The City of Eternal Truth

Re: Quine and Carnap on ontology -- with Grice thrown in for good measure

2011-11-19T04:16:00.000-08:00

Speranza

In "Quine and Carnap on Ontology," Jones writes:

"This is rather rambling, and what I say about Quine is speculative and probably not entirely correct, but I'm posting anyway. After complaining about Quine's "On What There is" being diametrically opposed to Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology" (and I was thinking of it as the third in a triumvirate of Quinean oppositions to the core of Carnap's philosophy, the other two being the analytic/synthetic distinction and modal logic) the words "Ontological Relativity" popped up in my head, by way of reference to a contribution of Quine's in this area which I have never actually seen."

It is a good keyword: "Ontological Relativity". Thanks for reminding us about it.

Jones:

"I searched my little philosophical library and discovered that I really did not have a copy, and decided to have a look when next I visit the British Library.
(and also to get Code from PGRICE, no longer readable on google books, and the journal in which Grice on Aristotle appears). However, notwithstanding my never having read the paper, just the sight of a few lines of commentary suffices to change my perception of Quine on this topic. It seems that though "On What there is" seems contrary to Carnap, "Ontological Relativity", apart from being naturalistic rather than formalistic, is on the same lines as Carnap, i.e. it is relativistic; ontology is relative to language."

These are good points. From what I recall, this had an influence on Davidson. It is the point about the "Gavagai", etc. that Quine also develops in "Word and object". He was into defending this indeterminacy, as it were, at various levels. Ontological relativity, ontological indeterminacy? The issues are not exactly equivalent, but it may impinge on this: we say 'ontological relativity'. But how much of it is 'epistemic' indeterminacy? For a speaker S, of a language L, the things may be 'absolute' enough. It's only when someone, a metaphysician, say, tries to describe the ontology of L. He finds that various schemes are possibly. He infers, wrongly, that there is 'ontological relativity' involved.

Jones:

"That also makes it broadly similar I would guess, to Grice, for he had a relaxed liberal attitude to ontology, and one might perhaps think he allowed relativity to context not just language (which I'm sure the other two could be stretched to as well). It may be worth exploring this a little further for we are here saying something about absolute metaphysics, i.e. that ontology is not a part of it, ontological claims are supposed to be relative rather than absolute."

----- This reminds of a gem I once read: Warnock, "Metaphysics and Logic" (repr. in Flew). VERY GRICEIAN! (It is an OLD paper, dated 1950s, I think). But Warnock, like Grice, would like to be careful. He considers ONLY, the operator (Ex) and its vernacular counterpart, "some", and he is having in mind Quine. Warnock wants to say that a claim to existence may NOT be present in all 'there is', or (Ex) formulae. "Tigers exist", for example, he finds one of the most otiose thing to say in English. And so on. I discussed that bit when I was into considering the 'seven' formal devices that Grice lists as generating implicatures of note. "Some" being one of them. Note that 'some' (or (Ex)) formulae are not truth-functional. But in the case of these formulae, it is not just the relatively speaking relatively simple point by Quine that it all boils down to what values we accept for 'x'. For our talk (and thus, ontology) of 'there is' is PRETTY COMPLICATED. "There is beauty, and it is in the eye of the beholder". In this case, the values over which 'x' ranges are complex. It is a second-order statement. "There are a few pictures at the Louvre I find PARTICULARLY nice" also involves a second-order, seeing that 'nice' does not work as "dark", or "blue". Dark and blue are ways things are, but 'nice' applies to our perceiving, say, a particularly blue thing as 'attractive' or appealing to us. Aesthetic concepts (like 'nice', then) involve a special ontological framework (Sibley discusses this -- he belonged to the Warnock-Grice school). And so on.

Jones:

""On What there is" is perhaps ambivalent, rather than clearly opposite to the later paper (which I haven't read, still). It certainly seems antithetical to Carnap, because it is about "ontological commitment" and it is easy to think that that is exactly what Carnap denies when he distinguishes between internal and external questions and holds that a positive answer to an internal ontological question should not be confused with assent to the apparently relevant but actually meaningless external question. But if we read it in this way then Quine the logical empiricist almost comes out as a Platonist. My feeling is that the origins of this paper come from his analysis of Russell's "no class theory". Russell introduced the idea of "incomplete symbol" which appears in his theory of descriptions (in "On Denoting") but which applies also to his notation for classes in Principia Mathematica. Quine provides, in his "Set Theory and Its Logic" an analysis of exactly how much mathematics you can achieve by the use of "incomplete symbols" to talk as if classes exist without actually assuming the existence of classes. The disadvantage of this technique if you take it seriously is that, by hypothesis, these things that look like classes as far as the notation is concerned don't actually exist, and therefore are not in the range of bound variables (after all, existence, in modern logic, is just a quantifier, the things which exist are just the things in the range of the existential quantifier). In this context Quine is using the question whether or not you want the "class" to be in the range of quantification as a test for whether it can properly be called a virtual class or incomplete symbol. He is investigating what can be done with few things in the range of quantification."

I loved your exegesis, and it's most likely right. From what I recall, Quine's PhD at Harvard was v. much into all that, and possibly his first love _was_ Russell.

From what I recall, he does wax anti-Platonic at least at one point in "On what there is" where he refers to the 'beard of Plato' that the razor by Occam is supposed to cut, but I should revise that! --

From what I recall, his example is "Pegasus", and indeed

x pegasises.

comes out as something sensible to say (on occasion). I am told that the logician R. Martin called his cat "Pegasus" just to refute Quine.

---- But surely there are complications with the 'what-there-is' criterion (of x) when it comes, to use Jones's example:

------ classes per se.

and

-- universalia at large. For Quine would admit that 'being Pegasus' is now treated as a 'universal' (a predicate) which ranges over x, y, z. We look at our universe of discouse and we don't see any flying horse, so we conclude that 'nothing pegasises.' We may still, alla Grice in "Reply to Richards", want to consider empty classes ('vacuous names and descriptions'). Recall the subtleties brought by Grice in "Vacuous Names" that Jones has admirably identified and expanded on in his pdf document. "There is Pegasus". "Something is a flying horse". "There exists a flying horse", and so on. (Grice deals with these in term of syntactic scope distinctions, but various other approaches are conceivable, and Jones have dealt with some of them).

Jones:

"Quine conducts this analysis in the context of set theory, and its relevance to Principia Mathematica remains to be established. It is now generally accepted that Russell's no-class theory does not eliminate classes in the way that they would be eliminated if only virtual classes were admitted in set theory. This is because Russell's theory of types does have a complete hierachy of types of propositional functions, which, apart from not being extensional, are logically similar to sets. Russell's incomplete symbols in this case allow classes to be eliminated in favour of propositional functions, rather than eliminated altogether. So Russell's ontology is almost as rich as Zermelo set theory, but it just happens that the things in it are mostly functions not sets. The effect is that the limitations Quine illustrates on what can be done with virtual classes in set theory do not apply to their use in Russell's theory of types. Russell's ontological parsimony (at roundabout the time of Principia) was not limited to the "no class" theory. He followed up with his philosophy of logical atomism, which is more explicitly metaphysical."

I loved that! On top of that, he was an empiricist to the backbone, as I recall. And one which ended up influencing Oxford more than its share. Since Ayer was in love with the empiricism of Russell (what _things_ are 'sense data'? and G. A. Paul, one of Grice's group, and his reply to: "Is there a problem about sense data?").

Jones:

"As well as the distinction between real classes and virtual classes, Russell talks about logical fictions."

I think he was quoting Bentham?

"When he considers how to apply modern logic to science a key idea is the idea of a "logical construction"."

A lovely keyword that reappears in Grice, via Broad. Since Grice is defending, strongly, a 'logical construction' (versus pure ego, or disguised description) approach to "I" statement ("Personal identity"). What kind of metaphysics is implied, Grice asks, when one says,

"I was hit by a cricket ball."

What does "I" stand for? What is the value of x

(Ex) x was hit by a cricket ball.

He ends up suggesting that "I" refers to mnemonic states in chains of them, alla Locke. This is pure empiricism, in that he does not consider the extension of the _body_ -- just the memories of a thinking subject. He was possibly right. He does note that "I" sometimes seems to refer to just "my body" ("I fell from the stairs"), and so on. He wrote this in 1941, and one of his moving examples (!) was: "I will be fighting soon", where "I" is like a 'combo', he feels, of mind-AND-body (or soul, if you must). And so on.

Jones:

"So the idea is that complex objects are logical constructions from atomic entities of some kind (perhaps material atoms, perhaps sense data)."

Perhaps sense data, indeed. J. O. Urmson, one in Grice's group, was fascinated with this. He wrote a little book which was published by the OUP, "Philosophical analysis between the two wars", which is all about atomism. From what I recall, he seems to have seen Russell's empiricism of sense-data as fluent and sophisticated enough, while it was _Witters_'s (or Wittgenstein's) atomism he found pretty simplistic. He had a good example or two there. The atomism of:

"He took off his trousers and went to bed" p & q
"He went to bed and took off his trousers"

They depict the same state of affairs. The 'atoms' are just two, and the 'and then'-implicature of temporal succession is always cancellable ("But I do not mean to imply he did that in that order".) I was always fascinated by that example in that, in the original Urmson context (Grice will go on to use the same example, in "Presupposition and conversational implicature", but not in the WoW reprint) Urmson cares to consider the metaphysical implications. He then expands it to "if".

What sort of metaphysics, or ontology, is the one that one commits when one uses "if". He, like Grice, and zillions, think 'if' is only truth-functional. So the 'atom' "p" and the atom "q" then get combined. But Strawson and zillion others would disagree and allow for a different metaphysics, where the 'atoms' are not just truth-functionally correlated. There is an element of 'inferrability' that Strawson suggests is _entailed_ (or strictly, 'conventionally implicated') by "if p, q", that is NOT implicated by truth-functional equivalences of this. And so on.

Jones:

"These logical constructions yield logical fictions, but this does not mean that we do not need to have them in the range of the quantifiers. So incomplete symbols might possibly count as logical fictions, but they don't by any means exhaust the logical fictions, many of which (like propositional functions in general) are in the range of quantifiers. If we read Quine here as criticising Russell's beliefs about what can be achieved with incomplete symbols, then the criticism fails in two ways. Firstly because what you can do with incomplete symbols is not independent of context, Russell could manage without classes in the context of his type theory, even though Quine could not in a first order set theory (because he has no alternative ontology). Secondly, we may observe that Russell no more than Carnap believes that the range of the quantifiers has the metaphysical significance which Quine seems to suggest. Russell is happy to quantify over logical fictions, and presumably does not think that logical fictions are "real". Carnap goes one step further in denying that the metaphysical question is meaningful (let alone relevant)."

This above was excellent. The way Jones identified the main issues and provided questions to them.

Jones goes on:

"Carnap's step here is widely misunderstood, but I think should be regarded as possibly his most important contribution to metaphysics, for I know of no previous philosopher who considered it metaphysical even to allow that the questions (e.g. absolute, external. questions about existence) have an answer. This connects us with Carnap's "Principle of Tolerance". In "On What there Is", the alleged ontological commitment involved (let us suppose) in the use of a language, means that someone can be accused of inconsistency for using two languages whose ontological commitments are incompatible. It is this kind of accusation of inconsistency which, according to Carnap, provoked his principle of tolerance. As a graduate student he recalls discussions with friends in which he would use (say) materialistic or idealistic language depending on who he was talking to. He was then criticised by some for inconsistency. The idea is that you either are a materialist or an idealist. Whichever you are you must not use the language of the other, for that entails assent to multiple incompatible metaphysical ontologies."

I liked that. From what I recall, it had an influence in the USA (and Dummett!) via Sellars, and other empiricists. For indeed, are we being phenomenalist or physicalist in our language of choice? Grice would think that the 'syntax of illusion' (his phrase, but others as well) is more complex than that. It seems that the language (and syntax) not of 'material-object' (physicalism) but of sense data (idealism) is pretty complex. Grice was fascinated by ways one level (or stratum, to use Waissman's wording) entails the other.

"The pillar box seems red to me."

"It looks to me as if the pillar box is red."

and so on.

What would be a PHYSICALIST claim at this point? Grice is a Lockean, so

'x is red'

would not count, since we are having secondary qualities involved. So, it seems that the 'implicatures' of tolerance are many and varied.

--- (Dummett, in Truth and Other Enigmas, which includes some early pieces, elaborates on physicalism vs. phenomenalism in terms of the language of perception, and such).

---

Jones:

"Carnap's principle of tolerance is just the rejection of this point of view, the relativisation of metaphysics (which of course, once relativised may no longer be called metaphysics, and of course is not counted as metaphysics by Carnap, because it is just a working out of the semantics of the language and hence of necessity de dicto rather than de re). As to "The City of Eternal Truth", where are these to be found in ontology. After all this relativisation what room do we have for ontological absolutes, are there any necessary truths in ontology?
Well, the obvious candidates is questions of consistency.
Even if any ontology were possible, not every description of an ontology is consistent.
The natural context in which the most difficult questions of this kind are addressed is set theory, where the relative consistency of large cardinals is considered.
This is just the preferred language in which such questions are considered, and questions about the consistency of arbitrary logical systems (and their underlying ontologies) are generally answered by reduction to set theory.
If we argue that such questions are "absolute" in some sense, does that make them metaphysics rather than just logic?"

No, just logic!

This reminds me of Daniel Vanderveken and John Searle. I was, elsewhere, discussing their book and we found that Vanderveken just applied set-theory to all the machinations (if that's the word) by Searle. The result is a success! So, indeed, set-theory is all that a philosopher needs, sometime! And so on. But more later, I hope. Cheers.

Re: Izzing and Hazzing

2011-11-19T04:05:00.000-08:00

Speranza

This is a comment to Jones in the 'comment' section to my "Re: Izzing and Hazzing".

Jones:

"One of the issues here is the relationship between metaphysics and linguistic meta-theory. There clearly is a close connection in the case of descriptive metaphysics, and that would be a possible Carnapian objection to this Strawsonian enterprise."

Very good point. Tal of meta-theory, or meta-language, reminds me of a delightful principle by Grice, the "Bootstrap". He possibly was onto something when he thought that one should be, in the metalanguage, always be able to pull oneself up by one's own bootstrap." But I would need to elaborate on that. He was thinking that the ontology of a metalanguage should better be cautious since everything in the metalanguage should be rewritten in the object-langauge. So the more paucuous (if that's the word) the metalanguage, the less work we are left for the morrow, is I think the way he described it.

Jones:

"It is one thing to observe the metaphysics implicit in ordinary language, another to show that you have thereby something more fundamental and philosophical than empirical linguistics."

I would be slightly careful about 'empirical linguistics'. A few empiricist (even Foucault-type?) philosophers may not disagree about that point. For some -- I think there is a well-developed Scandinavian school of this sort of thought -- philosophy, qua discipline for the philosopher -- IS an empirical discipline in that it studies and analyses the way people talk and think. NOT qua linguistics, empirical, but as a sort of 'descriptive Athenian dialectic', as it were. You want to know what 'justice' is? Or how the logic of 'right' works in its right terms? You just go to the 'agora', as Socrates did, and inquire the folk. (Socrates was NOT an empiricist in this sense, in that he hoped to CORRECT 'ta legomena', or what people were saying -- I don't think Grice emphasises this point too much when he has Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as involved in 'ta legomena' in various ways. Surely he is thinking of Aristotle, rather than Socrates or Plato).

Jones:

"On the other hand, if Carnap were to accept my suggestion that a part of defining a truth semantics of a formal language is defining the relevant concept of "possible world" or state of affairs (this is the domain of the truth conditions, considered as a truth-valued function, it is this which prevents there being necessity de re and without it the semantics is incomplete) then doing metaphysics is part of defining the semantics of a language, a part of prescriptive metatheory."

Excellent point. I enjoy your use of 'descriptive' metaphysics at the object-language level, and 'prescriptive' metatheory.

Jones:

"I'm not convinced that the stability of the English Language is decisive. There does not seem to be stability in metaphysics. It does seem to me, as you seem to be suggesting at the end, that English allows you to manipulate the context of discourse so as to install whatever metaphysics you like. That is what makes this kind of meta-theoretic discussion of metaphysics possible. Must stop otherwise the comment will get too big!"

Too right, about the 'manipulation'. Of course, the point of the classical Grice, is to suggest that there is a truth-conditional core (the 'dictive', the alhetic), and that those 'manipulations' should better use pragmatic notions like 'implicature', since (this seems to be the point of the classic Grice), all too often, a philosopher make take, say, an 'implicatum', for what is 'part of what is being entailed' (part of an alethic condition).

And so on, but now I will comment on the other blog post by Jones.

Cheers.

Quine and Carnap on Ontology

2011-11-18T15:04:00.000-08:00

This is rather rambling, and what I say about Quine is speculative and probably not entirely correct, but I'm posting anyway.

After complaining about Quine's "On What There is" being diametrically opposed to Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology" (and I was thinking of it as the third in a triumvirate of Quinean oppositions to the core of Carnap's philosophy, the other two being the analytic/synthetic distinction and modal logic) the words "Ontological Relativity" popped up in my head, by way of reference to a contribution of Quine's in this area which I have never actually seen.

I searched my little philosophical library and discovered that I really did not have a copy, and decided to have a look when next I visit the British Library.
(and also to get Code from PGRICE, no longer readable on google books, and the journal in which Grice on Aristotle appears).

However, notwithstanding my never having read the paper, just the sight of a few lines of commentary suffices to change my perception of Quine on this topic. It seems that though "On What there is" seems contrary to Carnap, "Ontological Relativity", apart from being naturalistic rather than formalistic, is on the same lines as Carnap, i.e. it is relativistic; ontology is relative to language. That also makes it broadly similar I would guess, to Grice, for he had a relaxed liberal attitude to ontology, and one might perhaps think he allowed relativity to context not just language (which I'm sure the other two could be stretched to as well).

It may be worth exploring this a little further for we are here saying something about absolute metaphysics, i.e. that ontology is not a part of it, ontological claims are supposed to be relative rather than absolute.

"On What there is" is perhaps ambivalent, rather than clearly opposite to the later paper (which I haven't read, still).
It certainly seems antithetical to Carnap, because it is about "ontological commitment" and it is easy to think that that is exactly what Carnap denies when he distinguishes between internal and external questions and holds that a positive answer to an internal ontological question should not be confused with assent to the apparently relevant but actually meaningless external question.
But if we read it in this way then Quine the logical empiricist almost comes out as a Platonist.

My feeling is that the origins of this paper come from his analysis of Russell's "no class theory". Russell introduced the idea of "incomplete symbol" which appears in his theory of descriptions (in "On Denoting") but which applies also to his notation for classes in Principia Mathematica. Quine provides, in his "Set Theory and Its Logic" an analysis of exactly how much mathematics you can achieve by the use of "incomplete symbols" to talk as if classes exist without actually assuming the existence of classes. The disadvantage of this technique if you take it seriously is that, by hypothesis, these things that look like classes as far as the notation is concerned don't actually exist, and therefore are not in the range of bound variables (after all, existence, in modern logic, is just a quantifier, the things which exist are just the things in the range of the existential quantifier). In this context Quine is using the question whether or not you want the "class" to be in the range of quantification as a test for whether it can properly be called a virtual class or incomplete symbol. He is investigating what can be done with few things in the range of quantification.

Quine conducts this analysis in the context of set theory, and its relevance to Principia Mathematics remains to be established. It is now generally accepted that Russell's no-class theory does not eliminate classes in the way that they would be eliminated if only virtual classes were admitted in set theory.
This is because Russell's theory of types does have a complete hierachy of types of propositional functions, which, apart from not being extensional, are logically similar to sets. Russell's incomplete symbols in this case allow classes to be eliminated in favour of propositional functions, rather than eliminated altogether. So Russell's ontology is almost as rich as zermelo set theory, but it just happens that the things in it are mostly functions not sets.
The effect is that the limitations Quine illustrates on what can be done with virtual classes in set theory do not apply to their use in Russell's theory of types.

Russell's ontological parsimony (at roundabout the time of Principia) was not limited to the "no class" theory. He followed up with his philosophy of logical atomism, which is more explicitly metaphysical. As well as the distinction between real classes and virtual classes, Russell talks about logical fictions.
When he considers how to apply modern logic to science a key idea is the idea of a "logical construction". So the idea is that complex objects are logical constructions from atomic entities of some kind (perhaps material atoms, perhaps sense data). These logical constructions yield logical fictions, but this does not mean that we do not need to have them in the range of the quantifiers.
So incomplete symbols might possibly count as logical fictions, but they don't by any means exhaust the logical fictions, many of which (like propositional functions in general) are in the range of quantifiers.

If we read Quine here as criticising Russell's beliefs about what can be achieved with incomplete symbols, then the criticism fails in two ways. Firstly because what you can do with incomplete symbols is not independent of context, Russell could manage without classes in the context of his type theory, even though Quine could not in a first order set theory (because he has no alternative ontology). Secondly, we may observe that Russell no more than Carnap believes that the range of the quantifiers has the metaphysical significance which Quine seems to suggest. Russell is happy to quantify over logical fictions, and presumably does not think that logical fictions are "real". Carnap goes one step further in denying that the metaphysical question is meaningful (let alone relevant).

Carnap's step here is widely misunderstood, but I think should be regarded as possibly his most important contribution to metaphysics, for I know of no previous philosopher who considered it metaphysical even to allow that the questions (e.g. absolute, external. questions about existence) have an answer.

This connects us with Carnap's "Principle of Tolerance".
In "On What there Is", the alleged ontological commitment involved (let us suppose) in the use of a language, means that someone can be accused of inconsistency for using two languages whose ontological commitments are incompatible. It is this kind of accusation of inconsistency which, according to Carnap, provoked his principle of tolerance.

As a graduate student he recalls discussions with friends in which he would use (say) materialistic or idealistic language depending on who he was talking to. He was then criticised by some for inconsistency. The idea is that you either are a materialist or an idealist. Whichever you are you must not use the language of the other, for that entails assent to multiple incompatible metaphysical ontologies.

Carnap's principle of tolerance is just the rejection of this point of view, the relativisation of metaphysics (which of course, once relativised may no longer be called metaphysics, and of course is not counted as metaphysics by Carnap, because it is just a working out of the semantics of the language and hence of necessity de dicto rather than de re).

As to "The City of Eternal Truth", where are these to be found in ontology.
After all this relativisation what room do we have for ontological absolutes, are there any necessary truths in ontology?
Well, the obvious candidates is questions of consistency.
Even if any ontology were possible, not every description of an ontology is consistent.
The natural context in which the most difficult questions of this kind are addressed is set theory, where the relative consistency of large cardinals is considered.
This is just the preferred language in which such questions are considered, and questions about the consistency of arbitrary logical systems (and their underlying ontologies) are generally answered by reduction to set theory.
If we argue that such questions are "absolute" in some sense, does that make them metaphysics rather than just logic?

RBJ

Re: Izzing and Hazzing

2011-11-13T23:01:00.000-08:00

Speranza

Jones writes:

"How scandalous that I should write about categories and Grice without mentioning "izz" and "hazz"; so I make it the title this time. For the record, the distinction between intercategorial and intracategorial predication is exactly that between Grice's neologisms "izz" and "hazz", where izz is essential and hazz accidental."

Indeed, and thanks for that!

---- "the crunch comes with negation", I think is Grice's phrase.

Jones goes on to explore the issue of negation:

"Thanks JL for an interesting commentary, and enlightenment on many aspects. The big problem with insisting on truth values for category errors is the way it interacts with negation. For opponents it is less the falsehood of the errors which is a problem than the truth of their negations, and the asymmetry (because which way is up seems arbitrary). Suppose we have two colour predicates "white", "coloured" which are complementary. Then "ideas are white" as a category error would be false as would "ideas are coloured". But then coloured is a synonym for "not white", and "ideas are coloured" should be the same as "ideas are not white", which we expect to be the same as the negation of "ideas are white" and hence true. The "looseness" I spoke of in an earlier post (somewhere) might help here, because it preserves all the classical logical relationships. We just say that category mistakes still yield truth values, but the truth value is not defined (which is not the same as having an "undefined" third truth value). In my formal treatment of izzing and hazzing, which is essentially done in two valued logic, I wrote the definitions so that they come out definitely false if the obvious criteria for truth fail. It would be easy in that context to give a loose specification. I didn't do that because I couldn't really see any advantages in that course, and I am not yet aware of anything in Aristotle to convince me that he would have intended something like that."

Sorry I have so far little to comment on all that interesting material above. I will, I hope. Right now, I'm re-quoting in this blog post, and only for the record, as it were. But indeed, as Jones and Grice notes, the crunch comes with negation, in ways. Negation, of course, is just one of the many logical operators. Grice seems to be saying that, qua operator, 'not' carries implicatures (e.g. an implicature of minimal scope). Logically, negation carries maximal scope. So, the negation of an utterance can thus receive these two 'interpretations' ("Ideas are not coloured" -- "it is not the case that ideas are coloured"). I'm glad that Jones feels able to provide for this systematically. It seems economical for the Griceian to explain negation alla Boole, say, and account for the oddity of "Ideas are not coloured" elseway, as it were.

Jones then considers the topic of 'sytematic error'. How erroneous can, say, 'stone-age physics' be? More generally, how erroneous can 'ta legomena' be?

"As to finding the way forward from categories as exegesis of Aristotle to something closer to absolute metaphysics, I don't yet see how that could be done, and don't want to presume that it can be. I am resistant mainly because I don't see the categories of achieving what they aimed to achieve, and so that makes them poor candidates for consideration as absolute. On the exegetical side I have my formalisation in Aristotle's Logic and Metaphysics, and I do hope that I will eventually get back and move that forward, and I am certainly interested in what Grice might have to say about what true metaphysics can be mined from it, but rather expect that Carnap and I (even after I have persuaded him to be less dogmatic in his use of the word "metaphysics") will be parsimonious users of the term. On the Gricean view that systematic error is impossible (I am interested to know where we find that in Aristotle) I am not wholly convinced. Of course it depends what systematic means here. It seems to me that many commonly held beliefs are false, but what would count as "systematically false"? There is of course a big difference between systematic error about the meaning of language and systematic error about some matter of fact, but it is surely the latter and least plausible of the two which would have to be denied to give absolute metaphysics? So I definitely would want to see more to persuade me we were grasping something absolute."

I would think that Grice and Davidson interacted on that realm, somehow. The idea is further developed by Davidson, I would think. Why some of our beliefs have to be true, say. Grice sees this as 'transcendental'. As we apply this we need to narrow down the field then:

Categories -- become, say, 'categories of English' (where English is a natural language).

If everything we say in English (qua ordinary language) happens to be _false_ as when compared to, say, what quantum-physics says about things, then, we seem to be in trouble. So, Aristotle's and Grice's point (qua Athenian and Oxonian dialectic, as per the "Retrospective Epilogue") seem to work on the assumption that

'Ta legomena' (things said -- in Greek or English) must be, in great part, true.
---- But I should revise all that.

Jones:

"As to Quine's "On what there is?", there is little hope of carrying Carnap forward on that basis, not least because this paper is pretty much the antithesis of Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology" which is the very heart of Carnap's enterprise (IMO). Quine says that we are "committed" to the existence of all the entities over which "our" quantifiers range. Carnap says that the (external) question of whether the entities over which some language quantifies is meaningless (at first, later, lacking cognitive content). Being sure whether they are strictly contradicting each other is not wholly straightforward because Quine doesn't accept the internal/external distinction and Quine's holism makes it uncertain whether he ever really is talking about absolutes rather than expedients. But nevertheless, the informal thrust are opposite. Even if Quine's holism admitted metaphysics, I could not give credence as absolute to a metaphysic justified by Quine's holism. I should myself be inclined to treat it on a par with descriptive metaphysics, and expect some kind of additional argument in favour of taking any of it as absolute."

Good points.

Incidentally, I like your attribute, 'exegetical' as applied to 'metaphysics' -- versus 'revisionary' or 'descriptive'.

Exegetical I associate with 'interpretative', as it were. It may pay to order the vocabulary, say.

How does one provide a 'metaphysical' interpretation. When Whitehead proposed his 'process metaphysics', he was told that the subject-and-predicate Aristotelian metaphysics does not quite fit the 'process' view that Whitehead was defending. But he was told that some native American languages perhaps agreed more, in terms of their 'categories', with this 'process metaphysics'.

So, it seems that, besides the object-language (of clouds, stones, snow, beauty, human beings, persons, minds, beliefs, and so on), there is a sort of meta-language, that contains 'ontological categories' proper ("A stone is a thing"). It may be that a language lacks this ontological vocabulary. But English _is_ endowed with ontological vocabulary (of 'thing', 'attribute', and even 'substance').

In this respect, there is room, within the language, for metaphysical interpretation. If someone says, "the mind is not a thing" -- cfr. Descartes on 'res extensa' and its opposite --, he may still accept the term 'mind' (in the realm of hazzing) and negate that it falls within the 'ontological' category of 'thing'.

And so on. In other words, I would think that it's ordinary speakers themselves who should be endowed with the ability to 'interpret', metaphysically, the things they say or are committed to. Grice saw this when in "Method in philosophical pscyhology" he provides a continuum, as it were, between the ordinary speakers (or 'pirots') and an intelligent breed of them, whom he refers to as the 'metaphysicians' -- his is a 'genitorial' programme, where the pirot becomes his own genitor, as it were.

But I should re-read all the bits that Jones is adding to the discussion, and further comment, at a later stage.

Note that the assimilation 'exegetical' with 'interpretive' (mine, not Jones's) is perhaps vague. After all, the term the Latin philosophers were thinking of when using, say, Aristotle, "De interpretatione", is 'hermeneia', rather. And 'hermeneia' is not quite 'exegesis'.

Descriptive, exegetical, revisionary, prescriptive. Popper would say that science is always revising itself. So, scientific metaphysics (if there is such a thing) should be in a constant flow. With natural language, things seem to be different. The categories of, say, English, have remained the same for centuries. Indeed, they may be traced back to proto-Indo-European.

Sapir-Whorf, as we turn back to, say, the languages of the native-Americans, thought that the categories of language determine our thought-categories, and ultimately, then our conception of ontological categories. Jones, who has studied 'perfect languages', like Wilkins's, and Leibniz', may relate this to that. When Leibniz or Wilkins thought of a 'characteristica universalis', perhaps they were trying to start afresh. Think of the proper ontology, and provide a language to match.

In the case of 'natural' languages, our mother tongues (the tongues we learn from our mothers, strictly) things are never too easy. The language is already 'theory-laden', as it were. While there is indeed 'ontological freedom' -- a realist and a nominalist may both express their disagreements in English --, the speaker who has not reflected on the ontological (not to say, metaphysical) dimensions of what he is saying may require a crash course in eschatology, and still fail!

And so on.

Cheers.

Izzing and Hazzing

2011-11-13T10:18:00.000-08:00

How scandalous that I should write about categories and Grice without mentioning "izz" and "hazz"; so I make it the title this time.

For the record, the distinction between intercategorial and intracategorial predication is exactly that between Grice's neologisms "izz" and "hazz", where izz is essential and hazz accidental.

Thanks JL for an interesting commentary, and enlightenment on many aspects.

The big problem with insisting on truth values for category errors is the way it interacts with negation.
For opponents it is less the falsehood of the errors which is a problem than the truth of their negations, and the asymmetry (because which way is up seems arbitrary).
Suppose we have two colour predicates "white", "coloured" which are complementary. Then "ideas are white" as a category error would be false as would "ideas are coloured". But then coloured is a synonym for "not white", and "ideas are coloured" should be the same as "ideas are not white", which we expect to be the same as the negation of "ideas are white" and hence true.

The "looseness" I spoke of in an earlier post (somewhere) might help here, because it preserves all the classical logical relationships.
We just say that category mistakes still yield truth values, but the truth value is not defined (which is not the same as having an "undefined" third truth value).
In my formal treatment of izzing and hazzing, which is essentially done in two valued logic, I wrote the definitions so that they come out definitely false if the obvious criteria for truth fail.
It would be easy in that context to give a loose specification.
I didn't do that because I couldn't really see any advantages in that course, and I am not yet aware of anything in Aristotle to convince me that he would have intended something like that.

As to finding the way forward from categories as exegesis of Aristotle to something closer to absolute metaphysics, I don't yet see how that could be done, and don't want to presume that it can be. I am resistant mainly because I don't see the categories of achieving what they aimed to achieve, and so that makes them poor candidates for consideration as absolute.

On the exegetical side I have my formalisation in Aristotle's Logic and Metaphysics, and I do hope that I will eventually get back and move that forward, and I am certainly interested in what Grice might have to say about what true metaphysics can be mined from it, but rather expect that Carnap and I (even after I have persuaded him to be less dogmatic in his use of the word "metaphysics") will be parsimonious users of the term.

On the Gricean view that systematic error is impossible (I am interested to know where we find that in Aristotle) I am not wholly convinced.
Of course it depends what systematic means here.
It seems to me that many commonly held beliefs are false, but what would count as "systematically false"?
There is of course a big difference between systematic error about the meaning of language and systematic error about some matter of fact, but it is surely the latter and least plausible of the two which would have to be denied to give absolute metaphysics?
So I definitely would want to see more to persuade me we were grasping something absolute.

AS to Quine's "On what there is?", there is little hope of carrying Carnap forward on that basis, not least because this paper is pretty much the antithesis of Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology" which is the very heart of Carnap's enterprise (IMO).
Quine says that we are "committed" to the existence of all the entities over which "our" quantifiers range.
Carnap says that the (external) question of whether the entities over which some language quantifies is meaningless (at first, later, lacking cognitive content).
Being sure whether they are strictly contradicting each other is not wholly straightforward because Quine doesn't accept the internal/external distinction and Quine's holism makes it uncertain whether he ever really is talking about absolutes rather than expedients. But nevertheless, the informal thrust are opposite.

Even if Quine's holism admitted metaphysics, I could not give credence as absolute to a metaphysic justified by Quine's holism. I should myself be inclined to treat it on a par with descriptive metaphysics, and expect some kind of additional argument in favour of taking any of it as absolute.

Re: The metaphysical status of categories

2011-11-10T11:14:00.000-08:00

Speranza

Jones writes:

"We are reminded by recent postings that categories were significant in Grice's writings about metaphysics. Here, on the road to, "The City of Eternal Truth" some importance should be attached to exactly what kinds of metaphysics are at stake, for some, perhaps even most, risk being local and perhaps even arbitrary. The word absolute is good for the inner core of true metaphysics."

I agree. One has to look for a good antonym, too. Perhaps 'relative' is not quite the antonym. I would think an etymological inquiry into 'absolute' may help (or not). It is cognate with dissolute, I would think!

Jones:

"If we look for the absolute in metaphysics, and in Grice's discussions of metaphysics in particular, it seems to me moot whether Aristotle's categories are good contenders, and it is my purpose in this post to share my reservations on that count. The study of categories in Aristotle's metaphysics undoubtedly is a kind of metaphysics. I am inclined to use the description "exegetical metaphysics".
And if Strawson looks for categories in ordinary language then that sounds like his "descriptive metaphysics". Both of these are at worst just some kind of relative metaphysics, rather than belonging to that absolute core."

I agree. In the case of Aristotle, as Grice knew, the big problem is

"ta legomena"

--- things people say. Grice and Aristotle want to say that 'ta legomena' (e.g. things have causes) are rooted obviously in ordinary language (ordinary Greek, ordinary English). Aristotle and Grice want to say that 'what people say' then cannot be systematically false. So, what looks like arbitrary, or accidental, or relative, ends up solidifying, if that's the word, what looks like an absolute principle ("the principle of causation", say).

In Retrospective Epilogue, Grice discusses this in connection with Urmson: the idea that Oxford analysis (say, Strawson), unlike Athens analysis (what Grice calls the "Athenian dialectic") did not care about the _truth_ of 'ta legomena' "except perhaps Urmson". I would need to revise this.

Jones:

"In the first case relative to particular philosophers or philosophical schools, in the second relative to some particular language."

I agree with that. I found Mundle's "A critique of linguistic philosophy" very interesting in this respect. He criticises Strawson for his "Anglo-linguistic". Just browsing at the Contents lists of that book by Mundle is a pleasure!

Jones:

"In both cases, to move forward to the absolute one might look for arguments that the resulting metaphysics is not merely accidental. In Aristotle the categories play an important role in distinguishing the essential from the accidental. The do so in a quite definite way, true intracategorial predications are necessary, true intercategorial predications are accidental."

I like that. Of course, Jones is playing with Grice:

subcategorial
supracategorial -- the realm of eschatology.

Jones now distinguishes between

intracategorial
and
intercategorial

and he adds Aristotle's square of modality for good measure!

(cfr. Noel Burton Roberts about the implicatures of modality: what must be -- does it fall under 'what MAY be'? I think so) ("Implicature and Modality").

Jones:

"This is an ingenious way of obtaining a more subtle analysis of necessity, than we find in Plato, but it doesn't look convincing in the light of more recent semantic thinking."

Or pragmatic for that matter. Noel Burton-Roberts notes that

"what may be" falls indeed under "what must be". This makes the distintion necessary/non-necessary more pragmatic than anything else:

"You said, "you may"; apparently you meant, "you must"".

"Well, when you inferred, from my "you may", that "you must not", that was YOUR fault. The implicature was cancellable, and only retrievable on the weak basis that I was being fully informative."

---

Jones:

"From that point of view the same predication could be either necessary or accidental, you cannot establish which just by reference to categories.
You need the meaning. If they did succeed then there would be grounds for considering the categories to be metaphysical we need some reason to believe that they are not arbitrary but fundamental, and we need that case to justify the particular collection of categories nominated."

Grice plays with routines here, alla Strawson. One is objectification, or subjectification.

"Her eyes were blue" --- accidental.

But then 'blue' can become a subject:

"the blueness of her eyes was a necessary condition on..." whatever.

Grice thinks that the sub-substantial categories can become subject-items as it were.

Jones:

"One way of looking for that might have been through Ryle's notion of "category mistake". The idea here is that predications can fail to be true in a more radical way than simply being false. If they constitute a category error then it is tempting to say that they are neither true nor false (I don't know whether Ryle did say that)."

I would think he did. Of course, L. Horna and I disagree:

"Virtue is circular" is false.
"Virtue is not circular" is true.

Ryle wants to say that "Virtue is not circular" AND "Virtue is circular" are devoid of a truth-value.

----

A good source here may be Oscar P. Wood, "Essays on Ryle", with contributions by Urmson and Strawson.

Ryle was still a genius and the fact that Flew reprinted most of his genial essays in those influential collections helped the Oxonian analysts of Grice's school to progress (Ryle's book is called "Plato's -- sort of a pilgrim -- progress").

Jones:

"From this perspective this does not look good for Grice, if he wants to avoid truth value gaps." Indeed. Horn discusses category mistakes in "A natural history of negation". He retrieves most of the basic literature. He concludes that 'metalinguistic' negation is involved, but that is not the only explanation. So this is not a terribly serious problem for Grice or the Griceians.

Jones:

"But if category errors are falsehoods, (and if we accept that the categories cannot succeed in capturing the essential/categorial distinction as argued above) then its not clear why we need the categories at all, let alone why they would be absolute."

Well, we may need to explore the meaning-intentions, as it were, of an utterer who does say,

"Virtue is not circular".

Since there is such a thing as a 'vicious circle' (vice as a circle), one could argue that 'there is such a thing as a virtuous circle', and hence, by objectification, that virtue is indeed circular. Or not.

---- So, we may need to proceed case-by-case, when the utterance of a true negation of a false predication ("Virtue is circular") is propounded.

"Caesar is a prime number".

In context, of course, "Caesar, the Roman general, was not a prime number". But this may require qualification. If Caesar did happen to be a _number_ (and a 'prime' one at that -- or "Caesar" may be the proper name that some mathematician assigns to some high prime number -- cfr. Fermat), then "Caesar is not a prime number" would not be true, but false, and so on.

---- We may need a schema for all that, in more abstract or formal terms. For category C1 and Category C2, the category mistake, of the form C1/C2 is false iff... and thus the negation of that falsehood is, q. e. d., true.

---

Jones:

"To a programmer the system of categories looks like a prototype of a programming language type system. In that case we do have the situation that type-incorrect programs or expression do lack a value, which is a truth value gap for a boolean expression. But we also have the case that type-systems are dispensable (in favour of type-free programming languages), and by this analogy we might consider categories disposable in favour of a category-free ontology. The tendency of these considerations, if we were to take them seriously, would be to suggest that the absolute is as hard to pin down as we might have expected it to be. Would Grice have cared about this distinction?"

He would!

I like the way you propose two alternate analysis in terms of the programming approach. Both may need exploration.

Again, we may need a more formal generalisation.

For categories C1 and C2, say.

What sort of formalisation in, say, first-order predicate calculus, are we talking about? Are we introducing range of variables: x, y, ...

Why is "Caesar is not a prime number" true? What falls under the range of 'prime number'.

What is an individual? These Quinean questions do seem to be at the core of what ontological commitment we are ready to assume. I realise that Jones is not too sympathetic towards Quinean analyses (seeing that Quine took most of the stuff from Carnap, without crediting it), but "On what there is" may be a good start.

This particular paper was influential with Strawson: "A logician's landscape". So the point, as we recall Grice's response to Strawson: cherry trees in spring (rather than dismantled desert landscapes) may be at the core of the 'ontology' one cares to defend. Or not!

Cheers.

The metaphysical status of categories

2011-11-10T08:26:00.000-08:00

We are reminded by recent postings that categories were significant in Grice's writings about metaphysics.

Here, on the road to, "The City of Eternal Truth" some importance should be attached to exactly what kinds of metaphysics are at stake, for some, perhaps even most, risk being local and perhaps even arbitrary.
The word absolute is good for the inner core of true metaphysics.

If we look for the absolute in metaphysics, and in Grice's discussions of metaphysics in particular, it seems to me moot whether Aristotle's categories are good contenders, and it is my purpose in this post to share my reservations on that count.

The study of categories in Aristotle's metaphysics undoubtedly is a kind of metaphysics. I am inclined to use the description "exegetical metaphysics".
And if Strawson looks for categories in ordinary language then that sounds like his "descriptive metaphysics". Both of these are at worst just some kind of relative metaphysics, rather than belonging to that absolute core. In the first case relative to particular philosophers or philosophical schools, in the second relative to some particular language. In both cases, to move forward to the absolute one might look for arguments that the resulting metaphysics is not merely accidental.

In Aristotle the categories play an important role in distinguishing the essential from the accidental. The do so in a quite definite way, true intracategorial predications are necessary, true intercategorial predications are accidental.
This is an ingenious way of obtaining a more subtle analysis of necessity, than we find in Plato, but it doesn't look convincing in the light of more recent semantic thinking. From that point of view the same predication could be either necessary or accidental, you cannot establish which just by reference to categories.
You need the meaning.

If they did succeed then there would be grounds for considering the categories to be metaphysical we need some reason to believe that they are not arbitrary but fundamental, and we need that case to justify the particular collection of categories nominated.

One way of looking for that might have been through Ryle's notion of "category mistake". The idea here is that predications can fail to be true in a more radical way than simply being false. If they constitute a category error then it is tempting to say that they are neither true nor false (I don't know whether Ryle did say that). From this perspective this does not look good for Grice, if he wants to avoid truth value gaps.

But if category errors are falsehoods, (and if we accept that the categories cannot succeed in capturing the essential/categorial distinction as argued above) then its not clear why we need the categories at all, let alone why they would be absolute.

To a programmer the system of categories looks like a prototype of a programming language type system. In that case we do have the situation that type-incorrect programs or expression do lack a value, which is a truth value gap for a boolean expression. But we also have the case that type-systems are dispensable (in favour of type-free programming languages), and by this analogy we might consider categories disposable in favour of a category-free ontology,

The tendency of these considerations, if we were to take them seriously, would be to suggest that the absolute is as hard to pin down as we might have expected it to be,

Would Grice have cared about this distinction?

RBJ

Re: Eschatology and Metaphysics

2011-11-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

Speranza

Jones writes:

"It is nice that Grice uses a special word "eschatology" for (at least some of) his metaphysical ruminations, since that makes it easier to talk about the different conceptions of metaphysics that Carnap and Grice have, and slightly easier to find a way of talking about them both at once."

Good. It is perhaps not so nice (but then, 'nice', in Latin, meant 'silly', almost -- ne-scius, don't-know-it-all) that Grice does not use

"ontology" -- at least in that essay. He just speaks broadly of 'metaphysics' as categorial and eschatology as supracategoria.

This may be compensated by the long ruminations he has on "theory theory" in "Reply to Richards". I may have posted some of that material at the Grice Club. By "Theory Theory" he just means Aristotle's "prote philosophia", first philosophy.

But, as I see things, Grice is best to allow to understand Carnap in NOT distinguishing too much between 'philosophy' and 'science', so distinctions in the discipline of metaphysics is of secondary importance to him.

My favourite Grice quote must be his reaction to Russell's dismissal of 'metaphysics' as "stone-age metaphysics". Russell was replying to Strawson ("Mr. Strawson on referring") and other issues. Russell notes that ordinary language (silly things silly people say, I think is his expression) embodies a "stone age metaphysics". Grice, in "Reply to Richards", replies: "lovely rhetoric; but why not, 'stone-age PHYSICS'?"

Grice's most developed arguments come from "Actions and Events", where he refers to entities like electrons, and wavicles (his "Two Tables by Eddington" argument -- cfr. my "Cake-Eat and Have-It" principle, sometime).

There is also a good quote from "Method in philosophical psychology" that Jones and I have discussed elsewhere -- at Bayne's site --: Grice's "Ontological Marxism": how to bring entities into the picture. This may not just refer to 'universalia'. In fact, in "Action and Events" he expands on this, and quotes from Robinson, an Oxford don at Oriel: "You name it". This was Robinson's criterion for ontological acceptance: you name it and I deem it existent, as it were.

As we proceed on this, consider -- Heidegger's silly phrase as examined by Carnap:

"Nothing noughts".

"Das Nichts nichtet."

"Nothing" is possibly supracategorial. It's not like 'table' and 'chair'. To allow for 'Nothing' to stand as a subject-item is quite a challenge, and a feat!

Now, to add, as predicate-term, the so-far unexistent term, "to nought" (nichten), was Heidegger's contribution.

Is it true that Nothing noughts? Carnap just found it nonsensical. Alla, "Caesar is a prime number", or "If they but they they so so they" -- a breach of syntax.

In allowing for eschatology, perhaps Grice is saying that there may be something behind this apparently silly claim by whom he considers "the greatest living philosopher" (jokingly, in WoW:i -- Heidegger in name index).

Jones goes on:

"So far as Aristotle is concerned, the word metaphysics doesn't really come in, because it only appeared after Aristotle, his contribution being just the order in which his books came (I have no idea whether even that really was down to Aristotle). What Aristotle called the contents of the book which we call the Metaphysics was "First Philosophy" which sounds just like an opposite of "Eschatology"."

Good you mention this. As I say, Grice used 'theory theory' extensively. I think he did mean 'first philosophy' -- prote philosophia. The point being about the principles or 'arkhai', of course. It is true that there is no mention of this in the "Eschatology" essay by Grice, but I may have provided at the Grice Club some relevant quotes about his "theory theory". It is a erudite expression enough, "theory theory", to allow for an easy search, sometime!

----

Incidentally, the "Eschatology" paper is concerned with very specific issues, as I re-read it. Grice uses Baker's application of 'eschatology' to show that Aristotle reaches an 'aporia' with the theory of the 'alter ego'. The way Grice finds this interesting is interesting. Why a metaphysician, as it were, may find eschatology practical to 'save' the appearances, and avoid consistencies. "Theory theory", as it were? His own application concerns the word 'right'. This relates to "Reply to Richards". There, he notes that when we say, say

mind is prior to matter.
matter is prior to mind.

and so on, there may be different 'levels' or directions: ontological, cognitive, epistemological, valuational. The possibility of these different schemata may concern the eschatologist, who is now dealing with supracategorial epithets, as it were.

----

Jones goes on:

"This is probably just a curiosity, since there isn't much doubt that Aristotle was thinking of "First Philosophy" as being "ultimate" in some sense or other."

Indeed, a bit of a pun. What strikes me as odd is that there should be more than one 'principle'. The word 'principle' (the formulation of which is the task of 'prote philosophia') seems like to disallow the use of the plural. "The principles of ...", and so on. In old Latin, it meant just 'start'. And how different starting points can there be?

Jones:

"In Speranza's story about Grice's philosophical eschatology, it seems that Aristotle's categories loom large."

Indeed. I would think this is the keyword in Kantotle or Ariskant. Recall that what is an ontological realm for Aristotle, is merely cognitive or epistemological for Kant. Grice amused himself with Kant's treatment of Aristotle's categories. Consider just the quartette:

qualitas
quantitas
relatio
modus

--- what is the criterion to distinguish the category of 'quantitas' from that of 'qualitas', say?

Kant notably thought that Aristotle had posited 6 categories too many. So, Aristotle's ten categories become just four in Kant -- and jokingly, in the Grice of "Logic and Conversation". Note that the first category does not count as one in Kant: the substance. It's with 'qualitas/quantitas' that we start the 'categorial' game in Kant, since 'substance' is too much of a scholastic metaphysical (Jones is right that 'metaphysical' is post-Aristotelian -- Kant may be having Baumgarten's terminology in mind) term to care for...

The category of 'relatio' is an interesting one, and one that was later to be formalised by Russell

Rx
R(x, y)
R(x, y, z)

symmetry, transitivity, etc., all applied to 'relatio' as such.
Modus is more of a mixed bag!

---

Recall that in Grandy's and Warner's festschrift

P hilosohpical
G rounds of
R ationality
I ntentions
C ategories
E nds

the "C" is key!

Jones:

"I suppose this is understandable in the context of Ryle making a big deal about category mistakes, but it sounds more like descriptive or exegetical metaphysics than "revisionist" metaphysics, which is probably where we need to be to escape accident and language and home in on essence and the absolute."

Too true. Perhaps the word 'absolute' is overrated, though. True, Collingwood (whose prose Jones charmingly finds 'horrifying') does think of 'metaphysics' as (pretentiously) the 'science of absolute presuppositions'. But one wonders what a 'relative' presupposition would look like. Grice (and myself, for that matter) is a thorough constructivist. So he thinks that whatever we may end (unluckily) deeming an 'absolute' presupposition is still something we've constructed out of our own relativities...

Jones:

"So far I don't have a good idea of how Grice is separates out the truly eschatological from the accidents of descriptive metaphysics."

The "Reply to Richards" section on 'stone age physics' is a good start. He grants that Russell is being too rhetorical, and that

"S is P"

say, Aristotelian, or Kantotelian categories, refer to 'stone age metaphysics'. Russell may be thinking of, and indeed explicitly refers to 'twentieth-century physics', as needing a DIFFERENT metaphysical scheme.

So, Grice grants this, and makes a few points. A few of those points are descriptive. He notes that we may accept the study of 'stone age physics' as a legitimate HISTORICAL discipline. How people talked of and thought of the world before Einstein, say.

He then goes to refer to these categories not as being 'conversational' as he charmingly had it in "Logic and Conversation" but just _linguistic_. I like to read that in connection with Strawson's lectures on "Subject and Predicate in Grammar and Logic". For Grice is surely defending vintage Oxford analysis: if people do use 'subject and predicate' logic (rather than a pure predicate calculus, say), and if they also allow for different 'orders' (as when 'nothing' or 'blueness' becomes a subject-item, say), or when 'right' is used valuationally rather than epistemological, we may want to pay attention to the logic behind this. So this is the metaphysicist as a 'descriptive' grammarian, as it were.

Some unpublications of Grice at the Bancroft Library (UC/Berkeley) refer to his 'new method' or 'discourse' in metaphysics: from Genesis to Revelations, I think he called it -- in truly eschatological verbal fashion. So, he did think that the philosopher should go beyond the accidents of grammar, as it were, to the absolute, or the Snark if you must!

("For the Snark was a boojum, you see" -- Gardner has edited Lewis Carroll's work as an analysis of a neo-Hegelian search for the absolute).

Cheers.

Eschatology and Metphysics

2011-11-09T09:09:00.000-08:00

It is nice that Grice uses a special word "eschatology" for (at least some of) his metaphysical ruminations, since that makes it easier to talk about the different conceptions of metaphysics that Carnap and Grice have, and slightly easier to find a way of talking about them both at once.

So far as Aristotle is concerned, the word metaphysics doesn't really come in, because it only appeared after Aristotle, his contribution being just the order in which his books came (I have no idea whether even that really was down to Aristotle). What Aristotle called the contents of the book which we call the Metaphysics was "First Philosophy" which sounds just like an opposite of "Eschatology". This is probably just a curiosity, since there isn't much doubt that Aristotle was thinking of "First Philosophy" as being "ultimate" in some sense or other.

In Speranza's story about Grice's philosophical eschatology, it seems that Aristotle's categories loom large. I suppose this is understandable in the context of Ryle making a big deal about category mistakes, but it sounds more like descriptive or exegetical metaphysics than "revisionist" metaphysics, which is probably where we need to be to escape accident and language and home in on essence and the absolute.

So far I don't have a good idea of how Grice is separates out the truly eschatological from the accidents of descriptive metaphysics.

Roger Jones

Re: Presupposition and Metaphysics

2011-11-08T14:57:00.000-08:00

Speranza

Jones writes that "It's a bit of a handicap having a lousy memory. I see that in the draft "conversation" I had already casually made the connection (between presupposition and metaphysics) by describing (in section 4.5 "Metaphysics") descriptive metaphysics as concerned with metaphysics "as presupposed in ordinary language" (is this how Strawson describes it?)."

I should doublecheck. From what I recall, this was in "Individuals: an essay in descriptive metaphysics", that Grice mentions in "Reply to Richards", indeed.

--- But I wouldn't put too much emphasis on 'presuppose' there. Recall that Strawson is pretty loose when it comes to use 'presuppose'. He did write:

"The king of France is bald" IMPLIES there is a king of France. His presupposition was formerly a mere 'implication', and even Grice, who is much more careful with lingo, has "Have you stopped beating your wife?" as 'implication' in the Section III: Implication, of "Causal theory" in Baynes's website.

---- Of course Jones is right in using 'presupposition' seriously, alla Husserl, and Collingwood ("metaphysics" as 'the science of absolute presuppositions').

Jones:

"So I already have a start, in 4.5, on a comparison of metaphysics in Grice and Carnap, but had not at that stage the opinion I am now moving towards on the importance of a conciliation on metaphysics for "The City". However, I am inclined to start afresh on this, and first to post something on metaphysics on Carnap Corner.
I just noticed that my last post on "one Bete too many" was very badly formatted so I went back and edited it to make it more readable."

Good.

For the historical record, it may do to consult how HEIDEGGER was using 'metaphysic'. When Ayer popularised Carnap's rejection of metaphysics, he (Ayer) was introducing yet another 'sense' to 'metaphysic'.

I am glad to see that Carnap changed from 'meaningless' to jargon about cognitive significance! This is a particular favourite topic of mine, as it connects with Ogden and Richards, and EMOTIVISM, and via Stevenson, to Grice's emphasis on 'non-indicative' uses of 'language'. For

"Close the door!"

"Do not covet thy neighbour's wife!"

would NOT be a matter of indicative-type sort of meaning. It's still different with

"Eating people is wrong."

(I think there is a book on ethics by the title, "Why eating people is wrong." -- and so on).

Cheers.

Re: from language to metaphysics

2011-11-08T14:05:00.000-08:00

Speranza

This is a running commentary on Jones's recent post.

Jones writes:

"I think we have segued (not sure whether I like that word, but there it is) from vacuous names and truth value gaps at the Grice Club, via the notion of presupposition, with the assistance of Collingwood, into metaphysics here at The City of Eternal Truth. This I think, is a fine thing, and I thought I would just say why (I think its a fine thing) as a preliminary to milking it (at a leisurely pace). Why? Well, reflecting on the matter I concluded that "The City of Eternal Truth" should be, at its most profound, about metaphysics. The blog was invented by Speranza, though the phrase he took (of course) from Grice."

Indeed. Grice playfully quoting from "Pilgrim's Progress".

"And somehow this was supposed to involve Carnap as well. Speranza and I were at the time entering into collaboration on this essay called "a conversation between Carnap and Grice", which might possibly be about to move forward. This is how I now see it.
In the essay the idea was for Carnap and Grice to talk to each other and see whether their differences really were as great as they might at first sight appear.
First of all they have to try to understand each other so as to eliminate apparent, purely verbal, differences, and to work at the remaining apparently substantive disagreements to see whether a resolution of some kind might be possible.
So there is a bit of a focus on differences here. This gentle friction was to be a creative stimulus, a font of new ideas. The City of Eternal Truth is, as a Carnap/Grice enterprise, the other way up. It is a place where we focus on the fundamental issues on which Carnap and Grice might agree, a home for some of those new ideas. Apart from the Carnap/Grice angle, the idea of "Eternal Truth" does seem to push in the direction of metaphysics. It does seem to brush aside transient empirical accidents, including any features of language, natural or formal, which need not have been so. Of course, this still leaves natural laws, but they are for science, and that leaves us with metaphysics for the philosophers. But what hope would there be for a City built around a consensus between Carnap and Grice on metaphysics? At first glance there seems to be no common ground between them here.
I think however that a closer look might yield a more positive outlook, and that this might provide a nice way of moving forward for Speranza and I (Grice*! and Carnap*!, and anyone else interested) on both the "conversation" essay and the City blog. So here is my first take. We have to try to eliminate purely verbal disagreements, which are just obstacles, and then see whether, with some common terminology we can identify some common ground. Of course, we all know that Carnap completely and rather dogmatically rejected metaphysics in toto, whereas Grice was apparently much more liberal. Also we have Carnap quite keen on reductionist enterprises, which Grice calls minimalisms (or was it minimisms?)"

Minimalisms, I would think. "Minimism" is a minimal form of minimalism, if you mustn't. I think Grice refers to ONE Minimalism. I.e. all the -isms he cares to criticise (the 'betes noires' which Pilgrim Grice finds on his way to the City of the Eternal Truth) ARE variations on one single theme: the theme of minimalism.

----

"and thinks of perhaps as some grubby dogmatic empiricist nominalism. Grice on the other hand, is easy with metaphysics. We have him trying to understand Aristotle's metaphysics in a semi-formal way, and as an ordinary language philosopher he probably is OK with the enterprise which Strawson called "descriptive metaphysics" or even with Strawson's other kind (what was it?)."

I think he pretentiously called it 'revisionary'. Surely the antonym of 'descriptive' is _prescriptive_!

"To effect a reconciliation we have to work on both parties, in the first instance about language or terminology, for it seems to me that they really have quite different conceptions of what metaphysics is. There is also the difficulty about what "philosophy" is, but if we sideline value judgements about what philosophers ought to be doing, and bear in mind that Carnap at least was already, as he matured, softening some of his dogmas by refining his language (an example of which is to say "lacking in cognitive significance or content" instead of the bald and uncompromising "meaningless"). I'm going to pause there, to stop message bloat, and come back with some analysis of the different kinds of metaphysics at stake, before attempting to outline some ideas of metaphysics with which they might both be willing to move forward together (if they weren't dead!)."

Grice: "Try those who were great and dead as if they were great _AND LIVING_!" I know Jones did not mean any disrespect.

I love the idea of considering what we are talking about. Perhaps the blame is on Oxford. Back in the day, Collingwood, who wrote, "An essay in metaphysics", was appointed,

"Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy" (there are only three Oxford philo chairs: all oddly starting with "W", White chair of moral philosophy, Wykeham chair of logic, and Waynflete chair of metaphysical philosophy.

I like to think that what _Waynflete_ was up to was the distinction between:

physical philosophy -- YES, most things were deemed 'philosophy' back in the day.
metaphysical philosophy.

In more Romantic (as per Latin/Italian, and the Romance languages) parlance, the distinction between:

natural ------------ physical
trans-natural ------ meta-physical

(It is true that this is reading too much onto Aristotle, who just meant, 'those things which lie _next_ to the physics -- 'ta meta ta physika'.

But I do find the idea of 'trans-naturalia', sort of interesting, if mystic.

----

Now, when discussing about Collingwood's idea of the absolute presuppositions (and metaphysics as the science (or doctrine or discipline) of absolute presuppositions, it may do to revise the scholastic terminology:

There was metaphysica proper (transnaturalia). But there was 'ontologia', and this was considered to be divided into:

ontologia generalis

ontologia specialis----- within the specialis we basically get a "Theory of Everything":

------------ The two branches of 'ontologia specialis' being:

(in that order):

cosmologia
anthropologia

----

Now, for some quotations from Grice's "eschatology" essay in WoW, which Jones can also consult.

Grice is interested in EXTENDING the range of 'metaphysics' qua discipline. He writes:

"Some time ago"

---- this was written in 1987, but knowing Grice's preference for meiosis/litotes, this can well be, "circa 1946":

"the idea occurred to me"

as opposed to somebody else

"that there might be TWO DISTINGUISHABLE
DISCIPLINES each of which might have SOME
claim to the title or, or a share of the
title of, Metaphysics. The first of these
disciplines I thought of as being

CATEGORIAL in character"

-- and comprising Strawson's 'descriptive' and 'revisionary' varieties.

"that is to say, I thought of it as operating
at or BELOW the level of CATEGORIES."

Grice's keyword par excellence.

"Following leads suppplied primarily by
Aristotle and Kant,"

Or Ariskant, as he also called him.

"I conceived of it as concerned with
the identification of the most general
attributes or classifications, the SUMMA GENERA,
under which the various specific subject-items
and/or predicates (predicate-items, attributes)
might fall, and with the
formulation of metaphysical PRINCIPLES
governing such categorial attributes
(for examle some version of a Principle
of Causation, or some principle regulating
the persistence of substances)."

Recall that Collingwood thinks of the Principle of Causation as an 'absolute presupposition'.

Grice continues:

"The SECOND discipline I thought of as being

SUPRACATEGORIAL

in character; it would bring together

DIFFERENT subject-items BENEATH single
classificatory characterisations, and perhaps
would ALSO specificy PRINCIPLES which would have
to be exemplified by items brought together
by this kind of supracategorial assimilation."

Where 'assimilation' is the keyword. A metaphysical sentence belonging to this 'eschatological' branch would have complex truth-conditions, say.

Grice goes on:

"I hoped that the SECOND discipline, which I was tempted
to label"

and he did label

""Philosophical Eschatology"", might provide for
the detection of AFFINITIES between

CATEGORIALLY DIFFERENT REALITIES

--- thus, protecting the principles associated with
_particular_ categories from _suspiction of arbirariness_."

(or vacuity, pace Carnap?)

Grice continues:

"In response to a possibly objection to the
effect that

IF A PAIR OF ITEMS
were REALLY [trouser-word. Speranza]
categorially DIFFERENT
from one another, they could ****NOT****
[on risk of losing 'the bounds of sense', echoing Kant/Strawson]
BE ASSIMILATED
under a single classificatory head (since
they would be incapable of sharing
any attribute [[Jones may like to consider a set-theoretical reversion of this]),

I planned to reply that

EVEN

should it be _impossible_

for categorially different items
to _share_ a single attribute, this
objection might be INCONCLUSIVE
since 'assimilation' might take
the form of ascribing to the items
assimilated NOT A _COMMMON_ attribute
BUT an _ANALOGY_."

Keyword: Greek 'analogia'.

Grice continues:

"Traditionally, in such disciplines as
theology, analogy has been the resort of
those who hoped to find a way of comparing
entities so radically diverse from one
another as God and human beings."

Or cream-in-one's-coffee and personal objects of affection:

"You are like the cream in my coffee."
"You are the cream in my coffee." (discussion under 'metaphor' as conversational implicature, in WoW:ii).

Grice goes on:

"Such a mode of COMPARISON would
of course require careful examination."

Davidson, for example, thinks that

"The moon is made of cheese" is true iff the moon is made of cheese. The uttering of an analogy, a comparison, and a METAPHOR, involve supracategorial floutings to truth-conditional semantics: it's not the uttering of what is literally _false_ that matters.

Grice goes on:

"Such examination I shall for the moment defer,
as I shall also defer mention of certain further
ideas which I associated with philosophical
eschatology"

back in the day -- 'some time ago'.

Grice goes on:

"For a start, then, I might distinguish THREE
DIRECTIONS as being ones in which a philosophical
eschatologist [treading the path towards the City of Eternal Truth, as it were]
might be expected to deploy his energies."

FIRST:

"The provision of generalised
theoretical accounts which UNITE
specialised metaphysical [and why not 'physical' or
scientific? Speranza -- what is _metaphysical_
about the Principle of Causation? Speranza]
principles which are separated from another
by CATEGORY-BARRIERS."

Grice must be amusing himself with what was specially the obsession of another Waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy: Gilbert Ryle ("Category mistakes", 'category-barriers' -- the 'mind' and the 'body' as the ultimate 'category mistakes' -- the ghost in the machine).

Grice goes on:

SECOND:

"Fulfilment of such an undertaking
might involve an adequate theoretical
characteristation of a relation of

AFFINITY,

which, like the more familiar
relation of SIMILARITY [if a is identical to a,
is a similar to a? Speranza] offers a foundation
for the generalisation of specialised
regularities, but which, unlike similarity,
is sensitive, or has a high degree of INSENSITIVITY,
to the presence of category-barriers."

Ryle's example: "Saturday is in bed with Monday."

----

Grice goes on: "To suggest the possibility of such a relation is NOT, of course, to CONSTRUCT it, nor even to provide a guarantee that it CAN be constructed."

THIRD:

"An investigation of the notion of
analogy,"

a/b = c/d

A C
---::---
B D

"You are like the cream in my coffee"

"and a delineation of its links
with other seemingly comparable
notions, such as METAPHOR, and PARABLE. Can this
list be expanded?"

Yes: disimplicature. "You're the cream in my coffee" Grice has, elsewhere, as the epitome of the disimplicature. So, even in the descriptive realm of metaphysics of the analysis of ordinary language use, one has to provide for the fact that utterers _disimplicate_ by what they say, never mind _mean_!

Grice:

"At his point I turn to a paper by
Judith Baker, entitled, "Another Self": Aristotle
on friendship."

Grice:

"On the present occasion, my concern is
focused on METHODOLOGICAL"

rather than substantive

"questions; so I propose first to consider
the ideas about METHODOLOGY, in particular
Aritotle's methodology, ... and then to
inquire whether these ideas suggest any
additions to the prospective subject matter
of philosophical eschatology. ... Baker
suggests that Aristotle's philosophical
method, .... treats the existence of a
common consensus of opinions with respect
to a proposition as conferring at least
provisional validity (validity ceteris paribus)
upon the proposition in question."

---- "Implicatures happen."

Grice goes on:

"In general, no external [Carnap's sense? I think so! Spernza] justification
of the acceptance of the objects of universal agreement is called for. This idea
has not always been accepted by philsoophers."

... excursus on Moore.

"If my perception of Moore is correct,
he would in Aristotle's view have been looking for
an EXTERNAL justification for the
acceptance of the deliverances of common sense where
none is required."

--- Ditto for "science"

Grice on

Eddington's table (cited elsewhere in The Grice Club) in "Actions and Events". Why accept the atomic table as the _real_ table?, and so on.

Grice goes on:

"Though no EXTERNAL justification is
required for accepting the validity
of propositions which are generally or
universally believed, the validity
in question is only provisional. For a
common consensus may be undermined
in either of two ways."

FIRST:

"There may be a common consensus that
proposition A is true, but there may be
two mutually inconsistent propositions,
B1 and B2, where while there is a common consensus
that either B1 or B2 is true, there is no common
consensus concerning the truth of B1 or the truth
of B2; there are, so to speak, two schools
of thought, one favouring B1 and one favouring
B2. Furthermore (we may suppose) the combination
of B1 with A will yield C1, whereas the combination
of B2 with A will yield C2; and C2 and C2 are
mutually inconsistent. In such a tiatuion it
becomes a question whether the acceptability
of A is LEFT INTACT. If it is, a method will
have to be devided for deciding between B1 and B2."

SECOND:

"To cope with problems created by the apperance
on the scene of conflicts or other stumbling blocks
the theorist may be expected to systematise
the data which are vouched for by
common consensus by himself devising general
propositions which are embedded in his theory. Such
generalities will NOT be directly attested
by the consensus, but their

ACCEPTABILITY

will depend on the

ADEQUACY

of the theory in which they appear to yield
propositions which are directly matters
of general agreement. When an impasse ("aporia")
arises, the aim of the theorist will be
to ELIMINATE the impasse with minimal
disturbance to the material regarded as acceptable
BEFORE the impasse, including the
theoretical generalities of the theorist."

-----

Excursus on Baker's interpretation of 'amicus' = alter ego.

"... Baker mentions ... a certain kind of
criticism... by David Sachs." Changing the subject. Cfr. Quine, Duhem, Carnap.

----

Grice concludes the first section of his essay:

"The reflections in which I have just
been engaged, then, suggest to me

TWO FURTHER items which might

be added to a prospective subject matter
of philosophical eschatology."

---

"One would be a classification
of the various kinds of impasse or aproia
by theorists who engaged in the
Aristotelian undertaking of attempting
to systematise mterial with which they are
presented as LAY inquirers, together with
a classification of the variety of
responses which might be effective against
such impasses."

---

"The other would be a thoroughgoing
analysis of the boundary between
legitimate and ILLEGITIMATE imputations
to a theorist of the sin of 'having
changed the subject."

---- E.g. "I was talking legal 'right'; you are introducing MORAL right!"

----

Grice goes on:

"Beyond these additions I have at the moment
only one further suggetsion."

Grice's last suggestion:

"Sometimes, the activities of the eschatologist
might involve the suggestion of certain

PRINCIPLES

and some of the material embodied in
those principles might contain the potentialty of
independent life, a potentiality which it would
be theoretically advantageous to explore. This
further exploration might be regarded as
being itself

A PROPER OCCUPATION

for the eschatologist

[as opposed to the improper ones, alla pace Carnap!]."

"One example might be a further
examination of the theoretical
notion of [say] an alter ego..."

"Another example might be the
kind of abstract development of such
notions as

"MOVEMENT,"

that which moves, and what which is moved..."

-----

As from Section II, he proposes to analyse the tricky adjective 'right' in Neo-Socratic and neo-Thasymachean lines... (all quotations were as from WoW, pp. 304ff.)

Cheers.

Presupposition and Metaphysics

2011-11-08T12:52:00.000-08:00

Its a bit of a handicap having a lousy memory.

I see that in the draft "conversation" I had already casually made the connection (between presupposition and metaphysics) by describing (in section 4.5 "Metaphysics") descriptive metaphysics as concerned with metaphysics "as presupposed in ordinary language" (is this how Strawson describes it?).

So I already have a start, in 4.5, on a comparison of metaphysics in Grice and Carnap, but had not at that stage the opinion I am now moving towards on the importance of a conciliation on metaphysics for "The City".

However, I am inclined to start afresh on this, and first to post something on metaphysics on Carnap Corner.

RBJ

PS I just noticed that my last post on "one Bete too many" was very badly formatted so I went back and edited it to make it more readable.

from language to metaphysics

2011-11-08T09:26:00.000-08:00

I think we have segued (not sure whether I like that word, but there it is) from vacuous names and truth value gaps at the Grice Club, via the notion of presupposition, with the assistance of Collingwood, into metaphysics here at The City of Eternal Truth.
This I think, is a fine thing, and I thought I would just say why (I think its a fine thing) as a preliminary to milking it (at a leisurely pace).

Why?

Well, reflecting on the matter I concluded that "The City of Eternal Truth" should be, at its most profound, about metaphysics.
The blog was invented by Speranza, though the phrase he took (of course) from Grice. And somehow this was supposed to involve Carnap as well.
Speranza and I were at the time entering into collaboration on this essay called "a conversation between Carnap and Grice", which might possibly be about to move forward.

This is how I now see it.
In the essay the idea was for Carnap and Grice to talk to each other and see whether their differences really were as great as they might at first sight appear.
First of all they have to try to understand each other so as to eliminate apparent, purely verbal, differences, and to work at the remaining apparently substantive disagreements to see whether a resolution of some kind might be possible.
So there is a bit of a focus on differences here. This gentle friction was to be a creative stimulus, a font of new ideas.

The City of Eternal Truth is, as a Carnap/Grice enterprise, the other way up.
It is a place where we focus on the fundamental issues on which Carnap and Grice might agree, a home for some of those new ideas.
Apart from the Carnap/Grice angle, the idea of "Eternal Truth" does seem to push in the direction of metaphysics. It does seem to brush aside transient empirical accidents, including any features of language, natural or formal, which need not have been so.
Of course, this still leaves natural laws, but they are for science, and that leaves us with metaphysics for the philosophers.

But what hope would there be for a City built around a concensus between Carnap and Grice on metaphysics?
At first glance there seems to be no common ground between them here.

I think however that a closer look might yield a more positive outlook, and that this might provide a nice way of moving forward for Speranza and I (Grice*! and Carnap*!, and anyone else interested) on both the "conversation" essay and the City blog.

So here is my first take.
We have to try to eliminate purely verbal disagreements, which are just obstacles, and then see whether, with some common terminology we can identify some common ground.

Of course, we all know that Carnap completely and rather dogmatically rejected metaphysics in toto, whereas Grice was apparently much more liberal.
Also we have Carnap quite keen on reductionist enterprises, which Grice calls minimalisms (or was it minimisms?) and thinks of perhaps as some grubby dogmatic empiricist nominalism.
Grice on the other hand, is easy with metaphysics. We have him trying to understand Aristotle's metaphysics in a semi-formal way, and as an ordinary language philosopher he probably is OK with the enterprise which Strawson called "descriptive metaphysics" or even with Strawson's other kind (what was it?).

To effect a reconciliation we have to work on both parties, in the first instance about language or terminology, for it seems to me that they really have quite different conceptions of what metaphysics is.
There is also the difficulty about what "philosophy" is, but if we sideline value judgements about what philosophers ought to be doing, and bear in mind that Carnap at least was already, as he matured, softening some of his dogmas by refining his language (an example of which is to say "lacking in cognitive significance or content" instead of the bald and uncompromising "meaningless").

I'm going to pause there, to stop message bloat, and come back with some analysis of the different kinds of metaphysics at stake, before attempting to outline some ideas of metaphysics with which they might both be willing to move forward together (if they weren't dead!).

RBJ

Carnap, Kripke, presupposition

2011-11-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

This is an expansion of a Carnap/Kripke angle on the connection between metaphysics and presupposition.

It is generally accepted that Kripke in some way conclusively showed that the notion of analyticity does not coincide with that of ("metaphysical") necessity, and hence put a few nails in the coffin of Carnap's philosophy.

There is in this no discussion of whether the concepts as understood by Kripke are the same concepts as those used by Carnap. It is just assumed that these concepts have a single definite meaning and that Kripke showed that the two differed in extension (and hence in meaning).

What seems not to be mentioned is that Carnap, far from carelessly identifying the two concepts actually defines necessity in terms of analyticity, and gives cogent reasons for doing so.

There is no carelessness here, and it is immediate that if Kripke's arguments are sound, then he must be using different concepts.

So where do tbe presuppositions come in?

Well first I have to give another account of how it is that necessity (metaphysical and logical) and analyticity coincide.

A sentence is analytic if its truth in every possible circumstance is a consequence of the semantics of the language. And if the language is for talking about the real world (rather than perhaps some abstract domain), then that means in every possible world (and hence we see immediately the connection with necessity).
But it is essential here that the semantics does provide a complete account of the truth conditions of the language.
In respect of an incomplete semantics then some sentences will not be analytic even though they may be true in every possible world.

Kripke introduces the notion of rigid designator.
These are supposed to designate the same entity in every possible world.
Consequently every true identity between rigid designators is necessary.
And it is held that these identities are not analytic (I have never actually seen an argument to that effect).

But this assumption is tantamount to the assumption that the semantics gives an incomplete account of the truth conditions for sentences in the language.
Even Quine, following his explanation of analyticity in "Two Dogmas" would have to agree that identities between rigid designators are analytic, for he allows that in judging analyticity we may use any information "about the language" but none about the world, and that two designators rigidly designate the same entitity is surely a fact about language not about this (or any other) world.

So here come the presuppositions (and the meaning postulates).

This tells you about how you have to go about formalising the semantics of language.
To give a complete account of the truth conditions of a sentence you must define a function whose domain is the possible worlds which yields the truth value of the sentence in each possible world.
This means that you have to define the set of possible worlds.
Carnap would not put it this way, but we could say that metaphysics is a stage in defining the semantics of a language.

For Carnap of course, defining this domain of possible worlds (states of affairs) is what his meaning postulates are for.
But we could also go with Collingwood, and talk of these constraints on the domain of the truth conditions as "absolute presuppositions" embedded in the language.

Personally, the introduction of meaning postulates by Carnap is not something I greatly care for, but I see that his decisions on what he called "language planning" and his semantic methods forced him into it, and to avoid them you need to start almost from scratch.

Meaning postulates were a sticking plaster made necessary by Carnap's failure to notice the flaw in Wittgenstein's account of logical truth in the Tractatus (which consists is asserting that atomic propositions are logically independent, as if there could be no logical relations between predicates).
Bear in mind here that neither Wittgenstein nor Carnap has a narrow conception of logical truth (as is standard now) both intending logical truth to exhaust the non-empirical and hence correspond with analyticity (suitably defined).

The connection between Carnapian necessities and presupposition would be too tenuous to be worthy of mention, were it not in the context of Collingwood, for in this context it makes a connection between Collingwood's conception of metaphysics and the concept of metaphysics Carnap might have had, if he had allowed himself a slightly more liberal use of the term.
(noting that nothing here disturbs the fact that Carnap has defined metaphysics out of existence, the meanings postulates, are not for him metaphysics, not even if they include large cardinal axioms to fix the meaning of the concept of set).

Roger Jones

Carnap and Grice on presupposition

2011-11-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

Speranza

This is, of course, about Collingwood's presupposition. Via wiki,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Pierce/An_Essay_on_Metaphysics_(R._G._Collingwood)

It may interest Jones.

Chapter IV of Collingwood's "Essay in metaphysics" is entitled, "On Presupposing".

There are statements, questions, and suppositions.

That which is stated is something that can be true or false.

Following a convention that he does not like, Collingwood will call this a proposition, and stating it is propounding it.

It is not clear that Collingwood makes an important distinction between a statement and a proposition.

Neither does he say explicitly that they are the same thing.

Every statement is the answer to a question.

This question is always logically prior to the statement.

In scientific thinking, the question is also temporally prior, although it persists while it is being answered.

For example, an everyday observation like

"That is a clothes-line"

is preceded logically, but perhaps not in time, by a question like

"What is that line for?"

Every question has a presupposition, which is logically prior to the question.

The question "What is that line for?" has the presupposition that the line is for something.

When a question has an unmade presupposition, it is said that the question does not arise.

For example, the question

"When did you stop beating your spouse?"

usually does not arise.

[I discussed this elsewhere. Grice refers to the wife in WoW:Presupp. and Conv. Impl, and most notably in that section that Neale was complaining Grice did not reprint in WoW, in "Causal theory of perception". Grice uses,

"When did you stop beating your wife?"

along with "My wife is in the kitchen or the bathroom", and "He has beautiful handwriting" and "She was poor but she was honest" as the FOUR examples. This one is of 'presupposition'. I discussed this elsewhere, "Tu non cessas comedere ferrum", You do not cease to eat iron, an old sophisma.

That a supposition causes a question to arise is the logical efficacy of the supposition.

The supposition need not be a proposition in order to have logical efficacy.

For example, in commerce, the supposition that people are dishonest causes receipts to be requested.

But a request for a receipt is not an accusation that somebody is in fact dishonest.

Assumptions are suppositions made by choice.

Not all suppositions are assumptions.

It can be rude to accuse people of making wrong assumptions when they are only making suppositions.

Presuppositions that are themselves answers to questions are relative presuppositions.

There are also absolute presuppositions, which are not answers to any questions.

--- These should interst us as we walk towards the city of eternal truth. Or not!

They are not propositions.

They are neither true or false.

For example, the pathologist works with the absolute presupposition that every disease has a cause.

This is not something that can be discovered or verified, like the existence of microbes.

It is taken for granted.

The metaphysician's job is not to propound this or that absolute presupposition, because it cannot be done.

The metaphysician's job is to propound the proposition that this or that supposition is an absolute presupposition.

The next Chapter, V, Collingwood entitles, "[Metaphysics as] The Science of Absolute Presuppositions".

Thinking comes in grades.

In low-grade, unscientific thinking, we do not recognize that every thought answers a question, much less that every question has a presupposition.

Low-grade thinking cannot give rise to metaphysics.

It does give rise to the "realist" theory whereby knowledge is "intuition" or "apprehension" of what confronts us.

The harm of Realism comes from thinking that it is re-doing, only better, what people like Descartes and Kant have done.

As higher animals can use energy in bursts to overcome obstacles, so humans can use high-grade, scientific thinking to transform their world.

High-grade thinking depends on:

1. Increased mental effort, with which comes the asking of questions.

2. Skill in directing this effort:

Questions that may be grammatically one, although they are logically many, must be
disentangled and resolved into their components; arranged so that a question whose answer is presupposed by another question precedes that question.

This work of disentangling and arranging is analysis.

It is the work of detecting presuppositions.

Detecting absolute presuppositions is metaphysical analysis.

But all analysis raises the question of whether a given presupposition is relative or absolute.

Thus metaphysics is born together with science. (Surely Collingwood was well read in Carnap -- and Grice was _hearing_ all this).

As invented by Aristotle, metaphysics (after the nonsense of ontology is removed) is the science of absolute presuppositions.

This will be shown by the examples in Part III. Meanwhile, we are working what this formulation of metaphysics means.

Telling whether a presupposition is relative or absolute:

--- can be difficult, since acknowledging the existence of absolute presuppositions is out of fashion in modern Europe;

--- cannot be done by introspection, since this only focusses on what we are already aware of, and in low-grade thinking, we are not even aware of the questions that our propositions answer;

requires analysis.

This analysis can be done with a willing subject trained in some scientific work, but unused to metaphysics.

He will be "ticklish" about his absolute presuppositions, but not the relative.

He will accept an invitation to try to justify the latter, but not the former. However, the subject will lose value as he gains experience.

It is better to experiment on oneself.

Ordinary science identifies relative presuppositions for future study.

Metaphysics, absolute presuppositions.

Absolute presuppositions can cause "numinous terror" (in the terminology of Rudolf Otto).

In the past, people had "magical" ways to deal with this terror.

Now we have abolished magic, so we frown on metaphysics, denying the existence of absolute presuppositions.

This is neurosis. Successful eradication of metaphysics will eradicate science and civilisation.

Pseudo-metaphysics asks whether a given absolute presupposition is true, and why.

Answers to such questions are nonsense.

[True pure Carnap].

Grice saw this.

Re: One bete too many

2011-02-22T12:16:00.001-08:00

On 2011-02-20, J.L.Speranza wrote:

> Grice mentions the many (12) beasts (betes noires,

> in French) but adds that they are ALL offspring (as it

> were) from Minimalism. And in "Reply to Richards" he

> provides an 'economical' argument against Minimalism _in

> toto_, rather than, alas, caring to deal with each bete

> noire independently.

Unfortunately PGRICE has been downgraded on Google books to snippet view, so I can't go back and look at this.

> --- I noted in my reply to Jones, elsewhere, that it's

> best to trace Grice's study ("Meaning") to his seminar

> material on Peirce.

I don't suppose there is anything online about this?

I found this:

Grice in the wake of Peirce

Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen

University of Helsinki

In which I discover Grice as an anti-psychologist (according to Pietarinen).

I had supposed Grice's talk about speaker's meaning, which seems to connect meaning with some mental act or event, to be a kind of psychologism.

But JL tells me:

> ... it is

> "Meaning" which attempts to reduce the 'semantic' to the

> psychological (via reductive rather than reductionist

> analysis).

So I am puzzled there about whether Grice's ideas about meaning were psychologistic.

Even if so there is possibly another reconciliation, apart from my attempt to differentiate the kinds of language at stake (ordinary versus formal scientific).

That is in the differences between semantics and meaning,

and between semantics and pragmatics.

In this I am tempted to say that Carnap's interest in semantics is primarily concerned with giving truth conditions to formal languages, and not concerned with explanation or even explication of the concept of "meaning".

And on the second point, that (as seems generally recognised) a large part of Grice's insights belong to pragmatics rather than semantics.

So now we have three differentiators on the table which might disarm possible conflict on semantics.

It seems to me that Grice comes closest to Carnap's concerns when he discusses "central meaning" (in his retrospective epilogue?), and in doing so closest to semantics, rather than pragmatics or in the analysis of "meaning" as a concept in ordinary language.

> It IS complex. Back in the day, Grice was THOUGHT as

> having providing the ultimate reduction of the

> 'semantic' to the psychological.

But perhaps we should not call this "semantic"?

> "This looks like tough ground for a constructive

> conversation but I think that when you think about the

> distinct interests of the two philosophers there is

> reason for the different attitudes, and possibilities

> for reconciliation appear. Frege's interest was

> specifically in the language of mathematics. Subsequent

> philosophers may have applied his ideas more widely, but

> Frege's anti-psychologism is to the best of my knowlege

> specific to the language of mathematics. It is

> mathematical concepts which he seeks to divest of the

> psychological elements which were common among

> mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics in his

> day. And in this he has been successful, almost all

> mathematicians today, and probably most philosophers

> have a completely non-psychological understanding of

> mathematical concepts."

> I would tend to think he was perhaps opposing, say, Mill,

> System of Logic. I've never read a more psychologist

> book than that! And of course, Mill thought that 2+2=4

> is syntethic a posteriori!

Mill certainly gets his attention, 18 mentions in the Grundlagen der Arithmetic.

> "Carnap's interest was in formal language for science,

> and the ideals of mathematical formulation and that of

> objectivity in science make the same kind of conception

> of semantics seem appropriate for languages in which

> scientific theories can be formalised. To this we might

> add, that these languages are intended for publication

> rather than discussion, they are not primarily spoken

> but written languages, and cannot depend upon the kind

> of contextual clues which may contribute significantly

> to oral discourse."

> This is ironic, in a sort of way, if one is reminded of

> the 'infamous' Vienna Circle. Apparently, they just

> gathered to TALK!

Yes. And Carnap's idea was that all philosophy was analytic and could be formalised.

But to understand this you have to distinguish a particular class of propositions which are the official doctrines of the discipline, and consider the metatheory to be specifically about those, and not about numerous other kinds of fact which the discipline deals with en passant (like who are the experts on particular topics and where they work, or discussions about methods, and a whole load of other things).

This is important for understanding the logicist thesis.

There are a lot of really wierd discussions which take place on FOM (for example) which involve completely unmathematical propositions which some mathematical logicians care about.

Also some mathematicians will tell you (and this may be most or even nearly all), that mathematics is mainly transmitted, taught, learned, discovered in (spoken) discussions between mathematicians, not through published literature or texts.

At the same time, there was at one time an apparent concensus that "the standard of proof" for mathematical propositions is provability in ZFC, even though exhibiting a formal proof is not required. You can sometimes see this kind of very precise criteria for what constitutes and established result in action. For example, Harvey Friedman, who is the principle proponent of the supplementation of ZFC by large cardinal axioms, is very careful (according to his own account) to describe a result which depends on a large cardinal axiom differently to one which can be proven in ZFC without large cardinals, and this he attributes to the editorial policy of the journals he publishes in.

> ---- Grice of course loved to TALK too. So there is a

> parallel between the unwritten, conversational,

> doctrines of the Vienna Circle (I never knew WHERE they

> met.

The difference is that he was interested in the informal conversation as subject matter, whereas the Circle were not,

and, at least in Carnap's case, he denied that his formal semantic methods were applicable to natural languages.

> A note about Grice's manoeuvres. I tend to think, and

> like to self-convince me about this, that the whole

> manoeuvre of the 'conversational implicature' was a

> technical point that Grice wanted to make about a

> certain outdated mode of doing philosophy.

Well that's certainly my impression, my very first impression on reading Grice was that he was addressing issues in the philosophy of Austin which I myself had found unsatisfactory.

> So, 'conversational implicature' is meant to

> elucidate an analysis of philosophical theses put

> forward by philosophers. He wasn't really, Grice wasn't,

> on the trivialities of "She hasn't been to prison yet".

> Rather, on say, why 'material implication' doesn't do,

> in Strawson's view, to mirror the behaviour of 'if'.

But surely the reason why one has to go into conversational implicature to elucidate the analysis is that the analysis is itself primarily an analysis of ordinary language?

The problems (from a certain point of view!) with ordinary language philosophy of the kind from which Grice was departing were of (at least) two distinct kinds.

The first kind, which are the ones which Grice was principally addressing were that as an analysis of ordinary language it was just wrong.

Some of the most glaring issues of this kind seem to originate with Wittgenstein, who seemed to think that if something was too obvious for anyone ever to say it then it couldn't be true.

When Grice sorts these out, he is slightly removed from the idiocy, for he really is sorting out philosophical mistakes rather than promulgating falsehoods about ordinary language.

(and of course, less idiotic, because closer to the truth).

But there is no point in doing this if the original philosophical investigations were not just wrong, but misdirected. If the entire enterprise was a misdirection of philosophical talent, then a fine-grained corrective analysis is equally misdirected.

Against this kind of critique Grice responds to defend the enterprise. As you would expect, a detailed critique betokens an acceptance of the general conception of philosophy, though it doesn't mean an agreement on which are the important problems to address within that conception.

> It is LINGUISTS and other scientists (so-called) -- e.g.

> psycholinguists, ethnomethodologists of conversation,

> etc. -- which naturally focus on what Grice's theory is

> obviosuly about. But recall that for Grice, the point

> was in the application. The fun, he said in "Further

> notes", not in the WoW reprint, is when one cashes out

> implicature for its philosophical price, as it were.

And what is its philosophical price?

Austin too writes as if the analysis of language were a preliminary to something more important, but leaves one wondering whether life is long enough to reach these applications.

I do think that Grice does put on a better impression of desiring to address some real philosophical problems.

On the Kripke stuff I think I will come back later, when I have something more substantial to offer.

Roger Jones

One bete too many

2011-02-20T10:31:00.000-08:00

Jones writes:

"When last "the conversation" (between Grice and Carnap) through which Speranza and I were approaching the Eternal City was in progress, the principle avenue along which progress was envisaged lead Carnap down the gauntlet provided by Grice's numerous betes noires. My own difficulty in progressing this line was that for many of the betes we seemed to have little material from Grice to clarify exactly what it was he abhorred. This particularly difficult because it seemed that the central thread in these abhorrences was minimalisation, and that positivism, even the relatively giving positivism of Carnap, does involve a lot of this."

Yes. Grice mentions the many (12) beasts (betes noires, in French) but adds that they are ALL offspring (as it were) from Minimalism. And in "Reply to Richards" he provides an 'economical' argument against Minimalism _in toto_, rather than, alas, caring to deal with each bete noire independently.

Jones:

"My own pet thesis was that if one could probe Grice's mind one would find that what he abhorred was various dogmatic minimalisms, and that he might be persuaded to find some value in the more liberal pluralistic minimalisms in which Carnap mostly engaged. Making this thesis stick is not so easy, particularly in relation to minimalisms on which Grice wrote little. I have therefore in my more recently thoughts on this felt that other avenues might be more productive. There are of course the threads identified in the retrospective epilogue, whose primary merit is that they compiled with hindsight to reflect what he actually wrote about. There is one that seems to me at present to be of particular interest.
It is a topic which was very important to both, on which there is at first glance an irreconcilable gulf, but on which it seems to me that a conversation might well show that the gulf is illusory and that resolving the apparent conflict might be illuminating. This is "meaning"."

---- Yes. Jones was posting something on Russell Dale's history of 'meaning' (PhD disseration for New York Univ, under Schiffer) which relates.

--- I noted in my reply to Jones, elsewhere, that it's best to trace Grice's study ("Meaning") to his seminar material on Peirce. This in various pretty basic ways. Jonathan Bennett, on the other hand, in his "Linguistic Behaviour", makes the wrong connections.

He notes

1956 Grice/Strawson. In defense of a dogma
1957 Grice. Meaning

---- Bennett takes Grice's "Meaning" to be a reply to "In defense of a dogma". The latter was involved with the 'vicious' circle of semantic notions. And while G/S provide a behaviourist way out of the circle, it is "Meaning" which attempts to reduce the 'semantic' to the psychological (via reductive rather than reductionist analysis).

On the other hand, with S. R. Chapman, in her _Grice_, I now tend to think (it's good to change one's exegesis every now and then) that Grice was insulted by the overuse of technicisms in Peirce. If you have read Peirce you know what I mean: the icon, the symbol, the index, and what have you.

Grice thought it would be best to reduce all that to "proper" (i.e. ordinary) English, and speaks of

"... means..."

instead. The rest is history!

---- There is the connection with Stevenson, too, which may have bearing with Carnap. From Peirce we get to Morris. And Stevenson was involved in that group (Unity of Science). So, there was more like this 'complex' "research paradigm" springing form Peirce that Grice is considering. Carnap fits well in (vide his early, "Introduction to semantics", and his constant lip-servicing, if that's the word, pragmatics, as well -- and cfr. Jones and my research on Carnap's brief manifesto for pragmatics as the science of utterance, assertion, and belief, elsewhere).

Jones:

"The gulf has already been apparent between Speranza and I, for the kind of semantics which is of primary interest to Carnap, and to myself, and which comes down from Frege, is something which is completely divested of "psychologism", in which meanings have nothing whatever to do with minds or mental entities (unless minds are the subject matter of the language under analysis). Grice on the other hand builds his conception of semantics on speakers intentions (insofar as I understand it, which is not so much!)."

It IS complex. Back in the day, Grice was THOUGHT as having providing the ultimate reduction of the 'semantic' to the psychological. This was important for careful minds. E.g. Fodor (not one) would rather have a Language of Thought installed in one's brains. But a Griceian cannot just postulate a 'meaningful sentence' as the object of one's propositional attitude ("Jones believed that it is raining"). So, Grice would consider things like:

Jones uttered, "It is raining"
By uttering "It is raining", Jones meant that it was raining. I.e. By uttering "It is raining", Jones intended Speranza to believe that Jones believed that it was raining.

The odd thing is that this convinced Speranza thoroughly. ("I was disarmed by the inability of Speranza to check with the facts. He came to believe that I believed,
and intended Speranza to believe that I believed, that it was raining, by my merely having uttered, "It is raining". The odd implicature is that I never said _where_").

Jones:

"This looks like tough ground for a constructive conversation but I think that when you think about the distinct interests of the two philosophers there is reason for the different attitudes, and possibilities for reconciliation appear. Frege's interest was specifically in the language of mathematics. Subsequent philosophers may have applied his ideas more widely, but Frege's anti-psychologism is to the best of my knowlege specific to the language of mathematics. It is mathematical concepts which he seeks to divest of the psychological elements which were common among mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics in his day. And in this he has been successful, almost all mathematicians today, and probably most philosophers have a completely non-psychological understanding of mathematical concepts."

I would tend to think he was perhaps opposing, say, Mill, System of Logic. I've never read a more psychologist book than that! And of course, Mill thought that 2+2=4 is syntethic a posteriori! Grice would often joke with more grice to the mill. I once did a study (whose mimeo I must have somewhere and which I should scan, with H. Arlo Costa) on the mentalism (so-called) in Mill and Grice. I was amazed by the proto-Griceian views in Mill's analysis of syncategorematic particles like "however" and "but". A great author!

----

Jones:

"Carnap's interest was in formal language for science, and the ideals of mathematical formulation and that of objectivity in science make the same kind of conception of semantics seem appropriate for languages in which scientific theories can be formalised. To this we might add, that these languages are intended for publication rather than discussion, they are not primarily spoken but written languages, and cannot depend upon the kind of contextual clues which may contribute significantly to oral discourse."

This is ironic, in a sort of way, if one is reminded of the 'infamous' Vienna Circle. Apparently, they just gathered to TALK! Ayer enjoyed those conversations, even if his German was minimal. And so did who would later came out as a bit of a traitor to the whole Vienna Circle ideals: an American chap with a Manx surname (W. V. Orman).

---- Grice of course loved to TALK too. So there is a parallel between the unwritten, conversational, doctrines of the Vienna Circle (I never knew WHERE they met. I suppose the university. Odd: I would have selected a pub in downtown) and Grice's Play Group meetings.

Grice did meet in pubs. Notably "Lamb and Flag" and the more prestigious "Eagle and Child" (or "Bird and baby" as Grice called it). They are close enough to St. John's. The meetings were systematically on Saturday mornings. I would not have attended if I had been in the Oxford of the day, since, my last tutorial finished on Friday, I would have taken the FIRST TRAIN to London, and stay there till, say, Monday night, or whenever my next tutorial would be. Although perhaps Mondays I would have golfed?).

---

So, while there is this idea of _publication_, etc. (and Warnock recollects in his "Saturday mornings" how unBritish 'publication' was considered then. "We really didn't care to publish our views. We were proud of our parochialism") philosophy is indeed about the conversation -- 'endless conversation' as I think Richard Rorty has it. On the way to the City of Eternal Truth, of course.

Jones goes on:

"The relevant context is the literature, or some narrowly circumscribed part of it. Grice on the other hand, was of course trying to understand how ordinary spoken language works. In this case, it will much less often be the case that a sentence has some definite objective meaning. Add to this, Carnap's explicit denial that one could expect to deliver a formal semantics for natural languages. It is arguable therefore, that the different attitudes toward meaning are not in conflict, that they represent the different realities of distinct kinds of language."

A note about Grice's manoeuvres. I tend to think, and like to self-convince me about this, that the whole manoeuvre of the 'conversational implicature' was a technical point that Grice wanted to make about a certain outdated mode of doing philosophy. Recall he presented WoW:I-VI at Harvard 1967, and the Prolegomena all deal with specimens from:

Ryle
Austin
Wittgenstein
Strawson
Hart
Hare

and so on. So, 'conversational implicature' is meant to elucidate an analysis of philosophical theses put forward by philosophers. He wasn't really, Grice wasn't, on the trivialities of "She hasn't been to prison yet". Rather, on say, why 'material implication' doesn't do, in Strawson's view, to mirror the behaviour of 'if'.

It is LINGUISTS and other scientists (so-called) -- e.g. psycholinguists, ethnomethodologists of conversation, etc. -- which naturally focus on what Grice's theory is obviosuly about. But recall that for Grice, the point was in the application. The fun, he said in "Further notes", not in the WoW reprint, is when one cashes out implicature for its philosophical price, as it were.

---- It is true that in Oxford seminars between 1961 and 1967, on, boringly, "Logic and Conversation" he WAS BUILDING on a rationality-based account of minimal conversational exchanges. So a case can be made for a purely theoretical interest by Grice on this matters. But as a matter of history, it all started -- as he says in WoW:Retr. Ep., strand 6 -- out of Grice's discomfort with "later Wittgensteinian" rejections of sense-data ("The pillar box seems red to me, looks as if it is red; and, by Golly, this should surprise not even Witters, since the 'bloody' thing _is_ red!")

Jones:

"Furthermore, it seems to me now that if Carnap wished to continue his opposition to certain kinds of metaphysics, then a prime target would be the metaphysics of Kripke, and that because Kripke seems to suppose himself to be obtaining objective metaphysical truths in ordinary language without adopting any special terminology, especially without making use of specific philosophical notions of necessity (which is what Carnap does), then one part of an argument against this could be to deny that ordinary language does have any such concepts."

Kripke, oddly, can have a sense of humour. I pity the man after all the complications he was having with the American Philosophical Association (I'm not sure if Kripke does not call that Association a 'bete noire'). In his book, "Seas of Language", Dummett quotes from Kripke. "Seas of language". Kripke's quote refers to

"Socrates is called "Socrates""

--- see how deep the seas of language can go. Ditto, Grice refered to the 'berths' of language (Grice Club, search engine). So on a charitable view, one can see Grice's and Kripke's attempts to be such of reconstructing, say, 'logical form' out of its "pretty good guide" (in Russell's words): grammar.

----

Jones:

"In such an argument, the kind of attention to the realities of ordinary language which we find in Grice would be helpful. There is some similarity here with the contribution of Grice on the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, for Grice's contribution here with Strawson, is to the effect that no failure in precise enunciation of the distinction by philosophers can undermine the practical efficacy of related notions in ordinary language."

Indeed. And they DO provide a criterion: a behavioural one. Since they are working in the context of "ordinary language philosophy" the point is often not stressed strongly enough. But they DO propose:

"I just can't understand what the dickens you are talking about!" -- as an apt conversational reply to an analytically false 'conversational move' ("My neighbour's three-year child is an adult").

Versus:

"Incredible to some, but for some reason, I DO believe you!" (as an apt answer to the synthetically false, "My neighbour's three year child understands Russell's theory of types". Note that in this scenario, G/S do mention the case when such a child IS PRODUCED. "We must come to the conclusion that the proposition uttered WAS true." Whereas in the first case ("... is an adult") this would require a different 'conceptual scheme' or semantic interpreation of the basic predicates involved (e.g. "ADULT"), and so on.

Jones:

"Though this is the opposite way round, ordinary discourse providing support for a philosophical distinction."

Excellent point, that.

Recall that at the time, Grice and Strawson were hosting Quine at Oxford, so perhaps 'analytic' was TOO ordinary to be true!

Jones:

"On Kripkean metaphysics the aim would be to undermine the idea that this kind of metaphysics is other than a philosophical construction. Of course Grice might not care for such a campaign, even if it built on his insights!"

The other day I was checking O. Pooley's semantics page at the Oxford Univ site, and it's amazing the time he dedicates in his seminar to ... Kripke! It's not just Kripke-Kripke, but minor Kripke like Kripke on 'semantic reference' and 'speaker reference'. I have work by Patton and Stampe refuting Kripke's early misuse of Grice. It's amazing how it developed into something Grice also found interest, in "Vacuous Names", when he considers Identificatory versus Non-Identificatory Reference -- Kripke's line being put forward also by Donnellan with his referential/attribute distinction.

So, yes, the Kripke-Grice interface is worth considering! Whatever the results!

Bete's and the conversation

2011-02-20T06:01:00.000-08:00

When last "the conversation" (between Grice and Carnap) through which Speranza and I were approaching the Eternal City was in progress, the principle avenue along which progress was envisaged lead Carnap down the gauntlet provided by Grice's numerous betes noires.
My own difficulty in progressing this line was that for many of the betes we seemed to have little material from Grice to clarify exactly what it was he abhorred.

This particularly difficult because it seemed that the central thread in these abhorrences was minimalisation, and that positivism, even the relatively giving positivism of Carnap, does involve a lot of this.
My own pet thesis was that if one could probe Grice's mind one would find that what he abhorred was various dogmatic minimalisms, and that he might be persuaded to find some value in the more liberal pluralistic minimalisms in which Carnap mostly engaged. Making this thesis stick is not so easy, particularly in relation to minimalisms on which Grice wrote little.

I have therefore in my more recently thoughts on this felt that other avenues might be more productive. There are of course the threads identified in the retrospective epilogue, whose primary merit is that they compiled with hindsight to reflect what he actually wrote about.

There is one that seems to me at present to be of particular interest.
It is a topic which was very important to both, on which there is at first glance an irreconcilable gulf, but on which it seems to me that a conversation might well show that the gulf is illusory and that resolving the apparent conflict might be illuminating.

This is "meaning".

The gulf has already been apparent between Speranza and I, for the kind of semantics which is of primary interest to Carnap, and to myself, and which comes down from Frege, is something which is completely divested of "psychologism", in which meanings have nothing whatever to do with minds or mental entities (unless minds are the subject matter of the language under analysis).
Grice on the other hand builds his conception of semantics on speakers intentions (insofar as I understand it, which is not so much!).

This looks like tough ground for a constructive conversation but I think that when you think about the distinct interests of the two philosophers there is reason for the different attitudes, and possibilities for reconciliation appear.

Frege's interest was specifically in the language of mathematics. Subsequent philosophers may have applied his ideas more widely, but Frege's anti-psychologism is to the best of my knowlege specific to the language of mathematics. It is mathematical concepts which he seeks to divest of the psychological elements which were common among mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics in his day. And in this he has been successful, almost all mathematicians today, and probably most philosophers have a completely non-psychological understanding of mathematical concepts.
Carnap's interest was in formal language for science, and the ideals of mathematical formulation and that of objectivity in science make the same kind of conception of semantics seem appropriate for languages in which scientific theories can be formalised. To this we might add, that these languages are intended for publication rather than discussion, they are not primarily spoken but written languages, and cannot depend upon the kind of contextual clues which may contribute significantly to oral discourse. The relevant context is the literature, or some narrowly circumscribed part of it.

Grice on the other hand, was of course trying to understand how ordinary spoken language works. In this case, it will much less often be the case that a sentence has some definite objective meaning.

Add to this, Carnap's explicit denial that one could expect to deliver a formal semantics for natural languages.

It is arguable therefore, that the different attitudes toward meaning are not in conflict, that they represent the different realities of distinct kinds of language.
Furthermore, it seems to me now that if Carnap wished to continue his opposition to certain kinds of metaphysics, then a prime target would be the metaphysics of Kripke, and that because Kripke seems to suppose himself to be obtaining objective metaphysical truths in ordinary language without adopting any special terminology, especially without making use of specific philosophical notions of necessity (which is what Carnap does), then one part of an argument against this could be to deny that ordinary language does have any such concepts. In such an argument, the kind of attention to the realities of ordinary language which we find in Grice would be helpful.
There is some similarity here with the contribution of Grice on the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, for Grice's contribution here with Strawson, is to the effect that no failure in precise enunciation of the distinction by philosophers can undermine the practical efficacy of related notions in ordinary language. Though this is the opposite way round, ordinary discourse providing support for a philosophical distinction. On Kripkean metaphysics the aim would be to undermine the idea that this kind of metaphysics is other than a philosophical construction.
Of course Grice might not care for such a campaign, even if it built on his insights!

Roger Jones

Toward the City (progressing the conversation)

2010-09-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

This is a few words about what I think the most important point on which to progress the Carnap/Grice conversation on its way toward the City of Eternal Truth.

There is the proposition thing, which I raised on the Grice Club, possibly at a bad moment to get a response.

I shalln't press that one here.

The other main area of apparent discord and hence possible progress is the Griceian Bete's.
We have, in "the conversation" (PDF), an account by Speranza of what these Bete's are, but if a conciliation is sought between Grice and the beastly aspects of Carnap, the detail will be important. Important, for example, to check out my hunch that Grice's opposition is to radical or dogmatic beastlyness, rather than moderate and pragmatic minimalisations.

To this end it would be nice to know the detail (if there is any) about what Grice said about the Bete's.

This seems to me rather more difficult than progressing Grice's attitude towards the proposition. For in that latter case, I have plenty on "meaning", even "central meaning" in WOW, which can be assessed in relation to the notion of proposition (construed as a semantic entity) even if Grice didn't like that word.
But I am less aware of his having written about the Bete's and even if detailed textual references might not be forthcoming, any pointers would be of interest.

Roger Jones

Meaning Postulates for "Refudiate"

2010-08-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

Since I discovered the Palindrone [sic], 'refudiate', in yesterday's Newsweek, I've been having a field day at the Grice Club.

I wonder about meaning postulates, an archaism from Carnap (I mean, as Jones will tell us, he disallowed the notion in later writings).

Consider this from an online source for the defense of Palin's neologism, 'refudiate':

"a conjunction of repudiate (i.e., renounce the planned building) and refute (i.e., dispute the notion that it is necessary and appropriate at that exact location)."

Grice is never so strict as Carnap is that for any predicate we should provide, in System C-sub-R, with a 'meaning-postulate'. For Grice, the meaning-intention is constitutive. If Palin meant that the mosque plan should be 'refudiated', she obviously (we hope) meant that that was a negative-attitude that was being promoted, one attitude like repudiation and refutation and refuse. Since there was no covertness in her intention, she MEANT that, or HOPED to mean that.

Belnap and Company

2010-07-31T09:02:00.000-07:00

Glad to know that Jones, as he notes in his "Carnap Corner" blog found online some excellent pdf essay on Carnap, which cross-references with Belnap's "Carnap's lamp" essay, which he also refers to in a different post.

I had read Belnap's essay and have found it of great interest and was impressed by the technicality of the previous essay that Jones referred to, that compares Carnap with computer programming.

I am glad Jones will compare the 'flatness' of Belnap with the 'shallowness' of his own approach to stuff including Grice's 'Vacuous Names'. Etc.

Grice on Vacuous Names and X-Methods

2010-07-13T23:01:00.000-07:00

By Roger Bishop Jones for The City of Eternal Truth

What is the point of my paper Grice on Vacuous Names, and how does it bear upon "The City of Eternal Truth".

Well, the key to Eternal Truth, rather than the usual philosophical speculative froth, is in analytic method.
The way we approach The City is through a dialogue between Carnap* and Grice*, in which by a constructive comparative analysis the philosophies of the two men evolve toward an effective analytic method.
This paper is one element of this process.

After an initial flurry in constructing the formal model (called System C) which one might think of as a hybrid between a formal model of and a dialectical response to system Q, I will use this as an example for the description and discussion of analytic methods. I decided to use the term "X-Methods" as a label for the position I am now developing on a pluralistic analytic method (this is the kind of thing which Carnap* might have come up with).

The exposition will be split across two chapters of a multi-volume work of formal philosophy (at present called "analyses of analysis") of which the material on Grice's system Q will form a chapter.
An earlier chapter in the work is intended to provide a discussion of the methods employed in the book, and I hope to progress that chapter and make clear in "Grice on Vacuous Names" how that chapter exemplifies the methods.

These methods are Carnap*'s approach to Eternal Truth.

Roger Jones

Fascinated that Jones created system C!

2010-07-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

by J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club.

I am fascinated that R. B. Jones cared to create "System C" at:

rbjones.com/rbjpub/pp/doc/t037.pdf

----

Little summary of how this fits with the "City of Eternal Truth". Maria R., in her entry, "non-existent objects", for the Stanford, mentions "The Golden Mountain" as a non-existent object. She does NOT mention, "The City of Eternal Truth" as a similarly non-existent thing, so there's hope for us!

In any case, as Jones notes, he created "System C" as a tribute to Carnap. And as he notes this is echoing Grice who coined his System Q in tribute to Quine and, perhaps more importantly, to Myro who 'coined' his system -- System G -- as a tribute to Grice. I have elsewhere (S/H, etc.) referred to the thing as System G_HP.

So we have a few systems here! That's good!

Bootstrap: System CR, System GHP

2010-06-04T04:13:00.000-07:00

by J. L. Speranza

THIS MEANT as commentary to Jones's commentary -- but system disallowed it. It's all about 'pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps' in special connection with something like Carnap's System C_R and Grice's System Q which becomes Myro's System G_HP.

Very good points. Indeed, System G_HP is intended as a 'model' of, say, say English. I call it "H. P." to refer to 'highly plausible' or 'hopefully powerful' -- while sticking to the initials of Grice being H. P, Herbert Paul.

And you are right that it's not meant as a 'meta-language' in principle. Indeed, in defining System Q (which is the one that Grice himself created) he uses natural English, ordinary English, as the metalanguage for his Sysem Q (and Myro does the same when defining his System G -- on which System G_HP is based. Consider:

"If phi is a formula, phi /\ psi is a formula".

That simple enough 'formation rule' for System G_HP -- actually subscripts for the three elemnts of "phi /\ psi" would be needed -- may cover some complexity should we want to define it in the object-language of System G_HP itself. For it involves a sort of predicate-calculus, and we are dealing with the propositional-calculus segment of System G_HP. For " ... is a formula" is really quite a piece of work, if you ask me! In any case I would think that Grice intends his System Q to cover BOTH the object-language (L1) and the meta-language -- but I would need to revise this. Similarly, in WoW:first two pages of 'Logic and Conversation' when he paints the picture of the Formalist (alla Hilbert) as dealing with a 'set of formulae' which may be taken as axiomata, etc., he seems to be talking of 'system', as he indeed is, as the 'proper' set of formulae -- 'proper' in the sense of 'itself', not qua technical term in set-theory! -- rather than as the set of formulae cum editorial work that the meta-language L2 may provide. But this may be tricky. In any case, there seems to be some sort of regress in that if, as Grice thinks, the formalist's point in constructing L1 is to free the language of 'metaphysical excrescences', what would the point be if any such excrescence, metaphysical or other, is brought onto the system via the meta-language?

Tarksi is a good case in point, maybe -- for I thought his "Semantic definition of truth" FULL of metaphysics at the meta-level. And it may be something like an examination of work being done by Davidson at Berkeley that had Grice formulating Bootstrap in the first place! (I am referring to Davidson on his "Truth" essay in Synthese that apparently had a big influence on Strawson's student, Strawson). But will re-read stuff and elaborate (mean: think). Thanks for input.

Carnap and Grice pulling ourselves up by their own bootstraps

2010-06-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

by JLS

THIS WAS MEANT as comment to the previous post, but system disallowed it.

Good. Yes, there must be something Tarskian behind this. Grice refers only briefly to Tarski in WoW:55 re: "Monkeys can talk", when he writes: "A theory of truth has (as Tarski notes) to provide not only for occurrences of true in sentennces in whch what is being spoken of as true is specified [in the object-language] but also for occurrences in which no specification is given (e.g. The policeman's statement was true)."

(Grice thought that Strawson's and indeed Ramsey's (whom he also quotes on that same page) failed to provide for that.

But I'm not sure about the NL-FL (natural-formal language) distinction at this point. Yes, there must have been something along that line in the Carnap-Grice difference of outlook. But I would think that syntax, even in NL, allows for a pretty easy way to mark the object-language/meta-language distinction: the simple quotes or scare quotes --. So, even in terms of syntactic admissability (which you say you are laxer when it comes to something like a System, and like to indulge in the semantics-ontology interface) I would think Grice is seeing a bigger problem there.

It would seem then that we do have an user of the L₁ -- this may be a given. A system like System G_HP, or System C_R, aims at reconstructing or constructing a segment of "NL" (or the language of scientists in Carnap's construal) as it is used (provisos there). But what about L₂? This is the system-analyst's job (There IS a discipline, 'systems analysis', no?, so I propose such a reference when we talk of approaching a System like System G_HP or System C_R --. A mere truth-functional equivalence, of the Tarski type, to allow for the specification of what the policeman said as true may be complexer than it sounds. For we will not be satisfied with 'Monkeys can talk is true' iff monkeys can talk. In 'elucidation' of various types, including philosophical, if we were asked to provide a truth-functional equivalence of "Monkeys can talk" we may rather be inspired to provide an excursus onto what we mean, in the object-language, by 'monkey', by 'talk', and by 'can'. Suppose we arrive at the conclusion that it means, 'Any specimen s of Pan troglodytes has a procedure in the repertoire which has a finite set of initial devices, together with semantic provisions for them, and a finite set of different syntactical operations or combinations, and an understanding of what the functions of those modes of combination are, so that s can generate an infinite set of utterances or complex devices, together with a correspodningly infinite set of things to be communicated by them" (apres WoW:296). Even here we would be using 'talk' in scare quotes, since apparently, Nim Chimsky may be said to 'talk' rather than talk -- i.e. the malleability of the phonetic apparatus seems to be missing.

But I don't think Grice was into specific claims in the object-language, "Monkeys can talk" that may need an elucidation in terms of the meta-language. Rather, as I believe Jones does, too with his interesting notion of semantic regress and meta-circular definitions, and the brilliant idea of the Scylla and Charidis -- bewteen meta-circularity and regressus ad infinitum -- the problem lies at the heart of the 'constructivist' enterprise.

In any case, it is a good reminder to keep a good eye on what logicians mean when they jump to metalogic (as some of them do) in a way that they think washes 'their hands' with respect to the object-language.

The 'order' index may be indicative too. System G_HP, or System C_R, may be thought of as a language, L₁. But what about L₂. As Grice describes System Q in his "Vacuous Names", he uses English, indeed, not System Q itself. But is this a mere 'abbreviatory' manoeuvre? We hope so. But are we sure? The point may be trickier. In an introduction or elimination rule for a connective, say, when a System like System G_HP uses the very idea of 'valid' inference, isn't it a bit of an 'act of faith' that such openly 'meta-linguistic' operation will yield an expression in the object-language? In some logic tracts the meta-language (meta-logic) is so much richer that one doubts! Or consider the semantics, where it interfaces with the ontology (or metaphysics as Grice would prefer -- recall that Part II of WoW is entitled, "Explorations in semantics and metaphysics" --. When the meta-language (in System G_HP) speaks of 'Corr (1)', correlation with truth, and 'Corr (0)' and correlation with falsity, as it provides the 'truth-tables' for each operator -- e.g. monadic or dyadic truth-functors -- what would THAT statement, i.e. the statement of each such correlation -- yield when expressed in the object-language. I AM hoping that Tarski was, as Jones said he was, 'premature' in rejecting meta-circularity. I am positive that Grice loved a circle! (WoW: Meaning Revisited -- last section, is all about Schiffer's allegations of circularity in Grice and he goes on to bring in the platonic "circle" as a case in point to prove Schiffer wrong!)

Carnap and Grice pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps

2010-06-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

--- by JLS

--- IN "PREJUDICES AND PREDILECTIONS", which is the title I prefer for "Reply to Richards", (online books), Grice speaks of "Bootstrap". I may have quoted verbatim what the principle amounts to in the Grice Club. From memory. It concerns Russell's neologisms:

object-language (here the hyphen is important and the idea of 'object' IS important)

meta-language.

Let's use L1 and L2 for those. Since this is really a System. We can deal with the first order System G_HP, or first-order System C_R, alternatively.

(But there is the caveat that 'second-order' does not really necessarily MEAN 'metalanguage').

So, let's grab the piece by Grice!

--- He writes:

It is p. 93 of P. G. R. I. C. E., ed. Grandy/Warner (Clarendon Press).

He is considering points which I have discussed in the club, as to levels of priority and levels of conceptual priority, and subscripting to levels of conceptual priority (reminiscing this PhD I was referring to recently at the Grice Club regarding the point of the "... means ..."). In any case, Grice is being VERY general here, and surely he doesn't have just '... means ...' as his focus. He is considering sense-data, and moral/legal notions, too. He is considering ontology and epistemology (ontological priority, epistemic ontology), etc. He writes:

"It is perhaps reasonable to regard such fine
distinction as indispensable if we are to succeed
in the business of pulling ourselves up by our
own bootstraps. In this connection it will be
relevant for me to say that I once invented
(though I did not establish its validity) a
principle which I labelled as Boostrap. The
principle laid down that when one is introducing
the primitive concepts of a theory formulated
in an object-language, one has freedom to use
any battery of concepts expressible in the
meta-language, subject to the condition that
counterparts of such concepts are
subsequently definable or otherwise derivable
in the object-language. So the more economically
one introduces the primitive object-language concepts,
the less of a task one leaves oneself for the morrow".

I propose the above vis a vis Jones's VERY intersting reflections, here and in the other two blogs, Grice Club and Carnap Corner, about the role of metalogic in the development of twentieth-century logic -- a topic that fascinates us both. And Jones's expertise allows him to utter some very bold and inspiring and truly exegetical claims in the direction where progress should lead to.

System GHP, System CR and Jones's Systems

2010-06-02T11:17:00.000-07:00

By J. L. Speranza

JONES WROTE in his commentary to "System C_R and System G_HP"

"[Mine] is a first order set theory".

Obviously Grice was familiar with this, since often he would refer to set-theoretical concepts -- mainly in his attack of 'Extensionalism', which just ignores all that Carnap said about intensions or the mere possibility of defining intensions in terms of extensions. This is the only treatment of a bete noire in his "Reply to Richards". He tires with the details soon enough and proposes to deal with the twelve betes noires en bloc, as offsprings of Minimalism -- in THIS connection set-theory rears its head again, in that, for example, 'set' IS a sort of 'abstract entity' -- and thus Nominalism has to be refined to deal with the acceptance of sets. At some point Grice would say, 'rejection of all abstract entitities except sets' or something like that (as he tries to reconstruct rather than deconstruct the position). But in any case, Grice would prefer to talk of 'predicate calculus'.

----

Notably in "Prejudices and predilections" he does mention the collocation, "first-order predicate calculus with identity" -- implicating that NO modal notions need be introduced -- which would have yielded a system like Kripke's System S.

When I look at the presentations of these calculus (the Praedikaet Calcul of the Germans -- based on the Propositional Calculus) I am sometimes intrigued by the ontological simplicity of it. It seems it is GOING to yield a pretty simple ontology -- i.e. the syntax (never mind semantics) is such, -- 'contrived' may be the word -- that it's no wonder that the ontology that it will be made to 'depend' on via the semantics will also be contrived.

Sometimes the way to distinguish a philosopher (such as Carnap, Grice, Jones, or Speranza) -- from a non-philosopher is to examine his reactions at the 'ontology', so I'm pleased that Jones likes to play with the ontologies and the semantics. The syntax, as Jones notes, has to reflect an ontology which will be as rich as we want it to make it -- to reflect what we see is the ontology of 'common sense' or 'ordinary language' or 'science' -- qua 'cathedral of learning'. This is QUITE a task!

In any case, Jones's use of 'first-order' merits a post, which I will entitle 'Bootstrap', soon.

System CR and System GHP

2010-05-31T16:08:00.000-07:00

by J. L. S.

SO, I PROPOSE they are identical. We should find out if Carnap had another name than Rudolf, since I have my System G_HP to read, a 'hopefully plausible' or 'highly powerful' version of Myro's System G (based on Grice's System Q, for Quine).

So I propose they are identical.

Once Virgil and Dante speak the same lingo, they can raise to the City!

----

More on this later. My point is really a hint to think of a specific quote by Carnap -- from his book he wrote to 'replace' Principia Mathematica (seeing how inflation was killing Germany) --. Basically System C, like System G, then would contain:

vocabulary

syntax -- inference rules

introduction and elimination of operators. I have of late concentrated on "~", but the points can be made more generally about logical operators in general, notably conectives.

semantics

pragmatics

---

The sketch for Grice's "System Q" in his "Vacuous Names" I have expanded at the Grice Club. I should provide specific quotes from that essay by Grice, I suppose, and I may!

The conversation and de-construction

2010-05-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

By Roger Bishop Jones, for The City of Eternal Truth

In the Grice Club Speranza has been talking about deconstructionism, and the discussion connects with the reasons for a recent pause in my attention to the Carnap/Grice conversation and the road to The City.

"The conversation" is an exercise in comparative analysis, in which we seek an understanding by each philosopher of the view of the other, and hope to discover substantial "sub-theories" of the ideas of each philosophy which are compatible and can provide a basis on which they could have built together.

To move forward in this enterprise I have to have straight in my head a method of comparative analysis which is capable of achieving such a reconciliation.
I had come to believe that such a method might be arrived at by some further development of my earlier conception of "X-Logic", itself a formal method, and of an informal version suitable for earlier stages in an analysis which might ultimately be formalised.

This squares with the idea which I put forward to The Grice Club that certain aspects of deconstructionism should be taken seriously in the articulation of methods for rational re-construction, so that pathologies in the target of analysis are fully explicated rather than glossed over, and can be focussed on in the analysis.

This is all rather ethereal perhaps, and will have to be articulated and illustrated more thoroughly, but perhaps give some idea why I think that progress on the Conversation depends for my part on progressing a new version of X-Logic, and on an account of how one can achieve similar effects in the first place by less formal means.

RBJ

Carnap and Grice discussed successively (almost) by Beaney

2010-05-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

In his entry on "Analysis" at Stanford, Fregean scholar M. Beaney tells the story with some continuity. His section 7 is Carnap. His section 8 is Grice. Some commentary. From the site at:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/s6.html#7

Section 7 is thus entitled, "Carnap".

Some fragments with commentary:

"influenced not only by Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein but also by neo-Kantianism (see Friedman 2000, Richardson 1998)."

I was surprised to read in the "Finding Aid to Grice" that he has joint work with this M. Friedman on universalia!

---

"to be ‘constructed’ by quasi-analysis, a method that mimics analysis in yielding ‘quasi-constituents’, but which proceeds ‘synthetically’ rather than ‘analytically’ (1928, §§ 69, 74)."

This seems to trade on "analysis" as a mathematical practice, and Grice would have favoured that. Perhaps Aristotle is given too much credit with the invention of "analysis" -- his "Analytica priora and posteriora", but perhaps, analysis, qua analysis, is after all, a mathematical conception (Descartes).

Beaney quotes from Carnap 1936:143:

“The logical analysis of a particular expression

consists in the setting-up of a linguistic system

and the placing of that expression in this system.”

He also quotes from the later, "Meaning and Necessity" (1947):

"The task of making more exact a vague

or not quite exact concept used in everyday life

or in an earlier stage of scientific or logical

development, or rather of replacing it by a newly

constructed, more exact concept, belongs among the most

important tasks of logical analysis and logical construction.

We call this the task of explicating, or of giving an

explication for, the earlier concept."

(1947, 7-8)

Beaney concludes his discussion of Carnap with quotations from the still later, "Logical Foundations of Probability" and the idea that temperature is an elucidation of warmth. He notes the longitudinal unity of this conception of analysis which Beaney traces to the Greeks and Descartes on geometry.

The next section 8, is "Oxford Linguistic Philosophy"

Alas there is no explicit mention of Grice, but if Beaney is reading all the profusive quotes by Frege that Horn is bringing to the forum in his discussion of F-implicature, he SHOULD start quoting Grice more often!

Beaney dedicates a whole passage to Ryle, which Grice saw as too senior for consideration. Ryle had been born in 1900, and the post-war philosophers of Austin´s group -- to which Grice belonged -- found his figure too "fatherly". THEY were supposed to be doing philosophy, not aplying it.

Beaney discusses Austin, whom Jones-Speranza regard as ´prototype´ for the type of analysis from which Grice departs and refines.

Beaney notes:

"J. L. Austin ... emphasized the need to pay careful attention to our ordinary use of language, although he has been criticized for valuing subtle linguistic distinctions for their own sake."

Whose sake?

"He was influential in the creation of speech-act theory, with such distinctions as that between locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts (Austin 1962a)."

Grice does use the idea of a "central speech act" (sic, in WoW:vi) but without the dogmas. He was of course more onto the assertion-implication distintion, which he was attracted to, as Austin was with his own theory, for methodological rather than substantive reasons.

Beaney jumps from Austin to Strawson -- who was Grice´s student.

"P.F. Strawson, whose critique of Russell’s theory of descriptions in his own seminal paper of 1950, ‘On Referring’, and his Introduction to Logical Theory of 1952 had also helped establish ordinary language philosophy as a counterweight to the tradition of ... Carnap."

--- with caveats. Grice gets TWO mentions in that book. In the preface, and in a pretty famous (among Griceians) footnote, where Strawson discusses the "pragmatic rules" of ´implicature´. In fact in his earlier "On referring", Strawson HAD used "imply" to mark this important non-logical relation, which he later re-baptised "presupposing". The important difference is of course metaphysical: truth-value gaps are a no-no for Grice.

Beaney notes:

"The appearance of Individuals in 1959 and The Bounds of Sense in 1966 signalled a return to metaphysics, but it was a metaphysics that Strawson called ‘descriptive’ (as opposed to ‘revisionary’) metaphysics, aimed at clarifying our fundamental conceptual frameworks."

Grice suggests that he regrets Strawson never cared to mention him in THAT book. Grice always kept the notes on "Categories" -- some archival material cited by Chapman in her biography of Grice --. So, this is indeed a Griceian-Strawsonian joint thing. Grice became less and less descriptive as time went by an self-confessed revisionary.

Beaney:

"It is here that we can see how ‘connective’ analysis has replaced ‘reductive’ analysis; and this shift was explicitly discussed in the work Strawson published shortly after he retired, Analysis and Metaphysics (1992)."

Strawson perhaps published one book too many!

----

Note that he also reprinted his contribution to the Grice festschrift, "If and -->" in his own "Identity and Entity". What´s the good of a festschrift if you are going to publish the "contribution" elsewhere? At least on principle he never let himself published his joint "Defense of a dogma" with Grice in his own publications!

Beaney:

"Strawson notes that analysis has often been thought of as “a kind of breaking down or decomposing of something” (1992, 2), but points out that it also has a more comprehensive sense (1992, 19), which he draws on in offering a ‘connective model’ of analysis to contrast with the ‘reductive or atomistic model’ (1992, 21). Our most basic concepts, on this view, are ‘irreducible’, but not ‘simple’."

--- This is so complex, and one wonders. Strawson is influential for BEANEY, because Beaney is a Brit and Strawson is a Brit. Grice had become an American by then, but give me Grice anyday!

Beaney continues:

"A concept may be complex, in the sense that its philosophical elucidation requires the establishing of its connections with other concepts, and yet at the same time irreducible, in the sense that it cannot be defined away, without circularity, in terms of those other concepts to which it is necessarily related. (1992, 22-3)
Such a view is not new."

I rather prefer Grice´s clearer reflections on reductive versus reductionist analysis in his WoW: Retrospective Epilogue.

----

Plus, Grice, unlike Strawson, had a sense of humour!

----

Beaney refers, "for further discussion". to Baldwin 2001; Beaney 2007b; Hacker 1996, ch. 6; Lyons 1980; Passmore 1966, ch. 18; Rorty 1967; Stroll 2000, ch. 6; Warnock 1989."

--- of which Warnock, the best. Grice´s English teacher biographer, Siobhan Chapman, keeps quoting Warnock as G. C., which confuses me! He was Sir Geoffrey James, and Vice-Chancelor of the only university that should have one: Oxford.

Hacker succeeded Gordon Baker (festschriftist for Hart and Grice) as tutorial fellow at St. John´s, so the least thing he can do is quote from Grice. But Hacker, like, alas, D. F. Pears, has turned into a Wittersian, leaving all traces of Griceanism implicaturish wit behind! (He has Witt, rather!).

---

Passmore is a good one. A total Colonial. I loved that footnote in "Hundred Years": "There´s this ingenious fellow, Grice, who has written so little it scares". Or words.

Carno-Griceana

2010-05-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

In private conversation, R. B. Jones has used "Carno-Gricean" which I think is very good. So I´ll start using. You know, Google.com never knows!

Rehashed Diagram

2010-05-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

The diagram has been under discussion at The Grice Club, but on reflection I reworked it a bit, and post the latest version here again.

In theory the Speranza - Jones Carnap/Grice conversation project is spread across the three blogs (Carnap Corner, Grice Club and here), and the bit of the conversation which belongs here is the bit in which we extrapolate from the developments in the philosophies of Carnap and Grice which actually happened, via further evolution of a similar kind, to the realisation of a common conception of The City of Eternal Truth (or at least to mutually compatible conceptions).

So here is the latest diagram:

2010-05-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

I thought I would try a picture for discussion:

The idea is that Wittgenstein's two philosophical stances polarised analytic philosophy from an early stage, that Carnap and Grice play the role of moderators gradually moving away from the two opposing extremes as they matured, and that the journey to "The City of Eternal Truth" is a continuation of these two processes which can be facilitated by dialogue between Carnap and Grice, through present philosophers whose sympathies lie with them (Jones and Speranza, and anyone else who wants to join in).

RBJ

Change of Meaning, Change of Belief

2010-05-02T05:23:00.001-07:00

This below is meant as comment to Jones's point in "I propose this as interesting stuff for Carnap-Grice interface", THIS BLOG.

---

Good.

So, indeed, if we change our minds about meaning we change our linguistic frameworks. Even that bit may need some elucidation.

Let me rephrase the abstract bit by bit. Actually, I'm a bit familiar with H. Arlo Costa's theory on this. It seems quite a problem for formalists of the logic of belief. So I supposed that for Carno-Griceian studies it may do, too.

The authors of the essay cited above write in the abstract:

"One of the standard principles of rationality guiding traditional accounts of belief change is the principle of minimal change: a reasoner's belief corpus should be modified in a minimal fashion when assimilating new information."

I was thinking of Carno-Griceian ways out to Quine. Recall Grice's and Strawson's TWO examples. One as a reply to a synthetically false sentence, another to an analytically false sentence:

A: My neighbour's three-year old child understands Russell's theory of types.

B: That's almost unbelievable!

----

versus:

A: My neighbour's three-year-old child is an adult.

B: I won't BELIEVE THAT.

----

For Grice and Strawson, the second scenario is BEYOND belief, as it were. But of course, one may adopt the linguistic framework of one's interlocutor and DO COME to 'understand', and then perhaps 'believe'.

The authors continue:

"This rationality principle has stood belief change in good stead. However, it does not deal properly with all belief change scenarios."

Another case that I have considered in extenso elsewhere is what I called "Speranza": a machine unable to understand novel metaphors. Like, "Meaning is a dinosaur", or "My brother had an abortion". Or things like that. I should revise the cases. But the point is that there seems to be a LEAP at some point and that it's very bold of an interpreter to deal with a metaphor, because, when taken literally, metaphors are obviously FALSE.

The authors go on:

"We introduce a novel account of belief change motivated by one of Grice's maxims of conversational implicature: the reasoner's belief corpus is modified in a minimal fashion to assimilate exactly the new information."

-----

So, here we do need to formalise, to see what's going on if the 'change of 'our minds'' is about meaning or what.

First we should consider just synthetic change of belief.

"Is it raining?"
"No. It's not."
"Oh. I thought it was. Thanks for informing."

So here we have a change from

B(A, -p)

to

B(A, p)

Not tragic.

"Is it raining?"
"No. It's pouring!"

--- Here the case is impicatural. I take the answer as being FALSE. Pouring IS a kind of rain!

----

"Is it raining?"
"Yes. Cats and dogs".
"Whoa?"
"It's raining cats and dogs".
"I hope you are being figurative".

---- This may be one silly case, but suppose that the utterer A refuses to use "to rain cats and dogs" even figuratively. So he may need to translate that silly idiom into something he will understand, "very hard".

----

Finally we get to the cases of meaning postulates:

First the synthetic scenario:

B (A, - 'Tim understands Russell's theory of Types')
to
B (A, 'Tim understands Russell's theory of types')

In this, I'm not sure there is a change of belief involved, since U never actually DISBELIEVED that the 3-year-old child understood it.

So, we get to the 'trick' case:

B(A, -'A 3-year-old child is an adult')

to

B(A, 'A 3-year-old child is an adult')

Since one's interlocutor is actually saying that a 3-year-old child is an adult, and possibly believing it, how do we change our belief about meaning?

There must be more obvious cases. Another one would be the taste of twater for Putnan. I see that Barbara Abbott wrote about this for the Aristotelian Society.

Or consider Copernicus:

"I used to believe that the sun went around the earth, but I changed my mind."

---- No change of meaning involved. But surely there are such changes of meaning in the history of science. Indeed, that was Quine's point about Duhem, etc.

I can't think of one! Perhaps Einstein's ideas as 'changing the meaning' of 'time' and 'space' (notably space) as the idea was understood in Newtonian physics? Etc.

Stekeler cites Grice and Carnap in abstract to his essay

2010-05-01T02:01:00.001-07:00

"The project of developing a pragmatic theory of meaning aims at an antimetaphysical, therefore antirepresentationalist and antisubjectivist, analysis of truth and reference. In order to understand this project we have to remember the turns of twists given to Frege's and Wittgenstein's original idea of inferential semantics (with Kant and Hegel as predecessors) in later developments like formal axiomatic theories (Hilbert, Tarski, Carnap), regularist behaviorism (Quine), mental regulism and interpretationism (Chomsky, Davidson), social behaviorism (Sellars, Millikan), intentionalism (Grice), conventionalism (D. Lewis), justificational theories (Dummett, Lorenzen) and, finally, Brandom's normative pragmatics."

I propose this as interesting stuff for Grice/Carnap interface

2010-05-01T01:57:00.000-07:00

Gricean Belief Change
Authors:Delgrande, James P
Nayak, Abhaya C
Pagnucco, Maurice
Source:Studia Logica: An International Journal for Symbolic Logic, 79(1), 97-113. 17 p. February 2005.
Document Type:Journal Article
Subjects:BELIEF
CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE
LOGIC
REVISION
SEMANTICS
Persons as Subjects:GRICE, H PAUL
Abstract:One of the standard principles of rationality guiding traditional accounts of belief change is the principle of minimal change: a reasoner's belief corpus should be modified in a minimal fashion when assimilating new information. This rationality principle has stood belief change in good stead. However, it does not deal properly with all belief change scenarios. We introduce a novel account of belief change motivated by one of Grice's maxims of conversational implicature: the reasoner's belief corpus is modified in a minimal fashion to assimilate exactly the new information.

----

The idea:

Carnap seems to suggest that if we change our 'minds', we change the linguistic framework.

Grice seems more consistent with 'ordinary usage' here?

Peake and Grice on Revelations

2010-04-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

As Warner/Teasely (1918) hymn indicates: the Scriptural sources here are two: Hebrews and Revelations.

Let's recall that among the unpublications left by Grice there was one entitled: "From Genesis to Revelations: new discourse on metaphysics"

Cfr. this with Arthur S. Peake's old book -- "Christianity: Its Nature and Its Truth"

"There can, indeed, be no doubt that from

some points of view the prospect thus held

out to us is an alluring one. To soar away

from the dreary earth into the rare atmosphere of

beautiful ideas, to reach that peaceful region

where we are no longer in the rough and tumble

of historical controversy, to have gone where

critics cease from troubling, that

would be a delightful experience. How exhilarating

to be born upward on the bold unfettered wing

of pure speculation till we have scaled

the cloudy ramparts and found ourselves at

home in the city of eternal truth!"

(p. 140).

திருப்புகழ்,

2010-04-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

I read at:

www.kaumaram.com/thiru_uni/tpun0833.html - En caché - Similares

That Chidhambaram (திருப்புகழ்) means "The City of Eternal Truth".

Using the description at

http://www.chidambaram.rajadeekshithar.com/temple_history.htm

I propose for Chapter 5 of CarnapGrice pdf by JonesSperanza:

---

And there it lay: the City of Eternal Truth. Carnap and Grice were in awe, as they approached it with veneration. As fellow pilgrims we can now report:

The early history of the City of Eternal Truthlies hidden in the mists of time. The City reached her present form under the patronage of Kantotle. In an aerial view we can see the total surface area of the temple covers 13 hectares or 35 acres, each dedicated to a philosophical speciality -- and placing it among the largest Cities in the whole of Philosophy. The City is the result of some urban planning. It is designed with 5 concentric 'monads', or circumambulatory temple courtyards. Each of these is associated with one of the Five Elements -- which are ultimately one, of course. "The innermost 'monad' is not visible: it lies within the sanctum with the golden roof, and can only be entered by the Universal Maxim. The architecture and the rituals of this City reflect its history and doctrine. Where we now find this beautiful and ancient City was once an impenetrable Forest of Dogmatic Trees, which is a kind of mangrove. This Forest gave The City her first and most ancient name, "Woody". Within this sprawling forest was a lotus pond, and at the southern bank of this pond existed a Cunning of Reason. A Cunning of Reason is a representation of Kantotle -- which unites both the concepts of Form as well as of Formless in itself. In modern terms this formless-form might be called an abstraction. What Carnap calls an "Intension". "Intension means ‘self existent’ [only different], signifying that the Fregean Sense [like the Natural Number]
was not made by human beings, but came into existence by itself, from what Grice calls "Nature". "To this lotus pond in the "Woody" forest came two saints, named Carnap and Grice. They came from very different backgrounds and from very different directions. But they came for the same reason: to witness Kantotle’s Cosmic Dance."
It had been foretold to them that if they would 'elucidate' the "Cunning of Reason" on the bank of the lotus pond in the forest, Kantotle would come to perform His Dance for them. Eventually this great event took place. Kantotle (in his guise as Plathegel) came to perform His Dance on a Saturday morning, when the moon was in the asterism Ryle, during Hilary, long before the Devil of Scientism era. Kantotle's dance is called the Dance of Bliss. The two saints achieved liberation, and on their special request Kantotle (in his guise as Plathegel) promised to perform His Dance for all time at that place. For the full narration of the myth the reader is referred to chapter IV of the present Conversation (again -- and again). The story of the origin of the worship of Kantotle in the City of Eternal Truth is told in the Logische Aufbau der Welt.
The Sacred History of the City of Eternal Truth, which is part of the "Principia Mathematica", one of the 18 great vademecums or collections of mythology. From one of the saints, Carnap, which means "Slept in a Vehicle", The City of Eternal Truth received her second name, Pirotgrad, meaning ‘City of the Pirot’. Its third name, Griceland, refers to the philosophy and doctrine of the temple, as narrated by Grice's arch-enemy: Carnap, in his third re-incarnation. "Gri-" means consciousness or wisdom. "-ce" signifies "ether" in Pirotese but in Russell it means 'hall'. Carnap-Corner-in-Griceland unifies the two aspects of the one and only Kantotelian doctrine. Meaning thus both "Hall of Wisdom", as well as the place of the Ether of Consciousness. --- INSIDE THE CITY: The edifice which now includes within its sanctum this Cunning of Reason form of Kantotle, situated on the southern bank of the sacred pound, is called "Bosanquet"". This term means ‘place of origin’ or ‘root place’ -- an exaggeration, seeing that old Grice saw him as a 'minor figure'. "Bosanquet" can be found in the third courtyard, within the temple proper.
Facing east, it is a conventional temple with a sanctum containing the cunning of reason, and aa hall in front of the sanctum. In this hall we find the images of our two saints, Carnap and Grice. How the images got there BEFORE THEM is a great mystery. They stand with their hands folded, worshipping. A sanctum placed at an angle to the Cunning-of-Reason shrine, facing south, houses the consort of Kantotle, the goddess Aletheia. On the western wall of the shrine we find a relief sculptured of the Wishing Tree of Paradise (Eschatology). This shrine achieved its present form probably under the middle and later stages of the Vienna Circle. The main edifices of the temple are the five Halls. At the centre of the temple is situated the sanctum sanctorum or Holy Of Holiest. This means the ‘Hall of Wisdom’. It is the main shrine where Kantotle accompanied by his consort Aletheia (the Unveiled One) performs His Cosmic Dance, the Dance of Bliss. The World -- or "Nature" -- is the embodiment of the colossal human form. The City of Eternal Truth is the centre of this form, the place of the heart, where Kantotle performs the Cosmic Dance. The City is laid out as a labyrinth. For this reason the devotees may approach the
central shrine from two sides. One is called Extension. A narrower path is called Intension. As blood flows to and from the heart. The 16 stupas topping the golden roof represent the sixteen strands of The Fabric. They also asymbolize the sixteen Strands -- or goddesses. The roof of this hall is made of 21.600 tiles, representing
inhalations and exhalations of Pirots.
The links and side joints symbolize the connecting veins -- of the pirots, of course. The five main steps at the entrance to the shrine stand between the devotees and the image of Kantotle, covered in silver. They are the five seed words or syllables. By chanting these syllables,"

----------------KAN -- TO --- TLE

the devotee can cross the ocean of bondage and attain to the Lord. The granite plinth of the shrine is called Oxonianism -- because it does duty for Vienna in providing a support for Kantotle (in his Russell re-incarnation). On all special occasions worship is performed to this plinth. The name, Hall of Consciousness or Hall of Wisdom, refers to the quality of wisdom which pervades the atmosphere, bestowed upon the worshippers by the Dance of the Lord. His boon is the experience of the Cosmic Dance. A unique feature is that the structure of the actual stage is made of wood, which has so far not been botanically classified but is nevertheless real. It is rectangular in form and here Kantotle is worshipped in his three aspects: as Form or Image, as Formless-Form -- the crystal Cunning of Reason -- and as formless. From the platform opposite one can see the image of the Dancing Kantotle, situated in the middle of the stage. Kantotle is facing south, unlike most other simpler Philosophers. This signifies he is the Conqueror of Dogma, dispelling the fear of death for Humanity. The Crystal Cunning of Reason is Kantotle as Formless-Form. It was formed from the essence of the crescent moon in Kantotle's matted hair, for the purpose of peripatetic worship.
This is taken from its keeping place at the feet of the thing six times a day, and holy ablution is performed to him in the hall. Immediately to the proper right of this is the ‘mystery’ of Analyticity. Here, behind a silk curtain which is black
on the outside and red on the inside, is the Treasure of Meaning Postulates, in the form of Predicate Calculus. An abstract geometrical design, on which the deity is invoked. Behind the curtain, before it, hang a few strands of golden fig leaves. This signifies the act of creation -- or Pirotology. One moment nothing exists, the next instant the All has been brought into existence.
At regular timings the curtain is removed to allow the devotees to worship the Ether which is the vehicle of the Absolute and Consciousness. The hall houses one more unique form of Kantotle. This is the Organon, the Ruby Lord: a replica of Kantotle in ruby form. This appeared out of the fire of the sacrifice in response to the devotion of the Modernists. Every Saturday, as part of the 10.00 o’clock morning ritual, after the Recitation of the Crystal Cunning of Reason is also performed to the Ruby Kantotle. As conclusion of this ceremony the Ruby Thing is placed on the edge of the Swimming Pool and an Implicature is offered. This is the burning of camphor on a special plate which is shown both in front and behind the Ruby Thing. This brings out the special quality of translucence of this, creating a mystical spectacle for the onlookers. Nobody knows when the worship of Kantotle was established here, or when the City of Eternal Truth was build. The original wooden structure is doubtless, and ironically,the oldest structure in the temple complex,
as the shrine of Plathegel is a later construction under the Neo-Kantians. The City has no features, really, that could help to date it and it might just as well be eternal, after all.
It is unique and no other structure is known like it anywhere else in Philosophy. Analysis by the Leibnizian ifinitesimal method would be unreliable because it is known to have been regularly renovated during the centuries. But the origins of the City of Eternal Truth lie back in prehistoric times. According to the mythology the City was first constructed by a Philosopher King nicknamed "Thales". This Philosopher King was healed of leprosy by bathing in the sacred pond in the "Woody" forest and witnessed the Cosmic Dance. The first gilding of the roof of the temple and the instituting of the formal worship are all attributed to this King Philosopher.
The first historical references can be found in Jowett's translation of the Plato Dialogues, especially in the Timaeus. Here Aletheia, the six-faced Daughter of Yocasta and Socrates, is described as worshipping his parents in Athens, before going to do battle with a demon called Physicalism. This text can be dated to the fourth century BCE. The City of Eternal Truth is also prominently mentioned in "De Consolatione Philosophiae", an important religious and philosophical text in ancient Latin, dating from the beginning of the Christian era. A few centuries later the temple and its Lord are often mentioned by members of the Vienna Circle, but only derogatorily and, especially by Schlick. The first historical persons to claim having gilded the roof of the temple are Baumgarten and his 'cousin', Kant. By this time the temple had already become important. The place where Students were crowned, and where they came to worship and receive counsel. How the gilding of the roof was done is a knowledge that was sadly lost with time. But it is without doubt one of the great technical achievements of ancient times.
Immediately in front of the temple is the golden hall. Its roof is made of copper, although Kanaka means gold. This is the gold of spiritual treasure: to experience Kantotle's dance from so near. In this hall are most of the Saturday morning rituals of worship performed. The Early Morning rituals. The rituals with lamps and ritual objects. And the Ruby Thing. The pilgrims can enter certain areas of the hall for worship at specified hours. It is a controversy whether this was originally constructed together with the older hall, or some time later. This is the shrine in the form of a chariot, pulled by two stone horses.
One represents Practical Reason, the other Theoretical Reason. It is situated opposite the old hall, in the third courtyard. It is the place of the dance contest between Kantotle and Plathegel. Kantotle conquered Alethei, who would not calm down after she destroyed a powerful demon -- Reductionism -- by lifting his right leg straight up towards the sky. This dance is called "Gentzen". Then and there Aletheia suddenly remembered who she really was, the peaceful consort of Kantotle, and she was able to leave her furious mood and returned to her peaceful self. This scene is depicted in the sanctum inside. We see Kantotle performing his dance, with his leg
lifted straight above his head, and Aletheia calmed down in one corner, both accompanied by Carnap and Grice playing the Fiddles, the instruments which are used to accompany the dance.
The chariot form commemorates Kantotle as the Destroyer of the Three Demon Cities. Several divine powers joined together to create this chariot. Thus the sun and moon became the wheels, and the Two Reasons the two horses. After destroying the Three Cities he descended from his chariot, having landed opposite, and ascended into the City to commence His Dance. From this, it is also called opposite hall. This opposite (or subcontrary) hall has several distinguishing features aside from its shape and its function. Its columns are unique to the chariot hall. They are square, and circular at the same time, and although carved from the hardest granite they are covered with exquisite miniature reliefs, depicting dancers, musicians and all kinds of philosophical figures. One other feature sets this edifice apart from any other hall within the temple complex and from all other temple halls in Philosophy. This is mysteriously connected to the Sphinx -- she of Riddles fame. Just under the floor surface of the raised platform which is the Body is a belt surrounding the whole city.
Here we see lions and sphinxes alternating in pairs, girdling it. Also the pillars of the two pavilions on the western side of the hall are supported by four sphinxes which function as caryatids. It is considered by tradition the second oldest building in the complex, without any real indication of its age. It is reported in inscriptions as having been renovated by the St. Bonaventura
in the thirteenth century. The hall can be found in the third courtyard. The festival deities are kept during the year, and worship is performed for them
on Saturday mornings. This is done inside the hall, and is open to the public. The age and history of this hall is also hidden in the mists of time. There is some evidence the hall was once used not just as a dance hall, but as an "Music Hall" by visiting Philosophers and Comedians of the different governing dynasties of the Oxford and the Sorbonne during the several phases of history. No other information is available, alas.
To the right is the Thousand Pillar Hall in the second courtyard. It is
the architectural representation of the Crown. Which is the seventh spiritual energy point in the astral body. Kantotle and the goddess Aletheia, his consort, dance here in the mornings of the 9th and 10th Saturday of the Chariot Festival. About this too, we have very little historical information. It is first mentioned as the place where the Flemish philosopher, Descartes, premiered his great Song-and-Dance routine ("The Cogito") on the lives of the 63 saints -- or Malignant Demon --, before Voltaire. Its base is encircled by reliefs of dancers and musicians, as it were, participating in a procession.
The most imposing feature of the temple, which can be seen soaring above the plain from miles away, are the four temple gateways, located in the second wall of enclosure at the four cardinal points. These are:
The South,
The West,
The East
and
The North.
They are considered among the earliest examples of such structures and are in their present form dated to at least the 12th and 13th century. Both Carnapians and Griceians disagree about the dates of the individual columns, or about which one was build first. Some consider the West as oldest, some the East. In between the sculptures decorating the inside of the West Corridor we find a musician (Grice?) playing a standing double drum. This could point to an early date for this -- or a later one, if one allows for Syncopation and the Jazz Age. On the outside of the granite bases are found sculptures of many important as well as less well known deities in niches in a particular order. The inside walls of passages through all the four corridors are decorated with the 108 dance movements of Kantotle's Peripatetic Dance, from the Organon, the world’s most ancient treatise on dance, drama and theatre -- and logic. Besides here, these movements -- of which the first is called "Barbara" -- are depicted in only four other temples -- but they circulate widely on the Net. The four corridors, together with the golden dome of the central shrine are the five towers which represent the five faces of Kantotle, with the Smiley symbolizing the masterful face.
In the innermost courtyard, at a right angle with the Golden Thing, we find the shrine of Aletheia. Reclining on the Cosmic Snake, she is in the state of consciousness, enjoying the vision of Kantotle’s dance. The coexistence of the worship of both Kantotle and Aletheia within one temple is unique. The worship was established in the earliest times and was originally performed by the "Minstrels" themselves. In the later medieval period, with a shifting political situation and hyperinflation under pressure of Capitalist invasions, there was possibly a discontinuation of the worship for a long period, after which it re-instated by the Wittgenstein, of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The worship of Aletheia has since then been in the hands of Carnapians and Griceians mainly, and was no longer performed by the "Minstrels" proper.
Within the inner courtyard, to the east, we find a small shrine which houses the bracelets of both the Creator god, of the Handy Trinity, and Home, a deified saint. The presence of the Creator-God (a deity almost never worshipped) establishes the worship of all three deities of the Handy Trinity with-in the one complex. The temple of goddess Aletheia, consort of Kantotle, is situated on the west side of the Water Tank. A flight of steps leads down into its courtyard. The goddess is worshipped here as the energy and power of wisdom. On the frontal portion of the pillared hall, on the ceiling of the right and left wings, the finest eye-capturing fresco paintings of approximately a thousand years old, illustrate the Sacred Deeds of Kantotle. The galleries surrounding the temple are decorated with a procession of dancers, musicians, and philosophers, sculptured in relief. This temple was possibly built in the 11th century, if not earlier.
This holds The Sacred Twater Place or Tank. It is famous for healing the ancient king Buridan of his skin disease. His skin became golden after which he was called "The Ass". In this Tank we find a stone representation of the the Element Twater, which as Putnam has showed, is not H20, but XYZ. In the dry season it becomes visible as the water level in the tank is reduced. The Twater temple is dedicated to Abelard, the second son of Kantotle and Aletheia. This shrine is also shaped as a chariot, pulled by horses and elephants. This temple was according to tradition build by a king of the dynasty from Cambridge, which superceded the rule of the the Oxonians in the fifteenth century. His name was Testa Bianca ("White Head"), and the temple is named after him. In the middle of the 19th century this temple was renovated by the Victorians with the support of Dutch merchants, who had a trading post in nearby Porto Nuovo. According to an inscription on copper plates they donated a share of their profit for this purpose, but we do not know what they did with the rest.

---

WLOG: Strands and Monsters

2010-04-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

R. B. Jones proposes to track the strands and monsters in Carnap and Grice with the aid of

WLOG.

We shall use the definition provided by

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/without_loss_of_generality

WLOG:

"[To] mak[e] a constraining assumption [A]
that makes it clear how to apply [an otherwise
specific proof [P], but explicitly
performed under [A]
to the general case where P is
unconstrained by [A]."

We propose to apply WLOG to the 12 monsters (M1-12 -- since they are all forms of Minimalism) vis a vis the 16 strands we identified in the philosophies of Carnap and Grice. Tomorrow.

The Carnap Biography, the Grice Biography

2010-04-29T08:13:00.001-07:00

It is sometimes difficult to provide a link to the best biography. My favourite on Grice seems to be the rather prestigious:

Stroud, Barry C. and G. J. Warnock) "Grice, (Herbert) Paul", The Dictionary of National Biography: 1986-1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996 pp. 171-172.

Grice's theory as ultimately 'ad-hoc'

2010-04-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

We are discussing this vis a vis the CarnapGrice project.

The reference being to:

MacKay, Alfred F. 1972. Professor Grice's Theory of Meaning. Mind, 81, 57-66.

-----

MacKay is writing as a methodologist, and concerned with the very manoeuvre of Grice on meaning. He is particularly concerned with the flurry of 'alleged' counterexamples referred to in Grice 1969.

Grice lists the following authors as having aimed at presenting a counterexample to his views:

J. O. Urmson
D. W. Stampe
S. R. Schiffer
J. R. Searle
P. F. Strawson

----

in each case, Grice is victorious. Why? Well, McKay suggests, 'because his theory is essentially ad hoc'. For each new clause that the 'alleged' counter-example provokes, the only motivation, McKay, in this rather uncharitable reading, suggests is the 'overcoming' of the counterexample.

McKay never put forwarded his own views on meaning, and the reserach of this Mind paper draws from sharing with Grice a round table at Oberlin. He makes an important point that helps us appreciate Grice's methodology. And while it is perfectly true we submit that there is also an 'internal' logic going on.

Grice was good at this: he could SEE through the eyes of his critics. Take the first alleged counterexample, by Urmson. Urmson proposed a case where the intended effect on the addressee was NOT the result of a reason, but just a cause. His example was that of a bribe. Grice readapts it to a scenario of physical torture! -- The need to qualify the 'reason' (as well as 'cause') aspect was only CONTINGENTLY associated with Urmson's observation. The inner logic of Grice's analysis leads in that direction.

The next big counterexample was Strawson's, in 1964. The details of the Strawson manoeuvre are interesting per se since they echo some of the manoeuvres of Quine against Carnap. But all in all, Grice accepted the example by Strawson in 1964 as really pointing to a drawback in his original analysis of 1948. As it stood, it did not discriminate between forms of overt communication (which we associate with our ouse of "mean") from cases of persuasion of a more covert nature. Stampe, Schiffer, and Searle followed the Strawson line. The way by Grice to counterattack is Grice's own. He would NOT appeal to 'convention' or the openness of the 'linguistic' rule. Instead he kept adding an utterer's intention -- which McKay finds ad hoc. This particular intention, however, while superficially readable as "to block a counterexample" is imbued with Grice's important idea that everything in communication is 'above board', to which he returned in his discussion of Strand 5 in the Retrospective Epilogue ("in communication in a certain sense all must be pulbic" -- Gri89:367).

Comparative Table: Carnap and Grice on analyticity

2010-04-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

-------------------------- LEIBNIZ'S
-------------------------- use of the "S is P"
-------------------------- formula
.
.
.

CARNAP ----------------------------- GRICE

L-equivalence

M-postulate

Method of intensions

------------------------------------pre-defense of
----------------------------------- a dogma
--------------------------- (NO USE FOR ANALYTICITY)

------------------------Quine's attack

Carnap's ------------------------ Grice, champion
emphasis on L-equivalence -------- of ordinary language.
emphasis on pragmatics ----------- "Paradigm Case Argument"
---------------------------------- people HAVE ways to deal
---------------------------------- with analytically FALSE
---------------------------------- statements. They claim
---------------------------------- incomprehension. "My
---------------------------------- neighbour's three year old is an adult"

Carnap on intensions -------------- Grice's
as reducible set-theoretically ----- later takes
to extensions ----------------------- on the 'analytic'
-------------------------------------- as a transcendental
-------------------------------------- requisite in any
-------------------------------------- language we can think of.

Comparative Table: Carnap and Grice on 'logical construction'

2010-04-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

-------------------- RUSSELL --------------

introduces 'logical construction' in his
talks on Atomism:

One very important heuristic maxim ... is a form of Occam's Razor

-----Whenever possible, substitute
---- constructions out of known entities for
-----inferences to unknown entities(1924:160)

-------------------------------------------------------

CARNAP

applies
'logical construction'
to matter in
Logische Aufbau der Welt.

---- ----------------------- In 1941
---------------------------------------- Grice borrows "the logical
---------------------------------------- construction theory" from
---------------------------------------- Broad (who knew Russell
---------------------------------------- at Cambridge) and applies
---------------------------------------- it to the problem of the
------------------------------------------------- self.
- - - "Personal Identity" (Mind)

------------------- DIVERGENCES IN APPROACH

Carnap --

reductionist interpretation ----------------- reductionist interpretation
------------------------------------------------ rejected by Grice 1989:Strand 4

-- pragmatist interepetation ------------------- reductive, not reductionist.

How pseudo- can philosophy be?

2010-04-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

Carnap's favourite word is "pseudo-"

It's all 'pseudo-' for him. He was the forgery detector.

Heidegger said, causally,

"Nothing noths".

Carnap overeacted: "Nonsense!"

"Scheinprobleme!" -- This was translated as 'pseudo-problem.' In Carnap's cariacture, the philosopher is a pseudosopher (I owe the ref. to this word to Ian Cargan Dengler)

"pseudosophy pretension to wisdom"

"This group of 30 odd '-sophy' and '-sopher' words have in common an etymological derivation from the Greek sophia, meaning 'wisdom'."

"They refer to an odd group of systems of knowledge, esoteric doctrines and other principles, most of which are obsolete or extremely rare, with philosophy being the only major exception."

"Not quite sciences or studies, nor are they isms, they tend to refer to mystical or occult concepts rather than strictly religious or scientific canons of knowledge.

http://phrontistery.50megs.com/wisdom.html

Dual Pages in CarnapGrice by JonesSperanza

2010-04-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

by JLS, of the Grice Club.

---- One of the fascinating things about my joint project with Carnapian Roger Bishop Jones is that each knows what the other is talking about.

"What's the point of a joint book otherwise", Margaret Attwood notes.

---- "There's not just pages filled with Griceanisms and Carnapianisms, but comparisons. too. Take this delight: "A Conceptual Map"

--------------------

See how this is wonderfully designed in a single page of the pdf. document. And when you open the hard copy of the book, we have TWO pages to consider. The material being:

A DUAL PAGE (in the diagrammes by Jones and Speranza) refers to a page where we trace connections -- always conceptual (we cannot think but in concepts) between Carnap and Grice. We use arrows and stuff.

-------------------A
-------------CONCEPTUAL MAP
-------------------TO

The ------------------------
Carnap ------ and ------------ Griceland
Corner
------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------- .
--------------------------------------- .
--------------------------------------- .

---------------------------------- Aristotle

------------------ KANT

------------------------------Hume is where the Heart is

-------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------- .
------------------------------------------- .
------------------------------------------- .

------------------------------- (Kantotle, Ariskant)

Neo-Kantianism <--- vs. ----> Oxford Hegelianism

--------------------------- Ryle sends Ayer to Vienna
----------------
-----( Wiener Kreis )
-- Carnap on pirots.

--------------------------- Ayer returns from Vienna.
--------------------------- splits from Austin's playgroup.

****************** The War ************************
----------------- The Postward ------------------------

---------------------------- Grice influential in Austin's 'kindergartens'

------------------------ Grice travels to the USA
----------------------------- to deliver the William James lectures,
----------------------------- and puns on Heidegger alla Carnap.
----------------------------- "Heidegger is the greatest living
----------------------------- philosopher, if you can take me
----------------------------- seriously" (Gri89:18)

Carnap dies.

--------------------------------- Grice intorduces his pirotological
--------------------------------- programme in the APA presidential
--------------------------------- address (Pacific Division) for 1975.

--------------------------------------- Grice gives the Carus Lectures
--------------------------------------- (published as Grice 1991)

-------------------------------------------- Grice dies in 1988.

------------------------------ Grice's Aspects of Reason lectures
---------------------------------- (published 2001).

Carnap and Grice as Heirs of Russell -- the 'logical construction'

2010-04-26T00:53:00.000-07:00

By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club.

----

I append more running comments on Bernard Linsky's interesting entry on 'logical construction' in the Stanford Encyclopaedia (online at

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-construction/

and (c) B. Linsky (2009).

It relates to this item in the Grice Archive as to 'personal identity' as a 'logical construction'. It connects with Carnap's idea of 'matter' as a logical construction out of sense data.

Linksy writes that Russell refers to "several different definitions and philosophical analyses as providing "logical constructions"". These are of certain entities and expressions." The "examples he cites" are:

a. "the Frege/Russell definition of numbers as classes of equinumerous classes".

b. "the theory of definite descriptions".

c. "the construction of matter from sense data,"

-- "and several others", Linsky writes.

"Generally expressions for such entities are called "incomplete symbols" and the entities themselves "logical fictions"."

"The notion originates with Russell's logicist program of reducing mathematics to logic, was widely used by Russell, and led to the later Logical Positivist notion of construction and ultimately the widespread use of set theoretic models in philosophy."

"Russell's most specific formulation of logical construction as a method in Philosophy comes from his essay "Logical Atomism"."

Linksy quotes directly from Russell:

One very important heuristic maxim which
Dr. Whitehead and I found, by experience, to
be applicable in mathematical logic, and have
since applied to various other fields, is a
form of Occam's Razor. When some set of
supposed entities has neat
logical properties, it turns out, in a
great many instances, that the supposed entities
can be replaced by purely logical structures composed
of entities which have not such neat properties. In
that case, in interpreting a body of
propositions hitherto believed to be
about the supposed entities, we can
substitute the logical structures without altering
any of the detail of the body of propositions
in question. This is an economy, because
entities with neat logical properties are
always inferred, and if the propositions
in which they occur can be interpreted without
making this inference, the ground for the
inference fails, and our body of propositions
is secured against the need of a doubtful
step. The principle may be stated in the [following] form.

RUSSELL's formulation of 'logical construction':

Whenever possible, substitute
constructions out of known entities
for inferences to unknown entities

Ruseell 1924:160.

Linksy comments that Russell is speaking of logical constructions in this memorable passage from his "Philosophy of Logical Atomism" lectures." Again Linksy quotes directly from Russell:

The method of `postulating' what we
want has many advantages; they are the
same as the advantages of theft
over honest toil. Let us leave them
to others and proceed with
our honest toil

Russell 1918:71.

Linksy comments:

"The notion of logical construction
appears frequently with the idea that
what is defined is a "logical fiction",
and an "incomplete symbol"."

As Linksy comments:

"The latter term, [incomplete symbol] derives
from the use of contextual definitions, providing an analysis of each sentence in which a defined symbol may occur without, however, giving an explicit definition, an equation or universal statement giving necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the term in isolation."

Linksy continues:

"The terms "fiction" and "incomplete symbol" apply with differing aptness to various constructions."

Here starts Linksy's brilliant historical analysis. He writes:

"Russell's first use of construction, and
the model for later constructions, is the
Frege/Russell definition of numbers as classes.
This follows the kind of definitions used
in the arithmetization of analysis of
the preceding century, in particular, Dedekind's
earlier construction of real numbers as
bounded classes in the rational numbers. Russell's
logicist program could not rest content with
postulates for the fundamental objects of
mathematics such as the Peano Axioms
for the natural numbers. Instead numbers
were to be defined as classes of
equinumerous classes."

Is this abstraction?

Linsky notes:

"Russell refers to this method as "abstraction",
now known as the abstraction of an
equivalence class. The definition of equinumerosity,
or of the existence of a one to one mapping between two classes, also called "similarity", is solely in terms
of logical notions of quantifiers and identity. With
the numbers defined, for example, two as
the class of all two membered sets, or pairs, the properties of numbers could be derived by logical means alone."

--- Linsky then turns to the second illustration:

"The most influential of Russell's constructions

was the theory of descriptions [in] "On Denoting" in 1905."

"Russell's theory provides an analysis of
sentences of the form `The alpha is beta'
where `The alpha' is called a definite
decription."

"The analysis proposes that

`The alpha is beta' as equivalent to

`There is one and only one alpha and it is beta'".

"With this analysis, the logical properties
of descriptions can now be deduced using just the
logic of quantifiers and identity."

Linksy continues:

"Among the theorems in *14 of PM are those
showing what follows."

"First, if there is just one alpha then `The alpha is alpha' is 1, and if there is not, then `The alpha is beta' is always 0 and, crucially for the logical manipulation of descriptions."

"Second, if the alpha = the beta, and the alpha is gamma, then the beta is gamma. I.e. proper -- uniquely referring -- descriptions behave like singular terms."

"Some of these results are contentious. P. F. Strawson (Grice's tutee at St. John's< Oxford), noted that

`The present king of france is bald'

should be truth valueless since there is no present king of France, rather than "plainly false", as Russell's theory predicts."

But Grice came to the defense of Russell.

Linsky goes on:

"The theory of descriptions introduces

Russell's notion of incomplete symbol.

Definite descriptions like

`The alpha' do not show up in the formal

analysis of sentences in which they occur,

thus

`The alpha is gamma' becomes as per below."

(x) [(y)(Fy y=x) & Hx]

-- "of which no subformula, or continuous segment, can be identified as the analysis of `The alpha'".

Linsky notes:

"Much as talk about "the average family" as in

"The average family has 2.2 children" becomes

"The number of children in families divided by the number of families = 2.2",

there is no portion of that analysis that corresponds with "the average family"."

"Instead, we have a formula for eliminating
such expressions from contexts in which they occur,
hence the notion of "incomplete symbol" and
the related "contextual definition"".

Linsky notes:

"It is standard to see in this the origins of
the distinction between between surface grammatical
form and logical form, and thus the origin of linguistic analysis as a method in philosophy which operates by seeing past superficial linguistic form to underlying philosophical analysis."

----

He adds:

"The theory of descriptions has been criticized by some linguists who see descriptions and other noun phrases as full fledged constituents of sentences, and who see the sharp distinction between grammatical and logical form as a mistake."

Citation needed!

Linsky goes on:

"The theory of descriptions is often described as a model for avoiding ontological commitment to objects such as Meinongian subsistent entities, and so logical constructions in general are often seen as being chiefly aimed at ontological goals."

Cfr. Grice on 'avoiding Meinongian jungles' in "Vacuous Names".

Linsky goes on:

"In fact, that goal is at most peripheral
to most constructions. Rather, the goal is
to allow the proof of propositions that
would otherwise have to be assumed as
axioms or hypotheses."

Linsky adds:

"Nor need the ontological goal be
always elimination of problematic entities. Other
constructions should be seen more as reductions
of one class of entity to another, or replacements of one notion by a more precise, mathematical, substitute."

---

"Russell's 'no-class' theory of classes
from *20 of Whitehead's and Russell's PM
provides a contextual definition
like the theory of descriptions."

How? Well,

"One of Russell's early diagnoses of the
paradoxes was that they showed that
classes could not be objects. Indeed he
seems to have come across his paradox
of the class of all classes that are not members of
themselves by applying Cantor's argument to show that there are more classes of objects than objects."

Linksy goes on:

"Hence, Russell concludes that classes can not be objects."

"Inspired by the theory of descriptions, Russell proposes
that to say something beta of the class of alphas --

BETA{x: ALPHAx}

-- is to say that there is some property beta coextensive with (1 of the same things as) alpha such that gamma is beta."

"Extensionality of sets is thus derivable, rather than postulated: if alpha and gamma are co-extensive then anything true of"

{x: ALPHAx}

"will be true of {x: GAMMAx}."

"Features of sets then follow from the features of the logic of properties, the "ramified theory of types"."

Russell echoing Bentham:

"Because classes would seem to be individuals of some sort, but on analysis are found not to be, Russell speaks of them as "logical fictions", an expression which echoes Jeremy Bentham's notion of a "legal fiction"."

"Because statements attributing a property to particular classes are analyzed by existential sentences saying that there is some propositional function having that property, this construction should not be seen as avoiding ontological commitment entirely, but rather of reducing classes to propositional functions."

"The properties of classes are really properties of propositional functions and for every class said to have a property there really is some propositional function having that property."

Linsky then draws from other illustrations.

"For other constructions such as propositions a contextual definition is not provided."

"In any case, constructions do not appear as the referents of logically proper names, and so by that account are not part of the fundamental "furniture" of the world."

J. WISDOM on constructions.

"Early critical discussions of constructions, such as John Wisdom's, stressed the contrast between logically proper names, which do refer, and constructions, which were thus seen as ontologically innocent."

Linsky notes:

"Beginning with The Problems of Philosophy (1912), Russell turns repeatedly to the problem of matter."

"Part of the problem is to find a refution of Berkeleyan idealism, of showing how the existence and real nature of matter can be proved."

"In Problems Russell argues that matter is a well supported hypothesis that explains our experiences. Matter is known only indirectly, "by description", as the cause, whatever it may be, of our sense data, which we know "by acquaintance". This is the notion of hypothesis which Russell contrasts with construction in the passage above."

"Russell saw an analogy between the case of simply hypothesizing the existence of numbers with certain properties, those described by axioms, and hypothesizing the existence of matter. While we distinguish the certain knowledge we may have of mathematical entities from the contingent knowledge of material objects, Russell says that there are certain "neat" features of matter which are just too tidy to have turned out by accident. Examples include the most general spatiotemporal properties of objects, that no two can occupy the same place at the same time, and so on. Material objects are now to be seen as collections of sense data. Influenced by William James, Russell defended a "neutral monism" by which matter and minds were both to be constructed from sense data, but in different ways. Intuitively, the sense data occuring as they do "in" a mind, are material to construct that mind, the sense data derived from an object from different points of view to constructthat object. Russell saw some support for this in the theory of relativity, and the fundumental importance of frames of reference in the new physics."

"These prominent examples are not the only use of the notion of construction in Russell's thought."

"In Whitehead's and Russell's Principia Mathematica the multiple relation theory of propositions is introduced by saying that propositions are "incomplete symbols"."

"Russell's multiple relation theory, that he held from 1910 to 1919 or so, argued that the constitituents of propositions, say

i. Desdemona loves Cassio

which is 0, are unified in a way that does not make it the case that they constitute a fact by themselves."

"Those constituents occur only in the context of beliefs, say,

ii. Othello judges that Desdemona loves Cassio.

"The real fact consists of a relation of
Belief holding between the constituents
Othello, Desdemona and Cassio."

B(o, d , L, c).

"Because one might also have believed

propositions of other structures, such as --

"B (o, F, a)"

there need to be many such relations B, thus
the "multiple" relation theory."

"Like the construction of numbers, this
construction abstracts out what a
number of occurrences of a belief have in common,
a believer and various objects in a certain order."

"The analysis also makes the proposition an incomplete symbol because there is no constituent in the analysis of

`x believes that p'

that corresponds to `p'"

"Russell also suggests that propositional functions are logical constructions when he says that they are "nothing", but "nonetheless important for that" (1918:96)."

"Propositional functions are abstracted from their values, propositions. The propositional function

x is human.

is abstracted from its values

Socrates is human
Plato is human.

etc.

"Viewing propositional functions as constructions from propositions which are in turn constructions by the multiple relation theory helps to make sense of the theory of types of propositional functions in Whitehead's and Russell's Principia Mathematica".

"The notion of "incomplete symbol" does not make as much sense as "construction" when applied to propositional functions and propositions."

"This usage requires a broadening of the notion."

---- From Russell to Carnap, Grice, and beyond:

"The notion of logical construction

had a great impact on

analytic philosophy."

"One line of influence was via the notion
of a contextual definition, or paraphrase, intended
to minimize ontological commitment and to
be a model of philosophical analysis."

"The distinction between the surface appearance of definite descriptions, as singular terms, and the fully analyzed sentences from which they seem to disappear was seen as a model for making problematic notions disappear upon analysis. The theory of descriptions has been viewed as a paradigm of philosophical analysis."

CARNAP EXPLICITLY CITED BY LINSKY:

"A more technical strand in

analytic philosophy was

influenced by the construction of

matter."

Or, as I prefer, 'physicalism' out of 'phenomenalism'.

Linsky writes:

"Carnap was attempted to carry out the
construction of matter from
sense data."

--- R. B. JONES WILL HAVE LOADS TO SAY ABOUT THAT:

i. It's a pragmatist prescription. Carnap sees phenomenalism as more primitive, but there are prior and prior.

ii. Etc.

----

Linsky goes on:

"Later Nelson Goodman continued the project."

And popularised in Oxford with reviews of "Structure of Appearance" by Dummett. Grice would similarly speak of "The syntax of illusion".

Linsky goes on:

"More generally, however, the use of
set-theoretic constructions became
widespread among philosophers,
and continues in the construction of set-theoretic models,
both in the sense of logic where they model formal theories, and as objects of interest in their own right."

--- And then there's Grice.

All in all, we congratulate Bernard Linsky, recommend interested readers to check his essay from the Stanford site, and report back with any insight as it dwells on our city of eternal truth.

References cited by Linsky include:

Carnap, R. , The Logical Structure of the World & Pseudo Problems in Philosophy, trans. R.George, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

Goodman, N., The Structure of Appearance, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1951.

Russell, B., 1905, "On Denoting", in Robert Marsh, Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1950 , London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956, 39-56.

----1918, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism" in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism , D.F.Pears, ed. Lasalle: Open Court, 1985, 35-155.

----1924, "Logical Atomism", in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism , D.F.Pears, ed., Lasalle: Open Court, 1985, 157-181.

----1912, The Problems of Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press, reprinted 1967.

Whitehead, A.N., and Russell,B.: 1925, Principia Mathematica Vol.I., second ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925.

Wisdom, J., 1931, "Logical Constructions (I.).", Mind , XL , April, 188-216.
Related Entries

Cross-referneces by Stanford: "Russell, Bertrand | Russell's Paradox | definite descriptions | and Carnap, Rudolf"

Carnap and Grice: Formal and "Ordinary" Language

2010-04-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

-- by JLS, of the Grice Club.

THIS IS FURTHER TO Jones's comments on "Grice: effect of Carnap", this blog.

The idea then

Russell,
Carnap
(Hilbert, even)

FORMALISM

.
.
.
\/

Oxford school of
Ordinary Language
Philosophy

(as reaction)

led by Austin (1911-1960)
and upon his demise, Grice (1913-1988).

----

But on the other hand, we should also consider:

-----

"Ordinary language philosophy" as back to 'people's talk' -- versus the technical talk of philosophers. Discomfort with technicisms like 'sense datum', even. In this case, the reaction may go via Moore and Cambridge.

Strand 3, I think, in Grice, concerns this.

The idea: that philosophers were starting to talk 'paradoxes'. Malcolm came to the defense of the ordinary man, -- and Grice was obsessed with this.

If this second 'interpretation' of "ordinary language philosophy" is furthered, one see yet another connection with Carnap.

Carnap wants to say that philosophers indeed talk 'paradoxes'. -- "The nothing noths", etc. So, there is a need to get sense back to the TOPIC of philosophy -- philosophy has been contaminated, and corrupted, in its idioms, by philosophers. We need to go back to 'ordinary' talk of "know", "believe", "is", "may", "ought", etc., rather than philosophise abstractedly on the non-naturalistic fallacy, say.

Grice as the Effect of Carnap: "Language?"

2010-04-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

---

Jones is mainly responsible for Chapter 2. I have a say in Chapter 3.

I follow Jones in being Sellars/Yeatman. These historians of England are prone of using the form:

"... was the cause of ..."

E.g. The Zulu war: Cause of the Zulu War: the Zulus.

----

So, we should give proper consideration to this idea that Grice was the effect of Carnap.

Allow us to explain.

Everyone who reads a manual of 20th century philosophy -- as an undergraduate I was fascinated by such manuals and soon enough got wedded to Austin and his school -- knows that 'post-war Oxford philosophy', due to the bad influence of Ayer, had turned its efforts to "NATURAL" language, like English, 'ordinary language'.

HAD CARNAP NOT TAKEN The formalist approach seriously -- in his influential books of the 1930s and 1940s, Austin and Grice, in the postwar period -- they led the 'school' -- would never have gotten so 'enthusiastic' about it.

It was a slogan. "We care for ordinary language here". Implicating: not for what people like Carnap CALL 'language' but isn't ('formal language').

Oxford always had an anti-Cantabrigensis strand. They couldn't just cope with Whitehead/Russell's Principia Mathematica. Anyone familiar with the history of logic in Oxford in the 20th century (starting with J. C. Wilson, Statement and Inference) notes that formalism never set foot, or got anchored in the dreaming spires.

---

So, indeed Carnap was the cause of Grice.

--- But the more one learns of Grice, the more one detects his 'irreverent conservative' and REACTIONARY strand. He, among the Oxonians, was the one that DID want to play "Symbolo". He would NOT disregard 'formal language' as a Carnapian invention, but would rather look for the generalities. Things that could be said about BOTH formal languages AND natural languages. Things that could illuminate BOTH the ordinary-language philosopher (as they illuminated Strawson, who credits Grice in his vademecum of 'informal logic' (1952)) AND the formalist.

Alas, the Carnap-Quine interface was not running along smooth tracks, for Quine had close associations with the post-war Oxford movement. After a polemic with J. L. Austin of rather bitter overtones, Quine felt more at ease with Grice, and they would lecture together in Oxford (or rather Quine had a say as a visiting scholar).

So, with Quine in Oxford (who had learned it all from Carnap), Grice found fodder for his thoughts. For he could hold a conversation on natural language with someone who knew of "formal" "language".

By the death of Austin, ordinary-language philosophy was over. Logic had taken a firm place in all academic teaching and, more importantly, the newer generations noted that Austin had been incomparable. Nobody could have replaced him. The demise of Austin meant the demise of ordinary-language philosophy.

But Grice of course survived the 1960s, and this decade and half of the 1970s see him at his formal best.

It was circa 1978, mainly due to his close association with his former student Judith Baker, that he turned to other areas of philosophy, which, as he notes, were "less amenable" for the type of formalism he revelled in.

This is the 'rhetoric' Grice. The Grice of the florid prose. BUT ALWAYS accompanied by a reference or two to the days that formed him, and the FIGURE that helped form him more than anyone else: Austin.

Strands and Monsters

2010-04-21T21:50:00.001-07:00

----

We are considering a few monsters (were they ten? -- no they were TWELVE -- Grice speaks of a twelfth-fold antipathy for "Minimalism" --

things like

Nominalism
Extensionalism
Physicalism
Phenomenalism
Mechanism
Scepticism

etc.

----

On the other hand there are 16 strands in Grice. He himself dwells with 8 in WoW, but we have duplicated them to allow for the richness of his input other than in WoW.

Now:

The question.

Hypothesis.

FOR EACH STRAND, as per CarnapGrice pdf by JonesSperanza, there is a monster.

Consider

Strand 1: Philosophy of perception. The causal problem. What monster is here involved? Mechanism. Also "Physicalism" and "Phenomenalism" for Grice notes that a thesis of the strand involves the alleged reduction of a material-object statement to its sense-datum counterparts.

----

It's easier to proceed with strands other than the ones Grice recognised.

Strand 9, for example. Value. What is the monster here? Positivism. I.e. the idea that value does NOT belong in the world.

Strand 10, for example. Reason. What is the monster here? Scepticism. Because the concern with reason in Grice is an attempt to bridge Hume's fork, and that there IS such a thing as 'practical reason'.

----

So we see that for each strand, for it to have relevance, we need to identify it or mate it with a monster (or countermonster).

Grice was clear about the logic of this:

He was intolerant of intolerance.

He thought that to proscribe value, or practical reason, or abstract entities, or intention, or free will, or absolute value, or pragmatics, etc. form a philosophical explanation involved a reduction: a 'minimalism'. We were offered explanations which were more MINIMAL than they needed be.

Example.

Strand 9: value. Monster: Positivism, Scepticism. There is no value in the world. It is a world of matters of fact. So the minimalist explanation, alla Hume, goes that what is of value reduces to a 'desire'. The 'ought' becomes an 'is' -- the 'is' of desire. Just by adopting 'value' as a 'primitive' though, or a possible explanans, we avoid the reduction.

As a philosopher, like Carnap, Grice was onto the foundations. So he would not have been happy with, say, introducing abstract entities, value, pragmatic, practical reason just by fiat.

His philosophy is one of 'constructivism'. He proposes so-called 'rational reconstructions'. To even TALK about them in a world transfigured by Jacques Derrida and his ideal of de-constructionaism is enough to see how conservatively irreverent (or irreverently conservative) Grice, and we trust, Carnap, could be.

Carnap Idiom, Grice Idiom, Common Idiom

2010-04-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

Roger Bishop Jones is doing some excellent job. In "Strand 5" for the Grice Club he proposed some 'correspondence rules', as it were, to read Grice via Carnap, and vice versa.

That is precisely what we need.

--- It sounds exaggerating, but it may not be.

Grice considered changes of idioms as pressing and topical when it came to the "longitudinal unity of philosophy". I.e. how to make sense of Locke's rather florid prose (hey!) in terms of mid-twentieth century philosophy, as when Grice was writing?

---

Yet, he is optimistic: he sees that while the idioms change, the topics remain. And that the change of idiom is the easiest first thing to do.

----

What does Jones propose.

Well,

---

There is "meaning". Qua noun. As when we say, "the meaning of this". Here Carnap uses "Sinn". Recall that his mother tongue was German. Grice prefers the verb, '... means ...'. Is this the 'sense'? We don't think so. For Grice there is indeed more to meaning than sense. This is not just the chiffchaff, the peripheral meaning. Even within 'sense' we need some caveats.

There's Grice's "implication". Does Carnap use anything like that? To refer to any 'connotation' that an expression carrying this or that 'Sinn' may ALSO carry into the bargain? We do not know. "Implikation" is not possibly a word he used.

-----

There's Pragmatik. Carnap used this, and it had been coined, well after Carnap's main developments on this, by C. W. Morris. Does Grice use 'pragmatic'? Yes, as we point out in CarnapGrice pfd [by JonesSperanza], Strand 6, Grice says, is concerned with what he then calls the logical-pragmatic distinction, as applied to 'inference'.

---- As for the 'intension' of "pragmatic", it is best to stick with Morris's ideal which is maintained by Carnap (Intro. to Semantics): pragmatic is that branch of semeiotic that refers to the relation between a sign and its user. Is this what Grice has in mind? We think so.

Then there's truth-conditions. Both Carnap and Grice here use the correct terms. Carnap uses "Warheit", which is the abstract term for Truth. But he is well aware of the developments of logicism, so he can use the German expressios for 'truth-value', that Grice uses, 'truth-function', that Grice uses, and 'truth-condition' (that Wittgenstein used).

Psychological attitude. Does Carnap use anything like this? He refers to 'belief'. Recall that Carnap had ceased to be a German-language philosopher to become an English-language one. What would 'belief' be in German? "Glauben" is to believe. Does German allow for the richness of formations that Grice can play with this here: 'to accept', 'to judge', 'to believe', 'to will', 'to intend'. There is the bread and butter for Grice. What is the bread and butter for Carnap?

"connective". This was a topic for Grice. What does Carnap say about this? Here, strictly, a connective is a truth-functional dyadic operator. Does Carnap ever consider the amalgams and the counterparts in German for them?

I propose:

'conjunktion' --- "und"
'disjunktion' --- "oder"
'conditional' --- "ob"

----

What about 'all' and 'some'. Do they carry the same implicatures in German.

'universal quantifier' -- "alle"
'existential quantifier' --- "nicht alle"?

--

What about the iota operator:

ix ---- "der". Does Carnap ever consider that while 'the' (which obsessed Russell -- the king of France is bald) translates as 'der', 'die' and 'das' in German? Does this matter for the introduction of 'identity'?

"ethics" -- Carnap's world is a factual world. He inherited from Witters the idea that 'value' issues are not the concern of the philosopher. But Grice is ALWAYS talking 'value'.

---- Etc.

But do not despair! There IS a common ground.

Carnap and Grice on 'theoretical pragmatics'

2010-04-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

--- by JL

This just the test to feed jlsblogs@rbjones.com with this. An interesting discussion of Carnap's "Appendix" to "Meaning and Necessity" (Some concepts of pragmatics) took place at the Grice Club --- We should feed the "Carnap Corner" about that too.

--- The problems that concern us are:

i. distinctions between 'to assert', 'to believe', 'to utter'. In which ways can we get away WITHOUT intensions, as Carnap is always reminding us it's so easy to do?

ii. Other.

Grice and Carnap on "central" meaning

2010-04-11T14:35:00.001-07:00

By Roger Bishop Jones for The City of Eternal Truth
.
This is a follow up to a post by J.L.Speranza at The Grice
Club, entitled "Salva Veritate"
http://griceclub.blogspot.com/2010/04/salva-veritate.html
.
This is mainly concerned with strand 5 of the "Retrospective
Epilogue" in Grice's "Studies in the Way of Words".
Here Grice is looking for some "central" aspect of
significance (meaning) of expressions.
Grice is talking about ordinary language, and Carnap has
conceded in the analytic/synthetic debate that a precise
account of the semantics of ordinary language may not be
possible. Furthermore, Carnap is concerned mainly with the
advancement of scientific method in philosophy and science
through the adoption of formal language.
.
On the road to "The City of Eternal Truth" which we are
navigating through a dialogue between Grice* and Carnap* as
interpreted by Speranza and Jones, this topic confronts the
greatest danger of disruptive discord.
Surely Carnap and Grice would here either be unable to
reconcile their attitudes toward ordinary language, or would
simply find their areas of interest disjoint and fall into
silence?
.
Well, on behalf of Carnap* I'm going to suggest that we need
not despair.
Insofar as I am able to discern the purpose of Grice's
search for a central concept of significance, I think it
plausible that this is the very same purpose which is
addressed by the adoption of formal languages.
.
What is that purpose?
That purpose is to make more rigorous the conduct of
deductive reasoning.
.
What does that involve (centrally!)?
It involves devising languages with deductive systems which
are SOUND.
A sound inference is one in which "whenever" the premises
are true so are the conclusions.
The "whenever" here expresses universal quantification over
all possible "conditions" (possible worlds, situations,
states-of-affairs).
.
What we see from this is, that if we are concerned about
rational discourse, and want to be able to reason
deductively, then for that purpose the key element in the
significance of sentences is their truth conditions.
In default of definite truth conditions, the notion of sound
deduction fails.
.
Now Carnap* I suggest, will not have much to say about
"centrality" itself unless Grice can make its meaning more
definite, but he has here a candidate for what he might call
an explication of "central" which has some resonance with
what Grice is saying.
.
There is one thing which Grice mentions, almost as an aside,
as necessary to both his logically independent candidates
for centrality, and that is "truth conditions".
Since he also requires that the central should be simple, it
follows that the central notion of significance if it does
include truth conditions, should contain nothing else, all
else should, in his words "cluster around" this central
core.
.
Thus we may interpret Grice's search for a central core of
significance in ordinary language as being addressed by
Carnap's formal techniques, which are intended to give
languages in which the significance is just that central core
of truth conditions.
.
It is arguable that however significant implicature and other
non-central significance might be in conversational contexts
it is out of place in published scientific results which
should rely exclusively on direct explicit statement, but
that the key requirements on signification which support
sound deduction (viz truth conditions) are equally desirable
in conversational contexts, and thus form a part, and hence
for the sake of the required simplicity, the whole of the
centre.
.
In my first response to "Salva Veritate" there was a lot of
detailed discussion of the points mentioned by JLS, I shall
have to look back and consider whether to follow up with
some of that detail.
.
RBJ

References

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Jones, Roger Bishop and J. L. Spearnza. Beyond the Pirot Talk: On Grice and Carnap -- and back.

Name Index

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Carnap, Rudolf
Grice, H. P.
Jones, Roger Bishop
Speranza, J. L.

Notes

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Where we elaborate on all the references dropped, with special reference to the august figures that have accompanied along the way.

Chapter Six: Eternal Truth In View

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We have reached a stage where we can conclude some pretty good optimistic notes about the purposes and enquiries of philosophy. Join in our enjoyment!

Chapter Five: Palaeo-Grice and Neo-Grice

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But then, neo-Carnap's vision of Grice is similarly dated. On what the authors of the present study aim at doing about this.

Chapter Four: Palaeo-Carnap and neo-Carnap

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It can be argued that Grice's vision of Carnap is _dated_. Learn why.

Chapter Three: A Twelvefold Antipathy

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Grice sees himself as a pilgrim on the way to the City of Eternal Truth. The twelve betes noires he finds invite a Carnapian pespective about them.

Chapter Two: Grice

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While Carnap does not feature too large in the writings of H. P. Grice, a case can be done for his inclusion in Grice's priorities.

Chapter One: Carnap

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Carnap has been an inspiring figure for Roger Bishop Jones for some time now. Learn why.

Foreword

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What we propose to do in this study is consider the views of Carnap and Grice. But not so in a mere historical sense (what Grice at least would have as a longitudinal sense) but in a latitudinal sense as well. As it says things to us _now_.

We will be concerned with 'disciplinary' issues -- and notably as to the value of 'philosophy', or the philosophical campaign. In particular, we want to reassess Carnap's, or the received Carnapian view against metaphysics, and Grice, or the received Gricean view _pro_ it.

We will tread 'eschatological' ground. For we have to conjugate, as it were, Carnap's _pragmatist_ leanings with Grice's _constructivist_ ones. We want to give room for the enterprise of philosophy, be able to reply to the most important of both Carnap's and Grice's doubts that the enterprise has originated, and at the same time provide some way out of them.

We see the task before us as 'liberatory' and 'exhilarating'. By viewing ourselves and inviting our dear reader to view his or her own self on the way to the "City of Eternal Truth" we want to propose a few guidelines as to how to proceed along the tortuous path, the tourtousness is being smoothed for at least the purposes of our expositional allegory.

Enjoy the trip!

Roger Bishop Jones

J. L. Speranza