acceptum: or ‘ACCEPTVM,’ as Grice would
spell it. As a meta-ethicist, like Hare, Grice is interested in providing
criteria for acceptability. He proposes three formal universalizability,
conceptual universalizability, and applicational universalizability. This is
Grice’s Golden Rule, which is Biblical in nature. Grice needs a past participle
for a ‘that’-clause of something ‘thought’. He has ‘creditum’ for what is
believed, and ‘desideratum’ for what is desired. So he uses ‘acceptum’ for
what is accepted, a neutral form to cover both the desideratum and the
creditum. Short and Lewis have ‘accipio,’ f. ‘capio.’ Grice uses the
abbreviation “Acc” for this. As he puts it in the Locke lectures: "An idea I want to explore is that we represent
the sentences ‘Smith should be
recovering his health by now’ and ‘Smith should join the cricket club’ as having the following structures. First, a common
"rationality" operator 'Acc', to be heard as "it is
reasonable that", "it is acceptABLE that", "it
ought to be that", "it should be that", or in some
other similar way.Next, one or other of two mode operators, which in the case
of the first are to be written as
'⊢'
and in the case of the
second are to be written as '!.’ Finally a
'radical', to be represented by 'r' or some other lower-case letter. The
structure for the second is ‘Acc
+ ⊢ +
r. For the second, ‘Acc + ! + r,’ with each symbol falling within the scope of
its predecessor. Grice
is not a psychologist, but he speaks of the ‘soul.’ He was a philosopher
engaged in philosophical psychology. The psychological theory which Grice
envisages would be deficient as a theory to explain behaviour if it did not
contain provision for interests in the ascription of psychological states
otherwise than as tools for explaining and predicting behaviour, interests e.
g. on the part of one creature to be able to ascribe these rather than those
psychological states to another creature because of a concern for the other
creature. Within such a theory it should be possible to derive strong
motivations on the part of the creatures Subjects to the theory against the
abandonment of the central concepts of the theory and so of the theory itself,
motivations which the creatures would or should regard as justified. Indeed, only from within the framework of
such a theory, I think, can matters of evaluation, and so, of the evaluation of
modes of explanation, be raised at all. If I conjecture aright, then, the
entrenched system contains the materials needed to justify its own
entrenchment; whereas no rival system contains a basis for the justification of
anything at all. We should recall that the first rendering that Liddell and Scott
give for “ψυχή” is “life;” the tripartite division of “ψ., οἱ δὲ περὶ Πλάτωνα
καὶ Ἀρχύτας καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ Πυθαγόρειοι τὴν ψ. τριμερῆ ἀποφαίνονται, διαιροῦντες
εἰς λογισμὸν καὶ θυμὸν καὶ ἐπιθυμίαν,” Pl.R.439e sqq.; in Arist. “ἡ
ψ. τούτοις ὥρισται, θρεπτικῷ, αἰσθητικῷ, διανοητικῷ, κινήσει: πότερον δὲ τοὔτων
ἕκαστόν ἐστι ψ. ἢ ψυχῆς μόριον;” de An.413b11, cf. PA641b4; “ἡ θρεπτικὴ
ψ.” Id.de An.434a22, al.; And Aristotle also has Grice’s favourite,
‘psychic,’ ψυχικός , ή, όν, “of the soul or life, spiritual, opp. “σωματικός, ἡδοναί”
Arist.EN1117b28. The compound “psichiologia” is first used in
"Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae," (in Bozicevic-Natalis, Vita
Marci Maruli Spalatensis). A footnote in “Method,” repr. in “Conception” dates
Grice’s lectures at Princeton. Grice is forever grateful to Carnap for having
coined ‘pirot,’ or having thought to have coined. Apparently, someone had used
the expression before him to mean some sort of exotic fish. He starts by
listing this or that a focal problem. The first problem is circularity. He
refers to the dispositional behaviouristic analysis by Ryle. The second focal
problem is the alleged analytic status of a psychological law. One problem concerns
some respect for Grice’s own privileged access to this or that state and this
or that avowal of this or that state being incorrigible. The fourth problem
concerns the law-selection. He refers to pessimism. He talks of folk-science. D
and C are is each predicate-constant in some law L in some psychological
theory θ. This or that instantiable of D or C may well be a set or a
property or neither. Grices way of Ramseyified naming: There is just one
predicate D, such that nomological generalization L introducing D via implicit
definition in theory θ obtains. Uniqueness is essential since D is
assigned to a names for a particular instantiable (One can dispense with
uniqueness by way of Ramseyified description discussed under ‘ramseyified
description.’) Grice trusts he is not overstretching Ramsey’s original
intention. He applies Ramsey-naming and Ramsey-describing to pain. He who
hollers is in pain. Or rather, He who is in pain hollers. (Sufficient but not
necessary). He rejects disjunctional physicalism on it sounding harsh, as
Berkeley puts it, to say that Smiths brains being in such and such a state is a
case of, say, judging something to be true on insufficient evidence. He
criticises the body-soul identity thesis on dismissing =s main purpose, to
license predicate transfers. Grice wasnt sure what his presidential
address to the American Philosophical Association will be about. He chose
the banal (i.e. the ordinary-language counterpart of something like a need we
ascribe to a squirrel to gobble nuts) and the bizarre: the philosophers
construction of need and other psychological, now theoretical terms. In
the proceedings, Grice creates the discipline of Pology. He cares to
mention philosophers Aristotle, Lewis, Myro, Witters, Ramsey, Ryle, and a few
others. The essay became popular when, of all people, Block, cited it as a
programme in functionalism, which it is Grices method in functionalist
philosophical psychology. Introduces Pology as a creature-construction
discipline. Repr. in “Conception,” it reached a wider audience. The essay
is highly subdivided, and covers a lot of ground. Grice starts by noting that,
contra Ryle, he wants to see psychological predicates as theoretical concepts.
The kind of theory he is having in mind is folksy. The first creature he
introduces to apply his method is Toby, a squarrel, that is a reconstructed squirrel.
Grice gives some principles of Pirotology. Maxims of rational behaviour
compound to form what he calls an immanuel, of which The Conversational
Immanuel is a part. Grice concludes with a warning against the Devil of
Scientism, but acknowledges perhaps he was giving much too credit to Myros
influence on this! “Method” in “Conception,” philosophical
psychology, Pirotology. The Immanuel section is perhaps the most important from
the point of view of conversation as rational cooperation. For he identifies three
types of generality: formal, applicational, and content-based. Also, he allows
for there being different types of imannuels. Surely one should be the
conversational immanuel. Ryle would say that one can have a manual, yet now
know how to use it! And theres also the Witters-type problem. How do we say
that the conversationalist is following the immanuel? Perhaps the statement is
too strong – cf. following a rule – and Grices problems with resultant and
basic procedures, and how the former derive from the latter! This connects with
Chomsky, and in general with Grices antipathy towards constitutive rules! In
“Uncertainty,” Grice warns that his interpretation of Prichards willing that as
a state should not preclude a physicalist analysis, but in Method it is all
against physicalism. In Method, from the
mundane to the recondite, he is playful enough to say that primacy is no big
deal, and that, if properly motivated, he might give a reductive analysis of
the buletic in terms of the doxastic. But his reductive analysis of the
doxastic in terms of the buletic runs as follows: P judges that p iff P wills
as follows: given any situation in which P wills some end E and here are two
non-empty classes K1 and K2 of action types,
such that: the performance by P of an action-type belonging to K1 realises
E1 just in case p obtains, and the performance by the P of an
action type belonging to of K2 will realise E just in case p
does not obtain, and here is no third non-empty class K3 of
action types such that the performance by the P of an action type belonging
to will realise E whether p is true or p is false, in such situation, the
P is to will that the P performs some action type belonging to K1.
Creature construction allows for an account of freedom that will metaphysically
justify absolute value. Frankfurt has become famous for his
second-order and higher-order desires. Grice is exploring similar grounds in
what comes out as his “Method” (originally APA presidential address, now repr.
in “Conception”). acceptabilitias. Grice generalizes his desirability and
credibility functions into a single acceptability. Acceptability has obviously
degrees. Grice is thinking of ‘scales’ alla: must, optimal acceptability (for
both modalities), should (medium acceptability), and ought (defeasible
acceptability). He develops the views in The John Locke lectures, having
introduced ‘accept,’ in his BA lecture on ‘Intention and Uncertainty.’ In fact,
much as in “Causal Theory” he has an excursus on ‘Implication,’ here he has,
also in italics, an excursus on “acceptance.” It seems that a degree of analogy
between intending and believing has to be admitted; likewise the presence of a
factual commitment in the case of an expression of intention. We can now use
the term ‘acceptance’ to express a generic concept applying both to cases of
intention and to cases of belief. He who intends to do A and he who believes
that he will do A can both be said to accept (or to accept it as being the
case) that he will do A. We could now attempt to renovate the three-pronged
analysis discussed in Section I, replacing references in that analysis to being
sure or certain that one will do A by references to accepting that one will do
A. We might reasonably hope thereby to escape the objections raised in Section I,
since these objections seemingly centred on special features of the notion of
certainty which would NOT attach to the generic notion of acceptance. Hope that
the renovated analysis will enable us to meet the sceptic will not immediately
be realised, for the sceptic can still as (a) why some cases of acceptance
should be specially dispensed from the need for evidential backing, and (b) if
certain cases are exempt from evidential justification but not from
justification, what sort of justification is here required. Some progress might
be achieved by adopting a different analysis of intention in terms of
acceptance. We might suggest that ‘Grice intends to go to Harborne’ is very
roughly equivalent to the conjunction of ‘Grice accepts-1 that he will go to
Harborne’ and ‘Grice accepts-2 that his going to Harborne will result from the
effect of his acceptance-1 that he will go to Harborne. The idea is that when a
case of acceptance is also a case of belief, the accepter does NOT regard his
acceptance as contributing towards the realisation of the state of affairs the
future the existence of which he accepts; whereas when a case of acceptance is
not a case of belief but a case of intention, he does regard the acceptance as
so contributing. Such an analysis clearly enables us to deal with the sceptic
with regard to this question (a), viz. why some cases of acceptance (those
which are cases of intention) should be specially exempt from the need of
evidential backing. For if my going to Harborne is to depend causally on my
acceptance that I shall-c go, the possession of satisfactory evidence that I
shall-c go will involve possession of the information that I accept that I
shall-c go. Obviously, then, I cannot (though others can) come to accept that I
shall-c go on the basis of satisfactory evidence, for to have such evidence I
should have already to have accepted that I shall-c go. I cannot decide whether
or not to accept-1 that I shall-c go on the strength of evidence which includes
as a datum that I do accept-1 that I shall-c go. Grice grants that we are still
unable to deal with the sceptic as regards question (b), viz. what sort of
justification is available for those cases of acceptance which require
non-evidential justification even though they involve a factual commitment.
Though it is clear that, on this analysis, one must not expect the intender to
rely on evidence for his statements of what he will in fact do, we have not
provided any account of the nature of the non-evidential considerations which
may be adduced to justify such a statement, nor (a fortiori) of the reasons why
such considerations might legitimately thought to succeed in justifying such a
statement. Refs.: Grice, “Intention and uncertainty,” The British Academy, and
BANC, MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library. Refs.: The obvious source is his
“Method,” repr. in “Conception,” but the keyword: “philosophical psychology” is
useful in the Grice papers. There is a specific essay on the power structure of
the soul, The H. P. Grice Collection, BANC.
accidens:
accidentia, if there is accidentia, there is
‘essentia.’ If the Grecians felt like using the prefix ‘syn-‘ for this, why
didn’t the Romans use the affix ‘cum-’? There are two: coincidentia, and
concomitantia. For Grice, even English is vague here – to the point like he
felt that ‘have,’ as in ‘have a property’ seems more of a proper translation of
Aristotle’s ‘accidentia.’ Anything else falls under the ‘izz,’ not the ‘hazz.’
Because if the property is not accidental, the subject-item would just cease to
exist, so the essential property is something the subject item IZZ, not HAZZ. One
philosophical mistake: what is essential is not also accidental. Grice follows
Kripke in the account of existence and essence. If Grice’s essence is his
rational nature, if Grice becomes irrational, he ceases to exist. Not so for
any property that Grice has which is NOT essential. An essential property is
the first predicable, in that it is not one of this or that genus that is
redundant. So Grice applies ‘accidental,’ like ‘essential’ to ‘attribute,’ and
to attribute is to predicate. An essential attribute is manifested by an
essential predicate. A non-essential predicate is an accidental attribute.
There is the ‘idea’ of the ‘proprium,’ idion, with which Grice has to struggle a
little. For what is the implicaturum of a ‘proprium’ ascripition? “Man is a
laughing animal.” Why would someone say such an idiocy in the first place?!
Strictly, from a Griceian point of view, an ‘accidens’ is feature or property
of a substance e.g., an organism or an artifact without which the substance
could still exist. According to a common essentialist view of persons,
Socrates’ size, color, and integrity are among his accidents, while his
humanity is not. For Descartes, thinking is the essence of the soul, while any
particular thought a soul entertains is an accident. According to a common
theology, God has no accidents, since all truths about him flow by necessity
from his nature. These examples suggest the diversity of traditional uses of
the notion of accident. There is no uniform conception; but the Cartesian view,
according to which the accidents are modes of ways of specifying the essence of
a substance, is representative. An important ambiguity concerns the identity of
accidents: if Plato and Aristotle have the same weight, is that weight one
accident say, the property of weighing precisely 70 kilograms or two one
accident for Plato, one for Aristotle? Different theorists give different
answers and some have changed their minds. Issues about accidents have become
peripheral in this century because of the decline of traditional concerns about
substance. But the more general questions about necessity and contingency are
very much alive. While not one of the labours of Grice, Accidentailism is regarded
by Grice as the metaphysical thesis that the occurrence of some events is
either not necessitated or not causally determined or not predictable. Many
determinists have maintained that although all events are caused, some
nevertheless occur accidentally, if only because the causal laws determining
them might have been different. Some philosophers have argued that even if
determinism is true, some events, such as a discovery, could not have been
predicted, on grounds that to predict a discovery is to make the discovery. The
term may also designate a theory of individuation: that individuals of the same
kind or species are numerically distinct in virtue of possessing some different
accidental properties. Two horses are the same in essence but numerically distinct
because one of them is black, e.g., while the other is white. Accidentalism
presupposes the identity of indiscernibles but goes beyond it by claiming that
accidental properties account for numerical diversity within a species. Peter
Abelard criticized a version of accidentalism espoused by his teacher, William
of Champeaux, on the ground that accidental properties depend for their
existence on the distinct individuals in which they inhere, and so the
properties cannot account for the distinctness of the individuals.
accidie also acedia,
apathy, listlessness, or ennui. This condition is problematic for the
internalist thesis that, necessarily, any belief that one morally ought to do
something is conceptually sufficient for having motivation to do it. Grice
gives the example of Ann. Ann has long believed that she ought, morally, to
assist her ailing mother, and she has dutifully acted accordingly. Seemingly,
she may continue to believe this, even though, owing to a recent personal
tragedy, she now suffers from accidie and is wholly lacking in motivation to
assist her mother. acedia, Fr. acédie,
tristesse, Gr. “ἀϰήδεια,” “ἀϰηδία,” Lat. taedium v. malaise, melancholy,
spleen, dasein, desengano, oikeiosis, sorge, verguenza. Through the
intermediary of monastic Lat., “acedia,” “weariness, indifference” (Cassian, De
institutis coenobiorum, 10.2.3; RT: PL, vol. 49, cols. 363–69), the rich Greek
concept of “akêdeia,” a privative formed on “kêdos” [ϰῆδоς], “care,” and
bearing the twofold meaning of lacking care (negligence) and absence of care
(from lassitude or from serenity), established well in the language —a concept
that belongs simultaneously to the communal and the moral registers. The Greek
was originally associated with social rituals; in philosophical Latin from
Seneca on, it was related to the moral virtue of intimacy, but its contemporary
usage has returned it to a collective dimension. Gr. “akêdeia” is
simultaneously part of the register of the obligations owed to others and part
of the register of self-esteem: this breadth of meaning determines the later
variations. On the social level, the substantive kêdos, “care, concern,” is
specialized as early as Homer in two particular uses: mourning, the honors
rendered to the dead, and union, family relationship through marriage or
through alliance; “ϰήδεια” (adj. “ϰῆδεоς”) is the attention that must be paid
to the dead, as well as the concern and care for allies, characteristic of this
relationship of alliance, which is distinct from that of blood and also
contributes to philia [φιλία], to the well-being of the city-state (Aristotle,
Politics, 9.1280b 36; see love and polis); “ὁ ϰηδεμών” refers to all those who
protect, for example, tutelary gods (Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 3.3.21). Akêdês [ἀϰηδής]
qualifies in an active sense, in a positive way, someone who is exempt from
care and anxiety (Hesiod, Theogony, 5.489, apropos of the “invincible and
impassive” Zeus, but also, negatively, the serving woman or negligent man;
Homer, Odyssey, 17.319; Plato, Laws, 913c); in the passive sense, it designates
a person who is neglected (Odyssey, 20.130) or abandoned without burial (like
Hector, Iliad, 24.554). How can the lack of care, “akêdeia,” become a virtue of
the reflexive type? There is a twofold
sense of the term (transitive: care for others; reflexive: care for oneself).
The first movement toward the ethics of intimacy is determined by practical
philosophy’s reflection on the finitude of human life. The event represented by
death produces a sadness that seems to have no consolation. The moral reaction
to situations in which one finds oneself fearing such a finitude is presented
in an active and critical way in the ethics developed by Seneca in the
Consolations. Grace and purity can temper sadness (“Marcum blandissimum puerum,
ad cujus conspectum nulla potest durare tristitia” [Marcus, this boy, so
gentle, before whom no sadness can last]; De consolatione ad Helviam, 18.4).
But above all, it is the effort of reason and study that can overcome any
sadness (“liberalia studia: illa sanabunt vulnus tuum, illa omnem tristitiam
tibi evellent” [these studies will heal your wound, will free you from any
sadness]; De consolatione ad Helviam, 17.3). This view of internal control is
foundational for a style rooted in the culture of the South: the sober
acceptance of death, and more generally, of finitude. Acedia is conceived as
having a twofold psychological and theological meaning. First of all, it is a
passion of the animus and is therefore one of the four kinds of sadness, the
other three being pigritia, “laziness,” tristitia, “sadness” properly so
called, and taedium, “boredom.” In Christian monasticism of the fourth and
fifth centuries, especially in Cassian and the eastern desert fathers, acedia
is one of the seven or eight temptations with which the monks might have to struggle
at one time or another. Usually mentioned between sadness and vainglory in a
list that was to become that of the “seven deadly sins,” it is characterized by
a pronounced distaste for spiritual life and the eremitic ideal, a
discouragement and profound boredom that lead to a state of lethargy or to the
abandonment of monastic life. It was designated by the expression “noonday
demon,” which is supposed to come from verse 6 of Psalm 91. Thomas Aquinas
opposes acedia to the joy that is inherent in the virtue of charity and makes
it a specific sin, as a sadness with regard to spiritual goods (Summa
theologica, IIa, IIae, q. 35). Some place acedia among the seven deadly sins.
If it is equivalent to the more widespread terms “taedium” and “pigritia”, that
is because it is the result of an excess of dispersion or idle chatter, and of
the sadness and indifference (incuria) produced by the difficulty of obtaining
spiritual goods. Thus “desolation” is supposed also to be a term related to
acedia, and is often employed in spiritual and mystical literature——and it
subsists in the vocabulary of moral sentiments. The secular sense that the word
has acquired can make “acedia” the result of a situation of crisis and social
conflict. Acedia (derivedfrom the adjective “acedo,” from Lat. “acidus,” “acid,”
bitter) may be connected with the deprivation and need to which the poor are
subject. It involves the naturalization or loss of aura discussed by Walter
Benjamin, who draws on Baudelaire’s notion of “spleen” and on the phenomenology
of the consciousness of loss or collective distress that follows the great
upheavals of modernization (Das Passagen-Werk).Refs.: Benjamin, Walter. Das
Passagen-Werk. Vol. 5 of Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by R. Tiedemann.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982. Translation by H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin: The
Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Meltzer,
Françoise. “Acedia and Melancholia.” In Walter Benjamin and the Demands of
History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Achillini: essential
Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice ed Achillini," per
Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria,
Italia.
ackrillism: after J. L.
Ackrill, London-born, Oxford-educated tutee of Grice’s. Grice cites him in
“Some reflections on ends and happiness.” The reference is to Ackrill’s
exploration on Aristotle on happiness. Ackrill was Grice’s tutee at St. John’s
where he read, as he should, for the Lit. Hum. (Phil.). Grice instilled on him
a love for Aristotle, which had been instilled on Grice by Scots philosopher
Hardie, Grice’s tutee at THE place to study Lit. Hum., Corpus. Grice regretted
that Ackrill had to *translate* Aristotle. “Of course at Clifton and Corpus,
Hardie never asked me so!” Grice thought that Aristotle was almost being
‘murdered,’ literally, by Ackrill. That’s why Grice would always quote
Aristotle in the Grecian vernacular. An “ackrillism,” then, as Grice used it,
is a way to turn Aristotle from one vernacular to another, “usually with an
Ackrillian effect.” Griceians usually pay respect to Ackrill’s grave, which
reads, in a pretty Griceian way, “Aristotelian.” Grice commented: “A man of
words, and not of deeds…”
aconzio: essential
Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice ed Aconzio," per
Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria,
Italia.
Acri: essential Italian
philosopher. Resf.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice ed Acri," per Il Club
Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
actum: or ACTVM, as Grice
would spell it. Grice’s theory is
action-oriented. He often used ‘pragmatic’ to that effect. This is most evident
in his account of meaning. In the phrastic, “The door is closed, please,” the
ultimate intention is that the recipient performs the action of closing the
door. Grice saw action theory as the study of the ontological structure of
human action, the process by which it originates, and the ways in which it is
explained. Most human actions are acts of commission: they constitute a class
of events in which a subject the agent brings about some change or changes.
Thus, in moving one’s finger, one brings it about that one’s finger moves. When
the change brought about is an ongoing process e.g., the continuing appearance
of words on a , the behavior is called an activity writing. An action of
omission occurs when an agent refrains from performing an action of commission.
Since actions of commission are events, the question of their ontology is in
part a matter of the general ontology of change. An important issue here is
whether what occurs when an action is performed should be viewed as abstract or
concrete. On the first approach, actions are understood either as
proposition-like entities e.g., Booth’s moving a finger, or as a species of
universal namely, an act-type moving a
finger. What “occurred” when Booth moved his finger in Ford’sTheater on April
14, 1865, is held to be the abstract entity in question, and the entity is
viewed as repeatable: that is, precisely the same entity is held to have
occurred on every other occasion of Booth’s moving his finger. When actions are
viewed as concrete, on the other hand, Booth’s moving his finger in Ford’s
Theater is understood to be a non-repeatable particular, accidental property
action theory 6 4065A- 6 and the
movement of the finger counts as an acttoken, which instantiates the
corresponding acttype. Concrete actions are time-bound: each belongs to a
single behavioral episode, and other instantiations of the same act-type count
as distinct events. A second important ontological issue concerns the fact that
by moving his finger, Booth also fired a gun, and killed Lincoln. It is common
for more than one thing to be accomplished in a single exercise of agency, and
how such doings are related is a matter of debate. If actions are understood as
abstract entities, the answer is essentially foregone: there must be as many
different actions on Booth’s part as there are types exemplified. But if
actions are viewed as particulars the same token can count as an instance of
more than one type, and identity claims become possible. Here there is
disagreement. Fine-grained theories of act individuation tend to confine
identity claims to actions that differ only in ways describable through
different modifications of the same main verb
e.g., where Placido both sings and sings loudly. Otherwise, different
types are held to require different tokens: Booth’s action of moving his finger
is held to have generated or given rise to distinct actions of firing the gun
and killing Lincoln, by virtue of having had as causal consequences the gun’s
discharge and Lincoln’s death. The opposite, coarse-grained theory, however,
views these causal relations as grounds for claiming Booth’s acts were
precisely identical. On this view, for Booth to kill Lincoln was simply for him
to do something that caused Lincoln’s death
which was in fact nothing more than to move his finger and similarly for his firing the gun. There
is also a compromise account, on which Booth’s actions are related as part to
whole, each consisting in a longer segment of the causal chain that terminates
with Lincoln’s death. The action of killing Lincoln consisted, on this view, in
the entire sequence; but that of firing the gun terminated with the gun’s
discharge, and that of moving the finger with the finger’s motion. When, as in
Booth’s case, more than one thing is accomplished in a single exercise of
agency, some are done by doing others. But if all actions were performed by
performing others, an infinite regress would result. There must, then, be a
class of basic actions i.e., actions
fundamental to the performance of all others, but not themselves done by doing
something else. There is disagreement, however, on which actions are basic.
Some theories treat bodily movements, such as Booth’s moving his finger, as
basic. Others point out that it is possible to engage in action but to
accomplish less than a bodily movement, as when one tries to move a limb that
is restrained or paralyzed, and fails. According to these accounts, bodily
actions arise out of a still more basic mental activity, usually called
volition or willing, which is held to constitute the standard means for
performing all overt actions. The question of how bodily actions originate is closely
associated with that of what distinguishes them from involuntary and reflex
bodily events, as well as from events in the inanimate world. There is general
agreement that the crucial difference concerns the mental states that attend
action, and in particular the fact that voluntary actions typically arise out
of states of intending on the part of the agent. But the nature of the relation
is difficult, and there is the complicating factor that intention is sometimes
held to reduce to other mental states, such as the agent’s desires and beliefs.
That issue aside, it would appear that unintentional actions arise out of more
basic actions that are intentional, as when one unintentionally breaks a
shoelace by intentionally tugging on it. But how intention is first tr. into
action is much more problematic, especially when bodily movements are viewed as
basic actions. One cannot, e.g., count Booth’s moving his finger as an
intentional action simply because he intended to do so, or even on the ground
if it is true that his intention caused his finger to move. The latter might
have occurred through a strictly autonomic response had Booth been nervous
enough, and then the moving of the finger would not have counted as an action
at all, much less as intentional. Avoiding such “wayward causal chains”
requires accounting for the agent’s voluntary control over what occurs in
genuinely intentional action a difficult
task when bodily actions are held to be basic. Volitional accounts have greater
success here, since they can hold that movements are intentional only when the
agent’s intention is executed through volitional activity. But they must
sidestep another threatened regress: if we call for an activity of willing to
explain why Booth’s moving his finger counts as intentional action, we cannot
do the same for willing itself. Yet on most accounts volition does have the
characteristics of intentional behavior. Volitional theories of action must,
then, provide an alternative account of how mental activity can be intentional.
Actions are explained by invoking the agent’s reasons for performing them.
Characteristically, a reason may be understood to consist in a positive
attitude of the agent toward one or another action theory action theory 7
4065A- 7 outcome, and a belief to the
effect that the outcome may be achieved by performing the action in question.
Thus Emily might spend the summer in France out of a desire to learn , and a
belief that spending time in France is the best way to do so. Disputed
questions about reasons include how confident the agent must be that the action
selected will in fact lead to the envisioned outcome, and whether obligation
represents a source of motivation that can operate independently of the agent’s
desires. Frequently, more than one course of action is available to an agent.
Deliberation is the process of searching out and weighing the reasons for and
against such alternatives. When successfully concluded, deliberation usually
issues in a decision, by which an intention to undertake one of the
contemplated actions is formed. The intention is then carried out when the time
for action comes. Much debate has centered on the question of how reasons are
related to decisions and actions. As with intention, an agent’s simply having a
reason is not enough for the reason to explain her behavior: her desire to
learn notwithstanding, Emily might have
gone to France simply because she was transferred there. Only when an agent
does something for a reason does the reason explain what is done. It is frequently
claimed that this bespeaks a causal relation between the agent’s strongest
reason and her decision or action. This, however, suggests a determinist stance
on the free will problem, leading some philosophers to balk. An alternative is
to treat reason explanations as teleological explanations, wherein an action is
held to be reasonable or justified in virtue of the goals toward which it was
directed. But positions that treat reason explanations as non-causal require an
alternative account of what it is to decide or act for one reason rather than
another. Grice would often wonder about
the pervasiveness of the intentiona idiom in the description of action. He
would use the phrase ‘action verb,’ i. e. a verb applied to an agent and
describing an activity, an action, or an attempt at or a culmination of an
action. Verbs applying to agents may be distinguished in two basic ways: by
whether they can take the progressive continuous form and by whether or not
there is a specific moment of occurrence/completion of the action named by the
verb. An activity verb is one describing something that goes on for a time but
with no inherent endpoint, such as ‘drive’, ‘laugh’, or ‘meditate’. One can
stop doing such a thing but one cannot complete doing it. Indeed, one can be
said to have done it as soon as one has begun doing it. An accomplishment verb
is one describing something that goes on for a time toward an inherent
endpoint, such as ‘paint’ a fence, ‘solve’ a problem, or ‘climb’ a mountain.
Such a thing takes a certain time to do, and one cannot be said to have done it
until it has been completed. An achievement verb is one describing either the
culmination of an activity, such as ‘finish’ a job or ‘reach’ a goal; the
effecting of a change, such as ‘fire’ an employee or ‘drop’ an egg; or
undergoing a change, such as ‘hear’ an explosion or ‘forget’ a name. An
achievement does not go on for a period of time but may be the culmination of
something that does. Ryle singled out achievement verbs and state verbs see
below partly in order to disabuse philosophers of the idea that what
psychological verbs name must invariably be inner acts or activities modeled on
bodily actions or activities. A task verb is an activity verb that implies
attempting to do something named by an achievement verb. For example, to seek
is to attempt to find, to sniff is to attempt to smell, and to treat is to
attempt to cure. A state verb is a verb not an action verb describing a
condition, disposition, or habit rather than something that goes on or takes
place. Examples include ‘own’, ‘weigh’, ‘want’, ‘hate’, ‘frequent’, and
‘teetotal’. These differences were articulated by Zeno Vendler in Linguistics
and Philosophy 7. Taking them into account, linguists have classified verbs and
verb phrases into four main aspectual classes, which they distinguish in
respect to the availability and interpretation of the simple present tense, of
the perfect tenses, of the progressive construction, and of various temporal
adverbials, such as adverbs like ‘yesterday’, ‘finally’, and ‘often’, and
prepositional phrases like ‘for a long time’ and ‘in a while’. Many verbs
belong to more than one category by virtue of having several related uses. For
example, ‘run’ is both an activity and an accomplishment verb, and ‘weigh’ is both
a state and an accomplishment verb. Linguists single out a class of causative
verbs, such as ‘force’, ‘inspire’, and ‘persuade’, some of which are
achievement and some accomplishment verbs. Such causative verbs as ‘break’,
‘burn’, and ‘improve’ have a correlative intransitive use, so that, e.g., to
break something is to cause it to break. Grice denies the idea of an ‘act’ of
the soul. In this way, it is interesting to contrast his views to those
philosophers, even at Oxford, like Occam or Geach, who speak of an act of the
soul. And then there’s act-content-object psychology, or ‘act-object
psychology,’ for short, a philosophical theory that identifies in every
psychological state a mental act, a lived-through phenomenological content,
such as a mental image or description of properties, and an intended object
that the mental act is about or toward which it is directed by virtue of its
content. The distinction between the act, content, and object of thought
originated with Alois Höfler’s Logik 0, written in collaboration with Meinong.
But the theory is historically most often associated with its development in
Kazimierz Twardowski’s Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellung “On
the Content and Object of Presentations,” 4, despite Twardowski’s acknowledgment
of his debt to Höfler. Act-object psychology arose as a reaction to Franz
Brentano’s immanent intentionality thesis in his influential Psychologie vom
empirischen Standpunkt “Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,” 1874, in
which Brentano maintains that intentionality is “the mark of the mental,” by
contrast with purely physical phenomena. Brentano requires that intended
objects belong immanently to the mental acts that intend them a philosophical commitment that laid Brentano
open to charges of epistemological idealism and psychologism. Yet Brentano’s
followers, who accepted the intentionality of thought but resisted what they
came to see as its detachable idealism and psychologism, responded by
distinguishing the act-immanent phenomenological content of a psychological
state from its act-transcendent intended object, arguing that Brentano had
wrongly and unnecessarily conflated mental content with the external objects of
thought. Twardowski goes so far as to claim that content and object can never
be identical, an exclusion in turn that is vigorously challenged by Husserl in
his Logische Untersuchungen “Logical Investigations,” 3, 2, and by others in
the phenomenological tradition who acknowledge the possibility that a
self-reflexive thought can sometimes be about its own content as intended
object, in which content and object are indistinguishable. Act-object
psychology continues to be of interest to contemporary philosophy because of
its relation to ongoing projects in phenomenology, and as a result of a
resurgence of study of the concept of intentionality and qualia in philosophy
of mind, cognitive psychology, and Gegenstandstheorie, or existent and
non-existent intended object theory, in philosophical logic and semantics. Grice was fascinated by the metaphysically
wrong theory of agent-causation. He would make fun of it. His example, “The
cause of the death of Charles I is decapitation; therefore, decapitation willed
the death of Charles I. Grice would refer to transeunt causation in “Actions
and events.” In Grice’s terms, agent causation is the convoluted idea that the
primary cause of an event is a substance; more specifically, causation by a
substance, as opposed to an event. Thus a brick a substance may be said to be
the cause of the breaking of the glass. The expression is also used more
narrowly by Reid and others for the view that an action or event is caused by
an exertion of power by some agent endowed with will and understanding. Thus, a
person may be said to be the cause of her action of opening the door. In this
restricted sense Reid called it “the strict and proper sense”, an agent-cause
must have the power to cause the action or event and the power not to cause it.
Moreover, it must be “up to” the agent whether to cause the event or not to
cause it. It is not “up to” the brick whether to cause or not to cause the
breaking of the glass. The restricted sense of agent causation developed by
Reid is closely tied to the view that the agent possesses free will. Medieval
philosophers distinguished the internal activity of the agent from the external
event produced by that activity. The former was called “immanent causation” and
the latter “transeunt causation.” These terms have been adapted by Chisholm and
others to mark the difference between agent causation and event causation. The
idea is that the internal activity is agentcaused by the person whose activity
it is; whereas the external event is event-caused by the internal activity of
the agent. His “Death of Charles I”
example is meant as a reductio ad sbsurdum of ‘agent causation.’ The
philosopher cannot possibly be meaning to communicate such absurdity. The
‘actus’ is less obviously related to the actum, but it should. When Grice says,
“What is actual is not also possible” as a mistake – he is not thinking of
HUMAN rational agency – but some kind of agency, though. It may be thought that
‘actum’ is still phrased after a ‘that’-clause, even if what is reported is
something that is actual, e. g. It is actually raining (versus It is possibly
raining in Cambridge). – potentia -- energeia, Grecian term coined by Aristotle
and often tr. as ‘activity’, ‘actuality’, and even ‘act’, but more literally
rendered ‘a state of functioning’. Since for Aristotle the function of an
object is its telos or aim, energeia can also be described as an entelecheia or
realization another coined term he uses interchangeably with energeia. So
understood, it can denote either a something’s being functional, though not in
use at the moment, and b something’s actually functioning, which Aristotle
describes as a “first realization” and “second realization” respectively On the
Soul II.5. In general, every energeia is correlative to some dunamis, a
capability or power to function in a certain way, and in the central books of
the Metaphysics Aristotle uses the linkage between these two concepts to
explain the relation of form to matter. He also distinguishes between energeia
and kinesis change or motion Metaphysics IX.6; Nicomachean Ethics X.4. A
kinesis is defined by reference to its terminus e.g., learning how to multiply
and is thus incomplete at any point before reaching its conclusion. An
energeia, in contrast, is a state complete in itself e.g., seeing. Thus,
Aristotle says that at any time that I am seeing, it is also true that I have
seen; but it is not true that at any time I am learning that I have learned. In
Grecian, this difference is not so much one of tense as of encrateia energeia
264 264 aspect: the perfect tense marks
a “perfect” or complete state, and not necessarily prior activity. energeticism, also called energetism or
energism, the doctrine that energy is the fundamental substance underlying all
change. Its most prominent champion was the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. In
his address “Die Überwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialismus” “The
Conquest of Scientific Materialism”, delivered at Lübeck in 5, Ostwald
chastised the atomic-kinetic theory as lacking progress and claimed that a
unified science, energetics, could be based solely on the concept of energy.
Many of Ostwald’s criticisms of materialism and mechanistic reductionism
derived from Mach. Ostwald’s attempts to deduce the fundamental equations of
thermodynamics and mechanics from the principles of energy conservation and
transformation were indebted to the writings of Georg Helm 18749, especially
Die Lehre von Energie “The Laws of Energy,” 7 and Die Energetik “Energetics,”
8. Ostwald defended Helm’s factorization thesis that all changes in energy can
be analyzed as a product of intensity and capacity factors. The factorization
thesis and the attempt to derive mechanics and thermodynamics from the
principles of energetics were subjected to devastating criticisms by Boltzmann
and Max Planck. Boltzmann also criticized the dogmatism of Ostwald’s rejection
of the atomickinetic theory. Ostwald’s program to unify the sciences under the
banner of energetics withered in the
face of these criticisms.” actum: -- behaviourism. Grice
was amused that what Ryle thought was behaviouristic was already pervaded wiith
mentalistic talk! Referred to by H. P. Grice in his criticism of Gilbert Ryle.
Ironically, Chomsky misjudged Grice as a behaviourist, but Chomsky’s critique
was demolished by P. Suppes, broadly, the view that behavior is fundamental in
understanding mental phenomena. The term applies both to a scientific research
Beauvoir, Simone de behaviorism 76 76
program in psychology and to a philosophical doctrine. Accordingly, we
distinguish between scientific psychological, methodological behaviorism and
philosophical logical, analytical behaviorism. Scientific behaviorism. First
propounded by the psychologist J. B.
Watson who introduced the term in 3 and further developed especially by C. L.
Hull, E. C. Tolman, and B. F. Skinner, it departed from the introspectionist
tradition by redefining the proper task of psychology as the explanation and
prediction of behavior where to explain
behavior is to provide a “functional analysis” of it, i.e., to specify the
independent variables stimuli of which the behavior response is lawfully a
function. It insisted that all variables
including behavior as the dependent variable must be specifiable by the experimental
procedures of the natural sciences: merely introspectible, internal states of
consciousness are thus excluded from the proper domain of psychology. Although
some behaviorists were prepared to admit internal neurophysiological conditions
among the variables “intervening variables”, others of more radical bent e.g.
Skinner insisted on environmental variables alone, arguing that any relevant
variations in the hypothetical inner states would themselves in general be a
function of variations in past and present environmental conditions as, e.g.,
thirst is a function of water deprivation. Although some basic responses are
inherited reflexes, most are learned and integrated into complex patterns by a
process of conditioning. In classical respondent conditioning, a response
already under the control of a given stimulus will be elicited by new stimuli
if these are repeatedly paired with the old stimulus: this is how we learn to
respond to new situations. In operant conditioning, a response that has
repeatedly been followed by a reinforcing stimulus reward will occur with
greater frequency and will thus be “selected” over other possible responses:
this is how we learn new responses. Conditioned responses can also be unlearned
or “extinguished” by prolonged dissociation from the old eliciting stimuli or
by repeated withholding of the reinforcing stimuli. To show how all human
behavior, including “cognitive” or intelligent behavior, can be “shaped” by
such processes of selective reinforcement and extinction of responses was the
ultimate objective of scientific behaviorism. Grave difficulties in the way of
the realization of this objective led to increasingly radical liberalization of
the distinctive features of behaviorist methodology and eventually to its
displacement by more cognitively oriented approaches e.g. those inspired by
information theory and by Chomsky’s work in linguistics. Philosophical
behaviorism. A semantic thesis about the meaning of mentalistic expressions, it
received its most sanguine formulation by the logical positivists particularly
Carnap, Hempel, and Ayer, who asserted that statements containing mentalistic
expressions have the same meaning as, and are thus translatable into, some set
of publicly verifiable confirmable, testable statements describing behavioral
and bodily processes and dispositions including verbalbehavioral dispositions.
Because of the reductivist concerns expressed by the logical positivist thesis
of physicalism and the unity of science, logical behaviorism as some
positivists preferred to call it was a corollary of the thesis that psychology
is ultimately via a behavioristic analysis reducible to physics, and that all
of its statements, like those of physics, are expressible in a strictly
extensional language. Another influential formulation of philosophical
behaviorism is due to Ryle The Concept of Mind, 9, whose classic critique of
Cartesian dualism rests on the view that mental predicates are often used to
ascribe dispositions to behave in characteristic ways: but such ascriptions,
for Ryle, have the form of conditional, lawlike statements whose function is
not to report the occurrence of inner states, physical or non-physical, of
which behavior is the causal manifestation, but to license inferences about how
the agent would behave if certain conditions obtained. To suppose that all
declarative uses of mental language have a fact-stating or -reporting role at
all is, for Ryle, to make a series of “category mistakes” of which both Descartes and the logical
positivists were equally guilty. Unlike the behaviorism of the positivists,
Ryle’s behaviorism required no physicalistic reduction of mental language, and
relied instead on ordinary language descriptions of human behavior. A further
version of philosophical behaviorism can be traced to Vitters Philosophical
Investigations, 3, who argues that the epistemic criteria for the applicability
of mentalistic terms cannot be private, introspectively accessible inner states
but must instead be intersubjectively observable behavior. Unlike the
previously mentioned versions of philosophical behaviorism, Vitters’s
behaviorism seems to be consistent with metaphysical mindbody dualism, and is
thus also non-reductivist. behaviorism behaviorism 77 77 Philosophical behaviorism underwent
severe criticism in the 0s and 0s, especially by Chisholm, Charles Taylor,
Putnam, and Fodor. Nonetheless it still lives on in more or less attenuated
forms in the work of such diverse philosophers as Quine, Dennett, Armstrong,
David Lewis, U. T. Place, and Dummett. Though current “functionalism” is often
referred to as the natural heir to behaviorism, functionalism especially of the
Armstrong-Lewis variety crucially differs from behaviorism in insisting that
mental predicates, while definable in terms of behavior and behavioral
dispositions, nonetheless designate inner causal states states that are apt to cause certain
characteristic behaviors. -- behavior
therapy, a spectrum of behavior modification techniques applied as therapy,
such as aversion therapy, extinction, modeling, redintegration, operant
conditioning, and desensitization. Unlike psychotherapy, which probes a
client’s recollected history, behavior therapy focuses on immediate behavior,
and aims to eliminate undesired behavior and produce desired behavior through
methods derived from the experimental analysis of behavior and from
reinforcement theory. A chronic problem with psychotherapy is that the client’s
past is filtered through limited and biased recollection. Behavior therapy is
more mechanical, creating systems of reinforcement and conditioning that may
work independently of the client’s long-term memory. Collectively,
behavior-therapeutic techniques compose a motley set. Some behavior therapists
adapt techniques from psychotherapy, as in covert desensitization, where
verbally induced mental images are employed as reinforcers. A persistent
problem with behavior therapy is that it may require repeated application.
Consider aversion therapy. It consists of pairing painful or punishing stimuli
with unwelcome behavior. In the absence, after therapy, of the painful
stimulus, the behavior may recur because association between behavior and
punishment is broken. Critics charge that behavior therapy deals with immediate
disturbances and overt behavior, to the neglect of underlying problems and
irrationalities. Behaviourism. Chomsky,
a. n. – cites H. P. Grice as “A. P. Grice” -- preeminent philosopher, and political activist who has
spent his professional career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chomsky’s best-known scientific achievement is the establishment of a rigorous
and philosophically compelling foundation for the scientific study of the
grammar of natural language. With the use of tools from the study of formal
languages, he gave a far more precise and explanatory account of natural
language grammar than had previously been given Syntactic Structures, 7. He has
since developed a number of highly influential frameworks for the study of
natural language grammar e.g., Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 5; Lectures on
Government and Binding, 1; The Minimalist Program, 5. Though there are significant
differences in detail, there are also common themes that underlie these
approaches. Perhaps the most central is that there is an innate set of
linguistic principles shared by all humans, and the purpose of linguistic
inquiry is to describe the initial state of the language learner, and account
for linguistic variation via the most general possible mechanisms. On Chomsky’s
conception of linguistics, languages are structures in the brains of individual
speakers, described at a certain level of abstraction within the theory. These
structures occur within the language faculty, a hypothesized module of the
human brain. Universal Grammar is the set of principles hard-wired into the
language faculty that determine the class of possible human languages. This conception
of linguistics involves several influential and controversial theses. First,
the hypothesis of a Universal Grammar entails the existence of innate
linguistic principles. Secondly, the hypothesis of a language faculty entails
that our linguistic abilities, at least so far as grammar is concerned, are not
a product of general reasoning processes. Finally, and perhaps most
controversially, since having one of these structures is an intrinsic property
of a speaker, properties of languages so conceived are determined solely by
states of the speaker. On this individualistic conception of language, there is
no room in scientific linguistics for the social entities determined by
linguistic communities that are languages according to previous anthropological
conceptions of the discipline. Many of Chomsky’s most significant contributions
to philosophy, such as his influential rejection of behaviorism “Review of
Skinner’s Verbal Behavior,” Language, 9, stem from his elaborations and
defenses of the above consequences cf. also Cartesian Linguistics, 6;
Reflections on Language, 5; Rules and Representations, 0; Knowledge of
Language, 6. Chomsky’s philosophical writings are characterized by an adherence
to methodological naturalism, the view that the mind should be studied like any
other natural phenomenon. In recent years, he has also argued that reference,
in the sense in which it is used in the philosophy of language, plays no role
in a scientific theory of language “Language and Nature,” Mind, 5.
additum: or, ADDITVM, as
Grice would spell it -- f. addo ,
dĭdi, dĭtum, 3, v. a. 2. do (addues for addideris, Paul. ex Fest. p. 27 Müll.),addition.
Strawson Wiggins p. 520. The utterer implies something more or different from
what he explicitly conveys. Cfr. Disimplicaturum, ‘less’ under ‘different from’
How seriously are we taking the ‘more.’ Not used by Grice. They seem
cross-categorial. If emissor draws a skull and then a cross he means that there
is danger and death in the offing. He crosses the cross, so it means death is
avoidable. Urmson says that Warnock went to bed and took off his boots. He
implicates in that order. So he means MORE than the ‘ampersand.” The “and” is
expanded into “and then.” But in not every case things are so easy that it’s a
matter of adding stuff. Cf. summatum, conjunctum. And then there’s the
‘additive implicaturum.’ By uttering
‘and,’ Russell means the Boolean adition. Whitehead means ‘and then’.
Whithead’s implicaturum is ADDITIVE, as opposed to diaphoron. Grice considers
the conceptual possibilities here: One may explicitly convey that p, and
implicitly convey q, where q ADDS to p (e. g. ‘and’ implicates ‘and then’).
Sometimes it does not, “He is a fine fine,” (or a ‘nice fellow,’ Lecture IV)
implying, “He is a scoundrel.” Sometimes it has nothing to do with it, “The
weather has been nice” implying, “you committed a gaffe.” With disimplicaturum,
you implicate LESS than you explicitly convey. When did you last see your
father? “Yesterday night, in my drams.” Grice sums this up with the phrase,
“more or other.” By explicitly conveying that p, the emissor implicates MORE OR
OTHER than he explicitly conveys.
adornoian implicaturum. Grice enjoyed
Adorno’s explorations on the natural/non-natural distinction; adorno, t. w. a
philosopher of the first generation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory.
With Horkheimer, Adorno gave philosophical direction to the Frankfurt School
and its research projects in its Institute for Social Research. An accomplished
musician and composer, Adorno first focused on the theory of culture and art, working
to develop a non-reductionist but materialist theory of art and music in many
essays. Under the influence of Walter Benjamin, he turned toward developing a
“micrological” account of cultural artifacts, viewing them as “constellations”
of social and historical forces. As his collaboration with Horkheimer
increased, Adorno turned to the problem of a self-defeating dialectic of modern
reason and freedom. Under the influence of the seemingly imminent victory of
the Nazis in Europe, this analysis focused on the “entwinement of myth and
Enlightenment.” The Dialectic of Enlightenment argues that instrumental reason
promises the subject autonomy from the forces of nature only to enslave it
again by its own repression of its impulses and inclinations. The only way
around this self-domination is “non-identity thinking,” found in the unifying
tendencies of a non-repressive reason. This self-defeating dialectic is
represented by the striking image of Ulysses tied to the mast to survive his
encounter with the Sirens. Adorno initially hoped for a positive analysis of
the Enlightenment to overcome this genealogy of modern reason, but it is never
developed. Instead, he turned to an increasingly pessimistic analysis of the
growing reification of modern life and of the possibility of a “totally
administered society.” Adorno held that “autonomous art” can open up
established reality and negate the experience of reification. Aesthetic Theory develops
this idea of autonomous art in terms of aesthetic form, or the capacity of the
internal organization of art to restructure existing patterns of meaning.
Authentic works of art have a “truth-value” in their capacity to bring to
awareness social contradictions and antinomies. In Negative Dialectics 6 Adorno
provides a more general account of social criticism under the “fragmenting”
conditions of modern rationalization and domination. These and other writings
have had a large impact on cultural criticism, particularly through Adorno’s
analysis of popular culture and the “culture industry.”
adparitum: or ADPARTIVUM, as
Grice would spell it -- apparitio –
Latin for ‘appear’ – ADPARITUM -- theory of appearing, the theory that to
perceive an object is simply for that object to appear present itself to one as
being a certain way, e.g., looking round or like a rock, smelling vinegary,
sounding raucous, or tasting bitter. Nearly everyone would accept this
formulation on some interpretation. But the theory takes this to be a
rock-bottom characterization of perception, and not further analyzable. It
takes “appearing to subject S as so-and-so” as a basic, irreducible relation,
one readily identifiable in experience but not subject to definition in other
terms. The theory preserves the idea that in normal perception we are directly
aware of objects in the physical environment, not aware of them through
non-physical sense-data, sensory impressions, or other intermediaries. When a
tree looks to me a certain way, it is the tree and nothing else of which I am
directly aware. That involves “having” a sensory experience, but that
experience just consists of the tree’s looking a certain way to me. After
enjoying a certain currency early in this century the theory was largely
abandoned under the impact of criticisms by Price, Broad, and Chisholm. The most
widely advertised difficulty theoretical underdetermination is this. What is it
that appears to the subject in completely hallucinatory experience? Perhaps the
greatest strength of the theory is its fidelity to what perceptual experience
seems to be. ap-pārĕo (adp- , Ritschl, Fleck., B. and K.; app- , Lachm., Merk.,
Weissenb., Halm, Rib.), ui, itum, 2, v. n.,
I.to come in sight, to appear, become visible, make one's appearance
(class. in prose and poetry). I. A.. Lit.: “ego adparebo domi,” Plaut. Capt. 2,
3, 97: “ille bonus vir nusquam adparet,” Ter. Eun. 4, 3, 18; Lucr. 3, 25; so
id. 3, 989: “rem contra speculum ponas, apparet imago,” id. 4, 157: unde tandem
adpares, Cic. Fragm. ap. Prisc. p. 706 P.; id. Fl. 12 fin.: “equus mecum una
demersus rursus adparuit,” id. Div. 2, 68; so id. Sull. 2, 5: “cum lux
appareret (Dinter, adpeteret),” Caes. B. G. 7, 82: “de sulcis acies apparuit
hastae,” Ov. M. 3, 107: “apparent rari nantes,” Verg. A. 1, 118, Hor. C. S. 59
al.—With dat.: “anguis ille, qui Sullae adparuit immolanti,” Cic. Div. 2, 30
fin.; id. Clu. 53: “Quís numquam candente dies adparuit ortu,” Tib. 4, 1,
65.—Once in Varro with ad: quod adparet ad agricolas, R. R. 1, 40.— B. In gen.,
to be seen, to show one's self, be in public, appear: “pro pretio facio, ut
opera adpareat Mea,” Plaut. Ps. 3, 2, 60: “fac sis nunc promissa adpareant,”
Ter. Eun. 2, 3, 20; cf. id. Ad. 5, 9, 7: “illud apparere unum,” that this only
is apparent, Lucr. 1, 877; Cato, R. R. 2, 2: “ubi merces apparet? i. e. illud
quod pro tantā mercede didiceris,” Cic. Phil. 2, 34: “quo studiosius opprimitur
et absconditur, eo magis eminet et apparet,” id. Rosc. Am. 41 fin.: “Galbae orationes
evanuerunt, vix jam ut appareant,” id. Brut. 21, 82: “apparet adhuc vetus mde
cicatrix,” Ov. M. 12, 444; 2, 734: “rebus angustis animosus atque fortis
appare,” Hor. C. 2, 10, 22: “cum lamentamur, non apparere labores Nostros,” are
not noticed, considered, id. Ep. 2, 1, 224, so id. ib. 2, 1, 250 al.; Plaut.
Men. 2, 1, 14; cf. id. Am. 2, 2, 161 and 162.—Hence, apparens (opp. latens),
visible, evident: “tympana non apparentia Obstrepuere,” Ov. M. 4, 391:
“apparentia vitia curanda sunt,” Quint. 12, 8, 10; so id. 9, 2, 46.— II. Trop.:
res apparet, and far more freq. impers. apparet with acc. and inf. or
rel.-clause, the thing (or it) is evident, clear, manifest, certain, δῆλόν ἐστι,
φαίνεται (objective certainty, while videtur. δοκεῖ, designates subjective belief,
Web. Uebungssch. 258): “ratio adparet,” Plaut. Trin. 2, 4, 17: “res adparet,
Ter Ad. 5, 9, 7: apparet id etiam caeco, Liv 32, 34. cui non id apparere, id
actum esse. etc.,” id. 22, 34; 2, 31 fin.: “ex quo adparet antiquior origo,”
Plin. 36, 26, 67, § 197 al.: “adparet servom nunc esse domini pauperis,” Ter.
Eun. 3, 2, 33: “non dissimulat, apparet esse commotum,” Cic. Phil. 2, 34:
apparet atque exstat, utrum simus earum (artium) rudes, id. de Or. 1, 16, 72:
“quid rectum sit, adparet,” id. Fam. 5, 19; 4, 7: “sive confictum est, ut
apparet, sive, etc.,” id. Fl. 16 fin.; Nep. Att. 4, 1; Liv. 42, 43: “quo
adparet antiquiorem hanc fuisse scientiam,” Plin. 35, 12, 44, § 153 al.—Also
with dat. pers.: “quas impendere jam apparebat omnibus,” Nep. Eum. 10, 3; and,
by attraction, with nom. and inf., as in Gr. δῆλός ἐστι, Varr. R. R. 1, 6, 2:
“membra nobis ita data sunt, ut ad quandam rationem vivendi data esse
adpareant,” Cic. Fin. 3, 7, 23, ubi v. Otto: “apparet ita degenerāsse Nero,”
Suet. Ner. 1; or without the inf., with an adj. as predicate: “apparebat atrox
cum plebe certamen (sc. fore, imminere, etc.),” Liv. 2, 28; Suet. Rhet. 1.—
III. To appear as servant or aid (a lictor, scribe, etc.), to attend, wait
upon, serve; cf. apparitor (rare): “sacerdotes diis adparento,” Cic. Leg. 2, 8,
21: “cum septem annos Philippo apparuisset,” Nep. Eum. 13, 1: “cum appareret
aedilibus,” Liv. 9, 46 Drak.: “lictores apparent consulibus,” id. 2, 55:
“collegis accensi,” id. 3, 33: tibi appareo atque aeditumor in templo tuo, Pompon.
ap. Gell. 12, 10: “Jovis ad solium Apparent,” Verg. A. 12, 850 (= praestant ad
obsequium, Serv.). Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Bradley and the misuses of
‘appearance.’”
ælfric: important English philosopher,
like Grice.
æqui-pollens: -- from
‘aequipollentia,’ a term used by Grice, après Sextus Empiricus, to express the
view that there are arguments of equal strength on all sides of any question
and that therefore we should suspend judgment on every question that can be
raised.
æqui-probabile: a neuter – as
used by Grice, having the same probability. Sometimes used in the same way as
‘equipossible’, the term is associated with Laplace’s the “classical”
interpretation of probability, where the probability of an event is the ratio
of the number of equipossibilities favorable to the event to the total number of
equipossibilities. For example, the probability of rolling an even number with
a “fair” six-sided die is ½ there being
three equipossibilities 2, 4, 6 favorable to even, and six equipossibilities 1,
2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in all and 3 /6 % ½. The concept is now generally thought not to
be widely applicable to the interpretation of probability, since natural
equipossibilities are not always at hand as in assessing the probability of a
thermonuclear war tomorrow.
æqui-valens: -- from
aequi-valentia – i. ee. mutual inferability. The following are main kinds: two
statements are materially equivalent provided they have the same truthvalue,
and logically equivalent provided each can be deduced from the other; two
sentences or words are equivalent in meaning provided they can be substituted
for each other in any context without altering the meaning of that context. In
truth-functional logic, two statements are logically equivalent if they can
never have truthvalues different from each other. In this sense of ‘logically equivalent’
all tautologies are equivalent to each other and all contradictions are
equivalent to each other. Similarly, in extensional set theory, two classes are
equivalent provided they have the same numbers, so that all empty classes are
regarded as equivalent. In a non-extensional set theory, classes would be
equivalent only if their conditions of membership were logically equivalent or
equivalent in meaning.
æqui-vocalis: A neuter form -- Grice preferred Cicero’s rendition
of ‘synonymia’ (cf. paronymia, and homonympia) --. Grice’s æqui-vocality thesis
-- aequivocation, the use of an expression in two or more different senses in a
single context. For example, in ‘The end of anything is its perfection. But the
end of life is death; so death is the perfection of life’, the expression ‘end’
is first used in the sense of ‘goal or purpose,’ but in its second occurrence
‘end’ means ‘termination.’ The use of the two senses in this context is an
equivocation. Where the context in which the expression used is an argument,
the fallacy of equivocation may be committed.
æstheticum: or AESTHETICVM,
as Grice would spell it – “A hybrid,” – Grice is aware that the old Roman form
is ‘sensus’ – which Cicero uses to translate the rather convoluted Grecian idea
of the ‘aesthesis’ – or ‘aesthetikos’ versus ‘noetikos.’ -- Grice is well aware
that ‘aesthetica,’ qua discipline, was meant to refer to the ‘sensibile,’ as
opposed to the ‘intellectus.’ With F. N. Sibley (who credits Grice profusely),
Grice explored the ‘second-order’ quality of the so-called ‘aesthetic
properties.’ It influenced Scruton. The aesthetic attitude is the appropriate
attitude or frame of mind for approaching art or nature or other objects or
events so that one might both appreciate its intrinsic perceptual qualities,
and as a result have an aesthetic experience. The aesthetic attitude has been
construed in many ways: 1 as disinterested, so that one’s experience of the
work is not affected by any interest in its possible practical uses, 2 as a
“distancing” of oneself from one’s own personal concerns, 3 as the
contemplation of an object, purely as an object of sensation, as it is in
itself, for its own sake, in a way unaffected by any cognition or knowledge one
may have of it. These different notions of aesthetic attitude have at times
been combined within a single theory. There is considerable doubt about whether
there is such a thing as an aesthetic attitude. There is neither any special
kind of action nor any special way of performing an ordinary action that
ensures that we see a work as it “really is,” and that results in our having an
aesthetic experience. Furthermore, there are no purely sensory experiences,
divorced from any cognitive content whatsoever. Criticisms of the notion of
aesthetic attitude have reinforced attacks on aesthetics as a separate field of
study within philosophy. On the other hand, there’s aesthetic formalism,
non-iconic, the view that in our interactions with works of art, form should be
given primacy. Rather than taking ‘formalism’ as the name of one specific
theory in the arts, it is better and more typical to take it to name that type
of theory which emphasizes the form of the artwork. Or, since emphasis on form
is something that comes in degrees, it is best to think of theories of art as
ranged on a continuum of more formalist and less formalist. It should be added
that theories of art are typically complex, including definitions of art,
recommendations concerning what we should attend to in art, analyses of the
nature of the aesthetic, recommendations concerning the making of aesthetic
evaluations, etc.; and each of these components may be more formalist or less
so. Those who use the concept of form mainly wish to contrast the artifact
itself with its relations to entities outside itself with its representing various things, its
symbolizing various things, its being expressive of various things, its being
the product of various intentions of the artist, its evoking various states in
beholders, its standing in various relations of influence and similarity to
preceding, succeeding, and contemporary works, etc. There have been some,
however, who in emphasizing form have meant to emphasize not just the artifact
but the perceptible form or design of the artifact. Kant, e.g., in his theory
of aesthetic excellence, not only insisted that the only thing relevant to
determining the beauty of an object is its appearance, but within the
appearance, the form, the design: in visual art, not the colors but the design
that the colors compose; in music, not the timbre of the individual sounds but
the formal relationships among them. It comes as no surprise that theories of
music have tended to be much more formalist than theories of literature and
drama, with theories of the visual arts located in between. While Austin’s
favourite aesthetic property is ‘dumpty,’ Grice is more open minded, and allows
for more of a property or quality such as being dainty, garish, graceful,
balanced, charming, majestic, trite, elegant, lifeless, ugly, or beautiful. By
contrast, non-aesthetic properties are properties that require no special
sensitivity or perceptiveness to perceive
such as a painting’s being predominantly blue, its having a small red
square in a corner or a kneeling figure in the foreground, or that the music
becomes louder at a given point. Sometimes it is argued that a special
perceptiveness or taste is needed to perceive a work’s aesthetic qualities, and
that this is a defining feature of a property’s being aesthetic. A corollary of
this view is that aesthetic qualities cannot be defined in terms of
non-aesthetic qualities, though some have held that aesthetic qualities supervene
on non-aesthetic qualities. As a systematic philosopher, Grice goes back to the
etymological root of the aesthetic as the philosophy of the sensible. He would
make fun of the specialization. “If at the philosophy department I am
introduced to Mr. Puddle, our man in nineteenth-century continental aesthetics,
I can grasp he is either underdescribed or not good at nineteenth-century
continental aesthetics!’ The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of
art and the character of our adventitious ideas and experience of art and of
the natural environment. It emerged as a separate field of philosophical
inquiry during the eighteenth century in England and on the Continent.
Recognition of aesthetics as a separate branch of philosophy coincided with the
development of theories of art that grouped together painting, poetry,
sculpture, music, and dance and often landscape gardening as the same kind of
thing, les beaux arts, or the fine arts. Baumgarten coined the term
‘aesthetics’ in his Reflections on Poetry 1735 as the name for one of the two
branches of the study of knowledge, i.e., for the study of sensory experience
coupled with feeling, which he argued provided a different type of knowledge
from the distinct, abstract ideas studied by “logic.” He derived it from the
ancient Grecian aisthanomai ‘to perceive’, and “the aesthetic” has always been
intimately connected with sensory experience and the kinds of feelings it
arouses. Questions specific to the field of aesthetics are: Is there a special
attitude, the aesthetic attitude, which we should take toward works of art and
the natural environment, and what is it like? Is there a distinctive type of
experience, an aesthetic experience, and what is it? Is there a special object
of attention that we can call the aesthetic object? Finally, is there a
distinctive value, aesthetic value, comparable with moral, epistemic, and
religious values? Some questions overlap with those in the philosophy of art,
such as those concerning the nature of beauty, and whether there is a faculty
of taste that is exercised in judging the aesthetic character and value of
natural objects or works of art. Aesthetics also encompasses the philosophy of
art. The most central issue in the philosophy of art has been how to define
‘art’. Not all cultures have, or have had, a concept of art that coincides with
the one that emerged in Western Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. What justifies our applying our concept to the things people in
these other cultures have produced? There are also many pictures including
paintings, songs, buildings, and bits of writing, that are not art. What
distinguishes those pictures, musical works, etc., that are art from those that
are not? Various answers have been proposed that identify the distinguishing
features of art in terms of form, expressiveness, intentions of the maker, and
social roles or uses of the object. Since the eighteenth century there have
been debates about what kinds of things count as “art.” Some have argued that
architecture and ceramics are not art because their functions are primarily
utilitarian, and novels were for a long time not listed among the “fine arts”
because they are not embodied in a sensuous medium. Debates continue to arise
over new media and what may be new art forms, such as film, video, photography,
performance art, found art, furniture, posters, earthworks, and computer and electronic
art. Sculptures these days may be made out of dirt, feces, or various discarded
and mass-produced objects, rather than marble or bronze. There is often an
explicit rejection of craft and technique by twentieth-century artists, and the
subject matter has expanded to include the banal and everyday, and not merely
mythological, historical, and religious subjects as in years past. All of these
developments raise questions about the relevance of the category of “fine” or
“high” art. Another set of issues in philosophy of art concerns how artworks
are to be interpreted, appreciated, and understood. Some views emphasize that
artworks are products of individual efforts, so that a work should be
understood in light of the producer’s knowledge, skill, and intentions. Others
see the meaning of a work as established by social conventions and practices of
the artist’s own time, but which may not be known or understood by the
producer. Still others see meaning as established by the practices of the
users, even if they were not in effect when the work was produced. Are there
objective criteria or standards for evaluating individual artworks? There has
been much disagreement over whether value judgments have universal validity, or
whether there can be no disputing about taste, if value judgments are relative
to the tastes and interests of each individual or to some group of individuals
who share the same tastes and interests. A judgment such as “This is good”
certainly seems to make a claim about the work itself, though such a claim is
often based on the sort of feeling, understanding, or experience a person has
obtained from the work. A work’s aesthetic or artistic value is generally
distinguished from simply liking it. But is it possible to establish what sorts
of knowledge or experiences any given work should provide to any suitably
prepared perceiver, and what would it be to be suitably prepared? It is a
matter of contention whether a work’s aesthetic and artistic values are
independent of its moral, political, or epistemic stance or impact. Philosophy
of art has also dealt with the nature of taste, beauty, imagination,
creativity, repreaesthetics aesthetics 12 4065A- 12 sentation, expression, and
expressiveness; style; whether artworks convey knowledge or truth; the nature
of narrative and metaphor; the importance of genre; the ontological status of
artworks; and the character of our emotional responses to art. Work in the
field has always been influenced by philosophical theories of language or
meaning, and theories of knowledge and perception, and continues to be heavily
influenced by psychological and cultural theory, including versions of
semiotics, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, feminism, and Marxism. Some
theorists in the late twentieth century have denied that the aesthetic and the
“fine arts” can legitimately be separated out and understood as separate,
autonomous human phenomena; they argue instead that these conceptual categories
themselves manifest and reinforce certain kinds of cultural attitudes and power
relationships. These theorists urge that aesthetics can and should be
eliminated as a separate field of study, and that “the aesthetic” should not be
conceived as a special kind of value. They favor instead a critique of the
roles that images not only painting, but film, photography, and advertising,
sounds, narrative, and three-dimensional constructions have in expressing and
shaping human attitudes and experiences.
agape: Grice would often
contrast ‘self-love’ with ‘agape’ and ‘benevolence.’ Strictly, agape, “a lovely
Grecian word,” is best rendered as the unselfish love for all persons. An
ethical theory according to which such love is the chief virtue, and actions
are good to the extent that they express it, is sometimes called agapism. Agape
is the Grecian word most often used for love in the New Testament, and is often
used in modern languages to signify whatever sort of love the writer takes to
be idealized there. In New Testament Grecian, however, it was probably a quite
general word for love, so that any ethical ideal must be found in the text’s
substantive claims, rather than in the linguistic meaning of the word. R.M.A.
agathon, Grecian word meaning ‘a good’ or ‘the good’. From Socrates onward,
agathon was taken to be a central object of philosophical inquiry; it has
frequently been assumed to be the goal of all rational action. Plato in the
simile of the sun in the Republic identified it with the Form of the Good, the
source of reality, truth, and intelligibility. Aristotle saw it as eudaimonia,
intellectual or practical virtue, a view that found its way, via Stoicism and
Neoplatonism, into Christianity. Modern theories of utility can be seen as
concerned with essentially the same Socratic question.
agitation: or AGITATUM, as
Grice would spell it -- a Byzantine
feeling is a Ryleian agitation. If Grice
were to advance the not wholly plausible thesis that ‘to feel Byzantine’ is
just to have a an anti-rylean agitation which is caused by the thought that
Grice is or might *be* Byzantine, it would surely be ridiculous to criticise
Grice on the grounds that Grice saddles himself with an ontological commitment
to feelings, or to modes of feeling. And why? Well, because, alla Parsons, if a
quantifier is covertly involved at all, it will only be a universal quantifier
which in such a case as this is more than adequately handled by a
substitutional account of quantification. Grice’s situation vis-a-vis the
‘proposition’ is in no way different. In the idiolect of Ryle, “a serious
student of Grecian philosophy,” as Grice puts it, ‘emotion’ designates at least
three or four different kinds of things, which Ryle calls an ‘inclination, or
‘motive,’ a ‘mood’, an ‘agitation,’ or a ‘commotion,’ and a ‘feeling.’ An
inclination or a mood, including an agitation, is not occurrences and doest not
therefore take place either publicly or privately. It is a propensity, not an
act or state. An inclination is, however, a propensity of this or that kind,
and the kind is important. A feeling, on the other hand, IS an occurrence, but
the place that mention of it should take in a description of human behaviour is
very different from that which the standard theories accord to it. A
susceptibility to a specific agitation is on the same general footing with an
inclination, viz. that each is a general propensity and not an occurrence. An
agitation is not a motive. But an agitation does presuppose a motive, or rather
an agitataion presupposes a behaviour trend of which a motive is for us the
most interesting sort. There is however a matter of expression which
is the source of some confusion, even among Oxonian Wilde readers, and that did
confuse philosophical psychologists of the ability of G. F. Stout. An
expression may signify both an inclination and an agitation. But an expression
may signify anything but an agitations. Again, some other expression may signify
anything but an inclination. An expression like ‘uneasy’, ‘anxious’,
‘distressed’, ‘excited’, ‘startled’ always signifies an agitations. An
expression like ‘fond of fishing’, ‘keen on gardening’, ‘bent on becoming a
bishop’ never signifies an agitation. But an expression like ‘love’, ‘want’,
‘desire’, ‘proud’, ‘eager,’ or many others, stands sometimes for a simple
inclination and sometimes for an agitations which is resultant upon the
inclinations and interferences with the exercise of it. Thus ‘hungry’ for
‘having a good appetite’ means roughly ‘is eating or would eat heartily and
without sauces, etc..’ This is different from ‘hungry’ in which a person might
be said to be ‘too hungry to concentrate on his work’. Hunger in this second
expression is a distress, and requires for its existence the conjunction of an
appetite with the inability to eat. Similarly the way in which a boy is proud
of his school is different from the way in which he is speechless with pride on
being unexpectedly given a place in a school team. To remove a possible
misapprehension, it must be pointed out that an agitation may be quite
agreeable. A man may voluntarily subject himself to suspense, fatigue,
uncertainty, perplexity, fear and surprise in such practices as angling,
rowing, travelling, crossword puzzles, rock-climbing and joking. That a thing
like a thrill, a rapture, a surprise, an amusement and an relief is an
agitation is shown by the fact that we can say that someone is too much
thrilled, amused or relieved to act, think or talk coherently. It
is helpful to notice that, anyhow commonly, the expression which completes ‘pang of . . .’ or ‘chill of . . .’ denotes an
agitation. A feeling, such as a man feeling Byzantine, is intrinsically
connected with an agitation. But a feeling, e. g. of a man who is feeling
Byzantine, is not intrinsically connected with an inclination, save in so far
as the inclination is a factor in the agitation. This is no novel psychological
hypothesis; It is part of the logic of our descriptions of a feeling that a
feeling (such as a man feeling Byzantine) is a sign of an agitation and is not
an exercise of an inclination. A feeling, such as a man feeling Byzantine, in other
words, is not a thing of which it makes sense to ask from what motive it
issues. The same is true, for the same reasons, of any sign of any agitation. This
point shows why we were right to suggest above that a feeling (like a man
feeling Byzantine) does not belong directly to a simple inclination. An
inclination is a certain sort of proneness or readiness to do certain sorts of
things on purpose. These things are therefore describable as being done from
that motive. They are the exercises of the disposition that we call ‘a motive’.
A feeling (such as a man feeling Byzantine) is not from a motive and is
therefore not among the possible exercise of such a propensiy. The widespread
theory that a motive such as vanity, or affection, is in the first instance a
disposition to experience certain specific feeling is therefore absurd. There
may be, of course, a tendency to have a feeling, such as feeling Byzantine;
being vertiginous and rheumatic are such tendencies. But we do not try to
modify a tendency of these kinds by a sermon. What a feeling, such as being
Byzantine, does causally belong to is the agitation. A feeling (such as feeling
Byzantine) is a sign of an agitation in the same sort of way as a stomach-ache
is a sign of indigestion. Roughly, we do not, as the prevalent theory holds,
act purposively because we experience a feeling (such as feeling Byzantine); we
experience a feeling (such as feeling Byzantine), as we wince and shudder,
because we are inhibited from acting purposively.
A
sentimentalist is a man who indulges in this or that induced feeling (such as
feeling Byzantine) without acknowledging the fictitiousness of his agitation.
It seems to be generally supposed that ‘pleasure’ or ‘desire’ is always used to
signify a feeling. And there certainly are feelings which can be described as a
feeling of pleasure or desire. Some thrills, shocks, glows and ticklings are
feelings of delight, surprise, relief and amusement; and things like a
hankering, an itche, a gnawing and a yearning is a sign that something is both
wanted and missed. But the transports, surprises, reliefs and distresses of
which such a feeling is diagnosed, or mis-diagnosed, as a sign is not itself a
feeling. It is an agitation or a mood, just as are the transports and
distresses which a child betrays by his skips and his whimpers. Nostalgia is an
agitation and one which can be called a ‘desire’; but it is not merely a
feeling or series of feelings. There is the sense of ‘pleasure’ in which it is
commonly replaced by such expressions as ‘delight’, ‘transport’, ‘rapture’,
‘exultation’ and ‘joy’. These are expressions of this or that mood signifying this
or that agitation. There are two quite different usages of ‘emotion’, in which
we explain people’s behaviour by reference to emotions. In the first usage of
‘emotion,’ we are referring to the motives or inclinations from which more or
less intelligent actions are done. In a second usage we are referring to a
mood, including the agitation or perturbation of which some aimless movement
may be a sign. In neither of these usages are we asserting or implicating that
the overt behaviour is the effect of a felt turbulence in the agent’s stream of
consciousness. In a third usage of ‘emotion’, pangs and twinges are feelings or
emotions, but they are not, save per accidens, things by reference to which we
explain behaviour. They are things for which diagnoses are required, not things
required for the diagnoses of behaviour. Since a convulsion of merriment is not
the state of mind of the sober experimentalist, the enjoyment of a joke is also
not an introspectible happening. States of mind such as these more or less
violent agitations can be examined only in retrospect. Yet nothing disastrous
follows from this restriction. We are not shorter of information about panic or
amusement than about other states of mind. If retrospection can give us the
data we need for our knowledge of some states of mind, there is no reason why
it should not do so for all. And this is just what seems to be suggested by the
popular phrase ‘to catch oneself doing so and so’. We catch, as we pursue and
overtake, what is already running away from us. I catch myself daydreaming
about a mountain walk after, perhaps very shortly after, I have begun the
daydream; or I catch myself humming a particular air only when the first few
notes have already been hummed. Retrospection, prompt or delayed, is a genuine
process and one which is exempt from the troubles ensuing from the assumption
of multiply divided attention; it is also exempt from the troubles ensuing from
the assumption that violent agitations could be the objects of cool,
contemporary scrutiny. One may be aware that he is whistling ‘Tipperary’ and
not know that he is whistling it in order to give tte appearance of a
sang-froid which he does not feel. Or, again, he may be aware that he is
shamming sang-froid without knowing that the tremors which he is trying to hide
derive from the agitation of a guilty conscience.
agnoiologicum: Grice loved a
negative prefix. He was proud that he was never vulgar in publishing, like some
of his tutees – and that the number of his unpublications by far exceed the
number of his publications. To refute Hampshire with this intention and
certainty, he regaled the British Academy with the annual philosophical lecture
on intention and Uncertainty. While Grice thought that ‘knowledge’ was
overreated at Oxford (“Surely an examinee can be said to know that date of the
battle of Waterloo”) he could be agnoiological at times. From Grecian agnoia,
‘ignorance’, the study of ignorance, its quality, and its conditions. And then
there’s ‘agnosticism,’ from Grecian a-, ‘not’, and gnastos, ‘known’, term
invented by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869 to denote the philosophical and
religious attitude of those who claim that metaphysical ideas can be neither
proved nor disproved. Huxley wrote, “I neither affirm nor deny the immortality
of man. I see no reason for believing it, but on the other hand, I have no
means of disproving it. I have no a priori objection to the doctrine.” Agnosticism
is a form of skepticism applied to metaphysics, especially theism. The position
is sometimes attributed to Kant, who held that we cannot have knowledge of God
or immortality but must be content with faith. Agnosticism should not be
confused with atheism, the belief that no god exists.
alberti: Genova-born
essential Italian philosopher – Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice ed
Alberti," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa
Grice, Liguria, Italia.
albertus magnus: Dominican Griceian
philosopher. As a Parisian master of theology, he served on a commission that
condemned the Talmud. He left Paris to found the first Dominican studium
generale at Cologne. Albert was repeatedly asked to be an arbiter and
peacemaker. After serving briefly as bishop of Regensburg, he was ordered to preach
the crusade. He spent his last years writing in Cologne. Albert contributed to
philosophy chiefly as a commentator on Aristotle, although he occasionally
reached different conclusions from Aristotle. Primarily, Albert was a
theologian, as is evident from his extensive commentary on Peter Lombard’s
Sentences and his commentaries on the Old and New Testaments. As a theologian,
he customarily developed his thought by commenting on traditional texts. For Albert,
Aristotle offered knowledge ascertainable using reason, just as Scripture,
based on God’s word, tells of the supernatural. Albert saw Aristotle’s works,
many newly available, as an encyclopedic compendium of information on the
natural universe; included here is the study of social and political conditions
and ethical obligations, for Aristotelian “natural knowledge” deals with human
nature as well as natural history. Aristotle is the Philosopher; however,
unlike Holy Scripture, he must be corrected in places. Like Holy Scripture,
though, Aristotle is occasionally obscure. To rectify these shortcomings one
must rely on other authorities: in the case of Holy Scripture, reference is to
the church fathers and established interpreters; in the case of Aristotle, to
the Peripatetics. The term ‘Peripatetics’ extends to modern as well as ancient
authors al-Farabi, Avicenna Ibn-Sina,
and Averroes Ibn-Rushd, as well as Themistius and Alexander of Aphrodisias;
even Seneca, Maimonides, and “our” Boethius are included. For the most part,
Albert saw Plato through the eyes of Aristotle and Averroes, since apart from
the Timaeus very little of Plato’s work was available in Latin. Albert
considered the Liber de causis a work of Aristotle, supplemented by alFarabi,
Avicenna, and al-Ghazali and tr. into Latin. When he commented on the Liber de
causis, Albert was not aware that this Neoplatonic work which speaks of the world emanating from the
One as from a first cause was based on
Proclus and ultimately on Plotinus. But Albert’s student, Aquinas, who had
better translations of Aristotle, recognized that the Liber de causis was not
an Aristotelian work. Albert’s metaphysics, which is expounded in his
commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics on the Liber de causis, contains profoundly
contradictory elements. His inclination to synthesis led him to attempt to
reconcile these elements as on social
and ecclesiastical questions he often sought peace through compromise. In his
Metaphysics and Physics and in his On the Heavens and On Generation and
Corruption, Aristotle presented the world as ever-changing and taught that an
unmoved mover “thought thinking itself” maintained everything in movement and
animation by allowing its spiritual nature to be seen in all its cold,
unapproachable beauty. The Liber de causis, on the other hand, develops the
theory that the world emanates from the One, causing everything in the world in
its pantheistic creativity, so that the caused world returns in mystic harmony
to the One. Thus Albert’s Aristotelian commentaries culminated with his
commentary on a work whose pseudo-Aristotelian character he was unable to
recognize. Nevertheless, the Christian Neoplatonism that Albert placed on an
Aristotelian basis was to exert an influence for centuries. In natural
philosophy, Albert often arrived at views independent of Aristotle. According
to Aristotle’s Physics, motion belongs to no single category; it is incomplete
being. Following Avicenna and Averroes, Albert asks whether “becoming black,”
e.g. which ceases when change ceases and
blackness is finally achieved differs
from blackness essentially essentia or only in its being esse. Albert
establishes, contrary to Avicenna, that the distinction is only one of being.
In his discussions of place and space, stimulated by Avicenna, Albert also
makes an original contribution. Only two dimensions width and breadth are essential to place, so that a fluid in a
bottle is framed by the inner surface of the bottle. According to Albert, the
significance of the third dimension, depth, is more modest, but nonetheless
important. Consider a bucket of water: its base is the essential part, but its
round walls maintain the cohesion of the water. For Aristotle, time’s material
foundation is distinct from its formal definition. Materially, the movement of
the fixed stars is basic, although time itself is neither movement nor change.
Rather, just as before and after are continuous in space and there are earlier
and later moments in movement as it proceeds through space, so time being the number of motion has earlier and later moments or “nows.” The
material of time consists of the uninterrupted flow of the indivisible nows,
while time’s form and essential expression is number. Following al-Farabi and
Avicenna, Albert’s interpretation of these doctrines emphasizes not only the
uninterrupted continuity of the flow of “nows,” but also the quantity of time,
i.e., the series of discrete, separate, and clearly distinct numbers. Albert’s
treatment of time did not lend itself well to later consideration of time as a
dimension; his concept of time is therefore not well suited to accommodate our
unified concept of space-time. The use of the pseudo-Aristotelian De
proprietatibus elementorum in De causis proprietatum elementorum gave Albert’s
worldview a strong astrological flavor. At issue here is how the planets
influence the earth and mankind. Particularly important is the influence of
Jupiter and Saturn on fire and the seas; when increased, it could produce fiery
conflagrations, and when circumscribed, floods. Albert was encyclopedic: a
scientist and scholar as well as a philosopher and theologian. In addition to
the works mentioned, he produced commentaries on Pseudo-Dionysius, a Summa de
creaturis, a Summa Theologica, and many other treatises. Unlike other
commentators, his exposition was continuous, an extensive paraphrase; he
provided a complete Latin and Christian philosophy. Even in his lifetime, he
was a named authority; according to Roger Bacon, his views were often given as
much weight as those of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes. His students or
followers include Aquinas, Ulrich of Strassburg, Theodoric of Freiberg, Giles
of Lessines, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Henry Suso, Jan van Ruysbroeck,
and H. P. Grice.
alethic: Grice could not
find a good word for ‘verum,’ and so he borrowed ‘alethic’ from, but never
returned it to, von Wright. Under the alethic modalities, Grice, as
historically, included the four central ways or modes in which a given
proposition might be true or false: necessity, contingency, possibility, and
impossibility. The term ‘alethic’ derives from Grecian aletheia, ‘truth’. These
modalities, and their logical interconnectedness, can be characterized as
follows. A proposition that is true but possibly false is contingently true
e.g., that Aristotle taught Alexander; one that is true and not-possibly i.e.,
“impossibly” false is necessarily true e.g., that red things are colored.
Likewise, a proposition that is false but possibly true is contingently false
e.g., that there are no tigers; and one that is false and not-possibly true is
necessarily false e.g., that seven and five are fourteen. Though any one of the
four modalities can be defined in terms of any other, necessity and possibility
are generally taken to be the more fundamental notions, and most systems of
alethic modal logic take one or the other as basic. Distinct modal systems
differ chiefly in regard to their treatment of iterated modalities, as in the
proposition It is necessarily true that it is possibly true that it is possibly
true that there are no tigers. In the weakest of the most common systems,
usually called T, every iterated modality is distinct from every other. In the
stronger system S4, iterations of any given modality are redundant. So, e.g.,
the above proposition is equivalent to It is necessarily true that it is
possibly true that there are no tigers. In the strongest and most widely
accepted system S5, all iteration is redundant. Thus, the two propositions
above are both equivalent simply to It is possibly true that there are no
tigers.
alexanderian: s.– what Grice
called “A Balliol hegelian,” philosopher, tuteed at Balliol by A. C. Bradley,
Oxford, and taught for most of his career at the of Manchester. His aim, which he most fully
realized in Space, Time, and Deity 0, was to provide a realistic account of the
place of mind in nature. He described nature as a series of levels of existence
where irreducible higher-level qualities emerge inexplicably when lower levels
become sufficiently complex. At its lowest level reality consists of
space-time, a process wherein points of space are redistributed at instants of
time and which might also be called pure motion. From complexities in
space-time matter arises, followed by secondary qualities, life, and mind.
Alexander thought that the still-higher quality of deity, which characterizes
the whole universe while satisfying religious sentiments, is now in the process
of emerging from mind.
alexanderian: related to
Alexander de Aphrodisias: ““Alexander of Aphrodisias” should not be confused
with Samuel Alexander, a fellow of Bradley, even if they are next in your
philosophical dictionary!” – Grice. Grecian philosopher, one of the foremost
commentators on Aristotle in late antiquity. He exercised considerable
influence on later Grecian and Roman philosophy through to the Renaissance. On
the problem of universals, Alexander endorses a brand of conceptualism:
although several particulars may share a single, common nature, this nature
does not exist as a universal except while abstracted in thought from the
circumstances that accompany its particular instantiations. Regarding
Aristotle’s notorious distinction between the “agent” and “patient” intellects
in On the Soul III.5, Alexander identifies the agent intellect with God, who,
as the most intelligible entity, makes everything else intelligible. As its own
self-subsistent object, this intellect alone is imperishable; the human
intellect, in contrast, perishes at death. Of Alexander’s many commentaries,
only those on Aristotle’s Metaphysics Ad, Prior Analytics I, Topics, On the
Senses, and Meterologics are extant. We also have two polemical treatises, On
Fate and On Mixture, directed against the Stoics; a psychological treatise, the
De anima based on Aristotle’s; as well as an assortment of essays including the
De intellectu and his Problems and Solutions. Nothing is known of Alexander’s
life apart from his appointment by the emperor Severus to a chair in
Aristotelian philosophy between and
209.
Algarotti: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi
Speranza, "Grice ed Algarotti," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The
Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
algorithm: Grice’s term for
‘decision procedure,’ a clerical or effective procedure that can be applied to
any of a class of certain symbolic inputs and that will in a finite time and
number of steps eventuate in a result in a corresponding symbolic output. A
function for which an algorithm sometimes more than one can be given is an algorithmic
function. The following are common examples: a given n, finding the nth prime
number; b differentiating a polynomial; c finding the greatest common divisor
of x and y the Euclidean algorithm; and d given two numbers x, y, deciding
whether x is a multiple of y. When an algorithm is used to calculate values of
a numerical function, as in a, b, and c, the function can also be described as
algorithmically computable, effectively computable, or just computable.
Algorithms are generally agreed to have the following properties which made them essential to the theory of
computation and the development of the Church-Turing thesis i an algorithm can be given by a finite
string of instructions, ii a computation device or agent can carry out or
compute in accordance with the instructions, iii there will be provisions for
computing, storing, and recalling steps in a computation, iv computations can
be carried out in a discrete and stepwise fashion in, say, a digital computer,
and v computations can be carried out in a deterministic fashion in, say, a
deterministic version of a Turing machine.
allais’s paradox: a puzzle about
rationality, discussed by H. P. Grice, “Aspects of reason,” devised by Maurice
Allais b. 1. Leonard Savage advanced the
sure-thing principle, which states that a rational agent’s ranking of a pair of
gambles having the same consequence in a state S agrees with her ranking of any
other pair of gambles the same as the first pair except for having some other
common consequence in S. Allais devised an apparent counterexample with four
gambles involving a 100-ticket lottery. The table lists prizes in units of
$100,000. Ticket Numbers Gambles 1 2 11
12 100 A 5 5 5 B 0 25 5 C 5 5 0 D 0 25 0
Changing A’s and B’s common consequence for tickets 12100 from 5 to 0 yields C
and D respectively. Hence the sure-thing principle prohibits simultaneously
preferring A to B, and D to C. Yet most people have these preferences, which
seem coherent. This conflict generates the paradox. Savage presented the sure-thing
principle in The Foundations of Statistics 4. Responding to preliminary drafts
of that work, Allais formulated his counterexample in “The Foundations of a
Positive Theory of Choice Involving Risk and a Criticism of the Postulates and
Axioms of the School” 2.
alnwick: English
Franciscan theologian. William studied under Duns Scotus at Paris, and wrote
the Reportatio Parisiensia, a central source for Duns Scotus’s teaching. In his
own works, William opposed Scotus on the univocity of being and haecceitas.
Some of his views were attacked by Ockham.
alstonian: w. p. cites H. P.
Grice as ideationist. Philosopher widely acknowledged as one of the most
important contemporary epistemologists and one of the most important
philosophers of religion of the twentieth century. He is particularly known for
his argument that putative perception of God is epistemologically on all fours
with putative perception of everyday material objects. Alston graduated from
Centenary and the U.S. Army. A fine musician, he had to choose between
philosophy and music. Philosophy won out; he received his Ph.D. from the of Chicago and began his philosophical career
at the of Michigan, where he taught for twenty-two
years. Since 0 he has taught at Syracuse. Although his dissertation and some of
his early work were on Whitehead, he soon turned to philosophy of language
Philosophy of Language, 4. Since the early 0s Alston has concentrated on
epistemology and philosophy of religion. In epistemology he has defended
foundationalism although not classical foundationalism, investigated epistemic
justification with unusual depth and penetration, and called attention to
important levels distinctions. His chief works here are Epistemic
Justification, a collection of essays; and The Reliability of Sense Perception.
His chief work in philosophy of religion is Divine Nature and Human Language, a
collection of essays on metaphysical and epistemological topics; and Perceiving
God. The latter is a magisterial argument for the conclusion that experiential
awareness of God, more specifically perception of God, makes an important
contribution to the grounds of religious belief. In addition to this scholarly
work, Alston was a founder of the Society of Christian Philosophers, a
professional society with more than 1,100 members, and the founding editor of
Faith and Philosophy.
althusserian: a philosopher
Grice called a ‘hegelian’. LouisL Marxist philosopher whose publication in 5 of
two collections of essays, Pour Marx “For Marx” and Lire le Capital “Reading
Capital”, made him a sensation in
intellectual circles and attracted a large international readership. The
English translations of these texts in 9 and 0, respectively, helped shape the
development of Marxist thought in the English-speaking world throughout the 0s.
Drawing on the work of non-positivist
historians and philosophers of science, especially Bachelard, Althusser
proclaimed the existence of an “epistemological break” in Marx’s work,
occurring in the mid-1840s. What preceded this break was, in Althusser’s view,
a prescientific theoretical humanism derived from Feuerbach and ultimately from
Hegel. What followed it, Althusser maintained, was a science of history a
all-things-considered reason Althusser, Louis 23 4065A- 23 development as monumental, potentially,
as the rise of the new sciences of nature in the seventh century. Althusser
argued that the nature and even the existence of this new kind of science had
yet to be acknowledged, even by Marx himself. It therefore had to be
reconstructed from Marx’s writings, Das Kapital especially, and also discerned
in the political practice of Lenin and other like-minded revolutionaries who
implicitly understood what Marx intended. Althusser did little, however, to
elaborate the content of this new science. Rather, he tirelessly defended it
programmatically against rival construals of Marxism. In so doing, he took
particular aim at neo-Hegelian and “humanistic” currents in the larger Marxist
culture and implicitly in the Communist
Party, to which he belonged throughout his adult life. After 8, Althusser’s
influence in France faded. But he continued to teach at l’École Normale
Superieure and to write, making important contributions to political theory and
to understandings of “ideology” and related concepts. He also faced
increasingly severe bouts of mania and depression. In 0, in what the courts deemed an episode of “temporary
insanity,” he strangled his wife. Althusser avoided prison, but spent much of
the 0s in mental institutions. During this period he wrote two extraordinary
memoirs, L’avenir dure longtemps “The Future Lasts Forever” and Les faits “The
Facts”, published posthumously in 2.
altogether nice
girl:
Or Grice’s altogether nice girl. Grice quotes from the music-hall ditty, “Every
[sic] nice girl loves a sailor” (WoW:33). He uses this for his account of
multiple quantification. There is a reading where the emissor may implicate
that every nice girl is such that he loves one sailor, viz. Grice. But if the
existential quantifier is not made dominant, the uniqueness is disimplicated.
Grice admits that not every nominalist will be contented with the
‘metaphysical’ status of ‘the altogether nice girl.’ The ‘one-at-a-time sailor’
is her counterpart. And they inhabit the class of LOVE.
ambrosius: saint. Grice:
“Not to be confused with Ambrose and his orchestra – sweet!” – on altruism.
known as Ambrose of Milan c.33997, Roman church leader and theologian. While
bishop of Milan, he not only led the struggle against the Arian heresy and its
political manifestations, but offered new models for preaching, for Scriptural
exegesis, and for hymnody. His works also contributed to medieval Latin
philosophy. Ambrose’s appropriation of Neoplatonic doctrines was noteworthy in
itself, and it worked powerfully on and through Augustine. Ambrose’s commentary
on the account of creation in Genesis, his Hexaemeron, preserved for medieval
readers many pieces of ancient natural history and even some altruism Ambrose,
Saint 24 4065A- 24 elements of physical
explanation. Perhaps most importantly, Ambrose engaged ancient philosophical
ethics in the search for moral lessons that marks his exegesis of Scripture; he
also reworked Cicero’s De officiis as a treatise on the virtues and duties of
Christian living.
amicus: philia and eros –
Grice on Aristotle’s aporia of friendship -- Eros, the Grecian god of erotic
love. Eros came to be symbolic of various aspects of love, first appearing in
Hesiod in opposition to reason. In general, however, Eros was seen by Grecians
e.g., Parmenides as a unifying force. In Empedocles, it is one of two external
forces explaining the history of the cosmos, the other being Strife. These
forces resemble the “hidden harmony” of Heraclitus. The Symposium of Plato is
the best-known ancient discussion of Eros, containing speeches from various
standpoints mythical, sophistic, etc.
Socrates says he has learned from the priestess Diotima of a nobler form of
Eros in which sexual desire can be developed into the pursuit of understanding
the Form of beauty. The contrast between agape and Eros is found first in
Democritus. This became important in Christian accounts of love. In
Neoplatonism, Eros referred to the mystical union with Being sought by
philosophers. Eros has become important recently in the work of Continental
writers.
ammonius: saccas early
third century A.D., Platonist philosopher. He apparently served early in the
century as the teacher of the philosopher Origen. He attracted the attention of
Plotinus, who came to the city in 232 in search of philosophical enlightenment
Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 3. Ammonius the epithet ‘Saccas’ seems to mean ‘the
bagman’ was undoubtedly a charismatic figure, but it is not at all clear what,
if any, were his distinctive doctrines, though he seems to have been influenced
by Numenius. He wrote nothing, and may be thought of, in E. R. Dodds’s words,
as the Socrates of Neoplatonism.
analyticum: Porphyry couldn’t
find a Latinate for ‘analyticum’ – ‘analyisis’ is like ‘se-paratio.’ But even
in Grecian, ‘analysis’ and synthesis are not real opposite – since ‘synthesis’
neatly comes as ‘compositio’ -- analysis, the process of breaking up a concept,
proposition, linguistic complex, or fact into its simple or ultimate
constituents. That on which the analysis is done is called the analysandum, and
that which does the analysis is called the analysans. A number of the most
important philosophers of the twentieth century, including Russell, Moore, and
the early Vitters, have argued that philosophical analysis is the proper method
of philosophy. But the practitioners of analytic philosophy have disagreed
about what kind of thing is to be analyzed. For example, Moore tried to analyze
sense-data into their constituent parts. Here the analysandum is a complex
psychological fact, the having of a sense-datum. More commonly, analytic
philosophers have tried to analyze concepts or propositions. This is conceptual
analysis. Still others have seen it as their task to give an analysis of
various kinds of sentences e.g., those
involving proper names or definite descriptions. This is linguistic analysis.
Each of these kinds of analysis faces a version of a puzzle that has come to be
called the paradox of analysis. For linguistic analyses, the paradox can be
expressed as follows: for an analysis to be adequate, the analysans must be
synonymous with the analysandum; e.g., if ‘male sibling’ is to analyze
‘brother’, they must mean the same; but if they are synonymous, then ‘a brother
is a male sibling’ is synonymous with ‘a brother is a brother’; but the two
sentences do not seem synonymous. Expressed as a dilemma, the paradox is that
any proposed analysis would seem to be either inadequate because the analysans
and the analysandum are not synonymous or uninformative because they are
synonymous. Analytic philosophy is an
umbrella term currently used to cover a diverse assortment of philosophical
techniques and tendencies. As in the case of chicken-sexing, it is relatively
easy to identify analytic philosophy and philosophers, though difficult to say
with any precision what the criteria are. Analytic philosophy is sometimes
called Oxford philosophy or linguistic philosophy, but these labels are, at
least, misleading. Whatever else it is, analytic philosophy is manifestly not a
school, doctrine, or body of accepted propositions. At Cambridge, analytic
philosophers are the intellectual heirs of Russell, Moore, and Vitters,
philosophers who self-consciously pursued “philosophical analysis” in the early
part of the twentieth century. Analysis, as practiced by Russell and Moore,
concerned not language per se, but concepts and propositions. In their eyes,
while it did not exhaust the domain of philosophy, analysis provided a vital
tool for laying bare the logical form of reality. Vitters, in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
contended, though obliquely, that the structure of language reveals the
structure of the world; every meaningful sentence is analyzable into atomic
constituents that designate the finegrained constituents of reality. This
“Tractarian” view was one Vitters was to renounce in his later work, but it had
considerable influence within the Vienna Circle in the 0s, and in the
subsequent development of logical positivism in the 0s and 0s. Carnap and Ayer,
both exponents of positivism, held that the task of philosophy was not to
uncover elusive metaphysical truths, but to provide analyses of scientific
sentences. Other sentences, those in ethics, for instance, were thought to lack
“cognitive significance.” Their model was Russell’s theory of descriptions,
which provided a technique for analyzing away apparent commitments to
suspicious entities. Meanwhile, a number of former proponents of analysis,
influenced by Vitters, had taken up what came to be called ordinary language
philosophy. Philosophers of this persuasion focused on the role of words in the
lives of ordinary speakers, hoping thereby to escape long-standing
philosophical muddles. These muddles resulted, they thought, from a natural
tendency, when pursuing philosophical theses, to be misled by the grammatical
form of sentences in which those questions were posed. A classic illustration
might be Heidegger’s supposition that ‘nothing’ must designate something,
though a very peculiar something. Today, it is difficult to find much unanimity
in the ranks of analytic philosophers. There is, perhaps, an implicit respect
for argument and clarity, an evolving though informal agreement as to what
problems are and are not tractable, and a conviction that philosophy is in some
sense continuous with science. The practice of analytic philosophers to address
one another rather than the broader public has led some to decry philosophy’s
“professionalization” and to call for a return to a pluralistic,
community-oriented style of philosophizing. Analytic philosophers respond by
pointing out that analytic techniques and standards have been well represented
in the history of philosophy. Analyticity. H. P. Grice, “In defence of a
dogma,” in Studies in the way of words. the analyticsynthetic distinction, the
distinction, made famous by Kant, according to which an affirmative
subject-predicate statement proposition, judgment is called analytic if the
predicate concept is contained in the subject concept, and synthetic otherwise.
The statement ‘All red roses are red’ is analytic, since the concept ‘red’ is
contained in the concept ‘red roses’. ‘All roses are red’ is synthetic, since
the concept ‘red’ is not contained in the concept ‘roses’. The denial of an
affirmative subject-predicate statement entails a contradiction if it is
analytic. E.g., ‘Not all red roses are red’ entails ‘Some roses are both red
and not red’. One concept may be contained in another, in Kant’s sense, even
though the terms used to express them are not related as part to whole. Since
‘biped’ means ‘two-footed animal’, the concept ‘two-footed’ is contained in the
concept ‘biped’. It is accordingly analytic that all bipeds are two-footed. The
same analytic statement is expressed by the synonymous sentences ‘All bipeds
are two-footed’ and ‘All two-footed animals are two-footed’. Unlike statements,
sentences cannot be classified as analytic or synthetic except relative to an
interpretation. analytical jurisprudence analyticsynthetic distinction 26
4065A- 26 Witness ‘All Russian teachers
are Russian’, which in one sense expresses the analytic statement ‘All teachers
that are Russian are Russian’, and in another the synthetic statement ‘All
teachers of Russian are Russian’. Kant’s innovation over Leibniz and Hume lay
in separating the logicosemantic analyticsynthetic distinction from the
epistemological a prioria posteriori distinction and from the modalmetaphysical
necessarycontingent distinction. It seems evident that any analytic statement
is a priori knowable without empirical evidence and necessary something that
could not be false. The converse is highly controversial. Kant and his
rationalist followers maintain that some a priori and necessary statements are
synthetic, citing examples from logic ‘Contradictions are impossible’, ‘The
identity relation is transitive’, mathematics ‘The sum of 7 and 5 is 12’, ‘The
straight line between two points is the shortest’, and metaphysics ‘Every event
is caused’. Empiricists like J. S. Mill, Carnap, Ayer, and C. I. Lewis argue
that such examples are either synthetic a posteriori or analytic a priori.
Philosophers since Kant have tried to clarify the analyticsynthetic
distinction, and generalize it to all statements. On one definition, a sentence
is analytic on a given interpretation provided it is “true solely in virtue of
the meaning or definition of its terms.” The truth of any sentence depends in
part on the meanings of its terms. `All emeralds are green’ would be false,
e.g., if ‘emerald’ meant ‘ruby’. What makes the sentence synthetic, it is
claimed, is that its truth also depends on the properties of emeralds, namely,
their being green. But the same holds for analytic sentences: the truth of ‘All
red roses are red’ depends on the properties of red roses, namely, their being
red. Neither is true solely in virtue of meaning. A more adequate
generalization defines an analytic statement as a formal logical truth: one
“true in virtue of its logical form,” so that all statements with the same form
are true. In terms of sentences under an interpretation, an analytic truth is
an explicit logical truth one whose surface structure represents its logical
form or one that becomes an explicit logical truth when synonyms are
substituted. The negative statement that tomorrow is not both Sunday and not
Sunday is analytic by this definition, because all statements of the form : p
& - p are true. Kant’s definition is obtained as a special case by
stipulating that the predicate of an affirmative subjectpredicate statement is
contained in the subject provided the statement is logically true. On a third
generalization, ‘analytic’ denotes any statement whose denial entails a
contradiction. Subject S contains predicate P provided being S entails being P.
Whether this is broader or narrower than the second generalization depends on
how ‘entailment’, ‘logical form’, and ‘contradiction’ are defined. On some
construals, ‘Red is a color’ counts as analytic on the third generalization its
denial entails ‘Something is and is not a color’ but not on the second ‘red’
and ‘colored’ are logically unstructured, while the rulings are reversed for a
counterfactual conditional like ‘If this were a red rose it would be red’.
Following Quine, many have denied any distinction between analytic and
synthetic statements. Some arguments presume the problematic “true by meaning”
definition. Others are that: 1 the distinction cannot be defined without using
related notions like ‘meaning’, ‘concept’, and ‘statement’, which are neither
extensional nor definable in terms of behavior; 2 some statements like ‘All cats
are animals’ are hard to classify as analytic or synthetic; and 3 no statement
allegedly is immune from rejection in the face of new empirical evidence. If
these arguments were sound, however, the distinction between logical truths and
others would seem equally dubious, a conclusion seldom embraced. Some describe
a priori truths, both synthetic and analytic, as conceptual truths, on the
theory that they are all true in virtue of the nature of the concepts they
contain. Conceptual truths are said to have no “factual content” because they
are about concepts rather than things in the actual world. While it is natural
to classify a priori truths together, the proffered theory is questionable. As
indicated above, all truths hold in part because of the identity of their
concepts, and in part because of the nature of the objects they are about. It
is a fact that all emeralds are emeralds, and this proposition is about
emeralds, not concepts.
analyticum-a-priori: For Grice, an oxymoron, since surely ‘analyticum-a-posteriori’
is an oxymoron. R. A. Wollheim. London-born philosopher, BPhil Oxon, Balliol
(under D. Marcus) and All Souls.
Examined by H. P. Grice. “What’s two times two?” Wollheim treasured that
examination. It was in the context of a discussion of J. S. Mill and I. Kant,
for whom addition and multiplication are ‘synthetic’ – a priori for Kant, a
posteriori for Mill. Grice was trying to provide a counterexample to Mill’s
thesis that all comes via deduction or induction.
necessitatum: ananke, when
feeling very Grecian, Grice would use ‘ananke,’ instead of ‘must,’ which he
thought too English! Grecian, necessity. The term was used by early Grecian
philosophers for a constraining or moving natural force. In Parmenides frg. 8,
line 30 ananke encompasses reality in limiting bonds; according to Diogenes
Laertius, Democrianamnesis ananke 27 4065A-
27 tus calls the vortex that generates the cosmos ananke; Plato Timaeus
47e ff. refers to ananke as the irrational element in nature, which reason
orders in creating the physical world. As used by Aristotle Metaphysics V.5,
the basic meaning of ‘necessary’ is ‘that which cannot be otherwise’, a sense
that includes logical necessity. He also distinguishes Physics II.9 between
simple and hypothetical necessity conditions that must hold if something is to
occur.
anaxagoras: Grecian and
pre-Griceian philosopher who was the first of the pre-Socratics to teach in
Athens c.480450, where he influenced leading intellectuals such as Pericles and
Euripides. He left Athens when he was prosecuted for impiety. Writing in
response to Parmenides, he elaborated a theory of matter according to which
nothing comes into being or perishes. The ultimate realities are stuffs such as
water and earth, flesh and bone, but so are contraries such as hot and cold,
likewise treated as stuffs. Every phenomenal substance has a portion of every
elemental stuff, and there are no minimal parts of anything, but matter takes
on the phenomenal properties of whatever predominates in the mixture.
Anaxagoras posits an indefinite number of elemental stuffs, in contrast to his
contemporary Empedocles, who requires only four elements; but Anaxagoras
follows Parmenides more rigorously, allowing no properties or substances to
emerge that were not already present in the cosmos as its constituents. Thus
there is no ultimate gap between appearance and reality: everything we perceive
is real. In Anaxagoras’s cosmogony, an initial chaos of complete mixture gives
way to an ordered world when noûs mind begins a vortex motion that separates
cosmic masses of ether the bright upper air, air, water, and earth. Mind is
finer than the stuffs and is found in living things, but it does not mix with
stuffs. Anaxagoras’s theory of mind provides the first hint of a mindmatter
dualism. Plato and Aristotle thought his assigning a cosmic role to mind made
him sound like “a sober man” among his contemporaries, but they were
disappointed that he did not exploit his idea to provide teleological explanations
of natural phenomena.
anaximander:: Grecian and
pre-Griceian philosopher and cosmologist, reputedly the student and successor
of Thales in the Milesian school. He described the cosmos as originating from
apeiron the boundless by a process of separating off; a disk-shaped earth was
formed, surrounded by concentric heavenly rings of fire enclosed in air. At
“breathing holes” in the air we see jets of fire, which are the stars, moon,
and sun. The earth stays in place because there is no reason for it to tend one
way or another. The seasons arise from alternating periods where hot and dry or
wet and anaphor Anaximander 28 4065A-
28 cold powers predominate, governed by a temporal process figuratively
portrayed as the judgment of Time. Anaximander drew a map of the world and
explained winds, rain, and lightning by naturalistic hypotheses. He also
described the emergence of life in a way that prefigures the theory of
evolution. Anaximander’s interest in cosmology and cosmogony and his brilliant
conjectures set the major questions for later preSocratics.
anaximenes: of Miletus:
Grecian and pre-Griceian philosopher, a
pre-Socratic who, following in the tradition of the Milesians Thales and
Anaximander, speculated about cosmology and meteorology. The source arche of
the cosmos is air aer, originally mist, which by a process of rarefaction
becomes fire, and by a process of condensation becomes wind, clouds, water,
earth, and stones. Air is divine and causes life. The earth is flat and rides
on a cushion of air, while a heavenly firmament revolves about it like a felt
cap. Anaximenes also explained meteorological phenomena and earthquakes.
Although less innovative than his predecessor Anaximander, he made progress in
naturalistic explanations by appealing to a quantitative process of rarefaction
and condensation rather than to mythical processes involving quasi-personal
agents.
ancestry: Studied by H. P.
Grice. Of a given relation R, the relation also called the transitive closure
of R that relates one given individual to a second if and only if the first can
be “reached” from the second by repeated “applications” of the given relation
R. The “ancestor” relation is the ancestral of the parent relation since one
person is an ancestor of a second if the first is a parent of the second or the
first is a parent of a parent of the second or the first is a parent of a
parent of a parent of the second, and so on. Frege discovered a simple method
of giving a materially adequate and formally correct definition of the
ancestral of a given relation in terms of the relation itself plus logical
concepts. This method is informally illustrated as follows. In order for one
person A to be an ancestor of a second person B it is necessary and sufficient
for A to have every property that belongs to every parent of B and that belongs
to every parent of any person to whom it belongs. This and other similar
methods made possible the reduction of all numerical concepts to those of zero
and successor, which Frege then attempted to reduce to concepts of pure logic.
Frege’s definition of the ancestral has become a paradigm in modern analytic
philosophy as well as a historical benchmark of the watershed between
traditional logic and modern logic. It demonstrates the exactness of modern
logical analysis and, in comparison, the narrowness of traditional logic.
andronicus: Grecian
philosopher, a leading member of the Lyceum who was largely responsible for
establishing the canon of Aristotle’s works still read today. He also edited
the works of Theophrastus. At the time, Aristotle was known primarily for his
philosophical dialogues, only fragments of which now survive; his more
methodical treatises had stopped circulating soon after his death. By producing
the first systematic edition of Aristotle’s corpus, Andronicus revived study of
the treatises, and the resulting critical debates dramatically affected the
course of philosophy. Little is recorded about Andronicus’s labors; but besides
editing the texts and discussing titles, arrangement, and authenticity, he
sought to explicate and assess Aristotle’s thought. In so doing, he and his
colleagues initiated the exegetical tradition of Aristotelian commentaries.
Nothing he wrote survives; a summary account of emotions formerly ascribed to
him is spurious.
angst: Grice discusses
this as an ‘implicatural emotion.’ G. term for a special form of anxiety, an
emotion seen by existentialists as both constituting and revealing the human
condition. Angst plays a key role in the writings of Heidegger, whose concept
is closely related to Kierkegaard’s angest and Sartre’s angoisse. The concept
is first treated in this distinctive way in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of
Anxiety 1844, where anxiety is described as “the dizziness of freedom.” Anxiety
here represents freedom’s self-awareness; it is the psychological precondition
for the individual’s attempt to become autonomous, a possibility that is seen
as both alluring and disturbing.
animal: pirotese. Durrell’s
Family Conversations. Durrelly’s family conversation. When H. P. Grice was presented with an ‘overview’ of his
oeuvre for PGRICE (Grandy and Warner, 1986), he soon found out. “There’s something missing.” Indeed, there is a very infamous objection,
Grice thought, which is not mentioned by ‘Richards,’ as he abbreviates Richard
Grandy and Richard Warner’s majestically plural ‘overview,’ which seems to
Grice to be one to which Grice must respond. And he shall! The objection Grice
states as follows. One of the leading strands in Grice’s reductive analysis of
the circumstances or scenario in which an emissor (E) communicates that p is
that the scenario, call it “C,” is not to be regarded exclusively, “or even
primarily,” as a ‘feature’ of an E that is using what philosophers of language (since
Plato’s “Cratylus”) have been calling ‘language’ (glossa, la lingua latina, la
lingua italiana, la langue française, the English tongue, de nederlands taal,
die Deutsche Sprache, etc.). The emissum (e) may be an ‘utterance’ which is not
‘linguistic.’ Grice finds the issue crucial after discussing the topic with his
colleague at Berkeley, Davidson. For Davidson reminds Grice: “[t]here is no such
thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers […]
have supposed” (Davidson, 1986: 174). “I’m happy you say ‘many,’ Davidson,”
Grice commented. Grice continues formulating what he
obviously found to be an insidious, fastidious, objection. There are many
instances of “NOTABLY NON-‘linguistic’” vehicles or devices of communication,
within a communication-system, even a one-off system, which fulfil this or that
communication-function. I am using ‘communication-function’ alla Grice (1961:138,
repr. 1989:235).
These vehicles or devices are mostly
syntactically un-structured or amorphous – Grice’s favourite example being a
‘sort of hand-wave’ meaning that it is not the case that the emissor knows the
route or that the emissor is about to leave his addressee (1967:VI, repr. 1989:126).
Sometimes,
a device may exhibit at least “some rudimentary syntactic” structure – as Grice
puts it, giving a nod to Morris’s tripartite semiotics -- in that we may perhaps
distinguish and identify a ‘totum’ or complexum (say, Plato’s ‘logos’) from a
pars or simplex (say, Plato’s ‘onoma’ and ‘rhema’). Grice’s intention-based
reductive analysis of a communicatum, based on Aristotle, Locke, and Peirce, is
designed, indeed its very raison d'être being, to allow for the possibility that a non-“linguistic,” and,
further, indeed a non-“conventional” 'utterance,’ perhaps unrepeatable token,
not even manifesting any degree of syntactic structure, but a block of an
amorphous signal, be within the ‘repertoire’ of ‘procedures,’ perhaps
unrepeatable ones, of this or that organism, or creature, or agent, even if not
relying on any apparatus for communication of the kind that that we may label
‘linguistic’ or otherwise ‘conventional,’ will count as an emissor E ‘doing’
this or that ‘thing,’ thereby ‘communicating’ that p. To provide for this
conceptual scenario, it is plainly necessary, Grice grants, that the key
ingredient in any representation or conceptualization, or reductive analysis of
‘communicating,’ viz. intending that p, for Grice, should be a ‘state’ of the
emissor’s “soul” (Grice is translating Grecian ψυχή the capacity for which does not require what we may label
the ‘possession’ of, shall we say, ‘faculty,’ of what philosophers since
Cratylus have been calling ‘γλῶσσα Ἑλληνίδα,’
‘lingua latina,’ ‘lingua italiana,’ ‘langue française,’ ‘English tongue,’
‘Nederlands taal,’ ‘die Deutsche Sprache.’ (Grice
always congratulated Kant for never distinguishing between ‘die Deutsche
Sprache’ and ‘Sprache’ as ‘eine Fakultät.’). Now
a philosopher, relying on this or that neo-Prichardian reductive analysis of
‘intending that p,’ (Oxonian Grice will quote Oxonian if he can) may not be
willing to allow the possibility of such, shall we grant, pre-linguistic
intending that p, or non-linguistic intending that p. Surely, if the emissor E
realizes that his addressee or recipient R does not ‘share’ say, what the
Germans call ‘die Deutsche Sprache,” E may still communicate, by doing
so-and-so, that such-and-such, viz. p. E may make this sort of hand wave
communicating that E knows the route or that E is about to leave R. Against
that objection, Grice surely wins the day. There’s nothing in Prichard account
of ‘willing that p,’ itself a borrowing from William James (“I will that the
distant table slides over the floor toward me. It does not.”) which is about
‘die Deutsche Sprache.’
But Grice hastens to declare that
winning ‘the’ day may not be winning ‘all’ day. And
that is because of Oxonian philosophy being what it is. Because, as far as
Grice’s Oxonian explorations on communication go, in a succession of
increasingly elaborate moves – ending with a a clause which closes the succession
o-- designed to thwart this or that scenario, later deemed illegitimate,
involving two rational agents where the emissor E relies on an
‘inference-element’ that it is not the case that E intends his recipient R will
recogise – Grice is led to narrow the ‘intending’ the reductive analysis of ‘Emissor
E communicates that p’ to C-intending. Grice expects that whatever may be the case in general with
regard to ‘intending,’ C-intending seems for some reason to Grice to be unsophisticatedly,
viz. plainly, too sophisticated a ‘state’ of a soul (or ψυχή) to be found in an organism, ‘pirot,’ creature, that we may
not want to deem ‘rational,’ or as the Germans would say, a creature that is plainly
destitute of “Die Deutsche Sprache.” We seem to be needing a pirot to be “very
intelligent, indeed rational.” (Who other than Grice would genially combine
Locke with Carnap?). Some may regret, Grice admits, that his unavoidable rear-guard
action just undermines the raison d'etre of his campaign. However, Grice goes on to provide an admittedly brief reply
which will have to suffice under the circumstances. There is SOME limit for
Oxonian debate! A full treatment that would satisfy Grice requires delving deep
into crucial problems about the boundary between vicious and virtuous conceptual
circularity.
Which is promising. It is not something
UNATTAINABLE a priori – and there is nothing wrong with leaving it for the
morrow. It reduces to the philosopher trying to show himself virtuously
circular, if not, like Lear, spherical. But why need the circle be virtuous.
Well, as August would put it, unless a ‘circulus’ is not ‘virtuosus,’ one would
hardly deem it a ‘circulus’ in the first place. A circle is virtuous if it is not a
bad circle. One may even say, with The Carpenter, that, like a cabbage or a
king, if a circle is not virtuous is not even a circle! (Grice 2001:35). In
this case, to borrow from former Oxonian student S. R. Schiffer, we need the
‘virtuous circle’ because we are dealing with ‘a loop’ (Schiffer, 1988:v) -- a
‘conceptual loop,’ that is. Schiffer is not interested in ‘communicating;’ only
‘meaning,’ but his point can be easily transliterated. Schiffer is saying that
‘U,’ or utterer, our ‘E,’ means that p’ surely relies on ‘U intends that p,’
but mind the loop: ‘U intends that p’ may rely on ‘U means that p.’In Grice’s
most generic, third-person terms, we have a creature, call it a pirot, P1,
that, by doing thing D1, communicates that p. We are talking of Grice qua
ethologist, who OBSERVES the scenario. As it happens, Grice’s favourite pirot
is the parrot, and call Grice a snob, but his favourite parrot was Prince
Maurice’s Parrot. Prince Maurice’s Parrot. Grice reads Locke, and adapts it
slightly. “Since I think I may be confident, that, whoever should see a
CREATURE of his own shape or make, though it had no more reason all its life
than a PARROT, would call him still A MAN; or whoever should hear a parrot discourse,
reason, and philosophise, would call or think it nothing but a PARROT; and say,
the one was A DULL IRRATIONAL MAN, and the other A VERY INTELLIGENT RATIONAL
PARROT. “A relation we have in an author of great note, is sufficient to
countenance the supposition of A RATIONAL PARROT. “The author’s words are as
follows.”““I had a mind to know, from Prince Maurice's own mouth, the account
of a common, but much credited story, that I had heard so often from many
others, of a parrot he has, that speaks, and asks, and answers common questions,
like A REASONABLE CREATURE.””““So that those of his train there generally
conclude it to be witchery or possession; and one of his chaplains, would never
from that time endure A PARROT, but says all PARROTS have a devil in them.””““I
had heard many particulars of this story, and as severed by people hard to be
discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there is of it.””““Prince
Maurice says, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there is something
true, but a great deal false of what is reported.””““I desired to know of him
what there was of the first. Prince Maurice tells me short and coldly, that he
had HEARD of such A PARROT; and though he believes nothing of it, and it was a
good way off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for the parrot: that it
was a very great parrot; and when the parrot comes first into the room where
Prince Maurice is, with a great many men about him, the parrot says presently, ‘What
a nice company is here.’”” ““ One of the men asks the parrot, ‘What thinkest
thou that man is?,’ ostending his finger, and pointing to Prince Maurice.”“The
parrot answers, ‘Some general -- or other.’ When the man brings the parrot
close to Prince Maurice, Prince Maurice asks the parrot, ‘D'ou venez-vous?’”““The
parrot answers, ‘De Marinnan.’ Then Prince Maurice goes on, and poses a second
question to the parrot.””““‘A qui estes-vous?’ The Parrot answers: ‘A un
Portugais.’”““Prince Maurice then asks a third question: ‘Que fais-tu la?’““The
parrot answers: “Je garde les poulles.’ Prince Maurice smiles, which pleases
the Parrot.”““Prince Maurice, violating a Griceian maxim, and being just
informed that p, asks whether p. This is incidentally the Prince’s fourth
question to the parrot – the first idiotic one. ‘Vous gardez les poulles?’”” ““The Parrot answers, ‘Oui, moi; et je scai bien faire.’
Then the parrott appeals to Peirce’s iconic system and makes the chuck four or
five times that a man uses to make to chickens when a man calls them. I set
down the words of this worthy dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said
them to me. I ask Prince Maurice in what ‘tongue’ the parrot speaks.””““Prince
Maurice says that the parrot speaks in the Brazilian tongue.””““ I ask Prince
William whether he understands the Brazilian tongue.”” ““Prince Maurice says:
No, but he has taken care to have TWO interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman
that spoke the Brazilian tongue, and the other a Brazilian that spoke the Dutch
tongue; that Prince Maurice asked them separately and privately, and both of
them AGREED in telling Prince Maurice just the same thing that the parrot had
said.””““I could not but tell this ODD story, because it is so much out of the
way, and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one; for I dare say
Prince Maurice at least believed himself in all he told me, having ever passed
for a very honest and pious man.””““I leave it to naturalists to reason, and to
other men to believe, as they please upon it. However, it is not, perhaps,
amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such digressions,
whether to the purpose or no.””Locke takes care “that the reader should have
the story at large in the author's own words, because he seems to me not to
have thought it incredible.”“For it cannot be imagined that so able a man as
he, who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of
himself, should take so much pains, in a place where it had nothing to do, to
pin so close, not only on a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a prince
in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story which, if he
himself thought incredible, he could not but also think RIDICULOUS.”“Prince
Maurice, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author, who relates it
from him, both of them call this talker A PARROT.”Locke asks “any one else who
thinks such a story fit to be told, whether, if this PARROT, and all of its
kind, had always talked, as we have a prince's word for it this one did,-
whether, I say, they would not have passed for a race of RATIONAL ANIMALS; but
yet, whether, for all that, they would have been allowed to be MEN, and not
PARROTS?”“For I presume it is not the idea of A THINKING OR RATIONAL BEING
alone that makes the idea of A MAN in most people's sense: but of A BODY, so
and so shaped, joined to it: and if that be the idea of a MAN, the same
successive body not shifted all at once, must, as well as THE SAME IMMATERIAL
SPIRIT, go to the making of the same MAN.”So
back to Grice’s pirotology, or Pirotologia. But first a precis Grice needs a
dossier with a précis, so that he can insert the parrot’s conversational implicatura
– and Prince Maurice’s. PARROT: What a nice company is here.MAN (pointing to
Prince Maurice): What thinkest thou that man is?PARROT: Some general -- or
other. Grice’s gloss: The he parrot displays what Grice calls ‘up-take.’ The
parrot recognizes the man’s c-intention. So far is ability to display uptake.PRINCE
MAURICE: D'ou venez-vous?PARROT: De Marinnan.PRINCE MAURICE: A qui
estes-vous?PARROT: A un Portugais.PRINCE MAURICE: Que fais-tu la?PARROT: Je
garde les poulles.PRINCE MAURICE SMILES and flouts a Griceian maxim: Vous
gardez les poulles?PARROT (losing patience, and grasping the Prince’s implicaturum
that he doubts it): Oui, moi. Et je scai bien faire.Grice’s gloss: The Parrott appeals
to Peirce’s iconic system and makes the chuck five times that a man uses to
make to chickens when a man calls them.According to his “most recent speculations”
about communication, Grice goes on in his ‘Reply to Richards,’ one should
distinguish, as he engages in a bit of legalese, between two sides of the scenario
under conceptual reduction, E communicates that p. One side is the ‘de facto’
side, a side which, as in name implies, in fact contains any
communication-relevant feature which obtains or is present in the
circumstances. But then there is a ‘de jure’ side to the scenario, viz. the
nested C-intending which is only deemed to be present, as a vicious circle with
good intentions may become a virtuous one. By the ‘nesting,’ Grice means the
three sub-intentions, involved in a scenario where Emissor E communicates that
(psi*) p, reducible to the Emissor E c-intending that A recognises that E psi-s
that p.First, there is the ‘exhibitive’ intention, C1. Emissor E intends A to
recognise that A psi-s that p.Second, there is the ‘reflexive’ intention, C2.Emissor
intends that A recognise C1 by A recognising C2Third, there is the ‘openness’
intention, C3. There is no inference-element which is C-constitutive such that
Emissor relies on it and yet does not intend A to recognise.The “de jure” side
to the state of affairs involves self-reference But since this self-referential
circle, a mere ‘loop,’ is meant to BLOCK an utterly vicious circle of a
regressus ad infinitum (or ‘ho eis apeiron ekballon,’ if you must), the
self-referential circle may well be deemed virtuous. The ‘de jure’ side to the
scenario is trying to save state of affairs which in, in Grice’s words,
“infinitely complex,” and such that no reasonable philosopher should expect to
be realised ‘de facto.’ “In which case,” Grice remarks, “it seems to serve
little, if any, purpose” to assume that this very INCONCEIVABLE ‘de facto’
instantiation of a ‘de jure’ ascription of an emissor communicating that p
would only be detectable, as it isn’t, by appeal to something like ‘die
Deutsche Sprache’!“At its most meagre,” to use Grice’s idiom, the ‘de facto’
side should consist, merely, in any pre-rational ‘counterpart’ to the state of
affairs describable by having an Emissor E communicating that p,This might
amount to no more than making a certain sort of utterance – our doing D1 -- in
order thereby to get some recipient creature R, our second pirot, P2, to think
or want some particular thing, our p. This meagre condition hardly involves
reference to anything like ‘die Deutsche Sprache.’Let’s reformulate the
condition.It’s just a pirot, at a ‘pre-rational’ level. The pirot does a thing
T IN ORDER THEREBY to get some other pirot to think or do some particular
thing. To echo Hare,Die Tur ist geschlossen, ja.Die Tur ist geschlossen,
bitte.Grice continues as a corollary: “Maybe in a less straightforward instance
of “Emissor E communicates that p” there is actually present the C-intention
whose feasibility as an ‘intention’ suggests some ability to use ‘die Deutsche
Sprache.’And if it does, Grice adds, it looks like anything like ‘die Deutsche
Sprache’ ends up being an aid to the conceptualizing about communication, not
communication itself! ReferencesDavidson, Donald
1986. A nice derangement of epitaphs, in Grandy and Warner, pp. 157-74.Durrell,
My family and other animals. Grandy, R. E. and R. O. Warner. 1986.
Philosophical grounds of rationality: intentions, categories, ends. Oxford, at
the Clarendon Press. Grice, H. P. 1986. Reply to Richards, in Grandy and
Warner, pp. 45-106Grice, H. P. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. London and
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Grice, H. P. 2001. Aspects of
reason. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. Locke, J. 1690. An essay concerning
humane [sic] understanding. Oxford: The Bodleian. Schiffer, S. R. 1988.
Meaning. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press.
animatum: Grice thinks of
communication as what he calls ‘soul-to-soul transfer.’ Very Aristotelian. Grice was interested in what he called the
‘rational soul’ (psyche logike). In an act of communication, Emissor
communicates that p, there is a psi involved, therefore a soul, therefore what
the Romans called an ‘anima,’ and the Greeks called the ‘psyche.’ For surely
there can be no psi-transmission without a psi. Grice loved to abbreviate this
as the psi, since Lady Asquith, who was a soul, would not have desired any less
from Grice. Grice, like Plato and Aristotle, holds a tripartite theory of the
soul. Where, ‘part’ (Aristotelian ‘meros’) is taken very seriously. Anything
thought. From ‘psyche,’ anima. Grice uses the symbol of the letter psi here
which he renders as ‘animatum.’ Why Grice prefers ‘soul’ to mind. The
immortality of a the chicken soul. By Shropshire. Shropshire claims that the immortality of the soul is proved by
the fact that, if you cut off a chicken's head, the chicken will run round the
yard for a quarter of an hour before dropping. Grice has an an 'expansion' of
Shropshire's ingenious argument.If the soul is not dependent on the body, it is
immortal. If the soul is dependent on the body, it is dependent on that part of
the body in which it is located. If the soul is located in the body, it is
located in the head. If the chicken's soul were located in its head, the
chicken's soul would be destroyed if the head were rendered inoperative by
removal from the body. The chicken runs round the yard after head-removal. It
could do this only if animated, and controlled by its soul. So the chicken's
soul is not located in, and not dependent on, the chicken's head. So the
chicken's soul is not dependent on the chicken's body. So the chicken's soul is
immortal. end p.11 If the chicken's soul is immortal, a fortiori the human soul
is immortal. So the soul is immortal. The question I now ask myself is this:
why is it that I should be quite prepared to believe that the Harvard students
ascribed their expansion of Botvinnik's proof, or at least some part of it, to
Botvinnik (as what he had in mind), whereas I have no inclination at all to
ascribe any part of my expansion to Shropshire? Considerations which at once
strike me as being likely to be relevant are: (1) that Botvinnik's proof
without doubt contained more steps than Shropshire's claim; (2) that the
expansion of Botvinnik's proof probably imported, as extra premisses, only
propositions which are true, and indeed certain; whereas my expansion imports
premisses which are false or dubious; (3) that Botvinnik was highly intelligent
and an accomplished logician; whereas Shropshire was neither very intelligent
nor very accomplished as a philosopher. No doubt these considerations are
relevant, though one wonders whether one would be much readier to accord
Shropshire's production the title of 'reasoning' if it had contained some
further striking 'deductions', such as that since the soul is immortal moral
principles have absolute validity; and one might also ask whether the effect of
(3) does not nullify that of (2), since, if Shropshire was stupid, why should
not one ascribe to him a reconstructed argument containing plainly unacceptable
premisses? But, mainly, I would like some further light on the following
question: if such considerations as those which I have just mentioned are
relevant, why are they relevant? I should say a word about avowals. The
following contention might be advanced. If you want to know whether someone R,
who has produced what may be an incomplete piece of reasoning, has a particular
completion in mind, the direct way to find out is to ask him. That would settle
the matter. If, however, you are unable to ask him, then indirect methods will
have to be used, which may well be indecisive. Indeterminacy springs merely
from having to rely on indirect methods. I have two comments to make. First: it
end p.12 is far from clear to what extent avowals do settle the matter. Anyone
who has taught philosophy is familiar with the situation in which, under
pressure to expand an argument they have advanced, students, particularly
beginners, make statements which, one is inclined to say, misrepresent their
position. This phenomenon is perhaps accounted for by my much more important
second point: that avowals in this kind of context generally do not have the
character which one might without reflection suppose them to have; they are not
so much reportive as constructive. If I ask someone if he thinks that so-and-so
is a consequence of such-and-such, what I shall receive will be primarily a
defence of this supposition, not a report on what, historically, he had in mind
in making it. We are in general much more interested in whether an inferential
step is a good one to make than we are in what a particular person had in mind
at the actual moment at which he made the step. One might perhaps see an
analogy between avowals in this area and the specification of plans. If someone
has propounded a plan for achieving a certain objective, and I ask him what he
proposes to do in such-and-such a contingency, I expect him to do the best he
can to specify for me a way of meeting that contingency, rather than to give a
historically correct account of what thoughts he had been entertaining. This
feature of what I might call inferential avowals is one for which we shall have
to account.Let us take stock. The thesis which we proposed for examination has
needed emendation twice, once in the face of the possibility of bad reasoning,
and once to allow for informal and incomplete reasoning. The reformulation
needed to accommodate the latter is proving difficult to reach. Let us take s
and s′ to be sequences consisting of a set of premisses and a conclusion (or,
perhaps it would be better to say, a set of propositions and a further
proposition), or a sequence (sorites) of such sequences. (This is not fully
accurate, but will serve.) Let us suppose that x has produced s (in speech or
in thought). Let "formally cogent" mean "having true premisses,
and being such that steps from premisses to conclusions are formally valid".
(1) We cannot define "s is a piece of reasoning by x" as "x
thinks s to be formally cogent", because if s is an incomplete piece of
reasoning s is not, and could not reasonably be thought by x to be, formally
cogent. end p.13 (2) We cannot define "s is a piece of reasoning by
x" as "(∃s′)
(s′ is an expansion of s and s′ is formally cogent)" because (a) it does
not get in the idea that x thinks s′ formally cogent and (b) it would exclude
bad reasoning. (3) We cannot define "s is a piece of reasoning by x"
as "x thinks that (∃s′)
(s′ is an expansion of s and s′ is formally cogent)", for this is too
weak, and would allow as reasoning any case in which x believed (for whatever
reason, or lack of reason) that an informal sequence had some formally cogent
expansion or other. (Compare perhaps Shropshire.).” In Latin indeed, ‘animus’
and ‘anima’ make a world of a difference, as Shropshire well knows. Psyche
transliterates as ‘anima’ only; ‘animus’ the Greeks never felt the need for. Of
course a chicken is an animal, as in man. “Homo animalis rationalis.” Grice
prefers ‘human,’ but sometimes he uses ‘animal,’ as opposed to ‘vegetal,
sometimes, when considering stages of freedom. A stone (mineral) displays a
‘free’ fall, which is metabolical. And then, a vegetable is less free than an
animal, which can move, and a non-human animal (that Grice calls ‘a beast’) is
less free than man, who is a rational animal. Grice notes that back in the day,
when the prince came from a hunt, “I brought some animals,” since these were
‘deer,’ ‘deer’ was taken as meaning ‘animal,’ when the implicaturum was very
much cancellable. The Anglo-Saxons soon dropped the ‘deer’ and adopted the
Latinate ‘animal.’ They narrowed the use of ‘deer’ for the ‘cervus cervus.’ But
not across the North Sea where the zoo is still called a ‘deer-garden.’ When
Aelfric studied philosophy he once thought man was a rational deer.
annullatum
-- annullability: a synonym for ‘cancellability,’ used in “Causal.” Perhaps
clear than ‘cancel.’ The etymology seems clear, because it involves the
negative – “Cancel” seems like a soft sophisticated way of annulling, render
something nix. Short and Lewis has ‘nullus’ as ne-ullus, not any, none, no. which is indeed a diminutive
for ‘unus,’ [for unulus, dim. of unus], any, any one (usu.
in neg. sentences; corresp. with aliquis in affirmations).
anniceris: Grecian and
pre-Griceian philosopher, vide. H. P. Grice, “Pleasure.” A pupil of Antipater,
he established a separate branch of the Cyrenaic school known as the
Anniceraioi. He subscribed to typical Cyrenaic hedonism, arguing that the end
of each action should be one’s own pleasure, since we can know nothing of
others’ experiences. He tempered the implications of hedonism with the claim
that a wise man attaches weight to respect for parents, patriotism, gratitude,
and friendship, perhaps influencing Epicurus in this regard. Anniceris also
played down the Cyrenaic stress on the intellect’s role in hedonistic practical
rationality, taking the Aristotelian view that cultivation of the right habits
is indispensable.
anselmus: “I would call him ‘Canterbury,’ only he was an
Italian!” – H. P. Grice. Saint, called Anselm of Canterbury, philosopher
theologian. A Benedictine monk and the second Norman archbishop of Canterbury,
he is best known for his distinctive method
fides quaerens intellectum; his “ontological” argument for the existence
of God in his treatise Proslogion; and his classic formulation of the
satisfaction theory of the Atonement in the Cur Deus homo. Like Augustine
before him, Anselm is a Christian Platonist in metaphysics. He argues that the
most accessible proofs of the existence of God are through value theory: in his
treatise Monologion, he deploys a cosmological argument, showing the existence
of a source of all goods, which is the Good per se and hence supremely good;
that same thing exists per se and is the Supreme Being. In the Proslogion,
Anselm begins with his conception of a being a greater than which cannot be
conceived, and mounts his ontological argument that a being a greater than
which cannot be conceived exists in the intellect, because even the fool
understands the phrase when he hears it; but if it existed in the intellect
alone, a greater could be conceived that existed in reality. This supremely
valuable object is essentially whatever it is
other things being equal that is
better to be than not to be, and hence living, wise, powerful, true, just,
blessed, immaterial, immutable, and eternal per se; even the paradigm of
sensory goods Beauty, Harmony,
Sweetness, and Pleasant Texture, in its own ineffable manner. Nevertheless, God
is supremely simple, not compounded of a plurality of excellences, but “omne et
unum, totum et solum bonum,” a being a more delectable than which cannot be
conceived. Everything other than God has its being and its well-being through
God as efficient cause. Moreover, God is the paradigm of all created natures,
the latter ranking as better to the extent that they more perfectly resemble
God. Thus, it is better to be human than to be horse, to be horse than to be
wood, even though in comparison with God everything else is “almost nothing.”
For every created nature, there is a that-for-which-it-ismade ad quod factum
est. On the one hand, Anselm thinks of such teleology as part of the internal structure
of the natures themselves: a creature of type F is a true F only insofar as it
is/does/exemplifies that for which F’s were made; a defective F, to the extent
that it does not. On the other hand, for Anselm, the telos of a created nature
is that-for-which-God-made-it. Because God is personal and acts through reason
and will, Anselm infers that prior in the order of explanation to creation,
there was, in the reason of the maker, an exemplar, form, likeness, or rule of
what he was going to make. In De veritate Anselm maintains that such teleology
gives rise to obligation: since creatures owe their being and well-being to God
as their cause, so they owe their being and well-being to God in the sense of
having an obligation to praise him by being the best beings they can. Since
every creature is of some nature or other, each can be its best by being
that-for-which-God-made-it. Abstracting from impediments, non-rational natures
fulfill this obligation and “act rightly” by natural necessity; rational creatures,
when they exercise their powers of reason and will to fulfill God’s purpose in
creating them. Thus, the goodness of a creature how good a being it is is a
function of twin factors: its natural telos i.e., what sort of imitation of
divine nature it aims for, and its rightness in exercising its natural powers
to fulfill its telos. By contrast, God as absolutely independent owes no one
anything and so has no obligations to creatures. In De casu diaboli, Anselm
underlines the optimism of his ontology, reasoning that since the Supreme Good
and the Supreme Being are identical, every being is good and every good a
being. Two further conclusions follow. First, evil is a privation of being, the
absence of good in something that properly ought to have it e.g., blindness in
normally sighted animals, injustice in humans or angels. Second, since all
genuine powers are given to enable a being to fulfill its natural telos and so
to be the best being it can, all genuine metaphysically basic powers are
optimific and essentially aim at goods, so that evils are merely incidental
side effects of their operation, involving some lack of coordination among
powers or between their exercise and the surrounding context. Thus, divine
omnipotence does not, properly speaking, include corruptibility, passibility,
or the ability to lie, because the latter are defects and/or powers in other
things whose exercise obstructs the flourishing of the corruptible, passible,
or potential liar. Anselm’s distinctive action theory begins teleologically
with the observation that humans and angels were made for a happy immortality
enjoying God, and to that end were given the powers of reason to make accurate
value assessments and will to love accordingly. Anselm regards freedom and
imputability of choice as essential and permanent features of all rational
beings. But freedom cannot be defined as a power for opposites the power to sin
and the power not to sin, both because neither God nor the good angels have any
power to sin, and because sin is an evil at which no metaphysically basic power
can aim. Rather, freedom is the power to preserve justice for its own sake.
Choices and actions are imputable to an agent only if they are spontaneous,
from the agent itself. Creatures cannot act spontaneously by the necessity of
their natures, because they do not have their natures from themselves but
receive them from God. To give them the opportunity to become just of
themselves, God furnishes them with two motivaAnselm Anselm 31 31 tional drives toward the good: an
affection for the advantageous affectio commodi or a tendency to will things
for the sake of their benefit to the agent itself; and an affection for justice
affectio justitiae or a tendency to will things because of their own intrinsic
value. Creatures are able to align these drives by letting the latter temper
the former or not. The good angels, who preserved justice by not willing some
advantage possible for them but forbidden by God for that time, can no longer
will more advantage than God wills for them, because he wills their maximum as
a reward. By contrast, creatures, who sin by refusing to delay gratification in
accordance with God’s will, lose both uprightness of will and their affection
for justice, and hence the ability to temper their pursuit of advantage or to
will the best goods. Justice will never be restored to angels who desert it.
But if animality makes human nature weaker, it also opens the possibility of
redemption. Anselm’s argument for the necessity of the Incarnation plays out
the dialectic of justice and mercy so characteristic of his prayers. He begins
with the demands of justice: humans owe it to God to make all of their choices
and actions conform to his will; failure to render what was owed insults God’s
honor and makes the offender liable to make satisfaction; because it is worse
to dishonor God than for countless worlds to be destroyed, the satisfaction
owed for any small sin is incommensurate with any created good; it would be
maximally indecent for God to overlook such a great offense. Such calculations
threaten certain ruin for the sinner, because God alone can do/be immeasurably
deserving, and depriving the creature of its honor through the eternal
frustration of its telos seems the only way to balance the scales. Yet, justice
also forbids that God’s purposes be thwarted through created resistance, and it
was divine mercy that made humans for a beatific immortality with him.
Likewise, humans come in families by virtue of their biological nature which
angels do not share, and justice allows an offense by one family member to be
compensated by another. Assuming that all actual humans are descended from
common first parents, Anselm claims that the human race can make satisfaction
for sin, if God becomes human and renders to God what Adam’s family owes. When
Anselm insists that humans were made for beatific intimacy with God and
therefore are obliged to strive into God with all of their powers, he
emphatically includes reason or intellect along with emotion and will. God, the
controlling subject matter, is in part permanently inaccessible to us because
of the ontological incommensuration between God and creatures and our progress
is further hampered by the consequences of sin. Our powers will function best,
and hence we have a duty to follow right order in their use: by submitting
first to the holistic discipline of faith, which will focus our souls and point
us in the right direction. Yet it is also a duty not to remain passive in our
appreciation of authority, but rather for faith to seek to understand what it
has believed. Anselm’s works display a dialectical structure, full of
questions, objections, and contrasting opinions, designed to stir up the mind.
His quartet of teaching dialogues De grammatico,
De veritate, De libertate arbitrii, and De casu diaboli as well as his last
philosophical treatise, De concordia, anticipate the genre of the Scholastic
question quaestio so dominant in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His
discussions are likewise remarkable for their attention to modalities and
proper-versus-improper linguistic usage.
antilogismus: Grice: “Not to be
confused with the mere implicatural ‘para-logism.’ -- an inconsistent triad of
propositions, two of which are the premises of a valid categorical syllogism
and the third of which is the contradictory of the conclusion of this valid
categorical syllogism. An antilogism is a special form of antilogy or
self-contradiction.
antinomianism: as a Kantian,
Grice overused the idea of a nomos or law, and then there’s antinominaism, the
view that one is not bound by moral law; specifically, the view that Christians
are by grace set free from the need to observe moral laws. During the
Reformation, antinomianism was believed by some but not Martin Luther to follow
from the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone.
antiochus: Grecian
philosopher and the last prominent member of the New Academy. He played the
major role in ending its two centuries of Skepticism and helped revive interest
in doctrines from the Old Academy, as he called Plato, Aristotle, and their
associates. The impulse for this decisive shift came in epistemology, where the
Skeptical Academy had long agreed with Stoicism that knowledge requires an
infallible “criterion of truth” but disputed the Stoic claim to find this
criterion in “cognitive perception.” Antiochus’s teacher, Philo of Larissa,
broke with this tradition and proposed that perception need not be cognitive to
qualify as knowledge. Rejecting this concession, Antiochus offered new arguments
for the Stoic claim that some perception is cognitive, and hence knowledge. He
also proposed a similar accommodation in ethics, where he agreed with the
Stoics that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness but insisted with
Aristotle that virtue is not the only good. These and similar attempts to
mediate fundamental disputes have led some to label Antiochus an eclectic or
syncretist; but some of his proposals, especially his appeal to the Old
Academy, set the stage for Middle Platonism, which also sought to reconcile
Plato and Aristotle. No works by Antiochus survive, but his students included
many eminent Romans, most notably Cicero, who summarizes Antiochus’s
epistemology in the Academica, his critique of Stoic ethics in De finibus IV,
and his purportedly Aristotelian ethics in De finibus V.
anti-realism: If Grice was a
realist, he hated anti-realism, the rejection, in one or another form or area
of inquiry, of realism, the view that there are knowable mind-independent
facts, objects, or properties. Metaphysical realists make the general claim
that there is a world of mind-independent objects. Realists in particular areas
make more specific or limited claims. Thus moral realists hold that there are
mind-independent moral properties, mathematical realists that there are
mind-independent mathematical facts, scientific realists that scientific
inquiry reveals the existence of previously unknown and unobservable
mind-independent entities and properties. Antirealists deny either that facts
of the relevant sort are mind-independent or that knowledge of such facts is
possible. Berkeley’s subjective idealism, which claims that the world consists
only of minds and their contents, is a metaphysical anti-realism.
Constructivist anti-realists, on the other hand, deny that the world consists
only of mental phenomena, but claim that it is constituted by, or constructed
from, our evidence or beliefs. Many philosophers find constructivism
implausible or even incoherent as a metaphysical doctrine, but much more
plausible when restricted to a particular domain, such as ethics or
mathematics. Debates between realists and anti-realists have been particularly
intense in philosophy of science. Scientific realism has been rejected both by
constructivists such as Kuhn, who hold that scientific facts are constructed by
the scientific community, and by empiricists who hold that knowledge is limited
to what can be observed. A sophisticated version of the latter doctrine is Bas
van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, which allows scientists free rein in
constructing scientific models, but claims that evidence for such models
confirms only their observable implications.
apagoge:
distinguished by Grice from both ‘epagoge,’ and his favoured ‘diagoge.’ A shifting of the
basis of argument: hence of argument based on a probable or agreed assumption,
Arist.APr.69a20, cf. Anon.in SE65.35; reduction, “ἡ εἰς τὸ ἀδύνατον ἀ.”
reductio per impossibile, APr. 29b6; “ἡ ἀ. μετάβασίς ἐστιν ἀπ᾽ ἄλλου
προβλήματος ἢ θεωρήματος ἐπ᾽ ἄλλο, οὗ γνωσθέντος ἢ πορισθέντος καὶ τὸ
προκείμενον ἔσται καταφανές” Procl. in Euc.p.212F.; τῶν ἀπορουμένων
διαγραμμάτων τὴν ἀ. ποιήσασθαι ib. p.213F. b. reduction of a disputant (cf. ἀπάγω
v. 1c), “ἡ ἐπὶ τὸ ἄδηλον ἀ.” S.E.P.2.234.
apocatastasis: a branch of
Grice’s eschatology -- from Grecian, ‘reestablishment’, the restoration of all
souls, including Satan’s and his minions’, in the kingdom of God. God’s
goodness will triumph over evil, and through a process of spiritual education
souls will be brought to repentance and made fit for divine life. The theory
originates with Origen but was also held by Gregory of Nyssa. In modern times
F. D. Maurice 180572 and Karl Barth 6 8 held this position.
aporia: cf. aporetic, cognate
with porosity. No porosity, and you get an impasse. While aware of Baker’s and
Deutsch’s treatment of the ‘aporia’ in Aristotle’s account of ‘philos,’ Grice
explores ‘aporia’ in Plato in the Thrasymachus on ‘legal justice’ prior to
‘moral justice’ in Republic. in Dialectic, question for discussion, difficulty,
puzzle, “ἀπορίᾳ σχόμενος” Pl.Prt.321c; ἀ. ἣν ἀπορεῖς ib.324d; “ἡ ἀ. ἰσότης ἐναντίων
λογισμῶν” Arist. Top.145b1, al.; “ἔχει ἀπορίαν περί τινος” Id.Pol.1285b28; “αἱ
μὲν οὖν ἀ. τοιαῦταί τινες συμβαίνουσιν” Id.EN1146b6; “οὐδεμίαν ποιήσει ἀ.”
Id.Metaph.1085a27; ἀ. λύειν, διαλύειν, Id.MM 1201b1, Metaph.1062b31; “ἀπορίᾳ ἀπορίαν
λύειν” D.S.1.37.Discussion with the
Sophist Thrasymachus can
only lead to aporia.
And the more I trust you, the more I sink into an aporia of
sorts. —Aha! roared Thrasymachus to everyone's surprise. There it is!
Socratic aporia is
back! Charge! neither Socrates' company nor Socrates himself gives any
convincing answer. So, he says, finding himself in a real aporia, he
visits Thrasymachus as
well, and ... I argue that a combination of these means in form
that I call “provocative-aporetic” better accounts for the means that Plato
uses to exert a protreptic effect on readers. Aporia is a simultaneously
intellectual and affective experience, and the way that readers choose to
respond to aporia has a greater protreptic effect than either affective or
intellectual means alone. When Socrates says he can 'transfer' the use of
"just" to things related to the 'soul,' what kind of conversational
game is that? Grice took Socrates's manoeuvre very
seriously.Socrates relies on the tripartite theory of the soul. Plato, actually -- since Socrates is a drammatis persona! In "Philosophical Eschatology, Metaphysics, and Plato's
Republic," H. P. Grice's purpose is to carry out a provocative-aporetic
reading Book I Grice argues that it is a dispute between two ways of
understanding 'just' which causes the aporia when Socrates tries to analyse
'just.' Although Socrates will not argue for the complexity and
tripartition of the soul until Bk. IV, we can at least note the contrast with
Thrasymachus' “idealize user” theory.For Socrates, agents are complex, and
justice coordinates the parts of the agent.For Thrasymachus, agents are simple
“users,” and justice is a tool for use. (2 - 3) Justice makes its
possessor happy; the function (telos, metier) argument. To make the
argument that justice is an excellence (virtus, arete) of soul (psyche) that
makes its possessor happy, Socrates relies on a method for discovering the
function (ἔργον, ergon, 352e1, cf. telos, metier, causa finalis) of any object
whatsoever. Socrates begins by differentiating between an exclusive
functions and an optimal function, so that we may discover the functions in
different types of objects, i.e., natural and artificial objects. We can say
an object performs some function (ergon) if one of the following conditions
holds.If the object is the only one that can do the work in
question, or If it is the object that does that work best.Socrates
then provides examples from different part-whole complexes to make his
point. The eye's exclusive function is to see, because no other organ is
specialized so as to perform just that function. A horse's work is to
carry riders into battle. Even though this might not be a horse's
EXCLUSIVE function, it may be its “optimal” function in that the horse is best
suited or designed by God to the task. Finally, the pruning knife is best
for tending to vines, not because it cannot cut anything else, but because it
is optimally suited for that task. Socrates' use of the pruning knife of
as an example of a thing's function resembles a return to the technē model,
since a craftsman must make the knife for a gardener to Socrates asks,
“Would you define this as the function of a horse and of anything else, as that
which someone does either through that thing alone, or best?” (...τοῦτο ἄν
θείης καὶ ἵππου καὶ ἄλλου ὁτουοῦν ἔργον, ὅ ἄν ἤ μόνῳ ἐκείνῳ ποιῇ τις ἤ ἄριστα;
352e1-2) Thrasymachus agrees to this definition of function. 91 use.But his use
of the eye — a bodily organ — should dissuade us from this view. One may
use these examples to argue that Socrates is in fact offering a new method to
investigate the nature of justice: 1) Find out what the functions of such
objects are2) determine (by observation, experiment, or even thought experiment)
cases where objects of such a kind perform their functions well and cases where
they perform them poorly; and 3) finally find out the qualities that
enable them to perform such functions well (and in the absence of which they
perform poorly), and these are their virtues.A crucial difference between this
method and technē model of justice lies in the interpretation that each assigns
to the realm of human artifacts. Polemarchus and Thrasymachus both assume
that the technē is unique as a form of knowledge for the power and control that
it offers users. In Polemarchus' case, the technē of justice, “helping
friends and harming enemies,” may be interpreted as a description of a method
for gaining political power within a traditional framework of communal life,
which assumes the oikos as the basic unit of power. Those families that
help their friends and harm their enemies thrive. Thrasymachus, on the
other hand, emphasizes the ways that technai grant users the power to exploit
nature to further their own, distinctively individual ends. Thus, the
shepherd exploits the sheep to make a livelihood for himself. Socrates'
approach differs from these by re-casting “mastery” over nature as submission
to norms that structure the natural world. For example, many factors contribute
to making This points to a distinction Socrates draws in Book X between
producers and users of artifacts. He uses the example of the blacksmith
who makes a bridle and the horseman who uses the bridle to argue that
production and use correspond to two gradations of knowledge (601c). The
ultimate purpose of the example is to provide a metaphor — using the craft
analogy — for identifying gradations of knowledge on a copy-original paradigm
of the form-participant relation. the pruning knife the optimal tool for
cutting vines: the shape of the human hand, the thickness and shape of the
vines, and the metal of the blade. Likewise, in order for horses to
optimally perform their “work,” they must be "healthy" and
strong. The conditions that bring about their "health" and
strength are not up to us, however."Control” only comes about through the
recognition of natural norms. Thus technē is a type of knowledge that
coordinates structures in nature.It is not an unlimited source of power. Socrates'
inclusion of the human soul (psyche) among those things that have a function is
the more controversial aspect of function argument.Socrates says that the
functions (erga) of the soul (psyche) are “to engage in care-taking,
ruling, and deliberation” and, later, simply that the ergon (or
function) of the soul (or psyche) is “to live” (τὸ ζῆν, "to zen,"
353d6). But the difficulty seems to be this: the functions of pruning
knives, horses, and bodily organs are determined with respect to a limited and
fairly unambiguous context that is already defined for them. But what is
this context with respect to the soul (psyche) of a human individual? One
answer might be that the social world — politics — provides the context that
defines the soul's function, just as the needs of the human organism define the
context in which the eye can perform a function. But here a challenger
might reply that in aristocracies, oligarchies, and democracies, “care-taking,
ruling, and deliberation” are utilized for different ends.In these contexts,
individual souls might have different functions, according to the “needs” that
these different regimes have. Alternatively, one might deny altogether
that the human soul has a function: the distinctive feature of human beings
might be their position “outside” of nature. Thus, even if Socrates'
description of the soul's function is accurate, it is too general to be really
informative.Socrates must offer more details for the function argument to be
convincing. Nonetheless, the idea that justice is a condition that lets
the soul perform its functions is a significant departure from the technē
model of justice, and one that will remain throughout the argument of the
Republic. […] τὸ ἐπιμελεῖσθαι καὶ ἄρχειν καὶ βουλεύεσθαι (353d3). As
far as Bk. I is concerned, “justice” functions as a place-holder for that
condition of the soul which permits the soul to perform its functions
well. What that condition is, however, remains unknown.For this reason,
Plato has Socrates concludes Bk. I by likening himself to a “glutton” (ὥσπερ οἱ
λίχνοι, 354b1), who takes another dish before “moderately enjoying the
previous” serving (πρὶν τοῦ προτέρου μετρίως ἀπολαύσαι, 354b2-3). For
Socrates wants to know what effects the optimal condition of soul brings about
before knowing what the condition itself is. Thus Bk. I concludes in
"aporia," but not in a way that betrays the dialogue's lack of
unity.The “separatist” thesis concerning Bk. I goes back to Hermann in
"Geschichte und System der Platonischen Philosophie." One can
argue on behalf of the “separatist” view as well. One can argue against
the separatist thesis, even granting some evidence in favour of the separatist
thesis. To the contrary, the "aporia" clearly foreshadows the
argument that Socrates makes about the soul in Bk. IV, viz. that the soul
(psyche) is a complex whole of parts -- an implicaturum in the “justice is
stronger” argument -- and that 'just' is the condition that allows this complex
whole be integrated to an optimal degree. Thus, Bk. I does not conclude
negatively, but rather provides the resources for going beyond the
"technē" model of justice, which is the primary cause of
Polemarchus's and Thrasymachus's encounter with "aporia" in Bk.
I. Throughout conversation of "The Republic," Socrates does not
really alter the argument he gives for justice in Bk. I, but rather states the
same argument in a different way. My gratitude to P. N.
Moore. Refs: Wise guys and smart alecks in Republic 1 and 2; Proleptic
composition in the Republic, or why Bk. 1 was never a separate dialogue, The
Classical Quarterly; "Socrates: ironist and moral philosopher."
Strictly an ‘aporia’ in Griceian, is a ‘puzzle’, ‘question for discussion’,
‘state of perplexity’. The aporetic method
the raising of puzzles without offering solutions is typical of the elenchus in the early
Socratic dialogues of Plato. These consist in the testing of definitions and
often end with an aporia, e.g., that piety is both what is and what is not
loved by the gods. Compare the paradoxes of Zeno, e.g., that motion is both
possible and impossible. In Aristotle’s dialectic, the resolution of aporiai
discovered in the views on a subject is an important source of philosophical
understanding. The beliefs that one should love oneself most of all and that
self-love is shameful, e.g., can be resolved with the right understanding of
‘self’. The possibility of argument for two inconsistent positions was an
important factor in the development of Skepticism. In modern philosophy, the
antinomies that Kant claimed reason would arrive at in attempting to prove the
existence of objects corresponding to transcendental ideas may be seen as
aporiai.
applicatum.
While Bennett uses the rather ‘abusive’ “nominalist” to refer to Grice, Grice
isn’t. It’s all about the ‘applied.’ Grice thinks a rational creature – not a
parrot, but a rational intelligent pirot – can have an abstract idea. So there
is this “Communication Device,” with capital C and capital D. The emissor
APPLIES it to a given occasion. Cf. complete and incomplete. What’s the antonym
of applied? Plato’s idea! applied
– grice used ‘applied’ for ‘meaning’ – but ‘applied’ can be used in other
contxts too. In ethics, the domain of ethics that includes professional ethics,
such as business ethics, engineering ethics, and medical ethics, as well as
practical ethics such as environmental ethics, which is applied, and thus
practical as opposed to theoretical, but not focused on any one discipline. One
of the major disputes among those who work in applied ethics is whether or not
there is a general and universal account of morality applicable both to the
ethical issues in the professions and to various practical problems. Some
philosophers believe that each of the professions or each field of activity
develops an ethical code for itself and that there need be no apellatio applied
ethics 34 34 close relationship between
e.g. business ethics, medical ethics, and environmental ethics. Others hold
that the same moral system applies to all professions and fields. They claim
that the appearance of different moral systems is simply due to certain
problems being more salient for some professions and fields than for others.
The former position accepts the consequence that the ethical codes of different
professions might conflict with one another, so that a physician in business
might find that business ethics would require one action but medical ethics
another. Engineers who have been promoted to management positions sometimes
express concern over the tension between what they perceive to be their responsibility
as engineers and their responsibility as managers in a business. Many lawyers
seem to hold that there is similar tension between what common morality
requires and what they must do as lawyers. Those who accept a universal
morality hold that these tensions are all resolvable because there is only one
common morality. Underlying both positions is the pervasive but false view of
common morality as providing a unique right answer to every moral problem.
Those who hold that each profession or field has its own moral code do not
realize that common morality allows for conflicts of duties. Most of those who
put forward moral theories, e.g., utilitarians, Kantians, and contractarians,
attempt to generate a universal moral system that solves all moral problems.
This creates a situation that leads many in applied ethics to dismiss
theoretical ethics as irrelevant to their concerns. An alternative view of a
moral theory is to think of it on the model of a scientific theory, primarily
concerned to describe common morality rather than generate a new improved
version. On this model, it is clear that although morality rules out many
alternatives as unacceptable, it does not provide unique right answers to every
controversial moral question. On this model, different fields and different
professions may interpret the common moral system in somewhat different ways.
For example, although deception is always immoral if not justified, what counts
as deception is not the same in all professions. Not informing a patient of an
alternative treatment counts as deceptive for a physician, but not telling a
customer of an alternative to what she is about to buy does not count as
deceptive for a salesperson. The professions also have considerable input into
what special duties are incurred by becoming a member of their profession.
Applied ethics is thus not the mechanical application of a common morality to a
particular profession or field, but an independent discipline that clarifies
and analyzes the practices in a field or profession so that common morality can
be applied.
a priori: Obviously
contrasted to ‘a posteriori,’ but not necessarily in termporal terms -- Grice
was fascinated by the apriori, both analytic but more so the synthetic. He
would question his children’s playmates with things like, “Can a sweater be
green and red all over? No striped allowed.” a priori, prior to or independent
of experience; contrasted with ‘a posteriori’ empirical. These two terms are
primarily used to mark a distinction between 1 two modes of epistemic
justification, together with derivative distinctions between 2 kinds of
propositions, 3 kinds of knowledge, and 4 kinds of argument. They are also used
to indicate a distinction between 5 two ways in which a concept or idea may be
acquired. 1 A belief or claim is said to be justified a priori if its epistemic
justification, the reason or warrant for thinking it to be true, does not
depend at all on sensory or introspective or other sorts of experience; whereas
if its justification does depend at least in part on such experience, it is
said to be justified a posteriori or empirically. This specific distinction has
to do only with the justification of the belief, and not at all with how the
constituent concepts are acquired; thus it is no objection to a claim of a
priori justificatory status for a particular belief that experience is required
for the acquisition of some of the constituent concepts. It is clear that the
relevant notion of experience includes sensory and introspective experience, as
well as such things as kinesthetic experience. Equally clearly, to construe
experience in the broadest possible sense of, roughly, a conscious undergoing
of any sort would be to destroy the point of the distinction, since even a
priori justification presumably involves some sort of conscious process of
awareness. The construal that is perhaps most faithful to the traditional usage
is that which construes experience as any sort of cognitive input that derives,
presumably causally, from features of the actual world that may not hold in
other possible worlds. Thus, e.g., such things as clairvoyance or telepathy, if
they were to exist, would count as forms of experience and any knowledge
resulting therefrom as a posteriori; but the intuitive apprehension of properties
or numbers or other sorts of abstract entities that are the same in all
possible worlds, would not. Understood in this way, the concept of a priori
justification is an essentially negative concept, specifying as it does what
the justification of the belief does not depend on, but saying nothing a priori
a priori 35 35 about what it does
depend on. Historically, the main positive conception was that offered by
proponents of rationalism such as Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz,
according to which a priori justification derives from the intuitive
apprehension of necessary facts pertaining to universals and other abstract
entities. Although Kant is often regarded as a rationalist, his restriction of
substantive a priori knowledge to the world of appearances represents a major
departure from the main rationalist tradition. In contrast, proponents of
traditional empiricism, if they do not repudiate the concept of a priori
justification altogether as does Quine, typically attempt to account for such justification
by appeal to linguistic or conceptual conventions. The most standard
formulation of this empiricist view a development of the view of Hume that all
a priori knowledge pertains to “relations of ideas” is the claim typical of
logical positivism that all a priori knowable claims or propositions are
analytic. A rationalist would claim in opposition that at least some a priori
claims or propositions are synthetic. 2 A proposition that is the content of an
a priori justified belief is often referred to as an a priori proposition or an
a priori truth. This usage is also often extended to include any proposition
that is capable of being the content of such a belief, whether it actually has
this status or not. 3 If, in addition to being justified a priori or a
posteriori, a belief is also true and satisfies whatever further conditions may
be required for it to constitute knowledge, that knowledge is derivatively
characterized as a priori or a posteriori empirical, respectively. Though a
priori justification is often regarded as by itself guaranteeing truth, this
should be regarded as a further substantive thesis, not as part of the very
concept of a priori justification. Examples of knowledge that have been
classically regarded as a priori in this sense are mathematical knowledge,
knowledge of logical truths, and knowledge of necessary entailments and
exclusions of commonsense concepts ‘Nothing can be red and green all over at
the same time’, ‘If A is later than B and B is later than C, then A is later
than C’; but many claims of metaphysics, ethics, and even theology have also
been claimed to have this status. 4 A deductively valid argument that also
satisfies the further condition that each of the premises or sometimes one or
more particularly central premises are justified a priori is referred to as an
a priori argument. This label is also sometimes applied to arguments that are
claimed to have this status, even if the correctness of this claim is in
question. 5 In addition to the uses just catalogued that derive from the
distinction between modes of justification, the terms ‘a priori’ and ‘a
posteriori’ are also employed to distinguish two ways in which a concept or
idea might be acquired by an individual person. An a posteriori or empirical
concept or idea is one that is derived from experience, via a process of
abstraction or ostensive definition. In contrast, an a priori concept or idea
is one that is not derived from experience in this way and thus presumably does
not require any particular experience to be realized though the explicit
realization of such a concept might still require experience as a “trigger”.
The main historical account of such concepts, again held mainly by
rationalists, construes them as innate, either implanted in the mind by God or,
in the more contemporary version of the claim held by Chomsky, Fodor, and
others, resulting from evolutionary development. Concepts typically regarded as
having this sort of status include the concepts of substance, causation, God,
necessity, infinity, and many others. Empiricists, in contrast, typically hold
that all concepts are derived from experience. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “The
synthetic a priori.”
aquinas: --a strange
genitive for “Aquino,” the little village where the saint was born. while
Grice, being C. of E., would avoid Aquinas like the rats, he was aware of
Aquinas’s clever ‘intention-based semantics’ in his commentary of Aristotle’s
De Interpretatione. Saint Thomas 122574,
philosopher-theologian, the most influential thinker of the medieval
period. He produced a powerful philosophical synthesis that combined
Aristotelian and Neoplatonic elements within a Christian context in an original
and ingenious way. Life and works. Thomas was born at Aquino castle in
Roccasecca, Italy, and took early schooling at the Benedictine Abbey of Monte
Cassino. He then studied liberal arts and philosophy at the of Naples 123944 and joined the Dominican
order. While going to Paris for further studies as a Dominican, he was detained
by his family for about a year. Upon being released, he studied with the
Dominicans at Paris, perhaps privately, until 1248, when he journeyed to a
priori argument Aquinas, Saint Thomas 36
36 Cologne to work under Albertus Magnus. Thomas’s own report reportatio
of Albertus’s lectures on the Divine Names of Dionysius and his notes on
Albertus’s lectures on Aristotle’s Ethics date from this period. In 1252 Thomas
returned to Paris to lecture there as a bachelor in theology. His resulting
commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard dates from this period, as do two
philosophical treatises, On Being and Essence De ente et essentia and On the
Principles of Nature De principiis naturae. In 1256 he began lecturing as
master of theology at Paris. From this period 125659 date a series of scriptural
commentaries, the disputations On Truth De veritate, Quodlibetal Questions
VIIXI, and earlier parts of the Summa against the Gentiles Summa contra
gentiles; hereafter SCG. At different locations in Italy from 1259 to 1269,
Thomas continued to write prodigiously, including, among other works, the
completion of the SCG; a commentary on the Divine Names; disputations On the
Power of God De potentia Dei and On Evil De malo; and Summa of Theology Summa
theologiae; hereafter ST, Part I. In January 1269, he resumed teaching in Paris
as regent master and wrote extensively until returning to Italy in 1272. From
this second Parisian regency date the disputations On the Soul De anima and On
Virtues De virtutibus; continuation of ST; Quodlibets IVI and XII; On the Unity
of the Intellect against the Averroists De unitate intellectus contra
Averroistas; most if not all of his commentaries on Aristotle; a commentary on
the Book of Causes Liber de causis; and On the Eternity of the World De
aeternitate mundi. In 1272 Thomas returned to Italy where he lectured on
theology at Naples and continued to write until December 6, 1273, when his
scholarly work ceased. He died three months later en route to the Second
Council of Lyons. Doctrine. Aquinas was both a philosopher and a theologian.
The greater part of his writings are theological, but there are many strictly
philosophical works within his corpus, such as On Being and Essence, On the
Principles of Nature, On the Eternity of the World, and the commentaries on
Aristotle and on the Book of Causes. Also important are large sections of
strictly philosophical writing incorporated into theological works such as the
SCG, ST, and various disputations. Aquinas clearly distinguishes between
strictly philosophical investigation and theological investigation. If
philosophy is based on the light of natural reason, theology sacra doctrina
presupposes faith in divine revelation. While the natural light of reason is
insufficient to discover things that can be made known to human beings only through
revelation, e.g., belief in the Trinity, Thomas holds that it is impossible for
those things revealed to us by God through faith to be opposed to those we can
discover by using human reason. For then one or the other would have to be
false; and since both come to us from God, God himself would be the author of
falsity, something Thomas rejects as abhorrent. Hence it is appropriate for the
theologian to use philosophical reasoning in theologizing. Aquinas also
distinguishes between the orders to be followed by the theologian and by the
philosopher. In theology one reasons from belief in God and his revelation to
the implications of this for created reality. In philosophy one begins with an
investigation of created reality insofar as this can be understood by human
reason and then seeks to arrive at some knowledge of divine reality viewed as
the cause of created reality and the end or goal of one’s philosophical inquiry
SCG II, c. 4. This means that the order Aquinas follows in his theological
Summae SCG and ST is not the same as that which he prescribes for the
philosopher cf. Prooemium to Commentary on the Metaphysics. Also underlying
much of Aquinas’s thought is his acceptance of the difference between
theoretical or speculative philosophy including natural philosophy,
mathematics, and metaphysics and practical philosophy. Being and analogy. For
Aquinas the highest part of philosophy is metaphysics, the science of being as
being. The subject of this science is not God, but being, viewed without
restriction to any given kind of being, or simply as being Prooemium to
Commentary on Metaphysics; In de trinitate, qu. 5, a. 4. The metaphysician does
not enjoy a direct vision of God in this life, but can reason to knowledge of
him by moving from created effects to awareness of him as their uncreated
cause. God is therefore not the subject of metaphysics, nor is he included in
its subject. God can be studied by the metaphysician only indirectly, as the
cause of the finite beings that fall under being as being, the subject of the
science. In order to account for the human intellect’s discovery of being as
being, in contrast with being as mobile studied by natural philosophy or being
as quantified studied by mathematics, Thomas appeals to a special kind of
intellectual operation, a negative judgment, technically named by him
“separation.” Through this operation one discovers that being, in order to be
realized as such, need not be material and changAquinas, Saint Thomas Aquinas,
Saint Thomas 37 37 ing. Only as a result
of this judgment is one justified in studying being as being. Following
Aristotle and Averroes, Thomas is convinced that the term ‘being’ is used in
various ways and with different meanings. Yet these different usages are not
unrelated and do enjoy an underlying unity sufficient for being as being to be
the subject of a single science. On the level of finite being Thomas adopts and
adapts Aristotle’s theory of unity by reference to a first order of being. For
Thomas as for Aristotle this unity is guaranteed by the primary referent in our
predication of being substance. Other
things are named being only because they are in some way ordered to and
dependent on substance, the primary instance of being. Hence being is analogous.
Since Thomas’s application of analogy to the divine names presupposes the
existence of God, we shall first examine his discussion of that issue. The
existence of God and the “five ways.” Thomas holds that unaided human reason,
i.e., philosophical reason, can demonstrate that God exists, that he is one,
etc., by reasoning from effect to cause De trinitate, qu. 2, a. 3; SCG I, c. 4.
Best-known among his many presentations of argumentation for God’s existence
are the “five ways.” Perhaps even more interesting for today’s student of his metaphysics
is a brief argument developed in one of his first writings, On Being and
Essence c.4. There he wishes to determine how essence is realized in what he
terms “separate substances,” i.e., the soul, intelligences angels of the
Christian tradition, and the first cause God. After criticizing the view that
created separate substances are composed of matter and form, Aquinas counters
that they are not entirely free from composition. They are composed of a form
or essence and an act of existing esse. He immediately develops a complex
argument: 1 We can think of an essence or quiddity without knowing whether or
not it actually exists. Therefore in such entities essence and act of existing
differ unless 2 there is a thing whose quiddity and act of existing are
identical. At best there can be only one such being, he continues, by
eliminating multiplication of such an entity either through the addition of
some difference or through the reception of its form in different instances of
matter. Hence, any such being can only be separate and unreceived esse, whereas
esse in all else is received in something else, i.e., essence. 3 Since esse in
all other entities is therefore distinct from essence or quiddity, existence is
communicated to such beings by something else, i.e., they are caused. Since
that which exists through something else must be traced back to that which
exists of itself, there must be some thing that causes the existence of
everything else and that is identical with its act of existing. Otherwise one would
regress to infinity in caused causes of existence, which Thomas here dismisses
as unacceptable. In qu. 2, a. 1 of ST I Thomas rejects the claim that God’s
existence is self-evident to us in this life, and in a. 2 maintains that God’s
existence can be demonstrated by reasoning from knowledge of an existing effect
to knowledge of God as the cause required for that effect to exist. The first
way or argument art. 3 rests upon the fact that various things in our world of
sense experience are moved. But whatever is moved is moved by something else.
To justify this, Thomas reasons that to be moved is to be reduced from
potentiality to actuality, and that nothing can reduce itself from potency to
act; for it would then have to be in potency if it is to be moved and in act at
the same time and in the same respect. This does not mean that a mover must
formally possess the act it is to communicate to something else if it is to
move the latter; it must at least possess it virtually, i.e., have the power to
communicate it. Whatever is moved, therefore, must be moved by something else.
One cannot regress to infinity with moved movers, for then there would be no
first mover and, consequently, no other mover; for second movers do not move
unless they are moved by a first mover. One must, therefore, conclude to the
existence of a first mover which is moved by nothing else, and this “everyone
understands to be God.” The second way takes as its point of departure an
ordering of efficient causes as indicated to us by our investigation of
sensible things. By this Thomas means that we perceive in the world of sensible
things that certain efficient causes cannot exercise their causal activity
unless they are also caused by something else. But nothing can be the efficient
cause of itself, since it would then have to be prior to itself. One cannot
regress to infinity in ordered efficient causes. In ordered efficient causes,
the first is the cause of the intermediary, and the intermediary is the cause
of the last whether the intermediary is one or many. Hence if there were no
first efficient cause, there would be no intermediary and no last cause. Thomas
concludes from this that one must acknowledge the existence of a first
efficient cause, “which everyone names God.” The third way consists of two
major parts. Some Aquinas, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Thomas 38 38 textual variants have complicated the
proper interpretation of the first part. In brief, Aquinas appeals to the fact
that certain things are subject to generation and corruption to show that they
are “possible,” i.e., capable of existing and not existing. Not all things can
be of this kind revised text, for that which has the possibility of not
existing at some time does not exist. If, therefore, all things are capable of not
existing, at some time there was nothing whatsoever. If that were so, even now
there would be nothing, since what does not exist can only begin to exist
through something else that exists. Therefore not all beings are capable of
existing and not existing. There must be some necessary being. Since such a
necessary, i.e., incorruptible, being might still be caused by something else,
Thomas adds a second part to the argument. Every necessary being either depends
on something else for its necessity or it does not. One cannot regress to
infinity in necessary beings that depend on something else for their necessity.
Therefore there must be some being that is necessary of itself and that does
not depend on another cause for its necessity, i.e., God. The statement in the
first part to the effect that what has the possibility of not existing at some
point does not exist has been subject to considerable dispute among
commentators. Moreover, even if one grants this and supposes that every
individual being is a “possible” and therefore has not existed at some point in
the past, it does not easily follow from this that the totality of existing
things will also have been nonexistent at some point in the past. Given this,
some interpreters prefer to substitute for the third way the more satisfactory
versions found in SCG I ch. 15 and SCG II ch. 15. Thomas’s fourth way is based
on the varying degrees of perfection we discover among the beings we
experience. Some are more or less good, more or less true, more or less noble,
etc., than others. But the more and less are said of different things insofar
as they approach in varying degrees something that is such to a maximum degree.
Therefore there is something that is truest and best and noblest and hence that
is also being to the maximum degree. To support this Thomas comments that those
things that are true to the maximum degree also enjoy being to the maximum
degree; in other words he appeals to the convertibility between being and truth
of being. In the second part of this argument Thomas argues that what is
supremely such in a given genus is the cause of all other things in that genus.
Therefore there is something that is the cause of being, goodness, etc., for
all other beings, and this we call God. Much discussion has centered on
Thomas’s claim that the more and less are said of different things insofar as
they approach something that is such to the maximum degree. Some find this
insufficient to justify the conclusion that a maximum must exist, and would
here insert an appeal to efficient causality and his theory of participation.
If certan entities share or participate in such a perfection only to a limited
degree, they must receive that perfection from something else. While more
satisfactory from a philosophical perspective, such an insertion seems to
change the argument of the fourth way significantly. The fifth way is based on
the way things in the universe are governed. Thomas observes that certain
things that lack the ability to know, i.e., natural bodies, act for an end.
This follows from the fact that they always or at least usually act in the same
way to attain that which is best. For Thomas this indicates that they reach
their ends by “intention” and not merely from chance. And this in turn implies
that they are directed to their ends by some knowing and intelligent being.
Hence some intelligent being exists that orders natural things to their ends.
This argument rests on final causality and should not be confused with any
based on order and design. Aquinas’s frequently repeated denial that in this
life we can know what God is should here be recalled. If we can know that God
exists and what he is not, we cannot know what he is see, e.g., SCG I, c. 30.
Even when we apply the names of pure perfections to God, we first discover such
perfections in limited fashion in creatures. What the names of such perfections
are intended to signify may indeed be free from all imperfection, but every
such name carries with it some deficiency in the way in which it signifies.
When a name such as ‘goodness’, for instance, is signified abstractly e.g.,
‘God is goodness’, this abstract way of signifying suggests that goodness does
not subsist in itself. When such a name is signified concretely e.g., ‘God is
good’, this concrete way of signifying implies some kind of composition between
God and his goodness. Hence while such names are to be affirmed of God as
regards that which they signify, the way in which they signify is to be denied
of him. This final point sets the stage for Thomas to apply his theory of
analogy to the divine names. Names of pure perfections such as ‘good’, ‘true’,
‘being’, etc., cannot be applied to God with Aquinas, Saint Thomas Aquinas,
Saint Thomas 39 39 exactly the same
meaning they have when affirmed of creatures univocally, nor with entirely
different meanings equivocally. Hence they are affirmed of God and of creatures
by an analogy based on the relationship that obtains between a creature viewed
as an effect and God its uncaused cause. Because some minimum degree of
similarity must obtain between any effect and its cause, Thomas is convinced
that in some way a caused perfection imitates and participates in God, its
uncaused and unparticipated source. Because no caused effect can ever be equal
to its uncreated cause, every perfection that we affirm of God is realized in
him in a way different from the way we discover it in creatures. This
dissimilarity is so great that we can never have quidditative knowledge of God
in this life know what God is. But the similarity is sufficient for us to
conclude that what we understand by a perfection such as goodness in creatures
is present in God in unrestricted fashion. Even though Thomas’s identification
of the kind of analogy to be used in predicating divine names underwent some development,
in mature works such as On the Power of God qu. 7, a. 7, SCG I c.34, and ST I
qu. 13, a. 5, he identifies this as the analogy of “one to another,” rather
than as the analogy of “many to one.” In none of these works does he propose
using the analogy of “proportionality” that he had previously defended in On
Truth qu. 2, a. 11. Theological virtues. While Aquinas is convinced that human
reason can arrive at knowledge that God exists and at meaningful predication of
the divine names, he does not think the majority of human beings will actually
succeed in such an effort SCG I, c. 4; ST IIIIae, qu. 2, a. 4. Hence he
concludes that it was fitting for God to reveal such truths to mankind along
with others that purely philosophical inquiry could never discover even in
principle. Acceptance of the truth of divine revelation presupposes the gift of
the theological virtue of faith in the believer. Faith is an infused virtue by
reason of which we accept on God’s authority what he has revealed to us. To
believe is an act of the intellect that assents to divine truth as a result of
a command on the part of the human will, a will that itself is moved by God
through grace ST II IIae, qu. 2, a. 9. For Thomas the theological virtues,
having God the ultimate end as their object, are prior to all other virtues
whether natural or infused. Because the ultimate end must be present in the
intellect before it is present to the will, and because the ultimate end is
present in the will by reason of hope and charity the other two theological
virtues, in this respect faith is prior to hope and charity. Hope is the
theological virtue through which we trust that with divine assistance we will
attain the infinite good eternal
enjoyment of God ST IIIIae, qu. 17, aa. 12. In the order of generation, hope is
prior to charity; but in the order of perfection charity is prior both to hope
and faith. While neither faith nor hope will remain in those who reach the
eternal vision of God in the life to come, charity will endure in the blessed.
It is a virtue or habitual form that is infused into the soul by God and that
inclines us to love him for his own sake. If charity is more excellent than
faith or hope ST II IIae, qu. 23, a. 6, through charity the acts of all other
virtues are ordered to God, their ultimate end qu. 23, a. 8.
ars: techne Grecian, ‘art’, ‘craft’, a human skill based
on general principles and capable of being taught. In this sense, a manual
craft such as carpentry is a techne, but so are sciences such as medicine and
arithmetic. According to Plato Gorgias 501a, a genuine techne understands its
subject matter and can give a rational account of its activity. Aristotle
Metaphysics I.1 distinguishes technefrom experience on the grounds that techne
involves knowledge of universals and causes, and can be taught. Sometimes
‘techne’ is restricted to the productive as opposed to theoretical and
practical arts, as at Nicomachean Ethics VI.4. Techne and its products are
often contrasted with physis, nature Physics II.1.
arbitrium: arminius, Jacobus
15601609, Dutch theologian who, as a Dutch Reformed pastor and later professor
at the of Leiden, challenged Calvinist
orthodoxy on predestination and free will. After his death, followers codified
Arminius’s views in a document asserting that God’s grace is necessary for
salvation, but not irresistible: the divine decree depends on human free
choice. This became the basis for Arminianism, which was condemned by the Dutch
ReAristotle, commentaries on Arminius, Jacobus 51 51 formed synod but vigorously debated for
centuries among Protestant theologians of different denominations. The term
‘Arminian’ is still occasionally applied to theologians who defend a free human
response to divine grace against predestinationism.
arcesilaus: Grecian,
pre-Griceian, sceptic philosopher, founder of the Middle Academy. Influenced by
Socratic elenchus, he claimed that, unlike Socrates, he was not even certain
that he was certain of nothing. He shows the influence of Pyrrho in attacking
the Stoic doctrine that the subjective certainty of the wise is the criterion
of truth. At the theoretical level he advocated epoche, suspension of rational
judgment; at the practical, he argued that eulogon, probability, can justify
action an early version of coherentism. His
ethical views were not extreme; he held, e.g., that one should attend to one’s
own life rather than external objects. Though he wrote nothing except verse, he
led the Academy into two hundred years of Skepticism.
archytas: Grecian,
pre-Griceian, Pythagorean philosopher from Tarentum in southern Italy. He was
elected general seven times and sent a ship to rescue Plato from Dionysius II
of Syracuse in 361. He is famous for solutions to specific mathematical
problems, such as the doubling of the cube, but little is known about his
general philosophical principles. His proof that the numbers in a
superparticular ratio have no mean proportional has relevance to music theory,
as does his work with the arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic means. He gave
mathematical accounts of the diatonic, enharmonic, and chromatic scales and
developed a theory of acoustics. Fragments 1 and 2 and perhaps 3 are authentic,
but most material preserved in his name is spurious.
aretaic: sometimes
used by Grice for ‘virtuosum’. arete, ancient Grecian term meaning ‘virtue’ or
‘excellence’. In philosophical contexts, the term was used mainly of virtues of
human character; in broader contexts, arete was applicable to many different
sorts of excellence. The cardinal virtues in the classical period were courage,
wisdom, temperance sophrosune, piety, and justice. Sophists such as Protagoras
claimed to teach such virtues, and Socrates challenged their credentials for
doing so. Several early Platonic dialogues show Socrates asking after definitions
of virtues, and Socrates investigates arete in other dialogues as well.
Conventional views allowed that a person can have one virtue such as courage
but lack another such as wisdom, but Plato’s Protagoras shows Socrates
defending his thesis of the unity of arete, which implies that a person who has
one arete has them all. Platonic accounts of the cardinal virtues with the
exception of piety are given in Book IV of the Republic. Substantial parts of
the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle are given over to discussions of arete,
which he divides into virtues of character and virtues of intellect. This
discussion is the ancestor of most modern theories of virtue ethics.
argumentum:
cited
by Grice in “Aspects of reason.” Grice was Strawson’s tutor for the Logic
Paper, and he had to go with him over the ‘boring theory of the syllogism –
Barbara, Celarent, and the reset of them!” -- syllogism, in Aristotle’s words,
“a discourse in which, a certain thing being stated, something other than what
is stated follows of necessity from being so” Prior Analytics, 24b 18. Three
types of syllogism were usually distinguished: categorical, hypothetical, and
disjunctive. Each will be treated in that order. The categorical syllogism.
This is an argument consisting of three categorical propositions, two serving
as premises and one serving as conclusion. E.g., ‘Some students are happy; all students are high school graduates;
therefore, some high school graduates are happy’. If a syllogism is valid, the
premises must be so related to the conclusion that it is impossible for both
premises to be true and the conclusion false. There are four types of
categorical propositions: universal affirmative or A-propositions ‘All S are P’, or ‘SaP’; universal negative
or E-propositions ‘No S are P’, or
‘SeP’; particular affirmative or I-propositions
‘Some S are P’, or ‘SiP’; and particular negative or O-propositions:
‘Some S are not P’, or ‘SoP’. The mediate basic components of categorical
syllogism are terms serving as subjects or predicates in the premises and the
conclusion. There must be three and only three terms in any categorical
syllogism, the major term, the minor term, and the middle term. Violation of
this basic rule of structure is called the fallacy of four terms quaternio
terminorum; e.g., ‘Whatever is right is useful; only one of my hands is right;
therefore only one of my hands is useful’. Here ‘right’ does not have the same
meaning in its two occurrences; we therefore have more than three terms and
hence no genuine categorical syllogism. The syllogistic terms are identifiable
and definable with reference to the position they have in a given syllogism.
The predicate of the conclusion is the major term; the subject of the
conclusion is the minor term; the term that appears once in each premise but
not in the conclusion is the middle term. As it is used in various types of
categorical propositions, a term is either distributed stands for each and
every member of its extension or undistributed. There is a simple rule regarding
the distribution: universal propositions SaP and SeP distribute their subject
terms; negative propositions SeP and SoP distribute their predicate terms. No
terms are distributed in an I-proposition. Various sets of rules governing
validity of categorical syllogisms have been offered. The following is a
“traditional” set from the popular Port-Royal Logic 1662. R1: The middle term
must be distributed at least once. Violation: ‘All cats are animals; some
animals do not eat liver; therefore some cats do not eat liver’. The middle
term ‘animals’ is not distributed either in the first or minor premise, being
the predicate of an affirmative proposition, nor in the second or major
premise, being the subject of a particular proposition; hence, the fallacy of
undistributed middle. R2: A term cannot be distributed in the conclusion if it
is undistributed in the premises. Violation: ‘All dogs are carnivorous; no
flowers are dogs; therefore, no flowers are carnivorous’. Here the major,
‘carnivorous’, is distributed in the conclusion, being the predicate of a
negative proposition, but not in the premise, serving there as predicate of an
affirmative proposition; hence, the fallacy of illicit major term. Another
violation of R2: ‘All students are happy individuals; no criminals are
students; therefore, no happy individuals are criminals’. Here the minor,
‘happy individuals’, is distributed in the conclusion, but not distributed in
the minor premise; hence the fallacy of illicit minor term. R3: No conclusion
may be drawn from two negative premises. Violation: ‘No dogs are cats; some
dogs do not like liver; therefore, some cats do not like liver’. Here R1 is
satisfied, since the middle term ‘dogs’ is distributed in the minor premise; R2
is satisfied, since both the minor term ‘cats’ as well as the major term
‘things that like liver’ are distributed in the premises and thus no violation
of distribution of terms occurs. It is only by virtue of R3 that we can
proclaim this syllogism to be invalid. R4: A negative conclusion cannot be
drawn where both premises are affirmative. Violation: ‘All educated people take
good care of their children; all syllogism syllogism 894 894 who take good care of their children are
poor; therefore, some poor people are not educated’. Here, it is only by virtue
of the rule of quality, R4, that we can proclaim this syllogism invalid. R5:
The conclusion must follow the weaker premise; i.e., if one of the premises is
negative, the conclusion must be negative, and if one of them is particular,
the conclusion must be particular. R6: From two particular premises nothing
follows. Let us offer an indirect proof for this rule. If both particular
premises are affirmative, no term is distributed and therefore the fallacy of
undistributed middle is inevitable. To avoid it, we have to make one of the
premises negative, which will result in a distributed predicate as middle term.
But by R5, the conclusion must then be negative; thus, the major term will be
distributed in the conclusion. To avoid violating R2, we must distribute that
term in the major premise. It could not be in the position of subject term,
since only universal propositions distribute their subject term and, by
hypothesis, both premises are particular. But we could not use the same
negative premise used to distribute the middle term; we must make the other
particular premise negative. But then we violate R3. Thus, any attempt to make
a syllogism with two particular premises valid will violate one or more basic
rules of syllogism. This set of rules assumes that A- and Epropositions have
existential import and hence that an I- or an O-proposition may legitimately be
drawn from a set of exclusively universal premises. Categorical syllogisms are
classified according to figure and mood. The figure of a categorical syllogism
refers to the schema determined by the possible position of the middle term in
relation to the major and minor terms. In “modern logic,” four syllogistic
figures are recognized. Using ‘M’ for middle term, ‘P’ for major term, and ‘S’
for minor term, they can be depicted as follows: Aristotle recognized only
three syllogistic figures. He seems to have taken into account just the two
premises and the extension of the three terms occurring in them, and then asked
what conclusion, if any, can be derived from those premises. It turns out,
then, that his procedure leaves room for three figures only: one in which the M
term is the subject of one and predicate of the other premise; another in which
the M term is predicated in both premises; and a third one in which the M term
is the subject in both premises. Medievals followed him, although all
considered the so-called inverted first i.e., moods of the first figure with
their conclusion converted either simply or per accidens to be legitimate also.
Some medievals e.g., Albalag and most moderns since Leibniz recognize a fourth
figure as a distinct figure, considering syllogistic terms on the basis not of
their extension but of their position in the conclusion, the S term of the
conclusion being defined as the minor term and the P term being defined as the
major term. The mood of a categorical syllogism refers to the configuration of
types of categorical propositions determined on the basis of the quality and
quantity of the propositions serving as premises and conclusion of any given
syllogism; e.g., ‘No animals are plants; all cats are animals; therefore no
cats are plants’, ‘MeP, SaM /, SeP’, is a syllogism in the mood EAE in the
first figure. ‘All metals conduct electricity; no stones conduct electricity;
therefore no stones are metals’, ‘PaM, SeM /, SeP’, is the mood AEE in the
second figure. In the four syllogistic figures there are 256 possible moods,
but only 24 are valid only 19 in modern logic, on the ground of a
non-existential treatment of A- and E-propositions. As a mnemonic device and to
facilitate reference, names have been assigned to the valid moods, with each
vowel representing the type of categorical proposition. William Sherwood and
Peter of Spain offered the famous list designed to help students to remember
which moods in any given figure are valid and how the “inevident” moods in the
second and third figures are provable by reduction to those in the first
figure: barbara, celarent, darii, ferio direct Fig. 1; baralipton, celantes,
dabitis, fapesmo, frisesomorum indirect Fig. 1; cesare, camestres, festino,
baroco Fig. 2; darapti, felapton, disamis, datisi, bocardo, ferison Fig. 3. The
hypothetical syllogism. The pure hypothetical syllogism is an argument in which
both the premises and the conclusion are hypothetical, i.e. conditional,
propositions; e.g., ‘If the sun is shining, it is warm; if it is warm, the
plants will grow; therefore if the sun is shining, the plants will grow’.
Symbolically, this argument form can be represented by ‘A P B, B P C /, A P C’.
It was not recognized as such by Aristotle, but Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus
foreshadowed it, even syllogism syllogism 895
895 though it is not clear from his example of it ‘If man is, animal is; if animal is, then
substance is; if therefore man is, substance is’ whether this was seen to be a principle of
term logic or a principle of propositional logic. It was the MegaricStoic
philosophers and Boethius who fully recognized hypothetical propositions and
syllogisms as principles of the most general theory of deduction. Mixed
hypothetical syllogisms are arguments consisting of a hypothetical premise and
a categorical premise, and inferring a categorical proposition; e.g., ‘If the
sun is shining, the plants will grow; the sun is shining; therefore the plants
will grow’. Symbolically, this is represented by ‘P P Q, P /, Q’. This argument
form was explicitly formulated in ancient times by the Stoics as one of the
“indemonstrables” and is now known as modus ponens. Another equally basic form
of mixed hypothetical syllogism is ‘P P Q, -Q /, ~P’, known as modus tollens.
The disjunctive syllogism. This is an argument in which the leading premise is
a disjunction, the other premise being a denial of one of the alternatives,
concluding to the remaining alternative; e.g., ‘It is raining or I will go for
a walk; but it is not raining; therefore I will go for a walk’. It is not
always clear whether the ‘or’ of the disjunctive premise is inclusive or
exclusive. Symbolic logic removes the ambiguity by using two different symbols
and thus clearly distinguishes between inclusive or weak disjunction, ‘P 7 Q’,
which is true provided not both alternatives are false, and exclusive or strong
disjunction, ‘P W Q’, which is true provided exactly one alternative is true
and exactly one false. The definition of ‘disjunctive syllogism’ presupposes
that the lead premise is an inclusive or weak disjunction, on the basis of
which two forms are valid: ‘P 7 Q, -P /, Q’ and ‘P 7 Q, -Q /, P’. If the
disjunctive premise is exclusive, we have four valid argument forms, and we should speak here of an exclusive disjunctive
syllogism. This is defined as an argument in which either from an exclusive
disjunction and the denial of one of its disjuncts we infer the remaining
disjunct ’P W Q, -P /,Q’, and ‘P W Q, -Q
/, P’ modus tollendo ponens; or else, from an exclusive disjunction and one of
its disjuncts we infer the denial of the remaining disjunct ’P W Q, P /, -Q’, and ‘P W Q, Q /,-P’ modus
ponendo tollens. “Strictly, ‘argumetum’ is ‘what is argued,’
the passive perfect participle – arguens is the present active participle,
‘argumentatio’ the feminine abstract noun, and ‘argumentarus,’ and
‘argumentarum’ the neuter active future participle. – there is the
argumenttaturum, too.”“I thought I saw an argument, it turned to be some soap”
(Dodgson). Term that Grice borrows from (but “never returned” to) Boethius, the
Roman philosopher. Strictly, Grice is interested in the ‘arguer.’ Say Blackburn
goes to Grice and, not knowing Grice speaks English, writes a skull. Blackburn
intends Grice to think that there is danger, somewhere, even deadly danger. So
there is arguing on Blackburn’s part. And there is INTENDED arguing on
Blackburn’s recipient, Grice, as it happens. For Grice, the truth-value of
“Blackburn communicates (to Grice) that there is danger” does not REQUIRE the
uptake.” “Why, one must just as well require that Jones GETS his job to deem
Smith having GIVEN it to him if that’s what he’s promised. The arguer is
invoked in a self-psi-transmission. For he must think P, and he must think C,
and he must think that P yields C. And this thought that C must be CAUSED by
the fact that he thinks that P yields C. -- f. argŭo , ŭi, ūtum (ŭĭtum, hence
arguiturus, Sall. Fragm. ap. Prisc. p. 882 P.), 3, v. a. cf. ἀργής, white; ἀργός,
bright; Sanscr. árgunas, bright; ragatas, white; and rag, to shine (v. argentum
and argilla); after the same analogy we have clarus, bright; and claro, to make
bright, to make evident; and the Engl. clear, adj., and to clear = to make
clear; v. Georg Curtius p. 171. I. A.. In gen., to make clear, to show,
prove, make known, declare, assert, μηνύειν: “arguo Eam me vidisse intus,”
Plaut. Mil. 2, 3, 66: “non ex auditu arguo,” id. Bacch. 3, 3, 65: “M. Valerius
Laevinus ... speculatores, non legatos, venisse arguebat,” Liv. 30, 23:
“degeneres animos timor arguit,” Verg. A. 4, 13: “amantem et languor et
silentium Arguit,” Hor. Epod. 11, 9; id. C. 1, 13, 7.—Pass., in a mid. signif.:
“apparet virtus arguiturque malis,” makes itself known, Ov. Tr. 4, 3, 80:
“laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus,” betrays himself, Hor. Ep. 1, 19, 6.—
B. Esp. a. With aliquem, to attempt to show something, in one's case, against
him, to accuse, reprove, censure, charge with: Indicāsse est detulisse;
“arguisse accusāsse et convicisse,” Dig. 50, 16, 197 (cf. Fest. p. 22: Argutum
iri in discrimen vocari): tu delinquis, ego arguar pro malefactis? Enn. (as
transl. of Eurip. Iphig. Aul. 384: Εἶτ̓ ἐγὼ δίκην δῶ σῶν κακῶν ὁ μὴ σφαλείς)
ap. Rufin. § “37: servos ipsos neque accuso neque arguo neque purgo,” Cic.
Rosc. Am. 41, 120: “Pergin, sceleste, intendere hanc arguere?” Plaut. Mil. 2,
4, 27; 2, 2, 32: “hae tabellae te arguunt,” id. Bacch. 4, 6, 10: “an hunc porro
tactum sapor arguet oris?” Lucr. 4, 487: “quod adjeci, non ut arguerem, sed ne
arguerer,” Vell. 2, 53, 4: “coram aliquem arguere,” Liv. 43, 5: “apud
praefectum,” Tac. A. 14, 41: “(Deus) arguit te heri,” Vulg. Gen. 31, 42; ib. Lev.
19, 17; ib. 2 Tim. 4, 2; ib. Apoc. 3, 19 al.— b. With the cause of complaint in
the gen.; abl. with or without de; with in with abl.; with acc.; with a clause
as object; or with ut (cf. Ramsh. p. 326; Zumpt, § 446). (α). With gen.:
“malorum facinorum,” Plaut. Ps. 2, 4, 56 (cf. infra, argutus, B. 2.): “aliquem
probri, Stupri, dedecoris,” id. Am. 3, 2, 2: “viros mortuos summi sceleris,”
Cic. Rab. Perd. 9, 26: “aliquem tanti facinoris,” id. Cael. 1: “criminis,” Tac.
H. 1, 48: “furti me arguent,” Vulg. Gen. 30, 33; ib. Eccl. 11, 8:
“repetundarum,” Tac. A. 3, 33: “occupandae rei publicae,” id. ib. 6, 10:
“neglegentiae,” Suet. Caes. 53: “noxae,” id. Aug. 67: “veneni in se comparati,”
id. Tib. 49: “socordiae,” id. Claud. 3: “mendacii,” id. Oth. 10: “timoris,” Verg.
A. 11, 384: “sceleris arguemur,” Vulg. 4 Reg. 7, 9; ib. Act. 19, 40 al.— (β).
With abl.: “te hoc crimine non arguo,” Cic. Verr. 2, 5, 18; Nep. Paus. 3 fin.—
(γ). With de: “de eo crimine, quo de arguatur,” Cic. Inv 2, 11, 37: “de quibus
quoniam verbo arguit, etc.,” id. Rosc. Am. 29 fin.: “Quis arguet me de
peccato?” Vulg. Joan. 8, 46; 16, 8.— (δ). With in with abl. (eccl. Lat.): “non
in sacrificiis tuis arguam te,” Vulg. Psa. 49, 8.—（ε) With acc.: quid
undas Arguit et liquidam molem camposque natantīs? of what does he impeach the
waves? etc., quid being here equivalent to cujus or de quo, Lucr. 6, 405
Munro.—（ζ)
With an inf.-clause as object: “quae (mulier) me arguit Hanc domo ab se
subripuisse,” Plaut. Men. 5, 2, 62; id. Mil. 2, 4, 36: “occidisse patrem Sex.
Roscius arguitur,” Cic. Rosc. Am. 13, 37: “auctor illius injuriae fuisse
arguebatur?” Cic. Verr. 2, 1, 33: “qui sibimet vim ferro intulisse arguebatur,”
Suet. Claud. 16; id. Ner. 33; id. Galb. 7: “me Arguit incepto rerum accessisse
labori,” Ov. M. 13, 297; 15, 504.—（η) With ut, as in
Gr. ὡς (post-Aug. and rare), Suet. Ner. 7: “hunc ut dominum et tyrannum, illum
ut proditorem arguentes,” as being master and tyrant, Just. 22, 3.— II. Transf.
to the thing. 1. To accuse, censure, blame: “ea culpa, quam arguo,” Liv. 1, 28:
“peccata coram omnibus argue,” Vulg. 1 Tim. 5, 20: “tribuni plebis dum arguunt
in C. Caesare regni voluntatem,” Vell. 2, 68; Suet. Tit. 5 fin.:
“taciturnitatem pudoremque quorumdam pro tristitiā et malignitate arguens,” id.
Ner. 23; id. Caes. 75: “arguebat et perperam editos census,” he accused of
giving a false statement of property, census, id. Calig. 38: “primusque
animalia mensis Arguit imponi,” censured, taught that it was wrong, Ov. M. 15,
73: “ut non arguantur opera ejus,” Vulg. Joan. 3, 20.— 2. Trop., to denounce as
false: “quod et ipsum Fenestella arguit,” Suet. Vit. Ter. p. 292 Roth.—With
reference to the person, to refute, confute: “aliquem,” Suet. Calig. 8.—Hence,
argūtus , a, um, P. a. A. Of physical objects, clear. 1. To the sight, bright, glancing,
lively: “manus autem minus arguta, digitis subsequens verba, non exprimens,”
not too much in motion, Cic. de Or. 3, 59, 220 (cf. id. Or. 18, 59: nullae
argutiae digitorum, and Quint. 11, 3, 119-123): “manus inter agendum argutae
admodum et gestuosae,” Gell. 1, 5, 2: “et oculi nimis arguti, quem ad modum
animo affecti sumus, loquuntur,” Cic. Leg. 1, 9, 27: “ocelli,” Ov. Am. 3, 3, 9;
3, 2, 83: “argutum caput,” a head graceful in motion, Verg. G. 3, 80 (breve,
Servius, but this idea is too prosaic): aures breves et argutae, ears that move
quickly (not stiff, rigid), Pall. 4, 13, 2: “argutā in soleā,” in the neat
sandal, Cat. 68, 72.— 2. a.. To the hearing, clear, penetrating, piercing, both
of pleasant and disagreeable sounds, clear-sounding, sharp, noisy, rustling,
whizzing, rattling, clashing, etc. (mostly poet.): linguae, Naev. ap. Non. p.
9, 24: “aves,” Prop. 1, 18, 30: “hirundo,” chirping, Verg. G. 1, 377: “olores,”
tuneful, id. E. 9, 36: ilex, murmuring, rustling (as moved by the wind), id.
ib. 7, 1: “nemus,” id. ib. 8, 22 al.—Hence, a poet. epithet of the musician and
poet, clear-sounding, melodious: “Neaera,” Hor. C. 3, 14, 21: “poëtae,” id. Ep.
2, 2, 90: “fama est arguti Nemesis formosa Tibullus,” Mart. 8, 73, 7: forum,
full of bustle or din, noisy, Ov. A.A. 1, 80: “serra,” grating, Verg. G. 1,
143: “pecten,” rattling, id. ib. 1, 294; id. A. 7, 14 (cf. in Gr. κερκὶς ἀοιδός,
Aristoph. Ranae, v. 1316) al.—Hence, of rattling, prating, verbose discourse:
“sine virtute argutum civem mihi habeam pro preaeficā, etc.,” Plaut. Truc. 2,
6, 14: “[Neque mendaciloquom neque adeo argutum magis],” id. Trin. 1, 2, 163
Ritschl.— b. Trop., of written communications, rattling, wordy, verbose:
“obviam mihi litteras quam argutissimas de omnibus rebus crebro mittas,” Cic.
Att. 6, 5: vereor, ne tibi nimium arguta haec sedulitas videatur, Cael. ap.
Cic. Fam. 8, 1. —Transf. to omens, clear, distinct, conclusive, clearly
indicative, etc.: “sunt qui vel argutissima haec exta esse dicant,” Cic. Div.
2, 12 fin.: “non tibi candidus argutum sternuit omen Amor?” Prop. 2, 3, 24.— 3.
To the smell; sharp, pungent: “odor argutior,” Plin. 15, 3, 4, § 18.— 4. To the
taste; sharp, keen, pungent: “sapor,” Pall. 3, 25, 4; 4, 10, 26.— B. Of mental
qualities. 1. In a good sense, bright, acute, sagacious, witty: “quis illo (sc.
Catone) acerbior in vituperando? in sententiis argutior?” Cic. Brut. 17, 65:
“orator,” id. ib. 70, 247: “poëma facit ita festivum, ita concinnum, ita
elegans, nihil ut fieri possit argutius,” id. Pis. 29; so, “dicta argutissima,”
id. de Or. 2, 61, 250: “sententiae,” id. Opt. Gen. 2: “acumen,” Hor. A. P. 364:
“arguto ficta dolore queri,” dexterously-feigned pain, Prop. 1, 18, 26 al.— 2.
In a bad sense, sly, artful, cunning: “meretrix,” Hor. S. 1, 10, 40: calo. id.
Ep. 1, 14, 42: “milites,” Veg. Mil. 3, 6.—As a pun: ecquid argutus est? is he
cunning? Ch. Malorum facinorum saepissime (i.e. has been accused of), Plaut.
Ps. 2, 4, 56 (v. supra, I. B. a.).—Hence, adv.: argūtē (only in the signif. of
B.). a. Subtly, acutely: “respondere,” Cic. Cael. 8: “conicere,” id. Brut. 14,
53: “dicere,” id. Or. 28, 98.—Comp.: “dicere,” Cic. Brut. 11, 42.— Sup.: “de re
argutissime disputare,” Cic. de Or. 2, 4, 18.— b. Craftily: “obrepere,” Plaut. Trin.
4, 2, 132; Arn. 5, p. 181. For Grice, an argumentum is a sequence of statements
such that some of them the premises purport to give reason to accept another of
them, the conclusion. Since we speak of bad arguments and weak arguments, the
premises of an argument need not really support the conclusion, but they must
give some appearance of doing so or the term ‘argument’ is misapplied. Logic is
mainly concerned with the question of validity: whether if the premises are
true we would have reason to accept the conclusion. A valid argument with true
premises is called sound. A valid deductive argument is one such that if we
accept the premises we are logically bound to accept the conclusion and if we
reject the conclusion we are logically bound to reject one or more of the
premises. Alternatively, the premises logically entail the conclusion. A good
inductive argument some would reserve
‘valid’ for deductive arguments is one
such that if we accept the premises we are logically bound to regard the
conclusion as probable, and, in addition, as more probable than it would be if
the premises should be false. A few arguments have only one premise and/or more
than one conclusion.
argumentum a
fortiori: According
to Grice, an argument that moves from the premises that everything which
possesses a certain characteristics will possess some further characteristics
and that certain things possess the relevant characteristics to an eminent
degree to the conclusion that a fortiori even more so these things will possess
the further characteristics. The second premise is often left implicit – or
implicated, as Grice prefers, so a fortiori arguments are often enthymemes. A
favourite illustration by Grice of an a fortiori argument can be found in
Plato’s Crito. We owe gratitude and respect to our parents and so should do
nothing to harm them. However, athenians owe even greater gratitude and respect
to the laws of Athens. Therefore, a fortiori, Athenians should do nothing to
harm those laws.
arbor griceiana: When Kant
introduces the categoric imperative in terms of the ‘maxim’ he does not specify which. He just goes,
irritatingly, “Make the maxim of your conduct a law of nature.” This gave free
rein to Grice to multiply maxims as much as he wished. If he was an occamist
about senses, he certainly was an anti-occamist about maxims. The expression
Strawson and Wiggins use (p. 520) is “ramification.”So Grice needs just ONE
principle – indeed the idea of principles, in plural, is self-contradictory.
For whch ‘first’ is ‘first’? Eventually, he sticks with the principle of conversational
co-operation. And the principle of conversational co-operation, being
Ariskantian, and categoric, even if not ‘moral,’ “ramifies into” the maxims.
This is important. While an ‘ought’ cannot be derived from an ‘is,’ an ‘ought’
can yield a sub-ought. So whatever obligation the principle brings, the maxim
inherit. The maxim is also stated categoric. But it isn’t. It is a ‘counsel of
prudence,’ and hypothetical in nature – So, Grice is just ‘playing Kant,’ but
not ‘being’ Kant. The principle states the GOAL (not happiness, unless we call
it ‘conversational eudaemonia’). In any case, as Hare would agree, there is
‘deontic derivability.’ So if the principle ramifies into the maxims, the
maxims are ‘deductible’ from the principle. This deductibility is obvious in
terms of from generic to specific. The principle merely enjoins to make the
conversational move as is appropriate. Then, playing with Kant, Grice chooses
FOUR dimensions. Two correspond to the material: the quale and the quantum. The
quale relates to affirmation and negation, and Grice uses ‘false,’ which while
hardly conceptually linked to ‘negation,’ it relates in common parlance. So you
have things like a prohibition to say the ‘false’ (But “it is raining” can be
false, and it’s affirmative). The quantum relates to what Grice calls
‘informative CONTENT.’ He grants that the verb ‘inform’ already ENTAILS the
candour that quality brings. So ‘fortitude’ seems a better way to qualify this
dimension. Make the strongest conversational move. The clash with the quality
is obvious – “provided it’s not false.” The third dimension relates two two
materials. Notably the one by the previous conversationalist and your own. If A
said, “She is an old bag.” B says, “The weather’s been delightful.” By NOT
relating the ‘proposition’ “The weather has been delightful” to “She is an old
bag.” He ‘exploits’ the maxim. This is not a concept in Kant. It mocks Kant.
But yet, ‘relate!’ does follow from the principle of cooperation. So, there is
an UNDERLYING relation, as Hobbes noted, when he discussed a very distantly
related proposition concerning the history of Rome, and expecting the recipient
to “only connect.” So the ‘exploitation’ is ‘superficial,’ and applies to the
explicatum. Yet, the emissor does communicate that the weather has been
delightful. Only there is no point in informing the recipient about it, unless
he is communicating that the co-conversationalist has made a gaffe. Finally,
the category of ‘modus’ Grice restricts to the ‘forma,’ not the ‘materia.’ “Be
perspicuous” is denotically entailed by “Make your move appropriate.” This is
the desideratum of clarity. The point must be ‘explicit.’ This is Strawson and Wiggins way of putting
this. It’s a difficult issue. What the connection is between Grice’s principle
of conversational helpfulness and the attending conversational maxims. Strawson
and Wiggins state that Grice should not feel the burden to make the maxims
‘necessarily independent.’
The
image of the ramification is a good one – Grice called it ‘arbor griceiana.’
ardigò: essential Italian
philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice ed Ardigò," per Il Club
Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
ariskant: Two of Grice’s
main tutees were respectively Aristotelian and Kantian scholars: Ackrill and
Strawson. Grice, of course, read Ariskant in the vernacular. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Francis Haywood. William Pickering.
1838. critick of pure reason. (first English
translation) Critique
of Pure Reason. Translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn. 1855 – via Project Gutenberg.Critique of Pure Reason.
Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. 1873.Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Friedrich Max Müller. The Macmillan Company.
1881. (Introduction by Ludwig Noiré)Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. Palgrave Macmillan.
1929. ISBN 1-4039-1194-0. Archived from the
original on 2009-04-27.Critique
of Pure Reason. Translated by Wolfgang Schwartz. Scientia Verlag
und Antiquariat. 1982. ISBN 978-3-5110-9260-3.Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Werner S.
Pluhar. Hackett Publishing. 1996. ISBN 978-0-87220-257-3.Critique of Pure Reason, Abridged. Translated by Werner S.
Pluhar. Hackett Publishing. 1999. ISBN 978-1-6246-6605-6.Critique of Pure Reason.
Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge University
Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-5216-5729-7.Critique of Pure Reason.
Translated by Marcus Weigelt. Penguin Books. 2007. ISBN 978-0-1404-4747-7. Grice’s
favourite philosopher is Ariskant. One way to approach Grice’s meta-philosophy
is by combining teleology with deontology. Eventually, Grice embraces a
hedonistic eudaimonism, if rationally approved. Grice knows how to tutor in
philosophy: he tutor on Kant as if he is tutoring on Aristotle, and vice versa.
His tutees would say, Here come [sic] Kantotle. Grice is obsessed with
Kantotle. He would teach one or the other as an ethics requirement. Back at
Oxford, the emphasis is of course Aristotle, but he is aware of some trends to
introduce Kant in the Lit.Hum. curriculum, not with much success. Strawson does
his share with the pure reason in Kant in The bounds of sense, but White
professors of moral philosophy are usually not too keen on the critique by Kant
of practical reason. Grice is fascinated that an Irishman, back in 1873, cares
to translate (“for me”) all that Kant has to say about the eudaimonism and
hedonism of Aristotle. An Oxonian philosopher is expected to be a utilitarian,
as Hare is, or a Hegelian, and that is why Grice prefers, heterodoxical as he
is, to be a Kantian rationalist instead. But Grice cannot help being
Aristotelian, Hardie having instilled the “Eth. Nich.” on him at Corpus. While
he can’t read Kant in German, Grice uses Abbott’s Irish vernacular. Note
the archaic metaphysic sic in singular. More Kant. Since Baker can read
the vernacular even less than Grice, it may be good to review the editions. It
all starts when Abbott thinks that his fellow Irishmen are unable to tackle
Kant in the vernacular. Abbott’s thing comes out in 1873: Kant’s critique of
practical reason and other works on the theory of tthics, with Grice quipping.
Oddly, I prefer his other work! Grice collaborates with Baker mainly on work on
meta-ethics seen as an offspring, alla Kant, of philosophical psychology.
Akrasia or egkrateia is one such topic. Baker contributes to PGRICE, a
festschrift for Grice, with an essay on the purity, and alleged lack thereof,
of this or that morally evaluable motive – rhetorically put: do ones
motives have to be pure? For Grice morality cashes out in self-love,
self-interest, and desire. Baker also contributes to a volume on Grice’s honour
published by Palgrave, Meaning and analysis: essays on Grice. Baker
organises of a symposium on the thought of Grice for the APA, the proceedings
of which published in The Journal of Philosophy, with Bennett as chair,
contributions by Baker and Grandy, commented by Stalnaker andWarner. Grice
explores with Baker problems of egcrateia and the reduction of duty to
self-love and interest. Aristotle:
preeminent Grecian philosopher born in Stagira, hence sometimes called the
Stagirite. Aristotle came to Athens as a teenager and remained for two decades
in Plato’s Academy. Following Plato’s death in 347, Aristotle traveled to Assos
and to Lesbos, where he associated with Theophrastus and collected a wealth of
biological data, and later to Macedonia, where he tutored Alexander the Great.
In 335 he returned to Athens and founded his own philosophical school in the
Lyceum. The site’s colonnaded walk peripatos conferred on Aristotle and his
group the name ‘the Peripatetics’. Alexander’s death in 323 unleashed
antiMacedonian forces in Athens. Charged with impiety, and mindful of the fate
of Socrates, Aristotle withdrew to Chalcis, where he died. Chiefly influenced
by his association with Plato, Aristotle also makes wide use of the
preSocratics. A number of works begin by criticizing and, ultimately, building
on their views. The direction of Plato’s influence is debated. Some scholars
see Aristotle’s career as a measured retreat from his teacher’s doctrines. For
others he began as a confirmed anti-Platonist but returned to the fold as he
matured. More likely, Aristotle early on developed a keenly independent voice
that expressed enduring puzzlement over such Platonic doctrines as the separate
existence of Ideas and the construction of physical reality from
two-dimensional triangles. Such unease was no doubt heightened by Aristotle’s
appreciation for the evidential value of observation as well as by his
conviction that long-received and well-entrenched opinion is likely to contain
at least part of the truth. Aristotle reportedly wrote a few popular works for
publication, some of which are dialogues. Of these we have only fragments and
reports. Notably lost are also his lectures on the good and on the Ideas.
Ancient cataloguers also list under Aristotle’s name some 158 constitutions of
Grecian states. Of these, only the Constitution of Athens has survived, on a
papyrus discovered in 0. What remains is an enormous body of writing on
virtually every topic of philosophical significance. Much of it consists of
detailed lecture notes, working drafts, and accounts of his lectures written by
others. Although efforts may have been under way in Aristotle’s lifetime,
Andronicus of Rhodes, in the first century B.C., is credited with giving the
Aristotelian corpus its present organization. Virtually no extant manuscripts
predate the ninth century A.D., so the corpus has been transmitted by a complex
history of manuscript transcription. In 1831 the Berlin Academy published the
first critical edition of Aristotle’s work. Scholars still cite Aristotle by ,
column, and line of this edition. Logic and language. The writings on logic and
language are concentrated in six early works: Categories, On Interpretation,
Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations.
Known since late antiquity as the Organon, these works share a concern with
what is now called semantics. The Categories focuses on the relation between
uncombined terms, such as ‘white’ or ‘man’, and the items they signify; On
Interpretation offers an account of how terms combine to yield simple
statements; Prior Analytics provides a systematic account of how three terms
must be distributed in two categorical statements so as to yield logically a
third such statement; Posterior Analytics specifies the conditions that
categorical statements must meet to play a role in scientific explanation. The
Topics, sometimes said to include Sophistical Refutations, is a handbook of
“topics” and techniques for dialectical arguments concerning, principally, the
four predicables: accident what may or may not belong to a subject, as sitting
belongs to Socrates; definition what signifies a subject’s essence, as rational
animal is the essence of man; proprium what is not in the essence of a subject
but is unique to or counterpredicable of it, as all and only persons are
risible; and genus what is in the essence of subjects differing in species, as
animal is in the essence of both men and oxen. Categories treats the basic
kinds of things that exist and their interrelations. Every uncombined term,
says Aristotle, signifies essentially something in one of ten categories a substance, a quantity, a quality, a
relative, a place, a time, a position, a having, a doing, or a being affected.
This doctrine underlies Aristotle’s admonition that there are as many proper or
per se senses of ‘being’ as there are categories. In order to isolate the
things that exist primarily, namely, primary substances, from all other things
and to give an account of their nature, two asymmetric relations of ontological
dependence are employed. First, substance ousia is distinguished from the
accidental categories by the fact that every accident is present in a substance
and, therefore, cannot exist without a substance in which to inhere. Second,
the category of substance itself is divided into ordinary individuals or
primary substances, such as Socrates, and secondary substances, such as the
species man and the genus animal. Secondary substances are said of primary substances
and indicate what kind of thing the subject is. A mark of this is that both the
name and the definition of the secondary substance can be predicated of the
primary substance, as both man and rational animal can be predicated of
Socrates. Universals in non-substance categories are also said of subjects, as
color is said of white. Therefore, directly or indirectly, everything else is
either present in or said of primary substances and without them nothing would
exist. And because they are neither present in a subject nor said of a subject,
primary substances depend on nothing else for their existence. So, in the
Categories, the ordinary individual is ontologically basic. On Interpretation
offers an account of those meaningful expressions that are true or false,
namely, statements or assertions. Following Plato’s Sophist, a simple statement
is composed of the semantically heterogeneous parts, name onoma and verb rhema.
In ‘Socrates runs’ the name has the strictly referential function of signifying
the subject of attribution. The verb, on the other hand, is essentially
predicative, signifying something holding of the subject. Verbs also indicate
when something is asserted to hold and so make precise the statement’s truth
conditions. Simple statements also include general categorical statements.
Since medieval times it has become customary to refer to the basic categoricals
by letters: A Every man is white, E No man is white, I Some man is white, and O
Not every man is white. On Interpretation outlines their logical relations in
what is now called the square of opposition: A & E are contraries, A &
O and E & I are contradictories, and A & I and E & O are
superimplications. That A implies I reflects the no longer current view that
Aristotle Aristotle 45 45 all affirmative
statements carry existential import. One ambition of On Interpretation is a
theory of the truth conditions for all statements that affirm or deny one thing
or another. However, statements involving future contingencies pose a special
problem. Consider Aristotle’s notorious sea battle. Either it will or it will
not happen tomorrow. If the first, then the statement ‘There will be a sea
battle tomorrow’ is now true. Hence, it is now fixed that the sea battle occur
tomorrow. If the second, then it is now fixed that the sea battle not occur
tomorrow. Either way there can be no future contingencies. Although some hold
that Aristotle would embrace the determinism they find implicit in this
consequence, most argue either that he suspends the law of excluded middle for
future contingencies or that he denies the principle of bivalence for future
contingent statements. On the first option Aristotle gives up the claim that
either the sea battle will happen tomorrow or not. On the second he keeps the
claim but allows that future contingent statements are neither true nor false.
Aristotle’s evident attachment to the law of excluded middle, perhaps, favors
the second option. Prior Analytics marks the invention of logic as a formal
discipline in that the work contains the first virtually complete system of
logical inference, sometimes called syllogistic. The fact that the first
chapter of the Prior Analytics reports that there is a syllogism whenever,
certain things being stated, something else follows of necessity, might suggest
that Aristotle intended to capture a general notion of logical consequence.
However, the syllogisms that constitute the system of the Prior Analytics are
restricted to the basic categorical statements introduced in On Interpretation.
A syllogism consists of three different categorical statements: two premises
and a conclusion. The Prior Analytics tells us which pairs of categoricals
logically yield a third. The fourteen basic valid forms are divided into three
figures and, within each figure, into moods. The system is foundational because
second- and third-figure syllogisms are reducible to first-figure syllogisms,
whose validity is self-evident. Although syllogisms are conveniently written as
conditional sentences, the syllogistic proper is, perhaps, best seen as a
system of valid deductive inferences rather than as a system of valid
conditional sentences or sentence forms. Posterior Analytics extends
syllogistic to science and scientific explanation. A science is a deductively
ordered body of knowledge about a definite genus or domain of nature.
Scientific knowledge episteme consists not in knowing that, e.g., there is
thunder in the clouds, but rather in knowing why there is thunder. So the
theory of scientific knowledge is a theory of explanation and the vehicle of
explanation is the first-figure syllogism Barbara: If 1 P belongs to all M and
2 M belongs to all S, then 3 P belongs to all S. To explain, e.g., why there is
thunder, i.e., why there is noise in the clouds, we say: 3H Noise P belongs to
the clouds S because 2H Quenching of fire M belongs to the clouds S and 1H
Noise P belongs to quenching of fire M. Because what is explained in science is
invariant and holds of necessity, the premises of a scientific or demonstrative
syllogism must be necessary. In requiring that the premises be prior to and
more knowable than the conclusion, Aristotle embraces the view that explanation
is asymmetrical: knowledge of the conclusion depends on knowledge of each
premise, but each premise can be known independently of the conclusion. The
premises must also give the causes of the conclusion. To inquire why P belongs
to S is, in effect, to seek the middle term that gives the cause. Finally, the
premises must be immediate and non-demonstrable. A premise is immediate just in
case there is no middle term connecting its subject and predicate terms. Were P
to belong to M because of a new middle, M1, then there would be a new, more
basic premise, that is essential to the full explanation. Ultimately, explanation
of a received fact will consist in a chain of syllogisms terminating in primary
premises that are immediate. These serve as axioms that define the science in
question because they reflect the essential nature of the fact to be explained as in 1H the essence of thunder lies in the
quenching of fire. Because they are immediate, primary premises are not capable
of syllogistic demonstration, yet they must be known if syllogisms containing
them are to constitute knowledge of the conclusion. Moreover, were it necessary
to know the primary premises syllogistically, demonstration would proceed
infinitely or in a circle. The first alternative defeats the very possibility
of explanation and the second undermines its asymmetric character. Thus, the
primary premises must be known by the direct grasp of the mind noûs. This just
signals the appropriate way for the highest principles of a science to be
known even demonstrable propositions can
be known directly, but they are explained only when located within the structure
of the relevant science, i.e., only when demonstrated syllogistically. Although
all sciences exhibit the same formal structure and use Aristotle Aristotle
46 46 certain common principles,
different sciences have different primary premises and, hence, different
subject matters. This “one genus to one science” rule legislates that each
science and its explanations be autonomous. Aristotle recognizes three kinds of
intellectual discipline. Productive disciplines, such as house building,
concern the making of something external to the agent. Practical disciplines,
such as ethics, concern the doing of something not separate from the agent,
namely, action and choice. Theoretical disciplines are concerned with truth for
its own sake. As such, they alone are sciences in the special sense of the
Posterior Analytics. The three main kinds of special science are individuated
by their objects natural science by
objects that are separate but not changeless, mathematics by objects that are
changeless but not separate, and theology by separate and changeless objects.
The mathematician studies the same objects as the natural scientist but in a
quite different way. He takes an actual object, e.g. a chalk figure used in
demonstration, and abstracts from or “thinks away” those of its properties,
such as definiteness of size and imperfection of shape, that are irrelevant to
its standing as a perfect exemplar of the purely mathematical properties under
investigation. Mathematicians simply treat this abstracted circle, which is not
separate from matter, as if it were separate. In this way the theorems they
prove about the object can be taken as universal and necessary. Physics. As the
science of nature physis, physics studies those things whose principles and
causes of change and rest are internal. Aristotle’s central treatise on nature,
the Physics, analyzes the most general features of natural phenomena: cause,
change, time, place, infinity, and continuity. The doctrine of the four causes
is especially important in Aristotle’s work. A cause aitia is something like an
explanatory factor. The material cause of a house, for instance, is the matter
hyle from which it is built; the moving or efficient cause is the builder, more
exactly, the form in the builder’s soul; the formal cause is its plan or form
eidos; and the final cause is its purpose or end telos: provision of shelter.
The complete explanation of the coming to be of a house will factor in all of
these causes. In natural phenomena efficient, formal, and final causes often coincide.
The form transmitted by the father is both the efficient cause and the form of
the child, and the latter is glossed in terms of the child’s end or complete
development. This explains why Aristotle often simply contrasts matter and
form. Although its objects are compounds of both, physics gives priority to the
study of natural form. This accords with the Posterior Analytics’ insistence
that explanation proceed through causes that give the essence and reflects
Aristotle’s commitment to teleology. A natural process counts essentially as
the development of, say, an oak or a man because its very identity depends on
the complete form realized at its end. As with all things natural, the end is
an internal governing principle of the process rather than an external goal.
All natural things are subject to change kinesis. Defined as the actualization
of the potential qua potential, a change is not an ontologically basic item.
There is no category for changes. Rather, they are reductively explained in
terms of more basic things substances,
properties, and potentialities. A pale man, e.g., has the potentiality to be or
become tanned. If this potentiality is utterly unactualized, no change will
ensue; if completely actualized, the change will have ended. So the potentiality
must be actualized but not, so to speak, exhausted; i.e., it must be actualized
qua potentiality. Designed for the ongoing operations of the natural world, the
Physics’ definition of change does not cover the generation and corruption of
substantial items themselves. This sort of change, which involves matter and
elemental change, receives extensive treatment in On Generation and Corruption.
Aristotle rejects the atomists’ contention that the world consists of an
infinite totality of indivisible atoms in various arrangements. Rather, his
basic stuff is uniform elemental matter, any part of which is divisible into
smaller such parts. Because nothing that is actually infinite can exist, it is
only in principle that matter is always further dividable. So while
countenancing the potential infinite, Aristotle squarely denies the actual
infinite. This holds for the motions of the sublunary elemental bodies earth,
air, fire, and water as well as for the circular motions of the heavenly bodies
composed of a fifth element, aether, whose natural motion is circular. These
are discussed in On the Heavens. The four sublunary elements are further
discussed in Meteorology, the fourth book of which might be described as an
early treatise on chemical combination. Psychology. Because the soul psyche is
officially defined as the form of a body with the potentiality for life,
psychology is a subfield of natural science. In effect, Aristotle applies the
Aristotle Aristotle 47 47 apparatus of
form and matter to the traditional Grecian view of the soul as the principle
and cause of life. Although even the nutritive and reproductive powers of
plants are effects of the soul, most of his attention is focused on topics that
are psychological in the modern sense. On the Soul gives a general account of
the nature and number of the soul’s principal cognitive faculties. Subsequent
works, chiefly those collected as the Parva naturalia, apply the general theory
to a broad range of psychological phenomena from memory and recollection to
dreaming, sleeping, and waking. The soul is a complex of faculties. Faculties,
at least those distinctive of persons, are capacities for cognitively grasping
objects. Sight grasps colors, smell odors, hearing sounds, and the mind grasps
universals. An organism’s form is the particular organization of its material
parts that enable it to exercise these characteristic functions. Because an
infant, e.g., has the capacity to do geometry, Aristotle distinguishes two
varieties of capacity or potentiality dynamis and actuality entelecheia. The
infant is a geometer only in potentiality. This first potentiality comes to him
simply by belonging to the appropriate species, i.e., by coming into the world
endowed with the potential to develop into a competent geometer. By
actualizing, through experience and training, this first potentiality, he
acquires a first actualization. This actualization is also a second
potentiality, since it renders him a competent geometer able to exercise his
knowledge at will. The exercise itself is a second actualization and amounts to
active contemplation of a particular item of knowledge, e.g. the Pythagorean
theorem. So the soul is further defined as the first actualization of a complex
natural body. Faculties, like sciences, are individuated by their objects.
Objects of perception aisthesis fall into three general kinds. Special proper
sensibles, such as colors and sounds, are directly perceived by one and only
one sense and are immune to error. They demarcate the five special senses: sight,
hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Common sensibles, such as movement and shape,
are directly perceived by more than one special sense. Both special and common
sensibles are proper objects of perception because they have a direct causal
effect on the perceptual system. By contrast, the son of Diares is an
incidental sensible because he is perceived not directly but as a consequence
of directly perceiving something else that happens to be the son of Diares e.g., a white thing. Aristotle calls the mind
noûs the place of forms because it is able to grasp objects apart from matter.
These objects are nothing like Plato’s separately existing Forms. As
Aristotelian universals, their existence is entailed by and depends on their
having instances. Thus, On the Soul’s remark that universals are “somehow in
the soul” only reflects their role in assuring the autonomy of thought. The
mind has no organ because it is not the form or first actualization of any
physical structure. So, unlike perceptual faculties, it is not strongly
dependent on the body. However, the mind thinks its objects by way of images,
which are something like internal representations, and these are physically
based. Insofar as it thus depends on imagination phantasia, the mind is weakly
dependent on the body. This would be sufficient to establish the naturalized
nature of Aristotle’s mind were it not for what some consider an incurably
dualist intrusion. In distinguishing something in the mind that makes all
things from something that becomes all things, Aristotle introduces the
notorious distinction between the active and passive intellects and may even
suggest that the first is separable from the body. Opinion on the nature of the
active intellect diverges widely, some even discounting it as an irrelevant
insertion. But unlike perception, which depends on external objects, thinking
is up to us. Therefore, it cannot simply be a matter of the mind’s being
affected. So Aristotle needs a mechanism that enables us to produce thoughts
autonomously. In light of this functional role, the question of active
intellect’s ontological status is less pressing. Biology. Aristotle’s
biological writings, which constitute about a quarter of the corpus, bring
biological phenomena under the general framework of natural science: the four
causes, form and matter, actuality and potentiality, and especially the
teleological character of natural processes. If the Physics proceeds in an a
priori style, the History of Animals, Parts of Animals, and Generation of
Animals achieve an extraordinary synthesis of observation, theory, and general
scientific principle. History of Animals is a comparative study of generic
features of animals, including analogous parts, activities, and dispositions.
Although its morphological and physiological descriptions show surprisingly
little interest in teleology, Parts of Animals is squarely teleological. Animal
parts, especially organs, are ultimately differentiated by function rather than
morphology. The composition of, e.g., teeth and flesh is determined by their
role in the overall functioning of the organism and, hence, requires Aristotle
Aristotle 48 48 teleology. Generation
of Animals applies the formmatter and actualitypotentiality distinctions to animal
reproduction, inheritance, and the development of accidental characteristics.
The species form governs the development of an organism and determines what the
organism is essentially. Although in the Metaphysics and elsewhere accidental
characteristics, including inherited ones, are excluded from science, in the
biological writings form has an expanded role and explains the inheritance of
non-essential characteristics, such as eye color. The more fully the father’s
form is imposed on the minimally formed matter of the mother, the more completely
the father’s traits are passed on to the offspring. The extent to which matter
resists imposition of form determines the extent to which traits of the mother
emerge, or even those of more distant ancestors. Aristotle shared the
Platonists’ interest in animal classification. Recent scholarship suggests that
this is less an interest in elaborating a Linnean-style taxonomy of the animal
kingdom than an interest in establishing the complex differentiae and genera
central to definitions of living things. The biological works argue, moreover,
that no single differentia could give the whole essence of a species and that
the differentiae that do give the essence will fall into more than one
division. If the second point rejects the method of dichotomous division favored
by Plato and the Academy, the first counters Aristotle’s own standard view that
essence can be reduced to a single final differentia. The biological sciences
are not, then, automatically accommodated by the Posterior Analytics model of
explanation, where the essence or explanatory middle is conceived as a single
causal property. A number of themes discussed in this section are brought
together in a relatively late work, Motion of Animals. Its psychophysical
account of the mechanisms of animal movement stands at the juncture of physics,
psychology, and biology. Metaphysics. In Andronicus’s edition, the fourteen
books now known as the Metaphysics were placed after the Physics, whence comes
the word ‘metaphysics’, whose literal meaning is ‘what comes after the
physics’. Aristotle himself prefers ‘first philosophy’ or ‘wisdom’ sophia. The
subject is defined as the theoretical science of the causes and principles of
what is most knowable. This makes metaphysics a limiting case of Aristotle’s
broadly used distinction between what is better known to us and what is better
known by nature. The genus animal, e.g., is better known by nature than the
species man because it is further removed from the senses and because it can be
known independently of the species. The first condition suggests that the most
knowable objects would be the separately existing and thoroughly non-sensible
objects of theology and, hence, that metaphysics is a special science. The
second condition suggests that the most knowable objects are simply the most
general notions that apply to things in general. This favors identifying
metaphysics as the general science of being qua being. Special sciences study
restricted modes of being. Physics, for instance, studies being qua having an
internal principle of change and rest. A general science of being studies the
principles and causes of things that are, simply insofar as they are. A good
deal of the Metaphysics supports this conception of metaphysics. For example,
Book IV, on the principle of non-contradiction, and Book X, on unity,
similarity, and difference, treat notions that apply to anything whatever. So,
too, for the discussion of form and actuality in the central books VII, VIII,
and IX. Book XII, on the other hand, appears to regard metaphysics as the
special science of theology. Aristotle himself attempts to reconcile these two
conceptions of metaphysics. Because it studies immovable substance, theology
counts as first philosophy. However, it is also general precisely because it is
first, and so it will include the study of being qua being. Scholars have found
this solution as perplexing as the problem. Although Book XII proves the causal
necessity for motion of an eternal substance that is an unmoved mover, this
establishes no conceptual connection between the forms of sensible compounds
and the pure form that is the unmoved mover. Yet such a connection is required,
if a single science is to encompass both. Problems of reconciliation aside,
Aristotle had to face a prior difficulty concerning the very possibility of a
general science of being. For the Posterior Analytics requires the existence of
a genus for each science but the Metaphysics twice argues that being is not a
genus. The latter claim, which Aristotle never relinquishes, is implicit in the
Categories, where being falls directly into kinds, namely, the categories.
Because these highest genera do not result from differentiation of a single
genus, no univocal sense of being covers them. Although being is, therefore,
ambiguous in as many ways as there are categories, a thread connects them. The
ontological priority accorded primary substance in the Categories is made part
of the very definition of non-substantial entities Aristotle Aristotle 49 49 in the Metaphysics: to be an accident is
by definition to be an accident of some substance. Thus, the different senses
of being all refer to the primary kind of being, substance, in the way that
exercise, diet, medicine, and climate are healthy by standing in some relation
to the single thing health. The discovery of focal meaning, as this is
sometimes called, introduces a new way of providing a subject matter with the
internal unity required for science. Accordingly, the Metaphysics modifies the
strict “one genus to one science” rule of the Posterior Analytics. A single
science may also include objects whose definitions are different so long as
these definitions are related focally to one thing. So focal meaning makes
possible the science of being qua being. Focal meaning also makes substance the
central object of investigation. The principles and causes of being in general
can be illuminated by studying the principles and causes of the primary
instance of being. Although the Categories distinguishes primary substances
from other things that are and indicates their salient characteristics e.g.,
their ability to remain one and the same while taking contrary properties, it
does not explain why it is that primary substances have such characteristics.
The difficult central books of the Metaphysics
VII, VIII, and IX investigate
precisely this. In effect, they ask what, primarily, about the Categories’
primary substances explains their nature. Their target, in short, is the
substance of the primary substances of the Categories. As concrete empirical particulars,
the latter are compounds of form and matter the distinction is not explicit in
the Categories and so their substance must be sought among these internal
structural features. Thus, Metaphysics VII considers form, matter, and the
compound of form and matter, and quickly turns to form as the best candidate.
In developing a conception of form that can play the required explanatory role,
the notion of essence to ti en einai assumes center stage. The essence of a
man, e.g., is the cause of certain matter constituting a man, namely, the soul.
So form in the sense of essence is the primary substance of the Metaphysics.
This is obviously not the primary substance of the Categories and, although the
same word eidos is used, neither is this form the species of the Categories.
The latter is treated in the Metaphysics as a kind of universal compound
abstracted from particular compounds and appears to be denied substantial
status. While there is broad, though not universal, agreement that in the
Metaphysics form is primary substance, there is equally broad disagreement over
whether this is particular form, the form belonging to a single individual, or
species form, the form common to all individuals in the species. There is also
lively discussion concerning the relation of the Metaphysics doctrine of
primary substance to the earlier doctrine of the Categories. Although a few
scholars see an outright contradiction here, most take the divergence as
evidence of the development of Aristotle’s views on substance. Finally, the
role of the central books in the Metaphysics as a whole continues to be
debated. Some see them as an entirely selfcontained analysis of form, others as
preparatory to Book XII’s discussion of non-sensible form and the role of the
unmoved mover as the final cause of motion. Practical philosophy. Two of
Aristotle’s most heralded works, the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics, are
treatises in practical philosophy. Their aim is effective action in matters of
conduct. So they deal with what is up to us and can be otherwise because in
this domain lie choice and action. The practical nature of ethics lies mainly
in the development of a certain kind of agent. The Nicomachean Ethics was
written, Aristotle reminds us, “not in order to know what virtue is, but in
order to become good.” One becomes good by becoming a good chooser and doer.
This is not simply a matter of choosing and doing right actions but of choosing
or doing them in the right way. Aristotle assumes that, for the most part,
agents know what ought to be done the evil or vicious person is an exception.
The akratic or morally weak agent desires to do other than what he knows ought
to be done and acts on this desire against his better judgment. The enkratic or
morally strong person shares the akratic agent’s desire but acts in accordance
with his better judgment. In neither kind of choice are desire and judgment in
harmony. In the virtuous, on the other hand, desire and judgment agree. So
their choices and actions will be free of the conflict and pain that inevitably
accompany those of the akratic and enkratic agent. This is because the part of
their soul that governs choice and action is so disposed that desire and right
judgment coincide. Acquiring a stable disposition hexis of this sort amounts to
acquiring moral virtue ethike arete. The disposition is concerned with choices
as would be determined by the person of practical wisdom phronesis; these will
be actions lying between extreme alternatives. They will lie in a mean popularly called the “golden mean” relative to the talents and stores of the
agent. Choosing in this way is not easily done. It involves, for instance,
feeling anger or extending Aristotle Aristotle 50 50 generosity at the right time, toward the
right people, in the right way, and for the right reasons. Intellectual
virtues, such as excellence at mathematics, can be acquired by teaching, but
moral virtue cannot. I may know what ought to be done and even perform virtuous
acts without being able to act virtuously. Nonetheless, because moral virtue is
a disposition concerning choice, deliberate performance of virtuous acts can,
ultimately, instill a disposition to choose them in harmony and with pleasure
and, hence, to act virtuously. Aristotle rejected Plato’s transcendental Form of
the Good as irrelevant to the affairs of persons and, in general, had little
sympathy with the notion of an absolute good. The goal of choice and action is
the human good, namely, living well. This, however, is not simply a matter of
possessing the requisite practical disposition. Practical wisdom, which is
necessary for living well, involves skill at calculating the best means to
achieve one’s ends and this is an intellectual virtue. But the ends that are
presupposed by deliberation are established by moral virtue. The end of all
action, the good for man, is happiness eudaimonia. Most things, such as wealth,
are valued only as a means to a worthy end. Honor, pleasure, reason, and
individual virtues, such as courage and generosity, are deemed worthy in their
own right but they can also be sought for the sake of eudaimonia. Eudaimonia
alone can be sought only for its own sake. Eudaimonia is not a static state of
the soul but a kind of activity energeia of the soul something like human flourishing. The happy
person’s life will be selfsufficient and complete in the highest measure. The
good for man, then, is activity in accordance with virtue or the highest
virtue, should there be one. Here ‘virtue’ means something like excellence and
applies to much besides man. The excellence of an ax lies in its cutting, that
of a horse in its equestrian qualities. In short, a thing’s excellence is a
matter of how well it performs its characteristic functions or, we might say,
how well it realizes its nature. The natural functions of persons reside in the
exercise of their natural cognitive faculties, most importantly, the faculty of
reason. So human happiness consists in activity in accordance with reason.
However, persons can exercise reason in practical or in purely theoretical
matters. The first suggests that happiness consists in the practical life of
moral virtue, the second that it consists in the life of theoretical activity.
Most of the Nicomachean Ethics is devoted to the moral virtues but the final
book appears to favor theoretical activity theoria as the highest and most
choiceworthy end. It is man’s closest approach to divine activity. Much recent
scholarship is devoted to the relation between these two conceptions of the
good, particularly, to whether they are of equal value and whether they exclude
or include one another. Ethics and politics are closely connected. Aristotle
conceives of the state as a natural entity arising among persons to serve a
natural function. This is not merely, e.g., provision for the common defense or
promotion of trade. Rather, the state of the Politics also has eudaimonia as
its goal, namely, fostering the complete and selfsufficient lives of its
citizens. Aristotle produced a complex taxonomy of constitutions but reduced
them, in effect, to three kinds: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Which
best serves the natural end of a state was, to some extent, a relative matter
for Aristotle. Although he appears to have favored democracy, in some
circumstances monarchy might be appropriate. The standard ordering of
Aristotle’s works ends with the Rhetoric and the Poetics. The Rhetoric’s
extensive discussion of oratory or the art of persuasion locates it between
politics and literary theory. The relatively short Poetics is devoted chiefly
to the analysis of tragedy. It has had an enormous historical influence on
aesthetic theory in general as well as on the writing of drama. Refs.: The obvious keyword is “Kant,” –
especially in the Series III on the doctrines, in collaboration with Baker.
There are essays on the Grundlegung, too. The keyword for “Kantotle,” and the
keywords for ‘free,’ and ‘freedom,’ and ‘practical reason,’ and ‘autonomy, are
also helpful. Some of this material in “Actions and events,” “The influence of
Kant on Aristotle,” by H. P. Grice, John Locke Scholar (failed), etc., Oxford
(Advisor: J. Dempsey). The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC. Grice’s composite for Kant
and Aristotle -- Grice as an Aristotelian commentator – in “Aristotle on the
multiplicity of being,” – Grice would comment on Aristotle profusely at Oxford.
One of his favourite tutees was J. L. Ackrill – but he regretted that, of all
things Ackrill could do, he decided “to translate Aristotle into the
vernacular!” -- commentaries on Aristotle, the term commonly used for the Grecian
commentaries on Aristotle that take up about 15,000 s in the Berlin Commentaria
in Aristotelem Graeca 29, still the basic edition of them. Only in the 0s did a
project begin, under the editorship of Richard Sorabji, of King’s , London, to
translate at least the most significant portions of them into English. They had
remained the largest corpus of Grecian philosophy not tr. into any modern
language. Most of these works, especially the later, Neoplatonic ones, are much
more than simple commentaries on Aristotle. They are also a mode of doing
philosophy, the favored one at this stage of intellectual history. They are
therefore important not only for the understanding of Aristotle, but also for
both the study of the pre-Socratics and the Hellenistic philosophers,
particularly the Stoics, of whom they preserve many fragments, and lastly for
the study of Neoplatonism itself and, in
the case of John Philoponus, for studying the innovations he introduces in the
process of trying to reconcile Platonism with Christianity. The commentaries
may be divided into three main groups. 1 The first group of commentaries are
those by Peripatetic scholars of the second to fourth centuries A.D., most
notably Alexander of Aphrodisias fl. c.200, but also the paraphraser Themistius
fl. c.360. We must not omit, however, to note Alexander’s predecessor Aspasius,
author of the earliest surviving commentary, one on the Nicomachean Ethics a work not commented on again until the late
Byzantine period. Commentaries by Alexander survive on the Prior Analytics,
Topics, Metaphysics IV, On the Senses, and Meteorologics, and his now lost ones
on the Categories, On the Soul, and Physics had enormous influence in later
times, particularly on Simplicius. 2 By far the largest group is that of the
Neoplatonists up to the sixth century A.D. Most important of the earlier
commentators is Porphyry 232c.309, of whom only a short commentary on the
Categories survives, together with an introduction Isagoge to Aristotle’s
logical works, which provoked many commentaries itself, and proved most
influential in both the East and through Boethius in the Latin West. The
reconciling of Plato and Aristotle is largely his work. His big commentary on
the Categories was of great importance in later times, and many fragments are
preserved in that of Simplicius. His follower Iamblichus was also influential,
but his commentaries are likewise lost. The Athenian School of Syrianus
c.375437 and Proclus 41085 also commented on Aristotle, but all that survives
is a commentary of Syrianus on Books III, IV, XIII, and XIV of the Metaphysics.
It is the early sixth century, however, that produces the bulk of our surviving
commentaries, originating from the Alexandrian school of Ammonius, son of
Hermeias c.435520, but composed both in Alexandria, by the Christian John
Philoponus c.490575, and in or at least from Athens by Simplicius writing after
532. Main commentaries of Philoponus are on Categories, Prior Analytics,
Posterior Analytics, On Generation and Corruption, On the Soul III, and
Physics; of Simplicius on Categories, Physics, On the Heavens, and perhaps On
the Soul. The tradition is carried on in Alexandria by Olympiodorus c.495565
and the Christians Elias fl. c.540 and David an Armenian, nicknamed the
Invincible, fl. c.575, and finally by Stephanus, who was brought by the emperor
to take the chair of philosophy in Constantinople in about 610. These scholars
comment chiefly on the Categories and other introductory material, but
Olympiodorus produced a commentary on the Meteorologics. Characteristic of the
Neoplatonists is a desire to reconcile Aristotle with Platonism arguing, e.g.,
that Aristotle was not dismissing the Platonic theory of Forms, and to
systematize his thought, thus reconciling him with himself. They are responding
to a long tradition of criticism, during which difficulties were raised about
incoherences and contradictions in Aristotle’s thought, and they are concerned
to solve these, drawing on their comprehensive knowledge of his writings. Only
Philoponus, as a Christian, dares to criticize him, in particular on the
eternity of the world, but also on the concept of infinity on which he produces
an ingenious argument, picked up, via the Arabs, by Bonaventure in the
thirteenth century. The Categories proves a particularly fruitful battleground,
and much of the later debate between realism and nominalism stems from
arguments about the proper subject matter of that work. The format of these
commentaries is mostly that adopted by scholars ever since, that of taking
command theory of law commentaries on Aristotle 159 159 one passage, or lemma, after another of
the source work and discussing it from every angle, but there are variations.
Sometimes the general subject matter is discussed first, and then details of the
text are examined; alternatively, the lemma is taken in subdivisions without
any such distinction. The commentary can also proceed explicitly by answering
problems, or aporiai, which have been raised by previous authorities. Some
commentaries, such as the short one of Porphyry on the Categories, and that of
Iamblichus’s pupil Dexippus on the same work, have a “catechetical” form,
proceeding by question and answer. In some cases as with Vitters in modern
times the commentaries are simply transcriptions by pupils of the lectures of a
teacher. This is the case, for example, with the surviving “commentaries” of
Ammonius. One may also indulge in simple paraphrase, as does Themistius on
Posterior Analysis, Physics, On the Soul, and On the Heavens, but even here a
good deal of interpretation is involved, and his works remain interesting. An
important offshoot of all this activity in the Latin West is the figure of
Boethius c.480524. It is he who first transmitted a knowledge of Aristotelian
logic to the West, to become an integral part of medieval Scholasticism. He tr.
Porphyry’s Isagoge, and the whole of Aristotle’s logical works. He wrote a
double commentary on the Isagoge, and commentaries on the Categories and On
Interpretation. He is dependent ultimately on Porphyry, but more immediately,
it would seem, on a source in the school of Proclus. 3 The third major group of
commentaries dates from the late Byzantine period, and seems mainly to emanate
from a circle of scholars grouped around the princess Anna Comnena in the
twelfth century. The most important figures here are Eustratius c.10501120 and
Michael of Ephesus originally dated c.1040, but now fixed at c.1130. Michael in
particular seems concerned to comment on areas of Aristotle’s works that had
hitherto escaped commentary. He therefore comments widely, for example, on the
biological works, but also on the Sophistical Refutations. He and Eustratius,
and perhaps others, seem to have cooperated also on a composite commentary on
the Nicomachean Ethics, neglected since Aspasius. There is also evidence of
lost commentaries on the Politics and the Rhetoric. The composite commentary on
the Ethics was tr. into Latin in the next century, in England, by Robert
Grosseteste, but earlier than this translations of the various logical
commentaries had been made by James of Venice fl. c.1130, who may have even
made the acquaintance of Michael of Ephesus in Constantinople. Later in that
century other commentaries were being tr. from Arabic versions by Gerard of
Cremona d.1187. The influence of the Grecian commentary tradition in the West
thus resumed after the long break since Boethius in the sixth century, but only
now, it seems fair to say, is the full significance of this enormous body of
work becoming properly appreciated.
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