[lit-ideas] Re: Grice Memorial Lecture
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 10:08:06 -0400 (EDT)
We are discussing the Grice Memorial lecture.
----
A similar lecture, to honour a different philosopher, of a different
nationality (originally -- he later became a Brit -- oddly, as Grice became an
American) --, as in a message dated 10/15/2013 3:52:24 A.M. Eastern Daylight
Time, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes --, includes this tidbit (or
titbit, as the Brits would spell it):
"Yet the cunning of uncertainty is at work
underneath these forays into managing complexity."
McEvoy ventures that the above:
>Sounds Hegelian to me.
(indeed, cfr. 'the cunning of reason'). McEvoy goes further than merely
nothing whether it _sounds_ Hegelian, and offers the reason for this sound:
>Perhaps this is part of John Worral's
>Lakatos-inspired campaign to destroy Popper's
>philosophy by subverting it from within?
---
The answer to this should be in Wiki.
As per below.
Cheers,
Speranza
------------
In what follows I attempt a comparison of the life and times of H. P. Grice
(an Oxford philosopher) and John Worrall, chair to the memorial lecture to
another philosopher).
John Worrall was born 27 November 1946 in Leigh, Lancashire, UK.
Grice, on the other hand, was born south of Lancashire, though he taught in
Lancashire for a year -- he taught Greek and Latin to sixth-formers -- at
Rossall. The place to learn Greek and Latin in the beautiful Lancashire
countryside, they say.
Worrall is a professor of philosophy of science at the London School of
Economics.
Grice was professor of philosophy (emeritus) at the UC/Berkeley. He never
attained the status of a professor at Oxford: merely 'university lecture'.
Grice would say that the implicature of "philosophy of X" (as in 'philosophy
of science) is counter-disimplicated on various occasions.
His example:
"Mr. Puddle is our man in nineteenth-century German aesthetics" -- tends
to implicate, Grice says, that Puddle is no good _even_ at
nineteenth-century German aesthetics". "Philosophy, like virtue, is entire".
That philosophy
is entire need a specific application. Think Socrates.
Socrates is a philosopher.
Philosophy is entire
----
Therefore, Socrates is entire.
The idea that only a _part_ of Socrates is "philosophical" (cfr. Geary,
review of Farrington, "Hand and Brain in Ancient Greece") is either otiose or
stupid ("or both", as Geary otiosely adds).
---
Note that while 'philosophy of science' makes sense, 'science of
philosophy' does not. Cfr. "love of God", "God of love". (Speranza, ""x of y":
the
implicatures")
Worrall is also associated with the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and
Social Science at the same institution, LSE.
Which is a beautiful institution. Grice divided all English institution
into two types: old-stone wall (which he abbreviated, "Oxbridge") and the rest
-- 'redbrick'. Oddly, this dichotomy is not too valid in that Durham is
not Oxbridge yet stone-walled, and part of the campus of "London University"
(Bentham's idea) is stony, too.
Worrall is perhaps best known for resurrecting the theory of structural
realism in the philosophy of science, a view previously associated with Henri
Poincaré.
---- The idea of 'resurrection', as Geary notes, is 'controversial', and
ultimately what Geary calls 'theological'. "It is different if Worrall is
resurrecting Henri Poincaré."
Worrall has published widely in journals and anthologies, edited Imre
Lakatos's collected works, and a recent volume on The Ontology of Science. He
was editor-in-chief of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science from
1974 to 1983.
He is one of the best philosophers of science 'we' (as Geary says) 'have'
(as Geary says).
He is referred to in the Stanford Encyclopedia entry for 'structural
realism'.
Worrall's publications include:
Why Science Discredits Religion in M. Peterson and R. Vanarragon (eds)
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion. Blackwell, 2004
Normal Science and Dogmatism, Paradigms and Progress: Kuhn versus Popper
and Lakatos in T. Nickles (ed): Thomas Kuhn. Cambridge University Press, 2003
What Evidence in Evidence-Based Medicine, Philosophy of Science, September
2002 (with E. Scerri)
Prediction and the periodic table, Studies in the History and Philosophy of
Science Vol 32/3, 2001;
Kuhn, Bayes and "Theory-Choice": How Revolutionary is Kuhn's Account of
Theoretical Change? in R. Nola and H. Sankey (eds): After Popper, Kuhn and
Feyerabend: Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method, 2000;
The Scope, Limits and Distinctiveness of the Method of "Deduction from the
Phenomena": Some Lessons from Newton's "Demonstrations" in Optics, The
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2000;
Two Cheers for Naturalised Philosophy of Science, Science and Education,
July 1999;
Structural Realism: the Best of Both Worlds in D. Papineau (ed) The
Philosophy of Science (Oxford 1996).
Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Subject Editor for Philosophy of
Science), (Routledge, 1998)
Philosophy and Natural Science in A C Grayling (Ed.), Philosophy 2. Further
through the subject (Oxford University Press, 1998)
Revolution in Permanence": Karl Popper on theory-change in science, Karl
Popper: Problems and Philosophy (CUP, 1995)
The Ontology of Science, ed (Dartmouth Publishing Co, 1994)
---
While McEvoy finds the adage:
"yet the cunning of uncertainty is at work
underneath these forays into managing complexity"
-- it sounds better in Latin -- it shouldn't.
Once, Grice attended a lecture by Hampshire and Hart, entitled, "Intention
and Certainty". He was so offended by what he heard (although he loved both
men) that when the British Academy made Grice a member he went to
Cumberland House with a draft of an essay that came out as
"Henriette Herz Trust"
"Annual Philosophical Lecture"
"Intention and UNcertainty".
Grice thinks that the idea of 'uncertainty' is basic. The idea of
certainty, o.t.o.h., is Cartesian. But Grice distinguishes between
objective certainty: It is certain that it is hot.
from
subjective certainty:
"I'm certain that it is hot".
Mutatis mutandis for 'uncertainty'.
"Uncertainty is the negation of certainty" -- in symbols, with "K" for
'know' or 'certain') we use ~K.
"It may be argued that one can be certain of something that is not the
case, and thus that one does not strictly knows". McEvoy agrees. He uses the
colloquial phrase, "for all I know" as a proof that what one knows other can
be uncertain of.
Cfr. "As far as I know", "so far as I know".
While it makes sense to replace 'certain' here ("as far as I'm certain",
"so far as I'm certain"), the briefer idioms, "as far as I'm uncertain", "so
far as I'm uncertain") 'trigger an unwanted implicature' that linguist L.
R. Horn calls "squative" -- to the effect that the utterer knows _diddly_.
Or not.
Cunning is best applied to people -- not to certainty, uncertainty, or
reason. When Hegel speaks, in a manner to repudiate the neo-Kantians amongst
him -- of 'the cunning of reason' -- he is indeed sounding Hegelian. But
then, unlike Lakatos, Hegel couldn't HELP but sounding Hegelian.
Or not.
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