possibile – “what is actual is not also possible – grave
mistake!” – H. P. Grice. compossible, capable of existing or occurring
together. E.g., two individuals are compossible provided the existence of one
of them is compatible with the existence of the other. In terms of possible
worlds, things are compossible provided there is some possible world to which
all of them belong; otherwise they are incompossible. Not all possibilities are
compossible. E.g., the extinction of life on earth by the year 3000 is possible;
so is its continuation until the year 10,000; but since it is impossible that
both of these things should happen, they are not compossible. Leibniz held that
any non-actualized possibility must be incompossible with what is actual. possible worlds, alternative worlds in terms
of which one may think of possibility. The idea of thinking about possibility
in terms of such worlds has played an important part, both in Leibnizian
philosophical theology and in the development of modal logic and philosophical
reflection about it in recent decades. But there are important differences in
the forms the idea has taken, and the uses to which it has been put, in the two
contexts. Leibniz used it in his account of creation. In his view God’s mind
necessarily and eternally contains the ideas of infinitely many worlds that God
could have created, and God has chosen the best of these and made it actual,
thus creating it. Similar views are found in the thought of Leibniz’s
contemporary, Malebranche. The possible worlds are thus the complete
alternatives among which God chose. They are possible at least in the sense
that they are logically consistent; whether something more is required in order
for them to be coherent as worlds is a difficult question in Leibniz
interpretation. They are complete in that they are possible totalities of
creatures; each includes a whole possible universe, in its whole spatial extent
and its whole temporal history if it is spatially and temporally ordered. The
temporal completeness deserves emphasis. If “the world of tomorrow” is “a
better world” than “the world of today,” it will still be part of the same
“possible world” the actual one; for the actual “world,” in the relevant sense,
includes whatever actually has happened or will happen throughout all time. The
completeness extends to every detail, so that a milligram’s difference in the
weight of the smallest bird would make a different possible world. The
completeness of possible worlds may be limited in one way, however. Leibniz
speaks of worlds as aggregates of finite things. As alternatives for God’s
creation, they may well not be thought of as including God, or at any rate, not
every fact about God. For this and other reasons it is not clear that in
Leibniz’s thought the possible can be identified with what is true in some
possible world, or the necessary with what is true in all possible worlds. That
identification is regularly assumed, however, in the recent development of what
has become known as possible worlds semantics for modal logic the logic of
possibility and necessity, and of other conceptions, e.g. those pertaining to
time and to morality, that have turned out to be formally analogous. The basic
idea here is that such notions as those of validity, soundness, and
completeness can be defined for modal logic in terms of models constructed from
sets of alternative “worlds.” Since the late 0s many important results have
been obtained by this method, whose best-known exponent is Saul Kripke. Some of
the most interesting proofs depend on the idea of a relation of accessibility
between worlds in the set. Intuitively, one world is accessible from another if
and only if the former is possible in or from the point of view of the latter.
Different systems of modal logic are appropriate depending on the properties of
this relation e.g., on whether it is or is not reflexive and/or transitive
and/or symmetrical. The purely formal results of these methods are well
established. The application of possible worlds semantics to conceptions
occurring in metaphysically richer discourse is more controversial, however.
Some of the controversy is related to debates over the metaphysical reality of
various sorts of possibility and necessity. Particularly controversial, and
also a focus of much interest, have been attempts to understand modal claims de
re, about particular individuals as such e.g., that I could not have been a
musical performance, in terms of the identity and nonidentity of individuals in
different possible worlds. Similarly, there is debate over the applicability of
a related treatment of subjunctive conditionals, developed by Robert Stalnaker
and David Lewis, though it is clear that it yields interesting formal results.
What is required, on this approach, for the truth of ‘If it were the case that
A, then it would be the case that B’, is that, among those possible worlds in
which A is true, some world in which B is true be more similar, in the relevant
respects, to the actual world than any world in which B is false. One of the
most controversial topics is the nature of possible worlds themselves.
Mathematical logicians need not be concerned with this; a wide variety of sets
of objects, real or fictitious, can be viewed as having the properties required
of sets of “worlds” for their purposes. But if metaphysically robust issues of
modality e.g., whether there are more possible colors than we ever see are to
be understood in terms of possible worlds, the question of the nature of the
worlds must be taken seriously. Some philosophers would deny any serious
metaphysical role to the notion of possible worlds. At the other extreme, David
Lewis has defended a view of possible worlds as concrete totalities, things of
the same sort as the whole actual universe, made up of entities like planets,
persons, and so forth. On his view, the actuality of the actual world consists
only in its being this one, the one that we are in; apart from its relation to
us or our linguistic acts, the actual is not metaphysically distinguished from
the merely possible. Many philosophers find this result counterintuitive, and
the infinity of concrete possible worlds an extravagant ontology; but Lewis
argues that his view makes possible attractive reductions of modality both
logical and causal, and of such notions as that of a proposition, to more
concrete notions. Other philosophers are prepared to say there are non-actual
possible worlds, but that they are entities of a quite different sort from the
actual concrete universe sets of
propositions, perhaps, or some other type of “abstract” object. Leibniz himself
held a view of this kind, thinking of possible worlds as having their being
only in God’s mind, as intentional objects of God’s thought.
post-modern – H. P. Grice plays with the
‘modernists,’ versus the ‘neo-traditionalists.’ Since he sees a
neotraditionalist like Strawson (neotraditionalist, like neocon, is a joke) and
a modernist like Whitehead as BOTH making the same mistake, it is fair to see
Grice as a ‘post-modernist’ -- of or relating to a complex set of reactions to
modern philosophy and its presuppositions, as opposed to the kind of agreement
on substantive doctrines or philosophical questions that often characterizes a
philosophical movement. Although there is little agreement on precisely what
the presuppositions of modern philosophy are, and disagreement on which
philosophers exemplify these presuppositions, postmodern philosophy typically
opposes foundationalism, essentialism, and realism. For Rorty, e.g., the
presuppositions to be set aside are foundationalist assumptions shared by the
leading sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century philosophers. For
Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, the contested presuppositions to
be set aside are as old as metaphysics itself, and are perhaps best exemplified
by Plato. Postmodern philosophy has even been characterized, by Lyotard, as
preceding modern philosophy, in the sense that the presuppositions of
philosophical modernism emerge out of a disposition whose antecedent,
unarticulated beliefs are already postmodern. Postmodern philosophy is
therefore usefully regarded as a complex cluster concept that includes the
following elements: an anti- or post- epistemological standpoint;
anti-essentialism; anti-realism; anti-foundationalism; opposition to
transcendental arguments and transcendental standpoints; rejection of the
picture of knowledge as accurate representation; rejection of truth as
correspondence to reality; rejection of the very idea of canonical
descriptions; rejection of final vocabularies, i.e., rejection of principles,
distinctions, and descriptions that are thought to be unconditionally binding
for all times, persons, and places; and a suspicion of grand narratives,
metanarratives of the sort perhaps best illustrated by dialectical materialism.
In addition to these things postmodern philosophy is “against,” it also opposes
characterizing this menu of oppositions as relativism, skepticism, or nihilism,
and it rejects as “the metaphysics of presence” the traditional, putatively
impossible dream of a complete, unique, and closed explanatory system, an
explanatory system typically fueled by binary oppositions. On the positive
side, one often finds the following themes: its critique of the notion of the
neutrality and sovereignty of reason
including insistence on its pervasively gendered, historical, and
ethnocentric character; its conception of the social construction of wordworld
mappings; its tendency to embrace historicism; its critique of the ultimate
status of a contrast between epistemology, on the one hand, and the sociology
of knowledge, on the other hand; its dissolution of the notion of the
autonomous, rational subject; its insistence on the artifactual status of
divisions of labor in knowledge acquisition and production; and its ambivalence
about the Enlightenment and its ideology. Many of these elements or elective
affinities were already surfacing in the growing opposition to the spectator
theory of knowledge, in Europe and in the English-speaking world, long before
the term ‘postmodern’ became a commonplace. In Anglophone philosophy this took
the early form of Dewey’s and pragmatism’s opposition to positivism, early
Kuhn’s redescription of scientific practice, and Vitters’s insistence on the
language-game character of representation; critiques of “the myth of the given”
from Sellars to Davidson and Quine; the emergence of epistemology naturalized;
and the putative description-dependent character of data, tethered to the
theory dependence of descriptions in Kuhn, Sellars, Quine, and Arthur Fine perhaps in all constructivists in the
philosophy of science. In Europe, many of these elective affinities surfaced
explicitly in and were identified with poststructuralism, although traces are
clearly evident in Heidegger’s and later in Derrida’s attacks on Husserl’s
residual Cartesianism; the rejection of essential descriptions
Wesensanschauungen in Husserl’s sense; Saussure’s and structuralism’s attack on
the autonomy and coherence of a transcendental signified standing over against
a selftransparent subject; Derrida’s deconstructing the metaphysics of
presence; Foucault’s redescriptions of epistemes; the convergence between - and
English-speaking social constructivists; attacks on the language of enabling
conditions as reflected in worries about the purchase of necessary and
sufficient conditions talk on both sides of the Atlantic; and Lyotard’s many
interventions, particularly those against grand narratives. Many of these
elective affinities that characterize postmodern philosophy can also be seen in
the virtually universal challenges to moral philosophy as it has been
understood traditionally in the West, not only in G. and philosophy, but in the reevaluation of “the
morality of principles” in the work of MacIntyre, Williams, Nussbaum, John
McDowell, and others. The force of postmodern critiques can perhaps best be
seen in some of the challenges of feminist theory, as in the work of Judith
Butler and Hélène Cixous, and gender theory generally. For it is in gender
theory that the conception of “reason” itself as it has functioned in the
shared philosophical tradition is redescribed as a conception that, it is often
argued, is engendered, patriarchal, homophobic, and deeply optional. The term
‘postmodern’ is less clear in philosophy, its application more uncertain and
divided than in some other fields, e.g., postmodern architecture. In
architecture the concept is relatively clear. It displaces modernism in
assignable ways, emerges as an oppositional force against architectural
modernism, a rejection of the work and tradition inaugurated by Walter Gropius,
Henri Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, especially the International Style.
In postmodern architecture, the modernist principle of abstraction, of
geometric purity and simplicity, is displaced by multivocity and pluralism, by
renewed interest in buildings as signs and signifiers, interest in their
referential potential and resources. The modernist’s aspiration to buildings
that are timeless in an important sense is itself read by postmodernists as an
iconography that privileges the brave new world of science and technology, an
aspiration that glorifies uncritically the industrial revolution of which it is
itself a quintessential expression. This aspiration to timelessness is
displaced in postmodern architecture by a direct and self-conscious openness to
and engagement with history. It is this relative specificity of the concept
postmodern architecture that enabled Charles Jencks to write that “Modern
Architecture died in St. Louis Missouri on July 15, 2 at 3:32 P.M.”
Unfortunately, no remotely similar sentence can be written about postmodern
philosophy.
potching and
cotching: Grice coined ‘cotching’
because he was irritated to hear that Chomsky couldn’t stand ‘know’ and how to
coin ‘cognise’ to do duty for it! cognition -- cognitive dissonance, mental
discomfort arising from conflicting beliefs or attitudes held simultaneously.
Leon Festinger, who originated the theory of cognitive dissonance in a book of
that title 7, suggested that cognitive dissonance has motivational
characteristics. Suppose a person is contemplating moving to a new city. She is
considering both Birmingham and Boston. She cannot move to both, so she must
choose. Dissonance is experienced by the person if in choosing, say,
Birmingham, she acquires knowledge of bad or unwelcome features of Birmingham
and of good or welcome aspects of Boston. The amount of dissonance depends on
the relative intensities of dissonant elements. Hence, if the only dissonant
factor is her learning that Boston is cooler than Birmingham, and she does not
regard climate as important, she will experience little dissonance. Dissonance may
occur in several sorts of psychological states or processes, although the bulk
of research in cognitive dissonance theory has been on dissonance in choice and
on the justification and psychological aftereffects of choice. Cognitive
dissonance may be involved in two phenomena of interest to philosophers,
namely, self-deception and weakness of will. Why do self-deceivers try to get
themselves to believe something that, in some sense, they know to be false? One
may resort to self-deception when knowledge causes dissonance. Why do the
weak-willed perform actions they know to be wrong? One may become weak-willed
when dissonance arises from the expected consequences of doing the right thing.
-- cognitive psychotherapy, an expression introduced by Brandt in A Theory of
the Good and the Right to refer to a process of assessing and adjusting one’s
desires, aversions, or pleasures henceforth, “attitudes”. This process is
central to Brandt’s analysis of rationality, and ultimately, to his view on the
justification of morality. Cognitive psychotherapy consists of the agent’s
criticizing his attitudes by repeatedly representing to himself, in an ideally
vivid way and at appropriate times, all relevant available information. Brandt
characterizes the key definiens as follows: 1 available information is
“propositions accepted by the science of the agent’s day, plus factual
propositions justified by publicly accessible evidence including testimony of
others about themselves and the principles of logic”; 2 information is relevant
provided, if the agent were to reflect repeatedly on it, “it would make a
difference,” i.e., would affect the attitude in question, and the effect would
be a function of its content, not an accidental byproduct; 3 relevant
information is represented in an ideally vivid way when the agent focuses on it
with maximal clarity and detail and with no hesitation or doubt about its
truth; and 4 repeatedly and at appropriate times refer, respectively, to the
frequency and occasions that would result in the information’s having the
maximal attitudinal impact. Suppose Mary’s desire to smoke were extinguished by
her bringing to the focus of her attention, whenever she was about to inhale
smoke, some justified beliefs, say that smoking is hazardous to one’s health and
may cause lung cancer; Mary’s desire would have been removed by cognitive
psychotherapy. According to Brandt, an attitude is rational for a person
provided it is one that would survive, or be produced by, cognitive
psychotherapy; otherwise it is irrational. Rational attitudes, in this sense,
provide a basis for moral norms. Roughly, the correct moral norms are those of
a moral code that persons would opt for if i they were motivated by attitudes
that survive the process of cognitive psychotherapy; and ii at the time of
opting for a moral code, they were fully aware of, and vividly attentive to,
all available information relevant to choosing a moral code for a society in
which they are to live for the rest of their lives. In this way, Brandt seeks a
value-free justification for moral norms
one that avoids the problems of other theories such as those that make
an appeal to intuitions. -- cognitive
science, an interdisciplinary research cluster that seeks to account for
intelligent activity, whether exhibited by living organisms especially adult
humans or machines. Hence, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence
constitute its core. A number of other disciplines, including neuroscience,
linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy, as well as other fields of
psychology e.g., developmental psychology, are more peripheral contributors.
The quintessential cognitive scientist is someone who employs computer modeling
techniques developing computer programs for the purpose of simulating
particular human cognitive activities, but the broad range of disciplines that
are at least peripherally constitutive of cognitive science have lent a variety
of research strategies to the enterprise. While there are a few common
institutions that seek to unify cognitive science e.g., departments, journals,
and societies, the problems investigated and the methods of investigation often
are limited to a single contributing discipline. Thus, it is more appropriate
to view cognitive science as a cross-disciplinary enterprise than as itself a
new discipline. While interest in cognitive phenomena has historically played a
central role in the various disciplines contributing to cognitive science, the
term properly applies to cross-disciplinary activities that emerged in the 0s.
During the preceding two decades each of the disciplines that became part of
cogntive science gradually broke free of positivistic and behavioristic
proscriptions that barred systematic inquiry into the operation of the mind.
One of the primary factors that catalyzed new investigations of cognitive
activities was Chomsky’s generative grammar, which he advanced not only as an
abstract theory of the structure of language, but also as an account of
language users’ mental knowledge of language their linguistic competence. A
more fundamental factor was the development of approaches for theorizing about
information in an abstract manner, and the introduction of machines computers
that could manipulate information. This gave rise to the idea that one might
program a computer to process information so as to exhibit behavior that would,
if performed by a human, require intelligence. If one tried to formulate a
unifying question guiding cognitive science research, it would probably be: How
does the cognitive system work? But even this common question is interpreted
quite differently in different disciplines. We can appreciate these differences
by looking just at language. While psycholinguists generally psychologists seek
to identify the processing activities in the mind that underlie language use,
most linguists focus on the products of this internal processing, seeking to
articulate the abstract structure of language. A frequent goal of computer
scientists, in contrast, has been to develop computer programs to parse natural
language input and produce appropriate syntactic and semantic representations.
These differences in objectives among the cognitive science disciplines
correlate with different methodologies. The following represent some of the
major methodological approaches of the contributing disciplines and some of the
problems each encounters. Artificial intelligence. If the human cognition
system is viewed as computational, a natural goal is to simulate its
performance. This typically requires formats for representing information as
well as procedures for searching and manipulating it. Some of the earliest
AIprograms drew heavily on the resources of first-order predicate calculus,
representing information in propositional formats and manipulating it according
to logical principles. For many modeling endeavors, however, it proved
important to represent information in larger-scale structures, such as frames
Marvin Minsky, schemata David Rumelhart, or scripts Roger Schank, in which
different pieces of information associated with an object or activity would be
stored together. Such structures generally employed default values for specific
slots specifying, e.g., that deer live in forests that would be part of the
representation unless overridden by new information e.g., that a particular
deer lives in the San Diego Zoo. A very influential alternative approach,
developed by Allen Newell, replaces declarative representations of information
with procedural representations, known as productions. These productions take
the form of conditionals that specify actions to be performed e.g., copying an
expression into working memory if certain conditions are satisfied e.g., the
expression matches another expression. Psychology. While some psychologists
develop computer simulations, a more characteristic activity is to acquire
detailed data from human subjects that can reveal the cognitive system’s actual
operation. This is a challenging endeavor. While cognitive activities transpire
within us, they frequently do so in such a smooth and rapid fashion that we are
unaware of them. For example, we have little awareness of what occurs when we
recognize an object as a chair or remember the name of a client. Some cognitive
functions, though, seem to be transparent to consciousness. For example, we might
approach a logic problem systematically, enumerating possible solutions and
evaluating them serially. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon have refined methods
for exploiting verbal protocols obtained from subjects as they solve such
problems. These methods have been quite fruitful, but their limitations must be
respected. In many cases in which we think we know how we performed a cognitive
task, Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson have argued that we are misled,
relying on folk theories to describe how our minds work rather than reporting
directly on their operation. In most cases cognitive psychologists cannot rely
on conscious awareness of cognitive processes, but must proceed as do
physiologists trying to understand metabolism: they must devise experiments that
reveal the underlying processes operative in cognition. One approach is to seek
clues in the errors to which the cognitive system cognitive science cognitive
science is prone. Such errors might be more easily accounted for by one kind of
underlying process than by another. Speech errors, such as substituting ‘bat
cad’ for ‘bad cat’, may be diagnostic of the mechanisms used to construct
speech. This approach is often combined with strategies that seek to overload
or disrupt the system’s normal operation. A common technique is to have a
subject perform two tasks at once e.g.,
read a passage while watching for a colored spot. Cognitive psychologists may
also rely on the ability to dissociate two phenomena e.g., obliterate one while
maintaining the other to establish their independence. Other types of data
widely used to make inferences about the cognitive system include patterns of
reaction times, error rates, and priming effects in which activation of one
item facilitates access to related items. Finally, developmental psychologists
have brought a variety of kinds of data to bear on cognitive science issues.
For example, patterns of acquisition times have been used in a manner similar
to reaction time patterns, and accounts of the origin and development of
systems constrain and elucidate mature systems. Linguistics. Since linguists
focus on a product of cognition rather than the processes that produce the
product, they tend to test their analyses directly against our shared knowledge
of that product. Generative linguists in the tradition of Chomsky, for
instance, develop grammars that they test by probing whether they generate the
sentences of the language and no others. While grammars are certainly G.e to
developing processing models, they do not directly determine the structure of
processing models. Hence, the central task of linguistics is not central to
cognitive science. However, Chomsky has augmented his work on grammatical
description with a number of controversial claims that are psycholinguistic in
nature e.g., his nativism and his notion of linguistic competence. Further, an
alternative approach to incorporating psycholinguistic concerns, the cognitive
linguistics of Lakoff and Langacker, has achieved prominence as a contributor
to cognitive science. Neuroscience. Cognitive scientists have generally assumed
that the processes they study are carried out, in humans, by the brain. Until
recently, however, neuroscience has been relatively peripheral to cognitive
science. In part this is because neuroscientists have been chiefly concerned
with the implementation of processes, rather than the processes themselves, and
in part because the techniques available to neuroscientists such as single-cell
recording have been most suitable for studying the neural implementation of
lower-order processes such as sensation. A prominent exception was the
classical studies of brain lesions initiated by Broca and Wernicke, which
seemed to show that the location of lesions correlated with deficits in
production versus comprehension of speech. More recent data suggest that
lesions in Broca’s area impair certain kinds of syntactic processing. However,
other developments in neuroscience promise to make its data more relevant to
cognitive modeling in the future. These include studies of simple nervous
systems, such as that of the aplysia a genus of marine mollusk by Eric Kandel,
and the development of a variety of techniques for determining the brain
activities involved in the performance of cognitive tasks e.g., recording of
evoked response potentials over larger brain structures, and imaging techniques
such as positron emission tomography. While in the future neuroscience is
likely to offer much richer information that will guide the development and
constrain the character of cognitive models, neuroscience will probably not
become central to cognitive science. It is itself a rich, multidisciplinary
research cluster whose contributing disciplines employ a host of complicated
research tools. Moreover, the focus of cognitive science can be expected to
remain on cognition, not on its implementation. So far cognitive science has
been characterized in terms of its modes of inquiry. One can also focus on the
domains of cognitive phenomena that have been explored. Language represents one
such domain. Syntax was one of the first domains to attract wide attention in
cognitive science. For example, shortly after Chomsky introduced his
transformational grammar, psychologists such as George Miller sought evidence
that transformations figured directly in human language processing. From this
beginning, a more complex but enduring relationship among linguists,
psychologists, and computer scientists has formed a leading edge for much
cognitive science research. Psycholinguistics has matured; sophisticated
computer models of natural language processing have been developed; and
cognitive linguists have offered a particular synthesis that emphasizes
semantics, pragmatics, and cognitive foundations of language. Thinking and
reasoning. These constitute an important domain of cognitive science that is
closely linked to philosophical interests. Problem cognitive science cognitive
science solving, such as that which figures in solving puzzles, playing games,
or serving as an expert in a domain, has provided a prototype for thinking.
Newell and Simon’s influential work construed problem solving as a search
through a problem space and introduced the idea of heuristics generally reliable but fallible simplifying
devices to facilitate the search. One arena for problem solving, scientific
reasoning and discovery, has particularly interested philosophers. Artificial
intelligence researchers such as Simon and Patrick Langley, as well as
philosophers such as Paul Thagard and Lindley Darden, have developed computer
programs that can utilize the same data as that available to historical
scientists to develop and evaluate theories and plan future experiments.
Cognitive scientists have also sought to study the cognitive processes
underlying the sorts of logical reasoning both deductive and inductive whose
normative dimensions have been a concern of philosophers. Philip JohnsonLaird,
for example, has sought to account for human performance in dealing with
syllogistic reasoning by describing a processing of constructing and manipulating
mental models. Finally, the process of constructing and using analogies is
another aspect of reasoning that has been extensively studied by traditional
philosophers as well as cognitive scientists. Memory, attention, and learning.
Cognitive scientists have differentiated a variety of types of memory. The
distinction between long- and short-term memory was very influential in the
information-processing models of the 0s. Short-term memory was characterized by
limited capacity, such as that exhibited by the ability to retain a seven-digit
telephone number for a short period. In much cognitive science work, the notion
of working memory has superseded short-term memory, but many theorists are
reluctant to construe this as a separate memory system as opposed to a part of
long-term memory that is activated at a given time. Endel Tulving introduced a
distinction between semantic memory general knowledge that is not specific to a
time or place and episodic memory memory for particular episodes or occurrences.
More recently, Daniel Schacter proposed a related distinction that emphasizes
consciousness: implicit memory access without awareness versus explicit memory
which does involve awareness and is similar to episodic memory. One of the
interesting results of cognitive research is the dissociation between different
kinds of memory: a person might have severely impaired memory of recent events
while having largely unimpaired implicit memory. More generally, memory
research has shown that human memory does not simply store away information as
in a file cabinet. Rather, information is organized according to preexisting
structures such as scripts, and can be influenced by events subsequent to the
initial storage. Exactly what gets stored and retrieved is partly determined by
attention, and psychologists in the information-processing tradition have
sought to construct general cognitive models that emphasize memory and
attention. Finally, the topic of learning has once again become prominent.
Extensively studied by the behaviorists of the precognitive era, learning was
superseded by memory and attention as a research focus in the 0s. In the 0s,
artificial intelligence researchers developed a growing interest in designing
systems that can learn; machine learning is now a major problem area in AI.
During the same period, connectionism arose to offer an alternative kind of
learning model. Perception and motor control. Perceptual and motor systems
provide the inputs and outputs to cognitive systems. An important aspect of perception
is the recognition of something as a particular kind of object or event; this
requires accessing knowledge of objects and events. One of the central issues
concerning perception questions the extent to which perceptual processes are
influenced by higher-level cognitive information top-down processing versus how
much they are driven purely by incoming sensory information bottom-up
processing. A related issue concerns the claim that visual imagery is a
distinct cognitive process and is closely related to visual perception, perhaps
relying on the same brain processes. A number of cognitive science inquiries
e.g., by Roger Shepard and Stephen Kosslyn have focused on how people use
images in problem solving and have sought evidence that people solve problems
by rotating images or scanning them. This research has been extremely
controversial, as other investigators have argued against the use of images and
have tried to account for the performance data that have been generated in
terms of the use of propositionally represented information. Finally, a
distinction recently has been proposed between the What and Where systems. All
of the foregoing issues concern the What system which recognizes and represents
objects as exemplars of categories. The Where system, in contrast, concerns
objects in their environment, and is particularly adapted to the dynamics of
movement. Gibson’s ecological psychology is a long-standing inquiry into this
aspect of perception, and work on the neural substrates is now attracting the
interest of cognitive scientists as well. Recent developments. The breadth of
cognitive science has been expanding in recent years. In the 0s, cognitive
science inquiries tended to focus on processing activities of adult humans or
on computer models of intelligent performance; the best work often combined
these approaches. Subsequently, investigators examined in much greater detail
how cognitive systems develop, and developmental psychologists have
increasingly contributed to cognitive science. One of the surprising findings
has been that, contrary to the claims of William James, infants do not seem to
confront the world as a “blooming, buzzing confusion,” but rather recognize
objects and events quite early in life. Cognitive science has also expanded along
a different dimension. Until recently many cognitive studies focused on what
humans could accomplish in laboratory settings in which they performed tasks
isolated from reallife contexts. The motivation for this was the assumption
that cognitive processes were generic and not limited to specific contexts.
However, a variety of influences, including Gibsonian ecological psychology
especially as interpreted and developed by Ulric Neisser and Soviet activity
theory, have advanced the view that cognition is much more dynamic and situated
in real-world tasks and environmental contexts; hence, it is necessary to study
cognitive activities in an ecologically valid manner. Another form of expansion
has resulted from a challenge to what has been the dominant architecture for
modeling cognition. An architecture defines the basic processing capacities of
the cognitive system. The dominant cognitive architecture has assumed that the
mind possesses a capacity for storing and manipulating symbols. These symbols
can be composed into larger structures according to syntactic rules that can
then be operated upon by formal rules that recognize that structure. Jerry
Fodor has referred to this view of the cognitive system as the “language of
thought hypothesis” and clearly construes it as a modern heir of rationalism.
One of the basic arguments for it, due to Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn, is that
thoughts, like language, exhibit productivity the unlimited capacity to
generate new thoughts and systematicity exhibited by the inherent relation
between thoughts such as ‘Joan loves the florist’ and ‘The florist loves Joan’.
They argue that only if the architecture of cognition has languagelike
compositional structure would productivity and systematicity be generic
properties and hence not require special case-by-case accounts. The challenge
to this architecture has arisen with the development of an alternative
architecture, known as connectionism, parallel distributed processing, or
neural network modeling, which proposes that the cognitive system consists of
vast numbers of neuronlike units that excite or inhibit each other. Knowledge
is stored in these systems by the adjustment of connection strengths between
processing units; consequently, connectionism is a modern descendant of associationism.
Connectionist networks provide a natural account of certain cognitive phenomena
that have proven challenging for the symbolic architecture, including pattern
recognition, reasoning with soft constraints, and learning. Whether they also
can account for productivity and systematicity has been the subject of debate.
Philosophical theorizing about the mind has often provided a starting point for
the modeling and empirical investigations of modern cognitive science. The
ascent of cognitive science has not meant that philosophers have ceased to play
a role in examining cognition. Indeed, a number of philosophers have pursued
their inquiries as contributors to cognitive science, focusing on such issues
as the possible reduction of cognitive theories to those of neuroscience, the
status of folk psychology relative to emerging scientific theories of mind, the
merits of rationalism versus empiricism, and strategies for accounting for the
intentionality of mental states. The interaction between philosophers and other
cognitive scientists, however, is bidirectional, and a number of developments
in cognitive science promise to challenge or modify traditional philosophical
views of cognition. For example, studies by cognitive and social psychologists
have challenged the assumption that human thinking tends to accord with the
norms of logic and decision theory. On a variety of tasks humans seem to follow
procedures heuristics that violate normative canons, raising questions about
how philosophers should characterize rationality. Another area of empirical
study that has challenged philosophical assumptions has been the study of
concepts and categorization. Philosophers since Plato have widely assumed that
concepts of ordinary language, such as red, bird, and justice, should be
definable by necessary and sufficient conditions. But celebrated studies by
Eleanor Rosch and her colleagues indicated that many ordinary-language concepts
had a prototype structure instead. On this view, the categories employed in
human thinking are characterized by prototypes the clearest exemplars and a
metric that grades exemplars according to their degree of typicality. Recent
investigations have also pointed to significant instability in conceptual
structure and to the role of theoretical beliefs in organizing categories. This
alternative conception of concepts has profound implications for philosophical
methodologies that portray philosophy’s task to be the analysis of
concepts.
Potentia -- dunamis, also dynamis Grecian,
‘power’, ‘capacity’, as used by pre-Socratics such as Anaximander and
Anaxagoras, one of the elementary character-powers, such as the hot or the
cold, from which they believed the world was constructed. Plato’s early theory
of Forms borrowed from the concept of character-powers as causes present in
things; courage, e.g., is treated in the Laches as a power in the soul.
Aristotle also used the word in this sense to explain the origins of the
elements. In the Metaphysics especially Book IX, Aristotle used dunamis in a
different sense to mean ‘potentiality’ in contrast to ‘actuality’ energeia or
entelecheia. In the earlier sense of dunamis, matter is treated as
potentiality, in that it has the potential to receive form and so be actualized
as a concrete substance. In the later Aristotelian sense of dunamis, dormant
abilities are treated as potentialities, and dunamis is to energeia as sleeping
is to waking, or having sight to seeing.
Potentia -- dynamic logic, a branch of logic in which, in addition to
the usual category of formulas interpretable as propositions, there is a
category of expressions interpretable as actions. Dynamic logic originally
called the modal logic of programs emerged in the late 0s as one step in a long
tradition within theoretical computer science aimed at providing a way to
formalize the analysis of programs and their action. A particular concern here
was program verification: what can be said of the effect of a program if
started at a certain point? To this end operators [a] and ‹a were introduced
with the following intuitive readings: [a]A to mean ‘after every terminating
computation according to a it is the case that A’ and ‹aA to mean ‘after some
terminating computation according to a it is the case that A’. The logic of
these operators may be seen as a generalization of ordinary modal logic: where
modal logic has one box operator A and one diamond operator B, dynamic logic
has one box operator [a] and one diamond operator ‹a for every program
expression a in the language. In possible worlds semantics for modal logic a
model is a triple U, R, V where U is a universe of points, R a binary relation,
and V a valuation assigning to each atomic formula a subset of U. In dynamic
logic, a model is a triple U, R, V where U and V are as before but R is a
family of binary relations Ra, one for every program expression a in the
language. Writing ‘Xx A’, where x is a point in U, for ‘A is true at x’ in the
model in question, we have the following characteristic truth conditions
truth-functional compounds are evaluated by truth tables, as in modal logic: Xx
P if and only if x is a point in VP, where P is an atomic formula, Xx[a]A if
and only if, for all y, if x is Ra- related to y then Xy A, Xx ‹a if and only
if, for some y, x is Ra-related to y and Xy A. Traditionally, dynamic logic
will contain machinery for rendering the three regular operators on programs:
‘!’ sum, ‘;’ composition, and ‘*’ Kleene’s star operation, as well as the test
operator ‘?’, which, operating on a proposition, will yield a program. The
action a ! b consists in carrying out a or carrying out b; the action a;b in
first carrying out a, then carrying out b; the action a* in carrying out a some
finite number of times not excluding 0; the action ?A in verifying that A. Only
standard models reflect these intuitions: Ra ! b % Ra 4 Rb, Ra;b % Ra _ Rb, Ra*
% Ra*, R?A % {x,x : Xx A} where ‘*’ is the ancestral star The smallest
propositional dynamic logic PDL is the set of formulas true at every point in
every standard model. Note that dynamic logic analyzes non-deterministic
action this is evident at the level of
atomic programs p where Rp is a relation, not necessarily a function, and also
in the definitions of Ra + b and Ra*. Dynamic logic has been extended in
various ways, e.g., to first- and second-order predicate logic. Furthermore,
just as deontic logic, tense logic, etc., are referred to as modal logic in the
wide sense, so extensions of dynamic logic in the narrow sense such as process
logic are often loosely referred to as dynamic logic in the wide sense. Dyad
dynamic logic 250 250 The philosophical
interest in dynamic logic rests with the expectation that it will prove a
fruitful instrument for analyzing the concept of action in general: a
successful analysis would be valuable in itself and would also be relevant to
other disciplines such as deontic logic and the logic of imperatives. potency, for Aristotle, a kind of capacity
that is a correlative of action. We require no instruction to grasp the
difference between ‘X can do Y’ and ‘X is doing Y’, the latter meaning that the
deed is actually being done. That an agent has a potency to do something is not
a pure prediction so much as a generalization from past performance of
individual or kind. Aristotle uses the example of a builder, meaning someone able
to build, and then confronts the Megaric objection that the builder can be
called a builder only when he actually builds. Clearly one who is doing
something can do it, but Aristotle insists that the napping carpenter has the
potency to hammer and saw. A potency based on an acquired skill like carpentry
derives from the potency shared by those who acquire and those who do not
acquire the skill. An unskilled worker can be said to be a builder “in
potency,” not in the sense that he has the skill and can employ it, but in the
sense that he can acquire the skill. In both acquisition and employment,
‘potency’ refers to the actual either
the actual acquisition of the skill or its actual use. These post-structuralism
potency 726 726 potentiality, first
practical attitude 727 correlatives emerged from Aristotle’s analysis of change
and becoming. That which, from not having the skill, comes to have it is said
to be “in potency” to that skill. From not having a certain shape, wood comes
to have a certain shape. In the shaped wood, a potency is actualized. Potency
must not be identified with the unshaped, with what Aristotle calls privation.
Privation is the negation of P in a subject capable of P. Parmenides’
identification of privation and potency, according to Aristotle, led him to
deny change. How can not-P become P? It is the subject of not-P to which the
change is attributed and which survives the change that is in potency to
X. Potestas – Energeia – actus –
entelechia -- power, a disposition; an ability or capacity to yield some
outcome. One tradition which includes Locke distinguishes active and passive
powers. A knife has the active power to slice an apple, which has the passive
power to be sliced by the knife. The distinction seems largely grammatical, however.
Powers act in concert: the power of a grain of salt to dissolve in water and
the water’s power to dissolve the salt are reciprocal and their manifestations
mutual. Powers or dispositions are sometimes thought to be relational
properties of objects, properties possessed only in virtue of objects standing
in appropriate relations to other objects. However, if we distinguish, as we
must, between a power and its manifestation, and if we allow that an object
could possess a power that it never manifested a grain of salt remains soluble
even if it never dissolves, it would seem that an object could possess a power
even if appropriate reciprocal partners for its manifestation were altogether
non-existent. This appears to have been Locke’s view An Essay concerning Human
Understanding, 1690 of “secondary qualities” colors, sounds, and the like,
which he regarded as powers of objects to produce certain sorts of sensory
experience in observers. Philosophers who take powers seriously disagree over
whether powers are intrinsic, “built into” properties this view, defended by C.
B. Martin, seems to have been Locke’s, or whether the connection between
properties and the powers they bestow is contingent, dependent perhaps upon
contingent laws of nature a position endorsed by Armstrong. Is the solubility
of salt a characteristic built into the salt, or is it a “second-order”
property possessed by the salt in virtue of i the salt’s possession of some
“firstorder” property and ii the laws of nature? Reductive analyses of powers,
though influential, have not fared well. Suppose a grain of salt is soluble in
water. Does this mean that if the salt were placed in water, it would dissolve?
No. Imagine that were the salt placed in water, a technician would intervene,
imposing an electromagnetic field, thereby preventing the salt from dissolving.
Attempts to exclude “blocking” conditions
by appending “other things equal” clauses perhaps face charges of circularity: in nailing down
what other things must be equal we find ourselves appealing to powers. Powers
evidently are fundamental features of our world. In the romance languages, “it
may run” means “It has power to rain.” “Il peut …” This has a cognate in the Germanic languages,
“it might rain.” “Might is right.”
Potts: “One of the few non-Oxonian English philosohpers
I can stand, but then he was my genial tutee!, so he IS Oxford. Oxford made me
and him!” --. English philosopher, tutee of H. P. Grice. Semanticist of the
best order! Structures and Categories for the Representation
of Meaning T.C. Potts. Potts, alla Grice, addresses the representation problem
... how best to represent the meanings of linguistic expressions... One might
call this the 'semantic form' of expressions (p. xi, italics in the original).
The book begins with "three chapters in which I survey the contributions
made by linguistics, logic and computer science respectively to the
representation of meaning" (p. xii). These three chapters are not easy to
understand, principally because of Potts's obtuse style, an example of which is
that instead of saying "'either P or Q' is false if 'P' and 'Q' are both
false; otherwise, it is true," he says, "we lay down that a
proposition having the structure represented by 'either P or Q' is to be
accounted false if a false proposition is substituted for 'P' and a false
proposition for 'Q', but is otherwise to be accounted true" (p. 53). These
chapters are also outdated. In particular, the chapter on computer science,
discussing the work of researchers whose goals are the closest to Potts's own
stated goals, is mainly a review of work as of the seventies. There are
citations to several of the papers in Findler (1979), but only three to more
recent research publications: Hayes (1980), Sowa (1984), and Hobbs and Shieber
(1987). Perhaps the most valuable aspect of these three chapters is Potts's
criticisms of some of the work he surveys. Of course, some of the problems
noted have been corrected in literature that Potts hasn't yet got around to
reading. By the end of the three survey chapters, Potts has introduced two
techniques that he 427 Computational Linguistics Volume 21, Number 3 then
develops into his own representation-- categorial grammars and graphs as
representation formalisms. He takes the categorial analysis to be the prior of
the two, with his graphs, which he calls categorialgraphs, being the clearer
representation of sentence meaning. Unfortunately, "formalism" and
"clearer" must be taken with a grain of salt. Potts never formally
defines his categorial graphs, let alone gives a formal semantics for them.
Although I have had extensive experience reading, interpreting, and devising
graphical representations of meaning, I could not understand the details of
Potts's graphs. But then, neither, apparently, can he: "The relationship
between semantic and syntactic structures has not been spelled out, so that it
is not fully determinate what our semantic representations represent at the
syntactic level" (p. 168). The four substantive chapters are useful for
the linguistic issues that they address, even if they are not useful for the
representation scheme that they develop. These issues, which must eventually be
faced by all knowledge representation formalisms that aspire to complete
coverage of natural language include: quantifier scope; pronouns; relative
clauses; count nouns, substance nouns, and proper names; generic propositions;
deictic terms; plurals; identity; and adverbs. Appropriately, the book does not
end on a note of claimed accomplishment, but on a note of work yet to do:
"The purpose of a philosophical book is to stimulate thought, not to put
it to rest with solutions to every problem ... It is still premature to
formulate a graph grammar for semantic representation of everyday language...
The representation problem is commonly not accorded the respect which it
deserves" (p. 288). Many people agree, and have, accordingly, produced a
vast literature that Potts is apparently not familiar with. (Some relevant
collections are Cercone and McCalla 1987, Sowa 1991, and Lehmann 1992.)
Nevertheless, Potts is still correct when he suggests that there is much work
left to do.--Stuart C. Shapiro, State University of New York at Buffalo
References Cercone, Nick and McCalla, Gordon (editors) (1987). The Knowledge
Frontier: Essays in the Representation of Knowledge. Springer-Verlag. Findler,
Nicholas V. (editor) (1979). Associative Networks: The Representation and Use
of Knowledge in Computers. Academic Press. Hayes, Patrick J. (1980). "The
logic of frames." In Frame Conceptions and Text Understanding, edited by
Dieter Metzing, 46-61. de Gruyter, 1980. Also in Readings in Knowledge
Representation, edited by Ronald J. Brachman and Hector J. Levesque, 287-295.
Morgan Kaufmann. 1985. Hobbs, Jerry R., and Shieber, Stuart M. (1987). "An
algorithm for generating quantifier scopings." Computational Linguistics,
13(1-2), 47-63. Lehmann, Fritz (editor) (1992). Semantic Networks in Artificial
Intelligence. Pergamon Press. Sowa, John E (1984). Conceptual Structures.
Addison-Wesley. Sowa, John F. (editor) (1991). Principles of Semantic Networks:
Explorations in the Representation of Knowledge. Morgan Kaufmann. Refs.: Luigi
Speranza, “Potts at Villa Grice.”
Stimulus-response -- poverty of the
stimulus, a psychological phenomenon exhibited when behavior is
stimulusunbound, and hence the immediate stimulus characterized in
straightforward physical terms does not completely control behavior. Human
beings sort stimuli in various ways and hosts of influences seem to affect
when, why, and how we respond our
background beliefs, facility with language, hypotheses about stimuli, etc.
Suppose a person visiting a museum notices a painting she has never before
seen. Pondering the unfamiliar painting, she says, “an ambitious visual
synthesis of the music of Mahler and the poetry of Keats.” If stimulus painting
controls response, then her utterance is a product of earlier responses to
similar stimuli. Given poverty of the stimulus, no such control is exerted by
the stimulus the painting. Of course, some influence of response must be
conceded to the painting, for without it there would be no utterance. However,
the utterance may well outstrip the visitor’s conditioning and learning
history. Perhaps she had never before talked of painting in terms of music and
poetry. The linguist Noam Chomsky made poverty of the stimulus central to his
criticism of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior 7. Chomsky argued that there is no
predicting, and certainly no critical stimulus control of, much human behavior.
practical reason, the capacity for
argument or demonstrative inference, considered in its application to the task
of prescribing or selecting behavior. Some philosophical concerns in this area
pertain to the actual thought processes by which plans of action are formulated
and carried out in practical situations. A second major issue is what role, if
any, practical reason plays in determining norms of conduct. Here there are two
fundamental positions. Instrumentalism is typified by Hume’s claim that reason
is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions. According to
instrumentalism, reason by itself is incapable of influencing action directly.
It may do so indirectly, by disclosing facts that arouse motivational impulses.
And it fulfills an indispensable function in discerning meansend relations by
which our objectives may be attained. But none of those objectives is set by
reason. All are set by the passions the
desiderative and aversive impulses aroused in us by what our cognitive
faculties apprehend. It does not follow from this alone that ethical motivation
reduces to mere desire and aversion, based on the pleasure and pain different
courses of action might afford. There might yet be a specifically ethical
passion, or it might be that independently based moral injunctions have in
themselves a special capacity to provoke ordinary desire and aversion.
Nevertheless, instrumentalism is often associated with the view that pleasure
and pain, happiness and unhappiness, are the sole objects of value and
disvalue, and hence the only possible motivators of conduct. Hence, it is
claimed, moral injunctions must be grounded in these motives, and practical
reason is of interest only as subordinated to inclination. The alternative to
instrumentalism is the view championed by Kant, that practical reason is an
autonomous source of normative principles, capable of motivating behavior
independently of ordinary desire and aversion. On this view it is the passions
that lack intrinsic moral import, and the function of practical reason is to
limit their motivational role by formulating normative principles binding for
all rational agents and founded in the operation of practical reason itself.
Theories of this kind usually view moral principles as grounded in consistency,
and an impartial respect for the autonomy of all rational agents. To be morally
acceptable, principles of conduct must be universalizable, so that all rational
agents could behave in the same way without their conduct either destroying
itself or being inconsistently motivated. There are advantages and
disadvantages to each of these views. Instrumentalism offers a simpler account
of both the function of practical reason and the sources of human motivation.
But it introduces a strong subjective element by giving primacy to desire,
thereby posing a problem of how moral principles can be universally binding.
The Kantian approach offers more promise here, since it makes
universalizability essential to any type of behavior being moral. But it is
more complex, and the claim that the deliverances of practical reason carry
intrinsic motivational force is open to challenge. practical
reasoning, the inferential process by which considerations for or against
envisioned courses of action are brought to bear on the formation and execution
of intention. The content of a piece of practical reasoning is a practical
argument. Practical arguments can be complex, but they are often summarized in
syllogistic form. Important issues concerning practical reasoning include how
it relates to theoretical reasoning, whether it is a causal process, and how it
can be evaluated. Theories of practical reasoning tend to divide into two basic
categories. On one sort of view, the intrinsic features of practical reasoning
exhibit little or no difference from those of theoretical reasoning. What makes
practical reasoning practical is its subject matter and motivation. Hence the
following could be a bona fide practical syllogism: Exercise would be good for
me. Jogging is exercise. Therefore, jogging would be good for me. This argument
has practical subject matter, and if made with a view toward intention
formation it would be practical in motivation also. But it consists entirely of
propositions, which are appropriate contents for belief-states. In principle, therefore,
an agent could accept its conclusion without intending or even desiring to jog.
Intention formation requires a further step. But if the content of an intention
cannot be a proposition, that step could not count in itself as practical
reasoning unless such reasoning can employ the contents of strictly practical
mental states. Hence many philosophers call for practical syllogisms such as:
Would that I exercise. Jogging is exercise. Therefore, I shall go jogging. Here
the first premise is optative and understood to represent the content of a
desire, and the conclusion is the content of a decision or act of intention
formation. These contents are not true or false, and so are not propositions.
Theories that restrict the contents of practical reasoning to propositions have
the advantage that they allow such reasoning to be evaluated in terms of
familiar logical principles. Those that permit the inclusion of optative
content entail a need for more complex modes of evaluation. However, they bring
more of the process of intention formation under the aegis of reason; also,
they can be extended to cover the execution of intentions, in terms of
syllogisms that terminate in volition. Both accounts must deal with cases of
self-deception, in which the considerations an agent cites to justify a
decision are not those from which it sprang, and cases of akrasia, where the
agent views one course of action as superior, yet carries out another. Because
mental content is always abstract, it cannot in itself be a nomic cause of
behavior. But the states and events to which it belongs desires, beliefs, etc. can count as causes, and are so treated in
deterministic explanations of action. Opponents of determinism reject this
step, and seek to explain action solely through the teleological or justifying
force carried by mental content. Practical syllogisms often summarize very
complex thought processes, in which multiple options are considered, each with
its own positive and negative aspects. Some philosophers hold that when successfully
concluded, this process issues in a judgment of what action would be best all
things considered i.e., in light of all
relevant considerations. Practical reasoning can be evaluated in numerous ways.
Some concern the reasoning process itself: whether it is timely and duly
considers the relevant alternatives, as well as whether it is well structured
logically. Other concerns have to do with the products of practical reasoning.
Decisions may be deemed irrational if they result in incompatible intentions,
or conflict with the agent’s beliefs regarding what is possible. They may also
be criticized if they conflict with the agent’s best interests. Finally, an
agent’s intentions can fail to accord with standards of morality. The
relationship among these ways of evaluating intentions is important to the
foundations of ethics.
practition, Castaneda’s term for the
characteristic content of practical thinking. Each practition represents an
action as something to be done, say, as intended, commanded, recommended, etc.,
and not as an accomplishment or prediction. Thus, unlike propositions,
practitions are not truth-valued, but they can be components of valid arguments
and so possess values akin to truth; e.g., the command ‘James, extinguish your
cigar!’ seems legitimate given that James is smoking a cigar in a crowded bus.
Acknowledging practitions is directly relevant to many other fields.
praedicamenta singular: praedicamentum, in
medieval philosophy, the ten Aristotelian categories: substance, quantity, quality,
relation, where, when, position i.e., orientation e.g., “upright”, having, action, and
passivity. These were the ten most general of all genera. All of them except
substance were regarded as accidental. It was disputed whether this tenfold
classification was intended as a linguistic division among categorematic terms
or as an ontological division among extralinguistic realities. Some authors
held that the division was primarily linguistic, and that extralinguistic
realities were divided according to some but not all the praedicamenta. Most
authors held that everything in any way real belonged to one praedicamentum or
another, although some made an exception for God. But authors who believed in
complexe significabile usually regarded them as not belonging to any
praedicamentum.
pragmatic contradiction, a contradiction
that is generated by pragmatic rather than logical implication. A logically
implies B if it is impossible for B to be false if A is true, whereas A
pragmatically implies B if in most but not necessarily all contexts, saying ‘A’
can reasonably be taken as indicating that B is true. Thus, if I say, “It’s
raining,” what I say does not logically imply that I believe that it is
raining, since it is possible for it to be raining without my believing it is.
Nor does my saying that it is raining logically imply that I believe that it
is, since it is possible for me to say this without believing it. But my saying
this does pragmatically imply that I believe that it is raining, since normally
my saying this can reasonably be taken to indicate that I believe it.
Accordingly, if I were to say, “It’s raining but I don’t believe that it’s
raining,” the result would be a pragmatic contradiction. The first part “It’s
raining” does not logically imply the negation of the second part “I don’t
believe that it’s raining” but my saying the first part does pragmatically
imply the negation of the second part.
Old-World pragmatism: a philosophy that
stresses the relation of theory to praxis and takes the continuity of
experience and nature as revealed through the outcome of directed action as the
starting point for reflection. Experience is the ongoing transaction of
organism and environment, i.e., both subject and object are constituted in the
process. When intelligently ordered, initial conditions are deliberately
transformed according to ends-inview, i.e., intentionally, into a subsequent
state of affairs thought to be more desirable. Knowledge is therefore guided by
interests or values. Since the reality of objects cannot be known prior to
experience, truth claims can be justified only as the fulfillment of conditions
that are experimentally determined, i.e., the outcome of inquiry. As a
philosophic movement, pragmatism was first formulated by Peirce in the early
1870s in the Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts; it was announced as
a distinctive position in James’s 8 address to the Philosophical Union at
the of California at Berkeley, and
further elaborated according to the Chicago School, especially by Dewey, Mead,
and Jane Addams 18605. Emphasis on the reciprocity of theory and praxis,
knowledge and action, facts and values, follows from its postDarwinian
understanding of human experience, including cognition, as a developmental,
historically contingent, process. C. I. Lewis’s pragmatic a priori and Quine’s
rejection of the analytic synthetic distinction develop these insights further.
Knowledge is instrumental a tool for
organizing experience satisfactorily. Concepts are habits of belief or rules of
action. Truth cannot be determined solely by epistemological criteria because
the adequacy of these criteria cannot be determined apart from the goals sought
and values instantiated. Values, which arise in historically specific cultural
situations, are intelligently appropriated only to the extent that they
satisfactorily resolve problems and are judged worth retaining. According to
pragmatic theories of truth, truths are beliefs that are confirmed in the
course of experience and are therefore fallible, subject to further revision.
True beliefs for Peirce represent real objects as successively confirmed until
they converge on a final determination; for James, leadings that are
worthwhile; and according to Dewey’s theory of inquiry, the transformation of an
indeterminate situation into a determinate one that leads to warranted
assertions. Pragmatic ethics is naturalistic, pluralistic, developmental, and
experimental. It reflects on the motivations influencing ethical systems,
examines the individual developmental process wherein an individual’s values
are gradually distinguished from those of society, situates moral judgments
within problematic situations irreducibly individual and social, and proposes
as ultimate criteria for decision making the value for life as growth,
determined by all those affected by the actual or projected outcomes. The
original interdisciplinary development of pragmatism continues in its influence
on the humanities. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., member of the Metaphysical Club,
later justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, developed a pragmatic theory of law.
Peirce’s Principle of Pragmatism, by which meaning resides in conceivable
practical effects, and his triadic theory of signs developed into the field of
semiotics. James’s Principles of Psychology 0 not only established experimental
psychology in North America, but shifted philosophical attention away from
abstract analyses of rationality to the continuity of the biological and the
mental. The reflex arc theory was reconstructed into an interactive loop of
perception, feeling, thinking, and behavior, and joined with the selective
interest of consciousness to become the basis of radical empiricism. Mead’s
theory of the emergence of self and mind in social acts and Dewey’s analyses of
the individual and society influenced the human sciences. Dewey’s theory of
education as community-oriented, based on the psychological developmental
stages of growth, and directed toward full participation in a democratic
society, was the philosophical basis of progressive education.
praxis from Grecian prasso, ‘doing’,
‘acting’, in Aristotle, the sphere of thought and action that comprises the
ethical and political life of man, contrasted with the theoretical designs of
logic and epistemology theoria. It was thus that ‘praxis’ acquired its general
definition of ‘practice’ through a contrastive comparison with ‘theory’.
Throughout the history of Western philosophy the concept of praxis found a
place in a variety of philosophical vocabularies. Marx and the neoMarxists
linked the concept with a production paradigm in the interests of historical
explanation. Within such a scheme of things the activities constituting the
relations of production and exchange are seen as the dominant features of the
socioeconomic history of humankind. Significations of ‘praxis’ are also
discernible in the root meaning of pragma deed, affair, which informed the
development of pragmatism. In more
recent times the notion of praxis has played a prominent role in the formation
of the school of critical theory, in which the performatives of praxis are seen
to be more directly associated with the entwined phenomena of discourse,
communication, and social practices. The central philosophical issues addressed
in the current literature on praxis have to do with the theorypractice
relationship and the problems associated with a value-free science. The general
thrust is that of undermining or subverting the traditional bifurcation of
theory and practice via a recognition of praxis-oriented endeavors that
antedate both theory construction and the construal of practice as a mere
application of theory. Both the project of “pure theory,” which makes claims
for a value-neutral standpoint, and the purely instrumentalist understanding of
practice, as itself shorn of discernment and insight, are jettisoned. The
consequent philosophical task becomes that of understanding human thought and
action against the backdrop of the everyday communicative endeavors, habits,
and skills, and social practices that make up our inheritance in the
world. Praxis school, a school of
philosophy originating in Zagreb and Belgrade which, from 4 to 4, published the
international edition of the leading postwar Marxist journal Praxis. During the
same period, it organized the Korcula Summer School, which attracted scholars
from around the Western world. In a reduced form the school continues each
spring with the Social Philosophy Course in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The founders of
praxis philosophy include Gajo Petrovic Zagreb, Milan Kangrga Zagreb, and
Mihailo Markovic Belgrade. Another wellknown member of the group is Svetozar
Stojanovic Belgrade, and a second-generation leader is Gvozden Flego Zagreb.
The Praxis school emphasized the writings of the young Marx while subjecting
dogmatic Marxism to one of its strongest criticisms. Distinguishing between
Marx’s and Engels’s writings and emphasizing alienation and a dynamic concept
of the human being, it contributed to a greater understanding of the
interrelationship between the individual and society. Through its insistence on
Marx’s call for a “ruthless critique,” the school stressed open inquiry and
freedom of speech in both East and West. Quite possibly the most important and
original philosopher of the group, and certainly Croatia’s leading
twentieth-century philosopher, was Gajo Petrovic 793. He called for 1
understanding philosophy as a radical critique of all existing things, and 2
understanding human beings as beings of praxis and creativity. This later led
to a view of human beings as revolutionary by nature. At present he is probably
best remembered for his Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century and Philosophie und
Revolution. Milan Kangrga b.3 also emphasizes human creativity while insisting
that one should understand human beings as producers who humanize nature. An
ethical problematic of humanity can pragmatism, ethical Praxis school 731 731 be realized through a variety of
disciplines that include aesthetics, philosophical anthropolgy, theory of
knowledge, ontology, and social thought. Mihailo Markovic b.3, a member of the
Belgrade Eight, is best known for his theory of meaning, which leads him to a
theory of socialist humanism. His most widely read work in the West is From
Affluence to Praxis: Philosophy and Social Criticism.
Pre-analytic, considered but naive;
commonsensical; not tainted by prior explicit theorizing; said of judgments
and, derivatively, of beliefs or intuitions underlying such judgments.
Preanalytic judgments are often used to test philosophical theses. All things
considered, we prefer theories that accord with preanalytic judgments to those
that do not, although most theorists exhibit a willingness to revise
preanalytic assessments in light of subsequent inquiry. Thus, a preanalytic
judgment might be thought to constitute a starting point for the philosophical
consideration of a given topic. Is justice giving every man his due? It may
seem so, preanalytically. Attention to concrete examples, however, may lead us
to a different view. It is doubtful, even in such cases, that we altogether
abandon preanalytic judgments. Rather, we endeavor to reconcile apparently
competing judgments, making adjustments in a way that optimizes overall
coherence.
praedicabile: As in qualia being the plural of quale and universalia being
the plural of universale, predicabilia is Boethius’s plural for the
‘predicabile’ -- something Grice knew by heart from giving seminars at Oxfrod
on Aristotle’s categories with Austin and Strawson. He found the topic boring
enough to give the seminar ALONE!
prædicatum: vide Is there a praedicatum in Blackburn’s one-off
predicament. He draws a skull and communicates that there is danger. The
drawsing of the skull is not syntactically structured. So it is difficult to
isolate the ‘praedicatum.’ That’s why Grice leaves matters of the praedicatum’
to reductive analyses at a second stage of his programme, where one wants to
apply, metabolically, ‘communicate’ to what an emissum does. The emissum of the
form, The S is P, predicates P of S.
Vide subjectification, and subjectum. Of especial interest to Grice and
Strawson. Lewis and Short have “praedīco,” which they render as “to say or
mention before or beforehand, to premise.” Grice as a modista is interested in
parts of speech: nomen (onoma) versus verbum (rhema) being the classical, since
Plato. The mediaeval modistae like Alcuin adapted Aristotle, and Grice follows
suit. Of particular relevance are the ‘syncategoremata,’ since Grice was
obsessed with particles, and we cannot say that ‘and’ is a predicate! This
relates to the ‘categorema.’ Liddell and Scott have “κατηγόρ-ημα,” which they
render as “accusation, charge,” Gorg.Pal.22; but in philosophy, as “predicate,”
as per Arist.Int.20b32, Metaph.1053b19, etc.; -- “οὐκ εὔοδον τὸ ἁπλοῖν
ἐστι κ.” Epicur.Fr.18. – and as “head of predicables,” in
Arist.Metaph.1028a33,Ph.201a1, Zeno Stoic.1.25, etc.; περὶ κατηγορημάτων
Sphaer.ib.140. The term syncategorema comes from a passage of Priscian in
his Institutiones grammatice II , 15. “coniunctae
plenam faciunt orationem, alias autem partes, κατηγορήματα, hoc est consignificantia, appellabant.” A distinction is made between two types
of word classes ("partes orationis," singular, "pars
orationis") distinguished by philosophers since Plato, viz. nouns (nomen,
onoma) and verbs (verbum, rhema) on the one hand, and a 'syncategorema or
consignificantium. A consignificantium, just as the unary functor
"non," and any of the three dyadic functors, "et,"
"vel" (or "aut") and "si," does not have a
definitive meaning on its own -- cf. praepositio, cited by Grice, -- "the
meaning of 'to,' the meaning of 'of,'" -- rather, they acquire meaning in
combination or when con-joined to one or more categorema. It is one thing to
say that we employ a certain part of speech when certain conditions are
fulfilled and quite another to claim that the role in the language of that part
of speech is to say, even in an extended sense, that those conditions are
fulfilled. In Logic, the verb 'kategoreo' is 'predicate of a person or thing,'
“τί τινος” Arist.Cat.3a19,al., Epicur.Fr.250; κυρίως, καταχρηστικῶς κ.,
Phld.Po.5.15; “ἐναντίως ὑπὲρ τῶν αὐτῶν” Id.Oec.p.60 J.: —more freq. in Pass.,
to be predicated of . . , τινος Arist.Cat.2a21, APr. 26b9, al.; “κατά τινος”
Id.Cat.2a37; “κατὰ παντὸς ἢ μηδενός” Id.APr.24a15: less freq. “ἐπί τινος”
Id.Metaph.998b16, 999a15; so later “ἐφ᾽ ἑνὸς οἴονται θεοῦ ἑκάτερον τῶν ὀνομάτων
-εῖσθαι” D.H.2.48; “περί τινος” Arist. Top.140b37; “τὸ κοινῇ -ούμενον ἐπὶ
πᾶσιν” Id.SE179a8: abs., τὸ κατηγορούμενον the predicate, opp.
τὸ ὑποκείμενον (the subject), Id.Cat.1b11, cf.Metaph.1043a6,
al.; κατηγορεῖν καὶ -εῖσθαι to be subject and predicate, Id.APr.47b1.
BANC.
prejudices: the life and opinions of H. P. Grice, by H.
P. Grice! PGRICE had been in the works for a while. Knowing this, Grice is able
to start his auto-biography, or memoir, to which he later adds a specific reply
to this or that objection by the editors. The reply is divided in neat
sections. After a preamble displaying his gratitude for the volume in
his honour, Grice turns to his prejudices and predilections; which become,
the life and opinions of H. P. Grice. The third section is a reply to the
editorss overview of his work. This reply itself is itself subdivided into
questions of meaning and rationality, and questions of Met. , philosophical
psychology, and value. As the latter is repr. in “Conception” it is possible to
cite this sub-section from the Reply as a separate piece. Grice originally
entitles his essay in a brilliant manner, echoing the style of an English non-conformist,
almost: Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H.
P. Grice. With his Richards, a nice Welsh surNames, Grice is punning on the
first Names of both Grandy and Warner. Grice is especially concerned with what
Richards see as an ontological commitment on Grices part to the abstract,
yet poorly individuated entity of a proposition. Grice also deals with the
alleged insufficiency in his conceptual analysis of reasoning. He brings for
good measure a point about a potential regressus ad infinitum in his account of
a chain of intentions involved in meaning that p and communicating that p. Even
if one of the drafts is titled festschrift, not by himself, this is not
strictly a festschrift in that Grices Names is hidden behind the acronym:
PGRICE. Notably on the philosophy of perception. Also in “Conception,”
especially that tricky third lecture on a metaphysical foundation for objective
value. Grice is supposed to reply to the individual contributors, who
include Strawson, but does not. I cancelled the implicaturum! However, we may
identify in his oeuvre points of contacts of his own views with the
philosophers who contributed, notably Strawson. Most of this material is
reproduced verbatim, indeed, as the second part of his Reply to Richards, and
it is a philosophical memoir of which Grice is rightly proud. The life and
opinions are, almost in a joke on Witters, distinctly separated. Under Life,
Grice convers his conservative, irreverent rationalism making his early initial
appearance at Harborne under the influence of his non-conformist father, and
fermented at his tutorials with Hardie at Corpus, and his associations with
Austins play group on Saturday mornings, and some of whose members he lists
alphabetically: Austin, Gardiner, Grice, Hampshire, Hare, Hart, Nowell-Smith,
Paul, Pears, Strawson, Thomson, Urmson, and Warnock. Also, his joint
philosophising with Austin, Pears, Strawson, Thomson, and Warnock. Under
Opinions, Grice expands mainly on ordinary-language philosophy and his Bunyanesque
way to the City of Eternal Truth. Met. , Philosophical Psychology, and
Value, in “Conception,” is thus part of his Prejudices and predilections.
The philosophers Grice quotes are many and varied, such as Bosanquet and
Kneale, and from the other place, Keynes. Grice spends some delightful time
criticising the critics of ordinary-language philosophy such as Bergmann (who
needs an English futilitarian?) and Gellner. He also quotes from Jespersen, who
was "not a philosopher but wrote a philosophy of grammar!" And Grice
includes a reminiscence of the bombshells brought from Vienna by the enfant
terrible of Oxford philosophy Freddie Ayer, after being sent to the Continent
by Ryle. He recalls an air marshal at a dinner with Strawson at Magdalen relishing
on Cook Wilsons adage, What we know we know. And more besides! After
reminiscing for Clarendon, Grice will go on to reminisce for Harvard University
Press in the closing section of the Retrospective epilogue. Refs.: The main
source is “Reply to Richards,” and references to Oxonianism, and linguistic
botanising, BANC.
prelatum --
anaphora: a device of reference or
cross-reference in which a term called an anaphor, typically a pronoun, has its
semantic properties determined by a term or noun phrase called the anaphor’s
antecedent that occurs earlier. Sometimes the antecedent is a proper name or
other independently referring expression, as in ‘Jill went up the hill and then
she came down again’. In such cases, the anaphor refers to the same object as
its antecedent. In other cases, the anaphor seems to function as a variable
bound by an antecedent quantifier, as in ‘If any miner bought a donkey, he is
penniless’. But anaphora is puzzling because not every example falls neatly
into one of these two groups. Thus, in ‘John owns some sheep and Harry
vaccinates them’ an example due to Gareth Evans the anaphor is arguably not
bound by its antecedent ‘some sheep’. And in ‘Every miner who owns a donkey
beats it’ a famous type of case discovered by Geach, the anaphor is arguably
neither bound by ‘a donkey’ nor a uniquely referring expression.
Praedicabile, also praedicabilia, sometimes called the
quinque voces five words, in medieval philosophy, genus, species, difference,
proprium, and accident, the five main ways general predicates can be
predicated. The list comes from Porphyry’s Isagoge. It was debated whether it
applies to linguistic predicates only or also to extralinguistic universals.
Things that have accidents can exist without them; other predicables belong necessarily
to whatever has them. The Aristotelian/Porphyrian notion of “inseparable
accident” blurs this picture. Genus and species are natural kinds; other
predicables are not. A natural kind that is not a narrowest natural kind is a
genus; one that is not a broadest natural kind is a species. Some genera are
also species. A proprium is not a species, but is coextensive with one. A
difference belongs necessarily to whatever has it, but is neither a natural
kind nor coextensive with one.
Pre-existence, existence of the individual soul or
psyche prior to its current embodiment, when the soul or psyche is taken to be
separable and capable of existing independently from its embodiment. The
current embodiment is then often described as a reincarnation of the soul.
Plato’s Socrates refers to such a doctrine several times in the dialogues,
notably in the myth of Er in Book X of the Republic. The doctrine is
distinguished from two other teachings about the soul: creationism, which holds
that the individual human soul is directly created by God, and traducianism,
which held that just as body begets body in biological generation, so the soul
of the new human being is begotten by the parental soul. In Hinduism, the cycle
of reincarnations represents the period of estrangement and trial for the soul
or Atman before it achieves release moksha.
prescriptivism, the theory that evaluative judgments
necessarily have prescriptive meaning. Associated with noncognitivism and moral
antirealism, prescriptivism holds that moral language is such that, if you say
that you think one ought to do a certain kind of act, and yet you are not
committed to doing that kind of act in the relevant circumstances, then you
either spoke insincerely or are using the word ‘ought’ in a less than full-blooded
sense. Prescriptivism owes its stature to Hare. One of his innovations is the
distinction between “secondarily evaluative” and “primarily evaluative” words.
The prescriptive meaning of secondarily evaluative words, such as
‘soft-hearted’ or ‘chaste’, may vary significantly while their descriptive
meanings stay relatively constant. Hare argues the reverse for the primarily
evaluative words ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘ought’, and ‘must’. For
example, some people assign to ‘wrong’ the descriptive meaning ‘forbidden by
God’, others assign it the descriptive meaning ‘causes social conflict’, and
others give it different descriptive meanings; but since all use ‘wrong’ with
the same prescriptive meaning, they are using the same concept. In part to show
how moral judgments can be prescriptive and yet have the same logical relations
as indicative sentences, Hare distinguished between phrastics and neustics. The
phrastic, or content, can be the same in indicative and prescriptive sentences;
e.g., ‘Sam’s leaving’ is the phrastic not only of the indicative ‘Sam will
leave’ but also of the prescription ‘Sam ought to leave’. Hare’s Language of
Morals 2 specified that the neustic indicates mood, i.e., whether the sentence
is indicative, imperative, interrogative, etc. However, in an article in Mind 9
and in Sorting Out Ethics 7, he used ‘neustic’ to refer to the sign of
subscription, and ‘tropic’ to refer to the sign of mood. Prescriptivity is
especially important if moral judgments are universalizable. For then we can
employ golden rulestyle moral reasoning.
pre-Socratics: cf. pre-Griceians. the early Grecian
philosophers who were not influenced by Socrates. Generally they lived before
Socrates, but some are contemporary with him or even younger. The classification
though not the term goes back to Aristotle, who saw Socrates’ humanism and
emphasis on ethical issues as a watershed in the history of philosophy.
Aristotle rightly noted that philosophers prior to Socrates had stressed
natural philosophy and cosmology rather than ethics. He credited them with
discovering material principles and moving causes of natural events, but he
criticized them for failing to stress structural elements of things formal
causes and values or purposes final causes. Unfortunately, no writing of any
pre-Socratic survives in more than a fragmentary form, and evidence of their
views is thus often indirect, based on reports or criticisms of later writers.
In order to reconstruct pre-Socratic thought, scholars have sought to collect testimonies
of ancient sources and to identify quotations from the preSocratics in those
sources. As modern research has revealed flaws in the interpretations of
ancient witnesses, it has become a principle of exegesis to base
reconstructions of their views on the actual words of the pre-Socratics
themselves wherever possible. Because of the fragmentary and derivative nature
of our evidence, even basic principles of a philosopher’s system sometimes
remain controversial; nevertheless, we can say that thanks to modern methods of
historiography, there are many points we understand better than ancient
witnesses who are our secondary sources. Our best ancient secondary source is
Aristotle, who lived soon after the pre-Socratics and had access to most of
their writings. He interprets his predecessors from the standpoint of his own
theory; but any historian must interpret philosophers in light of some
theoretical background. Since we have extensive writings of Aristotle, we understand his system and can filter out his
own prejudices. His colleague Theophrastus was the first professional historian
of philosophy. Adopting Aristotle’s general framework, he systematically
discussed pre-Socratic theories. Unfortunately his work itself is lost, but
many fragments and summaries of parts of it remain. Indeed, virtually all
ancient witnesses writing after Theophrastus depend on him for their general
understanding of the early philosophers, sometimes by way of digests of his
work. When biography became an important genre in later antiquity, biographers
collected facts, anecdotes, slanders, chronologies often based on crude a
priori assumptions, lists of book titles, and successions of school directors,
which provide potentially valuable information. By reconstructing ancient theories,
we can trace the broad outlines of pre-Socratic development with some
confidence. The first philosophers were the Milesians, philosophers of Miletus
on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, who in the sixth century B.C. broke away
from mythological modes of explanation by accounting for all phenomena, even
apparent prodigies of nature, by means of simple physical hypotheses. Aristotle
saw the Milesians as material monists, positing a physical substrate of water, or the apeiron, or air; but their
material source was probably not a continuing substance that underlies all
changes as Aristotle thought, but rather an original stuff that was transformed
into different stuffs. Pythagoras migrated from Ionia to southern Italy,
founding a school of Pythagoreans who believed that souls transmigrated and
that number was the basis of all reality. Because Pythagoras and his early
followers did not publish anything, it is difficult to trace their development
and influence in detail. Back in Ionia, Heraclitus criticized Milesian
principles because he saw that if substances changed into one another, the
process of transformation was more important than the substances that appeared
in the cycle of changes. He thus chose the unstable substance fire as his
material principle and stressed the unity of opposites. Parmenides and the
Eleatic School criticized the notion of notbeing that theories of physical
transformations seemed to presuppose. One cannot even conceive of or talk of
not-being; hence any conception that presupposes not-being must be ruled out.
But the basic notions of coming-to-be, differentiation, and indeed change in
general presuppose not-being, and thus must be rejected. Eleatic analysis leads
to the further conclusion, implicit in Parmenides, explicit in Melissus, that
there is only one substance, what-is. Since this substance does not come into
being or change in any way, nor does it have any internal differentiations, the
world is just a single changeless, homogeneous individual. Parmenides’ argument
seems to undermine the foundations of natural philosophy. After Parmenides
philosophers who wished to continue natural philosophy felt compelled to grant
that coming-to-be and internal differentiation of a given substance were
impossible. But in order to accommodate natural processes, they posited a
plurality of unchanging, homogeneous elements
the four elements of Empedocles, the elemental stuffs of Anaxagoras, the
atoms of Democritus that by arrangement
and rearrangement could produce the cosmos and the things in it. There is no
real coming-to-be and perishing in the world since the ultimate substances are
everlasting; but some limited kind of change such as chemical combination or
mixture or locomotion could account for changing phenomena in the world of
experience. Thus the “pluralists” incorporated Eleatic principles into their
systems while rejecting the more radical implications of the Eleatic critique.
Pre-Socratic philosophers developed more complex systems as a response to
theoretical criticisms. They focused on cosmology and natural philosophy in
general, championing reason and nature against mythological traditions. Yet the
pre-Socratics have been criticized both for being too narrowly scientific in
interest and for not being scientific experimental enough. While there is some
justice in both criticisms, their interests showed breadth as well as
narrowness, and they at least made significant conceptual progress in providing
a framework for scientific and philosophical ideas. While they never developed
sophisticated theories of ethics, logic, epistemology, or metaphysics, nor
invented experimental methods of confirmation, they did introduce the concepts
that ultimately became fundamental in modern theories of cosmic, biological,
and cultural evolution, as well as in atomism, genetics, and social contract
theory. Because the Socratic revolution turned philosophy in different
directions, the pre-Socratic line died out. But the first philosophers supplied
much inspiration for the sophisticated fourthcentury systems of Plato and
Aristotle as well as the basic principles of the great Hellenistic schools,
Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism.
presupposition, 1 a relation between sentences or
statements, related to but distinct from entailment and assertion; 2 what a
speaker takes to be understood in making an assertion. The first notion is
semantic, the second pragmatic. The semantic notion was introduced by Strawson
in his attack on Russell’s theory of descriptions, and perhaps anticipated by
Frege. Strawson argued that ‘The present king of France is bald’ does not
entail ‘There is a present king of France’ as Russell held, but instead presupposes
it. Semantic presupposition can be defined thus: a sentence or statement S
presupposes a sentence or statement SH provided S entails SH and the negation
of S also entails SH . SH is a condition of the truth or falsity of S. Thus,
since ‘There is a present king of France’ is false, ‘The present king of France
is bald’ is argued to be neither true nor false. So construed, presupposition
is defined in terms of, but is distinct from, entailment. It is also distinct
from assertion, since it is viewed as a precondition of the truth or falsity of
what is asserted. The pragmatic conception does not appeal to truth conditions,
but instead contrasts what a speaker presupposes and what that speaker asserts
in making an utterance. Thus, someone who utters ‘The present king of France is
bald’ presupposes believes and believes
that the audience believes that there is
a present king of France, and asserts that this king is bald. So conceived,
presuppositions are beliefs that the speaker takes for granted; if these beliefs
are false, the utterance will be inappropriate in some way, but it does not
follow that the sentence uttered lacks a truth-value. These two notions of
presupposition are logically independent. On the semantic characterization,
presupposition is a relation between sentences or statements requiring that
there be truth-value gaps. On the pragmatic characterization, it is speakers
rather than sentences or statements that have presuppositions; no truth-value
gaps are required. Many philosophers and linguists have argued for treating
what have been taken to be cases of semantic presupposition, including the one
discussed above, as pragmatic phenomena. Some have denied that semantic
presuppositions exist. If not, intuitions about presupposition do not support the
claims that natural languages have truth-value gaps and that we need a
three-valued logic to represent the semantics of natural language adequately.
Presupposition is also distinct from implicaturum. If someone reports that he
has just torn his coat and you say, “There’s a tailor shop around the corner,”
you conversationally implicate that the shop is open. This is not a semantic
presupposition because if it is false that the shop is open, there is no
inclination to say that your assertion was neither true nor false. It is not a
pragmatic presupposition because it is not something you believe the hearer
believes.
pretheoretical, independent of theory. More
specifically, a proposition is pretheoretical, according to some philosophers,
if and only if it does not depend for its plausibility or implausibility on
theoretical considerations or considerations of theoretical analysis. The term
‘preanalytic’ is often used synonymously with ‘pretheoretical’, but the former
is more properly paired with analysis rather than with theory. Some
philosophers characterize pretheoretical propositions as “intuitively”
plausible or implausible. Such propositions, they hold, can regulate
philosophical theorizing as follows: in general, an adequate philosophical
theory should not conflict with intuitively plausible propositions by implying
intuitively implausible propositions, and should imply intuitively plausible
propositions. Some philosophers grant that theoretical considerations can
override “intuitions” in the sense of
intuitively plausible propositions when
overall theoretical coherence or reflective equilibrium is thereby enhanced.
prescriptum: prescriptivism. According to Grice’s prescriptive
meta-ethics, by uttering ‘p,’ the emissor may intend his recipient to entertain
a desiderative state of content ‘p.’ In which case, the emissor is
‘prescribing’ a course of conduct. As opposed to the ‘descriptum,’ which just
depicts a ‘state’ of affairs that the emissor wants to inform his recipient
about. Surely there are for Grice at
least two different modes, the buletic, which tends towards the prescriptive,
and the doxastic, which is mostly ‘descriptive.’ One has to be careful because
Grice thinks that what a philosopher like Strawson does with ‘descriptive’
expression (like ‘true,’ ‘know’ and ‘good’) and talk of pseudo-descriptive. What
is that gives the buletic a ‘prescritive’ or deontic ring to it? This is Kant’s
question. Grice kept a copy of Foots on morality as a system of hypothetical
imperatives. “So Somervillian Oxonian it hurts!”. Grice took virtue ethics more
seriously than the early Hare. Hare will end up a virtue ethicist, since he
changed from a meta-ethicist to a moralist embracing a hedonistic version of eudaemonist
utilitarianism. Grice was more Aristotelianly conservative! Unlike Hares and
Grices meta-ethical sensitivities (as members of the Oxonian school of
ordinary-language philosophy), Foot suggests a different approach to ethics.
Grice admired Foots ability to make the right conceptual distinction. Foot
is following a very Oxonian tradition best represented by the work of
Warnock. Of course, Grice was over-familiar with the virtue vs. vice
distinction, since Hardie had instilled it on him at Corpus! For Grice,
virtue and vice (and the mesotes), display an interesting logical grammar,
though. Grice would say that rationality is a virtue; fallacious reasoning is a
vice. Some things Grice takes more of a moral standpoint about. To cheat
is neither irrational nor unreasonble: just plain repulsive. As
such, it would be a vice ‒ mind not getting caught in its grip! Grice is
concerned with vice in his account of akrasia or incontinentia. If agent A
KNOWS that doing x is virtuous, yet decides to do ~x, which is vicious, A is
being akratic. For Grice, akratic behaviour applies both in the buletic or
boulomaic realm and in the doxastic realm. And it is part of the
philosopher’s job to elucidate the conceptual intricacies attached to
it. 1. prima-facie (p⊃!q)
V probably (p⊃q). 2.
prima-facie ((A and B) ⊃!p) V probably ( (A and B) ⊃p). 3. prima-facie
((A and B and C) ⊃!p)
V probably ( (A and B and C,) ⊃p). 4. prima-facie ((all things before P V!p) V
probably ((all things before P) ⊃ p). 5. prima-facie ((all things are
considered ⊃ !p)
V probably (all things are considered, ⊃ p). 6. !q V .q 7. Acc. Reasoning P
wills that !q V Acc. Reasoning P that judges q. Refs.: The main sources under
‘meta-ethics,’ above, BANC.
Preve: important Italian
philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Preve," per il Club
Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
Price: Welsh Dissenting minister, actuary, and moral
philosopher. His main work, A Review of the Principal Question in Morals 1758,
is a defense of rationalism in ethics. He argued that the understanding
immediately perceives simple, objective, moral qualities of actions. The
resulting intuitive knowledge of moral truths is accompanied by feelings of
approval and disapproval responsible for moral motivation. He also wrote
influential papers on life expectancy, public finance, and annuities;
communicated to the Royal Society the paper by his deceased friend Thomas Bayes
containing Bayes’s theorem; and defended the
and revolutions. Burke’s Reflections
on the Revolution in France is a response to one of Price’s sermons.
Prichard: h. a. – H. P. Grice called himself a
neo-Prichardian, but then “I used to be a neo-Stoutian before that!” -- English
philosopher and founder of the Oxford school of intuitionism. An Oxford fellow
and professor, he published Kant’s Theory of Knowledge 9 and numerous essays,
collected in Moral Obligation 9, 8 and in Knowledge and Perception 0. Prichard
was a realist in his theory of knowledge, following Cook Wilson. He held that
through direct perception in concrete cases we obtain knowledge of universals
and of necessary connections between them, and he elaborated a theory about our
knowledge of material objects. In “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” 2
he argued powerfully that it is wrong to think that a general theory of
obligation is possible. No single principle captures the various reasons why
obligatory acts are obligatory. Only by direct perception in particular cases
can we see what we ought to do. With this essay Prichard founded the Oxford
school of intuitionism, carried on by, among others, Ross.
Priestley, J.: British philosopher. In 1774 he prepared
oxygen by heating mercuric oxide. Although he continued to favor the phlogiston
hypothesis, his work did much to discredit that idea. He discovered many gases,
including ammonia, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrochloric acid.
While studying the layer of carbon dioxide over a brewing vat, he conceived the
idea of dissolving it under pressure. The resulting “soda water” was famous
throughout Europe. His Essay on Government 1768 influenced Jefferson’s ideas in
the Declaration of Independence. The
essay also contributed to the utilitarianism of Bentham, supplying the phrase
“the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Priestley modified the
associationism of Locke, Hume, and Hartley, holding that a sharp distinction
must be drawn between the results of association in forming natural
propensities and its effects on the development of moral ideas. On the basis of
this distinction, he argued, against Hume, that differences in individual moral
sentiments are results of education, through the association of ideas, a view
anticipated by Helvétius. Priestley served as minister to anti-Establishment
congregations. His unpopular stress on individual freedom resulted in his move
to Pennsylvania, where he spent his last years.
Primum -- prime mover, the original source and cause of
motion change in the universe an idea
that was developed by Aristotle and became important in Judaic, Christian, and
Islamic thought about God. According to Aristotle, something that is in motion
a process of change is moving from a state of potentiality to a state of
actuality. For example, water that is being heated is potentially hot and in
the process of becoming actually hot. If a cause of change must itself actually
be in the state that it is bringing about, then nothing can produce motion in
itself; whatever is in motion is being moved by another. For otherwise
something would be both potentially and actually in the same state. Thus, the
water that is potentially hot can become hot only by being changed by something
else the fire that is actually hot. The prime mover, the original cause of
motion, must itself, therefore, not be in motion; it is an unmoved mover.
Aquinas and other theologians viewed God as the prime mover, the ultimate cause
of all motion. Indeed, for these theologians the argument to establish the
existence of a first mover, itself unmoved, was a principal argument used in
their efforts to prove the existence of God on the basis of reason. Many modern
thinkers question the argument for a first mover on the ground that it does not
seem to be logically impossible that the motion of one thing be caused by a
second thing whose motion in turn is caused by a third thing, and so on without
end. Defenders of the argument claim that it presupposes a distinction between
two different causal series, one temporal and one simultaneous, and argue that
the objection succeeds only against a temporal causal series. PRIMA PHILOSOPHIA -- first philosophy, in
Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the study of being qua being, including the study of
theology as understood by him, since the divine is being par excellence.
Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy was concerned chiefly with the
existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the nature of matter and of
the mind.
Prince
Maurice’s parrot: The ascription of
‘that’-clause in the report of a communicatum by a pirot of stage n-1 may be a
problem by a priot in stage n. Do we want to say that the parrot communicates
that he finds Prince Maurice an idiot? While some may not be correct that
Griciean principles can be explained on practical, utilitarian grounds, Grice’s
main motivation is indeed to capture the ‘rational’ capacity. Since I think I
may be confident, that, whoever should see a creature of his own shape or make,
though it had no more reason all its life than a cat or a parrot, would call
him still a man; or whoever should hear a cat or a parrot discourse, reason,
and philosophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot; and
say, the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelligent
rational parrot. A relation we have in an author of great note, is sufficient
to countenance the supposition of a rational parrot. His words are: "I had
a mind to know, from Prince Maurice's own mouth, the account of a common, but
much credited story, that I had heard so often from many others, of an old
parrot he had in Brazil, during his government there, that spoke, and asked,
and answered common questions, like a reasonable creature: so that those of his
train there generally concluded it to be witchery or possession; and one of his
chaplains, who lived long afterwards in Holland, would never from that time
endure a parrot, but said they all had a devil in them. I had heard many
particulars of this story, and as severed by people hard to be discredited,
which made me ask Prince Maurice what there was of it. He said, with his usual
plainness and dryness in talk, there was something true, but a great deal false
of what had been reported. I desired to know of him what there was of the first.
He told me short and coldly, that he had heard of such an old parrot when he
had been at Brazil; and though he believed nothing of it, and it was a good way
off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for it: that it was a very great
and a very old one; and when it came first into the room where the prince was,
with a great many Dutchmen about him, it said presently, What a company of
white men are here! They asked it, what it thought that man was, pointing to
the prince. It answered, Some General or other. When they brought it close to
him, he asked it, D'ou venez-vous? It answered, De Marinnan. The Prince, A qui
estes-vous? The Parrot, A un Portugais. The Prince, Que fais-tu la? Parrot, Je
garde les poulles. The Prince laughed, and said, Vous gardez les poulles? The
Parrot answered, Oui, moi; et je scai bien faire; and made the chuck four or
five times that people use to make to chickens when they call them. I set down
the words of this worthy dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them
to me. I asked him in what language the parrot spoke, and he said in Brazilian.
I asked whether he understood Brazilian; he said No, but he had taken care to
have two interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke Brazilian, and the
other a Brazilian that spoke Dutch; that he asked them separately and
privately, and both of them agreed in telling him just the same thing that the
parrot had said. I could not but tell this odd story, because it is so much out
of the way, and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one; for I
dare say this Prince at least believed himself in all he told me, having ever
passed for a very honest and pious man: I leave it to naturalists to reason,
and to other men to believe, as they please upon it; however, it is not, perhaps,
amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such digressions,
whether to the purpose or no." I have taken care that the reader should
have the story at large in the author's own words, because he seems to me not
to have thought it incredible; for it cannot be imagined that so able a man as
he, who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of
himself, should take so much pains, in a place where it had nothing to do, to
pin so close, not only on a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a Prince
in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story which, if he
himself thought incredible, he could not but also think ridiculous. The Prince,
it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author, who relates it from him,
both of them call this talker a parrot: and I ask any one else who thinks such
a story fit to be told, whether, if this parrot, and all of its kind, had
always talked, as we have a prince's word for it this one did,- whether, I say,
they would not have passed for a race of rational animals; but yet, whether,
for all that, they would have been allowed to be men, and not parrots? For I
presume it is not the idea of a thinking or rational being alone that makes the
idea of a man in most people's sense: but of a body, so and so shaped, joined
to it: and if that be the idea of a man, the same successive body not shifted
all at once, must, as well as the same immaterial spirit, go to the making of
the same man.
Principle:
a philosopher loves a principle. principium. Grice. Principle of conversational
helpfulness. “I call it ‘principle,’ echoing Boethius.”Mention should also he made of Boethius’ conception, that
there are certain principles, sentences which have no demonstration — probatio
— which he calls principales propositiones or probationis principia. Here is
the fragment from his Commentary on Topics treating of principles; El iliac
quidem (propositiones) quarum nulla probatio est, maximae ac principales
vocantur, quod his illas necesse est approbari, quae ut demonstrari valeant,
non recusant/ est auteni maxima proposiiio ut liaec « si de aequalibus aequalia
demas, quae derelinquitur aequalia sunt », ita enim hoc per se notion est, ut
aliud notius quo approbari valeat esse non possit; quae proposi- tiones cum
(idem sui natura propria gerant, non solum alieno ad (idem non egent argumento,
oerum ceteris quoque probationis sclent esse principium; igitur per se notae
propositiones, quibus nihil est notius, indemonstrabiles ac maxime et
principales vocantur (“Indeed those sentences that have no demonstration are
called maximum or principal [sentences], because they are not rejected since
they are necessary to those that have to be demonstrated and which are valid
for making a demonstration ; but a maximum sentence such as « if from equal
[quantifies], equal [quantities] are taken, what is left are equal
[quantities]*, is self- evident, and there is nothing which can be better known
self-evidently valid, and self- demonstrating, therefore they are sentences containing
their certitude in their very nature and not only do they need no additional
argument to demonstrate their certitude, but are also the principles of
demonstration of the other [sentences]; so they are, self-evident sen- tences,
nothing being better known than they are, and are called undemonstrable or
maxi- mum and principal”). Boethius’ idea coincides with Aristotle’s; deduction
must start from somewhere, we must begin with something unproved. The
Stagirite, how- ever, gave an explanation of the existence of principles and
the possibility of their being grasjied by the active intellect, whereas with
Boethius princi- ples appear as severed from the sentences demonstrated in a
more formal manner: there are two kinds of sentences: some which are demonstrable
and others which need no demonstration There’s
the principle of economy of rational effort: (principium oeconomiae effortis
rationalis). Cf. his metaphor of the hamburger. Grice knew that ‘economy’ is
vague. It relates to the ‘open house.’ But is a crucial concept. It is not the
principle of parsimony of rational effort. It is not the principle of
‘minimisaation’ of rational effort. It is the principle of the ‘economy’ of
rational effort. ‘Economy’ is already a value-oriented word, since it is a branch
of politics and meta-ethics. oecŏnŏmĭcus , a, um, adj., = οἰκονομικός. I. Of or
relating to domestic economy; subst.: oecŏnŏmĭcus , i, m., a work of Xenophon
on domestic economy. in eo libro, qui Oeconomicus inscribitur, Cic. Off. 2, 24,
87; Gell. 15, 5, 8.— II. Of or belonging to a proper (oratorical) division or
arrangement; orderly, methodical: “oeconomica totius causae dispositio,” Quint.
7, 10, 11. οἰκονομ-ικός , ή, όν,
A.practised in the management of a household or family, opp. πολιτικός, Pl.Alc.1.133e,
Phdr.248d, X.Oec.1.3, Arist.Pol.1252a8, etc. : Sup., [κτημάτων] τὸ βέλτιστον καὶ-ώτατον,
of man, Phld.Oec.p.30 J. : hence, thrifty, frugal, economical, X.Mem.4.2.39,
Phylarch.65 J. (Comp.) : ὁ οἰ. title of treatise on the duties of domestic
life, by Xenophon ; and τὰ οἰ. title of treatise on public finance, ascribed to
Aristotle, cf. X.Cyr.8.1.14 : ἡ -κή (sc. τέχνη) domestic economy, husbandry,
Pl.Plt.259c, X.Mem. 3.4.11, etc. ; οἰ. ἀρχή defined as ἡ τέκνων ἀρχὴ καὶ γυναικὸς
καὶ τῆς οἰκίας πάσης, Arist.Pol.1278b38 ; applied to patriarchal rule,
ib.1285b32. Adv.“-κῶς” Ph.2.426, Plu.2.1126a ; also in literary sense, in a
well ordered manner, Sch.Th.1.63. Grice’s conversational maximin. Blackburn
draws a skull to communicate that there is danger. The skull complete with the
rest of the body will not do. So abiding by this principle has nothing to do
with an arbitrary convention. Vide principle of least conversational effort.
Principle of conversational least effort. No undue effort (candour), no
unnecessary trouble (self-love) if doing A involves too much conversational
effort, never worry: you will be DEEMED to have made the effort. Invoked by
Grice in “Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of
H. P. Grice.” When Grice qualifies this as ‘rational’ effort, what other
efforts are there? Note that the lexeme ‘effort’ does NOT feature in the
formulation of the principle itself. Grice confesses to be strongly inclined to
assent to the principle of economy of rational conversational effort or the
principle of economy of conversational effort, or the principle of economy of
conversational expenditure, or the principle of minimisation of rational expenditure,
or the principle of minimization of conversational expenditure, or the principle
of minimisation of rational cost, or the conversational maximin. The principle
of least cost. The principle of economy of rational expenditure states that,
where there is a ratiocinative procedure for arriving rationally at certain
outcome, a procedure which, because it is ratiocinative, involves an
expenditure of time and energy, if there is a NON-ratiocinative, and so more
economical procedure which is likely, for the most part, to reach the same
outcome as the ratiocinative procedure, provided the stakes are not too high,
it is rational to employ the cheaper though somewhat less reliable
non-ratiocinative procedure as a substitute for ratiocination. Grice thinks
this principle would meet with genitorial approval, in which case the genitor
would install it for use should opportunity arise. This applies to the charge
of overcomplexity and ‘psychological irreality’ of the reasoning involved in
the production and design of the maximally efficient conversational move and
the reasoning involved in the recognition of the implicaturum by the addressee.
In “Epilogue” he goes by yet another motto, Do not multiply rationalities
beyond necessity: The principle of conversational rationality, as he calls it
in the Epilogue, is a sub-principle of a principle of rationality simpiciter,
not applying to a pursuit related to ‘communication,’ as he puts it. Then
there’s the principium individuationis, the cause or basis of individuality in
individuals; what makes something individual as opposed to universal, e.g.,
what makes the cat Minina individual and thus different from the universal,
cat. Questions regarding the principle of individuation were first raised
explicitly in the early Middle Ages. Classical authors largely ignored
individuation; their ontological focus was on the problem of universals. The
key texts that originated the discussion of the principle of individuation are
found in Boethius. Between Boethius and 1150, individuation was always
discussed in the context of more pressing issues, particularly the problem of
universals. After 1150, individuation slowly emerged as a focus of attention,
so that by the end of the thirteenth century it had become an independent
subject of discussion, especially in Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Most early modern
philosophers conceived the problem of individuation epistemically rather than
metaphysically; they focused on the discernibility of individuals rather than
the cause of individuation, as in Descartes. With few exceptions, such as Karl
Popper, the twentieth century has followed this epistemic approach e. g. P. F.
Strawson. principle of bivalence, the
principle that any significant statement is either true or false. It is often
confused with the principle of excluded middle. Letting ‘Tp’ stand for ‘p is
true’ and ‘Tp’ for ‘p is false’ and otherwise using standard logical notation,
bivalence is ‘Tp 7 T-p’ and excluded middle is ‘T p 7 -p’. That they are
different principles is shown by the fact that in probability theory, where
‘Tp’ can be expressed as ‘Prp % 1’, bivalence ‘Pr p % 1 7 Pr ~p % 1’ is not
true for all values of p e.g. it is not
true where ‘p’ stands for ‘given a fair toss of a fair die, the result will be
a six’ a statement with a probability of 1 /6, where -p has a probability of 5
/6 but excluded middle ‘Prp 7 -p % 1’ is
true for all definite values of p, including the probability case just given.
If we allow that some significant statements have no truth-value or probability
and distinguish external negation ‘Tp’ from internal negation ‘T-p’, we can
distinguish bivalence and excluded middle from the principle of
non-contradiction, namely, ‘-Tp • T-p’, which is equivalent to ‘-Tp 7 -T-p’.
Standard truth-functional logic sees no difference between ‘p’ and ‘Tp’, or
‘-Tp’ and ‘T-p’, and thus is unable to distinguish the three principles. Some
philosophers of logic deny there is such a difference. principle of
contradiction, also called principle of non-contradiction, the principle that a
statement and its negation cannot both be true. It can be distinguished from
the principle of bivalence, and given certain controversial assumptions, from
the principle of excluded middle; but in truth-functional logic all three are
regarded as equivalent. Outside of formal logic the principle of
non-contradiction is best expressed as Aristotle expresses it: “Nothing can
both be and not be at the same time in the same respect.” principle of double effect, the view that
there is a morally relevant difference between those consequences of our actions
we intend and those we do not intend but do still foresee. According to the
principle, if increased literacy means a higher suicide rate, those who work
for education are not guilty of driving people to kill themselves. A physician
may give a patient painkillers foreseeing that they will shorten his life, even
though the use of outright poisons is forbidden and the physician does not
intend to shorten the patient’s life. An army attacking a legitimate military
target may accept as inevitable, without intending to bring about, the deaths of
a number of civilians. Traditional moral theologians affirmed the existence of
exceptionless prohibitions such as that against taking an innocent human life,
while using the principle of double effect to resolve hard cases and avoid
moral blind alleys. They held that one may produce a forbidden effect, provided
1 one’s action also had a good effect, 2 one did not seek the bad effect as an
end or as a means, 3 one did not produce the good effect through the bad
effect, and 4 the good effect was important enough to outweigh the bad one.
Some contemporary philosophers and Roman Catholic theologians hold that a
modified version of the principle of double effect is the sole justification of
deadly deeds, even when the person killed is not innocent. They drop any
restriction on the causal sequence, so that e.g. it is legitimate to cut off
the head of an unborn child to save the mother’s life. But they oppose capital
punishment on the ground that those who inflict it require the death of the
convict as part of their plan. They also play down the fourth requirement, on
the ground that the weighing of incommensurable goods it requires is
impossible. Consequentialists deny the principle of double effect, as do those
for whom the crucial distinction is between what we cause by our actions and
what just happens. In the most plausible view, the principle does not
presuppose exceptionless moral prohibitions, only something stronger than prima
facie duties. It is easier to justify an oblique evasion of a moral requirement
than a direct violation, even if direct violations are sometimes permissible.
So understood, the principle is a guide to prudence rather than a substitute
for it. principle of excluded middle,
the principle that the disjunction of any significant statement with its
negation is always true; e.g., ‘Either there is a tree over 500 feet tall or it
is not the case that there is such a tree’. The principle is often confused
with the principle of bivalence. principle of indifference, a rule for
assigning a probability to an event based on “parity of reasons.” According to
the principle, when the “weight of reasons” favoring one event is equal to the
“weight of reasons” favoring another, the two events should be assigned the
same probability. When there are n mutually exclusive and collectively
exhaustive events, and there is no reason to favor one over another, then we
should be “indifferent” and the n events should each be assigned probability
1/n the events are equiprobable, according to the principle. This principle is
usually associated with the names Bernoulli Ars Conjectandi, 1713 and Laplace
Théorie analytique des probabilités, 1812, and was so called by J. M. Keynes A
Treatise on Probability, 1. The principle gives probability both a subjective
“degree of belief” and a logical “partial logical entailment” interpretation.
One rationale for the principle says that in ignorance, when no reasons favor
one event over another, we should assign equal probabilities. It has been
countered that any assignment of probabilities at all is a claim to some
knowledge. Also, several seemingly natural applications of the principle,
involving non-linearly related variables, have led to some mathematical
contradictions, known as Bertrand’s paradox, and pointed out by Keynes. principle of insufficient reason, the
principle that if there is no sufficient reason or explanation for something’s
being the case, then it will not be the case. Since the rise of modern
probability theory, many have identified the principle of insufficient reason
with the principle of indifference a rule for assigning a probability to an
event based on “parity of reasons”. The two principles are closely related, but
it is illuminating historically and logically to view the principle of
insufficient reason as the general principle stated above which is related to
the principle of sufficient reason and to view the principle of indifference as
a special case of the principle of insufficient reason applying to
probabilities. As Mach noted, the principle of insufficient reason, thus
conceived, was used by Archimedes to argue that a lever with equal weights at
equal distances from a central fulcrum would not move, since if there is no
sufficient reason why it should move one way or the other, it would not move
one way or the other. Philosophers from Anaximander to Leibniz used the same
principle to argue for various metaphysical theses. The principle of
indifference can be seen to be a special case of this principle of insufficient
reason applying to probabilities, if one reads the principle of indifference as
follows: when there are N mutually exclusive and exhaustive events and there is
no sufficient reason to believe that any one of them is more probable than any
other, then no one of them is more probable than any other they are
equiprobable. The idea of “parity of reasons” associated with the principle of
indifference is, in such manner, related to the idea that there is no
sufficient reason for favoring one outcome over another. This is significant
because the principle of insufficient reason is logically equivalent to the
more familiar principle of sufficient reason if something is [the case], then
there is a sufficient reason for its being [the case] which means that the principle of
indifference is a logical consequence of the principle of sufficient reason. If
this is so, we can understand why so many were inclined to believe the
principle of indifference was an a priori truth about probabilities, since it
was an application to probabilities of that most fundamental of all alleged a
priori principles of reasoning, the principle of sufficient reason. Nor should
it surprise us that the alleged a priori truth of the principle of indifference
was as controversial in probability theory as was the alleged a priori truth of
the principle of sufficient reason in philosophy generally. principle of plenitude, the principle that
every genuine possibility is realized or actualized. This principle of the
“fullness of being” was named by A. O. Lovejoy, who showed that it was commonly
assumed throughout the history of Western science and philosophy, from Plato to
Plotinus who associated it with inexhaustible divine productivity, through
Augustine and other medieval philosophers, to the modern rationalists Spinoza
and Leibniz and the Enlightenment. Lovejoy connected plenitude to the great
chain of being, the idea that the universe is a hierarchy of beings in which
every possible form is actualized. In the eighteenth century, the principle was
“temporalized”: every possible form of creature would be realized not necessarily at all times but at some stage “in the fullness of time.”
A clue about the significance of plenitude lies in its connection to the principle
of sufficient reason everything has a sufficient reason [cause or explanation]
for being or not being. Plenitude says that if there is no sufficient reason
for something’s not being i.e., if it is genuinely possible, then it
exists which is logically equivalent to
the negative version of sufficient reason: if something does not exist, then
there is a sufficient reason for its not being. principle of verifiability, a
claim about what meaningfulness is: at its simplest, a sentence is meaningful
provided there is a method for verifying it. Therefore, if a sentence has no such
method, i.e., if it does not have associated with it a way of telling whether
it is conclusively true or conclusively false, then it is meaningless. The
purpose for which this verificationist principle was originally introduced was
to demarcate sentences that are “apt to make a significant statement of fact”
from “nonsensical” or “pseudo-” sentences. It is part of the emotive theory of
content, e.g., that moral discourse is not literally, cognitively meaningful,
and therefore, not factual. And, with the verifiability principle, the central
European logical positivists of the 0s hoped to strip “metaphysical discourse”
of its pretensions of factuality. For them, whether there is a reality external
to the mind, as the realists claim, or whether all reality is made up of
“ideas” or “appearances,” as idealists claim, is a “meaningless
pseudo-problem.” The verifiability principle proved impossible to frame in a
form that did not admit all metaphysical sentences as meaningful. Further, it
casts doubt on its own status. How was it to be verified? So, e.g., in the
first edition of Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer proposed that a sentence is
verifiable, and consequently meaningful, if some observation sentence can be
deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises, without being
deducible from those other premises alone. It follows that any metaphysical
sentence M is meaningful since ‘if M, then O’ always is an appropriate premise,
where O is an observation sentence. In the preface to the second edition, Ayer offered
a more sophisticated account: M is directly verifiable provided it is an
observation sentence or it entails, in conjunction with certain observation
sentences, some observation sentence that does not follow from them alone. And
M is indirectly verifiable provided it entails, in conjunction with certain
other premises, some directly verifiable sentence that does not follow from
those other premises alone and these additional premises are either analytic or
directly verifiable or are independently indirectly verifiable. The new
verifiability principle is then that all and only sentences directly or
indirectly verifiable are “literally meaningful.” Unfortunately, Ayer’s
emendation admits every nonanalytic sentence. Let M be any metaphysical
sentence and O1 and O2 any pair of observation sentences logically independent
of each other. Consider sentence A: ‘either O1 or not-M and not-O2’. Conjoined
with O2, A entails O1. But O2 alone does not entail O1. So A is directly
verifiable. Therefore, since M conjoined with A entails O1, which is not
entailed by A alone, M is indirectly verifiable. Various repairs have been
attempted; none has succeeded. principle
of economy of rational effort -- cheapest-cost avoider, in the economic
analysis of law, the party in a dispute that could have prevented the dispute,
or minimized the losses arising from it, with the lowest loss to itself. The
term encompasses several types of behavior. As the lowest-cost accident
avoider, it is the party that could have prevented the accident at the lowest
cost. As the lowest-cost insurer, it is the party that could been have insured
against the losses arising from the dispute. This could be the party that could
have purchased insurance at the lowest cost or self-insured, or the party best
able to appraise the expected losses and the probability of the occurrence. As
the lowest-cost briber, it is the party least subject to transaction costs.
This party is the one best able to correct any legal errors in the assignment
of the entitlement by purchasing the entitlement from the other party. As the
lowest-cost information gatherer, it is the party best able to make an informed
judgment as to the likely benefits and costs of an action. Principle of economy of rational effort:
Coase theorem, a non-formal insight by R. Coase: 1: assuming that there are no
transaction costs involved in exchanging rights for money, then no matter how
rights are initially distributed, rational agents will buy and sell them so as
to maximize individual returns. In jurisprudence this proposition has been the
basis for a claim about how rights should be distributed even when as is usual
transaction costs are high: the law should confer rights on those who would
purchase them were they for sale on markets without transaction costs; e.g.,
the right to an indivisible, unsharable resource should be conferred on the
agent willing to pay the highest price for it.
prisoner’s dilemma, a problem in game theory, and more
broadly the theory of rational choice, that takes its name from a familiar sort
of pleabargaining situation: Two prisoners Robin and Carol are interrogated
separately and offered the same deal: If one of them confesses “defects” and
the other does not, the defector will be given immunity from prosecution and
the other will get a stiff prison sentence. If both confess, both will get
moderate prison terms. If both remain silent cooperate with each other, both
will get light prison terms for a lesser offense. There are thus four possible
outcomes: 1 Robin confesses and gets immunity, while Carol is silent and gets a
stiff sentence. 2 Both are silent and get light sentences. 3 Both confess and
get moderate sentences. 4 Robin is silent and gets a stiff sentence, while
Carol confesses and gets immunity. Assume that for Robin, 1 would be the best
outcome, followed by 2, 3, and 4, in that order. Assume that for Carol, the
best outcome is 4, followed by 2, 3, and 1. Each prisoner then reasons as
follows: “My confederate will either confess or remain silent. If she confesses,
I must do likewise, in order to avoid the ‘sucker’s payoff’ immunity for her, a
stiff sentence for me. If she remains silent, then I must confess in order to
get immunity the best outcome for me.
Thus, no matter what my confederate does, I must confess.” Under those
conditions, both will confess, effectively preventing each other from achieving
anything better than the option they both rank as only third-best, even though
they agree that option 2 is second-best. This illustrative story attributed to
A. W. Tucker must not be allowed to obscure the fact that many sorts of social
interactions have the same structure. In general, whenever any two parties must
make simultaneous or independent choices over a range of options that has the
ordinal payoff structure described in the plea bargaining story, they are in a
prisoner’s dilemma. Diplomats, negotiators, buyers, and sellers regularly find
themselves in such situations. They are called iterated prisoner’s dilemmas if
the same parties repeatedly face the same choices with each other. Moreover,
there are analogous problems of cooperation and conflict at the level of
manyperson interactions: so-called n-person prisoner’s diemmas or free rider
problems. The provision of public goods provides an example. Suppose there is a
public good, such as clean air, national defense, or public radio, which we all
want. Suppose that is can be provided only by collective action, at some cost
to each of the contributors, but that we do not have to have a contribution
from everyone in order to get it. Assume that we all prefer having the good to
not having it, and that the best outcome for each of us would be to have it
without cost to ourselves. So each of us reasons as follows: “Other people will
either contribute enough to produce the good by themselves, or they will not.
If they do, then I can have it cost-free the best option for me and thus I
should not contribute. But if others do not contribute enough to produce the
good by themselves, and if the probability is very low that my costly
contribution would make the difference between success and failure, once again
I should not contribute.” Obviously, if we all reason in this way, we will not
get the public good we want. Such problems of collective action have been
noticed by philosophers since Plato. Their current nomenclature, rigorous
game-theoretic formulation, empirical study, and systematic philosophical
development, however, has occurred since 0.
private language argument, an argument designed to show
that there cannot be a language that only one person can speak a language that is essentially private, that
no one else can in principle understand. In addition to its intrinsic interest,
the private language argument is relevant to discussions of linguistic rules
and linguistic meaning, behaviorism, solipsism, and phenomenalism. The argument
is closely associated with Vitters’s Philosophical Investigations 8. The exact
structure of the argument is controversial; this account should be regarded as
a standard one, but not beyond dispute. The argument begins with the
supposition that a person assigns signs to sensations, where these are taken to
be private to the person who has them, and attempts to show that this
supposition cannot be sustained because no standards for the correct or
incorrect application of the same sign to a recurrence of the same sensation
are possible. Thus Vitters supposes that he undertakes to keep a diary about
the recurrence of a certain sensation; he associates it with the sign ‘S’, and
marks ‘S’ on a calendar every day he has that sensation. Vitters finds the
nature of the association of the sign and sensation obscure, on the ground that
‘S’ cannot be given an ordinary definition this would make its meaning publicly
accessible or even an ostensive definition. He further argues that there is no
difference between correct and incorrect entries of ‘S’ on subsequent days. The
initial sensation with which the sign ‘S’ was associated is no longer present,
and so it cannot be compared with a subsequent sensation taken to be of the
same kind. He could at best claim to remember the nature of the initial
sensation, and judge that it is of the same kind as today’s. But since the
memory cannot confirm its own accuracy, there is no possible test of whether he
remembers the initial association of sign and sensation right today.
Consequently there is no criterion for the correct reapplication of the sign
‘S’. Thus we cannot make sense of the notion of correctly reapplying ‘S’, and
cannot make sense of the notion of a private language. The argument described
appears to question only the claim that one could have terms for private mental
occurrences, and may not seem to impugn a broader notion of a private language
whose expressions are not restricted to signs for sensations. Advocates of
Vitters’s argument would generalize it and claim that the focus on sensations
simply highlights the absence of a distinction between correct and incorrect
reapplications of words. A language with terms for publicly accessible objects
would, if private to its user, still be claimed to lack criteria for the
correct reapplication of such terms. This broader notion of a private language
would thus be argued to be equally incoherent.
privation: H. P. Grice, “Negation and privation,” a
lack of something that it is natural or good to possess. The term is closely
associated with the idea that evil is itself only a lack of good, privatio
boni. In traditional theistic religions everything other than God is created by
God out of nothing, creation ex nihilo. Since, being perfect, God would create
only what is good, the entire original creation and every creature from the
most complex to the simplest are created entirely good. The original creation
contains no evil whatever. What then is evil and how does it enter the world?
The idea that evil is a privation of good does not mean, e.g., that a rock has
some degree of evil because it lacks such good qualities as consciousness and courage.
A thing has some degree of evil only if it lacks some good that is 741 privileged access privileged access 742
proper for that thing to possess. In the original creation each created thing
possessed the goods proper to the sort of thing it was. According to Augustine,
evil enters the world when creatures with free will abandon the good above
themselves for some lower, inferior good. Human beings, e.g., become evil to
the extent that they freely turn from the highest good God to their own private
goods, becoming proud, selfish, and wicked, thus deserving the further evils of
pain and punishment. One of the problems for this explanation of the origin of
evil is to account for why an entirely good creature would use its freedom to
turn from the highest good to a lesser good.
privileged access: H. P. Grice, “Privileged access and
incorrigibility,” special first-person awareness of the contents of one’s own
mind. Since Descartes, many philosophers have held that persons are aware of
the occurrent states of their own minds in a way distinct from both their mode
of awareness of physical objects and their mode of awareness of the mental
states of others. Cartesians view such apprehension as privileged in several
ways. First, it is held to be immediate, both causally and epistemically. While
knowledge of physical objects and their properties is acquired via spatially
intermediate causes, knowledge of one’s own mental states involves no such
causal chains. And while beliefs about physical properties are justified by
appeal to ways objects appear in sense experience, beliefs about the properties
of one’s own mental states are not justified by appeal to properties of a
different sort. I justify my belief that the paper on which I write is white by
pointing out that it appears white in apparently normal light. By contrast, my
belief that white appears in my visual experience seems to be self-justifying.
Second, Cartesians hold that first-person apprehension of occurrent mental
contents is epistemically privileged in being absolutely certain. Absolute
certainty includes infallibility, incorrigibility, and indubitability. That a
judgment is infallible means that it cannot be mistaken; its being believed
entails its being true even though judgments regarding occurrent mental
contents are not necessary truths. That it is incorrigible means that it cannot
be overridden or corrected by others or by the subject himself at a later time.
That it is indubitable means that a subject can never have grounds for doubting
it. Philosophers sometimes claim also that a subject is omniscient with regard
to her own occurrent mental states: if a property appears within her
experience, then she knows this. Subjects’ privileged access to the immediate
contents of their own minds can be held to be necessary or contingent.
Regarding corrigibility, for example, proponents of the stronger view hold that
first-person reports of occurrent mental states could never be overridden by
conflicting evidence, such as conflicting readings of brain states presumed to
be correlated with the mental states in question. They point out that knowledge
of such correlations would itself depend on first-person reports of mental
states. If a reading of my brain indicates that I am in pain, and I sincerely
claim not to be, then the law linking brain states of that type with pains must
be mistaken. Proponents of the weaker view hold that, while persons are
currently the best authorities as to the occurrent contents of their own minds,
evidence such as conflicting readings of brain states could eventually override
such authority, despite the dependence of the evidence on earlier firstperson
reports. Weaker views on privileged access may also deny infallibility on more
general grounds. In judging anything, including an occurrent mental state, to
have a particular property P, it seems that I must remember which property P
is, and memory appears to be always fallible. Even if such judgments are always
fallible, however, they may be more immediately justified than other sorts of
judgments. Hence there may still be privileged access, but of a weaker sort. In
the twentieth century, Ryle attacked the idea of privileged access by analyzing
introspection, awareness of what one is thinking or doing, in terms of
behavioral dispositions, e.g. dispositions to give memory reports of one’s
mental states when asked to do so. But while behaviorist or functional analyses
of some states of mind may be plausible, for instance analyses of cognitive
states such as beliefs, accounts in these terms of occurrent states such as
sensations or images are far less plausible. A more influential attack on
stronger versions of privileged access was mounted by Wilfrid Sellars.
According to him, we must be trained to report non-inferentially on properties
of our sense experience by first learning to respond with whole systems of
concepts to public, physical objects. Before I can learn to report a red sense
impression, I must learn the system of color concepts and the logical relations
among them by learning to respond to colored objects. Hence, knowledge of my
own mental states cannot be the firm basis from which I progress to other
knowledge. Even if this order of concept
acquisition is determined necessarily, it still may be that persons’ access to
their own mental states is privileged in some of the ways indicated, once the
requisite concepts have been acquired. Beliefs about one’s own occurrent states
of mind may still be more immediately justified than beliefs about physical
properties, for example.
pro attitude, a favorable disposition toward an object
or state of affairs. Although some philosophers equate pro attitudes with
desires, the expression is more often intended to cover a wide range of
conative states of mind including wants, feelings, wishes, values, and
principles. My regarding a certain course of action open to me as morally
required and my regarding it as a source of selfish satisfaction equally
qualify as pro attitudes toward the object of that action. It is widely held
that intentional action, or, more generally, acting for reasons, is necessarily
based, in part, on one or more pro attitudes. If I go to the store in order to
buy some turnips, then, in addition to my regarding my store-going as conducive
to turnip buying, I must have some pro attitude toward turnip buying.
Probabile: probability -- doomsday argument, an
argument examined by Grice -- an argument associated chiefly with the
mathematician Brandon Carter and the philosopher John Leslie purporting to
show, by appeal to Bayes’s theorem and Bayes’s rule, that whatever antecedent
probability we may have assigned to the hypothesis that human life will end
relatively soon is magnified, perhaps greatly, upon our learning or noticing
that we are among the first few score thousands of millions of human beings to
exist.Leslie’s The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction
6. The argument is based on an allegedly close analogy between the question of
the probability of imminent human extinction given our ordinal location in the
temporal swath of humanity and the fact that the reader’s name being among the
first few drawn randomly from an urn may greatly enhance for the reader the
probability that the urn contains fairly few names rather than very many. probability, a numerical value that can
attach to items of various kinds e.g., propositions, events, and kinds of
events that is a measure of the degree to which they may or should be
expected or the degree to which they
have “their own disposition,” i.e., independently of our psychological
expectations to be true, to occur, or to
be exemplified depending on the kind of item the value attaches to. There are
both multiple interpretations of probability and two main kinds of theories of
probability: abstract formal calculi and interpretations of the calculi. An
abstract formal calculus axiomatically characterizes formal properties of
probability functions, where the arguments of the function are often thought of
as sets, or as elements of a Boolean algebra. In application, the nature of the
arguments of a probability function, as well as the meaning of probability, are
given by interpretations of probability. The most famous axiomatization is
Kolmogorov’s Foundations of the Theory of Probability, 3. The three axioms for probability
functions Pr are: 1 PrX M 0 for all X; 2 PrX % 1 if X is necessary e.g., a
tautology if a proposition, a necessary event if an event, and a “universal
set” if a set; and 3 PrX 7 Y % PrX ! PrY where ‘7’ can mean, e.g., logical
disjunction, or set-theoretical union if X and Y are mutually exclusive X &
Y is a contradiction if they are propositions, they can’t both happen if they
are events, and their set-theoretical intersection is empty if they are sets.
Axiom 3 is called finite additivity, which is sometimes generalized to
countable additivity, involving infinite disjunctions of propositions, or
infinite unions of sets. Conditional probability, PrX/Y the probability of X
“given” or “conditional on” Y, is defined as the quotient PrX & Y/PrY. An
item X is said to be positively or negatively statistically or
probabilistically correlated with an item Y according to whether PrX/Y is
greater than or less than PrX/-Y where -Y is the negation of a proposition Y,
or the non-occurrence of an event Y, or the set-theoretical complement of a set
Y; in the case of equality, X is said to be statistically or probabilistically
independent of Y. All three of these probabilistic relations are symmetric, and
sometimes the term ‘probabilistic relevance’ is used instead of ‘correlation’.
From the axioms, familiar theorems can be proved: e.g., 4 Pr-X % 1 PrX; 5 PrX 7 Y % PrX ! PrY PrX & Y for all X and Y; and 6 a simple
version of Bayes’s theorem PrX/Y % PrY/XPrX/PrY. Thus, an abstract formal
calculus of probability allows for calculation of the probabilities of some
items from the probabilities of others. The main interpretations of probability
include the classical, relative frequency, propensity, logical, and subjective
interpretations. According to the classical interpretation, the probability of
an event, e.g. of heads on a coin toss, is equal to the ratio of the number of
“equipossibilities” or equiprobable events favorable to the event in question
to the total number of relevant equipossibilities. On the relative frequency
interpretation, developed by Venn The Logic of Chance, 1866 and Reichenbach The
Theory of Probability, probability attaches to sets of events within a
“reference class.” Where W is the reference class, and n is the number of
events in W, and m is the number of events in or of kind X, within W, then the
probability of X, relative to W, is m/n. For various conceptual and technical
reasons, this kind of “actual finite relative frequency” interpretation has
been refined into various infinite and hypothetical infinite relative frequency
accounts, where probability is defined in terms of limits of series of relative
frequencies in finite nested populations of increasing sizes, sometimes
involving hypothetical infinite extensions of an actual population. The reasons
for these developments involve, e.g.: the artificial restriction, for finite
populations, of probabilities to values of the form i/n, where n is the size of
the reference class; the possibility of “mere coincidence” in the actual world,
where these may not reflect the true physical dispositions involved in the
relevant events; and the fact that probability is often thought to attach to
possibilities involving single events, while probabilities on the relative
frequency account attach to sets of events this is the “problem of the single
case,” also called the “problem of the reference class”. These problems also
have inspired “propensity” accounts of probability, according to which
probability is a more or less primitive idea that measures the physical
propensity or disposition of a given kind of physical situation to yield an
outcome of a given type, or to yield a “long-run” relative frequency of an
outcome of a given type. A theorem of probability proved by Jacob Bernoulli Ars
Conjectandi, 1713 and sometimes called Bernoulli’s theorem or the weak law of
large numbers, and also known as the first limit theorem, is important for
appreciating the frequency interpretation. The theorem states, roughly, that in
the long run, frequency settles down to probability. For example, suppose the
probability of a certain coin’s landing heads on any given toss is 0.5, and let
e be any number greater than 0. Then the theorem implies that as the number of
tosses grows without bound, the probability approaches 1 that the frequency of
heads will be within e of 0.5. More generally, let p be the probability of an
outcome O on a trial of an experiment, and assume that this probability remains
constant as the experiment is repeated. After n trials, there will be a frequency,
f n, of trials yielding outcome O. The theorem says that for any numbers d and
e greater than 0, there is an n such that the probability P that _pf n_ ‹ e is
within d of 1 P 1d. Bernoulli also
showed how to calculate such n for given values of d, e, and p. It is important
to notice that the theorem concerns probabilities, and not certainty, for a
long-run frequency. Notice also the assumption that the probability p of O
remains constant as the experiment is repeated, so that the outcomes on trials
are probabilistically independent of earlier outcomes. The kinds of
interpretations of probability just described are sometimes called “objective”
or “statistical” or “empirical” since the value of a probability, on these
accounts, depends on what actually happens, or on what actual given physical
situations are disposed to produce as
opposed to depending only on logical relations between the relevant events or
propositions, or on what we should rationally expect to happen or what we
should rationally believe. In contrast to these accounts, there are the
“logical” and the “subjective” interpretations of probability. Carnap “The Two
Concepts of Probability,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5 has
marked this kind of distinction by calling the second concept probability1 and
the first probability2. According to the logical interpretation, associated
with Carnap Logical Foundations of
Probability, 0; and Continuum of Inductive Methods, 2, the probability of a
proposition X given a proposition Y is the “degree to which Y logically entails
X.” Carnap developed an ingenious and elaborate set of systems of logical
probability, including, e.g., separate systems depending on the degree to which
one happens to be, logically and rationally, sensitive to new information in
the reevaluation of probabilities. There is, of course, a connection between
the ideas of logical probability, rationality, belief, and belief revision. It
is natural to explicate the “logical-probabilistic” idea of the probability of
X given Y as the degree to which a rational person would believe X having come
to learn Y taking account of background knowledge. Here, the idea of belief
suggests a subjective sometimes called epistemic or partial belief or degree of
belief interpretation of probability; and the idea of probability revision
suggests the concept of induction: both the logical and the subjective
interpretations of probability have been called “inductive probability” a formal apparatus to characterize rational
learning from experience. The subjective interpretation of probability,
according to which the probability of a proposition is a measure of one’s
degree of belief in it, was developed by, e.g., Ramsey “Truth and Probability,”
in his Foundations of Mathematics and Other Essays, 6; Definetti “Foresight:
Its Logical Laws, Its Subjective Sources,” 7, translated by H. Kyburg, Jr., in
H. E. Smokler, Studies in Subjective Probability, 4; and Savage The Foundations
of Statistics, 4. Of course, subjective probability varies from person to person.
Also, in order for this to be an interpretation of probability, so that the
relevant axioms are satisfied, not all persons can count only rational, or “coherent” persons should
count. Some theorists have drawn a connection between rationality and probabilistic
degrees of belief in terms of dispositions to set coherent betting odds those
that do not allow a “Dutch book” an
arrangement that forces the agent to lose come what may, while others have
described the connection in more general decision-theoretic terms.
problem of induction. First stated by Hume, this
problem concerns the logical basis of inferences from observed matters of fact
to unobserved matters of fact. Although discussion often focuses upon
predictions of future events e.g., a solar eclipse, the question applies also
to inferences to past facts e.g., the extinction of dinosaurs and to present
occurrences beyond the range of direct observation e.g., the motions of planets
during daylight hours. Long before Hume the ancient Skeptics had recognized
that such inferences cannot be made with certainty; they realized there can be
no demonstrative deductive inference, say, from the past and present to the
future. Hume, however, posed a more profound difficulty: Are we justified in
placing any degree of confidence in the conclusions of such inferences? His
question is whether there is any type of non-demonstrative or inductive
inference in which we can be justified in placing any confidence at all.
According to Hume, our inferences from the observed to the unobserved are based
on regularities found in nature. We believe, e.g., that the earth, sun, and
moon move in regular patterns according to Newtonian mechanics, and on that
basis astronomers predict solar and lunar eclipses. Hume notes, however, that
all of our evidence for such uniformities consists of past and present
experience; in applying these uniformities to the future behavior of these
bodies we are making an inference from the observed to the unobserved. This
point holds in general. Whenever we make inferences from the observed to the
unobserved we rely on the uniformity of nature. The basis for our belief that
nature is reasonably uniform is our experience of such uniformity in the past.
If we infer that nature will continue to be uniform in the future, we are
making an inference from the observed to the unobserved precisely the kind of inference for which we
are seeking a justification. We are thus caught up in a circular argument.
Since, as Hume emphasized, much of our reasoning from the observed to the
unobserved is based on causal relations, he analyzed causality to ascertain
whether it could furnish a necessary connection between distinct events that
could serve as a basis for such inferences. His conclusion was negative. We
cannot establish any such connection a priori, for it is impossible to deduce
the nature of an effect from its cause
e.g., we cannot deduce from the appearance of falling snow that it will
cause a sensation of cold rather than heat. Likewise, we cannot deduce the
nature of a cause from its effect e.g.,
looking at a diamond, we cannot deduce that it was produced by great heat and
pressure. All such knowledge is based on past experience. If we infer that
future snow will feel cold or that future diamonds will be produced by great
heat and pressure, we are again making inferences from the observed to the
unobserved. Furthermore, if we carefully observe cases in which we believe a
causeeffect relation holds, we cannot perceive any necessary connection between
cause and effect, or any power in the cause that brings about the effect. We
observe only that an event of one type e.g., drinking water occurs prior to and
contiguously with an event of another type quenching thirst. Moreover, we
notice that events of the two types have exhibited a constant conjunction;
i.e., whenever an event of the first type has occurred in the past it has been
followed by one of the second type. We cannot discover any necessary connection
or causal power a posteriori; we can only establish priority, contiguity, and
constant conjunction up to the present. If we infer that this constant
conjunction will persist in future cases, we are making another inference from
observed to unobserved cases. To use causality as a basis for justifying
inference from the observed to the unobserved would again invovle a circular
argument. Hume concludes skeptically that there can be no rational or logical
justification of inferences from the observed to the unobserved i.e., inductive or non-demonstrative
inference. Such inferences are based on custom and habit. Nature has endowed us
with a proclivity to extrapolate from past cases to future cases of a similar
kind. Having observed that events of one type have been regularly followed by
events of another type, we experience, upon encountering a case of the first
type, a psychological expectation that one of the second type will follow. Such
an expectation does not constitute a rational justification. Although Hume
posed his problem in terms of homely examples, the issues he raises go to the
heart of even the most sophisticated empirical sciences, for all of them
involve inference from observed phenomena to unobserved facts. Although complex
theories are often employed, Hume’s problem still applies. Its force is by no means
confined to induction by simple enumeration. Philosophers have responded to the
problem of induction in many different ways. Kant invoked synthetic a priori
principles. Many twentieth-century philosophers have treated it as a
pseudo-problem, based on linguistic confusion, that requires dissolution rather
than solution. Carnap maintained that inductive intuition is indispensable.
Reichenbach offered a pragmatic vindication. Goodman has recommended replacing
Hume’s “old riddle” with a new riddle of induction that he has posed. Popper,
taking Hume’s skeptical arguments as conclusive, advocates deductivism. He
argues that induction is unjustifiable and dispensable. None of the many
suggestions is widely accepted as correct.
problem of the criterion, a problem of epistemology, arising in the
attempt both to formulate the criteria and to determine the extent of
knowledge. Skeptical and non-skeptical philosophers disagree as to what, or how
much, we know. Do we have knowledge of the external world, other minds, the
past, and the future? Any answer depends on what the correct criteria of
knowledge are. The problem is generated by the seeming plausibility of the
following two propositions: 1 In order to recognize instances, and thus to
determine the extent, of knowledge, we must know the criteria for it. 2 In
order to know the criteria for knowledge i.e., to distinguish between correct
and incorrect criteria, we must already be able to recognize its instances.
According to an argument of ancient Grecian Skepticism, we can know neither the
extent nor the criteria of knowledge because 1 and 2 are both true. There are,
however, three further possibilities. First, it might be that 2 is true but 1
false: we can recognize instances of knowledge even if we do not know the
criteria of knowledge. Second, it might be that 1 is true but 2 false: we can
identify the criteria of knowledge without prior recognition of its instances.
Finally, it might be that both 1 and 2 are false. We can know the extent of
knowledge without knowing criteria, and vice versa. Chisholm, who has devoted
particular attention to this problem, calls the first of these options
particularism, and the second methodism. Hume, a skeptic about the extent of
empirical knowledge, was a methodist. Reid and Moore were particularists; they
rejected Hume’s skepticism on the ground that it turns obvious cases of
knowledge into cases of ignorance. Chisholm advocates particularism because he
believes that, unless one knows to begin with what ought to count as an instance
of knowledge, any choice of a criterion is ungrounded and thus arbitrary.
Methodists turn this argument around: they reject as dogmatic any
identification of instances of knowledge not based on a criterion. problem of the speckled hen: a problem propounded
by Ryle as an objection to Ayer’s analysis of perception in terms of
sense-data. It is implied by this analysis that, if I see a speckled hen in a
good light and so on, I do so by means of apprehending a speckled sense-datum.
The analysis implies further that the sense-datum actually has just the number
of speckles that I seem to see as I look at the hen, and that it is immediately
evident to me just how many speckles this is. Thus, if I seem to see many
speckles as I look at the hen, the sense-datum I apprehend must actually
contain many speckles, and it must be immediately evident to me how many it
does contain. Now suppose it seems to me that I see more than 100 speckles.
Then the datum I am apprehending must contain more than 100 speckles. Perhaps it
contains 132 of them. The analysis would then imply, absurdly, that it must be
immediately evident to me that the number of speckles is exactly 132. One way
to avoid this implication would be to deny that a sense-datum of mine could
contain exactly 132 speckles or any
other large, determinate number of them
precisely on the ground that it could never seem to me that I was seeing
exactly that many speckles. A possible drawback of this approach is that it
involves committing oneself to the claim, which some philosophers have found
problem of the criterion problem of the speckled hen 747 747 self-contradictory, that a sense-datum
may contain many speckles even if there is no large number n such that it
contains n speckles.
prolatum – participle for ‘proferre,’ to utter. A much better choice than
Austin’s pig-latin “utteratum”! Grice prefferd Latinate when going serious. While
the verb is ‘profero – the participle corresponds to the ‘implicaturum’: what
the emissor profers. profer (v.)c. 1300, "to utter, express," from Old
French proferer (13c.)
"utter, present verbally, pronounce," from Latin proferre "to
bring forth, produce," figuratively "make known, publish, quote,
utter." Sense confused with proffer. Related: Profered; profering.
process-product ambiguity, an ambiguity that occurs
when a noun can refer either to a process or activity or to the product of that
process or activity. E.g., ‘The definition was difficult’ could mean either
that the activity of defining was a difficult one to perform, or that the
definiens the form of words proposed as equivalent to the term being defined
that the definer produced was difficult to understand. Again, ‘The writing
absorbed her attention’ leaves it unclear whether it was the activity of
writing or a product of that activity that she found engrossing.
Philosophically significant terms that might be held to exhibit processproduct
ambiguity include: ‘analysis’, ‘explanation’, ‘inference’, ‘thought’. P.Mac.
process theology, any theology strongly influenced by the theistic metaphysics
of Whitehead or Hartshorne; more generally, any theology that takes process or
change as basic characteristics of all actual beings, including God. Those
versions most influenced by Whitehead and Hartshorne share a core of
convictions that constitute the most distinctive theses of process theology:
God is constantly growing, though certain abstract features of God e.g., being
loving remain constant; God is related to every other actual being and is
affected by what happens to it; every actual being has some self-determination,
and God’s power is reconceived as the power to lure attempt to persuade each
actual being to be what God wishes it to be. These theses represent significant
differences from ideas of God common in the tradition of Western theism,
according to which God is unchanging, is not really related to creatures
because God is not affected by what happens to them, and has the power to do
whatever it is logically possible for God to do omnipotence. Process
theologians also disagree with the idea that God knows the future in all its
details, holding that God knows only those details of the future that are
causally necessitated by past events. They claim these are only certain
abstract features of a small class of events in the near future and of an even
smaller class in the more distant future. Because of their understanding of
divine power and their affirmation of creaturely self-determination, they claim
that they provide a more adequate theodicy. Their critics claim that their idea
of God’s power, if correct, would render God unworthy of worship; some also
make this claim about their idea of God’s knowledge, preferring a more
traditional idea of omniscience. Although Whitehead and Hartshorne were both
philosophers rather than theologians, process theology has been more
influential among theologians. It is a major current in contemporary Protestant theology and has attracted the
attention of some Roman Catholic theologians as well. It also has influenced
some biblical scholars who are attempting to develop a distinctive process
hermeneutics.
production theory, the economic theory dealing with the
conversion of factors of production into consumer goods. In capitalistic
theories that assume ideal markets, firms produce goods from three kinds of
factors: capital, labor, and raw materials. Production is subject to the
constraint that profit the difference between revenues and costs be maximized.
The firm is thereby faced with the following decisions: how much to produce,
what price to charge for the product, what proportions to combine the three
kinds of factors in, and what price to pay for the factors. In markets close to
perfect competition, the firm will have little control over prices so the
decision problem tends to reduce to the amounts of factors to use. The range of
feasible factor combinations depends on the technologies available to firms.
Interesting complications arise if not all firms have access to the same
technologies, or if not all firms make accurate responses concerning
technological changes. Also, if the scale of production affects the feasible
technologies, the firms’ decision process must be subtle. In each of these
cases, imperfect competition will result. Marxian economists think that the
concepts used in this kind of production theory have a normative component. In
reality, a large firm’s capital tends to be owned by a rather small, privileged
class of non-laborers and labor is treated as a commodity like any other
factor. This might lead to the perception that profit results primarily from
capital and, therefore, belongs to its owners. Marxians contend that labor is
primarily responsible for profit and, consequently, that labor is entitled to
more than the market wage.
professional ethics, a term designating one or more of
1 the justified moral values that should govern the work of professionals; 2
the moral values that actually do guide groups of professionals, whether those
values are identified as a principles in codes of ethics promulgated by
professional societies or b actual beliefs and conduct of professionals; and 3
the study of professional ethics in the preceding senses, either i normative
philosophical inquiries into the values desirable for professionals to embrace,
or ii descriptive scientific studies of the actual beliefs and conduct of
groups of professionals. Professional values include principles of obligation
and rights, as well as virtues and personal moral ideals such as those
manifested in the lives of Jane Addams, Albert Schweitzer, and Thurgood
Marshall. Professions are defined by advanced expertise, social organizations,
society-granted monopolies over services, and especially by shared commitments
to promote a distinctive public good such as health medicine, justice law, or
learning education. These shared commitments imply special duties to make
services available, maintain confidentiality, secure informed consent for
services, and be loyal to clients, employers, and others with whom one has
fiduciary relationships. Both theoretical and practical issues surround these
duties. The central theoretical issue is to understand how the justified moral
values governing professionals are linked to wider values, such as human
rights. Most practical dilemmas concern how to balance conflicting duties. For
example, what should attorneys do when confidentiality requires keeping
information secret that might save the life of an innocent third party? Other
practical issues are problems of vagueness and uncertainty surrounding how to
apply duties in particular contexts. For example, does respect for patients’
autonomy forbid, permit, or require a physician to assist a terminally ill
patient desiring suicide? Equally important is how to resolve conflicts of
interest in which self-seeking places moral values at risk.
proof by recursion, also called proof by mathematical
induction, a method for conclusively demonstrating the truth of universal propositions
about the natural numbers. The system of natural numbers is construed as an
infinite sequence of elements beginning with the number 1 and such that each
subsequent element is the immediate successor of the preceding element. The
immediate successor of a number is the sum of that number with 1. In order to
apply this method to show that every number has a certain chosen property it is
necessary to demonstrate two subsidiary propositions often called respectively
the basis step and the inductive step. The basis step is that the number 1 has
the chosen property; the inductive step is that the successor of any number
having the chosen property is also a number having the chosen property in other
words, for every number n, if n has the chosen property then the successor of n
also has the chosen property. The inductive step is itself a universal
proposition that may have been proved by recursion. The most commonly used
example of a theorem proved by recursion is the remarkable fact, known before
the time of Plato, that the sum of the first n odd numbers is the square of n.
This proposition, mentioned prominently by Leibniz as requiring and having
demonstrative proof, is expressed in universal form as follows: for every
number n, the sum of the first n odd numbers is n2. 1 % 12, 1 ! 3 % 22, 1 ! 3 !
5 % 32, and so on. Rigorous formulation of a proof by recursion often uses as a
premise the proposition called, since the time of De Morgan, the principle of
mathematical induction: every property belonging to 1 and belonging to the
successor of every number to which it belongs is a property that belongs
without exception to every number. Peano took the principle of mathematical
induction as an axiom in his 9 axiomatization of arithmetic or the theory of
natural numbers. The first acceptable formulation of this principle is
attributed to Pascal. proof theory, a
branch of mathematical logic founded by David Hilbert in the 0s to pursue
Hilbert’s Program. The foundational problems underlying that program had been
formulated around the turn of the century, e.g., in Hilbert’s famous address to
the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris 0. They were closely
connected with investigations on the foundations of analysis carried out by
Cantor and Dedekind; but they were also related to their conflict with
Kronecker on the nature of mathematics and to the difficulties of a completely
unrestricted notion of set or multiplicity. At that time, the central issue for
Hilbert was the consistency of sets in Cantor’s sense. He suggested that the
existence of consistent sets multiplicities, e.g., that of real numbers, could
be secured by proving the consistency of a suitable, characterizing axiomatic
system; but there were only the vaguest indications on how to do that. In a radical
departure from standard practice and his earlier hints, Hilbert proposed four
years later a novel way of attacking the consistency problem for theories in
Über die Grundlagen der Logik und der Arithmetik 4. This approach would
require, first, a strict formalization of logic together with mathematics, then
consideration of the finite syntactic configurations constituting the joint
formalism as mathematical objects, and showing by mathematical arguments that
contradictory formulas cannot be derived. Though Hilbert lectured on issues
concerning the foundations of mathematics during the subsequent years, the
technical development and philosophical clarification of proof theory and its
aims began only around 0. That involved, first of all, a detailed description
of logical calculi and the careful development of parts of mathematics in
suitable systems. A record of the former is found in Hilbert and Ackermann,
Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik 8; and of the latter in Supplement IV of
Hilbert and Bernays, Grundlagen der Mathematik II 9. This presupposes the clear
distinction between metamathematics and mathematics introduced by Hilbert. For
the purposes of the consistency program metamathematics was now taken to be a
very weak part of arithmetic, so-called finitist mathematics, believed to
correspond to the part of mathematics that was accepted by constructivists like
Kronecker and Brouwer. Additional metamathematical issues concerned the
completeness and decidability of theories. The crucial technical tool for the
pursuit of the consistency problem was Hilbert’s e-calculus. The
metamathematical problems attracted the collaboration of young and quite
brilliant mathematicians with philosophical interests; among them were Paul
Bernays, Wilhelm Ackermann, John von Neumann, Jacques Herbrand, Gerhard
Gentzen, and Kurt Schütte. The results obtained in the 0s were disappointing
when measured against the hopes and ambitions: Ackermann, von Neumann, and
Herbrand established essentially the consistency of arithmetic with a very
restricted principle of induction. That limits of finitist considerations for
consistency proofs had been reached became clear in 1 through Gödel’s
incompleteness theorems. Also, special cases of the decision problem for
predicate logic Hilbert’s Entscheidungsproblem had been solved; its general
solvability was made rather implausible by some of Gödel’s results in his 1
paper. The actual proof of unsolvability had to wait until 6 for a conceptual
clarification of ‘mechanical procedure’ or ‘algorithm’; that was achieved
through the work of Church and Turing. The further development of proof theory
is roughly characterized by two complementary tendencies: 1 the extension of
the metamathematical frame relative to which “constructive” consistency proofs
can be obtained, and 2 the refined formalization of parts of mathematics in
theories much weaker than set theory or even full second-order arithmetic. The
former tendency started with the work of Gödel and Gentzen in 3 establishing
the consistency of full classical arithmetic relative to intuitionistic
arithmetic; it led in the 0s and 0s to consistency proofs of strong subsystems
of secondorder arithmetic relative to intuitionistic theories of constructive
ordinals. The latter tendency reaches back to Weyl’s book Das Kontinuum 8 and
culminated in the 0s by showing that the classical results of mathematical
analysis can be formally obtained in conservative extensions of first-order
arithmetic. For the metamathematical work Gentzen’s introduction of sequent calculi
and the use of transfinite induction along constructive ordinals turned out to
be very important, as well as Gödel’s primitive recursive functionals of finite
type. The methods and results of proof theory are playing, not surprisingly, a
significant role in computer science. Work in proof theory has been motivated
by issues in the foundations of mathematics, with the explicit goal of
achieving epistemological reductions of strong theories for mathematical
practice like set theory or second-order arithmetic to weak, philosophically
distinguished theories like primitive recursive arithmetic. As the
formalization of mathematics in strong theories is crucial for the
metamathematical approach, and as the programmatic goal can be seen as a way of
circumventing the philosophical issues surrounding strong theories, e.g., the
nature of infinite sets in the case of set theory, Hilbert’s philosophical
position is often equated with formalism
in the sense of Frege in his Über die Grundlagen der Geometrie 306 and
also of Brouwer’s inaugural address Intuitionism and Formalism 2. Though such a
view is not completely unsupported by some of Hilbert’s polemical remarks
during the 0s, on balance, his philosophical views developed into a
sophisticated instrumentalism, if that label is taken in Ernest Nagel’s
judicious sense The Structure of Science, 1. Hilbert’s is an instrumentalism
emphasizing the contentual motivation of mathematical theories; that is clearly
expressed in the first chapter of Hilbert and Bernays’s Grundlagen der
Mathematik I 4. A sustained philosophical analysis of proof-theoretic research
in the context of broader issues in the philosophy of mathematics was provided
by Bernays; his penetrating essays stretch over five decades and have been
collected in Abhandlungen zur Philosophie der Mathematik 6.
Propensum -- propensity, an irregular or
non-necessitating causal disposition of an object or system to produce some
result or effect. Propensities are usually conceived as essentially
probabilistic in nature. A die may be said to have a propensity of “strength”
or magnitude 1 /6 to turn up a 3 if thrown from a dice box, of strength 1 /3 to
turn up, say, a 3 or 4, etc. But propensity talk is arguably appropriate only
when determinism fails. Strength is often taken to vary from 0 to 1. Popper
regarded the propensity notion as a new physical or metaphysical hypothesis,
akin to that of forces. Like Peirce, he deployed it to interpret probability
claims about single cases: e.g., the probability of this radium atom’s decaying
in 1,600 years is 1 /2. On relative frequency interpretations, probability
claims are about properties of large classes such as relative frequencies of
outcomes in them, rather than about single cases. But single-case claims appear
to be common in quantum theory. Popper advocated a propensity interpretation of
quantum theory. Propensities also feature in theories of indeterministic or
probabilistic causation. Competing theories about propensities attribute them
variously to complex systems such as chance or experimental set-ups or
arrangements a coin and tossing device, to entities within such set-ups the
coin itself, and to particular trials of such set-ups. Long-run theories
construe propensities as dispositions to give rise to certain relative frequencies
of, or probability distributions over, outcomes in long runs of trials, which
are sometimes said to “manifest” or “display” the propensities. Here a
propensity’s strength is identical to some such frequency. By contrast,
single-case theories construe propensities as dispositions of singular trials
to bring about particular outcomes. Their existence, not their strength, is
displayed by such an outcome. Here frequencies provide evidence about
propensity strength. But the two can always differ; they converge with a
limiting probability of 1 in an appropriate long run.
propositio
universalis: cf. substitutional
account of universal quantification, referred to by Grice for his treatment of
what he calls a Ryleian agitation caused by his feeling Byzantine. Vide
inverted A. A proposition (protasis), then, is a sentence affirming or denying
something of something; and this is either universal or particular or
indefinite. By universal I mean a statement that something belongs to all or
none of something; by particular that it belongs to some or not to some or not
to all; by indefinite that it does or does not belong, without any mark of
being universal or particular, e.g. ‘contraries are subjects of the same
science’, or ‘pleasure is not good’. (Prior Analytics I, 1, 24a16–21.). propositional
complexum: In logic, the first proposition of a syllogism (class.): “propositio
est, per quem locus is breviter exponitur, ex quo vis omnis oportet emanet
ratiocinationis,” Cic. Inv. 1, 37, 67; 1, 34, 35; Auct. Her. 2, 18, 28.— B.
Transf. 1. A principal subject, theme (class.), Cic. de Or. 3, 53; Sen. Ben. 6,
7, 1; Quint. 5, 14, 1.— 2. Still more generally, a proposition of any kind
(post-Aug.), Quint. 7, 1, 47, § 9; Gell. 2, 7, 21.—Do not expect Grice to use
the phrase ‘propositional content,’ as Hare does so freely. Grices proposes a
propositional complexum, rather, which frees him from a commitment to a
higher-order calculus and the abstract entity of a feature or a proposition.
Grice regards a proposition as an extensional family of propositional complexa
(Paul saw Peter; Peter was seen by Paul). The topic of a propositional
complex Grice regards as Oxonian in nature. Peacocke struggles with the same
type of problems, in his essays on content. Only a perception-based
account of content in terms of qualia gets the philosopher out of the vicious
circle of appealing to a linguistic entity to clarify a psychological
entity. One way to discharge the burden of giving an account of a
proposition involves focusing on a range of utterances, the formulation of
which features no connective or quantifier. Each expresses a
propositional complexum which consists of a sequence simplex-1 and
simplex-2, whose elements would be a set and an ordered sequence of this or
that individuum which may be a member of the set. The propositional
complexum ‘Fido is shaggy’ consists of a sequence of the set of shaggy
individua and the singleton consisting of the individuum Fido. ‘Smith loves
Fido’ is a propositional complexum, i. e., a sequence whose first element
is the class “love” correlated to a two-place predicate) and a the ordered pair
of the singletons Smith and Fido. We define alethic satisfactoriness. A
propositional complexum is alethically satisfactory just in case the sequence
is a member of the set. A “proposition” (prosthesis) simpliciter is defined as
a family of propositional complexa. Family unity may vary in
accordance with context. proposition, an abstract object said to be that
to which a person is related by a belief, desire, or other psychological
attitude, typically expressed in language containing a psychological verb
‘think’, ‘deny’, ‘doubt’, etc. followed by a thatclause. The psychological
states in question are called propositional attitudes. When I believe that snow
is white I stand in the relation of believing to the proposition that snow is
white. When I hope that the protons will not decay, hope relates me to the
proposition that the protons will not decay. A proposition can be a common
object for various attitudes of various agents: that the protons will not decay
can be the object of my belief, my hope, and your fear. A sentence expressing
an attitude is also taken to express the associated proposition. Because ‘The
protons will not decay’ identifies my hope, it identifies the proposition to
which my hope relates me. Thus the proposition can be the shared meaning of
this sentence and all its synonyms, in English or elsewhere e.g., ‘die Protonen
werden nicht zerfallen’. This, in sum, is the traditional doctrine of propositions.
Although it seems indispensable in some form
for theorizing about thought and language, difficulties abound. Some
critics regard propositions as excess baggage in any account of meaning. But
unless this is an expression of nominalism, it is confused. Any systematic
theory of meaning, plus an apparatus of sets or properties will let us
construct proposition-like objects. The proposition a sentence S expresses
might, e.g., be identified with a certain set of features that determines S’s
meaning. Other sentences with these same features would then express the same
proposition. A natural way to associate propositions with sentences is to let
the features in question be semantically significant features of the words from
which sentences are built. Propositions then acquire the logical structures of
sentences: they are atomic, conditional, existential, etc. But combining the
view of propositions as meanings with the traditional idea of propositions as
bearers of truthvalues brings trouble. It is assumed that two sentences that
express the same proposition have the same truth-value indeed, that sentences
have their truth-values in virtue of the propositions they express. Yet if
propositions are also meanings, this principle fails for sentences with
indexical elements: although ‘I am pale’ has a single meaning, two utterances
of it can differ in truth-value. In response, one may suggest that the
proposition a sentence S expresses depends both on the linguistic meaning of S
and on the referents of S’s indexical elements. But this reveals that
proposition is a quite technical concept
and one that is not motivated simply by a need to talk about meanings.
Related questions arise for propositions as the objects of propositional
attitudes. My belief that I am pale may be true, yours that you are pale false.
So our beliefs should take distinct propositional objects. Yet we would each
use the same sentence, ‘I am pale’, to express our belief. Intuitively, your
belief and mine also play similar cognitive roles. We may each choose the sun
exposure, clothing, etc., that we take to be appropriate to a fair complexion.
So our attitudes seem in an important sense to be the same an identity that the assignment of distinct
propositional objects hides. Apparently, the characterization of beliefs e.g.
as being propositional attitudes is at best one component of a more refined,
largely unknown account. Quite apart from complications about indexicality,
propositions inherit standard difficulties about meaning. Consider the beliefs
that Hesperus is a planet and that Phosphorus is a planet. It seems that
someone might have one but not the other, thus that they are attitudes toward
distinct propositions. This difference apparently reflects the difference in
meaning between the sentences ‘Hesperus is a planet’ and ‘Phosphorus is a
planet’. The principle would be that non-synonymous sentences express distinct
propositions. But it is unclear what makes for a difference in meaning. Since
the sentences agree in logico-grammatical structure and in the referents of
their terms, their specific meanings must depend on some more subtle feature
that has resisted definition. Hence our concept of proposition is also only
partly defined. Even the idea that the sentences here express the same proposition
is not easily refuted. What such difficulties show is not that the concept of
proposition is invalid but that it belongs to a still rudimentary descriptive
scheme. It is too thoroughly enmeshed with the concepts of meaning and belief
to be of use in solving their attendant problems. This observation is what
tends, through a confusion, to give rise to skepticism about propositions. One
may, e.g., reasonably posit structured abstract entities propositions
that represent the features on which the truth-values of sentences
depend. Then there is a good sense in which a sentence is true in virtue of the
proposition it expresses. But how does the use of words in a certain context
associate them with a particular proposition? Lacking an answer, we still
cannot explain why a given sentence is true. Similarly, one cannot explain
belief as the acceptance of a proposition, since only a substantive theory of
thought would reveal how the mind “accepts” a proposition and what it does to
accept one proposition rather than another. So a satisfactory doctrine of
propositions remains elusive.
propositional function, an operation that, when applied to something as
argument or to more than one thing in a given order as arguments, yields a
truth-value as the value of that function for that argument or those arguments.
This usage presupposes that truth-values are objects. A function may be
singulary, binary, ternary, etc. A singulary propositional function is
applicable to one thing and yields, when so applied, a truth-value. For
example, being a prime number, when applied to the number 2, yields truth;
negation, when applied to truth, yields falsehood. A binary propositional
function is applicable to two things in a certain order and yields, when so
applied, a truth-value. For example, being north of when applied to New York
and Boston in that order yields falsehood. Material implication when applied to
falsehood and truth in that order yields truth. The term ‘propositional
function’ has a second use, to refer to an operation that, when applied to
something as argument or to more than one thing in a given order as arguments,
yields a proposition as the value of the function for that argument or those
arguments. For example, being a prime number when applied to 2 yields the proposition
that 2 is a prime number. Being north of, when applied to New York and Boston
in that order, yields the proposition that New York is north of Boston. This
usage presupposes that propositions are objects. In a third use, ‘propositional
function’ designates a sentence with free occurrences of variables. Thus, ‘x is
a prime number’, ‘It is not the case that p’, ‘x is north of y’ and ‘if p then
q’ are propositional functions in this sense. C.S. propositional justification.
propositional opacity, failure of a clause to express any particular
proposition especially due to the occurrence of pronouns or demonstratives. If
having a belief about an individual involves a relation to a proposition, and
if a part of the proposition is a way of representing the individual, then
belief characterizations that do not indicate the believer’s way of
representing the individual could be called propositionally opaque. They do not
show all of the propositional elements. For example, ‘My son’s clarinet teacher
believes that he should try the bass drum’ would be propositionally opaque
because ‘he’ does not indicate how my son John’s teacher represents John, e.g.
as his student, as my son, as the boy now playing, etc. This characterization
of the example is not appropriate if propositions are as Russell conceived
them, sometimes containing the individuals themselves as constituents, because
then the propositional constituent John has been referred to. Generally, a
characterization of a propositional
754 attitude is propositionally opaque if the expressions in the
embedded clause do not refer to the propositional constituents. It is
propositionally transparent if the expressions in the embedded clause do so
refer. As a rule, referentially opaque contexts are used in propositionally
transparent attributions if the referent of a term is distinct from the
corresponding propositional constituent.
proprietates terminorum Latin, ‘properties of terms’,
in medieval logic from the twelfth century on, a cluster of semantic properties
possessed by categorematic terms. For most authors, these properties apply only
when the terms occur in the context of a proposition. The list of such
properties and the theory governing them vary from author to author, but always
include 1 suppositio. Some authors add 2 appellatio ‘appellating’, ‘naming’,
‘calling’, often not sharply distinguishing from suppositio, the property
whereby a term in a certain proposition names or is truly predicable of things,
or in some authors of presently existing things. Thus ‘philosophers’ in ‘Some
philosophers are wise’ appellates philosophers alive today. 3 Ampliatio
‘ampliation’, ‘broadening’, whereby a term refers to past or future or merely
possible things. The reference of ‘philosophers’ is ampliated in ‘Some philosophers
were wise’. 4 Restrictio ‘restriction’, ‘narrowing’, whereby the reference of a
term is restricted to presently existing things ‘philosophers’ is so restricted
in ‘Some philosophers are wise’, or otherwise narrowed from its normal range
‘philosophers’ in ‘Some Grecian philosophers were wise’. 5 Copulatio
‘copulation’, ‘coupling’, which is the type of reference adjectives have ‘wise’
in ‘Some philosophers are wise’, or alternatively the semantic function of the
copula. Other meanings too are sometimes given to these terms, depending on the
author. Appellatio especially was given a wide variety of interpretations. In
particular, for Buridan and other fourteenth-century Continental authors,
appellatio means ‘connotation’. Restrictio and copulatio tended to drop out of
the literature, or be treated only perfunctorily, after the thirteenth century. proprium:
idion. See Nicholas White's "The Origin of Aristotle's
Essentialism," Review of Metaphysics ~6. (September 1972): ... vice
versa. The proprium is
a necessary, but non-essential, property. ... Alan Code pointed this out to me. ' Does
Aristotle ... The proprium is defined by the fact that it only
holds of a particular subject or ... Of the appropriate answers some are more
specific or distinctive (idion)
and are in ... and property possession comes close to what Alan Code in a seminal
paper ... but "substance of" is what is "co-extensive
(idion) with each
thing" (1038b9); so ... by an alternative name or definition, and by
a proprium) and
the third which is ... Woods's idea (recently nicknamed "Izzing before
Having" by Code and Grice) . As my chairmanship
was winding down, I suggested to Paul Grice on one of his ... in Aristotle's technical sense
of an idion (Latin proprium), i.e., a characteristic
or feature ... Code,
which, arguably, is part of the theory of Izzing and Having: D. Keyt. a proprium, since proprium belongs to the
genus of accident. ... Similarly, Code claims (10): 'In its other uses the predicate
“being'' signifies either “what ... Grice adds a few steps to show that the plurality of
universals signified correspond ... Aristotle elsewhere calls an idion.353 If one predicates the
genus in the absence of. has described it by a paronymous form, nor as a
property (idion), nor
... terminology of Code and Grice.152 Thus there is no
indication that they are ... (14,20-31) 'Genus' and 'proprium' (ἰδίου) are said
homonymously in ten ways, as are. Ackrill replies to this line of
argument (75) as follows: [I]t is perfectly clear that Aristotle’s fourfold
classification is a classification of things and not names, and that what is
‘said of’ something as subject is itself a thing (a species or genus) and not a
name. Sometimes, indeed, Aristotle will speak of ‘saying’ or ‘predicating’ a
name of a subject; but it is not linguistic items but the things they signify
which are ‘said of a subject’… Thus at 2a19 ff. Aristotle sharply distinguishes
things said of subjects from the names of those things. This last argument
seems persuasive on textual grounds. After all, τὰ καθ᾽ ὑποκειμένου λεγόμενα
‘have’ definitions and names (τῶν καθ᾽ υποκειμένου λεγομένων… τοὔνομα καὶ τὸν
λὸγον, 2a19-21): it is not the case that they ‘are’ definitions and names, to
adapt the terminology of Code and Grice.152 See A. Code, ‘Aristotle: Essence
and Accident’, in Grandy and Warner (eds.), Philosophical Grounds of
Rationality (Oxford, 1986), 411-39: particulars have their predicables, but
Forms are their predicables. Thus there is no indication that they are
linguistic terms in their own right.proprium, one of Porphyry’s five
predicables, often tr. as ‘property’ or ‘attribute’; but this should not be
confused with the broad modern sense in which any feature of a thing may be
said to be a property of it. A proprium is a nonessential peculiarity of a
species. There are no propria of individuals or genera generalissima, although
they may have other uniquely identifying features. A proprium necessarily holds
of all members of its species and of nothing else. It is not mentioned in a
real definition of the species, and so is not essential to it. Yet it somehow
follows from the essence or nature expressed in the real definition. The
standard example is risibility the ability to laugh as a proprium of the
species man. The real definition of ‘man’ is ‘rational animal’. There is no
mention of any ability to laugh. Nevertheless anything that can laugh has both
the biological apparatus to produce the sounds and so is an animal and also a
certain wit and insight into humor and so is rational. Conversely, any rational
animal will have both the vocal chords and diaphragm required for laughing
since it is an animal, although the inference may seem too quick and also the
mental wherewithal to see the point of a joke since it is rational. Thus any
rational animal has what it takes to laugh. In short, every man is risible, and
conversely, but risibility is not an essential feature of man. property, roughly, an attribute,
characteristic, feature, trait, or aspect. propensity property 751 751 Intensionality. There are two salient
ways of talking about properties. First, as predicables or instantiables. For
example, the property red is predicable of red objects; they are instances of
it. Properties are said to be intensional entities in the sense that distinct
properties can be truly predicated of i.e., have as instances exactly the same
things: the property of being a creature with a kidney & the property of
being a creature with a heart, though these two sets have the same members.
Properties thus differ from sets collections, classes; for the latter satisfy a
principle of extensionality: they are identical if they have the same elements.
The second salient way of talking about properties is by means of property
abstracts such as ‘the property of being F’. Such linguistic expressions are
said to be intensional in the following semantical vs. ontological sense: ‘the
property of being F’ and ‘the property of being G’ can denote different
properties even though the predicates ‘F’ and ‘G’ are true of exactly the same
things. The standard explanation Frege, Russell, Carnap, et al. is that ‘the
property of being F’ denotes the property that the predicate ‘F’ expresses.
Since predicates ‘F’ and ‘G’ can be true of the same things without being
synonyms, the property abstracts ‘being F’ and ‘being G’ can denote different
properties. Identity criteria. Some philosophers believe that properties are
identical if they necessarily have the same instances. Other philosophers hold
that this criterion of identity holds only for a special subclass of
properties those that are purely
qualitative and that the properties for
which this criterion does not hold are all “complex” e.g., relational,
disjunctive, conditional, or negative properties. On this theory, complex
properties are identical if they have the same form and their purely
qualitative constituents are identical. Ontological status. Because properties
are a kind of universal, each of the standard views on the ontological status
of universals has been applied to properties as a special case. Nominalism:
only particulars and perhaps collections of particulars exist; therefore,
either properties do not exist or they are reducible following Carnap et al. to
collections of particulars including perhaps particulars that are not actual
but only possible. Conceptualism: properties exist but are dependent on the
mind. Realism: properties exist independently of the mind. Realism has two main
versions. In rebus realism: a property exists only if it has instances. Ante
rem realism: a property can exist even if it has no instances. For example, the
property of being a man weighing over ton has no instances; however, it is
plausible to hold that this property does exist. After all, this property seems
to be what is expressed by the predicate ‘is a man weighing over a ton’.
Essence and accident. The properties that a given entity has divide into two
disjoint classes: those that are essential to the entity and those that are
accidental to it. A property is essential to an entity if, necessarily, the
entity cannot exist without being an instance of the property. A property is
accidental to an individual if it is possible for the individual to exist
without being an instance of the property. Being a number is an essential
property of nine; being the number of the planets is an accidental property of
nine. Some philosophers believe that all properties are either essential by
nature or accidental by nature. A property is essential by nature if it can be
an essential property of some entity and, necessarily, it is an essential
property of each entity that is an instance of it. The property of being
self-identical is thus essential by nature. However, it is controversial
whether every property that is essential to something must be essential by nature.
The following is a candidate counterexample. If this automobile backfires
loudly on a given occasion, loudness would seem to be an essential property of
the associated bang. That particular bang could not exist without being loud.
If the automobile had backfired softly, that particular bang would not have
existed; an altogether distinct bang a
soft bang would have existed. By
contrast, if a man is loud, loudness is only an accidental property of him; he
could exist without being loud. Loudness thus appears to be a counterexample:
although it is an essential property of certain particulars, it is not
essential by nature. It might be replied echoing Aristotle that a loud bang and
a loud man instantiate loudness in different ways and, more generally, that
properties can be predicated instantiated in different ways. If so, then one
should be specific about which kind of predication instantiation is intended in
the definition of ‘essential by nature’ and ‘accidental by nature’. When this
is done, the counterexamples might well disappear. If there are indeed
different ways of being predicated instantiated, most of the foregoing remarks
about intensionality, identity criteria, and the ontological status of
properties should be refined accordingly.
prosona – Grice’s favoured spelling for ‘person’ –
“seeing that it means a mask to improve sonorisation’ personalism, a Christian
socialism stressing social activism and personal responsibility, the
theoretical basis for the Christian workers’ Esprit movement begun in the 0s by
Emmanuel Mounier 550, a Christian philosopher and activist. Influenced by both
the religious existentialism of Kierkegaard and the radical social action
called for by Marx and in part taking direction from the earlier work of
Charles Péguy, the movement strongly opposed fascism and called for worker
solidarity during the 0s and 0s. It also urged a more humane treatment of
France’s colonies. Personalism allowed for a Christian socialism independent of
both more conservative Christian groups and the Communist labor unions and
party. Its most important single book is Mounier’s Personalism. The quarterly
journal Esprit has regularly published contributions of leading and international thinkers. Such well-known
Christian philosophers as Henry Duméry, Marcel, Maritain, and Ricoeur were
attracted to the movement.
Protocol: one of the statements that constitute the
foundations of empirical knowledge. The term was introduced by proponents of
foundationalism, who were convinced that in order to avoid the most radical
skepticism, one must countenance beliefs that are justified but not as a result
of an inference. If all justified beliefs are inferentially justified, then to
be justified in believing one proposition P on the basis of another, E, one would
have to be justified in believing both E and that E confirms P. But if all
justification were inferential, then to be justified in believing E one would
need to infer it from some other proposition one justifiably believes, and so
on ad infinitum. The only way to avoid this regress is to find some statement
knowable without inferring it from some other truth. Philosophers who agree
that empirical knowledge has foundations do not necessarily agree on what those
foundations are. The British empiricists restrict the class of contingent
protocol statements to propositions describing the contents of mind sensations,
beliefs, fears, desires, and the like. And even here a statement describing a
mental state would be a protocol statement only for the person in that state.
Other philosophers, however, would take protocol statements to include at least
some assertions about the immediate physical environment. The plausibility of a
given candidate for a protocol statement depends on how one analyzes
non-inferential justification. Some philosophers rely on the idea of
acquaintance. One is non-inferentially justified in believing something when
one is directly acquainted with what makes it true. Other philosophers rely on
the idea of a state that is in some sense self-presenting. Still others want to
understand the notion in terms of the inconceivability of error. The main
difficulty in trying to defend a coherent conception of non-inferential
justification is to find an account of protocol statements that gives them enough
conceptual content to serve as the premises of arguments, while avoiding the
charge that the application of concepts always brings with it the possibility
of error and the necessity of inference.
prototype: a theory according to which human cognition
involves the deployment of “categories” organized around stereotypical
exemplars. Prototype theory differs from traditional theories that take the
concepts with which we think to be individuated by means of boundary-specifying
necessary and sufficient conditions. Advocates of prototypes hold that our
concept of bird, for instance, consists in an indefinitely bounded conceptual
“space” in which robins and sparrows are central, and chickens and penguins are
peripheral though the category may be
differently organized in different cultures or groups. Rather than being
all-ornothing, category membership is a matter of degree. This conception of
categories was originally inspired by the notion, developed in a different
context by Vitters, of family resemblance. Prototypes were first discussed in
detail and given empirical credibility in the work of Eleanor Rosch see, e.g.,
“On the Internal Structure of Perceptual and Semantic Categories,” 3.
proudhon: socialist theorist and father of anarchism.
He became well known following the publication of What Is Property? 1840, the
work containing his main ideas. He argued that the owner of the means of
production deprives the workers of a part of their labor: “property is theft.”
In order to enable each worker to dispose of his labor, capital and largescale
property must be limited. The need to abolish large-scale private property
surpassed the immediate need for a state as a controlling agent over chaotic
social relationships. To this end he stressed the need for serious reforms in
the exchange system. Since the economy and society largely depended on the
credit system, Proudhon advocated establishing popular banks that would approve
interest-free loans to the poor. Such a mutualism would start the
transformation of the actual into a just and nonexploited society of free
individuals. Without class antagonism and political authorities, such a society
would tend toward an association of communal and industrial collectivities. It
would move toward a flexible world federation based on self-management. The
main task of social science, then, is to make manifest this immanent logic of
social processes. Proudhon’s ideas influenced anarchists, populists Bakunin,
Herzen, and syndicalists Jaurès. His conception of self-management was an
important inspiration for the later concept of soviets councils. He criticized
the inequalities of the contemporary society from the viewpoint of small
producers and peasants. Although eclectic and theoretically rather naive, his
work attracted the serious attention of his contemporaries and led to a strong
attack by Marx in The Holy Family and The Poverty of Philosophy.
prudens:
practical reason: In “Epilogue” Grice
states that the principle of conversational rationality is a sub-principle of
the principle of rationality, simpliciter, which is not involved with
‘communication’ per se. This is an application of Occam’s razor: Rationalities
are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” This motto underlies his
aequi-vocality thesis: one reason: desiderative side, judicative side.
Literally, ‘practical reason’ is the buletic part of the soul (psyche) that
deals with praxis, where the weighing is central. We dont need means-end
rationality, we need value-oriented rationality. We dont need the rationality
of the means – this is obvious --. We want the rationality of the ends. The end
may justify the means. But Grice is looking for what justifies the end. The
topic of freedom fascinated Grice, because it merged the practical with the
theoretical. Grice sees the conception of freedom as crucial in his
elucidation of a rational being. Conditions of freedom are necessary for the
very idea, as Kant was well aware. A thief who is forced to steal is just a
thief. Grice would engage in a bit of language botany, when exploring the ways
the adjective free is used, freely, in ordinary language: free fall,
alcohol-free, sugar-free, and his favourite: implicaturum-free. Grices more
systematic reflections deal with Pology, or creature construction. A vegetals,
for example is less free than an animal, but more free than a stone! And Humans
are more free than non-human. Grice wants to deal with some of the paradoxes
identified by Kant about freedom, and he succeeds in solving some of them.
There is a section on freedom in Action and events for PPQ where he expands on eleutheria and notes the
idiocy of a phrase like free fall. Grice was irritated by the fact that his
friend Hart wrote an essay on liberty and not on freedom, cf. praxis. Refs.:
essays on ‘practical reason,’ and “Aspects,” in BANC.
ψ-transmissum. Or ‘soul-to-soul transfer’ “Before we study
‘psi’-transmission we should study ‘transmission’ simpliciter. It is cognate
with ‘emission.’ So the emissor is a transmissor. And the emissee is a
transemissee. Grice would never have
thougth that he had to lecture on what conversation is all about! He would
never have lectured on this to his tutees at St. John’s – but at Brighton is
all different. So, to communicate, for an emissor is to intend his recipient to
be in a state with content “p.” The modality of the ‘state’ – desiderative or
creditative – is not important. In a one-off predicament, the emissor draws a
skull to indicate that there is danger. So his belief and desire were
successfully transmitted. A good way to formulate the point of communication.
Note that Grice is never sure about analsans and analysandum: Emissor
communicates THAT P iff Emissor M-INTENDS THAT addressee is to psi- that P.
Which seems otiose. “It is raining” can be INFORMATIVE, but it is surely INDICATIVE
first. So it’s moke like the emissor intends his addressee to believe that he,
the utterer believes that p (the belief itself NOT being part of what is meant,
of course). So, there is psi-transmission not necessarily when the utterer
convinces his addressee, but just when he gets his addressee to BELIEF that he,
the utterer, psi-s that p. So the psi HAS BEEN TRANSMITTED. Surely when the
Beatles say “HELP” they don’t expect that their addressee will need help. They
intend their addressee to HELP them! Used by Grice in WoW: 287, and emphasised
by J. Baker. The gist of communication. trans-mitto or trāmitto , mīsi, missum,
3, v. a. I. To send, carry, or convey across, over, or through; to send off,
despatch, transmit from one place or person to another (syn.: transfero,
traicio, traduco). A. Lit.: “mihi illam ut tramittas: argentum accipias,”
Plaut. Ep. 3, 4, 27: “illam sibi,” id. ib. 1, 2, 52: “exercitus equitatusque
celeriter transmittitur (i. e. trans flumen),” are conveyed across, Caes. B. G.
7, 61: “legiones,” Vell. 2, 51, 1: “cohortem Usipiorum in Britanniam,” Tac.
Agr. 28: “classem in Euboeam ad urbem Oreum,” Liv. 28, 5, 18: “magnam classem
in Siciliam,” id. 28, 41, 17: “unde auxilia in Italiam transmissurus erat,” id.
23, 32, 5; 27, 15, 7: transmissum per viam tigillum, thrown over or across, id.
1, 26, 10: “ponte transmisso,” Suet. Calig. 22 fin.: in partem campi pecora et
armenta, Tac. A. 13, 55: “materiam in formas,” Col. 7, 8, 6.— 2. To cause to
pass through: “per corium, per viscera Perque os elephanto bracchium
transmitteres,” you would have thrust through, penetrated, Plaut. Mil. 1, 30;
so, “ensem per latus,” Sen. Herc. Oet. 1165: “facem telo per pectus,” id.
Thyest. 1089: “per medium amnem transmittit equum,” rides, Liv. 8, 24, 13:
“(Gallorum reguli) exercitum per fines suos transmiserunt,” suffered to pass
through, id. 21, 24, 5: “abies folio pinnato densa, ut imbres non transmittat,”
Plin. 16, 10, 19, § 48: “Favonios,” Plin. Ep. 2, 17, 19; Tac. A. 13, 15: “ut
vehem faeni large onustam transmitteret,” Plin. 36, 15, 24, § 108.— B. Trop. 1.
To carry over, transfer, etc.: “bellum in Italiam,” Liv. 21, 20, 4; so,
“bellum,” Tac. A. 2, 6: “vitia cum opibus suis Romam (Asia),” Just. 36, 4, 12:
vim in aliquem, to send against, i. e. employ against, Tac. A. 2, 38.— 2. To
hand over, transmit, commit: “et quisquam dubitabit, quin huic hoc tantum
bellum transmittendum sit, qui, etc.,” should be intrusted, Cic. Imp. Pomp. 14,
42: “alicui signa et summam belli,” Sil. 7, 383: “hereditas transmittenda
alicui,” to be made over, Plin. Ep. 8, 18, 7; and with inf.: “et longo
transmisit habere nepoti,” Stat. S. 3, 3, 78 (analog. to dat habere, Verg. A.
9, 362; “and, donat habere,” id. ib. 5, 262); “for which: me famulo famulamque
Heleno transmisit habendam,” id. ib. 3, 329: “omne meum tempus amicorum
temporibus transmittendum putavi,” should be devoted, Cic. Imp. Pomp. 1, 1:
“poma intacta ore servis,” Tac. A. 4, 54.— 3. To let go: animo transmittente
quicquid acceperat, letting pass through, i. e. forgetting, Sen. Ep. 99, 6:
“mox Caesarem vergente jam senectā munia imperii facilius tramissurum,” would
let go, resign, Tac. A. 4, 41: “Junium mensem transmissum,” passed over,
omitted, id. ib. 16, 12 fin.: “Gangen amnem et quae ultra essent,” to leave
unconquered, Curt. 9, 4, 17: “leo imbelles vitulos Transmittit,” Stat. Th. 8,
596.— II. To go or pass over or across, to cross over; to cross, pass, go
through, traverse, etc. A. Lit. 1. In gen. (α). Act.: “grues cum maria
transmittant,” Cic. N. D. 2, 49, 125: “cur ipse tot maria transmisit,” id. Fin.
5, 29, 87; so, “maria,” id. Rep. 1, 3, 6: “satis constante famā jam Iberum
Poenos transmisisse,” Liv. 21, 20, 9 (al. transisse): “quem (Euphratem) ponte,”
Tac. A. 15, 7: “fluvium nando,” Stat. Th. 9, 239: “lacum nando,” Sil. 4, 347:
“murales fossas saltu,” id. 8, 554: “equites medios tramittunt campos,” ride
through, Lucr. 2, 330; cf.: “cursu campos (cervi),” run through, Verg. A. 4,
154: quantum Balearica torto Funda potest plumbo medii transmittere caeli, can
send with its hurled bullet, i. e. can send its bullet, Ov. M. 4, 710: “tectum
lapide vel missile,” to fling over, Plin. 28, 4, 6, § 33; cf.: “flumina disco,”
Stat. Th. 6, 677.—In pass.: “duo sinus fuerunt, quos tramitti oporteret:
utrumque pedibus aequis tramisimus,” Cic. Att. 16, 6, 1: “transmissus amnis,”
Tac. A. 12, 13: “flumen ponte transmittitur,” Plin. Ep. 8, 8, 5.— (β). Neutr.:
“ab eo loco conscendi ut transmitterem,” Cic. Phil. 1, 3, 7: “cum exercitus
vestri numquam a Brundisio nisi summā hieme transmiserint,” id. Imp. Pomp. 12,
32: “cum a Leucopetrā profectus (inde enim tramittebam) stadia circiter CCC.
processissem, etc.,” id. Att. 16, 7, 1; 8, 13, 1; 8, 11, 5: “ex Corsicā subactā
Cicereius in Sardiniam transmisit,” Liv. 42, 7, 2; 32, 9, 6: “ab Lilybaeo
Uticam,” id. 25, 31, 12: “ad vastandam Italiae oram,” id. 21, 51, 4; 23, 38,
11; 24, 36, 7: “centum onerariae naves in Africam transmiserunt,” id. 30, 24,
5; Suet. Caes. 58: “Cyprum transmisit,” Curt. 4, 1, 27. — Pass. impers.: “in
Ebusum insulam transmissum est,” Liv. 22, 20, 7.—* 2. In partic., to go over,
desert to a party: “Domitius transmisit ad Caesa rem,” Vell. 2, 84 fin. (syn.
transfugio).— B. Trop. (post-Aug.). 1. In gen., to pass over, leave untouched
or disregarded (syn praetermitto): “haud fas, Bacche, tuos taci tum tramittere
honores,” Sil. 7, 162; cf.: “sententiam silentio, deinde oblivio,” Tac. H. 4, 9
fin.: “nihil silentio,” id. ib. 1, 13; “4, 31: aliquid dissimulatione,” id. A.
13, 39: “quae ipse pateretur,” Suet. Calig. 10; id. Vesp. 15. — 2. In partic.,
of time, to pass, spend (syn. ago): “tempus quiete,” Plin. Ep. 9, 6, 1: so,
“vitam per obscurum,” Sen. Ep. 19, 2: steriles annos, Stat. S. 4, 2, 12:
“aevum,” id. ib. 1, 4, 124: “quattuor menses hiemis inedia,” Plin. 8, 25, 38, §
94: “vigiles noctes,” Stat. Th. 3, 278 et saep. — Transf.: “febrium ardorem,”
i. e. to undergo, endure, Plin. Ep. 1, 22, 7; cf. “discrimen,” id. ib. 8, 11,
2: “secessus, voluptates, etc.,” id. ib. 6, 4, 2
pseudo-hallucination, a non-deceptive hallucination. An
ordinary hallucination might be thought to comprise two components: i a sensory
component, whereby one experiences an image or sensory episode similar in many
respects to a veridical perceiving except in being non-veridical; and ii a
cognitive component, whereby one takes or is disposed to take the image or
sensory episode to be veridical. A pseudohallucination resembles a
hallucination, but lacks this second component. In experiencing a pseudohallucination,
one appreciates that one is not perceiving veridically. The source of the term
seems to be the painter Wassily Kandinsky, who employed it in 5 to characterize
a series of apparently drug-induced images experienced and pondered by a friend
who recognized them, at the very time they were occurring, not to be veridical.
Kandinsky’s account is discussed by Jaspers in his General Psychopathology, 6,
and thereby entered the clinical lore. Pseudohallucinations may be brought on
by the sorts of pathological condition that give rise to hallucinations, or by
simple fatigue, emotional adversity, or loneliness. Thus, a driver, late at
night, may react to non-existent objects or figures on the road, and
immediately recognize his error.
psycholinguistics, an interdisciplinary research area
that uses theoretical descriptions of language taken from linguistics to
investigate psychological processes underlying language production, perception,
and learning. There is considerable disagreement as to the appropriate characterization
of the field and the major problems. Philosophers discussed many of the
problems now studied in psycholinguistics before either psychology or
linguistics were spawned, but the self-consciously interdisciplinary field
combining psychology and linguistics emerged not long after the birth of the
two disciplines. Meringer used the adjective ‘psycholingisch-linguistische’ in
an 5 book. Various national traditions of psycholinguistics continued at a
steady but fairly low level of activity through the 0s and declined somewhat
during the 0s and 0s because of the antimentalist attitudes in both linguistics
and psychology. Psycholinguistic researchers in the USSR, mostly inspired by L.
S. Vygotsky Thought and Language, 4, were more active during this period in
spite of official suppression. Numerous quasi-independent sources contributed
to the rebirth of psycholinguistics in the 0s; the most significant was a
seminar held at a during the summer of 3
that led to the publication of Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and
Research Problems 4, edited by C. E. Osgood and T. A. Sebeok a truly interdisciplinary book jointly
written by more than a dozen authors. The contributors attempted to analyze and
reconcile three disparate approaches: learning theory from psychology,
descriptive linguistics, and information theory which came mainly from
engineering. The book had a wide impact and led to many further investigations,
but the nature of the field changed rapidly soon after its publication with the
Chomskyan revolution in linguistics and the cognitive turn in psychology. The
two were not unrelated: Chomsky’s positive contribution, Syntactic Structures,
was less broadly influential than his negative review Language, 9 of B. F.
Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Against the empiricist-behaviorist view of language
understanding and production, in which language is merely the exhibition of a
more complex form of behavior, Chomsky argued the avowedly rationalist position
that the ability to learn and use language is innate and unique to humans. He
emphasized the creative aspect of language, that almost all sentences one hears
or produces are novel. One of his premises was the alleged infinity of
sentences in natural languages, but a less controversial argument can be given:
there are tens of millions of five-word sentences in English, all of which are
readily understood by speakers who have never heard them. Chomsky’s work
promised the possibility of uncovering a very special characteristic of the
human mind. But the promise was qualified by the disclaimer that linguistic
theory describes only the competence of the ideal speaker. Many psycholinguists
spent countless hours during the 0s and 0s seeking the traces of underlying
competence beneath the untidy performances of actual speakers. During the 0s,
as Chomsky frequently revised his theories of syntax and semantics in
significant ways, and numerous alternative linguistic models were under
consideration, psychologists generated a range of productive research problems
that are increasingly remote from the Chomskyan beginnings. Contemporary
psycholinguistics addresses phonetic, phonological, syntactic, semantic, and
pragmatic influences on language processing. Few clear conclusions of
philosophical import have been established. For example, several decades of
animal research have shown that other species can use significant portions of
human language, but controversy abounds over how central those portions are to
language. Studies now clearly indicate the importance of word frequency and
coarticulation, the dependency of a hearer’s identification of a sound as a
particular phoneme, or of a visual pattern as a particular letter, not only on
the physical features of the pattern but on the properties of other patterns
not necessarily adjacent. Physically identical patterns may be heard as a d in
one context and a t in another. It is also accepted that at least some of the
human lignuistic abilities, particularly those involved in reading and speech
perception, are relatively isolated from other cognitive processes. Infant
studies show that children as young as eight months learn statistically
important patterns characteristic of their natural language suggesting a complex set of mechanisms that
are automatic and invisible to us.
Pufendorf, S., G. historian and theorist of natural
law. Pufendorf was influenced by both Grotius and Hobbes. He portrayed people
as contentious and quarrelsome, yet as needing one another’s company and
assistance. Natural law shows how people can live with one another while
pursuing their own conflicting projects. To minimize religious disputes about
morals, Pufendorf sought a way of deriving laws of nature from observable facts
alone. Yet he thought divine activity essential to morality. He opened his
massive Latin treatise On the Law of Nature and of Nations 1672 with a
voluntarist account of God’s creation of the essence of mankind: given that we
have the nature God gave us, certain laws must be valid for us, but only God’s
will determined our nature. As a result, our nature indicates God’s will for
us. Hence observable facts about ourselves show us what laws God commands us to
obey. Because we so obviously need one another’s assistance, the first law is
to increase our sociability, i.e. our willingness to live together. All other
laws indicate acts that would bring about this end. In the course of expounding
the laws he thought important for the development of social life to the high
cultural level our complex nature points us toward, Pufendorf analyzed all the
main points that a full legal system must cover. He presented the rudiments of
laws of marriage, property, inheritance, contract, and international relations
in both war and peace. He also developed the Grotian theory of personal rights,
asserting for the first time that rights are pointless unless for each right
there are correlative duties binding on others. Taking obligation as his
fundamental concept, he developed an important distinction between perfect and
imperfect duties and rights. And in working out a theory of property he
suggested the first outlines of a historical sociology of wealth later
developed by Adam Smith. Pufendorf’s works on natural law were textbooks for
all of Europe for over a century and were far more widely read than any other treatments
of the subject.
pulchrum -- beauty, an aesthetic property commonly
thought of as a species of aesthetic value. As such, it has been variously
thought to be 1 a simple, indefinable property that cannot be defined in terms
of any other properties; 2 a property or set of properties of an object that
makes the object capable of producing a certain sort of pleasurable experience
in any suitable perceiver; or 3 whatever produces a particular sort of
pleasurable experience, even though what produces the experience may vary from
individual to individual. It is in this last sense that beauty is thought to be
“in the eye of the beholder.” If beauty is a simple, indefinable property, as
in 1, then it cannot be defined conceptually and has to be apprehended by
intuition or taste. Beauty, on this account, would be a particular sort of
aesthetic property. If beauty is an object’s Bayle, Pierre beauty 75 75 capacity to produce a special sort of
pleasurable experience, as in 2, then it is necessary to say what properties
provide it with this capacity. The most favored candidates for these have been
formal or structural properties, such as order, symmetry, and proportion. In
the Philebus Plato argues that the form or essence of beauty is knowable,
exact, rational, and measurable. He also holds that simple geometrical shapes,
simple colors, and musical notes all have “intrinsic beauty,” which arouses a
pure, “unmixed” pleasure in the perceiver and is unaffected by context. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many treatises were written on individual
art forms, each allegedly governed by its own rules. In the eighteenth century,
Hutcheson held that ‘beauty’ refers to an “idea raised in us,” and that any
object that excites this idea is beautiful. He thought that the property of the
object that excites this idea is “uniformity in variety.” Kant explained the
nature of beauty by analyzing judgments that something is beautiful. Such
judgments refer to an experience of the perceiver. But they are not merely expressions
of personal experience; we claim that others should also have the same
experience, and that they should make the same judgment i.e., judgments that
something is beautiful have “universal validity”. Such judgments are
disinterested determined not by any
needs or wants on the part of the perceiver, but just by contemplating the mere
appearance of the object. These are judgments about an object’s free beauty,
and making them requires using only those mental capacities that all humans
have by virtue of their ability to communicate with one another. Hence the
pleasures experienced in response to such beauty can in principle be shared by
anyone. Some have held, as in 3, that we apply the term ‘beautiful’ to things
because of the pleasure they give us, and not on the basis of any specific
qualities an object has. Archibald Alison held that it is impossible to find
any properties common to all those things we call beautiful. Santayana believed
beauty is “pleasure regarded as a quality of a thing,” and made no pretense
that certain qualities ought to produce that pleasure. The Grecian term to
kalon, which is often tr. as ‘beauty’, did not refer to a thing’s autonomous
aesthetic value, but rather to its “excellence,” which is connected with its
moral worth and/or usefulness. This concept is closer to Kant’s notion of
dependent beauty, possessed by an object judged as a particular kind of thing
such as a beautiful cat or a beautiful horse, than it is to free beauty,
possessed by an object judged simply on the basis of its appearance and not in
terms of any concept of use
punishment, a distinctive form of legal sanction,
distinguished first by its painful or unpleasant nature to the offender, and
second by the ground on which the sanction is imposed, which must be because
the offender offended against the norms of a society. None of these three
attributes is a strictly necessary condition for proper use of the word
‘punishment’. There may be unpleasant consequences visited by nature upon an
offender such that he might be said to have been “punished enough”; the
consequences in a given case may not be unpleasant to a particular offender, as
in the punishment of a masochist with his favorite form of self-abuse; and
punishment may be imposed for reasons other than offense against society’s
norms, as is the case with punishment inflicted in order to deter others from
like acts. The “definitional stop” argument in discussions of punishment seeks
to tie punishment analytically to retributivism. Retributivism is the theory that
punishment is justified by the moral desert of the offender; on this view, a
person who culpably does a wrongful action deserves punishment, and this desert
is a sufficient as well as a necessary condition of just punishment. Punishment
of the deserving, on this view, is an intrinsic good that does not need to be
justified by any other good consequences such punishment may achieve, such as
the prevention of crime. Retributivism is not to be confused with the view that
punishment satisfies the feelings of vengeful citizens nor with the view that
punishment preempts such citizens from taking the law into their own hands by
vigilante action these latter views
being utilitarian. Retributivism is also not the view sometimes called “weak”
or “negative” retributivism that only the deserving are to be punished, for
desert on such a view typically operates only as a limiting and not as a
justifying condition of punishment. The thesis known as the “definitional stop”
says that punishment must be retributive in its justification if it is to be
punishment at all. Bad treatment inflicted in order to prevent future crime is
not punishment but deserves another name, usually ‘telishment’. The dominant
justification of non-retributive punishment or telishment is deterrence. The
good in whose name the bad of punishing is justified, on this view, is
prevention of future criminal acts. If punishment is inflicted to prevent the
offender from committing future criminal acts, it is styled “specific” or
“special” deterrence; if punishment is inflicted to prevent others from
committing future criminal acts, it is styled “general” deterrence. In either
case, punishment of an action is justified by the future effect of that
punishment in deterring future actors from committing crimes. There is some
vagueness in the notion of deterrence because of the different mechanisms by
which potential criminals are influenced not to be criminals by the example of
punishment: such punishment may achieve its effects through fear or by more
benignly educating those would-be criminals out of their criminal desires.
Pyrrho of Elis, Grecian philosopher, regarded as the
founder of Skepticism. Like Socrates, he wrote nothing, but impressed many with
provocative ideas and calm demeanor. His equanimity was admired by Epicurus;
his attitude of indifference influenced early Stoicism; his attack on knowledge
was taken over by the skeptical Academy; and two centuries later, a revival of
Skepticism adopted his name. Many of his ideas were anticipated by earlier
thinkers, notably Democritus. But in denying the veracity of all sensations and
beliefs, Pyrrho carried doubt to new and radical extremes. According to ancient
anecdote, which presents him as highly eccentric, he paid so little heed to
normal sensibilities that friends often had to rescue him from grave danger;
some nonetheless insisted he lived into his nineties. He is also said to have
emulated the “naked teachers” as the Hindu Brahmans were called by Grecians
whom he met while traveling in the entourage of Alexander the Great. Pyrrho’s
chief exponent and publicist was Timon of Phlius c.325c.235 B.C.. His
bestpreserved work, the Silloi “Lampoons”, is a parody in Homeric epic verse
that mocks the pretensions of numerous philosophers on an imaginary visit to
the underworld. According to Timon, Pyrrho was a “negative dogmatist” who
affirmed that knowledge is impossible, not because our cognitive apparatus is
flawed, but because the world is fundamentally indeterminate: things themselves
are “no more” cold than hot, or good than bad. But Timon makes clear that the
key to Pyrrho’s Skepticism, and a major source of his impact, was the ethical
goal he sought to achieve: by training himself to disregard all perception and
values, he hoped to attain mental tranquility.
Pythagoras, the most famous of the pre-Socratic Grecian
philosophers. He emigrated from the island of Samos off Asia Minor to Croton
southern Italy in 530. There he founded societies based on a strict way of
life. They had great political impact in southern Italy and aroused opposition
that resulted in the burning of their meeting houses and, ultimately, in the
societies’ disappearance in the fourth century B.C. Pythagoras’s fame grew
exponentially with the pasage of time. Plato’s immediate successors in the
Academy saw true philosophy as an unfolding of the original insight of
Pythagoras. By the time of Iamblichus late third century A.D., Pythagoreanism
and Platonism had become virtually identified. Spurious writings ascribed both
to Pythagoras and to other Pythagoreans arose beginning in the third century
B.C. Eventually any thinker who saw the natural world as ordered according to
pleasing mathematical relations e.g., Kepler came to be called a Pythagorean.
Modern scholarship has shown that Pythagoras was not a scientist,
mathematician, or systematic philosopher. He apparently wrote nothing. The
early evidence shows that he was famous for introducing the doctrine of
metempsychosis, according to which the soul is immortal and is reborn in both
human and animal incarnations. Rules were established to purify the soul including
the prohibition against eating beans and the emphasis on training of the
memory. General reflections on the natural world such as “number is the wisest
thing” and “the most beautiful, harmony” were preserved orally. A belief in the
mystical power of number is also visible in the veneration for the tetractys
tetrad: the numbers 14, which add up to the sacred number 10. The doctrine of
the harmony of the spheres that the
heavens move in accord with number and produce music may go back to Pythagoras. It is often
assumed that there must be more to Pythagoras’s thought than this, given his
fame in the later tradition. However, Plato refers to him only as the founder
of a way of life Republic 600a9. In his account of pre-Socratic philosophy,
Aristotle refers not to Pythagoras himself, but to the “so-called Pythagoreans”
whom he dates in the fifth century.
Q
quale: a property of a mental state or event, in
particular of a sensation and a perceptual state, which determine “what it is
like” to have them. Sometimes ‘phenomenal properties’ and ‘qualitative
features’ are used with the same meaning. The felt difference between pains and
itches is said to reside in differences in their “qualitative character,” i.e.,
their qualia. For those who accept an “actobject” conception of perceptual
experience, qualia may include such properties as “phenomenal redness” and
“phenomenal roundness,” thought of as properties of sense-data, “phenomenal
objects,” or portions of the visual field. But those who reject this conception
do not thereby reject qualia; a proponent of the adverbial analysis of
perceptual experience can hold that an experience of “sensing redly” is so in
virtue of, in part, what qualia it has, while denying that there is any sense
in which the experience itself is red. Qualia are thought of as
non-intentional, i.e., non-representational, features of the states that have
them. So in a case of “spectrum inversion,” where one person’s experiences of
green are “qualitatively” just like another person’s experiences of red, and
vice versa, the visual experiences the two have when viewing a ripe tomato
would be alike in their intentional features both would be of a red, round,
bulgy surface, but would have different qualia. Critics of physicalist and
functionalist accounts of mind have argued from the possibility of spectrum
inversion and other kinds of “qualia inversion,” and from such facts as that no
physical or functional description will tell one “what it is like” to smell
coffee, that such accounts cannot accommodate qualia. Defenders of such
accounts are divided between those who claim that their accounts can
accommodate qualia and those who claim that qualia are a philosophical myth and
thus that there are none to accommodate.
qualitative predicate, a kind of predicate postulated in some attempts
to solve the grue paradox. 1 On the syntactic view, a qualitative predicate is
a syntactically more or less simple predicate. Such simplicity, however, is
relative to the choice of primitives in a language. In English, ‘green’ and
‘blue’ are primitive, while ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ must be introduced by
definitions ‘green and first examined before T, or blue otherwise’, ‘blue and
first examined before T, or green otherwise’, respectively. In other languages,
‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ may be primitive and hence “simple,” while ‘green’ and
‘blue’ must be introduced by definitions ‘grue and first examined before T, or
bleen otherwise’, ‘bleen and first examined before T, or grue otherwise’,
respectively. 2 On the semantic view, a qualitative predicate is a predicate to
which there corresponds a property that is “natural” to us or of easy semantic
access. The quality of greenness is easy and natural; the quality of grueness
is strained. 3 On the ontological view, a qualitative predicate is a predicate
to which there corresponds a property that is woven into the causal or modal
structure of reality in a way that gruesome properties are not. qualities, properties or characteristics.
There are three specific philosophical senses. 1 Qualities are physical
properties, logical constructions of physical properties, or dispositions.
Physical properties, such as mass, shape, and electrical charge, are properties
in virtue of which objects can enter into causal relations. Logical
constructions of physical properties include conjunctions and disjunctions of
them; being 10 # .02 cm long is a disjunctive property. A disposition of an
object is a potential for the object to enter into a causal interaction of some
specific kind under some specific condition; e.g., an object is soluble in
water if and only if it would dissolve were it in enough pure water. Locke held
a very complex theory of powers. On Locke’s theory, the dispositions of objects
are a kind of power and the human will is a kind of power. However, the human
will is not part of the modern notion of disposition. So, predicating a
disposition of an object implies a subjunctive conditional of the form: if
such-and-such were to happen to the object, then so-and-so would happen to it;
that my vase is fragile implies that if my vase were to be hit sufficiently
hard then it would break. Whether physical properties are distinct from
dispositions is disputed. Three sorts of qualities are often distinguished.
Primary qualities are physical properties or logical constructions from
physical properties. Secondary qualities are dispositions to produce sensory
experiences of certain phenomenal sorts under appropriate conditions. The
predication of a secondary quality, Q, to an object implies that if the object
were to be perceived under normal conditions then the object would appear to be
Q to the perceivers: if redness is a secondary quality, then that your coat is
red implies that if your coat were to be seen under normal conditions, it would
look red. Locke held that the following are secondary qualities: colors,
tastes, smells, sounds, and warmth or cold. Tertiary qualities are dispositions
that are not secondary qualities, e.g. fragility. Contrary to Locke, the color
realist holds that colors are either primary or tertiary qualities; so that x
is yellow is logically independent of the fact that x looks yellow under normal
conditions. Since different spectral reflectances appear to be the same shade
of yellow, some color realists hold that any shade of yellow is a disjunctive
property whose components are spectral reflectances. 2 Assuming a
representative theory of perception, as Locke did, qualities have two
characteristics: qualities are powers or dispositions of objects to produce
sensory experiences sensedata on some theories in humans; and, in sensory
experience, qualities are represented as intrinsic properties of objects.
Instrinsic properties of objects are properties that objects have independently
of their environment. Hence an exact duplicate of an object has all the
intrinsic properties of the original, and an intrinsic property of x never has
the form, x-stands-in-suchand-such-a-relation-to-y. Locke held that the primary
qualities are extension size, figure shape, motion or rest, solidity impenetrability,
and number; the primary qualities are correctly represented in perception as
intrinsic features of objects, and the secondary qualities listed in 1 are
incorrectly represented in perception as intrinsic features of objects. Locke
seems to have been mistaken in holding that number is a quality of objects.
Positional qualities are qualities defined in terms of the relative positions
of points in objects and their surrounding: shape, size, and motion and rest.
Since most of Locke’s primary qualities are positional, some non-positional
quality is needed to occupy positions. On Locke’s account, solidity fulfills
this role, although some have argued Hume that solidity is not a primary
quality. 3 Primary qualities are properties common to and inseparable from all
matter; secondary qualities are not really qualities in objects, but only
powers of objects to produce sensory effects in us by means of their primary
qualities. This is another use of ‘quality’ by Locke, where ‘primary’ functions
much like ‘real’ and real properties are given by the metaphysical assumptions
of the science of Locke’s time. Qualities are distinct from representations of
them in predications. Sometimes the same quality is represented in different
ways by different predications: ‘That is water’ and ‘That is H2O’. The
distinction between qualities and the way they are represented in predications
opens up the Lockean possibility that some qualities are incorrectly
represented in some predications. Features of predications are sometimes used
to define a quality; dispositions are sometimes defined in terms of subjunctive
conditionals see definition of ‘secondary qualities’ in 1, and disjunctive
properties are defined in terms of disjunctive predications. Features of
predications are also used in the following definition of ‘independent
qualities’: two qualities, P and Q, are independent if and only if, for any
object x, the predication of P and of Q to x are logically independent i.e.,
that x is P and that x is Q are logically independent; circularity and redness
are independent, circularity and triangularity are dependent. If two
determinate qualities, e.g., circularity and triangularity, belong to the same
determinable, say shape, then they are dependent, but if two determinate
qualities, e.g., squareness and redness, belong to different determinables, say
shape and color, they are independent.
quantum: Quantification:
H. P. Grice, “Every nice girl loves a sailor.” -- the application of one or
more quantifiers e.g., ‘for all x’, ‘for some y’ to an open formula. A
quantification or quantified sentence results from first forming an open
formula from a sentence by replacing expressions belonging to a certain class
of expressions in the sentences by variables whose substituends are the expressions
of that class and then prefixing the formula with quantifiers using those
variables. For example, from ‘Bill hates Mary’ we form ‘x hates y’, to which we
prefix the quantifiers ‘for all x’ and ‘for some y’, getting the quantification
sentence ‘for all x, for some y, x hates y’ ‘Everyone hates someone’. In
referential quantification only terms of reference may be replaced by
variables. The replaceable terms of reference are the substituends of the
variables. The values of the variables are all those objects to which reference
could be made by a term of reference of the type that the variables may
replace. Thus the previous example ‘for all x, for some y, x hates y’ is a
referential quantification. Terms standing for people ‘Bill’, ‘Mary’, e.g. are
the substituends of the variables ‘x’ and ‘y’. And people are the values of the
variables. In substitutional quantification any type of term may be replaced by
variables. A variable replacing a term has as its substituends all terms of the
type of the replaced term. For example, from ‘Bill married Mary’ we may form
‘Bill R Mary’, to which we prefix the quantifier ‘for some R’, getting the
substitutional quantification ‘for some R, Bill R Mary’. This is not a
referential quantification, since the substituends of ‘R’ are binary predicates
such as ‘marries’, which are not terms of reference. Referential quantification
is a species of objectual quantification. The truth conditions of
quantification sentences objectually construed are understood in terms of the
values of the variable bound by the quantifier. Thus, ‘for all v, fv’ is true
provided ‘fv’ is true for all values of the variable ‘v’; ‘for some v, fv’ is
true provided ‘fv’ is true for some value of the variable ‘v’. The truth or
falsity of a substitutional quantification turns instead on the truth or
falsity of the sentences that result from the quantified formula by replacing
variables by their substituends. For example, ‘for some R, Bill R Mary’ is true
provided some sentence of the form ‘Bill R Mary’ is true. In classical logic
the universal quantifier ‘for all’ is definable in terms of negation and the
existential quantifier ‘for some’: ‘for all x’ is short for ‘not for some x
not’. The existential quantifier is similarly definable in terms of negation and
the universal quantifier. In intuitionistic logic, this does not hold. Both
quantifiers are regarded as primitive. Then there’s quantifying in, use of a
quantifier outside of an opaque construction to attempt to bind a variable
within it, a procedure whose legitimacy was first questioned by Quine. An
opaque construction is one that resists substitutivity of identity. Among
others, the constructions of quotation, the verbs of propositional attitude,
and the logical modalities can give rise to opacity. For example, the position
of ‘six’ in: 1 ‘six’ contains exactly three letters is opaque, since the
substitution for ‘six’ by its codesignate ‘immediate successor of five’ renders
a truth into a falsehood: 1H ‘the immediate successor of five’ contains exactly
three letters. Similarly, the position of ‘the earth’ in: 2 Tom believes that
the earth is habitable is opaque, if the substitution of ‘the earth’ by its
codesignate ‘the third planet from the sun’ renders a sentence that Tom would
affirm into one that he would deny: 2H Tom believes that the third planet from
the sun is habitable. Finally, the position of ‘9’ and of ‘7’ in: 3 Necessarily
9 7 is opaque, since the substitution of
‘the number of major planets’ for its codesignate ‘9’ renders a truth into a
falsehood: 3H Necessarily the number of major planets 7. Quine argues that since the positions
within opaque constructions resist substitutivity of identity, they cannot
meaningfully be quantified. Accordingly, the following three quantified
sentences are meaningless: 1I Ex ‘x’ 7,
2I Ex Tom believes that x is habitable, 3I Ex necessarily x 7. 1I, 2I, and 3I are meaningless, since the
second occurrence of ‘x’ in each of them does not function as a variable in the
ordinary nonessentialist quantificational way. The second occurrence of ‘x’ in
1I functions as a name that names the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet. The
second occurrences of ‘x’ in 2I and in 3I do not function as variables, since
they do not allow all codesignative terms as substituends without change of
truth-value. Thus, they may take objects as values but only objects designated
in certain ways, e.g., in terms of their intensional or essential properties.
So, short of acquiescing in an intensionalist or essentialist metaphysics,
Quine argues, we cannot in general quantify into opaque contexts. Quantum: one of Aristotle’s categories.
Cicero’s translation of Aristotle -- quantum logic, the logic of which the
models are certain non-Boolean algebras derived from the mathematical
representation of quantum mechanical systems. The models of classical logic
are, formally, Boolean algebras. This is the central notion of quantum logic in
the literature, although the term covers a variety of modal logics, dialogics,
and operational logics proposed to elucidate the structure of quantum mechanics
and its relation to classical mechanics. The dynamical quantities of a
classical mechanical system position, momentum, energy, etc. form a commutative
algebra, and the dynamical properties of the system e.g., the property that the
position lies in a specified range, or the property that the momentum is
greater than zero, etc. form a Boolean algebra. The transition from classical
to quantum mechanics involves the transition from a commutative algebra of
dynamical quantities to a noncommutative algebra of so-called observables. One
way of understanding the conceptual revolution from classical to quantum
mechanics is in terms of a shift from the class of Boolean algebras to a class
of non-Boolean algebras as the appropriate relational structures for the
dynamical properties of mechanical systems, hence from a Boolean classical
logic to a non-Boolean quantum logic as the logic applicable to the fundamental
physical processes of our universe. This conception of quantum logic was
developed formally in a classic 6 paper by G. Birkhoff and J. von Neumann
although von Neumann first proposed the idea in 7. The features that
distinguish quantum logic from classical logic vary with the formulation. In
the Birkhoffvon Neumann logic, the distributive law of classical logic fails,
but this is by no means a feature of all versions of quantum logic. It follows
from Gleason’s theorem 7 that the non-Boolean models do not admit two-valued
homomorphisms in the general case, i.e., there is no partition of the dynamical
properties of a quantum mechanical system into those possessed by the system
and those not possessed by the system that preserves algebraic structure, and
equivalently no assignment of values to the observables of the system that
preserves algebraic structure. This result was proved independently for finite
sets of observables by S. Kochen and E. P. Specker 7. It follows that the
probabilities specified by the Born interpretation of the state function of a
quantum mechanical system for the results of measurements of observables cannot
be derived from a probability distribution over the different possible sets of
dynamical properties of the system, or the different possible sets of values
assignable to the observables of which one set is presumed to be actual,
determined by hidden variables in addition to the state function, if these sets
of properties or values are required to preserve algebraic structure. While
Bell’s theorem 4 excludes hidden variables satisfying a certain locality
condition, the Kochen-Specker theorem relates the non-Booleanity of quantum
logic to the impossibility of hidden variable extensions of quantum mechanics,
in which value assignments to the observables satisfy constraints imposed by
the algebraic structure of the observables. Then there’s quantum mechanics,
also called quantum theory, the science governing objects of atomic and
subatomic dimensions. Developed independently by Werner Heisenberg as matrix
mechanics, 5 and Erwin Schrödinger as wave mechanics, 6, quantum mechanics
breaks with classical treatments of the motions and interactions of bodies by
introducing probability and acts of measurement in seemingly irreducible ways.
In the widely used Schrödinger version, quantum mechanics associates with each
physical system a time-dependent function, called the state function
alternatively, the state vector or Y function. The evolution of the system is
represented by the temporal transformation of the state function in accord with
a master equation, known as the Schrödinger equation. Also associated with a
system are “observables”: in principle measurable quantities, such as position,
momentum, and energy, including some with no good classical analogue, such as
spin. According to the Born interpretation 6, the state function is understood
instrumentally: it enables one to calculate, for any possible value of an
observable, the probability that a measurement of that observable would find
that particular value. The formal properties of observables and state functions
imply that certain pairs of observables such as linear momentum in a given
direction, and position in the same direction are incompatible in the sense
that no state function assigns probability 1 to the simultaneous determination
of exact values for both observables. This is a qualitative statement of the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle alternatively, the indeterminacy principle, or
just the uncertainty principle. Quantitatively, that principle places a precise
limit on the accuracy with which one may simultaneously measure a pair of
incompatible observables. There is no corresponding limit, however, on the
accuracy with which a single observable say, position alone, or momentum alone
may be measured. The uncertainty principle is sometimes understood in terms of
complementarity, a general perspective proposed by Niels Bohr according to
which the connection between quantum phenomena and observation forces our
classical concepts to split into mutually exclusive packages, both of which are
required for a complete understanding but only one of which is applicable under
any particular experimental conditions. Some take this to imply an ontology in
which quantum objects do not actually possess simultaneous values for
incompatible observables; e.g., do not have simultaneous position and momentum.
Others would hold, e.g., that measuring the position of an object causes an
uncontrollable change in its momentum, in accord with the limits on
simultaneous accuracy built into the uncertainty principle. These ways of
treating the principle are not uncontroversial. Philosophical interest arises
in part from where the quantum theory breaks with classical physics: namely,
from the apparent breakdown of determinism or causality that seems to result
from the irreducibly statistical nature of the theory, and from the apparent
breakdown of observer-independence or realism that seems to result from the
fundamental role of measurement in the theory. Both features relate to the
interpretation of the state function as providing only a summary of the
probabilities for various measurement outcomes. Einstein, in particular,
criticized the theory on these grounds, and in 5 suggested a striking thought
experiment to show that, assuming no action-at-a-distance, one would have to
consider the state function as an incomplete description of the real physical
state for an individual system, and therefore quantum mechanics as merely a
provisional theory. Einstein’s example involved a pair of systems that interact
briefly and then separate, but in such a way that the outcomes of various
measurements performed on each system, separately, show an uncanny correlation.
In 1 the physicist David Bohm simplified Einstein’s example, and later 7
indicated that it may be realizable experimentally. The physicist John S. Bell
then formulated a locality assumption 4, similar to Einstein’s, that constrains
factors which might be used in describing the state of an individual system,
so-called hidden variables. Locality requires that in the EinsteinBohm experiment
hidden variables not allow the measurement performed on one system in a
correlated pair immediately to influence the outcome obtained in measuring the
other, spatially separated system. Bell demonstrated that locality in
conjunction with other assumptions about hidden variables restricts the
probabilities for measurement outcomes according to a system of inequalities
known as the Bell inequalities, and that the probabilities of certain quantum
systems violate these inequalities. This is Bell’s theorem. Subsequently
several experiments of the Einstein-Bohm type have been performed to test the
Bell inequalities. Although the results have not been univocal, the consensus
is that the experimental data support the quantum theory and violate the
inequalities. Current research is trying to evaluate the implications of these
results, including the extent to which they rule out local hidden variables.
See J. Cushing and E. McMullin, eds., Philosophical Consequences of Quantum
Theory, 9. The descriptive incompleteness with which Einstein charged the
theory suggests other problems. A particularly dramatic one arose in
correspondence between Schrödinger and Einstein; namely, the “gruesome”
Schrödinger cat paradox. Here a cat is confined in a closed chamber containing a
radioactive atom with a fifty-fifty chance of decaying in the next hour. If the
atom decays it triggers a relay that causes a hammer to fall and smash a glass
vial holding a quantity of 766 prussic
acid sufficient to kill the cat. According to the Schrödinger equation, after
an hour the state function for the entire atom ! relay ! hammer ! glass vial !
cat system is such that if we observe the cat the probability for finding it
alive dead is 50 percent. However, this evolved state function is one for which
there is no definite result; according to it, the cat is neither alive nor
dead. How then does any definite fact of the matter arise, and when? Is the act
of observation itself instrumental in bringing about the observed result, does
that result come about by virtue of some special random process, or is there
some other account compatible with definite results of measurements? This is
the so-called quantum measurement problem and it too is an active area of
research.
quasi-demonstratum: The use of ‘quasi-‘ is implicatural. Grice is
implicating this is NOT a demonstratum. By a demonstratum he is having in mind
a Kaplanian ‘dthis’ or ‘dthat.’ Grice was obsessed with this or that. An
abstractum (such as “philosopher”) needs to be attached in a communicatum by
what Grice calls a ‘quasi-demonstrative,’ and for which he uses “φ.” Consider,
Grice says, an utterance, out of the blue, such as ‘The philosopher in the
garden seems bored,’ involving two iota-operators. As there may be more that a
philosopher in a garden in the great big world, the utterer intends his
addressee to treat the utterance as expandable into ‘The A which is φ is
B,’ where “φ” is a quasi-demonstrative epithet to be identified in a particular
context of utterance. The utterer intends that, to identify the denotatum
of “φ” for a particular utterance of ‘The philosopher in the garden seems
bored,’ the addressee wil proceed via the identification of a particular
philosopher, say Grice, as being a good candidate for being the philosopher
meant. The addressee is also intended to identify the candidate for a denotatum
of φ by finding in the candidate a feature, e. g., that of being the garden at
St. John’s, which is intended to be used to yield a composite epithet
(‘philosopher in St. John’s garden’), which in turn fills the bill of being the
epithet which the utterer believes is being uniquely satisfied by the
philosopher selected as the candidate. Determining the denotatum of “φ”
standardly involve determining what feature the utterer believes is uniquely
instantiated by the predicate “philosopher.” This in turn involves satisfying
oneself that some particular feature is in fact uniquely satisfied by a
particular actual item, viz. a particular philosopher such as Grice seeming
bored in the garden of St. John’s.
A.M. Quinton’s
Gedanke Experiment: from “Spaces and
Times,” Philosophy.“hardly Thought Out” – Is this apriori or a posteriori? H.
P. Grice. Space is ordinarily seen to be a
unique individual. All real things are contained in one and the same space, and
all spaces are part of the one space. In principle, every place can be reached
from every other place by traveling through intermediate places. The spatial
relation is symmetrical. Grice’s friend, A. M. Quinton devised a thought experiment
to challenge this picture. Suppose that we have richly coherent and connected
experience in our dreams just as we have in waking life, so that it becomes
arbitrary to claim that our dream experience is not of an objectively existing
world like the world of our waking experience. If the space of my waking world
and my dream world are not mutually accessible, it is unlikely that we are
justified in claiming to be living in a single spatially isolated world. Hence,
space is not essentially singular. In assessing this account, we might
distinguish between systematic and public physical space and fragmentary and
private experiential space. The two-space myth raises questions about how we
can justify moving from experiential space to objective space in the world as
it is. “We can at least conceive circumstances in which we should have good
reason to say that we know of real things located in two distinct spaces.”
Quinton, “Spaces and Times,” Philosophy 37.
quod: quid – quiddity. A term used by Grice when talking
to his wife. “What quiddity did you buy?”
qv-quæstio --
x-question: Grice borrowed the
erotetic from Cook Wilson, who in fact was influenced by Stout and will also
influence Collingwood. While Grice starts by considering the pseudo-distinction
between x-questions and yes/no questions, he soon finds out that they all reduce
to the x-question, since a yes/no question obviously asks for a variable (the
truth value of the whole proposition) to be filled. Grice sometimes follows
Ryle who had quoted Carnap on the ‘w
frage.’ Grice is aware of the ‘wh’ rune in Anglo-Saxon, but was confused
by ‘how.’ “For fun, I will spell ‘how,’ ‘whow.’” Although a Midlander Grice
preferred the northern English pronunciation of aspirating the ‘wh-‘ and was
irritated that only ‘who’ and ‘whose’ keep the aspiration. Note that “Where is
your wife?” is a qu-quaestio, but “(a) in the kitchen, (b) in the bedroom”
provides a ‘p v q’ as an answer – “Disjunctive answers to intrusive questions.”
Cf. “Iffy answers to intrusive questions.” “The lady doth protest too much:
ampliative conjunctive answers to intrusive questions.”
R
Radix -- Radix -- Grice often talked about logical atomism and
molecular propositions – and radix – which is an atomic metaphor -- Democritus,
Grecian preSocratic philosopher. He was born at Abdera, in Thrace. Building on
Leucippus and his atomism, he developed the atomic theory in The Little
World-system and numerous other writings. In response to the Eleatics’ argument
that the impossibility of not-being entailed that there is no change, the
atomists posited the existence of a plurality of tiny indivisible beings the atoms
and not-being the void, or empty
space. Atoms do not come into being or perish, but they do move in the void,
making possible the existence of a world, and indeed of many worlds. For the
void is infinite in extent, and filled with an infinite number of atoms that
move and collide with one another. Under the right conditions a concentration
of atoms can begin a vortex motion that draws in other atoms and forms a
spherical heaven enclosing a world. In our world there is a flat earth
surrounded by heavenly bodies carried by a vortex motion. Other worlds like
ours are born, flourish, and die, but their astronomical configurations may be
different from ours and they need not have living creatures in them. The atoms
are solid bodies with countless shapes and sizes, apparently having weight or
mass, and capable of motion. All other properties are in some way derivative of
these basic properties. The cosmic vortex motion causes a sifting that tends to
separate similar atoms as the sea arranges pebbles on the shore. For instance
heavier atoms sink to the center of the vortex, and lighter atoms such as those
of fire rise upward. Compound bodies can grow by the aggregations of atoms that
become entangled with one another. Living things, including humans, originally
emerged out of slime. Life is caused by fine, spherical soul atoms, and living
things die when these atoms are lost. Human culture gradually evolved through
chance discoveries and imitations of nature. Because the atoms are invisible
and the only real properties are properties of atoms, we cannot have direct
knowledge of anything. Tastes, temperatures, and colors we know only “by
convention.” In general the senses cannot give us anything but “bastard”
knowledge; but there is a “legitimate” knowledge based on reason, which takes
over where the senses leave off
presumably demonstrating that there are atoms that the senses cannot
testify of. Democritus offers a causal theory of perception sometimes called the theory of effluxes accounting for tastes in terms of certain
shapes of atoms and for sight in terms of “effluences” or moving films of atoms
that impinge on the eye. Drawing on both atomic theory and conventional wisdom,
Democritus develops an ethics of moderation. The aim of life is equanimity euthumiê,
a state of balance achieved by moderation and proportionate pleasures. Envy and
ambition are incompatible with the good life. Although Democritus was one of
the most prolific writers of antiquity, his works were all lost. Yet we can
still identify his atomic theory as the most fully worked out of pre-Socratic
philosophies. His theory of matter influenced Plato’s Timaeus, and his
naturalist anthropology became the prototype for liberal social theories.
Democritus had no immediate successors, but a century later Epicurus
transformed his ethics into a philosophy of consolation founded on atomism.
Epicureanism thus became the vehicle through which atomic theory was
transmitted to the early modern period.
ramseyified
description. Grice enjoyed Ramsey’s
Engish humour: if you can say it, you can’t whistle it either. Applied by Grice
in “Method.”Agent A is in a D state just in case there is a predicate
“D” introduced via implicit definition
by nomological generalisation L within theory θ, such L obtains, A
instantiates D. Grice distinguishes the ‘descriptor’ from a more primitive
‘name.’ The reference is to Ramsey. The issue is technical and relates to the
introduction of a predicate constant – something he would never have dared to
at Oxford with Gilbert Ryle and D. F. Pears next to him! But in the New World,
they loved a formalism! And of course Ramsey would not have anything to do with
it! Ramsey: p. r. – cited by Grice, “The Ramseyfied description. Frank Plumpton
330, influential 769 R 769 British philosopher
of logic and mathematics. His primary interests were in logic and philosophy,
but decades after his untimely death two of his publications sparked new
branches of economics, and in pure mathematics his combinatorial theorems gave
rise to “Ramsey theory” Economic Journal 7, 8; Proc. London Math. Soc., 8.
During his lifetime Ramsey’s philosophical reputation outside Cambridge was
based largely on his architectural reparation of Whitehead and Russell’s
Principia Mathematica, strengthening its claim to reduce mathematics to the new
logic formulated in Volume 1 a reduction
rounded out by Vitters’s assessment of logical truths as tautologous. Ramsey
clarified this logicist picture of mathematics by radically simplifying
Russell’s ramified theory of types, eliminating the need for the unarguable
axiom of reducibility Proc. London Math. Soc., 5. His philosophical work was
published mostly after his death. The canon, established by Richard Braithwaite
The Foundations of Mathematics . . . , 1, remains generally intact in D. H.
Mellor’s edition Philosophical Papers, 0. Further writings of varying
importance appear in his Notes on Philosophy, Probability and Mathematics M. C.
Galavotti, ed., 1 and On Truth Nicholas Rescher and Ulrich Majer, eds., 1. As
an undergraduate Ramsey observed that the redundancy account of truth “enables
us to rule out at once some theories of truth such as that ‘to be true’ means
‘to work’ or ‘to cohere’ since clearly ‘p works’ and ‘p coheres’ are not
equivalent to ‘p’.” Later, in the canonical “Truth and Probability” 6, he
readdressed to knowledge and belief the main questions ordinarily associated
with truth, analyzing probability as a mode of judgment in the framework of a
theory of choice under uncertainty. Reinvented and acknowledged by L. J. Savage
Foundations of Statistics, 4, this forms the theoretical basis of the currently
dominant “Bayesian” view of rational decision making. Ramsey cut his
philosophical teeth on Vitters’s Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus. His translation
appeared in 2; a long critical notice of the work 3 was his first substantial
philosophical publication. His later role in Vitters’s rejection of the
Tractatus is acknowledged in the foreword to Philosophical Investigations 3.
The posthumous canon has been a gold mine. An example: “Propositions” 9,
reading the theoretical terms T, U, etc. of an axiomatized scientific theory as
variables, sees the theory’s content as conveyed by a “Ramsey sentence” saying
that for some T, U, etc., the theory’s axioms are true, a sentence in which all
extralogical terms are observational. Another example: “General Propositions
and Causality” 9, offering in a footnote the “Ramsey test” for acceptability of
conditionals, i.e., add the if-clause to your ambient beliefs minimally modified
to make the enlarged set self-consistent, and accept the conditional if the
then-clause follows. Refs:
“Philosophical psychology,” in BANC. ‘
Ramée, philosopher who questioned the authority of
Aristotle and influenced the methods of f semantics. He published his “Dialecticae
institutiones libri XV,” reworked as “Dialectique,” the first philosophical work in what Grice
(‘Gris’) calls ‘the vernacular.’ “Not much different, I should say – cf.
Redecraft translating Logic!” Ramée is appointed
by François I as the first Regius Professor in Paris, where he teaches until he
is killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day
Massacre. Ramée doubted that we can apodictically intuit the major premises
required for Aristotle’s rational syllogism. Turning instead to Plato, Ramée proposed
that a “Socratizing” of logic would produce a more workable and fruitful result.
As had Agricola and Sturm, Ramée reworks the rhetorical and liberal arts
traditions’ concepts of “invention, judgment, and practice,” placing “method”
in the center of judgment. Proceeding in these stages, we can “read” nature’s
“arguments,” because they are modeled on natural reasoning, which in turn can
emulate the reasoning by which God creates. Often Ramée’s results are depicted
graphically in tables as in chapter IX of Hobbes’s Leviathan. When carefully
done they would show both what is known and where gaps require further
investigation; the process from invention to judgment is continuous. Ramée’s works saw some 750 editions in one
century, fostering the “Ramist” movement in emerging Protestant universities
and the colonies. He influenced Bacon, Hobbes, Milton, Methodism, Cambridge
Platonism, and Alsted. Inconsistencies make him less than a major figure in the
history of logic, but his many works and their rapid popularity led to
philosophical and educational efforts to bring the world of learning to the
“plain man” by using the vernacular, and by more closely correlating the rigor
of philosophy with the memorable and persuasive powers of rhetoric; he saw this
goal as Socratic.
Rashdall: English historian, theologian, and personal
idealist. While acknowledging that Berkeley needed to be corrected by Kant,
Rashdall defended Berkeley’s thesis that objects only exist for minds. From
this he concluded that there is a divine mind that guarantees the existence of
nature and the objectivity of morality. In his most important philosophical
work, The Theory of Good and Evil 7, Rashdall argued that actions are right or
wrong according to whether they produce well-being, in which pleasure as well
as a virtuous disposition are constituents. Rashdall coined the name ‘ideal
utilitarianism’ for this view.
Illatum: rational
choice: as oppose to irrational
choice. V. choose. Grice, “Impicatures of ‘choosing’” “Hobson’s choice, or
Hobson’s ‘choice’?” Pears on conversational implicaturum and choosing. That includes
choosing in its meaning, and then it is easy to ac- cept the
suggestion that choosing might be an S-factor, and that the hypothetical might
be a Willkür: one of
Grice’s favourite words from Kant – “It’s so Kantish!” I told Pears about this,
and having found it’s cognate with English ‘choose,’ he immediately set to
write an essay on the topic!” f., ‘option, discretion, caprice,’ from
MidHG. willekür, f., ‘free
choice, free will’; gee kiesen and Kur-.kiesen,
verb, ‘to select,’ from Middle High German kiesen, Old High German chiosan, ‘to test, try, taste for the purpose of testing, test
by tasting, select after strict examination.’ Gothic kiusan, Anglo-Saxon ceósan, English to choose. Teutonic root kus (with the change of s into r, kur in the participle erkoren, see also Kur, ‘choice’), from pre-Teutonic gus, in Latin gus-tus, gus-tare, Greek γεύω for γεύσω, Indian root juš, ‘to select, be fond of.’
Teutonic kausjun passed
as kusiti into
Slavonic. Insofar as a philosopher
explains and predicts the actum as consequences of a choice, which are
themselves explained in terms of alleged reasons, it must depict agents as to
some extent rational. Rationality, like reasons, involves evaluation, and just
as one can assess the rationality of individual choices, so one can assess the
rationality of social choices and examine how they are and ought to be related
to the preferences and judgments of the actor. In addition, there are intricate
questions concerning rationality in ‘strategic’ situations in which outcomes
depend on the choices of multiple individuals. Since rationality is a central
concept in branches of philosophy such as Grice’s pragmatics, action theory,
epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of mind, studies of rationality frequently
cross the boundaries various branches of philosophy. The barebones theory of
rationality takes an agent’s preferences, i. e. his rankings of states of affairs, to be
rational if they are complete and transitive, and it takes the agent’s choice
to be rational if the agent does not prefer any feasible alternative to the one
he chooses. Such a theory of rationality is clearly too weak. It says nothing
about belief or what rationality implies when the agent does not know (with
certainty) everything relevant to his choice. It may also be too strong, since there
is nothing irrational about having incomplete preferences in situations
involving uncertainty. Sometimes it is rational to suspend judgment and to
refuse to rank alternatives that are not well understood. On the other hand,
transitivity is a plausible condition, and the so-called “money pump” argument
demonstrates that if one’s preferences are intransitive and one is willing to
make exchanges, then one can be exploited. Suppose an agent A prefers X to Y, Y to Z and Z to X,
and that A will pay some small amount of money $P to
exchange Y for X, Z for Y,
and X for Z. That means that, starting
with Z, A will pay $P for Y,
then $P again for X, then $P again
for Z and so on. An agent need not be this stupid. He will
instead refuse to trade or adjust his preferences to eliminate the
intransitivity. On the other hand, there is evidence that an agent’s
preferences are not in fact transitive. Such evidence does not establish that
transitivity is not a requirement of rationality. It may show instead that an
agent may sometimes not be rational. In, e. g. the case of preference
reversals,” it seems plausible that the agent in fact makes the ‘irrational
choice.’ Evidence of persistent violations of transitivity is disquieting,
since standards of rationality should not be impossibly high. A further difficulty with the barebones theory
of rationality concerns the individuation of the objects of preference or
choice. Consider e. g. data from a multi-stage ultimatum game. Suppose A can
propose any division of $10 between A and B. B can
accept or reject A’s proposal. If B rejects
the proposal, the amount of money drops to $5, and B gets to
offer a division of the $5 which A can accept or reject.
If A rejects B’s offer, both players get
nothing. Suppose that A proposes to divide the money with $7
for A and $3 for B. B declines
and offers to split the $5 evenly, with $2.50 for each. Behaviour such as this
is, in fact, common. Assuming that B prefers more money to
less, these choices appear to be a violation of transitivity. B prefers
$3 to $2.50, yet declines $3 for certain for $2.50 (with some slight chance
of A declining and B getting nothing).
But the objects of choice are not just quantities of money. B is
turning down $3 as part of “a raw deal” in favour of $2.50 as part of a fair
arrangement. If the objects of choice are defined in this way, there is no
failure of transitivity. This plausible
observation gives rise to a serious conceptual problem that Grice thinks he can
solve. Unless there are constraints on how the objects of choice are
individuated, conditions of rationality such as transitivity are empty. A’s
choice of X over Y, Y over Z and Z over X does
not violate transitivity if “X when the alternative is Y”
is not the same object of choice as “X when the alternative
is Z”. A further substantive principle of rationality isrequired
to limit how alternatives are individuated or to require that agents be
indifferent between alternatives such as “X when the alternative
is Y” and “X when the alternative is Z.”
To extend the theory of rationality to circumstances involving risk (where the objects of choice are lotteries with known
probabilities) and uncertainty (where agents do not know the probabilities or
even all the possible outcomes of their choices) requires a further principle
of rationality, as well as a controversial technical simplification. Subjective
Bayesians suppose that the agent in circumstances of uncertainty has
well-defined subjective probabilities (degrees of belief) over all the payoffs
and thus that the objects of choice can be modeled as lotteries, just as in
circumstances involving risk, though with subjective probabilities in place of objective
probabilities. The most important of the axioms needed for the theory of
rational choice under conditions of risk and uncertainty is the independence condition.
The preferences of a rational agent between two lotteries that differ in only one
outcome should match his preferences between the differing outcomes. A
considerable part of Grice’s rational choice theory is concerned with
formalizations of conditions of rationality and investigation of their
implications. When they are complete and transitive and satisfy a further
continuity condition, the agent’s preferences can be represented by an ordinal
utility function, i. e. it is then possible to define a function that
represents an agent’s preferences so that U(X)
> U(Y) iff if the agent prefers X to Y,
and U(X) = U(Y) iff if the agent
is indifferent between X and Y. This function represents
the preference ranking, and contains no information beyond the ranking. When in
addition they satisfy the independence condition, the agent’s preferences can
be represented by an expected utility function (Ramsey 1926). Such a function
has two important properties. First, the expected utility of a lottery is equal
to the sum of the expected utilities of its prizes weighted by their
probabilities. Second, expected utility functions are unique up to a positive
affine transformation. If U and V are
both expected utility functions representing the preferences of an agent, for
all objects of preference, X, V(X) must be
equal to aU(X) + b, where a and b are
real numbers and a is positive. The axioms of rationality
imply that the agent’s degrees of belief will satisfy the axioms of the
probability calculus. A great deal of controversy surrounds Grice’s theory of
rationality, and there have been many formal investigations into amendeding it.
Although a conversational pair is very different from this agent and this other
agent, the pair has a mechanism to evaluate alternatives and make a choice. The
evaluation and the choice may be rational or irrational. Pace Grice’s fruitful
seminars on rational helpfulness in cooperation, t is not, however, obvious,
what principles of rationality should govern the choices and evaluations of the
conversational dyad. Transitivity is one plausible condition. It seems that a conversational
dyad that chooses X when faced with the alternatives X or Y, Y when
faced with the alternatives Y or Z and Z when
faced with the alternatives X or Z, the
conversational dyad has had “a change of hearts” or is choosing ‘irrationally.’
Yet, purported irrationalities such as these can easily arise from a standard
mechanism that aims to link a ‘conversational choice’ and individual
preferences. Suppose there are two conversationalists in the dyad. Individual
One ranks the alternatives X, Y, Z.
Individual Two ranks them Y, Z, X. (An
Individual Three if he comes by, may ranks them Z, X, Y).
If decisions are made by pairwise majority voting, X will be
chosen from the pair (X, Y), Y will
be chosen from (Y, Z), and Z will be
chosen from (X, Z). Clearly this is unsettling. But is a
possible cycle in a ‘conversational choice’ “irrational”? Similar
problems affect what one might call the logical coherence of a conversational
judgment Suppose the dyad consists of two individuals who make the following
judgments concerning the truth or falsity of the propositions P and Q and
that “conversational” judgment follows the majority. P if P, Q Q
Conversationalist A true true true Conversationalist B false true false
(Conversationalist C, if he passes by) true false false “Conversation” as an
Institution: true true false. The judgment of each conversationalist is
consistent with the principles of logic, while the “conversational
co-operative” judgment violates the principles of logic. The “cooperative
conversational,” “altruistic,” “joint judgment” need not be consistent with the
principles of egoist logic. Although conversational choice theory bears on
questions of conversational rationality, most work in conversational choice theory
explores the consequences of principles of rationality coupled with this or
that explicitly practical, or meta-ethical constraint. Grice does
not use ‘moral,’ since he distinguishes what he calls a ‘conversational maxim’
from a ‘moral maxim’ of the type Kant universalizes. Arrow’s impossibility
theorem assumes that an individual preference and a concerted, joint preference
are complete and transitive and that the method of forming a conversational,
concerted, joint preference (or making a conversational, concerted, choice)
issues in some joint preference ranking or joint choice for any possible
profile (or dossier, as Grice prefers) of each individual preference. Arrow’s
impossibility theorem imposes a weak UNANIMITY (one-soul) condition. If A and B
prefers X to Y, Y must not
jointly preferred. Arrow’s impossibility theorem requires that there be no boss
(call him Immanuel, the Genitor) whose preference determines a joint preference
or choice irrespective of the preferences of anybody else. Arrow’s impossibility
theorem imposes the condition that the joint concerted conversational
preference between X and Y should depend
on how A and B rank X and Y and on
nothing else. Arrow’s impossibility theorem proves that no method of co-relating
or linking conversational and a monogogic preference can satisfy all these
conditions. If an monopreference and a mono-evaluations both satisfy the axioms
of expected utility theory (with shared or objective probabilities) and that a
duo-preference conform to the unanimous mono-preference, a duo- evaluation is
determined by a weighted sum of individual utilities. A form of weighted futilitarianism,
which prioritizes the interests of the recipient, rather than the emissor,
uniquely satisfies a longer list of rational and practical constraints. When
there are instead disagreements in probability assignments, there is an
impossibility result. The unanimity (‘one-soul’) condition implies that for
some profiles of individual preferences, a joint or duo-evaluation will not
satisfy the axioms of expected utility theory. When outcomes depend on what at
least two autonomous free agents do, one agent’s best choice may depend on what
the other agent chooses. Although the principles of rationality governing mono-choice
still apply, there is a further principle of conversational rationality
governing the ‘expectation’ (to use Grice’s favourite term) of the action (or
conversational move) of one’s co-conversationalist (and obviously, via the
mutuality requirement of applicational universalizability) of the
co-conversationalist’s ‘expectation’ concerning the conversationalist’s action
and expectation, and so forth. Grice’s Conversational Game Theory plays a
protagonist role within philosophy, and it is relevant to inquiries concerning conversational
rationality and inquiries concerning conversational ethics. Rational choice --
Probability -- Dutch book, a bet or combination of bets whereby the bettor is
bound to suffer a net loss regardless of the outcome. A simple example would be
a bet on a proposition p at odds of 3 : 2 combined with a bet on not-p at the
same odds, the total amount of money at stake in each bet being five dollars.
Under this arrangement, if p turned out to be true one would win two dollars by
the first bet but lose three dollars by the second, and if p turned out to be
false one would win two dollars by the second bet but lose three dollars by the
first. Hence, whatever happened, one would lose a dollar. Dutch book argument, the argument that a rational
person’s degrees of belief must conform to the axioms of the probability
calculus, since otherwise, by the Dutch book theorem, he would be vulnerable to
a Dutch book. R.Ke. Dutch book theorem, the proposition that anyone who a
counts a bet on a proposition p as fair if the odds correspond to his degree of
belief that p is true and who b is willing to make any combination of bets he
would regard individually as fair will be vulnerable to a Dutch book provided
his degrees of belief do not conform to the axioms of the probability calculus.
Thus, anyone of whom a and b are true and whose degree of belief in a
disjunction of two incompatible propositions is not equal to the sum of his
degrees of belief in the two propositions taken individually would be vulnerable
to a Dutch book. Illatum: rational
decision theory -- decidability, as a property of sets, the existence of an
effective procedure a “decision procedure” which, when applied to any object,
determines whether or not the object belongs to the set. A theory or logic is
decidable if and only if the set of its theorems is. Decidability is proved by
describing a decision procedure and showing that it works. The truth table
method, for example, establishes that classical propositional logic is
decidable. To prove that something is not decidable requires a more precise
characterization of the notion of effective procedure. Using one such
characterization for which there is ample evidence, Church proved that
classical predicate logic is not decidable. decision theory, the theory of
rational decision, often called “rational choice theory” in political science
and other social sciences. The basic idea probably Pascal’s was published at
the end of Arnaud’s Port-Royal Logic 1662: “To judge what one must do to obtain
a good or avoid an evil one must consider not only the good and the evil in
itself but also the probability of its happening or not happening, and view
geometrically the proportion that all these things have together.” Where goods
and evils are monetary, Daniel Bernoulli 1738 spelled the idea out in terms of
expected utilities as figures of merit for actions, holding that “in the
absence of the unusual, the utility resulting from a fixed small increase in
wealth will be inversely proportional to the quantity of goods previously
possessed.” This was meant to solve the St. Petersburg paradox: Peter tosses a
coin . . . until it should land “heads” [on toss n]. . . . He agrees to give
Paul one ducat if he gets “heads” on the very first throw [and] with each additional
throw the number of ducats he must pay is doubled. . . . Although the standard
calculation shows that the value of Paul’s expectation [of gain] is infinitely
great [i.e., the sum of all possible gains $ probabilities, 2n/2 $ ½n], it has
. . . to be admitted that any fairly reasonable man would sell his chance, with
great pleasure, for twenty ducats. In this case Paul’s expectation of utility
is indeed finite on Bernoulli’s assumption of inverse proportionality; but as
Karl Menger observed 4, Bernoulli’s solution fails if payoffs are so large that
utilities are inversely proportional to probabilities; then only boundedness of
utility scales resolves the paradox. Bernoulli’s idea of diminishing marginal
utility of wealth survived in the neoclassical texts of W. S. Jevons 1871,
Alfred Marshall 0, and A. C. Pigou 0, where personal utility judgment was
understood to cause preference. But in the 0s, operationalistic arguments of
John Hicks and R. G. D. Allen persuaded economists that on the contrary, 1 utility
is no cause but a description, in which 2 the numbers indicate preference order
but not intensity. In their Theory of Games and Economic Behavior 6, John von
Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern undid 2 by pushing 1 further: ordinal preferences
among risky prospects were now seen to be describable on “interval” scales of
subjective utility like the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales for temperature, so
that once utilities, e.g., 0 and 1, are assigned to any prospect and any
preferred one, utilities of all prospects are determined by overall preferences
among gambles, i.e., probability distributions over prospects. Thus, the
utility midpoint between two prospects is marked by the distribution assigning
probability ½ to each. In fact, Ramsey had done that and more in a
little-noticed essay “Truth and Probability,” 1 teasing subjective
probabilities as well as utilities out of ordinal preferences among gambles. In
a form independently invented by L. J. Savage Foundations of Statistics, 4,
this approach is now widely accepted as a basis for rational decision analysis.
The 8 book of that title by Howard Raiffa became a theoretical centerpiece of
M.B.A. curricula, whose graduates diffused it through industry, government, and
the military in a simplified format for defensible decision making, namely,
“costbenefit analyses,” substituting expected numbers of dollars, deaths, etc.,
for preference-based expected utilities. Social choice and group decision form
the native ground of interpersonal comparison of personal utilities. Thus, John
C. Harsanyi 5 proved that if 1 individual and social preferences all satisfy
the von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms, and 2 society is indifferent between two
prospects whenever all individuals are, and 3 society prefers one prospect to
another whenever someone does and nobody has the opposite preference, then
social utilities are expressible as sums of individual utilities on interval
scales obtained by stretching or compressing the individual scales by amounts
determined by the social preferences. Arguably, the theorem shows how to derive
interpersonal comparisons of individual preference intensities from social
preference orderings that are thought to treat individual preferences on a par.
Somewhat earlier, Kenneth Arrow had written that “interpersonal comparison of
utilities has no meaning and, in fact, there is no meaning relevant to welfare
economics in the measurability of individual utility” Social Choice and
Individual Values, 1 a position later
abandoned P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman, eds., Philosophy, Politics and
Society, 7. Arrow’s “impossibility theorem” is illustrated by cyclic
preferences observed by Condorcet in 1785 among candidates A, B, C of voters 1,
2, 3, who rank them ABC, BCA, CAB, respectively, in decreasing order of preference,
so that majority rule yields intransitive preferences for the group of three,
of whom two 1, 3 prefer A to B and two 1, 2 prefer B to C but two 2, 3 prefer C
to A. In general, the theorem denies existence of technically democratic
schemes for forming social preferences from citizens’ preferences. A clause
tendentiously called “independence of irrelevant alternatives” in the
definition of ‘democratic’ rules out appeal to preferences among non-candidates
as a way to form social preferences among candidates, thus ruling out the
preferences among gambles used in Harsanyi’s theorem. See John Broome, Weighing
Goods, 1, for further information and references. Savage derived the agent’s
probabilities for states as well as utilities for consequences from preferences
among abstract acts, represented by deterministic assignments of consequences
to states. An act’s place in the preference ordering is then reflected by its
expected utility, a probability-weighted average of the utilities of its
consequences in the various states. Savage’s states and consequences formed
distinct sets, with every assignment of consequences to states constituting an
act. While Ramsey had also taken acts to be functions from states to
consequences, he took consequences to be propositions sets of states, and
assigned utilities to states, not consequences. A further step in that
direction represents acts, too, by propositions see Ethan Bolker, Functions
Resembling Quotients of Measures,
Microfilms, 5; and Richard Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision, 5, 0.
Bolker’s representation theorem states conditions under which preferences
between truth of propositions determine probabilities and utilities nearly
enough to make the position of a proposition in one’s preference ranking
reflect its “desirability,” i.e., one’s expectation of utility conditionally on
it. decision theory decision theory 208
208 Alongside such basic properties as transitivity and connexity, a
workhorse among Savage’s assumptions was the “sure-thing principle”:
Preferences among acts having the same consequences in certain states are
unaffected by arbitrary changes in those consequences. This implies that agents
see states as probabilistically independent of acts, and therefore implies that
an act cannot be preferred to one that dominates it in the sense that the
dominant act’s consequences in each state have utilities at least as great as
the other’s. Unlike the sure thing principle, the principle ‘Choose so as to
maximize CEU conditional expectation of utility’ rationalizes action aiming to
enhance probabilities of preferred states of nature, as in quitting cigarettes
to increase life expectancy. But as Nozick pointed out in 9, there are problems
in which choiceworthiness goes by dominance rather than CEU, as when the smoker
like R. A. Fisher in 9 believes that the statistical association between
smoking and lung cancer is due to a genetic allele, possessors of which are
more likely than others to smoke and to contract lung cancer, although among
them smokers are not especially likely to contract lung cancer. In such
“Newcomb” problems choices are ineffectual signs of conditions that agents
would promote or prevent if they could. Causal decision theories modify the CEU
formula to obtain figures of merit distinguishing causal efficacy from
evidentiary significance e.g., replacing
conditional probabilities by probabilities of counterfactual conditionals; or
forming a weighted average of CEU’s under all hypotheses about causes, with
agents’ unconditional probabilities of hypotheses as weights; etc. Mathematical
statisticians leery of subjective probability have cultivated Abraham Wald’s
Theory of Statistical Decision Functions 0, treating statistical estimation,
experimental design, and hypothesis testing as zero-sum “games against nature.”
For an account of the opposite assimilation, of game theory to probabilistic
decision theory, see Skyrms, Dynamics of Rational Deliberation 0. The
“preference logics” of Sören Halldén, The Logic of ‘Better’ 7, and G. H. von
Wright, The Logic of Preference 3, sidestep probability. Thus, Halldén holds
that when truth of p is preferred to truth of q, falsity of q must be preferred
to falsity of p, and von Wright with Aristotle holds that “this is more
choiceworthy than that if this is choiceworthy without that, but that is not
choiceworthy without this” Topics III, 118a. Both principles fail in the
absence of special probabilistic assumptions, e.g., equiprobability of p with
q. Received wisdom counts decision theory clearly false as a description of
human behavior, seeing its proper status as normative. But some, notably
Davidson, see the theory as constitutive of the very concept of preference, so
that, e.g., preferences can no more be intransitive than propositions can be at
once true and false. Rational decision:
envelope paradox, an apparent paradox in decision theory that runs as follows.
You are shown two envelopes, M and N, and are reliably informed that each
contains some finite positive amount of money, that the amount in one
unspecified envelope is twice the amount in the unspecified other, and that you
may choose only one. Call the amount in M ‘m’ and that in N ‘n’. It might seem
that: there is a half chance that m % 2n and a half chance that m = n/2, so
that the “expected value” of m is ½2n ! ½n/2 % 1.25n, so that you should prefer
envelope M. But by similar reasoning it might seem that the expected value of n
is 1.25m, so that you should prefer envelope N.
illatum. rationality – while Grice never used to employ ‘rationality’ he
learned to! In “Retrospective epilogue” in fact he refers to the principle of
conversational helpfulness as ‘promoting conversational rationality.’
Rationality as a faculty psychology, the view that the mind is a collection of
departments responsible for distinct psychological functions. Related to
faculty psychology is the doctrine of localization of function, wherein each
faculty has a specific brain location. Faculty psychologies oppose theories of
mind as a unity with one function e.g., those of Descartes and associationism
or as a unity with various capabilities e.g., that of Ockham, and oppose the
related holistic distributionist or mass-action theory of the brain. Faculty
psychology began with Aristotle, who divided the human soul into five special
senses, three inner senses common sense, imagination, memory and active and
passive mind. In the Middle Ages e.g., Aquinas Aristotle’s three inner senses
were subdivied, creating more elaborate lists of five to seven inward wits.
Islamic physicianphilosophers such as Avicenna integrated Aristotelian faculty
psychology with Galenic medicine by proposing brain locations for the
faculties. Two important developments in faculty psychology occurred during the
eighteenth century. First, Scottish philosophers led by Reid developed a version
of faculty psychology opposed to the empiricist and associationist psychologies
of Locke and Hume. The Scots proposed that humans were endowed by God with a
set of faculties permitting knowledge of the world and morality. The Scottish
system exerted considerable influence in the United States, where it was widely
taught as a moral, character-building discipline, and in the nineteenth century
this “Old Psychology” opposed the experimental “New Psychology.” Second,
despite then being called a charlatan, Franz Joseph Gall 17581828 laid the
foundation for modern neuropsychology in his work on localization of function.
Gall rejected existing faculty psychologies as philosophical, unbiological, and
incapable of accounting for everyday behavior. Gall proposed an innovative
behavioral and biological list of faculties and brain localizations based on
comparative anatomy, behavior study, and measurements of the human skull.
Today, faculty psychology survives in trait and instinct theories of
personality, Fodor’s theory that mental functions are implemented by
neurologically “encapsulated” organs, and localizationist theories of the
brain. rationalism, the position that reason has precedence over other ways of
acquiring knowledge, or, more strongly, that it is the unique path to
knowledge. It is most often encountered as a view in epistemology, where it is
traditionally contrasted with empiricism, the view that the senses are primary
with respect to knowledge. It is important here to distinguish empiricism with
respect to knowledge from empiricism with respect to ideas or concepts; whereas
the former is opposed to rationalism, the latter is opposed to the doctrine of
innate ideas. The term is also encountered in the philosophy of religion, where
it may designate those who oppose the view that revelation is central to
religious knowledge; and in ethics, where it may designate those who oppose the
view that ethical principles are grounded in or derive from emotion, empathy,
or some other non-rational foundation. The term ‘rationalism’ does not
generally designate a single precise philosophical position; there are several
ways in which reason can have precedence, and several accounts of knowledge to
which it may be opposed. Furthermore, the very term ‘reason’ is not altogether
clear. Often it designates a faculty of the soul, distinct from sensation,
imagination, and memory, which is the ground of a priori knowledge. But there
are other conceptions of reason, such as the narrower conception in which
Pascal opposes reason to “knowledge of the heart” Pensées, section 110, or the
computational conception of reason Hobbes advances in Leviathan I.5. The term
might thus be applied to a number of philosophical positions from the ancients
down to the present. Among the ancients, ‘rationalism’ and ‘empiricism’
especially denote two schools of medicine, the former relying primarily on a
theoretical knowledge of the hidden workings of the human body, the latter
relying on direct clinical experience. The term might also be used to characterize
the views of Plato and later Neoplatonists, who argued that we have pure
intellectual access to the Forms and general principles that govern reality,
and rejected sensory knowledge of the imperfect realization of those Forms in
the material world. In recent philosophical writing, the term ‘rationalism’ is
most closely associated with the positions of a group of seventeenth-century
philosophers, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and sometimes Malebranche. These
thinkers are often referred to collectively as the Continental rationalists,
and are generally opposed to the socalled British empiricists, Locke, Berkeley,
and Hume. All of the former share the view that we have a non-empirical and
rational access to the truth about the way the world is, and all privilege
reason over knowledge derived from the senses. These philosophers are also
attracted to mathematics as a model for knowledge in general. But these common
views are developed in quite different ways. Descartes claims to take his
inspiration from mathematics not
mathematics as commonly understood, but the analysis of the ancients. According
to Descartes, we start from first principles known directly by reason the
cogito ergo sum of the Meditations, what he calls intuition in his Rules for
the Direction of the Mind; all other knowledge is deduced from there. A central
aim of his Meditations is to show that this faculty of reason is trustworthy.
The senses, on the other hand, are generally deceptive, leading us to mistake
sensory qualities for real qualities of extended bodies, and leading us to the
false philosophy of Aristotle and to Scholasticism. Descartes does not reject
the senses altogether; in Meditation VI he argues that the senses are most
often correct in circumstances concerning the preservation of life. Perhaps
paradoxically, experiment is important to Descartes’s scientific work. However,
his primary interest is in the theoretical account of the phenomena experiment
reveals, and while his position is unclear, he may have considered experiment
as an auxiliary to intuition and deduction, or as a second-best method that can
be used with problems too complex for pure reason. Malebranche, following
Descartes, takes similar views in his Search after Truth, though unlike
Descartes, he emphasizes original sin as the cause of our tendency to trust the
senses. Spinoza’s model for knowledge is Euclidean geometry, as realized in the
geometrical form of the Ethics. Spinoza explicitly argues that we cannot have
adequate ideas of the world through sensation Ethics II, propositions 1631. In
the Ethics he does see a role for the senses in what he calls knowledge of the
first and knowledge of the second kinds, and in the earlier Emendation of the
Intellect, he suggests that the senses may be auxiliary aids to genuine
knowledge. But the senses are imperfect and far less valuable, according to
Spinoza, than intuition, i.e., knowledge of the third kind, from which sensory
experience is excluded. Spinoza’s rationalism is implicit in a central
proposition of the Ethics, in accordance with which “the order and connection
of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” Ethics II,
proposition 7, allowing one to infer causal connections between bodies and
states of the material world directly from the logical connections between
ideas. Leibniz, too, emphasizes reason over the senses in a number of ways. In
his youth he believed that it would be possible to calculate the truth-value of
every sentence by constructing a logical language whose structure mirrors the structure
of relations between concepts in the world. This view is reflected in his
mature thought in the doctrine that in every truth, the concept of the
predicate is contained in the concept of the subject, so that if one could take
the God’s-eye view which, he concedes, we cannot, one could determine the truth
or falsity of any proposition without appeal to experience Discourse on
Metaphysics, section 8. Leibniz also argues that all truths are based on two
basic principles, the law of non-contradiction for necessary truths, and the
principle of sufficient reason for contingent truths Monadology, section 31,
both of which can be known a priori. And so, at least in principle, the
truth-values of all propositions can be determined a priori. This reflects his
practice in physics, where he derives a number of laws of motion from the
principle of the equality of cause and effect, which can be known a priori on
the basis of the principle of sufficient reason. But, at the same time,
referring to the empirical school of ancient medicine, Leibniz concedes that
“we are all mere Empirics in three fourths of our actions” Monadology, section
28. Each of the so-called Continental rationalists does, in his own way,
privilege reason over the senses. But the common designation ‘Continental
rationalism’ arose only much later, probably in the nineteenth century. For
their contemporaries, more impressed with their differences than their common
doctrines, the Continental rationalists did not form a single homogeneous
school of thought. Illatum: rationality. In its primary sense, rationality is a
normative concept that philosophers have generally tried to characterize in
such a way that, for any action, belief, or desire, if it is rational we ought
to choose it. No such positive characterization has achieved anything close to
universal assent because, often, several competing actions, beliefs, or desires
count as rational. Equating what is rational with what is rationally required
eliminates the category of what is rationally allowed. Irrationality seems to
be the more fundamental normative category; for although there are conflicting
substantive accounts of irrationality, all agree that to say of an action,
belief, or desire that it is irrational is to claim that it should always be
avoided. Rationality is also a descriptive concept that refers to those
intellectual capacities, usually involving the ability to use language, that
distinguish persons from plants and most other animals. There is some dispute
about whether some non-human animals, e.g., dolphins and chimpanzees, are
rational in this sense. Theoretical rationality applies to beliefs. An
irrational belief is one that obviously conflicts with what one should know.
This characterization of an irrational belief is identical with the psychiatric
characterization of a delusion. It is a personrelative concept, because what
obviously conflicts with what should be known by one person need not obviously
conflict with what should be known by another. On this account, any belief that
is not irrational counts as rational. Many positive characterizations of
rational beliefs have been proposed, e.g., 1 beliefs that are either
self-evident or derived from self-evident beliefs by a reliable procedure and 2
beliefs that are consistent with the overwhelming majority of one’s beliefs;
but all of these positive characterizations have encountered serious
objections. Practical rationality applies to actions. For some philosophers it
is identical to instrumental rationality. On this view, commonly called
instrumentalism, acting rationally simply means acting in a way that is
maximally efficient in achieving one’s goals. However, most philosophers
realize that achieving one goal may conflict with achieving another, and
therefore require that a rational action be one that best achieves one’s goals
only when these goals are considered as forming a system. Others have added
that all of these goals must be ones that would be chosen given complete
knowledge and understanding of what it would be like to achieve these goals. On
the latter account of rational action, the system of goals is chosen by all
persons for themselves, and apart from consistency there is no external
standpoint from which to evaluate rationally any such system. Thus, for a
person with a certain system of goals it will be irrational to act morally.
Another account of rational action is not at all person-relative. On this
account, to act rationally is to act on universalizable principles, so that
what is a reason for one person must be a reason for everyone. One point of
such an account is to make it rationally required to act morally, thus making
all immoral action irrational. However, if to call an action irrational is to
claim that everyone would hold that it is always to be avoided, then it is
neither irrational to act immorally in order to benefit oneself or one’s
friends, nor irrational to act morally even when that goes against one’s system
of goals. Only a negative characterization of what is rational as what is not
irrational, which makes it rationally permissible to act either morally or in
accordance with one’s own system of goals, as long as these goals meet some
minimal objective standard, seems likely to be adequate. Illatum:
rationalization, 1 an apparent explanation of a person’s action or attitude by
appeal to reasons that would justify or exculpate the person for it if, contrary to fact, those reasons were to
explain it; 2 an explanation or interpretation made from a rational perspective.
In sense 1, rationalizations are pseudo-explanations, often motivated by a
desire to exhibit an item in a favorable light. Such rationalizations sometimes
involve self-deception. Depending on one’s view of justification, a
rationalization might justify an action
by adducing excellent reasons for its performance even if the agent, not having acted for those
reasons, deserves no credit for so acting. In sense 2 a sense popularized in
philosophy by Donald Davidson, rationalizations of intentional actions are
genuine explanations in terms of agents’ reasons. In this sense, we provide a
rationalization for or
“rationalize” Robert’s shopping at Zed’s
by identifying the reasons for which he does so: e.g., he wants to buy an
excellent kitchen knife and believes that Zed’s sells the best cutlery in town.
Also, the reasons for which an agent acts may themselves be said to rationalize
the action. Beliefs, desires, and intentions may be similarly rationalized. In
each case, a rationalization exhibits the rationalized item as, to some degree,
rational from the standpoint of the person to whom it is attributed. rational
psychology, the a priori study of the mind. This was a large component of
eighteenthand nineteenth-century psychology, and was contrasted by its
exponents with empirical psychology, which is rooted in contingent experience.
The term ‘rational psychology’ may also designate a mind, or form of mind,
having the property of rationality. Current philosophy of mind includes much
discussion of rational psychologies, but the notion is apparently ambiguous. On
one hand, there is rationality as intelligibility. This is a minimal coherence,
say of desires or inferences, that a mind must possess to be a mind. For
instance, Donald Davidson, many functionalists, and some decision theorists
believe there are principles of rationality of this sort that constrain the
appropriate attribution of beliefs and desires to a person, so that a mind must
meet such constraints if it is to have beliefs and desires. On another pole,
there is rationality as justification. For someone’s psychology to have this
property is for that psychology to be as reason requires it to be, say for that
person’s inferences and desires to be supported by proper reasons given their
proper weight, and hence to be justified. Rationality as justification is a
normative property, which it would seem some minds lack. But despite the
apparent differences between these two sorts of rationality, some important
work in philosophy of mind implies either that these two senses in fact
collapse, or at least that there are intervening and significant senses, so
that things at least a lot like normative principles constrain what our
psychologies are. rational
reconstruction, also called logical reconstruction, translation of a discourse
of a certain conceptual type into a discourse of another conceptual type with
the aim of making it possible to say everything or everything important that is
expressible in the former more clearly or perspicuously in the latter. The
best-known example is one in Carnap’s Der Logische Aufbau der Welt. Carnap
attempted to translate discourse concerning physical objects e.g., ‘There is a
round brown table’ into discourse concerning immediate objects of sense
experience ‘Color patches of such-and-such chromatic characteristics and shape
appear in such-and-such a way’. He was motivated by the empiricist doctrine
that immediate sense experience is conceptually prior to everything else,
including our notion of a physical object. In addition to talk of immediate
sense experience, Carnap relied on logic and set theory. Since their use is
difficult to reconcile with strict empiricism, his translation would not have
fully vindicated empiricism even if it had succeeded. Illatum: rationality -- reasons for action,
considerations that call for or justify action. They may be subjective or
objective. A subjective reason is a consideration an agent understands to
support a course of action, whether or not it actually does. An objective
reason is one that does support a course of action, regardless of whether the
agent realizes it. What are cited as reasons may be matters either of fact or
of value, but when facts are cited values are also relevant. Thus the fact that
cigarette smoke contains nicotine is a reason for not smoking only because nicotine
has undesirable effects. The most important evaluative reasons are normative
reasons i.e., considerations having e.g.
ethical force. Facts become obligating reasons when, in conjunction with
normative considerations, they give rise to an obligation. Thus in view of the
obligation to help the needy, the fact that others are hungry is an obligating
reason to see they are fed. Reasons for action enter practical thinking as the
contents of beliefs, desires, and other mental states. But not all the reasons one
has need motivate the corresponding behavior. Thus I may recognize an
obligation to pay taxes, yet do so only for fear of punishment. If so, then
only my fear is an explaining reason for my action. An overriding reason is one
that takes precedence over all others. It is often claimed that moral reasons
override all others objectively, and should do so subjectively as well.
Finally, one may speak of an all-things-considered reason one that after due consideration is taken as
finally determinative of what shall be done.
reasons for belief, roughly, bases of belief. The word ‘belief’ is
commonly used to designate both a particular sort of psychological state, a
state of believing, and a particular intentional content or proposition
believed. Reasons for belief exhibit an analogous duality. A proposition, p,
might be said to provide a normative reason to believe a proposition, q, for
instance, when p bears some appropriate warranting relation to q. And p might
afford a perfectly good reason to believe q, even though no one, as a matter of
fact, believes either p or q. In contrast, p is a reason that I have for
believing q, if I believe p and p counts as a reason in the sense above to
believe q. Undoubtedly, I have reason to believe countless propositions that I
shall never, as it happens, come to believe. Suppose, however, that p is a
reason for which I believe q. In that case, I must believe both p and q, and p
must be a reason to believe q or, at any
rate, I must regard it as such. It may be that I must, in addition, believe q
at least in part because I believe p. Reasons in these senses are inevitably
epistemic; they turn on considerations of evidence, truth-conduciveness, and
the like. But not all reasons for belief are of this sort. An explanatory reason,
a reason why I believe p, may simply be an explanation for my having or coming
to have this belief. Perhaps I believe p because I was brainwashed, or struck
on the head, or because I have strong non-epistemic motives for this belief. I
might, of course, hold the belief on the basis of unexceptionable epistemic
grounds. When this is so, my believing p may both warrant and explain my
believing q. Reflections of this sort can lead to questions concerning the
overall or “all-things-considered” reasonableness of a given belief. Some
philosophers e.g., Clifford argue that a belief’s reasonableness depends
exclusively on its epistemic standing: my believing p is reasonable for me
provided it is epistemically reasonable for me; where belief is concerned,
epistemic reasons are overriding. Others, siding with James, have focused on
the role of belief in our psychological economy, arguing that the
reasonableness of my holding a given belief can be affected by a variety of
non-epistemic considerations. Suppose I have some evidence that p is false, but
that I stand to benefit in a significant way from coming to believe p. If that
is so, and if the practical advantages of my holding p considerably outweigh
the practical disadvantages, it might seem obvious that my holding p is
reasonable for me in some all-embracing sense.
Ray, J. English naturalist whose work on the structure
and habits of plants and animals led to important conclusions on the
methodology of classification and gave a strong impetus to the design argument
in natural theology. In an early paper he argued that the determining
characteristics of a species are those transmitted by seed, since color, scent,
size, etc., vary with climate and nutriment. Parallels from the animal kingdom
suggested the correct basis for classification would be structural. But we have
no knowledge of real essences. Our experience of nature is of a continuum, and
for practical purposes kinships are best identified by a plurality of criteria.
His mature theory is set out in Dissertatio Brevis 1696 and Methodus Emendata
1703. The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation 1691 and three
revisions was a best-selling compendium of Ray’s own scientific learning and
was imitated and quarried by many later exponents of the design argument.
Philosophically, he relied on others, from Cicero to Cudworth, and was
superseded by Paley.
Res: “Possibly the most important word in philosophy.”
Grice -- Realism – causal realism -- direct realism, the theory that perceiving
is epistemically direct, unmediated by conscious or unconscious inference.
Direct realism is distinguished, on the one hand, from indirect, or
representative, realism, the view that perceptual awareness of material objects
is mediated by an awareness of sensory representations, and, on the other hand,
from forms of phenomenalism that identify material objects with states of mind.
It might be thought that direct realism is incompatible with causal theories of
perception. Such theories invoke causal chains leading from objects perceived
causes to perceptual states of perceivers effects. Since effects must be
distinct from causes, the relation between an instance of perceiving and an
object perceived, it would seem, cannot be direct. This, however, confuses
epistemic directness with causal directness. A direct realist need only be
committed to the former. In perceiving a tomato to be red, the content of my
perceptual awareness is the tomato’s being red. I enter this state as a result
of a complex causal process, perhaps. But my perception may be direct in the
sense that it is unmediated by an awareness of a representational sensory state
from which I am led to an awareness of the tomato. Perceptual error, and more
particularly, hallucinations and illusions, are usually thought to pose special
difficulties for direct realists. My hallucinating a red tomato, for instance,
is not my being directly aware of a red tomato, since I may hallucinate the
tomato even when none is present. Perhaps, then, my hallucinating a red tomato
is partly a matter of my being directly aware of a round, red sensory
representation. And if my awareness in this case is indistinguishable from my
perception of an actual red tomato, why not suppose that I am aware of a
sensory representation in the veridical case as well? A direct realist may
respond by denying that hallucinations are in fact indistinguishable from
veridical perceivings or by calling into question the claim that, if sensory
representations are required to explain hallucinations, they need be postulated
in the veridical case. reality, in
standard philosophical usage, how things actually are, in contrast with their
mere appearance. Appearance has to do with how things seem to a particular
perceiver or group of perceivers. Reality is sometimes said to be
twoway-independent of appearance. This means that appearance does not determine
reality. First, no matter how much agreement there is, based on appearance,
about the nature of reality, it is always conceivable that reality differs from
appearance. Secondly, appearances are in no way required for reality: reality
can outstrip the range of all investigations that we are in a position to make.
It may be that reality always brings with it the possibility of appearances, in
the counterfactual sense that if there were observers suitably situated, then
if conditions were not conducive to error, they would have experiences of
such-and-such a kind. But the truth of such a counterfactual seems to be
grounded in the facts of reality. Phenomenalism holds, to the contrary, that
the facts of reality can be explained by such counterfactuals, but
phenomenalists have failed to produce adequate non-circular analyses. The
concept of reality on which it is two-wayindependent of experience is sometimes
called objective reality. However, Descartes used this phrase differently, to
effect a contrast with formal or actual reality. He held that there must be at
least as much reality in the efficient and total cause of an effect as in the
effect itself, and applied this principle as follows: “There must be at least
as much actual or formal reality in the efficient and total cause of an idea as
objective reality in the idea itself.” The objective reality of an idea seems
to have to do with its having representational content, while actual or formal
reality has to do with existence independent of the mind. Thus the quoted
principle relates features of the cause of an idea to the representational
content of the idea. Descartes’s main intended applications were to God and
material objects.
recursum: Grice, ‘anti-sneak.” The third clause (III) in
Grice’s final analysis of utterer’s meaning is self-referential and recursive,
in a good way, in that (III) itself counts as one of the ‘inference elements’
(that Grice symbolises as “E”) that (III) specifies. Grice loved the heraldy
metaphor of the escrutcheon – and the Droste effect. Cf. ‘speculative,’
--. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice’s
mise-en-abyme,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa
Grice, Liguria, Italia. Then there is the recursive function theory, an area of
formal semantics that takes as its point of departure the study of an extremely
limited class of functions, the recursive functions. Recursive function theory
is a branch of higher arithmetic number theory, or the theory of natural
numbers whose universe of discourse is restricted to the non-negative integers:
0, 1, 2, etc. However, the techniques and results of recursive function theory
do not resemble those traditionally associated with number theory. The class of
recursive functions is defined in a way that makes evident that every recursive
function can be computed or calculated. The hypothesis that every calculable
function is recursive, which is known as Church’s thesis, is often taken as a kind
of axiom in recursive function theory. This theory has played an important role
in philosophy of mathematics, especially when epistemological issues are
studied, since as Grice knows, super-knowing may be hard, but not impossible!
Redintegratum: a psychological process, similar to or
involving classical conditioning, in which one feature of a situation causes a
person to recall, visualize, or recompose an entire original situation. On
opening a pack of cigarettes, a person may visualize the entire process,
including striking the match, lighting the cigarette, and puffing.
Redintegration is used as a technique in behavior therapy, e.g. when someone
trying to refrain from smoking is exposed to unpleasant odors and vivid
pictures of lungs caked with cancer, and then permitted to smoke. If the
unpleasantness of the odors and visualization outweighs the reinforcement of
smoking, the person may resist smoking. Philosophically, for Grice, so-called
barbarically “redintegratum” is of interest for two reasons. First, the process
may be critical in prudence. By bringing long-range consequences of behavior
into focus in present deliberation, redintegration may help to protect
long-range interests. Second, redintegration offers a role for visual images in
producing behavior. Images figure in paradigmatic cases of redintegration. In
recollecting pictures of cancerous lungs, the person may refrain from smoking.
Pears: “Oddly, it didn’t work with Grice who remained a bit of a chain-smoker – but of Navy’s Cut only,
except for the very last. He never smelt the odour in a bad way.”
reduction, the replacement of one expression by a
second expression that differs from the first in prima facie reference.
So-called reductions have been meant in the sense of uniformly applicable
explicit definitions, contextual definitions, or replacements suitable only in
a limited range of contexts. Thus, authors have spoken of reductive conceptual
analyses, especially in the early days of analytic philosophy. In particular,
in the sensedatum theory talk of physical objects was supposed to be reduced to
talk of sense-data by explicit definitions or other forms of conceptual
analysis. Logical positivists talked of the reduction of theoretical vocabulary
to an observational vocabulary, first by explicit definitions, and later by
other devices, such as Carnap’s reduction sentences. These appealed to a test
condition predicate, T e.g., ‘is placed in water’, and a display predicate, D
e.g., ‘dissolves’, to introduce a dispositional or other “non-observational”
term, S e.g., ‘is water-soluble’: Ex [Tx / Dx / Sx], with ‘/’ representing the
material conditional. Negative reduction sentences for non-occurrence of S took
the form Ex [NTx / NDx / - Sx]. For coinciding predicate pairs T and TD and -D
and ND Carnap referred to bilateral reduction sentences: Ex [Tx / Dx S Sx].
Like so many other attempted reductions, reduction sentences did not achieve
replacement of the “reduced” term, S, since they do not fix application of S
when the test condition, T, fails to apply. In the philosophy of mathematics,
logicism claimed that all of mathematics could be reduced to logic, i.e., all
mathematical terms could be defined with the vocabulary of logic and all
theorems of mathematics could be derived from the laws of logic supplemented by
these definitions. Russell’s Principia Mathematica carried out much of such a
program with a reductive base of something much more like what we now call set
theory rather than logic, strictly conceived. Many now accept the reducibility
of mathematics to set theory, but only in a sense in which reductions are not
unique. For example, the natural numbers can equally well be modeled as classes
of equinumerous sets or as von Neumann ordinals. This non-uniqueness creates
serious difficulties, with suggestions that set-theoretic reductions can throw
light on what numbers and other mathematical objects “really are.” In contrast,
we take scientific theories to tell us, unequivocally, that water is H20 and
that temperature is mean translational kinetic energy. Accounts of theory
reduction in science attempt to analyze the circumstance in which a “reducing
theory” appears to tell us the composition of objects or properties described
by a “reduced theory.” The simplest accounts follow the general pattern of
reduction: one provides “identity statements” or “bridge laws,” with at least
the form of explicit definitions, for all terms in the reduced theory not
already appearing in the reducing theory; and then one argues that the reduced
theory can be deduced from the reducing theory augmented by the definitions. For
example, the laws of thermodynamics are said to be deducible from those of
statistical mechanics, together with statements such as ‘temperature is mean
translational kinetic energy’ and ‘pressure is mean momentum transfer’. How
should the identity statements or bridge laws be understood? It takes empirical
investigation to confirm statements such as that temperature is mean
translational kinetic energy. Consequently, some have argued, such statements
at best constitute contingent correlations rather than strict identities. On
the other hand, if the relevant terms and their extensions are not mediated by
analytic definitions, the identity statements may be analogized to identities
involving two names, such as ‘Cicero is Tully’, where it takes empirical investigation
to establish that the two names happen to have the same referent. One can
generalize the idea of theory reduction in a variety of ways. One may require
the bridge laws to suffice for the deduction of the reduced from the reducing
theory without requiring that the bridge laws take the form of explicit
identity statements or biconditional correlations. Some authors have also
focused on the fact that in practice a reducing theory T2 corrects or refines
the reduced theory T1, so that it is really only a correction or refinement,
T1*, that is deducible from T2 and the bridge laws. Some have consequently
applied the term ‘reduction’ to any pair of theories where the second corrects
and extends the first in ways that explain both why the first theory was as
accurate as it was and why it made the errors that it did. In this extended
sense, relativity is said to reduce Newtonian mechanics. Do the social
sciences, especially psychology, in principle reduce to physics? This prospect
would support the so-called identity theory of mind and body, in particular
resolving important problems in the philosophy of mind, such as the mindbody
problem and the problem of other minds. Many though by no means all are now
skeptical about the prospects for identifying mental properties, and the
properties of other special sciences, with complex physical properties. To
illustrate with an example from economics adapted from Fodor, in the right
circumstances just about any physical object could count as a piece of money.
Thus prospects seem dim for finding a closed and finite statement of the form
‘being a piece of money is . . .’, with only predicates from physics appearing
on the right though some would want to admit infinite definitions in providing
reductions. Similarly, one suspects that attributes, such as pain, are at best
functional properties with indefinitely many possible physical realizations.
Believing that reductions by finitely stable definitions are thus out of reach,
many authors have tried to express the view that mental properties are still
somehow physical by saying that they nonetheless supervene on the physical
properties of the organisms that have them. In fact, these same difficulties
that affect mental properties affect the paradigm case of temperature, and probably
all putative examples of theoretical reduction. Temperature is mean
translational temperature only in gases, and only idealized ones at that. In
other substances, quite different physical mechanisms realize temperature.
Temperature is more accurately described as a functional property, having to do
with the mechanism of heat transfer between bodies, where, in principle, the
required mechanism could be physically realized in indefinitely many ways. In
most and quite possibly all cases of putative theory reduction by strict
identities, we have instead a relation of physical realization, constitution,
or instantiation, nicely illustrated by the property of being a calculator
example taken from Cummins. The property of being a calculator can be physically
realized by an abacus, by devices with gears and levers, by ones with vacuum
tubes or silicon chips, and, in the right circumstances, by indefinitely many
other physical arrangements. Perhaps many who have used ‘reduction’,
particularly in the sciences, have intended the term in this sense of physical
realization rather than one of strict identity. Let us restrict attention to
properties that reduce in the sense of having a physical realization, as in the
cases of being a calculator, having a certain temperature, and being a piece of
money. Whether or not an object counts as having properties such as these will
depend, not only on the physical properties of that object, but on various
circumstances of the context. Intensions of relevant language users constitute
a plausible candidate for relevant circumstances. In at least many cases,
dependence on context arises because the property constitutes a functional
property, where the relevant functional system calculational practices, heat
transfer, monetary systems are much larger than the propertybearing object in
question. These examples raise the question of whether many and perhaps all
mental properties depend ineliminably on relations to things outside the
organisms that have the mental properties.
Then there is the reduction sentence, for a given predicate Q3 of
space-time points in a first-order language, any universal sentence S1 of the
form: x [Q1x / Q2x / Q3 x], provided that the predicates Q1 and Q2 are
consistently applicable to the same space-time points. If S1 has the form given
above and S2 is of the form x [Q4x / Q5 / - Q6] and either S1 is a reduction
sentence for Q3 or S2 is a reduction sentence for -Q3, the pair {S1, S2} is a
reduction pair for Q3. If Q1 % Q4 and Q2 % - Q5, the conjunction of S1 and S2
is equivalent to a bilateral reduction sentence for Q3 of the form x [Q1 / Q3 S
Q2]. These concepts were introduced by Carnap in “Testability and Meaning,”
Philosophy of Science 637, to modify the verifiability criterion of meaning to
a confirmability condition where terms can be introduced into meaningful
scientific discourse by chains of reduction pairs rather than by definitions.
The incentive for this modification seems to have been to accommodate the use
of disposition predicates in scientific discourse. Carnap proposed explicating
a disposition predicate Q3 by bilateral reduction sentences for Q3. An
important but controversial feature of Carnap’s approach is that it avoids
appeal to nonextensional conditionals in explicating disposition predicates. Then there is the reductio ad absurdum,
“Tertullian’s favourite proof,” – Grice. 1 The principles A / - A / -A and -A /
A / A. 2 The argument forms ‘If A then B and not-B; therefore, not-A’ and ‘If
not-A then B and not-B; therefore, A’ and arguments of these forms. Reasoning
via such arguments is known as the method of indirect proof. 3 The rules of
inference that permit i inferring not-A having derived a contradiction from A
and ii inferring A having derived a contradiction from not-A. Both rules hold
in classical logic and come to the same thing in any logic with the law of
double negation. In intuitionist logic, however, i holds but ii does not. reductionism: The issue of reductionism
is very much twentieth-century. There was Wisdom’s boring contribtions to Mind
on ‘logical construction,’ Grice read the summary from Broad. One of the twelve
–isms that Grice finds on his ascent to the City of Eternal Truth. He makes the
reductive-reductionist distinction. Against J. M. Rountree. So, for Grice, the bad
heathen vicious Reductionism can be defeated by the good Christian virtuous. Reductivism.
A reductivist tries to define, say, what an emissor communicates (that p) in
terms of the content of that proposition that he intends to transmit to his
recipient. Following Aristotle, Grice reduces the effect to a ‘pathemata
psucheos,’ i. e. a passio of the anima, as Boethius translates. This can be
desiderative (“Thou shalt not kill”) or creditativa (“The grass is green.”)
mise-en-abyme-- reflection principles, two varieties of
internal statements related to correctness in formal axiomatic systems. 1
Proof-theoretic reflection principles are formulated for effectively presented
systems S that contain a modicum of elementary number theory sufficient to
arithmetize their own syntactic notions, as done by Kurt Gödel in his 1 work on
incompleteness. Let ProvS x express that x is the Gödel number of a statement
provable in S, and let nA be the number of A, for any statement A of S. The
weakest reflection principle considered for S is the collection RfnS of all
statements of the form ProvS nA P A, which express that if A is provable from S
then A is true. The proposition ConS expressing the consistency of S is a
consequence of RfnS obtained by taking A to be a disprovable statement. Thus,
by Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem, RfnS is stronger than S if S is
consistent. Reflection principles are used in the construction of ordinal
logics as a systematic means of overcoming incompleteness. 2 Set-theoretic
reflection principles are formulated for systems S of axiomatic set theory,
such as ZF Zermelo-Fraenkel. In the simplest form they express that any
property A in the language of S that holds of the universe of “all” sets,
already holds of a portion of that universe coextensive with some set x. This
takes the form A P DxAx where in Ax all quantifiers of A are relativized to x.
In contrast to proof-theoretic reflection principles, these may be established
as theorems of ZF.
Reflectum -- reflective equilibrium, as usually
conceived, a coherence method for justifying evaluative principles and
theories. The method was first described by Goodman, who proposed it be used to
justify deductive and inductive principles. According to Goodman Fact, Fiction
and Forecast, 5, a particular deductive inference is justified by its
conforming with deductive principles, but these principles are justified in
their turn by conforming with accepted deductive practice. The idea, then, is
that justified inferences and principles are those that emerge from a process
of mutual adjustment, with principles being revised when they sanction
inferences we cannot bring ourselves to accept, and particular inferences being
rejected when they conflict with rules we are unwilling to revise. Thus,
neither principles nor particular inferences are epistemically privileged. At
least in principle, everything is liable to revision. Rawls further articulated
the method of reflective equilibrium and applied it in ethics. According to
Rawls A Theory of Justice, 1, inquiry begins with considered moral judgments,
i.e., judgments about which we are confident and which are free from common
sources of error, e.g., ignorance of facts, insufficient reflection, or
emotional agitation. According to narrow reflective equilibrium, ethical
principles are justified by bringing them into coherence with our considered
moral judgments through a process of mutual adjustment. Rawls, however, pursues
a wide reflective equilibrium. Wide equilibrium is attained by proceeding to
consider alternatives to the moral conception accepted in narrow equilibrium,
along with philosophical arguments that might decide among these conceptions.
The principles and considered judgments accepted in narrow equilibrium are then
adjusted as seems appropriate. One way to conceive of wide reflective
equilibrium is as an effort to construct a coherent system of belief by a
process of mutual adjustment to considered moral judgments and moral principles
as in narrow equilibrium along with the background philosophical, social
scientific, and any other relevant beliefs that might figure in the arguments
for and against alternative moral conceptions, e.g., metaphysical views
regarding the nature of persons. As in Goodman’s original proposal, none of the
judgments, principles, or theories involved is privileged: all are open to
revision.
regressus
vitiosum -- viscious regress – Grice
preferred ‘vicious circle’ versus ‘virtuous circle’ – “Whether virtuous regress
sounds oxymoronic” -- regress that is in some way unacceptable, where a regress
is an infinite series of items each of which is in some sense dependent on a
prior item of a similar sort, e.g. an infinite series of events each of which
is caused by the next prior event in the series. Reasons for holding a regress
to be vicious might be that it is either impossible or that its existence is
inconsistent with things known to be true. The claim that something would lead
to a vicious regress is often made as part of a reductio ad absurdum argument
strategy. An example of this can be found in Aquinas’s argument for the
existence of an uncaused cause on the ground that an infinite regress of causes
is vicious. Those responding to the argument have sometimes contended that this
regress is not in fact vicious and hence that the argument fails. A more
convincing example of a regress is generated by the principle that one’s coming
to know the meaning of a word must always be based on a prior understanding of
other words. If this principle is correct, then one can know the meaning of a
word w1 only on the basis of previously understanding the meanings of other
words w2 and w3. But a further application of the principle yields the result
that one can understand these words w2 and w3 only on the basis of
understanding still other words. This leads to an infinite regress. Since no
one understands any words at birth, the regress implies that no one ever comes
to understand any words. But this is clearly false. Since the existence of this
regress is inconsistent with an obvious truth, we may conclude that the regress
is vicious and consequently that the principle that generates it is false.
Griceian renaissance – (“rinascimento”) after J. L.
Austin’s death -- Erasmus, D., philosopher who played an important role in
Renaissance humanism. Like his
forerunners Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati, Lorenzo Valla, Leonardo Bruni,
and others, Erasmus stressed within philosophy and theology the function of
philological precision, grammatical correctness, and rhetorical elegance. But
for Erasmus the virtues of bonae literarae which are cultivated by the study of
authors of Latin and Grecian antiquity must be decisively linked with Christian
spirituality. Erasmus has been called by Huizinga the first modern intellectual
because he tried to influence and reform the mentality of society by working
within the shadow of ecclesiastical and political leaders. He epistemology,
evolutionary Erasmus, Desiderius 278
278 became one of the first humanists to make efficient use of the then
new medium of printing. His writings embrace various forms, including diatribe,
oration, locution, comment, dialogue, and letter. After studying in Christian
schools and living for a time in the monastery of Steyn near Gouda in the
Netherlands, Erasmus worked for different patrons. He gained a post as
secretary to the bishop of Kamerijk, during which time he wrote his first
published book, the Adagia first edition 1500, a collection of annotated Latin
adages. Erasmus was an adviser to the Emperor Charles V, to whom he dedicated
his Institutio principii christiani 1516. After studies at the of Paris, where he attended lectures by the
humanist Faber Stapulensis, Erasmus was put in touch by his patron Lord
Mountjoy with the British humanists John Colet and Thomas More. Erasmus led a
restless life, residing in several European cities including London, Louvain,
Basel, Freiburg, Bologna, Turin where he was awarded a doctorate of theology in
1506, and Rome. By using the means of modern philology, which led to the ideal
of the bonae literarae, Erasmus tried to reform the Christian-influenced
mentality of his times. Inspired by Valla’s Annotationes to the New Testament,
he completed a new Latin translation of the New Testament, edited the writings
of the early church fathers, especially St. Hieronymus, and wrote several
commentaries on psalms. He tried to regenerate the spirit of early Christianity
by laying bare its original sense against the background of scholastic
interpretation. In his view, the rituals of the existing church blocked the
development of an authentic Christian spirituality. Though Erasmus shared with
Luther a critical approach toward the existing church, he did not side with the
Reformation. His Diatribe de libero arbitrio 1524, in which he pleaded for the
free will of man, was answered by Luther’s De servo arbitrio. The historically
most influential books of Erasmus were Enchirion militis christiani 1503, in
which he attacked hirelings and soldiers; the Encomium moriae id est Laus
stultitiae 1511, a satire on modern life and the ecclesiastical pillars of
society; and the sketches of human life, the Colloquia first published in 1518,
often enlarged until 1553. In the small book Querela pacis 1517, he rejected
the ideology of justified wars propounded by Augustine and Aquinas. Against the
madness of war Erasmus appealed to the virtues of tolerance, friendliness, and
gentleness. All these virtues were for him the essence of Christianity.
Regressus: regression analysis, a part of statistical
theory concerned with the analysis of data with the aim of inferring a linear
functional relationship between assumed independent “regressor” variables and a
dependent “response” variable. A typical example involves the dependence of
crop yield on the application of fertilizer. For the most part, higher amounts
of fertilizer are associated with higher yields. But typically, if crop yield
is plotted vertically on a graph with the horizontal axis representing amount
of fertilizer applied, the resulting points will not fall in a straight line.
This can be due either to random “stochastic” fluctuations involving
measurement errors, irreproducible conditions, or physical indeterminism or to
failure to take into account other relevant independent variables such as
amount of rainfall. In any case, from any resulting “scatter diagram,” it is
possible mathematically to infer a “best-fitting” line. One method is, roughly,
to find the line that minimizes the average absolute distance between a line
and the data points collected. More commonly, the average of the squares of
these distances is minimized this is the “least squares” method. If more than
one independent variable is suspected, the theory of multiple regression, which
takes into account multiple regressors, can be applied: this can help to
minimize an “error term” involved in regression. Computers must be used for the
complex computations typically encountered. Care must be taken in connection
with the possibility that a lawlike, causal dependence is not really linear
even approximately over all ranges of the regressor variables e.g., in certain
ranges of amounts of application, more fertilizer is good for a plant, but too
much is bad.
reichenbach, “’philosopher,’ as we might say,” -- Grice
of science and a major leader of the movement known as logical empiricism. Born
in Hamburg, Reichenbach studies engineering (“if that’s something you study
than learn” – Grice) for a brief time, then turned to mathematics, philosophy,
and physics, which he pursued at Berlin, Munich, and Göttingen (“He kept moving
in the area.”) He takes his doctorate in philosophy at Erlangen with a
dissertation on conceptual aspects of probability, and a degree in mathematics
and physics by state examination at Göttingen – “just in case,” he said. With
Hitler’s rise to power, Reichenbach flees to Istanbul, then to “Los Angeles,” a
town on the western coast of America -- where he remained until his death, “if
not after” (Grice). Prior to his departure from G.y he is professor of philosophy of science at the of Berlin, leader of the Berlin Group of
logical empiricists, and a close associate of Einstein. With Carnap Reichenbach
founds “Erkenntnis,” the major journal of scientific philosophy before World
War II. After a short period early in his career as a follower of Kant,
Reichenbach rejects, “slightly out of the blue” (Grice), the synthetic a priori, chiefly because of
considerations arising out of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Reichenbach remains thereafter champion
of empiricism, adhering to a probabilistic version of the verifiability theory
of cognitive (“if not emotive”) meaning. Never, however, did he embrace the
logical positivism of what he pompously called the “Wiener Kraus.” Ideed, he
explicitly described his principal epistemological work, Experience and
Prediction 8, as his refutation of logical positivism. In particular, his
logical empiricism consisted in rejecting phenomenalism in favor of physicalism;
he rejected phenomenalism both in embracing scientific realism and in insisting
on a thoroughgoing probabilistic analysis of scientific meaning and scientific
knowledge. His main works span a wide range. In Probability and Induction he
advocated the frequency interpretation of probability and offered a pragmatic
justification of induction. In his philosophy of space and time he defended
conventionality of geometry and of simultaneity. In foundations of quantum
mechanics he adopted a three-valued logic to deal with causal anomalies. He
wrote major works on epistemology, logic, laws of nature, counterfactuals, and
modalities. At the time of his death he had almost completed The Direction of
Time, which was published posthumously. Grice cites him profusely in “Actions
and events.” Refs.: Section on Reichenbach in Grice, “Actions and events.”
reid: Scots philosopher, beloved by Woozley, Grice’s
friend at Oxford in the late 1930s. Adefender of common sense and critic of the
theory of impressions and ideas articulated by Hume. Reid was born exactly one
year before Hume, in Strachan, Scotland. A bright lad, he went to
Marischal in Aberdeen at the age of
twelve, studying there with Thomas Blackwell and George Turnbull. The latter
apparently had great influence on Reid. Turnbull contended that knowledge of
the facts of sense and introspection may not be overturned by reasoning and
that volition is the only active power known from experience. Turnbull defended
common sense under the cloak of Berkeley. Reid threw off that cloak with
considerable panache, but he took over the defense of common sense from
Turnbull. Reid moved to a position of regent and lecturer at King’s in Aberdeen in 1751. There he formed, with
John Gregory, the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, which met fortnightly, often
to discuss Hume. Reid published his Inquiry into the Human Mind on the
Principles of Common Sense in 1764, and, in the same year, succeeded Adam Smith
in the chair of moral philosophy at Old
in Glasgow. After 1780 he no longer lectured but devoted himself to his
later works, Essays on the Intellectual Powers 1785 and Essays on the Active
Powers 1788. He was highly influential in Scotland and on the Continent in the
eighteenth century and, from time to time, in England and the United States
thereafter. Reid thought that one of his major contributions was the refutation
of Hume’s theory of impressions and ideas. Reid probably was convinced in his
teens of the truth of Berkeley’s doctrine that what the mind is immediately
aware of is always some idea, but his later study of Hume’s Treatise convinced
him that, contrary to Berkeley, it was impossible to reconcile this doctrine,
the theory of ideas, with common sense. Hume had rigorously developed the
theory, Reid said, and drew forth the conclusions. These, Reid averred, were
absurd. They included the denial of our knowledge of body and mind, and, even
more strikingly, of our conceptions of these things. The reason Reid thought
that Hume’s theory of ideas led to these conclusions was that for Hume, ideas
were faded impressions of sense, hence, sensations. No sensation is like a
quality of a material thing, let alone like the object that has the quality.
Consider movement. Movement is a quality of an object wherein the object
changes from one place to another, but the visual sensation that arises in us
is not the change of place of an object, it is an activity of mind. No two
things could, in fact, be more unalike. If what is before the mind is always
some sensation, whether vivacious or faded, we should never obtain the
conception of something other than a sensation. Hence, we could never even
conceive of material objects and their qualities. Even worse, we could not
conceive of our own minds, for they are not sensations either, and only sensations
are immediately before the mind, according to the theory of ideas. Finally, and
even more absurdly, we could not conceive of past sensations or anything that
does not now exist. For all that is immediately before the mind is sensations
that exist presently. Thus, we could not even conceive of qualities, bodies,
minds, and things that do not now exist. But this is absurd, since it is
obvious that we do think of all these things and even of things that have never
existed. The solution, Reid suggested, is to abandon the theory of ideas and
seek a better one. Many have thought Reid was unfair to Hume and misinterpreted
him. Reid’s Inquiry was presented to Hume by Dr. Blair in manuscript form,
however, and in reply Hume does not at all suggest that he has been
misinterpreted or handled unfairly. Whatever the merits of Reid’s criticism of
Hume, it was the study of the consequences of Hume’s philosophy that accounts
for Reid’s central doctrine of the human faculties and their first principles.
Faculties are innate powers, among them the powers of conception and
conviction. Reid’s strategy in reply to Hume is to build a nativist theory of
conception on the failure of Hume’s theory of ideas. Where the theory of ideas,
the doctrine of impressions and ideas, fails to account for our conception of
something, of qualities, bodies, minds, past things, nonexistent things, Reid
hypothesizes that our conceptions originate from a faculty of the mind, i.e.,
from an innate power of conception. This line of argument reflects Reid’s
respect for Hume, whom he calls the greatest metaphysician of the age, because
Hume drew forth the consequences of a theory of conception, which we might call
associationism, according to which all our conceptions result from associating
sensations. Where the associationism of Hume failed, Reid hypothesized that
conceptions arise from innate powers of conception that manifest themselves in
accordance with original first principles of the mind. The resulting hypotheses
were not treated as a priori necessities but as empirical hypotheses. Reid
notes, therefore, that there are marks by which we can discern the operation of
an innate first principle, which include the early appearance of the operation,
its universality in mankind, and its irresistibility. The operations of the
mind that yield our conceptions of qualities, bodies, and minds all bear these
marks, Reid contends, and that warrants the conclusion that they manifest first
principles. It should be noted that Reid conjectured that nature would be
frugal in the implantation of innate powers, supplying us with no more than
necessary to produce the conceptions we manifest. Reid is, consequently, a
parsimonious empiricist in the development of his nativist psychology. Reid
developed his theory of perception in great detail and his development led,
surprisingly, to his articulation of non-Euclidean geometry. Indeed, while Kant
was erroneously postulating the a priori necessity of Euclidean space, Reid was
developing non-Euclidean geometry to account for the empirical features of
visual space. Reid’s theory of perception is an example of his empiricism. In
the Inquiry, he says that sensations, which are operations of the mind, and
impressions on the organs of sense, which are material, produce our conceptions
of primary and secondary qualities. Sensations produce our original conceptions
of secondary qualities as the causes of those sensations. They are signs that
suggest the existence of the qualities. A sensation of smell suggests the
existence of a quality in the object that causes the sensation, though the
character of the cause is otherwise unknown. Thus, our original conception of
secondary qualities is a relative conception of some unknown cause of a
sensation. Our conception of primary qualities differs not, as Locke suggested,
because of some resemblance between the sensation and the quality for, as
Berkeley noted, there is no resemblance between a sensation and quality, but
because our original conceptions of primary qualities are clear and distinct.
The sensation is a sign that suggests a definite conception of the primary
quality, e.g. a definite conception of the movement of the object, rather than
a mere conception of something, we know not what, that gives rise to the
sensation. These conceptions of qualities signified by sensations result from
the operations of principles of our natural constitution. These signs, which
suggest the conception of qualities, also suggest a conception of some object
that has them. This conception of the object is also relative, in that it is
simply a conception of a subject of the qualities. In the case of physical
qualities, the conception of the object is a conception of a material object.
Though sensations, which are activities of the mind, suggest the existence of
qualities, they are not the only signs of sense perception. Some impressions on
the organs of sense, the latter being material, also give rise to conceptions
of qualities, especially to our conception of visual figure, the seen shape of
the object. But Reid can discern no sensation of shape. There are, of course,
sensations of color, but he is convinced from the experience of those who have
cataracts and see color but not shape that the sensations of color are
insufficient to suggest our conceptions of visual figure. His detailed account
of vision and especially of the seeing of visual figure leads him to one of his
most brilliant moments. He asks what sort of data do we receive upon the eye
and answers that the data must be received at the round surface of the eyeball
and processed within. Thus, visual space is a projection in three dimensions of
the information received on the round surface of the eye, and the geometry of
this space is a non-Euclidean geometry of curved space. Reid goes on to derive
the properties of the space quite correctly, e.g., in concluding that the
angles of a triangle will sum to a figure greater than 180 degrees and thereby
violate the parallels postulate. Thus Reid discovered that a non-Euclidean
geometry was satisfiable and, indeed, insisted that it accurately described the
space of vision not, however, the space of touch, which he thought was
Euclidean. From the standpoint of his theory of perceptual signs, the example
of visual figure helps to clarify his doctrine of the signs of perception. We
do not perceive signs and infer what they signify. This inference, Reid was
convinced by Hume, would lack the support of reasoning, and Reid concluded that
reasoning was, in this case, superfluous. The information received on the surface
of the eye produces our conceptions of visual figure immediately. Indeed, these
signs pass unnoticed as they give rise to the conception of visual figure in
the mind. The relation of sensory signs to the external things they signify
originally is effected by a first principle of the mind without the use of
reason. The first principles that yield our conceptions of qualities and
objects yield convictions of the existence of these things at the same time. A
question naturally arises as to the evidence of these convictions. First
principles yield the convictions along with the conceptions, but do we have
evidence of the existence of the qualities and objects we are convinced exist?
We have the evidence of our senses, of our natural faculties, and that is all the
evidence possible here. Reid’s point is that the convictions in questions
resulting from the original principles of our faculties are immediately
justified. Our faculties are, however, all fallible, so the justification that
our original convictions possess may be refuted. We can now better understand
Reid’s reply to Hume. To account for our convictions of the existence of body,
we must abandon Hume’s theory of ideas, which cannot supply even the conception
of body. We must discover both the original first principles that yield the
conception and conviction of objects and their qualities, and first principles
to account for our convictions of the past, of other thinking beings, and of
morals. Just as there are first principles of perception that yield convictions
of the existence of presently existing objects, so there are first principles
of memory that yield the convictions of the existence of past things,
principles of testimony that yield the convictions of the thoughts of others,
and principles of morals that yield convictions of our obligations. Reid’s
defense of a moral faculty alongside the faculties of perception and memory is
striking. The moral faculty yields conceptions of the justice and injustice of
an action in response to our conception of that action. Reid shrewdly notes
that different people may conceive of the same action in different ways. I may
conceive of giving some money as an action of gratitude, while you may consider
it squandering money. How we conceive of an action depends on our moral
education, but the response of our moral faculty to an action conceived in a
specific way is original and the same in all who have the faculty. Hence
differences in moral judgment are due, not to principles of the moral faculty,
but to differences in how we conceive of our actions. This doctrine of a moral
faculty again provides a counterpoint to the moral philosophy of Hume, for,
according Reid, Thomas Reid, Thomas 785
785 to Reid, judgments of justice and injustice pertaining to all
matters, including promises, contracts, and property, arise from our natural
faculties and do not depend on anything artificial. Reid’s strategy for
defending common sense is clear enough. He thinks that Hume showed that we
cannot arrive at our convictions of external objects, of past events, of the
thoughts of others, of morals, or, for that matter, of our own minds, from
reasoning about impressions and ideas. Since those convictions are a fact,
philosophy must account for them in the only way that remains, by the hypothesis
of innate faculties that yield them. But do we have any evidence for these
convictions? Evidence, Reid says, is the ground of belief, and our evidence is
that of our faculties. Might our faculties deceive us? Reid answers that it is
a first principle of our faculties that they are not fallacious. Why should we
assume that our faculties are not fallacious? First, the belief is
irresistible. However we wage war with first principles, the principles of
common sense, they prevail in daily life. There we trust our faculties whether
we choose to or not. Second, all philosophy depends on the assumption that our
faculties are not fallacious. Here Reid employs an ad hominem argument against
Hume, but one with philosophical force. Reid says that, in response to a total
skeptic who decides to trust none of his faculties, he puts his hand over his
mouth in silence. But Hume trusted reason and consciousness, and therefore is
guilty of pragmatic inconsistency in calling the other faculties into doubt.
They come from the same shop, Reid says, and he who calls one into doubt has no
right to trust the others. All our faculties are fallible, and, therefore, we
must, to avoid arbitrary favoritism, trust them all at the outset or trust
none. The first principles of our faculties are trustworthy. They not only
account for our convictions, but are the ground and evidence of those
convictions. This nativism is the original engine of justification. Reid’s
theory of original perceptions is supplemented by a theory of acquired perceptions,
those which incorporate the effects of habit and association, such as the
perception of a passing coach. He distinguishes acquired perceptions from
effects of reasoning. The most important way our original perceptions must be
supplemented is by general conceptions. These result from a process whereby our
attention is directed to some individual quality, e.g., the whiteness of a
piece of paper, which he calls abstraction, and a further process of
generalizing from the individual quality to the general conception of the
universal whiteness shared by many individuals. Reid is a sophisticated
nominalist; he says that the only things that exist are individual, but he
includes individual qualities as well as individual objects. The reason is that
individual qualities obviously exist and are needed as the basis of
generalization. To generalize from an individual we must have some conception
of what it is like, and this conception cannot be general, on pain of
circularity or regress, but must be a conception of an individual quality,
e.g., the whiteness of this paper, which it uniquely possesses. Universals,
though predicated of objects to articulate our knowledge, do not exist. We can
think of universals, just as we can think of centaurs, but though they are the
objects of thought and predicated of individuals that exist, they do not
themselves exist. Generalization is not driven by ontology but by utility. It
is we and not nature that sort things into kinds in ways that are useful to us.
This leads to a division-of-labor theory of meaning because general conceptions
are the meanings of general words. Thus, in those domains in which there are
experts, in science or the law, we defer to the experts concerning the general
conceptions that are the most useful in the area in question. Reid’s theory of
the intellectual powers, summarized briefly above, is supplemented by his
theory of our active powers, those that lead to actions. His theory of the
active powers includes a theory of the principles of actions. These include
animal principles that operate without understanding, but the most salient and
philosophically important part of Reid’s theory of the active powers is his
theory of the rational principles of action, which involve understanding and
the will. These rational principles are those in which we have a conception of
the action to be performed and will its performance. Action thus involves an
act of will or volition, but volitions as Reid conceived of them are not the
esoteric inventions of philosophy but, instead, the commonplace activities of
deciding and resolving to act. Reid is a libertarian and maintains that our
liberty or freedom refutes the principle of necessity or determinism. Freedom
requires the power to will the action and also the power not to will it. The
principle of necessity tells us that our action was necessitated and,
therefore, that it was not in our power not to have willed as we did. It is not
sufficient for freedom, as Hume suggested, that we act as we will. We must also
have the Reid, Thomas Reid, Thomas 786
786 power to determine what we will. The reason is that willing is the
means to the end of action, and he who lacks power over the means lacks power
over the end. This doctrine of the active power over the determinations of our
will is founded on the central principle of Reid’s theory of the active powers,
the principle of agent causation. The doctrine of acts of the will or volitions
does not lead to a regress, as critics allege, because my act of will is an
exercise of the most basic kind of causality, the efficient causality of an
agent. I am the efficient cause of my acts of will. My act of will need not be
caused by an antecedent act of will because my act of will is the result of my
exercise of my causal power. This fact also refutes an objection to the
doctrine of liberty that if my action is
not necessitated, then it is fortuitous. My free actions are caused, not
fortuitous, though they are not necessitated, because they are caused by me.
How, one might inquire, do we know that we are free? The doubt that we are free
is like other skeptical doubts, and receives a similar reply, namely, that the
conviction of our freedom is a natural and original conviction arising from our
faculties. It occurs prior to instruction and it is irresistible in practical
life. Any person with two identical coins usable to pay for some item must be
convinced that she can pay with the one or the other; and, unlike the ass of
Buridan, she readily exercises her power to will the one or the other. The
conviction of freedom is an original one, not the invention of philosophy, and
it arises from the first principles of our natural faculties, which are
trustworthy and not fallacious. The first principles of our faculties hang
together like links in a chain, and one must either raise up the whole or the
links prove useless. Together, they are the foundation of true philosophy,
science, and practical life, and without them we shall lead ourselves into the
coalpit of skepticism and despair.
reimarus: G. philosopher, born in Hamburg and educated in
philosophy at Jena. For most of his life he taught foreignl languages at a high
school in Hamburg (“anything but Deutsche!”). The most important writings he
published were a treatise on natural religion, Abhandlungen von den vornehmsten
Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion, a textbook
on semantics, which he pretentiously called “Vernunftlehre,” and an interesting work on instincts in
animals, “Allgemeine Betrachtungen über die Triebe der Tiere,” “which Strawson
thought was about deer!” – Grice.
However, Reimarus is best known
for his Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes.” In
it, Reimarus reverses his stance on natural theology and openly advocates a
deism in the British tradition. The controversy created by its publication had
a profound impact on the further development of G. theology. Though Reimarus
always remained basically a follower of Wolff, he is often quite critical of
Wolffian rationalism in his discussion of semantics and philosophical
psychology.
Reinhold, Karl Leonhard 17431819, Austrian philosopher
who was both a popularizer and a critic of Kant. He was the first occupant of
the chair of critical philosophy established at the of Jena in 1787. His Briefe über die
Kantische Philosophie 1786/87 helped to popularize Kantianism. Reinhold also
proclaimed the need for a more “scientific” presentation of the critical
philosophy, in the form of a rigorously deductive system in which everything is
derivable from a single first principle “the principle of consciousness”. He
tried to satisfy this need with Elementarphilosophie “Elementary Philosophy” or
“Philosophy of the Elements”, expounded in his Versuch einer neuen Theorie des
menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens “Attempt at a New Theory of the Human
Faculty of Representation,” 1789, Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger
Missverständnisse der Philosophen I “Contributions to the Correction of the
Prevailing Misunderstandings of Philosophers,” 1790, and Ueber das Fundament des
philosophischen Wissens “On the Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge,” 1791.
His criticism of the duality of Kant’s starting point and of the ad hoc
character of his deductions contributed to the demand for a more coherent
exposition of transcendental idealism, while his strategy for accomplishing
this task stimulated others above all,
Fichte to seek an even more “fundamental” first
principle for philosophy. Reinhold later became an enthusiastic adherent, first
of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre and then of Bardili’s “rational realism,” before
finally adopting a novel “linguistic” approach to philosophical problems.
res: “No doubt the most important expression in the
philosophical vocabulary – nobody knows what it means!” – Grice. reism, also
called concretism, the theory that the basic entities are concrete objects.
Reism differs from nominalism in that the problem of universals is not its only
motivation and often not the principal motivation for the theory. Three types
of reism can be distinguished. 1 Brentano held that every object is a concrete
or individual thing. He said that substances, aggregates of substances, parts
of substances, and individual properties of substances are the only things that
exist. There is no such thing as the existence or being of an object; and there
are no non-existent objects. One consequence of this doctrine is that the
object of thought what the thought is about is always an individual object and
not a proposition. For example, the thought that this paper is white is about this
paper and not about the proposition that this paper is white. Meinong attacked
Brentano’s concretism and argued that thoughts are about “objectives,” not
objects. 2 Kotarbigski, who coined the term ‘reism’, holds as a basic principle
that only concrete objects exist. Although things may be hard or soft, red or
blue, there is no such thing as hardness, softness, redness, or blueness.
Sentences that contain abstract words are either strictly meaningless or can be
paraphrased into sentences that do not contain any abstract words. Kotarbinski
is both a nominalist and a materialist. Brentano was a nominalist and a
dualist. 3 Thomas Garrigue Masaryk’s concretism is quite different from the
first two. For him, concretism is the theory that all of a person’s cognitive
faculties participate in every instance of knowing: reason, senses, emotion,
and will.
relatum – Grice: “One should carefully distinguish
between the prior ‘relatum’ and its formative, ‘relatIVUM.’” -- RELATUM --
referentially transparent. An occurrence of a singular term t in a sentence ‘.
. . t . . .’ is referentially transparent or purely referential if and only if
the truth-value of ‘. . . t . . .’ depends on whether the referent of t
satisfies the open sentence ‘. . . x . . .’; the satisfaction of ‘. . . x . .
.’ by the referent of t would guarantee the truth of ‘. . . t . . .’, and
failure of this individual to satisfy ‘. . . x . . .’ would guarantee that ‘. .
. t . . .’ was not true. ‘Boston is a city’ is true if and only if the referent
of ‘Boston’ satisfies the open sentence ‘x is a city’, so the occurrence of
‘Boston’ is referentially transparent. But in ‘The expression “Boston” has six
letters’, the length of the word within the quotes, not the features of the
city Boston, determines the truth-value of the sentence, so the occurrence is
not referentially transparent. According to a Fregean theory of meaning, the
reference of any complex expression that is a meaningful unit is a function of
the referents of its parts. Within this context, an occurrence of a referential
term t in a meaningful expression ‘. . . t . . .’ is referentially transparent
or purely referential if and only if t contributes its referent to the
reference of ‘. . . t . . .’. The expression ‘the area around Boston’ refers to
the particular area it does because of the referent of ‘Boston’ and the
reference or extension of the function expressed by ‘the area around x’. An
occurrence of a referential term t in a meaningful expression ‘. . . t . . .’
is referentially opaque if and only if it is not referentially transparent.
Thus, if t has a referentially opaque occurrence in a sentence ‘. . . t . . .’,
then the truth-value of ‘. . . t . . .’ depends on something reduction,
phenomenological referentially transparent 780 780 other than whether the referent of t
satisfies ‘. . . x . . .’. Although these definitions apply to occurrences of
referential terms, the terms ‘referentially opaque’ and ‘referentially
transparent’ are used primarily to classify linguistic contexts for terms as
referentially opaque contexts. If t occurs purely referentially in S but not in
CS, then C is a referentially opaque
context. But we must qualify this: C is
a referentially opaque context for that occurrence of t in S. It would not
follow without further argument that C
is a referentially opaque context for other occurrences of terms in
sentences that could be placed into C . Contexts of quotation, propositional
attitude, and modality have been widely noted for their potential to produce
referential opacity. Consider: 1 John believes that the number of planets is
less than eight. 2 John believes that nine is less than eight. If 1 is true but
2 is not, then either ‘the number of planets’ or ‘nine’ has an occurrence that
is not purely referential, because the sentences would differ in truth-value
even though the expressions are co-referential. But within the sentences: 3 The
number of planets is less than eight. 4 Nine is less than eight. the
expressions appear to have purely referential occurrence. In 3 and 4, the
truth-value of the sentence as a whole depends on whether the referent of ‘The
number of planets’ and ‘Nine’ satisfies ‘x is less than eight’. Because the
occurrences in 3 and 4 are purely referential but those in 1 and 2 are not, the
context ‘John believes that ’ is a
referentially opaque context for the relevant occurrence of at least one of the
two singular terms. Some argue that the occurrence of ‘nine’ in 2 is purely
referential because the truth-value of the sentence as a whole depends on
whether the referent, nine, satisfies the open sentence ‘John believes that x
is less than eight’. Saying so requires that we make sense of the concept of
satisfaction for such sentences belief sentences and others and that we show
that the concept of satisfaction applies in this way in the case at hand
sentence 2. There is controversy about whether these things can be done. In 1,
on the other hand, the truth-value is not determined by whether nine the
referent of ‘the number of planets’ satisfies the open sentence, so that
occurrence is not purely referential. Modal contexts raise similar questions. 5
Necessarily, nine is odd. 6 Necessarily, the number of planets is odd. If 5 is
true but 6 is not, then at least one of the expressions does not have a purely
referential occurrence, even though both appear to be purely referential in the
non-modal sentence that appears in the context ‘Necessarily, ———’. Thus the
context is referentially opaque for the occurrence of at least one of these
terms. On an alternative approach, genuinely singular terms always occur
referentially, and ‘the number of planets’ is not a genuinely singular term.
Russell’s theory of definite descriptions, e.g., provides an alternative
semantic analysis for sentences involving definite descriptions. This would
enable us to say that even simple sentences like 3 and 4 differ considerably in
syntactic and semantic structure, so that the similarity that suggests the
problem, the seemingly similar occurrences of co-referential terms, is merely
apparent. “A formation out of referro,” -- a two-or-more-place property e.g.,
loves or between, or the extension of such a property. In set theory, a
relation is any set of ordered pairs or triplets, etc., but these are reducible
to pairs. For simplicity, the formal exposition here uses the language of set
theory, although an intensional property-theoretic view is later assumed. The
terms of a relation R are the members of the pairs constituting R, the items
that R relates. The collection D of all first terms of pairs in R is the domain
of R; any collection with D as a subcollection may also be so called.
Similarly, the second terms of these pairs make up or are a subcollection of
the range counterdomain or converse domain of R. One usually works within a set
U such that R is a subset of the Cartesian product U$U the set of all ordered
pairs on U. Relations can be: 1 reflexive or exhibit reflexivity: for all a,
aRa. That is, a reflexive relation is one that, like identity, each thing bears
to itself. Examples: a weighs as much as b; or the universal relation, i.e.,
the relation R such that for all a and b, aRb. 2 symmetrical or exhibit
symmetry: for all a and b, aRb P bRa. In a symmetrical relation, the order of
the terms is reversible. Examples: a is a sibling of b; a and b have a common
divisor. Also symmetrical is the null relation, under which no object is
related to anything. 3 transitive or exhibit transitivity: for all a, b, and c,
aRb & bRc P aRc. Transitive relations carry across a middle term. Examples:
a is less than b; a is an ancestor of b. Thus, if a is less than b and b is
less than c, a is less than c: less than has carried across the middle term, b.
4 antisymmetrical: for all a and b, aRb & bRa P a % b. 5 trichotomous,
connected, or total trichotomy: for all a and b, aRb 7 bRa 7 a % b. 6
asymmetrical: aRb & bRa holds for no a and b. 7 functional: for all a, b,
and c, aRb & aRc P b % c. In a functional relation which may also be called
a function, each first term uniquely determines a second term. R is
non-reflexive if it is not reflexive, i.e., if the condition 1 fails for at
least one object a. R is non-symmetric if 2 fails for at least one pair of
objects a, b. Analogously for non-transitive. R is irreflexive aliorelative if
1 holds for no object a and intransitive if 3 holds for no objects a, b, and c.
Thus understands is non-reflexive since some things do not understand
themselves, but not irreflexive, since some things do; loves is nonsymmetric
but not asymmetrical; and being a cousin of is non-transitive but not
intransitive, as being mother of is. 13 define an equivalence relation e.g.,
the identity relation among numbers or the relation of being the same age as
among people. A class of objects bearing an equivalence relation R to each other
is an equivalence class under R. 1, 3, and 4 define a partial order; 3, 5, and
6 a linear order. Similar properties define other important classifications,
such as lattice and Boolean algebra. The converse of a relation R is the set of
all pairs b, a such that aRb; the comreism relation 788 788 plement of R is the set of all pairs a,
b such that aRb i.e. aRb does not hold. A more complex example will show the
power of a relational vocabulary. The ancestral of R is the set of all a, b
such that either aRb or there are finitely many cI , c2, c3, . . . , cn such
that aRcI and c1Rc2 and c2Rc3 and . . . and cnRb. Frege introduced the
ancestral in his theory of number: the natural numbers are exactly those
objects bearing the ancestral of the successor-of relation to zero.
Equivalently, they are the intersection of all sets that contain zero and are
closed under the successor relation. This is formalizable in second-order
logic. Frege’s idea has many applications. E.g., assume a set U, relation R on
U, and property F. An element a of U is hereditarily F with respect to R if a
is F and any object b which bears the ancestral of R to a is also F. Hence F is
here said to be a hereditary property, and the set a is hereditarily finite
with respect to the membership relation if a is finite, its members are, as are
the members of its members, etc. The hereditarily finite sets or the sets
hereditarily of cardinality ‹ k for any inaccessible k are an important
subuniverse of the universe of sets. Philosophical discussions of relations
typically involve relations as special cases of properties or sets. Thus
nominalists and Platonists disagree over the reality of relations, since they
disagree about properties in general. Similarly, one important connection is to
formal semantics, where relations are customarily taken as the denotations of
relational predicates. Disputes about the notion of essence are also pertinent.
One says that a bears an internal relation, R, to b provided a’s standing in R
to b is an essential property of a; otherwise a bears an external relation to
b. If the essentialaccidental distinction is accepted, then a thing’s essential
properties will seem to include certain of its relations to other things, so
that we must admit internal relations. Consider a point in space, which has no
identity apart from its place in a certain system. Similarly for a number. Or
consider my hand, which would perhaps not be the same object if it had not
developed as part of my body. If it is true that I could not have had other
parents that possible persons similar to
me but with distinct parents would not really be me then I, too, am internally related to other
things, namely my parents. Similar arguments would generate numerous internal
relations for organisms, artifacts, and natural objects in general. Internal
relations will also seem to exist among properties and relations themselves.
Roundness is essentially a kind of shape, and the relation larger than is
essentially the converse of the relation smaller than. In like usage, a
relation between a and b is intrinsic if it depends just on how a and b are;
extrinsic if they have it in virtue of their relation to other things. Thus,
higher-than intrinsically relates the Alps to the Appalachians. That I prefer
viewing the former to the latter establishes an extrinsic relation between the
mountain ranges. Note that this distinction is obscure as is internal-external.
One could argue that the Alps are higher than the Appalachians only in virtue
of the relation of each to something further, such as space, light rays, or
measuring rods. Another issue specific to the theory of relations is whether
relations are real, given that properties do exist. That is, someone might
reject nominalism only to the extent of admitting one-place properties.
Although such doctrines have some historical importance in, e.g., Plato and
Bradley, they have disappeared. Since relations are indispensable to modern
logic and semantics, their inferiority to one-place properties can no longer be
seriously entertained. Hence relations now have little independent significance
in philosophy.
Analysandum/analysans, definiens/definiendum,
implicans/implicaturum
relational logic, the formal study of the properties of
and operations on binary relations that was initiated by Peirce between 1870
and 2. Thus, in relational logic, one might examine the formal properties of
special kinds of relations, such as transitive relations, or asymmetrical ones,
or orderings of certain types. Or the focus might be on various operations,
such as that of forming the converse or relative product. Formal deductive
systems used in such studies are generally known as calculi of relations.
relativum-absolutum distinction, the: “No, we don’t
mean Whorft, less so Sapir!” – Grice. relativism, the denial that there are
certain kinds of universal truths. There are two main types, cognitive and
ethical. Cognitive relativism holds that there are no universal truths about
the world: the world has no intrinsic characteristics, there are just different
ways of interpreting it. The Grecian Sophist Protagoras, the first person on
record to hold such a view, said, “Man is the measure of all things; of things
that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not.” Goodman,
Putnam, and Rorty are contemporary philosophers who have held versions of
relativism. Rorty says, e.g., that “ ‘objective truth’ is no more and no less
than the best idea we currently have about how to explain what is going on.”
Critics of cognitive relativism contend that it is self-referentially
incoherent, since it presents its statements as universally true, rather than
simply relatively so. Ethical relativism is the theory that there are no
universally valid moral principles: all moral principles are valid relative to
culture or individual choice. There are two subtypes: conventionalism, which
holds that moral principles are valid relative to the conventions of a given
culture or society; and subjectivism, which maintains that individual choices
are what determine the validity of a moral principle. Its motto is, Morality
lies in the eyes of the beholder. As Ernest Hemingway wrote, “So far, about
morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is
immoral is what you feel bad after.” Conventionalist ethical relativism
consists of two theses: a diversity thesis, which specifies that what is
considered morally right and wrong varies from society to society, so that
there are no moral principles accepted by all societies; and a dependency
thesis, which specifies that all moral principles derive their validity from
cultural acceptance. From these two ideas relativists conclude that there are
no universally valid moral principles applying everywhere and at all times. The
first thesis, the diversity thesis, or what may simply be called cultural
relativism, is anthropological; it registers the fact that moral rules differ
from society to society. Although both ethical relativists and non-relativists
typically accept cultural relativism, it is often confused with the normative
thesis of ethical relativism. The opposite of ethical relativism is ethical
objectivism, which asserts that although cultures may differ in their moral
principles, some moral principles have universal validity. Even if, e.g., a
culture does not recognize a duty to refrain from gratuitous harm, that
principle is valid and the culture should adhere to it. There are two types of
ethical objectivism, strong and weak. Strong objectivism, sometimes called
absolutism, holds that there is one true moral system with specific moral
rules. The ethics of ancient Israel in the Old Testament with its hundreds of
laws exemplifies absolutism. Weak objectivism holds that there is a core
morality, a determinate set of principles that are universally valid usually
including prohibitions against killing the innocent, stealing, breaking of
promises, and lying. But weak objectivism accepts an indeterminate area where
relativism is legitimate, e.g., rules regarding sexual mores and regulations of
property. Both types of objectivism recognize what might be called application
relativism, the endeavor to apply moral rules where there is a conflict between
rules or where rules can be applied in different ways. For example, the ancient
Callactians ate their deceased parents but eschewed the impersonal practice of
burying them as disrespectful, whereas contemporary society has the opposite
attitudes about the care of dead relatives; but both practices exemplify the
same principle of the respect for the dead. According to objectivism, cultures
or forms of life can fail to exemplify an adequate moral community in at least
three ways: 1 the people are insufficiently intelligent to put constitutive
principles in order; 2 they are under considerable stress so that it becomes
too burdensome to live by moral principles; and 3 a combination of 1 and 2.
Ethical relativism is sometimes confused with ethical skepticism, the view that
we cannot know whether there are any valid moral principles. Ethical nihilism
holds that there are no valid moral principles. J. L. Mackie’s error theory is
a version of this view. Mackie held that while we all believe some moral
principles to be true, there are compelling arguments to the contrary. Ethical
objectivism must be distinguished from moral realism, the view that valid moral
principles are true, independently of human choice. Objectivism may be a form
of ethical constructivism, typified by Rawls, whereby objective principles are
simply those that impartial human beings would choose behind the veil of
ignorance. That is, the principles are not truly independent of hypothetical
human choices, but are constructs from those choices. relativum-absolutum
distinction, the: relativity, a term applied to Einstein’s theories of
electrodynamics special relativity, 5 and gravitation general relativity, 6
because both hold that certain physical quantities, formerly considered
objective, are actually “relative to” the state of motion of the observer. They
are called “special” and “general” because, in special relativity,
electrodynamical laws determine a restricted class of kinematical reference
frames, the “inertial frames”; in general relativity, the very distinction
between inertial frames and others becomes a relative distinction. Special
relativity. Classical mechanics makes no distinction between uniform motion and
rest: not velocity, but acceleration is physically detectable, and so different
states of uniform motion are physically equivalent. But classical
electrodynamics describes light as wave motion with a constant velocity through
a medium, the “ether.” It follows that the measured velocity of light should
depend on the motion of the observer relative to the medium. When
interferometer experiments suggested that the velocity of light is independent
of the motion of the source, H. A. Lorentz proposed that objects in motion
contract in the direction of motion through the ether while their local time
“dilates”, and that this effect masks the difference in the velocity of light.
Einstein, however, associated the interferometry results with many other
indications that the theoretical distinction between uniform motion and rest in
the ether lacks empirical content. He therefore postulated that, in
electrodynamics as in mechanics, all states of uniform motion are equivalent.
To explain the apparent paradox that observers with different velocities can
agree on the velocity of light, he criticized the idea of an “absolute” or
frame-independent measure of simultaneity: simultaneity of distant events can
only be established by some kind of signaling, but experiment suggested that
light is the only signal with an invariant velocity, and observers in relative
motion who determine simultaneity with light signals obtain different results.
Furthermore, since objective measurement of time and length presupposes
absolute simultaneity, observers in relative motion will also disagree on time
and length. So Lorentz’s contraction and dilatation are not physical effects,
but consequences of the relativity of simultaneity, length, and time, to the
motion of the observer. But this relativity follows from the invariance of the
laws of electrodynamics, and the invariant content of the theory is expressed
geometrically in Minkowski spacetime. Logical empiricists took the theory as an
illustration of how epistemological analysis of a concept time could eliminate
empirically superfluous notions absolute simultaneity. General relativity.
Special relativity made the velocity of light a limit for all causal processes
and required revision of Newton’s theory of gravity as an instantaneous action
at a distance. General relativity incorporates gravity into the geometry of
space-time: instead of acting directly on one another, masses induce curvature
in space-time. Thus the paths of falling bodies represent not forced deviations
from the straight paths of a flat space-time, but “straightest” paths in a
curved space-time. While space-time is “locally” Minkowskian, its global
structure depends on mass-energy distribution. The insight behind this theory
is the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass: since a given
gravitational field affects all bodies equally, weight is indistinguishable
from the inertial force of acceleration; freefall motion is indistinguishable
from inertial motion. This suggests that the Newtonian decomposition of free
fall into inertial and accelerated components is arbitrary, and that the
freefall path itself is the invariant basis for the structure of space-time. A
philosophical motive for the general theory was to extend the relativity of
motion. Einstein saw special relativity’s restricted class of equivalent
reference frames as an “epistemological defect,” and he sought laws that would
apply to any frame. His inspiration was Mach’s criticism of the Newtonian
distinction between “absolute” rotation and rotation relative to observable
bodies like the “fixed stars.” Einstein formulated Mach’s criticism as a fundamental
principle: since only relative motions are observable, local inertial effects
should be explained by the cosmic distribution of masses and by motion relative
to them. Thus not only velocity and rest, but motion in general would be
relative. Einstein hoped to effect this generalization by eliminating the
distinction between inertial frames and freely falling frames. Because free
fall remains a privileged state of motion, however, non-gravitational
acceleration remains detectable, and absolute rotation remains distinct from
relative rotation. Einstein also thought that relativity of motion would result
from the general covariance coordinate-independence of his theory i.e., that general equivalence of coordinate
systems meant general equivalence of states of motion. It is now clear,
however, that general covariance is a mathematical property of physical
theories without direct implications about motion. So general relativity does
not “generalize” the relativity of motion as Einstein intended. Its great accomplishments
are the unification of gravity and geometry and the generalization of special
relativity to space-times of arbitrary curvature, which has made possible the
modern investigation of cosmological structure. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “G. R.
Grice, M. Hollis, and Norfolkian relativism.”
relevans: “Hardly in the vocabulary of Cartesio!” –
Grice. relevance logic, any of a range of logics and philosophies of logic
united by their insistence that the premises of a valid inference must be
relevant to the conclusion. Standard, or classical, logic contains inferences
that break this requirement, e.g., the spread law, that from a contradiction
any proposition whatsoever follows. Relevance logic had its genesis in a system
of strenge Implikation published by Wilhelm Ackermann in 6. Ackermann’s idea
for rejecting irrelevance was taken up and developed by Alan Anderson and Nuel
Belnap in a series of papers between 9 and Anderson’s death in 4. The first
main summaries of these researches appeared under their names, and those of
many collaborators, in Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity vol. 1,
5; vol. 2, 2. By the time of Anderson’s death, a substantial research effort
into relevance logic was under way, and it has continued. Besides the rather
vague unity of the idea of relevance between premises and conclusion, there is
a technical criterion often used to mark out relevance logic, introduced by
Belnap in 0, and applicable really only to propositional logics the main focus
of concern to date: a necessary condition of relevance is that premises and
conclusion should share a propositional variable. Early attention was focused
on systems E of entailment and T of ticket entailment. Both are subsystems of
C. I. Lewis’s system S4 of strict implication and of classical truth-functional
logic i.e., consequences in E and T in ‘P’ are consequences in S4 in ‘ ’ and in
classical logic in ‘/’. Besides rejection of the spread law, probably the most
notorious inference that is rejected is disjunctive syllogism DS for extensional
disjunction which is equivalent to detachment for material implication: A 7
B,ÝA , B. The reason is immediate, given acceptance of Simplification and
Addition: Simplification takes us from A & ÝA to each conjunct, and
Addition turns the first conjunct into A 7 B. Unless DS were rejected, the
spread law would follow. Since the late 0s, attention has shifted to the system
R of relevant implication, which adds permutation to E, to mingle systems which
extend E and R by the mingle law A P A P A, and to contraction-free logics,
which additionally reject contraction, in one form reading A P A P B P A P B. R
minus contraction RW differs from linear logic, much studied recently in
computer science, only by accepting the distribution of ‘&’ over ‘7’, which
the latter rejects. Like linear logic, relevance logic contains both
truth-functional and non-truth-functional connectives. Unlike linear logic,
however, R, E, and T are undecidable unusual among propositional logics. This
result was obtained only in 4. In the early 0s, relevance logics were given
possible-worlds semantics by several authors working independently. They also
have axiomatic, natural deduction, and sequent or consecution formulations. One
technical result that has attracted attention has been the demonstration that,
although relevance logics reject DS, they all accept Ackermann’s rule Gamma:
that if A 7 B and ÝA are theses, so is B. A recent result occasioning much
surprise was that relevant arithmetic consisting of Peano’s postulates on the base
of quantified R does not admit Gamma. Refs.: “’Be relevant’—as a conversational
maxim under the category of relation.” Grice, “Strawson’s Principle of
Relevance – where did he take it from?”, H. P. Grice, “Nowell-Smith on
conversational relevance, and why he left Oxford.” Luigi Rossi, PhD
dissertataion on P. H. Nowell-Smith’s conversational relevance. P. H.
Nowell-Smith, “Grice et moi.” --. H. P. Grice, “Strawson’s relevance, Urmson’s
appositeness, and my helpfulness! Post-war Oxford pragmatics!”
reliabile, the, n. neuter. -- reliabilism, a type of
theory in epistemology that holds that what qualifies a belief as knowledge or
as epistemically justified is its *reliable* linkage to the truth. Philosophers
usually motivate reliabilism with an analogy between a thermometer that
reliably indicates the temperature and a belief that reliably indicates the
truth. A belief qualifies as knowledge, if there is a lawlike connection in nature
that guarantees that the belief is true. A cousin of the nomic sufficiency
account is the counterfactual approach, proposed by Dretske, Goldman, and
Nozick. A typical formulation of this approach says that a belief qualifies
relativity, general reliabilism 792
792 as knowledge if the belief is true and the cognizer has reasons for
believing it that would not obtain unless it were true. For example, someone
knows that the telephone is ringing if he believes this, it is true, and he has
a specific auditory experience that would not occur unless the telephone were
ringing. In a slightly different formulation, someone knows a proposition if he
believes it, it is true, and if it were not true he would not believe it. In
the example, if the telephone were not ringing, he would not believe that it
is, because he would not have the same auditory experience. These accounts are
guided by the idea that to know a proposition it is not sufficient that the
belief be “accidentally” true. Rather, the belief, or its mode of acquisition,
must “track,” “hook up with,” or “indicate” the truth. Unlike knowledge,
justified belief need not guarantee or be “hooked up” with the truth, for a
justified belief need not itself be true. Nonetheless, reliabilists insist that
the concept of justified belief also has a connection with truth acquisition.
According to the reliable process account, a belief’s justificational status
depends on the psychological processes that produce or sustain it. Justified
beliefs are produced by appropriate psychological processes, unjustified
beliefs by inappropriate processes. For example, beliefs produced or preserved
by perception, memory, introspection, and “good” reasoning are justified,
whereas beliefs produced by hunch, wishful thinking, or “bad” reasoning are
unjustified. Why are the first group of processes appropriate and the second
inappropriate? The difference appears to lie in their reliability. Among the
beliefs produced by perception, introspection, or “good” reasoning, a high
proportion are true; but only a low proportion of beliefs produced by hunch,
wishful thinking, or “bad” reasoning are true. Thus, what qualifies a belief as
justified is its being the outcome of a sequence of reliable belief-forming
processes. Reliabilism is a species of epistemological externalism, because it
makes knowledge or justification depend on factors such as truth connections or
truth ratios that are outside the cognizer’s mind and not necessarily
accessible to him. Yet reliabilism typically emphasizes internal factors as
well, e.g., the cognitive processes responsible for a belief. Process
reliabilism is a form of naturalistic epistemology because it centers on
cognitive operations and thereby paves the way for cognitive psychology to play
a role in epistemology. Grice: “I expect that my co-conversationalist shall be
realiable, as I assume he expects I will, too – or is it I assume he expects I
*shall*?” Grice: “Covnersational reliability.”
renouvier: philosopher influenced by Kant and Comte, the latter natural,
Comte being one of his teachers – “and brainwashing so endemic in academia it
hurts! I’m lucky Hardie wasn’t worth my mimesis!” – Grice. Renouvier rejected many of the views of both
these philosophers, however, charting his own course. He emphasized the
irreducible plurality and individuality of all things against the contemporary
tendencies toward absolute idealism. Human individuality he associated with
indeterminism and freedom. To the extent that agents are undetermined by other
things and self-determining, they are unique individuals. Indeterminism also
extends to the physical world and to knowledge. He rejected absolute certitude,
but defended the universality of the laws of logic and mathematics. In politics
and religion, he emphasized individual freedom and freedom of conscience. His
emphasis on plurality, indeterminism, freedom, novelty, and process influenced
James and, through James, pragmatism.
re-praesentatum: Grice plays with this as a philosophical semanticist,
rather than a philosophical psychologist. But the re-praesentatum depends on
the ‘praesentatum,’ which corresponds to Grice’s sub-perceptum (not the
‘conceptus’). cf. Grice on Peirce’s representamen (“You don’t want to go
there,” – Grice to his tutees). It seems that in the one-off predicament,
iconicy plays a role: the drawing of a skull to indicate danger, the drawing of
an arrow at the fork of a road to indicate which way the emissor’s flowers, who
were left behind, are supposed to take (Carruthers). Suppose Grice joins the
Oxfordshire cricket club. He will represent Oxfordshire. He will do for Oxfordshire
what Oxfordshire cannot do for herself. Similarly, by uttering “Smoke!,” the
utterer means that there is fire somewhere. “Smoke!” is a communication-device
if it does for smoke what smoke cannot do for itself, influence thoughts and
behaviour. Or does it?! It MWheIGHT. But suppose that the fire is some distant
from the addresse. And the utterer HAS LEARNED That there is fire in the
distance. So he utters ‘Smoke!’ Where? Oh, you won’t see it. But I was told
there is smoke on the outskirts. Thanks for warning me! rĕ-praesento , āvi,
ātum, 1, v. a. I. To bring before one, to bring back; to show, exhibit,
display, manifest, represent (class.): “per quas (visiones) imagines rerum
absentium ita repraesentantur animo, ut eas cernere oculis ac praesentes habere
videamur,” Quint. 6, 2, 29: “memoriae vis repraesentat aliquid,” id. 11, 2, 1;
cf. Plin. Ep. 9, 28, 3: “quod templum repraesentabat memoriam consulatūs mei,”
Cic. Sest. 11, 26: si quis vultu torvo ferus simulet Catonem, Virtutemne
repraesentet moresque Catonis? * Hor. Ep. 1, 19, 14: “imbecillitatem ingenii
mei,” Val. Max. 2, 7, 6: “movendi ratio aut in repraesentandis est aut
imitandis adfectibus,” Quint. 11, 3, 156: “urbis species repraesentabatur
animis,” Curt. 3, 10, 7; cf.: “affectum patris amissi,” Plin. Ep. 4, 19, 1:
“nam et vera esse et apte ad repraesentandam iram deūm ficta possunt,” Liv. 8,
6, 3 Weissenb. ad loc.: “volumina,” to recite, repeat, Plin. 7, 24, 24, § 89:
“viridem saporem olivarum etiam post annum,” Col. 12, 47, 8: “faciem veri
maris,” id. 8, 17, 6: “colorem constantius,” to show, exhibit, Plin. 37, 8, 33,
§ 112: “vicem olei,” i. e. to supply the place of, id. 28, 10, 45, § 160; cf.
id. 18, 14, 36, § 134.— B. Of painters, sculptors, etc., to represent, portray,
etc. (post-Aug. for adumbro): “Niceratus repraesentavit Alcibiadem,” Plin. 34,
8, 19, § 88.—With se, to present one's self, be present, Col. 1, 8, 11; 11, 1,
26; Dig. 48, 5, 15, § 3.— II. In partic., mercant. t. t., to pay immediately or
on the spot; to pay in ready money: reliquae pecuniae vel usuram Silio
pendemus, dum a Faberio vel ab aliquo qui Faberio debet, repraesentabimus,
shall be enabled to pay immediately, Cic. Att. 12, 25, 1; 12, 29, 2: “summam,”
Suet. Aug. 101: “legata,” id. Calig. 16: “mercedem,” id. Claud. 18; id. Oth. 5;
Front. Strat. 1, 11, 2 Oud. N. cr.: “dies promissorum adest: quem etiam
repraesentabo, si adveneris,” shall even anticipate, Cic. Fam. 16, 14, 2; cf.
fideicommissum, to discharge immediately or in advance, Dig. 35, 1, 36.— B.
Transf., in gen., to do, perform, or execute any act immediately, without
delay, forthwith; hence, not to defer or put off; to hasten (good prose): se,
quod in longiorem diem collaturus esset, repraesentaturum et proximā nocte
castra moturum, * Caes. B. G. 1, 40: “festinasse se repraesentare consilium,”
Curt. 6, 11, 33: “petis a me, ut id quod in diem suum dixeram debere differri,
repraesentem,” Sen. Ep. 95, 1; and Front. Aquaed. 119 fin.: “neque exspectare
temporis medicinam, quam repraesentare ratione possimus,” to apply it
immediately, Cic. Fam. 5, 16, 6; so, “improbitatem suam,” to hurry on, id. Att.
16, 2, 3: “spectaculum,” Suet. Calig. 58: “tormenta poenasque,” id. Claud. 34:
“poenam,” Phaedr. 3, 10, 32; Val. Max. 6, 5, ext. 4: “verbera et plagas,” Suet.
Vit. 10: “vocem,” to sing immediately, id. Ner. 21 et saep.: “si repraesentari
morte meā libertas civitatis potest,” can be immediately recovered, Cic. Phil.
2, 46, 118: “minas irasque caelestes,” to fulfil immediately, Liv. 2, 36, 6
Weissenb. ad loc.; cf. Suet. Claud. 38: “judicia repraesentata,” held on the
spot, without preparation, Quint. 10, 7, 2.— C. To represent, stand in the
place of (late Lat.): nostra per eum repraesentetur auctoritas, Greg. M. Ep. 1,
1.
res publica --: republicanism: cf. Cato -- Grice was a British
subject and found classical republicanism false -- also known as civic
humanism, a political outlook developed by Machiavelli in Renaissance Italy and
by James Harrington in England, modified by eighteenth-century British and
Continental writers and important for the thought of the founding fathers. Drawing on Roman
historians, Machiavelli argued that a state could hope for security from the
blows of fortune only if its male citizens were devoted to its well-being. They
should take turns ruling and being ruled, be always prepared to fight for the
republic, and limit their private possessions. Such men would possess a wholly
secular virtù appropriate to political beings. Corruption, in the form of
excessive attachment to private interest, would then be the most serious threat
to the republic. Harrington’s utopian Oceana 1656 portrayed England governed
under such a system. Opposing the authoritarian views of Hobbes, it described a
system in which the well-to-do male citizens would elect some of their number
to govern for limited terms. Those governing would propose state policies; the
others would vote on the acceptability of the proposals. Agriculture was the
basis of economics, civil rights classical republicanism 145 145 but the size of estates was to be
strictly controlled. Harringtonianism helped form the views of the political
party opposing the dominance of the king and court. Montesquieu in France drew
on classical sources in discussing the importance of civic virtue and devotion
to the republic. All these views were well known to Jefferson, Adams, and
other colonial and revolutionary
thinkers; and some contemporary communitarian critics of culture return to classical republican ideas.
stimulus/response
distinction, the: Grice’s motto: “No
stimulus, no response.” “The black box is meant to EXPLAIN (make plain) the
link between the stimulus and the response – and no item in the black box
should be postulated that it lacks this explanatory adequacy. “As Witters says,
“No mental concept without the behaviour the mental concept is brought to
explain.” Chomsky hated it. Grice changed it to ‘effect.’ Or not. “Stimulus and
response,” Skinner's behavioral theory was largely
set forth in his first book, Behavior of Organisms (1938).[9] Here, he gives a
systematic description of the manner in which environmental variables control
behavior. He distinguished two sorts of behavior which are controlled in
different ways: Respondent behaviors are elicited by stimuli, and may be
modified through respondent conditioning, often called classical (or pavlovian)
conditioning, in which a neutral stimulus is paired with an eliciting stimulus.
Such behaviors may be measured by their latency or strength. Operant behaviors
are 'emitted,' meaning that initially they are not induced by any particular
stimulus. They are strengthened through operant conditioning (aka instrumental
conditioning), in which the occurrence of a response yields a reinforcer. Such
behaviors may be measured by their rate. Both of these sorts of behavior had
already been studied experimentally, most notably: respondents, by Ivan
Pavlov;[25] and operants, by Edward Thorndike.[26] Skinner's account differed
in some ways from earlier ones,[27] and was one of the first accounts to bring
them under one roof.
rerum natura: Latin, ‘the nature of things’, or ‘reality,’ to use
the root of ‘res,’ cognate with ‘ratio,’ – (as ‘ding’ is connected with
‘denken,’ and ‘logos’ with ‘legein’ -- metaphysics. The phrase can also be used
more narrowly to mean the nature of physical reality, and often it presupposes
a naturalistic view of all reality. Lucretius’s epic poem “De rerum natura,” is
an Epicurean physics, designed to underpin the Epicurean morality. Seneca told
Lucrezio, “You could have looked for a catchier title if you want it a
best-seller.”
responsabile, the responsabile: responsibility – cited
by H. P. Grice in “The causal theory of perception” -- a condition that relates
an agent to actions of, and consequences connected to, that agent, and is
always necessary and sometimes sufficient for the appropriateness of certain
kinds of appraisals of that agent. Responsibility has no single definition, but
is several closely connected specific concepts. Role responsibility. Agents are
identified by social roles that they occupy, say parent or professor. Typically
duties are associated with such roles to
care for the needs of their children, to attend classes and publish research
papers. A person in a social role is “responsible for” the execution of those
duties. One who carries out such duties is “a responsible person” or “is
behaving responsibly.” Causal responsibility. Events, including but not limited
to human actions, cause other events. The cause is “responsible” for the
effect. Causal responsibility does not imply consciousness; objects and natural
phenomena may have causal responsibility. Liability responsibility. Practices
of praise and blame include constraints on the mental stance that an agent must
have toward an action or a consequence of action, in order for praise or blame
to be appropriate. To meet such constraints is to meet a fundamental necessary
condition for liability for praise or blame
hence the expression ‘liability responsibility’. These constraints
include such factors as intention, knowledge, recklessness toward consequences,
absence of mistake, accident, inevitability of choice. An agent with the
capability for liability responsibility may lack it on some occasion when mistaken, for example. Capacity
responsibility. Practices of praise and blame assume a level of intellectual
and emotional capability. The severely mentally disadvantaged or the very
young, for example, do not have the capacity to meet the conditions for
liability responsibility. They are not “responsible” in that they lack capacity
responsibility. Both morality and law embody and respect these distinctions,
though law institutionalizes and formalizes them. Final or “bottom-line”
assignment of responsibility equivalent to indeed deserving praise or blame
standardly requires each of the latter three specific kinds of responsibility.
The first kind supplies some normative standards for praise or blame.
resultus: or resultance, a relation according to which one
property the resultant property, sometimes called the consequential property is
possessed by some object or event in virtue of and hence as a result of that
object or event possessing some other property or set of properties. The idea
is that properties of things can be ordered into connected levels, some being
more basic than and giving rise to others, the latter resulting from the
former. For instance, a figure possesses the property of being a triangle in
virtue of its possessing a collection of properties, including being a plane
figure, having three sides, and so on; the former resulting from the latter. An
object is brittle has the property of being brittle in virtue of having a
certain molecular structure. It is often claimed that moral properties like
rightness and goodness are resultant properties: an action is right in virtue
of its possessing other properties. These examples make it clear that the
nature of the necessary connection holding between a resultant property and
those base properties that ground it may differ from case to case. In the
geometrical example, the very concept of being a triangle grounds the
resultance relation in question, and while brittleness is nomologically related
to the base properties from which it results, in the moral case, the resultance
relation is arguably neither conceptual nor causal.
cornwall – “He hardly spoke English – and Grosseteste
hardly spoke Cornish – yet they became best friends at Oxford – Fishacre
helped. “But they communicated mainly in the lingua franca, that is Roman!” --
Rrichard Rufus, also called Richard of Cornwall English philosopher who wrote
some of the earliest commentaries on Aristotle in the Latin West. Cornwall’s
commentaries are not cursory summaries; they include sustained philosophical
discussions. “Cornwall,” as he was called (cf. Grice’s “Shropshire,” – all I
remember about him is that his name was that of a shire”) was a master of arts
at Paris, where he studied with Hales. And they would joke, “I was called after
a shire, but you after a town, ain’t that unfair?” – Cornwall is also deeply
influenced by Grosseteste – “he of the great head” – or “balls” (testis,
testiculus). Cornwall leaves Paris and joins the Franciscan order. He was
ordained in England. In 1256, he became regent master of the Franciscan studium
at Oxford (“of course,” Grice); according to Bacon, Cornwall is the most influential
philosopher at Oxford In addition to his
Aristotle commentaries, Cornwall writes two commentaries on Peter Lombard’s
Sentences. In the first of these he borrows
freely from Grosseteste, Hales, and Fishacre (“if you’ve heard of him” –
Grice). The second commentary is a critical condensation of the lectures of
Fidanza, presented in Paris. Cornwall is a proponent of the theory of impetus. His views
on projectile motion are cited by Meyronnes.
Cornwall also advocates other arguments first presented by Philoponus. Against
the eternity of the world, he argued that past time is necessarily finite, since
it has been traversed, and, on top, the world is hardly eternal, since “if the
world has no beginning, no more time transpires before tomorrow than it
transpires before today – but it does so transpire.” Cornwall also argues that
if the world had not been created ex nihilo, the first cause would be mutable. Grosseteste
cited one of Cornwalls arguments against the eternity of the world in his notes
on Aristotle’s Physics. Cornwall denies the validity of Anselm’s ontological
argument, but, anticipating Duns Scotus, Cornwall argues that the existence of
an independent being could be inferred from its possibility. Like Duns Scotus,
Cornwall employs the formal distinction as an explanatory tool; in presenting
his own views, Duns Scotus cites Cornwall’s’s definition of the “formal
distinction” versus the “material distinction.” Richard states his
philosophical views briefly, even cryptically; his Latin prose style is
sometimes eccentric (even Griceian), characterized by rather abrupt
extemporaneous interjections in which he apparently means to addresses this or
that question to God, to himself, or to his intended recipient. Cornwall is
hesitant about the value of systematic theology for the theologian, deferring
to biblical exposition as the primary forum for theological discussion. In
systematic theology, he emphasized Aristotelian semanticsc. He was a well-known
semanticist. Some scholars (Kneale, Grice, and Speranza included) believe
Cornwall is the famous logician known as the “Magister Abstractionum.” Though
Cornwall borrowed freely from his contemporaries, he was a profoundly original
philosopher.
ricoeur: hermeneuticist and phenomenologist who has been a
professor at several universities as
well as the of Naples, Yale , and
the of Chicago. He has received major
prizes from France, G.y, and Italy. He is the author of twenty-some volumes tr.
in a variety of languages. Among his best-known books are Freedom and Nature:
The Voluntary and the Involuntary; Freud and Philosophy: An Essay of
Interpretation; The Conflict of Interpretations: Essay in Hermeneutics; The
Role of the Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in
Language, Time and Narrative; and Oneself as Another. His early studies with
the existentialist Marcel resulted in a
book-length study of Marcel’s work and later a series of published dialogues
with him. Ricoeur’s philosophical enterprise is colored by a continuing tension
between faith and reason. His long-standing commitments to both the
significance of the individual and the Christian faith are reflected in his
hermeneutical voyage, his commitment to the Esprit movement, and his interest
in the writings of Emmanuel Mounier. This latter point is also seen in his
claim of the inseparability of action and discourse in our quest for meaning.
In our comprehension of both history and fiction one must turn to the text to
understand its plot as guideline if we are to comprehend experience of any
reflective sort. In the end there are no metaphysical or epistemological
grounds by which meaning can be verified, and yet our nature is such that
possibility must be present before us. Ricoeur attempts his explanation through
a hermeneutic phenomenology. The very hermeneutics of existence that follows is
itself limited by reason’s questioning of experience and its attempts to
transcend the limit through the language of symbols and metaphors. Freedom and
meaning come to be realized in the actualization of an ethics that arises out
of the very act of existing and thus transcends the mere natural voluntary
distinction of a formal ethic. It is clear from his later work that he rejects
any form of foundationalism including phenomenology as well as nihilism and
easy skepticism. Through a sort of interdependent dialectic that goes beyond
the more mechanical models of Hegelianism or Marxism, the self understands
itself and is understood by the other in terms of its suffering and its moral
actions. Refs.: J. O. Urmson, “La
pragmatique,” H. P. Grice, “The conflict of interpretations between me and
Ricoeur, and vice versa.”
directus -- right: an advantageous position conferred
on some possessor by law, morals, rule, or other norm. There is no agreement on
the way in which a ‘right’ is an advantage. Will theories hold that rights
favor the will of the possessor over the conflicting will of some other party;
interest theories maintain that rights serve to protect or promote the
interests of the right-holder. Hohfeld identified four legal advantages:
liberties, claims, powers, and immunitiesThe concept of a right arose in Roman
jurisprudence and was extended to ethics via natural law theory. Just as
positive law, the law posited by human lawmakers, confers legal rights, so the
natural law confers natural rights. Rights are classified by their specific
sources in different sorts of rules. Legal rights are advantageous positions
under the law of a society. Other species of institutional rights are conferred
by the rules of private organizations, of the moral code of a society, or even
of some game. Those who identify natural law with the moral law often identify
natural rights with moral rights, but some limit natural rights to our most
fundamental rights and contrast them with ordinary moral rights. Others deny
that moral rights are natural because they believe that they are conferred by
the mores or positive morality of one’s society. One always possesses any
specific right by virtue of possessing some status. Thus, rights are also
classified by status. Civil rights are those one possesses as a citizen; human
rights are possessed by virtue of being human. Presumably women’s rights,
children’s rights, patients’ rights, and the rights of blacks as such are
analogous. Human rights play very much the same role in ethics once played by
natural rights. This is partly because ontological doubts about the existence
of God undermine the acceptance of any natural law taken to consist in divine
commands, and epistemological doubts about self-evident moral truths lead many
to reject any natural law conceived of as the dictates of reason. Although the
Thomistic view that natural rights are grounded on the nature of man is often
advocated, most moral philosophers reject its teleological conception of human
nature defined by essential human purposes. It seems simpler to appeal instead
to fundamental rights that must be universal among human beings because they
are possessed merely by virtue of one’s status as a human being. Human rights
are still thought of as natural in the very broad sense of existing
independently of any human action or institution. This explains how they can be
used as an independent standard in terms of which to criticize the laws and
policies of governments and other organizations. Since human rights are
classified by status rather than source, there is another species of human
rights that are institutional rather than natural. These are the human rights
that have been incorporated into legal systems by international agreements such
as the European Convention on Human Rights. It is sometimes said that while
natural rights were conceived as purely negative rights, such as the right not
to be arbitrarily imprisoned, human rights are conceived more broadly to
include positive social and economic rights, such as the right to social
security or to an adequate standard of living. But this is surely not true by
definition. Traditional natural law theorists such as Grotius and Locke spoke
of natural rights as powers and associated them with liberties, rather than
with claims against interference. And while modern declarations of human rights
typically include social and economic rights, they assume that these are rights
in the same sense that traditional political rights are. Rights are often
classified by their formal properties. For example, the right not to be
battered is a negative right because it imposes a negative duty not to batter,
while the creditor’s right to be repaid is a positive right because it imposes
a positive duty to repay. The right to be repaid is also a passive right
because its content is properly formulated in the passive voice, while the
right to defend oneself is an active right because its content is best stated in
the active voice. Again, a right in rem is a right that holds against all
second parties; a right in personam is a right that holds against one or a few
others. This is not quite Hart’s distinction between general and special
rights, rights of everyone against everyone, such as the right to free speech,
and rights arising from special relations, such as that between creditor and
debtor or husband and wife. Rights are conceptually contrasted with duties
because rights are advantages while duties are disadvantages. Still, many
jurists and philosophers have held that rights and duties are logical
correlatives. This does seem to be true of claim rights; thus, the creditor’s
right to be repaid implies the debtor’s duty to repay and vice versa. But the
logical correlative of a liberty right, such as one’s right to park in front of
one’s house, is the absence of any duty for one not to do so. This contrast is
indicated by D. D. Raphael’s distinction between rights of recipience and
rights of action. Sometimes to say that one has a right to do something is to
say merely that it is not wrong for one to act in this way. This has been
called the weak sense of ‘a right’. More often to assert that one has a right
to do something does not imply that exercising this right is right. Thus, I
might have a right to refuse to do a favor for a friend even though it would be
wrong for me to do so. Finally, many philosophers distinguish between absolute
and prima facie rights. An absolute right always holds, i.e., disadvantages some
second party, within its scope; a prima facie right is one that holds unless
the ground of the right is outweighed by some stronger contrary reason. Refs.
H. P. Grice, “On the conceptual priority of the moral right over the legal
right, and vice versa.”
rigorism, the view that morality consists in that
single set of simple or unqualified moral rules, discoverable by reason, which
applies to all human beings at all times. It is often said that Kant’s doctrine
of the categorical imperative is rigoristic. Two main objections to rigorism
are 1 some moral rules do not apply universally
e.g., ‘Promises should be kept’ applies only where there is an
institution of promising; and 2 some rules that could be universally kept are
absurd e.g., that everyone should stand
on one leg while the sun rises. Recent interpreters of Kant defend him against
these objections by arguing, e.g., that the “rules” he had in mind are general
guidelines for living well, which are in fact universal and practically
relevant, or that he was not a rigorist at all, seeing moral worth as issuing
primarily from the agent’s character rather than adherence to rules.
ring of Gyges, a ring that gives its wearer
invisibility, discussed in Plato’s Republic II, 359b 360d. Glaucon tells the
story of a man who discovered the ring and used it to usurp the throne to
defend the claim that those who behave justly do so only because they lack the
power to act unjustly. If they could avoid paying the penalty of injustice,
Glaucon argues, everyone would be unjust.
romagnosi: important
Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Romagnosi," per
il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria,
Italia.
filosofia
romana: Grice: “There is a continuity
between the philosophy wrote in Ancient Rome and that done in Italy – as every
British soldier who fought in the second world war should know!” -- Grice loved
it. Enesidemo, academic philosopher, founder of a
Pyrrhonist revival in Rome. Vide “Enesidemo. Anassagora, pre-Socratic enquirer into the origin of the cosmos – andronico, peripatetic; editor of
Aristotle’s works. – antioco, cademic who reverted to Plato’s dogmatism – Antipater, Stoic, tutor to
Cato Uticensis. – apollonide, toic, adviser to Cato Uticensis – apollonio, eo-pythagorean.
– apuleio, Platonic, author of the “Isagoge” adored
by Boezio, and the "Metamorphoses". – arcelisao, academic sceptic, head of the New Academy --- aristippo, member
of Socrates’s circle – aristone, peripatetic and head of the Lyceum –
aristotele founder of the Peripatetic
school – aristo, head of the Academy and
teacher of Brutus – ario, adviser to Augustus – artemidoro, stoic, friend of
Pliny the Younger and son-in-law of Musonius – atenodoro, Stoic and
adviser to Cato Uticensis, in whose
house he lived –atenodoro, Stoic and friend of Cicero – attalo, toic, teacher of Seneca –augustino, neo-platonist –
bione, ynic, popular teacher – boezio, philosopher with Stoic and Neoplatonist views,
author of "The Consolation of
Philosophy" – carneade, head of the New Academy, Sceptic and star of the Athenian embassy to Rome in
155 – cheremone, toic, tutor to Nero – crisippo, head of the
Stoic school from 232 – cicerone, leading transmitter of Hellenistic philosophy to Rome and
Renaissance Europe, follower of the New
Academy and pupil of Philo of Larissa – cleante, Zeno’s successor as head of the Stoic school from
262 – clitomaco, ceptic and pupil of Carneades, head of the New Academy from 127 – cornuto, toic,
teacher and friend of Persius and Lucan
– crantore, Academic, the first
commentator on Plato – crate, ynic, follower of Diogenes of Sinope and teacher of Zeno of Citium –
cratippo, eripatetic, friend of Cicero and Nigidius and teacher of Cicero’s
son. – critolao, head of the Peripatetic
school and member of the Athenian
embassy to Rome in 155 – Demetrio, friend of Seneca – Demetrio, adviser of
Cato Uticensis – democrito,
pre-Socratic, founder of atomism –
dicherco, Peripatetic, pupil of
Aristotle – diodoto, toic, teacher and friend of Cicero, in whose house he lived – diogene
laerzio, author of "The Lives of the Philosophers" – diogene
d’apollonia 2nd half of 5th. cent., pre-Socratic philosopher and enquirer into the natural world; a source for Seneca’s
"Naturates Quaestiones" – diogene da babilonia, head of the Stoic
school and member of the Athenian
embassy to Rome in 155, tutor to Panaetius – diogene d’enoanda, Epicurean and
part-author of the inscription on the
stoa which he caused to be set up in Oenoanda -- diogene da sinope. mid-4th.cent., founder of Cynicism -- epitteto, Stoic, pupil of Musonius – epicuro -- principal
source for Lucretius’s poem – eufrate, Stoic,
student of Musonius and friend of Pliny
the Younger – favorino, philosopher of
the Second Sophistic, friend of Plutarch and teacher of Fronto – galeno,
physician to Marcus Aurelius, Platonist – ecato, early 1st. cent., Stoic, pupil
of Panaetius and member of circle of Posidonius – ermarco, pupil of Epicurus and his successor as head of the Epicurean
school from 271, with Epicurus,
Metrodorus and Polyaenus, one of “The Four Men”, founders of the
Epicurean school – ierocle, Stoic
-- lelio, consul in 140, friend of
Scipio Aemilianus and Panaetius and called by
Cicero "the first Roman philosopher." – leucippo, co-founder with Democritus of atomism – lucrezio,
Epicurean, author of "De Rerum Natura" – manilio -- Stoic author of
"Astronomica" – marc’aurelio, emperor, and Stoic, author of "To
Himself", a private diary –
menippo, first half of 3rd. cent., Cynic and
satirical author in prose and verse on philosophical subjects –
metrodoro, friend of Epicurus and one “The Four Men”, founders of Epicureanism – moderato, neo-pythagorean –
musonio, Roman of Etruscan descent,
Stoic, teacher of Epictetus – nigidio, eo-pythagorean – panezio, Stoic, head of
the Stoic school from 129, influential
at Rome, friend of Scipio Aemilianus and major
source for Cicero’s "De Officiis" – parmenide, pre-Socratic,
pioneer enquirer into the nature of
“what is” – patrone, friend of Cicero
and successor of Phaedrus as head of the Epicurean school – fedro, Epicurean, admired by Cicero.
head of the Epicurean school in the last years of his life – filone
d’alessandria, philosopher, sympathetic to Stoic ethics and influential in the later development of
Neo-platonism – filone da larissa, head of the New Academy, 110–88, the most
influential of Cicero’s tutors –
filodemo, Epicurean philosopher, protegé of Piso Caesoninus and an influence on
Virgil and Horace, many of his fragmentary
writings are preserved in the Herculaneum papyri – platone -- founder of
the Academy and disciple and interpreter of Socrates – plotino -- eo-platonist,
resident in Rome and Campania – Plutarco,
Platonist – polemo, Platonist and
head of the Academy -- poliaeno, friend of Epicurus and one of “The Four Men,”
founders of Epicureanism – posidonio, Stoic, student of Panaetius and head of
his own school in Rhodes, where Cicero
heard him. The dominant figure in middle Stoicism, whose works encompassed the whole range of
intellectual enquiry.—pirrone, the founder of
Scepticism, whose doctrines were revived in Rome by Enesidemo. – pitagora di samo -- head of a
community at Croton in S. Italy,
emphasized the importance of number and proportion, his doctrines included vegetarianism and the
transmigration of souls, influenced
Plato, his philosophy was revived at Rome by Nigidius and the Sextii.
–rustico: consul, Stoic, friend and teacher of
marc’aurelio. – Seneca, stoic, tutor, adviser and victim of Nero, author of philosophical treatises,
including "Dialogi" and "Epistulae Morales" – severo: consul, Stoic friend
and teacher of marc’aurelio, whose son married his daughter. – sestio -- Neo-pythagorean,
founder of the only genuinely Roman school of philosophy; admired by Seneca for his disciplined Roman ethos
– sesto empirico --sceptic, author of philosophical works and critic of Stoicism, principal source for
Pyrrhonism – siro, 1st. cent.,
Epicurean, teacher in Campania of Virgil – socrate -- iconic Athenian philosopher and one of the most
influential figures in Graeco-roman philosophy; he wrote nothing but is the
central figure in Plato’s dialogues,
admired by non-Academics, including the Stoic Marc’ Aureliio nearly six
hundred years after his death – sotione:
Neopythagorean, teacher of Seneca –
speusippo, , Plato’s successor as head of the
Academy – tele, cynic, author of diatribes on ethical subjects –
teofrasto, peripatetic, successor to Aristotle as head of the Lyceum– Varrone –
– Senocrate,. head of the Academy. Senone da Citio -- founder of Stoicism,
originally a follower of the Cynic
Crates, taught at Athens in the Stoa Poikile, which gave its name to his school. Senone da Sidone, head
of the Epicurean school (or Garden) at Athens, where he taught Philodemus and
was heard by Cicero. Refs.: Marc’aurelio on Platone.
roscelin de Compiègne: He made fun of Abelard having
been ‘castrated’ for his philosophical dogmas on the universals. -- philosopher
and logician who became embroiled in theological controversy when he applied
his logical teachings to the doctrine of the Trinity. Since almost nothing
survives of his written work, we must rely on hostile accounts of his views by
Anselm of Canterbury and Peter Abelard, both of whom openly opposed his
positions. Perhaps the most notorious view Roscelin is said to have held is
that universals are merely the puffs of air produced when a word is pronounced.
On this point he opposed views current among many theologians that a universal
has an existence independent of language, and somehow is what many different
particulars are. Roscelin’s aversion to any proposal that different things can
be some one thing is probably what led him in his thinking about the three
persons of God to a position that sounded suspiciously like the heresy of
tritheism. Roscelin also evidently held that the qualities of things are not
entities distinct from the subjects that possess them. This indicates that
Roscelin probably denied that terms in the Aristotelian categories other than
substance signified anything distinct from substances. Abelard, the foremost
logician of the twelfth century, studied under Roscelin around 1095 and was
undoubtedly influenced by him on the question of universals. Roscelin’s view
that universals are linguistic entities remained an important option in
medieval thought. Otherwise his positions do not appear to have had much
currency in the ensuing decades. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “The universal – and what
to do with it.”
rosmini: important Italian philosopher,
Catholic priest, counselor to Pope Pius IX, and supporter of the supremacy of
the church over civil government Neo-Guelphism. Rosmini had two major concerns:
the objectivity of human knowledge and the synthesis of philosophical thought
within the tradition of Catholic thought. In his Nuovo saggio sull’origine
delle idee “New Essay on the Origin of Ideas,” 1830, he identifies the
universal a priori intuitive component of all human knowledge with the idea of
being that gives us the notion of a possible or ideal being. Everything in the
world is known by intellectual perception, which is the synthesis of sensation
and the idea of being. Except for the idea of being, which is directly given by
God, all ideas derive from abstraction. The objectivity of human knowledge
rests on its universal origin in the idea of being. The harmony between
philosophy and religion comes from the fact that all human knowledge is the
result of divine revelation. Rosmini’s thought was influenced by Augustine and
Aquinas, and stimulated by the attempt to find a solution to the contrasting
needs of rationalism and empiricism. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Rosmini e Grice,”
per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool
Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
rosselli: important Italian philosopher –
There is a Rosselli Circle in Rome – Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Rosselli e Grice,”
per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria,
Italia.
rota: Italian philosopher – Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e
Rota," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice,
Liguria, Italia.
rousseau: philosopher, best known for his theories on
social freedom and societal rights, education, and religion. Born in Geneva, he
was largely self-educated and moved to France as a teenager. Throughout much of
his life he moved between Paris and the provinces with several trips abroad
including a Scottish stay with Hume and a return visit to Geneva, where he
reconverted to Protestantism from his earlier conversion to Catholicism. For a
time he was a friend of Diderot and other philosophes and was asked to
contribute articles on music for the Encyclopedia. Rousseau’s work can be seen
from at least three perspectives. As social contract theorist, he attempts to
construct a hypothetical state of nature to explain the current human
situation. This evolves a form of philosophical anthropology that gives us both
a theory of human nature and a series of pragmatic claims concerning social
organization. As a social commentator, he speaks of both practical and ideal
forms of education and social organization. As a moralist, he continually
attempts to unite the individual and the citizen through some form of universal
political action or consent. In Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of
Inequality Among Mankind 1755, Rousseau presents us with an almost idyllic view
of humanity. In nature humans are first seen as little more than animals except
for their special species sympathy. Later, through an explanation of the
development of reason and language, he is able to suggest how humans, while
retaining this sympathy, can, by distancing themselves from nature, understand
their individual selves. This leads to natural community and the closest thing
to what Rousseau considers humanity’s perfect moment. Private property quickly
follows on the division of labor, and humans find themselves alienated from
each other by the class divisions engendered by private property. Thus man, who
was born in freedom, now finds himself in chains. The Social Contract or
Principles of Political Right 1762 has a more ambitious goal. With an account
of the practical role of the legislator and the introduction of the concept of
the general will, Rousseau attempts to give us a foundation for good government
by presenting a solution to the conflicts between the particular and the
universal, the individual and the citizen, and the actual and the moral.
Individuals, freely agreeing to a social pact and giving up their rights to the
community, are assured of the liberties and equality of political citizenship
found in the contract. It is only through being a citizen that the individual
can fully realize his freedom and exercise his moral rights and duties. While
the individual is naturally good, he must always guard against being dominated
or dominating. Rousseau finds a solution to the problems of individual freedoms
and interests in a superior form of moral/political action that he calls the
general will. The individual as citizen substitutes “I must” for “I will,”
which is also an “I shall” when it expresses assent to the general will. The
general will is a universal force or statement and thus is more noble than any
particular will. In willing his own interest, the citizen is at the same time
willing what is communally good. The particular and the universal are united.
The individual human participant realizes himself in realizing the good of all.
As a practical political commentator Rousseau knew that the universal and the
particular do not always coincide. For this he introduced the idea of the
legislator, which allows the individual citizen to realize his fulfillment as
social being and to exercise his individual rights through universal consent.
In moments of difference between the majority will and the general will the
legislator will instill the correct moral/political understanding. This will be
represented in the laws. While sovereignty rests with the citizens, Rousseau
does not require that political action be direct. Although all government should
be democratic, various forms of government from representative democracy
preferable in small societies to strong monarchies preferable in large
nation-states may be acceptable. To shore up the unity and stability of
individual societies, Rousseau suggests a sort of civic religion to which all
citizens subscribe and in which all members participate. His earlier writings
on education and his later practical treatises on the governments of Poland and
Corsica reflect related concerns with natural and moral development and with
historical and geographical considerations. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Rousseau
and Grice and Grice on the explanatory myth of the contract,” per Il Club
Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
rovere: essential Italian
philosopher – His family originates in Albalonga, Savona, Liguria. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e della Rovere," per
il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria,
Italia.
rule of law, the largely formal or procedural
properties of a well-ordered legal system. Commonly, these properties are
thought to include: a prohibition of arbitrary power the lawgiver is also
subject to the laws; laws that are general, prospective, clear, and consistent
capable of guiding conduct; and tribunals courts that are reasonably accessible
and fairly structured to hear and determine legal claims. Contemporary
discussions of the rule of law focus on two major questions: 1 to what extent
is conformity to the rule of law essential to the very idea of a legal system;
and 2 what is the connection between the rule of law and the substantive moral
value of a legal system?
Russell: “not really a philosopher,” as Grice puts it,
by either education or practice, he was born of Celtic Highland stock into an
aristocratic family in Wales (then part of England), Russell always divided his
interests between politics, philosophy, and the ladies (he married six times). Orphaned
at four, he was brought up by his grandmother, who educated him at home with
the help of “rather dull” tutors. He studied mathematics at Cambridge and then,
as his grandmother says, ‘out of the blue,’ he turned to philosophy. At home he
had absorbed J. S. Mill’s liberalism, but not his empiricism. At Cambridge he
came under the influence of neo-Hegelianism, especially the idealism of
McTaggart, Ward his tutor, and Bradley. His earliest logical views were
influenced most by Bradley, especially Bradley’s rejection of psychologism.
But, like Ward and McTaggart, he rejected Bradley’s metaphysical monism in
favor of pluralism or monadism. Even as an idealist, he held that scientific
knowledge was the best available and that philosophy should be built around it.
Through many subsequent changes, this belief about science, his pluralism, and
his anti-psychologism remained constant. In 5, he conceived the idea of an
idealist encyclopedia of the sciences to be developed by the use of
transcendental arguments to establish the conditions under which the special
sciences are possible. Russell’s first philosophical book, An Essay on the
Foundations of Geometry 7, was part of this project, as were other mostly
unfinished and unpublished pieces on physics and arithmetic written at this
time see his Collected Papers, vols. 12. Russell claimed, in contrast to Kant,
to use transcendental arguments in a purely logical way compatible with his
anti-psychologism. In this case, however, it should be both possible and preferable
to replace them by purely deductive arguments. Another problem arose in
connection with asymmetrical relations, which led to contradictions if treated
as internal relations, but which were essential for any treatment of
mathematics. Russell resolved both problems in 8 by abandoning idealism
including internal relations and his Kantian methodology. He called this the
one real revolution in his philosophy. With his Cambridge contemporary Moore,
he adopted an extreme Platonic realism, fully stated in The Principles of
Mathematics 3 though anticipated in A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of
Leibniz 0. Russell’s work on the sciences was by then concentrated on pure
mathematics, but the new philosophy yielded little progress until, in 0, he
discovered Peano’s symbolic logic, which offered hope that pure mathematics
could be treated without Kantian intuitions or transcendental arguments. On
this basis Russell propounded logicism, the claim that the whole of pure
mathematics could be derived deductively from logical principles, a position he
came to independently of Frege, who held a similar but more restricted view but
whose work Russell discovered only later. Logicism was announced in The
Principles of Mathematics; its development occupied Russell, in collaboration
with Whitehead, for the next ten years. Their results were published in
Principia Mathematica 013, 3 vols., in which detailed derivations were given
for Cantor’s set theory, finite and transfinite arithmetic, and elementary
parts of measure theory. As a demonstration of Russell’s logicism, Principia
depends upon much prior arithmetization of mathematics, e.g. of analysis, which
is not explicitly treated. Even with these allowances much is still left out:
e.g., abstract algebra and statistics. Russell’s unpublished papers Papers,
vols. 45, however, contain logical innovations not included in Principia, e.g.,
anticipations of Church’s lambda-calculus. On Russell’s extreme realism,
everything that can be referred to is a term that has being though not necessarily
existence. The combination of terms by means of a relation results in a complex
term, which is a proposition. Terms are neither linguistic nor psychological.
The first task of philosophy is the theoretical analysis of propositions into
their constituents. The propositions of logic are unique in that they remain
true when any of their terms apart from logical constants are replaced by any
other terms. In 1 Russell discovered that this position fell prey to
self-referential paradoxes. For example, if the combination of any number of
terms is a new term, the combination of all terms is a term distinct from any
term. The most famous such paradox is called Russell’s paradox. Russell’s
solution was the theory of types, which banned self-reference by stratifying
terms and expressions into complex hierarchies of disjoint subclasses. The
expression ‘all terms’, e.g., is then meaningless unless restricted to terms of
specified types, and the combination of terms of a given type is a term of
different type. A simple version of the theory appeared in Principles of
Mathematics appendix A, but did not eliminate all the paradoxes. Russell
developed a more elaborate version that did, in “Mathematical Logic as Based on
the Theory of Types” 8 and in Principia. From 3 to 8 Russell sought to preserve
his earlier account of logic by finding other ways to avoid the paradoxes including a well-developed substitutional
theory of classes and relations posthumously published in Essays in Analysis,
4, and Papers, vol. 5. Other costs of type theory for Russell’s logicism
included the vastly increased complexity of the resulting sysRussell, Bertrand
Arthur William Russell, Bertrand Arthur William 802 802 tem and the admission of the problematic
axiom of reducibility. Two other difficulties with Russell’s extreme realism
had important consequences: 1 ‘I met Quine’ and ‘I met a man’ are different
propositions, even when Quine is the man I met. In the Principles, the first
proposition contains a man, while the second contains a denoting concept that
denotes the man. Denoting concepts are like Fregean senses; they are meanings
and have denotations. When one occurs in a proposition the proposition is not
about the concept but its denotation. This theory requires that there be some way
in which a denoting concept, rather than its denotation, can be denoted. After
much effort, Russell concluded in “On Denoting” 5 that this was impossible and
eliminated denoting concepts as intermediaries between denoting phrases and
their denotations by means of his theory of descriptions. Using firstorder
predicate logic, Russell showed in a broad, though not comprehensive range of
cases how denoting phrases could be eliminated in favor of predicates and
quantified variables, for which logically proper names could be substituted.
These were names of objects of acquaintance
represented in ordinary language by ‘this’ and ‘that’. Most names, he
thought, were disguised definite descriptions. Similar techniques were applied
elsewhere to other kinds of expression e.g. class names resulting in the more
general theory of incomplete symbols. One important consequence of this was
that the ontological commitments of a theory could be reduced by reformulating
the theory to remove expressions that apparently denoted problematic entities.
2 The theory of incomplete symbols also helped solve extreme realism’s
epistemic problems, namely how to account for knowledge of terms that do not
exist, and for the distinction between true and false propositions. First, the
theory explained how knowledge of a wide range of items could be achieved by
knowledge by acquaintance of a much narrower range. Second, propositional
expressions were treated as incomplete symbols and eliminated in favor of their
constituents and a propositional attitude by Russell’s multiple relation theory
of judgment. These innovations marked the end of Russell’s extreme realism,
though he remained a Platonist in that he included universals among the objects
of acquaintance. Russell referred to all his philosophy after 8 as logical
atomism, indicating thereby that certain categories of items were taken as
basic and items in other categories were constructed from them by rigorous
logical means. It depends therefore upon reduction, which became a key concept
in early analytic philosophy. Logical atomism changed as Russell’s logic
developed and as more philosophical consequences were drawn from its
application, but the label is now most often applied to the modified realism
Russell held from 5 to 9. Logic was central to Russell’s philosophy from 0
onward, and much of his fertility and importance as a philosopher came from his
application of the new logic to old problems. In 0 Russell became a lecturer at
Cambridge. There his interests turned to epistemology. In writing a popular
book, Problems of Philosophy 2, he first came to appreciate the work of the
British empiricists, especially Hume and Berkeley. He held that empirical
knowledge is based on direct acquaintance with sense-data, and that matter
itself, of which we have only knowledge by description, is postulated as the
best explanation of sense-data. He soon became dissatisfied with this idea and
proposed instead that matter be logically constructed out of sensedata and
unsensed sensibilia, thereby obviating dubious inferences to material objects
as the causes of sensations. This proposal was inspired by the successful
constructions of mathematical concepts in Principia. He planned a large work,
“Theory of Knowledge,” which was to use the multiple relation theory to extend
his account from acquaintance to belief and inference Papers, vol. 7. However,
the project was abandoned as incomplete in the face of Vitters’s attacks on the
multiple relation theory, and Russell published only those portions dealing
with acquaintance. The construction of matter, however, went ahead, at least in
outline, in Our Knowledge of the External World 4, though the only detailed
constructions were undertaken later by Carnap. On Russell’s account, material
objects are those series of sensibilia that obey the laws of physics.
Sensibilia of which a mind is aware sense-data provide the experiential basis
for that mind’s knowledge of the physical world. This theory is similar, though
not identical, to phenomenalism. Russell saw the theory as an application of
Ockham’s razor, by which postulated entities were replaced by logical
constructions. He devoted much time to understanding modern physics, including
relativity and quantum theory, and in The Analysis of Matter 7 he incorporated
the fundamental ideas of those theories into his construction of the physical
world. In this book he abandoned sensibilia as fundamental constituents of the
world in favor Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, Bertrand Arthur
William 803 803 of events, which were
“neutral” because intrinsically neither physical nor mental. In 6 Russell was
dismissed from Cambridge on political grounds and from that time on had to earn
his living by writing and public lecturing. His popular lectures, “The
Philosophy of Logical Atomism” 8, were a result of this. These lectures form an
interim work, looking back on the logical achievements of 510 and emphasizing
their importance for philosophy, while taking stock of the problems raised by
Vitters’s criticisms of the multiple relation theory. In 9 Russell’s philosophy
of mind underwent substantial changes, partly in response to those criticisms.
The changes appeared in “On Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean” 9
and The Analysis of Mind 1, where the influence of contemporary trends in
psychology, especially behaviorism, is evident. Russell gave up the view that
minds are among the fundamental constituents of the world, and adopted neutral
monism, already advocated by Mach, James, and the New Realists. On Russell’s neutral monism, a
mind is constituted by a set of events related by subjective temporal relations
simultaneity, successiveness and by certain special “mnemic” causal laws. In
this way he was able to explain the apparent fact that “Hume’s inability to
perceive himself was not peculiar.” In place of the multiple relation theory
Russell identified the contents of beliefs with images “imagepropositions” and
words “word-propositions”, understood as certain sorts of events, and analyzed
truth qua correspondence in terms of resemblance and causal relations. From 8
to 4 Russell lived in the United States, where he wrote An Inquiry into Meaning
and Truth 0 and his popular A History of Western Philosophy 5. His
philosophical attention turned from metaphysics to epistemology and he
continued to work in this field after he returned in 4 to Cambridge, where he
completed his last major philosophical work, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and
Limits 8. The framework of Russell’s early epistemology consisted of an
analysis of knowledge in terms of justified true belief though it has been
suggested that he unintentionally anticipated Edmund Gettier’s objection to
this analysis, and an analysis of epistemic justification that combined
fallibilism with a weak empiricism and with a foundationalism that made room
for coherence. This framework was retained in An Inquiry and Human Knowledge,
but there were two sorts of changes that attenuated the foundationalist and
empiricist elements and accentuated the fallibilist element. First, the scope
of human knowledge was reduced. Russell had already replaced his earlier
Moorean consequentialism about values with subjectivism. Contrast “The Elements
of Ethics,” 0, with, e.g., Religion and Science, 5, or Human Society in Ethics
and Politics, 4. Consequently, what had been construed as self-evident
judgments of intrinsic value came to be regarded as non-cognitive expressions
of desire. In addition, Russell now reversed his earlier belief that deductive
inference can yield new knowledge. Second, the degree of justification
attainable in human knowledge was reduced at all levels. Regarding the
foundation of perceptual beliefs, Russell came to admit that the
object-knowledge “acquaintance with a sensedatum” was replaced by “noticing a
perceptive occurrence” in An Inquiry that provides the non-inferential
justification for a perceptual belief is buried under layers of
“interpretation” and unconscious inference in even the earliest stages of
perceptual processes. Regarding the superstructure of inferentially justified
beliefs, Russell concluded in Human Knowledge that unrestricted induction is
not generally truthpreserving anticipating Goodman’s “new riddle of induction”.
Consideration of the work of Reichenbach and Keynes on probability led him to
the conclusion that certain “postulates” are needed “to provide the antecedent
probabilities required to justify inductions,” and that the only possible
justification for believing these postulates lies, not in their self-evidence,
but in the resultant increase in the overall coherence of one’s total belief
system. In the end, Russell’s desire for certainty went unsatisfied, as he felt
himself forced to the conclusion that “all human knowledge is uncertain,
inexact, and partial. To this doctrine we have not found any limitation
whatever.” Russell’s strictly philosophical writings of 9 and later have
generally been less influential than his earlier writings. His influence was
eclipsed by that of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy. He
approved of the logical positivists’ respect for logic and science, though he
disagreed with their metaphysical agnosticism. But his dislike of ordinary
language philosophy was visceral. In My Philosophical Development 9, he accused
its practitioners of abandoning the attempt to understand the world, “that
grave and important task which philosophy throughout the ages has hitherto
pursued.”
ryle: the waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy,
known especially for his contributions to the philosophy of mind and his
attacks on Cartesianism. His best-known work is the masterpiece The Concept of
Mind 9, an attack on what he calls “Cartesian dualism” and a defense of a type
of logical behaviorism. This dualism he dubs “the dogma of the Ghost in the
Machine,” the Machine being the body, which is physical and publicly
observable, and the Ghost being the mind conceived as a private or secret arena
in which episodes of sense perception, consciousness, and inner perception take
place. A person, then, is a combination of such a mind and a body, with the
mind operating the body through exercises of will called “volitions.” Ryle’s
attack on this doctrine is both sharply focused and multifarious. He finds that
it rests on a category mistake, namely, assimilating statements about mental
processes to the same category as statements about physical processes. This is
a mistake in the logic of mental statements and mental concepts and leads to
the mistaken metaphysical theory that a person is composed of two separate and
distinct though somehow related entities, a mind and a body. It is true that
statements about the physical are statements about things and their changes.
But statements about the mental are not, and in particular are not about a
thing called “the mind.” These two types of statements do not belong to the
same category. To show this, Ryle deploys a variety of arguments, including
arguments alleging the impossibility of causal relations between mind and body
and arguments alleging vicious infinite regresses. To develop his positive view
on the nature of mind, Ryle studies the uses and hence the logic of mental
terms and finds that mental statements tell us that the person performs
observable actions in certain ways and has a disposition to perform other
observable actions in specifiable circumstances. For example, to do something
intelligently is to do something physical in a certain way and to adjust one’s
behavior to the circumstances, not, as the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine
would have it, to perform two actions, one of which is a mental action of
thinking that eventually causes a separate physical action. Ryle buttresses
this position with many acute and subtle analyses of the uses of mental terms.
Much of Ryle’s other work concerns philosophical methodology, sustaining the
thesis which is the backbone of The Concept of Mind that philosophical problems
and doctrines often arise from conceptual confusion, i.e., from mistakes about
the logic of language. Important writings in this vein include the influential
article “Systematically Misleading Expressions” and the book Dilemmas. Ryle was
also interested in Grecian philosophy throughout his life, and his last major
work, Plato’s Progress, puts forward novel hypotheses about changes in Plato’s
views, the role of the Academy, the purposes and uses of Plato’s dialogues, and
Plato’s relations with the rulers of Syracuse. Refs: H. P. Grice, “What neither
Ryle nor Austin ever taught me!” --. “What I mislearned from ‘The Concept of
Mind.’”
Saint Petersburg paradox, or the return/utility distinction:
a puzzle about gambling that motivated the distinction between expected return
and expected utility. Bernoulli published it in a St. Petersburg journal in
1738. It concerns a gamble like this: it pays $2 if heads appears on the first
toss of a coin, $4 if heads does not appear until the second toss, $8 if heads
does not appear until the third toss, and so on. The expected return from the
gamble is ½2 ! ¼4 ! 1 /88 ! . . . , or 1 ! 1 ! 1 ! ..., i.e., it is infinite.
But no one would pay much for the gamble. So it seems that expected returns do
not govern rational preferences. Bernoulli argued that expected utilities
govern rational preferences. He also held that the utility of wealth is
proportional to the log of the amount of wealth. Given his assumptions, the
gamble has finite 808 S 808 expected
utility, and should not be preferred to large sums of money. However, a
twentieth-century version of the paradox, attributed to Karl Menger,
reconstructs the gamble, putting utility payoffs in place of monetary payoffs,
so that the new gamble has infinite expected utility. Since no one would trade
much utility for the new gamble, it also seems that expected utilities do not
govern rational preferences. The resolution of the paradox is under debate.
rouvroy -- Saint-Simon, Comte de, title of Claude-Henri
de Rouvroy, social reformer. An aristocrat by birth, he initially joined the
ranks of the enlightened and liberal bourgeoisie. His Newtonian Letters to an
Inhabitant of Geneva and Introduction to Scientific Works of the Nineteenth
Century championed Condorcet’s vision of scientific and technological progress.
With Auguste Comte, he shared a positivistic philosophy of history: the triumph
of science over metaphysics. Written in wartime, The Reorganization of European
Society urged the creation of a European parliamentary system to secure peace
and unity. Having moved from scientism to pacifism, Saint-Simon moved further
to industrialism. In 1817, under the influence of two theocratic thinkers, de
Maistre and Bonald, Saint-Simon turned away from classical economic liberalism
and repudiated laissez-faire capitalism. The Industrial System 1820 drafts the
program for a hierarchical state, a technocratic society, and a planned
economy. The industrial society of the future is based on the principles of
productivity and cooperation and led by a rational and efficient class, the
industrialists artists, scientists, and technicians. He argued that the
association of positivism with unselfishness, of techniques of rational
production with social solidarity and interdependency, would remedy the plight
of the poor. Industrialism prefigures socialism, and socialism paves the way
for the rule of the law of love, the eschatological age of The New
Christianity. This utopian treatise, which reveals Saint-Simon’s alternative to
reactionary Catholicism and Protestant individualism, became the Bible of the
Saint-Simonians, a sectarian school of utopian socialists.
idem, ipse, sui, de se -- Same -- Sameness -- Griceian
– One of Grice’s favourite essays ever was Wiggins’s “Sameness and substance”
-- Griceian différance, a coinage
deployed by Derrida in De la Grammatologie 7, where he defines it as “an
economic concept designating the production of differing/deferring.” Différance
is polysemic, but its key function is to name the prime condition for the
functioning of all language and thought: differing, the differentiation of
signs from each other that allows us to differentiate things from each other.
Deferring is the process by which signs refer to each other, thus constituting
the self-reference essential to language, without ever capturing the being or
presence that is the transcendent entity toward which it is aimed. Without the
concepts or idealities generated by the iteration of signs, we could never
identify a dog as a dog, could not perceive a dog or any other thing as such.
Perception presupposes language, which, in turn, presupposes the ideality
generated by the repetition of signs. Thus there can be no perceptual origin for
language; language depends upon an “original repetition,” a deliberate oxymoron
that Derrida employs to signal the impossibility of conceiving an origin of
language from within the linguistic framework in which we find ourselves.
Différance is the condition for language, and language is the condition for
experience: whatever meaning we may find in the world is attributed to the
differing/ deferring play of signifiers. The notion of différance and the
correlative thesis that meaning is language-dependent have been appropriated by
radical thinkers in the attempt to demonstrate that political inequalities are
grounded in nothing other than the conventions of sign systems governing
differing cultures.
sanction, anything whose function is to penalize or
reward. It is useful to distinguish between social sanctions, legal sanctions,
internal sanctions, and religious sanctions. Social sanctions are extralegal
pressures exerted upon the agent by others. For example, others might distrust
us, ostracize us, or even physically attack us, if we behave in certain ways.
Legal sanctions include corporal punishment, imprisonment, fines, withdrawal of
the legal rights to run a business or to leave the area, and other penalties.
Internal sanctions may include not only guilt feelings but also the sympathetic
pleasures of helping others or the gratified conscience of doing right. Divine
sanctions, if there are any, are rewards or punishments given to us by a god
while we are alive or after we die. There are important philosophical questions
concerning sanctions. Should law be defined as the rules the breaking of which
elicits punishment by the state? Could there be a moral duty to behave in a
given way if there were no social sanctions concerning such behavior? If not,
then a conventionalist account of moral duty seems unavoidable. And, to what
extent does the combined effect of external and internal sanctions make
rational egoism or prudence or self-interest coincide with morality?
sanctis: essential
philosopher. He considers philosophy as a branch of the belles lettres – and
his field of expertise is when stylists stopped using an artificial Roman, and
turned to ‘Italian.’ Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e de Sanctis," per
Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria,
Italia..
sapir’s and whorf’s hypothesis, broadly, the claim that
one’s perception, thought, and behavior are influenced by one’s language. The
hypothesis was named after Benjamin Lee Whorf 7 1 and his teacher Edward Sapir
4 9. We may discern different versions of this claim by distinguishing degrees
of linguistic influence, the highest of which is complete and unalterable
determination of the fundamental structures of perception, thought, and
behavior. In the most radical form, the hypothesis says that one’s reality is
constructed by one’s language and that differently structured languages give
rise to different realities, which are incommensurable.
sarpi: very important
Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Sarpi," per il
Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
sartre: Grice: “The philosopher of “Le deux magots.” –
“I’m surprised Mary Warnock dedicated his life to him!” -- philosopher and
writer, the leading advocate of existentialism during the years following World
War II. The heart of his philosophy was the precious notion of freedom and its
concomitant sense of personal responsibility. He insisted, in an interview a
few years before his death, that he never ceased to believe that “in the end
one is always responsible for what is made of one,” only a slight revision of
his earlier, bolder slogan, “man makes himself.” To be sure, as a student of
Hegel, Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger and
because of his own physical frailty and the tragedies of the war Sartre had to be well aware of the many
constraints and obstacles to human freedom, but as a Cartesian, he never
deviated from Descartes’s classical portrait of human consciousness as free and
distinct from the physical universe it inhabits. One is never free of one’s
“situation,” Sartre tells us, though one is always free to deny “negate” that
situation and to try to change it. To be human, to be conscious, is to be free
to imagine, free to choose, and responsible for one’s lot in life. As a
student, Sartre was fascinated by Husserl’s new philosophical method,
phenomenology. His first essays were direct responses to Husserl and
applications of the phenomenological method. His essay on The Imagination in 6
established the groundwork for much of what was to follow: the celebration of
our remarkable freedom to imagine the world other than it is and following Kant
the way that this ability informs all of our experience. In The Transcendence
of the Ego 7 he reconsidered Husserl’s central idea of a “phenomenological
reduction” the idea of examining the essential structures of consciousness as
such and argued following Heidegger that one cannot examine consciousness
without at the same time recognizing the reality of actual objects in the
world. In other words, there can be no such “reduction.” In his novel Nausea 8,
Sartre made this point in a protracted example: his bored and often nauseated
narrator confronts a gnarled chestnut tree in the park and recognizes with a
visceral shock that its presence is simply given and utterly irreducible. In
The Transcendence of the Ego Sartre also reconsiders the notion of the self,
which Husserl and so many earlier philosophers had identified with consciousness.
But the self, Sartre argues, is not “in” consciousness, much less identical to
it. The self is out there “in the world, like the self of another.” In other
words, the self is an ongoing project in the world with other people; it is not
simply self-awareness or self-consciousness as such “I think, therefore I am”.
This separation of self and consciousness and the rejection of the self as
simply self-consciousness provide the framework for Sartre’s greatest
philosophical treatise, L’être et le néant Being and Nothingness, 3. Its
structure is unabashedly Cartesian, consciousness “being-for-itself” or pour
soi on the one side, the existence of mere things “being-in-itself” or en soi
on the other. The phraseology comes from Hegel. But Sartre does not fall into
the Cartesian trap of designating these two types of being as separate
“substances.” Instead, Sartre describes consciousness as “nothing’ “not a thing” but an activity, “a wind
blowing from nowhere toward the world.” Sartre often resorts to visceral
metaphors when developing this theme e.g., “a worm coiled in the heart of
being”, but much of what he is arguing is familiar to philosophical readers in
the more metaphor-free work of Kant, who also warned against the follies
“paralogisms” of understanding consciousness as itself a possible object of
consciousness rather than as the activity of constituting the objects of
consciousness. As the lens of a camera can never see itself and in a mirror only sees a reflection of
itself consciousness can never view
itself as consciousness and is only aware of itself “for itself”
through its experience of objects. Ontologically, one might think of
“nothingness” as “no-thing-ness,” a much less outrageous suggestion than those
that would make it an odd sort of a thing. It is through the nothingness of
consciousness and its activities that negation comes into the world, our
ability to imagine the world other than it is and the inescapable necessity of
imagining ourselves other than we seem to be. And because consciousness is
nothingness, it is not subject to the rules of causality. Central to the
argument of L’être et le néant and Sartre’s insistence on the primacy of human
freedom is his insistence that consciousness cannot be understood in causal
terms. It is always self-determining and, as such, “it always is what it is
not, and is not what it is” a playful
paradox that refers to the fact that we are always in the process of choosing.
Consciousness is “nothing,” but the self is always on its way to being
something. Throughout our lives we accumulate a body of facts that are true of
us our “facticity” but during our lives we remain free to
envision new possibilities, to reform ourselves and to reinterpret our
facticity in the light of new projects and ambitions our “transcendence.” This indeterminacy means
that we can never be anything, and when we try to establish ourselves as
something particular whether a social
role policeman, waiter or a certain character shy, intellectual, cowardly we are in “bad faith.” Bad faith is
erroneously viewing ourselves as something fixed and settled Sartre utterly
rejects Freud and his theory of the unconscious determination of our
personalities and behavior, but it is also bad faith to view oneself as a being
of infinite possibilities and ignore the always restrictive facts and
circumstances within which all choices must be made. On the one hand, we are
always trying to define ourselves; on the other hand we are always free to
break away from what we are, and always responsible for what we have made of
ourselves. But there is no easy resolution or “balance” between facticity and
freedom, rather a kind of dialectic or tension. The result is our frustrated
desire to be God, to be both in-itself and for-itself. But this is not so much
blasphemy as an expression of despair, a form of ontological original sin, the
impossibility of being both free and what we want to be. Life for Sartre is yet
more complicated. There is a third basic ontological category, on a par with
the being-in-itself and being-for-itself and not derivative of them. He calls
it “being-for-others.” To say that it is not derivative is to insist that our
knowledge of others is not inferred, e.g. by some argument by analogy, from the
behavior of others, and we ourselves are not wholly constituted by our
self-determinations and the facts about us. Sartre gives us a brutal but
familiar everyday example of our experience of being-for-others in what he
calls “the look” le regard. Someone catches us “in the act” of doing something
humiliating, and we find ourselves defining ourselves probably also resisting
that definition in their terms. In his Saint Genet 3, Sartre describes such a
conversion of the ten-year-old Jean Genet into a thief. So, too, we tend to
“catch” one another in the judgments we make and define one another in terms
that are often unflattering. But these judgments become an essential and
ineluctible ingredient in our sense of ourselves, and they too lead to
conflicts indeed, conflicts so basic and so frustrating that in his play Huis
clos No Exit, 3 Sartre has one of his characters utter the famous line, “Hell
is other people.” In his later works, notably his Critique of Dialectical
Reason 859, Sartre turned increasingly to politics and, in particular, toward a
defense of Marxism on existentialist principles. This entailed rejecting
materialist determinism, but it also required a new sense of solidarity or what
Sartre had wistfully called, following Heidegger, Mitsein or “being with
others”. Thus in his later work he struggled to find a way of overcoming the
conflict and insularity or the rather “bourgeois” consciousness he had
described in Being and Nothingness. Not surprisingly given his constant
political activities he found it in revolutionary engagement. Consonant with
his rejection of bourgeois selfhood, Sartre turned down the 4 Nobel prize for
literature.
satisfactoriness-condition: a state of affairs or “way things are,” most commonly
referred to in relation to something that implies or is implied by it. Let p,
q, and r be schematic letters for declarative sentences; and let P, Q, and R be
corresponding nominalizations; e.g., if p is ‘snow is white’, then P would be
‘snow’s being white’. P can be a necessary or sufficient condition of Q in any
of several senses. In the weakest sense P is a sufficient condition of Q iff if
and only if: if p then q or if P is actual then Q is actual where the conditional is to be read as
“material,” as amounting merely to not-p & not-q. At the same time Q is a
necessary condition of P iff: if not-q then not-p. It follows that P is a
sufficient condition of Q iff Q is a necessary condition of P. Stronger senses
of sufficiency and of necessity are definable, in terms of this basic sense, as
follows: P is nomologically sufficient necessary for Q iff it follows from the
laws of nature, but not without them, that if p then q that if q then p. P is
alethically or metaphysically sufficient necessary for Q iff it is alethically
or metaphysically necessary that if p then q that if q then p. However, it is
perhaps most common of all to interpret conditions in terms of subjunctive
conditionals, in such a way that P is a sufficient condition of Q iff P would
not occur unless Q occurred, or: if P should occur, Q would; and P is a
necessary condition of Q iff Q would not occur unless P occurred, or: if Q
should occur, P would. -- satisfaction,
an auxiliary semantic notion introduced by Tarski in order to give a recursive
definition of truth for languages containing quantifiers. Intuitively, the
satisfaction relation holds between formulas containing free variables such as
‘Buildingx & Tallx’ and objects or sequences of objects such as the Empire
State Building if and only if the formula “holds of” or “applies to” the
objects. Thus, ‘Buildingx & Tallx’, is satisfied by all and only tall
buildings, and ‘-Tallx1 & Tallerx1, x2’ is satisfied by any pair of objects
in which the first object corresponding to ‘x1’ is not tall, but nonetheless
taller than the second corresponding to ‘x2’. Satisfaction is needed when
defining truth for languages with sentences built from formulas containing free
variables, because the notions of truth and falsity do not apply to these
“open” formulas. Thus, we cannot characterize the truth of the sentences ‘Dx
Buildingx & Tallx’ ‘Some building is tall’ in terms of the truth or falsity
of the open formula ‘Buildingx & Tallx’, since the latter is neither true
nor false. But note that the sentence is true if and only if the formula is
satisfied by some object. Since we can give a recursive definition of the
notion of satisfaction for possibly open formulas, this enables us to use this
auxiliary notion in defining truth. -- satisfiable,
having a common model, a structure in which all the sentences in the set are
true; said of a set of sentences. In modern logic, satisfiability is the
semantic analogue of the syntactic, proof-theoretic notion of consistency, the
unprovability of any explicit contradiction. The completeness theorem for
first-order logic, that all valid sentences are provable, can be formulated in
terms of satisfiability: syntactic consistency implies satisfiability. This
theorem does not necessarily hold for extensions of first-order logic. For any
sound proof system for secondorder logic there will be an unsatisfiable set of
sentences without there being a formal derivation of a contradiction from the
set. This follows from Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. One of the central
results of model theory for first-order logic concerns satisfiability: the
compactness theorem, due to Gödel in 6, says that if every finite subset of a
set of sentences is satisfiable the set itself is satisfiable. It follows
immediately from his completeness theorem for first-order logic, and gives a
powerful method to prove the consistency of a set of sentences.
satisfice: to choose or do the good enough rather than the most
or the best. ‘Satisfice’, an obsolete variant of ‘satisfy’ (“much as
‘implicate’ is an explicated form of ‘imply’” – Grice) has been adopted by Simon
and others to designate nonoptimizing choice or action. According to some
economists, limitations of time or information may make it impossible or
inadvisable for an individual, firm, or state body to attempt to maximize
pleasure, profits, market share, revenues, or some other desired result, and
satisficing with respect to such results is then said to be rational, albeit
less than ideally rational. Although many orthodox economists think that choice
can and always should be conceived in maximizing or optimizing terms, satisficing
models have been proposed in economics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy.
Biologists have sometimes conceived evolutionary change as largely consisting
of “good enough” or satisficing adaptations to environmental pressures rather
than as proceeding through optimal adjustments to such pressures, but in
philosophy, the most frequent recent use of the idea of satisficing has been in
ethics and rational choice theory. Economists typically regard satisficing as
acceptable only where there are unwanted constraints on decision making; but it
is also possible to see satisficing as entirely acceptable in itself, and in
the field of ethics, it has recently been argued that there may be nothing
remiss about moral satisficing, e.g., giving a good amount to charity, but less
than one could give. It is possible to formulate satisficing forms of
utilitarianism on which actions are morally right even if they contribute
merely positively and/or in some large way, rather than maximally, to overall
net human happiness. Bentham’s original formulation of the principle of utility
and Popper’s negative utilitarianism are both examples of satisficing
utilitarianism in this sense and it
should be noted that satisficing utilitarianism has the putative advantage over
optimizing forms of allowing for supererogatory degrees of moral excellence.
Moreover, any moral view that treats moral satisficing as permissible makes
room for moral supererogation in cases where one optimally goes beyond the
merely acceptable. But since moral satisficing is less than optimal moral
behavior, but may be more meritorious than certain behavior that in the same
circumstances would be merely permissible, some moral satisficing may actually
count as supererogatory. In recent work on rational individual choice, some
philosophers have argued that satisficing may often be acceptable in itself,
rather than merely second-best. Even Simon allows that an entrepreneur may
simply seek a satisfactory return on investment or share of the market, rather
than a maximum under one of these headings. But a number of philosophers have
made the further claim that we may sometimes, without irrationality, turn down
the readily available better in the light of the goodness and sufficiency of
what we already have or are enjoying. Independently of the costs of taking a
second dessert, a person may be entirely satisfied with what she has eaten and,
though willing to admit she would enjoy that extra dessert, turn it down,
saying “I’m just fine as I am.” Whether such examples really involve an
acceptable rejection of the momentarily better for the good enough has been
disputed. However, some philosophers have gone on to say, even more strongly,
that satisficing can sometimes be rationally required and optimizing rationally
unacceptable. To keep on seeking pleasure from food or sex without ever being
thoroughly satisfied with what one has enjoyed can seem compulsive and as such
less than rational. If one is truly rational about such goods, one isn’t
insatiable: at some point one has had enough and doesn’t want more, even though
one could obtain further pleasure. The idea that satisficing is sometimes a
requirement of practical reason is reminiscent of Aristotle’s view that
moderation is inherently reasonable
rather than just a necessary means to later enjoyments and the avoidance
of later pain or illness, which is the way the Epicureans conceived moderation.
But perhaps the greatest advocate of satisficing is Plato, who argues in the
Philebus that there must be measure or limit to our desire for pleasure in
order for pleasure to count as a good thing for us. Insatiably to seek and
obtain pleasure from a given source is to gain nothing good from it. And
according to such a view, satisficing moderation is a necessary precondition of
human good and flourishing, rather than merely being a rational restraint on
the accumulation of independently conceived personal good or well-being.
saussure: founder of structuralism. His work in semiotics is a
major influence on the later development of
structuralist philosophy, as well as structural anthropology,
structuralist literary criticism, and modern semiology. He pursued studies in
linguistics largely under Georg Curtius at the
of Leipzig, along with such future Junggrammatiker neogrammarians as
Leskien and Brugmann. Following the publication of his important Mémoire sur le
système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européenes 1879, Saussure
left for Paris, where he associated himself with the Société Linguistique and
taught comparative grammar. In 1, he returned to Switzerland to teach Sanskrit,
comparative grammar, and general linguistics at the of Geneva. His major work, the Course in
General Linguistics 6, was assembled from students’ notes and his original
lecture outlines after his death. The Course in General Linguistics argued
against the prevalent historical and comparative philological approaches to
language by advancing what Saussure termed a scientific model for linguistics,
one borrowed in part from Durkheim. Such a model would take the “social fact”
of language la langue as its object, and distinguish this from the variety of
individual speech events la parole, as well as from the collectivity of speech
events and grammatical rules that form the general historical body of language
as such le langage. Thus, by separating out the unique and accidental elements
of practiced speech, Saussure distinguished language la langue as the objective
set of linguistic elements and rules that, taken as a system, governs the
language use specific to a given community. It was the systematic coherency and
generality of language, so conceived, that inclined Saussure to approach
linguistics principally in terms of its static or synchronic dimension, rather
than its historical or diachronic dimension. For Saussure, the system of
language is a “treasury” or “depository” of signs, and the basic unit of the
linguistic sign is itself two-sided, having both a phonemic component “the
signifier” and a semantic component “the signified”. He terms the former the
“acoustical” or “sound” image which may,
in turn, be represented graphically, in writing
and the latter the “concept” or “meaning.” Saussure construes the
signifier to be a representation of linguistic sounds in the imagination or
memory, i.e., a “psychological phenomenon,” one that corresponds to a
specifiable range of material phonetic sounds. Its distinctive property
consists in its being readily differentiated from other signifiers in the
particular language. It is the function of each signifier, as a distinct
entity, to convey a particular meaning
or “signified” concept and this
is fixed purely by conventional association. While the relation between the
signifier and signified results in what Saussure terms the “positive” fact of
the sign, the sign ultimately derives its linguistic value its precise
descriptive determination from its position in the system of language as a
whole, i.e., within the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations that
structurally and functionally differentiate it. Signifiers are differentially
identified; signifiers are arbitrarily associated with their respective
signified concepts; and signs assume the determination they do only through
their configuration within the system of language as a whole: these facts
enabled Saussure to claim that language is largely to be understood as a closed
formal system of differences, and that the study of language would be
principally governed by its autonomous structural determinations. So conceived,
linguistics would be but a part of the study of social sign systems in general,
namely, the broader science of what Saussure termed semiology. Saussure’s
insights would be taken up by the subsequent Geneva, Prague, and Copenhagen
schools of linguistics and by the Russian formalists, and would be further
developed by the structuralists in France and elsewhere, as well as by recent
semiological approaches to literary criticism, social anthropology, and
psychoanalysis. Grice was influenced by de Saussure via Ogden’s and Richard’s
Meaning of Meaning and Gardiner’s “Theory of Speech and Language.”
saxonia: “Strictly, if we
call William of Occam, Occam, we should call Albert of Saxony, Saxony.”
“Saxonia sounds like a large place – but we do not know where in Saxony came
from – I often wonder if Albertus of Saxony is not underinformative.” – Grice.
Like Grice, a terminist logician, from lower Saxony who taught in the arts
faculty at Paris. Under the influence of Buridan and Nicholas of Oresme, he
turned to playful dialectics. He was a founder of the “Universitas Vienna” and
was bishop of Halberstadt. His works on logic include Logic, Questions on the
Posterior Analytics, Sophismata, Treatise on Obligations, and Insolubilia. He
also wrote questions on Aristotle’s physical works and on John of Sacrobosco’s
De Sphaera, and short treatises on squaring the circle and on the ratio of the
diameter to the side of a square. His work is competent but rarely original.
Grice read most of them, and was surprised that Albertus never coined
‘implicaturum’!
sceptis: Cicero translated as ‘dubitatio.’ For some
reason, Grice was irritated by Wood’s sobriquet of Russell as a “passionate
sceptic”: ‘an oxymoron.” The most specific essay by Grice on this is an essay
he kept after many years, that he delivered back in the day at Oxford,
entitled, “Scepticism and common sense.” Both were traditional topics at Oxford
at the time. Typically, as in the Oxonian manner, he chose two authors,
New-World’s Malcolm’s treatment of Old-World Moore, and brings in Austin’s
‘ordinary-language’ into the bargain. He also brings in his own obsession with
what an emissor communicates. In this case, the “p” is the philosopher’s
sceptical proposition, such as “That pillar box is red.” Grice thinks
‘dogmatic’ is the opposite of ‘sceptic,’ and he is right! Liddell and Scott
have “δόγμα,” from “δοκέω,” and which they render as “that which seems to one,
opinion or belief;” Pl.R.538c; “δ. πόλεως κοινόν;” esp. of philosophical
doctrines, Epicur.Nat.14.7; “notion,” Pl.Tht.158d; “decision, judgement,” Pl. Lg.926d; (pl.); public decree,
ordinance, esp. of Roman
Senatus-consulta, “δ. συγκλήτου” “δ. τῆς
βουλῆς” So note that there is nothing ‘dogmatic’ about ‘dogma,’ as it derives
from ‘dokeo,’ and is rendered as ‘that which seems to one.’ So the keyword
should be later Grecian, and in the adjectival ‘dogmatic.’ Liddell and Scott
have “δογματικός,” which they render as “of or for doctrines, didactic,
[διάλογοι] Quint.Inst.2.15.26, and “of persons, δ. ἰατροί,” “physicians who go
by general principles,” opp. “ἐμπειρικοί and μεθοδικοί,” Dsc.Ther.Praef.,
Gal.1.65; in Philosophy, S.E.M.7.1, D.L.9.70, etc.; “δ. ὑπολήψεις” Id.9.83; “δ.
φιλοσοφία” S.E. P.1.4. Adv. “-κῶς” D.L.9.74, S.E.P.1.197: Comp. “-κώτερον” Id.M.
6.4. Why is Grice interested in scepticism. His initial concern, the one that
Austin would authorize, relates to ‘ordinary language.’ What if ‘ordinary
language’ embraces scepticism? What if it doesn’t? Strawso notes that the world
of ordinary language is a world of things, causes, and stuff. None of the good
stuff for the sceptic. what is Grice’s answer to the sceptic’s implicaturum?
The sceptic’s implicaturum is a topic that always fascinated Girce. While Grice
groups two essays as dealing with one single theme, strictly, only this or that
philosopher’s paradox (not all) may count as sceptical. This or that
philosopher’s paradox may well not be sceptical at all but rather dogmatic. In
fact, Grice defines philosophers paradox as anything repugnant to common sense,
shocking, or extravagant ‒ to Malcolms ears, that is! While it is,
strictly, slightly odd to quote this as a given date just because, by a stroke
of the pen, Grice writes that date in the Harvard volume, we will follow
his charming practice. This is vintage Grice. Grice always takes the
sceptics challenge seriously, as any serious philosopher should. Grices
takes both the sceptics explicatum and the scepticss implicaturum as
self-defeating, as a very affront to our idea of rationality, conversational or
other. V: Conversations with a sceptic: Can he be slightly more conversational
helpful? Hume’ sceptical attack is partial, and targeted only towards practical
reason, though. Yet, for Grice, reason is one. You cannot really attack
practical or buletic reason without attacking theoretical or doxastic reason.
There is such thing as a general rational acceptance, to use Grice’s term, that
the sceptic is getting at. Grice likes to play with the idea that ultimately
every syllogism is buletic or practical. If, say, a syllogism by Eddington
looks doxastic, that is because Eddington cares to omit the practical tail, as
Grice puts it. And Eddington is not even a philosopher, they say. Grice is here
concerned with a Cantabrigian topic popularised by Moore. As Grice
recollects, Some like Witters, but Moore’s my man. Unlike Cambridge
analysts such as Moore, Grice sees himself as a linguistic-turn Oxonian
analyst. So it is only natural that Grice would connect time-honoured
scepticism of Pyrrhos vintage, and common sense with ordinary language, so
mis-called, the elephant in Grices room. Lewis and Short have “σκέψις,” f. σκέπτομαι,
which they render as “viewing, perception by the senses, ἡ διὰ τῶν ὀμμάτων
ςκέψις, Pl. Phd. 83a; observation of auguries; also as examination,
speculation, consideration, τὸ εὕρημα πολλῆς σκέψιος; βραχείας ςκέψις; ϝέμειν
ςκέψις take thought of a thing; ἐνθεὶς τῇ τέχνῃ ςκέψις; ςκέψις ποιεῖσθαι;
ςκέψις προβέβληκας; ςκέψις λόγων; ςκέψις περί τινος inquiry
into, speculation on a thing; περί τι Id. Lg. 636d;ἐπὶ σκέψιν τινὸς ἐλθεῖν; speculation,
inquiry,ταῦτα ἐξωτερικωτέρας ἐστὶ σκέψεως; ἔξω τῆς νῦν ςκέψεως; οὐκ οἰκεῖα τῆς
παρούσης ςκέψις; also hesitation, doubt, esp. of the Sceptic or Pyrthonic
philosophers, AP 7. 576 (Jul.); the Sceptic philosophy, S. E. P. 1.5; οἱ ἀπὸ
τῆς ςκέψεως, the Sceptics, ib. 229. in politics, resolution, decree,
συνεδρίον Hdn. 4.3.9, cf. Poll. 6.178. If scepticism attacks common sense
and fails, Grice seems to be implicating, that ordinary language philosophy is
a good antidote to scepticism. Since what language other than ordinary language
does common sense speak? Well, strictly, common sense doesnt speak. The man in
the street does. Grice addresses this topic in a Mooreian way in a later essay,
also repr. in Studies, Moore and philosophers paradoxes, repr. in Studies.
As with his earlier Common sense and scepticism, Grice tackles Moores and
Malcolms claim that ordinary language, so-called, solves a few of philosophers
paradoxes. Philosopher is Grices witty way to generalise over your
common-or-garden, any, philosopher, especially of the type he found eccentric,
the sceptic included. Grice finds this or that problem in this overarching
Cantabrigian manoeuvre, as over-simplifying a pretty convoluted
terrain. While he cherishes Austins Some like Witters, but Moores MY man!
Grice finds Moore too Cantabrigian to his taste. While an Oxonian thoroughbred,
Grice is a bit like Austin, Some like Witters, but Moores my man, with this or
that caveat. Again, as with his treatment of Descartes or Locke, Grice is
hardly interested in finding out what Moore really means. He is a philosopher,
not a historian of philosophy, and he knows it. While Grice agrees with Austins
implicaturum that Moore goes well above Witters, if that is the expression
(even if some like him), we should find the Oxonian equivalent to Moore. Grice
would not Names Ryle, since he sees him, and his followers, almost every day.
There is something apostolic about Moore that Grice enjoys, which is just as
well, seeing that Moore is one of the twelve. Grice found it amusing that
the members of The Conversazione Society would still be nickNamesd apostles
when their number exceeded the initial 12. Grice spends some time exploring
what Malcolm, a follower of Witters, which does not help, as it were, has to
say about Moore in connection with that particularly Oxonian turn of phrase,
such as ordinary language is. For Malcolms Moore, a paradox by philosopher
[sic], including the sceptic, arises when philosopher [sic], including the
sceptic, fails to abide by the dictates of ordinary language. It might merit
some exploration if Moore’s defence of common sense is against: the sceptic may
be one, but also the idealist. Moore the realist, armed with ordinary language
attacks the idealists claim. The idealist is sceptical of the realists claim.
But empiricist idealism (Bradley) has at Oxford as good pedigree as empiricist
realism (Cook Wilson). Malcolm’s simplifications infuriate Grice, and ordinary
language has little to offer in the defense of common sense realism against
sceptical empiricist idealism. Surely the ordinary man says ridiculous, or
silly, as Russell prefers, things, such as Smith is lucky, Departed spirits
walk along this road on their way to Paradise, I know there are infinite stars,
and I wish I were Napoleon, or I wish that I had
been Napoleon, which does not mean that the utterer wishes that
he were like Napoleon, but that he wishes that he had lived
not in the his century but in the XVIIIth century. Grice is being specific
about this. It is true that an ordinary use of language, as Malcolm
suggests, cannot be self-contradictory unless the ordinary use of language is
defined by stipulation as not self-contradictory, in which case an appeal to
ordinary language becomes useless against this or that paradox by Philosopher.
I wish that I had been Napoleon seems to involve nothing but an ordinary use of
language by any standard but that of freedom from absurdity. I wish
that I had been Napoleon is not, as far as Grice can see, philosophical, but
something which may have been said and meant by numbers of ordinary
people. Yet, I wish that I had been Napoleon is open to the suspicion of
self-contradictoriness, absurdity, or some other kind of
meaninglessness. And in this context suspicion is all Grice needs. By
uttering I wish that I had been Napoleon U hardly means the same as he
would if he uttered I wish I were like Napoleon. I wish that I had been
Napoleon is suspiciously self-contradictory, absurd, or meaningless, if, as
uttered by an utterer in a century other than the XVIIIth century, say, the
utterer is understood as expressing the proposition that the utterer wishes
that he had lived in the XVIIIth century, and not in his century, in which case
he-1 wishes that he had not been him-1? But blame it on the
buletic. That Moore himself is not too happy with Malcolms criticism can
be witnessed by a cursory glimpse at hi reply to Malcolm. Grice is totally
against this view that Malcolm ascribes to Moore as a view that is too broad to
even claim to be true. Grices implicaturum is that Malcolm is appealing to
Oxonian turns of phrase, such as ordinary language, but not taking proper
Oxonian care in clarifying the nuances and stuff in dealing with, admittedly, a
non-Oxonian philosopher such as Moore. When dealing with Moore, Grice is not
necessarily concerned with scepticism. Time is unreal, e.g. is hardly a sceptic
utterance. Yet Grice lists it as one of Philosophers paradoxes. So, there are
various to consider here. Grice would start with common sense. That is what he
does when he reprints this essay in WOW, with his attending note in both the
preface and the Retrospective epilogue on how he organizes the themes and
strands. Common sense is one keyword there, with its attending realism.
Scepticism is another, with its attending empiricist idealism. It is intriguing
that in the first two essays opening Grices explorations in semantics and metaphysics
it seems its Malcolm, rather than the dryer Moore, who interests Grice most.
While he would provide exegeses of this or that dictum by Moore, and indeed,
Moore’s response to Malcolm, Grice seems to be more concerned with applications
of his own views. Notably in Philosophers paradoxes. The fatal objection Grice
finds for the paradox propounder (not necessarily a sceptic, although a sceptic
may be one of the paradox propounders) significantly rests on Grices reductive
analysis of meaning that as ascribed to
this or that utterer U. Grice elaborates on circumstances that hell later take
up in the Retrospective epilogue. I find myself not understanding what I mean
is dubiously acceptable. If meaning, Grice claims, is about an utterer U
intending to get his addressee A to believe that U ψ-s that p, U must think
there is a good chance that A will recognise what he is supposed to believe,
by, perhaps, being aware of the Us practice or by a supplementary explanation
which might come from U. In which case, U should not be meaning what Malcolm
claims U might mean. No utterer should intend his addressee to believe what is
conceptually impossible, or incoherent, or blatantly false (Charles Is
decapitation willed Charles Is death.), unless you are Queen in Through the
Looking Glass. I believe five impossible things before breakfast, and I hope
youll soon get the proper training to follow suit. Cf. Tertulian, Credo, quia
absurdum est. Admittedly, Grice edits the Philosophers paradoxes essay. It is
only Grices final objection which is repr. in WOW, even if he provides a good
detailed summary of the previous sections. Grice appeals to Moore on later
occasions. In Causal theory, Grice lists, as a third philosophical
mistake, the opinion by Malcolm that Moore did not know how to use knowin a
sentence. Grice brings up the same example again in Prolegomena. The use of
factive know of Moore may well be a misuse. While at Madison, Wisconsin, Moore
lectures at a hall eccentrically-built with indirect lighting simulating sun rays,
Moore infamously utters, I know that there is a window behind that curtain,
when there is not. But it is not the factiveness Grice is aiming at, but the
otiosity Malcolm misdescribes in the true, if baffling, I know that I have two
hands. In Retrospective epilogue, Grice uses M to abbreviate Moore’s fairy
godmother – along with G (Grice), A (Austin), R (Ryle) and Q (Quine)! One
simple way to approach Grices quandary with Malcolm’s quandary with Moore is
then to focus on know. How can Malcolm claim that Moore is guilty of misusing
know? The most extensive exploration by Grice on know is in Grices third James
lecture (but cf. his seminar on Knowledge and belief, and his remarks on some
of our beliefs needing to be true, in Meaning revisited. The examinee knows
that the battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815. Nothing odd about that, nor
about Moores uttering I know that these are my hands. Grice is perhaps the only
one of the Oxonian philosophers of Austins play group who took common sense
realsim so seriously, if only to crticise Malcoms zeal with it. For Grice,
common-sense realism = ordinary language, whereas for the typical Austinian,
ordinary language = the language of the man in the street. Back at Oxford,
Grice uses Malcolm to contest the usual criticism that Oxford ordinary-language
philosophers defend common-sense realist assumptions just because the way
non-common-sense realist philosopher’s talk is not ordinary language, and even
at Oxford. Cf. Flews reference to Joness philosophical verbal rubbish in using
self as a noun. Grice is infuriated by all this unclear chatter, and chooses
Malcolms mistreatment of Moore as an example. Grice is possibly fearful to
consider Austins claims directly! In later essays, such as ‘the learned’ and ‘the
lay,’ Grice goes back to the topic criticising now the scientists jargon as an
affront to the ordinary language of the layman that Grice qua philosopher
defends. scepticism, in the most common sense, the refusal to grant that there
is any knowledge or justification. Skepticism can be either partial or total,
either practical or theoretical, and, if theoretical, either moderate or
radical, and either of knowledge or of justification. Skepticism is partial iff
if and only if it is restricted to particular fields of beliefs or
propositions, and total iff not thus restricted. And if partial, it may be
highly restricted, as is the skepticism for which religion is only opium, or
much more general, as when not only is religion called opium, but also history
bunk and metaphysics meaningless. Skepticism is practical iff it is an attitude
of deliberately withholding both belief and disbelief, accompanied perhaps but
not necessarily by commitment to a recommendation for people generally, that
they do likewise. Practical skepticism can of course be either total or
partial, and if partial it can be more or less general. Skepticism is
theoretical iff it is a commitment to the belief that there is no knowledge
justified belief of a certain kind or of certain kinds. Such theoretical skepticism
comes in several varieties. It is moderate and total iff it holds that there is
no certain superknowledge superjustified belief whatsoever, not even in logic
or mathematics, nor through introspection of one’s present experience. It is
radical and total iff it holds that there isn’t even any ordinary knowledge
justified belief at all. It is moderate and partial, on the other hand, iff it
holds that there is no certain superknowledge superjustified belief of a
certain specific kind K or of certain specific kinds K1, . . . , Kn less than
the totality of such kinds. It is radical and partial, finally, iff it holds
that there isn’t even any ordinary knowledge justified belief at all of that
kind K or of those kinds K1, . . . , Kn. Grecian skepticism can be traced back
to Socrates’ epistemic modesty. Suppressed by the prolific theoretical
virtuosity of Plato and Aristotle, such modesty reasserted itself in the
skepticism of the Academy led by Arcesilaus and later by Carneades. In this
period began a long controversy pitting Academic Skeptics against the Stoics
Zeno and later Chrysippus, and their followers. Prolonged controversy,
sometimes heated, softened the competing views, but before agreement congealed
Anesidemus broke with the Academy and reclaimed the arguments and tradition of
Pyrrho, who wrote nothing, but whose Skeptic teachings had been preserved by a
student, Timon in the third century B.C.. After enduring more than two
centuries, neoPyrrhonism was summarized, c.200 A.D., by Sextus Empiricus Outlines
of Pyrrhonism and Adversus mathematicos. Skepticism thus ended as a school, but
as a philosophical tradition it has been influential long after that, and is so
even now. It has influenced strongly not only Cicero Academica and De natura
deorum, St. Augustine Contra academicos, and Montaigne “Apology for Raimund
Sebond”, but also the great historical philosophers of the Western tradition,
from Descartes through Hegel. Both on the Continent and in the Anglophone
sphere a new wave of skepticism has built for decades, with logical positivism,
deconstructionism, historicism, neopragmatism, and relativism, and the writings
of Foucault knowledge as a mask of power, Derrida deconstruction, Quine
indeterminacy and eliminativism, Kuhn incommensurability, and Rorty solidarity
over objectivity, edification over inquiry. At the same time a rising tide of
books and articles continues other philosophical traditions in metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, etc. It is interesting to compare the cognitive
disengagement recommended by practical skepticism with the affective
disengagement dear to stoicism especially in light of the epistemological
controversies that long divided Academic Skepticism from the Stoa, giving rise
to a rivalry dominant in Hellenistic philosophy. If believing and favoring are
positive, with disbelieving and disfavoring their respective negative
counterparts, then the magnitude of our happiness positive or unhappiness
negative over a given matter is determined by the product of our
belief/disbelief and our favoring/disfavoring with regard to that same matter.
The fear of unhappiness may lead one stoically to disengage from affective
engagement, on either side of any matter that escapes one’s total control. And
this is a kind of practical affective “skepticism.” Similarly, if believing and
truth are positive, with disbelieving and falsity their respective negative
counterparts, then the magnitude of our correctness positive or error negative
over a given matter is determined by the product of our belief/disbelief and
the truth/falsity with regard to that same matter where the positive or
negative magnitude of the truth or falsity at issue may be determined by some
measure of “theoretical importance,” though alternatively one could just assign
all truths a value of !1 and all falsehoods a value of †1. The fear of error
may lead one skeptically to disengage from cognitive engagement, on either side
of any matter that involves risk of error. And this is “practical cognitive
skepticism.” We wish to attain happiness and avoid unhappiness. This leads to
the disengagement of the stoic. We wish to attain the truth and avoid error.
This leads to the disengagement of the skeptic, the practical skeptic. Each
opts for a conservative policy, but one that is surely optional, given just the
reasoning indicated. For in avoiding unhappiness the stoic also forfeits a
corresponding possibility of happiness. And in avoiding error the skeptic also
forfeits a corresponding possibility to grasp a truth. These twin policies
appeal to conservatism in our nature, and will reasonably prevail in the lives
of those committed to avoiding risk as a paramount objective. For this very
desire must then be given its due, if we judge it rational. Skepticism is
instrumental in the birth of modern epistemology, and modern philosophy, at the
hands of Descartes, whose skepticism is methodological but sophisticated and
well informed by that of the ancients. Skepticism is also a main force, perhaps
the main force, in the broad sweep of Western philosophy from Descartes through
Hegel. Though preeminent in the history of our subject, skepticism since then
has suffered decades of neglect, and only in recent years has reclaimed much
attention and even applause. Some recent influential discussions go so far as to
grant that we do not know we are not dreaming. But they also insist one can
still know when there is a fire before one. The key is to analyze knowledge as
a kind of appropriate responsiveness to its object truth: what is required is
that the subject “track” through his belief the truth of what he believes. S
tracks the truth of P iff: S would not believe P if P were false. Such an
analysis of tracking, when conjoined with the view of knowledge as tracking,
enables one to explain how one can know about the fire even if for all one
knows it is just a dream. The crucial fact here is that even if P logically
entails Q, one may still be able to track the truth of P though unable to track
the truth of Q. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, 1. Many problems arise in
the literature on this approach. One that seems especially troubling is that
though it enables us to understand how contingent knowledge of our surroundings
is possible, the tracking account falls short of enabling an explanation of how
such knowledge on our part is actual. To explain how one knows that there is a
fire before one F, according to the tracking account one presumably would
invoke one’s tracking the truth of F. But this leads deductively almost
immediately to the claim that one is not dreaming: Not D. And this is not
something one can know, according to the tracking account. So how is one to
explain one’s justification for making that claim? Most troubling of all here
is the fact that one is now cornered by the tracking account into making combinations
of claims of the following form: I am quite sure that p, but I have no
knowledge at all as to whether p. And this seems incoherent. A Cartesian dream
argument that has had much play in recent discussions of skepticism is made
explicit by Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, 4 as
follows. One knows that if one knows F then one is not dreaming, in which case
if one really knows F then one must know one is not dreaming. However, one does
not know one is not dreaming. So one does not know F. Q.E.D. And why does one
fail to know one is not dreaming? Because in order to know it one would need to
know that one has passed some test, some empirical procedure to determine
whether one is dreaming. But any such supposed test say, pinching oneself could just be part of a dream, and dreaming
one passes the test would not suffice to show one was not dreaming. However,
might one not actually be witnessing the fire, and passing the test and be doing this in wakeful life, not in a
dream and would that not be compatible
with one’s knowing of the fire and of one’s wakefulness? Not so, according to
the argument, since in order to know of the fire one needs prior knowledge of
one’s wakefulness. But in order to know of one’s wakefulness one needs prior
knowledge of the results of the test procedure. But this in turn requires prior
knowledge that one is awake and not dreaming. And we have a vicious circle. We
might well hold that it is possible to know one is not dreaming even in the
absence of any positive test result, or at most in conjunction with coordinate
not prior knowledge of such a positive indication. How in that case would one
know of one’s wakefulness? Perhaps one would know it by believing it through
the exercise of a reliable faculty. Perhaps one would know it through its
coherence with the rest of one’s comprehensive and coherent body of beliefs.
Perhaps both. But, it may be urged, if these are the ways one might know of
one’s wakefulness, does not this answer commit us to a theory of the form of A
below? A The proposition that p is something one knows believes justifiably if
and only if one satisfies conditions C with respect to it. And if so, are we
not caught in a vicious circle by the question as to how we know what justifies us in believing A itself? This is far from obvious, since the
requirement that we must submit to some test procedure for wakefulness and know
ourselves to test positively, before we can know ourselves to be awake, is itself
a requirement that seems to lead equally to a principle such as A. At least it
is not evident why the proposal of the externalist or of the coherentist as to
how we know we are awake should be any more closely related to a general
principle like A than is the foundationalist? notion that in order to know we
are awake we need epistemically prior knowledge that we test positive in a way
that does not presuppose already acquired knowledge of the external world. The
problem of how to justify the likes of A is a descendant of the infamous “problem
of the criterion,” reclaimed in the sixteenth century and again in this century
by Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 6, 7, and 8 but much used already by the
Skeptics of antiquity under the title of the diallelus. About explanations of
our knowledge or justification in general of the form indicated by A, we are
told that they are inadequate in a way revealed by examples like the following.
Suppose we want to know how we know anything at all about the external world,
and part of the answer is that we know the location of our neighbor by knowing
the location of her car in her driveway. Surely this would be at best the
beginning of an answer that might be satisfactory in the end if recursive,
e.g., but as it stands it cannot be satisfactory without supplementation. The
objection here is based on a comparison between two appeals: the appeal of a
theorist of knowledge to a principle like A in the course of explaining our
knowledge or justification in general, on one side; and the appeal to the car’s
location in explaining our knowledge of facts about the external world, on the
other side. This comparison is said to be fatal to the ambition to explain our
knowledge or justification in general. But are the appeals relevantly
analogous? One important difference is this. In the example of the car, we
explain the presence, in some subject S, of a piece of knowledge of a certain
kind of the external world by appeal to the presence in S of some other piece
of knowledge of the very same kind. So there is an immediate problem if it is
our aim to explain how any knowledge of the sort in question ever comes to be
unless the explication is just beginning, and is to turn recursive in due
course. Now of course A is theoretically ambitious, and in that respect the
theorist who gives an answer of the form of A is doing something similar to
what must be done by the protagonist in our car example, someone who is
attempting to provide a general explanation of how any knowledge of a certain
kind comes about. Nevertheless, there is also an important difference, namely
that the theorist whose aim it is to give a general account of the form of A
need not attribute any knowledge whatsoever to a subject S in explaining how
that subject comes to have a piece of knowledge or justified belief. For there
is no need to require that the conditions C appealed to by principle A must be
conditions that include attribution of any knowledge at all to the subject in
question. It is true that in claiming that A itself meets conditions C, and
that it is this which explains how one knows A, we do perhaps take ourselves to
know A or at least to be justified in believing it. But if so, this is the
inevitable lot of anyone who seriously puts forward any explanation of
anything. And it is quite different from a proposal that part of what explains
how something is known or justifiably believed includes a claim to knowledge or
justified belief of the very same sort. In sum, as in the case of one’s belief
that one is awake, the belief in something of the form of A may be said to be
known, and in so saying one does not commit oneself to adducing an ulterior
reason in favor of A, or even to having such a reason in reserve. One is of
course committed to being justified in believing A, perhaps even to having
knowledge that A. But it is not at all clear that the only way to be justified
in believing A is by way of adduced reasons in favor of A, or that one knows A
only if one adduces strong enough reasons in its favor. For we often know
things in the absence of such adduced reasons. Thus consider one’s knowledge
through memory of which door one used to come into a room that has more than
one open door. Returning finally to A, in its case the explanation of how one
knows it may, once again, take the form of an appeal to the justifying power of
intellectual virtues or of coherence or
both. Recent accounts of the nature of thought and representation undermine a
tradition of wholesale doubt about nature, whose momentum is hard to stop, and
threatens to leave the subject alone and restricted to a solipsism of the
present moment. But there may be a way to stop skepticism early by questioning the possibility of its being
sensibly held, given what is required for meaningful language and thought.
Consider our grasp of observable shape and color properties that objects around
us might have. Such grasp seems partly constituted by our discriminatory
abilities. When we discern a shape or a color we do so presumably in terms of a
distinctive impact that such a shape or color has on us. We are put
systematically into a certain distinctive state X when we are appropriately
related, in good light, with our eyes open, etc., to the presence in our
environment of that shape or color. What makes one’s distinctive state one of
thinking of sphericity rather than something else, is said to be that it is a
state tied by systematic causal relations to skepticism skepticism 849 849 the presence of sphericity in one’s
normal environment. A light now flickers at the end of the skeptic’s tunnel. In
doubt now is the coherence of traditional skeptical reflection. Indeed, our
predecessors in earlier centuries may have moved in the wrong direction when
they attempted a reduction of nature to the mind. For there is no way to make
sense of one’s mind without its contents, and there is no way to make sense of
how one’s mind can have such contents except by appeal to how one is causally
related to one’s environment. If the very existence of that environment is put
in doubt, that cuts the ground from under one’s ability reasonably to
characterize one’s own mind, or to feel any confidence about its contents.
Perhaps, then, one could not be a “brain in a vat.” Much contemporary thought
about language and the requirements for meaningful language thus suggests that
a lot of knowledge must already be in place for us to be able to think
meaningfully about a surrounding reality, so as to be able to question its very
existence. If so, then radical skepticism answers itself. For if we can so much
as understand a radical skepticism about the existence of our surrounding
reality, then we must already know a great deal about that reality. Sceptics, those ancient thinkers who
developed sets of arguments to show either that no knowledge is possible
Academic Skepticism or that there is not sufficient or adequate evidence to
tell if any knowledge is possible. If the latter is the case then these
thinkers advocated suspending judgment on all question concerning knowledge
Pyrrhonian Skepticism. Academic Skepticism gets its name from the fact that it
was formulated in Plato’s Academy in the third century B.C., starting from
Socrates’ statement, “All I know is that I know nothing.” It was developed by
Arcesilaus c.268241 and Carneades c.213129, into a series of arguments,
directed principally against the Stoics, purporting to show that nothing can be
known. The Academics posed a series of problems to show that what we think we
know by our senses may be unreliable, and that we cannot be sure about the
reliability of our reasoning. We do not possess a guaranteed standard or
criterion for ascertaining which of our judgments is true or false. Any
purported knowledge claim contains some element that goes beyond immediate
experience. If this claim constituted knowledge we would have to know something
that could not possibly be false. The evidence for the claim would have to be
based on our senses and our reason, both of which are to some degree
unreliable. So the knowledge claim may be false or doubtful, and hence cannot
constitute genuine knowledge. So, the Academics said that nothing is certain.
The best we can attain is probable information. Carneades is supposed to have
developed a form of verification theory and a kind of probabilism, similar in
some ways to that of modern pragmatists and positivists. Academic Skepticism
dominated the philosophizing of Plato’s Academy until the first century B.C.
While Cicero was a student there, the Academy turned from Skepticism to a kind
of eclectic philosophy. Its Skeptical arguments have been preserved in Cicero’s
works, Academia and De natura deorum, in Augustine’s refutation in his Contra
academicos, as well as in the summary presented by Diogenes Laertius in his
lives of the Grecian philosophers. Skeptical thinking found another home in the
school of the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, probably connected with the Methodic school
of medicine in Alexandria. The Pyrrhonian movement traces its origins to Pyrrho
of Elis c.360275 B.C. and his student Timon c.315225 B.C.. The stories about
Pyrrho indicate that he was not a theoretician but a practical doubter who
would not make any judgments that went beyond immediate experience. He is
supposed to have refused to judge if what appeared to be chariots might strike
him, and he was often rescued by his students because he would not make any
commitments. His concerns were apparently ethical. He sought to avoid
unhappiness that might result from accepting any value theory. If the theory
was at all doubtful, accepting it might lead to mental anguish. The theoretical
formulation of Pyrrhonian Skepticism is attributed to Aenesidemus c.100 40
B.C.. Pyrrhonists regarded dogmatic philosophers and Academic Skeptics as
asserting too much, the former saying that something can be known and the
latter that nothing can be known. The Pyrrhonists suspended judgments on all
questions on which there was any conflicting evidence, including whether or not
anything could be known. The Pyrrhonists used some of the same kinds of
arguments developed by Arcesilaus and Carneades. Aenesidemus and those who followed
after him organized the arguments into sets of “tropes” or ways of leading to
suspense of judgment on various questions. Sets of ten, eight, five, and two
tropes appear in the only surviving writing of the Pyrrhonists, the works of
Sextus Empiricus, a third-century A.D. teacher of Pyrrhonism. Each set of
tropes offers suggestions for suspending judgment about any knowledge claims
that go beyond appearances. The tropes seek to show that for any claim,
evidence for and evidence against it can be offered. The disagreements among
human beings, the variety of human experiences, the fluctuation of human
judgments under differing conditions, illness, drunkenness, etc., all point to
the opposition of evidence for and against each knowledge claim. Any criterion
we employ to sift and weigh the evidence can also be opposed by
countercriterion claims. Given this situation, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics sought
to avoid committing themselves concerning any kind of question. They would not
even commit themselves as to whether the arguments they put forth were sound or
not. For them Skepticism was not a statable theory, but rather an ability or
mental attitude for opposing evidence for and against any knowledge claim that
went beyond what was apparent, that dealt with the non-evident. This opposing
produced an equipollence, a balancing of the opposing evidences, that would
lead to suspending judgment on any question. Suspending judgment led to a state
of mind called “ataraxia,” quietude, peace of mind, or unperturbedness. In such
a state the Skeptic was no longer concerned or worried or disturbed about
matters beyond appearances. The Pyrrhonians averred that Skepticism was a cure
for a disease called “dogmatism” or rashness. The dogmatists made assertions
about the non-evident, and then became disturbed about whether these assertions
were true. The disturbance became a mental disease or disorder. The
Pyrrhonians, who apparently were medical doctors, offered relief by showing the
patient how and why he should suspend judgment instead of dogmatizing. Then the
disease would disappear and the patient would be in a state of tranquillity,
the peace of mind sought by Hellenistic dogmatic philosophers. The Pyrrhonists,
unlike the Academic Skeptics, were not negative dogmatists. The Pyrrhonists
said neither that knowledge is possible nor that it is impossible. They
remained seekers, while allowing the Skeptical arguments and the equipollence
of evidences to act as a purge of dogmatic assertions. The purge eliminates all
dogmas as well as itself. After this the Pyrrhonist lives undogmatically,
following natural inclinations, immediate experience, and the laws and customs
of his society, without ever judging or committing himself to any view about
them. In this state the Pyrrhonist would have no worries, and yet be able to
function naturally and according to law and custom. The Pyrrhonian movement
disappeared during the third century A.D., possibly because it was not
considered an alternative to the powerful religious movements of the time. Only
scant traces of it appear before the Renaissance, when the texts of Sextus and
Cicero were rediscovered and used to formulate a modern skeptical view by such
thinkers as Montaigne and Charron. Refs.:
The obvious source is the essay on scepticism in WoW, but there are allusions
in “Prejudices and predilections, and elsewhere, in The H. P. Grice Papers,
BANC
scheler: G. phenomenologist, social philosopher, and
sociologist of knowledge. Born in Munich, he studied in Jena; when he returned
to Munich in 7 he came in contact with phenomenology, especially the realist
version of the early Husserl and his Munich School followers. Scheler’s first
works were phenomenological studies in ethics leading to his ultimate theory of
value: he described the moral feelings of sympathy and resentment and wrote a
criticism of Kantian formalism and rationalism, Formalism in Ethics and a Non-Formal
Ethics of Value 3. During the war, he was an ardent nationalist and wrote
essays in support of the war that were also philosophical criticisms of modern
culture, opposed to “Anglo-Saxon” naturalism and rational calculation. Although
he later embraced a broader notion of community, such criticisms of modernity
remained constant themes of his writings. His conversion to Catholicism after
the war led him to apply phenomenological description to religious phenomena
and feelings, and he later turned to themes of anthropology and natural
science. The core of Scheler’s phenomenological method is his conception of the
objectivity of essences, which, though contained in experience, are a priori
and independent of the knower. For Scheler, values are such objective, though
non-Platonic, essences. Their objectivity is intuitively accessible in
immediate experience and feelings, as when we experience beauty in music and do
not merely hear certain sounds. Scheler distinguished between valuations or
value perspectives on the one hand, which are historically relative and
variable, and values on the other, which are independent and invariant. There
are four such values, the hierarchical organization of which could be both
immediately intuited and established by various public criteria like duration
and independence: pleasure, vitality, spirit, and religion. Corresponding to
these values are various personalities who are not creators of value but their
discoverers, historical disclosers, and exemplars: the “artist of consumption,”
the hero, the genius, and the saint. A similar hierarchy of values applies to
forms of society, the highest of which is the church, or a Christian community
of solidarity and love. Scheler criticizes the leveling tendencies of
liberalism for violating this hierarchy, leading to forms of resentment,
individualism, and nationalism, all of which represent the false ordering of
values.
schelling: G. philosopher whose metamorsphoses encompass the
entire history of idealism. A Schwabian, Schelling studied at Tübingen, where
he befriended Hölderlin and Hegel. Schelling was an enthusiastic exponent of
Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre and devoted several early essays to its exposition.
After studying science and mathematics at Leipzig, he joins Fichte at Jena. Meanwhile,
in such writings as Philosophische Briefe über Dogmatismus und Kritizismus Schelling
betrays growing doubts concerning Fichte’s philosophy above all, its treatment
of nature and a lively interest in Spinoza. He then turned to constructing a
systematic Naturphilosophie within the context of which nature would be treated
more holistically than by either Newtonian science or transcendental idealism.
Of his many publications on this topic, two of the more important are Ideen zu
einer Philosophie der Natur and Von der Weltseele. Whereas transcendental
idealism attempts to derive objective experience from an initial act of free
self-positing, Schelling’s philosophy of nature attempts to derive
consciousness from objects. Beginning with “pure objectivity,” the
Naturphilosophie purports to show how nature undergoes a process of unconscious
self-development, culminating in the conditions for its own
self-representation. The method of Naturphilosophie is fundamentally a priori:
it begins with the concept of the unity of nature and accounts for its
diversity by interpreting nature as a system of opposed forces or “polarities,”
which manifest themselves in ever more complex levels of organization Potenzen.
At Jena, Schelling came into contact with Tieck, Novalis, and the Schlegel
brothers and became interested in art. This new interest is evident in his
System des transzendentalen Idealismus 1800, which describes the path from pure
subjectivity self-consciousness to objectivity the necessary positing of the Not-I,
or of nature. The most innovative and influential portion of this treatise,
which is otherwise closely modeled on Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, is its
conclusion, which presents art as the concrete accomplishment of the
philosophical task. In aesthetic experience the identity between the subjective
and the objective, the ideal and the real, becomes an object to the
experiencing I itself. For Schelling, transcendental idealism and
Naturphilosophie are two complementary sides or subdivisions of a larger, more
encompassing system, which he dubbed the System of Identity or Absolute
Idealism and expounded in a series of publications, including the Darstellung
meines Systems der Philosophie, Bruno
and Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums. The most
distinctive feature of this system is that it begins with a bald assertion of
the unity of thought and being, i.e., with the bare idea of the self-identical
“Absolute,” which is described as the first presupposition of all knowledge.
Since the identity with which this system commences transcends every
conceivable difference, it is also described as the “point of indifference.”
From this undifferentiated or “indifferent” starting point, Schelling proceeds
to a description of reality as a whole, considered as a differentiated system
within which unity is maintained by various synthetic relationships, such as
substance and attribute, cause and effect, attraction and repulsion. Like his
philosophy of nature, Schelling’s System of Identity utilizes the notion of
various hierarchically related Potenzen as its basic organizing principle. The
obvious question concerns the precise relationship between the “indifferent”
Absolute and the real system of differentiated elements, a question that may be
said to have set the agenda for Schelling’s subsequent philosophizing. Schelling
was in Bavaria, where he continued to expound his System of Identity and to
explore the philosophies of art and nature. The most distinctive feature of his
thought during this period, however, was a new interest in religion and in the
theosophical writings of Boehme, whose influence is prominent in the
Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit
“Philosophical Investigations concerning the Nature of Human Freedom,” 1809, a
work often interpreted as anticipating existentialism. He also worked on a
speculative interpretation of human history, Die Weltalter, which remained
unpublished, and lectured regularly on the history of philosophy. Schelling
moved to Berlin, where he lectured on his new philosophy of revelation and
mythology, which he now characterized as “positive philosophy,” in
contradistinction to the purely “negative” philosophy of Kant, Fichte, and
Hegel. Some scholars have interpreted these posthumously published lectures as
representing the culmination both of Schelling’s own protracted philosophical
development and of G. idealism as a whole.
schiller, G. philosopher. Signora Speranza’s favourite
librettist for Verdi! -- Along with his colleagues Reinhold and Fichte, he
participated in systematically revising Kant’s transcendental idealism. Though
Schiller’s bestknown theoretical contributions were to aesthetics, his
philosophical ambitions were more general, and he proposed a novel solution to
the problem of the systematic unity, not merely of the critical philosophy, but
of human nature. His most substantial philosophical work, Briefe über die
äesthetische Erziehung des Menschen “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of
Man,” 1794/95, examines the relationship between natural necessity and
practical freedom and addresses two problems raised by Kant: How can a creature
governed by natural necessity and desire ever become aware of its own freedom
and thus capable of autonomous moral action? And how can these two sides of
human nature the natural, sensuous side
and the rational, supersensuous one be
reconciled? In contradistinction both to those who subordinate principles to
feelings “savages” and to those who insist that one should strive to
subordinate feelings to principles “barbarians”, Schiller posited an
intermediary realm between the sphere of nature and that of freedom, as well as
a third basic human drive capable of mediating between sensuous and rational
impulses. This third impulse is dubbed the “play impulse,” and the intermediary
sphere to which it pertains is that of art and beauty. By cultivating the play
impulse i.e., via “aesthetic education” one is not only freed from bondage to
sensuality and granted a first glimpse of one’s practical freedom, but one also
becomes capable of reconciling the rational and sensuous sides of one’s own
nature. This idea of a condition in which opposites are simultaneously
cancelled and preserved, as well as the specific project of reconciling freedom
and necessity, profoundly influenced subsequent thinkers such as Schelling and
Hegel and contributed to the development of G. idealism. Refs.: H. P. Grice,
“Meistersinger is for children, and Luisa Miller is for my wife!” --.
schlegel: Grice: “I’ve been reading Schlegel’s “On
incomprehensibility,” in German, and found it surprisingly comprehensible!” -- G.
philosopher, one of the principal representatives of G. Romanticism. In “On the
Study of Grecian (or Griceian) Poetry Schlegel lays the foundations for the
distinction between the classical and the romantic, e and a pronounced
consciousness of literary modernity. Together with his brother August Wilhelm,
he edited the Athenaeum, the main
theoretical organ of G. Romanticism, famous for its collection of fragments as
a new means of critical communication. Schlegel is the originator of the
Romantic theory of irony, a non-dialectical form of philosophizing and literary
writing that takes its inspiration from Socratic irony and combines it with
Fichte’s thought process of affirmation and negation, “self-creation” and
“self-annihilation.” Closely connected wih Schlegel’s theory of irony is his
theory of language and understanding hermeneutics. Critical reflection on
language promotes an ironic awareness of the “necessity and impossibility of
complete communication” Critical Fragments, No. 108; critical reflection on
understanding reveals the amount of incomprehensibility, of “positive not-understanding”
involved in every act of understanding On Incomprehensibility. Schlegel’s
writings were essential for the rise of historical consciousness in G.
Romanticism. His On Ancient and Modern Literature 1812 is reputed to represent
the first literary history in a modern and broadly comparative fashion. His
Philosophy of History, together with his Philosophy of Life and Philosophy of
Language, confront Hegel’s philosophy from the point of view of a Christian and
personalistic type of philosophizing. Schlegel converted to Catholicism in
1808.
schleiermacher: G. philosopher, a “critical realist”
working among post-Kantian idealists. In philosophy and science he presupposed
transcendental features, noted in his dialectic lectures, and advocated integrative
but historically contingent, empirical functions. Both develop, but, contra
Hegel, not logically. Schleiermacher was a creator of modern general
hermeneutics; a father of modern theological and religious studies; an advocate
of women’s rights; the cofounder, with Humboldt, of the at Berlin 180810, where he taught until 1834;
and the classic translator of Plato into G.. Schleiermacher has had an
undeservedly minor place in histories of philosophy. Appointed chiefly to
theology, he published less philosophy, though he regularly lectured, in
tightly argued discourse, in Grecian philosophy, history of philosophy,
dialectic, hermeneutics and criticism, philosophy of mind “psychology”, ethics,
politics, aesthetics, and philosophy of education. From the 0s, his collected
writings and large correspondence began to appear in a forty-volume critical
edition and in the larger Schleiermacher Studies and Translations series.
Brilliant, newly available pieces from his twenties on freedom, the highest
good, and values, previously known only in fragments but essential for
understanding his views fully, were among the first to appear. Much of his
outlook was formed before he became prominent in the early Romantic circle
17961806, distinguishable by his markedly religious, consistently liberal
views.
schole – “The Grecian term for ‘otium.’” “Not to be
confused with ‘studium’ as in ‘studium generale.’ Scholasticism, a set of
scholarly and instructional techniques developed in Western European schools of
the late medieval period, including the use of commentary and disputed
question. ‘Scholasticism’ is derived from Latin scholasticus, which in the
twelfth century meant the master of a school. The Scholastic method is usually
presented as beginning in the law schools
notably at Bologna and as being
then transported into theology and philosophy by a series of masters including
Abelard and Peter Lombard. Within the new universities of the thirteenth
century the standardization of the curriculum and the enormous prestige of Aristotle’s
work despite the suspicion with which it was initially greeted contributed to
the entrenchment of the method and it was not until the educational reforms of
the beginning of the sixteenth century that it ceased to be dominant. There is,
strictly speaking, no such thing as Scholasticism. As the term was originally
used it presupposed that a single philosophy was taught in the universities of
late medieval Europe, but there was no such philosophy. The philosophical
movements working outside the universities in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries and the “neo-Scholastics” of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries all found such a presupposition useful, and their
influence led scholars to assume it. At first this generated efforts to find a
common core in the philosophies taught in the late medieval schools. More
recently it has led to efforts to find methods characteristic of their
teaching, and to an extension of the term to the schools of late antiquity and
of Byzantium. Both among the opponents of the schools in the seventeenth
century and among the “neoScholastics,” ‘Scholasticism’ was supposed to
designate a doctrine whose core was the doctrine of substance and accidents. As
portrayed by Descartes and Locke, the Scholastics accepted the view that among
the components of a thing were a substantial form and a number of real
accidental forms, many of which corresponded to perceptible properties of the
thing its color, shape, temperature.
They were also supposed to have accepted a sharp distinction between natural
and unnatural motion.
schopenhauer: philosopher born in Danzig and schooled in G.y,
France, and England during a welltraveled childhood, he became acquainted
through his novelist mother with Goethe, Schlegel, and the brothers Grimm. He
studied medicine at the of Göttingen and
philosophy at Berlin; received the doctorate from the of Jena; and lived much of his adult life in
Frankfurt, where he died. Schopenhauer’s dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of
the Principle of Sufficient Reason lays the groundwork for all of his later
philosophical work. The world of representation equivalent to Kant’s phenomenal
world is governed by “the principle of sufficient reason.” “Every possible
object stands in a necessary relation to
other objects, on the one hand as determined, on the other as determining” The
World as Will and Representation. Thus, each object of consciousness can be
explained in terms of its relations with other objects. The systematic
statement of Schopenhauer’s philosophy appeared in The World as Will and
Representation. His other works are On Vision and Colors,” “On the Will in
Nature” conjoined with “On the Foundation of Morality” in The Two Fundamental
Problems of Ethics. The second edition of The World as Will and Representation,
which included a second volume of essays; an enlarged and revised edition of On
the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason; and Parerga and
Paralipomena, a series of essays 1851. These are all consistent with the principal
statement of his thought in The World as Will and Representation. The central
postulate of Schopenhauer’s system is that the fundamental reality is will,
which he equates with the Kantian thing-in-itself. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer
contends that one can immediately know the thing-in-itself through the
experience of an inner, volitional reality within one’s own body. Every
phenomenon, according to Schopenhauer, has a comparable inner reality.
Consequently, ‘will’ can extend to the inner nature of all things. Moreover,
because number pertains exclusively to the phenomenal world, the will, as
thing-initself, is ONE. Nevertheless, different types of things manifest the
will to different degrees. Schopenhauer accounts for these differences by
invoking Plato’s Ideas or Forms. The Ideas are the universal prototypes for the
various kinds of objects in the phenomenal world. Taken collectively, the Ideas
constitute a hierarchy. We usually overlook them in everyday experience,
focusing instead on particulars and their practical relationships to us.
However, during aesthetic experience, we recognize the universal Idea within
the particular; simultaneously, as aesthetic beholders, we become “the
universal subject of knowledge.” Aesthetic experience also quiets the will
within us. The complete silencing of the will is, for Schopenhauer, the ideal
for human beings, though it is rarely attained. Because will is the fundamental
metaphysical principle, our lives are dominated by willing and, consequently, filled with struggle,
conflict, and dissatisfaction. Schopenhauer contends that all of life is
suffering, which only an end to desire can permanently eliminate as opposed to
the respite of aesthetic experience. This is achieved only by the saint, who
rejects desire in an inner act, a denial of the will to live. The saint fully
grasps that the same will motivates all phenomena and, recognizing that nothing
is gained through struggle and competition, achieves “resignation.” Such a
person achieves the ethical ideal of all religions compassion toward all
beings, resulting from the insight that all are, fundamentally, one. Refs,:
Grice, “Nihilism and negation in Schopenhauer and myself.”
schröder’s and bernstein’s theorem: “One of my
favourite theorems.” – Grice. the theorem that mutually dominant sets are
equinumerous. A set A is said to be dominated by a set B if and only if each
element of A can be mapped to a unique element of B in such a way that no two
elements of A are mapped to the same element of B possibly with some elements
of B left over. Intuitively, if A is dominated by B, then B has at least as
many members as A. Given this intuition, one would expect that if A is
dominated by B and B is dominated by A, then A and B are equinumerous i.e., A
can be mapped to B as described above with no elements of B left over. This is
the Schröder-Bernstein theorem. Stated in terms of cardinal numbers, the
theorem says that if k m l and l m k, then k % l. Despite the simplicity of the
theorem’s statement, its proof is non-trivial, “but quadrivial.”
schrödinger: philosopher best known for five papers
published in 6, in which he discovered the Schrödinger wave equation and
created modern wave mechanics. For this achievement, he was awarded the Nobel
prize in physics shared with Paul Dirac in 3. Like Einstein, Schrödinger was a
resolute but ultimately unsuccessful critic of the Copenhagen interpretation of
quantum mechanics. Schrödinger defended the view which he derived from
Boltzmann that theories should give a picture, continuous in space and time, of
the real processes that produce observable phenomena. Schrödinger’s realistic
philosophy of science played an important role in his discovery of wave
mechanics. Although his physical interpretation of the psi function was soon
abandoned, his approach to quantum mechanics survives in the theories of Louis
de Broglie and David Bohm.
schulze: G. philosopher known mainly as an acute and
influential early critic of Kant and Reinhold. He taught at Wittenberg,
Helmstedt, and Göttingen; one of his most important students was Schopenhauer,
whose view of Kant was definitely influenced by Schulze’s interpretation.
Schulze’s most important work was his Aenesidemus, or “On the Elementary
Philosophy Put Forward by Mr. Reinhold in Jena. Together with a Defense of
Skepticism” 1792. It fundamentally changed the discussion of Kantian
philosophy. Kant’s earliest critics had accused him of being a skeptic like
Hume. Kantians, like Reinhold, had argued that critical philosophy was not only
opposed to skepticism, but also contained the only possible refutation of
skepticism. Schulze tried to show that Kantianism could not refute skepticism,
construed as the doctrine that doubts the possibility of any knowledge
concerning the existence or non-existence of “things-in-themselves,” and he
argued that Kant and his followers begged the skeptic’s question by
presupposing that such things exist and causally interact with us. Schulze’s
Aenesidemus had a great impact on Fichte and Hegel, and it also influenced
neoKantianism.
scire – sapio
-- sapientia: wisdom, an understanding
of the highest principles of things that functions as a guide for living a
truly exemplary human life. From the preSocratics through Plato this was a
unified notion. But Aristotle introduced a distinction between theoretical
wisdom sophia and practical wisdom phronesis, the former being the intellectual
virtue that disposed one to grasp the nature of reality in terms of its
ultimate causes metaphysics, the latter being the ultimate practical virtue
that disposed one to make sound judgments bearing on the conduct of life. The
former invoked a contrast between deep understanding versus wide information,
whereas the latter invoked a contrast between sound judgment and mere technical
facility. This distinction between theoretical and practical wisdom persisted
through the Middle Ages and continues to our own day, as is evident in our use
of the term ‘wisdom’ to designate both knowledge of the highest kind and the
capacity for sound judgment in matters of conduct. Grice: “The etymology of
‘sapientia’ is excellent – it’s like taste!” –
săpĭo , īvi or ĭi (sapui, Aug. Civ. Dei, 1,
10; id. Ep. 102, 10; but sapivi, Nov. ap. Prisc. p. 879 P.; id. ap. Non. 508,
21: I.“saPisti,” Mart. 9, 6, 7: “sapisset,” Plaut. Rud. 4, 1, 8), 3, v. n. and
a. [kindr. with ὀπός, σαφής, and σοφός], to taste, savor; to taste, smack, or
savor of, to have a taste or flavor of a thing (cf. gusto). I. Lit. (so only in
a few examples). 1. Of things eaten or drunk: “oleum male sapiet,” Cato, R. R.
66, 1: “occisam saepe sapere plus multo suem,” Plaut. Mil. 2, 6, 104: “quin
caseus jucundissime sapiat,” Col. 7, 8, 2: “nil rhombus nil dama sapit,” Juv.
11, 121.—With an acc. of that of or like which a thing tastes: “quis (piscis)
saperet ipsum mare,” Sen. Q. N. 3, 18, 2: “cum in Hispaniā multa mella herbam
eam sapiunt,” Plin. 11, 8, 8, § 18: “ipsum aprum (ursina),” Petr. 66, 6.—Poet.:
anas plebeium sapit, has a vulgar taste, Petr. poët. 93, 2: “quaesivit quidnam
saperet simius,” Phaedr. 3, 4, 3.—* 2. Of that which tastes, to have a taste or
a sense of taste (perh. so used for the sake of the play upon signif. II.):
“nec sequitur, ut, cui cor sapiat, ei non sapiat palatus,” Cic. Fin. 2, 8, 24.—
3. Transf., of smell, to smell of or like a thing (syn.: oleo, redoleo; very
rare): Cicero, Meliora, inquit, unguenta sunt, quae terram quam crocum sapiunt.
Hoc enim maluit dixisse quam redolent. Ita est profecto; “illa erit optima,
quae unguenta sapiat,” Plin. 17, 5, 3, § 38: “invenitur unguenta gratiosiora esse,
quae terram, quam quae crocum sapiunt,” id. 13, 3, 4, § 21.—In a lusus verbb.
with signif. II.: istic servus quid sapit? Ch. Hircum ab alis, Plaut. Ps. 2, 4,
47.— II. Trop. 1. To taste or smell of, savor of, i. e., a. To resemble (late
Lat.): “patruos,” Pers. 1, 11.— b. To suggest, be inspired by: “quia non sapis
ea quae Dei sunt,” Vulg. Matt. 16, 23; id. Marc. 8, 33.— c. Altum or alta
sapere, to be high-minded or proud: “noli altum sapere,” Vulg. Rom. 11, 20:
“non alta sapientes,” id. ib. 12, 16.— 2. To have good taste, i.e. to have
sense or discernment; to be sensible, discreet, prudent, wise, etc. (the
predominant signif. in prose and poetry; most freq. in the P. a.). (α). Neutr.,
Plaut. Ps. 2, 3, 14: “si aequum siet Me plus sapere quam vos, dederim vobis
consilium catum, etc.,” id. Ep. 2, 2, 73 sq.: “jam diu edepol sapientiam tuam
abusa est haec quidem. Nunc hinc sapit, hinc sentit,” id. Poen. 5, 4, 30; cf.:
“populus est moderatior, quoad sentit et sapit tuerique vult per se constitutam
rem publicam,” Cic. Rep. 1, 42, 65; “so (with sentire),” Plaut. Am. 1, 1, 292;
id. Bacch. 4, 7, 19; id. Merc. 2, 2, 24; id. Trin. 3, 2, 10 sq.; cf.: “qui
sapere et fari possit quae sentiat,” Hor. Ep. 1, 4, 9; Plaut. Bacch. 1, 2, 14:
“magna est admiratio copiose sapienterque dicentis, quem qui audiunt
intellegere etiam et sapere plus quam ceteros arbitrantur,” Cic. Off. 2, 14,
48: “veluti mater Plus quam se sapere Vult (filium),” Hor. Ep. 1, 18, 27: “qui
(puer) cum primum sapere coepit,” Cic. Fam. 14, 1, 1; Poët. ap. Cic. Fam. 7,
16, 1: “malo, si sapis, cavebis,” if you are prudent, wise, Plaut. Cas. 4, 4,
17; so, “si sapis,” id. Eun. 1, 1, 31; id. Men. 1, 2, 13; id. Am. 1, 1, 155;
id. Aul. 2, 9, 5; id. Curc. 1, 1, 28 et saep.; Ter. Eun. 4, 4, 53; id. Heaut.
2, 3, 138: “si sapias,” Plaut. Merc. 2, 3, 39; 4, 4, 61; id. Poen. 1, 2, 138;
Ter. Heaut. 3, 3, 33; Ov. H. 5, 99; 20, 174: “si sapies,” Plaut. Bacch. 4, 9,
78; id. Rud. 5, 3, 35; Ter. Heaut. 4, 4, 26; Ov. M. 14, 675: “si sapiam,”
Plaut. Men. 4, 2, 38; id. Rud. 1, 2, 8: “si sapiet,” id. Bacch. 4, 9, 74: “si
saperet,” Cic. Quint. 4, 16: hi sapient, * Caes. B. G. 5, 30: Ph. Ibo. Pl.
Sapis, you show your good sense, Plaut. Mil. 4, 8, 9; id. Merc. 5, 2, 40: “hic
homo sapienter sapit,” id. Poen. 3, 2, 26: “quae (meretrix) sapit in vino ad
rem suam,” id. Truc. 4, 4, 1; cf. id. Pers. 1, 3, 28: “ad omnia alia aetate
sapimus rectius,” Ter. Ad. 5, 3, 46: “haud stulte sapis,” id. Heaut. 2, 3, 82:
“te aliis consilium dare, Foris sapere,” id. ib. 5, 1, 50: “pectus quoi sapit,”
Plaut. Bacch. 4, 4, 12; id. Mil. 3, 1, 191; id. Trin. 1, 2, 53; cf.: “cui cor
sapiat,” Cic. Fin. 2, 8, 24: “id (sc. animus mensque) sibi solum per se sapit,
id sibi gaudet,” Lucr. 3, 145.— (β). Act., to know, understand a thing (in good
prose usually only with general objects): “recte ego rem meam sapio,” Plaut.
Ps. 1, 5, 81: “nullam rem,” id. Most. 5, 1, 45: qui sibi semitam non sapiunt,
alteri monstrant viam, Poët. ap. Cic. Div. 1, 58, 132; Cic. Att. 14, 5, 1;
Plaut. Mil. 2, 3, 65; cf.: “quamquam quis, qui aliquid sapiat, nunc esse beatus
potest?” Cic. Fam. 7, 28, 1: “quantum ego sapio,” Plin. Ep. 3, 6, 1: “jam nihil
sapit nec sentit,” Plaut. Bacch. 4, 7, 22: “nihil,” Cic. Tusc. 2, 19, 45:
“plane nihil,” id. Div. in Caecil. 17, 55: nihil parvum, i. e. to occupy one's
mind with nothing trivial (with sublimia cures), Hor. Ep. 1, 12, 15; cf.: cum
sapimus patruos, i.e. resemble them, imitate them in severity, Pers. 1, 11. —
3. Prov.: sero sapiunt Phryges, are wise behind the time; or, as the Engl.
saying is, are troubled with afterwit: “sero sapiunt Phryges proverbium est
natum a Trojanis, qui decimo denique anno velle coeperant Helenam quaeque cum
eā erant rapta reddere Achivis,” Fest. p. 343 Müll.: “in Equo Trojano (a
tragedy of Livius Andronicus or of Naevius) scis esse in extremo, Sero sapiunt.
Tu tamen, mi vetule, non sero,” Cic. Fam. 7, 16, 1.—Hence, să-pĭens , entis
(abl. sing. sapiente, Ov. M. 10, 622; gen. plur. sapientum, Lucr. 2, 8; Hor. S.
2, 3, 296; “but sapientium,” id. C. 3, 21, 14), P. a. (acc. to II.), wise,
knowing, sensible, well-advised, discreet, judicious (cf. prudens). A. In gen.:
“ut quisque maxime perspicit, quid in re quāque verissimum sit, quique
acutissime et celerrime potest et videre et explicare rationem, is
prudentissimus et sapientissimus rite haberi solet,” Cic. Off. 1, 5, 16; cf.:
“sapientissimum esse dicunt eum, cui quod opus sit ipsi veniat in mentem:
proxume acceder illum, qui alterius bene inventis obtemperet,” id. Clu. 31, 84:
“M. Bucculeius, homo neque meo judicio stultus et suo valde sapiens,” id. de
Or. 1, 39, 179: “rex aequus ac sapiens,” id. Rep. 1, 26, 42; cf.: “Cyrus
justissimus sapientissimusque rex,” id. ib. 1, 27, 43: “bonus et sapiens et
peritus utilitatis civilis,” id. ib. 2, 29, 52: “o, Neptune lepide, salve,
Neque te aleator ullus est sapientior,” Plaut. Rud. 2, 3, 29: “quae tibi mulier
videtur multo sapientissima?” id. Stich. 1, 2, 66: “(Aurora) ibat ad hunc
(Cephalum) sapiens a sene diva viro,” wise, discreet, Ov. H. 4, 96 Ruhnk.; so,
“puella,” id. M. 10, 622: “mus pusillus quam sit sapiens bestia,” Plaut. Truc.
4, 4, 15; id. As. 3, 3, 114 et saep.—With gen. (analogous to gnarus, peritus,
etc.): “qui sapiens rerum esse humanarum velit,” Gell. 13, 8, 2.—Subst.:
săpĭens , entis, m., a sensible, shrewd, knowing, discreet, or judicious
person: “semper cavere hoc sapientes aequissimumst,” Plaut. Rud. 4, 7, 20; cf.:
“omnes sapientes suom officium aequom est colere et facere,” id. Stich. 1, 1,
38; id. Trin. 2, 2, 84: “dictum sapienti sat est,” id. Pers. 4, 7, 19; Ter.
Phorm. 3, 3, 8; Plaut. Rud. 2, 4, 15 sq.: “insani sapiens nomen ferat, aequus
iniqui,” Hor. Ep. 1, 6, 15: “sapiens causas reddet,” id. S. 1, 4, 115: “quali
victu sapiens utetur,” id. ib. 2, 2, 63; 1, 3, 132.—In a lusus verbb. with the
signif. of sapio, I., a person of nice taste: “qui utuntur vino vetere
sapientes puto Et qui libenter veteres spectant fabulas,” good judges,
connoisseurs, Plaut. Cas. prol. 5: fecundae leporis sapiens sectabitur armos,
Hor. S. 2, 4, 44.—As a surname of the jurists Atilius, C. Fabricius, M'.
Curius, Ti. Coruncanius, Cato al., v. under B. fin.— b. Of abstract things:
“opera,” Plaut. Pers. 4, 5, 2: “excusatio,” Cic. Att. 8, 12, 2: “modica et
sapiens temperatio,” id. Leg. 3, 7, 17: “mores,” Plaut. Rud. 4, 7, 25: “verba,”
Ter. Ad. 5, 1, 7: “consilium,” Ov. M. 13, 433: “Ulixes, vir sapienti facundiā
praeditus,” Gell. 1, 15, 3: “morus, quae novissima urbanarum germinat, nec nisi
exacto frigore, ob id dicta sapientissima arborum,” Plin. 16, 25, 41, § 102.—
B. After the predominance of Grecian civilization and literature, particularly
of the Grecian philosophy, like σοφός, well acquainted with the true value of
things, wise; and subst., a wise man, a sage (in Cic. saepiss.): ergo hic,
quisquis est, qui moderatione et constantiā quietus animo est sibique ipse
placatus ut nec tabescat molestiis nec frangatur timore nec sitienter quid
expetens ardeat desiderio nec alacritate futili gestiens deliquescat; “is est
sapiens quem quaerimus, is est beatus,” Cic. Tusc. 4, 17, 37: “sapientium
praecepta,” id. Rep. 3, 4, 7: “si quod raro fit, id portentum putandum est:
sapientem esse portentum est. Saepius enim mulam peperisse arbitror, quam
sapientem fuisse,” id. Div. 2, 28, 61: “statuere quid sit sapiens, vel maxime
videtur esse sapientis,” id. Ac. 2, 3, 9; cf. id. Rep. 1, 29, 45.—So esp. of
the seven wise men of Greece: “ut ad Graecos referam orationem ... septem
fuisse dicuntur uno tempore, qui sapientes et haberentur et vocarentur,” Cic.
de Or. 3, 34, 137: “eos vero septem quos Graeci sapientes nominaverunt,” id.
Rep. 1, 7, 12: “sapienti assentiri ... se sapientem profiteri,” id. Fin. 2,3,
7.—Ironically: “sapientum octavus,” Hor. S. 2, 3, 296.—With the Romans, an
appellation of Lœlius: te, Laeli, sapientem et appellant et existimant.
Tribuebatur hoc modo M. Catoni: scimus L. Atilium apud patres nostros
appellatum esse sapientem, sed uterque alio quodam modo: Atilius, qui prudens
esse in jure civili putabatur; “Cato quia multarum rerum usum habebat ...
propterea quasi cognomen jam habebat in senectute sapientis ... Athenis unum
accepimus et eum quidem etiam Apollinis oraculo sapientissimum judicatum,” Cic.
Lael. 2, 6; cf.: “numquam ego dicam C. Fabricium, M'. Curium, Ti. Coruncanium,
quos sapientes nostri majores judicabant, ad istorum normam fuisse sapientes,”
id. ib. 5, 18: “ii, qui sapientes sunt habiti, M. Cato et C. Laelius,” id. Off.
3, 4, 16; Val. Max. 4, 1, ext. 7; Lact. 4, 1.—Hence, adv.: săpĭen-ter ,
sensibly, discreetly, prudently, judiciously, wisely: “recte et sapienter
facere,” Plaut. Am. 1, 1, 133; id. Mil. 3, 3, 34: “consulere,” id. ib. 3, 1,
90: “insipienter factum sapienter ferre,” id. Truc. 4, 3, 33: “factum,” id.
Aul. 3, 5, 3: “dicta,” id. Rud. 4, 7, 24: “quam sapienter jam reges hoc nostri
viderint,” Cic. Rep. 2, 17, 31: “provisa,” id. ib. 4, 3, 3: “a majoribus
prodita fama,” id. ib. 2, 2, 4: “considerate etiam sapienterque fecerunt,” id.
Phil. 4, 2, 6; 13, 6, 13: “vives sapienter,” Hor. Ep. 1, 10, 44: “agendum,” Ov.
M. 13, 377: “temporibus uti,” Nep. Epam. 3, 1; Hor. C. 4, 9, 48.—Comp.: “facis
sapientius Quam pars latronum, etc.,” Plaut. Curc. 4, 3, 15; id. Poen. prol. 7:
“nemo est, qui tibi sapientius suadere possit te ipso,” Cic. Fam. 2, 7, 1:
“sapientius fecisse,” id. Brut. 42, 155.—Sup.: “quod majores nostros et
probavisse maxime et retinuisse sapientissime judico,” Cic. Rep. 2, 37, 63.
Vide H. P. Grice, “Philosophy: love of wisdom, love of taste,” BANC.
res: reale: Grice: “Possibly the philosophically most
important Roman neuter expression,” -- is res! "Unfortunately,
the etymology is dubious." "Perhaps "res" comes from a root
ra- of reor, ratus."- to reckon, calculate, believe, think, suppose,
imagine, judge, deem, as in English 'ratify,' and 'reason.' "I am reminded of German
"ding;" English "thing," from "denken," to think;
prop., that which is thought of." "I am also reminded of
"λόγος," Lid. and Scott, 9, a thing, object, being; a matter, affair,
event, fact, circumstance, occurrence, deed, condition, case, etc.; and
sometimes merely = something (cf.: causa, ratio, negotium)." realism,
the view that the subject matter of common sense or scientific research and
scientific theories exists independently of our knowledge of it, and that the
goal of science is the description and explanation of both observable and
unobservable aspects of the world. Scientific realism is contrasted with
logical empiricism and social constructivism. Early arguments for scientific
realism simply stated that, in light of the impressive products and methods of
science, realism is the only philosophy that does not make the success of
science a miracle. Formulations of scientific realism focus on the objects of
theoretical knowledge: theories, laws, and entities. One especially robust
argument for scientific realism due to Putnam and Richard Boyd is that the instrumental
reliability of scientific methodology in the mature sciences such as physics,
chemistry, and some areas of biology can be explained adequately only if we
suppose that theories in the mature sciences are at least approximately true
and their central theoretical terms are at least partially referential Putnam
no longer holds this view. More timid versions of scientific realism do not
infer approximate truth of mature theories. For example, Ian Hacking’s “entity
realism” 3 asserts that the instrumental manipulation of postulated entities to
produce further effects gives us legitimate grounds for ontological commitment
to theoretical entities, but not to laws or theories. Paul Humphreys’s “austere
realism” 9 states that only theoretical commitment to unobserved structures or
dispositions could explain the stability of observed outcomes of scientific
inquiry. Distinctive versions of scientific realism can be found in works by
Richard Boyd 3, Philip Kitcher 3, Richard Miller 7, William Newton-Smith 1, and
J. D. Trout 8. Despite their differences, all of these versions of realism are
distinguished against logical
empiricism by their commitment that
knowledge of unobservable phenomena is not only possible but actual. As well,
all of the arguments for scientific realism are abductive; they argue that
either the approximate truth of background theories or the existence of
theoretical entities and laws provides the best explanation for some
significant fact about the scientific theory or practice. Scientific realists
address the difference between real entities and merely useful constructs,
arguing that realism offers a better explanation for the success of science. In
addition, scientific realism recruits evidence from the history and practice of
science, and offers explanations for the success of science that are designed
to honor the dynamic and uneven character of that evidence. Most arguments for
scientific realism cohabit with versions of naturalism. Anti-realist opponents
argue that the realist move from instrumental reliability to truth is
question-begging. However, realists reply that such formal criticisms are
irrelevant; the structure of explanationist arguments is inductive and their
principles are a posteriori.
applicatum, extensum -- extensio: scope, the “part” of
the sentence or proposition to which a given term “applies” under a given
interpretation of the sentence. If the sentence ‘Abe does not believe Ben died’
is interpreted as expressing the proposition that Abe believes that it is not
the case that Ben died, the scope of ‘not’ is ‘Ben died’; interpreted as “It is
not the case that Abe believes that Ben died,” the scope is the rest of the
sentence, i.e., ‘Abe believes Ben died’. In the first case we have narrow
scope, in the second wide scope. If ‘Every number is not even’ is interpreted
with narrow scope, it expresses the false proposition that every number is
non-even, which is logically equivalent to the proposition that no number is
even. Taken with wide scope it expresses the truth that not every number is
even, which is equivalent to the truth that some number is non-even. Under
normal interpretations of the sentences, ‘hardened’ has narrow scope in ‘Carl
is a hardened recidivist’, whereas ‘alleged’ has wide scope in ‘Dan is an
alleged criminal’. Accordingly, ‘Carl is a hardened recidivist’ logically
implies ‘Carl is a recidivist’, whereas ‘Dan is an alleged criminal’, being
equivalent to ‘Allegedly, Dan is a criminal’, does not imply ‘Dan is a
criminal’. Scope considerations are useful in analyzing structural ambiguity
and in understanding the difference between the grammatical form of a sentence
and the logical form of a proposition it expresses. In a logically perfect
language grammatical form mirrors logical form, there is no scope ambiguity,
and the scope of a given term is uniquely determined by its context.
scots common sense philosophy, a comprehensive
philosophical position developed by Reid in the latter part of the eighteenth
century. Reid’s views were propagated by a succession of Scottish popularizers,
of whom the most successful was Dugald Stewart. Through them common sense
doctrine became nearly a philosophical orthodoxy in Great Britain during the
first half of the nineteenth century. Brought to the United States through the
s in Princeton and Philadelphia, common sensism continued to be widely taught
until the later nineteenth century. The early Reidians Beattie and Oswald were,
like Reid himself, read in G.y by Kant and others; and Reid’s views were widely
taught in post-Napoleonic France. The archenemy for the common sense theorists
was Hume. Reid saw in his skepticism the inevitable outcome of Descartes’s
thesis, accepted by Locke, that we do not perceive external objects directly,
but that the immediate object of perception is something in the mind. Against
this he argued that perception involves both sensation and certain intuitively
known general truths or principles that together yield knowledge of external
objects. He also argued that there are many other intuitively known general
principles, including moral principles, available to all normal humans. As a
result he thought that whenever philosophical argument results in conclusions
that run counter to common sense, the philosophy must be wrong. Stewart made
some changes in Reid’s acute and original theory, but his main achievement was
to propagate it through eloquent classes and widely used textbooks. Common
sensism, defending the considered views of the ordinary man, was taken by many
to provide a defense of the Christian religious and moral status quo. Reid had
argued for free will, and presented a long list of self-evident moral axioms.
If this might be plausibly presented as part of the common sense of his time,
the same could not be said for some of the religious doctrines that Oswald
thought equally self-evident. Reid had not given any rigorous tests for what
might count as selfevident. The easy intuitionism of later common sensists was
a natural target for those who, like J. S. Mill, thought that any appeal to
self-evidence was simply a way of justifying vested interest. Whewell, in both
his philosophy of science and his ethics, and Sidgwick, in his moral theory,
acknowledged debts to Reid and tried to eliminate the abuses to which his
method was open. But in doing so they transformed common sensism beyond the
limits within which Reid and those shaped by him operated.
scupoli: very important Italian philosopher.
Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Scupoli," per il Club Anglo-Italiano,
The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
searleim, or “playing for the gallery,” as Grice calls it –
after Oxonian Rhodes scholar philosopher of language and mind D. Phil., Oxford
influenced by Frege, Vitters, and J. L. Austin; a founder of speech act theory
and an important contributor to debates on intentionality, consciousness, and
institutional facts. Language. In Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of
Language 9, Searle brings together modified versions of Frege’s distinctions
between the force F and content P of a sentence, and between singular reference
and predication, Austin’s analysis of speech acts, and Grice’s analysis of
speaker meaning. Searle explores the hypothesis that the semantics of a natural
language can be regarded as a conventional realization of underlying
constitutive rules and that illocutionary acts are acts performed in accordance
with these rules. Expression and Meaning 9 extends this analysis to non-literal
and indirect illocutionary acts, and attempts to explain Donnellan’s
referential-attributive distinction in these terms and proposes an influential
taxonomy of five basic types of illocutionary acts based on the illocutionary
point or purpose of the act, and word-to-world versus world-toword direction of
fit. Language and mind. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind 3
forms the foundation for the earlier work on speech acts. Now the semantics of
a natural language is seen as the result of the mind intrinsic intentionality
imposing conditions of satisfaction or aboutness on objects expressions in a
language, which have intentionality only derivatively. Perception and action
rather than belief are taken as fundamental. Satisfaction conditions are
essentially Fregean i.e. general versus singular and internal meaning is in the head, relative to a
background of non-intentional states, and relative to a network of other
intentional states. The philosophy of language becomes a branch of the
philosophy of mind. Mind. “Minds, Brains and Programs” 0 introduced the famous
“Chin. room” argument against strong artificial intelligence the view that appropriately programming a
machine is sufficient for giving it intentional states. Suppose a monolingual
English-speaker is working in a room producing Chin. answers to Chin. questions
well enough to mimic a Chin.speaker, but by following an algorithm written in
English. Such a person does not understand Chin. nor would a computer computing
the same algorithm. This is true for any such algorithms because they are
syntactically individuated and intentional states are semantically individuated.
The Rediscovery of the Mind 2 continues the attack on the thesis that the brain
is a digital computer, and develops a non-reductive “biological naturalism” on
which intentionality, like the liquidity of water, is a high-level feature,
which is caused by and realized in the brain. Society. The Construction of
Social Reality 5 develops his realistic worldview, starting with an independent
world of particles and forces, up through evolutionary biological systems
capable of consciousness and intentionality, to institutions and social facts,
which are created when persons impose status-features on things, which are
collectively recognized and accepted. Refs.:
H. P. Grice, “Searle,” in WoW. Searle, in P. G. R. I. C. E., Oxford: Clarendon.
“I’m glad I can say all the contributors are friends of mine, and not merely
impersonal – but personal, too!”
first-order
predicate calculus with time-relative identity: - second-order logic, the logic of languages that
contain, in addition to variables ranging over objects, variables ranging over
properties, relations, functions, or classes of those objects. A model, or
interpretation, of a formal language usually contains a domain of discourse.
This domain is what the language is about, in the model in question. Variables
that range over this domain are called first-order variables. If the language
contains only first-order variables, it is called a first-order language, and
it is within the purview of first-order logic. Some languages also contain
variables that range over properties, relations, functions, or classes of
members of the domain of discourse. These are second-order variables. A
language that contains first-order and second-order variables, and no others,
is a secondorder language. The sentence ‘There is a property shared by all and
only prime numbers’ is straightforwardly rendered in a second-order language,
because of the bound variable ranging over properties. There are also
properties of properties, relations of properties, and the like. Consider,
e.g., the property of properties expressed by ‘P has an infinite extension’ or
the relation expressed by ‘P has a smaller extension than Q’. A language with
variables ranging over such items is called thirdorder. This construction can
be continued, producing fourth-order languages, etc. A language is called
higher-order if it is at least second-order. Deductive systems for second-order
languages are obtained from those for first-order languages by adding
straightforward extensions of the axioms and rules concerning quantifiers that
bind first-order variables. There may also be an axiom scheme of comprehension:
DPExPx S Fx, one instance for each formula F that does not contain P free. The
scheme “asserts” that every formula determines the extension of a property. If
the language has variables ranging over functions, there may also be a version
of the axiom of choice: ERExDyRxy P DfExRxfx. In standard semantics for second-order
logic, a model of a given language is the same as a model for the corresponding
first-order language. The relation variables range over every relation over the
domain-of-discourse, the function variables range over every function from the
domain to the domain, etc. In non-standard, or Henkin semantics, each model
consists of a domain-ofdiscourse and a specified collection of relations,
functions, etc., on the domain. The latter may not include every relation or
function. The specified collections are the range of the second-order variables
in the model in question. In effect, Henkin semantics regards second-order
languages as multi-sorted, first-order languages.
secundum quid: in a certain respect, or with a qualification.
Fallacies can arise from confusing what is true only secundum quid with what is
true simpliciter ‘without qualification’, ‘absolutely’, ‘on the whole’, or
conversely. Thus a strawberry is red simpliciter on the whole. But it is black,
not red, with respect to its seeds, secundum quid. By ignoring the distinction,
one might mistakenly infer that the strawberry is both red and not red. Again,
a certain thief is a good cook, secundum quid; but it does not follow that he
is good simpliciter without qualification. Aristotle was the first to recognize
the fallacy secundum quid et simpliciter explicitly, in his Sophistical
Refutations. On the basis of some exceptionally enigmatic remarks in the same
work, the liar paradox was often regarded in the Middle Ages as an instance of
this fallacy.
deceptum sui: Auto-deception – D. F. Pears -- self-deception, 1
purposeful action to avoid unpleasant truths and painful topics about oneself
or the world; 2 unintentional processes of denial, avoidance, or biased
perception; 3 mental states resulting from such action or processes, such as
ignorance, false belief, wishful thinking, unjustified opinions, or lack of
clear awareness. Thus, parents tend to exaggerate the virtues of their
children; lovers disregard clear signs of unreciprocated affection; overeaters
rationalize away the need to diet; patients dying of cancer pretend to
themselves that their health is improving. In some contexts ‘self-deception’ is
neutral and implies no criticism. Deceiving oneself can even be desirable,
generating a vital lie that promotes happiness or the ability to cope with
difficulties. In other contexts ‘self-deception’ has negative connotations,
suggesting bad faith, false consciousness, or what Joseph Butler called “inner
hypocrisy” the refusal to acknowledge
our wrongdoing, character flaws, or onerous responsibilities. Existentialist
philosophers, like Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and most notably Sartre Being and
Nothingness, 3, denounced self-deception as an inauthentic dishonest, cowardly
refusal to confront painful though significant truths, especially about
freedom, responsibility, and death. Herbert Fingarette, however, argued that
self-deception is morally ambiguous
neither clearly blameworthy nor clearly faultless because of how it erodes capacities for
acting rationally Self-Deception, 9. The idea of intentionally deceiving
oneself seems paradoxical. In deceiving other people I usually know a truth
that guides me as I state the opposite falsehood, intending thereby to mislead
them into believing the falsehood. Five difficulties seem to prevent me from
doing anything like that to myself. 1 With interpersonal deception, one person
knows something that another person does not. Yet self-deceivers know the truth
all along, and so it seems they cannot use it to make themselves ignorant. One
solution is that self-deception occurs over time, with the initial knowledge
becoming gradually eroded. Or perhaps selfdeceivers only suspect rather than
know the truth, and then disregard relevant evidence. 2 If consciousness implies
awareness of one’s own conscious acts, then a conscious intention to deceive
myself would be self-defeating, for I would remain conscious of the truth I
wish to flee. Sartre’s solution was to view self-deception as spontaneous and
not explicitly reflected upon. Freud’s solution was to conceive of
self-deception as unconscious repression. 3 It seems that self-deceivers
believe a truth that they simultaneously get themselves not to believe, but how
is that possible? Perhaps they keep one of two conflicting beliefs unconscious
or not fully conscious. 4 Self-deception suggests willfully creating beliefs,
but that seems impossible since beliefs cannot voluntarily be chosen. Perhaps
beliefs can be indirectly manipulated by selectively ignoring and attending to evidence.
5 It seems that one part of a person the deceiver manipulates another part the
victim, but such extreme splits suggest multiple personality disorders rather
than self-deception. Perhaps we are composed of “subselves” relatively unified clusters of elements in
the personality. Or perhaps at this point we should jettison interpersonal
deception as a model for understanding self-deception. .
determinatum
sui: auto-determination -- self-determination,
the autonomy possessed by a community when it is politically independent; in a
strict sense, territorial sovereignty. Within international law, the principle
of self-determination appears to grant every people a right to be
self-determining, but there is controversy over its interpretation. Applied to
established states, the principle calls for recognition of state sovereignty
and non-intervention in internal affairs. By providing for the
self-determination of subordinate communities, however, it can generate demands
for secession that conflict with existing claims of sovereignty. Also, what
non-self-governing groups qualify as beneficiaries? The national interpretation
of the principle treats cultural or national units as the proper claimants,
whereas the regional interpretation confers the right of self-determination
upon the populations of well-defined regions regardless of cultural or national
affiliations. This difference reflects the roots of the principle in the
doctrines of nationalism and popular sovereignty, respectively, but complicates
its application.
evidens sui: (after ‘causa sui’), self-evidence, the property of
being self-evident. Only true propositions or truths are self-evident, though
false propositions can appear to be self-evident. It is widely held that a true
proposition is self-evident if and only if one would be justified in believing
it if one adequately understood it. Some would also require that self-evident
propositions are known if believed on the basis of such an understanding. Some
self-evident propositions are obvious, such as the proposition that all stags
are male, but others are not, since it may take considerable reflection to
achieve an adequate understanding of them. That slavery is wrong and that there
is no knowledge of falsehoods are perhaps examples of the latter. Not all
obvious propositions are self-evident, e.g., it is obvious that a stone will
fall if dropped, but adequate understanding of that claim does not by itself
justify one in believing it. An obvious proposition is one that immediately
seems true for anyone who adequately understands it, but its obviousness may
rest on wellknown and commonly accepted empirical facts, not on understanding.
All analytic propositions are self-evident but not all self-evident
propositions are analytic. The propositions that if A is older than B, then B
is younger than A, and that no object can be red and green all over at the same
time and in the same respects, are arguably self-evident but not analytic. All
self-evident propositions are necessary, for one could not be justified in
believing a contingent proposition simply in virtue of understanding it.
However, not all necessary propositions are self-evident, e.g., that water is
H2O and that temperature is the measure of the molecular activity in substances
are necessary but not self-evident. A proposition can appear to be selfevident
even though it is not. For instance, the proposition that all unmarried adult
males are bachelors will appear self-evident to many until they consider that
the pope is such a male. A proposition may appear self-evident to some but not
to others, even though it must either have or lack the property of being
self-evident. Self-evident propositions are knowable non-empirically, or a
priori, but some propositions knowable a priori are not self-evident, e.g.,
certain conclusions of long and difficult chains of mathematical
reasoning.
auto-present: self-presenting, in the philosophy of
Meinong, having the ability common to
all mental states to be immediately
present to our thought. “Meinong was too German to be English – take
‘wahrnehmen,’ to perceive, to take notice, to ‘verum’-sit.!”
Warhnehmungvorstellung is perceptual representation – Chisholm, alas, never
gives, typically in a second-tier varsity, to give the correct citation, when
he claims, to impress, that he is ‘borrowing’ from Meinong, never to return!
(“also typical of a second-tier!” -- Grice). In Meinong’s view, no mental state
can be presented to our thought in any other way e.g., indirectly, via a Lockean “idea of
reflection.” The only way to apprehend a mental state is to experience or “live
through” it. The experience involved in the apprehension of an external object
has thus a double presentational function: 1 via its “content” it presents the
object to our thought; 2 as its own “quasi-content” it presents itself
immediately to our thought. In the contemporary era, Roderick Chisholm has
based his account of empirical knowledge in part on a related concept of the
self-presenting. In Chisholm’s sense the
definition of which we omit here all
self-presenting states are mental, but not conversely; for instance, being
depressed because of the death of one’s spouse would not be self-presenting. In
Chisholm’s epistemology, self-presenting states are a source of certainty in
the following way: if F is a self-presenting state, then to be certain that one
is in state F it is sufficient that one is, and believes oneself to be in state
F. Cf. untranslatable, ‘sui,’ ‘ipse,’ ‘idem’. Presentatum de se.
self-reproducing automaton: a formal model of
self-reproduction of a kind introduced by von Neumann. He worked with an
intuitive robot model and then with a well-defined cellular automaton model.
Imagine a class of robotic automata made of robot parts and operating in an
environment of such parts. There are computer parts switches, memory elements,
wires, input-output parts sensing elements, display elements, action parts
grasping and moving elements, joining and cutting elements, and straight bars
to maintain structure and to employ in a storage tape. There are also energy
sources that enable the robots to operate and move around. These five
categories of parts are sufficient for the construction of robots that can make
objects of various kinds, including other robots. These parts also clearly suffice
for making a robot version of any finite automaton. Sensing and acting parts
can then be added to this robot so that it can make an indefinitely expandable
storage tape from straight bars. A “blank tape” consists of bars joined in
sequence, and the robot stores information on this tape by attaching bars or
not at the junctions. If its finite automaton part can execute programs and is
sufficiently powerful, such a robot is a universal computing robot cf. a
universal Turing machine. A universal computing robot can be augmented to form
a universal constructing robot a robot
that can construct any robot, given its description. Let r be any robot with an
indefinitely expandable tape, let Fr be the description of its finite part, and
let Tr be the information on its tape. Now take a universal computing robot and
augment it with sensing and acting devices and with programs so that when Fr
followed by Tr is written on its tape, this augmented universal computer
performs as follows. First, it reads the description Fr, finds the needed
parts, and constructs the finite part of r. Second, it makes a blank tape,
attaches it to the finite part of r, and then copies the information Tr from
its own tape onto the new tape. This augmentation of a universal computing
robot is a universal constructor. For when it starts with the information Fr,Tr
written on its tape, it will construct a copy of r with Tr on its tape. Robot
self-reproduction results from applying the universal constructor to itself.
Modify the universal constructor slightly so that when only a description Fr is
written on its tape, it constructs the finite part of r and then attaches a
tape with Fr written on it. Call this version of the universal constructor Cu.
Now place Cu’s description FCu on its own tape and start it up. Cu first reads
this description and constructs a copy of the finite part of itself in an empty
region of the cellular space. Then it adds a blank tape to the new construction
and copies FCu onto it. Hence Cu with FCu on its tape has produced another copy
of Cu with FCu on its tape. This is automaton self-reproduction. This robot
model of self-reproduction is very general. To develop the logic of
self-reproduction further, von Neumann first extended the concept of a finite
automaton to that of an infinite cellular automaton consisting of an array or
“space” of cells, each cell containing the same finite automaton. He chose an
infinite checkerboard array for modeling self-reproduction, and he specified a
particular twenty-nine-state automaton for each square cell. Each automaton is
connected directly to its four contiguous neighbors, and communication between
neighbors takes one or two time-steps. The twenty-nine states of a cell fall
into three categories. There is a blank state to represent the passivity of an
empty area. There are twelve states for switching, storage, and communication,
from which any finite automaton can be constructed in a sufficiently large
region of cells. And there are sixteen states for simulating the activities of
construction and destruction. Von Neumann chose these twenty-nine states in
such a way that an area of non-blank cells could compute and grow, i.e.,
activate a path of cells out to a blank region and convert the cells of that
region into a cellular automaton. A specific cellular automaton is embedded in
this space by the selection of the initial states of a finite area of cells,
all other cells being left blank. A universal computer consists of a
sufficiently powerful finite automaton with a tape. The tape is an indefinitely
long row of cells in which bits are represented by two different cell states.
The finite automaton accesses these cells by means of a construction arm that
it extends back and forth in rows of cells contiguous to the tape. When
activated, this finite automaton will execute programs stored on its tape. A
universal constructor results from augmenting the universal computer cf. the
robot model. Another construction arm is added, together with a finite
automaton controller to operate it. The controller sends signals into the arm
to extend it out to a blank region of the cellular space, to move around that
region, and to change the states of cells in that region. After the universal
constructor has converted the region into a cellular automaton, it directs the
construction arm to activate the new automaton and then withdraw from it.
Cellular automaton selfreproduction results from applying the universal
constructor to itself, as in the robot model. Cellular automata are now studied
extensively by humans working interactively with computers as abstract models
of both physical and organic systems. See Arthur W. Burks, “Von Neumann’s
Self-Reproducing Automata,” in Papers of John von Neumann on Computers and
Computer Theory, edited by William Aspray and Arthur Burks, 7. The study of
artificial life is an outgrowth of computer simulations of cellular automata
and related automata. Cellular automata organizations are sometimes used in
highly parallel computers.
sellars: philosopher, son of Roy Wood Sellars, and one of the
great systematic New-World (“as opposed to the Old World to which I belong” –
Grice) philosophers of the century. His
most influential and representative works are “Empiricism and the Philosophy of
Mind” 6 and “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” 0. The Sellarsian
system may be outlined as follows. The myth of the given. Thesis 1: Classical
empiricism foundationalism maintains that our belief in the commonsense,
objective world of physical objects is ultimately justified only by the way
that world presents itself in sense experience. Thesis 2: It also typically
maintains that sense experience a is not part of that world and b is not a form
of conceptual cognition like thinking or believing. Thesis 3: From 1 and 2a
classical empiricism concludes that our knowledge of the physical world is
inferred from sense experience. Thesis 4: Since inferences derive knowledge
from knowledge, sense experience itself must be a form of knowledge. Theses 14
collectively are the doctrine of the given. Each thesis taken individually is
plausible. However, Sellars argues that 2b and 4 are incompatible if, as he
thinks, knowledge is a kind of conceptual cognition. Concluding that the
doctrine of the given is false, he maintains that classical empiricism is a
myth. The positive system. From an analysis of theoretical explanation in the
physical sciences, Sellars concludes that postulating theoretical entities is
justified only if theoretical laws
nomological generalizations referring to theoretical entities are needed to explain particular observable
phenomena for which explanation in terms of exceptionless observation laws is
unavailable. While rejecting any classical empiricist interpretation of
observation, Sellars agrees that some account of non-inferential knowledge is
required to make sense of theoretical explanation thus conceived. He thinks
that utterances made in direct response to sensory stimuli observational
reports count as non-inferential knowledge when a they possess authority, i.e.,
occur in conditions ensuring that they reliably indicate some physical property
say, shape in the environment and are accepted by the linguistic community as
possessing this quality; and b the utterer has justified belief that they
possess this authority. Sellars claims that some perceptual conditions induce
ordinary people to make observation reports inconsistent with established
explanatory principles of the commonsense framework. We thus might tend to
report spontaneously that an object is green seen in daylight and blue seen
indoors, and yet think it has not undergone any process that could change its
color. Sellars sees in such conflicting tendencies vestiges of a primitive
conceptual framework whose tensions have been partially resolved by introducing
the concept of sense experiences. These experiences count as theoretical
entities, since they are postulated to account for observational phenomena for
which no exceptionless observation laws exist. This example may serve as a
paradigm for a process of theoretical explanation occurring in the framework of
commonsense beliefs that Sellars calls the manifest image, a process that
itself is a model for his theory of the rational dynamics of conceptual change
in both the manifest image and in science
the scientific image. Because the actual process of conceptual evolution
in Homo sapiens may not fit this pattern of rational dynamics, Sellars treats
these dynamics as occurring within certain hypothetical ideal histories myths
of the way in which, from certain conceptually primitive beginnings, one might
have come to postulate the requisite theoretical explanations. The manifest
image, like the proto-theories from which it arose, is itself subject to
various tensions ultimately resolved in the scientific image. Because this
latter image contains a metaphysical theory of material objects and persons
that is inconsistent with that of its predecessor framework, Sellars regards
the manifest image as replaced by its successor. In terms of the Peircean
conception of truth that Sellars endorses, the scientific image is the only
true image. In this sense Sellars is a scientific realist. There is, however,
also an important sense in which Sellars is not a scientific realist: despite
discrediting classical empiricism, he thinks that the intrinsic nature of sense
experience gives to conceptualization more than simply sensory stimulus yet
less than the content of knowledge claims. Inspired by Kant, Sellars treats the
manifest image as a Kantian phenomenal world, a world that exists as a cognitive
construction which, though lacking ideal factual truth, is guided in part by
intrinsic features of sense experience. This is not analytic phenomenalism,
which Sellars rejects. Moreover, the special methodological role for sense
experience has effects even within the scientific image itself. Theories of
mind, perception, and semantics. Mind: In the manifest image thoughts are
private episodes endowed with intentionality. Called inner speech, they are
theoretical entities whose causal and intentional properties are modeled,
respectively, on inferential and semantic properties of overt speech. They are
introduced within a behaviorist proto-theory, the Rylean framework, to provide
a theoretical explanation for behavior normally accompanied by linguistically
overt reasons. Perception: In the manifest image sense experiences are sense
impressions states of persons modeled on
two-dimensional, colored physical replicas and introduced in the theoretical
language of the adverbial theory of perception to explain why it can look as if
some perceptible quality is present when it is not. Semantics: The meaning of a
simple predicate p in a language L is the role played in L by p defined in
terms of three sets of linguistic rules: language entry rules, intralinguistic
rules, and language departure rules. This account also supports a nominalist
treatment of abstract entities. Identification of a role for a token of p in L
can be effected demonstratively in the speaker’s language by saying that p in L
is a member of the class of predicates playing the same role as a demonstrated
predicate. Thus a speaker of English might say that ‘rot’ in G. plays the
semantic role ‘red’ has in English. Sellars sees science and metaphysics as
autonomous strands in a single web of philosophical inquiry. Sellarsianism thus
presents an important alternative to the view that what is fundamentally real
is determined by the logical structure of scientific language alone. Sellars
also sees ordinary language as expressing a commonsense framework of beliefs
constituting a kind of proto-theory with its own methods, metaphysics, and
theoretical entities. Thus, he also presents an important alternative to the
view that philosophy concerns not what is ultimately real, but what words like
‘real’ ultimately mean in ordinary language.
semantic: semantic
– Grice saw ‘semantics’ (he detested the pretentious ‘pragmatics’) as a branch
of philosophy. “Surely we cannot expect someone whose training includes
phonetics, a totally physical science, to have any saying on the nuances of the
communicatum, which is all semantics is about!” -- H. P. Grice, “Logic and
conversation” – “Meaning,” in P. F. Strawson, “Philosophical Logic,” Oxford --
the arena of philosophy devoted to examining the scope and nature of logic.
Aristotle considered logic an organon, or foundation, of knowledge. Certainly,
inference is the source of much human knowledge. Logic judges inferences good
or bad and tries to justify those that are good. One need not agree with
Aristotle, therefore, to see logic as essential to epistemology. Philosophers
such as Vitters, additionally, have held that the structure of language
reflects the structure of the world. Because inferences have elements that are
themselves linguistic or are at least expressible in language, logic reveals
general features of the structure of language. This makes it essential to
linguistics, and, on a Vittersian view, to metaphysics. Moreover, many
philosophical battles have been fought with logical weaponry. For all these
reasons, philosophers have tried to understand what logic is, what justifies
it, and what it tells us about reason, language, and the world. The nature of
logic. Logic might be defined as the science of inference; inference, in turn,
as the drawing of a conclusion from premises. A simple argument is a sequence,
one element of which, the conclusion, the others are thought to support. A
complex argument is a series of simple arguments. Logic, then, is primarily
concerned with arguments. Already, however, several questions arise. 1 Who
thinks that the premises support the conclusion? The speaker? The audience? Any
competent speaker of the language? 2 What are the elements of arguments?
Thoughts? Propositions? Philosophers following Quine have found these answers
unappealing for lack of clear identity criteria. Sentences are more concrete
and more sharply individuated. But should we consider sentence tokens or
sentence types? Context often affects interpretation, so it appears that we
must consider tokens or types-in-context. Moreover, many sentences, even with contextual
information supplied, are ambiguous. Is a sequence with an ambiguous sentence
one argument which may be good on some readings and bad on others or several?
For reasons that will become clear, the elements of arguments should be the
primary bearers of truth and falsehood in one’s general theory of language. 3
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what does ‘support’ mean? Logic
evaluates inferences by distinguishing good from bad arguments. This raises
issues about the status of logic, for many of its pronouncements are explicitly
normative. The philosophy of logic thus includes problems of the nature and
justification of norms akin to those arising in metaethics. The solutions,
moreover, may vary with the logical system at hand. Some logicians attempt to
characterize reasoning in natural language; others try to systematize reasoning
in mathematics or other sciences. Still others try to devise an ideal system of
reasoning that does not fully correspond to any of these. Logicians concerned
with inference in natural, mathematical, or scientific languages tend to
justify their norms by describing inferential practices in that language as
actually used by those competent in it. These descriptions justify norms partly
because the practices they describe include evaluations of inferences as well
as inferences themselves. The scope of logic. Logical systems meant to account
for natural language inference raise issues of the scope of logic. How does
logic differ from semantics, the science of meaning in general? Logicians have
often treated only inferences turning on certain commonly used words, such as
‘not’, ‘if’, ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘all’, and ‘some’, taking them, or items in a
symbolic language that correspond to them, as logical constants. They have
neglected inferences that do not turn on them, such as My brother is married.
Therefore, I have a sister-in-law. Increasingly, however, semanticists have
used ‘logic’ more broadly, speaking of the logic of belief, perception,
abstraction, or even kinship. Such uses
seem to treat logic and semantics as coextensive. Philosophers who have sought
to maintain a distinction between the semantics and logic of natural language
have tried to develop non-arbitrary criteria of logical constancy. An argument
is valid provided the truth of its premises guarantees the truth of its
conclusion. This definition relies on the notion of truth, which raises
philosophical puzzles of its own. Furthermore, it is natural to ask what kind
of connection must hold between the premises and conclusion. One answer
specifies that an argument is valid provided replacing its simple constituents
with items of similar categories while leaving logical constants intact could
never produce true premises and a false conclusion. On this view, validity is a
matter of form: an argument is valid if it instantiates a valid form. Logic
thus becomes the theory of logical form. On another view, an argument is valid
if its conclusion is true in every possible world or model in which its
premises are true. This conception need not rely on the notion of a logical
constant and so is compatible with the view that logic and semantics are
coextensive. Many issues in the philosophy of logic arise from the plethora of
systems logicians have devised. Some of these are deviant logics, i.e., logics
that differ from classical or standard logic while seeming to treat the same
subject matter. Intuitionistic logic, for example, which interprets the
connectives and quantifiers non-classically, rejecting the law of excluded
middle and the interdefinability of the quantifiers, has been supported with
both semantic and ontological arguments. Brouwer, Heyting, and others have
defended it as the proper logic of the infinite; Dummett has defended it as the
correct logic of natural language. Free logic allows non-denoting referring
expressions but interprets the quantifiers as ranging only over existing
objects. Many-valued logics use at least three truthvalues, rejecting the
classical assumption of bivalence that
every formula is either true or false. Many logical systems attempt to extend
classical logic to incorporate tense, modality, abstraction, higher-order
quantification, propositional quantification, complement constructions, or the
truth predicate. These projects raise important philosophical questions. Modal
and tense logics. Tense is a pervasive feature of natural language, and has
become important to computer scientists interested in concurrent programs.
Modalities of several sorts alethic
possibility, necessity and deontic obligation, permission, for example appear in natural language in various
grammatical guises. Provability, treated as a modality, allows for revealing
formalizations of metamathematics. Logicians have usually treated modalities
and tenses as sentential operators. C. I. Lewis and Langford pioneered such
approaches for alethic modalities; von Wright, for deontic modalities; and
Prior, for tense. In each area, many competing systems developed; by the late
0s, there were over two hundred axiom systems in the literature for
propositional alethic modal logic alone. How might competing systems be
evaluated? Kripke’s semantics for modal logic has proved very helpful. Kripke
semantics in effect treats modal operators as quantifiers over possible worlds.
Necessarily A, e.g., is true at a world if and only if A is true in all worlds
accessible from that world. Kripke showed that certain popular axiom systems
result from imposing simple conditions on the accessibility relation. His work
spawned a field, known as correspondence theory, devoted to studying the
relations between modal axioms and conditions on models. It has helped
philosophers and logicians to understand the issues at stake in choosing a
modal logic and has raised the question of whether there is one true modal logic.
Modal idioms may be ambiguous or indeterminate with respect to some properties
of the accessibility relation. Possible worlds raise additional ontological and
epistemological questions. Modalities and tenses seem to be linked in natural
language, but attempts to bring tense and modal logic together remain young.
The sensitivity of tense to intra- and extralinguistic context has cast doubt
on the project of using operators to represent tenses. Kamp, e.g., has
represented tense and aspect in terms of event structure, building on earlier
work by Reichenbach. Truth. Tarski’s theory of truth shows that it is possible
to define truth recursively for certain languages. Languages that can refer to
their own sentences, however, permit no such definition given Tarski’s
assumptions for they allow the
formulation of the liar and similar paradoxes. Tarski concluded that, in giving
the semantics for such a language, we must ascend to a more powerful
metalanguage. Kripke and others, however, have shown that it is possible for a
language permitting self-reference to contain its own truth 680 predicate by surrendering bivalence or
taking the truth predicate indexically. Higher-order logic. First-order
predicate logic allows quantification only over individuals. Higher-order
logics also permit quantification over predicate positions. Natural language
seems to permit such quantification: ‘Mary has every quality that John
admires’. Mathematics, moreover, may be expressed elegantly in higher-order
logic. Peano arithmetic and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, e.g., require infinite
axiom sets in firstorder logic but are finitely axiomatizable and categorical, determining their models up
to isomorphism in second-order logic.
Because they quantify over properties and relations, higher-order logics seem
committed to Platonism. Mathematics reduces to higher-order logic; Quine
concludes that the latter is not logic. Its most natural semantics seems to
presuppose a prior understanding of properties and relations. Also, on this
semantics, it differs greatly from first-order logic. Like set theory, it is
incomplete; it is not compact. This raises questions about the boundaries of
logic. Must logic be axiomatizable? Must it be possible, i.e., to develop a
logical system powerful enough to prove every valid argument valid? Could there
be valid arguments with infinitely many premises, any finite fragment of which
would be invalid? With an operator for forming abstract terms from predicates,
higher-order logics easily allow the formulation of paradoxes. Russell and
Whitehead for this reason adopted type theory, which, like Tarski’s theory of
truth, uses an infinite hierarchy and corresponding syntactic restrictions to
avoid paradox. Type-free theories avoid both the restrictions and the paradoxes,
as with truth, by rejecting bivalence or by understanding abstraction
indexically. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Why I don’t use ‘logic,’ but I use
‘semantic.’”Grice was careful with what he felt was an abuse of ‘semantic’ – v.
Evans: “Meaning and truth: essayis in semantics.” “Well, that’s what ‘meaning’
means, right?” The semantics is more reated to the signatum than to the
significatum. The Grecians did not have anything remotely similar to the
significatum, which is all about the making (facere) of a sign (as in Grice’s
example of the handwave). This is the meaning Grice gives to ‘semantics.’ There
is no need for the handwave to be part of a system of communication, or have
syntactic structure, or be ‘arbitrary.’ Still, one thing is communicated from
the emissor to his recipient, and that is all count. “I know the route” is the
message, or “I will leave you soon.” The handwave may be ambiguous. Grice is
aware that formalists like Hilbert and Gentzen think that they can do without
semantics – but as long as there is something ‘transmitted,’ or ‘messaged,’ it
cannot. In the one-off predicament, Emissor E emits x and communicates that p.
Since an intention with a content involving a psychological state is involved
and attached, even in a one-off, to ‘x,’ we can legitimately say the scenario
may be said to describe a ‘semantic’ phenomenon. Grice would freely use
‘semantic,’ and the root for ‘semantics,’ that Grice does use, involves the
richest root of all Grecian roots: the ‘semion.’ Liddell and Scott have “τό σημεῖον,”
Ion. σημήϊον , Dor. σα_μήϊον IG12(3).452 (Thera, iv B.C.), σα_μεῖον
IPE12.352.25 (Chersonesus, ii B.C.), IG5(1).1390.16 (Andania, i B.C.), σα_μᾶον
CIG5168 (Cyrene); = σῆμα in all senses, and more common in Prose, but never in
Hom. or Hes.; and which they render as “mark by which a thing is known,”
Hdt.2.38;” they also have “τό σῆμα,” Dor. σᾶμα Berl.Sitzb.1927.161 (Cyrene),
etc.; which they render as “sign, mark, token,” “ Il.10.466, 23.326, Od.19.250,
etc.” Grice lectured not only on Cat. But the next, De Int. As Arsitotle puts
it, an expression is a symbol (symbolon) or sign (semeion) of an affections or
impression (pathematon) of the soul (psyche). An affection of the soul, of
which a word is primarily a sign, are
the same for the whole of mankind, as is also objects (pragmaton) of which the
affections is a representation or likenes, image, or copiy (homoiomaton). [De Int., 1.16a4] while Grice is NOT concerned about the
semantics of utterers meaning (how could he, when he analyses means
in terms of intends , he is about
the semantics of expression-meaning. Grices
second stage (expression meaing) of his programme about meaning begins with
specifications of means as applied to x, a token of X. He is having Tarski and
Davidson in their elaborations of schemata like ‘p’ ‘means’ that p. ‘Snow
is white’ ‘means’ that snow is white, and stuff! Grice was especially concerned
with combinatories, for both unary and dyadic operators, and with multiple
quantifications within a first-order predicate calculus with identity. Since in
Grice’s initial elaboration on meaning he relies on Stevenson, it is worth
exploring how ‘semantics’ and ‘semiotics’ were interpreted by Peirce and the
emotivists. Stevenson’s main source is however in the other place, though,
under Stevenson. Semantics – communication – H. P. Grice, “Implicaturum and
Explicature: The basis of communication” – “Communication and Intention” --
philosophy of language, the philosophical study of natural language and its
workings, particularly of linguistic meaning and the use of language. A natural
language is any one of the thousands of various tongues that have developed
historically among populations of human beings and have been used for everyday
purposes including English, , Swahili,
and Latin as opposed to the formal and
other artificial “languages” invented by mathematicians, logicians, and
computer scientists, such as arithmetic, the predicate calculus, and LISP or
COBOL. There are intermediate cases, e.g., Esperanto, Pig Latin, and the sort
of “philosophese” that mixes English words with logical symbols. Contemporary
philosophy of language centers on the theory of meaning, but also includes the
theory of reference, the theory of truth, philosophical pragmatics, and the
philosophy of linguistics. The main question addressed by the theory of meaning
is: In virtue of what are certain physical marks or noises meaningful
linguistic expressions, and in virtue of what does any particular set of marks
or noises have the distinctive meaning it does? A theory of meaning should also
give a comprehensive account of the “meaning phenomena,” or general semantic
properties of sentences: synonymy, ambiguity, entailment, and the like. Some
theorists have thought to express these questions and issues in terms of
languageneutral items called propositions: ‘In virtue of what does a particular
set of marks or noises express the proposition it does?’; cf. ‘ “La neige est
blanche” expresses the proposition that snow is white’, and ‘Synonymous
sentences express the same proposition’. On this view, to understand a sentence
is to “grasp” the proposition expressed by that sentence. But the explanatory
role and even the existence of such entities are disputed. It has often been
maintained that certain special sentences are true solely in virtue of their
meanings and/or the meanings of their component expressions, without regard to
what the nonlinguistic world is like ‘No bachelor is married’; ‘If a thing is
blue it is colored’. Such vacuously true sentences are called analytic.
However, Quine and others have disputed whether there really is such a thing as
analyticity. Philosophers have offered a number of sharply competing hypotheses
as to the nature of meaning, including: 1 the referential view that words mean
by standing for things, and that a sentence means what it does because its
parts correspond referentially to the elements of an actual or possible state
of affairs in the world; 2 ideational or mentalist theories, according to which
meanings are ideas or other psychological phenomena in people’s minds; 3 “use”
theories, inspired by Vitters and to a lesser extent by J. L. Austin: a
linguistic expression’s “meaning” is its conventionally assigned role as a
game-piece-like token used in one or more existing social practices; 4 H. P.
Grice’s hypothesis that a sentence’s or word’s meaning is a function of what
audience response a typical utterer would intend to elicit in uttering it. 5
inferential role theories, as developed by Wilfrid Sellars out of Carnap’s and
Vitters’s views: a sentence’s meaning is specified by the set of sentences from
which it can correctly be inferred and the set of those which can be inferred
from it Sellars himself provided for “language-entry” and “language-exit” moves
as partly constitutive of meaning, in addition to inferences; 6
verificationism, the view that a sentence’s meaning is the set of possible
experiences that would confirm it or provide evidence for its truth; 7 the
truth-conditional theory: a sentence’s meaning is the distinctive condition
under which it is true, the situation or state of affairs that, if it obtained,
would make the sentence true; 8 the null hypothesis, or eliminativist view,
that “meaning” is a myth and there is no such thing a radical claim that can stem either from
Quine’s doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation or from eliminative
materialism in the philosophy of mind. Following the original work of Carnap,
Alonzo Church, Hintikka, and Richard Montague in the 0s, the theory of meaning
has made increasing use of “possible worlds”based intensional logic as an
analytical apparatus. Propositions sentence meanings considered as entities,
and truth conditions as in 7 above, are now commonly taken to be structured
sets of possible worlds e.g., the set of
worlds in which Aristotle’s maternal grandmother hates broccoli. And the
structure imposed on such a set, corresponding to the intuitive constituent
structure of a proposition as the concepts ‘grandmother’ and ‘hate’ are
constituents of the foregoing proposition, accounts for the meaning-properties
of sentences that express the proposition. Theories of meaning can also be
called semantics, as in “Gricean semantics” or “Verificationist semantics,”
though the term is sometimes restricted to referential and/or truth-conditional
theories, which posit meaning-constitutive relations between words and the
nonlinguistic world. Semantics is often contrasted with syntax, the structure
of grammatically permissible ordering relations between words and other words
in well-formed sentences, and with pragmatics, the rules governing the use of
meaningful expressions in particular speech contexts; but linguists have found
that semantic phenomena cannot be kept purely separate either from syntactic or
from pragmatic phenomena. In a still more specialized usage, linguistic
semantics is the detailed study typically within the truth-conditional format
of particular types of construction in particular natural languages, e.g.,
belief-clauses in English or adverbial phrases in Kwakiutl. Linguistic
semantics in that sense is practiced by some philosophers of language, by some
linguists, and occasionally by both working together. Montague grammar and
situation semantics are common formats for such work, both based on intensional
logic. The theory of referenceis pursued whether or not one accepts either the
referential or the truthconditional theory of meaning. Its main question is: In
virtue of what does a linguistic expression designate one or more things in the
world? Prior to theorizing and defining of technical uses, ‘designate’,
‘denote’, and ‘refer’ are used interchangeably. Denoting expressions are
divided into singular terms, which purport to designate particular individual
things, and general terms, which can apply to more than one thing at once.
Singular terms include proper names ‘Cindy’, ‘Bangladesh’, definite
descriptions ‘my brother’, ‘the first baby born in the New World’, and singular
pronouns of various types ‘this’, ‘you’, ‘she’. General terms include common
nouns ‘horse’, ‘trash can’, mass terms ‘water’, ‘graphite’, and plural pronouns
‘they’, ‘those’. The twentieth century’s dominant theory of reference has been
the description theory, the view that linguistic terms refer by expressing
descriptive features or properties, the referent being the item or items that
in fact possess those properties. For example, a definite description does that
directly: ‘My brother’ denotes whatever person does have the property of being
my brother. According to the description theory of proper names, defended most
articulately by Russell, such names express identifying properties indirectly
by abbreviating definite descriptions. A general term such as ‘horse’ was
thought of as expressing a cluster of properties distinctive of horses; and so
forth. But the description theory came under heavy attack in the late 0s, from
Keith Donnellan, Kripke, and Putnam, and was generally abandoned on each of
several grounds, in favor of the causal-historical theory of reference. The
causal-historical idea is that a particular use of a linguistic expression
denotes by being etiologically grounded in the thing or group that is its
referent; a historical causal chain of a certain shape leads backward in time
from the act of referring to the referents. More recently, problems with the
causal-historical theory as originally formulated have led researchers to
backpedal somewhat and incorporate some features of the description theory.
Other views of reference have been advocated as well, particularly analogues of
some of the theories of meaning listed above
chiefly 26 and 8. Modal and propositional-attitude contexts create
special problems in the theory of reference, for referring expressions seem to
alter their normal semantic behavior when they occur within such contexts. Much
ink has been spilled over the question of why and how the substitution of a
term for another term having exactly the same referent can change the
truth-value of a containing modal or propositional-attitude sentence.
Interestingly, the theory of truth historically predates articulate study of
meaning or of reference, for philosophers have always sought the nature of
truth. It has often been thought that a sentence is true in virtue of
expressing a true belief, truth being primarily a property of beliefs rather
than of linguistic entities; but the main theories of truth have also been
applied to sentences directly. The correspondence theory maintains that a
sentence is true in virtue of its elements’ mirroring a fact or actual state of
affairs. The coherence theory instead identifies truth as a relation of the
true sentence to other sentences, usually an epistemic relation. Pragmatic
theories have it that truth is a matter either of practical utility or of
idealized epistemic warrant. Deflationary views, such as the traditional
redundancy theory and D. Grover, J. Camp, and N. D. Belnap’s prosentential
theory, deny that truth comes to anything more important or substantive than
what is already codified in a recursive Tarskian truth-definition for a language.
Pragmatics studies the use of language in context, and the context-dependence
of various aspects of linguistic interpretation. First, one and the same
sentence can express different meanings or propositions from context to
context, owing to ambiguity or to indexicality or both. An ambiguous sentence
has more than one meaning, either because one of its component words has more
than one meaning as ‘bank’ has or because the sentence admits of more than one
possible syntactic analysis ‘Visiting doctors can be tedious’, ‘The mouse tore
up the street’. An indexical sentence can change in truth-value from context to
context owing to the presence of an element whose reference fluctuates, such as
a demonstrative pronoun ‘She told him off yesterday’, ‘It’s time for that
meeting now’. One branch of pragmatics investigates how context determines a
single propositional meaning for a sentence on a particular occasion of that
sentence’s use. Speech act theory is a second branch of pragmatics that
presumes the propositional or “locutionary” meanings of utterances and studies
what J. L. Austin called the illocutionary forces of those utterances, the
distinctive types of linguistic act that are performed by the speaker in making
them. E.g., in uttering ‘I will be there tonight’, a speaker might be issuing a
warning, uttering a threat, making a promise, or merely offering a prediction,
depending on conventional and other social features of the situation. A crude
test of illocutionary force is the “hereby” criterion: one’s utterance has the
force of, say, a warning, if it could fairly have been paraphrased by the
corresponding “explicitly performative” sentence beginning ‘I hereby warn you
that . . .’..Speech act theory interacts to some extent with semantics,
especially in the case of explicit performatives, and it has some fairly
dramatic syntactic effects as well. A third branch of pragmatics not altogether
separate from the second is the theory of conversation or theory of implicaturum,
founded by H. P. Grice. Grice notes that sentences, when uttered in particular
contexts, often generate “implications” that are not logical consequences of
those sentences ‘Is Jones a good philosopher?’
’He has very neat handwriting’. Such implications can usually be
identified as what the speaker meant in uttering her sentence; thus for that
reason and others, what Grice calls utterer’s meaning can diverge sharply from
sentence-meaning or “timeless” meaning. To explain those non-logical
implications, Grice offered a now widely accepted theory of conversational implicaturum.
Conversational implicaturums arise from the interaction of the sentence uttered
with mutually shared background assumptions and certain principles of efficient
and cooperative conversation. The philosophy of linguistics studies the
academic discipline of linguistics, particularly theoretical linguistics
considered as a science or purported science; it examines methodology and
fundamental assumptions, and also tries to incorporate linguists’ findings into
the rest of philosophy of language. Theoretical linguistics concentrates on
syntax, and took its contemporary form in the 0s under Zellig Harris and
Chomsky: it seeks to describe each natural language in terms of a generative
grammar for that language, i.e., a set of recursive rules for combining words
that will generate all and only the “well-formed strings” or grammatical
sentences of that language. The set must be finite and the rules recursive
because, while our informationprocessing resources for recognizing grammatical
strings as such are necessarily finite being subagencies of our brains, there
is no limit in any natural language either to the length of a single
grammatical sentence or to the number of grammatical sentences; a small device
must have infinite generative and parsing capacity. Many grammars work by
generating simple “deep structures” a kind of tree diagram, and then producing
multiple “surface structures” as variants of those deep structures, by means of
rules that rearrange their parts. The surface structures are syntactic parsings
of natural-language sentences, and the deep structures from which they derive
encode both basic grammatical relations between the sentences’ major
constituents and, on some theories, the sentences’ main semantic properties as
well; thus, sentences that share a deep structure will share some fundamental
grammatical properties and all or most of their semantics. As Paul Ziff and
Davidson saw in the 0s, the foregoing syntactic problem and its solution had
semantic analogues. From small resources, human speakers understand compute the meanings of arbitrarily long and novel sentences without
limit, and almost instantaneously. This ability seems to require semantic
compositionality, the thesis that the meaning of a sentence is a function of
the meanings of its semantic primitives or smallest meaningful parts, built up
by way of syntactic compounding. Compositionality also seems to be required by
learnability, since a normal child can learn an infinitely complex dialect in
at most two years, but must learn semantic primitives one at a time. A grammar
for a natural language is commonly taken to be a piece of psychology, part of
an explanation of speakers’ verbal abilities and behavior. As such, however, it
is a considerable idealization: it is a theory of speakers’ linguistic
“competence” rather than of their actual verbal performance. The latter
distinction is required by the fact that speakers’ considered, reflective
judgments of grammatical correctness do not line up very well with the class of
expressions that actually are uttered and understood unreflectively by those
same speakers. Some grammatical sentences are too hard for speakers to parse
quickly; some are too long to finish parsing at all; speakers commonly utter
what they know to be formally ungrammatical strings; and real speech is usually
fragmentary, interspersed with vocalizations, false starts, and the like.
Actual departures from formal grammaticality are ascribed by linguists to
“performance limitations,” i.e., psychological factors such as memory failure,
weak computational capacity, or heedlessness; thus, actual verbal behavior is
to be explained as resulting from the perturbation of competence by performance
limitations. Refs.: The main sources are
his lectures on language and reality – part of them repr. in WOW. The keywords
under ‘communication,’ and ‘signification,’ that Grice occasionally uses ‘the
total signification’ of a remark, above, BANC. -- semantic holism, a
metaphysical thesis about the nature of representation on which the meaning of
a symbol is relative to the entire system of representations containing it.
Thus, a linguistic expression can have meaning only in the context of a
language; a hypothesis can have significance only in the context of a theory; a
concept can have intentionality only in the context of the belief system.
Holism about content has profoundly influenced virtually every aspect of
contemporary theorizing about language and mind, not only in philosophy, but in
linguistics, literary theory, artificial intelligence, psychology, and
cognitive science. Contemporary semantic holists include Davidson, Quine,
Gilbert Harman, Hartry Field, and Searle. Because semantic holism is a
metaphysical and not a semantic thesis, two theorists might agree about the
semantic facts but disagree about semantic holism. So, e.g., nothing in
Tarski’s writings determines whether the semantic facts expressed by the
theorems of an absolute truth semantic atomism semantic holism 829 829 theory are holistic or not. Yet Davidson,
a semantic holist, argued that the correct form for a semantic theory for a
natural language L is an absolute truth theory for L. Semantic theories, like
other theories, need not wear their metaphysical commitments on their sleeves.
Holism has some startling consequences. Consider this. Franklin D. Roosevelt
who died when the United States still had just forty-eight states did not
believe there were fifty states, but I do; semantic holism says that what
‘state’ means in our mouths depends on the totality of our beliefs about
states, including, therefore, our beliefs about how many states there are. It
seems to follow that he and I must mean different things by ‘state’; hence, if
he says “Alaska is not a state” and I say “Alaska is a state” we are not
disagreeing. This line of argument leads to such surprising declarations as
that natural langauges are not, in general, intertranslatable Quine, Saussure;
that there may be no fact of the matter about the meanings of texts Putnam,
Derrida; and that scientific theories that differ in their basic postulates are
“empirically incommensurable” Paul Feyerabend, Kuhn. For those who find these
consequences of semantic holism unpalatable, there are three mutually exclusive
responses: semantic atomism, semantic molecularism, or semantic nihilism.
Semantic atomists hold that the meaning of any representation linguistic,
mental, or otherwise is not determined by the meaning of any other
representation. Historically, Anglo- philosophers in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries thought that an idea of an X was about X’s in virtue of this idea’s
physically resembling X’s. Resemblance theories are no longer thought viable,
but a number of contemporary semantic atomists still believe that the basic
semantic relation is between a concept and the things to which it applies, and
not one among concepts themselves. These philosophers include Dretske, Dennis
Stampe, Fodor, and Ruth Millikan. Semantic molecularism, like semantic holism,
holds that the meaning of a representation in a language L is determined by its
relationships to the meanings of other expressions in L, but, unlike holism,
not by its relationships to every other expression in L. Semantic molecularists
are committed to the view, contrary to Quine, that for any expression e in a
language L there is an in-principle way of distinguishing between those
representations in L the meanings of which determine the meaning of e and those
representations in L the meanings of which do not determine the meaning of e.
Traditionally, this inprinciple delimitation is supported by an
analytic/synthetic distinction. Those representations in L that are
meaning-constituting of e are analytically connected to e and those that are
not meaning-constituting are synthetically connected to e. Meaning molecularism
seems to be the most common position among those philosophers who reject
holism. Contemporary meaning molecularists include Michael Devitt, Dummett, Ned
Block, and John Perry. Semantic nihilism is perhaps the most radical response to
the consequences of holism. It is the view that, strictly speaking, there are
no semantic properties. Strictly speaking, there are no mental states; words
lack meanings. At least for scientific purposes and perhaps for other purposes
as well we must abandon the notion that people are moral or rational agents and
that they act out of their beliefs and desires. Semantic nihilists include
among their ranks Patricia and Paul Churchland, Stephen Stich, Dennett, and,
sometimes, Quine. -- semantic paradoxes,
a collection of paradoxes involving the semantic notions of truth, predication,
and definability. The liar paradox is the oldest and most widely known of
these, having been formulated by Eubulides as an objection to Aristotle’s
correspondence theory of truth. In its simplest form, the liar paradox arises
when we try to assess the truth of a sentence or proposition that asserts its
own falsity, e.g.: A Sentence A is not true. It would seem that sentence A
cannot be true, since it can be true only if what it says is the case, i.e., if
it is not true. Thus sentence A is not true. But then, since this is precisely
what it claims, it would seem to be true. Several alternative forms of the liar
paradox have been given their own names. The postcard paradox, also known as a
liar cycle, envisions a postcard with sentence B on one side and sentence C on
the other: B The sentence on the other side of this card is true. semantic
molecularism semantic paradoxes 830
830 C The sentence on the other side of this card is false. Here, no
consistent assignment of truth-values to the pair of sentences is possible. In
the preface paradox, it is imagined that a book begins with the claim that at
least one sentence in the book is false. This claim is unproblematically true
if some later sentence is false, but if the remainder of the book contains only
truths, the initial sentence appears to be true if and only if false. The
preface paradox is one of many examples of contingent liars, claims that can
either have an unproblematic truth-value or be paradoxical, depending on the
truth-values of various other claims in this case, the remaining sentences in
the book. Related to the preface paradox is Epimenedes’ paradox: Epimenedes,
himself from Crete, is said to have claimed that all Cretans are liars. This
claim is paradoxical if interpreted to mean that Cretans always lie, or if
interpreted to mean they sometimes lie and if no other claim made by Epimenedes
was a lie. On the former interpretation, this is a simple variation of the liar
paradox; on the latter, it is a form of contingent liar. Other semantic
paradoxes include Berry’s paradox, Richard’s paradox, and Grelling’s paradox.
The first two involve the notion of definability of numbers. Berry’s paradox
begins by noting that names or descriptions of integers consist of finite
sequences of syllables. Thus the three-syllable sequence ‘twenty-five’ names
25, and the seven-syllable sequence ‘the sum of three and seven’ names ten. Now
consider the collection of all sequences of English syllables that are less
than nineteen syllables long. Of these, many are nonsensical ‘bababa’ and some
make sense but do not name integers ‘artichoke’, but some do ‘the sum of three
and seven’. Since there are only finitely many English syllables, there are only
finitely many of these sequences, and only finitely many integers named by
them. Berry’s paradox arises when we consider the eighteen-syllable sequence
‘the smallest integer not nameable in less than nineteen syllables’. This
phrase appears to be a perfectly well-defined description of an integer. But if
the phrase names an integer n, then n is nameable in less than nineteen
syllables, and hence is not described by the phrase. Richard’s paradox
constructs a similarly paradoxical description using what is known as a
diagonal construction. Imagine a list of all finite sequences of letters of the
alphabet plus spaces and punctuation, ordered as in a dictionary. Prune this
list so that it contains only English definitions of real numbers between 0 and
1. Then consider the definition: “Let r be the real number between 0 and 1
whose kth decimal place is if the kth
decimal place of the number named by the kth member of this list is 1, and 0
otherwise’. This description seems to define a real number that must be different
from any number defined on the list. For example, r cannot be defined by the
237th member of the list, because r will differ from that number in at least
its 237th decimal place. But if it indeed defines a real number between 0 and
1, then this description should itself be on the list. Yet clearly, it cannot
define a number different from the number defined by itself. Apparently, the
definition defines a real number between 0 and 1 if and only if it does not
appear on the list of such definitions. Grelling’s paradox, also known as the
paradox of heterologicality, involves two predicates defined as follows. Say
that a predicate is “autological” if it applies to itself. Thus ‘polysyllabic’
and ‘short’ are autological, since ‘polysyllabic’ is polysyllabic, and ‘short’
is short. In contrast, a predicate is “heterological” if and only if it is not
autological. The question is whether the predicate ‘heterological’ is
heterological. If our answer is yes, then ‘heterological’ applies to itself and so is autological, not heterological. But
if our answer is no, then it does not apply to itself and so is heterological, once again
contradicting our answer. The semantic paradoxes have led to important work in
both logic and the philosophy of language, most notably by Russell and Tarski.
Russell developed the ramified theory of types as a unified treatment of all
the semantic paradoxes. Russell’s theory of types avoids the paradoxes by
introducing complex syntactic conditions on formulas and on the definition of new
predicates. In the resulting language, definitions like those used in
formulating Berry’s and Richard’s paradoxes turn out to be ill-formed, since
they quantify over collections of expressions that include themselves,
violating what Russell called the vicious circle principle. The theory of types
also rules out, on syntactic grounds, predicates that apply to themselves, or
to larger expressions containing those very same predicates. In this way, the
liar paradox and Grelling’s paradox cannot be constructed within a language
conforming to the theory of types. Tarski’s attention to the liar paradox made
two fundamental contributions to logic: his development of semantic techniques
for defining the truth predicate for formalized languages and his proof of Tarski’s
theorem. Tarskian semantics avoids the liar paradox by starting with a formal
language, call it L, in which no semantic notions are expressible, and hence in
which the liar paradox cannot be formulated. Then using another language, known
as the metalanguage, Tarski applies recursive techniques to define the
predicate true-in-L, which applies to exactly the true sentences of the
original language L. The liar paradox does not arise in the metalanguage,
because the sentence D Sentence D is not true-in-L. is, if expressible in the
metalanguage, simply true. It is true because D is not a sentence of L, and so
a fortiori not a true sentence of L. A truth predicate for the metalanguage can
then be defined in yet another language, the metametalanguage, and so forth,
resulting in a sequence of consistent truth predicates. Tarski’s theorem uses
the liar paradox to prove a significant result in logic. The theorem states
that the truth predicate for the first-order language of arithmetic is not
definable in arithmetic. That is, if we devise a systematic way of representing
sentences of arithmetic by numbers, then it is impossible to define an
arithmetical predicate that applies to all and only those numbers that
represent true sentences of arithmetic. The theorem is proven by showing that
if such a predicate were definable, we could construct a sentence of arithmetic
that is true if and only if it is not true: an arithmetical version of sentence
A, the liar paradox. Both Russell’s and Tarski’s solutions to the semantic
paradoxes have left many philosophers dissatisfied, since the solutions are
basically prescriptions for constructing languages in which the paradoxes do
not arise. But the fact that paradoxes can be avoided in artificially
constructed languages does not itself give a satisfying explanation of what is
going wrong when the paradoxes are encountered in natural language, or in an
artificial language in which they can be formulated. Most recent work on the
liar paradox, following Kripke’s “Outline of a Theory of Truth” 5, looks at
languages in which the paradox can be formulated, and tries to provide a
consistent account of truth that preserves as much as possible of the intuitive
notion.
semeiotics: semiological: or is it semiotics? Cf. semiological,
semotic. Since Grice uses ‘philosophical psychology’ and ‘philosopical
biology,’ it may do to use ‘semiology,’ indeed ‘philosophical semiology,’ here.
Oxonian semiotics is unique. Holloway
published his “Language and Intelligence” and everyone was excited. It is best
to see this as Grices psychologism. Grice would rarely use ‘intelligent,’ less
so the more pretentious, ‘intelligence,’ as a keyword. If he is doing it, it is
because what he saw as the misuse of it by Ryle and Holloway. Holloway, a PPE,
is a tutorial fellow in philosophy at All Souls. He acknowledges Ryle as his
mentor. (Holloway also quotes from Austin). Grice was amused that J. N.
Findlay, in his review of Holloway’s essay in “Mind,” compares Holloway to C.
W. Morris, and cares to cite the two relevant essay by Morris: The Foundation
in the theory of signs, and Signs, Language, and Behaviour. Enough for Grice to
feel warmly justified in having chosen another New-World author, Peirce, for
his earlier Oxford seminar. Morris studied under G. H. Mead. But is
‘intelligence’ part of The Griceian Lexicon?Well, Lewis and Short have
‘interlegere,’ to chose between. Lewis and Short have ‘interlĕgo , lēgi, lectum,
3, v. a., I’.which they render it as “to cull or pluck off here and there
(poet. and postclass.).in tmesi) uncis Carpendae manibus frondes, interque
legendae, Verg. G. 2, 366: “poma,” Pall. Febr. 25, 16; id. Jun. 5, 1.intellĕgo
(less correctly intellĭgo), exi, ectum (intellexti for intellexisti, Ter. Eun.
4, 6, 30; Cic. Att. 13, 32, 3: I.“intellexes for intellexisses,” Plaut. Cist.
2, 3, 81; subj. perf.: “intellegerint,” Sall. H. Fragm. 1, 41, 23 Dietsch);
“inter-lego,” “to see into, perceive, understand.” I. Lit. A. Lewis and Short
render as “to perceive, understand, comprehend.” Cf. Grice on his handwriting
being legible to few. And The child is an adult as being UNintelligible until
the creature is produced. In “Aspects,” he mentions flat rationality, and
certain other talents that are more difficult for the philosopher to conceptualise,
such as nose (i.e. intuitiveness), acumen, tenacity, and such. Grices
approach is Pological. If Locke had used intelligent to refer to Prince
Maurices parrot, Grice wants to find criteria for intelligent as applied to his
favourite type of P, rather (intelligent, indeed rational.). semiosis from
Grecian semeiosis, ‘observation of signs’, the relation of signification
involving the three relata of sign, object, and mind. Semiotic is the science
or study of semiosis. The semiotic of John of Saint Thomas and of Peirce
includes two distinct components: the relation of signification and the
classification of signs. The relation of signification is genuinely triadic and
cannot be reduced to the sum of its three subordinate dyads: sign-object,
sign-mind, object-mind. A sign represents an object to a mind just as A gives a
gift to B. Semiosis is not, as it is often taken to be, a mere compound of a
sign-object dyad and a sign-mind dyad because these dyads lack the essential
intentionality that unites mind with object; similarly, the gift relation
involves not just A giving and B receiving but, crucially, the intention
uniting A and B. In the Scholastic logic of John of Saint Thomas, the
sign-object dyad is a categorial relation secundum esse, that is, an essential
relation, falling in Aristotle’s category of relation, while the sign-mind dyad
is a transcendental relation secundum dici, that is, a relation only in an
analogical sense, in a manner of speaking; thus the formal rationale of
semiosis is constituted by the sign-object dyad. By contrast, in Peirce’s
logic, the sign-object dyad and the sign-mind dyad are each only potential
semiosis: thus, the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt were merely potential signs
until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, just as a road-marking was a merely
potential sign to the driver who overlooked it. Classifications of signs
typically follow from the logic of semiosis. Thus John of Saint Thomas divides
signs according to their relations to their objects into natural signs smoke as
a sign of fire, customary signs napkins on the table as a sign that dinner is
imminent, and stipulated signs as when a neologism is coined; he also divides
signs according to their relations to a mind. An instrumental sign must first
be cognized as an object before it can signify e.g., a written word or a
symptom; a formal sign, by contrast, directs the mind to its object without
having first been cognized e.g., percepts and concepts. Formal signs are not
that which we cognize but that by which we cognize. All instrumental signs
presuppose the action of formal signs in the semiosis of cognition. Peirce
similarly classified signs into three trichotomies according to their relations
with 1 themselves, 2 their objects, and 3 their interpretants usually minds;
and Charles Morris, who followed Peirce closely, called the relationship of
signs to one another the syntactical dimension of semiosis, the relationship of
signs to their objects the semantical dimension of semiosis, and the
relationship of signs to their interpreters the pragmatic dimension of
semiosis. Refs.: The most specific essay
is his lecture on Peirce, listed under ‘communication, above. A reference to
‘criteria of intelligence relates. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
sender: Grice:
“Surely, if there is a ‘recipient,’ there must be a ‘sender.’” Grice: “I prefer
‘sender’ as correlative for ‘recipient,’ since there is an embedded
intentionality about it.” Cf. Sting, “Message in a bottle – sending out an S.
O. S.” – Grice: “Addresser and addressee sound otiose.” – Grice: “Then there’s
this jargon of the ‘target’ addressee’ – while we are in the metaphorical
mode!” -- emissor: utterer: cf.
emissum, emissor. Usually Homo sapiens sapiens – and usually Oxonian, the Homo
sapiens sapiens Grice interactes with. Sometimes tutees, sometimes tutor. There
is something dualistic about the ‘utterer.’ It is a vernacularism from English
‘out.’ So the French impressionists were into IM-pressing, out to in; the
German expressionists were into EX-pressing, in to out. Or ‘man’. The important
thing is for Grice to avoid ‘speaker.’ He notes that ‘utterance’ has a nice
fuzziness about it. He still notes that he is using ‘utter’ in a ‘perhaps
artificial’ way. He was already wedded to ‘utter’ in his talk for the Oxford Philosopical Society.
Grice does not elaborate much on general gestures or signals. His main example
is a sort of handwave by which the emissor communicates that either he knows
the route or that he is about to leave the addressee. Even this is complex.
Let’s try to apply his final version of communication to the hand-wave. The
question of “Homo sapiens sapiens” is an interesting one. Grice is all for
ascribing predicates regarding the soul to what he calls the ‘lower animals’.
He is not ready to ascribe emissor’s meaning to them. Why? Because of Schiffer!
I mean, when it comes to the conditions of necessity of the reductive analysis,
he seems okay. When it comes to the sufficiency, there are two types of
objection. One by Urmson, easily dismissed. The second, first by Stampe and
Strawson, not so easily. But Grice agrees to add a clause limiting intentions
to be ‘in the open.’ Those who do not have a philosophical background usually
wonder about this. So for their sake, it may be worth considering Grice’s
synthetic a posteriori argument to refuse an emissor other than a Homo sapiens
sapiens to be able to ‘mean,’ if not ‘communicate,’ or ‘signify.’ There is an objection which is not mentioned by his
editors, which seems to Grice to be one to which Grice must respond. The
objection may be stated thus. One of the leading strands in Grice’s reductive
analysis of an emissor communicating that p is that communication is not to be
regarded exclusively, or even primarily, as a ‘feature’ of emissors who use
what philosophers of language call ‘language’ (Sprache, Taal, Langage,
Linguaggio – to restrict to the philosophical lexicon, cf. Plato’s Cratylus),
and a fortiori of an emissor who emits this or that “linguistic” ‘utterance.’
There are many instances of NOTABLY NON-“linguistic” vehicles or devices of
communication, within a communication-system, which fulfil this or that
communication-function; these vehicles or devices are mostly syntactically
un-structured or amorphous. Sometimes, a device may exhibit at least some
rudimentary syntactic structure, in that we may distinguish a totum from a pars
and identify a ‘simplex’ within a ‘complexum.’ Grice’s intention-based
reductive analysis of a communicatum, based on Aristotle, Locke, and Peirce, is
designed to allow for the possibility that a non-“linguistic,” and, further,
indeed a non-“conventional” 'utterance' token, perhaps even manifesting some
degree of syntactic structure, and not just a block of an amorphous signal, may
be within the ‘repertoire’ of ‘procedures’ of this or that organism, or
creature, or agent, which, even if not relying on any apparatus for
communication of the kind that that we may label ‘linguistic’ or otherwise
‘conventional,’ ‘do’ this or that
‘thing’ thereby ‘communicating’ that p, or q. To provide for this possibility,
it is plainly necessary that the key ingredient in any representation of
‘communicating,’ viz. intending that p, should be a ‘state’ of the emissor’s
soul the capacity for which does not require what we may label the ‘possession’
of, shall we say, a ‘faculty,’ of what philosophers call ‘a’ ‘language’
(Sprache, Taal, langue, lingua – note that in German we do not distinguish
between ‘die Deutsche Sprache’ and ‘Sprache’ as ‘ein Facultat.’). Now a
philosopher, relying on this or that neo-Prichardian reductive analysis of
‘intending that p,’ may not be willing to allow the possibility of such, shall
we call it, pre-linguistic intending that p, or non-linguistic intending that
p. Surely if the emissor realizes that his addressee does not share what the
Germans call ‘die Deutsche Sprache,” the emissor may still communicate with his
addresse this or that by doing this or that. E. g. he may simulate that he
wants to smoke a cigarette and wonders if his addressee has one to spare.
Against that objection, Grice surely wins the day. But Grice grants that
winning the day on THAT front may not be enough. And that is because, as far as
Grice’s Oxonian explorations on communication go, in a succession of
increasingly elaborate moves – ending with a ‘closure’ clause which cut this
succession of increasingly elaborate moves -- designed to thwart this or that
scenario, later deemed illegitimate, involving two rational agents where the
emissor relies on an ‘inference-element’ that it is not the case that he
intends his addressee will recogise – Grice is led to restrict the ‘intending’
which is to constitute a case of an emissor communicating that p to
C-intending. Grice suspects that whatever may be the case in general with
regard to ‘intending,’ C-intending seems for some reason to Grice to be unsophisticatedly,
viz. plainly, too sophisticated a ‘state’ of a soul to be found in an organism,
‘pirot,’ creature, that we may not want to deem ‘rational,’ or as the Germans
would say, a creature that is destitute of “Die Deutsche Sprache.” We need the
pirot to be “very intelligent, indeed rational.”Grice regrets that some may
think that what he thought were unavoidable rear-guard actions (ending with a
complex reductive analysis of C-intending) seem to have undermined the raison
d'etre of the Griciean campaign.”Unfortunately, Grice provides what he
admittedly labels “a brief reply” which “will have to suffice.” Why? Because “a
full treatment would require delving deep into crucial problems concerning the
boundaries between vicious and virtuous circularity.” Which is promising. It is
not something totally UNATTAINABLE. It reduces to the philosopher being
virtuously circular, only! Why is the ‘virtuous circle’ so crucial – vide
‘circulus virtuosus.’ virtŭōsus , a, um, adj. virtus, I.virtuous, good (late Lat.), Aug. c. Sec.
Man. 10. A circle is virtuous if it is not that bad. In this case, we need the
‘virtuous circle’ because we are dealing with ‘a loop.’ This is exactly
Schiffer’s way of putting it in his ‘Introduction’ to Meaning (second edition).
There is a ‘conceptual loop.’ Schiffer is not interested in ‘communicating;’
only ‘meaning.’ But his point can be transferred. He is saying that ‘U means
that p,’ may rely on ‘U intends that p,’ where ‘U intends that p’ relies on ‘U
means that p.’ There is a loop. In more generic terms:We have a creature, call
it a pirot P1 that, by doing thing T, communicates that p. Are we talking of
the OBSERVER? I hope so, because Grice’s favourite pirot is the parrot. So we
have Prince Maurice’s Parrot. Locke: Since I think I may be confident, that,
whoever should see a CREATURE of his own shape or make, though it had no more
reason all its life than a cat or a PARROT, would call him still A MAN; or
whoever should hear a cat or a parrot discourse, reason, and philosophize,
would call or think it nothing but a cat or a PARROT; and say, the one was A
DULL IRRATIONAL MAN, and the other A VERY INTELLIGENT RATIONAL PARROT. A
relation we have in an author of great note, is sufficient to countenance the
supposition of A RATIONAL PARROT. The author’s words are: I had a mind to know,
from Prince Maurice's own mouth, the account of a common, but much credited
story, that I had heard so often from many others, of an old parrot he has,
that speaks, and asks, and answers common questions, like A REASONABLE
CREATURE. So that those of his train there generally conclude it to be witchery
or possession; and one of his chaplains, would never from that time endure A
PARROT, but says all PARROTS have a devil in them. I had heard many particulars
of this story, and as severed by people hard to be discredited, which made me
ask Prince Maurice what there is of it. Prince Maurice says, with his usual
plainness and dryness in talk, there is something true, but a great deal false
of what is reported. I desired to know of him what there was of the first.
Prince Maurice tells me short and coldly, that he had HEARD of such A PARROT;
and though he believes nothing of it, and it was a good way off, yet he had so
much curiosity as to send for the parrot: that it was a very great parrot; and
when the parrot comes first into the room where Prince Maurice is, with a great
many men about him, the parrot says presently, What a nice company is here. One
of the men asks the parrot, ‘What thinkest thou that man is?,’ ostending his
finger, and pointing to Prince Maurice. The parrot answers, ‘Some general -- or
other.’ When the man brings the parrot close to Prince Maurice, Prince Maurice
asks the parrot., “D'ou venez-vous?” The parrot answers, “De Marinnan.” Then
Prince Maurice goes on, and poses a second question to the parrot. “A qui
estes-vous?” The Parrot answers: “A un Portugais.” Prince Maurice asks a third
question. “Que fais-tu la?” The parrot answers: “Je garde les poulles.”Prince
Maurice smiles, which pleases the Parrot. Prince Maurice, violating a Griceian
maxim, and being just informed that p, asks whether p. This is his fourth
question. “Vous gardez les poulles?” The Parrot answers, “Oui, moi; et je scai
bien faire.” The Parrott appeals to Peirce’s iconic system and makes the chuck
four or five times that a man uses to make to chickens when a man calls them. I
set down the words of this worthy dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice
said them to me. I ask Prince Maurice in what ‘language’ the parrot speaks.
Prince Maurice says that the parrot speaks in Brazilian. I ask Prince William
whether he understands the Brazilian language. Prince Maurice says: No, but he
has taken care to have TWO interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke
Brazilian, and the other a Brazilian that spoke Dutch; that Prince Maurice
asked them separatelyand privately, and both of them AGREED in telling Prince
Maurice just the same thing that the parrot had said. I could not but tell this
ODD story, because it is so much out of the way, and from the first hand, and
what may pass for a good one; for I dare say Prince Maurice at least believed
himself in all he told me, having ever passed for a very honest and pious man.
I leave it to naturalists to reason, and to other men to believe, as they
please upon it. However, it is not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or enliven a busy
scene sometimes with such digressions, whether to the purpose or no.Locke takes
care that the reader should have the story at large in the author's own words,
because he seems to me not to have thought it incredible.For it cannot be
imagined that so able a man as he, who had sufficiency enough to warrant all
the testimonies he gives of himself, should take so much pains, in a place
where it had nothing to do, to pin so close, not only on a man whom he mentions
as his friend, but on a prince in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and
piety, a story which, if he himself thought incredible, he could not but also
think RIDICULOUS. Prince Maurice, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our
author, who relates it from him, both of them call this talker A PARROT. And
Locke asks any one else who thinks such a story fit to be told, whether, if
this PARROT, and all of its kind, had always talked, as we have a prince's word
for it this one did,- whether, I say, they would not have passed for a race of
RATIONAL ANIMALS; but yet, whether, for all that, they would have been allowed
to be MEN, and not PARROTS? For I presume it is not the idea of A THINKING OR
RATIONAL BEING alone that makes the idea of A MAN in most people's sense: but
of A BODY, so and so shaped, joined to it: and if that be the idea of a MAN,
the same successive body not shifted all at once, must, as well as THE SAME
IMMATERIAL SPIRIT, go to the making of the same MAN. So back to Grice’s pirotology.But first a precis of the
conversation, or languaging:PARROT: What a nice company is here.MAN (pointing to
Prince Maurice): What thinkest thou that man is?PARROT: Some general -- or
other. (i. e. the parrot displays what Grice calls ‘up-take.’ The parrot
recognizes the man’s c-intention. So far is ability to display uptake.PRINCE
MAURICE: D'ou venez-vous?PARROT: De Marinnan.PRINCE MAURICE: A qui
estes-vous?PARROT: A un Portugais.PRINCE MAURICE: Que fais-tu la?PARROT: Je
garde les poulles.PRINCE MAURICE SMILES and flouts a Griceian maxim: Vous
gardez les poulles?PARROT (losing patience, and grasping the Prince’s
implicaturum that he doubts it): Oui, moi. Et je scai bien faire.(The Parrott
then appeals to Peirce’s iconic system and makes the chuck five times that a
man uses to make to chickens when a man calls them.)So back to Grice:“According
to my most recent speculations about communication, one should distinguish
between what I call the ‘factual’ or ‘de facto’ character of behind the state
of affairs that one might describe as ‘rational agent A communicates that p,’
for those communication-relevant features which obtain or are present in the
circumstances) the ‘titular’ or ‘de jure’ character, viz. the nested
C-intending which is only deemed to be present. And the reason Grice calls it
‘nested’ is that it involves three sub-intentions:(C) Emissor E communicates
that (psi*) p iff Emissor E c-intends that A recognises that E psi-s that p
iffC1: Emissor E intends A to recognise that A psi-s that p.C2: Emissor intends
that A recognise C1 by A recognising C2C3: There is no inference-element which
is C-constitutive such that Emissor relies on it and yet does not intend A to
recognise.Grice:“The titular or de jure character of the state of affairs that
is described as “Emissor communicates that p,” involves self-reference in the
closure clause regarding the third intention, C3, may be thought as being
‘regressive,’ or involving what mathematicians mean when they use “, …;” and
the translators of Aristotle, ‘eis apeiron,’ translated as ‘ad infinitum.’There
may be ways of UNDEEMING this, i. e. of stating that self-reference and closure
are meant to BLOCK an infinite regress. Hence the circle, if there is one – one
feature of a virtuous circle is that it doesn’t look like a circle simpliciter
-- would be virtuous. The ‘de jure’
character stands for a situation which, in Grice’s words, is “infinitely
complex,” and so cannot be actually present in toto – only DEEMED to be.”“In
which case,” Grice concludes pointing to the otiosity or rendering inoperative,
“to point out that THE INCONCEIVABLE actual presence of the ‘de jure’ character
of ‘Emissor communicates that p’ WOULD, still, be possible, or would be
detectable, only via the ‘use’ of something like ‘die Deutsche Sprache’ seem to
serve little, if any, purpose.”“At its most meagre, the factual or ‘de facto’
character consists merely in the pre-rational ‘counterpart’ of the state of
affairs describable by “Emissor E communicates that p,” which might amount to
no more than making a certain sort of utterance in order thereby to get some
creature to think or want some particular thing.This meagre condition does not
involve a reference to any expertise regarding anything like ‘die Deutsche
Sprache.’Let’s reformulate the condition.It’s just a pirot, at a ‘pre-rational’
level. The pirot does a thing T IN ORDER THEREBY to get some other pirot to
think or do some particular thing. To echo Hare,Die Tur ist geschlossen, ja.Die
Tur ist geschlossen, bitte.Grice continues as a corollary: “Maybe in a less
straightforward instance of “Emissor E communicates that p” there is actually
present the C-intention whose feasibility as an ‘intention’ suggests some
ability to use ‘die Deutsche Sprache.’But vide “non-verbal communication,”
pre-verbal communication, languaging, pre-conventional communication, gestural
communication – as in What Grice has as “a gesture (a signal).” Not necessary
‘conventional,’ and MAYBE ‘established’ – is one-off sufficient for
‘established’? I think so. By waving his hand in a particular way (“a
particular sort of hand wave”), the emissor communicates that he knows the route
(or is about to leave the addressee).
Grice concludes about the less straightforward instances, that there can
be no advance guarantee when this will be so, i. e. that there is actually
present the C-intention whose feasibility as an intention points to some
capacity to use ‘die Deutsche Sprache.’Grice adds: “It is in any case arguable
that the use of ‘die Deutsche Sprache’ would here be an indispensable aid to
philosophising about communication, rather than it being an element in the
PHILOSOPHISING about communication! Philosophers of Grice’s generation use ‘man’ on
purpose to mean ‘mankind’. What a man means. What a man utters. The utterer is
the man. In semiotics one can use something more Latinate, like gesturer, or
emitter – or profferer. The distinction is between what an utterer means and
what the logical and necessary implication. He doesn’t need to say this since
‘imply’ in the logical usage does not take utterer as subject. It’s what the
utterer SAYS that implies this or that. (Strawson and Wiggins, p. 519). The
utterer is possibly the ‘expresser.’
senone: (or as Strawson
would prefer, Zeno). "Senone *loved* his
native Velia. Vivid evidence of the
cultural impact of Senone's arguments in Italia is to be found in the interior
of a red-figure drinking cup (Roma, Villa Giulia, inv. 3591) discovered in the
Etrurian city of Falerii. It depicts a heroic figure racing nimbly ahead
of a large tortoise and has every appearance of being the first known
‘response’ to the Achilles (or Mercurio, Ermete) paradox. “Was ‘Senone’ BORN
in Velia?” – that is the question!” – Grice. Italian philosopher, as as such, or as Grice prefers, ‘senone’ --
Zenos paradoxes. “Since Elea is in Italy, we can say Zeno is Italian.” – H. P.
Grice. “Linguistic puzzles, in nature.”
H. P. Grice. four paradoxes relating to space and motion attributed to
Zeno of Elea fifth century B.C.: the racetrack, Achilles and the tortoise, the
stadium, and the arrow. Zeno’s work is known to us through secondary sources,
in particular Aristotle. The racetrack paradox. If a runner is to reach the end
of the track, he must first complete an infinite number of different journeys:
getting to the midpoint, then to the point midway between the midpoint and the
end, then to the point midway between this one and the end, and so on. But it
is logically impossible for someone to complete an infinite series of journeys.
Therefore the runner cannot reach the end of the track. Since it is irrelevant
to the argument how far the end of the track is
it could be a foot or an inch or a micron away this argument, if sound, shows that all
motion is impossible. Moving to any point will involve an infinite number of
journeys, and an infinite number of journeys cannot be completed. The paradox
of Achilles and the tortoise. Achilles can run much faster than the tortoise,
so when a race is arranged between them the tortoise is given a lead. Zeno
argued that Achilles can never catch up with the tortoise no matter how fast he
runs and no matter how long the race goes on. For the first thing Achilles has
to do is to get to the place from which the tortoise started. But the tortoise,
though slow, is unflagging: while Achilles was occupied in making up his
handicap, the tortoise has advanced a little farther. So the next thing Achilles
has to do is to get to the new place the tortoise occupies. While he is doing
this, the tortoise will have gone a little farther still. However small the gap
that remains, it will take Achilles some time to cross it, and in that time the
tortoise will have created another gap. So however fast Achilles runs, all that
the tortoise has to do, in order not to be beaten, is not to stop. The stadium
paradox. Imagine three equal cubes, A, B, and C, with sides all of length l,
arranged in a line stretching away from one. A is moved perpendicularly out of
line to the right by a distance equal to l. At the same time, and at the same
rate, C is moved perpendicularly out of line to the left by a distance equal to
l. The time it takes A to travel l/2 relative to B equals the time it takes A
to travel to l relative to C. So, in Aristotle’s words, “it follows, Zeno
thinks, that half the time equals its double” Physics 259b35. The arrow
paradox. At any instant of time, the flying arrow “occupies a space equal to
itself.” That is, the arrow at an instant cannot be moving, for motion takes a
period of time, and a temporal instant is conceived as a point, not itself
having duration. It follows that the arrow is at rest at every instant, and so
does not move. What goes for arrows goes for everything: nothing moves.
Scholars disagree about what Zeno himself took his paradoxes to show. There is
no evidence that he offered any “solutions” to them. One view is that they were
part of a program to establish that multiplicity is an illusion, and that
reality is a seamless whole. The argument could be reconstructed like this: if
you allow that reality can be successively divided into parts, you find
yourself with these insupportable paradoxes; so you must think of reality as a
single indivisible One. Refs.: H. P.
Grice, “Zeno’s sophisma;” Luigi Speranza,
"Senone e Grice," The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria,
Italia.
sensus: sensationalism, the belief that all mental
states particularly cognitive
states are derived, by composition or
association, from sensation. It is often joined to the view that sensations
provide the only evidence for our beliefs, or more rarely to the view that
statements about the world can be reduced, without loss, to statements about
sensation. Hobbes was the first important sensationalist in modern times.
“There is no conception in man’s mind,” he wrote, “which hath not at first,
totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are
derived from that original.” But the belief gained prominence in the eighteenth
century, due largely to the influence of Locke. Locke himself was not a
sensationalist, because he took the mind’s reflection on its own operations to
be an independent source of ideas. But his distinction between simple and
complex ideas was used by eighteenthcentury sensationalists such as Condillac
and Hartley to explain how conceptions that seem distant from sense might
nonetheless be derived from it. And to account for the particular ways in which
simple ideas are in fact combined, Condillac and Hartley appealed to a second
device described by Locke: the association of ideas. “Elementary”
sensations the building blocks of our
mental life were held by the
sensationalists to be non-voluntary, independent of judgment, free of
interpretation, discrete or atomic, and infallibly known. Nineteenth-century
sensationalists tried to account for perception in terms of such building
blocks; they struggled particularly with the perception of space and time. Late
nineteenth-century critics such as Ward and James advanced powerful arguments
against the reduction of perception to sensation. Perception, they claimed,
involves more than the passive reception or recombination and association of
discrete pellets of incorrigible information. They urged a change in
perspective to a functionalist viewpoint
more closely allied with prevailing trends in biology from which sensationalism never fully
recovered. sensibile: Austin, “Sense and
sensibile,” as used by Russell, those entities that no one is at the moment
perceptually aware of, but that are, in every other respect, just like the
objects of perceptual awareness. If one is a direct realist and believes that
the objects one is aware of in sense perception are ordinary physical objects,
then sensibilia are, of course, just physical objects of which no one is at the
moment aware. Assuming with common sense that ordinary objects continue to
exist when no one is aware of them, it follows that sensibilia exist. If,
however, one believes as Russell did that what one is aware of in ordinary
sense perception is some kind of idea in the mind, a so-called sense-datum,
then sensibilia have a problematic status. A sensibile then turns out to be an
unsensed sense-datum. On some the usual conceptions of sense-data, this is like
an unfelt pain, since a sense-datum’s existence not as a sense-datum, but as
anything at all depends on our someone’s perception of it. To exist for such
things is to be perceived see Berkeley’s “esse est percipii“. If, however, one
extends the notion of sense-datum as Moore was inclined to do to whatever it is
of which one is directly aware in sense perception, then sensibilia may or may
not exist. It depends on what physical
objects or ideas in the mind we are
directly aware of in sense perception and, of course, on the empirical facts
about whether objects continue to exist when they are not being perceived. If
direct realists are right, horses and trees, when unobserved, are sensibilia.
So are the front surfaces of horses and trees things Moore once considered to
be sensedata. If the direct realists are wrong, and what we are perceptually
aware of are “ideas in the mind,” then whether or not sensibilia exist depends
on whether or not such ideas can exist apart from any mind. sensorium, the seat and cause of sensation in
the brain of humans and other animals. The term is not part of contemporary
psychological parlance; it belongs to prebehavioral, prescientific psychology,
especially of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Only creatures
possessed of a sensorium were thought capable of bodily and perceptual
sensations. Some thinkers believed that the sensorium, when excited, also
produced muscular activity and motion. sensus communis, a cognitive faculty to
which the five senses report. It was first argued for in Aristotle’s On the
Soul II.12, though the term ‘common sense’ was first introduced in Scholastic
thought. Aristotle refers to properties such as magnitude that are perceived by
more than one sense as common sensibles. To recognize common sensibles, he
claims, we must possess a single cognitive power to compare such qualities,
received from the different senses, to one another. Augustine says the “inner
sense” judges whether the senses are working properly, and perceives whether
the animal perceives De libero arbitrio II.35. Aquinas In De anima II, 13.370
held that it is also by the common sense that we perceive we live. He says the
common sense uses the external senses to know sensible forms, preparing the
sensible species it receives for the operation of the cognitive power, which
recognizes the real thing causing the sensible species. sentential connective, also called sentential
operator, propositional connective, propositional operator, a word or phrase,
such as ‘and’, ‘or’, or ‘if . . . then’, that is used to construct compound
sentences from atomic i.e.,
non-compound sentences. A sentential
connective can be defined formally as an expression containing blanks, such
that when the blanks are replaced with sentences the result is a compound
sentence. Thus, ‘if ——— then ———’ and ‘——— or ———’ are sentential connectives,
since we can replace the blanks with sentences to get the compound sentences
‘If the sky is clear then we can go swimming’ and ‘We can go swimming or we can
stay home’. Classical logic makes use of truth-functional connectives only, for
which the truth-value of the compound sentence can be determined uniquely by
the truth-value of the sentences that replace the blanks. The standard
truth-functional sensibilia sentential connective 834 834 connectives are ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘if
. . . then’, and ‘if and only if’. There are many non-truth-functional
connectives as well, such as ‘it is possible that ———’ and ‘——— because
———’. sentimentalism, the theory,
prominent in the eighteenth century, that epistemological or moral relations
are derived from feelings. Although sentimentalism and sensationalism are both
empiricist positions, the latter view has all knowledge built up from
sensations, experiences impinging on the senses. Sentimentalists may allow that
ideas derive from sensations, but hold that some relations between them are
derived internally, that is, from sentiments arising upon reflection. Moral
sentimentalists, such as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, argued that the
virtue or vice of a character trait is established by approving or disapproving
sentiments. Hume, the most thoroughgoing sentimentalist, also argued that all
beliefs about the world depend on sentiments. On his analysis, when we form a
belief, we rely on the mind’s causally connecting two experiences, e.g., fire
and heat. But, he notes, such causal connections depend on the notion of
necessity that the two perceptions will
always be so conjoined and there is
nothing in the perceptions themselves that supplies that notion. The idea of
necessary connection is instead derived from a sentiment: our feeling of
expectation of the one experience upon the other. Likewise, our notions of
substance the unity of experiences in an object and of self the unity of
experiences in a subject are sentimentbased. But whereas moral sentiments do
not purport to represent the external world, these metaphysical notions of
necessity, substance, and self are “fictions,” creations of the imagination
purporting to represent something in the outside world.
sententia: For some reason, perhaps of his eccentricity, J. L.
Austin was in love with Chomsky. He would read “Syntactic Structures” aloud to
the Play Group. And Grice was listening. This stuck with Grice, who started to
use ‘sentence,’ even in Polish, when translating Tarski. Hardie had taught him
that ‘sententia’ was a Roman transliteration of ‘dia-noia,’ which helped. Since
“Not when the the of dog” is NOT a sentence, not even an ‘ill-formed sentence,’
Grice concludes that like ‘reason,’ and ‘cabbage,’ sentence is a
value-paradeigmatic concept. His favourite sentence was “Fido is shaggy,”
uttered to communicate that Smith’s dog is hairy coated. One of Grice’s
favourite sentences was Carnap’s “Pirots karulise elatically,” which Carnap
borrowed from (but never returned to) Baron Russell. (“I later found out a
‘pirot’ is an extinct fish, which destroyed my whole implicaturum – talk of
ichthyological necessity!” (Carnap contrasted, “Pirots karulise elatically,”
with “The not not if not the dog the.”
shaggy-dog story, v. Grice’s shaggy-dog story.
shared experience: WoW: 286. Grice was fascinated by the
etymology of ‘share,’ – “which is so difficult to translate to Grecian!” –
“Co-operation can be regarded as a shared experience. You cooperate not just
when you help, but, as the name indicates, when you operate along with another
– when you SHARE some task – in this case influencing the other in the dyad,
and being influenced by him.”
set: “Is the idea of a one-member set implicatural?” –
Grice. “I distinguish between a class and a set, but Strawson does not.” –
Grice -- the study of collections,
ranging from familiar examples like a set of encyclopedias or a deck of cards
to mathematical examples like the set of natural numbers or the set of points
on a line or the set of functions from a set A to another set B. Sets can be
specified in two basic ways: by a list e.g., {0, 2, 4, 6, 8} and as the
extension of a property e.g., {x _ x is an even natural number less than 10},
where this is read ‘the set of all x such that x is an even natural number less
than 10’. The most fundamental relation in set theory is membership, as in ‘2
is a member of the set of even natural numbers’ in symbols: 2 1 {x _ x is an
even natural number}. Membership is determinate, i.e., any candidate for
membership in a given set is either in the set or not in the set, with no room
for vagueness or ambiguity. A set’s identity is completely determined by its
members or elements i.e., sets are extensional rather than intensional. Thus {x
_ x is human} is the same set as {x _ x is a featherless biped} because they
have the same members. The smallest set possible is the empty or null set, the
set with no members. There cannot be more than one empty set, by
extensionality. It can be specified, e.g., as {x _ x & x}, but it is most
often symbolized as / or { }. A set A is called a subset of a set B and B a
superset of A if every member of A is also a member of B; in symbols, A 0 B.
So, the set of even natural numbers is a subset of the set of all natural numbers,
and any set is a superset of the empty set. The union of two sets A and B is
the set whose members are the members of A and the members of B in symbols, A 4 B % {x _ x 1 A or x 1 B} so the union of the set of even natural
numbers and the set of odd natural numbers is the set of all natural numbers.
The intersection of two sets A and B is the set whose members are common to
both A and B in symbols, A 3 B % {x _ x
1 A and x 1 B} so the intersection of
the set of even natural numbers and the set of prime natural numbers is the
singleton set {2}, whose only member is the number 2. Two sets whose
intersection is empty are called disjoint, e.g., the set of even natural
numbers and the set of odd natural numbers. Finally, the difference between a
set A and a set B is the set whose members are members of A but not members of
B in symbols, A B % {x _ x 1 A and x 2 B} so the set of odd numbers between 5 and 20
minus the set of prime natural numbers is {9, 15}. By extensionality, the order
in which the members of a set are listed is unimportant, i.e., {1, 2, 3} % {2,
3, 1}. To introduce the concept of ordering, we need the notion of the ordered
pair of a and b in symbols, a, b or .
All that is essential to ordered pairs is that two of them are equal only when their
first entries are equal and their second entries are equal. Various sets can be
used to simulate this behavior, but the version most commonly used is the
Kuratowski ordered pair: a, b is defined to be {{a}, {a, b}}. On this
definition, it can indeed be proved that a, b % c, d if and only if a % c and b
% d. The Cartesian product of two sets A and B is the set of all ordered pairs
whose first entry is in A and whose second entry is B in symbols, A $ B % {x _ x % a, b for some a
1 A and some b 1 B}. This set-theoretic reflection principles set theory
836 836 same technique can be used to
form ordered triples a, b, c % a, b, c;
ordered fourtuples a, b, c, d % a, b, c,
d; and by extension, ordered n-tuples for all finite n. Using only these simple
building blocks, substitutes for all the objects of classical mathematics can
be constructed inside set theory. For example, a relation is defined as a set
of ordered pairs so the successor
relation among natural numbers becomes {0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3 . . . } and a function is a relation containing no
distinct ordered pairs of the form a, b and a, c so the successor relation is a function. The
natural numbers themselves can be identified with various sequences of sets, the
most common of which are finite von Neumann ordinal numbers: /, {/}, {/, {/},
{/}, {/}, {/, {/}}}, . . . . On this definition, 0 % /, 1 % {/}, 2 % {/, {/}},
etc., each number n has n members, the successor of n is n 4 {n}, and n ‹ m if
and only if n 1 m. Addition and multiplication can be defined for these
numbers, and the Peano axioms proved from the axioms of set theory; see below.
Negative, rational, real, and complex numbers, geometric spaces, and more
esoteric mathematical objects can all be identified with sets, and the standard
theorems about them proved. In this sense, set theory provides a foundation for
mathematics. Historically, the theory of sets arose in the late nineteenth
century. In his work on the foundations of arithmetic, Frege identified the
natural numbers with the extensions of certain concepts; e.g., the number two
is the set of all concepts C under which two things fall in symbols, 2 % {x _ x is a concept, and
there are distinct things a and b which fall under x, and anything that falls
under x is either a or b}. Cantor was led to consider complex sets of points in
the pursuit of a question in the theory of trigonometric series. To describe
the properties of these sets, Cantor introduced infinite ordinal numbers after
the finite ordinals described above. The first of these, w, is {0, 1, 2, . .
.}, now understood in von Neumann’s terms as the set of all finite ordinals.
After w, the successor function yields w ! 1 % w 4 {w} % {0, 1, 2, . . . n, n +
1, . . . , w}, then w ! 2 % w ! 1 ! 1 % {0, 1, 2, . . . , w , w ! 1}, w ! 3 % w
! 2 ! 1 % {0, 1, 2, . . . , w, w ! 1, w ! 2}, and so on; after all these comes
w ! w % {0, 1, 2, . . . , w, w ! 1, w ! 2, . . . , w ! n, w ! n ! 1, . . .},
and the process begins again. The ordinal numbers are designed to label the
positions in an ordering. Consider, e.g., a reordering of the natural numbers
in which the odd numbers are placed after the evens: 0, 2, 4, 6, . . . 1, 3, 5,
7, . . . . The number 4 is in the third position of this sequence, and the
number 5 is in the w + 2nd. But finite numbers also perform a cardinal
function; they tell us how many so-andso’s there are. Here the infinite
ordinals are less effective. The natural numbers in their usual order have the
same structure as w, but when they are ordered as above, with the evens before
the odds, they take on the structure of a much larger ordinal, w ! w. But the
answer to the question, How many natural numbers are there? should be the same
no matter how they are arranged. Thus, the transfinite ordinals do not provide
a stable measure of the size of an infinite set. When are two infinite sets of
the same size? On the one hand, the infinite set of even natural numbers seems
clearly smaller than the set of all natural numbers; on the other hand, these
two sets can be brought into one-to-one correspondence via the mapping that
matches 0 to 0, 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 3 to 6, and in general, n to 2n. This puzzle
had troubled mathematicians as far back as Galileo, but Cantor took the
existence of a oneto-one correspondence between two sets A and B as the
definition of ‘A is the same size as B’. This coincides with our usual
understanding for finite sets, and it implies that the set of even natural
numbers and the set of all natural numbers and w ! 1 and w! 2 and w ! w and w !
w and many more all have the same size. Such infinite sets are called
countable, and the number of their elements, the first infinite cardinal
number, is F0. Cantor also showed that the set of all subsets of a set A has a
size larger than A itself, so there are infinite cardinals greater than F0,
namely F1, F2, and so on. Unfortunately, the early set theories were prone to
paradoxes. The most famous of these, Russell’s paradox, arises from
consideration of the set R of all sets that are not members of themselves: is R
1 R? If it is, it isn’t, and if it isn’t, it is. The Burali-Forti paradox
involves the set W of all ordinals: W itself qualifies as an ordinal, so W 1 W,
i.e., W ‹ W. Similar difficulties surface with the set of all cardinal numbers
and the set of all sets. At fault in all these cases is a seemingly innocuous
principle of unlimited comprehension: for any property P, there is a set {x _ x
has P}. Just after the turn of the century, Zermelo undertook to systematize
set theory by codifying its practice in a series of axioms from which the known
derivations of the paradoxes could not be carried out. He proposed the axioms
of extensionality two sets with the same members are the same; pairing for any
a and b, there is a set {a, b}; separation for any set A and property P, there is
a set {x _ x 1 A and x has P}; power set for any set A, there is a set {x _ x0
A}; union for any set of sets F, there is a set {x _ x 1 A for some A 1 F} this yields A 4 B, when F % {A, B} and {A, B}
comes from A and B by pairing; infinity w exists; and choice for any set of
non-empty sets, there is a set that contains exactly one member from each. The
axiom of choice has a vast number of equivalents, including the well-ordering
theorem every set can be well-ordered and Zorn’s lemma if every chain in a partially ordered set has
an upper bound, then the set has a maximal element. The axiom of separation
limits that of unlimited comprehension by requiring a previously given set A
from which members are separated by the property P; thus troublesome sets like
Russell’s that attempt to collect absolutely all things with P cannot be
formed. The most controversial of Zermelo’s axioms at the time was that of
choice, because it posits the existence of a choice set a set that “chooses” one from each of
possibly infinitely many non-empty sets
without giving any rule for making the choices. For various
philosophical and practical reasons, it is now accepted without much debate.
Fraenkel and Skolem later formalized the axiom of replacement if A is a set,
and every member a of A is replaced by some b, then there is a set containing
all the b’s, and Skolem made both replacement and separation more precise by
expressing them as schemata of first-order logic. The final axiom of the
contemporary theory is foundation, which guarantees that sets are formed in a
series of stages called the iterative hierarchy begin with some non-sets, then
form all possible sets of these, then form all possible sets of the things
formed so far, then form all possible sets of these, and so on. This iterative
picture of sets built up in stages contrasts with the older notion of the
extension of a concept; these are sometimes called the mathematical and the
logical notions of collection, respectively. The early controversy over the
paradoxes and the axiom of choice can be traced to the lack of a clear
distinction between these at the time. Zermelo’s first five axioms all but
choice plus foundation form a system usually called Z; ZC is Z with choice
added. Z plus replacement is ZF, for Zermelo-Fraenkel, and adding choice makes
ZFC, the theory of sets in most widespread use today. The consistency of ZFC
cannot be proved by standard mathematical means, but decades of experience with
the system and the strong intuitive picture provided by the iterative
conception suggest that it is. Though ZFC is strong enough for all standard
mathematics, it is not enough to answer some natural set-theoretic questions
e.g., the continuum problem. This has led to a search for new axioms, such as
large cardinal assumptions, but no consensus on these additional principles has
yet been reached. Then there are the set-theoretica paradoxes, a collection of
paradoxes that reveal difficulties in certain central notions of set theory.
The best-known of these are Russell’s paradox, Burali-Forti’s paradox, and
Cantor’s paradox. Russell’s paradox, discovered in 1 by Bertrand Russell, is
the simplest and so most problematic of the set-theoretic paradoxes. Using it,
we can derive a contradiction directly from Cantor’s unrestricted comprehension
schema. This schema asserts that for any formula Px containing x as a free
variable, there is a set {x _ Px} whose members are exactly those objects that
satisfy Px. To derive the contradiction, take Px to be the formula x 1 x, and
let z be the set {x _ x 2 x} whose existence is guaranteed by the comprehension
schema. Thus z is the set whose members are exactly those objects that are not
members of themselves. We now ask whether z is, itself, a member of z. If the
answer is yes, then we can conclude that z must satisfy the criterion of
membership in z, i.e., z must not be a member of z. But if the answer is no,
then since z is not a member of itself, it satisfies the criterion for
membership in z, and so z is a member of z. All modern axiomatizations of set
theory avoid Russell’s paradox by restricting the principles that assert the
existence of sets. The simplest restriction replaces unrestricted comprehension
with the separation schema. Separation asserts that, given any set A and
formula Px, there is a set {x 1 A _ Px}, whose members are exactly those
members of A that satisfy Px. If we now take Px to be the formula x 2 x, then
separation guarantees the existence of a set zA % {x 1 A _ x 2 x}. We can then
use Russell’s reasoning to prove the result that zA cannot be a member of the
original set A. If it were a member of A, then we could prove that it is a
member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself. Hence it is not a
member of A. But this result is not problematic, and so the paradox is avoided.
The Burali-Forte paradox and Cantor’s paradox are sometimes known as paradoxes
of size, since they show that some collections are too large to be considered
sets. The Burali-Forte paradox, discovered by Cesare Burali-Forte, is concerned
with the set of all ordinal numbers. In Cantor’s set theory, an ordinal number
can be assigned to any well-ordered set. A set is wellordered if every subset
of the set has a least element. But Cantor’s set theory also guarantees the
existence of the set of all ordinals, again due to the unrestricted
comprehension schema. This set of ordinals is well-ordered, and so can be
associated with an ordinal number. But it can be shown that the associated
ordinal is greater than any ordinal in the set, hence greater than any ordinal
number. Cantor’s paradox involves the cardinality of the set of all sets.
Cardinality is another notion of size used in set theory: a set A is said to
have greater cardinality than a set B if and only if B can be mapped one-to-one
onto a subset of A but A cannot be so mapped onto B or any of its subsets. One
of Cantor’s fundamental results was that the set of all subsets of a set A
known as the power set of A has greater cardinality than the set A. Applying
this result to the set V of all sets, we can conclude that the power set of V
has greater cardinality than V. But every set in the power set of V is also in
V since V contains all sets, and so the power set of V cannot have greater
cardinality than V. We thus have a contradiction. Like Russell’s paradox, both
of these paradoxes result from the unrestricted comprehension schema, and are
avoided by replacing it with weaker set-existence principles. Various
principles stronger than the separation schema are needed to get a reasonable
set theory, and many alternative axiomatizations have been proposed. But the
lesson of these paradoxes is that no setexistence principle can entail the
existence of the Russell set, the set of all ordinals, or the set of all sets,
on pain of contradiction.
sextus empiricus: the sixth son of Empiricus the Elder – “My five
brothers were not philosophers” -- Grecian Skeptic philosopher whose writings
are the chief source of our knowledge about the extreme Skeptic view,
Pyrrhonism. Practically nothing is known about him as a person. He was
apparently a medical doctor and a teacher in a Skeptical school, probably in
Alexandria. What has survived are his Hypotoposes, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, and
a series of Skeptical critiques, Against the Dogmatists, questioning the
premises and conclusions in many disciplines, such as physics, mathematics,
rhetoric, and ethics. In these works, Sextus summarized and organized the views
of Skeptical arguers before him. The Outlines starts with an attempt to
indicate what Skepticism is, to explain the terminology employed by the
Skeptics, how Pyrrhonian Skepticism differs from other so-called Skeptical
views, and how the usual answers to Skepticism are rebutted. Sextus points out
that the main Hellenistic philosophies, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Academic
Skepticism which is presented as a negative dogmatism, claimed that they would
bring the adherent peace of mind, ataraxia. Unfortunately the dogmatic adherent
would only become more perturbed by seeing the Skeptical objections that could
be brought against his or her view. Then, by suspending judgment, epoche, one
would find the tranquillity being sought. Pyrrhonian Skepticism is a kind of
mental hygiene or therapy that cures one of dogmatism or rashness. It is like a
purge that cleans out foul matter as well as itself. To bring about this state
of affairs there are sets of Skeptical arguments that should bring one to
suspense of judgment. The first set are the ten tropes of the earlier Skeptic,
Anesidemus. The next are the five tropes about causality. And lastly are the
tropes about the criterion of knowledge. The ten tropes stress the variability
of sense experience among men and animals, among men, and within one
individual. The varying and conflicting experiences present conflicts about
what the perceived object is like. Any attempt to judge beyond appearances, to
ascertain that which is non-evident, requires some way of choosing what data to
accept. This requires a criterion. Since there is disagreement about what
criterion to employ, we need a criterion of a criterion, and so on. Either we
accept an arbitrary criterion or we get into an infinite regress. Similarly if
we try to prove anything, we need a criterion of what constitutes a proof. If
we offer a proof of a theory of proof, this will be circular reasoning, or end
up in another infinite regress. Sextus devotes most of his discussion to
challenging Stoic logic, which claimed that evident signs could reveal what is
non-evident. There might be signs that suggested what is temporarily
non-evident, such as smoke indicating that there is a fire, but any supposed
linkage between evident signs and what is non-evident can be challenged and
questioned. Sextus then applies the groups of Skeptical arguments to various
specific subjects physics, mathematics,
music, grammar, ethics showing that one
should suspend judgment on any knowledge claims in these areas. Sextus denies
that he is saying any of this dogmatically: he is just stating how he feels at
given moments. He hopes that dogmatists sick with a disease, rashness, will be
cured and led to tranquillity no matter how good or bad the Skeptical arguments
might be.
sgalambro: important Italian philosopher –
Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Sgalamabro," per il Club
Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
shaftesbury, Lord, in full, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, title of Anthony
Ashley Cooper, English philosopher and politician who originated the moral
sense theory. He was born at Wimborne St. Giles, Dorsetshire. As a Country Whig
he served in the House of Commons for three years and later, as earl, monitored
meetings of the House of Lords. Shaftesbury introduced into British moral
philosophy the notion of a moral sense, a mental faculty unique to human
beings, involving reflection and feeling and constituting their ability to
discern right and wrong. He sometimes represents the moral sense as analogous
to a purported aesthetic sense, a special capacity by which we perceive,
through our emotions, the proportions and harmonies of which, on his Platonic
view, beauty is composed. For Shaftesbury, every creature has a “private good
or interest,” an end to which it is naturally disposed by its constitution. But
there are other goods as well notably,
the public good and the good without qualification of a sentient being. An
individual creature’s goodness is defined by the tendency of its “natural
affections” to contribute to the “universal system” of nature of which it is a
part i.e., their tendency to promote the
public good. Because human beings can reflect on actions and affections,
including their own and others’, they experience emotional responses not only
to physical stimuli but to these mental objects as well e.g., to the thought of
one’s compassion or kindness. Thus, they are capable of perceiving and acquiring through their actions a particular species of goodness, namely,
virtue. In the virtuous person, the person of integrity, natural appetites and
affections are in harmony with each other wherein lies her private good and in
harmony with the public interest. Shaftesbury’s attempted reconciliation of
selflove and benevolence is in part a response to the egoism of Hobbes, who
argued that everyone is in fact motivated by self-interest. His defining
morality in terms of psychological and public harmony is also a reaction to the
divine voluntarism of his former tutor, Locke, who held that the laws of nature
and morality issue from the will of God. On Shaftesbury’s view, morality exists
independently of religion, but belief in God serves to produce the highest
degree of virtue by nurturing a love for the universal system. Shaftesbury’s
theory led to a general refinement of eighteenth-century ideas about moral
feelings; a theory of the moral sense emerged, whereby sentiments are under certain conditions perceptions of, or constitutive of, right and
wrong. In addition to several essays collected in three volumes under the title
Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times second edition, 1714,
Shaftesbury also wrote stoical moral and religious meditations reminiscent of
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. His ideas on moral sentiments exercised
considerable influence on the ethical theories of Hutcheson and Hume, who later
worked out in detail their own accounts of the moral sense. H. P. Grice, “My favourite Cooper.”
sheffer
stroke – see abdicatum, Grice,
“Negation and privation” and “Lectures on negation” -- also called alternative
denial, a binary truth-functor represented by the symbol ‘_’, the logical force
of which can be expressed contextually in terms of ‘-’ and ‘&’ by the following
definition: p_q % Df -p & q. The importance of the Sheffer stroke lies in
the fact that it by itself can express any well-formed expression of
truth-functional logic. Thus, since {-,7} forms an expressively complete set,
defining -p as p_p and p 7 q as p_p _q_q provides for the possibility of a
further reduction of primitive functors to one. This system of symbols is
commonly called the stroke notation.
shyreswood: “I prefer the spelling shyreswood, since it SAYS what
‘sherwood’ merely implicates.” -- Sherwood, William, also called William
Shyreswood, English logician who taught logic at Oxford and at Paris between
1235 and 1250. He was the earliest of the three great “summulist” writers, the
other two whom he influenced strongly being Peter of Spain and Lambert of
Auxerre. His main works are “Introductiones in Logicam,” “Syncategoremata,” “De
insolubilibus,” and “Obligationes.” Some serious doubts have recently arisen
about the authorship of the latter work. Since M. Grabmann published Sherwood’s
Introductiones, philosophers have paid considerable attention to this seminal
Griceian. While the first part of Introductiones offer the basic ideas of
Aristotle’s Organon, and the latter part neatly lays out the Sophistical
Refutations, the final tract expounds the doctrine of the four properties of a
term. First, signification. Second, supposition. Third, conjunction, Fourth, appellation
-- hence the label ‘terminist’ for this sort of logic. These logico-semantic
discussions, together with the discussions of syncategorematic words,
constitute the “logica moderna,” (Grice’s ‘mdoernism’) as opposed to the more
strictly Aristotelian contents of the earlier logica vetus (Grice’s
neo-traditionalism) and logica nova (“It took me quite a while to explain to
Strawson the distinction between ‘logica nova’ and ‘logica moderna,’ only to
have him tell me, “worry not, Grice – I’ll be into ‘logica vetus’ anyways!””. The
doctrine of properties of terms and the analysis of syncategorematic terms,
especially those of ‘all’ (or every) ‘no’ (or not or it is not the case) and
‘nothing’, ‘only’, ‘not’, ‘begins’ and ‘ceases (to eat iron) ‘necessarily’,
‘if’ (Latin ‘si,’ Grecian ‘ei’), ‘and’ (Latin ‘et’, Grecian ‘kai’) and ‘or’
(Latin ‘vel’) may be said to constitute
Sherwood’s or Shyrewood’s philosophy of logic. Shyrewood not only distinguishes
categorematic descriptive and syncategorematic logical words but also shows how
some terms are used categorematically in some contexts and syncategorematically
in others – “he doesn’t explain which, and that’s one big map in his opus.”–
Grice. He recognizes the importance of the order of words (hence Grice, ‘be
orderly’) and of the scope of logical functors; he also anticipates the variety
of composite and divided senses of propositions. Obligationes, if indeed his,
attempts to state conditions under which a formal disputation may take place.
De Insolubilibus deals with paradoxes of self-reference and with ways of
solving them. Understanding Sherwood’s logic is important for understanding the
later medieval developments of logica moderna down to Occam whom Grice laughed
at (“modified Occam’s razor.”). Refs.: Grice, “Shyreswood at Oxford.”
All figures of rhetoric
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