Griceian Cockfighting & Beyond

Speranza

Once there was a time when chicken roamed free -- but were cocks all ways fighting with each other? This begs a question. Indeed, it _is_ a question. An a Griceian one at that. For, to echo Grice in "The conception of value": is 'chicken' a value-oriented word? (He notes that 'cabbage' and 'king' are -- but then he is quoting from Lewis Carroll).

 

Cultural & Scientific Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions.

 

-- is an essay in progress by Greger Larson.

 

Larson, like Grice did, teaches at Oxford -- Grice adds: "For the poor; only the poor learn at Oxford." (Grice is implicating he has read Arnold, and this was Arnold's impression when he went there; oddly shared by Grice, who already KNEW MOST THINGS when he went up to Oxford straight from Clifton -- a 'Midlands scholarship boy'.

 

In his lectures on chicken, Larson notes,

 

"It looks like from all the evidence

that chickens existed for a VERY LONG

TIME [Larson empahsises in his Oxonian

accent] in association with people

and the were NOT food."

 

(Again, with Oxonian emphasis on 'food'.)

 

Students -- the "poor'uns," took notice.

 

Larson goes on:

"Oddly enough, it would seem that for thousands

of years, the primary ROLE or function of chickens

seems to have been in cockfighting -- or other

various rituals."

 

"Chickens only started to be eaten in Israel

a about 2,200 years ago, ONLY."

 

Larson grants that "we are still not sure

what humans did with chickens for all

that time -- or chickens with humans, if you

wish."

 

(The 'poor'un' students took notice.)

 

"In Austria, I found a cemetery," Larson adds,

"where people were buried along with their

chickens -- which is neat."

 

"What's more, carbon studies suggest they

-- humans and chickens --were sharing a

similar diet. This confused me at first."

 

He implicates "no longer."

 

Larson quotes from Grice, "The conception of value", where he (Grice) provides a conceptual analysis of "Old English sheepdog". According to Grice, this dog was not originally a sheepdog, never mind an Old English one. He was just a dog. But with domestication, "the _conceived_ value of sheeping was added to the 'canis familiaris'." Grice notes this poses a problem for "those dogs that the English call 'toy dogs' and which they criticise as the French worshipping them."

 

References

 

Larson, Cultural & Scientific Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions.

Grice, The Conception of Value, Clarendon Press.

The Importance of Being Griceian

Speranza

I think Hume would say that "Humeian" makes no sense. I KNOW Quine did.

For Quine, "Pegasus" becomes "pegasizes". And there are no such things as what Duns called 'haecceitas,' i.e. properties that refer to an individual.

It MIGHT be different for Grice.

Harold Bloom, of Yale, was referring to the 'perfect Emersonian,' and this got me into thinking. Was Grice the perfect Griceian?

Does "Griceian" have _sense_.

It's not like 'pathetic', which is an adjective which we might characterise as 'common'.

"Griceian" stems from a proper name, and using "Griceian" IMPLICATES that we assume not just, 'related to Grice,' as a boring dictionary might tell us ("I care a hoot what the dictionary says," Grice said), but that there is a property, Griceianity, or Griceianness, such that if Grice is Griceian, this should be MORE than analytic a priori and thus vacuous and otiose.

Or not.

There are two bands: neo-Griceians, who follow Grice, but are not necessarily Griceians; and post-Griceians, who think they have superseded, if only chronologically, Grice.

I prefer to lean every now and then to the best palaeo-Griceian of all time: i.e. Grice!

Cheers!