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.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Eschatology and Metphysics
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
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
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Re: Presupposition and Metaphysics
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Carnap, Kripke, presupposition
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)