[lit-ideas] Grice, A Transcendentalist
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 09:27:45 -0400 (EDT)
Metaphysical Argument -- Transcendental
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s
and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest to the
general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of
intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church
taught at Harvard Divinity School.
Early in the movement's history, the term "Transcendentalists" was used as
a pejorative term by critics, who were suggesting their position was beyond
sanity and reason.
---
Plakanter, Ariskant
I should revise where Grice introduces ("meet") "Kantotle" -- in "Reply to
Richards" (i.e. Reply to Richard Grandy and Richard Warner -- no such thing
as Richards). In unpublications he also played with "Ariskant", and now
McEvoy is delightfully playing with Plakanter.
McEvoy refers to my diagram:
Plato ----> Hegel
Aristotle ---> Kant
as being, indeed, simplistic. And at this point it may do to revise what
Grice was thinking when he said, "Kantotle", or "Ariskant".
So some running commentary on McEvoy's post on Plakanter:
In a message dated 6/15/2012 6:45:15 A.M. UTC-02,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"the intellectual connections between these thinkers are much more
involved than as depicted in JLS' simple diagram."
--- Too true. Note that there so many lingos involved. For in the long run,
what perhaps Popper meant when he said that Plato is in a different league
from Aristotle, was that Plato speaks _better_ (better Greek, -- similarly
Hegel, they say, writes better German than scholastic Aristotelian Kant
does).
McEvoy continues:
"In the theory of knowledge, for example, Plato's pessimistic view in 'The
Cave' is much closer to the truth and cuts deeper, for Popper, than many
naively optimistic views (even though Popper believes what is true in 'The
Cave' can be squared with a somewhat more optimistic view of the growth of
knowledge)."
Oddly, this Cave seems to have obsessed play group (Grice's play group,
that is) members like Austin. When I bought my 3rd edition of Austin's
"Philosophical Papers", I noted that J. O. Urmson, the editor, had cared to add
an early piece by Austin on the "Cave". Austin plays with all the terminology
there: doxa, episteme, etc. Pretty interesting, even if Austin's
handwriting left a lot to be desired.
I rather follow Griffiths in viewing Plato's Cave as a foreshadow of
American cinematography.
McEvoy:
"The Plato of 'The Cave' and Kant have something very important and
fundamental in common: the Kantian idea that reality as it is in itself is
unknowable is very close to the parable of 'The Cave'. Popper's theory of
knowledge takes this Kantian idea very seriously by accepting it is as true
where
knowledge means certain knowledge."
There is a line AFTER McEvoy's signature, that reads:
"This issue of the 'knowability-of-reality' is of an absolutely fundamental
character: and we might say Plato, Kant and Popper are roughly on the same
side in certain fundamental respects here."
I shouldn't be quoting it here, since it may refer to a draft to the post
that McEvoy sent; in case it isn't I quote it, for I liked the phrasing.
----
For it uses nice phrases like
KNOWABILITY
and so on.
McEvoy:
"The Plato of 'The Cave' and Kant have something very important and
fundamental in common: the Kantian idea that reality as it is in itself is
unknowable is very close to the parable of 'The Cave'."
Too true. Grice was of course fascinated with this, and the fact that
Strawson had spent YEARS (or "Hilary terms", as the Oxonians call them)
teaching
Kant ("The Bounds of Sense", Methuen) did not help. Grice would say that a
sense-datum like
"The pillar box now looks red to me"
cannot lead behaviour. It is the pillar box itself (the 'object', Grice
sometimes vaguely calls it) that can lead to action or behaviour. Similarly, I
cannot eat _deliciousness_: I eat apples. So it's Material Objects (or
Things, as I prefer -- Kant, Dinge) that have a bearing on our lives. So, I'm
not sure that Kant is into the unknowability of reality. True, it's
'ding-an-sich'. Kant's terminology, of the Noumenon and the Phainomenon does
not
help. For "Noumenon" is too platonistic a notion to count (Nous for the
Greeks was the thought, and what does THOUGHT to do with the thing-in-itself?
Nothing, one expects).
McEvoy:
"This issue of the 'knowability-of-reality' is of an absolutely
fundamental character."
Grice must have been irritated by Strawson's title, "The bounds of sense",
but indeed that is Kant's phrase. Kant speaks, like the verificationists
that Popper opposes, of a LIMIT, or bound here (bounds, he uses the plural),
and it's SENSE, as in sense-data, that marks the boundary. Note that Kant
distinguishes between SENSE and intellect, pretty much as J. Austen did, in
"Sense and Sensibility". When Austin gave his lectures at Oxford on "Sense
and Sensibilia" we know what he was thinking.
McEvoy:
"Popper's theory of knowledge takes this Kantian idea very seriously by
accepting it is as true where knowledge means certain knowledge."
Well, 'certain' has so many usages: some vaguer than others. "I met a
certain man who did not know what he was talking about". Here, it's not
'certain' as in Ayer, "certainty" qua criterion of knowledge. But being sure
is a
psychological notion that very well can go with total mistaking a red
pillar box for a London Tower beefeater, say.
McEvoy:
"Further, in the words of Bryan Magee [Confessions of a Philosopher,
p.244], Popper "does, indeed, believe that reality is hidden, and permanently
so, but he believes that this hidden reality is transcendentally real.""
Well, Magee can rephrase his subjects in ways that _sell_ them. I'm not
sure "transcendental" is the correct word. This label is used by Kant and
Hegel -- and indeed Grice, but he prefers 'metaphysical' -- "metaphysical
argumentation" -- to _prove_ things. I don't think it means "beyond" as Magee
suggests, but one should doublecheck here.
Plus, the 'hidden', while charming, reminds one of the Snark ("The Hunting
of the Snark" as Hegelian manifesto) and things like Bradley's book,
"Appearance and Reality". The Snark was a boo-jum, you see. There was nothing,
REALLY, hidden.
McEvoy:
"I am unsure Magee is quite correct here btw where "hidden" might denote
'unknowable', for Popper argues we may have conjectural knowledge of this
otherwise hidden reality."
This trades on McEvoy's (possibly Popper's) distinction between types of
knowledge:
certain knowledge
conjectural knowledge.
But if there is something witty and charming about that Very English word,
"know", is that it requires NO qualification. "I know it". "You mean you
know it conjecturally?" can only breach a conversational maxim.
McEvoy:
"But there is no Archimedean point from which we can survey just how
successful an approximation our 'conjectural knowledge' is - assessing its
degree of success is also a conjecture. Nevertheless what Magge next says may
be
correct and develops and important connection between Kant and Popper, and
one we may trace back to 'The Cave': "Kant was an empirical realist but a
transcendental idealist; Popper is an empirical realist and a transcendental
realist also."
---- Well, I was referring to Alan Code's interpretation of, say,
Platonism and Aristotelianism in FORMAL terms (R. B. Jones has stuff online on
this). The issues are complex. I'm not sure bringing in 'idea' helps here.
Rather, it's UNIVERSALIA that are brought up by Platonism. So rephrasing
Magee's distinction between
REALISM
IDEALISM
can only complicate things. My guide to understand Plato's ideas has always
been J. O. Urmson, know knew (Greek). Surely for Plato, for starters,
ideas are real; hence the clumsiness of the parlance by Magee (who however got
an Oxford education).
Magee:
Kant is an empirical realist.
Kant is a transcendental idealist.
Popper is an empirical realist.
Popper is a transcendental realist.
We can play with Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Grice.
I propose.
Plato is an empirical idealist.
Plato is a transcendental realist.
Aristotle is an empirical realist.
Aristotle is a transcendental idealist.
Hegel is an empirical IRREALIST.
Hegel is a transcendental IDEALIST.
Finally,
Grice is an empirical (but implicating realist) transcendentalist.
----
You see: Magee can only complicate things.
McEvoy:
"Magee, as it happens, believes "the empirical world is...transcendentally
ideal" and from that POV writes, "What I believe [Popper] has done is to
provide a profoundly original and substantially correct analysis of the
nature of empirical knowledge whose true place, unrealized by him, is within a
larger empirical realism/transcendental idealism frame of reference, the
necessity for which [Popper] does not acknowledge.....Taken on its own terms,
what Popper has done is combine a fundamentally empiricist view of reality
with a fundamentally rationalist view of knowledge - an empiricist ontology
with a rationalist epistemology...It is worked out on such a scale, and
yet in such detail, that it constitutes an intellectual achievement of the
front rank. It is the most highly developed philosophy yet to have appeared
that incorporates within itself a belief in an independently existing
material world subsisting in independently existing space and time. It
constitutes a huge advance upon Russell, and embodies a depth of originality
and
imagination altogether outside Russell's scope. Anyone who is determined to
cling to the empiricist tradition will find in Popper's philosophy the richest
and most powerful instantiation of it...so far. At [this] point...to be a
self-ware and sophisticated empiricist has to mean either being a Popperian
or being a critical and reconstructed Popperian. And to be any sort of
transcendental idealist ought to involve embracing something like a Popperian
account of empirical reality. On either presupposition, he is the foremost
philosopher of the age. On the first presupposition his work is itself the
cutting edge of philosophical advance. Seen in the light of the second
presupposition it appears somewhat incidental ('how little has been done when
that has been done') but still of significance, and a great improvement on
the Tractatus."
Should go back to all THAT! I actually LOVE Magee's armchair. I read his
"Men of Ideas" -- a BBC book, based on his interviews. And it contains a very
large photograph of Magee seating on his beautiful cosy armchair, with a
view of a very cosy library too. He has a knack to interview people, and I'm
glad Popper gave him so much 'food for thought' (Yost dislikes this mixed
metaphor -- but what metaphor is not mixed?).
McEvoy:
"On this basis alone JLS should perhaps read some more Popper (as should
anyone on this list who takes philosophy seriously). But it seems a very
common attitude that (while they wouldn't claim to know everything) people
think they know all they need to know about x or y, and so they know all they
need to know about Wittgenstein or Popper or Kant or Plato. They may not say
it, but when it comes to it [for example, in their reading] their actions
speak louder. This is an unfortunate attitude, both complacent and
arrogant, but widespread particularly among the educated. Magee tells of his
vain
attempts to persuade Popper to advance his philosophy by locating within
---- "a larger empirical realism/transcendental idealism frame of
reference".
"Since it was a fundamental tenet of his philosophy that reality is
unknowable, he agreed that there must be some sort of no-man's-land within
which
what we know ends and reality begins; and that whether it was actually a
fixed frontier (as Kant believed) or a perpetually moving one (as he believed)
was a separate question....This question of whether there is anything that
lies permanently outside the range of all possible knowledge is one on
which Popper remains unbudgingly agnostic..We simply cannot know....It is
possible that there is something, obviously, and anyone who denies that
possibility is wrong; but it is possible that there is not, and anyone who
denies
that possibility is wrong too. And there is no point in speculating,
because we do not even have the concepts with which to do the speculating. The
nature of the [requisite] concepts is such that if they are to have genuine
content about what is or might be factually the case they need to be
derived, if only indirectly, from somebody or other's experience, and no such
concepts of the kind we are now talking about could be so derived."
-----
Well, many say that the Greeks never really had a theory of 'knowledge', so
while we analyse the connections
Plato--Hegel
or Plato--Kant
and
Aristotle-Kant
I'm not sure a twentieth-century idiom as Magee uses helps things. Grice
says we have to 'introject into the philosopher's shoes' (Aristotle,
incidentally, wore sandals -- most of his philosophical time -- on the other
hand,
both Socrates and Plato were notably barefoot -- "in Athens" in Socrates's
case, and in that lovely grove in the case of Plato).
---- The point about an agnosticism regarding the REAL is a very Hegelian
notion, and I'm not sure it pays to apply it even to Kant.
----- There are issues in Kant that are mighty complex, and that fascinated
Grice. For example, PRACTICAL reason. Surely there is some certainty
there. The whole point of Grice's Kant lectures at Stanford (on Reason and
Reasoning) was to bridge a gap between the alethic reason (theoretical reason)
and the practical reason. And he did.
----- The idea of the "Mystic" in Witters (things that can be shown, if not
said) is a catalyst (if that's the word, I doubt it) from Kantian concerns
with things we _know_ (our duties, for example).
So, Magee is just sticking with EMPIRICAL knowledge, and providing clues as
to what Popper should have thought about things of which we have no
experience. And so on.
On top of that, he uses 'transcendental' perhaps in a scholastic religious
way (Duns Scotus?), rather than to mean a type of logical argumentation.
One may argue transcendentally for the existence of a 'thing-in-itself', for
example, as the source of all our related sense-data on a particular
instance. But further asking about yet hidden agnostic realms while making for
good prose hardly makes for a philosophical project (or other).
Thanks for your thoughts,
Cheers,
Speranza
This issue of the 'knowability-of-reality' is of an absolutely fundamental
character: and we might say Plato, Kant and Popper are roughly on the same
side in certain fundamental respects here.
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