------ By J. L. S.
-------------IF THAT'S THE WORD, "gadget" I mean. We read (elsewhere) of Grice's gadget. This is Grice's _senior_. Herbert. Grice recalls him with affection (you would, wouldn't you) in "Reply to Richards", google.books:
"He was a dreadful businessman,
but a fine musician"
---
Since Grice's gadget _WAS_ the 'CONVENTIONAL' implicature, he (Grice Jr.) KNEW what he was meaning, 'but'.
Cfr. his long discussion in S. R. Bayne's site, "History of Analytic Philosophy" -- for Grice 1961 on
"She was poor but she was honest"
--- I once wrote to Potts in Leeds, "You've written stuff on Grice." "Close but no cigar", he replied, "He was, though, my tutor in Oxford, for a term or so. He was wholly _eccentric_ but he had a great reputation as a teacher".
"But"???
Now, what _was_ Grice Senior's gadget?
First his music:
The man is supposed to have been -- I "hate" the middle-classes, Evita screams in that script by Sir Tim Rice -- as he then wasn't --,
'wealthy middle-class'
-- but a 'businessman'?
Just because Herbert (as he was) invented and patented a gadget that went to be very fruitful (for the duration).
His music:
Herbert Grice ALWAYS played the fiddle. He would played at his greatest pleasure later, when Grice Junior (also called "Herbert" -- and our man) would join him on the piano (And Derek, Grice's little brother, in the cello).
Grice Senior was, you see, a concert violinist.
But before that?
Well, Grice (our man) was born in 1913. We don't know how old Grice Senior was then, but we assume his selfish genes were ready to reproduce, so he was "old enough" (and so we assume Mabel Fenton, the 50% of Grice's extended genotype).
In 1914, however, War broke (broke?). Grice was able to make LOADS (of fortune) vis a vis this little gadget he invented. It was made of metal, too, and blended in the best Black-Country things.
However, Society soon found out that, with Peace declared, the gadget had no further use.
Grice Senior failed to realise that. He tried to keep selling his thing. Nobody would buy it. Hence, "dreadful businessman"
So now you know!
I'm going to photograph the gadget and report, mabbe. Etc.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Grice's Exaptometer
---- By J. L. S.
JL (on the phone) ... Calling.
Is that Google?
Google. Yes, who is it?
JL. It's JL -- from the Blogs.
Google. Hi.
JL. Just to let you know I patented a new machinery. It's
"Grice's Exaptometer."
Browsing the OED, as is his wont, he comes across the
"Adaptometer" -- and since he's now using Axelrod's theory of ex-aptation (vs. ad-aptation), the gadget was created (by minor courtesy of Myers and his "self-adaptive").
self-adaptive, capable of adapting oneself or itself, (hence, by extension)
pertaining to, involving, or characterized by self-adaptation
1903 F. W. H. MYERS Human Pers. I. 216 Typical of life is its
*self-adaptive power.
Darwin speaks of GENERIC or specific (but still 'generic') adaptations of the species 'homo sapiens'. I don't think he was concerned with EACH and EVERY adaptation by SPECIMENS of the species, necessarily. That's where the Grice's exaptometer is brought to play.
----- One may need to narrow the idea to 'species-specific' ADAPTATIONS. It's very GENERAL things the evolutionists are talking about: not individual adaptations.
It seems that 'adapt' is a sort of puzzling notion in that it's like "I've led a happy life", or "I've been lucky". As Aristotle said, "Don't call a man happy until he is dead". "Adapt", and also "exapt" (but it's easier to disimplicate that) seems to be a word that needs to be used in the first-person only and with caution.
--- From the OED, on 'adapt' and 'exapt':
'adapt'
"as applied to BIOTIC", which I'd take as the BASIC sense:
Biol. Organic modification by which an organism or species becomes
adapted to its environment.
1859 DARWIN in Jrnl. Linn. Soc. Zool. III. 50
"The most vigorous and healthy males, implying perfect adaptation, must generally gain the victory in their contests [for the females].
1875 Encycl. Brit. I. 145/2
Adaptation..is usually restricted..to imply such modifications as arise during the life of an individual, when an external change directly generates some change of
function and structure.
1897 H. F. OSBORN in Science 15 Oct.,
Ontogenetic adaptation..enables animals and plants to survive very critical changes in their environment.
1904 H. E. CRAMPTON in Biometrika III. 114
A rigid..organization, incapable..of structural alterations as the result of ‘functional adaptation’.
1923 J. S. HUXLEY Ess. of Biologist i. 13
If the degree of adaptation has not increased during evolution, then it is clear that progress does not consist in increase in adaptation.
Other quotes, predating those, of general interest, vs. Grice's use of 'adaptiveness' in operant (vs. ex-operant) pirots:
1824 COLERIDGE Aids to Refl. (1848) 193
This higher species of adaptive power we call Instinct.
1854 WOODWARD Mollusca 56
Modifications relating only to peculiar habits are called adaptive.
1866 ARGYLL Reign of Law iv. (ed. 4) 185
Adaptive colouring as a means of concealment is never applied to any animal whose habits do not expose it to special danger.
1875 EMERSON Lett. & Soc. Aims iv. 114
Ah! what a plastic he is! so shifty, so adaptive!
1902 H. F. OSBORN in Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. XVI. 92
They represent an adaptive radiation for different local habitat, different modes of feeding, fighting, locomotion, etc.
1902 in Amer. Naturalist May 353
One of the essential features of divergent evolution..has been termed by the writer ‘adaptive radiation’. This term seems to express most clearly the idea of
differentiation of habit in several directions from a primitive type.
1927 HALDANE & HUXLEY Animal Biol. xi. 240
This adaptation to different modes of life, while..we call it specialization when we are thinking only of one species of animal, is called adaptive radiation when we are thinking of the group as a whole.
1958 IRE Trans. Automatic Control Dec. 102 (title)
A survey of *adaptive control systems. Ibid. 108/1 In answers to these questions may lie the fundamental principles of adaptive control.
1968 Brit. Med. Bull. XXIV. 251/1
A self-optimizing (also called ‘adaptive control’) system is one that
operates by continuously maximizing an overall performance index by adjusting the
characteristics of the system.
1984 J. F. LAMB et al. Essent. Physiol. (ed. 2) i. 13
Adaptive control systems are those which change to meet changing needs.
1879 LUBBOCK Scient. Lect. ii. 42
The modifications which insect larvæ undergo may be divided into two kindsdevelopmental..and adaptational or adaptive; those which tend to suit them to their own mode of life.
1985 A. ROSENBERG Struct. Biol. Sci. viii. 243
Adaptationalism must be compatible with the possibility, indeed the actuality, that many evolved structures have a present function, but were ‘not built by natural selection for their current roles’.
1988 Amer. Zoologist XXVIII. 200/2
They go on to allege that all sorts of problems with evolutionary theory, including a blind adherence to adaptationalism..can be laid at the door of reductionism.
A reductionist approach to the study of biological adaptations which
considers each character or feature of an organism as having evolved in
isolation to fulfil a specific function.
1983 Acta Biotheoretica XXXII. 217
The conceptual analysis in the present paper has a preliminary character. It is meant primarily as a basis for criticizing various arguments against ‘adaptationism’.
1988 Times Lit. Suppl. 19 Aug. 911/4
He enlists the somewhat dubious help of biological ‘adaptationism’ to make the point that assigning a purpose to a biological trait doesn't require knowledge of how the trait fulfils that purpose.
1991 Nature 11 July 117/3
In the English scientific context,..the complexities of conventional adaptationism may be underestimated by Gould.
----- but then he is the 'anti-Gricean scientist'! :)
Biol. Of, pertaining to, or holding a view of the evolution of morphological features which stresses adaptation by natural selection.
1978 Sci. Amer. Sept. 161/1
Their work is informed by the adaptationist program, and their aim is to explain particular anatomical features by showing that they are well suited to the function they perform.
1983 Man XVIII. 786/2
La Fontaine may well choose not to identify with the adaptationist paradigm..but this should not lead her to characterise the biological approach as in any sense pitted against cultural explanations.
1987 Nature 9 July 121/2
Foley's approach to evolution is strictly neo-darwinian and (despite his protestations) equally strictly adaptationist.
1988 J. GLEICK Chaos 201
So an adaptationist explanation for the shape of an organism or the function of an organ always looks to its cause, not its physical cause but its final cause.
Biol. One who stresses the role of adaptation in evolution, esp. one who holds that every morphological feature of an organism is the result of adaptation for a specific purpose.
1982 R. DAWKINS Extended Phenotype iii. 31
History seems to be on the side of the adaptationists, in the sense that in particular instances they have confounded the scoffers again and again.
--- if you've heard of him (Grice did!) (""_Read_ "Selfish Gene"", he wrote on a piece of paper, now deposited in "The H. P. Grice Collection", BANC MSS 90/135c, Bancroft Library).
1982 New Scientist 6 May 360/2
The cladist uses his method to construct a taxonomy; the comparative adaptationist inverts the technique.
1983 THORNHILL & ALCOCK Evolution Insect Mating Syst. i. 11
An extreme adaptationist would interpret this behavior in the following way.
Ecol. One who believes that human beings will adapt their behaviour to
accommodate changing climatic conditions. Chiefly N. Amer.
1991 Washington Post 22 Sept. C1/2
A temperature rise of two or three or four degrees spread out over 50 or 60 years? No big deal, say these adaptationists.
1991 Gazette (Montreal) 16 Oct. B2/5
The point of view of the so-called ‘adaptationist’ is not only shortsighted but also stupid.
--- cfr. "selfish and stupid genes": Or "It's the stupid, Gene!" (No offence meant!)
1992 Washington Times 19 June F2/5
Stephen Schneider was one of the first ‘adaptationists’ (i.e., moderates) in the global warming debate.
1881 Harper's Mag. Apr. 645
He possessed plenty of that Yankee adaptativeness.
Adaptedness; aptitude specially produced.
1842 MRS. BROWNING Grk. Chr. Poets 129
A hedge-thorn catches sheep's wool by position and approximation rather than adaptitude.
-- and then there's exaptitude, which I champion in.
1852 BROWNING Ess. on Shelley (1881) 16
A profound sensibility and adaptitude for act.
1863 J. C. JEAFFRESON Everard's Dau. xiii. 221
The man had..a subtle adaptiveness as well as sincere desire to please.
--- but then he died.
1878 C. STANFORD Symb. Christ vi. 172
The Saviour's words have minutely particular adaptiveness to every moment of the soul's history.
1879 CARPENTER Ment. Physiol. I. ii. §70. 74
The adaptiveness of the movements is no proof of the existence of consciousness.
--- Not for D. Hof.: the sfex moth!
1917 A. DUANE Fuchs's Textbk. Ophthalm. (ed. 5) ii. 127
A better instrument than Förster's is the adaptometer of Nagel.
---- and a still better gadget is Grice's exaptometer. (I have to write on blog on Grice senior's gadget -- as per Chapman's online bio of Grice in Literary Encyclopedia. I want a photo of it!). What did Grice's invention look like?
1928 R. J. E. SCOTT Gould's Med. Dict. (ed. 2) 31/2
Adaptometer, an instrument for measuring the time taken in retinal adaptation.
1934 H. C. WARREN Dict. Psychol. 6/1
Adaptometer, any device for measuring the course or degree of sensory adaptation, in terms of fall or rise of threshold or sensitivity.
1942 Brit. Jrnl. Psychol. July 4
Certain hysterical and pathological eye conditions undoubtedly affect adaptometer results.
--- and NB: This was not, necessarily, T. Nagel, Grice's student at St John's!
JL (on the phone) ... Calling.
Is that Google?
Google. Yes, who is it?
JL. It's JL -- from the Blogs.
Google. Hi.
JL. Just to let you know I patented a new machinery. It's
"Grice's Exaptometer."
Browsing the OED, as is his wont, he comes across the
"Adaptometer" -- and since he's now using Axelrod's theory of ex-aptation (vs. ad-aptation), the gadget was created (by minor courtesy of Myers and his "self-adaptive").
self-adaptive, capable of adapting oneself or itself, (hence, by extension)
pertaining to, involving, or characterized by self-adaptation
1903 F. W. H. MYERS Human Pers. I. 216 Typical of life is its
*self-adaptive power.
Darwin speaks of GENERIC or specific (but still 'generic') adaptations of the species 'homo sapiens'. I don't think he was concerned with EACH and EVERY adaptation by SPECIMENS of the species, necessarily. That's where the Grice's exaptometer is brought to play.
----- One may need to narrow the idea to 'species-specific' ADAPTATIONS. It's very GENERAL things the evolutionists are talking about: not individual adaptations.
It seems that 'adapt' is a sort of puzzling notion in that it's like "I've led a happy life", or "I've been lucky". As Aristotle said, "Don't call a man happy until he is dead". "Adapt", and also "exapt" (but it's easier to disimplicate that) seems to be a word that needs to be used in the first-person only and with caution.
--- From the OED, on 'adapt' and 'exapt':
'adapt'
"as applied to BIOTIC", which I'd take as the BASIC sense:
Biol. Organic modification by which an organism or species becomes
adapted to its environment.
1859 DARWIN in Jrnl. Linn. Soc. Zool. III. 50
"The most vigorous and healthy males, implying perfect adaptation, must generally gain the victory in their contests [for the females].
1875 Encycl. Brit. I. 145/2
Adaptation..is usually restricted..to imply such modifications as arise during the life of an individual, when an external change directly generates some change of
function and structure.
1897 H. F. OSBORN in Science 15 Oct.,
Ontogenetic adaptation..enables animals and plants to survive very critical changes in their environment.
1904 H. E. CRAMPTON in Biometrika III. 114
A rigid..organization, incapable..of structural alterations as the result of ‘functional adaptation’.
1923 J. S. HUXLEY Ess. of Biologist i. 13
If the degree of adaptation has not increased during evolution, then it is clear that progress does not consist in increase in adaptation.
Other quotes, predating those, of general interest, vs. Grice's use of 'adaptiveness' in operant (vs. ex-operant) pirots:
1824 COLERIDGE Aids to Refl. (1848) 193
This higher species of adaptive power we call Instinct.
1854 WOODWARD Mollusca 56
Modifications relating only to peculiar habits are called adaptive.
1866 ARGYLL Reign of Law iv. (ed. 4) 185
Adaptive colouring as a means of concealment is never applied to any animal whose habits do not expose it to special danger.
1875 EMERSON Lett. & Soc. Aims iv. 114
Ah! what a plastic he is! so shifty, so adaptive!
1902 H. F. OSBORN in Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. XVI. 92
They represent an adaptive radiation for different local habitat, different modes of feeding, fighting, locomotion, etc.
1902 in Amer. Naturalist May 353
One of the essential features of divergent evolution..has been termed by the writer ‘adaptive radiation’. This term seems to express most clearly the idea of
differentiation of habit in several directions from a primitive type.
1927 HALDANE & HUXLEY Animal Biol. xi. 240
This adaptation to different modes of life, while..we call it specialization when we are thinking only of one species of animal, is called adaptive radiation when we are thinking of the group as a whole.
1958 IRE Trans. Automatic Control Dec. 102 (title)
A survey of *adaptive control systems. Ibid. 108/1 In answers to these questions may lie the fundamental principles of adaptive control.
1968 Brit. Med. Bull. XXIV. 251/1
A self-optimizing (also called ‘adaptive control’) system is one that
operates by continuously maximizing an overall performance index by adjusting the
characteristics of the system.
1984 J. F. LAMB et al. Essent. Physiol. (ed. 2) i. 13
Adaptive control systems are those which change to meet changing needs.
1879 LUBBOCK Scient. Lect. ii. 42
The modifications which insect larvæ undergo may be divided into two kindsdevelopmental..and adaptational or adaptive; those which tend to suit them to their own mode of life.
1985 A. ROSENBERG Struct. Biol. Sci. viii. 243
Adaptationalism must be compatible with the possibility, indeed the actuality, that many evolved structures have a present function, but were ‘not built by natural selection for their current roles’.
1988 Amer. Zoologist XXVIII. 200/2
They go on to allege that all sorts of problems with evolutionary theory, including a blind adherence to adaptationalism..can be laid at the door of reductionism.
A reductionist approach to the study of biological adaptations which
considers each character or feature of an organism as having evolved in
isolation to fulfil a specific function.
1983 Acta Biotheoretica XXXII. 217
The conceptual analysis in the present paper has a preliminary character. It is meant primarily as a basis for criticizing various arguments against ‘adaptationism’.
1988 Times Lit. Suppl. 19 Aug. 911/4
He enlists the somewhat dubious help of biological ‘adaptationism’ to make the point that assigning a purpose to a biological trait doesn't require knowledge of how the trait fulfils that purpose.
1991 Nature 11 July 117/3
In the English scientific context,..the complexities of conventional adaptationism may be underestimated by Gould.
----- but then he is the 'anti-Gricean scientist'! :)
Biol. Of, pertaining to, or holding a view of the evolution of morphological features which stresses adaptation by natural selection.
1978 Sci. Amer. Sept. 161/1
Their work is informed by the adaptationist program, and their aim is to explain particular anatomical features by showing that they are well suited to the function they perform.
1983 Man XVIII. 786/2
La Fontaine may well choose not to identify with the adaptationist paradigm..but this should not lead her to characterise the biological approach as in any sense pitted against cultural explanations.
1987 Nature 9 July 121/2
Foley's approach to evolution is strictly neo-darwinian and (despite his protestations) equally strictly adaptationist.
1988 J. GLEICK Chaos 201
So an adaptationist explanation for the shape of an organism or the function of an organ always looks to its cause, not its physical cause but its final cause.
Biol. One who stresses the role of adaptation in evolution, esp. one who holds that every morphological feature of an organism is the result of adaptation for a specific purpose.
1982 R. DAWKINS Extended Phenotype iii. 31
History seems to be on the side of the adaptationists, in the sense that in particular instances they have confounded the scoffers again and again.
--- if you've heard of him (Grice did!) (""_Read_ "Selfish Gene"", he wrote on a piece of paper, now deposited in "The H. P. Grice Collection", BANC MSS 90/135c, Bancroft Library).
1982 New Scientist 6 May 360/2
The cladist uses his method to construct a taxonomy; the comparative adaptationist inverts the technique.
1983 THORNHILL & ALCOCK Evolution Insect Mating Syst. i. 11
An extreme adaptationist would interpret this behavior in the following way.
Ecol. One who believes that human beings will adapt their behaviour to
accommodate changing climatic conditions. Chiefly N. Amer.
1991 Washington Post 22 Sept. C1/2
A temperature rise of two or three or four degrees spread out over 50 or 60 years? No big deal, say these adaptationists.
1991 Gazette (Montreal) 16 Oct. B2/5
The point of view of the so-called ‘adaptationist’ is not only shortsighted but also stupid.
--- cfr. "selfish and stupid genes": Or "It's the stupid, Gene!" (No offence meant!)
1992 Washington Times 19 June F2/5
Stephen Schneider was one of the first ‘adaptationists’ (i.e., moderates) in the global warming debate.
1881 Harper's Mag. Apr. 645
He possessed plenty of that Yankee adaptativeness.
Adaptedness; aptitude specially produced.
1842 MRS. BROWNING Grk. Chr. Poets 129
A hedge-thorn catches sheep's wool by position and approximation rather than adaptitude.
-- and then there's exaptitude, which I champion in.
1852 BROWNING Ess. on Shelley (1881) 16
A profound sensibility and adaptitude for act.
1863 J. C. JEAFFRESON Everard's Dau. xiii. 221
The man had..a subtle adaptiveness as well as sincere desire to please.
--- but then he died.
1878 C. STANFORD Symb. Christ vi. 172
The Saviour's words have minutely particular adaptiveness to every moment of the soul's history.
1879 CARPENTER Ment. Physiol. I. ii. §70. 74
The adaptiveness of the movements is no proof of the existence of consciousness.
--- Not for D. Hof.: the sfex moth!
1917 A. DUANE Fuchs's Textbk. Ophthalm. (ed. 5) ii. 127
A better instrument than Förster's is the adaptometer of Nagel.
---- and a still better gadget is Grice's exaptometer. (I have to write on blog on Grice senior's gadget -- as per Chapman's online bio of Grice in Literary Encyclopedia. I want a photo of it!). What did Grice's invention look like?
1928 R. J. E. SCOTT Gould's Med. Dict. (ed. 2) 31/2
Adaptometer, an instrument for measuring the time taken in retinal adaptation.
1934 H. C. WARREN Dict. Psychol. 6/1
Adaptometer, any device for measuring the course or degree of sensory adaptation, in terms of fall or rise of threshold or sensitivity.
1942 Brit. Jrnl. Psychol. July 4
Certain hysterical and pathological eye conditions undoubtedly affect adaptometer results.
--- and NB: This was not, necessarily, T. Nagel, Grice's student at St John's!
The Gricean Mime (Was the Meme)
---- by J. L. S.
In his comments on Kramer's "Selfish Memes?", Jason Kennedy refers to Dawkins's views on Latin America.
In fairness to Dawkins, I must say that the ref. I was quoting comes straight from his (i.e. Dawkins's) entry in wiki, which reads:
"Dawkins has expressed concern"
-- this is of course 'concern-d'. 'Concern' is one of Grice's favourite words. I once presented Steven Stich with a quote from Grice on this (in the face, of Stich). He read it in silence. I asked. "So what d'you think?". "Preposterous!" he said! The quote was along these lines, straight from Gr75, later repr. as Gr91:
"We need to care about
psychological attitudes,
such as "She believes
that p"
not because we just
want to explain her
behaviour, but because
we _CARE_ for her."
--- It sounded to me like a good caveat for philosophers like Grice himself in that manifesto who think of philosophical psychology as a "theory" where concepts only have an 'explanatory' bite to them. Grice is allowing explicitly such an appeal to psychological attitude ascription is insufficient -- for broader issues or stuff the pirot may bring along.
the wiki continues:
"about the growth of the planet's
human population, and about the
matter of overpopulation.[131]
In The Selfish Gene, he briefly
mentions population growth,
giving the example of Latin America,
whose population, at the time
the book was written,
was doubling every 40 years."
So, if we ever get to publish this "The Grice companion" and may want to have a ref. list we may want to check with the SECOND edition!
These people, every ten years or so, come out with a second edition. I love Dawkins! Ditto Axelrod. In the second edn. for example Dawkins expressedly expresses vis a vis Axelrod.
I think TSG was early 1980s, and that statistics
seems to have been around for a time!
These things about evolution sort of bother me. They go so back in time! Every 40 years?! That's quite a stretch. And then we have Dawkins's new book on "The best show on earth". Lovely title, but going back in time a couple hundred years back right?
Etc.
----
Is a mime like a meme, but only different?
In English, the 'mocking-bird' so called in the American South, is the 'mimus' of the Latins, I think.
A New Orleans lifelong native the other was teaching or reminding me of that lovely conditional:
If the mocking bird won't sing
I'm gonna buy you a diamond ring!
In his comments on Kramer's "Selfish Memes?", Jason Kennedy refers to Dawkins's views on Latin America.
In fairness to Dawkins, I must say that the ref. I was quoting comes straight from his (i.e. Dawkins's) entry in wiki, which reads:
"Dawkins has expressed concern"
-- this is of course 'concern-d'. 'Concern' is one of Grice's favourite words. I once presented Steven Stich with a quote from Grice on this (in the face, of Stich). He read it in silence. I asked. "So what d'you think?". "Preposterous!" he said! The quote was along these lines, straight from Gr75, later repr. as Gr91:
"We need to care about
psychological attitudes,
such as "She believes
that p"
not because we just
want to explain her
behaviour, but because
we _CARE_ for her."
--- It sounded to me like a good caveat for philosophers like Grice himself in that manifesto who think of philosophical psychology as a "theory" where concepts only have an 'explanatory' bite to them. Grice is allowing explicitly such an appeal to psychological attitude ascription is insufficient -- for broader issues or stuff the pirot may bring along.
the wiki continues:
"about the growth of the planet's
human population, and about the
matter of overpopulation.[131]
In The Selfish Gene, he briefly
mentions population growth,
giving the example of Latin America,
whose population, at the time
the book was written,
was doubling every 40 years."
So, if we ever get to publish this "The Grice companion" and may want to have a ref. list we may want to check with the SECOND edition!
These people, every ten years or so, come out with a second edition. I love Dawkins! Ditto Axelrod. In the second edn. for example Dawkins expressedly expresses vis a vis Axelrod.
I think TSG was early 1980s, and that statistics
seems to have been around for a time!
These things about evolution sort of bother me. They go so back in time! Every 40 years?! That's quite a stretch. And then we have Dawkins's new book on "The best show on earth". Lovely title, but going back in time a couple hundred years back right?
Etc.
----
Is a mime like a meme, but only different?
In English, the 'mocking-bird' so called in the American South, is the 'mimus' of the Latins, I think.
A New Orleans lifelong native the other was teaching or reminding me of that lovely conditional:
If the mocking bird won't sing
I'm gonna buy you a diamond ring!
Wolfram of St. John's
---- by J. L. S.
In his comment in "Selfish Memes?" (comments), L. J. Kramer refers to the work of Steven Wolfram. (Don't have a search-engine or 'find-engine' rather, as I write this, so, if you can believe it, I didn't find the 'gene' in the link Kramer provides. I did find the meme alright).
In any case a link to 'wiki' (Wolfram) shows this is St. John's (Oxon) educated. Nice his mamma is Sybil, prof. (I expect tutor) of philosophy at Oxford (Sometimes wiki can be so general -- surely I want to know what college she dons -- or donha -- I bet Somerville -- and lose).
Anyway, have to reserach more on Wolfram.
My point was that 'gene' -- if used etymologically -- can mean mostly whatever you want it to mean. And that even the idea of hardware (biological hardware) may be minimised if we think of 'gene' as used in pure mathematics, or at least 'pure' geometry...
I'm going to ask Wolfram to formalise all Grice for me. (or a Wolframite -- these people get to be so powerful, that all the hard work is done, with the courtesy of a good grant to their foundations, by their 'colleagues'!).
Cheers,
JL
In his comment in "Selfish Memes?" (comments), L. J. Kramer refers to the work of Steven Wolfram. (Don't have a search-engine or 'find-engine' rather, as I write this, so, if you can believe it, I didn't find the 'gene' in the link Kramer provides. I did find the meme alright).
In any case a link to 'wiki' (Wolfram) shows this is St. John's (Oxon) educated. Nice his mamma is Sybil, prof. (I expect tutor) of philosophy at Oxford (Sometimes wiki can be so general -- surely I want to know what college she dons -- or donha -- I bet Somerville -- and lose).
Anyway, have to reserach more on Wolfram.
My point was that 'gene' -- if used etymologically -- can mean mostly whatever you want it to mean. And that even the idea of hardware (biological hardware) may be minimised if we think of 'gene' as used in pure mathematics, or at least 'pure' geometry...
I'm going to ask Wolfram to formalise all Grice for me. (or a Wolframite -- these people get to be so powerful, that all the hard work is done, with the courtesy of a good grant to their foundations, by their 'colleagues'!).
Cheers,
JL
The Pratt and the Grice
----------By J. L. S.
------------------- JASON KENNEDY, this blog (comments in "Spot-Bowling with H. P. Grice"), is considering various flouts to
"Don't be repetitive"
from his mentoring author, Thomas Bernhardt. Bernhardt repeats. Not like a cucumber.
My Anglo-Argentine friend, Joan Downey, loves cucumber sandwiches, but they, she complain, meaning 'cucumber', repeat. Cucumber repeats.
I often liked that phrase. In fact, my post to OPERA-L on Donizetti's closing of arias for tenor I entitled something, "Like a Cucumber". It fell sort of flat.
G. N. Leech (in a BEAUTIFUL book, in both senses of the word 'beautiful': just one really: but I mean, such gem of an object: green with gold letters),
"Linguistic Analysis of English Poetry" (I think: it's in the rather elementary Longman Series),
has considered this. He has also considered Novel at large in a book he co-authored with M. Short.
And there's loads of people working in that area in England. My favourite has to be, from Brum, Deirdre Burton, who has expanded on Pinter's plays as Gricean, or anti-Gricean, or Flout-Gricean (Grice can play the "Disgusted," Tunbridge Wells, persona, but he surely allows for floutings to his things to be rejoyced).
But the credit must go to Coulthard. In his, also Longman, "Discourse analysis" textbook he makes the funny claim: Pratt was the first.
So perhaps she was.
Pratt is more American than British. She teaches Spanish (if you can believe that) at Berkeley, where Grice also taught. Her thing got published in 1975, and it's a naive (naif?) but charming application of Grice to _Cortazar_. She has explored further issues, and in a subtler fashion, too, in later books. I LOVE HER.
The book is easy to read. In fact, too easy to read, for the Gricean! But the examples, even if translated, are charming.
Her specific discussion of Grice is pretty brief, but I think her approach should be taken as paradigmatic of a certain type of Anglo-_American_ criticism.
When it comes to 'don't be repetitive', authors of Pratt's ilk should be wondered and should relish on the creativity of sources provided by readers of their opus.
So, all the examples that Kennedy considers for Bernhardt, etc. can be analysed alla the rather conservative Pratt-views. Or no.
---
--
The most fruitful, but also most complex, areas, as far as Anglo-American theory is supposed to go, but won't just go, is from, I believe he is Australian (so much for Anglo-American, but they are Anglo alright, right?)
Gregory Currie.
He notes that first we need to analyse the whole gamut. These are 'etiolated' uses of lingo (as Austin and Grice would have it). And it's pretty bad to mix in one bag: poetry and novel and play etc. Or perhaps not. He talks about meta- issues, and analyses how different flouts can correspond to so-called different (narrowly construed) genres.
--- In this blog I have been retrieving things, and trust that the Eng. Lit. topic has come up in various fora. So I have expanded, THIS BLOG, on things that Grice says with some level of detail on things like
Blake
Love that never told can be.
I think it's sort of best to stick sometimes with 'ambiguity'. I once wrote on Seven Types of Gricean Ambiguity (etc). We have to be careful here because we do not mean POLYSEMY, just 'scope' ambiguity. For Grice, the interpretants of an intentionally ambiguous phrase like that trades on philosophical issues, such as:
-- love as process or product?
-- 'be' as a predicate?
-- He goes on to provide internal evidence and quotes from the whole thing: "prick", "woman", "Nature".
That's just an example of the fluidity of the 'flouting' thing. So Grice is willing to play with elaborated things which are understood as 'flouts' of what we may see as "The Norm" (where this is NOT meant as 'arbitrary' or 'valued' -- versus, say, ab-normal) but as a sort of desideratum for a type of conversation.
Surely one can say: what gives?
I mean, why narrow the whole perspective into Grice's _ex cathedra_ one and then have to suffer the consequences, and see all fiction, say, as a mere 'flout'? Can't we proceed quite the other way round? Etc.
But this is the Grice Club! And we are WILLING to play and get Grice (an Anglo-American) known or be enjoyed by people of other traditions and get the Griceans enriched by those same-self people! If you get my drift!
Cheers,
JL
------------------- JASON KENNEDY, this blog (comments in "Spot-Bowling with H. P. Grice"), is considering various flouts to
"Don't be repetitive"
from his mentoring author, Thomas Bernhardt. Bernhardt repeats. Not like a cucumber.
My Anglo-Argentine friend, Joan Downey, loves cucumber sandwiches, but they, she complain, meaning 'cucumber', repeat. Cucumber repeats.
I often liked that phrase. In fact, my post to OPERA-L on Donizetti's closing of arias for tenor I entitled something, "Like a Cucumber". It fell sort of flat.
G. N. Leech (in a BEAUTIFUL book, in both senses of the word 'beautiful': just one really: but I mean, such gem of an object: green with gold letters),
"Linguistic Analysis of English Poetry" (I think: it's in the rather elementary Longman Series),
has considered this. He has also considered Novel at large in a book he co-authored with M. Short.
And there's loads of people working in that area in England. My favourite has to be, from Brum, Deirdre Burton, who has expanded on Pinter's plays as Gricean, or anti-Gricean, or Flout-Gricean (Grice can play the "Disgusted," Tunbridge Wells, persona, but he surely allows for floutings to his things to be rejoyced).
But the credit must go to Coulthard. In his, also Longman, "Discourse analysis" textbook he makes the funny claim: Pratt was the first.
So perhaps she was.
Pratt is more American than British. She teaches Spanish (if you can believe that) at Berkeley, where Grice also taught. Her thing got published in 1975, and it's a naive (naif?) but charming application of Grice to _Cortazar_. She has explored further issues, and in a subtler fashion, too, in later books. I LOVE HER.
The book is easy to read. In fact, too easy to read, for the Gricean! But the examples, even if translated, are charming.
Her specific discussion of Grice is pretty brief, but I think her approach should be taken as paradigmatic of a certain type of Anglo-_American_ criticism.
When it comes to 'don't be repetitive', authors of Pratt's ilk should be wondered and should relish on the creativity of sources provided by readers of their opus.
So, all the examples that Kennedy considers for Bernhardt, etc. can be analysed alla the rather conservative Pratt-views. Or no.
---
--
The most fruitful, but also most complex, areas, as far as Anglo-American theory is supposed to go, but won't just go, is from, I believe he is Australian (so much for Anglo-American, but they are Anglo alright, right?)
Gregory Currie.
He notes that first we need to analyse the whole gamut. These are 'etiolated' uses of lingo (as Austin and Grice would have it). And it's pretty bad to mix in one bag: poetry and novel and play etc. Or perhaps not. He talks about meta- issues, and analyses how different flouts can correspond to so-called different (narrowly construed) genres.
--- In this blog I have been retrieving things, and trust that the Eng. Lit. topic has come up in various fora. So I have expanded, THIS BLOG, on things that Grice says with some level of detail on things like
Blake
Love that never told can be.
I think it's sort of best to stick sometimes with 'ambiguity'. I once wrote on Seven Types of Gricean Ambiguity (etc). We have to be careful here because we do not mean POLYSEMY, just 'scope' ambiguity. For Grice, the interpretants of an intentionally ambiguous phrase like that trades on philosophical issues, such as:
-- love as process or product?
-- 'be' as a predicate?
-- He goes on to provide internal evidence and quotes from the whole thing: "prick", "woman", "Nature".
That's just an example of the fluidity of the 'flouting' thing. So Grice is willing to play with elaborated things which are understood as 'flouts' of what we may see as "The Norm" (where this is NOT meant as 'arbitrary' or 'valued' -- versus, say, ab-normal) but as a sort of desideratum for a type of conversation.
Surely one can say: what gives?
I mean, why narrow the whole perspective into Grice's _ex cathedra_ one and then have to suffer the consequences, and see all fiction, say, as a mere 'flout'? Can't we proceed quite the other way round? Etc.
But this is the Grice Club! And we are WILLING to play and get Grice (an Anglo-American) known or be enjoyed by people of other traditions and get the Griceans enriched by those same-self people! If you get my drift!
Cheers,
JL
Selfish Memes?
Lawrence J. Kramer, for the Grice Club
One axis on which to view evolution is the movement from reflex to choice. Generally speaking, the more sophisticated an animal’s social organization, the more choices it must have in responding to stimuli. But a quantum leap occurs at the human level, where genes control behavior less than in any other animal.
I think this progression causes some confusion when it comes to altruism. I’ll adopt JL’s practice here and refer to altruism as Dawkins uses the term as “altruism-D” and altruism in its ordinary sense as “altruism-O.” Bees are altruistic-D by reflex, which is to say they are not altruistic-O at all. Humans are capable of altruism-O, but the choices may be heavily influenced by genetic predisposition (e.g., where our children are the beneficiaries). Our altruism-O is also altruism-D, but, whereas a bee’s altruism-D is merely a consequence of a reflex, ours arises by choice, and so cannot be accounted for solely by genetic control.
Based on the Dawkins’s circular “discovery,” we can say that altruism-O in man would not persist if it did not conduce to the replication of the genetic material that encodes the ability to engage in it. Compare that claim to this one: Altruism-D in bees would not persist if it did not conduce to replication of the genetic material that encodes the reflex that accomplishes it. Whereas the genetic material that controls the bee’s sting reflex probably does little else, the genetic material that makes altruism-O possible in humans may, at least in major part, be the same stuff that encodes our intellect, our moral sense, and our capacity for civilization itself.
I would speculate that the genetic material encoding the capacity for altruism-O may be entirely distinct from the stuff encoding our emotional interest in the survival of others, which may, in turn be distinct from that encoding our commitment to our closest relatives. The “caring” trait(s) and the altruism-O-enabling trait operate simultaneously to mediate our altruism-O. Needless to say, the calculus for when those forces and abilities generate altruism-D and when they don’t is beyond me. It may even be beyond nature if other actions we take using the generic endowments that make altruism-O possible have a much greater effect on the reproductive chances of that material than altruism-D. At least, I wouldn’t surprised if that were the case for the general ability to practice altruism-O. The trait of parental devotion, on the other hand, seems well-served by the practice of altruism-D by parents toward their children, so we would expect a lot of altruism-D directed at our kids, whether in the form of altruism-O or otherwise. (Do we really choose to risk our lives to push our child out of the way of an oncoming vehicle?)
If I recall correctly, The Selfish Gene has a lot of arithmetic that demonstrates a correlation between altruism-D and consanguinity. That arithmetic is made possible by the relative simplicity of the facts, especially the presumed reflexivity of the behaviors that achieve altruism-D. Bees are closely related, they all sting under certain stimuli, and the threats they face are colony-wide. Easy math there. Antelope fleeing (which I don’t recall being discussed in Dawkins) is equally straightforward. But if you add the complexity that human social structure and human intellectual endowments to the mix, the math become undoable, and Dawkins’s theory must take on a different explanatory role if it is to have one at all.
Dawkins’s claim is really a special case of the more general claim that nothing succeeds like success. Substitutable possibilities compete. In almost all situations, one way of being or doing has a better chance of filling a niche than another. Just how many substitutable options can co-exist depends on the selective pressures on the niche.
Altruism-D thus has analogs in other contexts, if one does the mapping right.
A.1. The bee genome persists because its expression competes successfully in the flower-pollenation niche.
A.2. The formula for Coca-Cola persists because its expression competes successfully in the soda niche.
B.1. If the hive is attacked, the worker bees sting and die, saving the queen and the stinging bee’s genome.
B.2. If the Coke factory catches fire, the owner would, if necessary, pour the inventory on the flames to save the formula.
Statement B.2 appears to introduce a third character in the person of the owner, but I don’t believe that’s the case. In terms of logical devices. the bee, <i>qua</i> thing that stings, is the “owner” of its body, and that same bee , <i>qua</i> thing that dies, is the “inventory” sacrificed to save the formula. As I said, it’s all in the mapping.
What type of thing is the formula for Coca-Cola? Is it a meme? Maybe it’s a useful bridge from genetic coding to cultural memes.
A.3. Politically correct beliefs persist because they compete successfully for a place in people’s belief systems.
B.3. People establish an artificially low burden of proof for support of their idea (“following p keeps the elephants away”) and/or an artificially high burden of proof for rebuttal of their idea (“How do you know that following p is necessarily catastrophic?”), thereby sacrificing their credibility but allowing the idea to persist.
Looks like altruism-D to me.
What, then does selfish gene analysis have to offer regarding memes? I have suggested unjustifiable denial as a form of sacrifice that we make for ideas. Dawkins would probably be the first to say that those sacrifices are greatest in the case of religious memes. I haven’t read The God Delusion – professional atheists annoy me. But one can see how the willingness to die for an idea propagates not only the idea itself, but the idea that the willingness to die for an idea propagates the idea. So, I think selfish gene analysis applies to memes, at least as respects altruism-D and altruism-O.
But then what? The value of The Selfish Gene, I think, is that it’s a smack upside the head of those who analyze evolution of species from the perspective of individual or group survival. The book would not be useful (if it is useful) were it not for the mistakes (if they are mistakes) that it seeks to correct. Is there a comparable alleged misconception in the field of ideas?
The “selfish gene” itself is a marketing trope. It does not describe anything real. Dawkins had to redefine “selfish” and “altruistic” away from their customary, value-laden usages in order to use them. (He sacrificed his linguistic purity to advance his idea.) Dawkins coined the term in TSG, but that fact alone suggests that he was not setting out to debunk any thoughts about memes. Everybody knew that genes encode organisms, and yet, Dawkins thought, people were misunderstanding how central the survival of genes was to the process of evolution. No one knew what a meme was until Dawkins invented them, so, while the idea of identifying these cultural quanta may be useful, it is not useful in debunking misconceptions about memes, as there were no conceptions at all.
And going forward, there is the problem of complexity. Genes reproduce in ways that are well-understood at the level Dawkins needs them to be understood to make his claims about why bees sting (and me mine about why bees reproduce in a way that makes them sting). But memes? Ideas not only propagate in various ways, they succeed in various ways. They are held firmly by some and weakly by others. They may be influenced by mob psychology (a genetic endowment), and they may be extinguished without extinguishing those who believe them – all we have to do is change our mind.
So, memetics may well be an interesting field, but the “selfish meme” doesn’t seem to me a useful notion.
Book Project for The Grice Club?
By Roger Bishop Jones for The Grice Club
I don't know whether its been mentioned here yet, but
Speranza and I are collaborating on a small book project.
.
Information about this can be found at Speranza's web page
which I put up at: http://jls.rbjones.com
.
It called "A Conversation between Carnap and Grice - as it
might have been". I think JLS would prefer something less
stodgy, but I insist on having Carnap and Grice in the title
so that it comes up on searches for them in the Amazon
catalogue.
.
From the JLS web page you can also access something which I
called "The Grice Companion" and is just a rather pathetic
attempt on my part to edit into some kind of organisation
the content of the several dozen messages which Speranza
sent me in the 24 hours after I suggested that we
collaborate on the Carnap/Grice companion.
.
Anyway, here I am watching this endless trail of
entertaining Griceities streaming out from the Grice club
and landing up in completely disorganised archives, and
wondering whether there is any way to get the material
edited into readable book-like things. (I'm just obsessed
with book writing at the moment)
.
Of course, I could set too and do that myself, but then I
wouldn't have any time to do philosophy, and my idea of
philosophy consists in spending my time mostly thinking, and
then somehow or other finding some way of getting some of
that stuff onto paper (or out there somehow)..
.
What I would like to do is contribute some ideas about how
contributors to the Grice Club might collaborate in a way
which follows up on the philosophical conversation with
something more structured and readable than a blog archive.
.
So here a first question. Are any of you interested???
.
The idea in the first instance is that "The Grice Companion"
or something like it, become a collaborative project of "The
Grice Club".
(perhaps it should be "Squintessential Grice").
.
Now, supposing that some of us were interested.
The next question is how to go about it, and one of the first
aspects of that which I would address is what technology we
use for it.
.
The two PDFs on Speranza's site are made from LaTeX source,
which produces nice results but is not so easy to work with.
This means that all the editing is down to me. Not cool.
.
There is good technology out there to support collaborative
projects of this sort, and fully worked totally transparent
complete projects out there to see.
.
One important piece of software for collaborative
development is a source code repository which keeps all the
history of the source and allows all the collaborators
shared access to the material they are working on.
One such system is "svn" or "Subversion".
This is particularly interesting because this piece of
software has a 300 page manual published by O'Reilly and the
book itself is a collaborative project now hosted at Google
code.
.
You can see the Subversion Manual at the subversion web site
which is here
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
.
The collaborative project which wrote the book is now hosted
at google code here:
http://code.google.com/p/svnbook/
.
So the idea is here, of trying out collaborative
philosophical writing by coupling a Blog (The Grice Club)
with a google.code hosted book-writing project.
.
Of course it will be a disaster, but it might be fun.
.
Anyone interested?
.
Roger Jones
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Cooperating From Within
-- by JLS
From wiki, "evolution of cooperation"
"Robert Trivers had shown that reciprocal altruism is strongly favored by natural selection to lead to complex systems of altruistic behavior (supporting Kroptokin's argument that cooperation is as much a factor of evolution as competition[65])."
So it seems one may have:
-- externalist critiques to apparently 'anti-Gricean' strands of this or that.
E.g. minor details like: a gene can 'misbehave', etc.
-- pro arguments 'from within' as it were, as Trivers above. To consider.
From wiki, "evolution of cooperation"
"Robert Trivers had shown that reciprocal altruism is strongly favored by natural selection to lead to complex systems of altruistic behavior (supporting Kroptokin's argument that cooperation is as much a factor of evolution as competition[65])."
So it seems one may have:
-- externalist critiques to apparently 'anti-Gricean' strands of this or that.
E.g. minor details like: a gene can 'misbehave', etc.
-- pro arguments 'from within' as it were, as Trivers above. To consider.
"_Read_ "Selfish Gene"" -- Again
-- by JLS
Wrote Grice.
A passage he might have liked. From wiki, 'evolution of cooperation' citing directly from Dawkins:
"we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature."[63]"
--- which belongs to Grice's 'dull' level 1: We are _taught_ to cooperate. Levels 2 and 2 involve why we should cooperate.
Of course I think it's the other way round and the motto is "Teach your _parents_ well"!
Wrote Grice.
A passage he might have liked. From wiki, 'evolution of cooperation' citing directly from Dawkins:
"we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature."[63]"
--- which belongs to Grice's 'dull' level 1: We are _taught_ to cooperate. Levels 2 and 2 involve why we should cooperate.
Of course I think it's the other way round and the motto is "Teach your _parents_ well"!
Beyond Cooperation
--- By JLS
Kramer has mentioned in comments to "Egoless Gene" the 'flouting cooperativeness', and we are discussing this in detail vis a vis specific implicatures.
What I noticed in the wiki, "evolution of cooperation" includes a few interesting mentions of 'rationality' -- and this:
"TFT also tolerates "ALL C" (always cooperate) strategies, which then give an opening to exploiters.[57]".
So there,s "All C" and "All D". But it seems that for Grice we do not NEED "All C". I'm not saying that cooperativeness can be flouted _as easy_ as Kramer may be suggesting it can! For this we may need to revise, as far as the exegesis goes, the Strand 6 of Grice's Valedictory Essay, on the general layout of this Cooperative Principle as emerging from a more general consideration of rationality. Etc.
Kramer has mentioned in comments to "Egoless Gene" the 'flouting cooperativeness', and we are discussing this in detail vis a vis specific implicatures.
What I noticed in the wiki, "evolution of cooperation" includes a few interesting mentions of 'rationality' -- and this:
"TFT also tolerates "ALL C" (always cooperate) strategies, which then give an opening to exploiters.[57]".
So there,s "All C" and "All D". But it seems that for Grice we do not NEED "All C". I'm not saying that cooperativeness can be flouted _as easy_ as Kramer may be suggesting it can! For this we may need to revise, as far as the exegesis goes, the Strand 6 of Grice's Valedictory Essay, on the general layout of this Cooperative Principle as emerging from a more general consideration of rationality. Etc.
Grice's Anti-Sneak
--- By J. L. S.
From wiki, 'evolution of cooperation':
"Don't be too clever: or, don't try to be tricky."
I was going to title this, "The Gricean Cheat: Doomed to Fail" but thought it would sound ambiguous!
I've always been fascinated, in an odd sort of way, by Grice's emphasis on anti-sneak. The thing has a formal ring to it in Grice. Almost 'cybernetic', to use Kramer's word. For Grice, if we want to say that
By uttering x, U meant that p
three conditions need to be fulfilled:
i. U exhibits propositional attitude p
ii. Grice-Way: he successfuly exhibits
by A's coming to recognise the exhibition
on account of A's recognition of U's
_INTENTION_ to exhibit p.
iii. Anti-Sneak. There's NO inference element
such that constitutes (i)-(iii) and such
that U may use but does not intend A to
recognise.
There can be no sneaky intention behind my uttering "The cat sat on the mat", for to mean, by uttering that, that I mean that the cat sat on the mat.
I actually buy the Gricean Formula, so called. But it _has_ been provocative. In general, Griceans who are more interested in expression-meaning, and who import a notion of 'mutual knowledge', usually don't need the anti-sneak clause. Vide Gr89: Meaning Revisited for the clearest exposition of his rivals on this, notably Schiffer.
So, it was nice to see Axelrod arriving at the same Gricean conclusion from a different perspective.
From wiki, 'evolution of cooperation':
"Don't be too clever: or, don't try to be tricky."
I was going to title this, "The Gricean Cheat: Doomed to Fail" but thought it would sound ambiguous!
I've always been fascinated, in an odd sort of way, by Grice's emphasis on anti-sneak. The thing has a formal ring to it in Grice. Almost 'cybernetic', to use Kramer's word. For Grice, if we want to say that
By uttering x, U meant that p
three conditions need to be fulfilled:
i. U exhibits propositional attitude p
ii. Grice-Way: he successfuly exhibits
by A's coming to recognise the exhibition
on account of A's recognition of U's
_INTENTION_ to exhibit p.
iii. Anti-Sneak. There's NO inference element
such that constitutes (i)-(iii) and such
that U may use but does not intend A to
recognise.
There can be no sneaky intention behind my uttering "The cat sat on the mat", for to mean, by uttering that, that I mean that the cat sat on the mat.
I actually buy the Gricean Formula, so called. But it _has_ been provocative. In general, Griceans who are more interested in expression-meaning, and who import a notion of 'mutual knowledge', usually don't need the anti-sneak clause. Vide Gr89: Meaning Revisited for the clearest exposition of his rivals on this, notably Schiffer.
So, it was nice to see Axelrod arriving at the same Gricean conclusion from a different perspective.
Axelrod's "Cooperative Strategies": An Oxymoron
---- By J. L. S.
From wiki, "evolution of cooperation"
"As cooperation became general the non-provocable strategies were exploited and eventually eliminated, whereupon the exploitive (non-cooperating) strategies were out-performed by the cooperative strategies."
While Dawkins comes from a selfish civil servant of a father (the wiki entry says, "ethnicity: English" -- but surely there's a drop of Scots blood in the "Dow-kins"? -- cfr. Defoe, "The Englishman", in Complete Works), Axelrod comes from the similarly unphilosophical game-theory (Mind, some philosophers, including Griceans like me _love_ it!).
I myself used 'strategy' like the plague. Till a Russian lady told me, of all people: "You are too gladiatorial". Indeed, 'strategos' was the Greek general. So the idea here is: War!
Zero-Sum games, not war-games, etc.
So, 'cooperative strategy' as used, pretty formally, by Axelrod, seems oxymoronic in that respect.
I'm learning a lot from Kramer: he says: If a word itches you, change it! ("Let not the marriage of true minds..." etc). So I propose: cooperative 'procedures' and leave WAR out of the 'nice', and 'clear' 'rules' of the game.
From wiki, "evolution of cooperation"
"As cooperation became general the non-provocable strategies were exploited and eventually eliminated, whereupon the exploitive (non-cooperating) strategies were out-performed by the cooperative strategies."
While Dawkins comes from a selfish civil servant of a father (the wiki entry says, "ethnicity: English" -- but surely there's a drop of Scots blood in the "Dow-kins"? -- cfr. Defoe, "The Englishman", in Complete Works), Axelrod comes from the similarly unphilosophical game-theory (Mind, some philosophers, including Griceans like me _love_ it!).
I myself used 'strategy' like the plague. Till a Russian lady told me, of all people: "You are too gladiatorial". Indeed, 'strategos' was the Greek general. So the idea here is: War!
Zero-Sum games, not war-games, etc.
So, 'cooperative strategy' as used, pretty formally, by Axelrod, seems oxymoronic in that respect.
I'm learning a lot from Kramer: he says: If a word itches you, change it! ("Let not the marriage of true minds..." etc). So I propose: cooperative 'procedures' and leave WAR out of the 'nice', and 'clear' 'rules' of the game.
TFT
---- By J. L. S.
"Tit for tat,
butter for fat;
if you kill my dog,
I'll kill your cat."
The problem with conditionals:
p --> q
If you kill my dog, I kill your cat.
-- I want to emphasise the nursery rhyme version of this sometimes obliterated by Axelrod.
As I read in a bazaar:
"If you break it, you bought it"
Why does this conditional strike as _odd_.
"if you kill my dog,...
I kill your cat".
We idea is to try to see this harmlessly enough as a truth-functional 'if'. It has all the appearance of it.
Thus, no inferrability to be 'implicated', because it can be defeated.
So give me your tit anytime!
"Tit for tat,
butter for fat;
if you kill my dog,
I'll kill your cat."
The problem with conditionals:
p --> q
If you kill my dog, I kill your cat.
-- I want to emphasise the nursery rhyme version of this sometimes obliterated by Axelrod.
As I read in a bazaar:
"If you break it, you bought it"
Why does this conditional strike as _odd_.
"if you kill my dog,...
I kill your cat".
We idea is to try to see this harmlessly enough as a truth-functional 'if'. It has all the appearance of it.
Thus, no inferrability to be 'implicated', because it can be defeated.
So give me your tit anytime!
Implicatures Of My Cat
---- by J. L. S.
Since Kramer mentions genetically nullified bees (who still help the bee queen), I quote from wiki, "evolution of cooperation":
"In a 1971 paper[22] Robert Trivers demonstrated how reciprocal altruism can evolve between unrelated individuals, even between individuals of entirely different species."
and we've all heard Aunt Matilda say how her cat implicates so _cleverly_ that either she keep cancelling, or he'll get no food!
Etc.
Since Kramer mentions genetically nullified bees (who still help the bee queen), I quote from wiki, "evolution of cooperation":
"In a 1971 paper[22] Robert Trivers demonstrated how reciprocal altruism can evolve between unrelated individuals, even between individuals of entirely different species."
and we've all heard Aunt Matilda say how her cat implicates so _cleverly_ that either she keep cancelling, or he'll get no food!
Etc.
The Prisoners' Conversation
----- By JLS
Since Kramer mentioned the prisoners' dilemma in his "Egoless Gene", this blog, I may drop some Gricean connections in here. This from wiki ('evolution of cooperation'):
"The best that you and your associate can do together is to not squeal: that is, to cooperate (with each other, not the prosecutor!) in a mutual bond of silence, and do your year. But wait: if your associate cooperates (that sucker!), can you do better by squealing ("defecting") to get that six month reduction? It's tempting, but then he's also tempted. And if you both squeal, oh, no, it's four and half years each. So perhaps you should cooperate – but wait, that's being a sucker yourself, as your associate will undoubtedly defect, and you won't even get the six months off. So what is the best strategy to minimize your incarceration (aside from going straight in the first place)? To cooperate, or not cooperate?"
---
Gricean points to follow in comments, I hope.
JLS
Since Kramer mentioned the prisoners' dilemma in his "Egoless Gene", this blog, I may drop some Gricean connections in here. This from wiki ('evolution of cooperation'):
"The best that you and your associate can do together is to not squeal: that is, to cooperate (with each other, not the prosecutor!) in a mutual bond of silence, and do your year. But wait: if your associate cooperates (that sucker!), can you do better by squealing ("defecting") to get that six month reduction? It's tempting, but then he's also tempted. And if you both squeal, oh, no, it's four and half years each. So perhaps you should cooperate – but wait, that's being a sucker yourself, as your associate will undoubtedly defect, and you won't even get the six months off. So what is the best strategy to minimize your incarceration (aside from going straight in the first place)? To cooperate, or not cooperate?"
---
Gricean points to follow in comments, I hope.
JLS
Grice and Dawkins on Lava Lizards
--- by J. L. S.
Well, I do like the phrase, 'lounge lizard'. Apparently, Dawkins was so moved by the Equatorian lava lizards that he found them _memic_.
"A Dictionary of Grice"? A "Dictionary of Dawkins" is what you need! And I'm not translating it!
Well, I do like the phrase, 'lounge lizard'. Apparently, Dawkins was so moved by the Equatorian lava lizards that he found them _memic_.
"A Dictionary of Grice"? A "Dictionary of Dawkins" is what you need! And I'm not translating it!
Thales and the Stars
--- By JLS
From wiki: "Dawkins"
"The Real Romance in the Stars (1995) – A critical view of astrology."
Cfr. Grice on astrology, Gr89:180 cited by Uschanov, 2004:40 (google.books).
---- Oddly, Thales, the creator of philosophy, I recall wonderfully in an engraving, falling onto a ditch because he was just looking UP the stars!
JLS
From wiki: "Dawkins"
"The Real Romance in the Stars (1995) – A critical view of astrology."
Cfr. Grice on astrology, Gr89:180 cited by Uschanov, 2004:40 (google.books).
---- Oddly, Thales, the creator of philosophy, I recall wonderfully in an engraving, falling onto a ditch because he was just looking UP the stars!
JLS
"Unread "Stupid Gene""
--- by JLS
---- did not Grice write.
-- Cfr. wiki, "Dawkins":
"Brown, Andrew (1999). The Darwin Wars: How stupid genes became selfish genes. London: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-684-85144-X."
If the antonym is as per header, R. B. Jones is very right! Etc. (I mean his comment on Kramer in "Selfless Gene", this blog.
---- did not Grice write.
-- Cfr. wiki, "Dawkins":
"Brown, Andrew (1999). The Darwin Wars: How stupid genes became selfish genes. London: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-684-85144-X."
If the antonym is as per header, R. B. Jones is very right! Etc. (I mean his comment on Kramer in "Selfless Gene", this blog.
"_Read_ "Selfish Gene""
--- By JLS
------------ wrote Grice.
From wiki, "Dawkins"
"Dawkins, Richard (1981), "In Defence of Selfish Genes", Philosophy 56: 556–573, doi:10.1017/S0031819100050580, http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php?id=5, retrieved 2008-03-17"
This from his polemic with Midgley. I suppose Grice could have just read the precis in my favourite philo journal of ALL time: _Philosophy_, issued for the Royal Society of Philosophy (But _he_ (Dawkins) wants a republic).
------------ wrote Grice.
From wiki, "Dawkins"
"Dawkins, Richard (1981), "In Defence of Selfish Genes", Philosophy 56: 556–573, doi:10.1017/S0031819100050580, http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php?id=5, retrieved 2008-03-17"
This from his polemic with Midgley. I suppose Grice could have just read the precis in my favourite philo journal of ALL time: _Philosophy_, issued for the Royal Society of Philosophy (But _he_ (Dawkins) wants a republic).
Grice and Empedocles on ichthyological exaptation
--- by JLS
--- From wiki, "Dawkins"
"Trivers, Robert (1971). "The evolution of reciprocal altruism". Quarterly Review of Biology 46: 35–57. doi:10.1086/406755."
For Empedocles, we were all _fish_ and later some came out of water, etc. Grice speaks of 'ichtyological necessity' in Aspects of Reason. "People are so into pigeonholing, that", or words", "I wouldn't be surprised if they speak of ichthyological necessity".
The point of this obscurely titled post, to drop evidence of Grecians, and not just Griceans, on 'evolution' and stuff. M. Chase, for example, argued against Aristotle as an evolutionist -- in discussion with me in CLASSICS-L, and since he may be right, I think it's best to deal with Empedocles and the earlier evolutionists. This may bring a nice Lit. Hum. ring to some of the opponents (or proponents) of Dawkins, etc.
Etc.
--- From wiki, "Dawkins"
"Trivers, Robert (1971). "The evolution of reciprocal altruism". Quarterly Review of Biology 46: 35–57. doi:10.1086/406755."
For Empedocles, we were all _fish_ and later some came out of water, etc. Grice speaks of 'ichtyological necessity' in Aspects of Reason. "People are so into pigeonholing, that", or words", "I wouldn't be surprised if they speak of ichthyological necessity".
The point of this obscurely titled post, to drop evidence of Grecians, and not just Griceans, on 'evolution' and stuff. M. Chase, for example, argued against Aristotle as an evolutionist -- in discussion with me in CLASSICS-L, and since he may be right, I think it's best to deal with Empedocles and the earlier evolutionists. This may bring a nice Lit. Hum. ring to some of the opponents (or proponents) of Dawkins, etc.
Etc.
The Gricean Joke
--- By JLS
From wiki, "spandrels"
"Phillip Stevens Thurtle. "The G Files: Linking 'The Selfish Gene' And 'The Thinking Reed'""
A Gricean joke arises out of eschatological concerns.
"You're the cream in my coffee"
is _funny_ (some say) because, hey, cream has no ears, so who are you talking to!
Ditto,
"Selfish Gene": it's fun, more so coming from an Oxon DPhil in Biology, right?
---
Ditto, "Thinking Reed".
As Kramer notes: "animism" galore! I'm surprised Kramer objects to my scare quotes in "Those spots 'mean' smallpox". :) (I hope smallbox is not too serious. The spots look VERY serious -- I have to find more about the virus, since Dawkins did it again when using the analogy to speak of his own "Atheists for Jesus" as campaigning against some 'viruses of the mind' he detected elsewhere.
From wiki, "spandrels"
"Phillip Stevens Thurtle. "The G Files: Linking 'The Selfish Gene' And 'The Thinking Reed'""
A Gricean joke arises out of eschatological concerns.
"You're the cream in my coffee"
is _funny_ (some say) because, hey, cream has no ears, so who are you talking to!
Ditto,
"Selfish Gene": it's fun, more so coming from an Oxon DPhil in Biology, right?
---
Ditto, "Thinking Reed".
As Kramer notes: "animism" galore! I'm surprised Kramer objects to my scare quotes in "Those spots 'mean' smallpox". :) (I hope smallbox is not too serious. The spots look VERY serious -- I have to find more about the virus, since Dawkins did it again when using the analogy to speak of his own "Atheists for Jesus" as campaigning against some 'viruses of the mind' he detected elsewhere.
Pirots Exapted
--- By JLS
I enjoyed Kramer's reference to spandrels in his "Egoless Gene", this blog.
They seem to have created some new neologisms, like 'exaptation". Which I always thought Grice would agree would count as a virtue for the rebel pirot _entre nous_. Etc.
I enjoyed Kramer's reference to spandrels in his "Egoless Gene", this blog.
They seem to have created some new neologisms, like 'exaptation". Which I always thought Grice would agree would count as a virtue for the rebel pirot _entre nous_. Etc.
The Reluctant Cannibal
--- by JLS
From wiki, "Dawkins"
"Riddell, Mary (26 March 1999). "Eating people is wrong". New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/199903260013. Retrieved 2008-03-13."
Since I have written so extensively on this Flanders/Swann gem, I thought...
JLS
From wiki, "Dawkins"
"Riddell, Mary (26 March 1999). "Eating people is wrong". New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/199903260013. Retrieved 2008-03-13."
Since I have written so extensively on this Flanders/Swann gem, I thought...
JLS
The Grice Prize for Pirot Welfare
--- By JLS
From wiki, "Dawkins"
""The Dawkins Prize for Animal Conservation and Welfare". Balliol College, Oxford. 9 November 2007. http://www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/official/miscellany/dawkins/index.asp. Retrieved 2008-03-30."
JLS
From wiki, "Dawkins"
""The Dawkins Prize for Animal Conservation and Welfare". Balliol College, Oxford. 9 November 2007. http://www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/official/miscellany/dawkins/index.asp. Retrieved 2008-03-30."
JLS
The Early Dawkins, The Late Grice
---- By JLS
-- From wiki, "Dawkins"
"Dawkins, Richard (1969). "A threshold model of choice behaviour". Animal Behaviour 17 (1): 120. doi:10.1016/0003-3472(69)90120-1."
Something that might have interested Grice. He loved to observe animals, etc. Especially squarrels, and especially a greedy one he called "Toby".
JLS
-- From wiki, "Dawkins"
"Dawkins, Richard (1969). "A threshold model of choice behaviour". Animal Behaviour 17 (1): 120. doi:10.1016/0003-3472(69)90120-1."
Something that might have interested Grice. He loved to observe animals, etc. Especially squarrels, and especially a greedy one he called "Toby".
JLS
Contradictions in Gricean Key
by JLS
--
From wiki, "Dawkins":
"Chittenden, Maurice; Waite, Roger (23 December 2007). "Dawkins to preach atheism to US". The Sunday Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3087486.ece. Retrieved 2008-04-01."
----
Cfr. "Women are women", "War is war", Gr89:ii. "A tautology is reverse is an irony with an oxymoron." -- but if it gets you good press and you have a knack for words, go for it!
JLS
--
From wiki, "Dawkins":
"Chittenden, Maurice; Waite, Roger (23 December 2007). "Dawkins to preach atheism to US". The Sunday Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3087486.ece. Retrieved 2008-04-01."
----
Cfr. "Women are women", "War is war", Gr89:ii. "A tautology is reverse is an irony with an oxymoron." -- but if it gets you good press and you have a knack for words, go for it!
JLS
The Projection Problem in Embeds: The Grice Award
=== By J. L. S.
--
From wiki, "Dawkins"
"Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has awarded a prize during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year. It is known as the Richard Dawkins Award, in honour of Dawkins' own work.[149]"
The Grice Club. "The Grice Award -- yet empty, for an engaging scholar: non-natives of Harborne need NOT apply -- who discovers the embedding clause projector for implicatures."
"This," Grice argues, or words, "is an unresolved question for me. If I say, "Rats!" therefore implying something nasty, should I call the rat-exterminator?"
--
From wiki, "Dawkins"
"Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has awarded a prize during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year. It is known as the Richard Dawkins Award, in honour of Dawkins' own work.[149]"
The Grice Club. "The Grice Award -- yet empty, for an engaging scholar: non-natives of Harborne need NOT apply -- who discovers the embedding clause projector for implicatures."
"This," Grice argues, or words, "is an unresolved question for me. If I say, "Rats!" therefore implying something nasty, should I call the rat-exterminator?"
Grice Tops Poll
--- By J. L. S.
From wiki: "Dawkins"
"In the same year, he was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007,[147]"
GRICE CLUB. A poll realised by surveying samples of posts by J. L. S. to the Grice Club has shown evidence that Grice is so far topping the polls". Etc.
JLS
From wiki: "Dawkins"
"In the same year, he was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007,[147]"
GRICE CLUB. A poll realised by surveying samples of posts by J. L. S. to the Grice Club has shown evidence that Grice is so far topping the polls". Etc.
JLS
Grice and Dawkins on selfish stars
--- By J. L. S.
From wiki, "Dawkins":
"In the 2007 TV documentary The Enemies of Reason,[137] Dawkins discusses what he sees as the dangers of abandoning critical thought and rationale based upon scientific evidence. He specifically cites astrology".
----
Oddly, in a paper that credits me (for general discussion, or something), Uschanov (google.books, "[C]riticisms of ... ordinary language philosophy" (Routledge), quotes for good effect Grice WoW:180 on astrology:
Words:
"To complain that philosophy no longer
solves practical problems is
as idiotic
as to complain that
astronomy is the natural offspring
of astrology -- that our future is
in the stars." Or something.
JLS
From wiki, "Dawkins":
"In the 2007 TV documentary The Enemies of Reason,[137] Dawkins discusses what he sees as the dangers of abandoning critical thought and rationale based upon scientific evidence. He specifically cites astrology".
----
Oddly, in a paper that credits me (for general discussion, or something), Uschanov (google.books, "[C]riticisms of ... ordinary language philosophy" (Routledge), quotes for good effect Grice WoW:180 on astrology:
Words:
"To complain that philosophy no longer
solves practical problems is
as idiotic
as to complain that
astronomy is the natural offspring
of astrology -- that our future is
in the stars." Or something.
JLS
Dark Clouds and Rainbows
--- by J. L. S.
From wiki, "Dawkins"
"His 1998 book Unweaving the Rainbow takes John Keats' accusation that, by explaining the rainbow, Isaac Newton had diminished its beauty, and argues for the opposite conclusion."
--- cfr
Those dark clouds mean, "It will rain".
That rainbow means: "Keats!"
---
JLS
From wiki, "Dawkins"
"His 1998 book Unweaving the Rainbow takes John Keats' accusation that, by explaining the rainbow, Isaac Newton had diminished its beauty, and argues for the opposite conclusion."
--- cfr
Those dark clouds mean, "It will rain".
That rainbow means: "Keats!"
---
JLS
From Genesis to Revelations
---- By JLS
From wiki, "Dawkins":
"Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation."[77]".
So it is perhaps rather good that Grice did not go to write his work in progress, that Chapman quotes: "From Genesis to Revelation: a new discourse in metaphysical methodology". Or something!
JLS
From wiki, "Dawkins":
"Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation."[77]".
So it is perhaps rather good that Grice did not go to write his work in progress, that Chapman quotes: "From Genesis to Revelation: a new discourse in metaphysical methodology". Or something!
JLS
Do Pirots Exist? (Was: Pirotology
--- By J. L. S.
From wiki, "Dawkins":
"Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of The Dawkins Delusion) maintains that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology, and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently.[96] In reply, Dawkins asks "do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?"".
JLS
From wiki, "Dawkins":
"Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of The Dawkins Delusion) maintains that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology, and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently.[96] In reply, Dawkins asks "do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?"".
JLS
"Those Spots Mean..."
Or, "selfless viruses", galore...
--- by J. L. S.
---
From wiki ("Dawkins"):
"In his 1991 essay "Viruses of the Mind" (from which the term faith-sufferer originated), he suggested that memetic theory..."
"He claims it to be analogous to the smallpox virus, though more difficult to eradicate.[77]"
Those spots mean smallpox?
--- by J. L. S.
---
From wiki ("Dawkins"):
"In his 1991 essay "Viruses of the Mind" (from which the term faith-sufferer originated), he suggested that memetic theory..."
"He claims it to be analogous to the smallpox virus, though more difficult to eradicate.[77]"
Those spots mean smallpox?
The H. P. Grice Foundation for Oxon Reason
---- By J. L. S.
He is a bit of a fanatic, right, you average ultra-Gricean!
From wiki:
"the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science − to subsidise the delivering of books, DVDs and pamphlets to schools, in order to counteract what he has described as an "educational scandal"".
JLS
He is a bit of a fanatic, right, you average ultra-Gricean!
From wiki:
"the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science − to subsidise the delivering of books, DVDs and pamphlets to schools, in order to counteract what he has described as an "educational scandal"".
JLS
Grice as a Cybernaut
--- By J. L. S.
Kramer notes that some of Grice's reflections on pirotology, 'look cybernetic' rather than 'biotic'.
I would agree, but then let's cfr. Dawkins. As per wiki:
"complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an AUTOMATIC [JLS], nonintelligent, blind watchmaker.[62]"
Etc.
JLS
Kramer notes that some of Grice's reflections on pirotology, 'look cybernetic' rather than 'biotic'.
I would agree, but then let's cfr. Dawkins. As per wiki:
"complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an AUTOMATIC [JLS], nonintelligent, blind watchmaker.[62]"
Etc.
JLS
Grice's Memetics
--- By J. L. S.
APPARENTLY Dawkins thinks he's coined 'meme' but left the task to Susan Blakemore! The thing may connect with Grice on _true_ memes, as per his "Personal Identity" (Mind, 1941!). I have to check the Liddell/Scott for further 'memes'. I do think the 'mneme' thing has one consonant too many. Etc.
APPARENTLY Dawkins thinks he's coined 'meme' but left the task to Susan Blakemore! The thing may connect with Grice on _true_ memes, as per his "Personal Identity" (Mind, 1941!). I have to check the Liddell/Scott for further 'memes'. I do think the 'mneme' thing has one consonant too many. Etc.
Dennett as Gricean
--- By J. L. S.
From wiki, on 'Dawkins':
"Two other thinkers on the subject often considered to be allied to Dawkins are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology..."
Dennett, for the record, (I met him) studied with Warnock and others as a graduate student in All Souls and has some charming memories of the Oxford days. He quotes Grice extensively in his many books, notably in his earlier stuff on "Intentional Stance", etc.
So we seem to have one Grice vs. another Grice, reduplicating phenotypically beyond the narrow environment of their own bodies, ah!
From wiki, on 'Dawkins':
"Two other thinkers on the subject often considered to be allied to Dawkins are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology..."
Dennett, for the record, (I met him) studied with Warnock and others as a graduate student in All Souls and has some charming memories of the Oxford days. He quotes Grice extensively in his many books, notably in his earlier stuff on "Intentional Stance", etc.
So we seem to have one Grice vs. another Grice, reduplicating phenotypically beyond the narrow environment of their own bodies, ah!
Grice on Environment-Adaptiveness
---- By J. L. S.
This may contrast with Dawkins.
From wiki:
"In The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins suggests that because of genetic recombination and sexual reproduction, from an individual gene's viewpoint all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted."
I would not think Grice would like to call "all other genes" as part of an 'environment'. Shouldn't the thing be secluded to broader issues. In ecology, that Dawkins promotes, isn't an 'environment' understood as something in between organisms, rather than ... genes?
This may contrast with Dawkins.
From wiki:
"In The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins suggests that because of genetic recombination and sexual reproduction, from an individual gene's viewpoint all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted."
I would not think Grice would like to call "all other genes" as part of an 'environment'. Shouldn't the thing be secluded to broader issues. In ecology, that Dawkins promotes, isn't an 'environment' understood as something in between organisms, rather than ... genes?
No Tautological Pirotology
---- By J. L. S.
We don't necessarily want our pirotological reflections to go 'tautological'. But it has been said so much for Dawkins's use of 'gene'. Cfr.
from wiki:
"[Dawkins] is using George C. Williams' definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency".[39]"
The 'that which...' looks like a FUNCTIONAL definition, which may lead to tautology-looking things, "If a gene persists, it persists" (cfr. Kramer on objection by R. B. Jones, this blog -- under Egoless Gene).
On the other hand, I haven't checked this, I would NOT define a gene "functionally" by what a gene does, would you? I would define it as a SPECIFIC thing in the hard-ware of real organisms. Defining a 'gene' in such an abstract term, no wonder the thing turns selfish?
JLS
We don't necessarily want our pirotological reflections to go 'tautological'. But it has been said so much for Dawkins's use of 'gene'. Cfr.
from wiki:
"[Dawkins] is using George C. Williams' definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency".[39]"
The 'that which...' looks like a FUNCTIONAL definition, which may lead to tautology-looking things, "If a gene persists, it persists" (cfr. Kramer on objection by R. B. Jones, this blog -- under Egoless Gene).
On the other hand, I haven't checked this, I would NOT define a gene "functionally" by what a gene does, would you? I would define it as a SPECIFIC thing in the hard-ware of real organisms. Defining a 'gene' in such an abstract term, no wonder the thing turns selfish?
JLS
The Designer Meets the Engineer
---- By J. L. S.
Grice speaks frequently of himself as a Designer (of pirots), needing to keep track with the Engineer: "Why, the man is supposed to bring to life what I'm just sketching on boards". This may connect with Dawkins. His 'gene', selfish or not, seems to be a matter of hardware (not software). As per wiki:
"The gene [critics to Dawkins argue] could be better described as a unit of evolution − of the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population."
Pirots gaggle, and they are very "allele", etc. Their genomes is not really something they can do much about, unless they become geneticists, and start eugenics... I have to end with "!". What's the good of a blog if it ain't gonna be fun?
Grice speaks frequently of himself as a Designer (of pirots), needing to keep track with the Engineer: "Why, the man is supposed to bring to life what I'm just sketching on boards". This may connect with Dawkins. His 'gene', selfish or not, seems to be a matter of hardware (not software). As per wiki:
"The gene [critics to Dawkins argue] could be better described as a unit of evolution − of the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population."
Pirots gaggle, and they are very "allele", etc. Their genomes is not really something they can do much about, unless they become geneticists, and start eugenics... I have to end with "!". What's the good of a blog if it ain't gonna be fun?
Why Grice Ought To Read "Selfish Gene"
---- By J. L. S.
---------------- WELL, because he did say, "_Read_ "Selfish Gene""!
--- But seriously:
From wiki:
"Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about ... selection at levels "above" that of the gene."
So, who's an evolutionist?
I think the whole point of Being Grice is to BELIEVE in selection at levels above the gene? I don't know! I wished Grice had read the thing and left copious notes!
JLS
---------------- WELL, because he did say, "_Read_ "Selfish Gene""!
--- But seriously:
From wiki:
"Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about ... selection at levels "above" that of the gene."
So, who's an evolutionist?
I think the whole point of Being Grice is to BELIEVE in selection at levels above the gene? I don't know! I wished Grice had read the thing and left copious notes!
JLS
The Immortality of Grice
--- By J. L. S.
----- I invited a poster here to post on the immortality of the soul and experiences of death and he did. See "Death" this blog.
This reminds me of what I read from wiki under "Dawkins":
"Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation.[36]"
How future? I hope it's post-mortem!
JLS
----- I invited a poster here to post on the immortality of the soul and experiences of death and he did. See "Death" this blog.
This reminds me of what I read from wiki under "Dawkins":
"Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation.[36]"
How future? I hope it's post-mortem!
JLS
Grice's Fairy Tale
----- By J. L. S.
From wiki:
"In September 2008, Dawkins retired from his post as Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science,[26][27] announcing plans to "write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales."[28]"
In February 2010, The Grice Club announced plans to "warn pro believing in Grice's fairy tales" provided they are written in Pirot.
vide Wharton, T. "[Grice's] myth" in "Pragmatics ...", CUP, 2009.
vide Chapman: "Pirots inhabit a fantasy world" (Chapman 2006).
JLS
From wiki:
"In September 2008, Dawkins retired from his post as Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science,[26][27] announcing plans to "write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales."[28]"
In February 2010, The Grice Club announced plans to "warn pro believing in Grice's fairy tales" provided they are written in Pirot.
vide Wharton, T. "[Grice's] myth" in "Pragmatics ...", CUP, 2009.
vide Chapman: "Pirots inhabit a fantasy world" (Chapman 2006).
JLS
The Grice Prize -- Priceless
---- By J. L. S.
From wiki:
"In 2004, Balliol College, Oxford instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities".[25]"
In 2010, The Grice Club instituted the Grice Prize (priceless) for 'instanding search into ... Grice?"
JLS
From wiki:
"In 2004, Balliol College, Oxford instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities".[25]"
In 2010, The Grice Club instituted the Grice Prize (priceless) for 'instanding search into ... Grice?"
JLS
Grice and Dawkins
--- By J. L. S.
Further notes for cross-reference to that delight of a note by Grice:
_Read_ "Selfish Gene"
cited Chapman06.
From wiki:
"From 1967 to 1969, Dawkins was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became heavily involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities..."
Oddly, 1967 was the year Grice became prof. (not full) at UC/B. Small world. I want to think that Dawkins _ha ha_ presented Grice with a copy of "Selfish Gene" and he NATURALLY Had to Read It!
I am enjoying Dawkins's interests in animals, etc. -- since I share that interest, and would gladly dissect a few. (cfr. my "Disappointed man", THIS BLOG for Barbillion dissecting this or that). Etc.
JLS
Further notes for cross-reference to that delight of a note by Grice:
_Read_ "Selfish Gene"
cited Chapman06.
From wiki:
"From 1967 to 1969, Dawkins was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became heavily involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities..."
Oddly, 1967 was the year Grice became prof. (not full) at UC/B. Small world. I want to think that Dawkins _ha ha_ presented Grice with a copy of "Selfish Gene" and he NATURALLY Had to Read It!
I am enjoying Dawkins's interests in animals, etc. -- since I share that interest, and would gladly dissect a few. (cfr. my "Disappointed man", THIS BLOG for Barbillion dissecting this or that). Etc.
JLS
The Gricean Gene
---- By J. L. S.
Grice wrote:
"_Read_ "Selfish Gene""
this has his bio _not_ crediting the Selfish Kenyan! (in name index).
Popper has it wrong when he says that genes co-operate. I never heard one implicate, though. But then, as they say, the appeal of the implicature is that it's a _soft_ thing.
Anyway, should expand on this at a later stage.
Here some news from Livingston's and Stanley's favourite continent below.
Well, if we are analysing the idea that Grice may have been criticised in Oxford because he was not from 'down the Home counties', we can psycho-babble Dawkins. Call me biographical, but before engaging in how selfish was my gene, I learn, and have not yet done the footnotes, from wiki:
"Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Colony of Kenya, British Empire. ... His father, Clinton John Dawkins, was an agricultural
CIVIL SERVANT
-- cfr. "Passage to India"
"in the British colonial service, in Nyasaland (now Malawi). His father was called up into the King's African Rifles during the second world war ... and was based in Kenya,... Both of his parents were interested in natural sciences,"
-- but not really scientists, as some hits had it.
"and they answered Dawkins' questions in scientific terms. ... Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". Though he began having doubts about the existence of God ... he was persuaded by the argument from design, an argument for the existence of God or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, or design in nature. By his mid-teens, he had instead concluded that the theory of evolution was a better explanation for life's complexity, and became nonreligious..."
---
Oddly, I was slightly taken aback by the Grice biographer when she writes, "By ... (insert good date here), Grice had lost all faith". (or words). I found that something that no biographer should touch, unless expressed by the biographee in first person. And for some reason, I detect a gentler spirit in Grice, and as unable to express things like
"By ... I did lose all faith."
So what kind of report is a biographer making?! Etc.
---
JLS
Notes.
"Richard Dawkins was born on Mar. 26, 1941 to Clinton John and Jean Mary Vyvyan Dawkins in Nairobi, Kenya. Both of his parents were scientists which helped encourage Dawkins' own interest in ...
http://www.woopidoo.com/biography/richard-dawkins/index.htm
Richard Dawkins was born on Mar. 26, 1941 to Clinton John and Jean Mary Vyvyan Dawkins in Nairobi, Kenya. Dawkins was born in Kenya in 1941 and, although his father moved to England for a time to volunteer for wartime service, raised in East Africa until 1949."
Grice wrote:
"_Read_ "Selfish Gene""
this has his bio _not_ crediting the Selfish Kenyan! (in name index).
Popper has it wrong when he says that genes co-operate. I never heard one implicate, though. But then, as they say, the appeal of the implicature is that it's a _soft_ thing.
Anyway, should expand on this at a later stage.
Here some news from Livingston's and Stanley's favourite continent below.
Well, if we are analysing the idea that Grice may have been criticised in Oxford because he was not from 'down the Home counties', we can psycho-babble Dawkins. Call me biographical, but before engaging in how selfish was my gene, I learn, and have not yet done the footnotes, from wiki:
"Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Colony of Kenya, British Empire. ... His father, Clinton John Dawkins, was an agricultural
CIVIL SERVANT
-- cfr. "Passage to India"
"in the British colonial service, in Nyasaland (now Malawi). His father was called up into the King's African Rifles during the second world war ... and was based in Kenya,... Both of his parents were interested in natural sciences,"
-- but not really scientists, as some hits had it.
"and they answered Dawkins' questions in scientific terms. ... Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". Though he began having doubts about the existence of God ... he was persuaded by the argument from design, an argument for the existence of God or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, or design in nature. By his mid-teens, he had instead concluded that the theory of evolution was a better explanation for life's complexity, and became nonreligious..."
---
Oddly, I was slightly taken aback by the Grice biographer when she writes, "By ... (insert good date here), Grice had lost all faith". (or words). I found that something that no biographer should touch, unless expressed by the biographee in first person. And for some reason, I detect a gentler spirit in Grice, and as unable to express things like
"By ... I did lose all faith."
So what kind of report is a biographer making?! Etc.
---
JLS
Notes.
"Richard Dawkins was born on Mar. 26, 1941 to Clinton John and Jean Mary Vyvyan Dawkins in Nairobi, Kenya. Both of his parents were scientists which helped encourage Dawkins' own interest in ...
http://www.woopidoo.com/biography/richard-dawkins/index.htm
Richard Dawkins was born on Mar. 26, 1941 to Clinton John and Jean Mary Vyvyan Dawkins in Nairobi, Kenya. Dawkins was born in Kenya in 1941 and, although his father moved to England for a time to volunteer for wartime service, raised in East Africa until 1949."
A Blacked-Out City
----- By J. L. Speranza
---------------- IN OTHER threads we are discussing Grice's
A: Did Charlie watch "Star Trek" tonight?
B: He was in Boston.
Surely, Grice says ("Logic and Conversation", Way of Words, iii):
+> No.
i.e. the implicature is "no".
For A and B both know as per the following
(p) A and B know that Boston was blacked-out
yesterday and (p).
We need the recursive loop, because it's not just a matter of A knowing
(B) Boston was blacked-out yesterday
and B knowing (B) too; they have to each know (if you excuse me the split) that (B) and so ad infinitum, which is best understood as (p). It cannot be 'non-controversial' topic (as Grice's other example: My aunt's cousin went to that concert) because this _trades_ on common-ground status, as Grice calls it.
Common-ground status Grice symbolises by square brackets
[Boston was blacked-out yesterday]
Applying PERE (principle of economy of rational effort) on the ground that the stakes are not TOO high, we DO NOT say "No", knowing that the negation or negative answer to the yes/no question is thus 'implicated' in a defeasible way.
On the other hand, he can go, "Why do you ask?" Etc.
---------------- IN OTHER threads we are discussing Grice's
A: Did Charlie watch "Star Trek" tonight?
B: He was in Boston.
Surely, Grice says ("Logic and Conversation", Way of Words, iii):
+> No.
i.e. the implicature is "no".
For A and B both know as per the following
(p) A and B know that Boston was blacked-out
yesterday and (p).
We need the recursive loop, because it's not just a matter of A knowing
(B) Boston was blacked-out yesterday
and B knowing (B) too; they have to each know (if you excuse me the split) that (B) and so ad infinitum, which is best understood as (p). It cannot be 'non-controversial' topic (as Grice's other example: My aunt's cousin went to that concert) because this _trades_ on common-ground status, as Grice calls it.
Common-ground status Grice symbolises by square brackets
[Boston was blacked-out yesterday]
Applying PERE (principle of economy of rational effort) on the ground that the stakes are not TOO high, we DO NOT say "No", knowing that the negation or negative answer to the yes/no question is thus 'implicated' in a defeasible way.
On the other hand, he can go, "Why do you ask?" Etc.
How Pirots Karulise Elatically: Some Simpler Ways
---------by J. L. Speranza
--- In "A featherless pirot" I propose the sequence for lower pirots. Here are the higher levels.
The first three stages of truly pirotic, reason-based evolution.
Stage 0.9.
We start with a Pirot (P) equipped to satisfy unnested judging and willing (i.e. whose contents do _not_ involve judging or willing). 1ST ORDER. It would be advantageous to P if it could have judging and willing,
which relate to its own judging or willing. Such a pirot could be equipped to control or regulate its own judgings and willings. It will presumably be already constituted so as to conform to the law that CAETERIS PARIBUS
if P wills that p and judges that ~p, if it can, it makes it the case that p [in its 'mind']. To give it some control over its judgings and willings, we need only extend the application of this law to its judging and willing. We equip it so that caeteris paribus IF A wills that it doesn't will that p and judges that it does will that p (if it can) it makes it the case that it does NOT will that p (and we somehow ensure that sometimes it CAN do this). Grice writes: "It may be that the installation of this kind of control would go hand in hand with the installation of the capacity for evaluation; but I need not concern myself with this now."
Stage 0.91
P2's intentional efforts depend on the motivational strength of its considered desires at the time of action. So far we have been seeing the process by which conflicting considered desires motivate action as a broadly CAUSAL process, a process that reveals MOTIVATIONAL strength. But P3 might itself try to weigh considerations provided by such conflicting desires in DELIBERATION about the pros and cons of various alternatives. In the simplest case, such weighing treats each of the things desired as a prima facie justifying end. In the face of conflict it weighs such desired ends, where the weights correspond to the motivational strength of the associated, considered desire. The outcome of such DELIBERATION will match the outcome of the CAUSAL motivational processes envisioned in our description of P. But since the weights it invokes in such deliberation correspond to the motivational strength of the relevant considered desires (though perhaps not to the motivational strength of the relevant considered desires), the resultant activities will match those of a corresponding P2 -- *all* of whose desires, we are assuming, are considered. To be more realistic we might limit ourselves to saying that P2 has the capacity to make the transition from unconsidered to considered desires but does not always do this. But it will keep the discussion more manageable to simplify and to suppose that *all* its desires are considered.
Stage 0.93
We shall not want these pirots to depend, in each will act in ways that reveal the motivational strength of considered desires at the time of action, but for P3 it will also be true that in some (though not all) cases it acts on the basis of how it weights the ends favoured by its conflicting, considered desires. It is time to note that P3's considered desires will concern matters that cannot be achieved simply by action at a single time. It may eg want to nurture a vegetable garden, or build a house. Such matters will require organized and coordinated action that extends over time. What it does now ill depend not only on what it now desires but also on what it now expects it will do later given what it does now. It needs a way of settling now what it will do later given what it does now. The point is even clearer when we remind ourselves, what we have so far ignored, that P3 is not alone. It is, we may assume, one of some number of such creatures; and in many cases it needs to
COORDINATE what it does with what others do so as to achieve ends desired by all participants, itself included.
Stage 0.94
Costs are magnified for a creature whose various plans are interwoven so that a change in one element can have significant ripple effects that will need to be considered. So let us suppose that the general strategies P4 has for responding to new information about its circumstances are sensitive to these kinds of costs. Promoting in the long run the satisfaction of its considered desires and preferences. P4 is a somewhat sophisticated planning agent but it has a problem. It can expect that its desires and preferences may well change over time
and undermine its efforts at organizing and coordinating its activities over time. Perhaps in many cases this is due to the kind of temporal discounting emphasized by (among others) G. Ainslie. So for example P4 may have a plan to exercise every day but may tend to prefer a sequence of not exercising on the present day but exercising all days in the future, to a uniform sequence the present day included. At the end of the day it returns to its earlier considered preference in favour of exercising on each and every day. Though P4, unlike P3, has the capacity to settle on prior plans or plaices concerning exercise, this capacity does not yet help in
such a case.A creature whose plans were stable in ways in part shaped by such a
no-regret principle would be more likely than P4 to resist temporary temptations.
Stage 0.95.
So let us build such a principle into the stability of the plans of P5 whose plans and policies are not derived solely from facts about its limits of time, attention, and the like. It is also grounded in the central concerns of a planning agent with its own future, concerns that lend special significance to anticipated future REGRET.
So let us add to P5 the capacity and disposition to arrive at such hierarchies of higher-order desires concerning its "will".
Stage 0.96
We reach a new creature, P6. There is a problem with P6, one that has been much discussed. It is not clear why a higher-order desire--even a higher-order desire that a certain desire be one's "will" -- is not simply one more desire in the pool of desires [Berkeley God's will problem] Why does it have the authority to constitute or ensure the agent's (that is, the creature's) endorsement or rejection of a FIRST-ORDER desire? Applied to P6 this is the question of whether, by virtue solely of its hierarchies of desires, it really does succeed in taking its own stand of endorsement or rejection of various FIRST-ORDER desires. Since it was the ability to take its own stand that we are trying to provide in the move to P6, we need some response to this challenge. The basic point is that P6 is not merely a time-slice agent. It is, rather, and understands itself to be, a temporally persisting planning agent, one who begins, and continues, and completes temporally extended projects. On a broadly Lockean view, its persistence over time consists in relevant psychological continuities (e.g. the persistence of attitudes of belief and intention)
and connections (eg memory of a past event, or the later intentional execution
of an intention formed earlier). Certain attitudes have as a primary role
the constitution and support of such Lockean continuities and connections.
In particular, policies that favor or reject various desires have it as their role to constitute and support various continuities both of ordinary desires and of the politicos themselves. For this reason such policies are not merely additional wiggles in the psychic stew. Instead, these policies have a claim to help determine where the agent, i.e. the temporally persisting agent, stands with respect to its desires. Or so it seems to me reasonable to say.
Stage 0.97
Pirots are starting to look at us (in our better moments, of course). So the psychology of P7 continues to have the hierarchical structure of pro-attitudes introduced with P6. The difference is that the higher-order pro-attitudes of P6 were simply characterized as desires in a broad, generic sense, and no appeal was made to the distinctive species of pro-attitude constituted by plan-like attitudes. That is the sense in which, following Grice, the psychology of P7 is an "extension of" the psychology of P6. Let us then give P7 such higher-order pollicies with the capacity
to take a stand with respect to its desires by arriving at relevant higher-order policies concerning the functioning of those desires over time. P7 exhibits a merger of hierarchical and planning structures. Appealing to planning theory and ground in connection to the temporally extended structure of agency, to be one's "will". P7 has higher-order policies that favor or challenge motivational roles of its considered desires. When P7 engages in deliberative weighing of conflicting, desired ends it seems that the assigned weights should reflect the policies that determine where it stands with respect to relevant desires. But the policies we have so far appealed to-policies concerning what desires are to be one's will --do not quite address this concern. The problem is that one can in certain cases have policies concerning which desires are to motivate and yet these not be policies that accord what those desires are for a corresponding justifying role in deliberation.
Stage 1.
We are about to reach the 'very intelligent, rational, pirot' we are. A solution is to give our creature--call it P8--the capacity to arrive at policies that express its commitment to be motivated by a desire by way of its treatment of that desire as providing, in deliberation, a justifying end for action. P8 has policies for treating (or not treating)certain desires as providing justifying ends--as, in this way, reason-providing--in motivationally effective deliberation. Let us call such policies self-governing policies--I will suppose that these policies are mutually compatible and do not challenge each other. In this way P8 involves, as Grice would want, an "extension" of structures already present in P7. The grounds on which P8 arrives at (and on occasion revises) such self-governing policies will be many and varied. We can see these policies as crystallizing complex pressures and concerns, some of which are grounded in other policies or desires. These self-governing policies may be tentative and will normally NOT be immune to change. If we ask what P8 values in this case, the answer seems to be: what it values is constituted in part by its higher-order self-governing policies. In particular, it values exercise over nonexercise even right now, and even given that it has a considered (though temporary) preference to the contrary. Unlike P3-5, what P8 now values is not simply a matter of its present, considered desires and preferences. NOW THIS MODEL OF P8
SEEMS IN RELEVANT RESPECTS TO BE A (PARTIAL) MODEL OF US. So we arrive at the conjecture that one important kind of valuing of which we are capable involves, in the cited ways, both our first-order desires and our higher order self-governing policies. In an important sub-class of cases our valuing involves reflexive polices that are both first-order policies of action and higher-order policies to treat the first-order policy as reason providing in motivationally effective deliberation. This may seem odd. Valuing seems normally to be a first-order attitude. One values honesty, say. The proposal is that an important kind of valuing involves higher-order policies. Does this mean that, strictly speaking, what one values is itself a desire--not honesty, say, but a desire for honesty? No it does not. What I value in the present case is honesty; but, on the theory, my valuing honesty in art consists in certain higher-order self-governing policies. An agent's reflective valuing involves a kind of higher-order willing.
--- In "A featherless pirot" I propose the sequence for lower pirots. Here are the higher levels.
The first three stages of truly pirotic, reason-based evolution.
Stage 0.9.
We start with a Pirot (P) equipped to satisfy unnested judging and willing (i.e. whose contents do _not_ involve judging or willing). 1ST ORDER. It would be advantageous to P if it could have judging and willing,
which relate to its own judging or willing. Such a pirot could be equipped to control or regulate its own judgings and willings. It will presumably be already constituted so as to conform to the law that CAETERIS PARIBUS
if P wills that p and judges that ~p, if it can, it makes it the case that p [in its 'mind']. To give it some control over its judgings and willings, we need only extend the application of this law to its judging and willing. We equip it so that caeteris paribus IF A wills that it doesn't will that p and judges that it does will that p (if it can) it makes it the case that it does NOT will that p (and we somehow ensure that sometimes it CAN do this). Grice writes: "It may be that the installation of this kind of control would go hand in hand with the installation of the capacity for evaluation; but I need not concern myself with this now."
Stage 0.91
P2's intentional efforts depend on the motivational strength of its considered desires at the time of action. So far we have been seeing the process by which conflicting considered desires motivate action as a broadly CAUSAL process, a process that reveals MOTIVATIONAL strength. But P3 might itself try to weigh considerations provided by such conflicting desires in DELIBERATION about the pros and cons of various alternatives. In the simplest case, such weighing treats each of the things desired as a prima facie justifying end. In the face of conflict it weighs such desired ends, where the weights correspond to the motivational strength of the associated, considered desire. The outcome of such DELIBERATION will match the outcome of the CAUSAL motivational processes envisioned in our description of P. But since the weights it invokes in such deliberation correspond to the motivational strength of the relevant considered desires (though perhaps not to the motivational strength of the relevant considered desires), the resultant activities will match those of a corresponding P2 -- *all* of whose desires, we are assuming, are considered. To be more realistic we might limit ourselves to saying that P2 has the capacity to make the transition from unconsidered to considered desires but does not always do this. But it will keep the discussion more manageable to simplify and to suppose that *all* its desires are considered.
Stage 0.93
We shall not want these pirots to depend, in each will act in ways that reveal the motivational strength of considered desires at the time of action, but for P3 it will also be true that in some (though not all) cases it acts on the basis of how it weights the ends favoured by its conflicting, considered desires. It is time to note that P3's considered desires will concern matters that cannot be achieved simply by action at a single time. It may eg want to nurture a vegetable garden, or build a house. Such matters will require organized and coordinated action that extends over time. What it does now ill depend not only on what it now desires but also on what it now expects it will do later given what it does now. It needs a way of settling now what it will do later given what it does now. The point is even clearer when we remind ourselves, what we have so far ignored, that P3 is not alone. It is, we may assume, one of some number of such creatures; and in many cases it needs to
COORDINATE what it does with what others do so as to achieve ends desired by all participants, itself included.
Stage 0.94
Costs are magnified for a creature whose various plans are interwoven so that a change in one element can have significant ripple effects that will need to be considered. So let us suppose that the general strategies P4 has for responding to new information about its circumstances are sensitive to these kinds of costs. Promoting in the long run the satisfaction of its considered desires and preferences. P4 is a somewhat sophisticated planning agent but it has a problem. It can expect that its desires and preferences may well change over time
and undermine its efforts at organizing and coordinating its activities over time. Perhaps in many cases this is due to the kind of temporal discounting emphasized by (among others) G. Ainslie. So for example P4 may have a plan to exercise every day but may tend to prefer a sequence of not exercising on the present day but exercising all days in the future, to a uniform sequence the present day included. At the end of the day it returns to its earlier considered preference in favour of exercising on each and every day. Though P4, unlike P3, has the capacity to settle on prior plans or plaices concerning exercise, this capacity does not yet help in
such a case.A creature whose plans were stable in ways in part shaped by such a
no-regret principle would be more likely than P4 to resist temporary temptations.
Stage 0.95.
So let us build such a principle into the stability of the plans of P5 whose plans and policies are not derived solely from facts about its limits of time, attention, and the like. It is also grounded in the central concerns of a planning agent with its own future, concerns that lend special significance to anticipated future REGRET.
So let us add to P5 the capacity and disposition to arrive at such hierarchies of higher-order desires concerning its "will".
Stage 0.96
We reach a new creature, P6. There is a problem with P6, one that has been much discussed. It is not clear why a higher-order desire--even a higher-order desire that a certain desire be one's "will" -- is not simply one more desire in the pool of desires [Berkeley God's will problem] Why does it have the authority to constitute or ensure the agent's (that is, the creature's) endorsement or rejection of a FIRST-ORDER desire? Applied to P6 this is the question of whether, by virtue solely of its hierarchies of desires, it really does succeed in taking its own stand of endorsement or rejection of various FIRST-ORDER desires. Since it was the ability to take its own stand that we are trying to provide in the move to P6, we need some response to this challenge. The basic point is that P6 is not merely a time-slice agent. It is, rather, and understands itself to be, a temporally persisting planning agent, one who begins, and continues, and completes temporally extended projects. On a broadly Lockean view, its persistence over time consists in relevant psychological continuities (e.g. the persistence of attitudes of belief and intention)
and connections (eg memory of a past event, or the later intentional execution
of an intention formed earlier). Certain attitudes have as a primary role
the constitution and support of such Lockean continuities and connections.
In particular, policies that favor or reject various desires have it as their role to constitute and support various continuities both of ordinary desires and of the politicos themselves. For this reason such policies are not merely additional wiggles in the psychic stew. Instead, these policies have a claim to help determine where the agent, i.e. the temporally persisting agent, stands with respect to its desires. Or so it seems to me reasonable to say.
Stage 0.97
Pirots are starting to look at us (in our better moments, of course). So the psychology of P7 continues to have the hierarchical structure of pro-attitudes introduced with P6. The difference is that the higher-order pro-attitudes of P6 were simply characterized as desires in a broad, generic sense, and no appeal was made to the distinctive species of pro-attitude constituted by plan-like attitudes. That is the sense in which, following Grice, the psychology of P7 is an "extension of" the psychology of P6. Let us then give P7 such higher-order pollicies with the capacity
to take a stand with respect to its desires by arriving at relevant higher-order policies concerning the functioning of those desires over time. P7 exhibits a merger of hierarchical and planning structures. Appealing to planning theory and ground in connection to the temporally extended structure of agency, to be one's "will". P7 has higher-order policies that favor or challenge motivational roles of its considered desires. When P7 engages in deliberative weighing of conflicting, desired ends it seems that the assigned weights should reflect the policies that determine where it stands with respect to relevant desires. But the policies we have so far appealed to-policies concerning what desires are to be one's will --do not quite address this concern. The problem is that one can in certain cases have policies concerning which desires are to motivate and yet these not be policies that accord what those desires are for a corresponding justifying role in deliberation.
Stage 1.
We are about to reach the 'very intelligent, rational, pirot' we are. A solution is to give our creature--call it P8--the capacity to arrive at policies that express its commitment to be motivated by a desire by way of its treatment of that desire as providing, in deliberation, a justifying end for action. P8 has policies for treating (or not treating)certain desires as providing justifying ends--as, in this way, reason-providing--in motivationally effective deliberation. Let us call such policies self-governing policies--I will suppose that these policies are mutually compatible and do not challenge each other. In this way P8 involves, as Grice would want, an "extension" of structures already present in P7. The grounds on which P8 arrives at (and on occasion revises) such self-governing policies will be many and varied. We can see these policies as crystallizing complex pressures and concerns, some of which are grounded in other policies or desires. These self-governing policies may be tentative and will normally NOT be immune to change. If we ask what P8 values in this case, the answer seems to be: what it values is constituted in part by its higher-order self-governing policies. In particular, it values exercise over nonexercise even right now, and even given that it has a considered (though temporary) preference to the contrary. Unlike P3-5, what P8 now values is not simply a matter of its present, considered desires and preferences. NOW THIS MODEL OF P8
SEEMS IN RELEVANT RESPECTS TO BE A (PARTIAL) MODEL OF US. So we arrive at the conjecture that one important kind of valuing of which we are capable involves, in the cited ways, both our first-order desires and our higher order self-governing policies. In an important sub-class of cases our valuing involves reflexive polices that are both first-order policies of action and higher-order policies to treat the first-order policy as reason providing in motivationally effective deliberation. This may seem odd. Valuing seems normally to be a first-order attitude. One values honesty, say. The proposal is that an important kind of valuing involves higher-order policies. Does this mean that, strictly speaking, what one values is itself a desire--not honesty, say, but a desire for honesty? No it does not. What I value in the present case is honesty; but, on the theory, my valuing honesty in art consists in certain higher-order self-governing policies. An agent's reflective valuing involves a kind of higher-order willing.
A Featherless Pirot
------- By J. L. Speranza, for the Grice Club.
-------------- Dedicated to Ian Cargan.
I has been suggested to me by Ian Cargan, of CHORA, and elsewhere, that each _stage_, in pirotological ascent, should be given a proper label. Till we reach the pirot sapiens, which _happens_ to be 'featherless' and 'laughable' (where it does not take two pirots to laugh at a pirot). For aren't 'scientists' _obsessed_ with the 'proper' terminology, or as I prefer _taxonomy_? (Scientists should stick with _explananda_, and leave _descripta_ to the common folk, some pirots object). Also that 'de-volution', or the 'degeneracy' of this or that trait, should also be taken into consideration -- especially in connection with the latest brands of 'pirots' --as we reach the apocalypse, as my grandmother is prone of saying.
I recall with cherrish my professor in ethics (for a seminar, actually). A girl was saying, "Surely Mother Theresa embodies all the virtues that we need in today's society". He replied, bluntly (his name is Osvaldo Guariglia): "She didn't know what she is doing". For many, supererogatory duties are indeed immoral. So when Dawkins speaks of the selfish gene, surely R. B. Jones, who brought in the pickiness (I love him!), adding: "Surely your nun is also selfish if she's got the selfish gene") should reconsider: Mother Theresa was _not_ selfish! (She was immoral, too, but that's another matter).
Cargan also suggested that I stick to the continuum. Rather than number stages, 1, 2, 3, etc. to speak rather of 1.1.2, 3.4.5.5. so that I have _more freedom_, and no necessity to be back for errata. Actually it's just one big jump or leap, from 0. to 1.
So we may consider for our Stages in the lower regions.
Stage 0.
This stage Cargan proposes we call "Apodeictic".
Surely in the realm of inorganitc chemistry it is all a matter of 'necessary implication'. "You mix the wrong substances, and POOOF!, it's an explosion. Nature is 'wise' (if a gene is selfish, Nature is wise). There _are_ natural explosions on earth, etc., and this may not have been all necessary. Oddly, the Big Bang _was_ possibly a necessary explosion, since it created _us_ and the pirot.
Stage 0.1
We are in the vertix of 'vita', as the Romance speakers have it: neither fish nor fowl. Or rather, either plant or animal. In this sense, we have reached 'mustard' alright. I'm sticking with the Duchess's meaning postulate in the Alice books, that mustard is best treated as if it were a mineral. We arrive at something that Cargan proposes we call "aisthesics", or things with "sense". A 'bacteria', for example.
Surely they can _feel_ and thus they should *enjoy* feeling, too.
Stage 0.2
Once the 'pirots' grow _legs_ and thus become 'animal', we reach the level of the so-called 'instinct' or Drive (Traub) that fascinated the Germans, etc. Ian Cargan suggested that I call this stage, for instinct-driven systems, "eikasics", and I will. This applies to one type of zoon only: the "lopho-trocho-zoon", or animal driven by instinct, in Aristotelian parlance. But then mostly all animals are instinctive, notably the male deer (cfr. studies in the ruts of words).
Stage 0.3
I'm skipping some stages because here I'm only concerned in Paleo-zoic Oxoniensis. After all I have to reach _Grice_, not Confucius, right? Some of the wing-endowed insects (ecdyso-zoon) display some sort of a rudimentary version of (if we may thus interpolate) 'human' _choice_ (Aristotle's pro-hairesis). Butter-the-fleas, for example. Thus we postulate this level as "pro-egmenic". This is, admittedly, an 'all or nothing' choice as I hope you noted that butterfleas don't really _decide_ where to drop-dead (or else they do).
Stage 0.4
This stage would be the "pro-hairetic", proper, where full, defeasible choice as we find in middle-order vertebrates. E.g. the eegle that Grice examines. She will
choose, as she is about to kill the squarrel, between killing the big squarrel or the little squarrel, or both, or none. At this stage the proper nomenclature is a bonus. 'Avian' pirot is the correct nomenclature here. This is also the realm of 'felis' that Grice adored.
Stage 0.5
A higher pirot (who is not a hermit) will _not_, caeteris paribus, live a solitary life ("It's not good that a pirot should live alone", writes the Pirot-Maker). They 'gaggle' and _socialise_ and not, as eegles do (I'm simplifying here to the Devon Eegle) just for the mating. This level Cargan proposes should be labeled "pith-anotic", from a Greek word meaning 'learn' (or 'teach,' I forget). We need only be concerned with only a few higher stages before we reach Grice, the highest pirot (at the peak of evolutionarily self-reflected perfection).
Stage 0.6
Cargan suggested to me that I label this higher stage the "hypo-lepsic". These are social, but still wild, animals (the leo inmanseatus of the Romans): they can be very dangerous beasts, as Christians and antelopes know, and will do _anything_ to survive -- (blame their selfish genes) and the worst of it is that most of them are carnivores, only -- they judge a pirot by its 'cloth'. And thus we (and other 'fleshly' types) supply them with their food, if we may use a zeugma. Also they seem to be almost always hungry (Females specially).
Stage 0.7
At this point the more peaceful 'pirots' descent from the trees, which allows for the development of the brain (or frons, in Latin) that ensues. These are what Linneaus, who _knew_, called 'the primates' from the Latin, primus inter pares. In a way they are the latest, but we KNOW what he was thinking. This stage can be appropriately called the "phronimic", after the Greek for 'brains' ('phronesis'), or more exactly, prudence.
Stage 0.8
We reach a "grice", a movable featherless biped who will karulise elatically for (we hope) years. After Aristotle, and as a tribute to "Hum-anism" (as per the Renaissance -- and Grice _was_ a Renaissance Man -- we reach, Cargan suggests, "spoudaics"'s the word, as per Aristotle's name for the virtue of the 'humane' human, and which, with Lockean certitude, applies to what we call "a very intelligent rational pirot".
As Grice notes, Locke wrote 'parot', but it could well have been a typo.
-------------- Dedicated to Ian Cargan.
I has been suggested to me by Ian Cargan, of CHORA, and elsewhere, that each _stage_, in pirotological ascent, should be given a proper label. Till we reach the pirot sapiens, which _happens_ to be 'featherless' and 'laughable' (where it does not take two pirots to laugh at a pirot). For aren't 'scientists' _obsessed_ with the 'proper' terminology, or as I prefer _taxonomy_? (Scientists should stick with _explananda_, and leave _descripta_ to the common folk, some pirots object). Also that 'de-volution', or the 'degeneracy' of this or that trait, should also be taken into consideration -- especially in connection with the latest brands of 'pirots' --as we reach the apocalypse, as my grandmother is prone of saying.
I recall with cherrish my professor in ethics (for a seminar, actually). A girl was saying, "Surely Mother Theresa embodies all the virtues that we need in today's society". He replied, bluntly (his name is Osvaldo Guariglia): "She didn't know what she is doing". For many, supererogatory duties are indeed immoral. So when Dawkins speaks of the selfish gene, surely R. B. Jones, who brought in the pickiness (I love him!), adding: "Surely your nun is also selfish if she's got the selfish gene") should reconsider: Mother Theresa was _not_ selfish! (She was immoral, too, but that's another matter).
Cargan also suggested that I stick to the continuum. Rather than number stages, 1, 2, 3, etc. to speak rather of 1.1.2, 3.4.5.5. so that I have _more freedom_, and no necessity to be back for errata. Actually it's just one big jump or leap, from 0. to 1.
So we may consider for our Stages in the lower regions.
Stage 0.
This stage Cargan proposes we call "Apodeictic".
Surely in the realm of inorganitc chemistry it is all a matter of 'necessary implication'. "You mix the wrong substances, and POOOF!, it's an explosion. Nature is 'wise' (if a gene is selfish, Nature is wise). There _are_ natural explosions on earth, etc., and this may not have been all necessary. Oddly, the Big Bang _was_ possibly a necessary explosion, since it created _us_ and the pirot.
Stage 0.1
We are in the vertix of 'vita', as the Romance speakers have it: neither fish nor fowl. Or rather, either plant or animal. In this sense, we have reached 'mustard' alright. I'm sticking with the Duchess's meaning postulate in the Alice books, that mustard is best treated as if it were a mineral. We arrive at something that Cargan proposes we call "aisthesics", or things with "sense". A 'bacteria', for example.
Surely they can _feel_ and thus they should *enjoy* feeling, too.
Stage 0.2
Once the 'pirots' grow _legs_ and thus become 'animal', we reach the level of the so-called 'instinct' or Drive (Traub) that fascinated the Germans, etc. Ian Cargan suggested that I call this stage, for instinct-driven systems, "eikasics", and I will. This applies to one type of zoon only: the "lopho-trocho-zoon", or animal driven by instinct, in Aristotelian parlance. But then mostly all animals are instinctive, notably the male deer (cfr. studies in the ruts of words).
Stage 0.3
I'm skipping some stages because here I'm only concerned in Paleo-zoic Oxoniensis. After all I have to reach _Grice_, not Confucius, right? Some of the wing-endowed insects (ecdyso-zoon) display some sort of a rudimentary version of (if we may thus interpolate) 'human' _choice_ (Aristotle's pro-hairesis). Butter-the-fleas, for example. Thus we postulate this level as "pro-egmenic". This is, admittedly, an 'all or nothing' choice as I hope you noted that butterfleas don't really _decide_ where to drop-dead (or else they do).
Stage 0.4
This stage would be the "pro-hairetic", proper, where full, defeasible choice as we find in middle-order vertebrates. E.g. the eegle that Grice examines. She will
choose, as she is about to kill the squarrel, between killing the big squarrel or the little squarrel, or both, or none. At this stage the proper nomenclature is a bonus. 'Avian' pirot is the correct nomenclature here. This is also the realm of 'felis' that Grice adored.
Stage 0.5
A higher pirot (who is not a hermit) will _not_, caeteris paribus, live a solitary life ("It's not good that a pirot should live alone", writes the Pirot-Maker). They 'gaggle' and _socialise_ and not, as eegles do (I'm simplifying here to the Devon Eegle) just for the mating. This level Cargan proposes should be labeled "pith-anotic", from a Greek word meaning 'learn' (or 'teach,' I forget). We need only be concerned with only a few higher stages before we reach Grice, the highest pirot (at the peak of evolutionarily self-reflected perfection).
Stage 0.6
Cargan suggested to me that I label this higher stage the "hypo-lepsic". These are social, but still wild, animals (the leo inmanseatus of the Romans): they can be very dangerous beasts, as Christians and antelopes know, and will do _anything_ to survive -- (blame their selfish genes) and the worst of it is that most of them are carnivores, only -- they judge a pirot by its 'cloth'. And thus we (and other 'fleshly' types) supply them with their food, if we may use a zeugma. Also they seem to be almost always hungry (Females specially).
Stage 0.7
At this point the more peaceful 'pirots' descent from the trees, which allows for the development of the brain (or frons, in Latin) that ensues. These are what Linneaus, who _knew_, called 'the primates' from the Latin, primus inter pares. In a way they are the latest, but we KNOW what he was thinking. This stage can be appropriately called the "phronimic", after the Greek for 'brains' ('phronesis'), or more exactly, prudence.
Stage 0.8
We reach a "grice", a movable featherless biped who will karulise elatically for (we hope) years. After Aristotle, and as a tribute to "Hum-anism" (as per the Renaissance -- and Grice _was_ a Renaissance Man -- we reach, Cargan suggests, "spoudaics"'s the word, as per Aristotle's name for the virtue of the 'humane' human, and which, with Lockean certitude, applies to what we call "a very intelligent rational pirot".
As Grice notes, Locke wrote 'parot', but it could well have been a typo.
Pirotologica
----- By J. L. S.
--- In his "The Egoless Gene", Kramer introduced explicitly the interesting topic of the Dawkins/Grice connection.
Since the comments on that thread are growing enormously, I start his with further quotes.
We stick to Grice's pirotological project.
Grice says Aristotle uses concepts to define the 'chain of being' and that 'soul', or 'life' (like 'natural number') requires a whole 'series' to be understood -- rather than 'defined' via genus and differentia specifica.
Grice came across the 'pirot' when studying Carnap -- in Grice's lectures on formal semantics, Grice expands on Carnap's term, 'pirots karulise elatically' (Carnap's pre-Chomskyan, colourless green ideas sleep furiously). Grice felt that his lecture could well be titled, How Pirots Carulise Elatically: Some Simple Ways. He wants to use 'nonsense strings' to provide hermeneutical brainstorm onto 'evolution':
"A pirot can be said to potch of some obble x as fang or feng; also to cotch of x, or some obble o, as fang or feng; or to cotch of one obble o and another obble o' as being fid to one another"
(Pirots need objects, because sense-data don't 'nourish or threaten': objects only do -- things do).
"Pirots inhabit a (fantasy) world of obbles. To potch is something like to perceive and to cotch something like to thing. Feng and fang are possible descriptions, much like our adjectives. Fid is a possible relation between obbles."
"It is when the behaviour of talking pirots is considered, when a group of pirots in a particular gaggle interact together, that something like the notion of reference becomes important")
---
ODDLY it is in Chapman's prose that I only find the word, "EVOLUTION".
On p. 153 she writes that pirotology allows Grice NOT TO COMMIT to a specific BIOLOGICAL theory.
"It allows Grice to IMPLY but not say that our mental capacities MIGHT BE
****EVOLUTIONARILY**** DERIVED, without having to commmit to this
or any other biological theory."
Why he should be so careful escapes me! Anyway, Chapman does well in tracing the 'pirotologica' to "Some reflections about ends and happiness". In Warner's terse criticism:
if we are to pursue Grice's strategy ... of replacing
Aristotle's 'activity in conformity with virtue' with
'SUITABILITY FOR THE DIRECTION OF LIFE'... The DESIGNER (Or Pirot-Maker as I prefer -- although Grice does distinguish between the DESIGNer and the ENGINEer)
"would have to endow pirots in order to make them MAXIMALLY VIALBE in pirot-living conditions, that is, in the widest manageable range of different environments"
"The goal is the continuation of self (specimen of pirot)(or of 'species')."And such changes 'advance'[Grice's word]. "Well, because of DECREASED VULNERABILITY
to vicissitudes of [the fantasy world]" "The chief end of ALL life forms [not just pirots-3] is to ensure their own continued survival of the species to which they belong"
Chapman notes the similarity with Locke, who "posited a hierarchy of living beings, with the identity of beings at EACH STAGE depending on the fulfillment of functions NECESSARY to the continued existence of that being"
Chapman's "ladder of existence" is Lovejoy's "chain of being". Read 'useful' always as "at least in terms of survival". The pirot-3 (human being rather than mere living being) needs survival benefits. For creatures living in COMPLEX, changing
environments, it is more beneficial to have the capacity to REASON about their environment and choose a strategy for survival, than to be endowed with a series of separate, and necessarily finite, reflex responses"
While Grice wrote on his note, "Read Selfish Gene" he should also have a look now at "BIOLOGICAL EXHUBERANCE". Eating for example, is 'basic survival'. But there's more to life than eating. And the point looms large: "What is the point of the pirot-3's own continued survival?" GRICE'S RATIONALISM:
"The pirot-3's capacity to reason is exactly the property to help it survive the question." "Rather than persuading the pirot-3 to GIVE UP The struggle (for survival), the capacity of reasoning is UTILISED to produce a set of criteria"
--- which "will provide the pirot-3 with justification for its continued existence."
"Thus the capacity of rationality both RISES and ANSWERS the question, 'why go on surviving?'"
Finally Chapman quotes from Conception of Value googlebooks lecture iii
"Every living pirot possesses a set of capacitieis, the fulfillment of each of which is a necessasry condition for the CONTINUED possession of that capacity. -- _Read_ "Selfish Gene", "chimp" lit". "Mandatory functions' include, in Grice's list, and any schoolboy's list, "reproduction ingestion digestion excretion repair
breath (why?) [perception. I add. JLS] cognition -- I add marginally, next to excretion: 'Skatology' -- which Chapman uses for what Grice calls "eschatology")
While a tiger just tigerises, the human humanizes. Grice seems to note that the 'survival-utility' is a simplification in the pirotological programme. It's a methodological restriction. The Pirot-Maker has AT LEAST to design the pirots
with a view to their survival". (Grice p. 37). And adds, "In order to achieve ECONOMY in assumptions, we shall suppose the Pirot-Maker to be concerned ONLY to optimise survival chances". Etc.
JLS
--- In his "The Egoless Gene", Kramer introduced explicitly the interesting topic of the Dawkins/Grice connection.
Since the comments on that thread are growing enormously, I start his with further quotes.
We stick to Grice's pirotological project.
Grice says Aristotle uses concepts to define the 'chain of being' and that 'soul', or 'life' (like 'natural number') requires a whole 'series' to be understood -- rather than 'defined' via genus and differentia specifica.
Grice came across the 'pirot' when studying Carnap -- in Grice's lectures on formal semantics, Grice expands on Carnap's term, 'pirots karulise elatically' (Carnap's pre-Chomskyan, colourless green ideas sleep furiously). Grice felt that his lecture could well be titled, How Pirots Carulise Elatically: Some Simple Ways. He wants to use 'nonsense strings' to provide hermeneutical brainstorm onto 'evolution':
"A pirot can be said to potch of some obble x as fang or feng; also to cotch of x, or some obble o, as fang or feng; or to cotch of one obble o and another obble o' as being fid to one another"
(Pirots need objects, because sense-data don't 'nourish or threaten': objects only do -- things do).
"Pirots inhabit a (fantasy) world of obbles. To potch is something like to perceive and to cotch something like to thing. Feng and fang are possible descriptions, much like our adjectives. Fid is a possible relation between obbles."
"It is when the behaviour of talking pirots is considered, when a group of pirots in a particular gaggle interact together, that something like the notion of reference becomes important")
---
ODDLY it is in Chapman's prose that I only find the word, "EVOLUTION".
On p. 153 she writes that pirotology allows Grice NOT TO COMMIT to a specific BIOLOGICAL theory.
"It allows Grice to IMPLY but not say that our mental capacities MIGHT BE
****EVOLUTIONARILY**** DERIVED, without having to commmit to this
or any other biological theory."
Why he should be so careful escapes me! Anyway, Chapman does well in tracing the 'pirotologica' to "Some reflections about ends and happiness". In Warner's terse criticism:
if we are to pursue Grice's strategy ... of replacing
Aristotle's 'activity in conformity with virtue' with
'SUITABILITY FOR THE DIRECTION OF LIFE'... The DESIGNER (Or Pirot-Maker as I prefer -- although Grice does distinguish between the DESIGNer and the ENGINEer)
"would have to endow pirots in order to make them MAXIMALLY VIALBE in pirot-living conditions, that is, in the widest manageable range of different environments"
"The goal is the continuation of self (specimen of pirot)(or of 'species')."And such changes 'advance'[Grice's word]. "Well, because of DECREASED VULNERABILITY
to vicissitudes of [the fantasy world]" "The chief end of ALL life forms [not just pirots-3] is to ensure their own continued survival of the species to which they belong"
Chapman notes the similarity with Locke, who "posited a hierarchy of living beings, with the identity of beings at EACH STAGE depending on the fulfillment of functions NECESSARY to the continued existence of that being"
Chapman's "ladder of existence" is Lovejoy's "chain of being". Read 'useful' always as "at least in terms of survival". The pirot-3 (human being rather than mere living being) needs survival benefits. For creatures living in COMPLEX, changing
environments, it is more beneficial to have the capacity to REASON about their environment and choose a strategy for survival, than to be endowed with a series of separate, and necessarily finite, reflex responses"
While Grice wrote on his note, "Read Selfish Gene" he should also have a look now at "BIOLOGICAL EXHUBERANCE". Eating for example, is 'basic survival'. But there's more to life than eating. And the point looms large: "What is the point of the pirot-3's own continued survival?" GRICE'S RATIONALISM:
"The pirot-3's capacity to reason is exactly the property to help it survive the question." "Rather than persuading the pirot-3 to GIVE UP The struggle (for survival), the capacity of reasoning is UTILISED to produce a set of criteria"
--- which "will provide the pirot-3 with justification for its continued existence."
"Thus the capacity of rationality both RISES and ANSWERS the question, 'why go on surviving?'"
Finally Chapman quotes from Conception of Value googlebooks lecture iii
"Every living pirot possesses a set of capacitieis, the fulfillment of each of which is a necessasry condition for the CONTINUED possession of that capacity. -- _Read_ "Selfish Gene", "chimp" lit". "Mandatory functions' include, in Grice's list, and any schoolboy's list, "reproduction ingestion digestion excretion repair
breath (why?) [perception. I add. JLS] cognition -- I add marginally, next to excretion: 'Skatology' -- which Chapman uses for what Grice calls "eschatology")
While a tiger just tigerises, the human humanizes. Grice seems to note that the 'survival-utility' is a simplification in the pirotological programme. It's a methodological restriction. The Pirot-Maker has AT LEAST to design the pirots
with a view to their survival". (Grice p. 37). And adds, "In order to achieve ECONOMY in assumptions, we shall suppose the Pirot-Maker to be concerned ONLY to optimise survival chances". Etc.
JLS
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The Egoless Gene
Lawrence J. Kramer, for the Grice Club
What follows is largely speculation. I don’t have the background to say any of it authoritatively. But you can look up anything that looks like a fact and think through for yourself anything that looks like a guess. This post is essentially a thought experiment in the logic of intergenerational persistence, so if anything doesn’t correspond to how things really are out there, the discrepancy is relevant only to the extent that it is inconsistent with the logic it is adduced to illustrate.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with HPG. I’ll leave that to JLS, who is quite creative on that score. I’m just trying to stimulate his pattern matcher to see what he sees.
In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins argues that genetic material is what replicates, so what matters from an evolutionary perspective is how selective pressures affect the replication chances of relevant genetic material. That’s all he argues. He does not argue that genes are “selfish” or that they do or do not “cooperate,” whatever that would mean. He calls them “selfish” because they, and not their carriers evolve, because they, and not their carriers are the product of natural selection.
This distinction is difficult to grasp because it seems that a gene cannot survive if its carrier does not. And, indeed, for most genetic material, reproduction of its individual carriers is a pretty good proxy for genetic material’s replication. Think of the genetic material responsible for any trait bowler in my spot-bowling model. The genetic material rolls its ball at the “spot” of individual survival. If the genetic material hits the spot – if the individual reproduces – the genetic material gets to replicate. But it is the replicating genetic material, not the reproducing carrier, that Dawkins would describe as “the fittest.”
To illustrate that individual reproduction is just one spot on Darwin’s bowling alley, Dawkins offers up a bit of genetic material that rolls its ball over another spot. That material programs an individual to sacrifice itself. What type of genetic material gets to replicate if its expression prevents the individual who carries it from reproducing? The answer, the key fact underlying The Selfish Gene, is any genetic material that the altruist shares with a population that is saved by the individual carrier’s altruism.
Altruism permits a trait (including, but not limited to the trait of altruism) to persist if, and only if, (i) the trait is widely distributed in the population (so that saving the population saves the trait), and (ii) acts of altruism are necessary to save the population from an otherwise extinguishing threat. But these two facts are not independent. If altruism is necessary to save a population, then that fact creates a selective pressure in favor of a style of reproduction that causes the trait of altruism to be widely spread in the population.
Bees are altruistic – individuals sting and die, and the colony survives on account of it. Bees live in hives. They do not run from threats; they drive threats away. Nor do bees’ enemies kill one bee at a time. Bees’ “enemies” are, for example, bears, who want the honey and don’t care how many bees they discommode to get it. So, in some situations, the colony of bees will survive only if individual worker bees sacrifices themselves.
All of a worker bee’s traits, including a fortiori, altruism, are widely distributed in the population. Worker bees are closely related. They have the same mother and many the same father, who has only one set of chromosomes and so generates uniform sperm. One can speculate, then about a feedback loop: the genetic material encoding a form of reproduction (genetic homogeneity) that promotes altruism persists in bees because they live a life that depends on altruism and the genetic material encoding their reproductive strategy (which is preserved by altruism) assures that they have the genetic material to be altruistic. The whole thing fits together like a geodesic dome. (Bee genetics is quite complex, and if you’re wondering why the survival of “sterile” worker bees matters to the persistence of their traits, it’s because worker bees actually produce drones – don’t ask – so their genetic material does replicate.)
Unlike bees, antelopes are not altruistic – they run, and the lion takes the hindmost. But the lion only eats one antelope at a time. If antelopes were altruistic, the sacrifice of one antelope would provide no benefit to the population as a whole. Thus, the homogeneous reproductive style of bees, essential to the spreading and persistence of altruism, and, therefore, to survival of the genetic material encoding that reproductive style, offers nothing to the antelope. A more otherwise adaptive form of “normal” sexual selection and reproduction emerges among them, and the genetic material encoding flight and speed, not sacrifice, is rewarded with replication.
Relating this discussion to PERE vs. Cooperativeness, I believe that Efficiency and Cooperativeness are both useful traits and that humans carry genetic material enabling both. (On the latter, see, e.g., Schermer, The Science of Good and Evil.) Cultures have memes that reinforce those traits to varying degrees. Gould argues in one of the pieces that Smith complained about that memes don’t respond to natural selection, as they evolve too quickly. I think he missed the point that competitive selection, of which natural selection is merely one example, operates at all levels of adaptation, whether Darwinian or Lamarckian.
In one of their cutest bits, the Smothers Brothers are singing a song (“Boil that Cabbage Down, Boys,” I think). At an appropriate point, Dicky shouts to his brother, in the way musicians do, “Take it, Tommy!” and Tommy, feigning complete surprise, responds “No.” Well aware of that example, I say “Take it, JL!”
Bowling with Grice
------------ By J. L. Speranza
---------------- dedicated to L. J. Kramer
I'm going to expand, briefly, on a lovely metaphor introduced by Kramer in his comment, no. 2, in "Who's who in Gricean".
He writes:
"Consider spot bowling."
I did. There is a useful article for it in wiki.
"One can bowl successfully even though the pins are hidden, so long as they are in their customary location. One need only roll the ball at the right speed with the right spin over the right spot, and the pins will fall."
Indeed. I skipped the middle section of that article, but there is a scientific explanation for it, and it says or promotes spot-bowling as the professional way to bowl. It has to do with similar techniques in other sports, too.
Kramer continues:
"I see "Be cooperative" as such a spot, and "Be brief" as the pins."
Good. I like my metaphors to be neat like that.
"The CP "works" because it leads to economical use of resources, which confers a competitive evolutionary advantage."
Apparently, L. J. Kramer wants to say more about the genes, so this may relate. I note that 'economy' is indeed used by Grice more or less formally in his "principle of ECONOMY of rational effort". Of course, 'economy' has so many connotations about it (Gk. oikos, house) that it's perhaps to have a "Waste not, want not" motto -- as per Cheeky Chap, "Waste not, want not is a motto old and true, I stick to it like glue" -- Why should the dustman get it all? in CD Radio Stars -- I think I have delivered the lyrics to that to Phil-Lit, or elsewhere so I may recover, since P. Stone allowed me to unbury all my contributions to that Phil-Lit thing. It's a charming lyric).
Kramer mentioning the 'competive' is interesting, because usually cooperation is contrasted with competition, as when Hintikka, or better, his disciple, Lauri Carlson, would say that Cooperation (or Conversation) is NOT a zero-sum game, i.e that the intersection
GA INT GB = Non-Null
the intersectin of A's goals and B's goals, at any given stage is not null. Less so at the end of the 'game'.
Kramer continues:
"The converse is not true: cooperativeness, as a conversational virtue, does not, except by avoiding waste, confer an advantage."
True. I think Grice is having in mind that we are _pirots_ (he uses that word when he wants to do the evolutionary talk). We find ourselves among _other_ pirots. We need to know what they think or want. So we exchange info, we try to influence those pirots next to us, and we are ready to be influenced by them. The pirots are not nasty or silly. They see that they have to 'co-operate' even if they further purely egotistic goals. As Grice says in RE of WoW, Gr89, 'cooperative conversation' can occur in harmony with the lowest goals of 'chicanery', etc.
I like the idea of 'virtue', to negate it! Indeed, I don't think the Gricean scheme holds well with a virtue-ethics alla Aristotle. It's more a matter of phronesis, or practical syllogism. Leech thinks otherwise. He speaks of the Polyanna Principle, and other principles, which may seem to elaborate on a 'virtuous' conversationalist. Sainsbury has done something similar when he speaks of "Conversational Roles" or Prototypes.
Kramer continues:
"Cooperastiveness certainly does confer an advantage in other areas of activity, especially those modeled by the Prisoners' Dilemma, but conversation is not such an activity."
Good. We'll have to elaborate on that. And the Good Samaritan. And that book on the Sour Grapes: paradoxes of rationality and irrationality. All these touches Gricean points.
Kramer continues taking into consideration this thing about the 'goals':
"But why does A care about B's goal?
Replace A and B with U and A, and you
have to ask "What's in it for U to
be brief? Why shouldn't husbanding
his own assets - his breath, his toner
cartridge, his time (Cicero et al. on
letter-writing notwithstanding) -
be what matters to U, at least in
the ordinary course of events?
Yes, A appreciates U's brevity, but
I believe it is coincidental and
fortunate that both parties have
an independent interest in conservation;
U would not be brief if brevity
did not serve him aside from A's
desire for it."
This is extremely important, and easy to understand. What Kramer proposes is this apparent 'breach' of 'be brief', as when, as Grice says, one can breach with "My lips are sealed". What Kramer proposes as illustration is:
"I'm sorry, your honor,
that question cannot be answered 'yes' or 'no.'"
-- Exactly, yeah or no, I think it is. Some honors are too into brief-tokens. Imagine,
"The King of France is bald?"
"Sorry, Paul [says Peter Strawson to Paul Grice];
that question cannot be answered 'yeah' or 'no'"
Oddly for Grice it CAN: His other example
"Have you stopped beating your wife?" -- whole discussion in "Causal theory of perception" fully available online in S. R. Bayne's site, History of Analytic Philosophy.
(For Grice wants to say: "Yes, he is bald". "No, he is not bald: he does not exist". "Yes, I stopped beating my wife. I took an anger-management course". "No, I haven't stopped beating my wife: I never started")
Kramer:
"What I'm proposing is a thought experiment. Replace
"Be Cooperative" with "Don't waste words or time,
whichever is more costly," and see if you don't
derive the CP maxims."
I think WE CAN Derive the CP and the maxims from a general rationality principle as Kasher does in his early 1977 "Conversational maxims and rationality". And as Grice allows in various spots where he notes that he is only interested in things like CP in his 'avowed aim to see conversation as a form of rational behaviour'. Also his principle of economy of rational effort.
Which in a way is back to
(pre-1891)
-- Where are you from?
-- Harborne, Staffordshire.
-- Where are you from?
-- Harborne.
This is all very complicated. Because the idea of 'waste' is very pertinent here. As J. Kennedy notes, his relations did not, he thinks, their whole lives, used "Birmingham" but refered to the thing as "The Town". I can think of similar scenarios for "Buenos Aires" or "London".
The answer:
-- Where are you from?
-- London.
seems pretty uninformative.
-- Where are you from?
-- The South of France.
Perhaps the whole idea of being 'from' is wrong, though. People add,
"originally"
-- Where are you from, originally?
Hawaii.
Perhaps since this is personal we can think of a third-person query:
-- Where did Grice teach?
-- Oxford
-- St. John's.
I can find contexts for both. Etc. I can quote here his example of the black-out city:
It has some interest in that it's the second WJ lecture, and so it seems obvious that the man did change or write them in the interim. For the second one, delivered one week later has him saying:
"In response to my previous lecture, I was given in
informal discussion"
--- this is something academics are aware of. When
I published my first publication, I was given
the permission to add "proceeding" of informal
discussion following, which I did: it's usually
the fun bit of a presentation. Nowadays, lecturers
just ignore the audience, cash and leave in the
next train to where they belong to.
Grice continues, and it's sad he does not credit
the person who made the discussion. Perhaps it
was not AFTER the conference, in alotted time, etc.
"an example which SEEMED to me, as far as it went,
to provide a WELCOME"
-- so not so good as informal discussion. Discussants are supposed to _criticise_, challenge, and find counterexamples.
"kind of support for the picture I have
been presenting in that it appeared
to exhibit a kind of interaction between
the members of my list of maxims which
I HAD NOT FORSEEN."
"Suppose that it is generally known that
New York and Boston [where the lectures took
place, almost -- in Harvard --one wonders
if he stayed in Boston, as I hope he did,
at the Athenaeum, rather than boring
Cambridge, Mass.] were blacked out
last night. And A asks B"
Did C see "Star Trek" last night?
[Grice was called "Trekkie" because he woudn't miss an episode]
"It will be
CONVERSATIONALLY unOBJECTIONABLE
for B, who knows that C was in New York, to reply
"No, he was in a blacked-out city".
"B could have said that C was in New York,
thereby providing a further piece of
information, BUT
in preferring the phrase
'a blacked-out city'
he was implicating (by the maxim
prescribing relevance) a more
appropriate piece of information,
namely, _why_ C was prevented
from seeing "Star Trek""
Here is the 'waste not, want not -- motto old and true' in full blown. Grice continues:
"He cold have provided BOTH pieces of
information by saying"
"He was in New York, which was blacked-out"
"but THE ***GAIN**** would have been **INSUFFICIENT**
to **JUSTIFY** the additional conversational **COST**."
(WoW:42).
Kramer continues:
"If so, perhaps we substitute "Be cooperative" for the longer principle out of expediency, rolling the ball over the spot rather than directly at the pins."
Yes, expediency and dispatch. These are crucial issues in the Gricean model, and I'm glad you bring them to our attention. And it's VERY good to have a colourful metaphor to go with it. Cheers,
JL
---------------- dedicated to L. J. Kramer
I'm going to expand, briefly, on a lovely metaphor introduced by Kramer in his comment, no. 2, in "Who's who in Gricean".
He writes:
"Consider spot bowling."
I did. There is a useful article for it in wiki.
"One can bowl successfully even though the pins are hidden, so long as they are in their customary location. One need only roll the ball at the right speed with the right spin over the right spot, and the pins will fall."
Indeed. I skipped the middle section of that article, but there is a scientific explanation for it, and it says or promotes spot-bowling as the professional way to bowl. It has to do with similar techniques in other sports, too.
Kramer continues:
"I see "Be cooperative" as such a spot, and "Be brief" as the pins."
Good. I like my metaphors to be neat like that.
"The CP "works" because it leads to economical use of resources, which confers a competitive evolutionary advantage."
Apparently, L. J. Kramer wants to say more about the genes, so this may relate. I note that 'economy' is indeed used by Grice more or less formally in his "principle of ECONOMY of rational effort". Of course, 'economy' has so many connotations about it (Gk. oikos, house) that it's perhaps to have a "Waste not, want not" motto -- as per Cheeky Chap, "Waste not, want not is a motto old and true, I stick to it like glue" -- Why should the dustman get it all? in CD Radio Stars -- I think I have delivered the lyrics to that to Phil-Lit, or elsewhere so I may recover, since P. Stone allowed me to unbury all my contributions to that Phil-Lit thing. It's a charming lyric).
Kramer mentioning the 'competive' is interesting, because usually cooperation is contrasted with competition, as when Hintikka, or better, his disciple, Lauri Carlson, would say that Cooperation (or Conversation) is NOT a zero-sum game, i.e that the intersection
GA INT GB = Non-Null
the intersectin of A's goals and B's goals, at any given stage is not null. Less so at the end of the 'game'.
Kramer continues:
"The converse is not true: cooperativeness, as a conversational virtue, does not, except by avoiding waste, confer an advantage."
True. I think Grice is having in mind that we are _pirots_ (he uses that word when he wants to do the evolutionary talk). We find ourselves among _other_ pirots. We need to know what they think or want. So we exchange info, we try to influence those pirots next to us, and we are ready to be influenced by them. The pirots are not nasty or silly. They see that they have to 'co-operate' even if they further purely egotistic goals. As Grice says in RE of WoW, Gr89, 'cooperative conversation' can occur in harmony with the lowest goals of 'chicanery', etc.
I like the idea of 'virtue', to negate it! Indeed, I don't think the Gricean scheme holds well with a virtue-ethics alla Aristotle. It's more a matter of phronesis, or practical syllogism. Leech thinks otherwise. He speaks of the Polyanna Principle, and other principles, which may seem to elaborate on a 'virtuous' conversationalist. Sainsbury has done something similar when he speaks of "Conversational Roles" or Prototypes.
Kramer continues:
"Cooperastiveness certainly does confer an advantage in other areas of activity, especially those modeled by the Prisoners' Dilemma, but conversation is not such an activity."
Good. We'll have to elaborate on that. And the Good Samaritan. And that book on the Sour Grapes: paradoxes of rationality and irrationality. All these touches Gricean points.
Kramer continues taking into consideration this thing about the 'goals':
"But why does A care about B's goal?
Replace A and B with U and A, and you
have to ask "What's in it for U to
be brief? Why shouldn't husbanding
his own assets - his breath, his toner
cartridge, his time (Cicero et al. on
letter-writing notwithstanding) -
be what matters to U, at least in
the ordinary course of events?
Yes, A appreciates U's brevity, but
I believe it is coincidental and
fortunate that both parties have
an independent interest in conservation;
U would not be brief if brevity
did not serve him aside from A's
desire for it."
This is extremely important, and easy to understand. What Kramer proposes is this apparent 'breach' of 'be brief', as when, as Grice says, one can breach with "My lips are sealed". What Kramer proposes as illustration is:
"I'm sorry, your honor,
that question cannot be answered 'yes' or 'no.'"
-- Exactly, yeah or no, I think it is. Some honors are too into brief-tokens. Imagine,
"The King of France is bald?"
"Sorry, Paul [says Peter Strawson to Paul Grice];
that question cannot be answered 'yeah' or 'no'"
Oddly for Grice it CAN: His other example
"Have you stopped beating your wife?" -- whole discussion in "Causal theory of perception" fully available online in S. R. Bayne's site, History of Analytic Philosophy.
(For Grice wants to say: "Yes, he is bald". "No, he is not bald: he does not exist". "Yes, I stopped beating my wife. I took an anger-management course". "No, I haven't stopped beating my wife: I never started")
Kramer:
"What I'm proposing is a thought experiment. Replace
"Be Cooperative" with "Don't waste words or time,
whichever is more costly," and see if you don't
derive the CP maxims."
I think WE CAN Derive the CP and the maxims from a general rationality principle as Kasher does in his early 1977 "Conversational maxims and rationality". And as Grice allows in various spots where he notes that he is only interested in things like CP in his 'avowed aim to see conversation as a form of rational behaviour'. Also his principle of economy of rational effort.
Which in a way is back to
(pre-1891)
-- Where are you from?
-- Harborne, Staffordshire.
-- Where are you from?
-- Harborne.
This is all very complicated. Because the idea of 'waste' is very pertinent here. As J. Kennedy notes, his relations did not, he thinks, their whole lives, used "Birmingham" but refered to the thing as "The Town". I can think of similar scenarios for "Buenos Aires" or "London".
The answer:
-- Where are you from?
-- London.
seems pretty uninformative.
-- Where are you from?
-- The South of France.
Perhaps the whole idea of being 'from' is wrong, though. People add,
"originally"
-- Where are you from, originally?
Hawaii.
Perhaps since this is personal we can think of a third-person query:
-- Where did Grice teach?
-- Oxford
-- St. John's.
I can find contexts for both. Etc. I can quote here his example of the black-out city:
It has some interest in that it's the second WJ lecture, and so it seems obvious that the man did change or write them in the interim. For the second one, delivered one week later has him saying:
"In response to my previous lecture, I was given in
informal discussion"
--- this is something academics are aware of. When
I published my first publication, I was given
the permission to add "proceeding" of informal
discussion following, which I did: it's usually
the fun bit of a presentation. Nowadays, lecturers
just ignore the audience, cash and leave in the
next train to where they belong to.
Grice continues, and it's sad he does not credit
the person who made the discussion. Perhaps it
was not AFTER the conference, in alotted time, etc.
"an example which SEEMED to me, as far as it went,
to provide a WELCOME"
-- so not so good as informal discussion. Discussants are supposed to _criticise_, challenge, and find counterexamples.
"kind of support for the picture I have
been presenting in that it appeared
to exhibit a kind of interaction between
the members of my list of maxims which
I HAD NOT FORSEEN."
"Suppose that it is generally known that
New York and Boston [where the lectures took
place, almost -- in Harvard --one wonders
if he stayed in Boston, as I hope he did,
at the Athenaeum, rather than boring
Cambridge, Mass.] were blacked out
last night. And A asks B"
Did C see "Star Trek" last night?
[Grice was called "Trekkie" because he woudn't miss an episode]
"It will be
CONVERSATIONALLY unOBJECTIONABLE
for B, who knows that C was in New York, to reply
"No, he was in a blacked-out city".
"B could have said that C was in New York,
thereby providing a further piece of
information, BUT
in preferring the phrase
'a blacked-out city'
he was implicating (by the maxim
prescribing relevance) a more
appropriate piece of information,
namely, _why_ C was prevented
from seeing "Star Trek""
Here is the 'waste not, want not -- motto old and true' in full blown. Grice continues:
"He cold have provided BOTH pieces of
information by saying"
"He was in New York, which was blacked-out"
"but THE ***GAIN**** would have been **INSUFFICIENT**
to **JUSTIFY** the additional conversational **COST**."
(WoW:42).
Kramer continues:
"If so, perhaps we substitute "Be cooperative" for the longer principle out of expediency, rolling the ball over the spot rather than directly at the pins."
Yes, expediency and dispatch. These are crucial issues in the Gricean model, and I'm glad you bring them to our attention. And it's VERY good to have a colourful metaphor to go with it. Cheers,
JL
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