"''Get thee to a nunnery'' also contains some not very flattering innuendo. The term 'nunnery' was slang for a brothel ('abbess' was used to refer to the madam in charge of the establishment)."
----
This may be confusing.
Suppose then that we DO multiply senses beyond necessity:
nunnery. 1. place with nuns, convent. 2. brothel, i.e. place with prostitutes.
abbess: 1. woman who runs convent. 2. woman who runs brothel. (Now obsolete).
---- The idea of 'obsolete' irriates me beyond measure. I mean, once a conversational implicature, ALWAYS a conversational implicature!
---- Grice does grant that a conventional implicature 'may have started life as a conversational implicature' but surely you cannot POSTULATE (by fiat) that there will not be a new generation that starts using 'nunnery' AGAIN to mean 'brothel' or 'abbess' to mean 'madam'.
--- One thing that is bound to irritate some Griceian is the use of 1, 2, 3, ... in stuff such as "Richard Snary" (dick-s-nary) -- I was watching an interview to Cortazar, the author of Hopscotch: the novel, and he refers to a dictionary as the 'cemetery of words'--.
In any case, consider this entry in wiki:
nunnery. Noun Singulal. Plural: nunneries 1.(archaic) a place of residence for nuns [quotations ▼] 1601: Shakespeare, Hamlet III.i Get thee to a nunnery, why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? 2.(slang) (obsolete) a brothel
----
It strikes me as irritating that they have a 2. I mean. At least it's not coded as a "sense".
There are a few things to consider here. When I pasted it, I didn't know it would retrieve the quote from Shakespeare (I owe all this to J, of course), -- but I note the extended passage sort of cancels the implicature, 'brothel':
'Get thee to a nunnery, why wouldst though be a breeder of sinners?'
True -- a prostitute usually does NOT get pregnant. So, nunnery can steal mean 'whorehouse' there:
"Get to a brothel and apply. (as a prostitute). Why would you be a mother (a breeder of sinners). You just DEAL with them."
I mean, as a prostitute she would DEAL with sinners, not breed them.
But it strikes me as odd that Hamlet would try to avoid Ophelia becoming a 'breeder' of sinners, and just a 'dealer WITH sinners'.
But I'm all for the idea that Shakespeare DID mean 'slut' by "nun". And also that only someone very UN-Griceian would take Hamlet's words at face-value.
When I go to see Shakespeare (his plays, really), I can't disassociate anything I hear with that bust of the man that graces my Swimming-Pool Library! I even have a beautiful replica of the Globe Theatre and one of the largest engravings of the man I ever saw! Genius!
---- (And he influenced Verdi so much that I love him doubly)
From online source, and following remarks by J -- and sorry, L. J. Kramer, while I look for better word than 'fossilised'.
This online remark went:
"Another play on words, nunnery, in this instance, symbolizes both sexual abstinence and sexual perversity. In a cloister, Ophelia would take a vow of chastity, and in a brothel, she would serve as the basest sexual object."
I once coined the phrase ironysm, I think, or something like that. It struck me that some expressions can ONLY be used ironically, or rather that the ironical implicatum may get 'conventionalised', but not in the sense of 'conventional implicature' but rather more like 'fossilised CONVERSATIONAL implicature', since it's metaphorical, or metonymical, or metaphtonymical play:
So a 'nun' possibly became at one time a fixed cliche (via irony) for 'nun'.
------ There is a local piece of pastry which is referred to as "the monk's ball", since it resembles one (as those who've seen them can testify): it's a rather ugly thing, too sugary for my taste. But oddly, some people find 'monk's ball' ("Pass me a monk's ball") as a rude thing to say, so they have conceived of a euphemism: 'a nun's delight'. So a 'nun's delight' works just as well in the circumstances, even though it is perhaps just as gross.
I'm glad I am not a Catholic!
(I was baptised one, but soon enough converted to Church-of-England! -- or "Anglican", strictly).
I dwelt on this in one of my first publications, which Searle read! (We shared a podium for this at the same congress). My paper considered Grice's notion (important, I thought at the time, and still do) of "optimality" when it comes to word-expressions. But I wanted to trace back this idea to the earliest Grice, which is WoW, p. 220 -- originally 1948. Grice writes:
"Perhaps we may make the following generalisations..."
"x meansNN (timeless) that so-and-so" might as a first shot be equated with a statement or disjunction of statements about what 'people' (vague) intend (with qualifications about 'recognition') to effect by x."
----
Next I should do 'tender'.
Nothing too revolutionary about Grice. That is from his 'seminal' "Meaning", which as I say, he wrote in 1948, and got published (by the Strawsons) in 1957. In WoW Grice cares not only to reprint that, but as an 'antecedent' to what forms the 'bulk' of WoW -- and the logical place to find an expansion on that 1948 earlier remark is in the 1967 William James Lecture, No. 6 -- where he will distinguish between 'idiosyncratic' and non-idiosyncratic. Not sure what the line of criterion is, but surely idiosyncratic applies to just ONE utterer.
Grice wants to keep that as basic. It's the "Deutero-Esperanto" of his essay on 'optimality' and 'meaning' (which forms the third stage of this evolution, in "Meaning Revisited" and also repr. in WoW).
---
Etc. -- so one sees how one single volume, rather pretentiously (but amusingly) titled after Locke ('the way of words', versus 'the way of ideas') already comprises three pretty 'distinct' ways to deal with for Austin was just a joke.
"What-is-the-meaning-of-a-'rat'?" in "The Meaning of a Word", in Austin's Philosophical Papers".
"After the device became common in Paris, ... the French created the term "taximètre" for it, from "taxe", a tariff (why the "e" should change to an "i" is unrecorded)."
----- About to create that record:
"Letter from Mme desGrieux to Mademoiselle LePratt,"
--- 'Are you coming by 'taxi'? --- 'TaxE'! --- 'taxi'! --- Your French manners annoy me!
Of course, one has to be suspicious of the word 'meaning' in plural ("meanings"). In German, 'meinung' does not pluralise (with -s).
Anyway, in World Wide Words, today, M. Quinion refers to 'pea-wet':
"a very local term known only around Wigan in Lancashire."
"The British national dish of fish and chips is often accompanied in northern England by a serving of mushy peas, a kind of thick green pea soup made from dried marrowfat peas."
"Now, the water that's strained
off mushy peas is 'pea-wet,' the poor man's version;
it's poured over a serving of chips as a gravy. It was at one time given away to poor children, as part of PEA-WET AND SCRAPS, the scraps being fragments of batter from the fish fryer."
"Get thee to a nunnery!" said Hamlet to Ophelia. Read the footnote and some Oxbridge type informs you that "nunnery" was also slang for...whorehouse at the time. Same for spanish and phrench to some degree (tho' it's quite difficult for most Mericans to pick up on a parisian's wit). Double-entendre, as they say. But I don't think that's a topic most academic philo-types address. They want the language controlled at all time, except perhaps for the flights of whimsy typical of Oxbridge."
Yes.
My favourite flight is A. G. N. Flew's: when he refers to Humpty Dumpty as an anarcho-semanticist.
And if Grice was never admired by Husserl that may be perhaps because Grice DID show an interest in 'those topics' -- such as 'nunnery' = 'whorehouse' via 'conversational implicature'"
My favourite example must be:
grass: material of which lawn is made. ------ Also: marijuana
"To help the grass to grow": to assist in the production of marijuana". Also: to be dead.
----
There are various options here -- it's discussed in "Studies in the Way of Words", chapter 5.
"He is helping the grass to grow"
----
means:
'He is dead' 'He is assisting the material of which lawns are composed to mature' 'He is assisting marijuana to mature.'
It would be hard to think of a situation where ambiguity springs at that level. Especially, since Grice uses the first person, in future tense:
"I shall be helping the grass to grow"
And also adds it as a protasis of a conditional:
"If I shall be then helping the grass to grow, I shall have no time for reading".
He notes that "I shall have no time for reading" does not mean what it says, -- strictly, that he will have no time for ANYTHING -- never mind 'reading'. He suggests it means that he 'will be freed from the troubles of the world'.
---
His main euphemism, unlike mine, which is "make love", was 'die'.
He noted other variants:
"At this point, he joined the heavenly choir"
---- "Since no such thing exists, the implicatum is that he died."
---
He had a problem with two idioms meaning 'to be dead':
"pushing up the daisies"
---- This he found 'vulgar' -- "too established an idiom". He would prefer,
"fertilising the daffodils".
"'Fertilising the daffodils" is less of a cliche, and so, my little niece may have it wrong, which I would enjoy".
---
He also diskliked "kick the bucket".
In general, he preferred idioms that related to the 'event' of 'being dead' (e.g. 'fertilising the daffodils' -- which takes time) to those related to the briefer 'event' of 'dying' ('to kick the bucket' only takes, say, 2 seconds).
---
So, Grice would be the GREAT exception to a philosopher who did not care about such nuances.
----
Of course he only cared about those things to irritate Strawson.
---- and perhaps himself when writing "Causal theory of perception".
For if 'push up the daisies' means what it means (i.e. to move the genus margherita margherita towards a higher position) it can also be 'used' to mean 'to be dead'. This is via
metaphtonymy
---- Grice explicitly has 'metaphor' as conversational implicature. It works via implicature BUT also 'disimplicature':
"You are the cream in my coffee"
Since it is hardly meant that you are a white liquid, the idea is that you 'drop' that entailment ("Cream is a white liquid, derived from the cow") and work out a similar proposition -- less informative, no doubt:
--- You are LIKE the cream in my coffee.
On the assumption that the utterer LIKES the cream in his coffee, the implicature then is yielded: "you are my pride and joy".
A friend, M. Attleo, suggested that since cream is high in cholesterol, it means that you are my 'bane'.
Grice prefers that meaning to be derived via "implicating" an irony ON the 'metaphorical' implicatum.
His example:
"He is SUCH a FINE friend" -- said of a scoundrel. THe irony is of course that he is NOT a fine friend. Similarly, an obvious compliment, like "You are the cream in my coffee" may mean 'you are my bane'.
----
There are other examples, but in general, metaphor and metonymy (conversational implicata) are then attached to the 'meaning' of expressions.
My favourite is 'gay'.
"Gay" meant 'cheerful', but by 1880, in London, it was started to be used for 'female prostitutes': "We saw a lot of gay ladies around the Piccadilly area". The implication (or entailment) cannot be that these ladies were cheerful -- it was more the AREA where they were standing and their attitude. Now, in this case, there seems to be a 'semantic' connection: a prostitute is supposed to be cheerful.
Later on the term started to mean 'someone who enjoys the sexual company of one's own sex' -- e.g. lesbian -- but Quentin Crisp objected: "By the acquaintance of some of my friends, 'sads' would be a better descript'".
Or take my favourite, 'make love', and parts of the 'body'. "Gay" is such an ellusive term that there is NO WAY to just "EX-plicate" what you mean. So you are bound to use an 'implicature' (a metaphor, metonymy, or synechdoche). Perhaps the same applies to 'make love' (which is a euphemism). In this case, an Anglo-Saxon type may claim that the F-word is the one that EX-plicates what all the other 'implicate' (via metaphor or metonymy or metaphtonymy), and I would agree.
Even the f-word has been criticised -- by Dale Spender, typically -- as sexist. While it is possible to say, in describing an event, that she f-ed him, Spender notes that there is an 'implicatum' of the type carried by the mere 'active' versus 'passive' voice --. She lived many years in Australia (in fact she is Australian) and notes that in the aboriginal languages, the f-word is not used in the 'active' voice like that -- or the 'passive'. "Australian aboriginal languages lack a voice," she concludes.
""Get thee to a nunnery!" said Hamlet to Ophelia. Read the footnote and some Oxbridge type informs you that "nunnery" was also slang for...whorehouse at the time."
Very clever.
So, here I think we can apply what Grice is up to when claiming 'meaning =/= use':
1. 'nunnery' means nunnery.
---- This above is odd, but true. I mean, try to imagine a context where you would be willing to have that. It's however, Tarski at his worst, as used by Davidson in 'Truth and meaning' in Synthese, and that Grice is trying to defend in "Logic and Conversation" and his other essays on "Meaning", more speficically (his "Utterer's meaning, sentence meaning, and word meaning").
2. "nunnery" means whorehouse.
Is FALSE. What that Oxbridge type above should have is THIS footnote:
---- "It may be claimed that Hamlet is conversationally implicating -- apres jargon by H. P. Grice -- that Ophelia should get to a whorehouse -- vide Birth, "Notes on 'nunnery' as code for 'whore house' in Tudor England: the "Hamlet" evidence". It turns out that the main evidence for nunnery implicating 'whorehouse' comes from Hamlet!
-----
"nunnery" is a composite out of "nun" -- not a composite out of "whore". So the idea is that 'nun' was also used as 'whore'. But no such record exists!
"He was caught in the grip of a vice" in "Logic and Conversation" (WoW:ii) he returns to that lexeme ('vice') on p. 291 -- and he says something, or wonders about something which is SO obvious to me! having checked the etymology, granted!
Grice is concerned about 'mean' -- the lexeme. Surely by Modified Occam's razor, we shouldn't multiply the senses of 'mean' beyond necessity. This is NOT T. Wharton's reference to 'mean' as in 'mean Mr. Mustard", or 'mean' as from Latin 'medianus'. It's 'mean' as in "Spots mean measles" and "'Spot' means spot".
-----
Grice writes:
"It this double USE of the word
'mean' just like the double use
of the word 'vice' to refer sometimes
to something approximating to a sin
and sometimes to a certain sort of
instrument used by carpenters?"
This is rhetorical.
But he adds, too guardedly for my taste:
"One is PRETTY much inclined"
---- I am SO inclined that I fall --
"in the latter case ['vice'] to say that
there are TWO words"
as any American would testify, since they spell it 'vyse'.
"which are pronounced and
written the same"
---- not if you are an American. The 'written' I mean.
In many respects, Noah Webster was a genius. There are ways of writing American English which are superior to the British ways. "Vyse" is an American geniality.
On the other hand, I don't think someone can EVER be, in real-life,
confused as to whether someone meant either 'a sort
of instrument used by a carpenter' and 'something
approximating a sin'.
Surely, "caught in the grip of a vyse" seems so convoluted that perhaps Grice heard it from Max Miller or some other 'music-hall' stand up comedian. They rely a lot on puns, those!
"It would be unwise to neglect a further direction of inquiry, namely proper characterisation of the relation between words on the one hand and on the other the sounds or shapes which constitute their physical realisations".
Exactly Kramer's distinction, elsewhere, between logical/physical devices.
Grice goes on:
"Such reflections may be expected to throw light on the precise SENSE in which words are insturments, and may well be of interset both in themselves and as a needed antidote to the facile acceptance of such popular but dubiously well founded hypothesis about langauge as the alleged type-token distinction"
--- Blame Pierce on it!
---
Grice goes on:
"It is perhaps NATURAL to assume that
in the case of words
the fundamental ENTITIES"
--- alla Kramer on spacetime, as per the "Scientific American" he was reading --
"are PARTICULAR
shapes and sounds (word tokens)
and that words, in the sense
of word-types are probably
regarded as CLASSES or sets
of mutually resembling word tokens."
So far so good. Gonzalo Pereyra (an Oxonian) would be pleased that Grice is endorsing his favoured Wittersian family-resemblance theory of universalia.
Grice goes on:
"But I think taht such a view can be
seen to be in conflict with
COMMON SENSE (to whatever extent
that is a drawback)."
--- and here comes Grice's suit:
"John's rendering of the word 'soot' may be INdistinguishable from James's rendering of the word 'suit';
BUT:
it does NOT follow"
---- This is pace The Grice Club which J says is famous for its non-sequiturs.
"from this that
when they [John and James]
produce these renderings,
they are uttering
THE SAME WORD,
or producing different
TOKENS of the same word-type."
--- Why?
Well, he goes on:
"Indeed, there is something
tempting about the idea that,
in order to allow for all
admissible vagaries of rendering,
what are to count for a given person
as renderings of particular words
can only be determined by reference
to more or less extended segments
of his discourse;"
---- not yet abstract enough!
Grice goes on:
"and this in turn perhaps prompts the
idea that particular
AUDIBLE or visible
renderings of words are
ONLY ESTABLISHED as such
by being CONCEIVED"
in an abstract way, I'd add
"by the speaker or writer
as realisations of JUST those words.
One might say perhaps"
--- in a realist, not Occamist vein,
"that words come first and only later come their realisations".
Grice writes that rather than arguing for the new precept or slogan, his
"primary aim", rather "is to determine
how any such distinction between
meaning and use is to be drawn,"
---- but this is what Ullman tried, and Ullman is no philosopher. So Grice goes on:
"and where lie the limits
of its PHILOSOPHICAL utility"
----- People (I don't care about people but I do care when people include philosophers!) usually forget about those manifestos by Grice. There is another in the earlier reprints of, e.g. "Presupposition and conversational implicature" -- not in WoW --: i.e. manifestos about the 'philosophical utility'.
Grice was NEVER interested in the nature of conversation per se, or the helpfulness, or cooperative principle, or even IMPLICATURE. He was a philosopher, not a linguist! His only interest was in the 'philosophical utility', which he found MAJOR when it came to 'implicature' (if conversational, rather than 'conventional').
In a way, it reminds me (and others -- e.g. my tutor E. A. Rabossi) J. L. Austin in the last lecture for the William James series -- "How to do things with words". After pedantic distinctions on rhemic, phonic, phatic, illocution, perlocution, locution, and explicit performatives, Austin adds, "And the fun is when you start to apply this to philosophy!".
In Modified Occam's Razor, Kramer speaks of 'lead'.
"Roots, I think, are real. But "senses"? What significance attaches to the number of "senses" a word has? And is the matter circular. Is "lead" one word or two? How many senses does it have? Why do we care? By what authority does etymology assign meaning to modern words? Isn't etymology merely interesting but usage all that really matters? And if a word can have more than one usage, again, what is a "sense" that we should care about it?"
Excellent questions. Grice should have been offended that Americans decided to spell 'vyse' vyse -- for that's the ONLY example he gives of heterophony, as it were -- or homophony, rather (but surely there is no homophone unless there is a heterophone).
He's example (WoW: ii -- and again WoW:xvi) being,
"He was caught in the grip of a vice"
where 'vice'
--- "something resembling a sin" --- "a tool carpenters' use".
---
This applies to 'lead' as you 'read' it rather than pronounce it, though -- 'heterograph' -- or 'homograph', rather than 'homophone', then.
----
Anyway, back to Kramer's comment:
"Roots, I think, are real."
And never be SO sure. For, after all, PHONES are real. Phonemes are already abstract. And I expect a root is composed of phonemes, rather than phones. I once wrote a paper on this, which I must have somewhere, for a seminar led by M. P. on "Phenomenology and the Social Sciences"! I was quoting from O'Connor's Phonetics (Penguin!) -- he says that nominalism/realism/conceptualism (the old philosophical dispute) reappears in the very definition of the abstract idea of a phoneme. Is a phoneme a SET of phones, or does it have a separate reality, etc.
----
Kramer goes on:
"But "senses"?"
Exactly. What irritates me particularly is that 'sensus', here, does not mean anything related to 'aesthetics', or 'sensuality'. Apparently it has to do with spin. Spin parallel. Two senses: to the right, and to the left. THAT 'sense' of 'sense'.
Incidentally, that's a good title for a book, "The sense of sense" -- after all, Koell has a book, "The concept of concept" and Ogden/Richards, the meaning of meaning.
Kramer:
"What significance attaches to the number of "senses" a word has?"
Exactly. I was once discussing this with one (THE one) Adam Kilgariff, in FLN-L, a forum led by Brigitte Nehrlich, and Kilgariff sent me some papers he had written, including one, a genial one, which he entitled, "I don't believe in word senses". He worked for the Longman Dictionary. Kilgariff gets very technical about this, but he endorses a 'nominalist' position which defines an alleged 'sense' as a bundle of 'usages' (or 'uses' if you must). VERY statistical.
Kramer:
"And is the matter circular."
Yes. But mind, the circle is THE perfect figure. M. Chase, who I know Kramer and I disagree with on occasions, once cited for me a book on the "Circle" written by a neo-Platonic. The circle of wisdom I think it was called.
Kramer:
"Is "lead" one word or two? How many senses does it have?"
Grice discusses, soot and suit, I think, in WoW. Will see if I find the quote, although I may have discussed this in this blog when I was doing that Strand 5 (in reply to R. B. Jones, so I may be able to retrieve the quote with the aid of the search engine the blog provides).
Kramer:
"Why do we care?"
I think in the case of Grice, he didn't. He would speak of "logical form" or 'truth-conditions' as closer to his heart. At one time, he even feels disgusted to speak of the 'senses' of a thing as short as "or" (which he compares to 'to'). So, I think he was having in mind pretentious books talking about senses like L. J. Cohen, "The diversity of meaning" -- or Ullman -- semanticists who don't know the first thing about Occamist parsimony and are always willing to TRIplicate senses. Elsewhere, for example, among linguists who should know better, I was quoted from Cruse's boring textbook on semantics (Cambridge U. P.) and his idea of 'faces' or something -- as being the ultimate word on 'semantics'! Totally overprofusive quatriplication of 'senses'!
I tend to think that things (i.e. words) usually have ONE sense. Horn called this monoguism -- but I prefer 'uniguism', since there's something hybrid about mono- (Greek) and -guism (Latin) (cfr. 'sociology').
----
The problem (actually the solution) is that since a sense is 1, surely even if you MULTIPLY senses (Grice, "Senses should not be multiplied beyond necessity" -- his modified Occam's razor) you cannot get anything HIGHER than 1:
1 1 times 1 = 1 1 times 1 times 1 = 1
etc.
Kramer:
"By what authority does etymology assign meaning to modern words?"
Exactly. Horn coined etymythology to have it in the right place!
Kramer:
"Isn't etymology merely interesting but usage all that really matters?"
Yes. But then I am biased. If I were to go to Thailand, say -- and show some interest in their native language, I would possibly BE interested in Thai etymologies. Suppose that they tell me that etymologically, the word they use to say "man" originally meant 'horse' (because of a myth they had, etc.). Surely I shouldn't care less. "No, it doesn't mean 'horse' anymore; it means 'man', plain" -- they try to encourage me. But I would feel very ODD calling a man a 'horse' -- or a horse a man for that matter.
Luckily Asian lingos are mainly idiographical -- but apparently they are so difficult to read that dailies take longer than a day to write -- never mind read. Most people watch CNN, though.
Kramer:
"And if a word can have more than one usage, again, what is a "sense" that we should care about it?"
Yes. Parkinson cared to reprint the proceedings of a symposium in the Aristotelian Society of London for his booklet, "Theories of meaning". I think the essay is boring, but it by Ryle, and he is at his pedantic best. He distinguishes between 'use' and 'usage'; and throws 'meaning' and a few other things onto the bargain.
Of course, the point of the existence of Grice -- Travis says in his review of "Ways of Words" -- was to prove Austin wrong. There are no uses, there are no usages, there are no meanings. There are just intentions!
Grice's Prolegomena to "Way of Words" (which he only published in 1989, but was a lecture delivered in 1967) is all about the vagueness, fuzziness and all bad things about the 'slogan' popularised by Witters,
"meaning is use".
Will see if I can select a good passage or sentence from it to quote.
I was referring to the complexities involved in just browsing at French's bibliographical references for the $tanford entry on individuation in quantum mechanics. Enough to turn Feyerabend back to a good empiricist.
---!
And the body of the essay by French is even MORE complex -- if one (I should, after opera) care to abridge a paragraph or two!
---
•Adams, R., 1979, "Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity", Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979): 5-26. •Auyang, S. Y., 1995, How is Quantum Field Theory Possible? Oxford: Oxford University Press. •Belousek, D., 2000, "Statistics, Symmetry and the Conventionality of Indistinguishability in Quantum Mechanics," Foundations of Physics.30(2000): 1-34. •Born, M., 1943, Experiment and Theory in Physics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. •Brown, H., Salqvist, E. and Bacciagaluppi, G., 1999, "Remarks on identical particles in de Broglie-Bohm theory", Physics LettersA 251 (1999): 229-235. •Butterfield, J., 1993, "Interpretation and Identity in Quantum Theory", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 24 (1993): 443-476. •Cao, T.L. (ed.), 1999, Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. •Cassirer, E., 1937, Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics, New Haven: Yale University, 1956; translation of Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modern Physik, Goteborg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1937. •Cantor, G., 1955, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, New York: Dover. •Castellani, E., 1998a, "Galilean Particles: An Example of Constitution of Objects", in Castellani, E. (ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 181-194. •Castellani, E., 1998b, "Introduction", in Castellani, E. (ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 3-17. •Cortes, A., 1976, "Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles: A False Principle", Philosophy of Science 43 (1976): 491-505. •Cushing, J. T., Fine, A. and Goldstein, S., 1996, Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. •da Costa, N. C. A. and Krause, D., 1994, "Schrödinger Logics", Studia Logica 53 (1994): 533-550. •de Muynck, W., 1975, "Distinguishable and Indistinguishable-Particle Descriptions of Systems of Identical Particles", International Journal of Theoretical Physics 14 (1975): 327-346. •Dalla Chiara, M. L. and Toraldo di Francia, G., 1993, "Individuals, Kinds and Names in Physics", in Corsi, G., et al. (eds), Bridging the Gap: Philosophy, Mathematics, Physics, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 261-283. •Dalla Chiara M. L. and Toraldo di Francia, G., 1995, "Identity Questions from Quantum Theory", in Gavroglu, K., et al. (eds), Physics, Philosophy and the Scientific Community, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 39-46. •Dalla Chiara, M. L., Giuntini, R. and Krause, D., 1998, "Quasiset Theories for Microobjects: A Comparision", in Castellani, E. (ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 142-152. •Dieks, D. and Vermaas, P. (eds.), 1998, The Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. •Earman, J., 1989, World Enough and Space-Time, Cambridge: MIT Press. •French, S., 1989, "Identity and Individuality in Classical and Quantum Physics", Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (1989): 432-446. •French, S., 1998, "On the Withering Away of Physical Objects", in Castellani, E. (ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 93-113. •French, S. and Krause, D., 1999, "The Logic of Quanta", in T. Cao (ed.), Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 324-342. •French, S. and Krause, D., Identity in Physics: A Formal, Historical and Philosophical Approach, Oxford: Oxford University Press forthcoming. •French, S. and Ladyman, J., 2003, "Remodelling Structural Realism: Quantum Physics and the Metaphysics of Structure", Synthese, 136, (2003): 31-56. •French, S. and Redhead, M., 1988, "Quantum Physics and the Identity of Indiscernibles", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (1988): 233-246. •Hesse, M., 1963, Models and Analogies in Science, London: Sheed and Ward; reprinted Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966. •Huggett, N., 1995, "What are Quanta, and Why Does it Matter?", PSA 1994 (Proceedings of the 1994 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association) Vol. 2, East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association (1995): 69-76. •Huggett, N., 1997, "Identity, Quantum Mechanics and Common Sense", The Monist 80 (1997): 118-130. •Huggett, N., 1999, "Atomic Metaphysics", The Journal of Philosophy 96 (1999): 5-24. •Krause, D., 1992, "On a Quasi-set Theory", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 33 (1992): 402-411. •Ladyman, J., 1998, "What is Structural Realism?", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 29 (1998): 409-424. •Lavine, S., 1991, "Is Quantum Mechanics an Atomistic Theory?", Synthese 89 (1991): 253-271. •Lewis, D., 1986, On the Plurality of Worlds, Oxford: Blackwell. •Marcus, Barcan R., 1993, Modalities: Philosophical Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press. •Massimi, M., 2001, "Exclusion Principle and the Identity of Indiscernibles: a Response to Margenau's Argument",British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52, (2001): 303-330. •Mittelstaedt, P. and Castellani, E., 2000, "Leibniz's Principle, Physics and the Language of Physics", Foundations of Physics 30, (2000): 1585-1604. •Post, H., 1963, "Individuality and Physics", The Listener 70 (1963): 534-537; reprinted in Vedanta for East and West 32: 14-22. •Quine, W.V.O., 1969, "Speaking of Objects", Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York: Columbia University Press. •Redhead, M., 1983, "Quantum Field Theory for Philosophers", in Asquith, P.D. and Nickles, T. (eds), PSA 1982 (Proceedings of the 1982 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association) Vol. 2, East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association (1983): 57-99. •Redhead, M. and Teller, P., 1991, "Particles, Particle Labels, and Quanta: the Toll of Unacknowledged Metaphysics", Foundations of Physics 21 (1991): 43-62. •Redhead, M. and Teller, P., 1992, "Particle Labels and the Theory of Indistinguishable Particles in Quantum Mechanics", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (1992): 201-218. •Rickles, D., French, S. and Saatsi, J., forthcoming, Structural Foundations of Quantum Gravity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. •Rovelli, C., 1999, "Localization in Quantum Field Theory: How Much of Quantum Field Theory is Compatible With What We Know about Space-Time?", in Cao, T. (ed.), Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 207-229. •Saunders, S., 2003, "Physics and Leibniz's Principles", in Brading, K. and Castellani, E., eds.Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections, , Cambridge University Press (2003). •Schrödinger, E., 1952, Science and Humanism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. •Simons, P., 1998, "Farewell to Substance: A Differentiated Leave-taking", Ratio 11 (1998): 235-252. •Stachel, J., 1999, "Comments", in Cao, T. (ed.), Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 233-240. •Teller, P., 1983, "Quantum Physics, the Identity of Indiscernibles and Some Unanswered Questions", Philosophy of Science 50 (1983): 309-319. •Teller, P., 1995, An Interpretative Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, Princeton: Princeton University Press. •Teller, P., 1998, "Quantum Mechanics and Haecceities", in Castellani, E. (ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 114-141. •Teller, P., 1999, "The Ineliminable Classical Face of Quantum Field Theory", in Cao, T. (ed.), Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 314-323. •van Fraassen, B., 1984, "The Problem of Indistinguishable Particles", in Cushing, J. T., Delaney, C. F., and Gutting, G. M. (eds), Science and Reality: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Science: Essays in Honor of Erman McMullin, Notre Dame: University Notre Dame Press, pp. 153-172. •van Fraassen, B., 1985, "Statistical Behaviour of Indistinguishable Particles: Problems of Interpretation", in Mittelstaedt, P., and Stachow, E. W. (eds), Recent Developments in Quantum Logic Mannheim, pp. 161-187. •van Fraassen, B., 1991, Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View, Oxford: Oxford University Press. •Weyl, H., 1931, The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics, London: Methuen and Co.; English trans. 2nd ed.
This is from Chapman's material. The quote is in the Grice Papers, Bancroft. It reads:
Grice writes:
"It repeatedly astonishes me that
people who whould themselves
readily admit to being devoid
of training, experience, or
knowledge in philosophy, and who
have plainly been endowed by
nature with no special gifts
of philosophical intelligence
should be so ready to
instruct professional philosophers
about the contents of the
body of philosophical truths."
------
------
The context can be provided on request. But I would refer it to the $tanford issue we were discussing. The concept of individuation in quantum mechanics -- as per that entry. The things get so complicated, that just to narrow the thing to the 'ontological commitment' issue would need the scientist (physicist) to be pretty aware of the 'ontological' discussion.
Usually, it is the philosopher who has to 'translate' all that the scientist says to the 'philosophical jargon'. But in some cases, the implicature is other. And you get, e.g., a claim for 'eliminative materialist' (Grice's 'devil of scientism') on the emptiness of some 'philosophical truth' when no constructive counterpart is being offered. I am speaking VERY vaguely, and must get ready for the opera!
J said, when somebody does the right thing, it won't matter if she was an eliminative materialist.
I would agree!
But I have strong memories of my time when I have to pass that course on metaphysics!
I had to write and write and write -- on stuff! I got an A+, but still!
So, I would qualify J's view above: it wouldn't matter, unless you ARE doing 'metaphysics'. In which case, if you are an eliminative materialist does matter.
Most scientists don't care, as J is well aware. As he notes, there are a lot of nurses, and other people who do the technical work, etc. --. The scientist who has to answer the question, Quine's -- on what there is, is possibly confused when you start quoting from Duns Scotus's haecceitas.
In this regard, the $tanford Encyclopedia entry on the existence of theoretical entities (that I referred to earlier) is a good one. There are quantum-mechanical assumptions that do not fit the canons of 'individuation', etc. Thus far, no big problem. But then the things become so metaphysical DENSE that you wish the scientist were able to discuss metaphysics rather than denegate it! I may quote Grice on that!
J said that there's good stuff in Preston's entry for Feyerabend in the $tanford Encyclopedia. I agree. This is my commentary on the timeline:
"1924 Born in Vienna. Son of a civil servant and a seamstress."
O. T. O. H., Grice born, son of a musician (cello player) and a woman (Mabel Fenton).
"1940 Was inducted into the Arbeitsdienst (the work service introduced by the Nazis)."
1940. Grice was inducted into the Royal Navy (the work service introduced by Mountbatten).
"1942 Drafted into the Pioneer Corps of the German army. After basic training, volunteered for Officers' School."
1940. Grice gets tired of 'sailing'. He is moved to the Admiralty office in London ("A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square").
"1943 Learned of his mother's suicide."
Grice never learned of his mother's suicide.
"1944 Decorated, Iron Cross. Advanced to Lieutenant. Lectured to Officers' School."
Grice decorated his Christmas tree. "Not something I would do -- but for the sake of Karen" (his daughter).
"1945 Shot in the hand and in the belly during the retreat from the Russian Army. The bullet damaged his spinal nerves."
Grice was hit by a cricket ball in the North Oxford Club he belonged to. No visual damage.
"1946 Received a fellowship to study singing and stage-management in Weimar. Joined the “Cultural Association for the Democratic Reform of Germany”."
"No singing for me!," Grice would say. He did play the piano for Clifton. He found singing boring.
"1947 Returned to Vienna to study history and sociology at the University. Soon transferred to physics. First article, on the concept of illustration in modern physics, published. Feyerabend “a raving positivist” at the time."
Grice's first essay was "Privation and Negation". "This must be a very early paper," Chapman surmises. "Instead of his Oxford address, it gives the address of his parents in Harborne".
"1948 First visit to the Alpbach seminar of the Austrian College Society. Became secretary of the seminars. Met Karl Popper and Walter Hollitscher. Married first wife, Edeltrud."
Grice married his first wife in 1940. Oddly Urmson has this date wrong in his obituary for Grice in "The Independent" -- as 1944. Surely Grice would not have survived the war without "the wife".
(Don't retrieve the wrong implicature, 'his first wife', that he had a second).
"1949 Became student leader of the “Kraft Circle”, a student philosophy club centred around Viktor Kraft, Feyerabend's dissertation supervisor and a former member of the Vienna Circle."
So this is the Vienna Circle Circle.
---
Grice became a member of the playgroup.
--- As J. Huggins commented, "While global warming was taking place, the Play-group played (games)."
"Ludwig Wittgenstein visited the Kraft Circle to give a talk. Feyerabend also met Bertolt Brecht."
In that order.
Quine gave a talk for the playgroup. It bored them. Or 'it', if you must.
"1951 Received doctorate in philosophy for his thesis on “basic statements”."
Rather than 'observational' statements. In Oxford, it is a no-no (an unclassy thing to do) to pursue a doctorate ('surely we don't need doctors to doctor us around here').
"Applied for a British Council scholarship to study under Wittgenstein at Cambridge. But Wittgenstein died before Feyerabend arrived in England, so Feyerabend chose Popper as his supervisor instead."
And lied in the form: "I said that Popper was in Cambridge". "With that money I bought my first car".
"1952 Came to England, to study under Popper at the London School of Economics. Concentrated on the quantum theory and Wittgenstein."
NOT in that order. "I tried to combine Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with Heisenberg -- and failed (miserably) but the British Council would not know, would it?"
"Studied the typescript of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and prepared a summary of the book."
Got as far as section IV.
"Befriended another of Popper's students, Joseph Agassi."
An Italian.
"1953 Feyerabend returned to Vienna. Popper applied for an extension to his scholarship, but Feyerabend decided to remain in Vienna instead."
And attend the opera, which he missed.
Vienna is very rich musically. It is not "The Merry Widow", you know.
"Translated Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies into German."
As he would say, "I untranslated, rather." implicating that Popper's English leaves a lot to be desired (by Feyerabend, no less).
"Declined the offer to become Popper's research assistant. Agassi took the post. Feyerabend became research assistant to Arthur Pap in Vienna."
This Pap is important because he translated stuff.
"1954 First articles on quantum mechanics and on Wittgenstein published. Pap introduced Feyerabend to Herbert Feigl."
'Feigl' is pronounced /feigl/. Oddly, Grice's first name was also "Herbert". It was a common Germanic name in fashion at the time (Nowadays, most Grices are called "Scott").
"1955 Took up his first full-time academic appointment as lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bristol, England."
Which Grice would NEVER have done. "Bristol bored me to tears," Grice would reminisce. It was his mother's silly idea to send him to Clifton. "I would have preferred Athens", he will memorise.
"His summary of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations appeared as a review of the book in The Philosophical Review."
which Grice did not read. He hardly read Strawson's review of "Philosophical Investigations" (repr. in Pitcher). "I don't think I NEED a review of such a clear book," he'd say.
"1956 Married second wife, Mary O'Neill."
In this, he diverged from Grice, who NEVER married Mary O'Neill.
"Published an article on the “paradox of analysis”. Feyerabend got to know the quantum physicist David Bohm, whose ideas were to influence him substantially."
"They literally bombed me" -- he said (of the ideas).
"1957 Gave a paper on the quantum theory of measurement to the Colston Research Symposium at the University of Bristol."
Bristol is not far from Clifton. In fact, some people wrongly say that Clifton IS in Bristol.
The earliest document on Grice is in the "Clifton Review": "Paul Grice marvelled us with a version of Ravel".
"1958 Took up visiting lectureship at the University of California, Berkeley. Two of his most important early papers, “An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience”, and “Complementarity” appeared in the proceedings of the Aristotelian Society."
Grice's paper, while Grice was older than Feyerabend, appeared in the Aristotelian Society's proceedings for 1961. Is that fair?
"In them, Feyerabend argued against positivism and in favour of a scientific realist account of the relation between theory and experience, largely on grounds familiar from Karl Popper's falsificationist views."
Grice failed to read this.
"1959 Accepted a permanent position at Berkeley, and applied for a Green Card to work in the US."
"I had to pretend that 'to philosophise' was to work -- But I managed to pour all my anarchism in my books!"
"1960 As a result of earlier discussions with Herbert Feigl, Feyerabend published “Das Problem der Existenz theoretischer Entitäten”, in which he argued that there is no special “problem” of theoretical entities, and that all entities are hypothetical."
There are echoes of this in Grice, "Method in philosophical psychology". Grice certainly argued that quarks, but also 'souls' are theoretical entities. So what. Grice would prefer 'theoretical concept'. "Theoretical entity" has a moronic (oxymoronic) ring to it.
"Gave two lectures to Oberlin College, Ohio, in which he embroidered on Popper's views about the pre-Socratic thinkers."
Grice would often visit this college.
"1962 “Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism” appeared. Criticised existing empiricist accounts of explanation and theoretical reduction (Hempel, Nagel), and introduced the concept of incommensurability, based on the “contextual theory of meaning” which Feyerabend claimed to find in Wittgenstein's Investigations."
But nodoby else did!
"1963 “How to be a Good Empiricist”, a position paper summing up his point of view, was published, along with his two main articles on the Mind/Body Problem in which he introduced the position now known as “eliminative materialism”".
"Good" in 'good empiricist' is a good one.
"1965 Publication of the first part of the essay “Problems of Empiricism”, and his “Reply to Criticism”, in which Feyerabend made his last serious attempt to construct a “tolerant”, “disinfected” empiricism."
Meanwhile Grice was progressing towards his irreverent, conservative, reactionary rationalism."
---- Feyerabend would later recollect in letter dated May 1971 to Lakatos: "Being with Grice today made me a rationalist -- but only almost"".
"Although beginning to put some distance between himself and Popper, Feyerabend was still able to write a glowing review of Popper's Conjectures and Refutations."
in German, not.
"1967–8 Focus of his published papers had by now moved to “theoretical pluralism”, the view that in order to maximise the chances of falsifying existing theories, scientists should construct and defend as many alternative theories as possible."
Pluralism relates to Carnap's toleranz, but I'll be damned if Feyerabend credited Carnap.
"Feyerabend's articles “On a Recent Critique of Complementarity” defended Niels Bohr's views against Popper's critique. Popper not amused."
Popper WAS not amused. Preston should not be eliding. It does not help one to retrieve the implicatures.
"1969 In a tiny article, “Science Without Experience”, Feyerabend finally gave up the attempt to be an empiricist, arguing that in principle experience is necessary at no point in the construction, comprehension or testing of empirical scientific theories."
How to be a BAD empiricist, then?
"1970 Publication of “Consolations for the Specialist”, in which Feyerabend attacked Popper from a Kuhnian point of view, and the essay version of “Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge”, in which “epistemological anarchism” was revealed for the first time."
While he was lecturing, of all places, at Yale!
"Feyerabend claimed to be applying the liberalism of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty to scientific methodology. Published little during the next few years."
but visited Italy.
"1974 Death of Feyerabend's friend Imre Lakatos, putting paid to their plans to produce a dialogue volume, For and Against Method."
Why? What has putting paid to do with a contingency like that?
"Feyerabend, lecturing at the University of Sussex, was ill too. Published a scathing review of Popper's Objective Knowledge."
which Popper ignored, dutifully.
"1975 Appearance of Feyerabend's first book, Against Method, setting out “epistemological anarchism”, whose main thesis was that there is no such thing as the scientific method."
He quotes from Cole Porter whose "Anything goes" he saw in a student revue at the Yale cabaret.
"Great scientists are methodological opportunists who use any moves that come to hand, even if they thereby violate canons of empiricist methodology."
Etc.
"1976–7 Feyerabend replies to most of the major reviewers of Against Method. Got depressed."
Oddly, Chapman notes that Grice would often get depressed too. "Into one of his broods", as they said.
"Published his first major article on relativism: the first time he explicitly endorsed the view."
Protagoras had done that without so much fuss".
"1978 Science in a Free Society appears, including replies to reviewers of Against Method. Some clarification of epistemological anarchism, and very little retreat from the position set out in AM. Explored further the political implications of epistemological anarchism."
While he became an American citizen -- "I am an American anarchist in the tradition of Warren Beaty in "Reds"", he would say.
"The book also included one of Feyerabend's major endorsements of relativism, one of the views for which he was becoming known. First volume of the German edition of Feyerabend's philosophical papers appears. (Feyerabend published increasingly in German from this point onwards)."
Austrian, rather. "I wouldn't call Austrian German, or vice versa."
"1981 English publication of the first two volumes of Feyerabend's Philosophical Papers, with new material in introductory chapters."
"1983 Met Grazia Borrini at his Berkeley lectures."
of Italian descent. They will later marry in 1989, but this time line gets to 1988, since Grice died then. Count: Feyerabend had three wives; Grice just one.
"1984 Publishes “Science as an Art”, in which he defends an explicitly relativistic account of the history of science according to which there is change, but no “progress”. Also continues his campaign to rehabilitate Ernst Mach."
who was dead.
"1987 Publication of Farewell to Reason, a volume collecting some of the papers Feyerabend had published between 1981 and 1987. Relativism again at the forefront, especially in its “Protagorean” version."
Feyerabend's Greek left a lot to be desired, so Protagorean is loose here.
"1988 Second, revised edition of Against Method, omitting the long chapter on the history of the visual arts, but now incorporating parts of Science in a Free Society, appeared."
The illustrations on the visual arts section were omitted in the paperback edition in Hungarian, alas. ("To print the book with the illustrations, as Feyerabend intended, would have triplicated the price of the volume. Plus they are unnecessary.")
J was saying that Feyerabend's eliminative materialism lasted from Oct. 1956 to Nov. 1962. So what?
Once an eliminative materialist, all-ways an eliminative materialist.
--- In a way, this differs from Grice. Grice found Russell's "My philosophical development" a bore.
"Philosophers don't develop," he would say.
Grice never changed ONE idea in his lifetime.
I would often discuss this with Arlo-Costa whose PhD is on 'belief change'. I would say, "Surely it is impossible to change a belief". "It may, for you", he would reassure me.
[PDF]The Concept of Trying ubiquity thesis Ä… was perhaps first defended in 1967 by Paul Grice. (1989, pp. ... This is Brian O'Shaughnessy's Argument from Possible Intimidation (as I ... www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118998152/articletext?... - Similar
---
Matter of fact, in PGRICE, Harman notes that Grice first defended this at Brandeis, as any member of the Grice Club should know.
That was so much earlier than 1967, that it hurts!
[PDF]Trying without Willing: An Essay in the ... arguments, focusing most of his efforts on Brian O'Shaughnessy's work.2 ... In Gricean fashion, O'Shaughnessy grants it might be misleading to say that ... www.jstor.org/stable/2693636 - Similar
---
Yet, the obit. of O'Shaughnessy pedantically claims:
"their treatments of these themes drew on a much richer philosophical and cultural tradition, and the style with which they addressed them was anything but ordinary language philosophy."
---- But you surely shouldn't have your cake and eat it.
[PDF]Trying and the Arguments from Total Failure elsewhere, for example, Grice 1989, ch. 1 (orig. 1967), O'Shaughnessy 1973; McCann 1975; Hornsby. 1980, ch. 3, Armstrong 1981; McGinn 1982, ch. ... www.springerlink.com/index/c62206g368157w16.pdf - Similar
See other references to 'unpublished William James lectures' when discussing O'Shaughnessy on trying.
The Concept of Trying, by Severin Schroeder, Student of Christ Church, Oxford, in Philosophical Investigations, vol. 8.
Schroeder (no reference to the cat) writes:
"It is widely held that whenever
someone
φs,
that person tries to do φ"
--- rather than
"tries AND does" as my greengrocer says. (He also says 'apple's').
Schroeder writes:
"I examine arguments by [the recently deceased Aussie-born, Oxford-trained] B. O'Shaughnessy and J.[ennifer, a female] Hornsby, and considerations by [H.] P. Grice in support of that thesis."
"I argue that none of them are convincing."
To him. He forgets to add, "to him". They are convincing TO ME (Grice's) and Schroder should know that.
Schroeder goes on:
"The remainder of the paper"
or essay. As Grice said, "A paper is, strictly, ONE page. Some of my tutees would disimplicate at this point"
"defends an analysis of the concept of trying along the lines opposed by Grice et al."
He can do that because he thought he was safe at Christ Church. Try to (or try and) oppose Grice at Oxford's BEST and only philosophy college: St. John's!
"By speaking of someone's trying to φ the speaker leaves the room for failure or the possibility of failure."
If HE leaves the room. I'm surprised Schroeder considers this example (leaving the room), seeing that the pretentious Christ Church, unlike the much more academic St. John's, has the biggest rooms in Oxford!
Schroder goes on:
"This account of the function of the word 'try' makes it clear what is wrong with the claim that whenever someone φs, that person tries to do φ. For that claim amounts to saying that every action is either a failure or a possible failure – which clearly one can't say of any action that one has already acknowledged to be successful."
--- Again, this apparent sense of superiority springs from the fact that Christ Church is supposed to be a prestigious college!
--
He should be crediting D. F. Pears, the ONLY philosopher at Christ Church whom Grice LOVED (and loved! and loved!).
Schroeder:
"Furthermore, whether an action is possibly a failure depends on how much one knows about it. Hence the question whether in itself an action does or does not involve trying is as misguided as the question whether it's intrinsically unexpected. It may be correct for some to describe it as 'an attempt to φ', but incorrect for others."
--- Scroeder should give emphasis to Grice, "Intention and UNcertainty." Knowledge has NOTHING to do with it!
We were discussing with L. J. Kramer, H. P. Grice's example:
The HMS Pinafore sank the Bismarck.
---
The HMS Pinafore sank.
We were discussing with Kramer the fact that in Old English, the distinction was between 'sink' and 'senk', two verbs with, obviously, two senses. I'm not sure I want to go the whole hog.
When I studied etymythology with Carlo Dissandro, he would say -- 'never go beyond the root'. Consider m-n: this root gives 'mind', 'mens', 'mental', and a few others. It's pretty basic in 'mens' and 'mental' -- less obvious in English 'mind'.
But the root is the same, hence ONE sense.
Now consider this quoting O'Shaughnessy who died last week, and H. P. Grice:
[PDF]Arm Raising and Arm Rising 2 See H. P. Grice 'The Causal Theory of Perception', Proceedings of the Aris- ... this conclusion I am indebted to Brian O'Shaughnessy.3 I attempt to state ... www.jstor.org/stable/3750976 - Similar
---
I would hold that 'raise' and 'rise' have the same SENSE.
Surely, there is a causative aspect in 'rise' -- but, I would now go further -- since the ROOT is the same ('r-s'), the SENSE is the same.
So, the causative aspect must be implicatural. It shouldn't BE implicatural. Perhaps it ISN'T implicatural. I'm saying it "Must" or ought to be implicatural.
Hence 'sink' -- here, English found a way to avoid 'senk' (which sounded pretty bad, if you ask me) and get away with the root variation.
My Greek teacher, on the other hand (Carlo Dissandro taught me a load of Latin), A. Gamerro, would emphasise the difference between a 'stem' and a 'root'. So, he would say that while the ROOT of 'rise' and 'raise' (and 'sink' and 'senk') is the same, the STEM is different.
I may be a linguistic botaniser, but Gamerro's distinction I found slightly otiose (for a Wednesday).
From wiki on Feyerabend -- that I was re-reading following J's suggestion that I read the bio bits:
"Feyerabend was influential in the development of eliminative materialism, a radical position in the philosophy of mind that holds that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind (folk psychology) is false. It is succinctly described by a modern proponent, Paul Churchland, as follows: "Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience."[7] In three short papers published in the early sixties[8][9][10], Feyerabend sought to defend materialism against the supposition that the mind cannot be a physical thing. Feyerabend suggested that our commonsense understanding of the mind was incommensurable with the (materialistic) scientific view, but that nevertheless we ought to prefer the materialistic one on general methodological grounds. This view of the mind/body problem is widely considered one of Feyerabend's most important legacies. Even though Feyerabend himself seems to have given it up in the late 1970s, it was taken up by Richard Rorty and, more recently, by Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland. In fact, as Keeley observes[11], "PMC [Paul Churchland] has spent much of his career carrying the Feyerabend mantle forward".
For Grice's arguments CONTRA 'eliminative materialism' -- and reductionist analyses in general -- vide Studies in the way of words ("Retrospective Epilogue") for the reductive/reductionist distinction -- and more importantly his "Conception of Value" book, which contains the 1970s attack of the Churchlands -- "From the banal to the bizarre (and back): method in philosophical psychology". For Grice, folk psychology is banal, but at least it's not as bizarre as what the Churchlands write!
From wiki on Feyerabend that J suggested I should read:
"This planned joint publication was put to an end by Lakatos's sudden death in 1974."
The verb, 'die', is an awkward one.
Witters writes in "Tractatus" that death is NOT an experience of life. I think he is right. McEvoy, who is a Popperian, disagrees. He thinks that, "He is dying" represents an experience.
In general, the idea of a 'sudden' death is confusing.
Grice was NOT poor, but you know the Oxonian types (Lord Douglas -- Lord Elderly, Lord Borrowmore, Lord Sickert and Lord Camp).
So, when he arrived straight from Clifton (not Harrow or Eton) he was referred to by Ayer and Berlin and Hart as 'a midlands scholarship boy'.
In those days, there were no scholarship 'girls', so 'boy' was NOT sexist!
---
This from the wiki on Feyerabend that J suggested I should read:
"In 1951, Feyerabend was granted a British Council scholarship to study under Wittgenstein. However, Wittgenstein died before Feyerabend moved to England. Feyerabend then chose Popper as his supervisor instead."
Once a scholarship boy, ALLways a scholarship boy! I would have rather re-imbursed!
When reading Chapman on Grice on "Negation" (1938) etc., I am fascinated by the scorn with which Grice treats 'primitive verificationism'. It's all very clever. In the Oxford of the 1930s, verificationism was sort of the rule, with Ayer, and Berlin, defending it. Grice wanted to see himself as an 'introspectionist', rather -- although his claims, Chapman thinks (rightly), are totally consistent with 'verificationism' -- and empiricism at large.
On the other hand (the same, really), I read -- as adviced by J -- from the bio bits in wiki's "Feyerabend"
"Feyerabend changed the subject of his study to philosophy and submitted his final thesis on observation sentences."
The Times's obit for Grice read, "Amateur cricketer and professional philosopher" (NOT in that order).
J suggested that I read P. Feyerabend's bio in wiki. It included:
"It turned out that one of the bullets had hit him in the spine. As a consequence of this, he needed to walk with a stick for the rest of his life."
In comparison, Grice had it lighter. As a Royal Navy, his ship WAS hit by the Germans, but it survived (did not sink). Otherwise, Grice (having been dead) would not have been able to develop as an amateur cricketer -- or professional philosopher, for that matter.
"At the same time, he was interested in explaining and delimiting the structure of the mind and the psyche."
----
Possibly, I would bet (and I do bet), the reason why Grice avoided 'philosophy of mind' (and preferred 'philosophical psychology') is that he was Ackrill's tutor. And as such, the expert in Aristotle in Oxford in the 1950s. And Aristotle uses 'soul' (psyche), never 'mind'!
"In one way, he was a phenomenologist, offering close descriptions of what it is to take a step, listen to a sound, feel your way through the dark, be drunk."
Forthcoming.
When I noted to Jan D. Grice's analysis of a squirrel eating a nut Jan exclaimed: "That must be the most convoluted analysis of 'eating' I've read in a long time!"
"Second, action is a primitive aspect of the mind, not to be analysed in terms of belief and desire, or intention. Correlative with this is O'Shaughnessy's identification of the category of subintentional action. We fidget, we drum our fingers idly on the table, roll our tongues around our mouths, tap a foot to an imagined rhythm. These are all actions, but done with no purpose and without the direction of intention. Subintentional action is for O'Shaughnessy a perfect illustration of how an aspect of our minds is essentially bound up with our bodies. Where the doctrine that all action involves trying has been central to action theory over the last 50 years, O'Shaughnessy's highlighting of the existence of subintentional action has had a wider impact".
Grice would disagree.
I first learned about this via a little book, "Mental representation and meaning", by Cummings.
If O'Shaughnessy were right (about sub-intentional stuff), then Grice would be wrong!
If I postulate something sub- (sub-standard): sub-doxastic, sub-boulemaic, say -- then, I would need to postulate a homunculus (to do the work). And who needs them?!
My eye-opener on this has been Lombard/Stine, "Grice's intentions", Philosophical Studies.
Grice's intentions have been highly overrated, but overrate them anyday and keep underrating anything under!
"all physical action involves trying or striving. Even when you effortlessly lift your arm, the movement is generated by trying to move your arm, and the physical action of moving your arm is a complex of this trying, together with the physical movement which is its successful upshot."
Grice would disagree.
Grice is best remembered at Brandeis for a series of lectures in 1963, entitled, "Trying".
His example was:
"A man tries to topple a wall. He does not do it to topple the wall -- but to exercise his muscles".
In general, though, he agreed that there is a silly insidious implicature.
Note that people do say,
"It failed to shine, the sun, yesterday".
I.e. they use 'fail' in most loose contexts -- implicating little.
"Peter failed to remember my birthday".
-- Peter never TRIED to keep it in his silly mind!
"O'Shaughnessy headed to Oxford. Taught first by GA Paul and PF Strawson, he had Ryle as his BPhil tutor. For his thesis, O'Shaughnessy wrote officially on mental imagery, but in fact on the location of sound, his real obsession."
According to J. M. Geary, the location of sound is in the ear.
-----
Grice mentions Paul as the first member in the Play Group (as I recall). Alas, Paul died very young -- I never learned much about his background, so perhaps he did NOT die very young. He was dead by 1961, though.
--- Strawson was a member of the Play Group too, of course, and a tutee of Grice.
Ryle said that he wished he had attended Austin's play group ("but he wouldn't allow anyone his senior").
The old label Grice reacted against was "philosophy of mind". As per today's obit of O'Shaughnessy:
"Across the two [Brian O'Shaughnessy] presented a highly individual and distinctive take on concerns that have been central to the philosophy of mind since Ryle popularised that label: the nature of bodily action; the inextricability of mind and body; the distinctive awareness each of us has of his or her own body; the structure of experience, in particular of waking consciousness; and the central role of attention in all experience and in making possible sensory awareness of the world around us."
---- Actually, I met O'Shaughnessy in a colloquium that had Searle talking on foreground and background. I failed to ask O'Shaughnessy what college in Oxford he had attended!
--- The obit says that he was "trained" in Oxford -- as a dog!?
Peter Bornedal has a book with "Grice" in the subtitle, on 'broken logic':
Peter Bornedal DISSERTATION: "The Interpretations of Art" (l994) POSITION: Associate Professor, American Univ. of Beirut SELECT PUBLICATIONS: At the Beginning of Knowledge (New York, forthcoming); Speech and System (Copenhagen, 1997); The Interpretations of Art (New York: University Press of America, 1996)
---
The forthcoming became out in 2006:
At the beginning of theory: deconstructing the broken logic of Grice, Habermas and John Stuart Mill.
Had to participate in an exam last week with Grice where one of the main things was a discussion of the sentence 'there was a rhinoceros in my refrigerator,' which sentence has been made famous by a guy called Donald Davidson who seems to study words in Princeton. This almost made me a rationalist again, but only almost.
""'anything goes' is not a 'principle' I hold... but the terrified exclamation of a rationalist who takes a closer look at history." (Feyerabend, Against method, 1975)"
----
The problem: in German, gehen, 'to go', can be used in ways it kant in English. Anything goes, in German, need NOT the clause, 'go whither?'
Grice pudding: When you've got it, flout it. Ingredients: Quality Quantity Relation Manner Chop up and simmer at low heat until room explodes with laughter. Caution: Not a suitable food for the anemic.
Grice grew to be very big. So, the placement (or his placement) in the curriculum is a big issue, too.
There was a philosopher, from Spain, I think, who suggested something as Berlioz had suggested re: Italian opera in Paris. Berlioz had suggested about the Italian opera house in Paris, "Bomb it". This Spanish professor held that the departments of philosophy in each university should be closed, since they are usually otiose. Instead, he proposed to have a 'philosopher' attached to all the different departments. Thus, if "Linguistics" is recognised as a science, there would be a philosopher attached there. Similarly for Physics, Statistics, Journalism, Art, Population Studies, Psychology, ... and the rest of them.
-----
Grice said that there are TWO dimensions of philosophy: in time (longitudinal -- as when we say, "that was a LONG time gone!") and in 'branches' (latitudinal) -- as when we say, "I first got an interest in metaphysics but was soon enough engaged in a discussion of Feyerabend's "Anything Goes" -- philosophy of science at its worst").
---
Grice is never clear what the 'conceptual' map of philosophy should go. At bits he suggests that it all falls within rationality.
He speaks of 'rational psychology' for example (as had been used by Kant and his predecessors, 'psychologia rationalis'). Then psychology (rationalis) he sees as a branch of 'metaphysics' (via ontologia specialis).
He was so into taxonomies that some students start to get very bored by Grice and most forget about all the taxonomies soon after they pass the course!
It's odd that the 'implicature' topic is NOT taught in philosophy courses --. Trust your average "language sciences" chap to know more about Grice than most. They may have the odd inconsistency. Most thought, for ages, that Grice was a chainsmoker (which he was) who taught English in California. "The linguist Paul Grice" -- e.g. The blame here is Cole & Morgan who included "Logic and Conversation" in their series, "Speech acts", volume 3.
Then, it's very natural that the 'language science' chap who learned of the "Gricean maxims" won't give a damn about Ziff on the counterexamples to Grice's theory of "meaning" of 1948. It's very HARD to integrate all that Grice had published on meaning and his reasonably perspicuous notion of 'implicature'.
When it comes to "Conception of Value" and "Aspects of Reason" -- it's like they say: "Not the Grice I'm interested". And maybe they are right! They use "Grice" to mean 'the chap about the implicature' at the time of saying those things in the 1967 second William James lecture. Anything else said by Grice BEFORE or AFTER that is claimed to be, mainly, irrelevant.
-----
I suppose an analogy would be to follow Christ by the Gospel according to St. Matthew, but only ch. 4, verses 12 to 19, and declare the rest apocryphal!
Grice speaks (inspired by Myro for worse or bad) of 'the Devil of Scientism'. This is in the online essay on Grice by Grandy/Warner, e.g. -- straight from "Method in philosophical psychology":
Thus, Grandy & Warner speak of
"a more accurate and complete scientific theory of behavior": "Grice objects on this ground to theories that regard only
scientific
knowledge as truly descriptive and explanatory and that relegate commonsense psychological explanation to a second-class role as a theory, useful in daily life, but not a theory we should endorse as a description or explanation of reality."
At this point they quote from Grice's Method:
"We must be ever
watchful against the
Devil of scientism, who
would lead us into myopic
overconcentration on the
nature and importance of knowledge, and of
scientific knowledge
in particular;
the Devil who is even so audacious
as to tempt us to call in question the
very system of ideas require to make
intelligible the idea of calling in
question anything at all; and
who would even prompt us, in effect, to suggest that since we do not really think but only think that we think, we had better change our minds without undue delay"
(Grice (1975b, 53) repr. in Conception of Value, 1991).
----
I'm not sure I follow Grice on that remark about the Devil of scientism.
After all, for the Latins, 'scio' was just "I know". It's not like there are, or SHOULD be, different uses
of 'know'.
So when people, like Grice above, makes remarkes about
'scientific knowledge' -- but he explicitly talks about 'knowledge' simpliciter --
I'm not sure I follow.
Suppose I say,
"I know it"
Someone remarks, or objects:
"Yes, but not scientifically"
I could not care less!
----
It's up to the remarker to see how the use of 'know' (when 'scientifically' does not follow) differs from those uses where 'scientifically' DOES follow). Or not!
J was wondering about 'obvious' philosophy of science, except perhaps Feyerabend. I agree.
It's too inductive. My teacher in the philosophy of science (G. Ranea) had his PhD on Copernicus -- but he bored us to tears with Ramsey and the observation-theoretical distinction.
It can be bored, such as "What is that thing called Science", by Chalmers. They usually just start with Inductivism (Vienna Circle) and never fail to mention 'fragile'. Then they have 4 or 5 chapters on Popper. Imagine if we were so detailed when we study British empiricism: Locke-Hume-and-Berkeley and that's it.
Then they do Kuhn, who is a historian, rather than a philosopher, no? And when they do Lakatos and Feyerabend -- I get distracted. I get distracted when I read Lakatos because I would rather be discussing an Oxonian philosopher! (rather than the work of a Hungarian emigree who worked most of his life in what Grice called a red-brick university! I love him! Lakatos, I mean). And when they do Feyerabend they never mention that the man 'hated' Grice.
Feyerabend was appointed a member of the faculty of the dept. of philosophy at Berkeley after Grice. So Grice, who was a newcomer (of sorts) behaved like the host. Feyerabend, in his letters, recalls how he would get very irritated in just having to share an examination date with Grice. On one occasion, Grice had a student for 15 minutes discussing the implicature of the existential (vis a vis radical translation): "There is a rhinoceros in the fridge".
-----
Most scientists don't 'implicate'. They just 'follow' the 'maxims' but hardly engage in the sort of 'divergences' that Strawson had made Grice to get a fascination with. Such as, "He got herpes and had sex" (strictly truth-conditionally equivalent to "He had sex and got herpes". Etc.
As J writes, What You See Is What You Get holds for 'many if not most' cases. I wonder about 'many' and 'most'.
It seems the old Latins never used those words?
----
It seems to me that 'most' is more important than 'many'.
E.g.
"Most own a Rolls Royce here"
----
It does not mean "many" do.
Yes, we need the universe of discourse.
So, Let's assume that if
n > 50%,
I would say, "most"
---
Similarly, if
n < 50%
I would NOT say 'most' -- It doesn't mean I would say 'few'.
Possibly 'fewest' should be used, too.
"Many" seems pretty vague. "Many happy returns of the day", they say.
Similarly, they speak of many-valued logic. And then you ask them, 'what do you mean 'many'?' and they say 'three'! -- Not really that many.
Etc.
In checking for this, I find that wiki uses 'multal' for 'many' -- "the multal quantifier" -- and 'paucal' for 'few' ("the paucal quantifier").
The way to go is the threshold, which is indicated as being the exact half. So if more than a half do, it's many. Etc.
It may be argued that if the class of students is 30 (by law no class can be bigger in some schools), and 5 are red-haired, one may want to say that "many" students are red-haired, but I think this is implicatural.
Surely 5 cannot be 'many'.
----
So if "many" is held to be 'many' in "5 red-haired students" that's because 'red-haired' we don't get many SIMPLICITER.
It is different if you know genetics. Apparently, red hair is INHERITED. So I would suggest that in a red-haired family (wife married a red-haired, being herself red-haired) to say that "many" are red-haired would be otiose if not downright misleading.
Note that 'many if not most' is not reciprocal:
"most if not many" does sound odd.
Murphy once claimed that this was a failure of 'scalar implicature'.
In a scale,
"Some, if not all, of my students know Greek".
-----
makes sense.
Murphy argued that, by the same logic,
"The shepherd culled some cows from the herd".
Murphy argued that, by the same token, adding, 'if not all', yields to some sort of paradox:
"The shepherd culled some, if not all, of the cows from the herd."
------
I don't find that above as paradoxical, provided we expand it:
"from the herd, which thus ceased to exist".
----
Geach called this pleonetetic, and it was used by Altham -- but the conversational implicatures have not really been studied -- by my aunt.
Excerpts from S. French, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on 'quantum physics'.
French writes:
"What are the metaphysical implications of quantum physics?"
"One way of approaching this question is to consider the impact of the theory on our understanding of objects as individuals with well defined identity conditions."
"One view is that quantum theory implies that the fundamental particles of physics cannot be regarded as individual objects in this sense."
"Such a view has motivated the development of non-standard formal systems which are appropriate for representing such non-individual objects."
"However, it has also been argued that quantum physics is in fact compatible with a metaphysics of individual objects."
"Nevertheless, such objects are indistinguishable in a sense which leads to the violation of Leibniz's famous Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles."
"Finally, this underdetermination of the metaphysics of individuality by the physics has important implications for the realism-antirealism debate."
------ EDDINGTON'S TWO TABLES:
French:
"It is typically held that chairs, trees, rocks, people and many of the so-called ‘everyday’ objects we encounter can be regarded as individuals."
"The issue, then, is how this individuality is to be understood, or what constitutes the ‘principle’ of individuality."
References provided by French:
•Adams, R., 1979,
"Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity",
Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979): 5-26.
•Auyang, S. Y., 1995, How is Quantum Field Theory Possible? Oxford: Oxford University Press.
•Belousek, D., 2000, "Statistics, Symmetry and the Conventionality of Indistinguishability in Quantum Mechanics," Foundations of Physics.30(2000): 1-34.
•Born, M., 1943, Experiment and Theory in Physics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
•Brown, H., Salqvist, E. and Bacciagaluppi, G., 1999, "Remarks on identical particles in de Broglie-Bohm theory", Physics LettersA 251 (1999): 229-235.
•Butterfield, J., 1993, "Interpretation and Identity in Quantum Theory", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 24 (1993): 443-476.
•Cao, T.L. (ed.), 1999, Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
•Cassirer, E., 1937, Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics, New Haven: Yale University, 1956; translation of Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modern Physik, Goteborg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1937.
•Cantor, G., 1955, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, New York: Dover.
•Castellani, E., 1998a, "Galilean Particles: An Example of Constitution of Objects", in Castellani, E. (ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 181-194.
•Castellani, E., 1998b, "Introduction", in Castellani, E. (ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 3-17.
•Cortes, A., 1976, "Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles: A False Principle", Philosophy of Science 43 (1976): 491-505.
•Cushing, J. T., Fine, A. and Goldstein, S., 1996, Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
•da Costa, N. C. A. and Krause, D., 1994, "Schrödinger Logics", Studia Logica 53 (1994): 533-550.
•de Muynck, W., 1975, "Distinguishable and Indistinguishable-Particle Descriptions of Systems of Identical Particles", International Journal of Theoretical Physics 14 (1975): 327-346.
•Dalla Chiara, M. L. and Toraldo di Francia, G., 1993,
"Individuals, Kinds and Names in Physics",
in Corsi, G., et al. (eds), Bridging the Gap: Philosophy, Mathematics, Physics, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 261-283.
•Dalla Chiara M. L. and Toraldo di Francia, G., 1995, "Identity Questions from Quantum Theory", in Gavroglu, K., et al. (eds), Physics, Philosophy and the Scientific Community, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 39-46.
•Dalla Chiara, M. L., Giuntini, R. and Krause, D., 1998, "Quasiset Theories for Microobjects: A Comparision", in Castellani, E. (ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 142-152.
•Dieks, D. and Vermaas, P. (eds.), 1998, The Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
•Earman, J., 1989, World Enough and Space-Time, Cambridge: MIT Press.
•French, S., 1989, "Identity and Individuality in Classical and Quantum Physics", Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (1989): 432-446.
•French, S., 1998, "On the Withering Away of Physical Objects", in Castellani, E. (ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 93-113.
•French, S. and Krause, D., 1999, "The Logic of Quanta", in T. Cao (ed.), Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 324-342.
•French, S. and Krause, D., Identity in Physics: A Formal, Historical and Philosophical Approach, Oxford: Oxford University Press forthcoming.
•French, S. and Ladyman, J., 2003, "Remodelling Structural Realism: Quantum Physics and the Metaphysics of Structure", Synthese, 136, (2003): 31-56.
•French, S. and Redhead, M., 1988, "Quantum Physics and the Identity of Indiscernibles", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (1988): 233-246.
•Hesse, M., 1963, Models and Analogies in Science, London: Sheed and Ward; reprinted Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966.
•Huggett, N., 1995,
"What are Quanta, and Why Does it Matter?", PSA 1994 (Proceedings of the 1994 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association) Vol. 2, East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association (1995): 69-76.
•Huggett, N., 1997, "Identity, Quantum Mechanics and Common Sense", The Monist 80 (1997): 118-130.
•Huggett, N., 1999,
"Atomic Metaphysics", The Journal of Philosophy 96 (1999): 5-24.
•Krause, D., 1992, "On a Quasi-set Theory", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 33 (1992): 402-411.
•Ladyman, J., 1998, "What is Structural Realism?", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 29 (1998): 409-424.
•Lewis, D., 1986, On the Plurality of Worlds, Oxford: Blackwell.
•Marcus, Barcan R., 1993, Modalities: Philosophical Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
•Massimi, M., 2001, "Exclusion Principle and the Identity of Indiscernibles: a Response to Margenau's Argument",British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52, (2001): 303-330.
•Mittelstaedt, P. and Castellani, E., 2000, "Leibniz's Principle, Physics and the Language of Physics", Foundations of Physics 30, (2000): 1585-1604.
•Post, H., 1963, "Individuality and Physics", The Listener 70 (1963): 534-537; reprinted in Vedanta for East and West 32: 14-22.
•Quine, W.V.O., 1969,
"Speaking of Objects",
Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York: Columbia University Press.
•Redhead, M., 1983, "Quantum Field Theory for Philosophers", in Asquith, P.D. and Nickles, T. (eds), PSA 1982 (Proceedings of the 1982 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association) Vol. 2, East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association (1983): 57-99.
•Redhead, M. and Teller, P., 1991,
"Particles, Particle Labels, and Quanta: the Toll of Unacknowledged Metaphysics",
Foundations of Physics 21 (1991): 43-62.
•Redhead, M. and Teller, P., 1992,
"Particle Labels and the Theory of Indistinguishable Particles in Quantum Mechanics", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (1992): 201-218.
•Rickles, D., French, S. and Saatsi, J., forthcoming, Structural Foundations of Quantum Gravity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
•Rovelli, C., 1999, "Localization in Quantum Field Theory: How Much of Quantum Field Theory is Compatible With What We Know about Space-Time?", in Cao, T. (ed.), Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 207-229.
•Saunders, S., 2003, "Physics and Leibniz's Principles", in Brading, K. and Castellani, E., eds.Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections, , Cambridge University Press (2003).
•Schrödinger, E., 1952, Science and Humanism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. •Simons, P., 1998, "Farewell to Substance: A Differentiated Leave-taking", Ratio 11 (1998): 235-252.
•Stachel, J., 1999, "Comments", in Cao, T. (ed.), Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 233-240.
•Teller, P., 1983, "Quantum Physics, the Identity of Indiscernibles and Some Unanswered Questions", Philosophy of Science 50 (1983): 309-319.
•Teller, P., 1995, An Interpretative Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
•Teller, P., 1998, "Quantum Mechanics and Haecceities", in Castellani, E. (ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 114-141.
•Teller, P., 1999, "The Ineliminable Classical Face of Quantum Field Theory", in Cao, T. (ed.), Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 314-323.
•van Fraassen, B., 1984, "The Problem of Indistinguishable Particles", in Cushing, J. T., Delaney, C. F., and Gutting, G. M. (eds), Science and Reality: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Science: Essays in Honor of Erman McMullin, Notre Dame: University Notre Dame Press, pp. 153-172.
•van Fraassen, B., 1985, "Statistical Behaviour of Indistinguishable Particles: Problems of Interpretation", in Mittelstaedt, P., and Stachow, E. W. (eds), Recent Developments in Quantum Logic Mannheim, pp. 161-187.
•van Fraassen, B., 1991, Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
•Weyl, H., 1931, The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics, London: Methuen and Co.; English trans. 2nd ed.
Other Internet Resources [Please contact the author with suggestions.]
Related Entries identity: of indiscernibles | identity: relative | physics: holism and nonseparability | quantum mechanics
I'm NOT saying 'quark' is a vacuous name -- but consider this from wiki, 'quark':
"The most common baryons are the proton and the neutron, the building blocks of the atomic nucleus.[13] A great number of hadrons are known (see list of baryons and list of mesons), most of them differentiated by their quark content and the properties these constituent quarks confer."
And next comest the intriguing (sort of):
"The existence of "exotic" hadrons with more valence quarks, such as tetraquarks (qqqq) and pentaquarks (qqqqq), has been conjectured[14] but not proven.[nb 2][14][15]"
-----
Consider Herodotus: "At this point we can only conjecture the existence of a flying stallion that Hesiod called "Pegasus" -- but not prove it."
"Werner Heisenberg I do not claim to be but understand that at a subatomic level, the actual entities are not observed, but inferred--posited."
Interesting.
People seem to overuse or underuse (depending on context), observation, or 'observe'. As my tutor in philosophy of science (G. Ranea) would play with us, "Observe!" he would utter. We were at a loss.
We need a guide to observation.
Ramsey was aware of this when he made the distinction, following "The grammar of science"? -- between:
observation -- observational terms theory -- theoretical terms.
And the idea of a correspondence rule. I should blame my physics teacher in high school because he would always ask me to go to the board and draw a big atom (Bohr), etc. So I suppose that I have always claimed to have observed that stuff.
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