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.