
Ramsey’s essay on “Theories,” but later came to see it as ‘pretentious’.
“Surely the way *I* use ‘theory’ is not Ramsey’s!” – If something is an object
of an intuition by Grice, it cannot be a theoretical term – theory and
intuition don’t go together. They repel each other! a term occurring in a
scientific theory that purports to make reference to an unobservable entity
e.g., ‘electron’, property e.g., ‘the monatomicity of a molecule’, or relation
‘greater electrical resistance’. The qualification ‘purports to’ is required
because instrumentalists deny that any such unobservables exist; nevertheless,
they acknowledge that a scientific theory, such as the atomic theory of matter,
may be a useful tool for organizing our knowledge of observables and predicting
future experiences. Scientific realists, in contrast, maintain that at least
some of the theoretical terms e.g., ‘quark’ or ‘neutrino’ actually denote
entities that are not directly observable
they hold, i.e., that such things exist. For either group, theoretical
terms are contrasted with such observational terms as ‘rope’, ‘smooth’, and
‘louder than’, which refer to observable entities, properties, or relations.
Much philosophical controversy has centered on how to draw the distinction
between the observable and the unobservable. Did Galileo observe the moons of
Jupiter with his telescope? Do we observe bacteria under a microscope? Do
physicists observe electrons in bubble chambers? Do astronomers observe the
supernova explosions with neutrino counters? Do we observe ordinary material
objects, or are sense-data the only observables? Are there any observational
terms at all, or are all terms theory-laden? Another important meaning of
‘theoretical term’ occurs if one regards a scientific theory as a semiformal
axiomatic system. It is then natural to think of its vocabulary as divided into
three parts, i terms of logic and mathematics, ii terms drawn from ordinary
language or from other theories, and iii theoretical terms that constitute the
special vocabulary of that particular theory. Thermodynamics, e.g., employs i
terms for numbers and mathematical operations, ii such terms as ‘pressure’ and
‘volume’ that are common to many branches of physics, and iii such special
thermodynamical terms as ‘temperature’, ‘heat’, and ‘entropy’. In this second
sense, a theoretical term need not even purport to refer to unobservables. For
example, although special equipment is necessary for its precise
quantitatheoretical entity theoretical term 912 912 tive measurement, temperature is an
observable property. Even if theories are not regarded as axiomatic systems,
their technical terms can be considered theoretical. Such terms need not
purport to refer to unobservables, nor be the exclusive property of one
particular theory. In some cases, e.g., ‘work’ in physics, an ordinary word is
used in the theory with a meaning that departs significantly from its ordinary
use. Serious questions have been raised about the meaning of theoretical terms.
Some philosophers have insisted that, to be meaningful, they must be given
operational definitions. Others have appealed to coordinative definitions to
secure at least partial interpretation of axiomatic theories. The verifiability
criterion has been invoked to secure the meaningfulness of scientific theories
containing such terms. A theoretical concept or construct is a concept
expressed by a theoretical term in any of the foregoing senses. The term
‘theoretical entity’ has often been used to refer to unobservables, but this
usage is confusing, in part because, without introducing any special
vocabulary, we can talk about objects too small to be perceived directly e.g., spheres of gamboge a yellow resin less
than 106 meters in diameter, which figured in a historically important
experiment by Jean Perrin. Grice uses
Ramsey’s concept of ‘theory’ – “granting that Ramsey overrated theory, as all
Cambridge men do!” -- theory-laden, dependent on theory; specifically,
involving a theoretical interpretation of what is perceived or recorded. In the
heyday of logical empiricism it was thought, by Carnap and others, that a rigid
distinction could be drawn between observational and theoretical terms. Later,
N. R. Hanson, Paul Feyerabend, and others questioned this distinction, arguing
that perhaps all observations are theory-laden either because our perception of
the world is colored by perceptual, linguistic, and cultural differences or
because no attempt to distinguish sharply between observation and theory has
been successful. This shift brings a host of philosophical problems. If we
accept the idea of radical theoryladenness, relativism of theory choice becomes
possible, for, given rival theories each of which conditions its own
observational evidence, the choice between them would seem to have to be made
on extra-evidential grounds, since no theory-neutral observations are
available. In its most perplexing form, relativism holds that, theory-ladenness
being granted, one theory is as good as any other, so far as the relationship
of theory to evidence is concerned. Relativists couple the thesis of
theory-ladenness with the alleged fact of the underdetermination of a theory by
its observational evidence, which yields the idea that any number of
alternative theories can be supported by the same evidence. The question becomes
one of what it is that constrains choices between theories. If theory-laden
observations cannot constrain such choices, the individual subjective
preferences of scientists, or rules of fraternal behavior agreed upon by groups
of scientists, become the operative constraints. The logic of confirmation
seems to be intrinsically contaminated by both idiosyncratic and social
factors, posing a threat to the very idea of scientific rationality.
thomson: Grice did not collaborate with that many friends. He
did with his tutee Strawson. He later did it with G. J. Warnock only on the
theory of perception (notably the ‘visum’). He collaborated with two more
Oxonian philosophers, and with both on the philosophy of action: D. F. Pears
and J. F. Thomson. J. F. Scots
London-born philosopher who would often give seminars with H. P. Grice. They
also explored ‘philosophy of action.’ Thomson presented his views on public
occasons on the topic, usually under the guidance of D. F. Pears – on topics
such as ‘freedom of the will.’ Thomson has assocations with University, and is
a Fellow of Corpus, Grice’s alma. --thomsonianism:
Grice explored philosophy of action with J. F. Thomson. Thomson would socialize
mainly with Grice and D. F. Pears. Oddly, Thomson was also interested in ‘if’
and reached more or less the same Philonian consequences that Grice does.
three-year-old’s
guide to Russell’s theory of types, the
– by H. P. Grice, with an appendix by P. F. Strawson, “Advice to parents,” v.
Grice’s three-year-old’s guide.
tillich:
philosopher, b. in Starzeddel, eastern Germany, he was educated in
philosophy and theology and ordained in the Prussian Evangelical Church in 2.
He served as an army chaplain during World War I and later taught at Berlin,
Marburg, Dresden, Leipzig, and Frankfurt. In November 3, following suspension
from his teaching post by the Nazis, he emigrated to the United States, where
he taught at Columbia and Union Theological Seminary until 5, and then at
Harvard and Chicago until his death. A popular preacher and speaker, he
developed a wide audience in the United States through such writings as The
Protestant Era 8, Systematic Theology three volumes: 1, 7, 3, The Courage to Be
2, and Dynamics of Faith 7. His sometimes unconventional lifestyle, as well as
his syncretic yet original thought, moved “on the boundary” between theology
and other elements of culture especially
art, literature, political thought, and depth psychology in the belief that religion should relate to
the whole extent, and the very depths, of human existence. Tillich’s thought,
despite its distinctive “ontological” vocabulary, was greatly influenced by the
voluntaristic tradition from Augustine through Schelling, Schopenhauer, Marx,
Nietzsche, and Freud. It was a systematic theology that sought to state fresh
Christian answers to deep existential questions raised by individuals and
cultures his method of correlation.
Every age has its distinctive kairos, “crisis” or “fullness of time,” the right
time for creative thought and action. In Weimar G.y, Tillich found the times
ripe for religious socialism. In postWorld War II America, he focused more on
psychological themes: in the midst of anxiety over death, meaninglessness, and
guilt, everyone seeks the courage to be, which comes only by avoiding the abyss
of non-being welling up in the demonic and by placing one’s unconditional faith ultit’ien Tillich, Paul 919 919 mate concern not in any particular being e.g. God but in
Being-Itself “the God above God,” the ground of being. This is essentially the
Protestant principle, which prohibits lodging ultimate concern in any finite
and limited reality including state, race, and religious institutions and
symbols. Tillich was especially influential after World War II. He represented
for many a welcome critical openness to the spiritual depths of modern culture,
opposing both demonic idolatry of this world as in National Socialism and
sectarian denial of cultural resources for faith as in Barthian
neo-orthodoxy.
tonk: a sentential connective whose meaning and logic
are completely characterized by the two rules or axioms 1 [P P P tonk Q] and 2
[P tonk Q P Q]. If 1 and 2 are added to any normal system, then every Q can be
derived from any P. A. N. Prior invented ‘tonk’ to show that deductive validity
must not be conceived as depending solely on arbitrary syntactically defined
rules or axioms. We may prohibit ‘tonk’ on the ground that it is not a natural,
independently meaningful notion, but we may also prohibit it on purely
syntactical grounds. E.g., we may require that, for every connective C, the
C-introduction rule [xxx P . . . C . . .] and the C-elimination rule [ - - - C
- - - P yyy] be such that the yyy is part of xxx or is related to xxx in some
other syntactical way.
token-reflexive, an expression that refers to itself in
an act of speech or writing, such as ‘this token’. The term was coined by
Reichenbach, who conjectured that all indexicals, all expressions whose
semantic value depends partly on features of the context of utterance, are
tokenreflexive and definable in terms of the phrase ‘this token’. He suggested
that ‘I’ means the same as ‘the person who utters this token’, ‘now’ means the
same as ‘the time at which this token is uttered’, ‘this table’ means the same
as ‘the table pointed to by a gesture accompanying this token’, and so forth.
Russell made a somewhat similar suggestion in his discussion of egocentric
particulars. Reichenbach’s conjecture is widely regarded as false; although ‘I’
does pick out the person using it, it is not synonymous with ‘the person who
utters this token’. If it were, as David Kaplan observes, ‘If no one were to
utter this token, I would not exist’ would be true. -- token-type
distinction – Grice: “Strictly, they are not antonyms – and token is too
English!” Grice: “Token is cognate with ‘teach,’ a Graeco-Roman thing, cfr.
insignum – insignare – to teach is to show, almost, with an m-intention
behind.” -- first the token, then the type – if necessary; “After all a type is
a set of tokens” -- used by Grice: there’s a type of an utterer, but there’s
the individual utterer: In symbols, “u” is an individual utterer, say, Grice.
“U” is a type of utterer, say Oxonian philosophy dons. Aas drawn by Peirce, the
contrast between a category and a member of that category. An individual or
token is said to exemplify a type; it possesses the property that characterizes
that type. In philosophy this distinction is often applied to linguistic
expressions and to mental states, but it can be applied also to objects,
events, properties, and states of affairs. Related to it are the distinctions
between type and token individuation and between qualitative and numerical
identity. Distinct tokens of the same type, such as two ants, may be
qualitatively identical but cannot be numerically identical. Irrespective of
the controversial metaphysical view that every individual has an essence, a
type to which it belongs essentially, every individual belongs to many types,
although for a certain theoretical or practical purpose it may belong to one
particularly salient type e.g., the entomologist’s Formicidae or the
picnicker’s buttinsky. The typetoken distinction as applied in the philosophy
of language marks the difference between linguistic expressions, such as words
and sentences, which are the subject of linguistics, and the products of acts
of writing or speaking the subject of speech act theory. Confusing the two can
lead to conflating matters of speaker meaning withmatters of word or sentence
meaning as noted by Grice. An expression is a linguistic type and can be used
over and over, whereas a token of a type can be produced only once, though of
course it may be reproduced copied. A writer composes an essay a type and
produces a manuscript a token, of which there might be many copies more tokens.
A token of a type is not the same as an occurrence of a type. In the previous
sentence there are two occurrences of the word ‘type’; in each inscription of
that sentence, there are two tokens of that word. In philosophy of mind the
typetoken distinction underlies the contrast between two forms of physicalism,
the typetype identity theory or type physicalism and the tokentoken identity
theory or token physicalism.
topos: Grice: “I will use the Latinate ‘commonplace’” –
‘locus communis’-- topic, the analysis of common strategies of argumentation,
later a genre of literature analyzing syllogistic reasoning. Aristotle
considered the analysis of types of argument, or “topics,” the best means of
describing the art of dialectical reasoning; he also used the term to refer to
the principle underlying the strategy’s production of an argument. Later
classical commentators on Aristotle, particularly Latin rhetoricians like
Cicero, developed Aristotle’s discussions of the theory of dialectical
reasoning into a philosophical form. Boethius’s work on topics exemplifies the
later classical expansion of the scope of topics literature. For him, a topic
is either a self-evidently true universal generalization, also called a
“maximal proposition,” or a differentia, a member of the set of a maximal
proposition’s characteristics that determine its genus and species. Man is a
rational animal is a maximal proposition, and like from genus, the differentia
that characterizes the maximal proposition as concerning genera, it is a topic.
Because he believed dialectical reasoning leads to categorical, not
conditional, conclusions, Boethius felt that the discovery of an argument
entailed discovering a middle term uniting the two, previously unjoined terms
of the conclusion. Differentiae are the genera of these middle terms, and one
constructs arguments by choosing differentiae, thereby determining the middle
term leading to the conclusion. In the eleventh century, Boethius’s logical
structure of maximal propositions and differentiae was used to study
hypothetical syllogisms, while twelfth-century theorists like Abelard extended
the applicability of topics structure to the categorical syllogism. By the thirteenth
century, Peter of Spain, Robert Kilwardby, and Boethius of Dacia applied topics
structure exclusively to the categorical syllogism, principally those with
non-necessary, probable premises. Within a century, discussion of topics
structure to evaluate syllogistic reasoning was subsumed by consequences
literature, which described implication, entailment, and inference relations
between propositions. While the theory of consequences as an approach to
understanding relations between propositions is grounded in Boethian, and
perhaps Stoic, logic, it became prominent only in the later thirteenth century
with Burley’s recognition of the logical significance of propositional
logic. topic-neutral, noncommittal
between two or more ontological interpretations of a term. J. J. C. Smart
suggested that introspective reports can be taken as topic-neutral: composed of
terms neutral between “dualistic metaphysics” and “materialistic metaphysics.”
When one asserts, e.g., that one has a yellowish-orange afterimage, this is
tantamount to saying ‘There is something going on that is 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 italicized phrase
is, in Smart’s terms, topic-neutral; it refers to an event, while remaining
noncommittal about whether it is material or immaterial. The term has not
always been restricted to neutrality regarding dualism and materialism. Smart
suggests that topic-neutral descriptions are composed of “quasi-logical” words,
and hence would be suitable for any occasion where a relatively noncommittal
expression of a view is required.
toxin puzzle, a puzzle about intention and practical
rationality: trustworthy billionaire, call him Paul, offers you, Peter, a
million pounds for intending tonight to drink a certain toxin tomorrow. Peter
is convinced that Paul can tell what Peter intends independently of what Peter
does. The toxin would make Peter painfully ill for a day. But Peter needs to drink
it to get the money. Constraints on the formation of a prize-winning intention
include prohibitions against “gimmicks,” “external incentives,” and forgetting
relevant details; e. g. Peter will not receive the money if Peter has a
hypnotist “implant the intention” or hire a hit man to kill Peter should Peter
not drink the toxin. If, by midnight tonight, without violating any rules,
Peter forms an intention to drink the toxin tomorrow, Peter will find a million
pounds in his bank account when he awakes tomorrow morning. Peter probably
would drink the toxin for a million dollars. But can you, without violating the
rules, intend tonight to drink it tomorrow? Apparently, you have no reason to
drink it and an excellent reason not to drink it. Seemingly, you will infer
from this that you will eschew drinking the toxin, and believing that you will
top-down eschew drinking it seems inconsistent with intending to drink it. Even
so, there are several reports in the philosophical literature of possible
people who struck it rich when offered the toxin deal! Refs: H. P. Grice,
“Grice’s book of paradoxes, with puzzling illustrations to match!”
trabia: Giuseppe
Giovanni Lanza del Vasto (n. San Vito dei Normanni) è un filosofo. Esponente
della nobile famiglia siciliana dei Lanza di Trabia. Il suo vero nome è infatti
Giuseppe Giovanni Luigi Enrico Lanza di Trabia-Branciforte. La sua personalità
eccezionale riunisce caratteristiche disparate: filosofo con una forte vena
mistica, ma anche patriarca fondatore di comunità rurali e attivista
nonviolento contro la guerra d'Algeria o gli armamenti nucleari.
Trabia nacque in un piccolo paese salentino, San Vito dei Normanni, nella
masseria "Specchia di Mare", da famiglia antica ed illustre: il
padre, Luigi Giuseppe, nato a Ginevra il 18 novembre 1857, dottore in
giurisprudenza e titolare di un'azienda agricola-vitivinicola era figlio
illegittimo del principe siciliano Giuseppe III Lanza di Trabia (1833-1868) e
la madre, belga, era la marchesa Anna Maria Enrichetta Nauts, nata ad Anversa
il I luglio 1874. Giuseppe Giovanni aveva due fratelli: Lorenzo Ercole, e
Angelo Carlo, cittadino americano nel 1939 (nel 1943 partecipò allo sbarco in
Sicilia). Lanza studiò al liceo Condorcet a Parigi, poi filosofia a Firenze e
Pisa, dove fu allievo di Armando Carlini. «La guerra di Abissinia già
iniziava ed il mio rifiuto a parteciparvi era la cosa più evidente. E poi questa
guerra non era che l’inizio: in seguito forse sarei stato ad uccidere inglesi,
tedeschi e un giorno avrei avuto dinanzi alla mia baionetta Rainer Maria Rilke.
No, la mia risposta era no. “Ma che cosa è che rende la guerra inevitabile?”,
mi domandavo. Benché giovane avevo capito la puerilità delle risposte
ordinarie, quelle che si rifanno alla nostra cattiveria, al nostro odio e al
pregiudizio. Sapevo che la guerra non aveva a che fare con tutto ciò. “Certo,
una dottrina esiste per opporsi alla guerra e la vedo nel Vangelo”, dicevo, “ma
com’è che i cristiani non la vedono? Manca quindi un metodo, un metodo per
difendersi senza offendere. Un modo nuovo, diverso, umano di risolvere i
conflitti umani”. Solo in Gandhi vedevo colui che avrebbe potuto darmi una
risposta ed il metodo.» (Pagni R., Ultimi dialoghi con Lanza del Vasto,
p.50-51) Così Lanza del Vasto ricorda la sua decisione di partire per l'India,
autofinanziandosi con la vendita a un'amica facoltosa del manoscritto della sua
prima opera, Giuda. Lanza non partiva alla ricerca di spiritualità, tanto più
che la conversione al cristianesimo gli impegnava pienamente l'animo: «Ma
mi ero, non senza pena, convertito alla mia propria religione, e avevo il mio
da fare per meditare le Scritture ed applicarne i comandamenti. E se mi si
chiedeva “siete cristiano?”, rispondevo: “Sarebbe ben prezioso dire di sì.
Tento di esserlo".» (L’Arca aveva una vigna per vela, p.11). In
India, Lanza conobbe il Mahatma Gandhi, con il quale stette qualche mese, per
poi recarsi in Himalaya. Durante il viaggio «conobbi le inquietudini sociali
dell'India ed il suo metodo di liberazione, la non violenza, che era molto
contraria al mio carattere (come del resto credo sia contraria al carattere di
tutti). Nessuno è non violento per natura: siamo violenti e non proviamo
vergogna a dirlo, anzi lo diciamo con un certo orgoglio. Ma ciò che non diciamo
è che la vigliaccheria e la violenza fanno la forza delle nazioni e degli
eserciti e la non violenza consiste nel superare questi due grandi motivi della
storia umana». In India trova «un'umanità simile alla nostra quanto opposta:
qualche cosa come un altro sesso.l ritorno in Europa Lo scrittore e
studioso in una delle sue comunità rurali (l'ultimo a destra) Tornato
dall'India dopo ulteriori peregrinazioni in Terra Santa, Lanza comprende che la
sua vocazione è di fondare una comunità rurale nonviolenta, sul modello del
gandhiano ashram, la comunità autarchica ed egualitaria che per il Mahatma
doveva essere la cellula della società. Gli ci volle del tempo prima di
riuscire a concretizzarla attraverso la fondazione della comunità dell'Arca,
che avvenne il 26 gennaio 1944[3]. Tra le poche persone a cui gli riesce di
esporre il suo progetto c'è Simone Weil, che incontra a Marsiglia. Nonostante
il suo pacifismo, la Weil non nutriva molta fiducia nella nonviolenza
gandhiana. Lanza gliene parlò e lei sembrò comprendere meglio. Poi parlarono
della visione dell'Arca, che allora non si chiamava ancora così, ed era la
prima volta che Lanza ne parlava con qualcuno: «Lei capì subito! “È un diamante
bellissimo”, disse. “Sì,” risposi “è vero. Ha solo un minuscolo difetto: che
non esiste”. E lei: “Ma esisterà, esisterà, perché Dio lo
vuole"."Simone aveva ragione. L'ultima sede della comunità fu la
Borie Noble, con circa centocinquanta persone che vivono nel modo più frugale e
gioiosamente comunitario. Il nome venne quando si cominciò a parlare di
“lanzismo”: «Si cominciava a parlare di Lanzisti e Lanzismo, cosa che mi fece
rizzare il pelo. “Amici miei”, annunciai, “noi ci chiameremo l'Arca, quella di
Noè beninteso. E noi gli animali dell'Arca.»[5]. Negli anni successivi
numerosissime iniziative nonviolente videro protagonista Lanza e i suoi
compagni, che seppero attirare l'attenzione dell'opinione pubblica francese e
non solo. La prima azione pubblica nonviolenta è del 1957, contro le torture e
i massacri compiuti dai francesi in Algeria, e si svolge a Clichy in una casa
dove aveva vissuto San Vincenzo de Paoli. L'azione fu guardata con relativo
favore dalla stampa, e giunse la solidarietà di personalità come Mauriac o
l'Abbé Pierre. Poi vennero le lotte contro il nucleare, la prima delle quali
nel 1958: Lanza con i suoi compagni penetrano nel cancello di una centrale
elettronucleare e vengono poi trascinati via dai poliziotti. Poi ancora la
campagna contro i “campi di assegnazione per residenza”, sorta di campi di
concentramento per gli algerini “sospetti”, e quella in favore degli obiettori
di coscienza. Durante la Quaresima del 1963, tra due sessioni del Concilio Vaticano
II Lanza fece un digiuno di quaranta giorni compiuto nell'attesa di una parola
forte sulla pace da parte della Chiesa. Poco dopo il trentesimo giorno, il
Segretario di Stato consegnò a Chanterelle, la moglie di Lanza, il testo
dell'enciclica Pacem in Terris: «Dentro ci sono cose che non sono mai state
dette, pagine che potrebbero essere firmate da suo marito!»[6]. Opere: Le
pèlerinage aux sources, Denoël, Parigi, traduzione italiana: Pellegrinaggio
alle sorgenti, Jaca Book, Milano; Approches de la vie intérieure, Denoël,
Parigi; traduzione italiana: Introduzione alla vita interiore, Jaca Book,
Milano 1989; Technique de la non-violence, Denoël, Parigi 1965; traduzione
italiana: Che cos'è la non violenza, Jaca Book, Milano 1979; Il canzoniere del
peregrin d'amore, Jaca Book, Milano 1980; Vinôbâ, ou le nouveau pèlerinage,
Denoël, Parigi 1954; traduzione italiana: Vinoba, o il nuovo pellegrinaggio,
Jaca Book, Milano 1980; L'Arche avait pour voilure une vigne, Denoël, Parigi
1978; traduzione italiana: L'Arca aveva una vigna per vela, Jaca Book, Milano
1980; Pour éviter la fin du monde, Rocher, Parigi; traduzione italiana: Per
evitare la fine del mondo, Jaca Book, Milano 1991; Principes et préceptes du
retour à l'évidence, Denoël, Parigi 1945; traduzione italiana: Principi e
precetti del ritorno all'evidenza, Gribaudi, Torino 1988; Préface au Message
Retrouvé de Louis Cattiaux, Denoël, Parigi 1956; traduzione italiana: Il
Messaggio Ritrovato, Mediterranee, Roma 2002. Note ^ Pagni, cit., p. 51 ^ Lanza
del Vasto, Pellegrinaggio alle sorgenti, p. 82 ^ Gabriella Fiori, Lanza del
Vasto e Simone Weil, Prospettiva Persona n° 86/2013,
http://www.prospettivapersona.it/editoriale/86/lanza_weil.pdf ^ Pagni, cit.,
p.58-59 ^ L'Arca aveva una vigna per vela, p. 48 ^ ivi, p. 99 Bibliografia
Jacques Madaule, Chi è Lanza del Vasto Arnaud de Mareuil, Lanza del Vasto
(Seghers, 1965) René Doumerc, Dialoghi con Lanza del Vasto (Albin Michel)
Claude-Henri Roquet, Les Facettes du cristal (Conversazioni con Lanza del
Vasto, Parigi 1981) Arnaud de Mareuil, Lanza del Vasto, sa vie, son oeuvre, son
message (Saint-Jean-de-Braye 1998) Anne Fougère, Claude-Henri Rocquet: Lanza
del Vasto. Pellegrino della nonviolenza, patriarca, poeta, (Paoline, Milano
2006) Antonino Drago, Paolo Trianni (a cura di), La filosofia di Lanza del
Vasto (Jaka Book, Milano 2008) Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource
Wikisource contiene una pagina in lingua francese dedicata a Lanza del Vasto
Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file
su Lanza del Vasto Collegamenti esterni L'Arche de Lanza del Vasto (sito
principale) (fr), su arche-nonviolence.eu. Comunità di St Antoine (Fr), su
arche-de-st-antoine.com. Comunità dell'Arca in Italia, su xoomer.virgilio.it.
Provincia di Brindisi su Lanza del Vasto. Lanza del Vasto & Ramon Llull
(es), su denip.webcindario.com. Controllo di autorità VIAF (EN) 2472923 ·
ISNI (EN) 0000 0001 2275 7061 · SBN IT\ICCU\CFIV\001261 · LCCN (EN) n50047299 ·
GND (DE) 121291928 · BNF (FR) cb11911016p (data) · BNE (ES) XX956618 (data) ·
NLA (EN) 35291519 · NDL (EN, JA) 00446875 · WorldCat Identities (EN)
lccn-n50047299 Biografie Portale Biografie Letteratura Portale Letteratura
Categorie: Filosofi italiani del XX secoloPoeti italiani del XX secoloScrittori
italiani del XX secoloNati nel 1901Morti nel 1981Nati il 29 settembreMorti il 5
gennaioNati a San Vito dei NormanniNonviolenzaLanza[altre].
vasto: essential Italian philosopher – Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e del
Vasto," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa
Grice, Liguria, Italia.
transcendentale: Grice: “Trust Cicero to look for the abstract!” --
transcendentia, broadly, the property of rising out of or above other things
virtually always understood figuratively; in philosophy, the property of being,
in some way, of a higher order. A being, such as God, may be said to be
transcendent in the sense of being not merely superior, but incomparably
superior, to other things, in any sort of perfection. God’s transcendence, or
being outside or beyond the world, is also contrasted, and by some thinkers
combined, with God’s immanence, or existence within the world. In medieval
philosophy of logic, terms such as ‘being’ and ‘one’, which did not belong
uniquely to any one of the Aristotelian categories or types of predication such
as substance, quality, and relation, but could be predicated of things
belonging to any or to none of them, were called transcendental. In Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason, principles that profess wrongly to take us beyond the
limits of any possible experience are called transcendent; whereas anything
belonging to non-empirical thought that establishes, and draws consequences
from, the possibility and limits of experience may be called transcendental.
Thus a transcendental argument in a sense still current is one that proceeds
from premises about the way in which experience is possible to conclusions
about what must be true of any experienced world. Transcendentalism was a
philosophical or religious movement in mid-nineteenth-century New England,
characterized, in the thought of its leading representative, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, by belief in a transcendent spiritual and divine principle in human
nature. Grice: “The formation of this Ciceronian expression is fascinating.
There’s the descent of the lark, and the transcend of the lark!” --
transcendentals, also called transcendentalia, terms or concepts that apply to
all things regardless of the things’ ontological kind or category.
transcendental deduction transcendentals 926
926 Terms or concepts of this sort are transcendental in the sense that
they transcend or are superordinate to all classificatory categories. The
classical doctrine of the transcendentals, developed in detail in the later
Middle Ages, presupposes an Aristotelian ontology according to which all beings
are substances or accidents classifiable within one of the ten highest genera,
the ten Aristotelian categories. In this scheme being Grecian on, Latin ens is
not itself one of the categories since all categories mark out kinds of being.
But neither is it a category above the ten categories of substance and
accidents, an ultimate genus of which the ten categories are species. This is
because being is homonymous or equivocal, i.e., there is no single generic
property or nature shared by members of each category in virtue of which they
are beings. The ten categories identify ten irreducible, most basic ways of
being. Being, then, transcends the categorial structure of the world: anything
at all that is ontologically classifiable is a being, and to say of anything
that it is a being is not to identify it as a member of some kind distinct from
other kinds of things. According to this classical doctrine, being is the
primary transcendental, but there are other terms or concepts that transcend
the categories in a similar way. The most commonly recognized transcendentals
other than being are one unum, true verum, and good bonum, though some medieval
philosophers also recognized thing res, something aliquid, and beautiful
pulchrum. These other terms or concepts are transcendental because the
ontological ground of their application to a given thing is precisely the same
as the ontological ground in virtue of which that thing can be called a being.
For example, for a thing with a certain nature to be good is for it to perform
well the activity that specifies it as a thing of that nature, and to perform
this activity well is to have actualized that nature to a certain extent. But
for a thing to have actualized its nature to some extent is just what it is for
the thing to have being. So the actualities or properties in virtue of which a
thing is good are precisely those in virtue of which it has being. Given this
account, medieval philosophers held that transcendental terms are convertible convertuntur
or extensionally equivalent idem secundum supposita. They are not synonymous,
however, since they are intensionally distinct differunt secundum rationem.
These secondary transcendentals are sometimes characterized as attributes
passiones of being that are necessarily concomitant with it. In the modern
period, the notion of the transcendental is associated primarily with Kant, who
made ‘transcendental’ a central technical term in his philosophy. For Kant the
term no longer signifies that which transcends categorial classification but
that which transcends our experience in the sense of providing its ground or
structure. Kant allows, e.g., that the pure forms of intuition space and time
and the pure concepts of understanding categories such as substance and cause
are transcendental in this sense. Forms and concepts of this sort constitute
the conditions of the possibility of experience. transcendental argument: Grice: “I prefer
metaphysical argument.’ -- an argument that elucidates the conditions for the
possibility of some fundamental phenomenon whose existence is unchallenged or
uncontroversial in the philosophical context in which the argument is
propounded. Such an argument proceeds deductively, from a premise asserting the
existence of some basic phenomenon such as meaningful discourse,
conceptualization of objective states of affairs, or the practice of making
promises, to a conclusion asserting the existence of some interesting,
substantive enabling conditions for that phenomenon. The term derives from
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which gives several such arguments. The
paradigmatic Kantian transcendental argument is the “Transcendental Deduction
of the Pure Concepts of Understanding.” Kant argued there that the objective
validity of certain pure, or a priori, concepts the “categories” is a condition
for the possibility of experience. Among the concepts allegedly required for
having experience are those of substance and cause. Their apriority consists in
the fact that instances of these concepts are not directly given in sense
experience in the manner of instances of empirical concepts such as red. This
fact gave rise to the skepticism of Hume concerning the very coherence of such
alleged a priori concepts. Now if these concepts do have objective validity, as
Kant endeavored to prove in opposition to Hume, then the world contains genuine
instances of the concepts. In a transcendental argument concerning the
conditions for the possibility of experience, it is crucial that some feature
entailed by the having of experience is identified. Then it is argued that
experience could not have this feature without satisfying some substantive
conditions. In the Transcendental Deduction, the feature of experience on which
Kant concentrates is the ability of a subject of experience to be aware of
several distinct inner states as all belonging to a single consciousness. There
is no general agreement on how Kant’s argument actually unfolded, though it
seems clear to most that he focused on the role of the categories in the
synthesis or combination of one’s inner states in judgments, where such
synthesis is said to be required for one’s awareness of the states as being all
equally one’s own states. Another famous Kantian transcendental argument the “Refutation of Idealism” in the
CriToynbee, Arnold transcendental argument 925
925 tique of Pure Reason shares a
noteworthy trait with the Transcendental Deduction. The Refutation proceeds from
the premise that one is conscious of one’s own existence as determined in time,
i.e., knows the temporal order of some of one’s inner states. According to the
Refutation, a condition for the possibility of such knowledge is one’s
consciousness of the existence of objects located outside oneself in space. If
one is indeed so conscious, that would refute the skeptical view, formulated by
Descartes, that one lacks knowledge of the existence of a spatial world
distinct from one’s mind and its inner states. Both of the Kantian
transcendental arguments we have considered, then, conclude that the falsity of
some skeptical view is a condition for the possibility of some phenomenon whose
existence is acknowledged even by the skeptic the having of experience;
knowledge of temporal facts about one’s own inner states. Thus, we can isolate
an interesting subclass of transcendental arguments: those which are
anti-skeptical in nature. Barry Stroud has raised the question whether such
arguments depend on some sort of suppressed verificationism according to which
the existence of language or conceptualization requires the availability of the
knowledge that the skeptic questions since verificationism has it that
meaningful sentences expressing coherent concepts, e.g., ‘There are tables’,
must be verifiable by what is given in sense experience. Dependence on a highly
controversial premise is undesirable in itself. Further, Stroud argued, such a
dependence would render superfluous whatever other content the anti-skeptical
transcendental argument might embody since the suppressed premise alone would
refute the skeptic. There is no general agreement on whether Stroud’s doubts
about anti-skeptical transcendental arguments are well founded. It is not
obvious whether the doubts apply to arguments that do not proceed from a
premise asserting the existence of language or conceptualization, but instead
conform more closely to the Kantian model. Even so, no anti-skeptical
transcendental argument has been widely accepted. This is evidently due to the
difficulty of uncovering substantive enabling conditions for phenomena that
even a skeptic will countenance.
transcendens -- transcendental argument: Transcendental argument --
Davidson, D.: H. P. Grice, “Reply to Davidson,” philosopher of mind and
language. His views on the relationship between our conceptions of ourselves as
persons and as complex physical objects have had an enormous impact on
contemporary philosophy. Davidson regards the mindbody problem as the problem
of the relation between mental and physical events; his discussions of
explanation assume that the entities explained are events; causation is a
relation between events; and action is a species of events, so that events are
the very subject matter of action theory. His central claim concerning events
is that they are concrete particulars
unrepeatable entities located in space and time. He does not take for
granted that events exist, but argues for their existence and for specific
claims as to their nature. In “The Individuation of Events” in Essays on
Actions and Events, 0, Davidson argues that a satisfactory theory of action
must recognize that we talk of the same action under different descriptions. We
must therefore assume the existence of actions. His strongest argument for the
existence of events derives from his most original contribution to metaphysics,
the semantic method of truth Essays on Actions and Events, pp. 10580; Essays on
Truth and Interpretation, 4, pp. 214. The argument is based on a distinctive
trait of the English language one not obviously shared by signal systems in
lower animals, namely, its productivity of combinations. We learn modes of
composition as well as words and are thus prepared to produce and respond to
complex expressions never before encountered. Davidson argues, from such
considerations, that our very understanding of English requires assuming the
existence of events. To understand Davidson’s rather complicated views about
the relationships between mind and body, consider the following claims: 1 The
mental and the physical are distinct. 2 The mental and the physical causally
interact. 3 The physical is causally closed. Darwinism, social Davidson, Donald
206 206 1 says that no mental event is
a physical event; 2, that some mental events cause physical events and vice
versa; and 3, that all the causes of physical events are physical events. If
mental events are distinct from physical events and sometimes cause them, then
the physical is not causally closed. The dilemma posed by the plausibility of
each of these claims and by their apparent incompatibility just is the traditional
mind body problem. Davidson’s resolution consists of three theses: 4 There are
no strict psychological or psychophysical laws; in fact, all strict laws are
expressible in purely physical vocabulary. 5 Mental events causally interact
with physical events. 6 Event c causes event e only if some strict causal law
subsumes c and e. It is commonly held that a property expressed by M is
reducible to a property expressed by P where M and P are not logically
connected only if some exceptionless law links them. So, given 4, mental and
physical properties are distinct. 6 says that c causes e only if there are
singular descriptions, D of c and DH of e, and a “strict” causal law, L, such
that L and ‘D occurred’ entail ‘D caused D'’. 6 and the second part of 4 entail
that physical events have only physical causes and that all event causation is
physically grounded. Given the parallel between 13 and 4 6, it may seem that
the latter, too, are incompatible. But Davidson shows that they all can be true
if and only if mental events are identical to physical events. Let us say that
an event e is a physical event if and only if e satisfies a basic physical
predicate that is, a physical predicate appearing in a “strict” law. Since only
physical predicates or predicates expressing properties reducible to basic
physical properties appear in “strict” laws, every event that enters into
causal relations satisfies a basic physical predicate. So, those mental events
which enter into causal relations are also physical events. Still, the
anomalous monist is committed only to a partial endorsement of 1. The mental
and physical are distinct insofar as they are not linked by strict law but they are not distinct insofar as mental
events are in fact physical events. transcendentalism,
a religious-philosophical viewpoint held by a group of New England
intellectuals, of whom Emerson, Thoreau, and Theodore Parker were the most
important. A distinction taken over from Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the only
bond that universally united the members of the Transcendental Club, founded in
1836: the distinction between the understanding and reason, the former
providing uncertain knowledge of appearances, the latter a priori knowledge of
necessary truths gained through intuition. The transcendentalists insisted that
philosophical truth could be reached only by reason, a capacity common to all
people unless destroyed by living a life of externals and accepting as true
only secondhand traditional beliefs. On almost every other point there were
disagreements. Emerson was an idealist, while Parker was a natural realist they simply had conflicting a priori
intuitions. Emerson, Thoreau, and Parker rejected the supernatural aspects of
Christianity, pointing out its unmistakable parochial nature and sociological
development; while James Marsh, Frederick Henry Hedge, and Caleb Henry remained
in the Christian fold. The influences on the transcendentalists differed widely
and explain the diversity of opinion. For example, Emerson was influenced by
the Platonic tradition, G. Romanticism, Eastern religions, and nature poets,
while Parker was influenced by modern science, the Scottish realism of Reid and
Cousin which also emphasized a priori intuitions, and the G. Higher Critics.
Emerson, Thoreau, and Parker were also bonded by negative beliefs. They not
only rejected Calvinism but Unitarianism as well; they rejected the ordinary
concept of material success and put in its place an Aristotelian type of
selfrealization that emphasized the rational and moral self as the essence of
humanity and decried idiosyncratic self-realization that admires what is unique
in people as constituting their real value.
trans-finitum: definitum, infinitum: Trans-finite number, in set
theory, an infinite cardinal or ordinal number.
TERMINUS
– DETERMINATVM -- determinatum: There’s the determinatum and there’s the indeeterminatum –
“And then there’s ‘indeterminacy.”” “A determinatum is like a definitum, in
that a ‘term’ is like the ‘end’ – “Thus, I am a Mercian, from Harborne.” “The
Mericans were thus called because the lived at the end of England.” “Popper,
who doesn’t know the first thing about this, prefers, ‘demarcatum’, which is
cognate with “mercian.’” Grice was always cautious and self-apologetic. “I’m
not expecting that you’ll find this to be a complete theory of implication, but
that was not my goal, and the endeavour should be left for another day, etc.”
But consider the detail into which he, like any other philosopher before, went
when it came to what he called the ‘catalyst’ tests or ideas or tests or ideas
for the implicaturum. In “Causal Theory” there are FOUR ideas. It is good to
revise the treatment in “Causal.” He proposes two ideas with the first two
examples and two further ideas with the two further examples. Surely his goal
is to apply the FOUR ideas to his own example of the pillar box. Grice notes
re: “You have not ceased eating iron” – the cxample is “a stock case of what is
sometimes called " prcsupposition " and it is often held that here
1he truth of what is irnplicd is a necessary condition of the original
statement's beirrg cither true or false.” So the first catalyst in the first
published version concerns the value, or satisfactory value. This will be
retained and sub-grouped in Essay II. “It is often held” Implicture: but often
not, and trust me I won’t. “that here the truth of what is implied [implicated
in the negative, entailed in the affirmative] is a necessary condition of the
original statement's being either true or false.” So the first catalyst in the
first published version concerns the value, or satisfactory value. This will be
retained and sub-grouped in Essay II. “This might be disputed, but it is at
least arguable that it is so, and its being arguable might be enough to
distinguish this type of case from others.” So he is working on a ‘distinctive
feature’ model. And ‘feature’ is exactly the expression he uses in Essay II. He
is looking for ‘distinctive features’ for this or that implication. When
phonologists speak of ‘distinctive feature’ they are being philosophical or
semioticians.“I shall however for convenience assume that the common view
mentioned is correct.”“This consideration clearly distinguishes “you have not
ceased eating iron” from [a case of a conventional implicaturum] “poor BUT
honest.”“Even if the implied proposition were false, i.e. if there were no
reason in the world to contrast poverty with honesty either in general or in
her case, the original statement COULD still be false.” “She [is] poor but she [is] honest” would be false if
for example she were rich and dishonest.”“One might perhaps be less comfortable
about assenting to its TRUTH if the implied contrast did not in fact obtain;
but the possibility of falsity is enough for the immediate purpose.”“My next experiment
[test, litmus idea – that he’ll apply as one of the criteria to provide
distinctive features for this or that implicaturum, with a view to identify the
nature of the animal that a conversational implicaturum is] on these examples
is to ask what it is in each case which could properly be said to be the
vehicle of implication (to do the implying).”In Essay II, since he elaborates
this at an earlier stage than when he is listing the distinctive features, he
does not deal much. It is understood that in Essay II by the time he is listing
the distinctive features, the vehicle is the UTTERER. But back in “Causal,” he
notes: “There are AT LEAST FOUR candidates, not necessarily mutually
exclusive.”“Supposing someone to have ‘uttered’ one or other of [the] sample
sentences, we may ask whether the vehicle of implication would be (FIRST) WHAT
the emissor communicated (or asserted or stated or explicitly conveyed), or
(SECOND) the emissor himself ("Surely you’re not implying that ….’ ) or (THIRD) the
utterance (FOURTH) his communicating, or
explicitly conveying that (or again his explicitly conveying that in that way);
or possibly some plurality of these items.”“As regards the first option for the
vehicle, ‘what the emissor has explicitly conveyed,’ Grice takes it that “You
have not ceased eating iron” and “Poor but honest” may differ.It seems correct
for Grice to say in the case of “eating iron” that indeed it is the case that
it is what he emissor explicitly conveys which implies that Smith has been
eating iron.On the other hand, Grice feels it would be ‘incorrect,’ or
improper, or bad, or unnatural or artificial, to say in the case of “poor but
honest” that it is the case. Rather it is NOT the case that it is WHAT the emissor explicitly conveys
which implies that there is a contrast between, e. g., honesty and poverty.”“A
sub-test on which Grice would rely is the following.If accepting that the
conventional implicaturum holds (contrast between honesty and poverty) involves
the emissor in accepting an hypothetical or conditional ‘if p, q,’ where 'p’
represents the original statement (“She [is] poor and she [is] honest) and 'q'
represents what is implied (“There is a contrast between honesty and poverty”),
it is the case that it is what the emissor explicitly conveys which is a (or
the) vehicle of implication. If that chain of acceptances does not hold, it is
not. To apply this rule to the “eat iron” and “poor but honest”, if the emissor
accepts the implication alleged to hold in the case of “eat iron”, I should feel
COMPELLED (forced, by the force of entailment) to accept the conditional or
hypothetical "If you have not ceased eating iron, you may have never
started.”[In “Causal,” Grice has yet not stressed the asymmetry between the
affirmative and the negative in alleged cases of presupposition. When, due to
the success of his implicaturum, he defines the presuppositum as a form of
implicaturum, he does stress the asymmetry: the entailment holds for the
affirmative, and the implicaturum for the negative). On the other hand, when it
comes to a CONVENTIONAL implicaturum (“poor but honest”) if the emissor
accepted the alleged implication in the case of “poor but honest”, I should NOT
feel compelled to accept the conditional or hypothetical "If she was poor
but honest, there is some contrast between poverty and honesty, or between her
poverty and her honesty." Which would yield that in the presuppositum
case, we have what is explicitly conveyed as a vehicle, but not in the case of
the conventional implicaturum.The rest of the candidates (Grice lists four and
allows for a combination) can be dealt with more cursorily.As regards OPTION II
(second):Grice should be inclined to say with regard to both “eat iron” and
“poor but honest” that the emissor could be said to have implied whatever it is
that is irnplied.As regards Option III (third: the utterance): In the case of
“poor but honest” it seems fairly clear that the utterance could be said, if
metabolically, and animistically, to ‘imply’ a contrast.It is much less clear
whether in the case of “eat iron” the utterance could be said to ‘imply’ that
Smith has been eating iron.As for option IV, in neither case would it be
evidently appropriate (correct, natural) to speak of the emissor’s explicitly
conveying that, or of his explicitly conveying that in that way, as ‘implying’
what is implied. A third catalyst idea with which Grice wish to assail my two
examples is really a TWIN idea, or catalyst, or test [That’s interesting – two
sides of the same coin] that of the detachability or cancellability of the
implication. Consider “eat iron.”One cannot find an alternative utterance which
could be used to assert explicitly just what the utterance “Smith has not
ceased from eating iron" might be used to convey explicitly, such that when
this alternative utterance is used the implication that Smith never started
eating iron is absent. Any way of (or any utterance uttered with a view to)
conveying explicitly what is explicitly conveyed in (1) involves the
implication in question. Grice expresses this fact – which he mentioned in
seminars, but this is the first ‘popularisation’ -- by saying that in the case
of (l) the implication is NOT detachable FROM what is asserted (or simpliciter,
is not detachable). Furthermore, and here comes the twin of CANCELLABILITY: one
cannot take any form of words for which both what is asserted and what is
implied is the same as for (l), AND THEN ADD a further clause withholding
commitment from what would otherwise be implied, with the idea of ANNULLING THE
IMPLICATURUM *without* ANNULLING annulling the EXPLICITUM. One cannot intelligibly say " Smith has
left off beating his wife but I do not mean to imply that he has been beating
her." But one surely can intelligibly say, “You have not ceased eating
iron because you never started.”While Grice uses “Smith,” the sophisma (or
Griceisma) was meant in the second person, to test the tutee’s intelligence
(“Have you stopped beating your dog?”). The point is that the tutee will be
offended – whereas he shouldn’t, and answer, “I never started, and I never
will.”Grice expresses this fact by saying that in the case of ‘eat iron’ the
implication is not cancellable or annullable (without cancelling or annulling
the assertion). If we turn to “poor but honest” we find, Grice thinks, that
there is quite a strong case for saying that here the implication IS
detachable. Therc sccms quite a good case for maintaining that if, instead of
saying " She is poor but she is honcst " I were to say, alla Frege,
without any shade, " She is poor AND she is honcst", I would assert
just what I would havc asscrtcct ii I had used thc original senterrce; but
there would now be no irnplication of a contrast between e.g', povery and
honesty. Of course, this is not a philosophical example, and it would be good
to revise what Frege thought about ‘aber.’ By the time Grice is lecturing
“Causal Theory” he had lectured for the Logic Paper for Strawson before the
war, so Whitehead and Russell are in the air.Surely in Anglo-Saxon, the
contrast is maintained, since ‘and’ means ‘versus.’“She is poor contra her
being honest.”Oddly, the same contrariety is present in Deutsche, that Frege
speaks, with ‘UND.”It’s different with Roman “et.” While Grecian ‘kai,’ even
Plato thought barbaric!The etymology of ‘by-out’ yields ‘but.’So Grice is
thinking that he can have a NEUTRAL conjoining – but ‘and’ has this echo of
contrariety, which is still present in ‘an-swer, i. e. and-swear, to
contradict. Perhaps a better neutral version would be. Let’s start with the
past version and then the present tense version.“She was pooo-ooor, she was
honest, and her parents were the same, till she met a city feller, and she lost
her honest name.”In terms of the concepts CHOSEN, the emissor wants to start
the ditty with pointing to the fact that she is poor – this is followed by
stating that she is honest. There’s something suspicious about that.I’m sure a
lady may feel offended without the ‘and’ OR ‘but’ – just the mere ‘succession’
or conjoining of ‘poor’ as pre-ceding the immediate ‘honest’ ‘triggers’ an
element of contrast. The present tense seems similar: “She is poooor, she is
honest, and her parents are the same, but she’ll meet a city feller, and she’ll
lose her honest name.”The question whether, in thre case of ‘poor but honest,’
the implication is cancellable, is slightly more cornplex, which shouldn’t if
the catalysts are thought of as twins.There is a way in which we may say that
it is not cancellable, or annullable.Imagine a Tommy marching and screaming: “She is poor but she is
honest,”“HALT!” the sargent shouts.The Tommy catches the implicaturum:“though
of course, sir, I do not mean to imply, sir, that there is any contrast, sir,
between her poverty, sir, and her honesty, sir.”As Grice notes, this would be a
puzzling and eccentric thing for a Tommy to engage in.And though the sargent
might wish to quarrel with the tommy (Atkins – Tommy Atkins is the name”), an
Oxonian philosopher should NOT go so far as to say that the tommy’s utterance
is unintelligible – or as Vitters would say, ‘nunsense.’The sargent should
rather suppose, or his lieutenant, since he knows more, that private Tommy
Atkins has adopted a “most pecooliar” way of conveying the news that she was
poor and honest.The sargent’s argument to the lieu-tenant:“Atkins says he means
no disrespect, sir, but surely, sir, just conjoining poverty and honesty like
that makes one wonder.”“Vitters: this is a Cockney song! You’re reading too
much into it!”“Cockney? And why the citty feller, then – aren’t Cockneys citty
fellers. I would rather, sir, think it is what Sharp would call a ‘sharp’ folk,
sir, song, sir.’ The fourth and last test Grice imposes on his examples is to
ask whether we would be inclined to regard the fact that the appropriate (or
corresponding, since they are hardly appropriate – either of them! – Grice
changes the tune as many Oxford philosophers of ordinary language do when some
female joins the Union) implication is present as being a matter of the, if we
may be metabolic and animistic, ‘meaning’ of some particular word or phrase
occurring in the sentences in question. Grice is aware and thus grants that
this may not be always a very clear or easy question to answer.Nevertheless,
Grice risks the assertion that we would be fairly happy and contented to say
that, as regards ‘poor but honest,’ the fact that the implication obtains is a
matter of the ‘meaning’ of 'but ' – i. e. what Oxonians usually mean when they
‘but.’So far as “he has not ceased from…’ is concerned we should have at least
some inclination to say that the presence of the implication is a matter of
the, metabolically, ‘meaning’ of some of the words in the sentence, but we
should be in some difficulty when it came to specifying precisely which this
word, or words are, of which this is true. Well, it’s semantics. Why did Roman
think that it was a good thing to create a lexeme, ‘cease.’“Cease” means
“stop,” or ‘leave off.”It is not a natural verb, like ‘eat.’A rational creature
felt the need to have this concept: ‘stop,’ ‘leave off,’ ‘cease.’The
communication-function it serves is to indicate that SOMETHING has been taken
place, and then this is no longer the case.“The fire ceased,” one caveman said
to his wife.The wife snaps back – this is the Iron Age:“Have you ceased eating
iron, by the way, daa:ling?”“I never started!”So it’s the ‘cease’ locution that
does the trick – or equivalents, i.e. communication devices by which this or
that emissor explicitly convey more or less the same thing: a halting of some
activity.Surely the implication has nothing to do with the ‘beat’ and the
‘wife.’After third example (‘beautiful handwriting) introduced, Grice goes back
to IDEA OR TEST No. 1 (the truth-value thing). Grice notes that it is plain
that there is no case at all for regarding the truth of what is implied here
(“Strawson is hopeless at philosophy”) as a pre-condition of the truth or
falsity of what the tutor has asserted.A denial of the truth of what is implied
would have no bearing at all on whether what I have asserted is true or false.
So ‘beautiful handwring’ is much closer to ‘poor but honest’ than ‘cease eating
iron’ in this respect. Next, as for the vehicle we have the at least four
options and possible combinations.The emissor, the tutor, could certainly be
said to have implied that Strawson is hopeless (provided that this is what the
tutor intended to ‘get across’) and the emissor’s, the tutor’s explicitly
saying that (at any rate the emissor’s saying that and no more) is also
certainly a vehicle of implication. On the other hand the emissor’s words and
what the emissor explicitly conveys are, Grice thinks, not naturally here
characterised as the ‘vehicle’ of implication. “Beautiful handwriting” thus
differs from BOTH “don’t cease eating iron” and “poor but honest” – so the idea
is to have a table alla distinctive features, with YES/NO questions answered
for each of the four implication, and the answers they get.As for the third
twin, the result is as expected: The implication is cancellable but not
detachable. And it looks as if Grice created the examples JUST to exemplify
those criteria.If the tutor adds, 'I do not of course mean to imply that
Strawson is no good at philosophy” the whole utterance is intelligible and
linguistically impeccable, even though it may be extraordinary tutorial
behaviour – at the other place, not Oxford --.The tutor can no longer be said
to have, or be made responsible for having implied that Strawson was no good,
even though perhaps that is what Grice’s colleagues might conclude to be the
case if Grice had nothing else to say. The implication is not however,
detachable.Any other way of making, in the same context of utterance, just the
assertion I have made would involve the same implication.“His calligraphy is
splendid and he is on time.”“Calligraphy splendid,” Ryle objected. “That’s slightly
oxymoronic, Grice – ‘kallos agathos’”Finally, for TEST No. 4, ‘meaning’ of
expression? The fact that the implication holds is surely NOT a matter of any
particular word or phrase within the sentence which I have uttered.It is just
the whole sentence. Had he gone tacit and say,“Beautiful handwriting!”Rather
than“He has beautiful handwriting.”The implication SEEMS to be a matter of two
particular words: the handwriting word, viz. ‘handwriting.’ And the ‘beautiful’
word, i. e. ‘beautiful.’Any lexeme expressing same concept, ‘Calligraphy
unique!’would do the trick because this is damn by faint praise, or suggestio
falsi, suppressio veri. So in this respect “Beautiful handwring” is certainly
different from “Poor but honest” and, possibly different from “Don’t cease to
eat iron!”One obvious fact should be mentioned before one passes to the fourth
example (“kitchen or bedroom”).This case of implication is unlike the others in
that the utterance of the sentence "Strawson has beautiful
handwriting" does not really STANDARDLY involve the implication here
attributed to it (but cf. “We should have lunch together sometime” meaning “Get
lost” – as Grice said, “At Oxford, that’s the standard – that’s what the
‘expression’ “means”); it requires a special context (that it should be uttered
at Collections) to attach the implication to its utterance. More generally: it
requires a special scenario (one should avoid the structuralist Derrideian
‘context’ cf. Grice, “The general theory of context”). If back in the house,
Mrs. Grice asks, “He has beautiful handwriting,” while not at Collections, the
implicaturum would hold. Similarly at the “Lamb and Flag,” or “Bird and
Baby.”But one gets Grice’s point. The scenario is one where Strawson is being
assessed or evaluated AS A PHILOSOPHER. Spinoza’s handwriting was, Stuart
Hampshire said, “terrible – which made me wonder at first whether I should
actually waste my time with him.”After fourth and last example is introduced
(“kitchen or bedroom”): in the case of the Test No. I (at least four possible
vehicles) one can produce a strong argument in favour of holding that the
fulfllment of the implication of the speaker's ignorance (or that he is
introducing “or” on grounds other than Whitehead’s and Russell’s
truth-functional ones) is not a precaution (or precondition) of the truth or
falsity of the disjunctive statement. Suppose that the emissor KNOWS that his
wife IS in the KITCHEN, that the house has only two rooms, and no passages.
Even though the utterer knows that his wife is in the kitchen (as per given),
the utterer can certainly still say truly (or rather truthfully) "She is
IN THE HOUSE.”SCENARIOA: Where is your wife? ii. Where in your house is your
wife?B: i. In the kitchen. ii. In the bedroom. iiia. She’s in the house, don’t
worry – she’s in the house, last time I checked. iii. In the HOUSE (but
inappropriate if mentioned in the question – unless answered: She’s not. iv. In
the kitchen or in the bedroom (if it is common ground that the house only has
two rooms there are more options) vi. v. I’m a bachelor. vi. If she’s not in the bedroom, she is in
the kitchen. vii. If she’s not in the kitchen, she’s in the bedroom. viii.
Verbose but informative: “If she’s not in the bedroom she’s in the kitchen, and
she’s not in the kitchen” Or consider By uttering “She is in the house,” the
utterer is answering in a way that he is merely not being as informative as he
could bc if need arose. But the true
proposition [cf. ‘propositional complex’] that his wife is IN THE HOUSE
together with the true proposition that ‘THE HOUSE’ consists entirely of a
‘kitchen’ and a ‘bedroom,’ ENTAIL or yield the proposition that his wife is in
the kitchen or in the bedroom. But IF to express the proposition p (“My wife is
in the house, that much I can tell”) in certain circumstances (a house
consisting entirely of a kitchen and a bedroom – an outback bathroom which
actually belongs to the neighbour – cf. Blenheim) would be to speak truly, and
p (“My wife is, do not worry, in the house”) togelher with another true proposition
– assumed to be common ground, that the house consists entirely of a kitchen
and a bedroom -- entails q (“My wife is in the kitchen OR in the bedroom”),
surely to express what is entailed (“My wife is in the kitchen or in the
bedroom”) in the same circvmstances must be, has to be to speak truly. So we have to take it that the disjunctive
statement – “kitchen or bedroom” -- does not fail to be TRUE or FALSE if the
implied ignorance (or the implied consideration that the utterer is uttering
‘or’ on grounds other than the truth-functional ones that ‘introduce’ “or” for
Gentzen) is in fact not realized, i. e. it is false. Secondly, as for Test No.
2 (the four or combo vehicles), Grice thinks it is fairly clear that in this
case, as in the case of “beautiful handwriting”, we could say that the emissor
had implies that he did not know (or that his ground is other than
truth-functional – assuming that he takes the questioner to be interested in
the specific location – i. e. to mean, “where IN THE HOUSE is your wife?”) and
also that his conveying explicilty that (or his conveying explicitly that
rather than something else, viz, in which room or where in the house she is, or
‘upstairs,’ or ‘downstairs,’ or ‘in the basement,’ or ‘in the attic,’ ‘went
shopping,’ ‘at the greengrocer’ – ‘she’s been missing for three weeks’) implied
that he did not know in which one of the two selected rooms his wife is
‘resident’ (and that he has grounds other than Gentzen’s truth-functional ones
for the introduction of ‘or.’). Thirdly, the implication (‘kitchen or bedroom’)
is in a way non-detachable, in that if in a given context the utterance of the
disjunctive sentence would involve the implication that the emissor did not
know in which room his his wife was (or strictly, that the emissor is
proceeding along non-truth-functional grounds for the introduction of ‘or,’ or
even more strictly still, that the emissor has grounds other than
truth-functional for the uttering of the disjunction), this implication would
also be involved in the utterance of any other form of words which would make
the same disjunctive assertion (e.g., "Look, knowing her, the alternatives
are she is either preparing some meal in the kitchen or snoozing in the
bedroom;” “One of the following things is the case, I’m pretty confident. First
thing: she is in the kitchen, since she enjoys watching the birds from the
kitchen window. Second thing: she is in the bedroom, since she enjoys watching
birds from the bedroom window.” Etymologically, “or” is short for ‘other,’
meaning second. So a third possibility: “I will be Anglo-Saxon: First, she is
the kitchen. Second, she is in the bedroom.” “She is in the kitchen UNLESS she
is in the bedroom”“She is in the kitchen IF SHE IS NOT in the bedroom.”“Well,
it is not the case that she is in the KITCHEN *AND* in the bedroom, De Morgan!”
She is in the kitchen, provided she is not in the bedroom” “If she is not in
the kitchen, she is in the bedroom” “Bedroom, kitchen; one of the two.”
“Kitchen, bedroom; check both just in case.”“Sleeping; alternatively, cooking –
you do the maths.”“The choices are: bedroom and kitchen.”“My choices would be:
bedroom and kitchen.”“I would think: bedroom? … kitchen?”“Disjunctively,
bedroom – kitchen – kitchen – bedroom.”“In alternation: kitchen, bedroom,
bedroom, kitchen – who cares?”“Exclusively, bedroom, kitchen.”ln another
possible way, however, the implication could perhaps bc said to BE indeed
detachable: for there will be some contexts of utterance (as Firth calls them)
in which the ‘normal’ implication (that the utterer has grounds other than
truth-functional for the utterance of a disjunction) will not hold.Here, for
the first time, Grice brings a different scenario for ‘or’:“Thc Secretary of
the Aristotelian Society, announcing ‘Our coming symposium will be in Oxford OR
not take place at all” perhaps does not imply that he is has grounds other than
truth-functional for the utterance of the disjunction. He is just being wicked,
and making a bad-taste joke. This totally extraneous scenario points to the
fact that the implication of a disjunction is cancellable.Once we re-apply it
to the ‘Where in the hell in your house your wife is? I hear the noise, but
can’t figure!’ Mutatis mutandi with the Secretary to The Aristotelian Socieety,
a man could say, “My wife is in the kitchen or in the bedroorn.”in
circumstances in which the implication (that the man has grounds other than
truth-functional for the uttering of the disjunction) would normally be
present, but he is not being co-operative – since one doesn’t HAVE to be
co-operative (This may be odd, that one appeals to helpfulness everywhere but
when it comes to the annulation!).So the man goes on, “Mind you, I am not
saying that I do not know which.”This is why we love Grice. Why I love Grice.
One would never think of finding that sort of wicked English humour in, say
Strawson. Strawson yet says that Grice should ‘let go.’ But to many, Grice is
ALWAYS humorous, and making philosophy fun, into the bargain, if that’s not the
same thing. Everybody else at the Play Group (notably the ones Grice opposed
to: Strawson, Austin, Hare, Hampshire, and Hart) would never play with him.
Pears, Warnock, and Thomson would!“Mind you, I am not saying that I do not know
which.”A: Where in the house is your wife? I need to talk to her.B: She is in
the kitchen – or in the bedroom. I know where she is – but since you usually
bring trouble, I will make you decide so that perhaps like Buridan’s ass, you
find the choice impossible and refrain from ‘talking’ (i. e. bringing bad news)
to her.A: Where is your wife? B: In the kitchen or in the bedroom. I know where
she is. But I also know you are always saying that you know my wife so well.
So, calculate, by the time of the day – it’s 4 a.m – where she could be. A:
Where is your wife? B: In the bedroom or in the kitchen. I know where she is –
but remember we were reading Heidegger yesterday? He says that a kitchen is
where one cooks, and a bedroom is where one sleeps. So I’ll let you decide if
Heidegger has been refuted, should you find her sleeping in the kitchen, or
cooking in the bedroom.A: Where is your wife? B: In the kitchen or the bedroom.
I know where she is. What you may NOT know, is that we demolished the
separating wall. We have a loft now. So all I’ll say is that she may be in
both! All this might be unfriendly,
unocooperative, and perhaps ungrammatical for Austen [Grice pronounced the
surname so that the Aristotelian Society members might have a doubt] – if not
Vitters, but, on the other hand, it would be a perfectly intelligible thing for
a (married) man to say. We may not even GO to bachelors. Finally, the fact that
the utterance of the disjunctive sentence normally or standardly or caeteris
paribus involves the implication of the emissor's ignorance of the truth-values
of the disjuncts (or more strictly, the implication of the emissor’s having
grounds other than truth-functional for the uttering of the disjunctive) is, I
should like to say, to be ‘explained’ – and Grice is being serious here, since
Austin never cared to ‘explain,’ even if he could -- by reference to a general
principle governing – or if that’s not too strong, guiding – conversation, at
least of the cooperative kind the virtues of which we are supposed to be
exulting to our tuttees. Exactly what this principle we should not go there. To
explain why the implicaturum that the emissor is having grounds other than
truth-functional ones for the utterance of a disjunction one may appeal to the
emissor being rational, assuming his emissee to be rational, and abiding by
something that Grice does NOT state in the imperative form, but using what he
calls a Hampshire modal (Grice divides the modals as Hampshire: ‘should,’ the
weakest, ‘ought’ the Hare modal, the medium, and ‘must,’ Grice, the
stronges)"One, a man, a rational man, should not make conversational move
communicating ‘p’ which may be characterised (in strict terms of entailment) as
weaker (i.e. poor at conversational fortitude) rather than a stronger (better
at conversational fortitude) one unless there is a good reason for so
doing." So Gentzen is being crazey-basey if he thinks:p; therefore, p or
q.For who will proceed like that?“Or” is complicated, but so is ‘if.’ The
Gentzen differs from the evaluation assignemt:‘p or q’ is 1 iff p is 1 or q is
1. When we speak of ‘truth-functional’ grounds it is this assignment above we
are referring to.Of courseif p, p or q [a formulation of the Gentzen
introduction]is a TAUTOLOGY [which is what makes the introduction a rule of
inference].In terms of entailment P Or Q (independently) Is stronger than ‘p v q’ In that either p or
q entail ‘p or q’ but the reverse is not true. Grice says that he first thought
of the pragmatic rule in terms of the theory of perception, and Strawson hints
at this when he says in the footnote to “Introduction to Logical theory” that
the rule was pointed out by his tutor in the Logic Paper, Grice, “in a
different connection.” The logic paper took place before the war, so this is
early enough in Grice’s career – so the ghosts of Whitehead and Russell were
there! We can call the above ‘the principle of conversational fortitude.’ This
is certainly not an adequate formulation but will perhaps be good enough for
Grice’s purpose in “Causal.” On the assumption that such a principle as this is
of general application, one can DRAW or infer or explain the conclusion that
the utterance of a disjunctive sentence would imply that the emissor has
grounds other than truth-functional for the uttering of a disjunctum, given
that, first, the obvious reason for not making a statemcnt which there is some
call on one to make VALIDLY is that one is not in a position (or entitled) to
make it, and given, second, the logical ‘fact’ that each disjunct entails the
disjunctive, but not vice versa; which being so, each disjunct is stronger
(bears more conversational ‘fortitude’) than the disjunctive. If the outline
just given is on the right lines, Grice would wish to say, we have a reason for
REFUSING (as Strawson would not!) in the case of “kitchen or bedroom” to regard
the implication of the emissor having grounds other than truth-functional for
the uttering of the disjunctive as being part of the ‘meaning’ (whatever that
‘means’) of 'or' – but I should doublecheck with O. P. Wood – he’s our man in
‘or’ – A man who knows about the logical relation between a disjunction and
each disjunct, i. e. a man who has at least BROWSED Whitehead and Russell – and
diregards Bradley’s exclusivist account -- and who also ‘knew,’ qua Kantian
rational agent, about the alleged general principle or guiding conversational,
could work out for hirnself, surely, that a disjunctive utterance would involve
the implication which it does in fact involve. Grice insists, however, that his
aim in discussing this last point – about the principle of conversational
fortitude EXPLAING the generation of the implicaturum -- has been merelyto
indicate the position I would wish to take up, and not to argue scriously in
favour of it. Grice’s main purpose in the excursus on implication was to
introduce four ideas or catalysts, or tesets – TEST No. I: truth-value; TEST
No. 2: Vehicle out of four; Test No. 3/Twin Test: Annulation and Non-Detachment
(is there a positive way to express this – non-detached twins as opposed to
CONJOINT twins), and Test No. 4 – ‘Meaning’ of expression? -- of which Grice
then goes to make some use re: the pillar box seeming red.; and to provide some
conception of the ways in which each of the four tests apply or fail to apply
to various types of implication. By the numbering of it, it seems that by the
time of Essay II he has, typically, added an extra. It’s FIVE catalysts now,
but actually, since he has two of the previous tests all rolled up in one, it
is SIX CATALSTS. He’ll go back to them in Essay IV (“Indicative conditionals”
with regard to ‘if’), and in Presupposition and Conversational (with regard to
Example I here: “You have not ceased eating iron”). Implicaturum.He needs those
catalysts. Why? It seems like he is always thinking that someone will challenge
him! This is Grice: “We can now show that, it having been stipulated as being
what it is, a conversational implicaturum must possess certain distinctive
features, they are six. By using distinctive feature Grice is serious. He wants
each of the six catalysts to apply to each type of ‘implicaturum’, so that a
table can be constructed. With answers yes/no. Or rather here are some catalyst
ideas which will help us to determine or individuate. Six tests for
implicaturum as it were. SO THESE FEATURES – six of them – apply to three of
the examples – not the ‘poor but honest’ – but the “you have not ceased eating
iron,” “Beautiful handwriting,” and “Kitchen or bedroom.”First test – nothing
about the ‘twin’ – it’s ANNULATION or CANCELLABILITY – as noted in “Causal
Theory” – for two of the examples (‘beautiful handwriting’ and ‘kitchen or
bedroom’ and NEGATIVE version of “You don’t cease to eat iron”) and the one of
the pillar box – He adds a qualifier now: the annulation should best be
IMPLICIT. But for the fastidious philosopher, he allows for an EXPLICITATION
which may not sound grammatical enough to Austen (pronounced to rhyme with the
playgroup master, or the kindergarten’s master). To assume the presence of a
conversational implicaturum, the philosopher (and emissee) has to assume that
the principle of conversational co-operation (and not just conversational
fortitude) is being observed.However, it is mighty possible to opt out of this
and most things at Oxford, i. e. the observation of this principle of
conversational cooperation (or the earlier principle of conversational
fortitude).It follows then that now we CAN EXPLAIN WHY CANCELLABILITY IS A
DISTINCTIVE FEATURE. He left it to be understood in “Causal.”It follows then,
deductively, that an implicaturum can be canceled (or annulled) in a particular
case. The conversational implicaturum may be, drearily – but if that’s what the
fastidious philosopher axes -- explicitly canceled, if need there be, by the
addition of a clause by which the utterer states or implies that he opts out
(e. g. “The pillar box seems red but it is.” “Where is your wife?” “My lips are
sealed”). Then again the conversational implicaturum may be contextually (or
implicitly) canceled, as Grice prefers (e. g. to a very honest person, who
knows I disbelieve the examiner exists, “The loyalty examiner won’t be
summoning you at any rate”). The utterance that usually would carry an
implicaturum is used on an occasion that makes it clear or obvious that the
utterer IS opting out without having to bore his addressee by making this obviousness
explicit. SECOND DISTINCTIVE FEATURE: CONJOINING, i.e. non-detachability.There
is a second litmus test or catalyst idea.Insofar as the calculation that a
implicaturum is present requires, besides contextual and background information
only an intuitive rational knowledge or understanding or processing of what has
been explicitly conveyed (‘are you playing squash? B shows bandaged leg) (or
the, shall we say, ‘conventional’ ‘arbitrary’ ‘commitment’ of the utterance),
and insofar as the manner or style, of FORM, rather than MATTER, of expression
should play at best absolutely no role in the calculation, it is NOT possible
to find another way of explicitly conveying or putting forward the same thing,
the same so-and-so (say that q follows from p) which simply ‘lacks’ the
unnecessary implicaturum in question -- except [will his excluders never end?]
where some special feature of the substituted version [this other way which he
says is not conceivable] is itself relevant to the determination of the implicaturum
(in virtue of this or that conversational maxims pertaining to the category of
conversational mode. THIS BIG CAVEAT makes you wonder that Grice regretted
making fun of Kant. By adopting jocularly the four conversational categories,
he now finds himself in having to give an excuse or exception for those
implicatura generated by a flout to what he earlier referred to as the
‘desideratum of conversational clarity,’ and which he jocularly rephrased as a
self-defeating maxim, ‘be perspicuous [sic], never mind perspicacious!’If we
call this feature, as Grice does in “Causal Theory,” ‘non-detachability’ (or
conjoining)– in that the implicaturum cannot be detached or disjointed from any
alternative expression that makes the same point -- one may expect the implicaturum
carried by this or that locution to have a high degree of non-detachability.
ALTERNATIVES FOR “NOT” Not, it is not the case, it is false that. There’s
nothing unique about ‘not’.ALTERNATIVES FOR “AND” and, nothing, furthermore,
but. There isnothing unique about ‘and’ALTERNATIVES FOR “OR”: One of the
following is true. There is nothing unique about ‘or’ALTERNATIVES FOR “IF”
Provided. ‘There is nothing unique about ‘if’ALTERNATIVES FOR “THE” – There is
at least one and at most one. And it exists. (existence and uniqueness). There
is nothing unique about ‘the’.THIS COVERS STRAWSON’S first problem.What about
the other English philosophers?AUSTIN – on ‘voluntarily’ ALTERNATIVES to
‘voluntarily,’ with the will, willingly, intentionally. Nothing unique about
‘voluntarily.’STRAWSON on ‘true’ – it is the case, redundance theory, nothing.
Nothing unique about ‘true’HART ON good. To say that ‘x is commendable’ is to
recommend x. Nothing unique about ‘good.’HART on ‘carefully.’ Da Vinci painted
Mona Lisa carefully, with caution, with precaution. Nothing unique about
‘carefully.’THIRD LITMUS TEST or idea and ATTENDING THIRD DISTINCTIVE FEATURE. THIRD DISTINCTIVE
FEATURE is in the protasis of the conditional.The implicaturum depends on the
explicatum or explicitum, and a fortiori, the implicaturum cannot INVOLVE
anything that the explicatum involves – There is nothing about what an emissor
explicitly conveys about “or” or a disjunctum in general, which has to do with
the emissor having grounds other than truth-functional for the utterance of a
disjunctum.The calculation of the presence of an implicaturum presupposes an
initial knowledge, or grasping, or understanding, or taking into account of the
‘conventional’ force (not in Austin’s sense, but translating Latin ‘vis’) of
the expression the utterance of which carries the implicaturum.A conversational
implicaturum will be a condition (but not a truth-condition), i. e. a condition
that is NOT, be definition, on risk of circularity of otiosity, included in
what the emissor explicitly conveys, i. e. the original specification of the
expression's ‘conventional’ or arbitrary forceIf I’m saying that ‘seems’
INVOLVES, as per conventional force, ‘doubt or denial,’what’s my point? If
Strawson is right that ‘if’ has the conventional force of conventionally
committing the utterer with the belief that q follows from p, why bother? And
if that were so, how come the implicaturum is still cancellable?Though it may
not be impossible for what starts life, so to speak, as a conversational
implicaturum to become conventionalized, to suppose that this is so in a given
case would require special justification. (Asking Lewis). So, initially at
least, a conversational implicaturum is, by definition and stipulation, not
part of the sense, truth-condition, conventional force, or part of what is
explicitly conveyed or put forward, or ‘meaning’ of the expression to the
employment of which the impicatum attaches. FOURTH LITMUS TEST or catalyst
idea. Mentioned in “Causal theory” YIELDS THE FOUTH DISICTINVE FEATURE and the
FIFTH distinctive feature.FOURTH DISTINCTIVE FEATURE: in the protasis of the
conditional – truth value.The alethic value – conjoined with the test about the
VEHICLE --. He has these as two different tests – and correspondingly two
distinctive features in “Causal”. The truth of a conversational implicaturum is
not required by (is not a condition for) the truth of what is said or
explicitly conveyed (what is said or explicated – the explicatum or explicitum,
or what is explicitly conveyed or communicated) may be true -- what is
implicated may be false – that he has beautiful handwriting, that q follows
from p, that the utterer is ENDORSING what someone else said, that the utterer
is recommending x, that the person who is said to act carefully has taken
precaution), FIFTH DISTINCTIVE FEATURE: vehicle – this is the FOURTH vehicle of
the four he mentions in “Causal”: ‘what the emissor explicitly conveys,’ ‘the
emissor himself,’ the emissor’s utterance, and fourth, the emissor’s explicitly
conveying, or explicitly conveying it that way --. The apodosis of the
conditional – or inferrability schema, since he uses ‘since,’ rather than ‘if,’
i. e. ‘GIVEN THAT p, q. Or ‘p; therefore, q’. The implicaturum is NOT carried
by what is said or the EXPLICATUM or EXPLICITUM, or is explicitly conveyed, but
only by the ‘saying’ or EXPLICATING or EXPLICITING of what is said or of the
explicatum or explicitum, or by 'putting it that way.’The fifth and last litmus
test or catalyst idea YIELDS A SIXTH DISTINCTIVE FEATURE:Note that he never
uses ‘first, second, etc.’ just the numerals, which in a lecture format, are
not visible!SIXTH DISTINCTIVE FEATURE: INDETERMINACY. Due to the open character
of the reasoning – and the choices available to fill the gap of the content of
the propositional attitude that makes the conversational rational:“He is
potentially dishonest.” “His colleagues are treacherous”Both implicatura
possible for “He hasn’t been to prison at his new job at the bank – yet.”Since,
to calculate a conversational implicaturum is to calculate what has to be
supposed in order to preserve the supposition that the utterer is a rational,
benevolent, altruist agent, and that the principle of conversational
cooperation is being observed, and since there may be various possible specific
explanations or alternatives that fill the gap here – as to what is the content
of the psychological attitude to be ascribed to the utterer, a list of which
may be open, or open-ended, the conversational implicaturum in such cases will
technically be an open-ended disjunction of all such specific explanations,
which may well be infinitely non-numerable. Since the list of these IS open,
the implicaturum will have just the kind of INDETERMINACY or lack of
determinacy that an implicaturum appears in most cases to possess.
indeterminacy of translation, a pair of theses derived, originally, from a
thought experiment regarding radical translation first propounded by Quine in
Word and Object (1960) and developed in his Ontological Relativity (1969),
Theories and Things (1981), and Pursuit of Truth (1990). Radical translation is
an imaginary context in which a field linguist is faced with the challenge of
translating a hitherto unknown language. Furthermore, it is stipulated that the
linguist has no access to bilinguals and that the language to be translated is
historically unrelated to that of the linguist. Presumably, the only data the
linguist has to go on are the observable behaviors of incompleteness
indeterminacy of translation 422 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 422 native
speakers amid the publicly observable objects of their environment. (1) The
strong thesis of indeterminacy, indeterminacy of translation of theoretical
sentences as wholes, is the claim that in the context of radical translation a
linguist (or linguists) could construct a number of manuals for translating the
(natives’) source language into the (linguists’) target language such that each
manual could be consistent with all possible behavior data and yet the manuals
could diverge with one another in countless places in assigning different
target-language sentences (holophrastically construed) as translations of the
same source-language sentences (holophrastically construed), diverge even to
the point where the sentences assigned have conflicting truth-values; and no
further data, physical or mental, could single out one such translation manual
as being the uniquely correct one. All such manuals, which are consistent with
all the possible behavioral data, are correct. (2) The weak thesis of
indeterminacy, indeterminacy of reference (or inscrutability of reference), is
the claim that given all possible behavior data, divergent target-language
interpretations of words within a source-language sentence could offset one another
so as to sustain different targetlanguage translations of the same
source-language sentence; and no further data, physical or mental, could single
out one such interpretation as the uniquely correct one. All such
interpretations, which are consistent with all the possible behavioral data,
are correct. This weaker sort of indeterminacy takes two forms: an ontic form
and a syntactic form. Quine’s famous example where the source-language term
‘gavagai’ could be construed either as ‘rabbit’, ‘undetached rabbit part’,
‘rabbithood’, etc. (see Word and Object), and his proxy function argument where
different ontologies could be mapped onto one another (see Ontological
Relativity, Theories and Things, and Pursuit of Truth), both exemplify the
ontic form of indeterminacy of reference. On the other hand, his example of the
Japanese classifier, where a particular three-word construction of Japanese can
be translated into English such that the third word of the construction can be
construed with equal justification either as a term of divided reference or as
a mass term (see Ontological Relativity and Pursuit of Truth), exemplifies the
syntactic form of indeterminacy of reference.
transformation – Grice: “My system G makes minimal use
of transformations” -- minimal transformation rule: an axiom-schema or rule of
inference. Grice: “Strictly, an Ovidian metamorphose!” -- A transformation rule
is thus a rule for transforming a possibly empty set of wellformed formulas
into a formula, where that rule operates only upon syntactic information. It
was this conception of an axiom-schema and rule of inference that was one of
the keys to creating a genuinely rigorous science of deductive reasoning. In
the 0s, the idea was imported into linguistics, giving rise to the notion of a
transformational rule. Such a rule transforms tree structures into tree
structures, taking one from the deep structure of a sentence, which determines
its semantic interpretation, to the surface structure of that sentence, which
determines its phonetic interpretation. Grice: “Chomsky misuses
‘transformation.’”
triangulus -- Grice’s triangle. He uses the word in “Meaning
Revisited,” (WoW: 286). It’s the semiotic triange between what he calls the
‘communication device,’ the denotatum, and the soul. While
often referred to as H. P. Grice’s triangle, or H. P. Grice’s semiotic
triangle, or "Ogden/Richards triangle" the idea is also expressed in
1810, by Bernard Bolzano, in his rather obscure, Grice grants, “Beiträge zu
einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik.” However, the triangle can be
traced back to the 4th century BC, in Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias (often
referred to in its Latin translation De Interpretatione, second book of his
Organon, on which Grice gave seminars as University Lecturer at Oxford with J.
L. Austin). H. P. Grice’s semiotic Triangle relates to the problem of
universals, a philosophical debate which split ancient and medieval
philosophers (mainly realists and nominalists). The triangle describes a
simplified form of relationship between the emissor as subject, a concept as
object or referent or denotatum, and its designation (sign, signans, or as
Grice prefers ‘communication device’). For more elaborated research see
Semiotics. Ogden semiotic triangle.png Contents 1Interlocutory applications
1.1Other triangles 1.2The communicative stand 1.3Direction of fit 2See also
3References 4External links Interlocutory applications Other triangles The
relations between the triangular corners may be phrased more precisely in
causal terms as follows[citation needed][original research?]. The matter evokes
the emissor's soul. The emissor refers the matter to the symbol. The symbol
evokes the emissee’s soul. The emissee refers the symbol back to the matter.
The communicative stand Such a triangle represents ONE agent, the emissor,
whereas communication takes place between TWO (objects, not necessarily
agents). So imagine another triangle and consider that for the two to
understand each other, the content that the "triangles" represent must
fit or be aligned. Clearly, this calls for synchronisation and an interface as
well as scale among other things. Notice also, that we perceive the world
mostly through our eyes and in alternative phases of seeing and not seeing with
change in the environment as the most important information to look for. Our
eyes are lenses and we see a surface (2D) in ONE direction (focusing) if we are
stationary and the object is not moving either. This is why you may position
yourself in one corner of the triangle and by replicating (mirroring) it, you
will be able to see the whole picture, your cognitive epistemological and the
ontological existential or physical model of life, the universe, existence,
etc. combined.[citation needed][original research?] Direction of fit Main
article: Direction of fit This section has multiple issues. Please help
improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to
remove these template messages) This section does not cite any sources.
(December 2012) This section is written like a personal reflection, personal
essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal
feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. (December 2012) Grice
uses the notion of "direction of fit" (in “Intention and Uncertainty”)
to create a taxonomy of acts. [3] [4] This table possibly contains
original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding
inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be
removed. (December 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
World or Referentintended →Writer's Thought decoded ↑ ↓
encoded Thought Emissee's← extendedSymbol or Word Emissor's
THOUGHT retrieves SYMBOL suited to REFERENT, Word suited to World.
Reader's THOUGHT retrieves REFERENT suited to SYMBOL, World suited to
Word. Actually the arrows indicate that there is something exchanged between
the two parties and it is a feedback cycle. Especially, if you imagine that the
world is represented in the soul of both the emissor and the emissee and used
for reality check. If you look at the triangle above again, remember that
reality check is not what is indicated there between the sign and the referent
and marked as "true', because a term or a sign is allocated "arbitrarily'.
What you check for is the observance of the law of identity which requires you
and your partner to sort out that you are on the same page, that the emissor is
communicating and the emissee is understanding about the same thing. So the
chunk of reality and the term are replaceable/interchangeable within limits and
your concepts in the soul as presented in some appropriate way are all related
and mean the same thing. Usually the check does not stop there, your ideas must
also be tested for feasibility and doability to make sure that they are
"real" and not "phantasy". Reality check comes from
consolidating your experience with other people's experience to avoid solipsism
and/or by putting your ideas (projection) in practice (production) and see the
reaction. Notice, however how vague the verbs used and how the concept of a fit
itself is left unexplained in details.[editorializing] See also The Delta
Factor De dicto De se De re References Colin Cherry (1957) On Human
Communication C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards (1923) The Meaning of
Meaning John Searle (1975) "A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts",
in: Gunderson, K. (ed.), Language, Mind, and Knowledge (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press) pp. 344-369. John Searle (1976) "A Classification
of Illocutionary Acts", Language in Society, Vol.5, pp. 1-24. External
links Jessica Erickstad (1998) Richards' Meaning of Meaning Theory. University
of Colorado at Boulder. Allie Cahill (1998) "Proper Meaning
Superstition" (I. A. Richards). University of Colorado at Boulder.
Categories: SemioticsSemanticsPragmaticsPhilosophy of languagePhilosophy of
mind. Semiotisches Dreieck Zur Navigation springen. Zur Suche springen. Das
semiotische Dreieck stellt die Relation zwischen dem Symbol, dem dadurch
hervorgerufenen Begriff und dem damit gemeinten realen Ding dar. Das
semiotische Dreieck ist ein in der Sprachwissenschaft und Semiotik verwendetes
Modell. Es soll veranschaulichen, dass ein Zeichenträger (Graphem, Syntagma,
Symbol) sich nicht direkt und unmittelbar auf einen außersprachlichen
Gegenstand bezieht, sondern dieser Bezug nur mittelbar durch eine
Vorstellung/einen Begriff erfolgt. Das semiotische Dreieck publizierten
erstmals Charles Kay Ogden und Ivor Armstrong Richards in dem Werk The Meaning
of Meaning. Das semiotische Dreieck in vereinfachter Beschreibung. Die Welt
besteht aus Gegenständen, Sachverhalten, Ereignissen und Ähnlichem. Diese sind
wirklich und bestimmen alles, was geschieht. Das Symbol für ein Einzelnes davon
steht in den folgenden Dreiecken rechts und bedeutet vereinfacht: Ding oder
„was Sache ist“. Wenn der Mensch ein Ding bemerkt oder sich vorstellt, macht er
sich ein gedachtes Bild davon. Das Symbol dafür steht in den folgenden
Dreiecken oben und bedeutet: Begriff oder „was man meint“. Wenn Menschen mit
diesen Begriffen von Dingen reden, so verwenden sie Zeichen (meist hörbar,
gelegentlich auch sichtbar oder anders wahrnehmbar). Das sind Wörter (auch
Bezeichnungen, Benennungen, Symbole oder Ähnliches). Das Symbol dafür steht in
den folgenden DREIECKEN links und bedeutet: Wort oder „was man dazu sagt“.
Ding, Begriff und Wort sollen eindeutig zusammengehören. Das gelingt nicht
immer, vielmehr muss man immerzu aufpassen, ob der eben verwendete Begriff das
betrachtete Ding richtig erfasst, ob das eben verwendete Wort den gemeinten
Begriff trifft, und sogar ob das eben betrachtete Ding überhaupt eins ist und
nicht etwa einige oder gar keins. Passen die drei Ecken nicht zueinander, „So
entstehen leicht die fundamentalsten Verwechslungen (deren die ganze Philosophie
voll ist).“ Vitters: Tractatus 3.324. Das semiotische Dreieck als
bildliche Darstellung der Mehrdimensionalität der Zeichen Begriff
/\ / \ /
\ / \ /
\ Zeichen ...... Gegenstand (Wort) (Ding). Das semiotische Dreieck
ist zunächst nur ein bildliches Hilfsmittel, um sich Beziehungen „im“ bzw.
„des“ Zeichens zu veranschaulichen. Seine Interpretation und nähere
Ausgestaltung hängt daher von der zugrunde gelegten Erkenntnistheorie ab.
In entscheidender Weise wird durch das semiotische Dreieck veranschaulicht,
dass zwischen dem Wort (der Zeichenform, d. h. dem Schriftbild oder dem
Lautbild) und dem Bezeichneten (Ding, Gegenstand) keine direkte Beziehung,
sondern nur durch (mindestens) eine hier so genannte Vermittlungsinstanz vermittelte
Beziehung besteht. Graphisch wird dies durch eine unterschiedliche Linie
dargestellt. Gebräuchlich ist ein Dreieck. Entscheidend ist die
nicht-direkte Beziehung zwischen Zeichen (Wort) und Gegenstand (Ding). Je nach
Anzahl der zu veranschaulichenden (nicht auszublendenden) Bezugspunkte und
Vermittlungsinstanzen und der Art der betonten Beziehungen kann man auch ein
Quadrat, ein sonstiges Vieleck bzw. einen mehrdimensionalen Körper
benutzen. Darauf hinzuweisen ist, dass die Vermittlungsinstanz – hier mit
dem mehrdeutigen Ausdruck „Begriff“ bezeichnet – sehr unterschiedlich gesehen
wird, was aus dem Terminologiebefund unten deutlich wird. Das semiotische
Dreieck ist Veranschaulichung eines Zeichenverständnisses, das dem
Zeichenbegriff von Ferdinand de Saussure, wonach ein Zeichen eine „psychische
Einheit“ zwischen einem „akustischen Bild“ (Signifikanten) und einem „Begriff“
(Signifikat) (bei ihm im Sinne einer psychischen Vorstellung)[2] sein soll,
widersprechen dürfte:[3] statt der „Papierblattmetapher“ für das Verhältnis von
Signifikant/Signifikat (von de Saussure) wird im semiotischen Dreieck eine
optische Trennung und Distanzierung von Zeichenkörper und Begriff (Sinn)
vorgenommen. Das semiotische Dreieck blendet auch pragmatische Bedingungen
und Bezüge aus bzw. reduziert sie auf die semantische Dimension und wird daher
von pragmatischen Bedeutungstheorien kritisiert (vgl. Semiotik). Das
Fehlen einer unmittelbaren Beziehung zwischen Zeichen und Gegenstand wird
zugleich als Ausdruck der (von de Saussure betonten) Arbitrarität und
Konventionalität von Zeichen interpretiert. Geschichte Man muss
unterscheiden zwischen dem semiotischen Dreieck als Bild und einem dreiseitigen
(triadischen) Zeichenbegriff, dessen Veranschaulichung es dient.
Verbreitet wird die sprachwissenschaftliche Entwicklung so dargestellt, als
gäbe es ein semiotisches Dreieck erst seit Ogden/Richards, die damit einen nur
zweigliedrigen Zeichenbegriff von de Saussure modifiziert/überwunden hätten.[4]
Es heißt, bis ins 19. Jahrhundert sei der Zeichenbegriff im Wesentlichen
hinsichtlich seines Sachbezugs als „zweistellige Relation“ diskutiert
worden.[5] Andere betonen den zugrunde liegenden dreiseitigen
(„triadischen“) Zeichenbegriff, der meist bei Aristoteles, mitunter auch schon
bei Platon angesetzt wird. Schon bei Platon findet sich ein gedankliches
Wort-Gegenstand-Modell zwischen Namen (Zeichen) – Idee (Begriff) und Ding. Bei
Aristoteles ist ein Zeichen (semeion, damit meint er ein Wort) ein Symptom für
eine Seelenregung, d. h. für etwas, das der Sprecher sich vorstellt. Diese
Vorstellung des Sprechers ist dann ein Ikon für ein Ding. Dies sind für ihn die
primären Zeichenrelationen (rot in der untenstehenden Figur). Davon abgeleitet
ist die sekundäre Zeichenrelation (schwarz in der Figur). Das
Semiotische Dreieck bei Aristoteles Seit Aristoteles wird vertreten, dass
Zeichen Dinge der Welt nicht unvermittelt, sondern vermittelt über einen
„Begriff“, „Vorstellung“ etc. bezeichnen. Dies bedeutet eine Differenzierung
gegenüber der einfachen aliquid-stat-pro-aliquo-Konzeption und ist „für die
ganze Geschichte der Semiotik entscheidend“. Bei Aristoteles stehen „Zeichen
[…] für Sachen, welche von den Bewußtseinsinhalten abgebildet worden sind“.
„Die Sachen werden von den Zeichen nicht präsentiert, sondern repräsentiert.“.
Die Interpretation von De interpretatione ist dabei seit Jahrtausenden
kontrovers. Die oben wiedergegebene Interpretation entspricht einer
psychologischen Deutung, die einen Psychologismus nahelegt. Dies erscheint
fraglich, da Aristoteles eher einen erkenntnistheoretischen Realismus vertreten
haben dürfte. Scholastik In der Sprachphilosophie der Scholastik finden
sich Überlegungen zum Dreierschema res (Sache, Ding), intellectus (Verstand,
Gedanken, Begriff), vox (Wortzeichen). Logik von Port-Royal. In der
Grammatik von Port-Royal (Mitte des 17. Jh.) soll das semiotische Dreieck
eingeführt worden sein.[10] In der Logik von Port-Royal sind die Gegenstände
und die Sprachzeichen nicht unmittelbar, sondern über Universalien miteinander
verknüpft. Nach KANT ist das zwischen Begrifflichkeit und Sinnlichkeit bzw.
Gegenstand vermittelnde Element das Schema als ein bildhaftes und anschauliches
Zeichen. Das Verfahren des Verstandes, mit Hilfe der ‚Einbildungskraft‘ die
reinen Verstandesbegriffe zu versinnlichen, heißt Schematismus. Auch Arthur
Schopenhauer, ein deutscher Philosoph des 19. Jahrhunderts, unterscheidet in
seinem Hauptwerk Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung strikt zwischen Wort,
Begriff und Anschauung. Ausblendung des Referenzbezugs im Zeichenmodell von de
Saussure Nach verbreiteter Auffassung haben die moderne Sprachwissenschaft und
der moderne Zeichenbegriff erst mit de Saussure eingesetzt. Nach de Saussure
ist ein Zeichen die Verbindung eines Ausdrucks (signifiant) mit einem Inhalt
(signifié), wobei das Zeichen als „psychische Einheit mit zwei Seiten“[14]
aufgefasst wurde. In diesem zweigliedrigen (dyadischen) Zeichenmodell „hat die
reale Welt keine Bedeutung“:[15] „Hier Bezeichnetes als geistige Vorstellung,
dort Bezeichnendes als dessen Materialisation in der Sprache, aber kein Platz
für das Objekt selbst“. Triadisches Zeichenmodells bei Peirce. Charles S.
Peirce entwickelte eine pragmatische Semiotik[16] und die Pragmatik soll auf
dem triadischen Zeichenmodell von Peirce beruhen.[17] Statt eines dyadischen
entwickelte Peirce ein kommunikativ-pragmatisches, triadisches Zeichenmodell:
das Zeichen ist eine „triadische Relation (semiotisches Dreieck)“. Dies, indem
er zu Zeichenmittel und Objekt den „Interpretanten“ ergänzte, d. h. die
Bedeutung, die durch Interpretation der Zeichenbenutzer (Sprecher bzw. Hörer)
in einem Handlungszusammenhang zustande kommt. „Das, was als
Bewusstseinsinhalt erscheint, der Interpretant, ist der individuell erkannte
Sinn, der seinerseits kulturell vor- oder mitgeprägt sein kann. Daher wird in
diesem Konzept die Zeichenbedeutung (…) auch als „kulturelle Einheit“ (Eco,
1972) postuliert.“Peirce-Interpreten wie Floyd Merrell oder Gerhard Schönrich
wenden sich gegen die Dreiecksdarstellung peircescher Zeichentriaden, da sie
suggerieren könnte, dass sich die irreduzible triadische Relation zerlegen
lasse in einzelne zweistellige Relationen. Stattdessen schlagen sie eine
Y-förmige Darstellung vor, bei der die drei Relate jeweils durch eine Linie mit
dem Mittelpunkt verbunden sind, aber entlang der Seiten des „Dreiecks“ keine
Linien verlaufen. Charles Kay Ogden / Ivor Armstrong Richards Als „die“
Vertreter eines dreiseitigen Zeichenmodells bzw. eines semiotischen Dreiecks
(unter Ausblendung ihrer Vorläufer) werden verbreitet Charles Kay Ogden und
Ivor Armstrong Richards angeführt. Diese erkannten eine Welt außerhalb des
menschlichen Bewusstseins ausdrücklich an und wandten sich gegen „idealistische
Konzepte“. Nach Charles Kay Ogden und Ivor Armstrong Richards symbolisiert das
Zeichen (symbol) etwas und ruft einen entsprechenden Bewusstseinsinhalt
(reference) hervor, der sich auf das Objekt (referent) bezieht.[6] Das
semiotische Dreieck wird wie folgt erklärt: „Umweltsachverhalte werden im
Gedächtnis begrifflich bzw. konzeptuell repräsentiert und mit Sprachzeichen
assoziiert. So ist z. B. das Wort „Baum“ ein Sprachzeichen, das mit dem Begriff
bzw. Konzept von „BAUM“ assoziiert ist und über diesen auf reale Bäume (Buchen,
Birken, Eichen usw.) verweisen kann.“. Siehe auch Organon-Modell (von Karl
Bühler) Literatur Metamorphosen des semiotischen Dreieck. In: Zeitschrift für
Semiotik. Band 10, (darin 8 einzelne Artikel). Umberto Eco: Semiotik – Entwurf
einer Theorie der Zeichen. 2. Auflage. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1991, ISBN
3-7705-2323-7. Umberto Eco: Einführung in die Semiotik. Wilhelm Fink Verlag,
München 1994, ISBN 3-7705-0633-2. Einzelnachweise C. K. Ogden, I. A.
Richards: The Meaning of Meaning. 1923 Kassai: Sinn. In: Martinet
(Hrsg.): Linguistik. Ohne Problematisierung trotz der Nähe zu Saussure hingegen
bei Kassai: Sinn. In: Martinet (Hrsg.): Linguistik. 1973, S. 251 (S. 254 f.)
referiert So wohl Fischer Kolleg Abiturwissen, Deutsch (2002), S.
27 So z. B. Schülerduden, Philosophie (2002), Semiotik Triadische
Zeichenrelation. In: Homberger: Sachwörterbuch zur Sprachwissenschaft.
2000 Trabant: Semiotik. Trabant: Semiotik. So auch Triadische
Zeichenrelation. In: Homberger: Sachwörterbuch zur Sprachwissenschaft. 2000,
wonach Aristoteles das Platonische Modell „psychologisiert“ haben soll So
Schülerduden, Philosophie (2002), Sprachphilosophie Schülerduden,
Philosophie (2002), Sprachphilosophie Baumgartner: Kants „Kritik der
reinen Vernunft“, Anleitung zur Lektüre. [1988], neu ersch. 5. Auflage. ALBER, Freiburg
Hierzu vor allem das Kapitel: „Zur Lehre von der abstrakten, oder
Vernunft-Erkenntnis“ (Zweiter Band) Fischer Kolleg Abiturwissen, Deutsch
(2002), S. 26 Ernst: Pragmalinguistik. 2002, S. 66 Schülerduden,
Philosophie (2002), Peirce So Pelz: Linguistik. 1996, S. 242
Zeichenprozess. In: Homberger: Sachwörterbuch zur Sprachwissenschaft.
2000 Bedeutung. In: Homberger: Sachwörterbuch zur Sprachwissenschaft.
2000 Kategorien: SemiotikSemantik. For Grice, the triangle represents the three
correspondences. First, psychophysical, second psychosemiotic, and third
semio-physical.
tisberi -- Heytesbury: w.
also called Hentisberus, Hentisberi, Tisberi before, English philosopher and
chancellor of Oxford . He wrote Sophismata “Sophisms”, Regulae solvendi
sophismata “Rules for Solving Sophisms”, and De sensu composito et diviso “On
the Composite and Divided Sense”. Other works are doubtfully attributed to him.
Heytesbury belonged to the generation immediately after Thomas Bradwardine and
Kilvington, and was among the most significant members of the Oxford
Calculators, important in the early developemnt of physics. Unlike Kilvington
but like Bradwardine, he appealed to mathematical calculations in addition to
logical and conceptual analysis in the treatment of change, motion,
acceleration, and other physical notions. His Regulae includes perhaps the most
influential treatment of the liar paradox in the Middle Ages. Heytesbury’s work
makes widespread use of “imaginary” thought experiments assuming physical
impossibilities that are yet logically consistent. His influence was especially
strong in Italy in the fifteenth century, where his works were studied widely
and commented on many times.
trinitarianism, -- “Raining, raining, raining.” -- the
theological doctrine that God consists of three persons, “in Strawson’s usage
of the expression” – Vide Grice, “Personal identity,” -- The persons who
constitute the Holy Trinity are the Father; the Son, who is Jesus Christ; and
the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. The doctrine states that each of these three
persons is God and yet they are not three Gods but one God. According to a
traditional formulation, the three persons are but one substance. In the
opinion of Aquinas, the existence of God can be proved by human reason, but the
existence of the three persons cannot be proved and is known only by
revelation. According to Christian tradition, revelation contains information
about the relations among the three persons, and these relations ground proper
attributes of each that distinguish them from one another. Thus, since the
Father begets the Son, a proper attribute of the Father is paternity and a
proper attribute of the Son is filiation. Procession transparent Trinitarianism
928 928 or spiration is a proper
attribute of the Holy Spirit. A disagreement about procession has contributed
to dividing Eastern and Western Christianity. The Eastern Orthodox church
teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. A theory
of double procession according to which the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Father and the Son has been widely accepted in the West. This disagreement is
known as the filioque ‘and the Son’ controversy because it arose from the fact
that adding this Latin phrase to the Nicene Creed became acceptable in the West
but not in the East. Unitarianism denies that God consists of three persons and
so is committed to denying the divinity of Jesus. The monotheistic faiths of
Judaism and Islam are unitarian, but there are unitarians who consider
themselves Christians. H. P. Grice, “Raining, raining, raining – my mother and
the Trinitarians.”
tipperary: music-hall cited
by Grice. Grice liked the song and would often accompany himself at the piano
(“in Eb always”). He especially loved to recite the three verses (“Up to
mighty London came an Irishman one
day,” “Paddy wrote a letter to his Irish Molly-O,” and “Molly wrote a neat
reply to Irish Paddy-O”). Grice devises a possible counter-example to his
account of ‘communication,’ or strictly the conditions that have to be met for
the state of affairs “Emisor E communicates that p” to hold. In Grice’s
scenario, a reminiscence shared by his father, at a musical soirée in 1912,
at Harborne, Grice’s grandfather sings "Tipperary” “in a
raucous voice” (those are Grice’s father’s words) with the intention of getting
his mother-in-law (whom he knew was never too keen on the music-hall) to leave
the drawing-room. Grice’s grandfather’s mother-in-law is supposed to recognise
(and to know that she is intended to recognise) that Grice’s grandfather wants
to get rid of his mother in law – “to put it bluntly,” as Grice’s father has
it. Grice’s grandfather, moreover, intends that his mother-in-law shall, in the
event, leave because she recognizes Grice’s grandfather’s intention that
she shall go. Grice’s grandfather’s
scheme is that his mother-in-law should, somewhat wrongly, think that Grice’s
grandfather intends his mother-in-law to think that he intends to get rid of
her by means of the recognition of his intention that she should go. In other
words, the mother-in-law is supposed to argue: "My son-in-law intends me
to *think* that he intends to get rid of me by the raucous singing of that
awful ditty complete with the three verses – starting with “Up to mighty London
came an Irishman one day” -- but of course he, rude as he is, really wants to
get rid of me by means of the recognition of his intention to get rid of me. I
am really intended to go because he wants me to go, not because I cannot stand
the singing – I suppose. I mean, I could possibly stand it, if tied up, or
something." The fact that the mother in law, while thinking she is seeing
through his son-in-law’s plans, is really *conforming* to them (a situation
that would not hold if she is known by her son-in-law to be
‘counter-suggestible’), is suggested as precluding Grice from deeming, here,
that his grandfather means by the singing in a raucuous voice the opening line
to “Tipperary” in a raucuous voice (“Up to mighty London came an Irishman one
day”) that his mother-in-law should go. However, it is clear to Grice that,
once one tries to fill in the detail of this description, the example becomes
baffling – “even if I myself designed it.” “For, how is my grandfather’s
mother-in-law sposed to reach the idea that my grandfather wants her to think
that he intends to get rid of her by singing in a raucuous voice “Up to mighty
London came an Irishman one day”?” “My father tells me that my grandfather
sould sing in a *particular nasal tone*, so common at the music-hall, which he
knows *not* necessarily to be displeasing to his mother in law (when put to use
to a respectable drawing-room ballad), though it is to most people that visit
the Grices.” Grice’s grandfather’s mother in law knows that Grice’s grandfather
knows this particular nasa tone not to be displeasing to her, but she thinks,
rather wrongly, that Grice’s grandfaather does not know that his mother-in-law
knows this (she would never display his tastes in public). The mother-in-law
might then be supposed to argue: "My son-in-law cannot want to drive me
out of the drawing-room by his singing, awful to most, since he knows that that
particularly nasal tone is not really displeasing to me. My son-in-law,
however, does not know that I know he knows this. Therefore, maybe my
son-in-law is does wantsme to think that he intends to drive me out, on the
ground of a mere cause, rather than a reason, *by* his singing." “At this
point,” Grice notes, “one would expect my grandfather’s mother-in-law to be
completely at a loss to explain my grandfather’s performance.” “I see no reason
at all why my grandfather’s mother in-law should then suppose that he *really*
wants to get rid of her in some other way.” Whether or not this example could
be made to work, its complexity is ennerving. “And the sad thing about it, is
that any attempt on my part to introduce yet further restrictions would involve
more ennerving complexities still.” “It is in general true that one cannot have
intentions to achieve results which one sees no chance of achieving; and the
success of intentions of the kind involved in communication requires he to whom
communications or near-communications is addressed to be capable in the
circumstances of having certain thoughts and drawing certain conclusions.” At
some early stage in the attempted regression the calculations required of my
grandfather’s mother-in-lawy by my grandfather will be impracticably difficult;
and I suspect the limit has now been reached (if not exceeded).” “So my
grandfather, is he is a Grice, cannot have the intentions – as reconstructed by
my father, this was way back in 1912 -- required of him in order to force the
addition of further restrictions. Not only are the calculations my grandfather
would be requiring of his mother-in-law too difficult, but it would be
impossible for him to find cues to indicate to her that the calculations should
be made, even if they were within his mother-in-law’s compass. So one is
tempted to conclude that no regress is involved.” But even should this
conclusion be correct, we seem to be left with an uncomfortable situation. For
though we may know that we do not need an infinite series of backward-looking
sub-clauses, we cannot say just how many such sub-clauses are required.
“Indeed, it looks as if the definitional expansion of "By uttering x
emisor E communicates that p"
might have to vary from case to case, depending on such things as the nature of
the intended response, the circumstances in which the attempt to elicit the
response is made (say, a musical soirée at Harborne in mid-1912), and the
intelligence of the utterer (in this case my grandfather) and of the addressee
(his mother in law).” It is dubious whether such variation can be acceptable.
However, Grice genially finds out that this ennerving difficulty (of the type
some of Grice’s tutees trying to outshine him would display) is avoided if we
could eliminate potential counter-examples not by requiring the emisor to have
certain additional, backward-looking, intentions, but rather by requiring the
emisor *not* to have a certain sort of intention or complex of intentions.
Potential counterexamples of the kind involves the construction of a situation
in which the emisor E intends the sendee S, in the reflection process by which
the sendee S is supposed to reach his response, both to rely on some
inference-element, i. e., ome premise or some inferential step, E, and also to
think that the emisor E intends his sendee S not to rely on E. “What I propose,
then, is to uproot such potential counterexamples by a single clause which
prohibits the emisor from having this kind of complex intention.” We reach a
redefinition: "the emisor E means that p by uttering x" is true iff
(for some sendee S and for some response r): (a) the emisor U utters x
intending (i) the sendee to produce r
(2) the sendee S to think the emisor E to intend (i) (3) the sendee S’s
fulfillment of (i) to be based on the sendee S’s fulfillment of (2) (b) there
is no inference-element E such that the emsior E utters x intending both (i')
that the sendee S’s determination of r should rely on the inference element e
and (2') that the sendee S should think the emisor E to intend that (I') be
false.”
transversum -- Transversality – a term Grice borrowed from
Heidegger – ‘the greatest philosopher that ever lived.” -- transcendence of the sovereignty of identity
or self-sameness by recognizing the alterity of the Other as Unterschied to use Heidegger’s term which signifies the sense of relatedness by
way of difference. An innovative idea employed and appropriated by such diverse
philosophers as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari,
transversality is meant to replace the Eurocentric formulation of truth as
universal in an age when the world is said to be rushing toward the global
village. Universality has been a Eurocentric idea because what is particular in
the West is universalized, whereas what is particular elsewhere remains
particularized. Since its center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere,
truth is polycentric and correlative. Particularly noteworthy is the phenomenologist Calvin O. Schrag’s attempt to
appropriate transversality by splitting the difference between the two extremes
of absolutism and relativism on the one hand and modernity’s totalizing
practices and postmodernity’s fragmentary tendencies on the other.
tropic: Grice: “Cf. Cicero, ‘Tropicus, and
sub-tropicus’ –“ used by R. M. Hare and H. P. Grice – Hare introduced the
‘tropic’ to contrast with the ‘phrastic,’ the ‘neustic,’ and the ‘clistic’ – “I
often wondered if Hare was not distinguishing too narrowly” – H. P. Grice
--trope, in recent philosophical usage, an “abstract particular”; an instance
of a property occurring at a particular place and time, such as the color of
the cover of this book or this . The whiteness of this and the whiteness of the previous are two distinct tropes, identical neither
with the universal whiteness that is instantiated in both s, nor with the itself; although the whiteness of this cannot exist independently of this ,
this could be dyed some other color. A
number of writers, perhaps beginning with D. C. Williams, have argued that
tropes must be included in our ontology if we are to achieve an adequate
metaphysics. More generally, a trope is a figure of speech, or the use of an
expression in a figurative or nonliteral sense. Metaphor and irony, e.g., fall
under the category of tropes. If you are helping someone move a glass table but
drop your end, and your companion says, “Well, you’ve certainly been a big
help,” her utterance is probably ironical, with the intended meaning that you
have been no help. One important question is whether, in order to account for
the ironical use of this sentence, we must suppose that it has an ironical
meaning in addition to its literal meaning. Quite generally, does a sentence
usable to express two different metaphors have, in addition to its literal
meaning, two metaphorical meanings and
another if it can be hyperbolic, and so forth? Many philosophers and other
theorists from Aristotle on have answered yes, and postulated such figurative
meanings in addition to literal sentence meaning. Recently, philosophers loath
to multiply sentence meanings have denied that sentences have any non-literal
meanings.Their burden is to explain how, e.g., a sentence can be used
ironically if it does not have an ironical sense or meaning. Such philosophers
disagree on whether tropes are to be explained semantically or pragmatically. A
semantic account might hypothesize that tropes are generated by violations of
semantical rules. An important pragmatic approach is Grice’s suggestion that
tropes can be subsumed under the more general phenomenon of conversational
implicaturum.
tukey’s bit: from binary digit, a unit or measure of information.
Suggested by John W. Tukey, a bit is both an amount of information a reduction
of eight equally likely possibilities to one generates three bits [% log2 8] of
information and a system of representing that quantity. The binary system uses
1’s and 0’s.
Turing: Grice: “While not a philosopher, Turing’s thought
experiment is about the ‘conceptual analysis’ of ‘thought’” --similar to a
Griceian machine -- a machine, an
abstract automaton or imagined computer consisting of a finite automaton
operating an indefinitely long storage tape. The finite automaton provides the
computing power of the machine. The tape is used for input, output, and
calculation workspace; in the case of the universal Turing machine, it also
specifies another Turing machine. Initially, only a finite number of squares of
the tape are marked with symbols, while the rest are blank. The finite
automaton part of the machine has a finite number of internal states and
operates discretely, at times t % 0, 1, 2, . . . . At each time-step the
automaton examines the tape square under its tape head, possibly changes what
is there, moves the tape left or right, and then changes its internal state.
The law governing this sequence of actions is deterministic and is defined in a
state table. For each internal state and each tape symbol or blank under the
tape head, the state table describes the tape action performed by the machine
and gives the next internal state of the machine. Since a machine has only a
finite number of internal states and of tape symbols, the state table of a
machine is finite in length and can be stored on a tape. There is a universal
Turing machine Mu that can simulate every Turing machine including itself: when
the state table of any machine M is written on the tape of Mu, the universal
machine Mu will perform the same input-output computation that M performs. Mu
does this by using the state table of M to calculate M’s complete history for
any given input. Turing machines may be thought of as conceptual devices for
enumerating the elements of an infinite set e.g., the theorems of a formal
language, or as decision machines e.g., deciding of any truth-functional
formula whether it is a tautology. A. M. Turing showed that there are
welldefined logical tasks that cannot be carried out by any machine; in
particular, no machine can solve the halting problem. Turing’s definition of a
machine was theoretical; it was not a practical specification for a machine.
After the modern electronic computer was invented, he proposed a test for
judging whether there is a computer that is behaviorally equivalent to a human
in reasoning and intellectual creative power. The Turing test is a “black box”
type of experiment that Turing proposed as a way of deciding whether a computer
can think. Two rooms are fitted with the same input-output equipment going to
an outside experimenter. A person is placed in one room and a programmed
electronic computer in the other, each in communication with the experimenter.
By issuing instructions and asking questions, the experimenter tries to decide
which room has the computer and which the human. If the experimenter cannot
tell, that outcome is strong evidence that the computer can think as well as
the person. More directly, it shows that the computer and the human are
equivalent for all the behaviors tested. Since the computer is a finite
automaton, perhaps the most significant test task is that of doing creative
mathematics about the non-enumerable infinite.
tychism: from Grecian tyche, ‘chance’, Peirce’s doctrine that
there is absolute chance in the universe and its fundamental laws are
probabilistic and inexact. Peirce’s tychism is part of his evolutionary
cosmology, according to which all regularities of nature are products of growth
and development, i.e., results of evolution. The laws of nature develop over
time and become increasingly rigid and exact; the apparently deterministic laws
of physics are limiting cases of the basic, probabilistic laws. Underlying all
other laws is “the tendency of all things to take habits”; Peirce calls this
the Law of Habit. In his cosmology his tychism is associated with synechism,
the doctrine of the continuity of nature. His synechism involves the doctrine
of the continuity of mind and matter; Peirce sometimes expressed this view by
saying that “matter is effete mind.”
type: v.
Grice’s three-year-old’s guide to Russell’s theory of type
U
U SUBJECT INDEX: USE
U NAME INDEX ITALIAN: UBALDI
U NAME INDEX ENGLISH: URMSON (Grice’s collaborator)
ubaldi: Italian philosopher. Pietro
Ubaldi (n. Foligno) è stato un filosofo. Firma di Pietro Ubaldi Nato a Foligno,
vi ha vissuto sino al 1952 ad eccezione del periodo universitario, in cui ha
risieduto a Roma, e nei vent'anni d'insegnamento della lingua inglese: il primo
a Modica, in Sicilia, gli altri diciannove a Gubbio. Dal 1952 al 1972 si è
trasferito in Brasile. Ha scritto 24 volumi - oltre a vari articoli e sette
messaggi - presentando il sistema dell'evoluzione dell'universo e considerando
le leggi dell'evoluzione umana. Ha chiarito i rapporti d'involuzione ed
evoluzione fra le tre dimensioni della materia, dell'energia e dello spirito,
in un processo d'unificazione fra le ipotesi della scienza e i principi della
fede. Nella sua visione ha cercato di spiegare il senso della vita, la funzione
del dolore e la presenza del male. Candidato al premio Nobel nel 1964,
all'ultimo gli fu preferito Jean-Paul Sartre. Il suo sistema filosofico fu
considerato da Albert Einstein - come risulta da un carteggio - "dolce e
leggero" e la sua opera principale, La grande sintesi, fu giudicata da
Enrico Fermi "un quadro di filosofia scientifica e antropologica etica,
che oltrepassa di molto i consimili tentativi dell'ultimo secolo".
Nato in una regione influenzata dalla vicinanza con Assisi e impregnata
di spiritualità francescana, iniziò la scuola nel 1891, proseguì gli studi a
Roma e si laureò in Diritto nel giugno del 1910. Integrò gli studi scolastici
leggendo molto, studiò inoltre pianoforte ed apprese l'inglese, il francese e
il tedesco. Pietro Ubaldi e la moglie M. Antonietta Nel 1911
viaggiò negli Stati Uniti e nel 1912 si sposò con Maria Antonietta Solfanelli,
della vicina città di Matelica, dalla quale ebbe due figli: Franco, morto nella
seconda guerra mondiale, e Agnese. Si occupò delle proprietà terriere sua e
della moglie, che in seguito cedette in amministrazione ad altri. Nel 1927
avrebbe fatto voto di povertà e gli sarebbe apparso Cristo. L'apparizione si
sarebbe ripetuta nel 1931, insieme a san Francesco di Assisi. Il giorno di
Natale dello stesso anno avrebbe ricevuto il primo di numerosi
"messaggi". Divenne professore di lingua e letteratura inglese,
insegnando nelle scuole medie inferiori e superiori, prima a Modica, in
Sicilia, e poi a Gubbio. Tra il 1932 e il 1935, scrisse il libro La
grande sintesi, nel quale espose il suo pensiero, messo all'indice nel 1939,
poi riammesso da papa Giovanni XXIII. A questi anni appartengono dieci dei
libri da lui scritti A 65 anni nel 1951, dopo aver scritto dieci libri,
lasciò l'insegnamento e andò in pensione. Fu invitato a fare in Brasile un giro
di conferenze tra luglio e dicembre del 1951 e nel 1952 si trasferì
definitivamente con la famiglia a São Vicente, presso Santos, nello stato di São
Paulo, e qui scrisse altri quattordici volumi, dichiarando conclusa la sua
opera nel giorno di Natale del 1971, esattamente quarant'anni dopo il primo
"messaggio" ricevuto. La sua vita può essere considerata
distinta in quattro periodi ventennali, caratterizzati da un lavoro differente.
Nel primo periodo (1891-1910) avrebbe cercato le risposte nella filosofia,
nella religione e nella scienza senza trovarla. Il secondo periodo (1911-1930)
sarebbe stato caratterizzato da una sperimentazione pratica a contatto col
mondo, d'osservazione della realtà della vita. Nel terzo periodo (1931-1950)
scrisse i volumi della sua opera pubblicati in italiano e nel quarto
(1951-1970) la parte restante. Pensiero Pietro Ubaldi ritiene che esiste
un'unica "Sostanza", la cui essenza sarebbe il movimento e che si
manifesterebbe come "materia" (statica), "energia"
(dinamica) e "spirito" (vita). L'essere umano è chiamato ad evolversi
ampliando la percezione della sua coscienza, che da inviduale deve farsi
collettiva, per farsi poi coscienza cosmica. In tale processo viene delineato
il futuro stato organico-unitario dell'umanità, generato da una nuova etica
internazionale, effetto di una consapevolezza razionale e non di un emotivo
pacifismo. L'uomo si inserirebbe nel fenomeno universale dell'evoluzione
tramite la reincarnazione. Considera la sua "Opera" la
manifestazione del proprio destino e della propria ascesa evolutiva,
proponendosi attraverso di essa di arrivare ad una conoscenza utilizzabile per
risolvere i problemi della vita, in maniera consapevole e dignitosa. La
grande legge della vita, per Ubaldi, è quella dell'Amore, tale che la si
dovrebbe seguire in ogni situazione: cercare ciò che unifica. Per questo fare
il male significa voler andare contro la corrente del Sistema, perpetuando la
separazione, produttrice di sopraffazione e violenza, sino all'autodistruzione.
Fare il bene, invece, vuol dire cercare di armonizzarsi con tutto e con tutti,
perseguendo quel processo di unificazione che ci riporta al centro dell'essere,
che è rappresentato dalla presenza dell'ordine e della giustizia del pensiero
divino. In tal senso il segreto della felicità consiste nell'inquadrarsi
nell'ordine divino e la preghiera autentica consisterebbe nella docile
accettazione della Legge, cooperando con la Sua azione. Così pure, il lavorare
rappresenterebbe il diventare cooperatori del funzionamento organico
dell'universo. Il fine dell'esistenza - secondo Pietro Ubaldi - è
rappresentato dall'evoluzione. Si tratta dell'evoluzione etica, iscritta nel
movimento dell'evoluzione dell'universo. L'universo viene così inteso come
un'inestinguibile volontà d'amare, di creare e di affermare, in lotta col
principio opposto dell'inerzia, dell'odio e della distruzione. L'etica viene
concepita come dimensione ascendente, a tante dimensioni quante sono le
posizioni dell'essere lungo la scala evolutiva. In tale compito evolutivo
fondamentale sono gli ideali - aventi la funzione di orientamento e di guida -,
aventi il compito di anticipare una realtà futura da raggiungere. In questa
fase evolutiva l'impegno deve essere quello della spiritualizzazione,
consistente nel seguire gli ideali, che si sono configurati storicamente nelle
religioni e nelle morali. Ciò può avvenire cercando di praticare la
comprensione reciproca e ricercando la fratellanza universale. Si tratta di un
"cammino ascensionale", frutto di libertà e volontà, attraverso le
quali da un lato si struttura la nostra personalità dall'altro la vita
collettiva progredisce servendosi di tali progressi. La legge delle unità
collettive rappresenta un principio evolutivo fondamentale, quello per cui
tendiamo ad unioni sempre più ampie: dalla coppia alla famiglia, dalle nazioni
alle unioni di popoli, sino all'unione di tutti gli esseri viventi del pianeta,
pur mantenendo diversità e multiformità. Per questo, la via è quella del
superamento di ogni separazione: la separazione da sé stessi, dagli altri, dal
mondo. L'evoluzionismo di Ubaldi è, per tutto ciò, ben diverso da quello di
Darwin: guarda all'avvenire ed intuisce oltre l'evoluzione organica già
compiuta dall'essere umano. È più ampio di quello di Teilhard de Chardin, in
quanto concepisce anche un processo involutivo - dallo spirito, attraverso
l'energia, sino alla materia - che motiva e sorregge la via di ritorno,
evolutiva, come processo di unificazione, che dalla presenza del divino nella
materia, attraverso l'energia, ascende verso la spiritualizzazione. È
caratterizzato eticamente, come tensione spirituale verso il superuomo che è
presente in ognuno di noi, differentemente dal superomismo di Nietzsche,
sospinto dal desiderio di espandere solo le potenzialità dell'io. La
produzione della sua opera si basa sul metodo intuitivo, attraverso il quale la
coscienza, facendosi umile e ricettiva, riesce a penetrare per vie interiori
l'intima essenza dei fenomeni, diversamente dal metodo obiettivo che se pur ha
il vantaggio di giungere a conclusioni più universali è nato senza ali, in
quanto basato sulla distinzione tra l'io e il non io, tra il soggetto e
l'oggetto, tra la coscienza e il mondo esteriore. I suoi scritti - seguendo le
sue stesse dichiarazioni - sarebbero passati da una forma ispirata, collegata
ad una forma di contatto telepatico con le noùri (correnti di pensiero), a
livello "supercosciente", al controllo razionale dell'ispirazione
("metodo dell'intuizione razionalmente controllata"). Tale metodo
avrebbe consentito di esaminare sia la "materia" che lo
"spirito" nella loro armonia, unificando scienza e fede, considerate
due aspetti della stessa verità. Elenco degli scritti Ciclo italiano La
grande sintesi I grandi messaggi (nell'edizione brasiliana con una vita
dell'autore). La grande sintesi Le nouri ("correnti di pensiero")
L'ascesi mistica. Frammenti di pensiero e di passione: La nuova civiltà del
terzo millennio Problemi dell'avvenire (Il problema psicologico, filosofico,
scientifico). Ascensioni umane. Dio e universo. Profezie (L'avvenire del
mondo). Ciclo brasiliano Pietro Ubaldi e Manuel Emydio Commentari
(raccolta dei giudizi della stampa sui volumi precedenti). Problemi attuali. Il
sistema (Genesi e struttura dell'universo). La grande battaglia. Evoluzione e
Vangelo La legge di Dio La tecnica funzionale della legge di Dio Caduta e
salvezza Principi di una nuova etica. La discesa degli ideali Un destino
seguendo Cristo Come orientare la propria vita Cristo. Volumi pubblicati in
lingua italiana Storia di un uomo, Fratelli Bocca editori, Milano 1942
Ascenzioni umane. Verso l'armonia con l'ordine cosmico, Edizioni Mediterranee,
Roma 1951 - Cristo e la sua legge, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 1970 La grande
sintesi. Sintesi e soluzione dei problemi della scienza e dello spirito,
Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 1980 Le noùri. Dal superumano al piano concettuale
umano, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 1982 La nuova civiltà del terzo millennio.
Verso la nuova era dello spirito, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 1988 Problemi
dell'avvenire. La civiltà dello spirito, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 1990
L'ascesi mistica. Dal piano concettuale umano al superumano, Edizioni Mediterranee,
Roma 2000 Dio e Universo, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 2002 Storia di un uomo,
Edizioni del centro studi italiano di parapsicologia, Recco(Ge) 2006 Il
Sistema, Edizioni del centro studi italiano di parapsicologia, Recco(Ge) 2007
La legge di Dio, Edizioni del centro studi italiano di parapsicologia,
Recco(Ge) 2008 La tecnica funzionale della legge di Dio, Edizioni del centro
studi italiano di parapsicologia, Recco(Ge) 2009 La discesa degli ideali, Om
Edizioni, Città di Castello (Pg) 2010 "Un destino seguendo Cristo",Om
Edizioni, Città di Castello (Pg) 2012 "Evoluzione e Vangelo", Centro
Culturale Pietro Ubaldi, Foligno (Pg) 2016 Bibliografia Giuseppe Arcidiacono,
Pietro Ubaldi e la scienza moderna, in Atti dell'8º Convegno sul pensiero di
Pietro Ubaldi, Roma 2000,73-78. Antony Elenjimittan, "La missione
ecumenica di Pietro Ubaldi", in Atti dell'8º Convegno sul pensiero di
Pietro Ubaldi, Roma 2000, 35-40. Paola Giovetti, "I grandi iniziati del
nostro tempo", Rizzoli, Milano 1993. Franco Lanari (a cura di), "Il
pensiero di Pietro Ubaldi" - Relazioni tenute nei quattro convegni
dedicati a Pietro Ubaldi - Roma 1988-1989-1990, Ed. Mediterranee, Roma 1993.
Franco Lanari (a cura di) "Pietro Ubaldi - Profeta del terzo
millennio" , Atti dell'8º Convegno sul pensiero di Pietro Ubaldi, Roma
2000. Filippo Liverziani, "Pietro Ubaldi e le Nòuri", in Atti dell'8º
Convegno sul pensiero di Pietro Ubaldi, Roma 2000, 21-26. Ulderico Pasquale
Magni, "Scienza e mistica", in Atti dell'8º Convegno sul pensiero di
Pietro Ubaldi, Roma 2000, 69-72. Alfredo Marocchino, "Pietro Ubaldi
profeta della intesi tra Metafisica e Nuova Fisica", in Atti dell'8º
Convegno sul pensiero di Pietro Ubaldi, Roma 2000, 43-48. Luca Marzetti, La
scala di Giacobbe, Perugia 2010. Gaetano Mollo, Pietro Ubaldi biosofo
dell'evoluzione umana, Ed. Mediterranee, Roma 2006. Gaetano Mollo, "La
formazione dell'uomo evoluto nel pensiero di Pietro Ubaldi", in
"Pedagogia e Vita", n. 4, 2005, 23-36. Gaetano Mollo, "La
visione del mondo tra scienza e fede di Pietro Ubaldi", in Atti dell'8º
Convegno sul pensiero di Pietro Ubaldi, Roma 2000, 49-59. Gaetano Mollo,
"La visione dell'universo. La prospettiva di Pietro Ubaldi", in
"Rivista di teosofia", n° 2, febbraio 2001,15-17. Gaetano Mollo,
"Il rapporto tra scienza e fede. La prospettiva di Pietro Ubaldi", in
"Rivista di teosofia", n° 12, dicembre 2001,10-12. Lorenzo Ostuni,
Fisica e metafisica di Pietro Ubaldi in relazione all'uomo contemporaneo, in
Atti dell'8º Convegno sul pensiero di Pietro Ubaldi, Roma 2000, 35-40. Riccardo
Pieracci, Pietro Ubaldi e la Grande Sintesi, Ed. Mediterranee, Roma 1986.
Riccardo Pieracci, "Pietro Ubaldi mistico dell'Umbria", Edizioni
Eugubina, Gubbio 1973. Antonio Pieretti, "Pietro Ubaldi. La civiltà del
terzo millennio", Bollettino storico della città di Foligno, XIX, 1995,
469. Carlo Splendore, "La Legge Ciclica dell'evoluzione nel pensiero di
Pietro Ubaldi", in Atti dell'8º Convegno sul pensiero di Pietro Ubaldi,
Roma 2000,79-88. Altri progetti Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons
contiene immagini o altri file su Pietro Ubaldi Collegamenti esterni Sito
ufficiale del Centro culturale "Pietro Ubaldi" di Foligno, su
pietroubaldi.com. URL consultato il 02-02-2010. Comitato del Comune di Foligno
per la divulgazione del pensiero di Pietro Ubaldi, presieduto da Gaetano Mollo,
su gaetanomollo.it. URL consultato il 02-02-2010. L'opera di Pietro Ubaldi, su
cesnur.org. URL consultato il 23-10-2010 (archiviato dall'url originale il 23
giugno 2011)., in Massimo Introvigne, PierLuigi Zoccatelli, Le religioni in
Italia (sezione "Spiritismo, parapsicologia, ricerca psichica"), sul
sito Cesnur.org (Center for Studies on New Religions) Controllo di autorità
VIAF (EN) 14829753 · ISNI (EN) 0000 0000 0161 9674 · BNF (FR) cb12266472f
(data) · WorldCat Identities (EN) viaf-14829753 Biografie Portale Biografie
Filosofia Portale Filosofia Letteratura Portale Letteratura Categorie: Filosofi
italiani del XX secoloTeologi italianiNati nel 1886Morti nel 1972Nati il 18
agostoMorti il 29 febbraioNati a FolignoFilosofi cattoliciItaliani emigrati in
BrasileStudenti della Sapienza - Università di Roma[altre]. Refs.: Luigi
Speranza, “Ubalid e Grice,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool
Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
uncertainty: one of those negativisims by Grice – cfr.
‘non-certainty’ -- v. certum. It may be held that ‘uncertain’ is wrong. Grice
is certain that p. It is not the case that Grice is certain that p.
Umanesimo
rinascimentale -- humanism: Grice distinguishes between a human and a person –
so he is more of a personalist than a humanism. “But the distinction is
implicatural.” He was especially keen on Italian humanism. a set of presuppositions that assigns to
human beings a special position in the scheme of things. Not just a school of
thought or a collection of specific beliefs or doctrines, humanism is rather a
general perspective from which the world is viewed. That perspective received a
gradual yet persistent articulation during different historical periods and
continues to furnish a central leitmotif of Western civilization. It comes into
focus when it is compared with two competing positions. On the one hand, it can
be contrasted with the emphasis on the supernatural, transcendent domain, which
considers humanity to be radically dependent on divine order. On the other
hand, it resists the tendency to treat humanity scientifically as part of the
natural order, on a par with other living organisms. Occupying the middle
position, humanism discerns in human beings unique capacities and abilities, to
be cultivated and celebrated for their own sake. The word ‘humanism’ came into
general use only in the nineteenth century but was applied to intellectual and
cultural developments in previous eras. A teacher of classical languages and
literatures in Renaissance Italy was described as umanista (contrasted with
legista, teacher of law), and what we today call “the humanities,” in the
fifteenth century was called studia humanitatis, which stood for grammar,
rhetoric, history, literature, and moral philosophy. The inspiration for these
studies came from the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Latin texts; Plato’s
complete works were translated for the first time, and Aristotle’s philosophy
was studied in more accurate versions than those available during the Middle
Ages. The unashamedly humanistic flavor of classical writings had a tremendous
impact on Renaissance scholars. Here, one felt no weight of the supernatural
pressing on the human mind, demanding homage and allegiance. Humanity – with
all its distinct capacities, talents, worries, problems, possibilities – was
the center of interest. It has been said that medieval thinkers philosophized
on their knees, but, bolstered by the new studies, they dared to stand up and
to rise to full stature. Instead of devotional Church Latin, the medium of
expression was the people’s own language – Italian, French, German, English.
Poetical, lyrical self-expression gained momentum, affecting all areas of life.
New paintings showed great interest in human form. Even while depicting
religious scenes, Michelangelo celebrated the human body, investing it with
instrinsic value and dignity. The details of daily life – food, clothing,
musical instruments – as well as nature and landscape – domestic and exotic –
were lovingly examined in paintings and poetry. Imagination was stirred by
stories brought home by the discoverers of new lands and continents, enlarging
the scope of human possibilities as exhibited in the customs and the natural
environments of strange, remote peoples. The humanist mode of thinking deepened
and widened its tradition with the advent of eighteenth-century thinkers. They
included French philosophes like Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, and other
European and American figures – Bentham, Hume, Lessing, Kant, Franklin, and
Jefferson. Not always agreeing with one another, these thinkers nevertheless
formed a family united in support of such values as freedom, equality,
tolerance, secularism, and cosmopolitanism. Although they championed
untrammeled use of the mind, they also wanted it to be applied in social and
political reform, encouraging individual creativity and exalting the active
over the contemplative life. They believed in the perfectibility of human
nature, the moral sense and responsibility, and the possibility of progress.
The optimistic motif of perfectibility endured in the thinking of nineteenth-
and twentiethcentury humanists, even though the accelerating pace of
industrialization, the growth of urban populations, and the rise in crime,
nationalistic squabbles, and ideological strife leading to largescale inhumane
warfare often put in question the efficacy of humanistic ideals. But even the
depressing run of human experience highlighted the appeal of those ideals,
reinforcing the humanistic faith in the values of endurance, nobility,
intelligence, moderation, flexibility, sympathy, and love. Humanists attribute
crucial importance to education, conceiving of it as an all-around development
of personality and individual talents, marrying science to poetry and culture
to democracy. They champion freedom of thought and opinion, the use of
intelligence and pragmatic research in science and technology, and social and
political systems governed by representative institutions. Believing that it is
possible to live confidently without metaphysical or religious certainty and
that all opinions are open to revision and correction, they see human
flourishing as dependent on open communication, discussion, criticism, and
unforced consensus. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Italian humanism, Holofernes’s
Mantuan, from Petrarca to Valla.”
unexpected
examination paradox, a paradox about
belief and prediction. One version is as follows: It seems that a teacher could
both make, and act on, the following announcement to his class: “Sometime
during the next week I will set you an examination, but at breakfast time on
the day it will occur, you will have no good reason to expect that it will
occur on that day.” If he announces this on Friday, could he not do what he
said he would by, say, setting the examination on the following Wednesday? The
paradox is that there is an argument purporting to show that there could not be
an unexpected examination of this kind. For let us suppose that the teacher
will carry out his threat, in both its parts; i.e., he will set an examination,
and it will be unexpected. Then he cannot set the examination on Friday
assuming this to be the last possible day of the week. For, by the time Friday
breakfast arrives, and we know that all the previous days have been
examination-free, we would have every reason to expect the examination to occur
on Friday. So leaving the examination until Friday is inconsistent with setting
an unexpected examination. For similar reasons, the examination cannot be held
on Thursday. Given our previous conclusion that it cannot be delayed until
Friday, we would know, when Thursday morning came, and the previous days had
been examination-free, that it would have to be held on Thursday. So if it were
held on Thursday it would not be unexpected. So it cannot be held on Thursday.
Similar reasoning sup938 U 938 posedly
shows that there is no day of the week on which it can be held, and so
supposedly shows that the supposition that the teacher can carry out his threat
must be rejected. This is paradoxical, for it seems plain that the teacher can
carry out his threat. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Grice’s book of paradoxes, with
pictures and illustrations to confuse you.”
uniformity of
nature – Grice: “’uniformity’ has
nothing to do with ‘form’ here!” – Grice: “I once used the phrase in a tutorial
with Hardie: “What do you mean by ‘of’?’ he asked” -- a state of affairs thought to be required if
induction is to be justified. For example, inductively strong arguments, such
as ‘The sun has risen every day in the past; therefore, the sun will rise
tomorrow’, are thought to presuppose that nature is uniform in the sense that
the future will resemble the past, in this case with respect to the diurnal
cycle. The Scottish empiricist Hume was the first to make explicit that the
uniformity of nature is a substantial assumption in inductive reasoning. Hume
argued that, because the belief that the future will resemble the past cannot
be grounded in experience for the future
is as yet unobserved induction cannot be
rationally justified; appeal to it in defense of induction is either
question-begging or illicitly metaphysical. Francis Bacon’s “induction by
enumeration” and J. S. Mill’s “five methods of experimental inquiry” presuppose
that nature is uniform. Whewell appealed to the uniformity of nature in order
to account for the “consilience of inductions,” the tendency of a hypothesis to
explain data different from those it was originally introduced to explain. For
reasons similar to Hume’s, Popper holds that our belief in the uniformity of
nature is a matter of faith. Reichenbach held that although this belief cannot
be justified in advance of any instance of inductive reasoning, its
presupposition is vindicated by successful inductions. It has proved difficult
to formulate a philosophical statement of the uniformity of nature that is both
coherent and informative. It appears contradictory to say that nature is
uniform in all respects, because inductive inferences always mark differences
of some sort e.g., from present to future, from observed to unobserved, etc.,
and it seems trivial to say that nature is uniform in some respects, because
any two states of nature, no matter how different, will be similar in some
respect. Not all observed regularities in the world or in data are taken to
support successful inductive reasoning; not all uniformities are, to use
Goodman’s term, “projectible.” Philosophers of science have therefore proposed
various rules of projectibility, involving such notions as simplicity and
explanatory power, in an attempt to distinguish those observed patterns that
support successful inductions and thus are taken to represent genuine causal
relations from those that are accidental or spurious.
unity in
diversity, in aesthetics, the
principle that the parts of the aesthetic object must cohere or hang together
while at the same time being different enough to allow for the object to be
complex. This principle defines an important formal requirement used in judging
aesthetic objects. If an object has insufficient unity e.g., a collection of
color patches with no recognizable patterns of any sort, it is chaotic or lacks
harmony; it is more a collection than one object. But if it has insufficient
diversity e.g., a canvas consisting entirely of one color with no internal
differentiations, it is monotonous. Thus, the formal pattern desired in an
aesthetic object is that of complex parts that differ significantly from each
other but fit together to form one interdependent whole such that the character
or meaning of the whole would be changed by the change of any part.
universal
instantiation: Grice: “Slightly
confusing in that the universe is not a pluri-verse.” -- discussed by Grice in
his System G -- also called universal quantifier elimination. 1 The argument
form ‘Everything is f; therefore a is f’, and arguments of this form. 2 The
rule of inference that permits one to infer that any given thing is f from the
premise that everything is f. In classical logic, where all terms are taken to
denote things in the domain of discourse, the rule says simply that from vA[v]
one may infer A[t], the result of replacing all free occurrences of v in A[v]
by the term t. If non-denoting terms are allowed, however, as in free logic,
then the rule would require an auxiliary premise of the form Duu % t to ensure
that t denotes something in the range of the variable v. Likewise in modal
logic, which is sometimes held to contain terms that do not denote “genuine individuals”
the things over which variables range, an auxiliary premise may be required. 3
In higher-order logic, the rule of inference that says that from XA[X] one may
infer A[F], where F is any expression of the grammatical category e.g., n-ary
predicate appropriate to that of X e.g., n-ary predicate variable.
universale: Grice: “Very Ciceronian – not found in Aristotle.” --
Like ‘qualia,’ which is the plural for ‘quale,’ ‘universalia’ is the plural for
‘universale.’ The totum for Grice on “all” -- This is a Gricism. It all started
with arbor porphyriana. It is supposed to translate Aristotle’s “to kath’olou”
(which happens to be one of the categories in Kant, “alleheit,” and which
Aristotle contrasts with “to kath’ekastou,” (which Kant has as a category,
SINGULARITAS. For a nominalist, any predicate is a ‘name,’ hence ‘nominalism.’
Opposite ‘realism.’ “Nominalism” is actually a misnomer. The opposite of
realism is anti-realism. We need something like ‘universalism,’ (he who
believes in the existence, not necessary ‘reality’ of a universal) and a
‘particularist,’ or ‘singularist,’ who does not. Note that the opposite of
‘particularism,’ is ‘totalism.’ (Totum et pars). Grice holds a set-theoretical
approach to the universalium. Grice is willing to provide always a
set-theoretical extensionalist (in terms of predicate) and an intensionalist
variant in terms of property and category. Grice explicitly uses ‘X’ for
utterance-type (WOW:118), implying a distinction with the utterance-token.
Grice gets engaged in a metabolical debate concerning the reductive
analysis of what an utterance-type means in terms of a claim to the effect
that, by uttering x, an utterance-token of utterance-type X, the utterer means
that p. The implicaturum is x (utterance-token). Grice is not enamoured
with the type/token or token/type distinction. His thoughts on logical
form are provocative. f you cannot put it in logical form, it is not worth
saying. Strawson infamously reacted with a smile. Oh, no: if you CAN put
it in logical form, it is not worth saying. Grice refers to the type-token
distinction when he uses x for token and X for type. Since Bennett cares to
call Grice a meaning-nominalist we should not care about the type X anyway. He
expands on this in Retrospective Epilogue. Grice should have payed more
attention to the distinction seeing that it was Ogdenian. A common mode of
estimating the amount of matter in a printed book is to count the number of
words. There will ordinarily be about twenty thes on a page, and, of course,
they count as twenty words. In another use of the word word, however, there is
but one word the in the English language; and it is impossible that this word
should lie visibly on a page, or be heard in any voice. Such a Form, Peirce, as
cited by Ogden and Richards, proposes to term a type. A single object such as
this or that word on a single line of a single page of a single copy of a book,
Peirce ventures to call a token. In order that a type may be used, it has to be
embodied in a token which shall be a sign of the type, and thereby of the
object the type signifies, and Grice followed suit. Refs.: Some of the sources
are given under ‘abstractum.’ Also under ‘grecianism,’ since Grice was keen on
exploring what Aristotle has to say about this in Categoriae, due to his joint
research with Austin, Code, Friedman, and Strawson. Grice also has a specific
Peirceian essay on the type-token distinction. BANC. Grice – “A Ciceronian
technicism, not found in Aristotle. -- (‘the altogether nice girl’) dictum de
omni et nullo, also dici de omni et nullo Latin, ‘said of all and none’, two
principles that were supposed by medieval logicians to underlie all valid
syllogisms. Dictum de omni applies most naturally to universal affirmative
propositions, maintaining that in such a proposition, whatever falls under the
subject term also falls under the predicate term. Thus, in ‘Every whale is a
mammal’, whatever is included under ‘whale’ is included under ‘mammal’. Dictum
de nullo applies to universal negative propositions, such as ‘No whale is a
lizard’, maintaining that whatever falls under the subject term does not fall
under the predicate term. SYLLOGISM.
W.E.M. Diderot, Denis 171384,
philosopher, Encyclopedist, dramatist, novelist, and art critic, a
champion of Enlightenment values. He is known primarily as general editor of
the Encyclopedia 174773, an analytical and interpretive compendium of
eighteenth-century science and technology. A friend of Rousseau and Condillac,
Diderot tr. Shaftesbury’s Inquiry Concerning Virtue 1745 into . Revealing
Lucretian affinities Philosophical Thoughts, 1746, he assailed Christianity in
The Skeptics’ Walk 1747 and argued for a materialistic and evolutionary
universe Letter on the Blind, 1749; this led to a short imprisonment. Diderot
wrote mediocre bourgeois comedies; some bleak fiction The Nun, 1760; and two satirical
dialogues, Rameau’s Nephew 1767 and Jacques the Fatalist 176584, his
masterpieces. He innovatively theorized on drama Discourse on Dramatic Poetry,
1758 and elevated art criticism to a literary genre Salons in Grimm’s Literary
Correspondence. At Catherine II’s invitation, Diderot visited Saint Petersburg
in 1773 and planned the creation of a Russian . Promoting science, especially
biology and chemistry, Diderot unfolded a philosophy of nature inclined toward
monism. His works include physiological investigations, Letter on the Deaf and
Dumb 1751 and Elements of Physiology 177480; a sensationalistic epistemology,
On the Interpretation of Nature 1745; an aesthetic, Essays on Painting 1765; a
materialistic philosophy of science, D’Alembert’s Dream 1769; an anthropology,
Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville 1772; and an anti-behavioristic
Refutation of Helvétius’ Work “On Man” 177380.
universalisability: -- Grice: ‘Slightly confusing, in that the universe
is not a pluri-verse” -- discussed along three dimension by Grice:
applicational conceptual, and formal. -- 1 Since the 0s, the moral criterion
implicit in Kant’s first formulation of the categorical imperative: “Act only
on that maxim that you can at the same time will to be a universal law,” often called
the principle of universality. A maxim or principle of action that satisfies
this test is said to be universalizable, hence morally acceptable; one that
does not is said to be not universalizable, hence contrary to duty. 2 A second
sense developed in connection with the work of Hare in the 0s. For Hare,
universalizability is “common to all judgments which carry descriptive
meaning”; so not only normative claims moral and evaluative judgments but also
empirical statements are universalizable. Although Hare describes how such
universalizuniversal universalizability 940
940 ability can figure in moral argument, for Hare “offenses against . .
. universalizability are logical, not moral.” Consequently, whereas for Kant
not all maxims are universalizable, on Hare’s view they all are, since they all
have descriptive meaning. 3 In a third sense, one that also appears in Hare,
‘universalizability’ refers to the principle of universalizability: “What is
right or wrong for one person is right or wrong for any similar person in
similar circumstances.” This principle is identical with what Sidgwick The
Methods of Ethics called the Principle of Justice. In Generalization in Ethics
1 by M. G. Singer b.6, it is called the Generalization Principle and is said to
be the formal principle presupposed in all moral reasoning and consequently the
explanation for the feature alleged to hold of all moral judgments, that of
being generalizable. A particular judgment of the form ‘A is right in doing x’
is said to imply that anyone relevantly similar to A would be right in doing
any act of the kind x in relevantly similar circumstances. The characteristic
of generalizability, of presupposing a general rule, was said to be true of
normative claims, but not of all empirical or descriptive statements. The
Generalization Principle GP was said to be involved in the Generalization
Argument GA: “If the consequences of everyone’s doing x would be undesirable,
while the consequences of no one’s doing x would not be, then no one ought to do
x without a justifying reason,” a form of moral reasoning resembling, though
not identical with, the categorical imperative CI. One alleged resemblance is
that if the GP is involved in the GP, then it is involved in the CI, and this
would help explain the moral relevance of Kant’s universalizability test. 4 A
further extension of the term ‘universalizability’ appears in Alan Gewirth’s
Reason and Morality 8. Gewirth formulates “the logical principle of
universalizability”: “if some predicate P belongs to some subject S because S
has the property Q . . . then P must also belong to all other subjects S1, S2,
. . . , Sn that have Q.” The principle of universalizability “in its moral
application” is then deduced from the logical principle of universalizability,
and is presupposed in Gewirth’s Principle of Generic Consistency, “Act in
accord with the generic rights of your recipients as well as yourself,” which
is taken to provide an a priori determinate way of determining relevant
similarities and differences, hence of applying the principle of
universalizability. The principle of universalizability is a formal principle;
universalizability in sense 1, however, is intended to be a substantive
principle of morality.
universalisierung: Grice: “Ironically, the Dutch so careful with
their lingo, this is vague, in that the universe is not a pluriverse.” -- While
Grice uses ‘universal,’ he means like Russell, the unnecessary implication of
‘every.’ Oddly, Kant does not relate this –ung with the first of his three categories
under ‘quantitas,’ the universal. But surely they are related. Problem is that
Kant wasn’t aware because he kept moving from the Graeco-Roman classical
vocabulary to the Hun. Thus, Kant has “Allheit,” which he renders in Latinate
as “Universitas,” and “Totalität,” gehört in der Kategorienlehre des
Philosophen Immanuel Kant zu den reinen Verstandesbegriffen, d. h. zu den
Elementen des Verstandes, welche dem Menschen bereits a priori, also unabhängig
von der sinnlichen Erfahrung gegeben sind. “Allheit” wird wie Einheit und
Vielheit den Kategorien der “Quantität” zugeordnet und entspricht den Einzelnen
Urteilen (Urteil hier im Sinn von 'Aussage über die Wirklichkeit') in der Form
„Ein S ist P“, also z. B. „Immanuel Kant ist ein Philosoph“. Sie wird von Kant
definiert als „die Vielheit als Einheit betrachtet“ (KrV, B 497 f.)[3]. Siehe
auch Transzendentale Analytik Weblinks. Allheit – Bedeutungserklärungen,
Wortherkunft, Synonyme, Übersetzungen Einzelnachweise Immanuel Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Reclam,
Stuttgart 1966, ISBN 3-15-006461-9.
Peter Kunzmann, Franz-Peter Burkard, Franz Wiedmann: dtv-Atlas zur
Philosophie. dtv, München 1991, ISBN 3-423-03229-4, S. 136 ff. Zitiert nach Arnim Regenbogen, Uwe Meyer
(Hrsg.): Wörterbuch der Philosophischen Begriffe. Meiner, Hamburg 2005, ISBN
3-7873-1738-4: Allheit Kategorie: Ontologie. Referred to by Grice in his
“Method,” – “A requisite for a maxim to enter my manual, which I call the
Immanuel, is that it should be universalizable. Die Untersuchung zur »Universalisierung
in der Ethik« greift eine Problematik auf, die für eine Reihe der
prominentesten Ethikentwürfe der Gegenwart sowohl des deutschsprachigen wie des
angelsächsischen Raumes zentral ist, nämlich ob der normative
Rationalitätsanspruch, den ethische Argumentationen erheben, auf eine dem
wissenschaftlichen Anspruch der deskriptiven Gesetzeswissenschaften
vergleichbare Weise eingelöst werden kann, nämlich durch Verallgemeinerungs-
oder Universalisierungsprinzipien. universalizability
Ethics The idea that moral judgments should be universalizable can be traced to
the Golden Rule and Kant’s ethics. In the twentieth century it was elaborated
by Hare and became a major thesis of his prescriptivism. The principle states
that all moral judgments are universalizable in the sense that if it is right
for a particular person A to do an action X, then it must likewise be right to
do X for any person exactly like A, or like A in the relevant respects.
Furthermore, if A is right in doing X in this situation, then it must be right
for A to do X in other relevantly similar situations. Hare takes this feature
to be an essential feature of moral judgments. An ethical statement is the
issuance of a universal prescription. Universalizability is not the same as
generality, for a moral judgment can be highly specific and detailed and need
not be general or simple. The universalizability principle enables Hare to
avoid the charge of irrationality that is usually lodged against
non-cognitivism, to which his prescriptivism belongs, and his theory is thus a
great improvement on emotivism. “I have been maintaining that the meaning of
the word ‘ought’ and other moral words is such that a person who uses them
commits himself thereby to a universal rule. This is the thesis of universalizability.”
Hare, Freedom and Reason.
universe of
discourse: Grice: “The phrase is
confusing, seeing the uni-verse, is not a pluri-verse.” Tthe usually limited
class of individuals under discussion, whose existence is presupposed by the
discussants, and which in some sense constitutes the ultimate subject matter of
the discussion. Once the universe of a discourse has been established, expressions
such as ‘every object’ and ‘some object’ refer respectively to every object or
to some object in the universe of discourse. The concept of universe of
discourse is due to De Morgan in 1846, but the expression was coined by Boole
eight years later. When a discussion is formalized in an interpreted standard
first-order language, the universe of discourse is taken as the “universe” of
the interpretation, i.e., as the range of values of the variables. Quine and
others have emphasized that the universe of discourse represents an ontological
commitment of the discussants. In a discussion in a particular science, the
universe of discourse is often wider than the domain of the science, although
economies of expression can be achieved by limiting the universe of discourse
to the domain.
unstructured:
Typically, Grice is more interested in the negatives: the unstructured is prior
to the structured, surely. Grice: “Paget was able to structure compositionality
with his hands!” -- one of those negativisms of Grice (cfr. ‘non-structured’).
Surely Grice cared a hoot for French anthropological structuralism! So he has
the ‘unstructured’ followed by the structured. A handwave is unstructured,
meaning syntactically unstructured, and in it you have all the enigma of reason
resolved. By waving his hand, U means that SUBJECT: the emissor, copula IS,
predicate: A KNOWER OF THE ROUTE, or ABOUT TO LEAVE the emissor.There is a lot
of structure in the soul of the emissor. So apply this to what Grice calls a
‘soul-to-soul transfer’ to which he rightly reduces communication. Even if it
is n unstructured communication device, and maybe a ‘one-off’ one, to use
Blackburn’s vulgarism, we would have the three types of correspondence of
Grice’s Semantic Triangle obtaining. First, the psychophysical. The emissor
knows the route, and he shows it. And he wants the emissee to ‘catch’ or get
the emissor’s drift. It is THAT route which he knows. So the TWO psychophysical
correspondences obtain. Then there are the two psychosemiotic correspondences.
The emissor intends that the emissor will recognise the handwave as a signal
that he, the emissor, knows the route. As for the emissee’s psychosemiotic
correspondence: he better realise it is THAT route – to Banbury, surely, with
bells in his shoes, as Grice’s mother would sing to him. And then we have the
two semio-physical correspondences. If the emissor DOES know the route (and he
is not lying, or rather, he is not mistaken about it), then that’s okay. Many
people say or signal that they know because they feel ashamed to admit their
ignorance. So it is very expectable, outside Oxford, to have someone waving
meaning that he knows the route, when he doesn’t. This is surely non-natural,
because it’s Kiparsky-non-factive. Waving the hand thereby communicating that
he knows the route does not entail that he knows the route (as ‘spots’ do
entail measles). From the emissee’s point of view, provided the emissor knows
the route and shows it, the emissee will understand, hopefully, and feel
assured that the emissor will hopefully reach the destination, Banbury, surely,
safely enough.
uptake:
used by Grice slightly different from Austin. Austin: “The performance of an
illocutionary act involves the securing of uptake.” “I distinguish some senses
of consequences and effects, especially three senses in which effects can come
in even with illocutionary acts, viz. securing uptake, taking effect, and
inviting a response.” “Comparing
stating to what we have said about the illocu- tionary act, it is an act
to which, just as much as to other illocutionary acts, it is essential to
‘secure uptake’ : the doubt about whether I stated something if it was
not heard or understood is just the same as the doubt about whether
I warned sotto voce or protested if someone did not take it as a protest,
&c. And statements do ‘take effect’ just as much as ‘namings’, say:
if I have stated something, then that commits me to other
statements: other statements made by me will be in order or out of
order.” Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Verstehen and uptake.”
urmson’s
bribe: Urmson’s use of the bribe is
‘accidental.’ What Urmson is getting at is that if the briber intends the bribe
acts as a cause to effect a response, even a cognitive one, in the bribe, the
propositional complexum, “This is a bribe,” should not necessarily be
communicated. It is amazing how Grice changed the example into one about
physical action. They seem different. On the other hand, Grice would not have
cared to credit Urmson had it not believed it worth knowing that the criticism
arose within the Play Group (Grice admired Urmson). In his earlier “Meaning,”
Grice presents his own self-criticisms to arrive at a more refined analysis.
But in “Utterer’s meaning and intention,” when it comes to the SUFFICIENCY,
it’s all about other people: notably Urmson and Strawson. Grice cites Stampe
before Strawson, but many ignore Stampe on the basis that Strawson does not
credit him, and there is no reason why he should have been aware of it. But
Stampe was at Oxford at the time so this is worth noting. It has to be
emphasised that the author list is under ‘sufficiency.’ Under necessity, Grice
does not credit the source of the objections, so we can assume it is Grice
himself, as he had presented criticisms to his own view within the same ‘Meaning.’
It is curious that Grice loved Stampe. Grice CHANGED Urmon’s example, and was
unable to provide a specific scenario to Strawson’s alleged counterexample,
because Strawson is vague himself. But Stampe’s, Grice left unchanged. It seems
few Oxonian philosohpers of Grice’s playgroup had his analytic acumen. Consider
his sophisticated account of ‘meaning.’ It’s different if you are a graduate
student from the New World, and you have to prove yourself intelligent. But for
Grice’s playgroup companion, only three or four joined in the analysis. The
first is Urmson. The second is Strawson. The case by Urmson involved a tutee
offering to buy Gardiner an expensive dinner, hoping that Gardiner will give
him permission for an over-night visit to London. Gardiner knows that
his tutee wants his permission. The appropriate analysans for "By offering
to buy Gardiner an expensive dinner, the tuttee means that Gardiner should give
him permission for an overnight stay in London" are fulfilled: (1) The
tutee offers to buy Gardiner an expensive dinner with the intention of
producing a certain response on the part of Gardiner (2) The tutee intends that
Gardiner should recognize (know, think) that the tutee is offering to buy him
an expensive dinner with the intention of producing this response; (3) The
tutee intends that Gardiners recognition (thought) that the tutee has the
intention mentioned in (2) should be at least part of Gardiners reason for
producing the response mentioned. If in general to specify in (i) the nature of
an intended response is to specify what was meant, it should be correct not
only to say that by offering to buy Gardiner an expensive dinner, the tutee
means that Gardiner is to give him permission for an overnight stay in London,
but also to say that he meas that Gardiner should (is to) give him permission
for an over-night visit to London. But in fact one would not wish to say either
of these things; only that the tutee meant Gardiner to give him permission. A
restriction seems to be required, and one which might serve to eliminate this
range of counterexamples can be identified from a comparison of two scenarios.
Grice goes into a tobacconists shop, ask for a packet of my favorite
cigarettes, and when the unusually suspicious tobacconist shows that he wants
to see the color of my money before he hands over the goods, I put down the
price of the cigarettes on the counter. Here nothing has been meant.
Alternatively, Grice goes to his regular tobacconist (from whom I also purchase
other goods) for a packet of my regular brand of Players Navy Cuts, the price
of which is distinctive, say 43p. Grice says nothing, but puts down 43p. The
tobacconist recognizes my need, and hands over the packet. Here, I think, by
putting down 43p I meant something-Namesly, that I wanted a packet of Players
Navy Cuts. I have at the same time provided an inducement. The distinguishing
feature of the second example seems to be that here the tobacconist recognized,
and was intended to recognize, what he was intended to do from my "utterance"
(my putting down the money), whereas in the first example this was not the
case. Nor is it the case with respect to Urmson’s case of the tutees attempt to
bribe Gardiner. So one might propose that the analysis of meaning be amended
accordingly. U means something by uttering x is true if: (i) U intends, by
uttering x, to induce a certain response in A (2) U intends A to recognize, at
least in part from the utterance of x, that U intends to produce that response
(3) U intends the fulfillment of the intention mentioned in (2) to be at least
in part As reason for fulfilling the intention mentioned in (i). This copes
with Urmsons counterexample to Grices proposal in the Oxford Philosophical
Society talk involving the tutee attempting to bribe Gardiner. Urmson’s
super-erogation: ‘super-erogatum --. 1520s,
"performance of more than duty requires," in Catholic theology, from
Late Latin supererogationem (nominative supererogatio) "a payment in
addition," noun of action from past participle stem of supererogare
"pay or do additionally," from Latin super "above, over"
(see super-) + erogare "pay out," from ex "out" (see ex-) +
rogare "ask, request," apparently a figurative use of a PIE verb
meaning literally "to stretch out (the hand)," from root *reg-
"move in a straight line." Grice got interested in this thanks
to J. O. Urmson who discussed his ‘saints and heroes’ with the Saturday morning
kindergarten held by Austin -- the property of going beyond the call of duty.
Supererogatory actions are sometimes equated with actions that are morally good
in the sense that they are encouraged by morality but not required by it.
Sometimes they are equated with morally commendable actions, i.e., actions that
indicate a superior moral character. It is quite common for morally good
actions to be morally commendable and vice versa, so that it is not surprising
that these two kinds of supererogatory actions are not clearly distinguished
even though they are quite distinct. Certain kinds of actions are not normally
considered to be morally required, e.g., giving to charity, though morality
certainly encourages doing them. However, if one is wealthy and gives only a
small amount to charity, then, although one’s act is supererogatory in the
sense of being morally good, it is not supererogatory in the sense of being
morally commendable, for it does not indicate a superior moral character.
Certain kinds of actions are normally morally required, e.g., keeping one’s
promises. However, when the harm or risk of harm of keeping one’s promise is
sufficiently great compared to the harm caused by breaking the promise to
excuse breaking the promise, then keeping one’s promise counts as a
supererogatory act in the sense of being morally commendable. Some versions of
consequentialism claim that everyone is always morally required to act so as to
bring about the best consequences. On such a theory there are no actions that
are morally encouraged but not required; thus, for those holding such theories,
if there are supererogatory acts, they must be morally commendable. Many
versions of non-consequentialism also fail to provide for acts that are morally
encouraged but not morally required; thus, if they allow for supererogatory
acts, they must regard them as morally required acts done at such significant
personal cost that one might be excused for not doing them. The view that all
actions are either morally required, morally prohibited, or morally indifferent
makes it impossible to secure a place for supererogatory acts in the sense of
morally good acts. This view that there are no acts that are morally encouraged
but not morally required may be the result of misleading terminology. Both Kant
and Mill distinguish between duties of perfect obligation and duties of
imperfect obligation, acknowledging that a duty of imperfect obligation does
not specify any particular act that one is morally required to do. However,
since they use the term ‘duty’ it is very easy to view all acts falling under
these “duties” as being morally required. One way of avoiding the view that all
morally encouraged acts are morally required is to avoid the common
philosophical misuse of the term ‘duty’. One can replace ‘duties of perfect
obligation’ with ‘actions required by moral rules’ and ‘duties of imperfect
obligation’ with ‘actions encouraged by moral ideals’. However, a theory that
includes the kinds of acts that are supererogatory in the sense of being
morally good has to distinguish between that sense of ‘supererogatory’ and the
sense meaning ‘morally commendable’, i.e., indicating a superior moral
character in the agent. For as pointed out above, not all morally good acts are
morally commendable, nor are all morally commendable acts morally good, even
though a particular act may be supererogatory in both senses. urmsonianism. Urmson is possibly more English than Grice, in
that ‘gris’ is Nordic – but Urmson, with such a suffix, -son, HAS to be English
English! Plus, he is a charmer! Who other than Urmson would come up with a
counter-example to the sufficiency of Grice’s analysis of an act of
communication. In a case of bribery, the response or effect in the emittee is
NOT meant to be recognised. So we need a further restriction unless we want to
say that the briber means that his emittee recognise the ‘gift’ as a meta-bribe.
Refs.: Urmson, “Introduction” to Austin’s Philosophical Papers, cited by Grice.
Urmson, Introduction to Austin’s How to do things with words, cited by Grice.
Urmson on Grice, “The Independent.” Urmson on pragmatics. Refs.: H. P.
Grice, “Urmson’s supererogation,” H. P. Grice, “Urmson no saint, hero perhaps
–.” H. P. Grice, “Urmson, my hero.”
use-mention
distinction: Grice: “I once used
Jevons’s coinage in a tutorial with Hardie; he said, ‘What do you mean by
‘of’?’” -- Grice: “Strictly, if you mention, you are using!” -- discussed by
Grice in “Retrospective epilogue” – the only use of a vehicle of communication
is to communicate. two ways in which terms enter into discourse used when they refer to or assert something,
mentioned when they are exhibited for consideration of their properties as
terms. If I say, “Mary is sad,” I use the name ‘Mary’ to refer to Mary so that
I can predicate of her the property of being sad. But if I say, “ ‘Mary’
contains four letters,” I am mentioning Mary’s name, exhibiting it in writing
or speech to predicate of that term the property of being spelled with four
letters. In the first case, the sentence occurs in what Carnap refers to as the
material mode; in the second, it occurs in the formal mode, and hence in a
metalanguage a language used to talk about another language. Single quotation
marks or similar orthographic devices are conventionally used to disambiguate
mentioned from used terms. The distinction is important because there are
fallacies of reasoning based on usemention confusions in the failure to observe
the use mention distinction, especially when the referents of terms are
themselves linguistic entities. Consider the inference: 1 Some sentences are
written in English. 2 Some sentences are written in English. Here it looks as
though the argument offers a counterexample to the claim that all arguments of
the form ‘P, therefore P’ are circular. But either 1 asserts that some
sentences are written in English, or it provides evidence in support of the
conclusion in 2 by exhibiting a sentence written in English. In the first case,
the sentence is used to assert the same truth in the premise as expressed in
the conclusion, so that the argument remains circular. In the second case, the
sentence is mentioned, and although the argument so interpreted is not
circular, it is no longer strictly of the form ‘P, therefore P’, but has the
significantly different form, ‘ “P” is a sentence written in English, therefore
P’.
usus: ad usum
griceianum -- use: Grice: “I would rephrase Vitter’s adage, ‘Don’t ask for the
expression meaning, as for the UTTERER’s meaning, if you have to axe at all!”
-- while Grice uses ‘use,’ as Ryle once told him, ‘you should use ‘usage, too.’
Parkinson was nearby. When Warnock commissioned Parkinson to compile a couple
of Oxonian essays on meaning and communication, Parkinson unearthed the old
symposium by Ryle and Findlay on the matter. Typically, when Ryle reprinted it,
he left Findlay out!
No comments:
Post a Comment