[lit-ideas] Teleo-Functional
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 14:48:26 EDT
In a message dated 10/4/2004 12:01:22 PM Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> While the Greeks spoke of that, Grice, too. In _Conception of Value_, he
> talks of the function of a tiger to be 'to tigerise' -- and the same for
> each
> noun. This is the finality (ratio essendi).
May it be inferred from this that the function of a burglar is to burglarise,
of a motorist to motorise and of a bullshitter to philosophise?
Donal
Rooting for anti-essentialism
London
----
Sort of. It's rather more complex. Since you ask, let me quote you Grice's
passage in full:
It's on p. 81 (Oxford: Clarendon Press):
"My idea would be that every sort of creature, and every _individual_
belonging to any such sort, must, in virtue of the fact that it is a _sort_ of
*living* creatures, or a sort of living creature, possess as an _essential
propety_ an *active* finality. To be a tiger or to be a human being is to
possess
as an essential property the capacity to tigerise or the capacity to humanise
(in whatever those things may be thought to consist)."
----
Note that if we say:
Donal McEvoy is a human
For Grice, it is not just
Nec.(Donal McEvoy HUMANISE)
but:
Nec. (Donal McEvoy DONALMCEVOYISE).
Where 'Donalmcevoyise' is the neologism constructed according Gricean lines
to explain Donal McEvoy's _raison d'etre_ in this (or the third, as he'd
prefer) world.
Cheers,
JL
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