[lit-ideas] Empiricism Revisited
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2012 00:32:36 -0400 (EDT)
Or Empiricist and its Discontents, rather.
The Early Ayer, The Early Grice.
In a message dated 5/30/2012 7:10:42 P.M. UTC-02, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx
writes:
“Yet…Ayer reaches…a conclusion which is the precise opposite of mine:
‘Accordingly, if we can lay down a general criterion for recognizing the
truth of basic statements [test statements], there is a sense in which we
shall after all have a general criterion for recognizing empirical truth.’
“By ‘empirical truth’ Ayer means, especially, the truth of scientific
theories; and the statement just quoted implies that, given an empirical
method to decide on the truth or falsity of what I in Logik der Forschung
called
‘basic statements’ (and now prefer to call ‘test statements’), we can
decide the truth or falsity of scientific theories.
----
Oddly, both the early (middle and later, for that matter) and the early
Grice (but perhaps not the later) were _empiricists_ and Popper should have
shown more respect for that.
Grice's very first 'unpublication', on "Negation" (The Grice Papers,
Bancroft Library, UC/Berkeley) attempts, as Ayer later will (in his own
"Negation") to define 'negation' in terms of empirical content. Grice wins!
Ayer's
theory is slightly more complicated: he must define "-" (the negation
operator) in terms of some other operator. Grice's and Ayer's empiricist theory
of negation, though, dwells on a problem already identified by Plato, on
negation and non-being.
Grice's very first published essay, "Personal identity", in Mind, 1941, is
also an empiricist account of "I" statements ("I was hit by a cricket ball"
-- my soul? my body? -- what is "I"?). Grice concludes, with Locke, that
"I" is a series of mnemonic states: "I am hearing a noise" being Grice's
example.
Papers by Grice from the early 1940s also display a great dose of
empiricism. His approach to "intention" and 'statements of intention' ("I
intend to
go to London") is based on the idea that some connection with actual or
possible behaviour (or dispositions thereof) are crucial.
So, whatever Popper found simplistic on Ayer's idea of 'empirical truth' is
perhaps itself simplistic.
The later Grice will count Empiricism as a bête noire on his way to the
city of Eternal Truth (I have discussed this elsewhere) and by that time Grice
was too strongly associated with "Rationalism" ("I am enough of a
rationalist", Lectures on reason and reasoning at Stanford and Oxford -- John
Locke
Lectures) to count as the typical British empiricist as the early Grice
and the early Ayer were and Popper wasn't.
Cheers,
Speranza
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