[lit-ideas] Re: "The Causal Theory of Perception"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:22:00 EDT
In a message dated 6/15/2009 5:55:37 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
Thanks, Paul. I almost wrote that I'd never sent an obituary of
Albritton anywhere, so I lucked out on a technicality. JL was right, for
all intents and purposes.
So, I should apologize to him.
----
O don't!
-- I was worried by your 'wearily' -- as I was worried by your 'weirded'
in a previous post.
It seems you are undergoing a w-stage.
To me, 'wearily' means 'tired', and you _can't_ be:
1481 CAXTON Godfrey clxxxv. 271 Theyr enemyes wexed wery and weryly and
slowly defended them. 1523 LD. BERNERS Froiss. clxxxvi. (1812) I. 221 And so
they went weryly by heapes. 1568 GRAFTON Chron. II. 298 They perceaued a
flocke of men of armes comming together right werily. 1610 SHAKES. Temp. III.
i. 32 Mir. You looke wearily. 18.. MOORE ‘Merrily every Bosom’ ii, Wearily
every bosom pineth. 1859 TENNYSON Marr. Geraint 254 [He] down the long
street riding wearily, Found every hostel full. 1866 GEO. ELIOT F. Holt i, A
heavy moth floated by, and, when it settled, seemed to fall wearily. 1891
FARRAR Darkn. & Dawn lix, ‘What is heaven?’ asked Poppæa, wearily.
from 'weary'
Having the feeling of loss of strength, languor, and need for rest,
produced by continued exertion (physical or mental), endurance of severe pain,
or
wakefulness; tired, fatigued. Now with stronger sense: Intensely tired,
worn out with fatigue.
If it's my fault, _I_ apologise.
For the record the passage by Grice as per googlebooks:
"[One may think that] One cannot speak of someone as 'looking
tough-looking'."
"But, as Albritton [...] pointed out to me, it does *not* seem
linguistically _improper_ to say of someone that he looked tough-looking when
he stood
in the dim light of the passage, but as soon as he moved into the room it
could be seen that really he looked quite gentle."
This sort of examples 'bother' me slightly, and perhaps McEvoy has a point
about the confutation of metaphysical realism:
seeing a lamp-seeming thing.
----
Grice's example is the denial-or-doubt:
The pillar box is red.
The pillar box _seems_ red (is otiose, with the thing in front of our
eyes). There is a denial-or-doubt IMPLICATURE (to follow): i.e. someone denies
or doubts that the pillar box is red.
But is it not?
Another example by Grice this time in WOW, iii:
in connection with Warnock's discussion:
This tie is blue
This tie is green
From memory: "It would be otiose," Grice says, "to have to qualify that as
'This tie seems blue', or "This tie seems red', when no change of colour is
in the background. But it _is_ loose talk."
For me, quale (plural qualia) are SECONDARY qualities, and a tie being blue
does not make any sense! Never mind a person looking gentle!
-----
There are two things to consider vis a vis McEvoy's confutation:
"The pillar box seems red" -- is otiose.
I prefer,
"it seems to me as though the pillar box is red"
Cfr. Geary's nightmare:
"The terrible quiet. The room seemed to me as
if a monster appeared."
"A monster seemed to me"
"It seemed to me as if there were a monster in my bedroom"
It would be odd to say
"The monster seems in my bedroom"
--- for 'the monster' gets _topical_ focus (being the subject of the
sentence).
That's why we use "it" seems that p. For we evacuate the 'noumenon' to
second-base.
Etc. -- but surely that's no naive realism.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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