de sensu implicaturum: vide casus obliquus. The casus rectus/casus obliquus
distinction. Peter Abelard, Kneale, Grice, Aristotle. Aquinas. de sensu implicaturum.
Ariskantian quessertions on de sensu implicate. “My sometimes mischievous friend Richard Grandy once
said, in connection with some other occasion on which I was talking, that to
represent my remarks, it would be necessary to introduce a new form of
speech act, or a new operator, which was to be called the operator of
quessertion. It is to be read as “It is perhaps possible that someone might
assert that . . .” and is to be symbolized “?├”; possibly it
might even be iterable […]. Everything I shall
suggest here is highly quessertable.” Grice 1989:297. If Grice had one thing, he had linguistic creativity.
Witness his ‘implicaturum,’ and his ‘implicaturum,’ not to mention his
‘pirotologia.’Sometime, somewhere, in the history of philosophy, a need was
felt by some Griceian philosopher, surely, for numbering intentions. The verb,
denoting the activity, out of which this ‘intention’ sprang was Latin
‘intendere,’ and somewhere, sometime, the need was felt to keep the Latinate
/t/ sound, and sometimes to make it sibilate, /s/. The source of it all seems to be Aristotle in
Soph.
Elen., 166a24–166a30, which was rendered twice om Grecian to Latin. In the
second Latinisation, ‘de sensu’ comes into view. Abelard proposes to use ‘de
rebus,’ or ‘de re,’ for what the previous translation had as ‘per divisionem.’
To make the distinction, he also proposes to use ‘de sensu’ for what the
previous translation has as ‘per compositionem,’ and ‘per conjunctionem.’ But
what did either mean? It was a subtle question, indeed. And trust Nicolai
Hartmann, in his mediaevalist revival, to add numbers and a further
distinction, now the ‘recte/’oblique’ distinction, and ‘intentio’ being
‘prima,’ ‘seconda,’ ‘tertia,’ and so on, ad infinitum. The proposal is clear.
We need a way to conceptualise first-order propositions. But we also need to
conceptualise ‘that’-clauses. The ‘that’-clause subordination is indeed
open-ended. ‘mean.’ Grice’s motivation in the presentation at the Oxford
Philosophical Society is to offer, as he calls it, a ‘proposal.’ In his words,
notice the emphasis on the Latinate ‘intend,’where it occurs, as applied to an
emissor, and as having as content, following that ‘that’-clause, an
‘intensional’ verb like ‘believe,’ which again, involves an ‘intentio tertia,’
now referring to a state back in the emissor expressed by yet another
intensional verball long for, ‘you communicate that p if you want your addressee
to realise that you hold this or that propositional attitude with content p.’ "A
meantNN something by x" is (roughly) equivalent to "A intended the
utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the
recognition of this intention"; and we may add that to ask what A meant is
to ask for a specification of the intended effect (though, of course, it may
not always be possible to get a straight answer involving a "that"
clause, for example, "a belief that . . ."). (Grice 1989: 220). Grice’s motivation
is to ‘reduce’ “mean” to what has come to be known in the Griceian [sic]
literature as a ‘Griceian’ [sic] ‘reflexive’ intentionhe prefers M-intention --
which we will read as involving an intentio seconda, and indeed intentio
tertia, and beyond, which makes its appearance explicitly in the second clause
-- or ‘prong,’ as he’d prefer -- of his ‘reductive’ analysis. Prong 1 then
corresponds to the intention prima or intention recta: Utterer U intends1
that Addressee A believes that Utterer U holds psychological state or attitude
ψ with content “p.” Prong 2 corresponds to the intentio seconda or
intentio obliqua: Utterer
U intends2 that Addressee A believes (i) on the ‘rational,’ and not
just ‘causal,’ basis of (ii), i.e. of the addressee A’s recognition of the
utterer U’s intentio seconda or intentio obliqua i2, that Addressee
A comes to believe that Utterer U holds psychological state or attitude ψ with
content “p.” In Grice’s wording, “i2” acts as a ‘reason,’ and not
merely a ‘cause’ for Addressee A’s coming to believe that U holds psychological
state or attitude ψ with content “p”. Kemmerling has used “↝” to represent this
‘reason’ (i1 ↝ i2,
Kemmerling in Grandy/Warner, 1986, cf. Petrus in Petrus ). Prong 3 is a closure
prong, now involving a self-reflective third-order intention, there is no
‘covert’ higher-order intention involved in (i)-(iii). Meaning-constitutive
intentions in utterer u’s meaning that p should be out there ‘in the open,’ or
‘above board,’ to count as having been ‘communicated.Grice quotes only one
author in ‘Meaning’: C. L. Stevenson, who started his career with a degree in
English from Yale. Willing to allow a ‘metabolical’ use of ‘mean’ he
recognises, he scare quotes it: “There is a
sense, to be sure, in which a groan “means“ something, just a reduced
temperature may at times ”mean” convalescence.” Stevenson 1944:38). This
remark will have Grice later attempting an ‘evolutionary’ model of how an ‘x’
causing ‘y’ may proceed from ‘natural’ to less natural ones. Consider ‘is in
pain.’ A creature is physically hurt, and the expression of pain comes up
naturally as an effect. But if the creature attains rational control over his
expressive behaviour, and the creature is in pain (or expects his addressee A
to think that he is in pain), U can now imitate or replicate, in a something
like a Peirceian iconic mode, the natural behaviour manifested by a spontaneous
response to a hurtful stimulus. The ‘simulated’ pain will be an ‘icon’ of the
natural pain. Grice is getting Peirceian by the day, and he is not telling us!
There are, Grice says, as if to simplify Peirce the most he can, two modes of
representation. The primary one is now the explicitly Peirceian iconic one. The
‘risus naturaliter significat interiorem laetitiam’ of Occam. And then, there’s
the derivative *non*-iconic representation, in that order. The first is, shall
we say, ‘natural,’ and beyond the utterer U’s voluntary control (cf. Darwin on
the expression of emotions in man and animals); the second is not. Grice is
allowing for smoke representing fire, or if one must, alla Stevenson,
‘representing’ it. In Grice’s motivation to along the right lines, his
psychologist austere views of his 1948 ‘Meaning,’ when he rather artificially
disjoins a ‘natural’ “mean” and an ‘artificial’ “mean,” when merely different
‘uses’ stand for what he then thought were senses, he wants now to re-introduce
into philosophical discourse the iconic natural representation or meaning that
he had left aside.If this is part of what he calls a ‘myth,’ even if an
evolutionary one, to account for the emergence of ‘systems of communication,’
it does starts with an utterer U expressing (very much alla Croce or Marty) a
psychological state or attitude ψ by displaying some behavioural pattern in an
unintentional way. Grice is being Wittgensteinian here, and quotes almost
verbatim from Anscombe’s rendition, “No psychological concept except when
backed in behaviour that manifests it.”
If Ockham notes that “Risus naturaliter significat interiorem
laetitiam,” Grice shows this will allow to avoid, also alla Ockham, a polysemy
to ‘mean.’In Grice’s three clauses in his 1948 conceptual analysis of
‘meaning’the first clause of exhibitiveness, the second clause of intentio
seconda or reflexivity, and the third clause of communicative overtness,
voluntary control on the part of the utterer U is already in order. Since the
utterer’s addressee A is intended to recognise this, no longer is it required
any prior ‘iconic’ association between a simulated behaviour and the behaviour
naturally displayed as a response to a stimulus. This amounts, for Grice to
deeming the system of expression as having become a full system now of
intention-based ‘communication.’‘know’’ Intentio seconda or intentio obliqua
comes up nicely when Grice delivers the third William James Lecture, later
reprinted as “Further notes on logic and conversation.” There, Grice targets
one type of anti-Gettier scenario for the use of a factive psychological state
or attitude expressed by a verb like “know,” again followed by a “that”-clause.
Grice is criticisign Austin’s hasty attempt to analyse ‘know’ in terms of the
‘performatory’ ‘guarantee.’ As Grice puts it in “Prolegomena,” “to say ‘I know’
is to give a guarantee.” (Grice 1989:9) which can be traced back to Austin,
although since, as Grice witnessed it, Austin ‘all too frequently ignored’ the
real of emissor’s communicatum, one is never sure. In any case, Grice wants to overcome this
‘performatory’ fallacy, and he expands on the ‘suspect’ example of the
Prolegomena in the Third lecture. Grice’s troubles with ‘know’ were long-dated.
In Causal Theory he lists as the third philosophical mistake, “What is known by
me to be the case is not also believed by me to be the case.” (1989: 237).
Uncredited, but he may be having in mind Ryle’s odd characterisations with
terms such as ‘occurrence,’ ‘episode,’ and so on. In the section on ‘stress,’ Grice asks us to
assume that Grice knows that p. The question is whether this claim commits the
philosopher to the further clause, ‘Grice knows that Grice knows that p, and so
on, … to use the scholastic term we started this with, ad infinitum. It is not
that Grice is adverse to a regressive analysis per se. This is, in effect, with
what the third clause or prong in his analysis of ‘meaning’ does‘let all
meaning-constitutive intentions be overt, including this one. Indeed, when it comes to meaning or knowing,
we are talking optimal, we are talking ‘virtue.’ Both ‘meaning,’
‘communicating, ‘and ‘knowing,’ represent an ‘ideal,’ value-paradeigmatic
conceptwhere value, a favourite with Hartmann, appears under the guise of a
noumenon in the topos ouranos that only realises imperfectly in the sub-lunary
world. In the third William James lecture Grice cursorily dismisses these
demanding or restrictive anti-Gettier scenarios as too stipulatory for the
colloquial, ordinary, useand thus ‘sense’ -- of ‘know.’ The approach Gettier is
cricising ends up being too convoluted, seeing that conversationalists tend to
make a rather loose use of the verb. Grice’s example illustrates linguistic
botanising. So we have Grice bringing the examinee who does know that the
battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815, with hardly conclusive evidence, or any
‘de sensu’ knowledge that the evidence (which he does not have) is conclusive.
Grice grants that, in a specially emphatic utterance of ‘know,’ there might be
a cancellable implicaturum to the effect that the knower does have conclusive
evidence for what he alleges to know. Grice’s explicit reference to this
‘regressive nature’ (p. 59) touches on the topic of intention de sensu. Grice
is contesting the strong view, as represented, according to Gettier, by
philosophers ranging from Plato’s Thaetetus to Ayer’s Problem of Empirical
Knowledge (indeed the only two loci Gettier cares to cite in his short essay)
that a claim, “Grice knows that p” entails a claim to the effect that there is
conclusive evidence for p, and which gives Grice a feeling of subjective
certainty, and that Grice knows that there is such conclusive evidence, and so
on, ad infinitum. Grice casts doubts on the intentio de sensu as applied to the
colloquial or ‘ordinary’ uses of ‘know’. If I know that p, must I know that I
know that p? Having just introduced his
“Modified Occam’s Razor”‘Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity’ --,
Grice doesn’t think so. At this point, however, he adds a characteristic
bracket: “(cf. causal theory).” With that bracket, Grice is allowing that the
denotatum of “p,” qua content of U’s psychological state or attitude of
‘knowing,’ the state-of-affairs itself, as we may put it, should play something
like a causal role in U’s knowing that p. Grice is open-minded as to what type
of link or connection that is. It need not be strictly causal. He is merely
suggesting the open-endness of ‘know in terms of these “further conditions” as
to how Grice ‘comes’ to know that p, and refers to the ‘causal theory,’ as
later developed by philosophers like E. F. Dretske and others. As a linguistic
botanist, Grice is well aware that ‘know,’ like ‘see,’ is what the Kiparskys
(whom Grice refers to) call a ‘factive.’An ascription of “Grice knows that p,”
or, indeed, “Grice sees that p,” (unless Grice hallucinates) entails “p.” The
defeating ‘hallucination’ scenario is key. It involves what Grice calls a dis-implicaturum.
The utterer is using ‘know’ or‘see’ in a loose way (and meaning less, rather
than more than he explicitly conveys. Note incidentally, as Grice later noted
in later seminars, how his analysis proves the philosopher’s adage wrong.
Surely what is known by me to be the case is believed by me to be the case. Any
divergence to the contrary is a matter of ‘implicatural’ stressby which he
means supra-segmentation.‘want’Soon after his delivering the William James
lectures, Grice got involved in a project concerning an evaluation of Quine’s
programme, where again he touches on issues of intentio seconda or intentio
obliqua, and brings us back to Russell and ‘the author of Waverley.’ Grice’s
presentation comes out in Words and Objections, edited by Davidson and
Hintikka, a pun on Quine’s Word and Object. Grice’s contribution, ‘Vacuous Names,’
(later reprinted in part in Ostertag’s volume on Definite descriptions)
concludes with an exploration of “the” phrases, and further on, with some
intriguing remarks on the subtle issues surrounding the scope of an ascription
of a predicate standing for a psychological state or attitude. Grice’s choice
of an ascription now notably involves an ‘opaque’ (rather than ‘factive,’ like
‘know’) psychological state or attitude: ‘wanting,’ which he symbolizes as “W.”
Grice considers a quartet of utterances: Jack wants someone to marry him; Jack
wants someone or other to marry him; Jack wants a particular person to marry
him, and There is someone whom Jack wants to marry him. Grice notes that “there
are clearly at least *two* possible readings” of an utterance like our (i): a
first reading “in which,” as Grice puts it, (i) might be paraphrased by (ii).”
A second reading is one “in which it might be paraphrased by (iii) or by (iv).”
Grice goes on to symbolize the phenomenon in his own version of a first-order
predicate calculus. ‘Ja wants that p’ becomes ‘Wjap,’ where ‘ja’
stands for the individual constant “Jack” as a super-script attached to the
predicate standing for Jack’s psychological state or attitude. Grice writes:
“Using the apparatus of classical predicate logic, we might hope to represent,”
respectively, the external reading and the internal reading (involving an
intentio secunda or intentio obliqua) as ‘(Ǝx)WjaFxja’
and ‘Wja(Ǝx)Fxja.’ Grice then
goes on to discuss a slightly more complex, or oblique, scenario involving this
second internal reading, which is the one that interests us, as it involves an
‘intentio seconda.’ Grice notes: “But suppose that Jack wants a specific
individual, Jill, to marry him, and this because Jack has been “*deceived* into
thinking that his friend Joe has a highly delectable sister called Jill, though
in fact Joe is an only child.” (The Jill Jack eventually goes up the hill with
is, coincidentally, another Jill, possibly existent). Let us recall that
Grice’s main focus of the whole essay is, as the title goes, ‘emptiness’! In
these circumstances, one is inclined to say that (i) is true only on reading
(vii),” where the existential quantifier occurs within the scope of the
psychological-state or -attitude verb, “but we cannot now represent (ii) or
(iii), with ‘Jill’ being vacuous, by (vi), where the existential quantifier (Ǝx) occurs outside the scope of the
psychological-attitude verb, want, “since [well,] Jill does not really exist,”
except as a figment of Jack’s imagination. In a manoeuver that I interpret as
‘purely intentionalist,’ and thus favouring by far Suppes’s over Chomsky’s
characterisation of Grice as a mere ‘behaviourist,’ Grice hopes that “we should
be provided with distinct representations for two familiar readings” of, now:
Jack wants Jill to marry him; Jack wants ‘Jill’ to marry him. It is at this
point that Grice applies a syntactic scope notation involving sub-scripted
numerals, (ix) and (x), where the numeric values merely indicate the order of
introduction of the symbol to which it is attached in a deductive schema for
the predicate calculus in question. Only the first notation yields the internal
de sensu reading (where ‘ji’ stands for ‘Jill’): ‘W2ja4F1ji3ja4’
and ‘W3ja4F2ji1ja4.’
Note that in the alternative external notation, the individual constant for
“Jill,” ‘ji,’ is introduced prior to ‘want,’‘ji’’s sub-script is 1, while ‘W’’s
sub-script is the higher numerical value 3. If Russell could have avowed of
this he would have had that the Prince Regents, by issuing the invitation,
wants to confirm that ‘the author of Waverley’
Scott, already having confirmed that the author of Waverley =M the
author of Waverley. Grice warns Quine. Given that Jill does not exist, only the
internal reading “can be true,” or alethically satisfactory. Similarly, we
might imagine an alternative scenario where the butler informs the Prince: ‘We
are sorry to inform Your Majesty that your invitation was returned: apparently
the author of Waverley does not SEEM to exist.’ Grice sums up his reflections
on the representation of the opaqueness of a verb standing for a psychological
state or attitude like that expressed by ‘wanting’ with one observation that
further marks him as an intentionalist, almost of a Meinongian type. If he
justified a loose use of ‘know,’ he is now is ready to allow for ‘existential’
phrases in cases of ‘vacuous’ designata, which however baffling, should not
lead a philosopher to the wrong characterisation of the linguistic phenomena
(as it led Austin with ‘know’). Provided such a descriptors occur within an
opaque, intensional, de sensu, psychological-state or attitude verbs, Grice
captures the nuances of ‘ordinary’ discourse, while keeping Quine happy. As
Grice puts it, we should also have available to us also three neutral, yet
distinct, (Ǝx)-quantificational forms
(together with their isomorphs),” as a philosopher who thinks that Wittgenstein
denies a distinction, craves for a generality! “Jill” now becomes “x”: ‘W4ja5Ǝx3F1x2ja5,’
‘Ǝx5W2ja5F1x4ja3’,
and ‘Ǝx5W3ja4F1x2ja4
.’ Since in (xii) the individual variable ‘x’ (ranging over ‘Jill’) “does not
dominate the segment following the ‘(Ǝx)’
quantifier, the formulation does not display any ‘existential’ or de re,
‘force,’ and is suitable therefore for representing the internal readings (ii)
or (iii), “if we have to allow, as we do have, if we want to faithfully
represent ‘ordinary’ discourse, for the possibility of expressing the fact that
a particular person, Jill, does not actually exist.” At least Grice does not write,
“really,” for he knew that Austin detested a ‘trouser word.’ Grice concludes
that (xi) and (xiii) are derivable from each of (ix) and (x), while (xii) will
be “derivable only” from (ix).‘intend’By this time, Grice had been made a
Fellow of the British Academy and it was about time for the delivery of the
philosophical lecture that goes with it. It only took him six five years. Grice
choses “Intention and uncertainty” as its topic. He was provoked by two members
of his ‘playgroup’ at Oxford, Hart and Hampshire, who in an essay published in
Mind, what Grice finds, again, as he did with the anti-Gettier cases of ‘know,’
as rather a too strong analysis of ‘intending.’ In his British-Academy lecture,
Grice plays now with the psychological state or attitude, realised by the
verbal form, ‘intend,’ when specifically followed by a ‘that’-clause, “intends
that…,” as an echo of his dealing with “meaning to” as merely ‘natural.’ He
calls himself a neo-Prichardian, reviving this ‘willing that’ which Urmson had
popularised at Oxford, bringing to publication Prichard’s exploration of
William James and his “I will that the distant chair slides over the floor
towards me. It does not.”Grice’s ‘intending that…’ is notably a practical,
boulemaic, or buletic, or desiderative, rather than alethic or doxastic,
psychological state or attitude. It involves not just an itentum, but an
intentum that involves both a desideratum AND a factumfor the ‘future
indicative’ is conceptually involved. Grice claims that, if the conceptual analysis
of “intending that…” is to represent ‘ordinary’ discourse, shows that it
contains, as one of its prongs, in the final ‘neo-Prichardian’ version that
Grice gives, also a ‘doxastic’ (rather than ‘factive’ and ‘epistemic’)
psychological state or attitude, notably a belief on the part of the ‘intender’
that his willing that p has a probability greater than 0.5 to the effect that p
be realised. Contra Hart and Hampshire, Grice acknowledges the investigations
by the playgroup member Pears on this topic. Interestingly, a polemic arose
elsewhere with Davidson, who trying to be more Griceian thatn Grice, sees this
doxastic constraint as a mere cancellable implicaturum. Grice grants it may be
a dis-implicaturum at most, as in loose cases of ‘know,’ or ‘see.’ Grice is
adamant in regarding the doxastic component as a conceptual ‘entailment’ in the
‘ordinary’ use of ‘intend,’ unless the verb is used in a merely
‘disimplicatural,’ loose fashion. Grice’s example, ‘Jill intends to climb
Everest next week,’ when the prohibitive conditions are all to evident to
anyone concerned with such an utterance of (xv), perhaps Jill included, and
‘intends’ has to be read only ‘internally’ and hyperbolically. At this point,
if in “Vacuous Names, he fights with Meinong while enjoying engaging in
emptiness, it should be stressed that Grice gives as an illustration of a ‘disimplicaturum,’
along with a use of ‘see’ in a Shakespeareian context. ‘See,’ like ‘know,’ or ‘mean,’ exhibit what
Grice calls diaphaneity. So it’s only natural Grice turns his attention to
‘see.’ Grice’s examples are ‘Macbeth saw Banquo’ and ‘Hamlet saw his father on
the ramparts of Elsinore,’ and both involve hallucination! It is worth
comparing the fortune of ‘disimplicaturum’ with that of ‘implicaturum.’ Grice
coins ‘to dis-implicate’ as an active verb, for a case where the utterer does
NOT, as in the case of implicaturum, mean MORE than he says, but LESS. Grice’s
point is a subtle one. It involves his concession on something like an
explicatum, but alsoo on something like Moore’s entailment. If the ‘doxastic
condition’ is entailed by “intending that…,’ an utterer U may STILL use, in an
‘ordinary’ fashion, a strong ‘intending that…’ in a scenario where it is common
ground between the utterer U and his addressee A that the probability of ‘p’
being realised is lower than 0.5. The expression of the psychological state or
attitude is loose, since the utterer is, as it were, dropping an ‘entailment’
that applies in a use of ‘intending that’ where that ‘common-ground’ assumption
is absent. One reason may be echoic. Jill may think that she can succeed in
climbing Mt. Everest; she herself has used ‘intend.’ When that information is
transmitted, the strong psychological verb is kept when the doxastic constraint
is no longer shared by the utterer U and his addressee A (Like an implicaturum,
a disimplicaturum has to be recognised as such to count as one. No such thing as an ‘unwanted’ disimplicaturum.‘motivate’Sometimes,
it would seem that, for Grice, the English philosopher of English
‘ordinary-language’ philosophy, English is not enough! Grice would amuse at
Berkeley seminars, with things like, ‘A pirot potches o as fang, or potches o
and o’ as F-id,’ just to attract his addressee’s attention. The full passage,
in what Grice calls, after Carnap, pirotese, reads: “A pirot can be said to
potch of some obble x as fang or feng; also to cotch of x, or some obble o, as
fang or feng; or to cotch of one obble o and another obble o’ as being fid to
one another.” Grice’s deciphering, with ‘pirot,” a tribute to Carnapand Locke
-- as any agent, and an ‘obble’ as an object. Grice borrows, but does not
return, the ‘pirot’ from Carnap (for whom pirots karulise elaticallyCarnap’s
example of a syntactically well-formed formula in Introduction to Semantics).
Grice uses ‘pirotese’ ‘to potch’ as a correlate for ‘perceive,’ such as the
factive ‘see’ and ‘to cotch’ as a correlate for the similarly factive
‘know.’While ‘perceive’ strictly allows for a ‘that’-clause (as in Grice
analysis of “I perceive that the pillar box is red” in “The causal theory of
perception”), for simplificatory purposes, Grice is using ‘to potch’ as
applying directly to an object, which Grice rephrases as an ‘obble.’ Since some
perceptual feature or other is required in a predication of ‘perceiving’ and
‘potching,’ ‘feng’ is introduced as a perceptual predicate. And since pirots
should also be allowed to perceive an ‘obble’ o in some relation with another
‘obble’ o2, Grice introduces the dyadic ‘relational’ feature ‘fid.’ Grice’s exegesis reads: “‘To potch’ is
something like ‘to perceive,’ whereas ‘to cotch’ is something like ‘to think.’
‘Feng’ and ‘fang’ are possible descriptions, much like our adjectives; ‘fid’ is
a possible relation between ‘obbles.’”).
At this point, Grice has been made, trans-territorially, the President
of the American Philosophical Association, and is ready to give his
Presidential Address (now reprinted in his Conception of Value, for Clarendon.
He chooses ‘philosophical psychology’ It’s when Grice goes on to play now with
the neo-Wittgensteinian issues of incorrigibility and privileged access, that
issues of intentio seconda become prominent.
For any psychological attitude ψ1, if U holds it, U holds, as
a matter of what Grice calls ‘genitorial construction,’ a meta-psychological
attitude, ψ2, a seconda intentio if ever there was one, -- Grice
even uses the numeral ‘2’ -- that has, as its content followed the second
‘that’-clause, the very first psychological attitude ψ1. The general
schema being given below, with an instance of specification: ‘ψup ⊃ ψuψup,’
and ‘if U wills that p, U wills that U wills that p.’ The interesting bit, from
the perspective of our exploration of ‘intentio seconda,’ is that, if, alla
Peano, we apply this to itself, as in the anti-Gettier cases Grice discussed
earlier, we end with an ad-infinitum clause. It was Judith Baker, who earned
her doctorate under Grice at Berkeley who sees this clearlier than everyone
(She was a regular contributor to the Kant Society in Germany). Baker’s
publications are, like those of her tutor, scarce. But in a delightful
contribution to the Grice festschrift, “Do one’s motives have to be pure?” (in
Grandy/Warner 1986), Baker explores the crucial importance of that ad-infinitum
chain of intentiones secondæ as it applies to questions of not alethic but
practical value or satisfactoriness. Consider ‘ought’. Grice would say that
‘must’ is aequi-vocal, i.e. it is not that ‘must’ has an alethic ‘sense’ and a practical
‘sense.’ Only “one” must, if one must! (As Grice jokes, “Who needs
ichthyological necessity?”). Baker notes
that the ad-infinitum chain may explain how ‘duty’ ‘cashes out’ in ‘interest.’
Both Grice and Baker are avowed Kantotelians. By allowing ‘duty’ to cash out in
interest they are merging Aristotle’s utilitarian teleology with Kant’s
deontology, and succeeding! It is possible to symbolize Grice’s and Baker’s
proposal. If there is a “p” SUCH AS, at some point in the iteration of willing
and intentiones secondæ, the agent is not willing to accept it, this blocks the
potential Kantian universalizability of the content of a teleological attitude
“p,” stripping “p” of any absolute value status that it may otherwise attain.In
Grice’s reductive analysis of ‘mean,’ ‘know,’ ‘want,’ ‘intend,’ and ‘motivate,’
we witness the subtlety of his approach that is only made possible from the
recognition of Aristotle’s insight back in “De Sophisticis Elenchis” to Kant’s
explorations on the purity of motives. It should not surprise us. It’s Grice’s
nod, no doubt, to an unjustly neglected philosopher, who should be neglected no
more.ReferencesBlackburn, S. W. 1984. Spreading the words: groundings in the
philosophy of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Darwin, Charles. 1872.
The expression of emotions in man and animals. London: Murray. Grandy, R. E.
and R. O. Warner 1986. Philosophical grounds of rationality: intentions,
categories, ends. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Grice, H. P. 1948. Meaning, The
Oxford Philosophical Society. Repr. in Grice 1989. Grice, H. P. 1961. The
causal theory of perception, The Aristotelian Society. Repr. in Grice 1989.
Grice, H. P. 1967. Logic and Conversation, The William James lectures. Repr. in
a revised 1987 form in Grice 1989. Grice, H. P. 1969. Vacuous Names, in
Davidson and Hintikka, Words and objections. Dordrecht: Reidel, Grice, H. P. 1971. Intention and uncertainty,
The British Academy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grice, H. P. 1975. How pirots
karulise elatically: some simpler ways, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Grice, H. P.
1982. Meaning Revisited, in N. V. Smith, Mutual knowledge. London: Croom Helm,
repr. in Grice 1989. Grice, H.P. 1987. Retrospective epilogue, in Studies in
the Way of Words. Grice, H. P. 1989. Studies in the way of words. London and
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Hart, H. L. A. and S. N. Hampshire
1958. Intention, decision, and certainty, Mind, 67:1-12.Kemmerling, A. M. 1986.
Utterer’s meaning revisited, in Grandy/Warner 1986. Kneale, W. C. and M.
Kneale. 1966. The development of logic. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.Pecocke, C. A. B. 1989. Transcendental Arguments
in the Theory of Content: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the
University of Oxford on 16 May 1989. Oxford University Press. Prichard, H. A.
1968. Moral Obligation and Duty and Interest. Essays and Lectures, edited by
W. D. Ross and J. O. Urmson. Oxford: Oxford University. Stevenson,
C. L. 1944. Ethics and language. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
StrawsonF. 1964 Intention and convention in speech acts, The Philosophical
Review, repr. in Logico-Linguistic Papers, London, Methuen, 1971, 149-169 as Blackburn puts it in his discussion of
Grice in the intention-based chapter of his “Spreading the word: groundings in
the philosophy of language.” Intentio seconda or obliqua bears heavily on
Grice’s presentation for the Oxford Philosophical Society. The motivation behind
Grice’s analysis pertains to philosophical methodology. Grice is legitimizing
an ascription of ‘mean’ to a rational agent, such as … a philosopher. This very
ascription Grice finds to be ‘seemingly denied by Wittgenstein’ (Grice 1986).
As an exponent of what he would later and in jest dub “The Post-War Oxonian
School of ‘Ordinary-Language’ Philosophy,” Grice engages in a bit of language
botany, and dealing with the intricacies of ‘communicative’ uses of “mean.”
Interestingly, and publiclyalthough a provision is in order hereGrice
acknowledges emotivist Stevenson, who apparently taught Grice about ‘metabolic’
uses of “mean.” Stevenson, who read English as a minor at Yale, would not
venture to apply ‘mean’ to moans! Realising it as a colloquial extension, he is
allowed to use ‘mean,’ but in scare quotes only! (“Smith’s reduced temperature
‘means’ that he is is convalescent.” “There is a
sense, to be sure, in which a groan “means“ something, just a reduced
temperature may at times ”mean” convalescence.” Stevenson 1944:38).
Close enough but no cigar. Stevenson has ‘groan,’ which at least rhymes with
‘moan.’ (As for the proviso, Grice never ‘meant’ to ‘publish’ his talk on
‘Meaning,’ but one of his tutees submitted for publication, and on acceptance,
Grice allowed the publication). In “Meaning” Grice does not provide a
conceptual analysis for, ‘by moaning, U means [simpliciter] that p.’ He will in
his “Meaning Revisited”the metabolical scare quotes are justified on two
counts: ‘By moaning U means that p’ is legitimized on the basis of the generic
‘x ‘means’ y iff x is a consequence of y.’ But it is also justified on the
basis that there is a continuum between U’s involuntarily moaning thereby
meaning that he is in pain, and U’s voluntarily moaning, thereby ‘communicating’
that he is in pain. However, and more importantly for our exploration of the
‘intentum,’ Grice hastens to add that he does not agree with Stevenson’s purely
‘causal’ account. The main reason is not ‘anti-naturalistic.’ It is just that
Grice sees Stevenson’s proposal as as involving a vicious circle. Typically,
Grice extrapolates the relevant quote from Stevenson, slightly out of context.
Grice refers to Stevenson’s appeal to "an elaborate process of
conditioning attending … communication."Grice: “If we have to take
seriously the second part of the qualifying phrase ("attending …
communication"), Stevenson’s account of meaning is obviously circular. We
might just as well say, "U means” if “U communicates,” which, though true,
is not helpful. It MIGHT be helpful for Cicero translating from Grecian to
Roman: ‘com-municatio’ indeed translates a Grecian turn of phrase involving
‘what is common.’ f. “con-” and root “mu-,” to bind; cf.: immunis, munus,
moenia.’And the suggestion would be helpful if we say that to ‘communicate,’ or
‘mean,’ is just to bring some intentum to be allotted ‘common ground,’ because
of the psi-transmission it is shared between the emissor and his intended
addressee. This one hopes is both true AND ‘helpful.’ In
any case, Grice’s tutee Strawson later found Grice’s elucidation of utterer’s
meaning to be ‘objection-proof’ (Starwson and Wiggins, 2001) in terms of a set
of necessary and sufficient conditions, of an utterer or emissor E meaning that
p, by uttering ‘x,’ and appealing to primary and secondary intentionality. But
is Grice’s intentionalism a sort of behaviourism? Grice denies that in “Method”
calling ‘behaviourism’ ‘silly. Grice further explores intentio obliqua as it
pertains to his remarks towards a general theory of “re-presentation.” The
place where this excursus takes place is crucial. It is his Valediction to his
compilation of essays, Studies in the Way of Words, posthumously published. At
this stage, he must have felt that, what he once regarded krypto-technic in
Peirce, is no more! Grice has already identified in that ‘Valediction’ many
strands of his philosophical thought, and concludes his re-assessment of his
‘philosophy of language’ and semiotics with an attempt to provide some general
remarks about ‘to represent’ in general, perhaps to counter the allegations of
vicious circularity which his approach had received, seeing that “p” features,
as a ‘gap-sign,’ as the content of both an ‘expression’ and a ‘psychological’
attitude. In trying to reconcile his austere views on “Meaning,” back in that
evening at the Oxford Philosophical Society, where he distinguished two senses
of ‘mean’ (“Smoke ‘means’ fire,” and ““Smoke” means ‘smoke’”). By focusing on
the most general of verbs for a psychological state or attitude, ‘to represent,’
that even allows for a non-psychological reading, Grice wants to be seen as
answering the challenge of an alleged vicious circle with which his
intention-based approach is usually associated. The secondary-intentional
non-iconic mode of representation rests on a prior iconic mode and can be
understood as ‘pre-conventional,’ without any explicit recourse to the features
we associate with a developed system of communication. Grice needs no ‘language
of thought’ or sermo mentalis alla Ockham there. Grice allows that one can
communicate fully without the need to use what more conventional philosophers
call ‘a language.’ Artists do it all the time!
The passage from intentio prima to full intentio seconda is, for Grice,
gradual and complex. Grice means to adhere with ‘ordinary’ discourse, in its implicatura
and dis-implicaata. The passage also adhering to a functionalist approach qua
‘method in philosophical psychology,’ as he’d prefer, that needs not to
postulate a full-blown ‘linguistic entity’ as the object of intentional
thought. In this respect, it is worth mentioning the work of C. A. B. Peacocke,
who knew Grice from his Oxford days and later joined his seminars at Berkeley,
and who has developed this line of thought in a better fashion than less careful
philosophers. Grice’s programme has occasionally, and justly, been compared
with phenomenological approaches to expression and communication, such as
Marty’s. It is hoped that the previous notes have shed some light on those
aspects where this interface can further be elaborated. Even as we leave an
intentio seconda to resume the discussion for a longer day. In his explorations
on the embedding of intensional concepts, Grice should be inspirational to
philosophers in more than one way, but especially in the one that he favoured
most: the problematicity of it all. As he put it in another context, when
defending absolute value. “Such a defence of absolute value is
of course, bristling with unsolved or incompletely solved problems. I do not
find this thought daunting. If philosophy generated no new problems it would be
dead, because it would be finished; and if it recurrently regenerated the same
old problems it would not be alive because it could never begin. So those who
still look to philosophy for their bread-and-butter should pray that the supply
of new problems never dries up.” (Grice 1991). In the Graeco-Roman tradition,
philosophers started to use ‘intentio prima,’ ‘intentio secunda,’ ‘intentio
tertia,’ and “… ad infinitum,” as they would put it. In post-war Oxford,
English philosopher H. P. Grice felt the need. The formalist he was, he found
subscribing numbers to embedded intentions has a strong appeal for him. Grice’s
main motivation is in the philosophy of language, but as ancillary towards
solving this or that problem concerning the ‘linguistic’ methodology of his
day. To appreciate Grice’s contribution one need to abstract a little from his
own historical circumstances, or rather, place them in the proper context, and
connect it with the general history of philosophy. As a matter of
history, ‘intentio prima,’ or ‘recta,’ as opposed to ‘obliqua,’ is part of
Nicolai Hartmann’s ‘mediaeval revival,’ as a reaction to mediaevalism having
made scorn by the likes of Rabelais that amused D. P. Henry. For the mediaeval
philosopher, to use Grice’s symbolism, was concerned with whether a chimaera
could eat ‘I2,’ a second intention. The mediaeval philosopher’s implicaturum
seems to be that a chimaera can easily eat ‘I1.’ Such a ‘quaestio
subtilissima,’ Rabelais jokes. If ‘I1,’ or, better, for
simplificatory purposes, ‘IR’ is a specific state, stance, or
attitude of the ‘soul,’ ‘ψ1’ or ‘ψR’ directed towards
its ‘de re’ ‘intentum,’ or ‘prae-sentatum,’ of the noumenon, ‘IO,’
‘intentio obliqua,’ is a state, stance, or attitude of the ‘soul,’ of the same
genus, ‘ψ2,’ or ‘ψS’ directed towards ‘ψR,’
its ‘de sensu’ ‘intentum’ now ‘re-prae-sentatum’ of the phainomenon or
ob-jectum (Abelard translates Aristotle’s ‘per divisionem’ as ‘de re’ and ‘per
compositionem’ and ‘per conjunctionem’ by ‘de sensu,’ and ‘per Soph. Elen.,
Kneale and Kneale, 1966). Grice’s intentionalism has been widely discussed, but
the defense he himself makes of intensionalism (versus extensionalism) has
proved inspiring, as when he assumes as an attending commentary to his
reductive analysis of the state of affairs by which the emissor communicates
that p, that he is putting forward “the legitimacy of [the] application of
[existential generalization] to a statement the expression of which contains
such [an] "intensional" verb[…] as "intend" (Grice 1989:
116 ). The expression ‘de sensu’ is due to Abelard, but Russell likes it. While
serving as Prince Regent of England in 1815, George IV casually remarks his
wish to meet ‘the author of Waverley’ in the flesh. The Prince was being funny,
you see. The prince would not know this, but when his press becomes embroiled
in pecuniary difficulties, Scotts set out to write a cash-cow. The result is
Waverley, a novel which did not name its author. It is a tale of the last
Jacobite rebellion in England, the “Forty-Five.” The novel meets with considerable
success. The next year, Scott. There follows a sequel, the same general
vein. Mindful of his reputation, Scotts
maintains the anonymous habit he displays with Waverley, and publishes the
sequel under “the Author of Waverley.” The identity “Author of Waverley” =
“Scott” is widely rumoured, and Scott is
given the honour of dining with George, Prince Regent, who had wished to
meet “Author of Waverley” in the flesh for a ‘snug little dinner’ at Carleton,
on hearing ‘the author of Waverley’ was in town. The use of a descriptor may
lead to the implicaturum that His Majesty is p’rhaps not sure that ‘the author
of Waverley’ has a name, and isR Scott. Lack of certainty is one
thing, yet, to quote from Russell, “an interest in the law of identity can
hardly be attributed to the first gentleman of Europe.” Grice admired Russell
profusely and one of his essays is wittily entitled, “Definite descriptions in
Russell and in the Vernacular,” so his explorations of ‘intentio’ ‘de sensu’
have an intrinsic interest. Keywords: H.
Paul Grice, intentio seconda, implicaturum, intentionalism, intentum, intentum de sensu, ‘that’-clause, the
recte-oblique distinction. Grice explored issues of intentum de sensu in
various areas. First, ‘meaning.’ Second, ‘knowing.’ Third, ‘wanting.’ Fourth,
‘intending,’ Fifth, pirots, with incorrigibility and privileged access. Sixth,
morality and the regressus. Seventh, the continuum and the unity. With Grice, it all
starts, roughly, when Grice comes up with a topic for a talk at The Oxford Philosophical
Society.The Society is holding one of those meetings, and Grice thinks of
presenting a few conclusions he had reached at his seminars on C. S.
Peirce.What’s the good of an Oxford don of keeping tidy lecture notes if you
will not be able to lecture to a philosophical addressee? Peirce is the
philosopher on whom Grice choses to lecture. In part, for “not being
particularly popular on these shores,” and in part because Grice noted the
‘heretic’ in Peirce with which he could identify.Granted, at this stage, Grice
disliked the un-Englishness of some of Peirce’s over-Latinate jargon, what
Grice finds the ‘krypto-technic.’ ‘Sign,’ ‘symbol,’ ‘icon,’ and the rest of
them!Instead, Grice thinks, initially for the sake of his tutees and studentshe
was university lecturer -- sticking with the simpler, ‘ordinary’, short English
lexeme ‘mean.’A. M. Kemmerling, of all people, who wrote the obituary for Grice
for Synthese, has precisely cast doubts on the ‘universal’ validity of Grice’s
proposed conceptual reductive analysis, notably in his Ph.D dissertation on
‘Meinen.’ Note the irony in Kemmerling’s
title: Was Grice mit "Meinen"
meintEine Rekonstruktion der Griceschen Analyse rationaler Kommunikation.” Nothing jocular in the subtitle, for this
indeed is a reconstruction of ‘rational’ communication. The funny bit is in
“Was mit “Meinen” Grice meint”! In that very phrase, which is rhetorical, and
allows for an answer, because ‘meinen’ is both mentioned and used, Kemmerling
allows that he is ‘buying’ Grice’s idea that his reductive analysis of ‘mean’
applies to German ‘meinen.’ Kemmerling is also pointing to the ‘primacy’ (to
use Suppes’s phrase) of ‘utterer’s’ or ‘emissor’s “communicatum” or ‘Meinung.”
Kemmerling advertises his interest in exploring on what _Grice_ meansby
uttering ‘meinen,’ almost! As Kemmerling notes, German ‘meinen,’ cognate
via common Germanic with English ‘mean,’ (cf. Frisian ‘mein,’and Hazzlitt,
“Bread, butter, and green cheese, very good English, very good cheese”) is none
other than ‘mean’ that Grice means. And ‘Grice means’ is the only literal, i.
e. non-metabolic use of the verb Grice allowsas applied to a rational agent,
which features in the subtitle to Kemmerling’s dissertation. Thus one reads in
Kluge, “Etymologische Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 1881, of “meinen,” rendered by J. F. Davis as ‘to think, opine, mean,’
from a MHG used to indicate, in
Davis’s rendition, ‘to direct one's thoughts to, have in view, aim at,
be affected towards a person, love,’ OHG meinen, meinan,
‘to mean, think, say, declare.’ = OS mênian, Du. meenen,
OE mœ̂nan, E mean (to this Anglo-Saxon mœ̂nan, cf. prob. moanI know your meaning from your moaning),
all from WGmc. meinen, mainjan, ‘mênjan,’ and cognate with ‘man,’ ‘to think’ (cf. ‘mahnen,’ ‘Mann,’
and ‘Minne’).
Kemmerling is very apropos, because Grice engaged in philosophical
discussion with him, as testified by his perceptive contribution to P. G. R. I.
C. E. (Kemmerling, 1986). On top, in his presentation for the Oxford
Philosophical Society, Grice wants to restrict the philosophical interest to
‘de sensu,’ the ‘that’-clause (cf. the recte-oblique distinction), viz. not
just ‘what Grice means,’ if this is going to be expaned as ‘something
wonderful.’ Not enough for Grice. It has to be expanded, for the thing to have
philosophical interest into a ‘propositional clause,’, an ‘intensional’
context, i. e., ‘Grice means that…’ Grice cavalierly dismisses other use of
‘mean,’notably the ubiquitous, ‘mean to…’He will later explain his reason for
this. It was after William James provoked Prichard. For William James uttered:
“I will that the distant table slides on the floor toward me. It doesn’t’.
Prichard turns this into the conceptual priority of ‘will that…’ for which Grice
gives him the credit he deserved at a later lecture now on his being appointed
a Fellow of The British Academy (Grice, 1971).
Strictly, what Grice does in the Oxford Philosophical Socieety
presentation is to distinguish between various ‘mean’ and end up focusing on
‘mean’ as followed by a ‘that’-clause. In the typical Oxonian fashion, that
Grice borrows (but never returns) from J. C. Wilson, Grice has the IO
as ‘meaning that so-and-so’ (Grice, 1989: 217). Grice explicitly displays the
primacy of a reductive analysis of the conceptual circumstances involving an
emissor (Anglo-Saxon ‘utterer’) who ‘means’ that p. It will be a longer
‘shaggy-dog’ story Grice tells when he crosses the divide from ‘propositional’
(p) to ‘predicative’ ascriptions (“By uttering ‘Fido is shaggy,’ Grice means
that the dog is hairy-coated (Grice 1989). Grice notes that ‘metabolically,’
“mean,” at least in English, can be applied to various other things, sometimes
even involving a ‘that’-clause. “By delivering his budget, the major means that
we will have a hard year.’ Grice finds that ‘but we won’t’ turns him into a
self-contradicter. In Grice’s usage, ‘x ‘means’ y’ iff ‘y is a consequence
[consequentia] of x’ --. Quite a departure from Old Frisian. If Hume’s
objection to the use of the verb ‘cause,’ is that it covers animistic beliefs
(“Charles I’s decapitation willed his death”), English allows for disimplicated
or loose ‘metabolic’ uses of ‘will’ (“It ‘will’ rain”) and ‘mean’ (Grice’s
moaning means that he is in pain).
DE-SIDERALIS -- desideratum: Qua volition,
a mental event involved with the initiation of action. ‘To will’ is sometimes
taken to be the corresponding verb form of ‘volition’. The concept of volition
is rooted in modern philosophy; contemporary philosophers have transformed it
by identifying volitions with ordinary mental events, such as intentions, or
beliefs plus desires. Volitions, especially in contemporary guises, are often
taken to be complex mental events consisting of cognitive, affective, and conative
elements. The conative element is the impetusthe underlying motivationfor the
action. A velleity is a conative element insufficient by itself to initiate
action. The will is a faculty, or set of abilities, that yields the mental
events involved in initiating action. There are three primary theories about
the role of volitions in action. The first is a reductive account in which
action is identified with the entire causal sequence of the mental event (the
volition) causing the bodily behavior. J. S. Mill, for example, says: “Now what
is action? Not one thing, but a series of two things: the state of mind called
a volition, followed by an effect. . . . [T]he two together constitute the
action” (Logic). Mary’s raising her arm is Mary’s mental state causing her arm
to rise. Neither Mary’s volitional state nor her arm’s rising are themselves
actions; rather, the entire causal sequence (the “causing”) is the action. The
primary difficulty for this account is maintaining its reductive status. There
is no way to delineate volition and the resultant bodily behavior without
referring to action. There are two non-reductive accounts, one that identifies
the action with the initiating volition and another that identifies the action
with the effect of the volition. In the former, a volition is the action, and
bodily movements are mere causal consequences. Berkeley advocates this view:
“The Mind . . . is to be accounted active in . . . so far forth as volition is
included. . . . In plucking this flower I am active, because I do it by the
motion of my hand, which was consequent upon my volition” (Three Dialogues). In
this century, Prichard is associated with this theory: “to act is really to
will something” (Moral Obligation, 1949), where willing is sui generis (though
at other places Prichard equates willing with the action of mentally setting
oneself to do something). In this sense, a volition is an act of will. This
account has come under attack by Ryle (Concept of Mind, 1949). Ryle argues that
it leads to a vicious regress, in that to will to do something, one must will
to will to do it, and so on. It has been countered that the regress collapses;
there is nothing beyond willing that one must do in order to will. Another
criticism of Ryle’s, which is more telling, is that ‘volition’ is an
obscurantic term of art; “[volition] is an artificial concept. We have to study
certain specialist theories in order to find out how it is to be manipulated. .
. . [It is like] ‘phlogiston’ and ‘animal spirits’ . . . [which] have now no utility”
(Concept of Mind). Another approach, the causal theory of action, identifies an
action with the causal consequences of volition. Locke, e.g., says: “Volition
or willing is an act of the mind directing its thought to the production of any
action, and thereby exerting its power to produce it. . . . [V]olition is
nothing but that particular determination of the mind, whereby . . . the mind
endeavors to give rise, continuation, or stop, to any action which it takes to
be in its power” (Essay concerning Human Understanding). This is a functional
account, since an event is an action in virtue of its causal role. Mary’s arm
rising is Mary’s action of raising her arm in virtue of being caused by her
willing to raise it. If her arm’s rising had been caused by a nervous twitch,
it would not be action, even if the bodily movements were photographically the
same. In response to Ryle’s charge of obscurantism, contemporary causal
theorists tend to identify volitions with ordinary mental events. For example,
Davidson takes the cause of actions to be beliefs plus desires and Wilfrid
Sellars takes volitions to be intentions to do something here and now. Despite
its plausibility, however, the causal theory faces two difficult problems: the
first is purported counterexamples based on wayward causal chains connecting
the antecedent mental event and the bodily movements; the second is provision
of an enlightening account of these mental events, e.g. intending, that does
justice to the conative element. See also ACTION THEORY, FREE WILL PROBLEM,
PRACTICAL REASONING, WAYWARD CAUSAL CHAIN. M.B. volition volition. Grice makes a double use of this. It should be thus two
entries. There’s the conversational desideratum, where a desideratum is like a
maxim or an imperativeand then there are two specific desiderata: the
desideratum of conversational clarity, and the desideratum of conversational
candour. Grice was never sure what adjective to use for the ‘desiderative.’ He
liked buletic. He liked desideratum because it has the co-relate
‘consideratum,’ for belief. He uses
‘deriderative’ and a few more! Of course what he means is a sub-psychological
modality, or rather a ‘soul.’ So he would apply it ‘primarily’ to the soul, as
Plato and Aristotle does. The ‘psyche’, or ‘anima’ is what is ‘desiderativa.’
The Grecians are pretty confused about this (but ‘boulemaic’ and ‘buletic’ are
used), and the Romans didn’t help. Grice is concerned with a
rational-desiderative, that takes a “that”-clause (or oratio obliqua), and qua
constructivist, he is also concerned with a pre-rational desiderative (he has
an essay on “Needs and Wants,” and his detailed example in “Method” is a
squarrel (sic) who needs a nut. On top, while Grice suggest s that it goes both
ways: the doxastic can be given a reductive analaysis in terms of the buletic,
and the buletic in terms of the doxastic, he only cares to provide the former.
Basically, an agent judges that p, if his willing that p correlates to a state
of affairs that satisfies his desires. Since he does not provide a reductive
analysis for Prichard’s willing-that, one is left wondering. Grice’s position
is that ‘willing that…’ attains its ‘sense’ via the specification, as a
theoretical concept, in some law in the folk-science that agents use to explain
their behaviour. Grice gets subtler when he deals with mode-markers for the
desiderative: for these are either utterer-oriented, or addressee-oriented, and
they may involve a buletic attitude itself, or a doxastic attitude. When
utterer-addressed, utterer wills that utterer wills that p. There is no closure
here, and indeed, a regressus ad infinitum is what Grice wants, since this
regressus allows him to get univeersabilisability, in terms of conceptual,
formal, and applicational kinds of generality. In this he is being Kantian, and
Hareian. While Grice praises Kantotle, Aristotle here would stay unashamedly
‘teleological,’ and giving priority to a will that may not be universalisable,
since it’s the communitarian ‘good’ that matters. what does Grice have to say
about our conversational practice? L and S have “πρᾶξις,” from “πράσσω,” and
which they render as ‘moral action,’ oποίησις, τέχνη;” “oποιότης,” “ἤθη καὶ
πάθη καὶ π.,” “oοἱ πολιτικοὶ λόγοι;” “ἔργῳ καὶ πράξεσιν, οὐχὶ λόγοις” Id.6.3;
ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι ὄντα τε καὶ πραττόμενα, “exhibited in actual life,” action in
drama, “oλόγος; “μία π. ὅλη καὶ τελεία.” With practical Grice means buletic.
Praxis involves acting, and surely Grice presupposes acting. By uttering, i. e.
by the act of uttering, expression x, U m-intends that p. Grice occasionally
refers to action and behaviour as the thing which an ascription of a
psychological state explains. Grice prefers the idiom of soul. Theres the
ratiocinative soul. Within the ratiocinative, theres the executive soul and the
merely administrative soul. Cicero had to translate Aristotle into prudentia,
every time Aristotle talked of phronesis. Grice was aware that the
terminology by Kant can be confusing. Kant used ‘pure’ reason for reason in the
doxastic realm. The critique by Kant of practical reason is hardly
symmetrical to his critique of doxastic reason. Grice, with his
æqui-vocality thesis of must (must crosses the buletic-boulomaic/doxastic
divide), Grice is being more of a symmetricalist. The buletic, boulomaic, or
volitive, is a part of the soul, as is the doxatic or judicative. And
judicative is a trick because there is such a thing as a value judgement, or an
evaluative judgement, which is hardly doxastic. Grice plays with two
co-relative operators: desirability versus probability. Grice invokes the
exhibitive/protreptic distinction he had introduced in the fifth James lecture,
now applied to psychological attitudes themselves. This Grice’s attempt is to
tackle the Kantian problem in the Grundlegung: how to derive the categorical
imperative from a counsel of prudence. Under the assumption that the protasis
is Let the agent be happy, Grice does not find it obtuse at all to construct a
universalisable imperative out of a mere motive-based counsel of prudence.
Grice has an earlier paper on pleasure which relates. The derivation involves
seven steps. Grice proposes seven steps in the derivation. 1. It is a
fundamental law of psychology that, ceteris paribus, for any creature R, for
any P and Q, if R wills P Λ judges if P, P as a result of Q, R wills
Q. 2. Place this law within the scope of a "willing" operator: R
wills for any P Λ Q, if R wills P Λ judges that if P, P as
a result of Q, R wills Q. 3. wills turns to should. If rational, R will have to
block unsatisfactory (literally) attitudes. R should (qua rational) judge for
any P Λ Q, if it is satisfactory to will that P Λ it is
satisfactory to judge that if P, P as a result of Q, it is sastisfactory to
will that Q. 4. Marking the mode: R should (qua rational) judge for any
P Λ Q, if it is satisfactory that !P Λ that if it .P, .P
only as a result of Q, it is satisfactory that !Q. 5. via (p & q
-> r) -> (p -> (q -> r)): R should (qua rational)
judge for any P Λ Q, if it is satisfactory that if .P, .P only
because Q, i is satisfactory that, if let it be that P, let it be that Q. 6. R
should (qua rational) judge for any P Λ Q, if P, P only because p
yields if let it be that P, let it be that Q. 7. For any P Λ Q if P,
P only because Q yields if let it be that P, let it be that Q. Grice was
well aware that a philosopher, at Oxford, needs to be a philosophical
psychologist. So, wanting and needing have to be related to willing. A plant
needs water. A floor needs sweeping. So need is too broad. So is want, a
non-Anglo-Saxon root for God knows what. With willing things get closer to the
rational soul. There is willing in the animal soul. But when it comes to
rational willing, there must be, to echo Pritchard, a conjecture, some doxastic
element. You cannot will to fly, or will that the distant chair slides over the
floor toward you. So not all wants and needs are rational willings, but then
nobody said they would. Grice is interested in emotion in his power structure
of the soul. A need and a want may count as an emotion. Grice was never too
interested in needing and wanting because they do not take a that-clause. He
congratulates Urmson for having introduced him to the brilliant willing that …
by Prichard. Why is it, Grice wonders, that many ascriptions of buletic states
take to-clause, rather than a that-clause? Even mean, as ‘intend.’ In this
Grice is quite different from Austin, who avoids the that-clause. The
explanation by Austin is very obscure, like those of all grammars on the
that’-clause, the ‘that’ of ‘oratio obliqua’ is not in every way similar to the
‘that’-clause in an explicit performative formula. Here the utterer is not
reporting his own ‘oratio’ in the first person singular present indicative
active. Incidentally, of course, it is not in the least necessary that an
explicit performative verb should be followed by a ‘that’-clause. In important
classes of cases it is followed by ‘to . . .,’ or by or nothing, e. g. ‘I
apologize for…,’ ‘I salute you.’ Now many of these verbs appear to be quite
satisfactory pure performatives. Irritating though it is to have them as such,
linked with clauses that look like statements, true or false, e. g., when I say
‘I prophesy that …,’ ‘I concede that …’,
‘I postulate that …,’ the clause following normally looks just like a
statement, but the verb itself seems to be pure performatives. One
may distinguish the performative opening part, ‘I state that …,’ which makes
clear how the utterance is to be taken, that it is a statement, as distinct
from a prediction, etc.), from the bit in the that-clause which is required to
be true or false. However, there are many cases which, as language stands at
present, we are not able to split into two parts in this way, even though the
utterance seems to have a sort of explicit performative in it. Thus, ‘I liken x
to y,’ or ‘I analyse x as y.’ Here we both do the likening and assert that
there is a likeness by means of one compendious phrase of at least a
quasi-performative character. Just to spur us on our way, we may also mention
‘I know that …’, ‘I believe that …’, etc. How complicated are these examples?
We cannot assume that they are purely descriptive, which has Grice talking of
the pseudo-descriptive. Want etymologically means absence; need should be
preferred. The squarrel (squirrel) Toby needs intake of nuts, and youll soon
see gobbling them! There is not much philosophical bibliography on these two
psychological states Grice is analysing. Their logic is interesting. Smith
wants to play cricket. Smith needs to play cricket. Grice is
concerned with the propositional content attached to the want and need
predicate. Wants that sounds harsh; so does need that. Still, there
are propositional attached to the pair above. Smith plays cricket. Grice
took a very cavalier attitude to what linguists spend their lives
analysing. He thought it was surely not the job of the philosopher,
especially from a prestigious university such as Oxford, to deal with the
arbitrariness of grammatical knots attached to this or that English verb. He
rarely used English, but stuck with ordinary language. Surely, he saw
himself in the tradition of Kantotle, and so, aiming at grand philosophical
truths: not conventions of usage, even his own! 1. Squarrel Toby has a
nut, N, in front of him. 2. Toby is short on squarrel food (observed or
assumed), so, 3. Toby wills squarrel food (by postulate of Folk Pyschological
Theory θ connecting willing with intake of N). 4. Toby prehends a nut
as in front (from (1) by Postulate of Folk Psychological Theory θ, if it
is assumed that nut and in front are familiar to Toby). 5. Toby joins squarrel
food with gobbling, nut, and in front (i.e. Toby judges gobbling, on nut in
front, for squarrel food (by Postulate of Folk Psychological
Theory θ with the aid of prior observation. So, from 3, 4 and 5, 6.
Tobby gobbles; and since a nut is in front of him, gobbles the nut in front of
him. The system of values of the society to which the agent belongs forms the
external standard for judging the relative importance of the commitments by the
agent. There are three dimensions of value: universally human, cultural that
vary with societies and times; and personal that vary with individuals. Each
dimension has a standard for judging the adequacy of the relevant values. Human
values are adequate if they satisfy basic needs; cultural values are adequate
if they provide a system of values that sustains the allegiance of the
inhabitants of a society; and personal values are adequate if the conceptions
of well‐being formed out of them enable individuals to live
satisfying lives. These values conflict and our well‐being requires some way of settling their conflicts, but
there is no universal principle for settling the conflicts; it can only be done
by attending to the concrete features of particular conflicts. These features vary
with circumstances and values. Grice reads Porter.The idea of the value chain
is based on the process view of organizations, the idea of seeing a
manufacturing (or service) organization as a system, made up of subsystems each
with inputs, transformation processes and outputs. Inputs, transformation
processes, and outputs involve the acquisition and consumption of
resourcesmoney, labour, materials, equipment, buildings, land, administration
and management. How value chain activities are carried out determines costs and
affects profits.In his choice of value system and value sub-system, Grice is
defending objectivity, since it is usually the axiological relativist who uses
such a pretentious phrasing! More than a value may co-ordinate in a system. One
such is eudæmonia (cf. system of ends). The problem for Kant is the reduction
of the categorical imperative to the hypothetical or
suppositional imperative. For Kant, a value tends towards the
Subjectsive. Grice, rather, wants to offer a metaphysical defence of objective
value. Grice called the manual of conversational maxims the Conversational
Immanuel. The keyword to search the H. P. Grice is ‘will,’ and ‘volitional,’
even ‘ill-will,’ (“Metaphysics and ill-will,” s. V, c. 7-f. 28) and
‘benevolence’ (vide below under ‘conversational benevolence”). Also
‘desirability’: “Modality, desirability, and probability,” s. V, c. 8-ff.
14-15, and the conference lecture in a different series, “Probability,
desirability, and mood operators,” s. II, c. 2-f.11). Grice makes systematic use of ‘practical’ to
contrast with the ‘alethic,’ too (“Practical reason,” s. V, c. 9-f.1), The H.
P. Grice Papers, BANC.
DE-SIDERALIS -- desideratum of
conversational candour: The key for philosophical
attention here is ‘candour’ but the collocation is delightfully Griceian, “the
desideratum of conversational candour”
where only ‘candour,’ and just about, should be taken seriously. The term
‘desideratum’ has to be taken seriously. It involves freedom. This includes the
maximin. It should be noted that candour is DESIRABLE. There is a desirability
for candour. Candour is not a given. Ditto for clarity. See conversational
desideratum, simpliciter. A rational desideratum is a desideratum by a rational
agent and which he expects from another rational agent. One should make the
strongest move, and on the other hand try not to mislead.Grice's Oxford
"Conversation" Lectures, 1966Grice: Between Self-Love and Benevolence
As I was saying (somewhere), Grice uses "self-love", charmingly
qualified with capitals, as
"Conversational Self-Love", and, less charmingly, "Conversational Benevolence", in
lectures advertised at Oxford, as "Logic and Conversation" that he gave at Oxford in
1964 as "University Lecturer in
Philosophy". He also gave seminars on "Conversational
helpfulness." A number of the lectures by Grice include discussion of
thetypes of behaviour people in general exhibit, and thereforethe types of
expectations[cfr. owings]they might bring to a venture such as a
conversation.Grice suggests that people in general both exhibitand EXPECT a
certain degree of helpfulness [-- alla Rosenschein, epistemic/boulemaic:If A
cognizes that B wills p, then A wills p.]
"from OTHERS" [-- reciprocal vs. reflexive, etc.] usually on
the understanding that such helpfulness does NOT get in the way of particular
goals and does not involve undue effort cf. least effort?cfr. Hobbes on self-love.
It two people, even complete strangers,are going through a gate, the
expectation isthat the FIRST ONE through will hold thegate open, or at least
leave it open, for thesecond. The expectation is such that todo OTHERWISE
without particular reasonwould be interpreted as RUDE. The type of helpfulness
exhibited andexpected in conversation is more specificbecause of a particular,
although not a unique feature of conversation.It is a COLLABORATIVE venture
betweenthe participants.There is a SHARED aimGrice wonders. His words, Does "helpfulness in something WE ARE
DOING TOGETHER” equate to 'cooperation'?He seems to have decided that it
does. By the later lectures in the series, 'the principle of conversational
helpfulness'has been rebranded the expectation of 'cooperation.' During the
Oxford lectures, Grice develops his account of the precise nature of this
cooperation. It can be seen as governed by certain regularities, or principles,
detailing expected behaviour. The expression'maxim' to describe these
regularities appears relatively late in the lectures.Grice's INITIAL choices of
terms are 'objectives' and 'desiderata'.He was particularly fond of the latter.
He was interested in detailing the desirable forms of behaviour for the purpose
of achieving a joint goal of the conversation. Initially, Grice posits TWO such
desiderata. Those relating to candour on the one hand and clarity on the other.
The desideratum of candour contains his general PRINCIPLE of making the
strongest (MAX) possible statement and, as a LIMITING (MAX) factor on this, the
suggestion that speakers should try not to mislead. (Do not mislead). cfr.
our"We are brothers"-- but not mutual."We are married to each
other". "You _are_ a boor".----The desideratum of conversational
clarity concerns the manner of expression. [His later reference to Modus or Mode
as used by Kant as one of the four
categories] for any conversational contribution. It includes the IMPORTANT
expectations of relevance to understanding and also insists that the main
import of an utterance be clear and explicit. (“Explicate!”) These two factors
are constantly to be WEIGHED against two
FUNDAMENTAL and SOMETIMES COMPETING DEMANDS. Contributions to a conversation
are aimed towards the agreed current purposes by the PRINCIPLE of Conversational
Benevolence. The principle of CONVERSATIONAL SELF-LOVE ensures the assumption
on the part of both participants that neither will go to unnecessary trouble
[LEAST EFFORT] in framing their contribution. This has been a topic of interest
to Noh end. In "Conversational Immanuel" Grice tries different ways
of making sense -- it is very easy to do so -- of Grice's distinctions that go
over the head of some linguists I know! Reasonable versus rational for example.
A Rawlsian distinction of sorts. Rational is too weak. We need 'reasonable'.
So, what sort of reasonableness is that which results from this harmonious, we
hope, clash of self-love and benevolence? Grice tried, wittily, to extend the
purposes of conversation to involve MUTUALLY INFLUENCING EACH OTHER -- a
reciprocal. (WoW, ii). And there's a mythical reconstruction of this in his
"Meaning Revisited" which he contributed to this symposium organised
by N. Smith on Mutua knowledge. But issues remains, we hope. The concept of
‘candour’is especially basic for Grice since it is constitutive of what it
means to identify the ‘significatum.’ As he notes, ‘false’ information is no
information. This is serious, because it has to do with the acceptum. A
contribution which is not trustworthy is not deemed a contribution. It is
conceptually impossible to intend to PROVIDE information if you are aware that
you are not being trustworthy and not conveying it. As for the degree of
explicitness, as Grice puts it. Since in communication in a certain fashion all
must be public, if an idea or thesis is heavily obscured, it can no longer be
regarded as having been propounded. This gives acceptum justification to the
correlative desideratum of conversational clarity. On top, if there is a level
of obscurity, the thing is not deemed to have been a communicatum or
significatum. It is all about confidence, you know. U expects A will find him
confident. Thus we find in Short and Lewis, “confīdo,” wich they render as
“to trust confidently in something,” and also, “confide in, rely firmly upon,
to believe, be assured of,” as an enhancing of “sperare,” in Cicero’s Att. 6,
9, 1. Trust and rationality are pre-requisites of conversation. Urmson develops
this. They phrase in Urmson is "implied claim." Whenever U makes a
conversational contribution in a standard context, there is an implied claim to
U being trustworthy and reasonable. What do Grice and Urmson mean by an
"implied claim"? It is obvious enough, but they both love to expand.
Whenever U utters an expression which can be used to convey truth or falsehood
there is an implied claim to trustworthiness by U, unless the situation shows
that this is not so. U may be acting or reciting or incredulously echoing the
remark of another, or flouting the expectation. This, Grice and Urmson think,
may need an explanation. Suppose that U utters, in an ordinary
circumstance, ‘It will rain tomorrow,’ or ‘It rained yesterday,’ or ‘It is
raining.’ This act carries with it the claim that U should be trusted and
licenses A to believe that it will rain tomorrow. By this is meant that
just as it is understood that no U will give an order unless he is entitled to
give orders, so it is understood that no U will utter a sentence of a kind
which can be used to make a statement unless U is willing to claim that that
statement is true, and hence one would be acting in a misleading manner if one
uttered the sentence if he was not willing to make that claim. Here, the
predicate “implies that …,” Grice, Grant, Moore, Nowell-Smith, and Urmson
hasten to add, is being used in such a way that, if there is a an expectation
that a thing is done in Circumstance C, U implies that C holds if he does the
thing. The point is often made if not always in the terms Grice uses, and it is,
Urmson and Grice believe, in substance uncontroversial. Grice and Urmson wish
to make the point that, when an utterer U deploys a hedge with an indicative
sentence, there is not merely an implied claim that the whole statement is true
but also that is true. The implied or expressed claim by the utterer to
trustworthiness need not be very strong. The whole point of a hedge is to
modify or weaken (if not, as Grice would have it, flout) the claim by U to full
trustworthiness which would be implied by the unhedged assertion. But
even if U utters “He is, I suppose, at home;” or “I guess that the penny
will come down heads," U expresses, or for Urmson plainly implies,
with however little reason, that this is what U accepts as worth the trust by
A. Now Grice and Urmson meet an objection which is made by some philosophers to
this comparison. Grice and Urmson intend to meet the objection by a fairly
detailed examination of the example which they themselves would most likely
choose. In doing this Grice and Urmson further explain the use of a
parenthetical verb. The adverb is "probably" and the verb is “I
believe.” To say, that something is probable, the imaginary objector will say,
is to imply that it is reasonable to believe, that the evidence justifies a
guarded claim for the trust or trustworthiness of U and the truth of the
statement. But to say that someone else, a third person, believes something
does not imply that it is reasonable for U or A to believe it, nor that the
evidence justifies the guarded or implied claim to factivity or truth which U
makes. Therefore, the objector continues, the difference between the use
of “I believe” and “probably” is not, as Grice and Urmson suggest, merely one
of nuance and degree of impersonality. In one case, “probably,” reasonableness
is implied; in the other, “believe,” it is not. This objection is met by Grice
and Urmson. They do so by making a general point. To use the
rational-reasonable distinction in “Conversational implicaturum” and “Aspects,”
there is an implied claim by U to reasonableness. Further to an implied
claim to trust whenever a sentence is uttered in a standard context, now Grice
and Urmson add, to meet the sceptical objection about the contrast between
“probably” and “I believe” that, whenever U makes a statement in a standard
context there is an implied claim to reasonableness. This contention must be
explained alla Kant. Cf. Strawson on the presumption of conversational
relevance, and Austin, Moore, Nowell-Smith, Grant, and Warnock. To use
Hart’s defeasibility, and Hall’s excluder, unless U is acting or story-telling,
or preface his remarks with some such phrase as “I know Im being silly,
but …” or, “I admit it is unreasonable, but …” it is, Grice and
Urmson think, a presupposition or expectation of communication or conversation
that a communicator will not make a statement, thereby implying this trust,
unless he has some ground, however tenuous, for the statement. To
utter “The King is visiting Oxford tomorrow,” or “The President of the BA has a
corkscrew in his pocket,” and then, when asked why the utterer is uttering
that, to answer “Oh, for no reason at all,” would be to sin,
theologically, against the basic conventions governing the use of discourse.
Grice goes on to provide a Kantian justification for that, hence his amusing
talk of maxims and stuff. Therefore, Urmson and Grice think there is an
implied or expressed claim to reasonableness which goes with all
our statements, i.e. there is a mutual expectation that a communicator will not
make a statement unless he is prepared to claim and defend its reasonablenesss.
Cf. Grice’s desideratum of conversational candour, subsumed under the
over-arching principle of conversational helpfulness (formerly conversational
benevolence-cum-self-love). Grice thinks that the principle of
conversational benevolence has to be weighed against the principle of
conversational self-love. The result is the overarching principle of
conversational helpfulness. Clarity gets in the picture. The desideratum of
conversational clarity is a reasonable requirement for conversants to abide
by. Grice follows some observations by Warnock. The logical grammar
of “trust,” “candour,” “charity,” “sincerity,” “decency,” “honesty,” is subtle,
especially when we are considering the two sub-goals of conversation: giving
and receiving information/influencing and being influenced by others. In both
sub-goals, trust is paramount. The explorations of trust has become an Oxonian
hobby, with authors not such like Warnock, but Williams, and others. Grice’s
essay is entitled, “Trust, metaphysics, value.” Trust as a corollary of the
principle of conversational helpfulness. In a given conversational
setting, assuming the principle of conversational helpfulness is operating, U
is assumed by A to be trustworthy and candid. There are two modes of
trust, which relate to the buletic sub-goal and the doxastic sub-goal which
Grice assumes the principle of conversational helpfulness captures:
giving and receiving information, and influencing and being influenced by
others. In both sub-goals, trust is key. In the doxastic realm, trust
has to do, not so much or only, with truth (with which the expression is
cognate), or satisfactoriness-value, but evidence and probability. In the
buletic realm, there are the dimensions of satisfactoriness-value (‘good’
versus ‘true’), and ‘ground’ versus evidence, which becomes less crucial. But
note that one is trustworthy regarding BOTH the buletic attitude and the
doxastic attitude. Grice mentions this or that buletic attitudes which is not
usually judged in terms of evidential support (“I vow to thee my country.”)
However, in the buletic realm, U is be assumed as trustworthy if U has the
buletic attitude he is expressing. The cheater, the insincere, the dishonest,
the untrustworthy, for Grice is not irrational, just repugnant. How immoral is
the idea that honesty is the best policy? Is Kant right in thinking there is no
right to refrain from trust? Surely it is indecent. For Kant, there is no
motivation or ‘motive,’ pure or impure, behind telling the truthit’s just a
right, and an obligationan imperative. Being trustworthy for Kant is associated
with a pure motive. Grice agrees. Decency comes into the picture. An indecent
agent may still be rational, but in such a case, conversation may still be seen
as rational (if not reasonable) and surely not be seen as rational helpfulness
or co-operation, but rational adversarial competition, rather, a zero-sum game.
Grice found the etymology of ‘decent’ too obscure. Short and Lewis have “dĕcet,”
which they deem cognate with Sanscrit “dacas,” ‘fame,’ and Grecian “δοκέω,‘to
seem,’ ‘to think,’ and with Latin ‘decus,’ ‘dingus.’ As an impersonal verb,
Short and Lewis render it as ‘it is seemly, comely, becoming,; it beseems,
behooves, is fitting, suitable, proper (for syn. v. debeo init.): decere quasi
aptum esse consentaneumque tempori et personae, Cic. Or. 22, 74; cf. also nunc
quid aptum sit, hoc est, quid maxime deceat in oratione videamus, id. de Or. 3,
55, 210 (very freq. and class.; not in Caesar). Grice’s idea of decency is
connected to his explorations on rational and reasonable. To cheat may be
neither unreasonable nor rational. It is just repulsive. Indecent, in
other words. In all this, Grice is concerned with ordinary language, and
treasures Austin questioning Warnock, when Warnock was pursuing a fellowship at
Magdalen. “What would you say the difference is between ‘Smith plays cricket
rather properly’ and ‘Smith plays cricket rather incorrectly’?” They spent the
whole dinner over the subtlety. By desserts, Warnock was in love with
Austin. Cf. Grice on his prim and proper Aunt Matilda. The exploration by
Grice on trust is Warnockian in character, or vice versa. In “Object of
morality,” Warnock has trust as key, as indeed, the very object of morality.
Grice starts to focus on trust in an Oxford seminars on the implicaturum. If
there is a desideratum of conversational candour, and the goal of the principle
of conversational helpfulness is that of giving and receiving information, and
influencing and being influenced by others, ‘false’ ‘information’ is just no
informationSince exhibiteness trumps protrepsis, this applies to the buletic,
too. Grice loved that Latin dictum, “tuus candor.” He makes an early defence of
this in his fatal objection to Malcolm. A philosopher cannot intentionally
instill a falsehood in his tutee, such as “Decapitation willed the death of
Charles I” (the alleged paraphrase of the paradoxical philosopher saying that
‘causing’ is ‘willing’ and rephrasing “Decapitation was the cause of the death
of Charles I.” There is, for both Grice and Apel, a transcendental (if weak)
justification, not just utilitarian (honesty as the best policy), as Stalnaker
notes in his contribution to the Grice symposium for APA. Unlike Apel, the transcendental
argument is a weak one in that Grice aims to show that conversation that did
not abide by trust would be unreasonable, but surely still ‘possible.’ It is
not a transcendental justification for the ‘existence’ of conversation
simpliciter, but for the existence of ‘reasonable,’ decent conversation. If we
approach charity in the first person, we trust ourselves that some of our
beliefs have to be true, and that some of our desires have to be satisfactory
valid, and we are equally trusted by our conversational partners. This is
Grice’s conversational golden rule. What would otherwise be the point of
holding that conversation is rational co-operation? What would be the point of
conversation simpliciter? Urmson follows Austin, so Austin’s considerations on
this, notably in “Other minds,” deserve careful examination. Urmson was of
course a member of Grice’s play group, and these are the philosophers that we
consider top priority. Another one was P. H. Nowell-Smith. At least two of his
three rules deserve careful examination. Nowell-Smith notes that this or that ‘rule’
of contextual implication is not meant to be taken as a ‘rigid rule’. Unlike
this or that rule of entailment, a conversational rule can be broken without
the utterer being involved in self-contradiction or absurdity. When U uses an
expression to make a statement, it is contextually implied that he believes it
to be true. Similarly, when he uses it to perform any of the other jobs for
which sentences are used, it is contextually implied that he is using it for
one of the jobs that it normally does. This rule is often in fact broken.
Anti-Kantian lying, Bernhard-type play-acting, Andersen-type story-telling, and
Wildeian irony is each a case in which U breaks the rule, or flouts the
expectation, either overtly or covertly. But each of these four cases is a
secondary use, i.e. a use to which an expression cannot logically or
conceptually be put unless, as Hart would have it, it has a primary use. There
is no limit to the possible uses to which an expression may be put. In many
cases a man makes his point by deliberately using an expression in a queer way
or even using it in the ‘sense’ opposite to its unique normal one, as in irony
(“He is a fine friend,” implying that he is a scoundrel). The distinction
between a primary and a secondary use is important because many an argument
used by a philosopher consists in pointing out some typical example of the way
in which some expression E is used. Such an argument is always illegitimate if
the example employed is an example of a secondary use, however common such a
use may be. U contextually implies that he has what he himself believes to be
good reasons for his statement. Once again, we often break this rule and we
have special devices for indicating when we are breaking it. Phrases such as
‘speaking offhand …,’ 'I do not really know but …,’ and ‘I should be inclined
to say that …,’ are used by scrupulous persons to warn his addressee that U has
not got what seem to him good reasons for his statement. But unless one of
these guarding phrases is used we are entitled to believe that U believes
himself to have good reasons for his statement and we soon learn to *mistrust*
people who habitually infringe this rule. It is, of course, a mistake to infer
from what someone says categorically that he has in fact good reasons for what
he says. If I tell you, or ‘inform’ to you, that the duck-billed platypus is a
bird (because I ' remember ' reading this in a book) I am unreliable; but I am
not using language improperly. But if I tell you this without using one of the
guarding phrases and without having what I think good reasons, I am. What U
says may be assumed to be relevant to the interests of his addressee. This is
the most important of the three rules; unfortunately it is also the most
frequently broken. Bores are more common than liars or careless talkers. This
rule is particularly obvious in the case of answers to questions, since it is
assumed that the answer is an answer. Not all statements are answers to questions;
information may be volunteered. Nevertheless the publication of a text-book on
trigonometry implies that the author believes that there are people who want to
learn about trigonometry, and to give advice implies a belief that the advice
is relevant to one’s addressee's problem. This rule is of the greatest
importance for ethics. For the major problem of ethics is that of bridging the
gap between a decisions, an ought-sentence, an injunction, and a sentence used
to give advice on the one hand and the statements of *fact*, sometime regarding
the U’s soul, that constitute the reasons for these on the other. It is in
order to bridge these gaps that insight into necessary synthetic connexions is
invoked. This rule of contextual implication may help us to show that there is
no gap to be bridged because the reason-giving sentence must turn out to be
also *practical* from the start and not a statement of *fact*, even concerning
the state of the U’s soul, from which a practical sentence can somehow be
deduced. This rule is, therefore, more than a rule of good manners; or rather
it shows how, in matters of ordinary language, rules of good manners shade into
logical rules. Unless we assume that it is being observed we cannot understand
the connexions between decisions, advice, and appraisals and the reasons given
in support of them. Refs.: The main reference is in the
first set of ‘Logic and conversation.’ Many keywords are useful, not just
‘candour,’ but notably ‘trust.’ (“Rationality and trust,” c. 9-f. 5, “Trust, metaphysics,
and value,” c. 9-f. 20, and “Aristotle and friendship, rationality, trust, and
decency,” c. 6-f. 18), BANC.
DE-SIDERALIS -- desideratum of
conversational clarity. There is some overlap here with
Grice’s category of conversational mannerof Grice’s maxim of conversational
perspicuity [sic]and at least one of the maxims proper, ‘obscuirty avoidance,’
or maxim of conversational obscurity avoidance. But at Oxford he defined the
philosopher as the one whose profession it is to makes clear things obscure. The
word desideratum has to be taken seriously. It involves freedom. In what way is
“The pillar box seems red to me” less perspicuous than “The pillar box is red”?
In all! If mutual expectation not to mislead and produce the stronger
contribution are characteristics of candour, expectation of mutual relevance to
interests, and being explicit and clear in your point are two characteristics
of this desideratum. “Candour” and “clarity’ are somewhat co-relative for
Grice. He is interested in identifying this or that desideratum. By having two
of them, he can play. So, how UNCLEAR can a conversationalist be provided he
WANTS to be candid? Candour trumps clarity. But too much ‘unperspicuity’ may
lead to something not being deemed an ‘implicaturum’ at all. Grice is
especially concerned with philosopher’s paradoxes. Why would Strawson say that
the usage of ‘not,’ ‘and,’ ‘or,’ ‘if,’ ‘if and only if,’ ‘all,’ ‘some (at least
one), ‘the,’ do not correspond to the logician’s use? Questions of candour and
clarity interact. Grice’s first application, which he grants is not original,
relates to “The pillar box seems red” versus “The pillar box is red.” “I would
not like to give the false impression that the pillar box is not red” seems
less clear than “The pillar box is red”Yet the unperspicuous contributin is
still ‘candid,’ in the sense that it expresses a truth. So one has to be
careful. On top, philosophers like Lewis were using ‘clarity is not enough’ as
a battle cry! Grice’s favourite formulations of the imperatives here are
‘self-contradictory,’ and for which he uses ‘[sic]’, notably: “Be perspicuous
[sic]’ and “Be brief. Avoid unnecessary prolixity [sic].’ Desirabile,
neuter, out of ‘desideratum’so by using ‘desirability,’ Grice is getting into
the modals -- desirability: Correlative: credibility. For Grice,
credibility reduces to desirability (He suggests that the reverse may also be
possible but does not give a proposal). This Grice calls the Jeffrey operator.
If Urmson likes ‘probably,’ Grice likes ‘desirably.’ This theorem is a
corollary of the desirability axiom by Jeffrey, which is: "If prob XY = 0,
for a prima facie PF(A V B) A (x E w)] =
PFA A (x E w)] + PfB A (x El+ w)]. This is the account by Grice of the
adaptability of a pirot to its changeable environs. Grice borrows the
notion of probability (henceforth, “pr”) from Davidson, whose early claim to
fame was to provide the logic of the notion. Grice abbreviates probability
by Pr. and compares it to a buletic operator ‘pf,’ ‘for prima facie,’ attached
to ‘De’ for desirability. A rational agent must calculate both the probability
and the desirability of his action. For both probability and desirability,
the degree is crucial. Grice symbolises this by d: probability in degree d;
probability in degree d. The topic of life Grice relates to that of
adaptation and surival, and connects with his genitorial programme of creature
construction (Pology.): life as continued operancy. Grice was fascinated with
life (Aristotle, bios) because bios is what provides for Aristotle the definition
(not by genus) of psyche. The steps are as follows. Pf(p ⊃!q)/Pr(p ⊃ q); pf((p1 p2) ⊃!q)/pr(p1 p2 ⊃q);
pf((p1 p2 p3) ⊃!q)/pr(p1 p2
p3 p4 ⊃q);
pf (all things before me ⊃!q)/pr (all things before me ⊃
q); pf (all things considered ⊃ !q)/pr(all things considered ⊃ q); !q/|- q; G wills !q/G judges q. Strictly, Grice avoids
using the noun probability (other than for the title of this or that lecture).
One has to use the sentence-modifier ‘probably,’ and ‘desirably.’ So the
specific correlative to the buletic prima facie ‘desirably’ is the doxastic ‘probably.’
Grice liked the Roman sound to ‘prima facie,’ ‘at first sight’: “exceptio, quae prima facie justa videatur.” Refs.:
The two main sources are “Probability, desirability, and mood operators,” c.
2-f. 11, and “Modality, desirability and probability,” c. 8-ff. 14-15. But most
of the material is collected in “Aspects,” especially in the third and fourth
lectures. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
Non-detachability. A rather abstract notion. One thinks of ‘detach’ in
physical terms (‘semi-detached house’). Grice means it in an abstract way. To
detachwhat is it that we detach? We detach an implicaturum. Grice is not so
much concerned with how to DETACH an implicaturum, but how sometimes you
cannot. It’s NON-detachability that is the criterion. And this should be a
matter of a prioricity. However, since style gets in the picture, he has to
allow for exceptions to this criterion. A conversational, even philosophically
interesting one, generated by the conversational category of modus (as the
maxim of orderliness: “he went to bed and took off his boots”) is detachable. How
to interpret this in an one-off predicament. Cf. non-detachability. And the
other features or tests or catalysts that Grice uses. In Causal Theory of
Perception, the ideas are FOUR, which he nicely summarises in WoW on the
occasion of eliminating the excursus. And then he expands on Essay II, as an
update. His tutees at Oxford are aware of the changes. Few care, though. Even
his colleagues don’t, they are into their own things. So let’s compare the two
versions of the catalysts in Causal and Essay II. Version of the four catalysts
up to the first two examples in “Causal”: The first cxample is a stock case of what
is sometimes called " prcsupposition " and it is often held that here
1he truth of what is irnplicd is a necessary condition of the original
statement's beirrg cither true or false. This might be disputed, but it is at
lcast arguable that it is so, and its being arguable might be enough to
distinguish-this type of case from others. I shall however for convenience
assume that the common view mentioned is correct. This consideration clearly
distinguishes (1) from (2); even if the implied proposition were false, i.e. if
there were no reason in the world to contrast poverty with honesty either in
general or in her case, the original statement could still be false; it would
be false if for example she were rich and dishonest. One might perhaps be less
comfortable about assenting to its truth if the implied contrast did not in
fact obtain; but the possibility of falsity is enough for the immediate
purpose. My next experiment on these examples is to ask what it is in each case
which could properly be said to be the vehicle of implication (to do the
implying). There are at least four candidates, not necessarily mutually
exclusive. Supposing someone to have uttered one or other of my sample
sentences, we may ask whether the vehicle of implication would be (a) what the
speaker said (or asserted), or (b) the speaker (" did he imply that . . .
.':) or (c) the words the speaker used, or (d) his saying that (or again his
saying that in that way); or possibly some plurality of these items. As regards
(a) I think (1) and (2) differ; I think it would be correct to say in the case
of (l) that what he speaker said (or asserted) implied that Smith had been
beating this wife, and incorrect to say in the case of (2) that what te said
(or asserted) implied that there was a contrast between e.g., honesty and
poverty. A test on which I would rely is the following : if accepting that the
implication holds involves one in r27 128 H. P. GRICE accepting an
hypothetical' if p then q ' where 'p ' represents the original statement and ' q'
represents what is implied, then what the speaker said (or asserted) is a
vehicle of implication, otherwise not. To apply this rule to the given
examples, if I accepted the implication alleged to hold in the case of (1), I
should feel compelled to accept the hypothetical " If Smith has left off
beating his wife, then he has been beating her "; whereas if I accepted
the alleged implication in the case of (2), I should not feel compelled to
accept the hypothetical " If she was poor but honest, then there is some
contrast between poverty and honesty, or between her poverty and her
honesty." The other candidates can be dealt with more cursorily; I should
be inclined to say with regard to both (l) and (2) that the speaker could be
said to have implied whatever it is that is irnplied; that in the case of (2)
it seems fairly clear that the speaker's words could be said to imply a
contrast, whereas it is much less clear whether in the case of (1) the
speaker's words could be said to imply that Smith had been beating his wife;
and that in neither case would it be evidently appropriate to speak of his
saying that, or of his saying that in that way, as implying what is implied.
The third idea with which I wish to assail my two examples is really a twin
idea, that of the detachability or cancellability of the implication. (These
terms will be explained.) Consider example (1): one cannot fi.nd a form of
words which could be used to state or assert just what the sentence "
Smith has left off beating his wife " might be used to assert such that
when it is used the implication that Smith has been beating his wife is just
absent. Any way of asserting what is asserted in (1) involves the irnplication
in question. I shall express this fact by saying that in the case of (l) the implication
is not detqchable from what is asserted (or simpliciter, is not detachable).
Furthermore, one cannot take a form of words for which both what is asserted
and what is implied is the same as for (l), and then add a further clause
withholding commitment from what would otherwise be implied, with the idea of
annulling the implication without annulling the assertion. One cannot
intelligibly say " Smith has left off beating his wife but I do not mean
to imply that he has been beating her." I shall express this fact by
saying that in the case of (1) the implication is not cancellable (without THE
CAUSAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION r29 cancelling the assertion). If we turn to (2) we
find, I think, that there is quite a strong case for saying that here the implication
ls detachable. Thcrc sccms quitc a good case for maintaining that if, instead
of sayirrg " She is poor but shc is honcst " I were to say " She
is poor and slre is honcst", I would assert just what I would havc
asscrtcct ii I had used thc original senterrce; but there would now be no
irnplication of a contrast between e.g', povery and honesty. But the question
whether, in tl-re case of (2), thc inrplication is cancellable, is slightly
more cornplex. Thcrc is a sonse in which we may say that it is non-cancellable;
if sorncone were to say " She is poor but she is honest, though of course
I do not mean to imply that there is any contrast between poverty and honesty
", this would seem a puzzling and eccentric thing to have said; but though
we should wish to quarrel with the speaker, I do not think we should go so far
as to say that his utterance was unintelligible; we should suppose that he had
adopted a most peculiar way of conveying the the news that she was poor and
honesl. The fourth and last test that I wish to impose on my exarnples is to
ask whether we would be inclined to regard the fact that the appropriate
implication is present as being a matter of the meaning of some particular word
or phrase occurring in the sentences in question. I am aware that this may not
be always a very clear or easy question to answer; nevertheless Iwill risk the
assertion that we would be fairly happy to say that, as regards (2), the
factthat the implication obtains is a matter of the meaning of the word ' but
'; whereas so far as (l) is concerned we should have at least some inclination
to say that the presence of the implication was a matter of the meaning of some
of the words in the sentence, but we should be in some difficulty when it came
to specifying precisely which this word, or words are, of which this is true.
After third example introduced:It is plain that there is no case at all for
regarding the truth of what is implied here as a pre-condition of the truth or
falsity cf 130 H. P. GRICB what I have asserted; a denial of the truth of what
is implied would have no bearing at all on whether what I have asserted is true
or false. So (3) is much closer to (2) than (1) in this respect. Next, I (the
speaker) could certainly be said to have implied that Jones is hopeless
(provided that this is what I intended to get across) and my saying that (at
any rate my saying /s/ that and no more) is also certainly a vehicle of
implication. On the other hand my words and what I say (assert) are, I think,
not here vehicles of implication. (3) thus differs from both (1) and (2). The
implication is cancellable but not detachable; if I add o'I do not of course
mean to imply that he is no good at philosophy " my whole utterance is
intelligible and linguistically impeccable, even though it may be extraordinary
tutorial behaviour; and I can no longer be said to have implied that he was no
good, even though perhaps that is what my colleagues might conclude to be the
case if I had nothing else to say. The implication is not however, detachable;
any other way of making, in the same context of utterance, just the assertion I
have made would involve the same implication. Finally, the fact that the
implication holds is not a matter of any particular word or phrase within the
sentence which I have uttered; so in this respect (3) is certainly different
from (2) and, possibly different from (1). One obvious fact should be mentioned
before I pass to the last example. This case of implication is unlike the
others in that the utterance of the sentence " Jones has beautiful
handwriting etc." does not standardly involve the implication here
attributed to it; it requires a special context (that it should be uttered at
Collections) to attach the implication to its uttgrance. After fourth and last
example is introduced: in the case of (a) I can produce a strong argument in
favour of holding that the fulfllment of the THE CAUSAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION
implication of the speaker's ignorance is not a precaution of the truth or
falsity of the disjunctive statement. Suppose (c) that the speaker knows that
his wife is in the kitchen, (b) that the house has only two rooms (and no
passages etc.) Even though (a) is the casc, thc spcaker can certainly say truly
" My wife is in the housc "; he is merely not being as informative as
he could bc if nccd arose. But the true proposition that his wife is in thc
housc together with the true proposition that the house consists entirely of a
kitchen and a bedroom, entail the proposition that his wife is either in the
kitchen or in the bedroom. But il to cxpress the proposition p in certain
circumstances would bc to spcak truly, and p, togelher with another true
proposition, crrtails q, then surely to express 4 in the same circvmstances
must be to speak truly. So I shall take it that the disjunctive statement in
(4) does not fail to be true or false if the implied ignorance is in fact not
realized. Secondly, I think it is fairly clear that in this case, as in the
case of (3), we could say that the speaker had irnplied that he did not know,
and also that his saying that (or his saying that rather than something else,
v2., in which room she was) implied that he did not know. Thirdly, the
irnplication is in a sense non-detachable, in that if in a given context the
utterance of the disjunctive sentence would involve the implication that the
speaker did not know in which room his his wife was, this implication would
also be involved in the utterance of any other form of words which would make
the same assertion(e.g., "The alternatives are (1) .(2) " or "
One of the following things is the case: (a) (r) "). ln another possible
sense, however, the implication could perhaps bc said to be detachable: for
there will be some contexls of ruttcrance in Which the normal implication will
not hold; e.g., thc spokesman who announces, " The next conference will be
cither in Geneva or in New York " perhaps does not imply that lrc does not
know which; for he may well be just not saying which. This points to the fact
that the implication is cancellablg; :r nrarl could say, " My wife is
either in the kitchen or in the bctlroorn " in circumstances in which the
implication would rrornrally be present, and then go on, " Mind you, I'm
not saying tlrrrt I don't know which"; this might be unfriendly (and
grcr'lrrps ungrammatical) but would be perfectly intelligible, I2 131 132 H. P.
GRICB Finally, the fact that the utterance of the disjunctive sentence normally
involves the implication of the speaker's ignorance of the truth-values of the
disjuncts is, I should like to say, to be explained by reference to a general principle
governing the use of language. Exactly what this principle is I am uncertain,
but L first sftol would be the following: "One should not make a weaker
statement rather than a stronger one unless there is a good reason for so
doing." This is certainly not an adequate formulation but will perhaps be
good enough for my present purpose. On the assumption that such a principle as
this is of general application, one can draw the conclusion that the utterance
of a disjunctive sentence would imply the speaker's ignorance of the
truth-values of the disjuncts, given that (a) the obvious reason for not making
a statemcnt which there is some call on one to make is that one is not in a
position to make it, and given (6) the logical fact that each disjunct entails
the disjunctive, but not vice versa; which being so, the disjuncts are stronger
than the disjunctive. lf the outline just given js on the right lines, then I
would wish to say, we have a reason for refusing in the case of (4) to regard
the implication of the speaker's ignorance as being part of the meaning of the
word'or'; someone who knows about the logical relation between a disjunction
and its disjuncts, and who also knew about the alleged general principle
governing discourse, could work out for hirnself that disjunctive utterances
would involve the implication which they do in fact involve. I must insist,
however, that my aim in discussing this last point has been merelyto indicate
the position I would wish to take up, and not to argue scriously in favour of
it. My main purpose in this sub-section has been to introduce four ideas of
which l intend to make some use; and to provide some conception of tlre ways in
which they apply or fail to apply to various types of implication. By the
numbering of it, it seems he has added an extra. It’s FIVE catalysts now. He’ll
go back to them in Essay IV, and in Presupposition and Conversational
Impicature. He needs those catalysts. Why? It seems like he is always thinking
that someone will challenge him! This is Grice: “We can now show that, it
having been stipulated as being what it is, a conversational implicaturum must
possess certain features. Or rather here are some catalyst ideas which will
help us to determine or individuate. Four tests for implicaturum as it were. First,
CANCELLABILITYas noted in “Causal Theory”for two of the examples (‘beautiful
handwriting’ and ‘kitchen or bedroom’ and NEGATIVE version of “You don’t cease
to eat iron”) and the one of the pillar box -- Since, to assume the presence of
a conversational implicum, we have to assume that the principle of
conversational co-operation is being observed, and since it is possible to opt
out of the observation of this principle, it follows that an implicaturum can
be canceled in a particular case. It may be explicitly canceled, if need there
be, by the addition of a clause by which the utterer states or implies that
he has opted out (e. g. “The pillar box
seems red but it is.”). Then again it may be contextually (or implicitly)
canceled (e. g. to a very honest person, who knows I disbelieve the examiner
exists, “The loyalty examiner won’t be summoning you at any rate”). The
utterance that usually would carry an implicaturum is used on an occasion that
makes it clear or obvious that the utterer IS opting out without having to bore
his addressee by making this obviousness explicit. There is a second litmus
test or catalyst idea. nsofar as the calculation that a implicaturum is present
requires, besides contextual and background information only a knowledge or understanding
or processing of what has been said or explicitly conveyed (‘are you playing
squash? B shows bandaged leg) (or the ‘conventional’ ‘commitment’ of the
utterance), and insofar as the manner or style, of FORM, rather than MATTER, of
expression plays no role in the calculation, it will NOT be possible to find
another way of explicitly conveying or putting forward the same thing, the same
so-and-so (say that q follows from p) which simply ‘lacks’ the unnecessary implicaturum
in question -- except [will his excluders never end?] where some special
feature of the substituted version [this other way which he says is not
conceivable] is itself relevant to the determination of the implicaturum (in
virtue of this or that conversational maxims pertaining to the category of
conversational mode. If we call this feature, as Grice does in “Causal Theory,”
‘non-detachability’in that the implicaturum cannot be detached from any
alternative expression that makes the same point -- one may expect the implicaturum
carried by this or that locution to have a high degree of non-detachability. ALTERNATIVES
FOR “NOT” Not, it is not the case, it is false that. There’s nothing unique
about ‘not’.ALTERNATIVES FOR “AND” and, nothing, furthermore, but. There othing
unique about ‘and’ALTERNATIVES FOR “OR”: One of the following is true. There is
nothing unique about ‘or’ALTERNATIVES FOR “IF” Provided. ‘There is nothing
unique about ‘if’ALTERNATIVES FOR “THE”There is at least one and at most one.
And it exists. (existence and uniqueness). There is nothing unique about
‘the’.THIS COVERS STRAWSON’S first problem.What about the other English
philosophers?AUSTINon ‘voluntarily’ ALTERNATIVES to ‘voluntarily,’ with the
will, willingly, intentionally. Nothing unique about ‘voluntarily.’STRAWSON on
‘true’it is the case, redundance theory, nothing. Nothing unique about
‘true’HART ON good. To say that ‘x is commendable’ is to recommend x. Nothing
unique about ‘good.’HART on ‘carefully.’ Da Vinci painted Mona Lisa carefully,
with caution, with precaution. Nothing unique about ‘carefully.’THIRD LITMUS
TEST or idea. To speak approximately, since the calculation of the presence of
an implicaturum presupposes an initial knowledge, or grasping, or
understanding, or taking into account of the ‘conventional’ force (not in
Austin’s sense, but translating Latin ‘vis’) of the expression the utterance of
which carries the implicaturum, a conversational implicaturum will be a
condition that is NOT, be definition, on risk of circularity of otiosity,
included in the original specification of the expression's conventional force.
If I’m saying that ‘seems’ INVOLVES, as per conventional force, ‘doubt or
denial,’what’s my point? If Strawson is right that ‘if’ has the conventional
force of conventionally committing the utterer with the belief that q follows
from p, why bother? And if that were so, how come the implicaturum is still
cancellable?Though it may not be impossible for what starts life, so to speak,
as a conversational implicaturum to become conventionalized, to suppose that
this is so in a given case would require special justification. (Asking Lewis).
So, initially at least, a conversational implicaturum is, by definition and
stipulation, not part of the sense, truth-condition, conventional force, or
part of what is explicitly conveyed or put forward, or ‘meaning’ of the
expression to the employment of which the impicatum attaches. FOURTH LITMUS
TEST or catalyst idea.Mentioned in “Causal theory” The alethic valueconjoined
with the test about the VEHICLE --. He has these as two different tests in
“Causal”. Since the truth of a conversational implicaturum is not required by (is
not a condition for) the truth of what is said or explicitly conveyed (what is
said or explicatedthe explicatum or explcitum, or what is explicitly conveyed
or communicated) may be true -- what is implicated may be falsethat he has
beautiful handwriting, that q follows from p, that the utterer is ENDORSING
what someone else said, that the utterer is recommending x, that the person who
is said to act carefully has taken precaution), the implicaturum is NOT carried
by what is said or the EXPLICATUM or EXPLICITUM, or is explicitly conveyed, but
only by the ‘saying’ or EXPLICATING or EXPLICITING of what is said or of the
explicatum or explicitum, or by 'putting it that way.’.The fifth and last
litmus test or catalyst idea. Since, to calculate a conversational implicaturum
is to calculate what has to be supposed in order to preserve the supposition
that the utterer is a rational, benevolent, altruist agent, and that the principle
of conversational cooperation is being observed, and since there may be various
possible specific explanations or alternatives that fill the gap hereas to what
is the content of the psychological attitude to be ascribed to the utterer, a
list of which may be open, or open-ended, the conversational implicaturum in
such cases will technically be an open-ended disjunction of all such specific
explanations, which may well be infinitely non-numerable. Since the list of
these IS open, the implicaturum will have just the kind of INDETERMINACY or
lack of determinacy that an implicaturum appears in most cases to possess.
DE-TERMINATVM
-- determinatum:
determinable, a general characteristic or property analogous to a genus except
that while a property independent of a genus differentiates a species that
falls under the genus, no such independent property differentiates a
determinate that falls under the determinable. The color blue, e.g., is a
determinate with respect of the determinable color: there is no property F
independent of color such that a color is blue if and only if it is F. In
contrast, there is a property, having equal sides, such that a rectangle is a
square if and only if it has this property. Square is a properly differentiated
species of the genus rectangle. W. E. Johnson introduces the terms
‘determinate’ and ‘determinable’ in his Logic, Part I, Chapter 11. His account
of this distinction does not closely resemble the current understanding
sketched above. Johnson wants to explain the differences between the
superficially similar ‘Red is a color’ and ‘Plato is a man’. He concludes that
the latter really predicates something, humanity, of Plato; while the former
does not really predicate anything of red. Color is not really a property or
adjective, as Johnson puts it. The determinates red, blue, and yellow are
grouped together not because of a property they have in common but because of
the ways they differ from each other. Determinates under the same determinable
are related to each other and are thus comparable in ways in which they are not
related to determinates under other determinables. Determinates belonging to
different determinables, such as color and shape, are incomparable. ’More
determinate’ is often used interchangeably with ‘more specific’. Many
philosophers, including Johnson, hold that the characters of things are
absolutely determinate or specific. Spelling out what this claim means leads to
another problem in analyzing the relation between determinate and determinable.
By what principle can we exclude red and round as a determinate of red and red
as a determinate of red or round?
determinism, the view that every event or state of affairs is brought
about by antecedent events or states of affairs in accordance with universal
causal laws that govern the world. Thus, the state of the world at any instant
determines a unique future, and that knowledge of all the positions of things
and the prevailing natural forces would permit an intelligence to predict the
future state of the world with absolute precision. This view was advanced by
Laplace in the early nineteenth century; he was inspired by Newton’s success at
integrating our physical knowledge of the world. Contemporary determinists do
not believe that Newtonian physics is the supreme theory. Some do not even
believe that all theories will someday be integrated into a unified theory.
They do believe that, for each event, no matter how precisely described, there
is some theory or system of laws such that the occurrence of that event under
that description is derivable from those laws together with information about
the prior state of the system. Some determinists formulate the doctrine
somewhat differently: a every event has a sufficient cause; b at any given
time, given the past, only one future is possible; c given knowledge of all
antecedent conditions and all laws of nature, an agent could predict at any
given time the precise subsequent history of the universe. Thus, determinists
deny the existence of chance, although they concede that our ignorance of the
laws or all relevant antecedent conditions makes certain events unexpected and,
therefore, apparently happen “by chance.” The term ‘determinism’ is also used
in a more general way as the name for any metaphysical doctrine implying that
there is only one possible history of the world. The doctrine described above
is really scientific or causal determinism, for it grounds this implication on
a general fact about the natural order, namely, its governance by universal
causal law. But there is also theological determinism, which holds that God
determines everything that happens or that, since God has perfect knowledge
about the universe, only the course of events that he knows will happen can
happen. And there is logical determinism, which grounds the necessity of the
historical order on the logical truth that all propositions, including ones
about the future, are either true or false. Fatalism, the view that there are
forces e.g., the stars or the fates that determine all outcomes independently
of human efforts or wishes, is claimed by some to be a version of determinism.
But others deny this on the ground that determinists do not reject the efficacy
of human effort or desire; they simply believe that efforts and desires, which
are sometimes effective, are themselves determined by antecedent factors as in
a causal chain of events. Since determinism is a universal doctrine, it
embraces human actions and choices. But if actions and choices are determined,
then some conclude that free will is an illusion. For the action or choice is
an inevitable product of antecedent factors that rendered alternatives
impossible, even if the agent had deliberated about options. An omniscient
agent could have predicted the action or choice beforehand. This conflict
generates the problem of free will and determinism.
deutero-esperanto: Also GricesePirotese. “Gricese” is best. Arbitrariness
need not be a two-party thing. E communicates to himself that there is danger
by drawing a skull. Grice genially opposed to the idea of a convention. He
hated a convention. A language is not conventional. Meaning is not
conventional. Communication is not conventional. He was even unhappy with the account
of convention by Lewis in terms of an arbitrary co-ordination. While the
co-ordination bit passes rational muster, the arbitrary element is deemed a
necessary condition, and Grice hated that. For Grice there is natural, and
iconic. When a representation ceases to be iconic and becomes, for lack of a
better expression, non-iconic, things get, we may assume conventional. One form
of correlation in his last definition of meaing allows for a conventional
correlation. “Pain!,” the P cries. There is nothing in /pein/ that minimally
resembles the pain the P is suffering. So from his involuntary “Ouch” to his
simulated “Ouch,” he thinks he can say “Pain.” Bennett explored the stages after
that. The dog is shaggy is Grices example. All sorts of resultant procedures
are needed for reference and predication, which may be deemed conventional. One
may refer nonconventionally, by ostension. It seems more difficult to predicate
non-conventionally. But there may be iconic predication. Urquhart promises
twelve parts of speech: each declinable in eleven cases, four numbers, eleven
genders (including god, goddess, man, woman, animal, etc.); and conjugable in
eleven tenses, seven moods, and four voices. The language will translate any
idiom in any other language, without any alteration of the literal sense, but
fully representing the intention. Later, one day, while lying in his bath,
Grice designed deutero-esperanto. The obble is fang may be current only
for Griceian members of the class of utterers. It is only this or that
philosophers practice to utter The obble is fang in such-and-such
circumstances. In this case, the utterer U does have a readiness to utter The
obble is feng in such-and-such circumstances. There is also the scenario in
which The obble is fang is may be conceived by the philosopher not to be deemed
current at all, but the utterance of The obble is feng in such-and-such
circumstances is part of some system of communication which the utterer U
(Lockwith,, Urquart, Wilkins, Edmonds, Grice) has devised but which has never
been put into operation, like the highway code which Grice invent another day
again while lying in his bath. In that case, U does this or that basic or
resultant procedure for the obble is feng in an attenuated but philosophically
legitimate fashion. U has envisaged a possible system of practices which
involve a readiness to utter Example by Grice that does NOT involve a
convention in this usage. Surely Grice can as he indeed did, invent a language, call
it Deutero-Esperanto, Griceish, or Pirotese, which nobody at Oxford ever uses
to communicat. That makes Grice the authoritycf. arkhe, authority, government
(in plural), "authorities"and Grice can lay down, while lying in the
tub, no doubtwhat is proper. A P can be said to potch of some obble o as
fang or as feng. Also to cotch of some obble o, as fang or feng; or to cotch of
one obble o and another obble o as being fid to one another.” In symbols:
(Ex)(Ey).Px Oy potch(x, y, fang) (Ex)(Ey).Px Oy potch(x,
y, feng) (Ex)(Ey).Px Oy cotch(x, y, fang) (Ex)(Ey).Px Ox
cotch(x, y, feng) (Ex)(Ey).Px
Oz Oy cotch(x, fid(y,z)). Let’s say that Ps (as
Russell and Carnap conceived them) inhabit a world of obbles, material
objects, or things. To potch is something like to perceive; to cotch something
like to think. Feng and fang are possible descriptions, much like our
adjectives. Fid is a possible relation between obbles. Grice provides a
symbolisation for content internalisation. The perceiver or cognitive Subjects
perceives or cognises two objects, x, y, as holding a relation of some
type. There is a higher level that Ps can reach when the object of their
potchings and cotchings is not so much objects but states of affairs. Its
then that the truth-functional operators will be brought to existence “”:
cotch(p q) “V”: cotch(p v q) “)”:
)-cotch(p ) q) A P will be able to reject a content, refuse-thinking: ~.
Cotch(~p). When P1 perceives P2, the reciprocals get more complicated. P2
cotches that P1!-judges that p. Grice uses ψ1
for potching and ψ2 for cotching. If P2 is
co-operative, and abides by "The Ps Immanuel," P2 will honour, in a
Kantian benevolent way, his partners goal by adopting temporarily his partners
goal potch(x (portch(y, !p)) ⊃ potch(x,
!p). But by then, its hardly simpler ways. Especially when the Ps outdo
their progenitor Carnap as metaphysicians. The details are under “eschatology,”
but the expressions are here “α izzes α.” This would be the principle of
non-contradiction or identity. P1 applies it war, and utters War is war which
yields a most peculiar implicaturum. “if α izzes β ∧ β izzes γ, α izz γ.” This is transitivity, which is
crucial for Ps to overcome Berkeley’s counterexample to Locke, and define their
identity over time. “if α hazzes β, α izzes β.” Or, what is accidental is not
essential. A P may allow that what is essential is accidental while misleading,
is boringly true. “α hazzes β iff α hazzes x ∧ x izzes β.” “If β is a katholou or universalium, β is
an eidos or forma.” For surely Ps need not be stupid to fail to see
squarrelhood. “if α hazzes β ∧ α
izzes a particular, γ≠α ∧ α izz β.” “α izzes predicable
of β iff ((β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α). “α izzes essentially predicable of β ⊃⊂ β izzes α α izzes
non-essentially/accidentally predicable of β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α). α = β iff α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α. “α izzes an atomon, or individuum ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(β izzes α ⊃ α
izzes β). “α izzes a particular ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(α izzes predicable of β ⊃ (α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α)). α izzes a universalium ⊃⊂ ◊(∃β)(α izzes predicable of α ∧ ~(α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α). α izzes some-thing ⊃ α
izzes an individuum. α izzes an eidos or forma ⊃ (α izzes some-thing ∧ α izzes a universalium); α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ (β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α). “ α izzes essentially predicable of α α izzes accidentally
predicable of β ⊃ α ≠ β. ~(α izzes accidentally predicable of
β) ⊃ α ≠ β. α izzes an kathekaston or particular ⊃ α izzes an individuum; α izz a particular ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x izz α). ~(∃x).(x
izzes a particular ∧ x izzes a forma) ⊢ α
izzes a forma ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x izzes α). x izzes a particular ⊃ ~(∃β)(α izzes β); α izzes a forma ⊃ ((α izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ β
hazzes α); α izzes a forma ∧ β
izzes a particular ⊃ (α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ β hazzes A); (α izzes a particular ∧ β izzes a universalium ∧ β izzes predicable of α) ⊃ (∃γ)(α ≠ γ ∧ γ
izzes essentially predicable of α). (∃x)
(∃y)(x izzes a particular ∧ y
izzes a universalium ∧ y izzes predicable of x ⊃ ~(∀x)(x izzes a universalium ∧ x izzes some-thing). (∀β)(β izzes a universalium ⊃ β izzes some-thing). α izzes a particular) ⊃ ~∃β.(α ≠ β ∧ β
izzes essentially predicable of α). (α izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ α
izzes non-essentially or accidentally predicable of β. Grice
is following a Leibnizian tradition. A philosophical language is any
constructed language that is constructed from first principles or certain
ideologies. It is considered a type of engineered language.
Philosophical languages were popular in Early Modern times, partly motivated by
the goal of recovering the lost Adamic or Divine language. The term
“ideal language” is sometimes used near-synonymously, though more modern
philosophical languages such as “Toki Pona” are less likely to involve such an
exalted claim of perfection. It may be known as a language of pure
ideology. The axioms and grammars of the languages together differ from
commonly spoken languages today. In most older philosophical languages,
and some newer ones, words are constructed from a limited set of morphemes that
are treated as "elemental" or fundamental. "Philosophical
language" is sometimes used synonymously with "taxonomic
language", though more recently there have been several conlangs
constructed on philosophical principles which are not taxonomic. Vocabularies
of oligo-synthetic communication-systems are made of compound expressions,
which are coined from a small (theoretically minimal) set of morphemes;
oligo-isolating communication-systems, such as Toki Pona, similarly use a
limited set of root words but produce phrases which remain s. of distinct
words. Toki Pona is based on minimalistic simplicity, incorporating
elements of Taoism. Láadan is designed to lexicalize and grammaticalise the
concepts and distinctions important to women, based on muted group
theory. A priori languages are constructed languages where the vocabulary
is invented directly, rather than being derived from other existing languages
(as with Esperanto, or Grices Deutero-Esperanto, or Pirotese or Ido). It all
starts when Carnap claims to know that pritos karulise elatically. Grice as
engineer. Pirotese is the philosophers engaging in Pology. Actually, Pirotese
is the lingo the Ps parrot. Ps karulise elatically. But not all of
them. Grice finds that the Pological talk allows to start from
zero. He is constructing a language, (basic) Pirotese, and the
philosophical psychology and world that that language is supposed to represent
or denote. An obble is a Ps object. Grice introduces potching and
cotching. To potch, in Pirotese, is what a P does with an obble: he perceives
it. To cotch is Pirotese for what a P can further do with an obble: know or
cognise it. Cotching, unlike potching, is factive. Pirotese would
not be the first language invented by a philosopher. Deutero-Esperanto
-- Couturat, L., philosopher and logician who wrote on the history of
philosophy, logic, philosophy of mathematics, and the possibility of a
universal language. Couturat refuted Renouvier’s finitism and advocated an
actual infinite in The Mathematical Infinite 6. He argued that the assumption
of infinite numbers was indispensable to maintain the continuity of magnitudes.
He saw a precursor of modern logistic in Leibniz, basing his interpretation of
Leibniz on the Discourse on Metaphysics and Leibniz’s correspondence with
Arnauld. His epoch-making Leibniz’s Logic 1 describes Leibniz’s metaphysics as
panlogism. Couturat published a study on Kant’s mathematical philosophy Revue
de Métaphysique, 4, and defended Peano’s logic, Whitehead’s algebra, and
Russell’s logistic in The Algebra of Logic 5. He also contributed to André
Lalande’s Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie 6. Refs.: While the reference to “Deutero-Esperanto’ comes from
“Meaning revisited,” other keywords are useful, notably “Pirotese” and
“Symbolo.” Also keywords like “obble,” and “pirot.” The H. P. Grice Papers,
BANC.
DIA-GOGE -- diagoge: Grice makes a triad here: apagoge, diagoge, and epagoge. Cf.
Grice’s emphasis on the ‘argument’ involved in the conversational implciatum,
though. To work out an impilcatum is to reach it ‘by argument.’ No argument, no
conversational implicaturum. But cf. argument in Emissor draws skull and
communicates that there is danger. ARGUMENT involved in that Emissor intends
his addressee WILL REASON. Can the lady communicate to the pigeons that she is
selling ‘twopence a bag’ for their pleasure? Grice contrasted epagoge with
diagoge. Cooperation with competition. Cooperative game with competitive game. But
epagoge is induction, so here we’ll consider his views on probability and how
it contrastds with diagoge. The diagoge is easy to identity: Grice is a social
animal, with the BA, Philosophy, conferences, discussion, The American
Philosophical Association, transcripts by Randall Parker, from the audio-tapes
contained in c. 10 within the same s. IV miscellaneous, Beanfest, transcripts
and audio-cassettes, s. IV, c. 6-f. 8, and f. 10, and s. V, c. 8-f. 4-8 Unfortunately, Parker typed carulise
for karulise, or not. Re: probability, Grice loves to reminisce an anecdote
concerning his tutor Hardie at Corpus when Hardie invoked Mills principles
to prove that Hardie was not responsible for a traffic jam. In drafts on word
play, Grice would speak of not bringing more Grice to your Mill. Mills
System of Logic was part of the reading material for his degree in Lit.
Hum.at Oxford, so he was very familiar with it. Mill represents the best
of the English empiricist tradition. Grice kept an interest on inductive
methodology. In his Life and opinions he mentions some obscure essays by
Kneale and Keynes on the topic. Grice was interested in Kneales secondary
induction, since Grice saw this as an application of a
construction routine. He was also interested in Keyness notion of a
generator property, which he found metaphysically intriguing.
Induction. Induction ‒ Mill’s Induction, induction, deduction, abduction,
Mill. More Grice to the Mill. Grice loved Hardies playing with Mill’s
method of difference with an Oxford copper. He also quotes Kneale and Keynes on
induction. Note that his seven-step derivation of akrasia relies on an
inductive step! Grice was fortunate to associate with Davidson, whose initial
work is on porbability. Grice borrows from Davidson the idea that inductive
probability, or probable, attaches to the doxastic, while prima facie attaches
to desirably, or desirability. Jeffreys notion of desirability is
partition-invariant in that if a proposition, A, can be expressed as the
disjoint disjunction of both {B1, B2, B3} and {C1, C2, C3}, ∑ Bi ∈ AProb (Bi ∣∣ A).
Des (Bi) = ∑Ci ∈ A Prob (Ci ∣∣ A).
Des (Ci). It follows that applying the rule of desirability maximization will
always lead to the same recommendation, irrespective of how the decision
problem is framed, while an alternative theory may recommend different courses
of action, depending on how the decision problem is
formulated. Here, then, is the analogue of Jeffreys desirability
axiom (D), applied to sentences rather than propositions: (D) (prob(s and t) =
0 and prob(s or t) "# 0, ⊃ d
( ) prob(s)des(s)+ prob(t)des(t) es s or t =-"---- prob( s) + prob(t )
(Grice writes prob(s) for the Subjectsive probability of sand des(s) for the
desirability or utility of s.) B. Jeffrey admits that "desirability"
(his terms for evidential value) does not directly correspond to any single
pre-theoretical notion of desire. Instead, it provides the best systematic
explication of the decision theoretic idea, which is itself our best effort to
make precise the intuitive idea of weighing options. As Jeffrey remarks, it is
entirely possibly to desire someone’s love when you already have it. Therefore,
as Grice would follow, Jeffrey has the desirability operator fall under the
scope of the probability operator. The agents desire that p provided he judges
that p does not obtain. Diagoge/epagoge, Grices audio-files, the audio-files,
audio-files of various lectures and conferences, some seminars with Warner and
J. Baker, audio files of various lectures and conferences. Subjects: epagoge,
diagoge. A previous folder in the collection contains the transcripts.
These are the audio-tapes themselves, obviously not in folder. The kind of
metaphysical argument which I have in mind might be said, perhaps, to exemplify
a dia-gogic or trans-ductive as opposed to epa-gogic or in-ductive approach to
philosophical argumentation. Hence Short and Lewis have, for ‘diagoge,’ the
cognates of ‘trādūco,’ f. transduco. Now, the more emphasis is placed on
justification by elimination of the rival, the greater is the impetus given to
refutation, whether of theses or of people. And perhaps a greater emphasis on a
diagogic procedure, if it could be shown to be justifiable, would have an
eirenic effect. Cf. Aristotle on diagoge, schole, otium. Liddell and Scott
have “διαγωγή,” which they render as “literally carrying across,” -- “τριήρων”
Polyaen.5.2.6, also as “carrying through,” and “hence fig.” “ἡ διὰ πάντων αὐτῶν
δ., “taking a person through a subject by instruction, Pl. Ep.343; so, course
of instruction, lectures, ἐν τῇ ἐνεστώσῃ δ. prob. in Phld. Piet.25; also
passing of life, way or course of life, “δ. βίου” Pl. R.344e: abs., Id.
Tht.177a, etc., way of passing time, amusement, “δ. μετὰ παιδιᾶς” Arist. EN
1127b34, cf. 1177a27; “δ. ἐλευθέριος” Id. Pol.1339b5; διαγωγαὶ τοῦ συζῆν public
pastimes, ib.1280b37, cf. Plu.126b (pl.). also delay, D.C. 57.3. management,
τῶν πραγμάτων δ. dispatch of business, Id.48.5. IV. station for ships, f. l. in
Hdn.4.2.8. And there are other entries to consider: διαγωγάν: διαίρεσιν,
διανομήν, διέλευσιν. Grice knew what he was talking about! Refs.: The main
sources listed under ‘desirability,’ above. There is a specific essay on
‘probability and life.’ Good keywords, too, are epagoge and induction The H. P.
Grice Papers, BANC.
dialogosthe
‘dia’ means ‘trans-‘, not ‘two.’ Deuterologos δευτερο-λόγος , ὁ, A.second
speaker (though, not really conversationalistcf. conversari) Teles p.5 H. -- is
the exact opposite of monologos, cf. Aeschylus when he called on an Athenian to
play the second ‘fighter’ “deuteron-agonistes.” -- dialogical implicaturumGrice seldom uses
‘dialogue.’ It’s always conversational with him. He must have thought that
‘dialogue’ was too Buberian. In Roman, ‘she had a conversation with him’ means
‘she had sex with him.’ “She had a dialogue with him” does not. Classicists are
obsessed with the beginning of Greek theatre: it all started with ‘dialogue.’
It wasn’t like Aeschylus needed a partner. He wrote the parts for BOTH. Was he
reconstructing naturally-occurring Athenian dialogue? Who knows! The *two*-actor rule, which was indeed
preceded by a convention in which only a single actor would appear on stage,
along with the chorus. It was in 471 B. C. that Aeschylus introduces a second
actor, called Cleander. You see, Aeschylus
always cast himself as protagonist in his own plays. For the season of 471 B.
C., the Athenians were surprised when Aeschylus introduced Cleander as his
deuteragonist. “I can now conversationally implicate!” he said to a cheering
crowd! Dialogism -- Bakhtin: m. m., philosopher of dialogism -- and
cultural theorist whose influence is pervasive in a wide range of academic
disciplines from literary hermeneutics
to the epistemology of the human sciences, and cultural theory. He may
legitimately be called a philosophical anthropologist in the venerable
Continental tradition. Because of his seminal work on Rabelais and Dostoevsky’s
poetics, Baden School Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich 70 70 his influence has been greatest in
literary hermeneutics. Without question dialogism, or the construal of
dialogue, is the hallmark of Bakhtin’s thought. Dialogue marks the existential
condition of humanity in which the self and the other are asymmetrical but
double-binding. In his words, to exist means to communicate dialogically, and
when the dialogue ends, everything else ends. Unlike Hegelian and Marxian
dialectics but like the Chin. correlative logic of yin and yang, Bakhtin’s
dialogism is infinitely polyphonic, open-ended, and indeterminate, i.e.,
“unfinalizable” to use his term.
Dialogue means that there are neither first nor last words. The past and the
future are interlocked and revolve around the axis of the present. Bakhtin’s
dialogism is paradigmatic in a threefold sense. First, dialogue is never
abstract but embodied. The lived body is the material condition of social existence
as ongoing dialogue. Not only does the word become enfleshed, but dialogue is
also the incorporation of the self and the other. Appropriately, therefore,
Bakhtin’s body politics may be called a Slavic version of Tantrism. Second, the
Rabelaisian carnivalesque that Bakhtin’s dialogism incorporates points to the
“jesterly” politics of resistance and protest against the “priestly”
establishment of officialdom. Third, the most distinguishing characteristic of
Bakhtin’s dialogism is the primacy of the other over the self, with a twofold
consequence: one concerns ethics and the other epistemology. In modern
philosophy, the discovery of “Thou” or the primacy of the other over the self
in asymmetrical reciprocity is credited to Feuerbach. It is hailed as the “Copernican
revolution” of mind, ethics, and social thought. Ethically, Bakhtin’s
dialogism, based on heteronomy, signals the birth of a new philosophy of
responsibility that challenges and transgresses the Anglo- tradition of “rights
talk.” Epistemologically, it lends our welcoming ears to the credence that the
other may be right the attitude that
Gadamer calls the soul of dialogical hermeneutics.
diaphaneity: Grice
unique in his subtlety. Strawson and Wiggins. 'the quality of being freely
pervious to light; transparency', OED. This is a crucial concept for Grice. He applies it
‘see,’ which which, after joint endeavours with G. J. Warnock, he was obsessed!
Grice considers the ascription, “Warnock sees that it is raining.” And then he
adds, “And it is true, I see that it is raining, too.” What’s the diference.
Then comes Strawson. “Strawson, you see that it is raining, right?” So we have
an ascription in the first, second, and third persons. When it comes to the
identification of a sense (like vision) via experience or qualia, we are at a
problem, because ‘see,’ allowing for what Ryle calls a ‘conversational avowal,’
that nobody has an authority to distrust, is what Grice calls a ‘diaphanous’
predicate. More formally. That means that “Grice sees that it is raining,” in
terms of experience, cannot really be expanded except by expanding into WHAT IS
that Grice sees, viz. that it is raining. The same with “communicating that p,”
and “meaning that p.”
dictum: Grice was fascinated with these multiple vowel roots:
dictum, deictis. Cf. dictor, and dictivenss. Not necessarily involved with
‘say,’ but with ‘deixis,’ So a dictum is involved in Emissor E drawing a skull,
communicating that there is danger. It is Hare who introduced ‘dictum’ in the
Oxonian philosophical literature in his T. H. Green Essay. Hare distinguishes
between the ‘dictum,’ that the cat is on the mat, from the ‘dictor,’ ‘I state
that the cat is on the mat, yes.’ ‘Cat, on the mat, please.’ Grice often refers
to Hare’s play with words, which he obviously enjoys. In “Epilogue,” Grice
elaborates on the ‘dictum,’ and turns it into ‘dictivitas.’ How does he coin
that word? He starts with Cicero, who has ‘dictivm,’ and creates an abstract
noun to match. Grice needs a concept of a ‘dictum’ ambiguous as it is. Grice
distinguishes between what an Utterer explicitly conveys, e. g. that Strawson
took off his boots and went to bed. Then there’s what Grice implicitly conveys,
to wit: that Strawson took off his boots and went to bedin that order. Surely
Grice has STATED that Strawson took off his boots and went to bed. Grice has
ASSERTED that Strawson took off his boots and went to bed. But if Grice were to
order Strawson: “Put on your parachute and jump!” the implicatura may differ.
By uttering that utterance, Grice has not asserted or stated anything. So Grice
needs a dummy that will do for indicatives and imperatives. ‘Convey’ usually
doesespecially in the modality ‘explicitly’ convey. Because by uttering that utterance
Grice has explicitly conveyed that Strawson is to put on his parachute and
jump. Grice has implicitly conveyd that Strawson is to put on his parachute and
THEN jump, surely.
Griceian
dignitas:
a moral worth or status usually attributed to human persons. Persons are said
to have dignity as well as to express it. Persons are typically thought to have
1 “human dignity” an dichotomy paradox dignity 234 234 intrinsic moral worth, a basic moral
status, or both, which is had equally by all persons; and 2 a “sense of
dignity” an awareness of one’s dignity inclining toward the expression of one’s
dignity and the avoidance of humiliation. Persons can lack a sense of dignity
without consequent loss of their human dignity. In Kant’s influential account
of the equal dignity of all persons, human dignity is grounded in the capacity
for practical rationality, especially the capacity for autonomous
self-legislation under the categorical imperative. Kant holds that dignity
contrasts with price and that there is nothing
not pleasure nor communal welfare nor other good consequences for which it is morally acceptable to
sacrifice human dignity. Kant’s categorical rejection of the use of persons as
mere means suggests a now-common link between the possession of human dignity
and human rights see, e.g., the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. One now widespread discussion of dignity concerns “dying with dignity”
and the right to conditions conducive thereto.
Griceian
dilemma,
a trilemma, tetralemma, monolemma, lemma
Grice thought that Ryle’s dilemmas were overrated. Strictly, a ‘dilemma’ is a
piece of reasoning or argument or argument form in which one of the premises is
a disjunction, featuring “or.” Constructive dilemmas take the form ‘If A and B,
if C, D, A or C; therefore, B or D’ and are instances of modus ponendo ponens
in the special case where A is C and B is D; A so-called ‘destructive’ dilemma
is of the form ‘If A, B, if C, D, not-B or not-D; therefore, not-A or not-C’ and
it is likewise an instance of modus
tollendo tollens in that special case. A dilemma in which the disjunctive
premise is false is commonly known as a “false” dilemma, which is one of Ryle’s
dilemmas: “a category mistake!”
DE-MINUTIO
-- diminutive:
diminished capacity: explored by Grice in his analysis of legal versus moral
right -- a legal defense to criminal liability that exists in two distinct
forms: 1 the mens rea variant, in which a defendant uses evidence of mental
abnormality to cast doubt on the prosecution’s assertion that, at the time of
the crime, the defendant possessed the mental state criteria, the mens rea,
required by the legal definition of the offense charged; and 2 the partial
responsibility variant, in which a defendant uses evidence of mental
abnormality to support a claim that, even if the defendant’s mental state
satisfied the mens rea criteria for the offense, the defendant’s responsibility
for the crime is diminished and thus the defendant should be convicted of a
lesser crime and/or a lesser sentence should be imposed. The mental abnormality
may be produced by mental disorder, intoxication, trauma, or other causes. The
mens rea variant is not a distinct excuse: a defendant is simply arguing that
the prosecution cannot prove the definitional, mental state criteria for the
crime. Partial responsibility is an excuse, but unlike the similar, complete
excuse of legal insanity, partial responsibility does not produce total
acquittal; rather, a defendant’s claim is for reduced punishment. A defendant
may raise either or both variants of diminished capacity and the insanity
defense in the same case. For example, a common definition of firstdegree
murder requires the prosecution to prove that a defendant intended to kill and
did so after premeditation. A defendant charged with this crime might raise
both variants as follows. To deny the allegation of premeditation, a defendant
might claim that the killing occurred instantaneously in response to a “command
hallucination.” If believed, a defendant cannot be convicted of premeditated
homicide, but can be convicted of the lesser crime of second-degree murder,
which typically requires only intent. And even a defendant who killed
intentionally and premeditatedly might claim partial responsibility because the
psychotic mental state rendered the agent’s reasons for action nonculpably
irrational. In this case, either the degree of crime might be reduced by
operation of the partial excuse, rather than by negation of definitional mens
rea, or a defendant might be convicted of first-degree murder but given a
lesser penalty. In the United States the mens rea variant exists in about half
the jurisdictions, although its scope is usually limited in various ways,
primarily to avoid a defendant’s being acquitted and freed if mental
abnormality negated all the definitional mental state criteria of the crime
charged. In English law, the mens rea variant exists but is limited by the type
of evidence usable to support it. No
jurisdiction has adopted a distinct, straightforward partial
responsibility variant, but various analogous doctrines and procedures are
widely accepted. For example, partial responsibility grounds both the doctrine
that intentional killing should be reduced from murder to voluntary manslaughter
if a defendant acted “in the heat of passion” upon legally adequate
provocation, and the sentencing judge’s discretion to award a decreased
sentence based on a defendant’s mental abnormality. In addition to such partial
responsibility analogues, England, Wales, and Scotland have directly adopted
the partial responsibility variant, termed “diminished responsibility,” but it
applies only to prosecutions for murder. “Diminished responsibility” reduces a
conviction to a lesser crime, such as manslaughter or culpable homicide, for
behavior that would otherwise constitute murder.
direction
of fit: referred
to by Grice in “Intention and uncertainty,” and symbolized by an upward arrow
and a downward arrowthere are only TWO directions (or senses) of fit: expressum
to ‘re’ and ‘re’ to expressum. The first is indicativus modus; the second is
imperativus modus -- according to his thesis of aequivocalitythe direction of
fit is overrated -- a metaphor that derives from a story in Anscombe’s
Intention 7 about a detective who follows a shopper around town making a list
of the things that the shopper buys. As Anscombe notes, whereas the detective’s
list has to match the way the world is each of the things the shopper buys must
be on the detective’s list, the shopper’s list is such that the world has to
fit with it each of the things on the list are things that he must buy. The
metaphor is now standardly used to describe the difference between kinds of
speech act assertions versus commands and mental states beliefs versus desires.
For example, beliefs are said to have the world-to-mind direction of fit
because it is in the nature of beliefs that their contents are supposed to
match the world: false beliefs are to be abandoned. Desires are said to have
the opposite mind-to-world direction of fit because it is in the nature of
desires that the world is supposed to match their contents. This is so at least
to the extent that the role of an unsatisfied desire that the world be a
certain way is to prompt behavior aimed at making the world that way.
disgrice: In PGRICE,
Kemmerling speaks of disgricing as the opposite of gricing. The first way to
disgrice Kemmerling calls ‘strawsonising.’For Strawson, even the resemblance
(for Grice, equivalence in terms of 'iff' -- cf. his account of what an
syntactically structured non-complete expression) between (G) There
is not a single volume in my uncle’s library which is not by an English
author,’and the negatively existential form (LFG) ~ (Ex)(Ax . ~ Bx)’
is deceptive, ‘It is not the case that there exists an x such that x is a book in Grice’s uncle’s
library and x is written by an
Englishman. FIRST, 'There is not a
single volume in uncle’s library which is not by an English author' -- as normally used, carries the
presupposition -- or entails, for Grice --
(G2) Some (at least one) book is in Grice’s uncle’s library. SECOND, 'There
is not a single volume in Grice’s uncle’s library which is not by an English
author,’ is far from being 'entailed' by (G3e) It is not the case that
there is some (at least one) book in my room. If we give ‘There not a single book in my room which is not by an English
author’ the modernist logical form ‘~
(Ex)(Ax .~ Bx),’ we see that this is ENTAILED
by the briefer, and indeed logicall stronger (in terms of entailments) ~ (Ex)Ax. So when Grice, with a solemn face, utters, ‘There
is not a single foreign volume in my uncle’s library, to reveal later that the library is empty, Grice should expect
his addressee to get some odd feeling. Surely not the feeling of having been
lied to -- or been confronted with an initial false utterance --, because we
have not. Strawson gets the feeling of having been made "the victim of a sort
of communicative outrage." "What you say is outrageous!" This
sounds stronger than it is. An outrage is believed to be an evil deed, offense,
crime; affront, indignity, act not within established or reasonable
limits," of food, drink, dress, speech, etc., from Old French outrage "harm, damage;
insult; criminal behavior; presumption, insolence, overweening" (12c.),
earlier oltrage (11c.),
From Vulgar Latin ‘ultraticum,’
excess," from Latin ultra,
beyond" (from suffixed form of PIE root *al- "beyond"). Etymologically, "the passing
beyond reasonable bounds" in any sense. The meaning narrowed in English
toward violent excesses because of folk etymology from out + rage. Of injuries to feelings,
principles, etc., from outrage, v. outragen,
"to go to excess, act immoderately," from outrage (n.) or from Old
French oultrager. From
1580s with meaning "do violence to, attack, maltreat." Related: Outraged; outraging. But Strawson gets the
feeling of having been made "the victim of a sort of communicative
outrage.” When Grice was only trying to tutor him in The Organon. Of
course it is not the case that Grice is explicitly conveying or expressing that
there there is some (at least one) book in his uncle's room. Grice has not said
anything false. Or rather, it is not the case that Grice utters an
utterance which is not alethically or doxastically satisfactory. Yet what Grice
gives Strawson the defeasible, cancellable, license to to assume that
Grice thinks there is at least one book. Unless he goes on to cancel the implicaturum,
Grice may be deemed to be misleading Strawson. What Grice explicitly conveys to
be true (or false) it is necessary (though not sufficient) that there should at
least one volume in his uncle’s library -- It is not the case that my uncle has
a library and in that library all the books are autochthonous to England, i.e.
it is not the case that Grice’s uncle has a library; for starters, it is not
the case that Grice has a literate uncle. Of this SUBTLE, nuantic, or cloudy or
foggy, "slight or delicate degree of difference in expression, feeling,
opinion, etc.," from Fr. nuance "slight difference, shade of colour,” from nuer "to
shade," from nue "cloud," from Gallo-Roman nuba, from
Latin nubes "a
cloud, mist, vapour," sneudh- "fog," source also of
Avestan snaoda "clouds,"
Latin obnubere "to
veil," Welsh nudd "fog," Greek nython, in
Hesychius "dark, dusky") According to Klein, the French usage is a
reference to "the different colours of the clouds,” in reference to color
or tone, "a slight variation in shade; of music, as a French term in
English -- 'sort' is the relation between ‘There is not a volume in my
uncle's library which is not by an English author,’ and ‘My uncle's
library is not empty. RE-ENTER GRICE. Grice suggested that Strawson see such a
fine point such as that, which Grice had the kindness to call an 'implicaturum',
the result of an act of an ‘implicatura’ (they were both attending Kneale’s
seminar on the growth and ungrowth of logic) is irrelevant to the issue of
‘entailment’. It is a 'merely pragmatic’ implicaturum, Grice would say,
bringing forward a couple of distinctions: logical/pragmatic point;
logical/pragmatic inference; entailment/implicaturum; conveying
explicitly/conveying implicitly; stating/implicating; asserting/implying; what
an utterer means/what the expression 'means' -- but cf. Nowell-Smith, who left
Oxford after being overwhelmed by Grice, "this is how the rules of
etiquette inform the rules of logic -- on the 'rule' of relevance in
"Ethics," 1955. If to call such a point, as Grice does, as
"irrelevant to logic" is vacuous in that it may be interpreted as
saying that that such a fine foggy point is not considered in a modernist
formal system of first-order predicate calculus with identity, this Strawson
wishes not to dispute, but to emphasise. Call it his battle cry! But to 'logic'
as concerned with this or that relation between this or that general class of
statement occurring in ordinary use, and the attending general condition under
which this or that statement is correctly called 'true' or 'false,' this fine
foggy nice point would hardly be irrelevant. GRICE'S FORMALIST (MODERNIST)
INTERPRETATION. Some 'pragmatic' consideration, or assumption, or expectation,
a desideratum of conversational conduct obviously underlies and in fact
'explains' the implicaturum, without having to change the ‘sense’ of
Aristotle’s syllogistics in terms of the logical forms of A, E, I, and O. If we
abide by an imperative of conversational helpfulness, enjoining the maximally
giving and receiving of information and the influencing and being influenced by
others in the institution of a decisions, the sub-imperative follows to the
effect, ‘Thou shalt NOT make a weak move compared to the stronger one that thou
canst truthfully make, and with equal or greater economy of means.’ Assume the
form ‘There is not a single … which is not . . .,’ or ‘It is not the case
that ... there is some (at least one) x that ... is not ... is introduced
in ‘ordinary’ language with the same SENSE as the expression in the
‘ideal’ language, ~(Ex)(Ax and ~Bx). Then prohibition inhibits the utterance of
the form where the utterer can truly and truthfully simply convey
explicitly ‘There is not a single ..., i. e. ~(Ex)(Fx). It is
defeasible prohibition which tends to confer on the overprolixic form ('it is
not the case that ... there is some (at least one) x that is not ...') just
that kind of an implicaturum which Strawson identifies. But having
detected a nuance in a conversational phenomenon is not the same thing as
rushing ahead to try to explain it BEFORE exploring in some detail what kind of
a nuance it is. The mistake is often commited by Austin, too (in "Other Minds,"
and "A Plea for Excuses"), and by Hart (on 'carefully'), and by Hare
(on "good"), and by Strawson on 'true,' (Analysis), ‘the,’ and 'if --
just to restrict to the play group. Grice tries to respond to anti-sense-datum
in "That pillar box seems red to me,” but Strawson was not listening. The overprolixic form in the ‘ordinary’
language, ‘It is not the case that there is some (at least one x) such that ...
x is not ...’ would tend, if it does not remain otiose, to develop or generate
just that baffling effect in one's addressee ('outrage!') that Strawson identifies,
as opposed to the formal-device in the ‘ideal’ language with which the the
‘ordinary’ language counterpart is co-related. What weakens our resistance
to the negatively existential analysis in this case more than in the case of
the corresponding "All '-sentence is the powerful attraction of the
negative opening phrase There is not …'. To avoid misunderstanding
one may add a point about the neo-traditionalist interpretation of the forms of
the traditional Aristotelian system. Strawson is not claiming that it
faithfully represents this or that intention of the principal exponent of the Square
of Opposition. Appuleius, who knows, was perhaps, more interested in
formulating this or that theorem governing this or that logical relation of
this or that more imposing general statement than this or that everyday general
statement that Strawson considers. Appuleius, who knows, might have
been interested, e. g., in the logical powers of this or that
generalisation, or this or that sentence which approximates more closely to the
desired conditions that if its utterance by anyone, at any time, at any place,
results in a true statement, so does its utterance by anyone else, at any other
time, at any other place. How far the account by the neo-traditionalist
of this or that general sentence of 'ordinary' langauge is adequate for every
generalization may well be under debate. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “In defence of
Appuleius,” BANC.
The explicaturum/implicaturum/disimplicaturum triad: Grice: “Strictly, it’s a dyad, since disimplicatum
is a derivative of one member of the dyad, the implicatumso that the opposition
is binary (ex/in) with ‘dis-‘ as applied to the im-, cf. disexplicaturum(the
annulation of an explicaturum). “We should not conclude from this that an
implication of the existence of thing said to be seen is NOT part of the
conventional meaning of ‘see’ nor even (as some philosophers have done) that
there is one sense of ‘see’ which lacks this implication!” (WoW:44). If
Oxonians are obsessed with ‘implication,’ do they NEED ‘disimplicaturum’? Grice
doesn’t think so! But sometimes you have to use it to correct a mistake. Grice
does not give names, but he says he has heard a philosopher claim that there
are two SENSES of ‘see,’ one which what one sees exists, and one in which it
doesn’t! It would be good to trace that! It relates, in any case to
‘remembers,’but not quite, and to ‘know.’ But not quite. The issue of ‘see’ is
not that central, since Grice realizes that it is just a modality of
perception, even if crucial. He coined ‘visum’ with Warnock to play with the
idea of ‘what is seen’ NOT being existent.
On another occasion, when he cannot name a ridiculous philosopher, he
invents him: “A philosopher will not be given much credit if he comes with an
account of the indefinite ‘one’ as having three senses: one proximate to the
emissor (“I broke a finger”), one distant (“He’s meeting a woman”) and one
where the link is not specified (“A flower”). he target is of course Davidson
having the cheek to quote Grice’s Henriette Herz Trust lecture for the BA!
Lewis and Short have ‘intendere’ under ‘in-tendo,’ which they render as ‘to
stretch out or forth, extend, also to turn ones attention to, exert one’s self
for, to purpose, endeavour,” and finaly as “intend”! “pergin, sceleste,
intendere hanc arguere?” Plaut. Mil. 2, 4, 27 Grices tends towards
claiming that you cannot extend what you dont intend. In the James lectures,
Grice mentions the use of is to mean seem (The tie is red in this light), and
see to mean hallucinate. Denying Existence: The Logic, Epistemology and Pragmatics of
...books.google.com › books ... then it seems unidiomatic if not ungrammatical
to speak of hallucinations as ... that fighting people and 156 APPEARING
UNREALS 4 Two Senses of "See"? A. Chakrabarti1997Language Arts &
Disciplines The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism,
Morality, and ...books.google.com › books sight, say sense-data; others will
then say that there are two senses of 'see'. ... wrong because I am dreaming or
hallucinating them, which of course could ... Stanley
Cavell1999Philosophy Wittgenstein and PerceptionPage 37Google Books
Resultbooks.google.com › books For example, Gilbert Harman characterises the
two senses of see as follows: see† = 'the ... which is common to genuine cases
of seeing and to hallucinations. Michael Campbell, Michael
O'SullivanPhilosophy The Alleged Ambiguity of'See'jstor.org ›
stable including dreams, hallucinations and the perception of physical objects.
... existence of at least two senses of ' see' were his adherence to the
doctrine that 'see' ... by AR White1963Cited by 3Related articles
Seeing and Namingjstorjstor.org › stable there are or aren't two senses
of 'see'. If there are, I'm speaking of ... The third kind of case is
illustrated by Macbeth's dagger hallucination, at least if we assume ... by RJ
Hall1977Cited by 3Related articles Philosophy at LaGuardia
Community Collegelaguardia.edu › Philosophy › GADFLY- PDF Lastly, I will
critically discuss Ayer's two senses of 'see', ... (e.g., hallucinations); it
thus seems correct to say that ... Hallucinations are hallucinations. There
are. Talking about seeing: An examination of some aspects of the
...etd.ohiolink.edu › ... I propose a distinction between delusions and
hallucinations,'and argue ... say that there are two senses of .'see* in
ordinary language or not, he does, as I will ... by KA Emmett1974Related
articles Wittgenstein and Perceptionciteseerx.ist.psu.edu ›
viewdoc › download PDF 2 Two senses of 'see'. 33 ... may see things that are
not there, for example in hallucinations. ... And so, hallucinations are not
genuine perceptual experiences. by Y ArahataRelated articles
Allen BlurUniversity of Yorkwww-users.york.ac.uk › Publications_files PDF of
subjectively indistinguishable hallucination (e.g. Crane 2006). ... and
material objects of sight, and correlatively for a distinction between two
senses of 'see',. by K AllenRelated articles Austin and
sense-dataUBC Library Open Collectionsopen.library.ubc.ca › ... › UBC Theses
and Dissertations Sep 15, (5) Illusions and Hallucinations It is not enough to
reject Austin's way of ... I will not deal with Austin and Ayer on "two
senses of 'see'" because I ... by DD Todd1967Cited by 1Related articles. Godfrey
Vesey (196573) deposes, "if a person sees something at all it must look
like something to him, even if it only looks like 'somebody doing something.'
With Davidson, Grice was more cavalier, because he could blame it on a
different ‘New-World’ dialect or idiolect, about ‘intend.’ When Grice uses ‘disimplicaturum’
to apply to ‘cream in coffee’ that is a bit tangentialand refers more generally
to his theory of communication. What would the rationale of disimplicaturum be?
In this case, if the emissee realizes the obvious category mistake (“She’s not
the cream in your coffee”) there may be a need to disimplicate explicitly. To
consider. There is an example that he gives that compares with ‘see’ and it is
even more philosophical but he doesn’t give examples: to use ‘is’ when one
means ‘seem’ (the tie example). The
reductive analyses of being and seeing hold. We have here two cases of loose
use (or disimplicaturum). Same now with his example in “Intention and Uncertainty”
(henceforth, “Uncertainty”): Smith intends to climb Mt. Everest +
[common-ground status: this is difficult]. Grices response to Davidsons pretty
unfair use of Grices notion of conversational implicaturum in Davidsons
analysis of intention caught a lot of interest. Pears loved Grices reply. Implicaturum
here is out of the question ‒ disimplicaturum may not. Grice just saw that his
theory of conversation is too social to be true when applied to intending. The
doxastic condition is one of the entailments in an ascription of an intending. It
cannot be cancelled as an implicaturum can. If it can be cancelled, it is best
seen as a disimplicaturum, or a loose use by an utterer meaning less than what
he says or explicitly conveys to more careful conversants. Grice and
Davidson were members of The Grice and Davidson Mutual Admiration
Society. Davidson, not being Oxonian, was perhaps not acquainted with
Grices polemics at Oxford with Hart and Hampshire (where Grice sided with
Pears, rather). Grice and Pears hold a minimalist approach to intending. On
the other hand, Davidson makes what Grice sees as the same mistake again of
building certainty into the concept. Grice finds that to apply the idea of
a conversational implicaturum at this point is too social to be
true. Rather, Grice prefers to coin the conversational disimplicaturum: Marmaduke
Bloggs intends to climb Mt Everest on hands and knees. The utterance
above, if merely reporting what Bloggs thinks, may involve a loose use of
intends. The certainty on the agents part on the success of his enterprise
is thus cast with doubt. Davidson was claiming that the agents belief in
the probability of the object of the agents intention was a mere conversational
implicaturum on the utterers part. Grice responds that the ascription of
such a belief is an entailment of a strict use of intend, even if, in cases
where the utterer aims at a conversational disimplicaturum, it can be
dropped. The addressee will still regard the utterer as abiding by
the principle of conversational helpfulness. Pears was especially interested in
the Davidson-Grice polemic on intending, disimplicaturum, disimplicaturum. Strictly,
a section of his reply to Davidson. If Grices claim to fame is implicaturum, he
finds disimplicaturum an intriguing notion to capture those occasions when an
utterer means LESS than he says. His examples include: a loose use of intending
(without the entailment of the doxastic condition), the uses of see in
Shakespeareian contexts (Macbeth saw Banquo, Hamlet saw his father on the
ramparts of Elsinore) and the use of is to mean seems (That tie is blue under
this light, but green otherwise, when both conversants know that a change of
colour is out of the question. He plays with Youre the cream in my coffee being
an utterance where the disimplicaturum (i.e. entailment dropping) is total. Disimplicaturum
does not appeal to a new principle of conversational rationality. It is
perfectly accountable by the principle of conversational helpfulness, in
particular, the desideratum of conversational candour. In everyday explanation we exploit, as Grice notes,
an immense richness in the family of expressions that might be thought of as
the wanting family. This wanting family includes expressions like want, desire,
would like to, is eager to, is anxious to, would mind not…, the idea of appeals to me, is thinking of, etc. As Grice
remarks, The likeness and differences within this wanting family demand careful
attention. In commenting on Davidsons treatment of wanting in
Intending, Grice notes: It seems to Grice that the picture of the soul
suggested by Davidsons treatment of wanting is remarkably tranquil and, one
might almost say, computerized. It is the picture of an ideally decorous board
meeting, at which the various heads of sections advance, from the standpoint of
their particular provinces, the case for or against some proposed course of
action. In the end the chairman passes judgement, effective for action;
normally judiciously, though sometimes he is for one reason or another
over-impressed with the presentation made by some particular member. Grices
soul doesnt seem to him, a lot of the time, to be like that at all. It is more
like a particularly unpleasant department meeting, in which some members shout,
wont listen, and suborn other members to lie on their behalf; while the
chairman, who is often himself under suspicion of cheating, endeavours to
impose some kind of order; frequently to no effect, since sometimes the meeting
breaks up in disorder, sometimes, though it appears to end comfortably, in
reality all sorts of enduring lesions are set up, and sometimes, whatever the
outcome of the meeting, individual members go off and do things unilaterally.
Could it be that Davidson, of the New World, and Grice, of the Old World, have
different idiolects regarding intend? Could well be! It is said that the New
World is prone to hyperbole, so perhaps in Grices more cautious use, intend is
restricted to the conditions HE wants it to restrict it too! Odd that for all
the generosity he displays in Post-war Oxford philosophy (Surely I can help you
analyse you concept of this or that, even if my use of the corresponding
expression does not agree with yours), he goes to attack Davidson, and just for
trying to be nice and apply the conversational implicaturum to intend! Genial
Grice! It is natural Davidson, with his naturalistic tendencies, would like to
see intending as merely invoking in a weak fashion the idea of a strong
psychological state as belief. And its natural that Grice hated that! Refs.:
The source is Grice’s comment on Davidson on intending. The H. P. Grice Papers,
BANC.
DIS-IVNCTVM
-- disjunctum:
Strangely enough Ariskant thought disjunctum, but not conjunctum a categorial
related to the category of ‘community’!Aulus Gellius (The Attic Nights, XVI, 8)
tells us about this disjunction: “There also is ■ another type of atwpa which
the Greeks call and we call disjunctum, disjunctive sentence. Gellius notes
that ‘or’ is by default ‘inclusive’: where one or several propositions may be
simultaneously true, without ex- cluding one another, although they may also
all be false. Gellius expands on the non-default reading of exclusive
disjunction: pleasure is either good or bad or it is neither good nor bad (“Aut
malum est voluplas, aut bonum, aul neque bonum, neque malum est”). All the
elements of the exclusive disjunctive exclude one another, and their
contradictory elements, Gr. avTtxs'-p.sva, are incompatible with one another”.
“Ex omnibus quae disjunguntiir, unum esse verum debet, falsa cetera.”Grice
lists ‘or’ as the second binary functor in his response to Strawson. But both
Grice and Strawson agreed that the Oxonian expert on ‘or’ is Wood. Mitchell is
good, too, though. The relations between “v” and “or” (or “either ... or …”)
are, on the whole, less intimate than those between “.” and “and,” but less
distant than those between “D” and “if.” Let us speak of a statement made by
coupling two clauses by “or” as an alternative statement ; and let us speak of
the first and second alternatesof such a statement, on analogy with our talk of
the antecedent and consequent of a hypothetical statement. At a bus-stop,
someone might say: “Either we catch this bus or we shall have to walk all the
way home.” He might equally well have said “If we don't catch this bus, we
shall have to walk all the way home.” It will be seen that the antecedent of
the hypothetical statement he might have made is the negation of the first
alternate of the alternative statement he did make. Obviously, we should not
regard our catching the bus as a sufficient condition of the 'truth' of either
statement; if it turns out that the bus we caught was not the last one, we
should say that the man who had made the statement had been wrong. The truth of
one of the alternates is no more a sufficient condition of the truth of the
alternative statement than the falsity of the antecedent is a sufficient
condition of the truth of the hypothetical statement. And since 'p"Dpyq'
(and, equally, * q"3p v q ') is a law of the truth-functional system, this
fact sufficiently shows a difference between at least one standard use of “or” and
the meaning given to “v.” Now in all, or almost all, the cases where we are
prepared to say something of the form “p or q,” we are also prepared to say
something of the form 4 if not-p, then q \ And this fact may us to exaggerate
the difference between “v” and “or” to think that, since in some cases, the
fulfilment of one alternate is not a sufficient condition of the truth of the
alternative statement of which It is an alternate, the fulfilment of one
alternate is a sufficient condition of the truth of an alternative statement.
And this is certainly an exaggeration. If someone says ; “Either it was John or
it was Robert but I couldn't tell which,” we are satisfied of the truth of the
alternative statement if either of the alternates turns out to be true; and we
say that the speaker was wrong only if neither turns out to be true. Here we
seem to have a puzzle ; for we seem to be saying that * Either it was John or
it was Robert ' entails 4 If it wasn't John, it was Robert * and, at the same
time, that ‘It was John’ entails the former, but not the latter. What we are
suffering from here is perhaps a crudity in our notion of entailraent, a
difficulty In applying this too undifferentiated concept to the facts of speech
; or, if we prefer it, an ambiguity in the notion of a sufficient condition.
The statement that it was John entails the statement that it was either John or
Robert in the sense thai it confirms it; when It turns out to have been John,
the man who said that either It was John or it was Robert is shown to have been
right. But the first statement does not entail the second in the sense that the
step ‘It was John, so it was either John or Robert’ is a logically proper step,
unless the person saying this means by it simply that the alternative statement
made previously was correct, i.e., 'it was one of the two '. For the
alternative statement carries the implication of the speaker's uncertainty as
to which of the two it was, and this implication is inconsistent with the
assertion that it was John. So in this sense of * sufficient condition ', the
statement that it was John is no more a sufficient condition of (no more
entails) the statement that it was either John or Robert than it is a
sufficient condition of (entails) the statement that if it wasn't John, it was
Robert. The further resemblance, which we have already noticed, between the
alternative statement and the hypothetical statement, is that whatever
knowledge or experience renders it reasonable to assert the alternative
statement, also renders it reasonable to make the statement that (under the
condition that it wasn't John) it was Robert. But we are less happy about
saying that the hypothetical statement is confirmed by the discovery that it
was John, than we are about saying that the alternative statement is confirmed
by this discovery. For we are inclined to say that the question of confirmation
of the hypothetical statement (as opposed to the question of its reasonableness
or acceptability) arises only if the condition (that it wasn't John) turns out
to be fulfilled. This shows an asymmetry, as regards confirmation, though not
as regards acceptability, between 4 if not p, then q ' and * if not qy then p '
which is not mirrored in the forms ‘either p or q’ and ‘either q or p.’ This
asymmetry is ignored in the rule that * if not p, then q ' and ‘if not q, then
p’ are logically equivalent, for this rule regards acceptability rather than
confirmation. And rightly. For we may often discuss the l truth ' of a
subjunctive conditional, where the possibility of confirmation is suggested by
the form of words employed to be not envisaged. It is a not unrelated
difference between * if ' sentences and ‘or’ sentences that whereas, whenever
we use one of the latter, we should also be prepared to use one of the former,
the converse does not hold. The cases in which it does not generally hold are
those of subjunctive conditionals. There is no ‘or’ sentence which would serve
as a paraphrase of ‘If the Germans had invaded England in 1940, they would have
won the war’ as this sentence would most commonly be used. And this is
connected with the fact that c either . . . or . . .' is associated with
situations involving choice or decision. 4 Either of these roads leads to
Oxford ' does not mean the same as ' Either this road leads to Oxford or that
road does’ ; but both confront us with the necessity of making a choice. This
brings us to a feature of * or ' which, unlike those so far discussed, is commonly
mentioned in discussion of its relation to * v ' ; the fact, namely, that in
certain verbal contexts, ‘either … or …’ plainly carries the implication ‘and
not both . . . and . . .', whereas in other contexts, it does not. These are
sometimes spoken of as, respectively, the exclusive and inclusive senses of
‘or;’ and, plainly, if we are to identify 4 v’ with either, it must be the
latter. The reason why, unlike others, this feature of the ordinary use of “or”
is commonly mentioned, is that the difference can readily be accommodated (1
Cf. footnote to p. 86.In the symbolism of the truth-functional system: It is the
difference between “(p y q) .~ (p . q)” (exclusive sense) and “p v q”
(inclusive sense). “Or,” like “and,” is commonly used to join words and phrases
as well as clauses. The 4 mutuality difficulties attending the general
expansion of 4 x and y are/ 5 into * x is /and y is/' do not attend the
expansion of 4 x or y isf into c r Is/or y is/ ? (This is not to say that the
expansion can always correctly be made. We may call “v” the disjunctive sign
and, being warned against taking the reading too seriously, may read it as ‘or.'
While he never approached the topic separately, it’s easy to find remarks about
disjunction in his oeuvre. A veritable genealogy of disjunction can be traced
along Griceian lines. DISJUNCTUM -- disjunction elimination. 1 The argument
form ‘A or B, if A then C, if B then C; therefore, C’ and arguments of this
form. 2 The rule of inference that permits one to infer C from a disjunction
together with derivations of C from each of the disjuncts separately. This is
also known as the rule of disjunctive elimination or V-elimination. disjunction introduction. 1 The argument form
‘A or B; therefore, A or B’ and arguments of this form. 2 The rule of inference
that permits one to infer a disjunction from either of its disjuncts. This is
also known as the rule of addition or Vintroduction. . disjunctive proposition, a proposition
whose main propositional operator main connective is the disjunction operator,
i.e., the logical operator that represents ‘and/or’. Thus, ‘P-and/orQ-and-R’ is
not a disjunctive proposition because its main connective is the conjunction
operation, but ‘P-and/or-Q-and-R’ is disjunctive. Refs.: Grice uses an illustration
involving ‘or’ in the ‘implication’ excursus in “Causal Theory.” But the
systematic account comes from WoW, especially essay 4.
DIS –
POSITVM -- dispositum.
Grice: “The –positum is a very formative Roman expression: there’s the
suppositum, the praepositum, and the dispositum. All very apposite!” -- H. P.
Grice, “Disposition and intention”Grice inspired D. F. Pears on this, as they
tried to refute Austin’s rather dogmatic views in ‘ifs’ and ‘cans’where the
‘can’ relates to the disposition, and the ‘if’ to the conditional analysis for
it. Grice’s phrase is “if I can”. “I intend to climb Mt Everest on hands and
knees,” Marmaduke Bloggs says, “if a can.” A disposition, more generally is,
any tendency of an object or system to act or react in characteristic ways in
certain situations. Fragility, solubility, and radioactivity, and
intentionality, are typical dispositions. And so are generosity and
irritability. For Ryle’s brand of analytic behaviorism, functionalism, and some
forms of materialism, an event of the soul, such as the occurrence of an idea,
and states such as a belief, a will, or an intention, is also a disposition. A hypothetical or
conditional statement is alleged to be ‘implicated’ by dispositional claims.
What’s worse, this conditional is alleged to capture the basic meaning of the
ascription of a state of the soul. The glass would shatter if suitably struck.
Left undisturbed, a radium atom will probably decay in a certain time. An
ascription of a disposition is taken as subjunctive rather than material
conditionals to avoid problems like having to count as soluble anything not
immersed in water. The characteristic mode of action or reaction shattering, decaying, etc. is termed the disposition’s manifestation or
display. But it need not be observable. Fragility is a regular or universal
disposition. A suitably struck glass invariably shatters. Radio-activity on the
other hand is alleged to be a variable or probabilistic disposition. Radium may
(but then again may not) decay in a certain situation. A dispositions may be
what Grice calls “multi-track,” i. e. multiply
manifested, rather than “single-track,” or singly manifested. Hardness or
elasticity may have different manifestations in different situations. In his
very controversial (and only famous essay), “The Concept of Mind,” Ryle, who
held, no less, the chair of metaphysical philosophy at Oxford, arguesjust to
provoke -- that there is nothing more to a dispositional claim than its
associated conditional. A dispositional property is not an occurrent property.
To possess a dispositional property is not to undergo any episode or
occurrence, or to be in a particular state. Grice surely refuted this when he
claims that the soul is in this or that a state. Consider reasoning. The soul
is in state premise; then the soul is in state conclusion. The episode or
occurrence is an event, when the state of the premise causes the state of the
conclusion. Coupled with a ‘positivist’ (or ultra-physicalist,
ultra-empiricist, and ultra-naturalist) rejection of any unobservable, and a
conception of an alleged episode or state of the soul as a dispositios, this
supports the view of behaviorism that such alleged episode or state is nothing
but a disposition TO observable behaviourif Grice intends to climb Mt. Everest
on hands and knees if he can, there is no ascription without the behaviour that
manifests itthe ascription is meant to EXPLAIN (or explicate, or provide the cause)
for the behaviour. Grice reached this ‘functionalist’ approach later in his
career, and presented it with full fanfare in “Method in philosophoical
psychology: from the banal to the bizarre.” By contrast, realism holds that
dispositional talk is also about an actual or occurrent property or a state, possibly
unknown or unobservablethe ‘black box’ of the functionalist, a function from
sensory input to behavioural output. In particular, it is about the bases of
dispositions in intrinsic properties or states. Thus, fragility is based in
molecular structure, radioactivity in nuclear structure. A disposition’s basis
is viewed as at least partly the cause of its manifestation in behaviour. Some
philosophers, for fear of an infinite regress, hold that the basis is categorical,
not dispositional D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind, 8. Others,
notably Popper, Madden, and Harre (Causal powers) hold that every property is dispositional.
Grice’s essay has now historical interestbut showed the relevance of these
topics among two tightly closed groups in post-war Oxford: the
dispositionalists led by Ryle, and the anti-dispositionalists, a one-member
group led by Grice. Refs.: Grice, “Intention and dispositions.”
DIS-TRIBVTVM
-- distributum:
distributio -- undistributed middle: a logical
fallacy in traditional syllogistic logic, resulting from the violation of the
rule that the middle term (the term that appears twice in premises) must be
distributed at least once in the premises. Any syllogism that commits this
error is invalid. Consider “All philosophers are persons,” and “Some persons
are bad.” No conclusion follows from these two premises because “persons” in
the first premise is the predicate of an affirmative proposition, and in the
second is the subject of a particular proposition. Neither of them is
distributed. “If in a syllogism the middle term is distributed in neither
premise, we are said to have a fallacy of undistributed middle.” Keynes, Formal
Logic. DISTRIBUTUM -- distribution, the property of standing for every
individual designated by a term. The Latin term distributio originated in the
twelfth century; it was applied to terms as part of a theory of reference, and
it may have simply indicated the property of a term prefixed by a universal quantifier.
The term ‘dog’ in ‘Every dog has his day’ is distributed, because it supposedly
refers to every dog. In contrast, the same term in ‘A dog bit the mailman’ is
not distributed because it refers to only one dog. In time, the idea of
distribution came to be used only as a heuristic device for determining the
validity of categorical syllogisms: 1 every term that is distributed in a
premise must be distributed in the conclusion; 2 the middle term must be
distributed at least once. Most explanations of distribution in logic textbooks
are perfunctory; and it is stipulated that the subject terms of universal
propositions and the predicate terms of negative propositions are distributed.
This is intuitive for A-propositions, e.g., ‘All humans are mortal’; the property
of being mortal is distributed over each human. The idea of distribution is not
intuitive for, say, the predicate term of O-propositions. According to the
doctrine, the sentence ‘Some humans are not selfish’ says in effect that if all
the selfish things are compared with some select human one that is not selfish,
the relation of identity does not hold between that human and any of the
selfish things. Notice that the idea of distribution is not mentioned in this
explanation. The idea of distribution is currently disreputable, mostly because
of the criticisms of Geach in Reference and Generality 8 and its irrelevance to
standard semantic theories. The related term ‘distributively’ means ‘in a
manner designating every item in a group individually’, and is used in contrast
with ‘collectively’. The sentence ‘The rocks weighed 100 pounds’ is ambiguous.
If ‘rocks’ is taken distributively, then the sentence means that each rock
weighed 100 pounds. If ‘rocks’ is taken collectively, then the sentence means
that the total weight of the rocks was 100 pounds. distributive laws, the logical principles A 8
B 7 C S A 8 B 7 A 7 C and A 7 B 8 C S A 7 B 8 A 7 C. Conjunction is thus said
to distribute over disjunction and disjunction over conjunction.
ditto: Or Strawson’s big mistake. Strawson quite didn’t
understand what “Analysis” was for, and submits this essay on the
perlocutionary effects of ‘true.’ Grice comes to the resuce of veritable
analysis. cf. verum. Grice disliked Strawson’s ditto theory in Analysis of ‘true’
as admittive performatory. 1620s, "in the month of the same name,"
Tuscan dialectal ditto "(in) the said (month or year)," literary
Italian detto, past participle of dire "to say," from Latin dicere
"speak, tell, say" (from PIE root *deik- "to show," also
"pronounce solemnly"). Italian used the word to avoid
repetition of month names in a series of dates, and in this sense it was picked
up in English. Its generalized meaning of "the aforesaid, the same thing,
same as above" is attested in English by 1670s. In early 19c. a suit of
men's clothes of the same color and material through was ditto or dittoes
(1755). Dittohead, self-description of followers of U.S. radio personality Rush
Limbaugh, attested by 1995. dittoship is from 1869.
Dòdaro: Grice: “Dòdaro is an interesting one – totally cryptic of
course! It is as if he were Nowell-Smith, Austin, and Donne, combined into one!
Recall Nowell-Smith’s challenge to Austin: “Donne is incomprehensible,” “He
surely ain’t!” -- «Ho bruciato il dizionario. Duemila pagine.
Ottantamila voci. Una sola parola, tutto il resto una metafora»
Francesco S. Dòdaro, Joe Cocker, Pieghe narrative, Lecce, Conte editore, 2001. Francesco
Saverio Dòdaro (Bari), filosofo. Trascorse l'infanzia e l'adolescenza a Bari e,
nel pieno della seconda guerra mondiale, fu costretto a riparare a Turi per
sfuggire ai bombardamenti sulla città pugliese. A Bari si legò a Milvia
Maglione, Mimmo Castellano, Gennaro Piccinni (futuri artisti) e, assieme allo
zio Silvio Dòdaro, prendeva parte, da giovanissimo, agli incontri artistici e
letterari del caffè-pasticceria Il Sottano (in quegli anni frequentato da Aldo
Moro, Albertazzi, Rocco Scotellaro, Vittorio Bodini, Aldo Calò ecc.), fondato a
Bari da Armando Scaturchio, e agli incontri di Laterza e del circolo La
Scaletta di Matera. Nello stesso periodo conobbe a Bari il poeta armeno Hrand
Nazariantz, il quale rappresentò per il giovane Dòdaro una sorta di guida, fu
lui, infatti, a introdurlo per la prima volta agli incontri del Sottano dove
ebbe modo di stringere amicizia con Vittorio Bodini, Aldo Calò, Rocco
Scotellaro. Abbandonò presto Bari, tentando una prima fuga a Parigi, città in
cui sarebbe tornato a vivere altre volte, prima di tornare a Bari per poi
trasferirsi definitivamente a Lecce intorno al 1953. Altre tappe, prima del
trasferimento a Lecce, furono Milano e Bologna. Nella città emiliana divenne
allievo di Giorgio Morandi, presso l'accademia, infatti, prime espressioni
della sua attività artistica furono la pittura, praticata per una manciata di
anni giovanili, e il teatro, poi diluito nelle successive esperienze poetiche e
narrative. Come pittore produsse alcuni quadri in cui all'informale materico
univa le combustioni, applicate, di fatto, nel 1954: il poeta Antonio Verri
riportava in suo intervento: arriva nel '53 F.S. Dodaro, arriva con la novità
dei colori "bruciati". Di questo ciclo di opere faceva parte il
quadro "Svergognato incantesimo di barca", dipinto nel 1954, che gli
valse, successivamente, la segnalazione presso il premio "Il maggio di
Bari". Prima del trasferimento a Lecce, lavorò a Bari presso l'ufficio
stampa della Fiera del Levante, a stretto contatto con Vittore Fiore, figlio di
Tommaso Fiore, venendo influenzato dal meridionalismo. Sempre nel clima della
Fiera del levante, strinse un ottimo legame con l'artista Amerigo Tot. Al suo
arrivo a Lecce riallacciò i rapporti con Vittorio Bodini e Aldo Calò, oltre che
con il pittore Lino Suppressa, conosciuto in occasione del premio Il Maggio di
Bari, entrò, inoltre, in contatto con quelli che sarebbero stati poi suoi amici
e compagni artistici: Rina Durante, Antonio Massari, Edoardo De Candia,
Vittorio Pagano. Ebbe frequentazioni con Carmelo Bene e strinse importanti
sodalizi amicali e letterari con il poeta-editore Antonio Leonardo Verri, con
l'artista Franco Gelli, con il poeta napoletano Luciano Caruso, il quale, in
corrispondenze private, ebbe modo di rinominare la loro amicizia e
collaborazione come il "sodalizio Caruso-Dòdaro". A Lecce, nel 1954,
si rese protagonista, con il pittore Edoardo De Candia, di un grande falò in
cui i due bruciarono tutti i quadri realizzati fino a quel momento. Per quanto
riguarda l'opera pittorica di Dòdaro, il quadro "Svergognato incantesimo
di barca", insieme a pochi altri, si salvò dal falò perché all'epoca
custodito presso la casa dello zio paterno Silvio Dòdaro, a Bari. Dopo questo
iniziale periodo di ricerca e sperimentazione, Dòdaro abbandonò la scena
artistica per circa vent'anni, anni in cui si dedicò allo studio intenso nel
tentativo di scoprire il perché dell'arte e del linguaggio, rompendo il
silenzio nel 1976 con la fondazione del Movimento di Arte Genetica con sede a
Lecce, Genova e Toronto. Con tale movimento, Dòdaro rintracciava:
l’origine dei linguaggi umani nel battito materno ascoltato in età fetale,
teorizzando il linguaggio come una congiunzione volta a rifondare la dualità
dell’essere umanonon un regressus ad uterum, bensì la “coppia”, la dualità,
ovvero la dimensione originaria del linguaggio, la comunione con l’altroe
l’arte come linguaggio del lutto, annodandola alla mancanza lacaniana; il
movimento si doterà di due riviste: “Ghen”, giornale modulare ideato da Dòdaro
con sede a Lecce, e “Ghen Res Extensa Ligu” con sede a Genova e diretta da
Rolando Mignani. L’idea di Dòdaro del “modulo come unità di misura del
pensiero” sarà alla base della struttura modulare di “Ghen” oltre che della
concezione dello spazio, mutuata sempre dagli studi sulla dimensione prenatale,
fino a sfociare nel manifesto "Incliniamo l’orizzonte" firmato nel
1979 con Fernando Miglietta. Il linguaggio, per Dòdaro, diventava una
congiunzione, una dichiarazione onomatopeica in cui, con l’abbandono della
pittura, si alimentava il trionfo della poesia e dell’analisi letteraria.
L’orizzonte letterario, poetico, diventava orizzonte mediale: poesie per i
treni, per gli altoparlanti e più in là romanzi in tre cartelle, romanzi su
cartolina, collane spaginate, poesie e poesie visive da proiettare per le
strade, poesie per internet, net.poetry, narrazioni su leaflet, romanzi da
muronarrativa concreta, romanzi di cento parole da pubblicare in store, nelle
vetrine dei negozi. Al Movimento di Arte Genetica aderirono, o ruotarono
attorno alle sue riviste e attività, un numero considerevole di autori,
italiani e non, provenienti dalle sperimentazioni poetiche e poetico-visive,
performative, sonore, plastiche: Eugenio Miccini, Amerigo Marras, Rolando
Mignani, Giovanni Fontana, Bruno Munari, Vittore Fiore, Aldo Dramis, Michele
Perfetti, Vittorio Pagano, Franco Gelli, Guido Le Noci, Sandro Greco, Corrado
Lorenzo, Armando Marocco, Antonio Massari, Enzo Miglietta, Center of Art and
Communication (Toronto), CAYC Group (Rio De Janeiro), Giorgio Barberi
Squarotti, Toshiaki Minemura, William Xerra, Tonino Sicoli, Ernesto de Souza,
Alternativa Zero, Experimental Art Foundation (South Australia), Block Cor
(Amsterdam), Nicole Genetet-Morel, Jaques Lepage, Stelio M. Martini, Giovanni
Valentini, Pierre Restany, Amelia Etlinger, Luciano Caruso, Antonio Verri,
Fernando Miglietta, Raffaele Nigro ecc. Con la nascita del movimento di
Arte Genetica, Dòdaro avviava una personale riflessione sull'oggetto-libro e le
sue modalità fruitive, avviava il progetto "Archivio degli operatori
pugliesi", per una catalogazione degli operatori estetici e culturali. Fra
il 1977 e il 1978, ha creato e animato «il centro di ricerca 1.4.7.8.
(strutturato, nel nome, sulle coordinate della Classificazione Decimale Dewey,
ad indicare i percorsi di ricerca: filosofia, linguistica, arte, letteratura),
ospitato dalla Libreria Adriatica di Lecce, e con il quale coinvolgerà numerosi
operatori del territorio (docenti universitari, il gruppo Gramma, il Centro
ricerche estetiche fondato a Novoli da Sandro Greco e Corrado Lorenzo, il
gruppo Oistros di Rina Durante e Gino Santoro, gli autori del gruppo di Arte
Genetica da lui fondato ecc)». Ha diretto per alcuni anni la casa editrice
Conte di Lecce, ha fondato, nel 2009 a Lecce, il movimento letterario New
PageNarrativa in store. Nel corso degli anni, la sua attività letteraria ed
editoriale è sempre stata caratterizzata da uno spiccato senso per la
formazione di gruppi e la ricerca di giovani autori da lanciare, rappresentando
sul territorio pugliese un autentico volano per operazioni di ampio respiro che
andavano spesso a coinvolgere autori del panorama letterario
internazionale. Attività editoriale Ha ideato e diretto una mole notevole
di collane editoriali volte al rinnovamento dell’oggetto-libro, fra queste:
«Scritture» (Parabita, Il Laboratorio, 1989), «Spagine. Scritture infinite»
(Caprarica di Lecce, Pensionante de' Saraceni, 1989) scritture di ricerca
formato poster, spaginate, «Compact Type. Nuova narrativa» (Caprarica di Lecce,
Pensionante de' Saraceni, 1990) ovvero romanzi in tre cartelle, «Diapoesitive.
Scritture per gli schermi» (Caprarica di Lecce, Pensionante de' Saraceni, 1990)
scritture di ricerca da proiettare, «Mail Fiction» (Caprarica di Lecce,
Pensionante de' Saraceni, 1991) romanzi su cartolina, «Wall Word» (Lecce, Conte
Editore, 1992)tradotta in giapponese ed esposta all’Hokkaido Museum of
Literature di Sappororomanzi da muro, ovvero collana di narrativa concreta,
«International Mail Stories» (Lecce, Conte Editore, 1993), «Internet Poetry»
(Lecce, Conte Editore, 1995) una delle primissime esperienze italiane di net
poetry, «Walkman Fiction. Romanzi da ascoltare» (Lecce, Argo, 1996), «E 800
European Literature», in 5 lingue (Lecce, Conte Editore, 2000), «Pieghe
narrative» (Lecce, Conte Editore, 2001), «Pieghe poetiche» (Lecce, Conte
Editore, 2001), «Pieghe della memoria» (Lecce, Conte Editore, 2001), «Foglie
nude» (Doria di Cassano Jonio, 2003), «Locandine letterarie» (Lecce, Il Raggio
Verde, 2005), «Romanzi nudi» (Lecce, 2006-07) in unico esemplare, «Carte
letterarie» (Lecce, Astragali, 2009), «792 Mail Theatre» (Lecce, Astragali,
2009), «New Page. Narrativa in store», (Lecce, 2009) narrativa breve, poi anche
poesia e teatro, in cento parole, collana che guarda alla comunicazione
pubblicitaria con i testi applicati su crowner, pannelli cartonati in uso nella
comunicazione pubblicitaria, ed esposti in store, nelle vetrine dei
negozi. Attività espositiva Nell'ambito della poesia verbo-visiva e del
libro-oggetto, è presente in numerose manifestazioni di «Nuova scrittura»: Ma
il vero scandalo è la poesia. Un salto di codice, Ferrara, Ipermedia, 1980;
Attorno a noi poeti in gruppo, Strudà (Lecce), Ospedale psichiatrico, 1980;
Dentro fuori luogo, Casarano, Palazzo D'Elia, 1980; Centro internazionale
Brera, Documenti di gestione alternativa. Appunti sulla Puglia, Milano, Chiesa
San Corpoforo, 1980; Artigianare '81, Lecce,1981; Cercare Bodini, Bari / Lecce,
1982; Ab origine, Martina Franca, 1983; Parola fra spazio e suono. Situazione
italiana 1984, Viareggio, 1984; Le brache di Gutenberg, Luciano Caruso, Bruna e
Franco Visco, Livorno, 1985; Far libro. Libri e pagine d' artsta in Italia,
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, 1989; Il segno della parola e la
parola del segno, Milano, Mercato del sale, 1989; Breton et le poeme-objet, Ugo
Carrega, Milano, Mercato del sale, 1990; Le porte di Sibari, Sibari, 1990;
Visibile Language. Numero speciale sulla poesia visuale. Sezione Italia, E.
Minarelli, USA,1990; Cartoline d'artista, Livorno, Belforte, 1990, 1991, 1992;
Terra del fuoco. Intersezioni per Adriano Spatola, QuartoNapoli, 1991; La
parola dipinta. Rassegna di poesia visuale, Belluno 1991; Comune di
GallarateCivica galleria d'arte moderna. Casa d'EuropaSede di Gallarate, Pagine
e dintorni, Libri d' artis ta, Gallarate, 1991; L. Pignotti, “La poesia
visiva”, L'immaginazione (Lecce), 1991; S-covando l'uovo, Firenze, 1991; Terra
del fuoco, QuartoNapoli, 1991; Musei Civici di Mantova, Poesia totale.
1887-1997. Dal colpo di dadi alla Poesia visuale. Mantova, Sarenco, Palazzo
della Ragione, 1998; Archivio libri d' artis ta. Laboratorio 66, G. Gini e F.
Fedi, Milano, 2007. È presente in Musei, Biblioteche, Archivi. Tra i più
importanti: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze“Libri e pagine d'artis
ta”con l’opera Mar/e amniotico, 1983; Galleria d’arte moderna di Gallarate, con
le opere Mourning Processes. The word, 1991 e Processi di lutto. Notizen: dis,
1991; Museo S. Castromediano di Lecce, con l'opera Matram psicofisica, 1987;
Archivio Sackner, Miami Beach, e Archivio Della Grazia di nuova scrittura,
Milano, con varie opere; Hokkaido Museum of Literature, con la collane “Wall
Word”, 1992, interamente tradotta in giapponese; Imago mundi-Visual poetry in
Europe (Fondazione Benetton, ) ecc. Pubblicazioni Opere letterarie
Dichiarazione onomatopeica (Lecce, 1979); Progetto negativo (Lecce, 1982);
Disianza Congiuntiva (Livorno, 1985); Disperate Professore(Parabita, 1989);
dis/adriatico (Caprarica di Lecce, 1989); Tracce di un discorso amoroso
(Caprarica di Lecce, 1990); Compact Type. Nuova narrativaCon A. Verri,
(Caprarica di Lecce, 1990); Sconcetti di luna (Caprarica di Lecce 1990); Mail
Fiction. Free LancesCon A. Verri(Caprarica di Lecce, 1991); Navigli (Caprarica
di Lecce 1991); Void Fiction (Sibari, 1992); Street Stories (Lecce,
1992)tradotto in giapponese(SapporoJapan, 2000); Parole morte. Dead Words
(Lecce, 1993); L’addio alle scene (Lecce, 1996); Antonio Verri. Schegge del
contestocon M. Nocera(Lecce, 2000); 18 i titoli pubblicati su leaflets (Lecce
2001), 16 «Pieghe narrative» e 2 «Pieghe poetiche»: “Pieghe narrative”: Vento,
vento, I colombi della clausura, Il figlio dell'anima, La Balilla , Graziato,
Il monumento, Dove volano i gabbiani, La mimosa, Ricordanze zigane, Franco, Joe
Cocker, All'ombra del grande vecchio, Reparto «P», Il tradimento, 27 marzo,
L'esame. “Pieghe poetiche”: Rosa virginale, Il solista; Dichiarazione
d'innocenza (Lecce, 2005); 7 i «Romanzi nudi», titoli in unico esemplare (Lecce
2006-2007)Dis (2006), Era d’autunno (2006), Il falò (2006), L’Objet trouvé
(2006), Silenzi (2006), Why (2006), Ballata migrante (2007); Uscita in marasma
(Lecce, 2009); Di viole. D’incanti. Astragali teatrocon F. Tolledi(Lecce 2009);
New Page: In un bosco di frammenti (Lecce, 2009), La parola tramava (Lecce, );
Le prime notti stellate (Lecce, ) interrogatorio violento (Lecce, ) I suoi
ramaggi (Lecce, ). Grigiori dell’anima (lecce, ), Di un solstizio d’amore
(Lecce, ), Maria la magliaia (Lecce, ), Teresa. L’Altrove, (Lecce, ), La mer.
Ma mère (Lecce, ), Una notte senza stelle (Lecce, ). Le distese di grano,
(Lecce, ), Gastronomia da asporto (Lecce, ), Una sua lettera (Lecce, ), Trincee
matricali (Lecce, ), Compagno d’accademia (Lecce, ). Tra i gabbiani (Lecce, ),
Cioccolatini di Chicago (Lecce, ), Cantata duale (Lecce, ). La tromba
dell’altrove (Lecce, ), Il nipote violoncellista (Lecce, ). Saggistica
Operatori culturali contemporanei in Puglia. Archivio storico divulgativo,
Lecce, 1976; “Ambivalenze genetiche”, Ghen (Lecce), 1977 ( ora in “Genetic
Ambivalencie”, Art Communication Edition, Toronto-Canada, 1977) “Links”, Ghen
(Lecce), 1978; “Il complesso di Edipo e quello di Caino”, Quotidiano (Lecce),
1980; “I processi di lutto. La Weltanschauung ghenica” in , La parola tra
spazio e suono. Situazione italiana, Viareggio, 1984; “Codice yem. Le origini
del linguaggio, ovvero la rifondazione della coppia”, Ghen (Lecce), 1979 (ora
in Regione Puglia, Creatività e linguaggio. Atti del Convegno, Maglie, 1986);
“Dis-astro”, in A. Massari, Dis-astro. Loos, Lecce, 1981; “L’area intermedia”,
in F. Gelli, Transitional Objects. Mutter Fixerung, Lecce, 1981; “Ipotesi
interpretativa del fenomeno droga, formulata da una coscienza che opera nella
poetica. Della scissione. Della prevenzione” in Tossicodipendenza: progetto di
lotta per gli anni ’80Centro studi giuridici M. Di Pietro. Convegno. Lecce, 1981;
“Mater externata”, in L. Caruso, Mater: poesia. Madre e signora dell’acqua,
Lecce, 1982; “Lontananze genetiche. Ad cantus enclitico”, in
Manifesto mostra gruppo Ghen, Milano, 1983; Progetto negativo, Galatina,
1982 (ora in Ab origine. Presenze pugliesi nell’arte contemporanea, Roma-Bari,
1983); “La letterarietà di Luciano Caruso”, in E. Giannì, Poiesis: Ricerca
poetica in Italia, Arezzo, 1986; “La poesia totale di Adriano Spatola. Il
convegno di Celle Ligure”, On Board, Lecce, 1990; “Wall Word: parole da muro,
romanzo da muro”, in F.S. Dòdaro, Street stories, Lecce, 1992; “Dodici haiku.
Dodici punti di rilevamento”, in E. Coriano, A tre deserti dall’ultimo sorriso
meccanico. Three deserts from the shadow of the last mechanical smile, Lecce,
1995; “Una pagina diversa, up to date”, in Pieghe narrative, Lecce, 2001;
Schede d'arte contemporanea. Mappatura schedografica degli Autori
contemporanei, Lecce, 2002; “L’ampliamento della flessione”, in Archivio libri
d’artista. Laboratorio 66, Milano, 2007; “Le anime narranti di Alberto
Tallone”, in Alberto Tallone. Manuale tipografico, Alpigiano (Torino), 2008;
New Page (Lecce, 2009); L'ortografia è morta. L'apparato pausativo, in New Page
(Lecce, ). Note Francesco Aprile, Già così tenera di folla (per F. S.
Dòdaro), in Intrecci, Napoli, Oèdipus, .
III 1988: Edoardo, un cavaliere senza terra, su bit. 20 marzo . Antonio Verri, Edoardo, Un cavaliere senza
terra, su bit. Francesco Aprile, Poesia
qualepoesia/06: Un’altra pagina. Le ricerche intermediali a Lecce, su puglialibre.it. Dòdaro: Testi di teoria
letteraria/editoriale, su utsanga.it.
Archivio di nuova scrittura, su verbovisualevirtuale.org. Dòdaro: Cantata duale, Imago mundi-Visual
poetry in Europe, su imagomundiart.com.
Antonio Verri, Una stupenda generazione, SudPuglia, dicembre 1988
Antonio Verri, Edoardo, un cavaliere senza terra, SudPuglia, settembre 1988
Francesco Aprile, Già così tenera di folla (per F. S. Dòdaro), Napoli,
Oèdipus, Francesco Aprile, La parola
intermediale: lineamenti di un itinerario pugliese, in Aprile F.-Caggiula C. ,
La parola intermediale: un itinerario pugliese (atti del convegno), Cavallino,
Biblioteca Gino Rizzo, Francesco Aprile,
L'opera di Dòdaro fra parola e new media, in Aprile F.-Caggiula C. , La parola
intermediale: un itinerario pugliese (atti del convegno), Cavallino, Biblioteca
Gino Rizzo, Cristo Caggiula,
Intersezioni asemiche nel movimento di Arte Genetica, in Aprile F.-Caggiula C.
, La parola intermediale: un itinerario pugliese (atti del convegno),
Cavallino, Biblioteca Gino Rizzo,
Francesco S. Dòdaro, Visual poetry: A short anthology, in utsanga.it
Francesco S. Dòdaro, L'ortografia è morta. L'apparato pausativo, in utsanga.it
Francesco S. Dòdaro, Testi di teoria letteraria/editoriale, in utsanga.it
Francesco S. Dòdaro, Codice Yem, le origini del linguaggio: ovvero la
rifondazione della coppia, in utsanga.it Francesco S. Dòdaro, Letterarietà di
Luciano Caruso, in utsanga.it Francesco S. Dòdaro, La poesia totale di Adriano
Spatola/Il convegno di Celle Ligure, in utsanga.it Francesco Aprile, Il
rapporto Dòdaro-Verri attraverso la critica, in utsanga.it Francesco Aprile,
Dal modulo all'internet poetry, in utsanga.it Francesco Aprile, Marzo
1976-Marzo : i quarant'anni dell'Arte Genetica, in utsanga.it Francesco Aprile,
New Page: Narrativa, Poesia, Teatro, Scavi in store, in utsanga.it Francesco
Aprile, New Page: la poiesi come approccio etnografico-pedagogico, Cavallino,
Biblioteca Gino Rizzo, Francesco Aprile,
New Page, collana di critica letteraria, Sondrio, Edizioni CFR, Intervista a Vincenzo Lagalla, Francesco
Aprile, in utsanga.it Lamberto Pignotti, Introduzione a Dòdaro F. S., L'addio
alle scene, Lecce, Argo, 1996, ora in utsanga.it Lamberto Pignotti, Rebus,
iper-rebus. Parole da vedere, immagini da leggere, in utsanga.it Luciano
Caruso, Frammento per F. S. Dòdaro, in utsanga.it Julien Blaine, Omaggio alla
"O" in Francesco Saverio Dòdaro, in utsanga.it Ruggero Maggi, Dedica
a Francesco Saverio Dòdaro, in utsanga.it Alessandro Laporta, F. S. Dòdaro: cercarlo
dove non appare, in utsanga.it Rolando Mignani, Ghen against again.
Risarcimento dei supporti o della signatura dei segni, in utsanga.it Egidio
Marullo, F. S. Dòdaro. L'ultimo mentore, in utsanga.it Omaggio a F. S. Dòdaro, in utsanga.it Cantata plurale per F. S. Dòdaro, materiali
01, Caprarica di Lecce, Utsanga.
dodgson: c. l.Grice quotes Carroll often. Cabbages and
kingsAchilles and the TortoiseHumpty Dumpty and his Deutero-Esperanto -- Carroll,
Lewis, pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson 183298, English writer and
mathematician. The eldest son of a large clerical family, he was educated at
Rugby and Christ Church, Oxford, where he remained for the rest of his
uneventful life, as mathematical lecturer until 1 and curator of the senior
commonroom. His mathematical writings under his own name are more numerous than
important. He was, however, the only Oxonian of his day to contribute to
symbolic logic, and is remembered for his syllogistic diagrams, for his methods
for constructing and solving elaborate sorites problems, for his early interest
in logical paradoxes, and for the many amusing examples that continue to
reappear in modern textbooks. Fame descended upon him almost by accident, as the
author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 1865, Through the Looking Glass
1872, The Hunting of the Snark 1876, and Sylvie and Bruno 9 93; saving the
last, the only children’s books to bring no blush of embarrassment to an adult
reader’s cheek. Dodgson took deacon’s orders in 1861, and though pastorally
inactive, was in many ways an archetype of the prim Victorian clergyman. His
religious opinions were carefully thought out, but not of great philosophic
interest. The Oxford movement passed him by; he worried about sin though
rejecting the doctrine of eternal punishment, abhorred profanity, and fussed
over Sunday observance, but was oddly tolerant of theatergoing, a lifelong
habit of his own. Apart from the sentimental messages later inserted in them,
the Alice books and Snark are blessedly devoid of religious or moral concern.
Full of rudeness, aggression, and quarrelsome, if fallacious, argument, they
have, on the other hand, a natural attraction for philosophers, who pillage
Carneades Carroll, Lewis 119 119 them
freely for illustrations. Humpty-Dumpty, the various Kings and Queens, the Mad
Hatter, the Caterpillar, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Unicorn, the
Tweedle brothers, the Bellman, the Baker, and the Snark make fleeting
appearances in the s of Russell, Moore, Broad, Quine, Nagel, Austin, Ayer,
Ryle, Blanshard, and even Vitters an unlikely admirer of the Mock Turtle. The
first such allusion to the March Hare is in Venn’s Symbolic Logic 1. The usual
reasons for quotation are to make some point about meaning, stipulative
definition, the logic of negation, time reversal, dream consciousness, the
reification of fictions and nonentities, or the absurdities that arise from
taking “ordinary language” too literally. For exponents of word processing, the
effect of running Jabberwocky through a spell-checker is to extinguish all hope
for the future of Artificial Intelligence. Though himself no philosopher,
Carroll’s unique sense of philosophic humor keeps him and his illustrator, Sir
John Tenniel effortlessly alive in the modern age. Alice has been tr. into
seventy-five languages; new editions and critical studies appear every year;
imitations, parodies, cartoons, quotations, and ephemera proliferate beyond
number; and Carroll societies flourish in several countries, notably Britain
and the United States. Refs.: Sutherland, “Grice, Dodgson, and Carroll. The
Carrolian, the journal of the Lewis Carroll SocietyJabberwocky: the newsletter
of the Lewis Carroll Society. A. M. Ghersi, “Turtles and mock-turtles,” from
“Correspondence with Derek Foster.” Alice’s adventures in Griceland.
Domarinto find.
dominium -- domainused by Grice in his treatment of
Extensionalism -- of a science, the class of individuals that constitute its
subject matter. Zoology, number theory, and plane geometry have as their
respective domains the class of animals, the class of natural numbers, and the
class of plane figures. In Posterior Analytics 76b10, Aristotle observes that
each science presupposes its domain, its basic concepts, and its basic
principles. In modern formalizations of a science using a standard firstorder
formal language, the domain of the science is often, but not always, taken as
the universe of the intended interpretation or intended model, i.e. as the
range of values of the individual variables.
Donkey quantificationconsidered by Grice -- sentences,
sentences exemplified by ‘Every man who owns a donkey beats it’, ‘If a man owns
a donkey, he beats it’, and similar forms (“Every nice girl loves a sailor”),
which have posed logical puzzles since medieval times but were noted more
recently by Geach. At issue is the logical form of such sentences specifically, the correct construal of the
pronoun ‘it’ and the indefinite noun phrase ‘a donkey’. Translations into predicate
logic by the usual strategy of rendering the indefinite as existential
quantification and the pronoun as a bound variable cf. ‘John owns a donkey and
beats it’ P Dx x is a donkey & John owns x & John beats x are either
ill-formed or have the wrong truth conditions. With a universal quantifier, the
logical form carries the controversial implication that every donkey-owning man
beats every donkey he owns. Efforts to resolve these issues have spawned much
significant research in logic and linguistic semantics.
Donà: Grice:
“Well, Donà has philosophised on almost anything – I drank wine; he
philosophises on it – ‘bacchiana,’ he calls it – he has also philosophised on
‘eros’ for which he uses the very Italian idea of ‘sesso.’ – And he has also
punned with ‘di-segnare’ – ‘di-segno’ – In sum, a genius!” -- Massimo Donà
(Venezia), filosofo e musicista italiano. In concerto. Dopo essersi
laureato con Emanuele Severino, presso la Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia
dell'Venezia, iniziai a pubblicare diversi saggi per riviste e volumi
collettanei, partecipando, lungo il corso degli anni ottanta, a diversi
convegni e seminari in varie città italiane. A partire dalla fine degli anni
ottanta, collabora con Massimo Cacciari presso la cattedra di Estetica
dello IUAV (Venezia) e coordina per alcuni anni i seminari dell'Istituto
Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici di Venezia. Sempre a partire dalla fine degli
anni ottanta, inizia la sua collaborazione con la rivista di architettura
Anfione-Zeto, della quale dirige ancora oggi la rubrica Theorein. In quegli
stessi anni, fonda, con Massimo Cacciari e Romano Gasparotti, la rivista
Paradosso. Negli anni novanta, invece, ha insegnato Estetica presso l'Accademia
di Belle Arti di Venezia. Attualmente insegna Metafisica e Ontologia dell'arte
presso la Facoltà di Filosofia dell'Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele di
Milano. È inoltre curatore, sempre con Romano Gasparotti e Massimo Cacciari,
dell'opera postuma del filosofo Andrea Emo. Dirige per la casa editrice
AlboVersorio le collane "Libri da Ascoltare" e "Anime in
dettaglio" ed è membro del comitato scientifico del festival La Festa
della Filosofia. Ha scritto diversi saggi e articoli per riviste, settimanali e
quotidiani di vario genere. Collabora con il settimanale
"L'Espresso". Attività musicale In qualità di musicista, dopo
aver esordito, ancor giovane, con Giorgio Gaslini e con Enrico Rava, forma un
suo gruppo: i Jazz Forms (di cui è leader insieme a Maurizio Caldura). In
seguito sviluppa il suo linguaggio trasformando l'idioma ancora bop dei primi
anni in una scrittura più articolata in cui entrano in gioco elementi tratti
dalla musica rock e da molte esperienze etniche maturate nel frattempo con
diversi gruppi musicali. Si esibisce in diverse città italiane con un sestetto,
in cui ad accompagnarlo sono una chitarra, una batteria, un basso, delle
percussioni e una tastiera. Nasce così il Massimo Donà Sextet. Suona con
musicisti che sarebbero diventati protagonisti della scena musicale italiana.
Suona in jam session anche con alcuni padri storici del jazz, come Dizzy
Gillespie, Marion Brown, Dexter Gordon e Kenny Drew. Dal 2001 riprende a
suonare professionalmente e forma un nuovo gruppo: il Massimo Donà Quintet, con
il quale si esibisce in Italia e all'estero. Il quintetto diventa quindi un
quartetto; che è la formazione con cui Donà suona da almeno tre anni. A
tutt'oggi il nostro ha all'attivo ben sette CD incisi con suoi gruppi. La sua
etichetta di riferimento è sempre la "Caligola Records", il cui
responsabile artistico è Claudio Donà, fratello di Massimo e importante critico
musicale jazz. Pubblicazioni In italiano 1983Il 'bello'... o di un
accadimento. Il destino dell'opera d'arte, Helvetia, Venezia 1983 1987Le forme
del fare, con Massimo Cacciari e Romano Gasparotti, Liguori, Napoli 1987;
1992Sull'assoluto (Per una reinterpretazione dell'idealismo Hegeliano),
Einaudi, Torino 1992; 2000Aporia del fondamento, La Città del Sole, Napoli
2000; 2000Fenomenologia del negativo, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli
2000; 2000Arte, tragedia, tecnica, con Massimo Cacciari, Raffaello Cortina
Editore, Milano 2000; 2001L' Uno, i molti : Rosmini-Hegel un dialogo
filosofico, Città Nuova, Roma 2001; 2003Aporie platoniche. Saggio sul
‘Parmenide’, Città Nuova, Roma 2003; 2003Filosofia del vino, Bompiani, Milano
2003; 2004Magia e filosofia, Bompiani, Milano 2004; 2004Joseph Beuys. La vera
mimesi, Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo (Milano) 2004; 2004Sulla
negazione, Bompiani, Milano 2004; 2005Serenità. Una passione che libera,
Bompiani, Milano 2005; 2006La libertà oltre il male. Discussione con Piero Coda
ed Emanuele Severino, Città Nuova, Roma 2006; 2006Il volto di Dio, la carne
dell'uomo, con Piero Coda, AlboVerosio, Milano 2006; 2006Dell'arte in una certa
direzione : appunti su Guido Sartorelli, Supernova, Venezia 2006; 2006Filosofia
della musica, Bompiani 2006; 2006Il mistero dell'esistere. Arte, verità e
insignificanza nella riflessione teorica di René Magritte. Mimesis, Milano
2006; 2007L'essere di Dio. Trascendenza e temporalità, AlboVersorio, Milano
2007; 2007Dio-Trinità. Tra filosofi e teologi, con Piero Coda, Bompiani, Milano
2007; 2007Arte e filosofia, Bompiani, Milano 2007; 2008L'anima del vino. Ahmbè
(cofanettolibro + cd), Bompiani, Milano 2008; 2008Non uccidere, con Enrico
Ghezzi, AlboVersorio, Milano 2008 (con un CD audio); 2008L'aporia del
fondamento, Mimesis, Milano 2008; 2009I ritmi della creazione. Big Bum
(cofanettolibro + cd), Bompiani, Milano 2009; 2009La "Resurrezione"
di Piero della Francesca, Mimesis, Milano 2009; Il tempo della verità, Mimesis,
Milano ; Non avrai altro Dio al di fuori di me, con Khaled Fouad Allam,
AlboVersorio, Milano (con un CD audio);
L'inconciliabile. Restauro Casa D'Arte Futurista Depero, con Renato Rizzi e Raffaella
Toffolo, Mimesis, Milano-Udine PANTA
decalogo (Massimo Donà e Raffaella Toffolo), Bompiani, Milano Filosofia. Un'avventura senza fine, Bompiani,
Milano Comandamenti. Santificare la
festa, con Stefano Levi Della Torre, il Mulino, Bologna Abitare la soglia. Cinema e filosofia,
Mimesis, Milano-Udine Eros e tragedia,
AlboVersorio, Milano ; Il vino e il mondo intorno. Dialoghi all'ombra della
vite (con Luca Maroni), Aliberti Editore, Reggio Emilia Figure d'Occidente. Platone, Nietzsche e
Heidegger (con Salvatore Natoli e Carlo Sini, introduzione di Ersamo Silvio
Storace), AlboVersorio, Milano ; Le verità della natura, AlboVersorio, Milano ;
Filosofia dell'errore. Le forme dell'inciampo, Bompiani, Milano Parmenide. Dell'essere e del nulla (Massimo Donà),
AlboVersorio, Milano Eroticamente. Per
una filosofia della sessualità, il prato, Saonara (Padova) Misterio grande. Filosofia di Giacomo
Leopardi, Bompiani, Milano Pensare la
Trinità. Filosofia europea e orizzonte trinitario (con Piero Coda), Città
Nuova, Roma Erranze (Alfredo Gatto), AlboVersorio,
Milano L'angelo musicante. Caravaggio e
la musica, Mimesis Edizioni, Milano-Udine
Parole sonanti. Filosofia e forme dell'immaginazione, Moretti &
Vitali, Bergamo J. Wolfgang Goethe,
Urpflanze. La pianta originaria (Massimo Donà), Albo Versorio, Milano La terra e il sacro. Il tempo della verità
(libro + DVD), Luca Taddio, Mimesis, Milano
Teomorfica. Sistema di estetica, Bompiani, Milano Sovranità del bene. Dalla fiducia alla fede,
tra misura e dismisura, Orthotes, Salerno
Senso e origine della domanda filosofica, Mimesis, Milano-Udine La filosofia di Miles Davis. Inno
all'irrisolutezza, Mimesis, Milano-Udine
Dire l'anima. Sulla natura della conoscenza, Rosenberg & Sellier,
Torino Tutto per nulla. La filosofia di
William Shakespeare, Bompiani, Milano
Pensieri bacchici. Vino tra filosofia, letteratura, arte e politica,
Edizioni Saletta dell'Uva, Caserta In
Principio. Philosophia sive Theologia. Meditazioni teologiche e trinitarie,
Mimesis, Milano-Udine Di un'ingannevole
bellezza. Le "cose" dell'arte, Bompiani-Giunti, Milano La filosofia dei Beatles, Mimesis,
Milano-Udine Un pensiero sublime. Saggi
su Giovanni Gentile, Inschibboleth, Roma
Dell'acqua, La nave di Teseo, Milano
Essere e divenire. Riflessioni sull'incontraddittorietà a partire da
Fichte, con Gaetano Rametta, Mimesis, Milano-Udine Di qua, di là. Ariosto e la filosofia
dell'Orlando Furioso, La nave di Teseo, Milano
Miracolo naturale. Leonardo e la Vergine delle rocce, Mimesis,
Milano In altre lingue Epifanías
admirables. Apogeo y consumación de la Antigüedad, Akal, Madrid, Spagna 1996;
IMMUNITY AND NEGATION. On possibile developments of the theses outlined in
ROBERTO ESPOSITO'S IMMUNITAS, in “Diacritics. A review of contemporary
criticism. Bios, Immunity, Life. The thought of Roberto Esposito”, volume 36,
number 2, The Johns Hopkins University Press (New York, Summer 2006 Filozofija
muzike, Geopetika, Beograd, Serbia 2008; Filosofía de la música, Global Rhythm
Press, Barcelona, Spagna 2008 Arte, tragedia, tecnica, (con Massimo Cacciari),
Prometeo Libros, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2009 Filosofia del vino, Sigma Books,
through Enterskorea, Seoul, Corea
L'anima del vino, Sigma Books, through Enterskorea, Seoul, Corea Filozofia vinului, Editura ART, Bucuresti,
Romania The Original Betrayal: Nihilism
and Nullification of the Negative, in “Annali d'Italianistica”Italian Critical
Theory, 29Edited by Alessandro Carrera,
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapell Hill, NC 27599-3170, The Singing of the Sirens, in "Between
Urban Topographies and Political Spaces", Threshold Experiences (edited by
Alexis Nuselovici, Mauro Ponzi, and Fabio Vighi), Lexington Books, Lanham,
Boulder, New York, Toronto, Plymouth, UK,
Der Gesang der Sirenen, in “Schwellen. Ansätze für eine neue Theorie des
Raums” (Herausgegeben von Sieglinde Borvitz und Mauro Ponzi), d/u/p,
Düsseldorf Habiter le seuil. Cinéma et
philosophie, Editions Mimesis, Paris
Saggi e articoli "Arte e Accademia", in Agalma, no. 9, marzo
2005: 24-30. Discografia New Rhapsody in blue, Caligola Records 2002; For miles
and miles, Caligola Records 2003; Spritz, Caligola Records 2004; Cose
dell'altro mondo. Bi Sol Mi Fa Re, Caligola Records 2006; Ahmbè, Caligola
Records 2008; Big Bum, Caligola Records 2009; Il santo che vola. San Giuseppe
da Copertino come un aerostato nelle mani di Dio, Caligola Records Iperboliche distanze. Le parole di Andrea
Emo, Caligola Records Altri progetti
Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file
su Massimo Donà Il mistero della
bellezza svelato da Massimo Donà. Intervista Alberto Nutricati, in L'Anima Fa
Arte Blog e Rivista di Psicologia Video-intervista sul mistero dell'esistenza,
su asia.it. "Arte e Accademia", in Agalma no. 9, testo completo:
web.archive.org/web/011555/http://agalmaweb.org/articoli.php?rivistaID=9 Sito
ufficiale di Massimo Donà, su massimodona.com. Filosofia Musica Musica Filosofo del XX secoloFilosofi
italiani del XXI secoloMusicisti italiani del XX secoloMusicisti italiani Professore1957
29 ottobre Venezia
Donatelli: Grice: “I like Donatelli – his titles can be too
expansive, like the one about ‘philosophy and common experience,’ as a
subtitle, which incorporates the all too controversial notion of experience
simpliciter!” Piergiorgio Donatelli, filosofo. Professore di Filosofia morale
alla Sapienza Roma. L’etica, la sua storia e le problematiche contemporanee
sono al centro dei suoi interessi. Ha
studiato presso la Sapienza Roma, dove ha conseguito la laurea e il dottorato,
per poi perfezionarsi all'University of Pittsburgh. Ha insegnato alla Luiss
Guido Carli, ed è stato professore visitatore alla University of Chicago e alla
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Temi di ricerca La sua ricerca spazia dalla ricognizione dei classici dell’etica
alla filosofia morale contemporanea. Si è occupato della riflessione sulla vita
umana, in bioetica e nel pensiero teoretico e politico, e del pensiero
ambientale. Nel dibattito bioetico ha difeso una concezione laica delle
istituzioni. La sua proposta si situa nella filosofia di ispirazione
wittgensteiniana (Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, Iris Murdoch) che fa incontrare
con i temi del pensiero democratico e perfezionista nella scia della filosofia
di John Stuart Mill. Riviste Dal dirige la rivista Iride. Filosofia e
discussione pubblica (il Mulino). È membro di numerosi comitati, tra cui del
comitato scientifico di Bioetica. Rivista Interdiscliplinare ed Etica &
Politica e dell’Advisory Board della Nordic Wittgenstein Review. Pubblicazioni Filosofia morale. Fondamenti,
metodi, sfide pratiche (con Gabriele De Anna e Roberto Mordacci), Milano, Le
Monnier, Il lato ordinario della vita.
Filosofia ed esperienza comune, Bologna, il Mulino, Etica. I classici, le teorie e le linee
evolutive, Torino, Einaudi, Manières
d’être humain. Une autre philosophie morale, Paris, Vrin, Quando giudichiamo morale un’azione?,
Roma-Bari, Laterza, (ed. digitale)
Decidere della propria vita, Roma-Bari, Laterza, (ed. digitale) La vita umana in prima
persona, Roma-Bari, Laterza, Manuale di
etica ambientale , Firenze, Le Lettere,
James Conant e Cora Diamond, Rileggere Wittgenstein , Roma,
Carocci, Introduzione a Mill, Roma-Bari,
Laterza, 2007 Il senso della virtù (cura con Emidio Spinelli), Roma, Carocci,
2009 Cora Diamond, L’immaginazione e la vita morale , Roma, Carocci, 2006 La
filosofia morale, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2001; 3 Wittgenstein e l’etica,
Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1998 Etica analitica. Analisi, teorie, applicazioni (con
Eugenio Lecaldano), Milano, LED, 1996; 2 Note
I destini dell'etica Bioetica e
progresso morale dell'Italia Il lato
ordinario della vita. Filosofia ed esperienza comune, su ilrasoiodioccam-micromega.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it. Bioetica Consulta di bioetica Registrazioni di Piergiorgio Donatelli, su
RadioRadicale.it, Radio Radicale. Pagina
personale, Sapienza Roma Academia.edu.
Donati: Grice:
“I like Donati; most of what he says is very basic, and he says it from what he
thinks is a scientific perspective – but then he writes about morality and you
start to wonder – anyhow, his central concept is that of reflexitvity, which he
multiplies into goal-centred, rule-centred, means-centred, and value-centred –
Since my oeuvre dwells on rellexivity I feel a lot of affection for Donati and
his approach!” -- : Pierpaolo Donati (Budrio), filosofo. Nei suoi scritti
occupano una posizione centrale le tematiche epistemologiche inerenti alla
rifondazione delle scienze sociali reinterpretate alla luce della "svolta
relazionale" della filosofia e sociologia moderna. Su tali basi, vengono
svolte l'analisi delle forme di cittadinanza, dei fenomeni associativi di
società civile e delle politiche di welfare state nelle società altamente
differenziate; l'analisi del ruolo delle istituzioni sociali che emergono dai
processi di morfogenesi sociale, in particolare nelle sfere di terzo settore;
l'apertura di una nuova prospettiva negli studi sul capitale sociale e sui
processi di riflessività in rapporto alla legittimazione di nuove forme di
democrazia deliberativa. L'elaborazione di una ‘sociologia relazionale' è
andata di pari passo con la fondazione filosofica di un nuovo e più generale
‘paradigma relazionale' nelle scienze sociali, che si pone come superamento
della contrapposizione fra realismo e costruttivismo, fra individualismo
metodologico e olismo metodologico. Questa prospettiva ha portato alla
elaborazione di nuovi concetti come quelli di ragione relazionale e beni
relazionali, come soluzioni rispettivamente dei problemi inerenti al
multiculturalismo e alla mercificazione del welfare nelle società
tardo-moderne. L'etichetta "sociologia relazionale" viene
usata, oltre che da Donati, da vari studiosi. Per esempio, Mustafa Emirbayer
(1997) ha scritto un ‘Manifesto di sociologia relazionale' elaborato in maniera
del tutto indipendente rispetto al lavoro del sociologo italiano. Anche il
sociologo inglese Nick Crossley () ha usato la medesima etichetta. Alcuni
studiosi assimilano la sociologia relazionale alla network analysis (Crossley ,
Mische ), altri tracciano delle differenze fra questi due modi di intendere
l'analisi della società (Donati ; Terenzi ; Tronca ). Indipendentemente dal
lavoro di Donati, esistono gruppi e reti di sociologia relazionale in vari
Paesi, tra cui il Canada (si veda il sito della Canadian Sociological
Association,, l'Australia (si veda il sito della Australian Sociological
Association,). In Italia gli studiosi vicini a Donati si riconoscono nel
network Relational Studies in Sociology,). Pierpaolo Donati è un
sociologo italiano che ha prodotto numerose opere di carattere teorico ed
empirico. Ha proposto una teoria generale per l'analisi della società chiamata
sociologia relazionale. Un capitolo autobiografico di Donati è stato inserito
nel volume dedicato ad alcuni dei più importanti sociologi viventi (si veda
Building a Relational Theory of Society: A Sociological Journey in Sociologists
in a Global Age. Biographical Perspectives,ed. Matthew Deflem, Ashgate,
Aldershot, 2007, 159–174). Dal 1981
al è stato Professore di Sociologia
presso la Facoltà di Scienze Politiche dell'Bologna. È stato direttore del
CEPOSS (Centro Studi di Politica Sociale e Sociologia Sanitaria), Presidente
del Corso di laurea in Sociologia, e Coordinatore del Ph.D. in Sociologia
presso il Dipartimento di Sociologia dell'Bologna. Ha avuto intensi
scambi scientifici personali con vari sociologi di fama internazionale, tra cui
Jeffrey C. Alexander, Niklas Luhmann, Margaret Archer. È stato Presidente
dell'AIS Associazione Italiana di Sociologia negli anni 1995-1998 e membro del
Board dell'International Institute of Sociology (IIS)negli anni 2001-2005. Dal
22 dicembre 1997 è membro della Pontificia Accademia delle Scienze Sociali. È
Direttore dell'Osservatorio Nazionale sulla Famiglia. Ha fatto parte del comitato
scientifico di Biennale Democrazia. Fondatore e Direttore della Rivista
“Sociologia e politiche sociali”, editore FrancoAngeli. Inoltre è stato e/o è:
Editorial Adviser della Rivista "International Sociology" Archiviato
il 30 novembre 2009 in ., ISA Journal, 1985-1996; Membro dell'International
Advisory Board della Rivista "Innovation", Vienna, 1988-1996; Membro
del Comitato Scientifico della Rivista "Sociologia", Istituto Luigi
Sturzo, Roma (dal 1995-); a partire dal 1998; membro del Comitato Scientifico
della Rivista “International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de
Sociologie” (IIS), Roma La Sapienza (dal 2003-); membro del Comitato
Scientifico della Rivista “Familia”, Instituto Superior de Ciencias de la
Familia, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Spagna (dal 2005). Ha
ricevuto il riconoscimento dell'ONU come membro esperto distinto nel corso
dell'Anno Internazionale della Famiglia (1994). Premio Capri San Michele per il
libro "Pensiero sociale cristiano e società post-moderna" (Ave, Roma,
1997) (settembre 1997). Premio San Benedetto per la promozione della Vita e
della Famiglia in Europa, IX edizione (Subiaco, 9 maggio 2009). Dottorato
honoris causa del Pontificio istituto Giovanni Paolo II per studi su matrimonio
e famiglia, Pontificia Università Lateranense (Roma, 13 maggio 2009). Premio
Mario Macchi 2009 conferito dalla Associazione nazionale genitori scuole
cattoliche (AGESC) per attività sociali e culturali di rilevante interesse
innovativo. Il 15 novembre Donati ha
ricevuto il suo secondo dottorato Honoris Causa dalla Università Internazionale
di Catalogna (UIC Barcelona). Con questo riconoscimento Pierpaolo Donati entra
a far parte dell'elenco dei dottori onorari dell'UIC Barcelona che comprende
anche il dott. Joaquín Navarro-Valls. Attraverso le sue ricerche, Donati
mostra con specifiche indagini empiriche in che modo la società possa essere
conosciuta e interpretata come relazione sociale, e non come un semplice
prodotto culturale, oppure una mera comunicazione, o ancora una semplice
influenza della struttura sociale sull'agire umano (Structure and
agency). La teoria relazionale della società La sociologia relazionale (o
teoria relazionale della società) viene per la prima volta esplicitata con il
volume “Introduzione alla sociologia relazionale” (Franco Angeli, Milano, 1983,
seconda edizione 1986). Questa “Introduzione” è nata come una sorta di
“Manifesto della sociologia relazionale”, anche se da allora pochi se ne sono
accorti. I punti essenziali di quel Manifesto sono i seguenti: La
sociologia relazionale consiste nell'osservare che la società, ovvero qualsiasi
fenomeno o formazione sociale (la famiglia, una impresa o società commerciale,
una associazione, una società nazionale), la società globale, non è né una idea
(o una rappresentazione o una realtà mentale) né una cosa materiale (o
biologica o fisica in senso lato), ma è una relazione sociale. Non è né un
“sistema”, più o meno preordinato o sovrastante i singoli fatti o fenomeni, né
un prodotto di azioni individuali, ma un altro ordine di realtà: la società è
relazione, ossia la società è fatta di relazioni, e precisamente di relazioni
sociali, che distinguono la forma e i contenuti di ogni concreta e specifica
“società”. La relazione sociale deve essere concepita non come una realtà
accidentale, secondaria o derivata da altre entità (individui o sistemi), bensì
come realtà sui generis. Affermare che “la società è relazione” può sembrare
quasi ovvio, ma non lo è affatto ove l'affermazione sia intesa come
presupposizione epistemologica generale e quindi si abbia coscienza delle
enormi implicazioni che da essa derivano. Tutti i sociologi parlano di
relazioni sociali (Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Talcott
Parsons, Niklas Luhmann), ma quasi nessuno ha compiuto l'operazione che viene
proposta dalla sociologia relazionale: partire dal presupposto che
“all'inizio c'è la relazione”, ossia che ogni realtà sociale emerge da un
contesto di relazioni e genera un contesto di relazioni essendo essa stessa
‘relazione sociale'. Ciò non significa in alcun modo aderire ad un punto di
vista di relativismo culturale, anzi si tratta esattamente del contrario: la
sociologia relazionale si fonda su una metafisica relazionale, e dunque su una
ontologia delle relazioni che vede nelle relazioni il costitutivo di ogni
realtà sociale seconda la loro propria natura (la sociologia relazionale non ha
nulla a che fare con il relazionismo filosofico. Il concetto di relazione
sociale In via generale, per relazione sociale Donati intende la realtà
immateriale (che sta nello spazio-tempo) dell'inter-umano, ossia ciò che sta
fra i soggetti agenti, e checome tale«costituisce» il loro orientarsi e agire
reciproco per distinzione da ciò che sta nei singoli attoriindividuali o
collettiviconsiderati come poli o termini della relazione. Questa «realtà fra»,
fatta insieme di elementi «oggettivi» e «soggettivi», è la sfera in cui vengono
definite sia la distanza sia l'integrazione degli individui che stanno in
società: dipende da questa realtà (la relazione sociale in cui il soggetto si
trova) se, in che forma, misura e qualità l'individuo può distaccarsi o
coinvolgersi rispetto agli altri soggetti più o meno prossimi, alle istituzioni
e in generale rispetto alle dinamiche della vita sociale. Verifiche e applicazioni
teoriche La teoria relazionale della società ha elaborato nuovi concetti che
sono stati utilizzati non solo da sociologi, ma anche in altri campi, come il
diritto, la legislazione sociale, l'economia. Tra i principali concetti
originali elaborati da Donati vi sono i seguenti: Il concetto di ‘privato
sociale’ (1978), che è stato poi applicato in molte leggi dello Stato italiano;
Il concetto di ‘cittadinanza societaria (1993), che è stato utilizzato dal
Consiglio di Stato (Sezione consultiva per gli atti normativi, Adunanza del 25
agosto 2003, N. della Sezione: 1440/2003) in importanti deliberazioni; Il
concetto di ‘beni relazionali’ (1991, 1993) che è stato poi ripreso in campo
economico da vari autori come Stefano Zamagni e Luigino Bruni; Il concetto di
‘servizi relazionali’ (2001), che è stato ripreso nella legislazione regionale
e nazionale in Italia, anche in relazione alle buone pratiche nelle politiche
familiari analizzate con le ricerche svolte per l'Osservatorio nazionale sulla
famiglia; Il concetto di ‘lavoro relazionale’ e di ‘contratti relazionali’
(2001); Il concetto di ‘welfare relazionale’ (2004) e buone pratiche nei
servizi alle famiglie (utilizzato dal Centro studi Erickson); Il concetto di
‘differenziazione relazionale’ (2005) applicato in particolare alla
problematica della conciliazione fra lavoro e famiglia Il concetto di ‘ragione
relazionale’ (2008) come possibile soluzione ai problemi dei conflitti
multiculturali; Il concetto di capitale sociale come relazione sociale (2003, 2006,
2008) con una ridefinizione degli studi sociologici sul tema del capitale
sociale; Il concetto di "riflessività relazionale" () per superare il
concetto puramente soggettivo di riflessività come mera riflessione interiore.
(termine elaborato nel 2009, approfondito nel volume, citato in nota) Il
concetto di "genoma sociale della famiglia"(). Ulteriori sviluppi
Donati ha affrontato una serie di tematiche di ricerca il cui sviluppo è ancora
in corso. Tra queste tematiche si ricordano: (a) La prima e più estesa
riguarda la tematica della sociologia della famiglia: si vedano i volumi P.
DonatiDi Nicola, Lineamenti di sociologia della famiglia. Un approccio
relazionale all'indagine sociologica, Carocci, Roma, 2002; P. Donati, Manuale
di sociologia della famiglia, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 1998 (traduzione spagnola:
Manual de Sociología de la Familia, Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona,
2003) che ha avuto una nuova edizione nel 2006; si vedano anche i Rapporti Cisf
sulla famiglia in Italia (dal 1989 al ); per gli aspetti applicativi:
Sociologia delle politiche familiari, Carocci, Roma, 2003; è il più recente P.
Donati "La famiglia. Il genoma che fa vivere la società", Soveria
Mannelli, Rubbettino, . (b) Un'altra tematica è quella della salute: si
veda P. Donati Manuale di sociologia
sanitaria, La Nuova Italia Scientifica, Roma, 1987 (traduzione spagnola: (a
cargo de), Manual de sociologia de la salud, Ediciones Diaz de Santos, Madrid,
1994). (c) Sui giovani e le generazioni nella società dell'indifferenza etica:
Giovani e generazioni. Quando si cresce in una società eticamente neutra, il
Mulino, Bologna, 1997; (d) Sul cittadinanza e welfare: La cittadinanza
societaria, Laterza, Roma- Bari, 2000; (e) Sul welfare state e le
politiche sociali: Risposte alla crisi dello Stato sociale, Franco Angeli,
Milano, 1985; Lo Stato sociale in Italia: bilanci e prospettive, Mondadori,
Milano, 1999; (f) Sul privato sociale o terzo settore e la società
civile: Sociologia del terzo settore, Carocci, Roma, 1996; sulla società
civile: La società civile in Italia, Mondadori, Milano; 1997; Generare “il
civile”: nuove esperienze nella società italiana, il Mulino, Bologna, 2001; Il
privato sociale che emerge: realtà e dilemmi, il Mulino, Bologna, 2004;
(g) Sul lavoro: Il lavoro che emerge, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2000;
(h) I rapporti fra sociologia relazionale e pensiero sociale cristiano:
Pensiero sociale cristiano e società post-moderna, Editrice Ave, Roma, 1997; La
matrice teologica della società, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, . (i) Sul
capitale sociale: P. Donati, I. Colozzi , Terzo settore e valorizzazione del
capitale sociale in Italia: luoghi e attori, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2006; P.
Donati, I. Colozzi , Capitale sociale delle famiglie e processi di socializzazione.
Un confronto fra scuole statali e di privato sociale, FrancoAngeli, Milano,
2006. Attraverso queste opere (e molte altre: si veda i capitoli Opere e
libri in Italiano e Opere in lingue straniere), la sociologia relazionale ha
sviluppato un nuovo quadro teorico e ne ha dimostrato la validità sia sul piano
della ricerca empirica, sia sul piano delle applicazioni concrete (in termini
di legislazione e di programmi di intervento sociale). La conoscenza
sociologica che la sociologia relazionale intende perseguire non rifiuta a
priori nessuna teoria, né vuole “unificare” tutte le teorie sotto un'unica
bandiera, ma tutte le prende in considerazione e le valuta per mettere in
evidenza quelle verità, anche parziali, che ciascuna di esse contiene.
Tuttavia, perché di solito una teoria offre una visione limitata, se non
riduttiva della realtà, la sociologia relazionale è in grado di inserire ogni
teoria in un quadro concettuale più ampio, nel quale ritrovare le verità
parziali ad un livello più elevato, coerente e consistente di conoscenza della
realtà sociale. Note Mustafa
Emirbayer, Manifesto for a relational sociology, in "American Journal of
Sociology", 103, n. 2, September
1997, 281-317. Nick Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology,
Routledge, London and New York, . Ann
Mische, Relational sociology, culture and agency, in J. Scott and P. Carrington
(eds.), Sage Handbook of Social Network Analysis, Sage, London, . Paolo Terenzi, Percorsi di sociologia
relazionale, FrancoAngeli, Milano, .
Luigi Tronca, Sociologia relazionale e social networks analysis. Analisi
delle strutture sociali, FrancoAngeli, Milano, . UICUniversitat Internacional
de Catalunya, Rivka Oxman and Pierpaolo Donati, new doctor honoris causas at
UIC Barcelona, in UIC, 15 novembre . 16 novembre . Enzo Paci, Dall'esistenzialismo al
relazionismo, D'Anna, Messina-Firenze, 1957
Pubblico e privato: fine di una alternativa?, Cappelli, Bologna, 1978pg
114. La cittadinanza societaria,
Laterza, Roma-Bari, 1993cap. 2 e 5. I
beni relazionali. Che cosa sono e quali effetti producono, Bollati Boringhieri,
Torino, Pierpaolo Donati e Riccardo Solci.Teoria relazionale della società,
FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1991cap. 3 e La cittadinanza societaria, Laterza,
Roma-Bari, 1993cap. 2 Il lavoro che
emerge. Prospettive del lavoro come relazione sociale in una economia
dopo-moderna, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2001pg 105/108 Il lavoro che emerge. Prospettive del lavoro
come relazione sociale in una economia dopo-moderna, Bollati Boringhieri,
Torino, 2001cap. 5 Il lavoro che emerge.
Prospettive del lavoro come relazione sociale in una economia dopo-moderna,
Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2001cap.6
Per un nuovo welfare locale “family friendly”: la sfida delle politiche
relazionali, in Osservatorio nazionale sulla famiglia, Famiglie e politiche di
welfare in Italia: interventi e pratiche.
I, il Mulino, Bologna, 2005,
169-197 e Politiche sociali e servizi sociali di fronte al modello
sociale europeo: lo scenario del “welfare relazionale”, in C. Corposanto, L.
Fazzi , Il servizio sociale in un'epoca di cambiamento: scenari, nodi e
prospettive, Edizioni Eiss, Roma, 2005,
57-112 Quale conciliazione tra
famiglia e lavoro? La prospettiva relazionale, in P. Donati , Famiglia e
lavoro: dal conflitto a nuove sinergie, Edizioni San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo,
200, 31-84 Oltre il multiculturalismo. La ragione
relazionale per un mondo comune, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2008cap. 6 La valorizzazione del capitale sociale in
Italia: luoghi e attoriDonati, I. Colozzi , FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2006 e Il
capitale sociale degli italiani. Le radici familiari, comunitarie e associative
del civismo (con L. Tronca), FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2008. Relational Sociology. A New Paradigm for the
Social Sciences, Routledge, London,
Margaret Archer, Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003
La famiglia. Il genoma che fa vivere la società, Soveria Mannelli,
Rubbettino, . Opere principali in lingua italiana L'enigma della relazione,
Mimesis, Milano, La famiglia. Il genoma
che fa vivere la società, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, Sociologia della riflessività. Come si entra
nel dopo-moderno, il Mulino, Bologna, I
beni relazionali. Che cosa sono e quali effetti producono (P.Donati e R.
Solci), Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, La
matrice teologica della società, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, Teoria relazionale della società: i concetti
di base, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2009 La società dell'umano, Marietti,
Genova-Milano, 2009 Il capitale sociale degli italiani. Le radici familiari,
comunitarie e associative del civismo (P. Donati e L. Tronca), FrancoAngeli,
Milano, 2008 Oltre il multiculturalismo. La ragione relazionale per un mondo
comune, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2008 Manuale di sociologia della famiglia, Laterza,
Roma-Bari, 2006 Sociologia delle politiche familiari, Carocci, Roma, 2003 Il
lavoro che emerge. Prospettive del lavoro come relazione sociale in una
economia dopo-moderna, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2001 La cittadinanza
societaria, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2000 Teoria relazionale della società,
FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1991 La famiglia come relazione sociale, FrancoAngeli,
Milano, 1989 La famiglia nella società relazionale. Nuove reti e nuove regole,
FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1986 Introduzione alla sociologia relazionale, FrancoAngeli,
Milano, 1986 Risposte alla crisi dello Stato sociale. Le nuove politiche
sociali in prospettiva sociologica, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1984 Famiglia e
politiche sociali. La morfogenesi familiare in prospettiva sociologica, Angeli,
Milano, 1981 Pubblico e privato: fine di una alternativa ?, Cappelli, Bologna,
1978 Opere principali in lingua straniera The Relational SubjectP. Donati, M.S.
Archer, Cambridge University Press,
Relational Sociology. A New Paradigm for the Social SciencesRoutledge,
London, Pursuing the Common Good: How
Solidarity and Subsidiarity Can Work Together, M.S. Archer and P. Donati
(eds.), Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Vatican Press, Rome, 2008
Família no século XXI: abordagem relacional, trad. e cura di Giancarlo Petrini,
Paulinas, Sao Paulo, Brasil, 2008 Repensar la sociedad. El enfoque relacional,
traduzione e introduzione di Pablo Garcia Ruiz, Ediciones Internacionales
Universitarias, Madrid, 2006 Manual de Sociología de la Familia, Eunsa,
Pamplona, 2003 La ciudadanía societaria, Editorial Universidad de Granada,
Granada, 1999 Manual de sociologia de la salud, Ediciones Diaz de Santos,
Madrid, 1994 Principali articoli e capitoli di libri in lingua straniera
Inglese The New Citizenship of the Family, in K. Matthijs (ed.), The
Family. Contemporary Perspectives and Challenges, Leuven University Press,
Leuven, The Challenge of Universalism in a Multicultural Postmodern Society: A
Relational Approach, in E. Halas (ed.), Florian Znaniecki's Sociological Theory
and the Challenges of 21st Century, Peter Lang, Frankfurt a.M., 2000, 31–47. Freedom contro Control in Post-Modern
Society: A Relational Approach, in E.K. Scheuch, D. Sciulli (eds.), Societies,
Corporations and the Nation State, Brill, Leiden, "The Annals of the
International Institute of Sociology", Religion and Democracy: The Challenge of a
“Religiously Qualified” Public Sphere, in “Polish Sociological Review”,Giving
and Social Relations: The Culture of Free Giving and its Differentiation Today,
in “International Review of Sociology”,
13, n. 2, 2003, 243–272. The end
of classical liberalism in the lib/lab interplay: what after ?, in E. Banús, A.
Llano (eds.), Present and Future of Liberalism, Eunsa, Pamplona, 2004, 169–212. Understanding the human person as a
relational subject: an ‘after'-modern paradigm for the social sciences (or: the
‘economy' of the human person lies on her ultimate concerns), in M.A. Glendon
(ed.), Conceptualization of the Human Person in Social Sciences, The Pontifical
Academy of Social Sciences, Vatican City Press, 2006. Building a relational
theory of society: a sociological journey, in Mathieu Deflem (ed.), Lessons
From Sociology. Global Perspectives on Sociological Careers, De Sitter
Publications, Oshawa, Canada, 2006 The Emergent Third Sector in Europe: Actors,
Relations and Social Capital, in H. K. Anheier, G. Rossi, L. Boccacin (eds.),
The Social Generative Action of the Third Sector. Comparing International
Experiences, Vita e Pensiero, Milano, 2008,
13–47. Beyond the dilemmas of multiculturalism: recognition through
‘relational reason', in “International Review of Sociology”, Beyond
Multiculturalism: Recognition Through the Relational Reason, in “Polish
Sociological Review”, 166, n. 2,
2009, 147–177. Modernization and
relational reflexivity, in “International Review of Sociology/Revue
Internationale de Sociologie”, 21, No.
1, March , 21-39. Francese La prospective relationelle dans
l'intervention de réseau: fondements théoriques, in L. Sanicola (ed.),
L'intervention de réseaux, Bayard Editions, Paris, 1994, 61–108. Family Associations in Europe: A
General Outlook and Typology, in "Associations. Journal for Social and
Legal Theory", 1, n. 2, 1997, 235–255. La relation comme objet spécifique
de la sociologie, in “Revue du Mauss”, La Découvert, n. 24, second semestre
2004, 233–254. Spagnolo Cultura y
comunicacion. Una perspectiva relacional, in "Comunicacion y
sociedad", VIII, n. 1, 1995, 61–75. El desarrollo de las organizaciones
del tercer sector en el proceso de modernización y más allá, in "Revista
Española de Investigaciones Sociólogicas", El desafío del universalismo en
una sociedad multicultural, in "Revista Internacional de Sociologia",
Csis, La crisis del Estado y el
surgimiento del tercer sector. Hacia una nueva configuración de relaciones, in
"Revista Mexicana de Sociologia",
El desafío del universalismo en una sociedad multicultural postmoderna:
un planteamiento relacional, in E. Banús, A. Llano (eds.), Razón práctica y
multiculturalismo, Newbook Ediciones, Mutilva Baja (Navarra), 1999, 1–34. Ciudadanía lib/lab (‘tercera vía')
versus ciudadanía societaria (civilización): Panópticon estatal versus sociedad
de redes, in José Pérez Adán (ed.), Las terceras vías, Ediciones Internacionales
Universitarias, Madrid, 2001, 49–82. Tedesco
Konzepte und Strategien einer integrierten und synergetischen Sozialpolitik, in
A. Evers, Th. Olk (Hrsg.), Wohlfahrtspluralismus, Westdeutcher Verlag, Opladen,
1996, 126–141. Welche soziale Inklusion?
«Lib/lab'sches Neo-Panopticon» und sozietale Staatsbürgerschaft: zwei
verschiedene sozialpolitische Strategien, in "Soziologisches
Jahrbuch“, 16, 2002/2003, 392–426. Polacco Praca w epoce
globalizacji, in “Spoteczenstwo”, Warszawa, a. XII, n. 47, 2002, 59–92.
Sociologia relazionale Associazione Italiana di Sociologia Altri
progetti Collabora a Wikiquote Citazionio su Pierpaolo Donati Pagina personale del Prof. Pierpaolo
DonatiAlma Mater Studiorum, Bologna, su unibo.it. Pagina personale del Prof.
Pierpaolo DonatiPontificia Accademia delle Scienze Sociali, su pass.va.
Recensione di Reza Azarian su Relational Sociology. A New Paradigm for the
Social Sciences. Sociologica, 1, , su sociologica.mulino.it. 31 agosto 5 marzo ). Recensione di Neil Gross su P.
Donati e M. Archer, The Relational Subject. American Journal of Sociology,
123(1),
Dondi: Grice: “I like Dondi
and I like a watch chain!” -- Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio (Chioggia), filosofo.
Nato da Jacopo Dondi, col quale è stato spesso confuso, studiò medicina,
astronomia, filosofia e logica presso l'Padova, dove divenne professore. Nel
1362 si trasferì a Pavia; dopo un periodo a Firenze, vi ritornò dal 1379 come
medico e astrologo di corte dei Visconti e insegnò presso l'Pavia. Scrittore di rime, amico e corrispondente di
Francesco Petrarca, fu anche tra i pionieri dell'archeologia: nel 1375, in
occasione di un viaggio a Roma, descrisse e misurò monumenti classici, copiò
iscrizioni e trascrisse i dati rilevati nel suo ‘'Iter Romanorum'’. Ritenuto a lungo morto nel 1389, è invece
stato accertato essere morto nel 1388 ad Abbiategrasso e solo nel 1389
trasferito e sepolto a Padova. La sua
fama è legata soprattutto all'astrario da lui progettato a Padova e costruito a
Pavia, dove, ancora alla fine del Quattrocento era conservato, nel castello di
Pavia, presso la biblioteca Visconteo-Sforzesca. L'astrario Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svgAstrario
di Giovanni Dondi. L'astrario di
Giovanni Dondi è un orologio astronomico che mostra l'ora, il calendario
annuale, il movimento dei pianeti, del Sole e della Luna. Per ogni giorno sono
indicati l'ora dell'alba e del tramonto (alla latitudine di Padova), la
"lettera domenicale" che determina la successione dei giorni della
settimana e il nome dei santi e la data delle feste fisse della Chiesa. Ricostruzione,
Museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, Milano.
L'orologio astronomico (o astrario) di Dondi è andato distrutto, ma è ben
conosciuto perché il suo ideatore ne dette una particolareggiata descrizione
nell'opera Astrarium, trasmessa da due manoscritti. Si trattava di un congegno
mosso da pesi, di piccole dimensioni (alto circa 85 cm, largo circa 70),
racchiuso in un involucro a base eptagonale. Grazie ad una serie di ingranaggi
l'astrario riproduceva i moti del Sole, della Luna e dei cinque pianeti. Esso
indicava anche la durata delle ore di luce alla latitudine di Padova. Come
misuratore del tempo esso, oltre all'ora, indicava (forse per la prima volta
tra gli orologi meccanici) anche i minuti, a gruppi di dieci. La presenza di opere
arabe nella biblioteca di Dondi ha fatto sospettare che la progettazione sia
stata influenzata da autori arabi. Una
ricostruzione dell'astrario di Dondi realizzata nel 1963 è esposta nella
sezione orologeria del Museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia
Leonardo da Vinci di Milano. L'orologio
astronomico che si può tuttora ammirare sulla Torre dell'Orologio (Padova) (in
Piazza dei Signori) è una copia non dell'astrario di Giovanni Dondi, ma
dell'orologio costruito nel 1344 dal padre Jacopo Dondi. Curiosità Secondo la tradizione sarebbe stato
Giovanni Dondi ad introdurre a Padova dalla Polonia la gallina col ciuffo, oggi
nota come gallina padovana. In realtà, il giornalista padovano Franco Holzer in
una sua ricerca ha potuto stabilire che non vi è documentazione alcuna che
attesti che Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio abbia mai avuto contatti con la
Polonia o che l'abbia mai visitata. A lui è dedicata una delle statue che
adornano il Prato della Valle, a Padova. Nel 1989, in occasione del 600 anniversario
della morte, il Circolo Numismatico Patavino gli ha dedicato una medaglia
commemorativa opera dello scultore bellunese Massimo Facchin. A Giovanni
De'Dondi è dedicata la ballata iniziale di Mausoleum. Siebenunddreißig Balladen
aus der Geschichte des Fortschritts (1975) del poeta tedesco Hans Magnus
Enzensberger. Edizioni delle opere
Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio, Rime, Antonio Daniele, Neri Pozza, Vicenza, 1990.
Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio, Astrarium, E. Poulle, CISST, 1988. Baillie G.H. e
altri, The Planetarium of Giovanni De Dondi, The Antiquarian Horological
Society, London, 1974. (Contiene la traduzione inglese dell'Astrarium). Opera
omnia Jacobi et Johannis de Dondis, corpus pubblicato sotto la direzione di
Emmanuel Poulle. Padova: 1, 1987. Note Andrea Albini, Op. cit., 62-63. La Biblioteca Visconteo Sforzesca, su
collezioni.museicivici.pavia.it. 7 marzo .
Andrea Albini, Op. cit., cap.2.
Andrea Albini, Op. cit., cap.4.
L'astrario di Giovanni Dondi, su Museoscienza.org. 1º aprile . Ricerche d'Archivio riguardanti la famiglia
Dondi dall'Orologio. Di Franco Holzer.
Andrea Albini, Machina Mundi. L'orologio astronomico di Giovanni Dondi,
CreateSpace, , cap.3. Astrario di
Giovanni Dondi Jacopo Dondi dall'Orologio Gabriele Dondi dall'Orologio Università
degli studi di Padova. Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio, in Dizionario biografico
degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Opere di Giovanni Dondi
dell'Orologio, . Replica in scala 1/2
dell'Astrario di Giovanni de Dondi, su clockmaker.it. Replica in scala 1/4
dell'Astrario di Giovanni de Dondi, su pendoleria.com.
Dorfles: Grice: “Must say my favourite Dorfles is
his ‘artificio e natura,’ on the doryphoros!” -- Gillo Dorfles, all'anagrafe Angelo Eugenio
Dorfles (Trieste), filosofo. Nato a Trieste nell'allora Austria-Ungheria da
padre goriziano di origine ebraica e madre genovese, si laureò in Medicina, con
specializzazione in psichiatria. Parallelamente agli studi in ambito medico,
sin dai primi anni trenta si dedicò allo studio della pittura, dell'estetica e
in generale delle arti. La conoscenza dell'antroposofia di Rudolf Steiner,
acquisita a partire dal 1934 grazie alla partecipazione a un ciclo di
conferenze a Dornach, orienta la sua arte pittorica verso il misticismo,
denotando una vicinanza più ai temi dominanti dell'area mitteleuropea che a
quelli propri della pittura italiana coeva. Professore di Estetica presso
le Milano, di Cagliari e di Trieste, nel 1948 fondò, insieme ad Atanasio
Soldati, Galliano Mazzon, Gianni Monnet e Bruno Munari, il Movimento per l'arte
concreta, del quale contribuì a precisare le posizioni attraverso una prolifica
produzione di articoli, saggi e manifesti artistici. Per tutti gli anni
cinquanta prende parte a numerose mostre del MAC, in Italia e all'estero: espone
i suoi dipinti alla Libreria Salto di Milano nel 1949 e nel 1950 e in numerose
collettive, tra le quali la mostra del 1951 alla Galleria Bompiani di Milano,
l'esposizione itinerante in Cile e Argentina nel 1952, e la grande mostra
"Esperimenti di sintesi delle arti", svoltasi nel 1955 nella Galleria
del Fiore di Milano. Nel 1954 risulta componente di una sezione italiana
del gruppo ESPACE. Nel 1956 diede il suo contributo alla realizzazione
dell'Associazione per il disegno industriale. Si dedicò quindi in maniera
pressoché esclusiva all'attività critica sino a metà degli anni ottanta. Solo
nel 1986, con la personale presso lo Studio Marconi di Milano, tornò a rendere
pubblica la propria produzione pittorica, che ha coltivato anche negli anni
successivi. Contributi e opere «L'arte non prescinde dal tempo per
esprimere semplicemente lo spirito della Storia universale, bensì è connessa al
ruolo delle mode e a tutti gli ambiti del gusto.» Considerevole è stato
il suo contributo allo sviluppo dell'estetica italiana del dopoguerra, a
partire dal Discorso tecnico delle arti (1952), cui hanno fatto seguito tra gli
altri Il divenire delle arti (1959) e Nuovi riti, nuovi miti (1965). Nelle sue
indagini critiche sull'arte contemporanea Dorfles si è sovente soffermato ad
analizzare l'aspetto socio-antropologico dei fenomeni estetici e culturali,
facendo ricorso anche agli strumenti della linguistica. È autore di numerose
monografie su artisti di varie epoche (Bosch, Dürer, Feininger, Wols,
Scialoja); ha inoltre pubblicato due volumi dedicati all'architettura (Barocco
nell'architettura moderna, L'architettura moderna) e un famoso saggio sul
disegno industriale (Il disegno industriale e la sua estetica, 1963).
Dorfles è il primo, già nel 1951, a vedere tendenze barocche nell'arte moderna
(il concetto di neobarocco sarà poi concettualizzato nel 1987 da Omar
Calabrese) riferendole all'architettura moderna in: Barocco nell'architettura
moderna. Nel 1995 contribuisce al Manifesto dell'antilibro, presentato ad
Acquasanta in provincia di Genova, in cui esprime la valenza artistica e
comunicativa dell'editoria di qualità e il ruolo del lettore come artista. A
Genova si occupa anche del lavoro del pittore Claudio Costa. Il 20
settembre 2003 partecipa alla presentazione del libro Materia Immateriale,
biografia di Claudio Costa, Miriam Cristaldi, di cui Dorfles ha scritto la
prefazione. L'editore Castelvecchi ha pubblicato Horror Pleni. La (in)civiltà
del rumore (2008), in cui analizza come la «scoria massmediatica» dei nostri tempi
abbia soppiantato le attività culturali; Conformisti (2009) e Fatti e Fattoidi
(2009). Nel 2009 pubblica un inedito d'eccezione: Arte e comunicazione, in cui
mette la teoria alla prova con alcune applicazioni concrete particolarmente
rilevanti e problematiche come il cinema, la fotografia, l'architettura.
Il 24 marzo è uscito
IrritazioniUn'analisi del costume contemporaneo, uscito nella collana Le navi
dell'editore Castelvecchi. Con la sua ironia Dorfles ha raccolto le prove della
sua inconciliabilità con i tempi che corrono. Nel libro c'è una critica
sarcastica e corrosiva all'attuale iperconsumismo. Nel settembre , Comunicarte
Edizioni, pubblica 99+1 risposte di Gillo Dorfles nella collana Carte Comuni.
Un'intervista "lunga un secolo" con la quale il critico ripercorre la
sua vita e alcuni incontri d'eccezione: da Italo Svevo a Andy Warhol, da Leo
Castelli a Leonor Fini. Il 13 gennaio
la Triennale di Milano ospita la mostra "Vitriol, disegni di Gillo
Dorfles " Aldo Colonetti e Luigi Sansone; Vitriol è un simbolo alchemico,
acronimo del motto rosacrociano “Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies
Occultum Lapidem”. Nel , assieme ad artisti e autori comeGiovanni
Anceschi, Enrico Baj, Gualtiero Marchesi, Maria Mulas e Giulia Niccolai, ha partecipato
al numero quattordici di BAU.. Muor e a Milano, nella sua casa di
piazzale Lavater, il 2 marzo , poco più di un mese prima di poter compiere 108
anni. Gillo era zio di Piero Dorfles, critico letterario della
trasmissione televisiva Per un pugno di libri (il padre di Piero, Giorgio, era
fratello di Gillo). Premi e riconoscimenti Gillo Dorfles (2008) Tra
i riconoscimenti ricevuti: Compasso d'oro dell'associazione per il design
industriale (ADI), Medaglia d'oro della Triennale, Premio della critica internazionale
di Girona, Franklin J. Matchette Prize for Aesthetics. È stato insignito
dell'Ambrogino d'oro dalla città di Milano, del Grifo d'Oro di Genova e del San
Giusto d'Oro di Trieste. È stato Accademico onorario di Brera e Albertina
di Torino, membro dell'Accademia del Disegno di Città del Messico, Fellow della
World Academy of Art and Science, dottore honoris causa del Politecnico di
Milano e dell'Università Autonoma di Città del Messico. Nell'aprile 2007,
l'Palermo gli conferì la laurea honoris causa in Architettura. Il 13 novembre ,
ricevette dall'Cagliari la laurea honoris causa in Lingue moderne.
Onorificenze Cavaliere di gran croce dell'Ordine al merito della Repubblica
italiananastrino per uniforme ordinariaCavaliere di gran croce dell'Ordine al
merito della Repubblica italiana «Di iniziativa del Presidente della
Repubblica» — 23 dicembre Medaglia d'oro
ai benemeriti della cultura e dell'artenastrino per uniforme ordinariaMedaglia
d'oro ai benemeriti della cultura e dell'arte — 20 aprile 2006 Opere Barocco
nell'architettura moderna, Collana studi monografici d'architettura n.2,
Libreria Editrice Politecnica Tamburini, 1951,
96, 66 illustrazioni. Discorso tecnico delle arti, Collana Saggi di varia
umanità, Pisa, Nistri-Lischi, 1952.Collana Il pensiero dell'arte, Milano,
Marinotti, 2004, 978-88-827-3050-5.
L'architettura moderna, Collana serie sapere tutto, Milano, Garzanti, 1954. Le
oscillazioni del gusto e l'arte moderna, Collana Forma e vita, Milano, Lerici,
1958. Il divenire delle arti, Collana Saggi n.243, Torino, Einaudi, 1959.IV ed.
accresciuta, Torino, Einaudi, 1967; Collana Reprints n.63, Einaudi, 1975;
Bompiani, 1996. Ultime tendenze nell'arte d'oggi, Collana UEF n.356, Milano,
Feltrinelli, 1961.edizioni rivedute e ampliate apparse nei decenni successivi;
XXVII ed., UEF, Milano, Feltrinelli, . Simbolo, comunicazione, consumo, Collana
Saggi, Torino, Einaudi, 1962. Il disegno industriale e la sua estetica,
Bologna, Cappelli, 1963. Kitsch e cultura, in Aut Aut, 1,1, 1963. Nuovi riti,
nuovi miti, Collana Saggi n.357, Torino, Einaudi, 1965.Collana paperbacks,
Milano, Skira, L'estetica del mito (da Vico a Wittgenstein), Milano, Mursia,
1967. Kitsch: antologia del cattivo gusto, Milano, Gabriele Mazzotta Editore,
1968. Artificio e natura, Collana Saggi n.426, Torino, Einaudi, 1968.Milano, Skira,
Le oscillazioni del gusto. L'arte d'oggi tra tecnocrazia e consumismo, Collana
Piccola Biblioteca n.137, Torino, Einaudi, 1970.Milano, Skira, Senso e
insensatezza nell'arte d'oggi, ellegi edizioni, 1971. L'architettura moderna.
Le origini dell'architettura contemporanea • I quattro grandi: Wright, Le
Corbusier, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe • Dall'espressionismo all'organicismo
«razionalizzato», dall'«ornamented modern» al brutalismo, ai più avveniristici
tentativi attuali, Collana I Garzanti, Milano, Garzanti, 1972. Dal significato
alle scelte, Collana Saggi n.517, Torino, Einaudi, 1973.Massimo Carboni,
Collana I Timoni, Roma, Castelvecchi, ,
978-88-761-5508-6. Il divenire della critica, Collana Saggi n.563,
Torino, Einaudi, 1976. Le buone maniere, Milano, Mondadori, 1978. Mode &
Modi, Collana Antologie e saggi n.10, Milano, Mazzotta, 1979.II ed. riveduta,
Mazzotta, 1990. Introduzione al disegno industriale. Linguaggio e storia della
produzione di serie, Collana Piccola Biblioteca n.181, Torino, Einaudi, 1980.
L'intervallo perduto, Collana Saggi, Torino, Einaudi, 1980.Collana paperbacks,
Milano, Skira, , 978-88-572-1600-3. I
fatti loro. Dal costume alle arti e viceversa, Collana Saggi, Milano, Feltrinelli,
1983. Architettura ambigue. Dal Neobarocco al Postmoderno, Bari, Dedalo, 1984.
La moda della moda, Collana I turbamenti dell'arte n.8, Genova, Edizioni Costa
& Nolan, 1984.La (nuova) moda della moda), Costa & Nolan, , 978-88-743-7080-1. Elogio della disarmonia.
Arte e vita tra logico e mitico, Collana Saggi blu, Milano, Garzanti,
1986, 978-88-11-59934-0.Milano, Skira,
2009, 978-88-572-0135-1. Itinerario
estetico, Collezione Biblioteca n.52, Milano, Studio Tesi, 1987.Itinerario
estetico. Simbolo mito metafora, Luca Cesari, Bologna, Editrice Compositori, Il feticcio quotidiano, Collana Campi del
sapere, Milano, Feltrinelli, Massimo Carboni, Collana I Timoni, Roma, Castelvecchi,
Intervista come autopresentazione, con VII tavole di Giulio Paolini, Collana
Scritti dall'arte, Tema Celeste Edizioni, 1992. Preferenze critiche. Uno
sguardo sull'arte visiva contemporanea, Nuova Biblioteca, Bari, Dedalo, Design:
percorsi e trascorsi, Collana Design e comunicazione, Bologna, Lupetti, Nuova
ed. aggiornata, Fulvio Carmagnola, Lupetti, . Conformisti, Collana Saggine,
Roma, Donzelli, 1997, 978-88-7989-327-5.
Fatti e fattoidi. Gli pseudoeventi nell'arte e nella società, Vicenza, Neri
Pozza, 1997.Massimo Carboni, Roma, Castelvecchi, Irritazioni. Un'analisi del costume
contemporaneo, Collana Attraverso lo specchio, Luni, 1997, 978-88-7984-046-0.Massimo Carboni, Collana I
Timoni, Roma, Castelvecchi, ,
978-88-761-5383-9. Scritti di Architettura (1930-1998), L. Tedeschi,
Milano, Mendrisio Academy Press, Gillo Dorfles-Flavia Puppo, Dorfles e
dintorni, Collana Le vele, Milano, Archinto, 2005, 978-88-7768-429-5. Lacerti della memoria.
Taccuini intermittenti, Collana Quadrifogli, Bologna, Editrice Compositori,
2007, 978-88-7794-567-9. L'artista e il
fotografo, Verso l'Arte, 2008,
978-88-95894-16-4. Conformisti. La morte dell'autenticità, Massimo
Carboni, Roma, Castelvecchi, 2008,
978-88-7615-260-3. Horror Pleni. La (in)civiltà del rumore, Collana I
Timoni, Roma, Castelvecchi, Arte e comunicazione. Comunicazione e struttura
nell'analisi di alcuni linguaggi artistici, Collana Saggi, Milano, Mondadori
Education, Inviato alla Biennale, A. De Simone, Milano, Scheiwiller, , 978-88-7644-632-0. 99+1 risposte, Lorenzo
Michelli, Trieste, Comunicarte Edizioni, Movimento Arte Concreta (1948-1958),
Luigi Sansone e N. Ossanna Cavadini, Milano, Mazzotta, Poesie, Campanotto
Editore, , 978-88-456-1347-0.
L'ascensore senza specchio, Quaderni di prosa e di invenzione n.9, Milano,
Edizioni Henry Beyle, . Kitsch: oggi il kitsch, Aldo Colonetti et al., Bologna,
Editrice Compositori, Arte con sentimento. Conversazione con Gillo Dorfles,
Marco Meneguzzo, Collana Polaroid, Milano, Medusa Edizioni, , 978-88-7698-300-9. Essere nel tempo, Achille
Bonito Oliva, Milano, Skira, , Gli artisti che ho incontrato, Luigi Sansone,
Milano, Skira, , La logica dell'approssimazione, nell'arte e nella vita, Aldo
Colonnetti, Silvana, Estetica senza dialettica. Scritti dal 1933 al , Luca
Cesari, Collana Il pensiero occidentale, Milano, Bompiani, , 978-88-452-8095-5. Paesaggi e personaggi,
Enrico Rotelli, Milano, Bompiani, ,
88-452-9407-2. La mia America, Luigi Sansone, Milano, Skira, , 978-88-572-3807-4. Saggi e articoli
"Interviene Gillo Dorfles", in alterlinus, gennaio/febbraio 1985.
"Calligaro: parole e immagini", in Preferenze critiche, Dedalo, 1993.
"Né moduli, né rimedi", in Agalma, no. 3, giugno 2002, 27–31. "Disarmonia, asimmetria, wabi,
sabi", in Agalma, no. 6, settembre 2003,
55–58. "Feticcio", in Agalma, no. 16, settembre 2008, 16–17. "Paolo Barozzi", in Da
Duchamp agli Happening. Articoli pubblicati su Il Mondo di Pannunzio e altri
scritti, Campanotto Editore, . Traduzioni Rudolf Arnheim, Arte e percezione
visiva, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1962. Rudolf Arnheim, Guernica. Genesi di un
dipinto, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1964. Note
Addio a Gillo Dorfles: «La mia vita infinita da Francesco Giuseppe agli
smartphone», su corriere.it. 2 marzo
(archiviato il 3 marzo ). Gruber,
Ruth Ellen. Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to East-Central Europe. New York:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1992, su iajgsjewishcemeteryproject.org. 2
marzo 3 marzo ). Aldo Cazzullo, Gillo Dorfles: la mia vita
infinita da Francesco Giuseppe agli smartphone, Corriere della sera, 10
febbraio Archiviato il 12 febbraio in ..
Redazione, Novità formali e riesumazioni di precedenti esempi, il
contemporaneo è un linguaggio nuovo di un sapere condiviso | QM, su
quidmagazine.com. 2 marzo (archiviato il
3 marzo ). Biografia di Gillo Dorfles, sul sito delle Edizioni Il Bulino,
su ilbulinoeditore.it. 23 febbraio 28
febbraio ). Galliano Mazzon, Mostra
antologia (1926-1969) di Galliano Mazzon : Civico Padiglione d'Arte Moderna,
Milano, 3-28 ottobre 1969, Milano, Civico Padiglione d'Arte Moderna, 1969, 843294483. Visualizzazione limitata su
Google Libri: Mostra antologia (1926-1969) di Galliano Mazzon : Civico
Padiglione d'Arte Moderna, Milano, 3-28 ottobre 1969, su books.google.it. 2
marzo (archiviato il 3 marzo ). Luciano Caramel, Arte in Italia, 1945-1960,
su books.google.it. 19 marzo (archiviato
il 19 marzo ). Dioguardi Gianfranco,
Processo edilizio e progetto: vecchi attori alla ricerca di nuovi ruoli, Milano
: Franco Angeli, Studi organizzativi. Fascicolo 2, 2005 Corriere della Sera, 16 gennaio 2009 Cfr. la raccolta degli scritti di Dorfles raccolti
in Architetture Ambigue: Dal Neobarocco al Postmoderno, Dedalo, Bari 1984. Di Giovanni Marilisa, Il corpo, nuova forma:
la body art, Cheiron : materiali e strumenti di aggiornamento storiografico.
A.24, 2007. electaweb.it, su Gillo
Dorfles: arte e comunicazione. 21 maggio 2009 12 marzo ). VitriolTriennale [collegamento interrotto],
su triennale.org. Sussidiaria: GPS /
GaPSle Forbici di Manitù (BAU14). 2 marzo
27 dicembre ). Celeste Prize BAU
14Container of Contemporary Culture[collegamento interrotto]. Antonio Gnoli, E' morto Gillo Dorfles,
scompare a 107 anni il rivoluzionario critico d'arte, La Repubblica, 2 marzo .
4 marzo (archiviato il 4 marzo ). Stefano Bucci, Morto Gillo Dorfles, critico
poliedrico. Aveva 107 anni, Corriere della Sera, 2 marzo . 4 marzo (archiviato il 4 marzo ). Addio ad Alma Dorfles, signora di cultura, Il
Piccolo, 4 aprile . 5 marzo 5 marzo ). Sito web del Quirinale: dettaglio decorato.,
su quirinale.it. 16 febbraio (archiviato
il 18 gennaio ). Sito web del Quirinale:
dettaglio decorato., su quirinale.it. 16 febbraio (archiviato il 6 ottobre ). Intervista a Gillo Dorfles, su
conoscenza.rai.it. Sergio Mandelli, Capire l'arte contemporaneaGillo Dorfles,
su youtube.com Gillo Dorfles , 106 anni (normali) «Mi sveglio, lavoro. Amo il
vino», in Corriere della Sera. 15 gennaio . Aldo Cazzullo, Gillo Dorfles: la
mia vita infinita da Francesco Giuseppe agli smartphone, in Corriere della
Sera. l'11 febbraio . V D M Vincitori
Premio Feronia-Città di Fiano.
Doria: Grice: “I love Doria: a nobleman who
should be sailing off Portofino, is writing a ‘progetto di metafisica’ after
discussing the ‘filosofia degl’antichi’ – you HAVE to love him! Plus, he
philosophised WHILE sailing!” -- Paolo
Mattia Doria (Genova), filosofo. Discorso apologetico, 1735 Nato da Giacomo Doria
e Maria Cecilia Spinola, appartenente alla nobile casata dei Doria Lamba dalla
quale provennero ben quattro Dogi della Repubblica di Genova, ebbe un'infanzia
travagliata segnata a cinque anni dalla morte del padre. L'uscita dalla
famiglia delle tre sorelle lo fecero rimanere all'età di 13 anni solo con la
madre che influenzò negativamente il suo carattere «melanconico ma vivace», il
suo desiderio di «virtù e gloria». La madre, che egli accusava esser stata «de'
miei errori ... la prima e principal cagione», si era disinteressata del figlio
limitandosi ad affidarne l'educazione a medici e pedagoghi bigotti che lo
fecero crescere con la paura delle malattie e della morte, che gli veniva
indicata dai suoi educatori gesuiti come «un positivo castigo agli uomini
rei». Il giovane Paolo divenne quindi un giovane «vivace e grazioso nelle
conversazioni ... affabile con tutti, facile e condiscendente con gli amici» e
allo stesso tempo pieno di sé e fatuo divenendo «uno di quei Petits Maitres
disinvolti e alla moda, ... li quali prendono per idea di virtù vere ed
esistenti tutte le vanità ... e molte volte prendono con idee di virtù li vizj
ancora. Pieno di sé e fatuo. Compì con la madre il classico viaggio
(Grand Tour) in Italia dei giovani ben nati dal quale ne uscì libero dalle
inibizioni religiose ma con «nuovi abiti di mente viziosi, ... li quali mi
facevano mirare come idee di virtù la rilassatezza ne' sensi, la prepotenza con
i deboli e la vendetta» Tornato a Genova trovò la sua città bombardata
dal mare dalle navi di Luigi XIV che voleva punirla per la sua politica
filospagnola. In quell'occasione conobbe Tomás Enriquez de Cabrera conte di
Melgar che era stato chiamato a difendere la città. Il conte avviò il giovane
nelle arti militari e lo introdusse nel giro del patriziato mondano.
Innamoratosi fortemente di una «meritevole donna» che morì poco tempo dopo,
cadde in depressione e per distrarsi dal dolore riprese i suoi dispendiosi
viaggi in Italia. Ridotto in ristrettezze economiche si recò a Napoli per
recuperare certi suoi crediti ma dovette lottare per oltre vent'anni per
districarsi dalla palude di leggi e cavillose procedure al punto che si mise
egli stesso a studiare legge con un certo profitto per ottenere dai tribunali
quanto gli spettava. La sua fama di spadaccino gli fece guadagnare le
simpatie del patriziato napoletano che riteneva «massime di cavagliero ... che
fusse atto di disonore e di vergogna il non punire un uomo a sé inferiore
quando si haveva da quello qualche offesa ricevuto, e che il perdonare
generosamente fusse vergogna; ... ma poscia ... era massima d'estrema vergogna
il non chiamare a duello un nobile a sé uguale quando da quello si era
qualche offesa ricevuta». Si diede quindi a duellare per qualsiasi
puntiglio cavalleresco tanto da essere messo in prigione aumentando così la sua
fama di «duellista e vendicativo» presso la nobiltà locale. Da duellista
a metafisico Dal 1694 Paolo Mattia cominciò a disgustarsi di questa sua vita
fatua e falsa trasformandosi in «filosofo metafisico» ed entrando nella cerchia
degli intellettuali cartesiani e gassendisti che caddero sotto l'attacco della
Chiesa preoccupata che il loro sensismo approdasse a un conclamato
materialismo. La posizione della Chiesa fu esplicitata dal grande processo del
1694 contro gli "ateisti", quegli intellettuali che si erano illusi
di poter modernizzare la dottrina cattolica. Paolo Mattia si schierò con
questi frequentando il salotto letterario di Nicolò Caravita che si era già battuto
contro l'Inquisizione e che era divenuto il centro di diffusione della
filosofia cartesiana. Qui il Doria ebbe modo di conoscere il protetto di
Caravita, quel Giambattista Vico che scriverà del genovese che «fu il primo con
cui poté cominciare a ragionar di metafisica» nella quale si intravedevano
«lumi sfolgoranti di platonica divinità». Gli scritti La politica
Vita civile, 1753 Per organizzarsi contro le polemiche dei tradizionalisti,
sostenuti dalla Chiesa cattolica, il Caravita pensò di fondare un'associazione
di intellettuali modernisti che, dopo diverse difficoltà, finalmente vide la
luce nel 1698 col nome di Accademia Palatina e che annoverava fra i 18 soci
fondatori anche Paolo Mattia Doria che pronunziò in quella sede lezioni
concernenti la teoria politica (Sopra la vita di Claudio imperadore) dove
sosteneva la superiorità della nobiltà per virtù e non per nascita, e dove
contestava la base valoriale dell'aristocrazia fondata sull'uso delle armi
(Dell'arte militare, Del conduttor degl'eserciti, Del governatore di piazza,
Della scherma). La guerra, scriveva Doria, non era un privilegio della
"nobiltà di spada" ma un'attività che richiedeva l'applicazione di
tecniche scientifiche e il comando affidato a ufficiali competenti nel dirigere
l'animo umano (Il capitano filosofoNapoli, 1739) Nel 1709 Doria pubblica
la Vita civile e l'educazione del principe, criticata da alcuni per alcuni
fraintendimenti sul pensiero di Cartesio («non ha inteso il Cartesio, o ... ad
arte ne tronca o perverte il senso»). Nell'opera si criticava la politica di
Tacito e Machiavelli sostenendo che questa va basata non «sopra l'idea degli
uomini quali sono» ma sulla «virtù, il giusto e l'onesto». Secondo Doria perciò
lo Stato andava guidato, come dettava l'insegnamento platonico, dai filosofi
facendosi così sostenitore, secondo le nuove idee riformatrici che cominciavano
a circolare in Europa, di un assolutismo moderato nel Regno di Napoli. La
"mattematica" e le donne Nel 1711 Doria cominciò ad interessarsi a
temi scientifici mandando alle stampe le sue Considerazioni sopra il moto e la
meccanica de' corpi sensibili e de' corpi insensibili (Augusta 1711) e una
Giunta di P. M. Doria al suo libro del Moto e della Meccanica (ibid. 1712).
Opere queste, dove si criticava il metodo galileiano e si metteva in
discussione la distinzione cartesiana fra res extensa e res cogitans in nome
del principio neoplatonico dell'Uno immateriale, che non ebbero il successo
sperato e vennero anzi aspramente criticate da più parti. Doria divenne un
personaggio ambito da nobili e femmes savantes che lo invitavano nei loro
circoli culturali dove riceveva numerosi attestati di stima. Per ricambiare le
nobili dame, sue discepole, Doria pubblicò nel 1716 i Ragionamenti ne' quali si
dimostra la donna, in quasi tutte le virtù più grandi, non essere all'uomo
inferiore . Le donne, sosteneva Doria, hanno gli stessi diritti naturali
degli uomini e possono governare e fondare grandi imperi ma non sono adatte
fisiologicamente a formulare leggi per le quali occorre una sapienza storica e
filosofica. Cartesio infatti aveva errato nel credere che Dio avesse dato a
tutti «eguale abilità per intender le scienze», mentre «Iddio non ha ugualmente
a tutti gli uomini distribuito e perciò vediamo che molti non son capaci nelle
scienze». Quindi le donne che egli ammirava moltissimo e che lo ricambiavano
con tante lodi, devono tuttavia accontentarsi di poter dirigere lo Stato ma non
possono essere legislatrici. Un rapporto questo con l'altro sesso che rimase
problematico per Doria che non volle mai sposarsi ritenendo il matrimonio una
«legge dura» che non trovava precisa corrispondenza nella teologia..
Verso il 1718 Doria si considerava ormai un "filosofo metafisico e
mattematico" che adottando il platonismo aveva pressoché «distrutto li
saggi di filosofia del signor Giovanni Locke ed in parte ancora la filosofia di
Renato Des-Cartes». Un capovolgimento di fronte Doria compiva un
capovolgimento delle sue convinzioni moderniste passando nel campo degli
"antichi" quando il suo Nuovo metodo geometrico (Augusta 1714) e i
Dialoghi ... ne' quali ... s'insegna l'arte di esaminare una dimostrazione
geometrica, e di dedurre dalla geometria sintetica la conoscenza del vero e del
falso (Amsterdam 1718), furono aspramente criticati da parte della rivista Acta
eruditorum di Lipsia. Ancora più aspre le contestazioni ricevute a Napoli che
gli costarono un sonetto denigratorio che così recitava: «Di rispondere a te
nessun si sogna / de' nostri, e strano è assai che Lipsia mandi / risposta a un
uom che 'l matto ognun lo noma» Illustrazione alla recensione
pubblicata sugli Acta Eruditorum del 1743 al Capitano filosofo Nel 1733, fu
rifondata l'Accademia degli Oziosi, dove Doria profuse tutte le sue energie nel
criticare i "moderni", seguaci del pensiero filosofico di John Locke,
dell'Accademia delle scienze di Celestino Galiani che aveva detto di lui «il
Doria ha ristampato tutte in un corpo le sue coglionerie». Con l'avvento
del re riformista Carlo III di Borbone nel Regno di Napoli, Doria si trovò
completamente isolato col suo «platonismo pratticabile» che continuava a
difendere scrivendo nel 1739 il Politico alla moda. Doria si rendeva
ormai conto di come fosse irrealizzabile il suo ideale di un governo ad opera
di sovrani virtuosi e filosofi legislatori: «li magistrati, li capitani, li
sacerdoti, e tutti gli ordini che governano hanno diviso la filosofia dalla
politica per unire alla politica la sola prattica»; ormai «i
principiscrivevavogliono governare lo stato colla politica de mercadanti, e non
con quella de filosofi». Egli constatava come vi fosse ormai una generale crisi
dei valori «perché in questo nostro tempo si corre dietro solamente alla
perniciosa filosofia di Locke e di Newton e si pratica solamente la politica
mercantile» Completamente ignorato dall'ambiente intellettuale, Doria
malato e in difficoltà economiche moriva nel 1746 indicando nel suo testamento
la volontà che fosse pubblicata a spese di un suo cugino, a saldo di un debito
da questi contratto, l'opera Idea di una perfetta repubblica. Quando lo
scritto fu infine edito nel 1753 fu condannato dai revisori ad essere bruciato
per il suo contenuto contro «Dio, la religione e la monarchia». In realtà
l'autore contestava il celibato ecclesiastico, l'indissolubilità del matrimonio,
la castita, l'eternità delle pene inflitte ai dannati e l'ideologia
etico-politica dei gesuiti. Il governo perfetto, ribadiva Doria
nell'opera postuma, doveva essere a imitazione di quello di Sparta e della Roma
repubblicana, «perché posto il governo in mano agli uomini, è forza che sia
moderato da un magistrato ordinato alla difesa del popolo contro la
tirannia» Gli unici a esecrare il rogo dell'opera furono proprio i
giuristi napoletani difendendo «i libri di quel savio e cordato vecchio di
Doria, di cui s'infama la venerata memoria». Lo smantellamento delle reti
fiduciarie nel Regno di Napoli L'opera
di Paolo Mattia Doria è al centro del saggio di Anthony Pagden dal
titolo La distruzione della fiducia e le sue conseguenze economiche a Napoli
nel secolo XVIII. In estrema sintesi il Pagden argomenta, poggiando la propria
analisi sugli scritti di Doria, che nel corso del secolo XVII, il governo
spagnolo, nell'azione di depredazione del Regno di Napoli aveva «spogliato i
loro sudditi della virtù e della ricchezza, introducendo al posto loro
ignoranza, infamia, divisione e infelicità». Altra azione, che si
rivelerà in seguito disastrosa per la società napoletana e in genere per il
Mezzogiorno, fu lo smantellamento dei rapporti interpersonali di fiducia tra le
diverse classi, necessari per lo sviluppo dei commerci e dell'iniziativa
privata e l'introduzione della cultura dell'onore attraverso l'infoltimento dei
ranghi nobiliari, il rafforzamento dell'Inquisizione, l'inasprimento della
segretezza dell'attività di governo, l'incremento delle cerimonie religiose e
di devozione ritualizzata, l'aumento della diseguaglianza davanti alla legge e
infine l'indebolimento apertamente perseguito del rapporto armonioso che si era
creato in passato tra i diversi ordini del Regno: tutto ciò al fine di
scoraggiare, minando la fede pubblica, l'ascesa di una classe
imprenditoriale-commerciale che avanzasse i propri diritti e rompesse
l'equilibrio dei poteri tra la corte e il patriziato locale che gli spagnoli
intendevano mantenere. Tutti questi fattori, lesivi di quel rapporto di fiducia
tra le classi necessario per l'avvio e il consolidamento dell'attività di
cooperazione e di intrapresa economica, non tarderanno a produrre effetti
duraturi sulla società meridionale, non solo a livello mentale-culturale, e di
converso a livello economico, costituendo uno dei fattori prodromici
dell'arretratezza socio-economico-culturale del Mezzogiorno d'Italia.
Opere: Paolo Mattia Doria, Considerazioni sopra il moto e la meccanica de' corpi
sensibili, e de' corpi insensibili, In Augusta [i.e. Napoli?, Daniello Hopper. Considerazioni
sopra il moto e la meccanica de' corpi sensibili, e de' corpi insensibili.
Giunta, In Augusta [i.e. Napoli?, Daniello Hopper; Dialoghi, Amsterdam, sn,
1718. 13 giugno . Esercitazioni geometriche, In Pariggi, Duplicationis cubi
demonstratio, Venetiis, Discorso apologetico, In Venezia, Soluzione del
problema della trisezione dell'angolo, In Venezia; Vita civile, In Napoli,
Angelo Vocola. Pierluigi Rovito, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Doria, L’arte di conoscer se stesso, in P. De
Fabrizio , Manoscritti napoletani, Paolo Mattia Doria, L'arte di conoscer se
stesso, Doria, L'arte di conoscer se stesso414. Paolo Mattia Doria,
L'arte di conoscer se stesso416. Paolo Mattia Doria, L'arte di conoscere
se stesso421. Paolo Mattia Doria,
Autobiografia, in P. Cristofolini , Opere filosofiche, 197120. R. Ajello, Diritto ed economia in P. M.
D.104 Vita civile6, ed. Augusta,
1710 Ibid., 344 s.
S. Rotta in Politici ed economisti del primo Settecento. Dal Muratori al
Cesarotti, V, Milano-Napoli 1978937
Paolo Mattia Doria, L'arte di conoscere se stesso423. Eugenio Di Rienzo, «GALIANI, Celestino» in
Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 51, 1998. Cit. in V. Ferrone, Scienza natura religione.
Mondo newtoniano e cultura italiana nel primo Settecento, Napoli 1982533 Manoscritti, V, 26-131
La Politica mercantile (1742), Manoscritti, IV360 Ibid.306
Idea di una perfetta repubblica939
"accorato"
Ajello124 Segnatamente: Del
commercio del Regno di Napoli (1740), in E. Vidal, Il pensiero civile di Paolo
Mattia Doria negli scritti inediti, Istituto di Filosofia del diritto dell'Roma
1953; Della vita civile, Torino; Massime del governo spagnolo di Napoli, V.
Conti, Guida, Napoli 1973. Contenuto nel
volume miscellaneo Diego Gambetta, Le strategie della fiducia, Einaudi, Torino
1989 alle 165-181 . D. Gambetta,
ibidem170 Pierluigi Rovito, «DORIA,
Paolo Mattia», in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 41, Roma,
Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1992. Roberto Scazzieri, «Doria, Paolo
Mattia», in Il Contributo italiano alla storia del PensieroEconomia, Roma,
Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, . Giulia Belgioioso, «Doria, Paolo
Mattia», in Il Contributo italiano alla storia del PensieroFilosofia, Roma,
Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, . E. Vidal, Il pensiero civile di Paolo
Mattia Doria negli scritti inediti, Istituto di Filosofia del diritto dell'Roma
1953 Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina
dedicata a Paolo Mattia Doria Collabora a Wikiquote Citazionio su Paolo Mattia
Doria Encyclopædia Britannica, su britannica.com.
dossier: Grice is not clear about the status of thisbut some
philosophers have been too mentalistic. How would a genitorial programme
proceed. Is there a dossier in a handwave by which the emissor communicates
that he knows the route or that he is about to leave his emissee. It does not
seem so, because the handwave is unstructured. Unlike “Fido is shaggy.” In the
case of “Fido is shaggy,” there must be some OVERLAP between the emissor’s soul
and the emissee’s soulin terms of dossier. So perhaps there is overlap in the
handwave. There must be an overlap as to WHICH route he means. By making the
handwave the emissor communicates that HE, the emissor, subject IS (copula)
followed by predicate “knower of the route.” So here we have a definite ‘the
route.’ Which route? To heaven, to hell. Cf. The scots ‘high road,’ ‘low road.’
To Loch Lomond. If there is not this minimal common ground nothing can be
communicated. In the alternative meaning, “I (subject) am (copula) about to
leave youwhere again there must be an overlap in the identification of the
denotata of the pronouns. In the case of Blackburn’s skull or the arrow at the
fork of a road, the common ground is instituted in situu in the one-off
predicament, and there still must be some overlap of dossier. In its most
technical usage, Grice wants to demystify Donnellan’s identificatory versus
non-identificatory uses of ‘the,’ as unnecessary implications to Russell’s
otherwise neat account. The topic interested Strawson (“Principle of assumption
of ignorance, knowledge and relevance”) and Urmson’s principle of aptitude. Grice’s
favourite vacuous name is ‘Bellerophon.’ ‘Vacuous names’ is an essay
commissioned by Davison and Hintikka for Words and objections: essays on the
work of W. V. Quine (henceforth, W and O) for Reidel, Dordrecht. “W and O” had
appeared (without Grices contribution) as a special issue of Synthese. Grices
contribution, along with Quines Reply to Grice, appeared only in the reprint of
that special issue for Reidel in Dordrecht. Grice cites from various
philosophers (and logicians ‒ this was the time when logic was starting to
be taught outside philosophy departments, or sub-faculties), such as Mitchell,
Myro, Mates, Donnellan, Strawson, Grice was particularly
proud to be able to quote Mates by mouth or book. Grice takes the
opportunity, in his tribute to Quine, to introduce one of two of his
syntactical devices to allow for conversational implicatura to be given maximal
scope. The device in Vacuous Namess is a subscription device to indicate
the ordering of introduction of this or that operation. Grice wants to
give room for utterances of a special existential kind be deemed
rational/reasonable, provided the principle of conversational helfpulness is
thought of by the addressee to be followed by the utterer. Someone t
attending the party organised by the Merseyside Geographical Society. That
is Marmaduke Bloggs, who climbed Mt. Everest on hands and knees. But who,
as it happened, turned out to be an invention of the journalists at the
Merseyside Newsletter, “W and O,” vacuous name, identificatory use,
non-identificatory use, subscript device. Davidson and Hintikka were well aware
of the New-World impact of the Old-World ideas displayed by Grice and
Strawson in their attack to Quine. Quine had indeed addressed Grices and
Strawsons sophisticated version of the paradigm-case argument in Word and
Object. Davidson and Hintikka arranged to publish a special issue for a
periodical publication, to which Strawson had already contributed. It was only
natural, when Davidson and Hintikka were informed by Reidel of their interest
in turning the special issue into a separate volume, that they would approach
the other infamous member of the dynamic duo! Commissioned by Davidson and
Hintikka for “W and O.” Grice introduces a subscript device to account for implicatura
of utterances like Marmaduke Bloggs won’t be attending the party; he was
invented by the journalists. In the later section, he explores
identificatory and non identificatory uses of the without involving himself in
the problems Donnellan did! Some philosophers, notably Ostertag, have
found the latter section the most intriguing bit, and thus Ostertag cared to
reprint the section on Descriptions for his edited MIT volume on the topic. The
essay is structured very systematically with an initial section on a calculus
alla Gentzen, followed by implicatura of vacuous Namess such as Marmaduke
Bloggs, to end with definite descriptions, repr. in Ostertag, and psychological
predicates. It is best to focus on a few things here. First his imaginary
dialogues on Marmaduke Bloggs, brilliant! Second, this as a preamble to his Presupposition
and conversational implicaturum. There is a quantifier phrase, the, and two
uses of it: one is an identificatory use (the haberdasher is clumsy, or THE
haberdasher is clumsy, as Grice prefers) and then theres a derived,
non-identificatory use: the haberdasher (whoever she was! to use Grices and
Mitchells addendum) shows her clumsiness. The use of the numeric subscripts
were complicated enough to delay the publication of this. The whole thing was a
special issue of a journal. Grices contribution came when Reidel turned that
into a volume. Grice later replaced his numeric subscript device by square
brackets. Perhaps the square brackets are not subtle enough,
though. Grices contribution, Vacuous Namess, later repr. in part “Definite
descriptions,” ed. Ostertag, concludes with an exploration of the phrases, and
further on, with some intriguing remarks on the subtle issues surrounding the
scope of an ascription of a predicate standing for a psychological state or
attitude. Grices choice of an ascription now notably involves an
opaque (rather than factive, like know) psychological state or attitude:
wanting, which he symbolizes as W. At least Grice does not write,
really, for he knew that Austin detested a trouser word! Grice concludes that
(xi) and (xiii) will be derivable from each of (ix) and (x), while (xii) will
be derivable only from (ix).Grice had been Strawsons logic tutor at St. Johns
(Mabbott was teaching the grand stuff!) and it shows! One topic that especially
concerned Grice relates to the introduction and elimination rules, as he later
searches for generic satisfactoriness. Grice
wonders [W]hat should be said of Takeutis conjecture (roughly)
that the nature of the introduction rule determines the character of
the elimination rule? There seems to be
no particular problem about allowing an introduction rule which tells
us that, if it is established in Xs personalized system that φ, then it is
necessary with respect to X that φ is true (establishable). The accompanying
elimination rule is, however, slightly less promising. If we suppose such a
rule to tell us that, if one is committed to the idea that it is necessary with
respect to X that φ, then one is also committed to whatever is expressed by φ,
we shall be in trouble; for such a rule is not acceptable; φ will be a volitive
expression such as let it be that X eats his hat; and my commitment to the idea
that Xs system requires him to eat his hat does not ipso facto involve me in
accepting (buletically) let X eat his hat. But if we take the elimination rule
rather as telling us that, if it is necessary with respect to X that let X eat
his hat, then let X eat his hat possesses satisfactoriness-with-respect-to-X,
the situation is easier; for this version of the rule seems inoffensive, even for
Takeuti, we hope. A very interesting concept Grice introduces in the
definite-descriptor section of Vacuous Namess is that of a conversational
dossier, for which he uses δ for a definite descriptor. The key concept is that
of conversational dossier overlap, common ground, or conversational pool. Let
us say that an utterer U has a dossier for a definite description δ if there is
a set of definite descriptions which include δ, all the members of which the
utterer supposes to be satisfied by one and the same item and the utterer U
intends his addressee A to think (via the recognition that A is so intended)
that the utterer U has a dossier for the definite description δ which the
utterer uses, and that the utterer U has specifically selected (or chosen, or
picked) this specific δ from this dossier at least partly in the hope that his
addressee A has his own dossier for δ which overlaps the utterers dossier for δ,
viz. shares a substantial, or in some way specially favoured, su-bset with the
utterers dossier. Its unfortunate that the idea of a dossier is not better
known amog Oxonian philosophers. Unlike approaches to the phenomenon by other
Oxonian philosophers like Grices tutee Strawson and his three principles
(conversational relevance, presumption of conversational knowledge, and
presumption of conversational ignorance) or Urmson and his, apter than
Strawsons, principle of conversational appositeness (Mrs.Smiths husband just
delivered a letter, You mean the postman!?), only Grice took to task the idea
of formalising this in terms of set-theory and philosophical
psychology ‒ note his charming reference to the utterers hope (never
mind intention) that his choice of d from his dossier will overlap with some d
in the dossier of his his addressee. The point of adding whoever he may be for
the non-identificatory is made by Mitchell, of Worcester, in his Griceian
textbook for Hutchinson. Refs.: The main reference is Grice’s “Vacuous names,”
in “W and O” and its attending notes, BANC.
Dottarelli: “I like Donatelli;
he is an Etruscan, from Balsena, and it’s only natural that he is obsessed with
the one and only Etruscan philosopher, Musonio!” --- Luciano
Dottarelli (Bolsena), filosofo. Si è formato alla Facoltà di Filosofia
dell'Perugia, dove ha studiato con Cornelio Fabro e si è laureato con una tesi
sul dibattito epistemologico del Novecento (K. PopperFeyerabend, I. Lakatos, T.
Kuhn) sotto la guida di Massimo Baldini. Si è poi specializzato in Filosofia
all'Urbino, dove ha avuto come maestri Italo Mancini e Pasquale Salvucci, con
cui ha discusso una tesi sulle implicazioni epistemologiche della filosofia di
Immanuel Kant. Ha insegnato nei Licei ed è stato docente a contratto di
Filosofia della scienza, Filosofia morale, Bioetica nelle Università della
Tuscia, di Macerata e Firenze. Ha sempre coniugato il lavoro didattico e
di ricerca con l'impegno civile. Per 13 anni consecutivi è stato Sindaco della
città di Bolsena (VT). Eletto la prima volta nel 1986, con una lista civica di
sinistra, è stato successivamente confermato nel 1990 e nel 1995. Dal 2005
al ha ricoperto il ruolo di Direttore
generale della Provincia di Viterbo e in tale veste, oltre al coordinamento e
alla sovrintendenza della gestione complessiva dell’Ente, ha avuto la responsabilità
diretta della formazione e organizzazione delle risorse umane, del percorso di
certificazione EMAS, del processo Agenda 21 locale e del progetto Arco Latino,
strumento per la definizione di una strategia integrata di sviluppo dell’area
del Mediterraneo. Con Pasquale Picone, filosofo e psicoanalista junghiano, nel
2004 è stato cofondatore della Società Filosofica Italianasezione di Viterbo,
di cui è attualmente vicepresidente. Nel
ha costituito il Club per l’UNESCO Viterbo Tuscia, di cui è presidente.
I suoi interessi teorici si sono rivolti all'epistemologia, all'etica, alla
filosofia politica e alla pratica filosofica. In Popper e il gioco della
scienza ha svolto un'analisi critica dell'epistemologia falsificazionista,
mostrando come l'ultimo Popper, pur rendendosi conto della coerenza dello
sviluppo evoluzionistico della propria epistemologia, arretrasse e resistesse
dal trarne le estreme conseguenze, restando fedele al paradigma del
razionalismo critico, difendendolo sino in fondo, ma con ragioni sempre più
deboli. Nei suoi lavori su Immanuel Kant (Kant e la metafisica come scienza,
Abitare un mondo comune. Follia e metafisica nel pensiero di Kant) ha
evidenziato sia il proposito kantiano di fondare come una scienza rigorosa la
metaphysica generalis, prima parte della metafisica come era intesa nella
tradizione razionalistica tedesca, sia il carattere che viene ad assumere la
metaphysica specialis, dopo la critica: un pensare congetturale e analogico che
è anche prassi, vita. In questa prospettiva la filosofia kantiana viene
valorizzata per la sua peculiare dimensione "cosmica", come «scienza
della relazione di ogni conoscenza e di ogni uso della ragione umana con lo
scopo essenziale di essa», e viene ricollegata alla filosofia come era praticata
soprattutto nell'antichità: arte di vivere, esercizio spirituale. Il filosofo
pratico, il maestro di saggezza tramite l’insegnamento e l’esempio, è così
«l’autentico filosofo», che, nel quadro della complessiva ed originale
riorganizzazione kantiana dell’orizzonte utopico di derivazione platonica e
rousseauiana, diventa esso stesso un ideale regolativo, al quale colui che più
si è avvicinato è stato Socrate, per via della sua esemplare coerenza di vita.
In Freud. Un filosofo dietro al divano, il lavoro del fondatore della
psicoanalisi viene letto come un episodio della lunga tradizione che ha
interpretato la filosofia come "medicina per l'anima". Il rapporto di
Freud con la filosofia si nutre di una profonda ambivalenza: da un lato
un'irresistibile attrazione; dall'altro quasi la necessità di rassicurare se
stesso e gli altri su una propria «incapacità costituzionale» (Autobiografia,
1924) alla pura speculazione e sulla sua ferma volontà di sottrarsiproprio lui,
formidabile affabulatoreal fascino delle narrazioni filosofiche. La riflessione
di Freud non trascura nessuna delle dimensioni fondamentali della ricerca
filosofica. Neanche quella teoretica, volta a costruire visioni complessive
dell’uomo e del mondo; quella che gli appare la più rischiosa, perché la più
astratta, la più esposta alla frequentazione della metafisica e della
religione, sempre in procinto di cadere nella trappola della verità assoluta.
Più a suo agio Freud si sente invece nel lavorare lungo un'altra linea
d’impegno tradizionale della filosofia: la riflessione critica sui saperi e
sulle pratiche umane. Nell'opera di smascheramento dei meccanismi con cui le
ideologie e le prassi individuali e sociali ammantano la loro miseria “umana,
troppo umana”, le potenzialità della psicoanalisi si esprimono al meglio.
Masecondo l'interpretazione di Luciano Dottarellila fatica intellettuale di
Freud trova la propria collocazione più appropriata nella dimensione della
ricerca filosofica che interpreta se stessa come un’attività in cui l’uomo si
dedica alla cura e alla fioritura di sé, alla coltivazione della propria
umanità. Questa dimensione della filosofia come arte di vivere è stata
approfondita da Luciano Dottarelli attraverso la ricostruzione della vita e del
pensiero del filosofo stoico Musonio Rufo nella monografia su Musonio
l'Etrusco. La filosofia come scienza di vita. Testimonianza della vitalità
della tradizione culturale etrusca in epoca romana, la filosofia di Musonio è
espressione significativa di quel crogiolo di idee ed esperienze di ricerca
della felicità che è l'ellenismo della tarda antichità, in cui si rispecchierà
poi la civiltà medievale e soprattutto quella umanistico-rinascimentale.
Musonio ha dato il tono di fondo all'impegno prevalente nella tradizione
filosofica della Tuscia: ricerca di una scienza di vita, studio di perfezione,
imitazione di Dio, àskesis, esercizio per sviluppare la conoscenza e la
coltivazione di sé, finalizzata alla fioritura dell’autentica esistenza umana.
L’adesione del filosofo di Volsinii allo stoicismo è decisamente sotto il segno
di Socrate: la filosofia può proporsi come arte regia in quanto, in primo
luogo, è arte di governare se stessi. L’ideale dell’autosufficienza del saggio
si traduce nella predilezione per l’agricoltura, come attività più appropriata
per il filosofo. «La terra in effettiaffermava Musonioricambia con i frutti più
belli e più giusti coloro che si prendono cura di essa, dando molte volte tanto
quel che riceve ed offrendo grande abbondanza di tutto quanto è necessario per
vivere a chi ha la volontà di faticare: e tutto questo con decenza, nulla di
ciò con vergogna». Ad un analogo sentimento di appartenenza al cosmo e ad un
profondo rispetto per gli altri esseri umani e per tutti i viventi, sono
ispirate anche le sue riflessioni sui rapporti sociali, sulla schiavitù, sulle
donne, sulla nonviolenza, sull'alimentazione, sul vestire e sull'abitare.
Riflessioni che Musoniosecondo la concorde testimonianza dei contemporaneiseppe
tradurre con coerenza esemplare in una efficace pratica di elevazione
spirituale, diretta a coinvolgere, insieme, il corpo e l’anima. Sobrietà,
rispetto, universalità e condivisione sono le parole di riferimento di una
visione etica che anticipa in modo sorprendente istanze fondamentali della
moderna sensibilità ecologista. La visione della filosofia come arte di
maneggiare gli assoluti è approfondita nel libro Maneggiare assoluti. Immanuel
Kant, Primo Levi e altri maestri. «La filosofiasostiene Luciano Dottarellianche
quella più incline a farsi coinvolgere nell'impresa di estinguere la sete
dell’assoluto, contiene in sé, nella propria vocazione alla ricerca di una
comune verità mediante il dialogo, un antidoto indispensabile al rischio
distruttivo che può annidarsi in ogni tentativo umano, tanto umano di cogliere
la totalità, l’infinito, Dio. Anche le grandi tradizioni religiose, quelle che
da secoli sono impegnate a tracciare sentieri, trovare parole, celebrare
liturgie per saziare la fame di assoluto che agita il cuore e la mente degli
uomini non possono fare a meno di intessere un intenso dialogo con questa
tradizione di ricerca, soprattutto nei momenti cruciali, quando diventa urgente
addomesticare i dèmoni che una frequentazione inadeguata del sacro può evocare.
Dèmoni che portano il nome di fanatismo, intolleranza, totalitarismo e di cui
la storia degli uomini alla ricerca della verità assoluta, della totalità
autentica ed incondizionata, dell’esperienza integrale è purtroppo costellata.
La consapevolezza che anche la filosofia non possa dichiararsi storicamente
innocente, non cancella ma spinge a ritrovare sempre di nuovo la vocazione più
profonda di quest’originale forma di esercizio spirituale: una ricerca
appassionata del bene e della verità, capace di resistere alla suggestione del
possesso compiuto e di mantenersi in quella apertura alla possibilità
dell’errore che è presidio di autentica libertà per sé e per gli altri».
Opere Popper e il "gioco della scienza", Massari, 1992 Kant e la
metafisica come scienza, Massari, 1995 Abitare un mondo comune. Follia e
metafisica nel pensiero di Kant (Introduzione al Saggio sulle malattie della
mente di I.Kant, Massari, 2001 Utopia e ragione come luoghi di incontro con
l’altro, in Le ragioni della speranza,
La Piccola Editrice, 2003 Maneggiare assoluti. Immanuel Kant, Primo Levi e
altri maestri, Il Prato, Musonio
l’Etrusco. La filosofia come scienza di vita, Annulli Editori, Freud. Un filosofo dietro al divano, Annulli
Editori, Riverberi. Di Tuscia e d’altro,
Annulli Editori, La farfalla dell’anima
e la libertà , Armando Editore,
Note Dipartimento per gli Affari
Interni e Territoriali
amministratori.interno.gov.it/amministratori/ServletVisualxCom3 Club per l'UNESCOViterbo TUSCIA http://treccani.it/magazine/webtv/videos/Conv_Musonio.html.
Doxastic:: discussed by J. L. Austin in the myth of the cave.
Plato is doing some form of linguistic botany when he distinguishes between the
doxa and the epistemeStich made it worse with his ‘sub-doxastic’! from Grecian
doxa, ‘belief’, of or pertaining to belief. A doxastic mental state, for
instance, is or incorporates a belief. Doxastic states of mind are to be
distinguished, on the one hand, from such non-doxastic states as desires,
sensations, and emotions, and, on the other hand, from subdoxastic states. By
extension, a doxastic principle is a principle governing belief. A doxastic
principle might set out conditions under which an agent’s forming or abandoning
a belief is justified epistemically or otherwise. -- doxographia
griceiana -- Griceian doxographers. A Griceian doxographer is a a compiler
of andcommentators on the opinions of Grice. “I am my first doxographer,” Grice
said. Grice enjoyed the term coined by H. Diels for the title of his work “Doxographi
Graeci,” which Grice typed “Doxographi Gricei”. In his “Doxographi,” Diels
assembles a series of Grecian texts in which the views of Grecian philosophers
from the archaic to the Hellenistic era are set out in a relatively schematic
way. In the introduction, Diels reconstructs the history of the writing of
these opinions, viz. the doxography strictlythe ‘writing’ (graphein) of the
‘opinion’ (“doxa”)cfr. the unwritten opinions; Diels’s ‘Doxographi’ is now a
standard part of the historiography of philosophy. Doxography is important both
as a source of information about a philosopher, and also because a later
philosopher (later than Grice, that is), ancient, medieval, and modern, should
rely on it besides what Diels calls the ‘primary’ material“what Grice actually
philosophised on.” The crucial text for Diels’s reconstruction is the book
Physical Opinions of the Philosophers Placita Philosophorum, traditionally
ascribed to Plutarch but no longer thought to be by him. “Placita philosophorum”
lists the views of various philosophers and schools under subject headings such
as “What Is Nature?” and “On the Rainbow.” Out of this oeuvre and others Diels
reconstructs a Collection of Opinions that he ascribes to Aetius, a philosopher
mentioned by Theodoret as its author. Diels takes Aetius’s ultimate source to
be Theophrastus, who wrote a more discursive Physical Opinions. Because Aetius
mentions the views of Hellenistic philosophers writing after Theophrastus,
Diels postulates an intermediate source, which he calls the “Vetusta Placita.” The
most accessible doxographical material for Grice is in “The Life of Opinions of
the Eminent Philosopher H. P. Grice,” “Vita et sententiae H. P. Griceiani quo
in philosophia probatus fuit.” by H. P. Grice, après “Vitae et sententiae eorum qui in
philosophia probati fuerunt,”
by Diogenes Laertius, who is, however, mainly interested in gossip.
Laertius arranges philosophers by schools and treats each school
chronologically.
Dummett:: Dummett on ‘implicaturum’ in “Truth and other enigmas”Note the animosity by Dummett against Grice’s playgroup for
Grice never inviting him to a Saturday morning! “I
will say this: conversational implicaturum, or as he fastidiously would prefer,
the ‘implicaturum,’ was, yes, ‘invented,’ by H. P. Grice, of St. John’s, but
University Lecturer, to boot, to replace an abstract semantic concept such as
Frege’s ‘Sinn,’ expelled in Grice’s original Playgroup’s determination to pay
attention, in the typical Oxonian manner, to nothing but what an *emisor*
(never mind his emission!) ‘communicates’ in a ‘particularised’ context — so
that was a good thing -- for Grice!” “Truth
and other enigmas.” Cited by Grice in Way of Words -- dummett, m. a.
e.cited by H. P. Grice. philosopher of language, logic, and mathematics, noted
for his sympathy for metaphysical antirealism and for his exposition of the
philosophy of Frege. Dummett regards allegiance to the principle of bivalence
as the hallmark of a realist attitude toward any field of discourse. This is
the principle that any meaningful assertoric sentence must be determinately
either true or else false, independently of anyone’s ability to ascertain its
truth-value by recourse to appropriate empirical evidence or methods of proof.
According to Dummett, the sentences of any learnable language cannot have
verification-transcendent truth conditions and consequently we should query the
intelligibility of certain statements that realists regard as meaningful. On
these grounds, he calls into question realism about the past and realism in the
philosophy of mathematics in several of the papers in two collections of his
essays, Truth and Other Enigmas 8 and The Seas of Language 3. In The Logical
Basis of Metaphysics 1, Dummett makes clear his view that the fundamental
questions of metaphysics have to be approached through the philosophy of
language, and more specifically through the theory of meaning. Here his
philosophical debts to Frege and Vitters are manifest. Dummett has been the
world’s foremost expositor and champion of Frege’s philosophy, above all in two
highly influential books, Frege: Philosophy of Language 3 and Frege: Philosophy
of Mathematics 1. This is despite the fact that Frege himself advocated a form
of Platonism in semantics and the philosophy of mathematics that is quite at
odds with Dummett’s own anti-realist inclinations. It would appear, however,
from what Dummett says in Origins of Analytical Philosophy 3, that he regards
Frege’s great achievement as that of having presaged the “linguistic turn” in
philosophy that was to see its most valuable fruit in the later work of
Vitters. Vitters’s principle that grasp of the meaning of a linguistic
expression must be exhaustively manifested by the use of that expression is one
that underlies Dummett’s own approach to meaning and his anti-realist leanings.
In logic and the philosophy of mathematics this is shown in Dummett’s sympathy
for the intuitionistic approach of Brouwer and Heyting, which involves a
repudiation of the law of excluded middle, as set forth in Dummett’s own book
on the subject, Elements of Intuitionism 7.
Duni: Grice: “I like Duni; but of course he errs, as
Kant does – for how can a ‘sitte’ a mere costume, become ‘universal’ – yet
that’s the oxymoronic title of his tract, ‘scienza dei costume, ovvero, diritto
universale’ -- Emanuele Duni (Matera), filosofo. Figlio di Francesco, maestro di cappella della
cattedrale di Matera, e fratello dei compositori Egidio Romualdo ed Antonio,
nell'ambiente familiare imparò la musica scrivendo anche alcune composizioni da
gravicembalo, pur se non seguì le orme dei fratelli maggiori in campo musicale,
e fu avviato agli studi religiosi nel Seminario della città di Matera.
Laureatosi in giurisprudenza presso l'Napoli nel 1742, tornò a Matera dove
aveva già intrapreso la pratica di avvocato presso la Regia Udienza e dove,
chiamato dall'arcivescovo Vincenzo Lanfranchi, fu insegnante presso il
Seminario; lo stesso Palazzo del Seminario divenne in seguito sede del Liceo
Classico di Matera, che fu a lui intitolato. Dopo la morte del padre, lasciò la
sua città natale trasferendosi dapprima a Napoli e successivamente a Roma. Presso l'Università degli Studi La Sapienza
fu docente di diritto canonico e di diritto civile, e nel 1752 pubblicò la sua
prima opera, un Commentarius in cui esponeva la dottrina giuridica del
codicillo, con una dedica a Papa Benedetto XIV che in seguito lo sostenne nella
sua nomina alla cattedra universitaria; a Roma entrò in contatto con le opere
di Giambattista Vico, del quale divenne un convinto sostenitore. Eleggendo il Vico a suo maestro, il Duni si
propose di realizzare un programma di diritto universale come fonte di tutte le
leggi e costumi umani; partendo dalla sua formazione cattolica, il Duni credeva
in Dio creatore del mondo e suo legislatore, e non distinse l'etica e la
giurisprudenza considerandole integrative in quanto tendenti allo stesso fine,
cioè a dare il senso della vita, e quindi facenti parte entrambe della
filosofia. Nacque così nel 1760 il Saggio sulla giurisprudenza universale, sua
opera fondamentale, dedicato al promotore della politica riformatrice del Regno
meridionale, il ministro Bernardo Tanucci; il Saggio indicava esclusivamente
nel vero il principio unitario delle conoscenze umane, a cui ricondurre anche
la fondazione delle scienze morali. Il bene o vero morale, che differisce dal
vero metafisico perché comporta anche l'elezione volontaria del vero
conosciuto, si esprime come onestà e come giustizia; la morale propone
l'honestum, cioè il bene secondo coscienza, e opera dall'interno, invece il
diritto indica la via per andare al giusto, regolando i rapporti tra gli
individui e quindi la vita sociale.
Successivamente al Saggio, il Duni scrisse nel 1763 un'opera sul
rapporto tra filosofia e filologia nell'ambito della storia di Roma, ed in
seguito una Risposta ai dubbi proposti dal signor Gianfrancesco Finetti in cui
polemizzava contro il Finetti difendendo la memoria del Vico. Nel 1775 pubblicò
a Napoli la Scienza del costume o Sia sistema del diritto universale dedicata
al cardinale Leonardo Antonelli, in cui proseguiva l'opera iniziata con il
Saggio del 1760; proprio a Napoli morì nel 1781, durante un breve soggiorno, e
fu sepolto nella chiesa di San Marco, dove suo fratello Saverio fece incidere
un epitaffio. Opere De veteri ac novo
iure codicillorum commentarius (1752) Saggio sulla giurisprudenza universale
(1760) Origine e progressi del cittadino e del governo civile di Roma (1763)
Scienza del costume o sia sistema del diritto universale (1775) Note Famiglia Duni Archiviato il 31 dicembre in . Sassiweb.it Altri progetti Collabora a
Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a Emanuele Duni Mauro Di Lisa, Emanuele Duni, in Dizionario
biografico degli italiani, 42, Roma,
Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1993.
Profilo su Aptbasilicata.it, su aptbasilicata.it. Profilo su Basilicata.cc,
su basilicata.cc.
Duso: Grice: “While Duso is right that Hegel makes
constitution and freedom analytically connected, the Romans didn’t! -- Grice:
“My favourite Duso is his study of Hegel on freedom and the constitution – but
Duso, who could have drawn from ‘diritto romano’ doesn’t!” -- Giuseppe (Bepi)
Duso (Treviso), filosofo> Professore di filosofia politica all'Università
degli studi di Padova. Studioso dei
concetti della politica moderna e riconosciuto per i suoi interventi su
Althusius, sul giusnaturalismo moderno, sulla filosofia classica tedesca e
sulla filosofia politica del Novecento. Giuseppe Duso ha studiato all'Padova e
di Würzburg e si è laureato nel 1966 con una tesi su Hegel interprete di
Platone. Nel 1971 è diventato assistente di Storia della filosofia e nel 1972
Professore di Storia della logica. Dal 1983 insegna presso l'Padova Storia
della filosofia politica. Dal in pensione,
continua a lavorare in ambito internazionale. Dirige dal 1977 un Gruppo di
ricerca sui concetti politici, collegato ad esperienze di ricerca in Europa e
in America. È stato membro della redazione delle riviste "Il
Centauro" e Laboratorio politico. Membro della Direzione della rivista
"Filosofia politica" dal 1987, anno della sua fondazione, è stato
membro fondatore dell'associazione "Centro di ricerca sul lessico politico
europeo" (http://cirlpge.it), insieme a Roberto Esposito, Alessandro
Biral, Adone Brandalise, Nicola Matteucci e altri. Nel 1999 ha fondato con
alcuni colleghi il Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca sul Lessico Politico e
Giuridico Europeo (CIRLPGE), con sede presso l'Istituto suor Orsola Benincasa a
Napoli, di cui è attualmente Direttore. Ha tenuto corsi di Storia della
Filosofia politica, di Filosofia politica e di Analisi dei Linguaggi e dei
Concetti Politici presso l'Padova fino al 12 giugno . In occasione della sua
ultima lezione "ufficiale", gli allievi del gruppo di ricerca padovano
sui concetti politici hanno edito in suo onore il volume "Concordia
discors. Scritti in onore di Giuseppe Duso" (Padova University Press). Il
27 maggio l'Universidad Nacional de San
Martín gli conferisce la laurea honoris causa per il suo lavoro accademico in
quanto "costituisce un fondamento teorico indispensabile per comprendere
l'attualità". Contributo teorico
Giuseppe Duso è tra i principali fautori italiani di una riflessione sui
concetti del politico, che si inserisce nel solco della Begriffsgeschichte
tedesca di Brunner, Conze, Koselleck. Nei confronti di quest'ultima il gruppo
padovano coordinato da Duso ha elaborato una originale linea di ricerca
caratterizzata in modo duplice dalla filosofia: in primo luogo in quanto i
concetti che si affermano e si diffondono con la Rivoluzione francese sono
esamila loro genesi, che avviene nell'ambito delle dottrine del contratto
sociale e dei sistemi di diritto naturale; ma soprattutto perché filosofico è
il movimento di pensiero di chi pratica una storia concettuale consistente
nell'interrogare e mettere in questione (nel senso dell'elenchos socratico)
concetti (diritti, uguaglianza, libertà, potere, democrazia) che sono in genere
ritenuti ovvii sia nel dibattito intellettuale, sia nella lotta politica. La storia
concettuale consiste in questo modo nel comprendere la genesi, la logica e le
aporie dei fondamentali concetti politici moderni. Come spiega Sandro Chignola,
«il termine "storia dei concetti" (Begriffsgeschichte) compare per la
prima volta nelle Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte di G. W. F.
Hegel. Stanti le caratteristiche di quel testo, non si sa se il termine sia di
conio hegeliano, o non piuttosto frutto di interpolazione. Esso allude ad una
delle tre modalità storiografiche discusse da Hegel, ed in particolare alla
"storia interpretativa" (reflektierte Geschichte), che indirizza la
storia generale (Weltgeschichte) alla filosofia, da un punto di vista
universale. Quest'uso linguistico della BsG. resta senza seguito. La tradizione
storico-concettuale evolve invece, tra il XVIII secolo ed il XIX, nell'alveo
della lessicografia filosofica tedesca.
Nella riflessione di Duso, la filosofia politica da una parte coincide
con il lavoro critico della storia concettuale, e dall'altra tende, sulla base
delle aporie emerse, a trovare linee di orientamento per un nuovo pensiero
della politica. In tal modo viene messa in questione la modalità generalmente
accettata di pensare la politica, che ha la sua radice nello sviluppo teorico
che va dalla nascita della sovranità moderna sulla base del concetto di libertà
ai concetti fondamentali delle nostre costituzioni democratiche, in particolare
sovranità del popolo e rappresentanza politica. Il lavoro critico sui concetti
moderni ha perciò una sua ricaduta nella messa in questione del dispositivo
formale sia della democrazia rappresentativa che della democrazia diretta, e
nel tentativo di pensare la politica mediante nuove categorie. Pubblicazioni principali: Hegel e Platone,
Padova; Contraddizione e dialettica nella formazione del pensiero fichtiano,
Argalìa, Urbino; Weber: razionalità e politica (ed.), Arsenale, Venezia; La
politica oltre lo Stato: Carl Schmitt (ed.), Arsenale, Venezia; Il contratto
sociale nella filosofia politica moderna (ed.), Il Mulino, Bologna; Filosofia
politica e pratica del pensiero: Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss e Hannah Arendt
(ed.), FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1988 Il potere. Per la storia della filosofia
politica moderna (ed.), Carocci, Roma, 1999 (disponibile su cirlpge.it: Parte
I; Parte II; Parte III; Parte IV; Parte V) La logica del potere. Storia
concettuale come filosofia politica, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 1999, (Polimetrica,
Monza 2007 (disponibile su cirlpge.it) La libertà nella filosofia classica
tedesca. Politica e filosofia tra Kant, Fichte, Schelling e Hegel (ed. con
Gaetano Rametta), Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2000 La rappresentanza politica: genesi
e crisi del concetto, Franco Angeli Milano, 2003 (disponibile su
cirlpge.it)(Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 2006 (disponibile su cirlpge.it); Buenos
Aires, ) Oltre la democrazia. Un itinerario attraverso i classici (ed.),
Carocci, Roma; Sui concetti giuridici e politici della costituzione dell'Europa
(ed. con Sandro Chignola), FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2005 Crise de la démocratie et
gouvernement de la vie, (ed. con Jean François Kervégan), Polimetrica, Monza; Ripensare la costituzione. La questione della
pluralità, (ed. con Mario Bertolissi e Antonino Scalone), Polimetrica, Monza,
2008 (disponibile su cirlpge.it) Storia dei concetti e filosofia politica, (con
Sandro Chignola), FrancoAngeli, Milano; Come pensare il federalismo? Nuove
categorie e trasformazioni costituzionali (ed. con A. Scalone), Polimetrica,
Monza (disponibile su cirlpge.it)
Thinking about Politics beyond Modern Concepts, in New Paths in Political
Philosophy, «The New Centennial Rewiew»,Begriffsgeschichte and the Modern
Concept of Power, in Political Concepts and Time. New Approaches to Conceptual
History I, ed. J. F. Sebastián, Cantabria University Press, Santander , 275-304 Idea di libertà e costituzione
repubblicana nella filosofia politica di Kant, Polimetrica, Monza, (disponibile su cirlpge.it) Ripensare la
rappresentanza alla luce della teologia politica, in «Quaderni fiorentini per
la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno», XLI (), 9-47 (disponibile su centropgm.unifi.it)
Libertà e costituzione in Hegel, FrancoAngeli, Milano, Parti o partiti? Sul partito politico nella
democrazia rappresentativa, in «Filosofia politica», 1/, 11-38 (disponibile su cirlpge.it) Buon
governo e agire politico dei governati: un nuovo modo di pensare la democrazia?
(A proposito di P. Rosanvallon, Le bon gouvernement), in «Quaderni fiorentini
per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno», XLV (), 619-650 (disponibile su centropgm.unifi.it)
Onorificenze Laurea honoris causa in Filosofia Universidad Nacional de San
Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina, . Note
Giuseppe Duso | Historia Conceptual, su historiaconceptual.com. 31
maggio . Giuseppe Duso recibió el
Honoris Causa de UNSAM.. 16 giugno .
. libri scaricabili gratuitamente
in formato dal sito del CIRLPGE (Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca sul
Lessico Politico e Giuridico Europeo)//cirlpge.it/. Nello stesso sito sono
disponibili inoltre altri saggi dello stesso autore. Carl Schmitt Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Johann Gottlieb Fichte Roberto Esposito Alessandro Biral Adone Brandalise
Gianfranco Miglio New Paths in Political
Philosophy: Intervento alla conferenza "New Paths in Political Philosophy"
alla University of Buffalo, 28/29 marzo 2008. CIRLPGE: Sito Ufficiale.
dyad -- co-agency: social action: Grice: “My principle of
co-operation you can call the ‘conversational contract.’ In this respect, I
agree with Grice: Grice: “When I speak of conversation, I mean of a social
actionwhere one agent’s expectations influence his co-agent’s” -- a subclass of
human action involving the interaction among agents and their mutual
orientation, or the action of groups. While all intelligible actions are in
some sense social, social actions must be directed to others. Talcott Parsons
279 captured what is distinctive about social action in his concept of “double
contingency,” and similar concepts have been developed by other philosophers
and sociologists, including Weber, Mead, and Vitters. Whereas in monological
action the agents’ fulfilling their purposes depends only on contingent facts
about the world, the success of social action is also contingent on how other
agents react to what the agent does and how that agent reacts to other agents,
and so on. An agent successfully communicates, e.g., not merely by finding some
appropriate expression in an existing symbol system, but also by understanding
how other agents will understand him. Game theory describes and explains
another type of double contingency in its analysis of the interdependency of
choices and strategies among rational agents. Games are also significant in two
other respects. First, they exemplify the cognitive requirements for social
interaction, as in Mead’s analysis of agents’ perspective taking: as a subject
“I”, I am an object for others “me”, and can take a third-person perspective
along with others on the interaction itself “the generalized other”. Second,
games are regulated by shared rules and mediated through symbolic meanings;
Vitters’s private language argument establishes that rules cannot be followed
“privately.” Some philosophers, such as Peter Winch, conclude from this
argument that rule-following is a basic feature of distinctively social action.
Some actions are social in the sense that they can only be done in groups.
Individualists such as Weber, Jon Elster, and Raimo Tuomela believe that these
can be analyzed as the sum of the actions of each individual. But holists such
as Marx, Durkheim, and Margaret Gilbert reject this reduction and argue that in
social actions agents must see themselves as members of a collective agent.
Holism has stronger or weaker versions: strong holists, such as Durkheim and
Hegel, see the collective subject as singular, the collective consciousness of
a society. Weak holists, such as Gilbert and Habermas, believe that social
actions have plural, rather than singular, collective subjects. Holists
generally establish the plausibility of their view by referring to larger
contexts and sequences of action, such as shared symbol systems or social
institutions. Explanations of social actions thus refer not only to the mutual
expectations of agents, but also to these larger causal contexts, shared
meanings, and mechanisms of coordination. Theories of social action must then
explain the emergence of social order, and proposals range from Hobbes’s
coercive authority to Talcott Parsons’s value consensus about shared goals
among the members of groups. -- social
biology, the understanding of social behavior, especially human social
behavior, from a biological perspective; often connected with the political
philosophy of social Darwinism. Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species highlighted
the significance of social behavior in organic evolution, and in the Descent of
Man, he showed how significant such behavior is for humans. He argued that it
is a product of natural selection; but it was not until 4 that the English
biologist William Hamilton showed precisely how such behavior could evolve,
namely through “kin selection” as an aid to the biological wellbeing of close
relatives. Since then, other models of explanation have been proposed,
extending the theory to non-relatives. Best known is the self-describing
“reciprocal altruism.” Social biology became notorious in 5 when Edward O.
Wilson published a major treatise on the subject: Sociobiology: The New
Synthesis. Accusations of sexism and racism were leveled because Wilson
suggested that Western social systems are biologically innate, and that in some
respects males are stronger, more aggressive, more naturally promiscuous than
females. Critics argued that all social biology is in fact a manifestation of
social Darwinism, a nineteenthcentury philosophy owing more to Herbert Spencer
than to Charles Darwin, supposedly legitimating extreme laissez-faire economics
and an unbridled societal struggle for existence. Such a charge is extremely
serious, for as Moore pointed out in his Principia Ethica 3, Spencer surely
commits the naturalistic fallacy, inasmuch as he is attempting to derive the
way that the world ought to be from the way that it is. Naturally enough,
defenders of social biology, or “sociobiology” as it is now better known,
denied vehemently that their science is mere right-wing ideology by another
name. They pointed to many who have drawn very different social conclusions on
the basis of biology. Best known is the Russian anarchist Kropotkin, who argued
that societies are properly based on a biological propensity to mutual aid.
With respect to contemporary debate, it is perhaps fairest to say that
sociobiology, particularly that pertaining to humans, did not always show
sufficient sensitivity toward all societal groups although certainly there was never the crude
racism of the fascist regimes of the 0s. However, recent work is far more
careful in these respects. Now, indeed, the study of social behavior from a
biological perspective is one of the most exciting and forward-moving branches
of the life sciences. -- social choice
theory, the theory of the rational action of a group of agents. Important
social choices are typically made over alternative means of collectively
providing goods. These might be goods for individual members of the group, or
more characteristically, public goods, goods such that no one can be excluded
from enjoying their benefits once they are available. Perhaps the most central
aspect of social choice theory concerns rational individual choice in a social
context. Since what is rational for one agent to do will often depend on what
is rational for another to do and vice versa, these choices take on a strategic
dimension. The prisoner’s dilemma illustrates how it can be very difficult to
reconcile individual and collectively rational decisions, especially in
non-dynamic contexts. There are many situations, particularly in the provision
of public goods, however, where simple prisoner’s dilemmas can be avoided and
more manageable coordination problems remain. In these cases, individuals may
find it rational to contractually or conventionally bind themselves to courses
of action that lead to the greater good of all even though they are not
straightforwardly utility-maximizing for particular individuals. Establishing
the rationality of these contracts or conventions is one of the leading
problems of social choice theory, because coordination can collapse if a
rational agent first agrees to cooperate and then reneges and becomes a free
rider on the collective efforts of others. Other forms of uncooperative
behaviors such as violating rules established by society or being deceptive
about one’s preferences pose similar difficulties. Hobbes attempted to solve
these problems by proposing that people would agree to submit to the authority
of a sovereign whose punitive powers would make uncooperative behavior an
unattractive option. It has also been argued that cooperation is rational if
the concept of rationality is extended beyond utility-maximizing in the right
way. Other arguments stress benefits beyond selfinterest that accrue to
cooperators. Another major aspect of social choice theory concerns the rational
action of a powerful central authority, or social planner, whose mission is to
optimize the social good. Although the central planner may be instituted by
rational individual choice, this part of the theory simply assumes the
institution. The planner’s task of making a onetime allocation of resources to
the production of various commodities is tractable if social good or social
utility is known as a function of various commodities. When the planner must
take into account dynamical considerations, the technical problems are more
difficult. This economic growth theory raises important ethical questions about
intergenerational conflict. The assumption of a social analogue of the
individual utility functions is particularly worrisome. It can be shown
formally that taking the results of majority votes can lead to intransitive
social orderings of possible choices and it is, therefore, a generally
unsuitable procedure for the planner to follow. Moreover, under very general conditions
there is no way of aggregating individual preferences into a consistent social
choice function of the kind needed by the planner. -- social constructivism, also called social
constructionism, any of a variety of views which claim that knowledge in some
area is the product of our social practices and institutions, or of the
interactions and negotiations between relevant social groups. Mild versions
hold that social factors shape interpretations of the world. Stronger versions
maintain that the world, or some significant portion of it, is somehow
constituted by theories, practices, and institutions. Defenders often move from
mild to stronger versions by insisting that the world is accessible to us only
through our interpretations, and that the idea of an independent reality is at
best an irrelevant abstraction and at worst incoherent. This philosophical
position is distinct from, though distantly related to, a view of the same name
in social and developmental psychology, associated with such figures as Piaget
and Lev Vygotsky, which sees learning as a process in which subjects actively
construct knowledge. Social constructivism has roots in Kant’s idealism, which
claims that we cannot know things in themselves and that knowledge of the world
is possible only by imposing pre-given categories of thought on otherwise
inchoate experience. But where Kant believed that the categories with which we
interpret and thus construct the world are given a priori, contemporary
constructivists believe that the relevant concepts and associated practices
vary from one group or historical period to another. Since there are no
independent standards for evaluating conceptual schemes, social constructivism
leads naturally to relativism. These views are generally thought to be present
in Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which argues that
observation and methods in science are deeply theory-dependent and that
scientists with fundamentally different assumptions or paradigms effectively
live in different worlds. Kuhn thus offers a view of science in opposition to
both scientific realism which holds that theory-dependent methods can give us
knowledge of a theory-independent world and empiricism which draws a sharp line
between theory and observation. Kuhn was reluctant to accept the apparently
radical consequences of his views, but his work has influenced recent social
studies of science, whose proponents frequently embrace both relativism and
strong constructivism. Another influence is the principle of symmetry advocated
by David Bloor and Barry Barnes, which holds that sociologists should explain
the acceptance of scientific views in the same way whether they believe those
views to be true or to be false. This approach is elaborated in the work of
Harry Collins, Steve Woolgar, and others. Constructivist themes are also
prominent in the work of feminist critics of science such as Sandra Harding and
Donna Haraway, and in the complex views of Bruno Latour. Critics, such as
Richard Boyd and Philip Kitcher, while applauding the detailed case studies
produced by constructivists, claim that the positive arguments for
constructivism are fallacious, that it fails to account satisfactorily for
actual scientific practice, and that like other versions of idealism and
relativism it is only dubiously coherent.
Then there’s the idea of a ‘contract,’ or social contract, an agreement
either between the people and their ruler, or among the people in a community.
The idea of a social contract has been used in arguments that differ in what
they aim to justify or explain e.g., the state, conceptions of justice,
morality, what they take the problem of justification to be, and whether or not
they presuppose a moral theory or purport to be a moral theory. Traditionally
the term has been used in arguments that attempt to explain the nature of
political obligation and/or the kind of responsibility that rulers have to
their subjects. Philosophers such as Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant
argue that human beings would find life in a prepolitical “state of nature” a
state that some argue is also presocietal so difficult that they would
agree either with one another or with a
prospective ruler to the creation of
political institutions that each believes would improve his or her lot. Note
that because the argument explains political or social cohesion as the product
of an agreement among individuals, it makes these individuals conceptually
prior to political or social units. Marx and other socialist and communitarian
thinkers have argued against conceptualizing an individual’s relationship to
her political and social community in this way. Have social contracts in
political societies actually taken place? Hume ridicules the idea that they are
real, and questions what value makebelieve agreements can have as explanations
of actual political obligations. Although many social contract theorists admit
that there is almost never an explicit act of agreement in a community,
nonetheless they maintain that such an agreement is implicitly made when members
of the society engage in certain acts through which they give their tacit
consent to the ruling regime. It is controversial what actions constitute
giving tacit consent: Plato and Locke maintain that the acceptance of benefits
is sufficient to give such consent, but some have argued that it is wrong to
feel obliged to those who foist upon us benefits for which we have not asked.
It is also unclear how much of an obligation a person can be under if he gives
only tacit consent to a regime. How are we to understand the terms of a social
contract establishing a state? When the people agree to obey the ruler, do they
surrender their own power to him, as Hobbes tried to argue? Or do they merely
lend him that power, reserving the right to take it from him if and when they
see fit, as Locke maintained? If power is merely on loan to the ruler,
rebellion against him could be condoned if he violates the conditions of that
loan. But if the people’s grant of power is a surrender, there are no such
conditions, and the people could never be justified in taking back that power
via revolution. Despite controversies surrounding their interpretation, social
contract arguments have been important to the development of modern democratic
states: the idea of the government as the creation of the people, which they
can and should judge and which they have the right to overthrow if they find it
wanting, contributed to the development of democratic forms of polity in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
and revolutionaries explicitly
acknowledged their debts to social contract theorists such as Locke and
Rousseau. In the twentieth century, the social contract idea has been used as a
device for defining various moral conceptions e.g. theories of justice by those
who find its focus on individuals useful in the development of theories that
argue against views e.g. utilitarianism that allow individuals to be sacrificed
for the benefit of the group -- social epistemology, the study of the social
dimensions or determinants of knowledge, or the ways in which social factors
promote or perturb the quest for knowledge. Some writers use the term
‘knowledge’ loosely, as designating mere belief. On their view social
epistemology should simply describe how social factors influence beliefs, without
concern for the rationality or truth of these beliefs. Many historians and
sociologists of science, e.g., study scientific practices in the same spirit
that anthropologists study native cultures, remaining neutral about the
referential status of scientists’ constructs or the truth-values of their
beliefs. Others try to show that social factors like political or professional
interests are causally operative, and take such findings to debunk any
objectivist pretensions of science. Still other writers retain a normative,
critical dimension in social epistemology, but do not presume that social
practices necessarily undermine objectivity. Even if knowledge is construed as
true or rational belief, social practices might enhance knowledge acquisition.
One social practice is trusting the opinions of authorities, a practice that
can produce truth if the trusted authorities are genuinely authoritative. Such
trust may also be perfectly rational in a complex world, where division of
epistemic labor is required. Even a scientist’s pursuit of extra-epistemic
interests such as professional rewards may not be antithetical to truth in
favorable circumstances. Institutional provisions, e.g., judicial rules of
evidence, provide another example of social factors. Exclusionary rules might
actually serve the cause of truth or accuracy in judgment if the excluded
evidence would tend to mislead or prejudice jurors. -- social philosophy, broadly the philosophy
of socisocial Darwinism social philosophy 856
856 ety, including the philosophy of social science and many of its
components, e.g., economics and history, political philosophy, most of what we
now think of as ethics, and philosophy of law. But we may distinguish two
narrower senses. In one, it is the conceptual theory of society, including the
theory of the study of society the
common part of all the philosophical studies mentioned. In the other, it is a
normative study, the part of moral philosophy that concerns social action and
individual involvement with society in general. The central job of social
philosophy in the first of these narrower senses is to articulate the correct
notion or concept of society. This would include formulating a suitable
definition of ‘society’; the question is then which concepts are better for which
purposes, and how they are related. Thus we may distinguish “thin” and “thick”
conceptions of society. The former would identify the least that can be said
before we cease talking about society at all
say, a number of people who interact, whose actions affect the behavior
of their fellows. Thicker conceptions would then add such things as community
rules, goals, customs, and ideals. An important empirical question is whether
any interacting groups ever do lack such things and what if anything is common
to the rules, etc., that actual societies have. Descriptive social philosophy
will obviously border on, if not merge into, social science itself, e.g. into
sociology, social psychology, or economics. And some outlooks in social
philosophy will tend to ally with one social science as more distinctively
typical than others e.g., the
individualist view looks to economics, the holist to sociology. A major
methodological controversy concerns holism versus individualism. Holism
maintains that at least some social groups must be studied as units,
irreducible to their members: we cannot understand a society merely by
understanding the actions and motivations of its members. Individualism denies
that societies are “organisms,” and holds that we can understand society only
in that way. Classic G. sociologists e.g., Weber distinguished between
Gesellschaft, whose paradigm is the voluntary association, such as a chess
club, whose activities are the coordinated actions of a number of people who
intentionally join that group in order to pursue the purposes that identify it;
and Gemeinschaft, whose members find their identities in that group. Thus,
the are not a group whose members teamed
up with like-minded people to form
society. They were before they
had separate individual purposes. The holist views society as essentially a
Gemeinschaft. Individualists agree that there are such groupings but deny that
they require a separate kind of irreducibly collective explanation: to
understand the we must understand how
typical individuals behave compared, say, with the G.s, and so on. The
methods of Western economics typify the analytical tendencies of methodological
individualism, showing how we can understand large-scale economic phenomena in
terms of the rational actions of particular economic agents. Cf. Adam Smith’s
invisible hand thesis: each economic agent seeks only his own good, yet the
result is the macrophenomenal good of the whole. Another pervasive issue
concerns the role of intentional characterizations and explanations in these
fields. Ordinary people explain behavior by reference to its purposes, and they
formulate these in terms that rely on public rules of language and doubtless
many other rules. To understand society, we must hook onto the selfunderstanding
of the people in that society this view is termed Verstehen. Recent work in
philosophy of science raises the question whether intentional concepts can
really be fundamental in explaining anything, and whether we must ultimately
conceive people as in some sense material systems, e.g. as computer-like. Major
questions for the program of replicating human intelligence in data-processing
terms cf. artificial intelligence are raised by the symbolic aspects of
interaction. Additionally, we should note the emergence of sociobiology as a
potent source of explanations of social phenomena. Normative social philosophy,
in turn, tends inevitably to merge into either politics or ethics, especially
the part of ethics dealing with how people ought to treat others, especially in
large groups, in relation to social institutions or social structures. This
contrasts with ethics in the sense concerned with how individual people may
attain the good life for themselves. All such theories allot major importance
to social relations; but if one’s theory leaves the individual wide freedom of
choice, then a theory of individually chosen goods will still have a
distinctive subject matter. The normative involvements of social philosophy
have paralleled the foregoing in important ways. Individualists have held that
the good of a society must be analyzed in terms of the goods of its individual
members. Of special importance has been the view that society must respect
indisocial philosophy social philosophy 857
857 vidual rights, blocking certain actions alleged to promote social
good as a whole. Organicist philosophers such as Hegel hold that it is the
other way around: the state or nation is higher than the individual, who is
rightly subordinated to it, and individuals have fundamental duties toward the
groups of which they are members. Outrightly fascist versions of such views are
unpopular today, but more benign versions continue in modified form, notably by
communitarians. Socialism and especially communism, though focused originally on
economic aspects of society, have characteristically been identified with the
organicist outlook. Their extreme opposite is to be found in the libertarians,
who hold that the right to individual liberty is fundamental in society, and
that no institutions may override that right. Libertarians hold that society
ought to be treated strictly as an association, a Gesellschaft, even though
they might not deny that it is ontogenetically Gemeinschaft. They might agree
that religious groups, e.g., cannot be wholly understood as separate
individuals. Nevertheless, the libertarian holds that religious and cultural
practices may not be interfered with or even supported by society. Libertarians
are strong supporters of free-market economic methods, and opponents of any sort
of state intervention into the affairs of individuals. Social Darwinism,
advocating the “survival of the socially fittest,” has sometimes been
associated with the libertarian view. Insofar as there is any kind of standard
view on these matters, it combines elements of both individualism and holism.
Typical social philosophers today accept that society has duties, not voluntary
for individual members, to support education, health, and some degree of
welfare for all. But they also agree that individual rights are to be
respected, especially civil rights, such as freedom of speech and religion. How
to combine these two apparently disparate sets of ideas into a coherent whole
is the problem. John Rawls’s celebrated Theory of Justice, 1, is a contemporary
classic that attempts to do just that. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Grice and Grice on
the conversational contract.”
e: the
‘universalis abdicative.’ Cf. Grice on the Square of Opposition, or figura
quadrata -- Grice, “Circling the square of Opposition.” Grice: “There is an
asymmetry here. It’s supposed to be from Affirmo/Nego, but Affirmo has THREE
vowels, and Nego, two; therefore, the o in affirmo is otiose.”
Ǝ: Ǝx. From
EX-SISTENS -- Grice: “The inverted E is supposed to stand for ‘exist,’ which is
a CiceronianismI mean, The Romans thought that you could sist, insist, or
exist!” -- The existential quantifier. When Gentzen used /\ and \/ for ‘all’
and ‘some’ he is being logical, since ‘all’ and ‘some’ behave like ‘and’ and
‘or.’ This is not transparently shown at all by the use of the inverted A and
the inverted E. This Grice called Grice’s Proportion: “and:or::every:some”. Grice: “Surely there is a relation of
‘every’ to ‘and’ and ‘some’ to ‘or.’” “Given a
finite domain of discourse D = {a1, ... an} “every” is equivalent to an “and”
propositions “Pai /\, … Pan.””“Analogously, “some (at least one”) is equivalent
to an “or” proposition having the same structure as before:“Pai V, … Pan.”“For
an infinite domain of discourse the equivalences are pretty similar, and I
shouldn’t bother you with it for two long. But consider the statement, “1 + 1,
and 2 + 2, 3 + 3, ..., and 100 + 100, and ..., etc.” This is an infinite “and”
proposition. From the point of view of a system like System G, this may seem
a problem. Syntax
rules are expected to generate finite formulae. But my example above is
fortunate in that there is a procedure to generate every conjunct. Now, as
Austin once suggested to me, having translated Frege, an assertion were to be
made about every *irrational* number, it would seem that is no (Fregeian) way
to enumerate every conjunct, since irrational numbers cannot be enumerated.
However, a succinct equivalent formulation which avoids this problem with the
‘irrational’ number uses “every” quantification. For
each natural number n, n 2 = n + n. An analogous analysis applies to the “or”
proposition: “1 is equal to 5 + 5,
2\/ is equal to 5 + 5, \/ 3 is
equal to 5 + 5, ... , \/ 100 is equal to 5 + 5, or ..., etc.” This is easily
rephrasable using “some (at least one)” quantification: “For SOME natural
number n, n is equal to 5+5. Aristotelian predicate calculus rescued from undue existential import
As ... universal quantifier
and conjunction and,
on the other, between the existential quantifier and disjunction.
This analogy has
not passed unnoticed in logical circles. ... existential quantifiers correspond
to the conjunction and disjunction operators, ...analogous analysis
applies to propositional logic. ... symbol 'V' for the existential quantifier in
the 'Californian'
notation’ (so-called by H. P. Grice when briefly visiting Berkeley)
which was ... In Grice’s system G, the
quantifiers are symbolized with larger versions of the symbols used for conjunction
and disjunction. Although quantified expressions cannot be translated into
expressions without quantifiers, there is a conceptual connection between the
universal quantifier and conjunction and between the existential quantifier and
disjunction. Consider the sentence ∃xPxxPx, for example. It means
that either the first member of the UD is a PP, or the second one is, or the
third one is, . . . . Such a system uses the symbol ‘⋁’ instead of ‘∃.’ Grice’s manoeuver to think of the quantifier versions of De
Morgan's laws is an interesting one. The statement ∀xP(x)∀xP(x) is very much like a
big conjunction. If the universe of discourse is the positive integers, for
example, then it is equivalent to the statement that “P(1)∧P(2)∧P(3)∧⋯P(1)∧P(2)∧P(3)∧⋯” or, more concisely, we might write “⋀x∈UP(x),⋀x∈UP(x),” using
notation similar to "sigma notation'' for sums. Of course, this is not
really a "statement'' in our official mathematical logic, because we don't
allow infinitely long formulas. In the same way, ∃xP(x)∃xP(x) can be thought of as “⋁x∈UP(x).⋁x∈UP(x). Now the first quantifier law can be
written “¬⋀x∈UP(x)⇔⋁x∈U(¬P(x)),¬⋀x∈UP(x)⇔⋁x∈U(¬P(x)),” which looks
very much like the law “¬(P∧Q)⇔(¬P∨¬Q),¬(P∧Q)⇔(¬P∨¬Q),” but with
an infinite conjunction and disjunction. Note that we can also rewrite De
Morgan's laws for ∧∧ and ∨∨ as “¬⋀i=12(Pi(x))¬⋁i=12(Pi(x))⇔⋁i=12(¬Pi(x))⇔⋀i=12(¬Pi(x)).¬⋀i=12(Pi(x))⇔⋁i=12(¬Pi(x))¬⋁i=12(Pi(x))⇔⋀i=12(¬Pi(x)).” As Grice says, “this may look initially cumbersome, but it reflects the close
relationship with the quantifier forms of De Morgan's laws.” Cited by Grice as translatable by “some (at least
one)”. Noting the divergence that Strawson identified but fails to identify as
a conversational implicaturum. It relates in the case of the square of
opposition to the ‘particularis’ but taking into account or NOT taking into
account the ‘unnecessary implication,’ as Russell calls it. “Take ‘every man is
mortal.’ Surely we don’t need the unnecessary implication that there is a man!”
eco: Grice: “Eco thought that his “Guglielmo da
Bascavilla” was a clever composite of Holmes, who deciphered the enigma of the
Baskervilles, and William Occam – and has his tutee claim that he died of the
black plague – but Gal has now discovered he did not!” -- Eco philosophised at
the oldest varsity, BolognaGrice: “Of course, ‘varsity’ is over-rated, as I’m
sure Cicero would agree!” -- Grice: “I would not call Eco a philosopher, since
his dissertation is on aesthetics in Aquinas! Plus, he wrote a novel!” -- scuola
bolognese-- possibly, after Speranza, one of the most Griceian of Italian
philosophers (Only Speranza calls himself an Oxonian, rather!“Surely alma mater
trumps all!”). Umberto Eco (Alessandria, 5 gennaio
1932Milano, 19 febbraio ) semiologo, filosofo, scrittore, traduttore,
accademico, bibliofilo e medievista italiano. Autografo di Eco
apposto all'edizione tedesca di Arte e bellezza nell'estetica medievale.
Saggista e intellettuale di fama mondiale, ha scritto numerosi saggi di
semiotica, estetica medievale, linguistica e filosofia, oltre a romanzi di
successo. Nel 1971 è stato tra gli ispiratori del primo corso del DAMS
all'Bologna. Sempre nello stesso ateneo, negli anni Ottanta ha promosso
l'attivazione del corso di laurea in Scienze della comunicazione, già attivo in
altre sedi. Nel 1988 ha fondato il Dipartimento della Comunicazione dell'San
Marino. Dal 2008 era professore emerito e presidente della Scuola Superiore di
Studi Umanistici dell'Bologna. Dal 12 novembre
Umberto Eco era socio dell'Accademia dei Lincei, per la classe di
Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filosofiche. Tra i suoi romanzi più famosi figura Il
nome della rosa, tradotto in più di 40 lingue, che è divenuto un bestseller
internazionale avendo venduto oltre 50 milioni di copie in tutto il mondo; da
quest'opera sono stati tratti un film ed una serie televisiva. Figlio di
Rita Bisio e di Giulio Eco, un impiegato nelle Ferrovie, conseguì la maturità
al liceo classico Giovanni Plana di Alessandria, sua città natale. Tra i suoi
compagni di classe, vi era il fisarmonicista Gianni Coscia, con il quale
scrisse spettacoli di rivista. In gioventù fu impegnato nella GIAC (l'allora
ramo giovanile dell'Azione Cattolica) e nei primi anni cinquanta fu chiamato
tra i responsabili nazionali del movimento studentesco dell'AC (progenitore
dell'attuale MSAC). Nel 1954 abbandonò l'incarico (così come avevano fatto
Carlo Carretto e Mario Rossi) in polemica con Luigi Gedda. Durante i suoi studi
universitari su Tommaso d'Aquino, smise di credere in Dio e lasciò definitivamente
la Chiesa cattolica; in una nota ironica, in seguito commentò: «si può dire che
lui Tommaso d'Aquino mi abbia miracolosamente curato dalla
fede». Laureatosi in filosofia nel 1954 all'Torino (agli esami
riportò sempre 30/30, anche con lode, tranne quattro casi: filosofia teoretica
e letteratura latina, in cui ottenne 29/30, e storia della letteratura italiana
e pedagogia, entrambi superati con 27/30)
con relatore Luigi Pareyson e tesi sull'estetica di San Tommaso d'Aquino
(controrelatore Augusto Guzzo), cominciò a interessarsi di filosofia e cultura
medievale, campo d'indagine mai più abbandonato (vedi il volume Dall'albero al
labirinto), anche se successivamente si dedicò allo studio semiotico della
cultura popolare contemporanea e all'indagine critica sullo sperimentalismo
letterario e artistico. Nel 1956 pubblicò il suo primo libro,
un'estensione della sua tesi di laurea dal titolo Il problema estetico in San
Tommaso. Nel 1954 partecipò e vinse un concorso della Rai per l'assunzione
di telecronisti e nuovi funzionari; con Eco vi entrarono anche Furio Colombo e
Gianni Vattimo. Tutti e tre abbandonarono l'ente televisivo entro la fine degli
anni cinquanta. Nel concorso successivo entrarono Emmanuele Milano, Fabiano
Fabiani, Angelo Guglielmi, e molti altri. I vincitori dei primi concorsi furono
in seguito etichettati come i "corsari" perché seguirono un corso di
formazione diretto da Pier Emilio Gennarini e avrebbero dovuto, secondo le
intenzioni del dirigente Filiberto Guala, "svecchiare" i programmi.
Con altri ingressi successivi, come quelli di Gianni Serra, Emilio Garroni e
Luigi Silori, questi giovani intellettuali innovarono davvero l'ambiente
culturale della televisione, ancora molto legato a personalità provenienti
dall'EIAR, venendo in seguito considerati come i veri promotori della
centralità della RAI nel sistema culturale italiano. Dall'esperienza
lavorativa in RAI, incluse amicizie con membri del Gruppo 63, Eco trasse spunto
per molti scritti, tra cui il celebre articolo del 1961 Fenomenologia di Mike
Bongiorno. Dal 1959 al 1975 fu codirettore editoriale della casa editrice
Bompiani. Nel 1962 pubblicò il saggio Opera aperta che, con sorpresa dello
stesso autore, ebbe notevole risonanza a livello internazionale e diede le basi
teoriche al Gruppo 63, movimento d'avanguardia letterario e artistico italiano
che suscitò interesse negli ambienti critico-letterari anche per le polemiche
che destò criticando fortemente autori all'epoca già "consacrati"
dalla fama come Carlo Cassola, Giorgio Bassani e Vasco Pratolini, ironicamente
definiti "Liale", con riferimento a Liala, autrice di romanzi
rosa. Nel 1961 ebbe inizio anche la sua carriera universitaria che lo
portò a tenere corsi, in qualità di professore incaricato, in diverse
università italiane: Torino, Milano, Firenze e, infine, Bologna dove ha
ottenuto la cattedra di Semiotica nel 1975, diventando Professore. All'Bologna
è stato fra i fondatori del primo corso di laurea in DAMS (era il 1971), poi è
stato direttore dell'Istituto di Comunicazione e spettacolo del DAMS, e in
seguito ha dato inizio al corso di laurea in Scienze della comunicazione.
Infine è divenuto Presidente della Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici,
fondata nel 2000, che coordina l'attività dei dottorati bolognesi del settore
umanistico, e dove nel 2001 ha ideato il Master in Editoria Cartacea e
Digitale. Nel corso degli anni ha insegnato come professore invitato alla
New York University, Northwestern University, Columbia University, Yale
University, Harvard University, University of California-San Diego, Cambridge
University, Oxford University, São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro, La Plata e Buenos
Aires, Collège de France, École normale supérieure (Parigi). Nell'ottobre 2007
si è ritirato dall'insegnamento per limiti di età. Dalla fine degli anni
cinquanta, Eco cominciò a interessarsi all'influenza dei mass media nella
cultura di massa, su cui pubblicò articoli in diversi giornali e riviste, poi
in gran parte confluiti in Diario minimo (1963) e Apocalittici e integrati
(1964). Apocalittici e integrati (che ebbe una nuova edizione nel 1977)
analizzò con taglio sociologico le comunicazioni di massa. Il tema era già
stato affrontato in Diario minimo, che includeva tra gli altri il breve
articolo del 1961 Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno. Sullo stesso tema, nel
1967 svolse a New York il seminario Per una guerriglia semiologica, in seguito
pubblicato ne Il costume di casa (1973) e frequentemente citato nelle
discussioni sulla controcultura e la resistenza al potere dei mass media.
Significativa fu anche la sua attenzione per le correlazioni tra dittatura e
cultura di massa ne Il fascismo eterno, capitolo del saggio Cinque scritti
morali, dove individuava le caratteristiche, ricorrenti nel tempo, del
cosiddetto "fascismo eterno", o "Ur-fascismo": il culto
della tradizione, il rifiuto del modernismo, il culto dell'azione per l'azione,
il disaccordo come tradimento, la paura delle differenze, l'appello alle classi
medie frustrate, l'ossessione del complotto, il machismo, il "populismo
qualitativo Tv e Internet" e altre ancora; da esse e dalle loro
combinazioni, secondo Eco, è possibile anche "smascherare" le forme
di fascismo che si riproducono da sempre "in ogni parte del
mondo". In un'intervista del 24 aprile mise in evidenza la sua visione rispetto a ,
della quale Eco si definiva un "utente compulsivo", e al mondo
dell'open source. Nel 1968 pubblicò il suo primo libro di teoria
semiotica, La struttura assente, cui seguirono il fondamentale Trattato di
semiotica generale (1975) e gli articoli per l'Enciclopedia Einaudi poi riuniti
in Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio (1984). Nel 1971 fondò
VersusQuaderni di studi semiotici, una delle maggiori riviste internazionali di
semiotica, rimanendone direttore responsabile e membro del comitato scientifico
fino alla morte. È anche stato segretario, vicepresidente e dal 1994 presidente
onorario della IASS/AIS ("International Association for Semiotic
Studies"). È stato invitato a tenere le prestigiose conferenze Tanner
(Cambridge, 1990), Norton (Harvard, 1993), Goggio (Toronto, 1998), Weidenfeld
(Oxford, 2002) e Richard Ellmann (Università Emory, 2008). Collaborò sin
dalla sua fondazione, nel 1955, al settimanale L'Espresso, sul quale dal 1985
al tenne in ultima pagina la rubrica La
bustina di minerva (nella quale, tra l'altro, dichiarò di aver contribuito
personalmente alla propria voce su ), ai giornali Il Giorno, La Stampa,
Corriere della Sera, la Repubblica, il manifesto e a innumerevoli riviste
internazionali specializzate, tra cui Semiotica (fondata nel 1969 da Thomas
Albert Sebeok), Poetics Today, Degrès, Structuralist Review, Text,
Communications (rivista parigina del EHESS), Problemi dell'informazione, Word
& Images, o riviste letterarie e di dibattito culturale quali Quindici, Il
Verri (fondata da Luciano Anceschi), Alfabeta, Il cavallo di Troia, ecc.
Collaborò alla collana "Fare l'Europa" diretta da Jacques Le Goff con
lo studio La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea (1993), in cui
si espresse a favore dell'utilizzo dell'esperanto. Tradusse gli Esercizi di
stile di Raymond Queneau (nel 1983) e Sylvie di Gérard de Nerval (nel 1999
entrambi presso Einaudi) e introdusse opere di numerosi scrittori e di artisti.
Ha anche collaborato con i musicisti Luciano Berio e Sylvano Bussotti. I
suoi dibattiti, spesso dal tono divertito, con Luciano Nanni, Omar Calabrese,
Paolo Fabbri, Ugo Volli, Francesco Leonetti, Nanni Balestrini, Guido Almansi,
Achille Bonito Oliva o Maria Corti, tanto per nominarne alcuni, hanno aggiunto
contributi non scritti alla storia degli intellettuali italiani, soprattutto
quando sfioravano argomenti non consueti (o almeno non ritenuti tali prima
dell'intervento di Eco), come la figura di James Bond, l'enigmistica, la
fisiognomica, la serialità televisiva, il romanzo d'appendice, il fumetto, il
labirinto, la menzogna, le società segrete o più seriamente gli annosi concetti
di abduzione, di canone e di classico.[senza fonte] Grande appassionato
del fumetto Dylan Dog, a Eco è stato fatto tributo sul numero 136 attraverso il
personaggio Humbert Coe, che ha affiancato l'indagatore dell'incubo in
un'indagine sull'origine delle lingue del mondo. È stato inoltre amico del
pittore e autore di fumetti Andrea Pazienza[25] che fu suo allievo al DAMS di
Bologna, e ha scritto la prefazione a libri di Hugo Pratt, Charles Monroe
Schulz, Jules Feiffer e Raymond Peynet. Scrisse la presentazione di
"Cuore" a fumetti, di F. Bonzi e Alain Denis, pubblicata su
"Linus" nel 1975. Nel 1980 Eco esordì nella narrativa. Il suo
primo romanzo, Il nome della rosa, riscontrò un grande successo sia presso la
critica sia presso il pubblico, tanto da divenire un best seller internazionale
tradotto in 47 lingue e venduto in trenta milioni di copie. Il nome della rosa
è stato anche tra i finalisti del prestigioso Edgar Award nel 1984 e ha vinto
il Premio Strega.[26] Dal lavoro fu tratto anche un celebre film con Sean
Connery. Nel 1988 pubblicò il suo secondo romanzo, Il pendolo di
Foucault, satira dell'interpretazione paranoica dei fatti veri o leggendari
della storia e delle sindromi del complotto. Questa critica
dell'interpretazione incontrollata viene ripresa in opere teoriche sulla
ricezione (cfr. I limiti dell'interpretazione). Romanzi successivi sono L'isola
del giorno prima (1994), Baudolino (2000), La misteriosa fiamma della regina
Loana (2004), Il cimitero di Praga () e Numero zero (), tutti editi in italiano
da Bompiani. Nel è stata
pubblicata una versione "riveduta e corretta" del suo primo romanzo
Il nome della rosa, con una nota finale dello stesso Eco che, mantenendo stile
e struttura narrativa, è intervenuto a eliminare ripetizioni ed errori, a
modificare l'impianto delle citazioni latine e la descrizione della faccia del
bibliotecario per togliere un riferimento neogotico. Molte opere furono
dedicate alle teorie della narrazione e della letteratura: Il superuomo di
massa (1976), Lector in fabula (1979), Sei passeggiate nei boschi narrativi
(1994), Sulla letteratura (2002), Dire quasi la stessa cosa (2003, sulla
traduzione). È stato inoltre precursore e divulgatore dell'applicazione della
tecnologia alla scrittura. In contemporanea alla nomina di "guest
curator" (curatore ospite) del Louvre, dove nel mese di novembre 2009
organizzò una serie di eventi e manifestazioni culturali[27], uscì per Bompiani
Vertigine della lista, pubblicato in quattordici paesi del mondo.
Nel Bompiani pubblicò una raccolta dal
titolo Costruire il nemico e altri scritti occasionali, che raccoglie saggi
occasionali che spaziano nei vari interessi dell'autore, come quello per la
narratologia e il feuilleton ottocentesco. Il primo saggio riprende temi già
presenti ne Il cimitero di Praga. Muore nella sua casa di Milano il 19
febbraio alle ore 22:30, a causa di un
tumore del pancreas che lo aveva colpito due anni prima.[28] I funerali laici
si sono svolti il 23 febbraio nel
Castello Sforzesco di Milano, dove migliaia di persone si sono recate per
l'ultimo saluto.[29] Sono state eseguite due composizioni alla viola da gamba e
al clavicembalo: Couplets de folies (Les folies d'Espagne) dalla Suite n. 1 in
re maggiore dai Pièces de viole, Livre II (1701) di Marin Marais e La Folia
dalla Sonata per violino e basso continuo in re minore, op. 5 n. 12 (1700) di
Arcangelo Corelli.[30] Nel proprio testamento Eco ha chiesto ai suoi
familiari di non autorizzare né promuovere, per i dieci anni successivi alla
sua morte (quindi sino al 2026), alcun seminario o conferenza su di
lui.[31] Il corpo di Eco è stato infine cremato. La moglie, Renate
Eco-Ramge, rifiutando la proposta di tumularne le ceneri nel Civico Mausoleo
Garbin, ex edicola privata del Cimitero Monumentale di Milano ora provvista di
piccole cellette destinate a ceneri o resti ossei di personalità artistiche
illustri, ne ha preferito la conservazione privata, con il progetto di
costruire un'edicola di famiglia nel medesimo cimitero.[32] Nei suoi
romanzi, Eco racconta storie realmente accadute o leggende che hanno come
protagonisti personaggi storici o inventati. Inserisce nelle sue opere accesi
dibattiti filosofici sull'esistenza del vuoto, di Dio o sulla natura
dell'universo. Attratto da temi piuttosto misteriosi e oscuri (i
cavalieri Templari, il sacro Graal, la sacra Sindone ecc.), nei suoi romanzi
gli scienziati e gli uomini che hanno fatto la storia sono spesso trattati con
indifferenza dai contemporanei. L'umorismo è l'arma letteraria preferita
dallo scrittore di Alessandria, che inserisce innumerevoli citazioni e
collegamenti a opere di vario genere, conosciute quasi esclusivamente da
filologi e bibliofili. Ciò rende romanzi come Il nome della rosa o L'isola del
giorno prima un turbinio variopinto di nozioni di carattere storico,
filosofico, artistico e matematico. Centrale ne Il nome della rosa è la
questione del riso, post-modernisticamente declinata. Ne Il pendolo di
Foucault Eco affronta temi come la ricerca del sacro Graal e la storia dei
cavalieri Templari, facendo numerosi cenni ai misteri dell'età antica e
moderna, rivisitati in chiave parodistica. Ne L'isola del giorno prima
l'umanità intera è simboleggiata dal naufrago Roberto de la Grive, che cerca
un'isola al di fuori del tempo e dello spazio. In Baudolino dà vita ad un
picaresco personaggio medioevale tutto dedito alla ricerca di un paradiso
terrestre (il regno leggendario di Prete Giovanni). Ne La misteriosa
fiamma della regina Loana riflette sulla forza e sull'essenza stessa del
ricordo, rivolto, in questo caso, ad episodi del XX secolo. Il cimitero
di Praga è incentrato sulla natura del complotto e, in particolar modo, sulla
storia 'europea' del popolo ebraico. Il suo ultimo romanzo, Numero zero,
riprendendo temi da sempre cari all'autore (il falso, la costruzione del
complotto e delle notizie) si sofferma sulla storia italiana recente, narrando
fatti realmente accaduti, ma riletti attraverso una chiave
complottistica. Nel 1971 fu tra i 757 firmatari della lettera aperta a
L'Espresso sul caso Pinelli e successivamente della autodenuncia di solidarietà
a Lotta Continua, in cui una cinquantina di firmatari esprimevano solidarietà
verso alcuni militanti e direttori responsabili del giornale, inquisiti per
istigazione a delinquere.[33] I firmatari si autodenunciavano alla
magistratura dicendo di condividere il contenuto dell'articolo. Peraltro le
severe critiche di Eco al terrorismo e ai vari progetti di lotta armata[34]
sono contenute in una serie di articoli scritti sul settimanale L'Espresso e su
Repubblica, specie ai tempi del caso Moro (articoli poi ripubblicati nel volume
Sette anni di desiderio). In effetti l'arma che ha caratterizzato l'impegno politico
di Eco è diventata l'analisi critica dei discorsi politici e delle
comunicazioni di massa. Questo impegno è sintetizzato nella metafora
della guerriglia semiologica dove si sostiene che non è tanto importante
cambiare il contenuto dei messaggi alla fonte ma cercare di animare la loro
analisi là dove essi arrivano (la formula era: non serve occupare la
televisione, bisogna occupare una sedia davanti a ogni televisore). In questo
senso la guerriglia semiologica è una forma di critica sociale attraverso
l'educazione alla ricezione.[35] Dal 2002 partecipa alle attività
dell'associazione Libertà e Giustizia, di cui è uno dei fondatori e garanti più
noti, partecipando attivamente tramite le sue iniziative al dibattito
politico-culturale italiano. Il suo libro A passo di gambero (2006)
contiene le critiche a quello che lui definisce populismo berlusconiano, alla
politica di Bush, al cosiddetto scontro tra etnie e religioni. Nel , nelle
settimane delle rivolte arabe, durante una conferenza stampa registrata alla
Fiera del libro di Gerusalemme, scatena una polemica politica la sua risposta a
un giornalista italiano che gli domanda se condivida il paragone fra Berlusconi
e Mubarak, avanzato da alcuni: "Il paragone potrebbe essere fatto con
Hitler: anche lui giunse al potere con libere elezioni";[36] lo stesso
Eco, dalle colonne de l'Espresso, smentirà tale dichiarazione chiarendo le
circostanze della sua risposta.[37] Eco faceva parte dell'associazione
Aspen Institute Italia.[38] Onorificenze italiane Cavaliere di gran croce
dell'Ordine al merito della Repubblica italiananastrino per uniforme
ordinariaCavaliere di gran croce dell'Ordine al merito della Repubblica
italiana — Roma, 9 gennaio 1996[39] Medaglia d'oro ai benemeriti della cultura
e dell'artenastrino per uniforme ordinariaMedaglia d'oro ai benemeriti della
cultura e dell'arte — Roma, 13 gennaio 1997[40] Onorificenze straniere
Commendatore dell'Ordine delle Arti e delle Lettere (Francia)nastrino per
uniforme ordinariaCommendatore dell'Ordine delle Arti e delle Lettere (Francia)
— 1985 Cavaliere dell'Ordine pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste
(Repubblica Federale di Germania)nastrino per uniforme ordinariaCavaliere
dell'Ordine pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste (Repubblica Federale
di Germania) — 1998 Premio Principe delle Asturie per la comunicazione e
l'umanistica (Spagna)nastrino per uniforme ordinariaPremio Principe delle
Asturie per la comunicazione e l'umanistica (Spagna) — 2000 Ufficiale
dell'Ordine della Legion d'Onore (Francia)nastrino per uniforme
ordinariaUfficiale dell'Ordine della Legion d'Onore (Francia) — 2003 Gran croce
al merito con placca dell'Ordine al merito della Repubblica Federale di
Germanianastrino per uniforme ordinariaGran croce al merito con placca
dell'Ordine al merito della Repubblica Federale di Germania — 2009 Commendatore
dell'Ordine della Legion d'Onore (Francia)nastrino per uniforme
ordinariaCommendatore dell'Ordine della Legion d'Onore (Francia) — Parigi, 13
gennaio [41] Cittadinanze onorarie Monte Cerignone, 1981. Nizza
Monferrato, 6 novembre . San Leo, 11 giugno . Torre Pellice, . Lauree Eco ha
ricevuto 40 lauree honoris causa da prestigiose università europee e
americane,[42] come quella del , che gli è stata conferita dall'Università
federale del Rio Grande do Sul, di Porto Alegre, in Brasile.[43] Nel
giugno in occasione della laurea in
comunicazione conferita dall'Torino, Umberto Eco ha rilasciato severi giudizi
sui social del Web che, a suo dire, possono essere utilizzati da «legioni di
imbecilli» per porsi sullo stesso piano di un vincitore di un Premio Nobel.[44]
Le affermazioni di Eco hanno suscitato approvazioni ma anche vivaci
discussioni.[45][46] Affiliazioni e sodalizi accademici Umberto Eco è
stato membro onorario (Honorary Trustee) della James Joyce Association,
dell'Accademia delle Scienze di Bologna, dell'Academia Europea de Yuste,
dell'American Academy of Arts and Letters, dell'Académie royale des sciences,
des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique, della Polska Akademia Umiejętności ("Accademia
polacca della Arti"), "Fellow" del St Anne's College di Oxford e
socio dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.[47] Eco è stato inoltre membro
onorario del CICAP. Altro Gli è stato dedicato l'asteroide 13069
Umbertoeco, scoperto nel 1991 dall'astronomo belga Eric Walter Elst. Il
12 aprile 2008 è stato nominato Duca dell'Isola del Giorno Prima del regno di
Redonda dal re Xavier. Nel il
comune di Milano ha deciso che il suo nome venga iscritto nel Pantheon di
Milano, all'interno del cimitero monumentale.[48] Saggistica Eco ha anche
scritto numerosi saggi di filosofia, semiotica, linguistica, estetica: Il
problema estetico in San Tommaso, Torino, Edizioni di Filosofia, 1956; poi Il
problema estetico in Tommaso d'Aquino, 2ª ed., Milano, Bompiani, 1970. Filosofi
in libertà, come Dedalus, Torino, Taylor, 1958, poi in Il secondo diario
minimo. Sviluppo dell'estetica medievale, in Momenti e problemi di storia
dell'estetica, I, Dall'antichità classica al Barocco, Milano, Marzorati, 1959.
Arte e bellezza nell'estetica medievale, Milano, Bompiani, 1987. Storia
figurata delle invenzioni. Dalla selce scheggiata al volo spaziale, e con G. B.
Zorzoli, Milano, Bompiani, 1961. Opera aperta. Forma e indeterminazione nelle
poetiche contemporanee, Milano, Bompiani, 1962; 1967 sulla base dell'ed.
francese 1965; 1971; 1976. Diario minimo, Milano, A. Mondadori, 1963; 1975.
(include i saggi Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno e Elogio di Franti)
Apocalittici e integrati, Milano, Bompiani, 1964; 1977. Il caso Bond. [Le
origini, la natura, gli effetti del fenomeno 007], e con Oreste del Buono,
Milano, Bompiani, 1965. Le poetiche di Joyce. Dalla "Summa" al
"Finnegans Wake", Milano, Bompiani, 1966. (ed. modificata sulla base
della seconda parte di Opera aperta, 1962) Appunti per una semiologia delle
comunicazioni visive, Milano, Bompiani, 1967. (poi in La struttura assente)
L'Italie par elle-meme. A portrait of Italy. Autoritratto dell'Italia, e con
Giulio Carlo Argan, Guido Piovene, Luigi Chiarini, Vittorio Gregotti e altri,
Milano, Bompiani, 1967. La struttura assente, Milano, Bompiani, 1968; 1980. La
definizione dell'arte, Milano, Mursia, 1968. L'arte come mestiere, a cura di,
Milano, Bompiani, 1969. I sistemi di segni e lo strutturalismo sovietico, e con
Remo Faccani, Milano, Bompiani, 1969. L'industria della cultura, a cura di,
Milano, Bompiani, 1969. Le forme del contenuto, Milano, Bompiani, 1971. I
fumetti di Mao, e con Jean Chesneaux e Gino Nebiolo, Bari, Laterza, 1971.
Cent'anni dopo. Il ritorno dell'intreccio, e con Cesare Sughi, Milano,
Bompiani, 1971. Documenti su il nuovo Medioevo, con Francesco Alberoni, Furio
Colombo e Giuseppe Sacco, Milano, Bompiani, 1972. Estetica e teoria
dell'informazione, a cura di, Milano, Bompiani, 1972. I pampini bugiardi.
Indagine sui libri al di sopra di ogni sospetto: i testi delle scuole
elementari, e con Marisa Bonazzi, Rimini, Guaraldi, 1972. Il segno, Milano,
Isedi, 1973; Milano, A. Mondadori, 1980. Il costume di casa. Evidenze e misteri
dell'ideologia italiana, Milano, Bompiani, 1973. Beato di Liébana. Miniature
del Beato de Fernando I y Sancha. Codice B.N. Madrid Vit. 14-2, testo e
commenti alle tavole di, Milano, Franco Maria Ricci, 1973. Eugenio Carmi. Una
pittura di paesaggio?, Milano, Prearo, 1973. Trattato di semiotica generale,
Milano, Bompiani, 1975.A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington, Indiana University
Press, 1976. (e London, Macmillan, 1977) [versione inglese originale del
Trattato di semiotica generale] Il superuomo di massa. Studi sul romanzo
popolare, Roma, Cooperativa Scrittori, 1976; Milano, Bompiani, 1978. Stelle
& stellette. La via lattea mormorò, illustrazioni di Philippe Druillet,
Conegliano Treviso, Quadragono Libri, 1976. Storia di una rivoluzione mai
esistita. L'esperimento Vaduz. Appunti del Servizio opinioni, n.292, settembre
1976, Roma, Rai, Servizio Opinioni, 1976. Dalla periferia dell'impero, Milano,
Bompiani, 1977. Come si fa una tesi di laurea, Milano, Bompiani, 1977. Carolina
Invernizio, Matilde Serao, Liala, con altri, Firenze, La nuova Italia, 1979.The
Role of the Reader, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1979. (contiene
saggi tratti da Opera aperta, Apocalittici e integrati, Forme del contenuto,
Lector in Fabula e Il superuomo di massa) (EN, FR) A semiotic Landscape.
Panorama sémiotique. Proceedings of the Ist Congress of the International
Association for Semiotic Studies, Den Haag, Paris, New York, Mouton (Approaches
to Semiotics, 29) (a cura di, con Seymour Chatman e Jean-Marie Klinkenberg).
Lector in fabula, Milano, Bompiani, 1979.Function and sign, the semiotics of
architecture; A componential analysis of the architectural sign /column/, in
Geoffrey Broadbent, Richard Bunt, Charles Jencks , Signs, symbols and
architecture, Chichester-New York, Wiley, 1980. (EL) E semeiologia sten
kathemerine zoe, Thessaloniki, Malliares, 1980. (antologia di saggi). De
bibliotheca, Milano, Comune di Milano, 1981. Postille al nome della rosa,
Milano, Bompiani, 1983. The Sign of Three. Peirce, Holmes, Dupin (a cura di,
con Thomas A. Sebeok), Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1983 (trad. Il
segno dei tre, Milano, Bompiani) Sette anni di desiderio. [Cronache,
1977-1983], Milano, Bompiani, 1983. Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio,
Torino, Einaudi, 1984, 88-06-05690-5.
(PT) Conceito de texto, São Paulo, Queiroz, 1984. Sugli specchi e altri saggi,
Milano, Bompiani, 1985. (DE) Streit der Interpretationen, Konstanz,
Universitätverlag Konstanz GMBH, 1987.
Notes sur la sémiotique de la réception, in "Actes sémiotiques.
Documents", IX, 81, 1987. (ZH) Jie gou zhu yi he fu hao xue. Dian ying wen
ji, San lien shu dian chu ban fa xing, Np, 1987. (edizione cinese di articoli
vari originariamente pubblicati in inglese e francese)Meaning and mental
representations (a cura di, con M. Santambrogio e Patrizia Violi), Bloomington,
Indiana University Press, 1988. (DE) Im Labyrinth der Vernunft. Texte über
Kunst und Zeichen, Leipzig, Reclam, 1989. (antologia di saggi) Lo strano caso
della Hanau 1609, Milano, Bompiani, 1989. Saggio in Leggere i Promessi sposi.
Analisi semiotiche, Giovanni Manetti, Milano, Gruppo editoriale
Fabbri-Bompiani-Sonzogno-ETAS, 1989,
88-452-1466-4. (DE) Auf dem Wege zu einem Neuen Mittelalter, München,
DTV Grossdruck, 1990. (antologia di saggi). I limiti dell'interpretazione,
Milano, Bompiani, 1990, 88-452-1657-8.
Vocali, con Soluzioni felici di Paolo Domenico Malvinni, Napoli, Collana
"Clessidra" di Alfredo Guida Ed., 1991, 88-7188-024-2. Il secondo diario minimo,
Milano, Bompiani, 1992,
88-452-1833-3.Interpretation and Overinterpretation, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1992. La memoria vegetale, Milano, Rovello, 1992.
La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea, Roma-Bari, Laterza,
1993, 88-420-4287-0. (EL) Ton augousto
den Uparchoun eideseis, Thessaloniki, Parateretés, 1993. (antologia di
saggi).Apocalypse Postponed, Bloomington, Indiana U.P, 1994. (saggi tratti da
Apocalittici e integrati scelti e curati da Robert Lumley)Six Walks in the
Fictional Woods, Cambridge, Harvard U.P., 1994. (tradotto come Sei passeggiate
nei boschi narrativi, Milano, Bompiani) Povero Pinocchio. Giochi linguistici di
studenti del Corso di Comunicazione, a cura di, Modena, Comix, 1995, 88-7686-601-9. In cosa crede chi non crede?,
con Carlo Maria Martini, Roma, Liberal, 1996,
88-86838-03-4. (DE) Neue Streichholzbriefe, München, DTV, 1997. Kant e
l'ornitorinco, Milano, Bompiani, 1997,
88-452-2868-1. Cinque scritti morali, Milano, Bompiani, 1997, 88-452-3124-0.Talking of Joyce, con Liberato
Santoro-Brienza, Dublin, University College Dublin Press, 1998. (DE) Gesammelte
Streichholzbriefe, München, Hanser, 1998.Serendipities. Language and Lunacy,
New York, Columbia University Press, 1998. Tra menzogna e ironia, Milano,
Bompiani, 1998, 88-452-3829-6. La
bustina di minerva, Milano, Bompiani, 1999,
88-452-4383-4. (NO) Den nye Middelalderen og andre essays, Oslo, Tiden
Norske, 2000. (antologia di saggi) (DE) Mein verrücktes Italien, Berlin,
Wagenbach, 2000. (antologia di saggi) (CS) Mysl a smysl, Praha, Moravia press,
2000. (antologia di saggi)Experiences in translation, Toronto, Toronto U.P.,
2000. Riflessioni sulla bibliofilia, Milano, Rovello, 2001. (DE) Sämtliche
Glossen und Parodien, München, Hanser, 2001. (raccolta completa da Diario
minimo, Secondo diario minimo, Bustina di minerva e altre parodie da raccolte in tedesco) Sulla
letteratura, Milano, Bompiani, 2002,
88-452-5069-5. Guerre sante, passione e ragione. Pensieri sparsi sulla
superiorità culturale; Scenari di una guerra globale, in Islam e Occidente.
Riflessioni per la convivenza, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2002, 88-420-6784-9. Bellezza. Storia di un'idea
dell'Occidente, CD-ROM a cura di, Milano, Motta On Line, 2002. Dire quasi la
stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione, Milano, Bompiani, 2003, 88-452-5397-X.Mouse or Rat?, Translation as
Negociation, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003. (Experiences in
translation e saggi selezionati da Dire quasi la stessa cosa) Storia della
bellezza, a cura di, testi di Umberto Eco e Girolamo de Michele, Milano,
Bompiani, 2004, 88-452-3249-2. Il linguaggio
della Terra Australe, Milano, Bompiani, 2004. (non in commercio) Il codice
Temesvar, Milano, Rovello, 2005. Nel segno della parola, con Daniele Del
Giudice e Gianfranco Ravasi, a cura e con un saggio di Ivano Dionigi, Milano,
BUR, 2005, 88-17-00632-7. A passo di
gambero. Guerre calde e populismo mediatico, Collana Overlook, Milano,
Bompiani, 2006, 88-452-5620-0. La
memoria vegetale e altri scritti di bibliofilia, Milano, Rovello, 2006, 88-452-5785-1. Sator Arepo eccetera, Roma,
Nottetempo, 2006, 88-7452-085-9. Storia
della bruttezza, a cura di, Milano, Bompiani, 2007, 978-88-452-5965-4. 11/9 La cospirazione
impossibile, con Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Michael Shermer, James Randi, Paolo
Attivissimo, Lorenzo Montali, Francesco Grassi, Andrea Ferrero e Stefano
Bagnasco, Massimo Polidoro, Casale Monferrato, Piemme, 2007, 978-88-384-6847-6. Dall'albero al labirinto.
Studi storici sul segno e l'interpretazione, Milano, Bompiani, 2007, 978-88-452-5902-9. Historia. La grande storia
della civiltà europea, e con altri, 9 voll., Milano, Motta, 2007. Storia della
civiltà europea, e con altri, 18 voll., Milano, Corriere della Sera, 2007-2008.
Nebbia, e con Remo Ceserani, con la collaborazione di Francesco Ghelli e un
saggio di Antonio Costa, Torino, Einaudi, 2009.
978-88-06-18724-8. (antologia letteraria di racconti a tema) Non sperate
di liberarvi dei libri, con Jean-Claude Carrière, Milano, Bompiani, 2009. 978-88-452-6215-9. Vertigine della lista,
Milano, Bompiani, 2009.
978-88-452-6345-3. Il Medioevo, a cura di, 4 voll., Milano,
Encyclomedia, -. 978-88-905082-0-2, 978-88-905082-1-9, 978-88-905082-5-7, 978-88-905082-9-5. La grande Storia, a cura
di, 28 voll., Milano, Corriere della Sera, . Costruire il nemico e altri
scritti occasionali, Milano, Bompiani, .
978-88-452-6585-3. Scritti sul pensiero medievale, Collana Il pensiero
occidentale, Milano, Bompiani, ,
978-88-452-7156-4. L'età moderna e contemporanea, a cura di, 22 voll.,
Roma, Gruppo editoriale L'Espresso, -. Storia delle terre e dei luoghi leggendari,
Milano, Bompiani, . 978-88-452-7392-6.
Da dove si comincia?, con Stefano Bartezzaghi, Roma, La Repubblica, .
Riflessioni sul dolore, Bologna, ASMEPA, .
978-88-97620-73-0. La filosofia e le sue storie, e con Riccardo Fedriga,
3 voll., Roma-Bari, Laterza, -.
978-88-581-1406-3, 978-88-581-1742-2, 978-88-581-1741-5. Pape Satàn Aleppe.
Cronache di una società liquida, Milano, La nave di Teseo, , 978-88-9344-021-9. Come viaggiare con un
salmone, Milano, La nave di Teseo, ,
978-88-9344-023-3. Sulle spalle dei giganti, Collana I fari, Milano, La
nave di Teseo, , 978-88-934-4271-8. Il
fascismo eterno, Collana Le onde, Milano, La nave di Teseo, , 978-88-934-4241-1. [già pubblicato in Cinque
scritti morali, Bompiani, 1997] Sulla televisione. Scritti 1956-, Gianfranco
Marrone, Collana I fari, Milano, La Nave di Teseo, , 978-88-934-4456-9. Narrativa Il nome
della rosa, Milano, Bompiani, 1980. Il pendolo di Foucault, Milano, Bompiani,
1988, 88-452-0408-1 L'isola del giorno
prima, Milano, Bompiani, 1994,
88-452-2318-3 Baudolino, Milano, Bompiani, 2000, 88-452-4736-8 La misteriosa fiamma della
regina Loana. Romanzo illustrato, Milano, Bompiani, 2004, 88-452-1425-7 Il cimitero di Praga, Milano,
Bompiani, , 978-88-452-6622-5 Numero
zero, Milano, Bompiani, ,
978-88-452-7851-8 Narrativa per l'infanzia La bomba e il generale,
illustrazioni di Eugenio Carmi, Milano, Bompiani, 1966. I tre cosmonauti,
illustrazioni di Eugenio Carmi, Milano, Bompiani, 1966. Ammazza l'uccellino,
come Dedalus, illustrazioni di Monica Sangberg, Milano, Bompiani, 1973. Gli
gnomi di Gnu, illustrazioni di Eugenio Carmi, Milano, Bompiani, 1992, 88-452-1885-6. Tre racconti, Milano, Fabbri,
2004, 88-451-0300-5. (raccolta dei tre
precedenti) La storia de "I promessi sposi", raccontata da,
Torino-Roma, Scuola Holden-La biblioteca di Repubblica-L'Espresso, , 978-88-8371-311-8. Traduzioni Raymond
Queneau, Esercizi di stile, Torino, Einaudi, 1983. Note Claudio
Gerino, Morto lo scrittore Umberto Eco. Ci mancherà il suo sguardo nel mondo,
in la Repubblica, 20 febbraio . 22 febbraio . Massimo Delfino e Emma
Camagna, Alessandria piange Umberto Eco, in La Stampa, 20 febbraio . 22
febbraio . Cosimo Di Bari, "A
passo di critica: il modello di media education nell'opera di Umberto Eco",
Firenze University Press 2009 Èco,
Umberto, in Treccani.itEnciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia
Italiana. LINCEI, ENRICO MENESTO' E
UMBERTO ECO NUOVI SOCI DELL'ACCADEMIA, su tuttoggi.info. 30 ottobre . 'Il nome della rosa' debutta su Rai1 e
conquista gli ascolti della prima serata, su la Repubblica, 5 marzo . 30
gennaio . quotidiano la Stampa; Gianni
Coscia: «quando suono col mio amico Umberto Eco», su genova.mentelocale.it. 20
febbraio 12 ottobre ). «È il lato dolente e angoscioso di un uomo
che è cresciuto nell'Azione Cattolica, che l'ha lasciata in polemica con il
grande Gedda; un uomo, Eco, che ha studiatodiconoTommaso d'Aquino, e che un
giorno se n'è uscito dalla Chiesa proclamandosi orgogliosamente ateo, o se si
preferisce, agnostico.» (In Rassegna stampa cattolica: Mario Palmaro, Eco è
solo un refuso, 21 settembre «His new
book touches on politics, but also on faith. Raised Catholic, Eco has long
since left the church. "Even though I'm still in love with that world, I
stopped believing in God in my 20s after my doctoral studies on St. Thomas
Aquinas. You could say he miraculously cured me of my faith..."» «Il
suo nuovo libro tratta di politica, ma anche di fede. Cresciuto nel
cattolicesimo, Eco ha lasciato da tempo la Chiesa. "Anche se io sono
ancora innamorato di quel mondo, ho smesso di credere in Dio durante i miei
anni 20, dopo i miei studi universitari su Tommaso d'Aquino. Potete dire che
egli mi ha miracolosamente curato dalla mia fede..."» (Articolo in
Time, 13 giugno 2005) Liukkonen, Petri
(2003) Umberto Eco (1932–)Pseudonym: Dedalus Archiviato il 4 agosto 2006 in
. Eco, quando l'Torino gli consegnò il
libretto con 27 in letteratura italiana, su la Repubblica, 20 febbraio . 17
febbraio . Antonio Galdo, Saranno
potenti? Storia, declino e nuovi protagonisti della classe dirigente italiana,
Sperling & Kupfer, Milano Giuseppe Antonio Camerino, ECO, Umberto, in
Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. "Riparte il Master in Editoria, ideato
da Umberto Eco" Capozzi
(2008) Bondanella (2005) 53
Umberto Eco, Cinque scritti morali, Bompiani Intervista a Umberto
EcoWikinotizie, su it.wikinews.org.
Umberto Eco, Ho sposato ?, «l'Espresso», 4 settembre 2009. Con lo pseudonimo di Dedalus: Dedalus e il
manifesto, su ilmanifesto.it, 20 Febbraio . 13 febbraio (archiviato il 13 febbraio ). Ostini (1998)
Sclavi (1998) p. 94, citazione: "Sto leggendo un libro [In cosa
crede chi non crede, N.d.R.] di Umberto Eco che mi è arrivato dall'Italia.
Curioso no? Ha il mio stesso nome e il cognome è l'anagramma del
mio..." 1981, Umberto Eco, su
premiostrega.it. 16 aprile . Italian
Writer Umberto Eco is the Louvre's New Guest Curator Emma Camagna, La morte di Eco, il ricordo di
Gianni Coscia, in La Stampa, 20 febbraio . 22 febbraio . L'ultimo saluto a Umberto Eco: "Grazie
maestro", in La Stampa, 23 febbraio . 23 febbraio . Marco Del Corona, «Follie di Spagna»: ecco
che cos'è la musica suonata per Umberto Eco, su Corriere della Sera. 23
febbraio . Umberto Eco, la richiesta nel
testamento: "Non autorizzate convegni su di me per i prossimi 10
anni", su Il Fatto Quotidiano. 23 marzo .
La lettera della vedova Eco al Comune, in Corriere della Sera. 30 marzo
. Pinelli, Calabresi e l'eskimo in
redazione Archiviato il 19 gennaio in .,
opinione.it, 30 gennaio 1997 Bruno
Pischedda, Come leggere Il nome della rosa di Umberto Eco, Mursia, 1994
p.99 La struttura assente, "Eco a Gerusalemme attacca il Cavaliere.
È polemica", di Francesco Battistini (dal Corriere della Sera, 24 febbraio
) Corriere della Sera Berlusconi, Hitler
e io, su l'Espresso. 20 febbraio .
Comitato Esecutivo | Aspen Institute Italia, su aspeninstitute.it. 20
febbraio . Sito web del Quirinale:
dettaglio decorato. Sito web del
Quirinale: dettaglio decorato. Umberto
Eco all'Eliseo onorato da Sarkozy con Legion D'Honneur, su liberoquotidiano.it.
14 gennaio 29 ottobre ). Curriculum Vitae, su umbertoeco.it. 20
febbraio . Unibo e Brasile: Laurea ad
honorem a Umberto Eco, su magazine.unibo.it. 20 febbraio . Umberto Eco contro i social: "Hanno dato
diritto di parola a legioni di imbecilli", su Il Fatto Quotidiano. 20
febbraio . Il problema di Umberto Eco
con internet, su Il Post. 20 febbraio .
Imbecilli e non, tutto il mondo è social, su LaStampa.it. 20 febbraio
. Serena Vitale e Umberto Eco entrano
nell'Accademia dei Lincei, 12 novembre , Il Giornale. Decise all'unanimità le 15 personalità
illustri da iscrivere nel Pantheon di Milano, su comune.milano.it, Opere:
Bondanella, Peter, Umberto Eco and the
Open Text: Semiotics, Fiction, Popular Culture Capozzi, Rocco (2008) Eco's
Prophetic Vision of Mass Culture in McLuhan Studies: Premier Issue, Antonio
Galdo, Saranno potenti? Storia, declino e nuovi protagonisti della classe
dirigente italiana, Sperling & Kupfer, Milano 88-200-3501-4 Alberto Ostini , Umberto Eco e
Tiziano Sclavi. Un dialogo, in Dylan Dog, indocili sentimenti, arcane paure,
Milano, Euresis, 1998. Tiziano Sclavi, Bruno Brindisi, Lassù qualcuno ci
chiama, Dylan Dog n. 136, Milano, Sergio Bonelli Editore, gennaio 199894.
Film Walt Dey e l'ItaliaUna storia d'amore (): viene mostrata
un'intervista durante lo "speciale Walt Dey" (1965) con Ettore Della
Giovanna e Gianni Rodari Luigi Bauco,
Francesco Millocca, Dizionario del «Pendolo di Foucault», Milano, Corbo, 1989.
Manlio Talamo, I segreti del Pendolo, Napoli, Simone, 1989. Francesco Pansa,
Anna Vinci, Effetto Eco, Roma, Nuova Edizione del Gallo; Marco Testi, "Il
romanzo al passato": medioevo e invenzione in tre autori contemporanei in
Analisi letteraria, 27, Roma, Bulzoni, 1992. Walter Pedullà, «L'utilitaria di
Eco» in Le caramelle di Musil, Milano, Rizzoli, 1992, 236-243. Salman Rushdie, «Umberto Eco» in
Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991, Londra, Penguin, 1992.
Bruno Pischedda, Come leggere «Il nome della rosa» di Umberto Eco, Milano, Mursia,
1994. Jean Petitot, Paolo Fabbri , Nel nome del senso. Intorno all'opera di
Umberto Eco, Milano, Sansoni, 2001. Antonio Sorella , Umberto Eco. Sponde
remote e nuovi orizzonti, Pescara, Tracce, 2002. Roberto Rampi, L'ornitorinco.
Umberto Eco, Peirce e la conoscenza congetturale, M & B Publishing, Milano;
Marco Sonzogni, Echi di Eco, Balerna, Edizione Ulivo, 2007. Cinzia Bianchi,
Clare Vassallo, “Umberto Eco's interpretative semiotics: Interpretation,
encyclopedia, translation”, in Semiotica. Journal of the International
Association for Semiotic Studies (Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter), Peter
Bondanella, Umberto Eco and the open text. Semiotics, fiction, popular culture,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Peter Bondanella , New Essays on Umberto
Eco, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Jean-Jacques Brochier ,
Umberto Eco. Du semiologue au romancier, in Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire
[inserto speciale], n. 262, febbraio 1989. Michael Caesar, Umberto Eco.
Philosophy, Semiotics and the Work of Fiction, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1999.
Rocco Capozzi , Reading Eco. An Anthology, Bloomington, Indiana University
Press, 1997. Michele Castelnovi, La mappa della biblioteca: geografia reale ed
immaginaria secondo Umberto Eco, in Miscellanea di Storia delle esplorazioni n.
LX, Genova, , 195-253. Remo Ceserani,
Eco e il postmoderno consapevole in Raccontare il postmoderno, Torino, Bollati
Boringhieri, 180-200. Michele Cogo,
Fenomenologia di Umberto Eco. Indagine sulle origini di un mito intellettuale
contemporaneo. Introduzione di Paolo Fabbri. Bologna, Baskerville, Furio
Colombo, «L'isola del giorno prima», in La rivista dei libri; Roberto Cotroneo, La diffidenza come sistema.
Saggio sulla narrativa di Umberto Eco, Milano, Anabasi, 1995. Roberto Cotroneo,
Eco: due o tre cose che so di lui, Milano, Bompiani, Teresa de Lauretis, Umberto Eco, Firenze, La
Nuova Italia, Nunzio Dell'Erba, Alla ricerca delle fonti del romanzo "Il
Cimitero di Praga" , in Id., L'eco della storia. Saggi di critica storica:
massoneria, anarchia, fascismo e comunismo, Universitas Studiorum, Mantova
, 978-88-97683-30-8 Cosimo Di Bari, A
passo di critica. Il modello di Media Education nell'opera di Umberto Eco,
Firenze, Firenze University Press, Richard Ellmann, Murder in the Monastery?,
in The New York Review of Books, n. 12, luglio 1983. Lorenzo Flabbi, La
disposizione del sapere di Umberto Eco, in Atlante dei movimenti culturali.
1968-2007, C. Cretella e P. Pieri, Clueb, Bologna, Cristina Farronato, Eco's
Chaosmos, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2003. Franco Forchetti, Il
segno e la rosa. I segreti della narrativa di Umberto Eco, Roma, Castelvecchi,
2005. Grit Fröhlich, Umberto Eco. PhilosophieÄsthetikSemiotik, Paderborn,
Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Margherita Ganeri, Il «caso» Eco, Palermo, Palumbo, 1991.
Alfredo Giuliani, «Scherzare col fuoco» in Autunno del novecento, Milano,
Feltrinelli, 1984. Renato Giovannoli , Saggi su «Il Nome della Rosa», Milano,
Bompiani, 1985. Fabio Izzo, Eco a perdere, Associazione Culturale Il Foglio,
2005. Paolo Jachia, Umberto Eco. Arte semiotica letteratura, San Cesario,
Manni, 2006. Anna Maria Lorusso, Umberto Eco. Temi, problemi e percorsi
semiotici, Roma, Carocci, 2008. Patrizia Magli et. al. , Semiotica: Storia
Teoria Interpretazione. Saggi intorno a Umberto Eco, Milano, Bompiani; Sandro
Montalto , Umberto Eco: l'uomo che sapeva troppo, Pisa, ETS; Franco Musarra et
al., Eco in fabula. Umberto Eco in the Humanities. Umberto Eco dans les
sciences humaines. Umberto Eco nelle scienze umane, Proceedings of the
International Conference, Leuven, 24-27 febbraio 1999, Leuven, Leuven U.P. e
Firenze, Franco Cesati Editore, 2002. Claudio Paolucci, Umberto Eco. Tra ordine
e avventura, Milano, Feltrinelli, .
Semiotica Monte Cerignone, luogo di residenza Struttura (semiotica)
Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a
Umberto Eco Collabora a Wikiquote Citazionio su Umberto Eco Collabora a
Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Umberto
Eco Sito ufficiale, su
umbertoeco.it. Umberto Eco, su
Treccani.itEnciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Umberto Eco, in Enciclopedia Italiana,
Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Umberto Eco, su Enciclopedia Britannica,
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Umberto Eco, su The Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction. Umberto Eco, su BeWeb,
Conferenza Episcopale Italiana. Opere di
Umberto Eco, su Liber Liber. Opere di
Umberto Eco, su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. Opere di Umberto Eco, . Pubblicazioni di Umberto Eco, su Persée,
Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l'Innovation. di Umberto Eco, su Internet Speculative
Fiction Database, Al von Ruff. Umberto Eco (autore), su Goodreads. Umberto Eco
(personaggio), su Goodreads. italiana
di Umberto Eco, su Catalogo Vegetti della letteratura fantastica,
Fantascienza.com. Registrazioni di
Umberto Eco, su RadioRadicale.it, Radio Radicale. Umberto Eco, su Internet
Movie Database, IMDb.com. Umberto Eco, su AllMovie, All Media Network; Umberto
Eco, su filmportal.de. Eco, Umberto, in
Lessico del XXI secolo, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, -. "La
bustina di minerva": la rubrica periodica di Eco su L'Espresso,
L'Espresso. 10 gennaio . signosemio.comSignoBiografia di Umberto Eco e la
presentazione della sua teoria semiotica, su signosemio.com. 19 giugno 2009 4
giugno 2009). Approfondimento, su italialibri.net. Curiosità (anche la
"cacopedia"in PDF) , su bibliotecheoggi.it. Opere in TecaLibri/1, su
tecalibri.info. Opere in TecaLibri/2, su tecalibri.info. Considerazioni su:
"Non sperate di liberarvi dei libri", su antonietta.philo.unibo.it 18
gennaio ). Golem L'indispensabile (il sito della rivista)rivista online diretta
da Umberto Eco, Renato Mannheimer, Carlo Bertelli, Danco Singer Un articolo di
Eco su , su espresso.repubblica.it. encyclomedia.it, su encyclomedia.it. Il
«questionario Proust» a Umberto Eco, su elapsus.it. 22 maggio . (DE) Umberto
Eco, in Perlentaucher, Perlentaucher Medien GmbH. Opere di Umberto Eco V D M
Vincitori del Premio Strega V D M Vincitori internazionali del Prix Médicis V D
M Vincitori del Premio Bancarella V D M Vincitori del Premio Cesare Pavese V D
M Vincitori del Premio di Stato austriaco per la letteratura europea V D M
Vincitori del Premio Mediterraneo per stranieri, Europeana agent/base/ Filosofia
Giallo Giallo Letteratura Letteratura Categorie: Semiologi
italianiFilosofi italiani del XX secoloFilosofi italiani del XXI
secoloScrittori italiani del XX secoloScrittori italiani Professore1932 5 gennaio 19 febbraiod Alessandria
MilanoUmberto EcoScrittori per ragazziFondatori di riviste italianeVincitori
del Premio BancarellaVincitori del Premio StregaCavalieri di gran croce
OMRIBenemeriti della cultura e dell'arteDecorati con la Legion d'onoreAutori
del Gruppo 63Accademici dei LinceiPersone legate all'HarvardProfessori
dell'BolognaProfessori della Columbia UniversityPatafisicaTraduttori
italianiAccademici italiani del XX secoloAccademici italiani del XXI
secoloSaggisti italiani del XX secoloSaggisti italiani del XXI secoloUomini
universaliStudenti dell'Università degli Studi di TorinoTraduttori dal
franceseTraduttori all'italianoMedievisti italianiBibliofiliDirettori di
periodici italianiCritici e teorici dei nuovi media. Econ provides a
bridge between Graeco-Roman philosophy and Grice! Eco is one of the few
philosophers who considers the very origins of philosophy in Bolognaand
straight from RomeOn top, Eco is one of the first to generalise most of Grice’s
topics under ‘communication,’ rather than using the Anglo-Saxon ‘mean’ that
does not really belong in the Graeco-Roman tradition. Eco cites H. P. Grice in
“Cognitive constraints of communication.” Umberto b.2, philosopher, intellectual historian, and
novelist. A leading figure in the field of semiotics, the general theory of
signs. Eco has devoted most of his vast production to the notion of
interpretation and its role in communication. In the 0s, building on the idea
that an active process of interpretation is required to take any sign as a
sign, he pioneered reader-oriented criticism The Open Work, 2, 6; The Role of
the Reader, 9 and championed a holistic view of meaning, holding that all of
the interpreter’s beliefs, i.e., his encyclopedia, are potentially relevant to
word meaning. In the 0s, equally influenced by Peirce and the structuralists, he offered a unified theory
of signs A Theory of Semiotics, 6, aiming at grounding the study of
communication in general. He opposed the idea of communication as a natural
process, steering a middle way between realism and idealism, particularly of
the Sapir-Whorf variety. The issue of realism looms large also in his recent
work. In The Limits of Interpretation 0 and Interpretation and
Overinterpretation 2, he attacks deconstructionism. Kant and the Platypus 7
defends a “contractarian” form of realism, holding that the reader’s
interpretation, driven by the Peircean regulative idea of objectivity and
collaborating with the speaker’s underdetermined intentions, is needed to fix
reference. In his historical essays, ranging from medieval aesthetics The
Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 6 to the attempts at constructing artificial and
“perfect” languages The Search for the Perfect Language, 3 to medieval
semiotics, he traces the origins of some central notions in contemporary
philosophy of language e.g., meaning, symbol, denotation and such recent
concerns as the language of mind and translation, to larger issues in the
history of philosophy. All his novels are pervaded by philosophical queries,
such as Is the world an ordered whole? The Name of the Rose, 0, and How much
interpretation can one tolerate without falling prey to some conspiracy
syndrome? Foucault’s Pendulum, 8. Everywhere, he engages the reader in the game
of controlled interpretations. “Il nome della rosa” is about the dark ages in
Northern Italy, where the monks were the only to find a slight interest in
philosophy, unlike the barbaric Lombards!” -- Refs.: Umberto Econ on H. P. Grice in
“Cognitive constraints on communication,” Luigi
Speranza, "Grice ed Eco: semantica filosofica," per Il Club
Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
eddington: “Some like Einstein, but Eddington’s MY man.”H. P.
Grice. Einsteindiscussed by Grice in “Eddington’s Two Tables” -- Albert 18795,
G.-born physicist, founder of the
special and general theories of relativity and a fundamental contributor to
several branches of physics and to the philosophical analysis and critique of
modern physics, notably of relativity and the quantum theory. Einstein was
awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 2, “especially for his discovery of the
law of the photoelectric effect.” Born in Ulm in the G. state of Württemberg,
Einstein studied physics at the Polytechnic in Zürich, Switzerland. He was
called to Berlin as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics 4 at
the peak of the G. ultranationalism that surrounded World War I. His reaction
was to circulate an internationalist “Manifesto to Europeans” and to pursue
Zionist and pacifist programs. Following the dramatic confirmation of the
general theory of relativity 9 Einstein became an international celebrity. This
fame also made him the frequent target of G. anti-Semites, who, during one
notable episode, described the theory of relativity as “a Jewish fraud.” In 3
Einstein left G.y for the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Although
his life was always centered on science, he was also engaged in the politics
and culture of his times. He carried on an extensive correspondence whose
publication will run to over forty volumes with both famous and ordinary
people, including significant philosophical correspondence with Cassirer,
Reichenbach, Moritz Schlick, and others. Despite reservations over logical
positivism, he was something of a patron of the movement, helping to secure
academic positions for several of its leading figures. In 9 Einstein signed a
letter drafted by the nuclear physicist Leo Szilard informing President
Roosevelt about the prospects for harnessing atomic energy and warning of the G.
efforts to make a bomb. Einstein did not further participate in the development
of atomic weapons, and later was influential in the movement against them. In 2
he was offered, and declined, the presidency of Israel. He died still working
on a unified field theory, and just as the founders of the Pugwash movement for
nuclear disarmament adopted a manifesto he had cosigned with Russell.
Einstein’s philosophical thinking was influenced by early exposure to Kant and
later study of Hume and Mach, whose impact shows in the operationalism used to
treat time in his famous 5 paper on special relativity. That work also displays
a passion for unity in science characteristic of nearly all his physical
thinking, and that may relate to the monism of Spinoza, a philosopher whom he
read and reread. Einstein’s own understanding of relativity stressed the
invariance of the space-time interval and promoted realism with regard to the
structure of spacetime. Realism also shows up in Einstein’s work on Brownian
motion 5, which was explicitly motivated by his long-standing interest in
demonstrating the reality of molecules and atoms, and in the realist treatment
of light quanta in his analysis 5 of the photoelectric effect. While he
pioneered the development of statistical physics, especially in his seminal
investigations of quantum phenomena 525, he never broke with his belief in
determinism as the only truly fundamental approach to physical processes. Here
again one sees an affinity with Spinoza. Realism and determinism brought Einstein
into conflict with the new quantum theory 526, whose observer dependence and
“flight into statistics” convinced him that it could not constitute genuinely
fundamental physics. Although influential in its development, he became the
theory’s foremost critic, never contributing to its refinement but turning
instead to the program of unifying the electromagnetic and gravitational fields
into one grand, deterministic synthesis that would somehow make room for
quantum effects as limiting or singular cases. It is generally agreed that his
unified field program was not successful, although his vision continues to
inspire other unification programs, and his critical assessments of quantum
mechanics still challenge the instrumentalism associated with the theory.
Einstein’s philosophical reflections constitute an important chapter in
twentieth-century thought. He understood realism as less a metaphysical
doctrine than a motivational program, and he argued that determinism was a
feature of theories rather than an aspect of the world Einstein, Albert
Einstein, Albert 256 256 directly.
Along with the unity of science, other central themes in his thinking include
his rejection of inductivism and his espousal of holism and constructivism or
conventionalism, emphasizing that meanings, concepts, and theories are free
creations, not logically derivable from experience but subject rather to
overall criteria of comprehensibility, empirical adequacy, and logical
simplicity. Holism is also apparent in his acute analysis of the testability of
geometry and his rejection of Poincaré’s geometric conventionalism.
Einheit: Grice: “I will use the Germanism for two reasons: it’s
pompous, and no Englishman would use ‘unity’ (literally ‘onehood’) like that!”
-- H. P. Grice, “Unity of science and
teleology.” unity of science, a situation in which all branches of empirical
science form a coherent system called unified science. Unified science is
sometimes extended to include formal sciences e.g., branches of logic and
mathematics. ‘Unity of science’ is also used to refer to a research program
aimed at unified science. Interest in the unity of science has a long history
with many roots, including ancient atomism and the work of the Encyclopedists. In the twentieth century this
interest was prominent in logical empiricism see Otto Neurath et al.,
International Encyclopedia of Unified Science,
I, 8. Logical empiricists originally conceived of unified science in
terms of a unified language of science, in particular, a universal observation
language. All laws and theoretical statements in any branch of science were to
be translatable into such an observation language, or else be appropriately
related to sentences of this language. In unified science unity of science 939 939 addition to encountering technical
difficulties with the observationaltheoretical distinction, this conception of
unified science also leaves open the possibility that phenomena of one branch
may require special concepts and hypotheses that are explanatorily independent
of other branches. Another concept of unity of science requires that all
branches of science be combined by the intertheoretic reduction of the theories
of all non-basic branches to one basic theory usually assumed to be some future
physics. These reductions may proceed stepwise; an oversimplified example would
be reduction of psychology to biology, together with reductions of biology to
chemistry and chemistry to physics. The conditions for reducing theory T2 to
theory T1 are complex, but include identification of the ontology of T2 with
that of T1, along with explanation of the laws of T2 by laws of T1 together
with appropriate connecting sentences. These conditions for reduction can be
supplemented with conditions for the unity of the basic theory, to produce a
general research program for the unification of science see Robert L. Causey,
Unity of Science, 7. Adopting this research program does not commit one to the
proposition that complete unification will ever be achieved; the latter is
primarily an empirical proposition. This program has been criticized, and some
have argued that reductions are impossible for particular pairs of theories, or
that some branches of science are autonomous. For example, some writers have
defended a view of autonomous biology, according to which biological science is
not reducible to the physical sciences. Vitalism postulated non-physical
attributes or vital forces that were supposed to be present in living
organisms. More recent neovitalistic positions avoid these postulates, but
attempt to give empirical reasons against the feasibility of reducing biology.
Other, sometimes a priori, arguments have been given against the reducibility
of psychology to physiology and of the social sciences to psychology. These
disputes indicate the continuing intellectual significance of the idea of unity
of science and the broad range of issues it encompasses. Einheitswissenschaft: Used by
Grice ironically. While he was totally ANTI-Einheitwisseschaft, he was ALL for
einheitsphilosophie! The phrase is used by
Grice in a more causal way. He uses the expression ‘unity of science’ vis-à-vis
the topic of teleology. Note that ‘einheitswissenschaft,’ literally translates
as unity-sciencethere is nothing about ‘making’ if one, which is what –fied implies.
The reason why ‘einheitswissenschaft’ was transliterated as ‘unified science’
was that Neurath thought that ‘unity-science’ would be a yes-yes in New
England, most New Englanders being Unitarians, but they would like to include
Theology there, ‘into the bargain.’ “Die Einheit von Wissenschaft.” Die Einheit der Wissenschaft und
die neopositivistische Theorie der „Einheitswissenschaft”. O. Neurath, „Einheit der Wissenschaft als
Aufgabe“,Einheitswissenschaft oder Einheit der Wissenschaft?
| Frank F Vierter Internationaler Kongress für Einheit der Wissenschaft, Cambridge 1938
... Einheitswissenschaft als
Basis der Wissenschaftsgeschichte ( positivists
held that no essential differences in aim and method exist between the various
branches of science. The scientists of all disciplines should collaborate
closely with each other and should unify the vocabulary of sciences by logical
analysis. According to this view, there is no sharp demarcation between natural sciences and social sciences. In
particular, to establish universal laws in the social sciences may be difficult
in practice, but it is not impossible in principle. Through Otto Neurath, this
ideal of scientific unity became a program for logical positivists, who
published a series of books in Vienna under the heading Unified Science. After
the dissolution of the Vienna Circle, Neurath renamed the official journal
Erkenntnis as The Journal of Unified Science, and planned to continue
publication of a series of works in the United States under the general title
The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. He thought that the work
would be similar in historical importance to the eighteenth-century French
Encyclopédie under the direction of Diderot. Unfortunately, this work was never
completed, although Carnap and Morris published some volumes originally
prepared for it under the title Foundations of the Unity of Science. “We have
repeatedly pointed out that the formation of the constructional system as a
whole is the task of unified science.” Carnap, The Logical Structure of the
World.
enantiamorphs: “When Moore said
that he knew he had two hands, he implicated, ‘I have two enantiamorphic
hands,’ before they were able to cancel his talk and his implicaturum.” from
Grecian enantios, ‘opposite’, and morphe, ‘form’, objects whose shapes differ
as do those of a right and left hand. One of a pair of enantiamorphs can be
made to look identical in shape to the other by viewing it in a mirror but not
merely by changing its spatial orientation. Enantiamorphs figure prominently in
the work of Kant, who argued that the existence of enantiamorphic pairs
entailed that Leibnizian relational theories of space were to be rejected in
favor of Newtonian absolutist theories, that some facts about space could be
apprehended empiricism, constructive enantiamorphs 263 263 only by “pure intuition,” and that space
was mind-dependent.
ENCYCLOPÆDIA
GRICEIANA:
he way Grice is known in Italy, due to the efforts of Luigi Speranza, of the
Grice Club. Speranza saw that Grice connected, somehow, with philosophy in
general, and tried to pursue a way to make him accessible to anti-Oxonians. The
encyclopædia Griceiana. Grice went to Paris and became enamoured with
encyclopedia, or “encyclopédie,” “or a Descriptive Dictionary of the Sciences,
Arts and Trades,” launched by the Parisian publisher Le Breton, who had secured
d’Alembert’s and Diderot’s editorship, the Encyclopedia was gradually released despite
a temporary revocation of its royal privilege. Comprising seventeen folio volumes
of 17,818 articles and eleven folio volumes of 2,885 plates, the ENCYCLOPAEDIA
GRICEIANA required a staff of 272 Griceian engravers. “But the good thing,”
Grice says, “is that it incorporates the accumulated knowledge and rationalist,
secularist views of the Enlightenment
and prescribed economic, social, and political reforms.” Strawson adds:
“Enormously successful at Oxford, ENCYCLOPÆDIA GRICEIANA was reprinted with revisions
five times before Grice died.” “Contributions were made by anyone we could
bribe!”As in the old encycloopaedia, the philosophes Voltaire, Rousseau,
Montesquieu, d’Holbach, Naigeon, and Saint-Lambert; the writers Duclos and
Marmontel; the theologians Morellet and Malet; enlightened clerics, e.g.
Raynal; explorers, e.g. La Condamine; natural scientists, e.g. Daubenton;
physicians, e.g. Bouillet; the economists Turgot and Quesnay; engineers, e.g.
Perronet; horologists, e.g. Berthoud; and scores of other experts. “The purpose
of the ENCYCLOPÆDIA GRICEIANA,” writes Grice in the “Foreword”, “is to collect
this or that bit of Griceian knowledge dispersed on the surface of the earth,
and to unfold its general system.” “The Encyclopedia,” Strawson adds, “offers
the educated Oxonian a comprehensive, systematic, and descriptive repository of
contemporary liberal and mechanical arts, with an appendix on implicaturum by
Grice hisself.” D’Alembert and Diderot developed a sensationalist epistemology,
“but I don’t.” “Preliminary Discourse” under the influence of Locke and
Condillac. Grice and Strawson (with the occasional help from Austin, Warnock,
Pears and Thomson) compiled and rationally classified existing knowledge
according to the noetic process memory, imagination, and reason. Based on the
assumption of the unity of theory and praxis, the approach of the ENCYCLOOPÆDIA
GRICEIANA is positivistic and ‘futilitarian.’ The ENCYCLOPÆDIA GRICEIANA
vindicates experimental reason and the rule of nature, fostered the practice of
criticism, and stimulated the development of both old and new sciences. In
religious matters, the ENCYCLOPAEDIA GRICEIANA cultivates ambiguity and implicaturum
to escape censorship by Queen Elizabeth II, an avid reader of the supplements. Whereas
most contributors held either conciliatory or orthodox positions, J. F. Thomson
barely concealed his naturalistic and atheistic opinions. Thomson’s radicalism
was pervasive. Supernaturalism, obscurantism, and fanaticism, and
Heideggerianism are among the Encyclopedists’ favorite targets. The Griceian
Encyclopaedists identify Roman Catholicism (of the type Dummett practiced) with
superstition and theology with occult magic; assert the superiority of natural
morality over theological ethics; demand religious toleration; and champion
human rights and conventional implicaturum alike. They innovatively retrace the
historical conditions of the development of Oxford (“and a little Cambridge”)
philosophy. They furthermore pioneer ideas on trade and industry and anticipate
the relevance of historiography, sociology, economics, and ‘conversational
pragmatics.’ As the most ambitious and expansive reference work Oxford ever saw,
the ENCYCLOPÆDIA GRICEIANA crystallizes the confidence of England’s midlands bourgeoisie
in the capacity of reason to dispel the shadows of ignorance and improve society“at
least Oxonian society, if I can.”
enesidemo: Grice:
“Mostly ignored by Italians – but then he was Greek or otherwise non-Roman!” ---- or ‘aenesidemus,’ as Strawson would
prefer. Although Grecian, he is listed in the name glossay to the essay on
“Roman philosophers,” and that is because he influenced some Roman-born
philosophers and nnobles. “Nothing
beats a Grecian don,” as Cicero remarked. Academic philosopher, founder of a
Pyrrhonist revival in Rome. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Scetticismo romano.”
Eicon
-- icum
-- Would Ciero prefer the spelling ‘eiconicus’ or ‘iconicus’? We know Pliny
preferred ‘icon.’īcon , ŏnis, f., = εἰκών,I.an image, figure: “fictae ceră icones,” Plin. 8, 54, 80, § 215.Iconicity -- depiction,
pictorial representation, also sometimes called “iconic representation.”
Linguistic representation is conventional: it is only by virtue of a convention
that the word ‘cats’ refers to cats. A picture of a cat, however, seems to refer
to cats by other than conventional means; for viewers can correctly interpret
pictures without special training, whereas people need special training to
learn languages. Though some philosophers, such as Goodman Languages of Art,
deny that depiction involves a non-conventional element, most are concerned to
give an account of what this non-conventional element consists in. Some hold
that it consists in resemblance: pictures refer to their objects partly by
resembling them. Objections to this are that anything resembles anything else
to some degree; and that resemblance is a symmetric and reflexive relation,
whereas depiction is not. Other philosophers avoid direct appeal to
resemblance: Richard Wollheim Painting as an Art argues that depiction holds by
virtue of the intentional deployment of the natural human capacity to see
objects in marked surfaces; and dependence, causal depiction Kendall Walton
Mimesis as Make-Believe argues that depiction holds by virtue of objects
serving as props in reasonably rich and vivid visual games of
make-believe.
Emiliani: Grice:
“I like Emiliani; of course in proper English we don’t pluralise ‘meanings’!
But he speaks of ‘significati,’ which is literate! The vernacular Italian is
‘segno,’ and the ‘ficare’ is also learned latinate! Gotta love him!” -- Alessandro
Emiliani, filosofo. Dio è la mia
speranza Anch'io vivo nella speranza di avere amici in cielo che pregano per me
e che attendono di unirsi a me nella nostra comune patria. Dobbiamo sempre
ricordare che questa vita terrena è soltanto un passaggio verso la nostra vera
patria che è quella celeste. La Madonna è apparsa e ha parlato a moltissimi
veggenti di molti popoli e nelle più svariate circostanze, come una persona
viva, che promette, annunzia, loda, esorta, profetizza, prega, guida e protegge
dai pericoli, risana i malati, opera i miracoli, piange, invita alla
conversione ed alla penitenza, aiuta ad avvicinarsi a Cristo, suo Figlio. La
mia sicura bussola è camminare sulla strada della carità in ogni circostanza della
vita. La presenza in noi dello Spirito Santo è la caparra della nostra vita
eterna futura. Solo Dio resta. Egli è l'unica roccia a cui mi posso aggrappare
per non essere travolto dai flutti tempestosi in mezzo ai quali galleggio. Alessandro Emiliani, Dio è la mia speranza,
Edizioni Studio Domenicano.
English
futilitarians, The: Bergmann’s pun on
H. P. Grice and J. L. Austin. from futile. Cf. conversational futilitarianism.
Can there be a futilitarian theory of communication? Grice’s! The issue is a complex
one. Some may interpret Grice’s theory as resting “on Kantian grounds.” Not
everybody was present at Grice’s seminars at Oxford on helpfulness, where he
discusses the kind of reasoning that a participant to a conversation will
display in assuming that his co-conversationalist is being conversationally
helpful, conversationally benevolent, conversationally ‘altruist,’ almost, and
conversationally, well, co-operative. So, as to the basis for this. We can
simplify the scenario by using the plural. A conversationalist assumes that his
co-conversationalist is being co-operative on Kantian grounds. What are the
alternatives, if any? One can re-describe “Kantian grounds” as “moral grounds.”
Conversationalists abide with the principle of conversational helpfulness on
Kantian, moral grounds. Kant wrote the “Critique of practical reason,” so Kant
would allow for a rephrase of this as follows. Conversationalists abide with
the principle of conversational helpfulness on practical, indeed moral,
groundswhich is the topic of Grice’s last Kant lecture at Stanford. How to turn
a ‘counsel of prudence,’ which is ‘practical’ into something that covers Kant’s
“Kategorische Imperativ.” And then there’s the utilitarian. Utilitarianism IS a
moral theory, or a meta-ethical theory. So one would have to allow for the
possibility that conversationalists abide by the principle of conversational
helpfulness on “utilitarian grounds,” which would be “practical grounds,” AND
“moral grounds,” if not Kantian grounds. In any case, the topic WAS raised, and
indeed, for someone like Grice who wrote on ‘pleasure,’ and ‘happiness,’ it
does not seem futilitarian to see him as a futilitarian. Unfortunately, you
need a serious philosophical background to appreciate all this, since it
touches on the very serious, or ‘deep,’ as Grice would say, “and fascinating,”
suburbia or practicality. But surely the keyword ‘utilitarian’ as per
“conversationalists abide by the principle of conversational helpfulness on
utilitarian grounds” is a possibility. Cf. Grice’s reference to the ‘least
effort,’ and in the Oxford lectures on helpfulness to a conversationalist not
getting involved in “undue effort,” or getting into “unnecessary trouble.”
“Undue effort” is ‘forbidden’ by the desideratum of conversational candour; the
‘unnecessary trouble’ is balanced by the ‘principle of conversational
self-love.’ And I don’t think Kant would ever considered loving himself! Grice
being keen on neuter adjectives, he saw the ‘utile’ at the root of
utilitarianism. There is much ‘of value’ in the old Roman concept of ‘utile.’
Lewis and Short have it as Neutr. absol.: ūtĭle , is, n., what is useful, the
useful: omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci, Hor. A. P. 343: “bonus
atque fidus Judex honestum praetulit utili,” id. C. 4, 9, 41: “utilium tardus
provisor,” id. A. P. 164: “sententiae de utilibus honestisque,” Quint. 3, 8,
13; cf. id. 1, 2, 29. —Ultimately, Grice’s meta-ethics, like Hare’s,
Nowell-Smith’s, Austin’s, Hampshire’s, and Warnock’s derives into a qualified
utilitarianism, with notions of agreeableness and eudaemonia being crucial.
Grice well knows that for Aristotle pleasure is just one out of the three
sources for phulia; the others being profit, and virtue. As an English
utilitarian, or English futilitarian, Grice plays with Griceian
pleasures. Democritus, as Grice remarks, seems to be the earliest
philosopher to have categorically embraced a hedonistic philosophy. Democritus
claims that the supreme goal of life is contentment or cheerfulness, stating
that joy and sorrow are the distinguishing mark of things beneficial and
harmful. The Cyrenaics are an ultra-hedonist Grecoam school of philosophy
founded by Aristippus. Many of the principles of the school were set by his
grandson, Aristippus the Younger, and Theodorus. The Cyrenaic school is one of
the earliest Socratic schools. The Cyrenaics teach that the only intrinsic
‘agathon’ is pleasure ‘hedone,’ which means not just the absence of pain, but a
positively enjoyable momentary sensation. A physical pleasure is stronger than
a pleasure of anticipation or memory. The Cyrenaics do, however, recognize the
value of social obligation, and that pleasure may be gained from altruism. The
Cyrenaic school dies out within a century, and is replaced by
Epicureanism. The Cyrenaics are known for their sceptical epistemology.
The Cyrenaics reduce logic to a basic doctrine concerning the criterion of
truth. The Cyrenaics think that one can only know with certainty his immediate
sense-experience, e. g., that he is having a sweet sensation. But one can know
nothing about the nature of the object that causes this sensation, e.g., that
honey is sweet. The Cyrenaics also deny that we can have knowledge of what the
experience of others are like. All knowledge is immediate sensation. Sensation
is a motion which is purely subjective, and is painful, indifferent or
pleasant, according as it is violent, tranquil or gentle. Further, sensation is
entirely individual and can in no way be described as constituting absolute
objective knowledge. Feeling, therefore, is the only possible criterion of
knowledge and of conduct. The way of being affected is alone knowable. Thus the
sole aim for everyone should be pleasure. Cyrenaicism deduces a single,
universal aim for all which is pleasure. Furthermore, feeling is momentary and
homogeneous. It follows that past and future pleasure have no real existence
for us, and that in present pleasure there is no distinction of kind. Socrates
speaks of the higher pleasure of the intellect. The Cyrenaics denies the validity
of this distinction and say that bodily pleasure (hedone somatike), being more
simple and more intense, is preferable. Momentary pleasure, preferably of a
physical kind, is the only good for a human. However, an action which gives
immediate pleasure can create more than their equivalent of pain. The wise
person should be in control (egcrateia) of pleasure rather than be enslaved to
it, otherwise pain results, and this requires judgement to evaluate this or
that pleasure of life. Regard should be paid to law and custom, because even
though neither law nor custom have an intrinsic value on its own, violating law
or custom leads to an unpleasant penalty being imposed by others. Likewise,
friendship and justice are useful because of the pleasure they provide. Thus
the Cyrenaics believe in the hedonistic value of social obligation and
altruistic behaviour. Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon
the teachings of Epicurus, an atomic materialist, following in the steps of
Democritus and Leucippus. Epicurus’s materialism leads him to a general stance
against superstition or the idea of divine intervention. Following Aristippus,
Epicurus believes that the greatest good is to seek modest, sustainable
pleasure in the form of a state of tranquility and freedom from fear (ataraxia)
and absence of bodily pain (aponia) through knowledge of the workings of the
world and the limits of desire. The combination of these two states, ataraxia
and aponia, is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form. Although
Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, insofar as it declares pleasure as the sole
intrinsic good, its conception of absence of pain as the greatest pleasure and
its advocacy of a simple life make it different from hedonism as it is commonly
understood. In the Epicurean view, the highest pleasure (tranquility and
freedom from fear) is obtained by knowledge, friendship and living a virtuous
and temperate life. Epicurus lauds the enjoyment of a simple pleasure, by which
he means abstaining from the bodily desire, such as sex and the appetite,
verging on asceticism. Epicurus argues that when eating, one should not eat too
richly, for it could lead to dissatisfaction later, such as the grim
realization that one could not afford such delicacies in the future. Likewise,
sex could lead to increased lust and dissatisfaction with the sexual partner.
Epicurus does not articulate a broad system of social ethics that has survived
but had a unique version of the golden rule. It is impossible to live a
pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, agreeing neither to
harm nor be harmed, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly
without living a pleasant life. Epicureanism is originally a challenge to
Platonism, though later it became the main opponent of Stoicism. Epicurus and
his followers shun politics. After the death of Epicurus, his school is headed
by Hermarchus. Later many Epicurean societies flourish in the Late Hellenistic
era and during the Roman era, such as those in Antiochia, Alexandria, Rhodes
and Ercolano. The poet Lucretius is its most known Roman proponent. By the end
of the Roman Empire, having undergone attack and repression, Epicureanism has
all but died out, and would be resurrected in the seventeenth century by the
atomist Pierre Gassendi. Some writings by Epicurus have survived. Some scholars
consider the epic poem “De natura rerum” by Lucretius to present in one unified
work the core arguments and theories of Epicureanism. Many of the papyrus
scrolls unearthed at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum are Epicurean
texts. At least some are thought to have belonged to the Epicurean
Philodemus. Cf. Barnes on epicures and connoiseurs. Many a controversy
arising out of this or that value judgement is settled by saying, ‘I like it and
you don’t, and that s the end of the matter.’ I am content to adopt this
solution of the difficulty on matters such as food and drink. Even here,
though, we admit the existence of epicures and connoisseurs.Why are we not
content to accept the same solution on every matter where value is concerned?
The reason I am not so content lies in the fact that the action of one man
dictated by his approval of something is frequently incompatible with the
action of another man dictated by his approval of something. This is
obviously philosophical, especially for the Grecian hedonistic Epicureians made
popular by Marius and Walter Pater at Oxford. L and S have "ἡδονή,” also
“ἁδονά,” or in a chorus in tragedy, “ἡδονά,” ultimately from "ἥδομαι,”
which they render it as “enjoyment, pleasure,” “prop. of sensual pleasure.” αἱ
τοῦ σώματος or περὶ τὸ σῶμα ἡ.; αἱ κατὰ τὸ σῶμα ἡ. Plato, Republic, 328d;
σωματικαὶ ἡ. Arist. Eth. Nich. 1151a13; αἱ περὶ πότους καὶ περὶ ἐδωδὰς ἡ.
Plato, Republic, 389e; but also ἀκοῆς ἡ; ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ εἰδέναι ἡ. Pl. R. 582b; of
malicious pleasure, ἡ ἐπὶ τοῖς τῶν φίλων κακοῖς, ἐπὶ ταῖς λοιδορίαις ἡ.; ἡδονῇ
ἡσσᾶσθαι, ἡδοναῖς χαρίζεσθαι, to give way to pleasure; Pl. Lg. 727c; κότερα
ἀληθείη χρήσομαι ἢ ἡδονῆ; shall I speak truly or so as to humour you? εἰ ὑμῖν
ἡδονὴ τοῦ ἡγεμονεύειν; ἡ. εἰσέρχεταί τιϝι εἰ, “one feels pleasure at the
thought that …” ; ἡδονὴν ἔχειν τινός to be satisfied with; ἡδονὴν ἔχει, φέρει;
ἡδονὴ ἰδέσθαι (θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι), of a temple; δαίμοσιν πρὸς ἡδονήν; ὃ μέν ἐστι πρὸς ἡ.; πρὸς ἡ. Λέγειν, “to speak
so as to please another”; δημηγορεῖν; οὐ πρὸς ἡ. οἱ ἦν τὰ ἀγγελλόμενα; πάντα
πρὸς ἡ. ἀκούοντας; later πρὸς ἡδονῆς εἶναί τινι; καθ᾽ ἡδονὴν κλύειν; καθ᾽
ἡδονήν ἐστί μοι; καθ᾽ ἡ. τι δρᾶν, ποιεῖν; καθ᾽ ἡδονὰς τῷ δήμῳ τὰ πράγματα
ἐνδιδόναι; ἐν ἡδονῇ ἐστί τινι, it is a pleasure or delight to another; ἐν ἡδονῇ
ἔχειν τινάς, to take pleasure in them; ἐν ἡδονῇ ἄρχοντες, oοἱ λυπηροί; μεθ᾽
ἡδονῆς; ὑφ᾽ ἡδονῆς; ὑπὸ τῆς ἡ; ἡδονᾷ with pleasure; a pleasure; ἡδοναὶ
τραγημάτων sweetmeats; plural., desires after pleasure, pleasant lusts. In
Ionic philosophers, taste, flavour, usually joined with χροιή. Note that
Aristotle uses somatike hedone. As a Lit. Hum. Oxon., and especially as a
tutee of Hardie at Corpus, Grice is almost too well aware of the centrality of
hedone in Aristotles system. Pleasure is sometimes rendered “placitum,” as in
“ad placitum,” in scholastic philosophy, but that is because scholastic
philosophy is not as Hellenic as it should be. Actually, Grice prefers
“agreeable.” One of Grices requisites for an ascription of eudaemonia (to have
a fairy godmother) precisely has the system of ends an agent chooses to realise
to be an agreeable one. One form or mode of agreeableness, Grice notes, is,
unless counteracted, automatically attached to the attainment of an object of
desire, such attainment being routinely a source of satisfaction. The
generation of such a satisfaction thus provides an independent ground for
preferring one system of ends to another. However, some other mode of
agreeableness, such as e. g. being a source of delight, which is not routinely
associated with the fulfilment of this or that desire, could discriminate,
independently of other features relevant to such a preference, between one
system of ends and another. Further, a system of ends the operation of which is
especially agreeable is stable not only vis-à-vis a rival system, but also
against the somewhat weakening effect of ‘egcrateia,’ incontinence, or akrasia,
if you mustn’t. A disturbing influence, as Aristotle knows from experience, is
more surely met by a principle in consort with a supporting attraction than by
the principle alone. Grices favourite hedonistic implicaturum was “please,” as
in “please, please me,” by The Beatles. While
Grice claims to love Kantotle, he cannot hide his greater reverence for
Aristotle, instilled early on at Corpus. An Oxonian need not recite Kant in
what during the Second World War was referred to as the Hun, and while
Aristotle was a no-no at Clifton (koine!), Hardie makes Grice love him. With eudaemonia,
Grice finds a perfect synthetic futilitarian concept to balance his innate
analytic tendencies. There is Grecian eudaemonism and there is Griceian
eudaemonism. L and S are not too helpful. They have “εὐδαιμονία” (Ion. –ιη),
which they render not as happiness, but as “prosperity, good fortune,
opulence;” “χρημάτων προσόδῳ καὶ τῇ ἄλλῃ εὐ.;” of countries; “μοῖρ᾽
εὐδαιμονίας.” In a second use, the expression is indeed rendered as “true,
full happiness;” “εὐ. οὐκ ἐν βοσκήμασιν οἰκεῖ οὐδ᾽ ἐν χρυσῷ; εὐ. ψυχῆς,
oκακοδαιμονίη, cf. Pl. Def. 412d, Arist. EN 1095a18, sometimes personified as a
divinity. There is eudaemonia and there is kakodaemonia. Of course, Grice’s
locus classicus is EN 1095a18, which is Grice’s fairy godmother, almost. Cf.
Austin on agathon and eudaimonia in Aristotle’s ethics, unearthed by Urmson and
Warnock, a response to an essay by Prichard in “Philosophy” on the meaning of
agathon in Aristotle’s ethics. Pritchard argues that Aristotle regards
“agathon” to mean conducive to “eudaemonia,” and, consequently, that Aristotle
maintains that every deliberate action stems, ultimately, from the desire for
eudaemonia. Austin finds fault with this. First, agathon in Aristotle does not
have a single usage, and a fortiori not the one Pritchard suggests. Second, if
one has to summarise the usage of “agathon” in one phrase, “being desired”
cannot fulfil this function, for there are other objects of desire besides “τό
άγαθόν,” even if Davidson would disagree. Prichard endeavours to specify what
Aristotle means by αγαθον. In some contexts, “agathon” seems to mean simply
that being desired or an ultimate or non‐ultimate
end or aim of a person. In other contexts, “αγαθον” takes on a normative
quality. For his statements to have content, argues Prichard, Aristotle must
hold that when we pursue something of a certain kind, such as an honour, we
pursue it as “a good.” Prichard argues that by "αγαθον" Aristotle
actually means, except in the Nicomachean Ethics, conducive to eudaemonia, and
holds that when a man acts deliberately, he does it from a desire to attain
eudaemonia. Prichard attributes this position to Plato as well, despite the
fact that both thinkers make statements inconsistent with this view of man’s
ultimate aim. Grice takes life seriously: philosophical biology. He even writes
an essay entitled “Philosophy of life,” listed is in PGRICE. Grice bases his thought
on his tutee Ackrill’s Dawes Hicks essay for the BA, who quotes extensively
from Hardie. Grice also reviews that “serious student of Greek philosophy,”
Austin, in his response to Prichard, Grice’s fairy godmother. Much the most
plausible conjecture regarding what Grecian eudaimonia means is that eudaemonia
is to be understood as the name for that state or condition which one’s good
dæmon would, if he could, ensure for one. One’s good dæmon is a being
motivated, with respect to one, solely by concern for one’s eudaemonia,
well-being or happiness. To change the idiom, eudæmonia is the general
characterisation of what a full-time and unhampered fairy godmother would
secure for one. Grice is concerned with the specific system of ends that
eudaemonia consists for Ariskant. Grice borrows, but never returns, some
reflections by his fomer tuttee at St. Johns, Ackrill. Ackrills point is about
the etymological basis for eudaemonia, from eudaemon, the good dæmon, as Grice
prefers. Grice thinks the metaphor should be disimplicated, and taken
literally. Grice concludes with a set of ends that justify our ascription of
eudaemonia to the agent. For Grice, as for Kantotle, telos and eudaemonia are
related in subtle ways. For eudaemonia we cannot deal with just one end, but a
system of ends, although such a system may be a singleton. Grice specifies a
subtle way of characterising end so that a particular ascription of an end may
entail an ascription of eudaemonia. Grice follows the textual criticism of his
tutee Ackrill, in connection with the Socratic point that eudaemonia is
literally related to the eudaemon. In PGRICE Warner explores Grice’s concept of
eudaemonia. Warner is especially helpful with the third difficult Carus lecture
by Grice, a metaphysical defence of absolute value. Warner connects with Grice
in such topics as the philosophy of perception seen in an evolutionary light
and the Kantotelian idea of eudaemonia. In response to Warner’s overview of the
oeuvre of Grice for the festschrift that Warner co-edited with Grandy, Grice
refers to the editors collectively as Richards. While he feels he has to use
“happiness,” Grice is always having Aristotle’s eudaemonia in mind. The implicaturum
of Smith is ‘happy’ is more complex than Kantotle thinks. Austen knew. For Emma,
you decide if youre happy. Ultimately, for Grice, the rational life is the
happy life. Grice took life seriously: philosophical biology! Grice is clear
when reprinting the Descartes essay in WOW, where he does quote from Descartes
sources quite a bit, even if he implicates he is no Cartesian scholarwhat
Oxonian would? It concerns certainty. And certainty is originally
Cantabrigian (Moore), but also Oxonian, in parts. Ayer says that to know is to
assure that one is certain or sure. So he could connect. Grice will at various
stages of his development play and explore this authoritative voice of
introspection: incorrigibility and privileged access. He surely wants to say
that a declaration of an intention is authoritative. And Grice plays with
meaning, too when provoking Malcolm in a don recollection: Grice: I want you to
bring me a paper tomorrow. Strawson: You mean a newspaper? Grice: No, a
philosophical essay. Strawson: How do you know? Are you certain you mean that?
Grice finds not being certain about what one means Strawsonian and otiose.
Tutees. Grice loved to place himself in the role of the philosophical hack,
dealing with his tutees inabilities, a whole week longuntil he could find
refreshment in para-philosophy on the Saturday morning. Now, the logical form
of certain is a trick. Grice would symbolize it as numbering of operators. If
G ψs p, G ψs ψs p, and G ψs ψs ψs p, and so ad infinitum. This is a
bit like certainty. But not quite! When he explores trust, Grice considers
something like a backing for it. But does conclusive evidence yield certainty?
He doesnt think so. Certainty, for Grice should apply to any psychological
attitude, state or stance. And it is just clever of him that when he had to
deliver his BA lecture he chooses ‘intention and uncertainty’ as its topic,
just to provoke. Not surprisingly, the “Uncertainty” piece opens with the
sceptics challenge. And he will not conclude that the intender is certain. Only
that theres some good chance (p ˃0.5) that what he intends will get through! When
there is a will, there is a way, when there is a neo-Prichardian will-ing,
there is a palæo-Griceian way-ing! Perhaps by know Moore means certain. Grice
was amused by the fact that Moore thought that he knew that behind the curtains
at the lecture hall at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, there was a
window, when there wasnt. He uses Moores misuse of knowaccording to Malcolmboth
in Causal theory and Prolegomena. And of course this relates to the topic of
the sceptics implicaturum, above, with the two essays Scepticism and Common
sense and Moore and Philosophers Paradoxes repr. partially in WOW. With regard
to certainty, it is interesting to compare it, as Grice does, not so much with
privileged access, but with incorrigibility. Do we not have privileged
access to our own beliefs and desires? And, worse still, may it not be true
that at least some of our avowals of our beliefs and desires are
incorrigible? One of Grices problems is, as he puts it, how to accommodate
privileged access and, maybe, incorrigibility. This or that a
second-order state may be, in some fashion, incorrigible. On the contrary,
for Grice, this or that lower-order, first-order judging is only a
matter for privileged access. Note that while he is happy to allow
privileged access to lower-order souly states, only those who are replicated at
a higher-order or second-order may, in some fashion, be said to count as an
incorrigible avowal. It rains. P judges it rains (privileged access). P judges
that P judges that it rains (incorrigible). The justification is
conversational. It rains says the P, or expresses the P. Grice wants to be able
to say that if a P expresses that p, the P judges2 that p. If
the P expresses that it rains, the P judges that he judges that it rains. In
this fashion, his second-order, higher-order judging is incorrigible, only.
Although Grice may allow for it to be corrected by a third-order judging. It is
not required that we should stick with judging here. Let Smith return the money
that he owes to Jones. If P expresses !p, P ψ-s2 that !p. His
second-order, higher-order buletic state is incorrigible (if ceteris paribus is
not corrected by a third-order buletic or doxastic state). His first-order
buletic state is a matter only of privileged access. For a study of conversation
as rational co-operation this utilitarian revival modifies the standard
exegesis of Grice as purely Kantian, and has him more in agreement with the
general Oxonian meta-ethical scene. Refs.: Under ‘futilitarianism,’ we cover
Grice’s views on ‘pleasure’ (he has an essay on “Pleasure,”) and “eudaemonia”
(He has an essay on ‘happiness’); other leads are given under ‘grecianism,’
since this is the Grecian side to Grice’s Ariskant; for specific essays on
‘pleasure,’ and ‘eudaimonia,’ the keywords ‘pleasure’ and ‘happiness’ are
useful. A good source is the essay on happiness in “Aspects,” which combines
‘eudaemonia’ and ‘agreebleness,’ his futilitarianism turned Kantotelian. BANC. English
futilitarians: utilitarianism, the
moral theory that an action is morally right if and only if it produces at
least as much good utility for all people affected by the action as any
alternative action the person could do instead. Its best-known proponent is J.
S. Mill, who formulated the greatest happiness principle also called the
principle of utility: always act so as to produce the greatest happiness. Two
kinds of issues have been central in debates about whether utilitarianism is an
adequate or true moral theory: first, whether and how utilitarianism can be
clearly and precisely formulated and applied; second, whether the moral
implications of utilitarianism in particular cases are acceptable, or instead
constitute objections to it. Issues of formulation. A central issue of
formulation is how utility is to be defined and whether it can be measured in
the way utilitarianism requires. Early utilitarians often held some form of
hedonism, according to which only pleasure and the absence of pain have utility
or intrinsic value. For something to have intrinsic value is for it to be
valuable for its own sake and apart from its consequences or its relations to
other things. Something has instrumental value, on the other hand, provided it
brings about what has intrinsic value. Most utilitarians have held that
hedonism is too narrow an account of utility because there are many things that
people value intrinsically besides pleasure. Some nonhedonists define utility
as happiness, and among them there is considerable debate about the proper
account of happiness. Happiness has also been criticized as too narrow to
exhaust utility or intrinsic value; e.g., many people value accomplishments,
not just the happiness that may accompany them. Sometimes utilitarianism is
understood as the view that either pleasure or happiness has utility, while
consequentialism is understood as the broader view that morally right action is
action that maximizes the good, however the good is understood. Here, we take
utilitarianism in this broader interpretation that some philosophers reserve
for consequentialism. Most utilitarians who believe hedonism gives too narrow
an account of utility have held that utility is the satisfaction of people’s
informed preferences or desires. This view is neutral about what people desire,
and so can account for the full variety of things and experiences that
different people in fact desire or value. Finally, ideal utilitarians have held
that some things or experiences, e.g. knowledge or being autonomous, are
intrinsically valuable or good whether or not people value or prefer them or
are happier with them. Whatever account of utility a utilitarian adopts, it
must be possible to quantify or measure the good effects or consequences of
actions in order to apply the utilitarian standard of moral rightness.
Happiness utilitarianism, e.g., must calculate whether a particular action, or
instead some possible alternative, would produce more happiness for a given
person; this is called the intrapersonal utility comparison. The method of
measurement may allow cardinal utility measurements, in which numerical units
of happiness may be assigned to different actions e.g., 30 units for Jones
expected from action a, 25 units for Jones from alternative action b, or only
ordinal utility measurements may be possible, in which actions are ranked only
as producing more or less happiness than alternative actions. Since nearly all
interesting and difficult moral problems involve the happiness of more than one
person, utilitarianism requires calculating which among alternative actions
produces the greatest happiness for all people affected; this is called the
interpersonal utility comparison. Many ordinary judgments about personal action
or public policy implicitly rely on interpersonal utility comparisons; e.g.,
would a family whose members disagree be happiest overall taking its vacation
at the seashore or in the mountains? Some critics of utilitarianism doubt that
it is possible to make interpersonal utility comparisons. Another issue of
formulation is whether the utilitarian principle should be applied to
individual actions or to some form of moral rule. According to act
utilitarianism, each action’s rightness or wrongness depends on the utility it
produces in comparison with possible alternatives. Even act utilitarians agree,
however, that rules of thumb like ‘keep your promises’ can be used for the most
part in practice because following them tends to maximize utility. According to
rule utilitarianism, on the other hand, individual actions are evaluated, in
theory not just in practice, by whether they conform to a justified moral rule,
and the utilitarian standard is applied only to general rules. Some rule
utilitarians hold that actions are right provided they are permitted by rules
the general acceptance of which would maximize utility in the agent’s society,
and wrong only if they would be prohibited by such rules. There are a number of
forms of rule utilitarianism, and utilitarians disagree about whether act or
rule utilitarianism is correct. Moral implications. Most debate about
utilitarianism has focused on its moral implications. Critics have argued that
its implications sharply conflict with most people’s considered moral
judgments, and that this is a strong reason to reject utilitarianism.
Proponents have argued both that many of these conflicts disappear on a proper
understanding of utilitarianism and that the remaining conflicts should throw
the particular judgments, not utilitarianism, into doubt. One important
controversy concerns utilitarianism’s implications for distributive justice.
Utilitarianism requires, in individual actions and in public policy, maximizing
utility without regard to its distribution between different persons. Thus, it
seems to ignore individual rights, whether specific individuals morally deserve
particular benefits or burdens, and potentially to endorse great inequalities
between persons; e.g., some critics have charged that according to
utilitarianism slavery would be morally justified if its benefits to the
slaveowners sufficiently outweighed the burdens to the slaves and if it
produced more overall utility than alternative practices possible in that
society. Defenders of utilitarianism typically argue that in the real world
there is virtually always a better alternative than the action or practice that
the critic charges utilitarianism wrongly supports; e.g., no system of slavery
that has ever existed is plausibly thought to have maximized utility for the
society in question. Defenders of utilitarianism also typically try to show
that it does take account of the moral consideration the critic claims it
wrongly ignores; for instance, utilitarians commonly appeal to the declining
marginal utility of money equal marginal
increments of money tend to produce less utility e.g. happiness for persons,
the more money they already utilitarianism utilitarianism have as giving some support to equality in income
distribution. Another source of controversy concerns whether moral principles
should be agent-neutral or, in at least some cases, agent-relative.
Utilitarianism is agent-neutral in that it gives all people the same moral
aim act so as to maximize utility for
everyone whereas agent-relative
principles give different moral aims to different individuals. Defenders of
agent-relative principles note that a commonly accepted moral rule like the
prohibition of killing the innocent is understood as telling each agent that he
or she must not kill, even if doing so is the only way to prevent a still
greater number of killings by others. In this way, a non-utilitarian,
agent-relative prohibition reflects the common moral view that each person
bears special moral responsibility for what he or she does, which is greater
than his or her responsibility to prevent similar wrong actions by others.
Common moral beliefs also permit people to give special weight to their own
projects and commitments and, e.g., to favor to some extent their own children
at the expense of other children in greater need; agent-relative
responsibilities to one’s own family reflect these moral views in a way that agent-neutral
utilitarian responsibilities apparently do not. The debate over neutrality and
relativity is related to a final area of controversy about utilitarianism.
Critics charge that utilitarianism makes morality far too demanding by
requiring that one always act to maximize utility. If, e.g., one reads a book
or goes to a movie, one could nearly always be using one’s time and resources
to do more good by aiding famine relief. The critics believe that this wrongly
makes morally required what should be only supererogatory action that is good, but goes beyond “the
call of duty” and is not morally required. Here, utilitarians have often argued
that ordinary moral views are seriously mistaken and that morality can demand
greater sacrifices of one’s own interests for the benefit of others than is
commonly believed. There is little doubt that here, and in many other cases,
utilitarianism’s moral implications significantly conflict with commonsense
moral beliefs the dispute is whether
this should count against commonsense moral beliefs or against utilitarianism.
Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Bergmann on Stephen
and the English utilitarians.”
entelecheia -- used by Grice in his philosophical psychology
-- from Grecian entelecheia, energeia, actuality. Aristotle, who coins both
terms, entelecheia and energeia, treats entelecheia as a near synonym of
Energeia (“which makes me often wonder why he felt the need to coin TWICE”H. P.
Grice.). Entelecheia figures in Aristotle’s definition of the soul (psyche) as
the first actuality of the natural body (De Anima, II.1). This is explained by
analogy with knowledge: first actuality is to knowledge as second actuality is
to the active use of knowledge. ’Entelechia’ is also a technical term, but in
German, in Leibniz for the primitive active force in every monad, which is
combined with primary matter, and from which the active force, vis viva, is
somehow derived (“But I rather use ‘entelecheia’ in the original
Grecian.”Grice). “The vitalist philosopher Hans Driesch used the Aristotelian
term in his account of biology, and I feel vitalistic on occasion.” “Life,
Driesch holds, is not a bowl of cherries, but an entelechy; and an entelechy is
a substantial entity, rather like a mind, that controls organic processes.” “To
me, life is rather a bowl of cherries, don’t make it serious! It’s just
mysterious!”
enthymeme: an incompletely
stated syllogism, with one premise, or even the conclusion, omitted. The term
sometimes designates incompletely stated arguments of other kinds. We are
expected to supply the missing premise or draw the conclusion if it is not
stated. The result is supposed to be a syllogistic inference. For example: ‘He
will eventually get caught, for he is a thief’; or ‘He will eventually be
caught, for all habitual thieves get caught’. This notion of enthymeme as an
incompletely stated syllogism has a long tradition and does not seem
inconsistent with Aristotle’s own characterization of it. Thus, Peter of Spain
openly declares that an enthymeme is an argument with a single premise that
needs to be reduced to syllogism. But Peter also points out that Aristotle
spoke of enthymeme as “being of ycos and signum,” and he explains that ycos
here means ‘probable proposition’ while signum expresses the necessity of
inference. ‘P, therefore Q’ is an ycos in the sense of a proposition that
appears to be true to all or to many; but insofar as P has virtually a double
power, that of itself and of the proposition understood along with it, it is
both probable and demonstrative, albeit from a different point of view.
EPI-STEMIC:
Grice:
“Philosophers hardly realise how artificial the idea of a Grecian epi-steme is!
from epi "over, near" (see epi-) +
histasthai "to stand," from PIE root *sta- "to stand, make or be
firm." epistemic
deontologism, a duty-based view of the nature of epistemic justification. A
central concern of epistemology is to account for the distinction between
justified and unjustified beliefs. According to epistemic deontologism, the
concept of justification may be analyzed by using, in a specific sense relevant
to the pursuit of knowledge, terms such as ‘ought’, ‘obligatory’,
‘permissible’, and ‘forbidden’. A subject S is justified in believing that p
provided S does not violate any epistemic obligations those that arise from the goal of believing
what is true and not believing what is false. Equivalently, S is justified in
believing that p provided believing p is
from the point of view taken in the pursuit of truth permissible for S. Among contemporary
epistemologists, this view is held by Chisholm, Laurence BonJour, and Carl
Ginet. Its significance is twofold. If justification is a function of meeting
obligations, then it is, contrary to some versions of naturalistic
epistemology, normative. Second, if the normativity of justification is
deontological, the factors that determine whether a belief is justified must be
internal to the subject’s mind. Critics of epistemic deontologism, most
conspicuously Alston, contend that belief is involuntary and thus cannot be a
proper object of obligations. If, e.g., one is looking out the window and
notices that it is raining, one is psychologically forced to believe that it is
raining. Deontologists can reply to this objection by rejecting its underlying
premise: epistemic obligations require that belief be voluntary. Alternatively,
they may insist that belief is voluntary after all, and thus subject to
epistemic obligations, for there is a means by which one can avoid believing
what one ought not to believe: weighing the evidence, or deliberation. -- epistemic logic, the logical investigation
of epistemic concepts and statements. Epistemic concepts include the concepts
of knowledge, reasonable belief, justification, evidence, certainty, and
related notions. Epistemic logic is usually taken to include the logic of
belief or doxastic logic. Much of the recent work on epistemic logic is based
on the view that it is a branch of modal logic. In the early 0s von Wright
observed that the epistemic notions verified known to be true, undecided, and
falsified are related to each other in the same way as the alethic modalities
necessary, contingent, and impossible, and behave logically in analogous ways.
This analogy is not surprising in view of the fact that the meaning of modal
concepts is often explained epistemically. For example, in the 0s Peirce
defined informational possibility as that “which in a given state of
information is not perfectly known not to be true,” and called informationally
necessary “that which is perfectly known to be true.” The modal logic of
epistemic and doxastic concepts was studied systematically by Hintikka in his
pioneering Knowledge and Belief2, which applied to the concepts of knowledge
and belief the semantical method the method of modal sets that he had used
earlier for the investigation of modal logic. In this approach, the truth of
the proposition that a knows that p briefly Kap in a possible world or
situation u is taken to mean that p holds in all epistemic alternatives of u;
these are understood as worlds compatible with what a knows at u. If the
relation of epistemic alternativeness is reflexive, the principle ‘KapPp’ only
what is the case can be known is valid, and the assumption that the
alternativeness relation is transitive validates the so-called KK-thesis, ‘Kap
P Ka Ka p’ if a knows that p, a knows that a knows that p; these two
assumptions together make the logic of knowledge similar to an S4-type modal
logic. If the knowledge operator Ka and the corresponding epistemic possibility
operator Pa are added to quantification theory with identity, it becomes
possible to study the interplay between quantifiers and epistemic operators and
the behavior of individual terms in epistemic contexts, and analyze such
locutions as ‘a knows who what b some F is’. The problems of epistemic logic in
this area are part of the general problem of giving a coherent semantical
account of propositional attitudes. If a proposition p is true in all epistemic
alternatives of a given world, so are all logical consequences of p; thus the
possible-worlds semantics of epistemic concepts outlined above leads to the
result that a person knows all logical consequences of what he knows. This is a
paradoxical conclusion; it is called the problem of logical omniscience. The
solution of this problem requires a distinction between different levels of
knowledge for example, between tacit and
explicit knowledge. A more realistic model of knowledge can be obtained by
supplementing the basic possible-worlds account by an analysis of the processes
by which the implicit knowledge can be activated and made explicit. Modal
epistemic logics have found fruitful applications in the recent work on
knowledge representation and in the logic and semantics of questions and
answers in which questions are interpreted as requests for knowledge or
“epistemic imperatives.” -- epistemic
principle, a principle of rationality applicable to such concepts as knowledge,
justification, and reasonable belief. Epistemic principles include the
principles of epistemic logic and principles that relate different epistemic
concepts to one another, or epistemic concepts to nonepistemic ones e.g.,
semantic concepts. Epistemic concepts include the concepts of knowledge,
reasonable belief, justification, epistemic probability, and other concepts
that are used for the purpose of assessing the reasonableness of beliefs and
knowledge claims. Epistemic principles can be formulated as principles
concerning belief systems or information systems, i.e., systems that
characterize a person’s possible doxastic state at a given time; a belief
system may be construed as a set of accepted propositions or as a system of
degrees of belief. It is possible to distinguish two kinds of epistemic
principles: a principles concerning the rationality of a single belief system,
and b principles concerning the rational changes of belief. The former include
the requirements of coherence and consistency for beliefs and for
probabilities; such principles may be said to concern the statics of belief
systems. The latter principles include various principles of belief revision
and adjustment, i.e., principles concerning the dynamics of belief
systems. -- epistemic privacy, the
relation a person has to a proposition when only that person can have direct or
non-inferential knowledge of the proposition. It is widely thought that people
have epistemic privacy with respect to propositions about certain of their own
mental states. According to this view, a person can know directly that he has
certain thoughts or feelings or sensory experiences. Perhaps others can also
know that the person has these thoughts, feelings, or experiences, but if they
can it is only as a result of inference from propositions about the person’s
behavior or physical condition. --
epistemic regress argument, an argument, originating in Aristotle’s Posterior
Analytics, aiming to show that knowledge and epistemic justification have a
two-tier structure as described by epistemic foundationalism. It lends itself
to the following outline regarding justification. If you have any justified
belief, this belief occurs in an evidential chain including at least two links:
the supporting link i.e., the evidence and the supported link i.e., the
justified belief. This does not mean, however, that all evidence consists of
beliefs. Evidential chains might come in any of four kinds: circular chains,
endless chains, chains ending in unjustified beliefs, and chains anchored in
foundational beliefs that do not derive their justification from other beliefs.
Only the fourth, foundationalist kind is defensible as grounding knowledge and
epistemic justification. Could all justification be inferential? A belief, B1,
is inferentially justified when it owes its justification, at least in part, to
some other belief, B2. Whence the justification for B2? If B2 owes its
justification to B1, we have a troublesome circle. How can B2 yield
justification or evidence for B1, if B2 owes its evidential status to B1? On
the other hand, if B2 owes its justification to another belief, B3, and B3 owes
its justification to yet another belief, B4, and so on ad infinitum, we have a
troublesome endless regress of justification. Such a regress seems to deliver
not actual justification, but at best merely potential justification, for the
belief at its head. Actual finite humans, furthermore, seem not to be able to
comprehend, or to possess, all the steps of an infinite regress of
justification. Finally, if B2 is itself unjustified, it evidently will be
unable to provide justification for B1. It seems, then, that the structure of
inferential justification does not consist of either circular justification,
endless regresses of justification, or unjustified starter-beliefs. We have
foundationalism, then, as the most viable account of evidential chains, so long
as we understand it as the structural view that some beliefs are justified
non-inferentially i.e., without deriving justification from other beliefs, but
can nonetheless provide justification for other beliefs. More precisely, if we
have any justified beliefs, we have some foundational, non-inferentially
justified beliefs. This regress argument needs some refinement before its full
force can be appreciated. With suitable refinement, however, it can seriously
challenge such alternatives to foundationalism as coherentism and
contextualism. The regress argument has been a key motivation for
foundationalism in the history of epistemology.
-- epistemology from Grecian episteme, ‘knowledge’, and logos,
‘explanation’, the study of the nature of knowledge and justification;
specifically, the study of a the defining features, b the substantive
conditions or sources, and c the limits of knowledge and justification. The
latter three categories are represented by traditional philosophical
controversy over the analysis of knowledge and justification, the sources of
knowledge and justification e.g., rationalism versus empiricism, and the
viability of skepticism about knowledge and justification. Kinds of knowledge.
Knowledge can be either explicit or tacit. Explicit knowledge is self-conscious
in that the knower is aware of the relevant state of knowledge, whereas tacit
knowledge is implicit, hidden from self-consciousness. Much of our knowledge is
tacit: it is genuine but we are unaware of the relevant states of knowledge, even
if we can achieve awareness upon suitable reflection. In this regard, knowledge
resembles many of our psychological states. The existence of a psychological
state in a person does not require the person’s awareness of that state,
although it may require the person’s awareness of an object of that state such
as what is sensed or perceived. Philosophers have identified various species of
knowledge: for example, propositional knowledge that something is so,
non-propositional knowledge of something e.g., knowledge by acquaintance, or by
direct awareness, empirical a posteriori propositional knowledge, nonempirical
a priori propositional knowledge, and knowledge of how to do something.
Philosophical controversy has arisen over distinctions between such species,
for example, over i the relations between some of these species e.g., does
knowing-how reduce to knowledge-that?, and ii the viability of some of these
species e.g., is there really such a thing as, or even a coherent notion of, a
priori knowledge?. A primary concern of classical modern philosophy, in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was the extent of our a priori knowledge
relative to the extent of our a posteriori knowledge. Such rationalists as
Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza contended that all genuine knowledge of the
real world is a priori, whereas such empiricists as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume
argued that all such knowledge is a posteriori. In his Critique of Pure Reason
1781, Kant sought a grand reconciliation, aiming to preserve the key lessons of
both rationalism and empiricism. Since the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, a posteriori knowledge has been widely regarded as knowledge that
depends for its supporting ground on some specific sensory or perceptual
experience; and a priori knowledge has been widely regarded as knowledge that
does not depend for its supporting ground on such experience. Kant and others
have held that the supporting ground for a priori knowledge comes solely from
purely intellectual processes called “pure reason” or “pure understanding.”
Knowledge of logical and mathematical truths typically serves as a standard
case of a priori knowledge, whereas knowledge of the existence or presence of
physical objects typically serves as a standard case of a posteriori knowledge.
A major task for an account of a priori knowledge is the explanation of what
the relevant purely intellectual processes are, and of how they contribute to
non-empirical knowledge. An analogous task for an account of a posteriori
knowledge is the explanation of what sensory or perceptual experience is and
how it contributes to empirical knowledge. More fundamentally, epistemologists
have sought an account of propositional knowledge in general, i.e., an account
of what is common to a priori and a posteriori knowledge. Ever since Plato’s
Meno and Theaetetus c.400 B.C., epistemologists have tried to identify the
essential, defining components of knowledge. Identifying these components will
yield an analysis of knowledge. A prominent traditional view, suggested by
Plato and Kant among others, is that propositional knowledge that something is
so has three individually necessary and jointly sufficient components:
justification, truth, and belief. On this view, propositional knowledge is, by
definition, justified true belief. This is the tripartite definition that has
come to be called the standard analysis. We can clarify it by attending briefly
to each of its three conditions. The belief condition. This requires that
anyone who knows that p where ‘p’ stands for any proposition or statement must
believe that p. If, therefore, you do not believe that minds are brains say,
because you have not considered the matter at all, then you do not know that
minds are brains. A knower must be psychologically related somehow to a
proposition that is an object of knowledge for that knower. Proponents of the
standard analysis hold that only belief can provide the needed psychological
relation. Philosophers do not share a uniform account of belief, but some
considerations supply common ground. Beliefs are not actions of assenting to a
proposition; they rather are dispositional psychological states that can exist
even when unmanifested. You do not cease believing that 2 ! 2 % 4, for example,
whenever your attention leaves arithmetic. Our believing that p seems to
require that we have a tendency to assent to p in certain situations, but it
seems also to be more than just such a tendency. What else believing requires
remains highly controversial among philosophers. Some philosophers have opposed
the belief condition of the standard analysis on the ground that we can accept,
or assent to, a known proposition without actually believing it. They contend
that we can accept a proposition even if we fail to acquire a tendency,
required by believing, to accept that proposition in certain situations. On
this view, acceptance is a psychological act that does not entail any
dispositional psychological state, and such acceptance is sufficient to relate
a knower psychologically to a known proposition. However this view fares, one
underlying assumption of the standard analysis seems correct: our concept of
knowledge requires that a knower be psychologically related somehow to a known
proposition. Barring that requirement, we shall be hard put to explain how
knowers psychologically possess their knowledge of known propositions. Even if
knowledge requires belief, belief that p does not require knowledge that p,
since belief can typically be false. This observation, familiar from Plato’s
Theaetetus, assumes that knowledge has a truth condition. On the standard
analysis, if you know that p, then it is true that p. If, therefore, it is
false that minds are brains, then you do not know that minds are brains. It is
thus misleading to say, e.g., that astronomers before Copernicus knew that the
earth is flat; at best, they justifiably believed that they knew this. The
truth condition. This condition of the standard analysis has not attracted any
serious challenge. Controversy over it has focused instead on Pilate’s vexing
question: What is truth? This question concerns what truth consists in, not our
ways of finding out what is true. Influential answers come from at least three
approaches: truth as correspondence i.e., agreement, of some specified sort,
between a proposition and an actual situation; truth as coherence i.e.,
interconnectedness of a proposition with a specified system of propositions;
and truth as pragmatic cognitive value i.e., usefulness of a proposition in
achieving certain intellectual goals. Without assessing these prominent
approaches, we should recognize, in accord with the standard analysis, that our
concept of knowledge seems to have a factual requirement: we epistemology
epistemology 274 274 genuinely know
that p only if it is the case that p. The pertinent notion of “its being the
case” seems equivalent to the notion of “how reality is” or “how things really
are.” The latter notion seems essential to our notion of knowledge, but is open
to controversy over its explication. The justification condition. Knowledge is
not simply true belief. Some true beliefs are supported only by lucky guesswork
and hence do not qualify as knowledge. Knowledge requires that the satisfaction
of its belief condition be “appropriately related” to the satisfaction of its
truth condition. This is one broad way of understanding the justification
condition of the standard analysis. More specifically, we might say that a
knower must have adequate indication that a known proposition is true. If we
understand such adequate indication as a sort of evidence indicating that a
proposition is true, we have reached the traditional general view of the
justification condition: justification as evidence. Questions about
justification attract the lion’s share of attention in contemporary
epistemology. Controversy focuses on the meaning of ‘justification’ as well as
on the substantive conditions for a belief’s being justified in a way
appropriate to knowledge. Current debates about the meaning of ‘justification’
revolve around the question whether, and if so how, the concept of epistemic
knowledge-relevant justification is normative. Since the 0s Chisholm has
defended the following deontological obligation-oriented notion of
justification: the claim that a proposition, p, is epistemically justified for
you means that it is false that you ought to refrain from accepting p. In other
terms, to say that p is epistemically justified is to say that accepting p is
epistemically permissible at least in
the sense that accepting p is consistent with a certain set of epistemic rules.
This deontological construal enjoys wide representation in contemporary
epistemology. A normative construal of justification need not be deontological;
it need not use the notions of obligation and permission. Alston, for instance,
has introduced a non-deontological normative concept of justification that
relies mainly on the notion of what is epistemically good from the viewpoint of
maximizing truth and minimizing falsity. Alston links epistemic goodness to a
belief’s being based on adequate grounds in the absence of overriding reasons
to the contrary. Some epistemologists shun normative construals of
justification as superfluous. One noteworthy view is that ‘epistemic
justification’ means simply ‘evidential support’ of a certain sort. To say that
p is epistemically justifiable to some extent for you is, on this view, just to
say that p is supportable to some extent by your overall evidential reasons.
This construal will be non-normative so long as the notions of supportability
and an evidential reason are nonnormative. Some philosophers have tried to
explicate the latter notions without relying on talk of epistemic
permissibility or epistemic goodness. We can understand the relevant notion of
“support” in terms of non-normative notions of entailment and explanation or,
answering why-questions. We can understand the notion of an “evidential reason”
via the notion of a psychological state that can stand in a certain
truth-indicating support relation to propositions. For instance, we might
regard nondoxastic states of “seeming to perceive” something e.g., seeming to
see a dictionary here as foundational truth indicators for certain
physical-object propositions e.g., the proposition that there is a dictionary
here, in virtue of those states being best explained by those propositions. If
anything resembling this approach succeeds, we can get by without the
aforementioned normative notions of epistemic justification. Foundationalism
versus coherentism. Talk of foundational truth indicators brings us to a key
controversy over justification: Does epistemic justification, and thus
knowledge, have foundations, and if so, in what sense? This question can be
clarified as the issue whether some beliefs can not only a have their epistemic
justification non-inferentially i.e., apart from evidential support from any
other beliefs, but also b provide epistemic justification for all justified
beliefs that lack such non-inferential justification. Foundationalism gives an
affirmative answer to this issue, and is represented in varying ways by, e.g.,
Aristotle, Descartes, Russell, C. I. Lewis, and Chisholm. Foundationalists do
not share a uniform account of non-inferential justification. Some construe
non-inferential justification as self-justification. Others reject literal
self-justification for beliefs, and argue that foundational beliefs have their
non-inferential justification in virtue of evidential support from the
deliverances of non-belief psychological states, e.g., perception “seem-ing-to-perceive”
states, sensation “seeming-to-sense” states, or memory “seeming-toremember”
states. Still others understand noninferential justification in terms of a
belief’s being “reliably produced,” i.e., caused and sustained by some
non-belief belief-producing process or source e.g., perception, memory,
introspection that tends to produce true rather than false beliefs. This last
view takes the causal source of a belief to be crucial to its justification.
Unlike Descartes, contemporary foundationalists clearly separate claims to
non-inferential, foundational justification from claims to certainty. They
typically settle for a modest foundationalism implying that foundational
beliefs need not be indubitable or infallible. This contrasts with the radical foundationalism
of Descartes. The traditional competitor to foundationalism is the coherence
theory of justification, i.e., epistemic coherentism. This is not the coherence
definition of truth; it rather is the view that the justification of any belief
depends on that belief’s having evidential support from some other belief via
coherence relations such as entailment or explanatory relations. Notable
proponents include Hegel, Bosanquet, and Sellars. A prominent contemporary
version of epistemic coherentism states that evidential coherence relations
among beliefs are typically explanatory relations. The rough idea is that a
belief is justified for you so long as it either best explains, or is best
explained by, some member of the system of beliefs that has maximal explanatory
power for you. Contemporary coherentism is uniformly systemic or holistic; it
finds the ultimate source of justification in a system of interconnected
beliefs or potential beliefs. One problem has troubled all versions of
coherentism that aim to explain empirical justification: the isolation
argument. According to this argument, coherentism entails that you can be
epistemically justified in accepting an empirical proposition that is
incompatible with, or at least improbable given, your total empirical evidence.
The key assumption of this argument is that your total empirical evidence
includes non-belief sensory and perceptual awareness-states, such as your
feeling pain or your seeming to see something. These are not belief-states.
Epistemic coherentism, by definition, makes justification a function solely of
coherence relations between propositions, such as propositions one believes or
accepts. Thus, such coherentism seems to isolate justification from the
evidential import of non-belief awareness-states. Coherentists have tried to
handle this problem, but no resolution enjoys wide acceptance. Causal and
contextualist theories. Some contemporary epistemologists endorse contextualism
regarding epistemic justification, a view suggested by Dewey, Vitters, and
Kuhn, among others. On this view, all justified beliefs depend for their
evidential support on some unjustified beliefs that need no justification. In
any context of inquiry, people simply assume the acceptability of some
propositions as starting points for inquiry, and these “contextually basic”
propositions, though lacking evidential support, can serve as evidential
support for other propositions. Contextualists stress that contextually basic
propositions can vary from context to context e.g., from theological inquiry to
biological inquiry and from social group to social group. The main problem for
contextualists comes from their view that unjustified assumptions can provide
epistemic justification for other propositions. We need a precise explanation
of how an unjustified assumption can yield evidential support, how a
non-probable belief can make another belief probable. Contextualists have not
given a uniform explanation here. Recently some epistemologists have
recommended that we give up the traditional evidence condition for knowledge.
They recommend that we construe the justification condition as a causal
condition. Roughly, the idea is that you know that p if and only if a you
believe that p, b p is true, and c your believing that p is causally produced
and sustained by the fact that makes p true. This is the basis of the causal
theory of knowing, which comes with varying details. Any such causal theory
faces serious problems from our knowledge of universal propositions. Evidently,
we know, for instance, that all dictionaries are produced by people, but our
believing that this is so seems not to be causally supported by the fact that
all dictionaries are humanly produced. It is not clear that the latter fact
causally produces any beliefs. Another problem is that causal theories
typically neglect what seems to be crucial to any account of the justification
condition: the requirement that justificational support for a belief be
accessible, in some sense, to the believer. The rough idea is that one must be
able to access, or bring to awareness, the justification underlying one’s
beliefs. The causal origins of a belief are, of course, often very complex and
inaccessible to a believer. Causal theories thus face problems from an
accessibility requirement on justification. Internalism regarding justification
preserves an accessibility requirement on what confers justification, whereas
epistemic externalism rejects this requirement. Debates over internalism and externalism
abound in current epistemology, but internalists do not yet share a uniform
detailed account of accessibility. The Gettier problem. The standard analysis
of knowledge, however elaborated, faces a devastating challenge that initially
gave rise to causal theories of knowledge: the Gettier problem. In 3 Edmund
Gettier published a highly influential challenge to the view that if you have a
justified true belief that p, then you know that p. Here is one of Gettier’s
counterexamples to this view: Smith is justified in believing the false proposition
that i Jones owns a Ford. On the basis of i, Smith infers, and thus is
justified in believing, that ii either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in
Barcelona. As it happens, Brown is in Barcelona, and so ii is true. So,
although Smith is justified in believing the true proposition ii, Smith does
not know ii. Gettier-style counterexamples are cases where a person has
justified true belief that p but lacks knowledge that p. The Gettier problem is
the problem of finding a modification of, or an alternative to, the standard
analysis that avoids difficulties from Gettier-style counterexamples. The
controversy over the Gettier problem is highly complex and still unsettled.
Many epistemologists take the lesson of Gettier-style counterexamples to be
that propositional knowledge requires a fourth condition, beyond the
justification, truth, and belief conditions. No specific fourth condition has
received overwhelming acceptance, but some proposals have become prominent. The
so-called defeasibility condition, e.g., requires that the justification
appropriate to knowledge be “undefeated” in the general sense that some
appropriate subjunctive conditional concerning defeaters of justification be
true of that justification. For instance, one simple defeasibility fourth condition
requires of Smith’s knowing that p that there be no true proposition, q, such
that if q became justified for Smith, p would no longer be justified for Smith.
So if Smith knows, on the basis of his visual perception, that Mary removed
books from the library, then Smith’s coming to believe the true proposition
that Mary’s identical twin removed books from the library would not undermine
the justification for Smith’s belief concerning Mary herself. A different
approach shuns subjunctive conditionals of that sort, and contends that
propositional knowledge requires justified true belief that is sustained by the
collective totality of actual truths. This approach requires a detailed account
of when justification is undermined and restored. The Gettier problem is
epistemologically important. One branch of epistemology seeks a precise
understanding of the nature e.g., the essential components of propositional
knowledge. Our having a precise understanding of propositional knowledge
requires our having a Gettier-proof analysis of such knowledge. Epistemologists
thus need a defensible solution to the Gettier problem, however complex that
solution is. Skepticism. Epistemologists debate the limits, or scope, of
knowledge. The more restricted we take the limits of knowledge to be, the more
skeptical we are. Two influential types of skepticism are knowledge skepticism
and justification skepticism. Unrestricted knowledge skepticism implies that no
one knows anything, whereas unrestricted justification skepticism implies the
more extreme view that no one is even justified in believing anything. Some
forms of skepticism are stronger than others. Knowledge skepticism in its
strongest form implies that it is impossible for anyone to know anything. A
weaker form would deny the actuality of our having knowledge, but leave open
its possibility. Many skeptics have restricted their skepticism to a particular
domain of supposed knowledge: e.g., knowledge of the external world, knowledge
of other minds, knowledge of the past or the future, or knowledge of
unperceived items. Such limited skepticism is more common than unrestricted
skepticism in the history of epistemology. Arguments supporting skepticism come
in many forms. One of the most difficult is the problem of the criterion, a
version of which has been stated by the sixteenth-century skeptic Montaigne:
“To adjudicate [between the true and the false] among the appearances of
things, we need to have a distinguishing method; to validate this method, we
need to have a justifying argument; but to validate this justifying argument,
we need the very method at issue. And there we are, going round on the wheel.”
This line of skeptical argument originated in ancient Greece, with epistemology
itself. It forces us to face this question: How can we specify what we know
without having specified how we know, and how can we specify how we know
without having specified what we know? Is there any reasonable way out of this
threatening circle? This is one of the most difficult epistemological problems,
and a cogent epistemology must offer a defensible solution to epistemology
epistemology 277 277 it. Contemporary
epistemology still lacks a widely accepted reply to this urgent problem
erfahrung: Grice used the
German, ‘since I find it difficult to translate.” G. term tr. into English,
especially since Kant, as ‘experience’. Kant does not use it as a technical
term; rather, it indicates that which requires explanation through more
precisely drawn technical distinctions such as those among ‘sensibility’,
‘understanding’, and ‘reason’. In the early twentieth century, Husserl
sometimes distinguishes between Erfahrung and Erlebnis, the former indicating
experience as capable of being thematized and methodically described or
analyzed, the latter experience as “lived through” and never fully available to
analysis. Such a distinction occasionally reappears in later texts of
phenomenology and existentialism.
eristic, the art of controversy, often
involving fallacious but persuasive reasoning. The ancient Sophists brought
this art to a high level to achieve their personal goal. They may have found
their material in the “encounters” in the law courts as well as in daily life.
To enhance persuasion they endorsed the use of unsound principles such as hasty
generalizations, faulty analogies, illegitimate appeal to authority, the post
hoc ergo propter hoc i.e., “after this, therefore because of this” and other
presumed principles. Aristotle exposed eristic argumentation in his Sophistical
Refutations, which itself draws examples from Plato’s Euthydemus. From this
latter work comes the famous example: ‘That dog is a father and that dog is
his, therefore that dog is his father’. What is perhaps worse than its obvious
invalidity is that the argument is superficially similar to a sound argument
such as ‘This is a table and this is brown, therefore this is a brown table’.
In the Sophistical Refutations Aristotle undertakes to find procedures for
detection of bad arguments and to propose rules for constructing sound
arguments.
erlebnis: G. Grice used the
German term, “since I find it difficult to translate it” -- term for experience
used in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century G. philosophy. Erlebnis
denotes experience in all its direct immediacy and lived fullness. It contrasts
with the more typical G. word Erfahrung, denoting ordinary experience as mediated
through intellectual and constructive elements. As immediate, Erlebnis eludes
conceptualization, in both the lived present and the interiority of experience.
As direct, Erlebnis is also disclosive and extraordinary: it reveals something
real that otherwise escapes thinking. Typical examples include art, religion,
and love, all of which also show the anti-rationalist and polemical uses of the
concept. It is especially popular among the Romantic mystics like Novalis and
the anti-rationalists Nietzsche and Bergson, as well as in phenomenology,
Lebensphilosophie, and existentialism. As used in post-Hegelian G. philosophy,
the term describes two aspects of subjectivity. The first concerns the
epistemology of the human sciences and of phenomenology. Against naturalism and
objectivism, philosophers appeal to the ineliminable, subjective qualities of
experience to argue that interpreters must understand “what it is like to be”
some experiencing subject, from the inside. The second use of the term is to
denote extraordinary and interior experiences like art, religion, freedom, and
vital energy. In both cases, it is unclear how such experience could be
identified or known in its immediacy, and much recent G. thought, such as
Heidegger and hermeneutics, rejects the concept.
erotetic: in the strict
sense, pertaining to questions. Erotetic logic is the logic of questions.
Different conceptions of questions yield different kinds of erotetic logic. A
Platonistic approach holds that questions exist independently of interrogatives.
For P. Tichý, a question is a function on possible worlds, the right answer
being the value of the function at the actual world. Erotetic logic is the
logic of such functions. In the epistemic-imperative approach of L. Bqvist,
Hintikka, et al., one begins with a system for epistemic sentences and embeds
this in a system for imperative sentences, thus obtaining sentences of the form
‘make it the case that I know . . .’ and complex compounds of such sentences.
Certain ones of these are defined to be interrogatives. Then erotetic logic is
the logic of epistemic imperatives and the conditions for satisfaction of these
imperatives. In the abstract interrogative approach of N. Belnap, T. Kubigski,
and many others, one chooses certain types of expression to serve as
interrogatives, and, for each type, specifies what expressions count as answers
of various kinds direct, partial, . . .. On this approach we may say that
interrogatives express questions, or we may identify questions with
interrogatives, in which case the only meaning that an interrogative has is
that it has the answers that it does. Either way, the emphasis is on
interrogatives, and erotetic logic is the logic of systems that provide
interrogatives and specify answers to them. In the broad sense, ‘erotetic’
designates what pertains to utterance-and-response. In this sense erotetic
logic is the logic of the relations between 1 sentences of many kinds and 2 the
expressions that count as appropriate replies to them. This includes not only the
relations between question and answer but also, e.g., between assertion and
agreement or denial, command and report of compliance or refusal, and for many
types of sentence S between S and various corrective replies to S e.g., denial
of the presupposition of S. Erotetic logics may differ in the class of
sentences treated, the types of response counted as appropriate, the assignment
of other content presupposition, projection, etc., and other details.
eschatologicum: Possibly related to Latin ‘summum, ‘as in ‘summum genus,’
and ‘summun bonum. From Greek, 5. in the Logic of Arist., τὰ ἔ. are the last or
lowest species, Metaph.1059b26, or individuals, ib.998b16, cf. AP0.96b12, al.;
“τὸ ἔ. ἄτομον” Metaph.1058b10. b. ὁ ἔ. ὅρος the minor term of a syllogism,
EN1147b14. c. last step in geom. analysis or ultimate condition of action, “τὸ
ἔ. ἀρχὴ τῆς πράξεως” de An.433a16. II. Adv. -τως to the uttermost, exceedingly,
“πῦρ ἐ. καίει” Hp.de Arte8; “ἐ. διαμάχεσθαι” Arist.HA613a11 ; “ἐ. φιλοπόλεμος”
X.An.2.6.1 ; “φοβοῦμαί σ᾽ ἐ.” Men.912, cf. Epicur.Ep. 1p.31U. b. -τως
διακεῖσθαι to be at the last extremity, Plb.1.24.2, D.S.18.48 ; “ἔχειν”
Ev.Marc.5.23 ; “ἀπορεῖν” Phld.Oec.p.72J. 2. so ἐς τὸ ἔ.,=ἐσχάτως, Hdt.7.229;
“εἰς τὰ ἔ.” X.HG5.4.33 ; “εἰς τὰ ἔ. μάλα” Id.Lac.1.2 ; “τὸ ἔ.” finally, in the
end, Pl.Grg.473c ; but, τὸ ἔ. what is worst of all, ib.508d. Why ontology is
not enough. The philosopher needs to PLAY with cross-categorial barriers. He is
an eschatologist. Socrates was. being and good, for Aristotle and Grice cover
all. Good was a favourite of Moore and Hare, as Barnes was well aware! Like
Barnes, Grice dislikes Prichards analysis of good. He leans towards the
emotion-based approach by Ogden. If Grice, like Humpty Dumpty, opposes the
Establishment with his meaning liberalism (what a word means is what I mean by
uttering it), he certainly should be concerned with category shifts. Plus,
Grice was a closet Platonist. As Plato once remarked, having the ability to see
horses but not horsehood (ἱππότης) is a mark of stupidityrendered by Liddell
and Scott as “horse-nature, the concept of horse” (Antisth. et Pl. ap. Simp.in
Cat.208.30,32, Sch.AristId.p.167F). Grice would endure the flinty experience of
giving joint seminars at Oxford with Austin on the first two books of
Aristotles Organon, Categoriae, and De Int. Grice finds the use of a
category, κατηγορία, by Aristotle a bit of a geniality. Aristotle is using
legalese, from kata, against, on, and agoreuô [ἀγορεύω], speak in public),
and uses it to designate both the prosecution in a trial and the
attribution in a logical proposition, i. e., the questions that must be asked
with regard to a Subjects, and the answers that can be given. As a
representative of the linguistic turn in philosophy, Grice is attracted to the
idea that a category can thus be understood variously, as applying to the realm
of reality (ontology), but also to the philosophy of language (category of
expression) and to philosophical psychology (category of representation). Grice
kept his explorations on categories under two very separate, shall we say,
categories: his explorations with Austin (very serious), and those with
Strawson (more congenial). Where is Smiths altruism? Nowhere to be seen. Should
we say it is idle (otiose) to speak of altruism? No, it is just an attribute,
which, via category shift, can be made the Subjects of your sentence, Strawson.
It is not spatio-temporal, though, right. Not really. ‒ I do not particularly
like your trouser words. The essay is easy to date since Grice notes that
Strawson reproduced some of the details in his Individuals, which we can very
well date. Grice thought Aristotle was the best! Or at any rate almost as good
as Kantotle! Aristotle saw Categoriæ, along with De Int. as part of his
Organon. However, philosophers of language tend to explore these topics without
a consideration of the later parts of the Organon dealing with the syllogism,
the tropes, and the topics ‒ the boring bits! The reason Grice is attracted to
the Aristotelian category (as Austin and Strawson equally were) is that
category allows for a linguistic-turn reading. Plus, its a nice, pretentious
(in the Oxonian way) piece of philosophical jargon! Aristotle couldnt find
category in the koine, so he had to coin it. While meant by Aristotle in a
primarily ontological way, Oxonian philosophers hasten to add that a category
of expression, as Grice puts it, is just as valid a topic for philosophical
exploration. His tutee Strawson will actually publish a book on Subjects and
predicate in grammar! (Trivial, Strawson!). Grice will later add an
intermediary category, which is the Subjects of his philosophical psychology.
As such, a category can be construed ontologically, or representationally: the
latter involving philosophical psychological concepts, and expressions
themselves. For Aristotle, as Grice and Austin, and Grice and Strawson, were
well aware as they educated some of the poor at Oxford (Only the poor learn at
Oxford ‒ Arnold), there are (at least ‒ at most?) ten categories. Grice
doesnt (really) care about the number. But the first are important. Actually
the very first: theres substantia prima, such as Grice. And then theres
substantia secunda, such as Grices rationality. The essentia. Then there are
various types of attributes. But, as Grice sharply notes, even substantia
secunda may be regarded as an attribute. Grices favourite game with Strawson
was indeed Category Shift, or Subjects-ification, as Strawson preferred.
Essence may be introduced as a sub-type of an attribute. We would have
substantia prima AND attribute, which in turn gets divided into essential, the
izzing, and non-essential, the hazzing. While Austin is not so fun to play
with, Strawson is. Smith is a very altruist person. Where is his altruism?
Nowhere to be seen, really. Yet we may sensically speak of Smiths altruism. It
is just a matter of a category shift. Grice scores. Grice is slightly
disappointed, but he perfectly understands, that Strawson, who footnotes Grice
as the tutor from whom I never ceased to learn about logic in Introduction to
logical lheory, fails to acknowledge that most of the research in Strawsons
Individuals: an essay in descriptive (not revisionary) metaphysics derives from
the conclusions reached at his joint philosophical investigations at joint
seminars with Grice. Grice later elaborates on this with Code, who is keen on
Grices other game, the hazz and the hazz not, the izz. But then tutor from whom
I never ceased to learn about metaphysics sounds slightlier clumsier, as far as
the implicaturum goes. Categories, the Grice-Myro theory of identity, Relative
identity, Grice on =, identity, notes, with Myro, metaphysics, philosophy, with
Code, Grice izz Griceor izz he? The idea that = is unqualified requires
qualification. Whitehead and Russell ignored this. Grice and Myro didnt. Grice
wants to allow for It is the case that a = b /t1 and it is not the case that a
= b /t2. The idea is intuitive, but philosophers of a Leibnizian bent are too
accustomed to deal with = as an absolute. Grice applies this to human vs.
person. A human may be identical to a person, but cease to be so. Indeed,
Grices earlier attempt to produce a reductive analsysis of I may be seen as
remedying a circularity he detected in Locke about same. Cf. Wiggins, Sameness
and substance. Grice makes Peano feel deeply Griceian, as Grice lists his =
postulates, here for consideration. And if you wondered why Grice prefers
Latinate individuum to the Grecian. The Grecian is “ἄτομον,” in logic, rendered
by L and S as ‘individual, of terms,’ Pl. Sph. 229d; of the εἶδος or forma,
Arist. Metaph.1034a8, de An. 414b27.2. individual, Id. APo. 96b11, al.: as a
subst., τό ἄτομον, Id. Cat. 1b6, 3a38, Metaph.1058a18 (pl.), Plot. 6.2.2,
al. subst.; latinised from Grecian. Lewis and Short have “indīvĭdŭum,” an atom,
indivisible particle: ex illis individuis, unde omnia Democritus gigni
affirmat, Cic. Ac. 2, 17 fin.: ne individuum quidem, nec quod dirimi distrahive
non possit, id. N. D. 3, 12, 29. Note the use of individuum in alethic
modalities for necessity and possibility, starting with (11). ⊢ (α izzes α). This would be the principle of
non-contradiction or identity. Grice applies it to war: War is war, as yielding
a most peculiar implicaturum. (α izzes β ∧ β izzes γ) ⊃ α
izzes γ. This above is transitivity, which is crucial for Grices tackling of
Reids counterexample to Locke (and which according to Flew in Locke on personal
identity was predated by Berkeley. α hazzes β ⊃ ~(α izzes β). Or, what is accidental is not essential.
Grice allows that what is essential is accidental is, while misleading,
true. ⊢ α hazzes β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(α hazzes x ∧ x
izzes β) ⊢ (∀β)(β izzes a universalium ⊃ β izzes a forma). This above defines a universalium as
a forma, or eidos. (α hazzes β ∧ α
izzes a particular) ⊃ (∃γ).(γ≠α ∧ α izzes β) ⊢ α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ ((β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α) ⊢ α izzes essentially predicable of β ⊃⊂ β izzes α ⊢ α
izzes non-essentially/accidentally predicable of β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α) α = β ⊃⊂ α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α ⊢ α izzes an individuum ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(β izzes α ⊃ α izzes β) ⊢ α
izzes a particular ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(α izzes predicable of β ⊃ (α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α)); α izzes a universalium ⊃⊂ ◊(∃β)(α izzes predicable of α ∧ ~(α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α) ⊢ α izzes some-thing ⊃ α
izzes an individuum. ⊢ α izzes a forma ⊃ (α izzes some-thing ∧ α izzes a universalium) 16. ⊢ α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ (β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α) ⊢ α izzes essentially predicable of α ⊢ α izzes accidentally predicable of β ⊃ α ≠ β; ~(α izzes accidentally predicable of β) ⊃ α ≠ β 20. α izzes a particular ⊃ α izzes an individuum. ⊢ α izzes a particular ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x izzes α) 22. ⊢~
(∃x).(x izzes a particular ∧ x
izzes a forma) α izzes a forma ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x
izzes α) x izzes a particular ⊃ ~(∃β)(α izz β) ⊢ α izzes a forma ⊃ ((α
izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ β hazz α); α izzes a forma ∧ β izzes a particular ⊃ (α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ β hazz A) ⊢ (α
izzes a particular ∧ β izzes a universalium ∧ β izzes predicable of α) ⊃ (∃γ)(α ≠ γ ∧ γ
izzes essentially predicable of α) ⊢ (∃x) (∃y)(x izzes a particular ∧ y
izzes a universalium ∧ y izzes predicable of x ⊃ ~(∀x)(x izzes a universalium ∧ x izzes some-thing); (∀β)(β
izzes a universalium ⊃ β izzes some-thing) ⊢ α
izzes a particular) ⊃ ~∃β.(α ≠ β ∧ β
izzes essentially predicable of α); (α izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β)⊃ α izzes non-essentially or
accidentally predicable of β. The use of this or that doxastic modality,
necessity and possibility, starting above, make this a good place to consider
one philosophical mistake Grice mentions in “Causal theory.” What is actual is
not also possible. Cf. What is essential is also accidental. He is criticising
a contemporary, if possible considered dated in the New World, form of
ordinary-language philosophy, where the philosopher detects a nuance, and
embarks risking colliding with the facts, rushing ahead to exploit it before he
can clarify it! Grice liked to see his explorations on = as belonging to
metaphysics, as the s. on his Doctrines
at the Grice Collection testifies. While Grice presupposes the use of = in his
treatment of the king of France, he also explores a relativisation of =. His
motivation was an essay by Wiggins, almost Aristotelian in spirit, against
Strawsons criterion of space-time continuancy for the identification of the
substantia prima. Grice wants to apply = to cases were the time continuancy is
made explicit. This yields that a=b in scenario S, but that it may not be the
case that a = b in a second scenario S. Myro had an occasion to expand on
Grices views in his contribution on the topic for PGRICE. Myro mentions his
System Ghp, a highly powerful/hopefully plausible version of Grices System Q,
in gratitude to to Grice. Grice explored also the logic of izzing and hazzing
with Code. Grice and Myro developed a Geach-type of qualified identity. The
formal aspects were developed by Myro, and also by Code. Grice discussed
Wigginss Sameness and substance, rather than Geach. Cf. Wiggins and Strawson on
Grice for the BA. At Oxford, Grice was more or less given free rein to teach
what he wanted. He found the New World slightly disconcerting at first. At
Oxford, he expected his tutees to be willing to read the classics in the
vernacular Greek. His approach to teaching was diagogic, as Socratess! Even in
his details of izzing and hazzing. Greek enough to me!, as a student recalled! correspondence
with Code, Grice sees in Code an excellent Aristotelian. They collaborated on
an exploration of Aristotles underlying logic of essential and non-essential
predication, for which they would freely use such verbal forms as izzing and
hazing, izzing and hazzing, Code on the significance of the middle book in
Aristotles Met. , Aristotle, metaphysics, the middle book. Very middle.
Grice never knew what was middle for Aristotle, but admired Code too much to
air this! The organisation of Aristotle’s metaphysics was a topic of much
concern for Grice. With Code, Grice coined izzing and hazzing to refer to
essential and non-essential attribution. Izzing and hazzing, “Aristotle on the
multiplicity of being” (henceforth, “Aristotle”) PPQ, Aristotle on
multiplicity, “The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly” (henceforth,
“PPQ,” posthumously ed. by Loar, Aristotle, multiplicity, izzing, hazzing,
being, good, Code. Grice offers a thorough discussion of Owens treatment of
Aristotle as leading us to the snares of ontology. Grice distinguishes between
izzing and hazzing, which he thinks help in clarifying, more axiomatico, what
Aristotle is getting at with his remarks on essential versus non-essential
predication. Surely, for Grice, being, nor indeed good, should not
be multiplied beyond necessity, but izzing and hazzing are already
multiplied. The Grice Papers contains drafts of the essay eventually
submitted for publication by Loar in memoriam Grice. Note that the Grice Papers
contains a typically Griceian un-publication, entitled Aristotle and
multiplicity simpliciter. Rather than Aristotle on, as the title for the
PPQ piece goes. Note also that, since its multiplicity simpliciter, it
refers to Aristotle on two key ideas: being and the good. As Code notes in
his contribution to PGRICE, Grice first presents his thoughts on izzing and hazzing
publicly at Vancouver. Jones has developed the axiomatic treatment favoured by
Grice. For Grice there is multiplicity in both being and good (ton agathon),
both accountable in terms of conversational implicatura, of course. If in
Prolegomena, Grice was interested in criticising himself, in essays of
historical nature like these, Grice is seeing Aristotles Athenian dialectic as
a foreshadow of the Oxonian dialectic, and treating him as an equal. Grice is
yielding his razor: senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.
But then Aristotle is talking about the multiplicity of is and is
good. Surely, there are ways to turn Aristotle into the monoguist he has to
be! There is a further item in the Grice collection that combines Aristotle on
being with Aristotle on good, which is relevant in connection with this. Aristotle
on being and good (ἀγαθόν). Aristotle, being, good (agathon), ἀγαθός.
As from this f., the essays are ordered alphabetically, starting with
Aristotle, Grice will explore Aristotle on being or is and good (ἀγαθός) in
explorations with Code. Grice comes up with izzing and hazzing as the two
counterparts to Aristotles views on, respectively, essential and non-essential
predication. Grices views on Aristotle on the good (strictly, there is no need
to restrict Arisstotles use to the neuter form, since he employs ἀγαθός)
connect with Grices Aristotelian idea of eudaemonia, that he explores elsewhere.
Strictly: Aristotle on being and the good. If that had been Grices case, he
would have used the definite article. Otherwise, good may well translate as
masculine, ἀγαθός ‒the agathetic implicaturum. He plays with Dodgson,
cabbages and kings. For what is a good cabbage as opposed to a cabbage? It
does not require very sharp eyes, but only our willingness to use the eyes one
has, to see that speech is permeated with the notion of purpose. To say
what a certain kind of thing is is only too frequently partly to say that it is
for. This feature applies to talk of, e. g., ships, shoes, sailing wax,
and kings; and, possibly and perhaps most excitingly, it extends even to
cabbages! Although Grice suspects Urmson might disagree. v. Grice on Urmsons
apples. Grice at his jocular best. If he is going to be a Kantian, he
will. He uses Kantian jargon to present his theory of conversation. This he
does only at Harvard. The implicaturum being that talking of vaguer assumptions
of helpfulness would not sound too convincing. So he has the maxim, the
super-maxim, and the sub-maxim. A principle and a maxim is Kantian enough. But
when he actually echoes Kant, is when he introduces what he later calls the
conversational categoriesthe keyword here is conversational category, as
categoria is used by Aristotle and Kant ‒ or Kantotle. Grice surely
knew that, say, his Category of Conversational Modality had nothing to do with
the Kantian Category of Modality. Still, he stuck with the idea of four
categories (versus Aristotles ten, eight or seven, as the text you consult may
tell you): category of conversational quantity (which at Oxford he had
formulated in much vaguer terms like strength and informativeness and
entailment), the category of conversational quality (keyword: principle of
conversational trust), and the category of conversational relation, where again
Kants relation has nothing to do with the maxim Grice associates with this
category. In any case, his Kantian joke may be helpful when considering the
centrality of the concept category simpliciter that Grice had to fight with
with his pupils at Oxfordhe was lucky to have Austin and Strawson as
co-lecturers! Grice was irritated by L and S defining kategoria as category. I
guess I knew that. He agreed with their second shot, predicable. Ultimately,
Grices concern with category is his concern with person, or prote ousia, as
used by Aristotle, and as giving a rationale to Grices agency-based approach to
the philosophical enterprise. Aristotle used kategorein in the sense
of to predicate, assert something of something, and kategoria. The prote
ousia is exemplified by o tis anthropos. It is obvious that Grice wants to
approach Aristotles semantics and Aristotles metaphysics at one fell swoop.
Grice reads Aristotles Met. , and finds it understandable. Consider the
adjective French (which Aristotle does NOT consider) ‒ as it occurs in phrases
such as Michel Foucault is a French citizen. Grice is not a French
citizen. Michel Foucault once wrote a nice French poem. Urmson once wrote
a nice French essay on pragmatics. Michel Foucault was a French
professor. Michel Foucault is a French professor. Michel Foucault
is a French professor of philosophy. The following features are perhaps
significant. The appearance of the adjective French, or Byzantine, as the
case might be ‒ cf. I’m feeling French tonight. In these phrases is what
Grice has as adjunctive rather than conjunctive, or attributive. A French poem
is not necessarily something which combines the separate features of being a
poem and being French, as a tall philosopher would simply combine the features
of being tall and of being a philosopher. French in French poem,
occurs adverbially. French citizen standardly means citizen of
France. French poem standardly means poem in French. But it is a mistake to
suppose that this fact implies that there is this or that meaning, or, worse,
this or that Fregeian sense, of the expression French. In any case, only
metaphorically or metabolically can we say that French means this or that or
has sense. An utterer means. An utterer makes sense. Cf. R. Pauls doubts about
capitalizing major. French means, and figuratively at that, only one thing,
viz. of or pertaining to France. And English only means of or
pertaining to England. French may be what Grice (unfollowing his remarks
on The general theory of context) call context-sensitive. One might indeed
say, if you like, that while French means ‒ or means only this or that, or that
its only sense is this or that, French still means, again figuratively, a
variety of things. French means-in-context of or pertaining to
France. Symbolise that as expression E means-in-context that p.
Expression E means-in-context C2 that p2. Relative
to Context C1 French means of France; as in the phrase French
citizen. Relative to context C2, French means in the French language, as in the phrase,
French poem ‒ whereas history does not behave, like this. Whether the
focal item is a universal or a particular is, contra Aristotle, quite
irrelevant to the question of what this or that related adjective means, or
what its sense is. The medical art is no more what an utterer means when he
utters the adjective medical, as is France what an utterer means by the
adjective French. While the attachment of this or that context may suggest an
interpretation in context of this or that expression as uttered by the utterer
U, it need not be the case that such a suggestion is indefeasible. It
might be e.g. that French poem would have to mean, poem composed in French,
unless there were counter indications, that brings the utterer and the
addressee to a different context C3. In which case, perhaps
what the utterer means by French poem is poem composed by a French competitor
in this or that competition. For French professor there would be two
obvious things an utterer might mean. Disambiguation will depend on the
wider expression-context or in the situational context attaching to
the this or that circumstance of utterance. Eschatology. Some like Hegel, but
Collingwoods *my* man! ‒ Grice. Grice participated in two
consecutive evenings of the s. of programmes on metaphysics organised by Pears.
Actually, charming Pears felt pretentious enough to label the meetings to be
about the nature of metaphysics! Grice ends up discussing, as he should, Collingwood
on presupposition. Met. remained a
favourite topic for Grices philosophical explorations, as it is evident from
his essay on Met. , Philosophical Eschatology, and Platos Republic, repr. in
his WOW . Possibly Hardie is to blame, since he hardly tutored Grice on
metaphysics! Grices two BBC lectures are typically dated in tone. It was the
(good ole) days when philosophers thought they could educate the non-elite by
dropping Namess like Collingwood and stuff! The Third Programme was extremely
popular, especially among the uneducated ones at London, as Pears almost put
it, as it was a way for Londoners to get to know what is going on down at
Oxford, the only place an uneducated (or educated, for that matter) Londoner at
the time was interested in displaying some interest about! I mean, Johnson is
right: if a man is tired of the nature of metaphysics, he is tired of life!
Since the authorship is Grice, Strawson, and Pears, Met. , in Pears, The Nature
of Met., The BBC Third Programme, it is somewhat difficult to identify what
paragraphs were actually read by Grice (and which ones by Pears and which ones
by Strawson). But trust the sharp Griceian to detect the correct implicaturum!
There are many (too many) other items covered by these two lectures: Kant, Aristotle,
in no particular order. And in The Grice Collection, for that matter, that
cover the field of metaphysics. In the New World, as a sort of tutor in the
graduate programme, Grice was expected to cover the discipline at various
seminars. Only I dislike discipline! Perhaps his clearest exposition is in the
opening section of his Met. , philosophical eschatology, and Platos Republic, repr.
in his WOW , where he states, bluntly that all you need is metaphysics! metaphysics, Miscellaneous,
metaphysics notes, Grice would possible see metaphysics as a classcategory
figuring large. He was concerned with the methodological aspects of the
metaphysical enterprise, since he was enough of a relativist to allow for one metaphysical
scheme to apply to one area of discourse (one of Eddingtons tables) and another
metaphysical scheme to apply to another (Eddingtons other table). In the third
programme for the BBC Grice especially enjoyed criticising John Wisdoms
innovative look at metaphysics as a bunch of self-evident falsehoods (Were all
alone). Grice focuses on Wisdom on the knowledge of other minds. He also
discusses Collingwoods presuppositions, and Bradley on the reality-appearance
distinction. Grices reference to Wisdom was due to Ewings treatment of Wisdom
on metaphysics. Grices main motivation here is defending metaphysics against
Ayer. Ayer thought to win more Oxonian philosophers than he did at Oxford, but
he was soon back in London. Post-war Oxford had become conservative and would
not stand to the nonsense of Ayers claiming that metaphysics is nonsense,
especially, as Ayers implicaturum also was, that philosophy is nonsense!
Perhaps the best summary of Griceian metaphysics is his From Genesis to
Revelations: a new discourse on metaphysics. It’s an ontological answer that
one must give to Grices metabolic operation from utterers meaning to expression
meaning, Grice had been interested in the methodology of metaphysics since his
Oxford days. He counts as one memorable experience in the area his
participation in two episodes for the BBC Third Programme on The nature of
metaphysics with the organiser, Pears, and his former tutee, Strawson on the
panel. Grice was particularly keen on Collingwoods views on metaphysical presuppositions,
both absolute and relative! Grice also considers John Wisdoms view of the
metaphysical proposition as a blatant falsehood. Grice considers Bradleys
Hegelian metaphysics of the absolute, in Appearance and reality. Refs.: While
Grice’s choice was ‘eschatology,’ as per WoW, Essay, other keywords are useful,
notably “metaphysics,” “ontology,” “theorizing,” and “theory-theory,” in The H.
P. Grice Papers, BANC.
ESSE: Grice: “Surely the most important verb,
philosophically speaking. It was good of Boezio to turn Aristotle’s troublesome
‘belonging’ into a simple ‘est’.” ens a se: Grice defines an ‘ens a se’ as a being that is completely independent
and self-sufficient. Since every creature depends at least upon God for its
existence, only God could be ens a se. In fact, only God is, and he must be.
For if God depended on any other being, he would be dependent and hence not
self-sufficient. To the extent that the ontological argument is plausible, it
depends on conceiving of God as ens a se. In other words, God as ens a se is
the greatest conceivable being. The idea of ens a se is very important in the
Monologion and Proslogion of Anselm, in various works of Duns Scotus, and later
Scholastic thought. Ens a se should be distinguished from ens ex se, according
to Anselm in Monologion. Ens a se is from itself and not “out of itself.” In
other words, ens a se does not depend upon itself for its own existence,
because it is supposed to be dependent on absolutely nothing. Further, if ens a
se depended upon itself, it would cause itself to exist, and that is
impossible, according to medieval and Scholastic philosophers, who took
causality to be irreflexive. It is also transitive and asymmetric. Hence, the
medieval idea of ens a se should not be confused with Spinoza’s idea of causa
sui. Later Scholastics often coined abstract terms to designate the property or
entity that makes something to be what it is, in analogy with forming, say,
‘rigidity’ from ‘rigid’. The Latin term ‘aseitas’ is formed from the prepositional
phrase in ‘ens a se’ in this way; ‘aseitas’ is tr. into English as ‘aseity’. A
better-known example of forming an abstract noun from a concrete word is
‘haecceitas’ thess from ‘haec’ this. --
ens rationis Latin, ‘a being of reason’, a thing dependent for its existence
upon reason or thought; sometimes known as an intentional being. Ens rationis
is the contrasting term for a real being res or ens in re extra animam, such as
an individual animal. Real beings exist independently of thought and are the foundation
for truth. A being of reason depends upon thought or reason for its existence
and is an invention of Enlightenment ens rationis 266 266 the mind, even if it has a foundation in
some real being. This conception requires the idea that there are degrees of
being. Two kinds of entia rationis are distinguished: those with a foundation
in reality and those without one. The objects of logic, which include genera
and species, e.g., animal and human, respectively, are entia rationis that have
a foundation in reality, but are abstracted from it. In contrast, mythic and
fictional objects, such as a chimera or Pegasus, have no foundation in reality.
Blindness and deafness are also sometimes called entia rationis. -- ens realissimum: used by Grice. Latin,
‘most real being’, an informal term for God that occurs rarely in Scholastic
philosophers. Within Kant’s philosophy, it has a technical sense. It is an
extension of Baumgarten’s idea of ens perfectissimum most perfect being, a
being that has the greatest number of possible perfections to the greatest
degree. Since ens perfectissimum refers to God as the sum of all possibilities
and since actuality is greater than possibility, according to Kant, the idea of
God as the sum of all actualities, that is, ens realissimum, is a preferable
term for God. Kant thinks that human knowledge is “constrained” to posit the
idea of a necessary being. The necessary being that has the best claim to
necessity is one that is completely unconditioned, that is, dependent on
nothing; this is ens realissimum. He sometimes explicates it in three ways: as
the substratum of all realities, as the ground of all realities, and as the sum
of all realities. Ens realissimum is nonetheless empirically invalid, since it
cannot be experienced by humans. It is something ideal for reason, not real in
experience. According to Kant, the ontological argument begins with the concept
of ens realissimum and concludes that an existing object falls under that
concept Critique of Pure Reason, Book II, chapter 3. esse, essentia:
Grice: “Perhaps the most important verb, philosophical speaking.” Grice: “It
was Boezio who had the witty occurrence of translating the Aristotelian
‘belong’ by the much simpler ‘est’“S est P.” -- Explored byy Grice in “Aristotle on the multiplicity of being”.
To avoid equivocation, Grice distinguishes between the ‘izz’ of essentia, and
the ‘hazz’ of accidentia. ssentialism, a metaphysical theory that objects have
essences and that there is a distinction between essential and non-essential or
accidental predications. Different issues have, however, been central in
debates about essences and essential predication in different periods in the
history of philosophy. In our own day, it is commitment to the notion of de re
modality that is generally taken to render a theory essentialist; but in the
essentialist tradition stemming from Aristotle, discussions of essence and
essential predication focus on the distinction between what an object is and
how it is. According to Aristotle, the universals that an ordinary object
instantiates include some that mark it out as what it is and others that
characterize it in some way but do not figure in an account of what it is. In
the Categories, he tells us that while the former are said of the object, the latter
are merely present in it; and in other writings, he distinguishes between what
he calls kath hauto or per se predications where these include the predication
of what-universals and kata sumbebekos or per accidens predications where these
include the predication of how-universals. He concedes that universals
predicated of an object kath hauto are necessary to that object; but he
construes the necessity here as derivative. It is because a universal marks out
an entity, x, as what x is and hence underlies its being the thing that it is
that the universal is necessarily predicated of x. The concept of definition is
critically involved in Aristotle’s essentialism. First, it is the kind infima species under which an object falls or one of the
items genus or differentia included in the definition of that kind that is
predicated of the object kath hauto. But, second, Aristotle’s notion of an
essence just is the notion of the ontological correlate of a definition. The
term in his writings we translate as ‘essence’ is the expression to ti ein
einai the what it is to be. Typically, the expression is followed by a
substantival expression in the dative case, so that the expressions denoting
essences are phrases like ‘the what it is to be for a horse’ and ‘the what it
is to be for an oak tree’; and Aristotle tells us that, for any kind, K, the
what it is to be for a K just is that which we identify when we provide a
complete and accurate definition of K. Now, Aristotle holds that there is
definition only of universals; and this commits him to the view that there are
no individual essences. Although he concedes that we can provide definitions of
universals from any of his list of ten categories, he gives pride of place to
the essences of universals from the category of substance. Substance-universals
can be identified without reference to essences from other categories, but the
essences of qualities, quantities, and other non-substances can be defined only
by reference to the essences of substances. In his early writings, Aristotle
took the familiar particulars of common sense things like the individual man
and horse of Categories V to be the primary substances; and in these writings
it is the essences we isolate by defining the kinds or species under which
familiar particulars fall that are construed as the basic or paradigmatic
essences. However, in later writings, where ordinary particulars are taken to
be complexes of matter and form, it is the substantial forms of familiar
particulars that are the primary substances, so their essences are the primary
or basic essences; and a central theme in Aristotle’s most mature writings is
the idea that the primary substances and their essences are necessarily one and
the same in number. error theory essentialism 281 281 The conception of essence as the
ontological correlate of a definition
often called quiddity persists
throughout the medieval tradition; and in early modern philosophy, the idea
that the identity of an object is constituted by what it is plays an important
role in Continental rationalist thinkers. Indeed, in the writings of Leibniz,
we find the most extreme version of traditional essentialism. Whereas Aristotle
had held that essences are invariably general, Leibniz insisted that each
individual has an essence peculiar to it. He called the essence associated with
an entity its complete individual concept; and he maintained that the
individual concept somehow entails all the properties exemplified by the
relevant individual. Accordingly, Leibniz believed that an omniscient being
could, for each possible world and each possible individual, infer from the
individual concept of that individual the whole range of properties exemplified
by that individual in that possible world. But, then, from the perspective of
an omniscient being, all of the propositions identifying the properties the
individual actually exhibits would express what Aristotle called kath hauto
predications. Leibniz, of course, denied that our perspective is that of an
omniscient being; we fail to grasp individual essences in their fullness, so
from our perspective, the distinction between essential and accidental
predications holds. While classical rationalists espoused a thoroughgoing
essentialism, the Aristotlelian conceptions of essence and definition were the
repeated targets of attacks by classical British empiricists. Hobbes, e.g.,
found the notion of essence philosophically useless and insisted that
definition merely displays the meanings conventionally associated with
linguistic expressions. Locke, on the other hand, continued to speak of
essences; but he distinguished between real and nominal essences. As he saw it,
the familiar objects of common sense are collections of copresent sensible
ideas to which we attach a single name like ‘man’ or ‘horse’. Identifying the
ideas constitutive of the relevant collection gives us the nominal essence of a
man or a horse. Locke did not deny that real essences might underlie such
collections, but he insisted that it is nominal rather than real essences to
which we have epistemic access. Hume, in turn, endorsed the idea that familiar
objects are collections of sensible ideas, but rejected the idea of some
underlying real essence to which we have no access; and he implicitly
reinforced the Hobbesian critique of Aristotelian essences with his attack on
the idea of de re necessities. So definition merely expresses the meanings we
conventionally associate with words, and the only necessity associated with
definition is linguistic or verbal necessity. From its origins, the
twentieth-century analytic tradition endorsed the classical empiricist critique
of essences and the Humean view that necessity is merely linguistic. Indeed,
even the Humean concession that there is a special class of statements true in
virtue of their meanings came into question in the forties and fifties, when
philosophers like Quine argued that it is impossible to provide a noncircular
criterion for distinguishing analytic and synthetic statements. So by the late
0s, it had become the conventional wisdom of philosophers in the Anglo-
tradition that both the notion of a real essence and the derivative idea that
some among the properties true of an object are essential to that object are
philosophical dead ends. But over the past three decades, developments in the
semantics of modal logic have called into question traditional empiricist
skepticism about essence and modality and have given rise to a rebirth of
essentialism. In the late fifties and early sixties, logicians like Kripke,
Hintikka, and Richard Montague showed how formal techniques that have as their
intuitive core the Leibnizian idea that necessity is truth in all possible
worlds enable us to provide completeness proofs for a whole range of
nonequivalent modal logics. Metaphysicians seized on the intuitions underlying
these formal methods. They proposed that we take the picture of alternative
possible worlds seriously and claimed that attributions of de dicto modality
necessity and possibility as they apply to propositions can be understood to involve
quantification over possible worlds. Thus, to say that a proposition, p, is
necessary is to say that for every possible world, W, p is true in W; and to
say that p is possible is to say that there is at least one possible world, W,
such that p is true in W. These metaphysicians went on to claim that the
framework of possible worlds enables us to make sense of de re modality.
Whereas de dicto modality attaches to propositions taken as a whole, an
ascription of de re modality identifies the modal status of an object’s
exemplification of an attribute. Thus, we speak of Socrates as being
necessarily or essentially rational, but only contingently snub-nosed.
Intuitively, the essential properties of an object are those it could not have
lacked; whereas its contingent properties are properties it exemplifies but
could have failed to exemplify. The “friends of possible worlds” insisted that
we can make perfectly good sense of this intuitive distinction if we say that
an object, x, exhibits a property, P, essentially just in case x exhibits P in
the actual world and in every possible world in which x exists and that x
exhibits P merely contingently just in case x exhibits P in the actual world,
but there is at least one possible world, W, such that x exists in W and fails
to exhibit P in W. Not only have these neo-essentialists invoked the Leibnizian
conception of alternative possible worlds in characterizing the de re
modalities, many have endorsed Leibniz’s idea that each object has an
individual essence or what is sometimes called a haecceity. As we have seen,
the intuitive idea of an individual essence is the idea of a property an object
exhibits essentially and that no other object could possibly exhibit; and
contemporary essentialists have fleshed out this intuitive notion by saying
that a property, P, is the haecceity or individual essence of an object, x,
just in case 1 x exhibits P in the actual world and in all worlds in which x
exists and 2 there is no possible world where an object distinct from x exhibits
P. And some defenders of individual essences like Plantinga have followed
Leibniz in holding that the haecceity of an object provides a complete concept
of that object, a property such that it entails, for every possible world, W,
and every property, P, either the proposition that the object in question has P
in W or the proposition that it fails to have P in W. Accordingly, they agree
that an omniscient being could infer from the individual essence of an object a
complete account of the history of that object in each possible world in which
it exists.
eudaemonia: from Grecian
eudaimonia, and then there’s eudaemonism --‘happiness’, ‘flourishing’, the
ethical doctrine that happiness is the ultimate justification for morality. The
ancient Grecian philosophers typically begin their ethical treatises with an
account of happiness, and then argue that the best way to achieve a happy life
is through the cultivation and exercise of virtue. Most of them make virtue or
virtuous activity a constituent of the happy life; the Epicureans, however,
construe happiness in terms of pleasure, and treat virtue as a means to the end
of pleasant living. Ethical eudaimonism is sometimes combined with
psychological eudaimonism i.e., the view
that all free, intentional action is aimed ultimately at the agent’s happiness.
A common feature of ancient discussions of ethics, and one distinguishing them
from most modern discussions, is the view that an agent would not be rationally
justified in a course of action that promised less happiness than some
alternative open to him. Hence it seems that most of the ancient theories are
forms of egosim. But the ancient theories differ from modern versions of egoism
since, according to the ancients, at least some of the virtues are dispositions
to act from primarily other-regarding motives: although the agent’s happiness
is the ultimate justification of virtuous action, it is not necessarily what
motivates such action. Since happiness is regarded by most of the ancients as
the ultimate end that justifies our actions, their ethical theories seem
teleological; i.e., right or virtuous action is construed as action that
contributes to or maximizes the good. But appearances are again misleading, for
the ancients typically regard virtuous action as also valuable for its own sake
and hence constitutive of the agent’s happiness.
event: used by Grice in
“Actions and Events,” -- anything that happens; an occurrence. Two fundamental
questions about events, which philosophers have usually treated together, are:
1 Are there events?, and 2 If so, what is their nature? Some philosophers
simply assume that there are events. Others argue for that, typically through
finding semantic theories for ordinary claims that apparently concern the fact
that some agent has done something or that some thing has changed. Most
philosophers presume that the events whose existence is proved by such
arguments are abstract particulars, “particulars” in the sense that they are
non-repeatable and spatially locatable, “abstract” in the sense that more than
one event can occur simultaneously in the same place. The theories of events
espoused by Davidson in his causal view, Kim though his view may be unstable in
this respect, Jonathan Bennett, and Lawrence Lombard take them to be abstract
particulars. However, Chisholm takes Euler diagram event 292 292 events to be abstract universals; and
Quine and Davidson in his later view take them to be concrete particulars. Some
philosophers who think of events as abstract particulars tend to associate the
concept of an event with the concept of change; an event is a change in some
object or other though some philosophers have doubts about this and others have
denied it outright. The time at which an event, construed as a particular,
occurs can be associated with the shortest time at which the object, which is
the subject of that event, changes from the having of one property to the
having of another, contrary property. Events inherit whatever spatial locations
they have from the spatial locations, if any, of the things that those events
are changes in. Thus, an event that is a change in an object, x, from being F to
being G, is located wherever x is at the time it changes from being F to being
G. Some events are those of which another event is composed e.g., the sinking
of a ship seems composed of the sinkings of its parts. However, it also seems
clear that not every group of events comprises another; there just is no event
composed of a certain explosion on Venus and my birth. Any adequate theory
about the nature of events must address the question of what properties, if
any, such things have essentially. One issue is whether the causes or effects
of events are essential to those events. A second is whether it is essential to
each event that it be a change in the entity it is in fact a change in. A third
is whether it is essential to each event that it occur at the time at which it
in fact occurs. A chief component of a theory of events is a criterion of
identity, a principle giving conditions necessary and sufficient for an event e
and an event eH to be one and the same event. Quine holds that events may be
identified with the temporal parts of physical objects, and that events and
physical objects would thus share the same condition of identity: sameness of
spatiotemporal location. Davidson once proposed that events are identical
provided they have the same causes and effects. More recently, Davidson
abandoned this position in favor of Quine’s. Kim takes an event to be the
exemplification of a property or relation by an object or objects at a time.
This idea has led to his view that an event e is the same as an event eH if and
only if e and eH are the exemplifications of the same property by the same
objects at the same time. Lombard’s view is a variation on this account, and is
derived from the idea of events as the changes that physical objects undergo
when they alter.
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