-- by JLS
----- for the GC
-- There is a cursory treatment of Grice's 'non-naturalistic' reading of "... means ..." in a recent Stanford encyclopaedia entry for 'causal theories of mental content". The reference is to vintage 1948 Grice (I was pleased that the essay is given the proper date: 1948, indeed). It is, of course, "Meaning". A reading of Grice -- usually as guided by pedant instructors -- may want you to think that Grice is OPPOSING Stevenson's causal theories. But he isn't! G. H. R. Parkinson is much more on spot when in his "Theories of meaning" (Oxford readings in philosophy") directly goes to quote Grice as a 'causalist'.
The passage by Grice merely indicates his distaste for a Stevensonian 'simplistic' account of 'cause' -- and indeed, later in "Meaning", as I have discussed with Stampe, Grice goes on to provide his own brand of causalism (when he emphasises that the intention be not just a 'cause' but a 'reason' and where the intention has to relate to feasible outcomes, rather than mere willings with no causal efficacy.
Grice writes against Stevenson. Stevenson, after all, is saying that if a man puts on his raincoat, he means he thinks it rains!
Nothing was ever so simple for Grice. He writes instead:
"I want first to consider briefly, and reject,
what I might term a CAUSAL TYPE of
answer to the question, 'What is meaningNN?'"
(WoW:215).
He goes on to provide a few (3) 'deficiencies in a causal theory of the type just expounded' --. His wording, again, may suggest (but not say) that his own brand is not a causal theory when he means it is not that type of causal theory.
He did not help the non-causalists among his readers when
he continued:
"I do NOT propose to consider ANY FURTHER
theories of the 'causal-tendency' type."
Why?
Well, because "I suspect no such theory could
avoid difficulties analogous to those I have
outlined without utterly"
--- said in a British fashion
"losing its claim to rank as a theory
of this type."
---- Since Grice stopped talking (mainly) about 'causal-tendency' and started talking about intention, that greatest probabilist of all, Patrick Suppes, in his contribution to the Grandy/Warner festschrift, brilliantly goes on to label Grice an 'intentionalist' rather than an analytical behaviourist alla Ryle. Which is just as well.
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Krantz, Suppes, and Tversky in "Foundations of Measurement," (I shall have to locate my copy) present remarkable machinery and alternatives on measurement and probability and utility, and so on.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorites is their conclusion that PROBABILITY (subjective probability) is literally a separate dimension like mass (weight on earth), length, time, temperature, electric charge, and so on. My coauthored paper, "Dimensional Analysis in the Social Sciences," in Socio-Economic Planning Sciences (1991) also had additional dimensions, as did the economist De Jong in his various publications (including dimensions of satisfaction, labour, money or monetary value if I recall, etc.).
"Intention" has good arguments for being a separate dimension. It is key to understanding Victims versus Victimizers (to use my simple language) in Melanie Klein's psychoanalysis and the Neo-Kleinians who have come after her. It is key to understanding some important historical documents including the U.S. Constitution which originally had some remarkably similar Intentions to the U.K. Acts of Parliament of the late 1600s. My own and my wife Marleen's interest in Causation and Probability and "Goals" and relating them quantitatively came largely from our interests in psychology including mathematical psychology and also my interests in anthropology and mathematical sociology.
Osher Doctorow
In Melanie Klein's and Neo-Kleinian psychoanalytic theory, a key difference in simple language, to my understanding, is between:
ReplyDelete1) Those who Intend violence against others.
2) Those who either Intend violence against themselves or do not Intend violence.
The former tend to be paranoid schizoid personality types, the latter among those who Intend violence against themselves tend to be depressed or depressive personalities. The former tend to be seldom curable/treatable or even "tractable" because they violently tend to oppose their Doctors, while the latter tend to be treatable at least if found early enough. There are some papers applying these differences to terrorism and other social sciences/topics by researchers at some U.K. universities, and I have a copy of one such paper somewhere.
Osher Doctorow
Yes. Intention seems like a different category, or as Doctorow prefers, ´dimension´. I was surprised when I read Suppes saying, "Of course Chomsky and Biro miss the mark: Grice is not a behaviourist, he is an intentionalist".
ReplyDeleteI actually met Biro later on, and said: "I suppose Suppes taught you a lesson". He said, "indeed". This was overseas, but on his return to Gainesville, Biro let me have a typed version (which I must have somewhere) of his lengthy reply to Suppes still criticising Grice now as an "intentionalist"!
----
My inspiration here has been Chapman. She traces Grice´s early theories in the light of the verificationism, confirmationism, and inductivism, and perhaps empricism, of his day, and notes that from a very early age Grice was relying on, or sticking with "intentions" which he found as basic -- as matters of introspective, incorrigible knowledge, sort of thing.
The view later became popular in Oxford with authors such as Hampshire (and his "Thought and Action") but many historians of 20th century philosopher were confused and in the case of Hampshire they HAD to allege that he had been influenced by Sartre!
There is a remarkable "relevance" factor in defining or using "dimension", namely, the question:
ReplyDelete1) Is the "dimension" relevant to the problem or question under consideration?
Thus, "intention" would certainly be relevant to law, crime, decisions by human beings, blame, praise, and so on.
It sometimes helps to examine dimensions in physics. There are at least 2 types:
2) The "deepest" or most "fundamental" or "basic" categories or classes in a wide range of physics problems, including Length (L), Time (T), Mass (weight on Earth) (M), Temperature (theta), Electric Charge (Q), sometimes Force (F), Energy (E), etc.
3) "Directions" in space that are very different or "opposite" in some sense: for example, up or down vs left or right vs forward or backward in 3-dimensional space. These could be labelled L_x, L_y, L_z respectively, or more commonly L_z, L_y, L_x, where the symbol L_z means L with subscript z.
Some physics and engineering problems are extremely difficult to solve without using the above dimensions or similar ones. They literally tend to simplify solving the problems!
Osher Doctorow
There is ONE sense in which there is an overlap here. And it's a bit of a striking one. I think it was Searle (following Anscombe and Austin) who popularised it!
ReplyDeleteIt's the "direction of fit". There are only TWO of them: upwards and downwards -- and symbolised as in spin-signs: an upward arrow and a downward arrow. Searle and Vanderveken have formalised this in their "Foundations of Illocutionary Logic".
Now, what strikes me as interesting is that indeed, there seems to be these two directions of fit only: an intention, and in general any conative attitude, has direction of fit 'towards the world'. It makes a change IN the world.
A doxastic attidude, a belief, a piece of 'information, knowledge, opinion, etc., has the very opposite direction of fit. One wants to be INFLUENCED by the world, rather than influence it.
Grice, as I have said elsewhere, thought that a method in philosophical psychology can do WITHOUT one of the directions of fit. Fortunately for me, in his "Method in philosophical psychology", he explored the reduction of the 'doxastic' dimension of a psychological attitude to the 'volitive' one.
But in geneal most philosophers are happy enough with having TWO dimensions or 'directions' within the dimension of the psychological attitude.
It's only the abstractionist in Grice that was always looking for the underlying structure. Also, because he wanted to look for 'generalities' which would apply to, say, both doxastic AND volitive attitudes -- and so the underlying unity was for him, qua philosopher, more important than their diversity.
While I tend to agree (when feeling charitable) with Searle re intention, or what he calls "deliberation" somewhere against the full-on determinists, merely invoking intention, or insisting on it doesn't really resolve the problem (really determinism/"freedom"), and in many instances one sees evidence of ....what we might call "nearly strict determinism". That's a separate issue from the language game (but I don't think language magically creates intention--as even a Chomsky, or Searle suggests-- but might suggest the anomaly of human thought in a sense).
ReplyDeleteThere's also a tendency to mysticize physics, and try to show that quantum indeterminacy shows dualism, or separate dimensions, or something, but that's generally a misreading of quantum mechanics (Bricmont also writes on this issue).
You will be going to, or at least eating lunch today--or scuzi the realism, urinating. That's not really negotiable--one might have a choice of some type (burgers or tacos?/) but that looks more like volitionism than pure freedom--the choice is compelled...one doesn't decide to urinate or not....
The det./freedom is a rather involved issue--the garden of forking paths has some interesting material on it. Needless to say, the dualistic incompatibilists (like traditional Kantian or theological sorts) mostly confused. Compatibilism of some type most likely holds (and even Hume thought along those lines...not to say he's right in most things...)
I liked J's example of free will as it impinges on urination.
ReplyDeleteThere are various contexts to distinguish. I heard there was a tribe of monks (in the Tibet most likely) that they eat very little. So little, that they never defecate. Similarly, it doesn't take a long stretch to imagine someone who drinks so little that she never needs to go to the bathroom (for number 1 in this case).
The question is NOT, "Urinate or not urinate?" -- A lot of people overuse the verb, "must". "I must go to work". Surely he can shoot himself and spare himself of that 'must'.
Freud distinguished between various types of 'control'. He was into 'sphincter' control, which had to do with Number 2, but there is a similar control that applies to number 1. So surely one can intend to urinate in this or that place rather tan in th'other.
Borges recalls that on one occasion he was so drunk and happy -- they had all been to a concert. They went to a park and started to urinate. One of the most inhibited types in the party said, "Read that sign: "Non si posse urinare"" -- "But we ARE being able" was the reply (It flows better in their vernacular). "You can't urinate" is thus better spelt "you kant urinate".
Or something.