[lit-ideas] The Vacuity of Truth and Knowledge

Eric: 
 
"My turn to play JLS:
 Main Entry: know
 Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English knowen, knawen, 
from Old English cnamacrwan; akin to Old 
High German bichnamacran to recognize, 
Old Norse knamacr I can, Latin gnoscere, 
noscere to become acquainted with, come to 
know, Greek gignomacrskein to come to know, 
perceive, Old Slavic znati to know, 
Sanskrit jamacrnamacrti"
 
Exactly. Which proves my point. R. Paul is right. We need to
be able to distinguish claims.
 
Have you ever _heard_ Geary says,
 
        "I know"
 
    "I know that Jesus loves me
     because the Lord told me so".
 
No. He goes by beliefs:
 
     "I believe Jesus loves me."
     "I believe this compressor shorted to ground.
      It's burntout, something's eaten the
      cables, and the fun is over-working."
 
Then there's Tweetie
 
      "I believe there is a big nasty cat before me"
      "I believe I've seen there is a big nasty cat before me"
      "There _is_ a big cag before me"
 
(It's "Schroinger's Cat" -- the nasty Hun who lives next to
the little old lady).
 
F. P. Ramsey, who was a colleague of Wittgenstein at
Cambridge used to say that all claims to knowledge and
truth are vacuous. His theories were ignored in Cambridge
(also, he died). In the famous "Bristol conference" (see
Warnock, "Bristol Revisited") there was a meeting of
the Aristotelian Society.
 
On the right stand, J. L. Austin
On the left stand, P. F. Strawson (student of Grice)
 
Austin got mixed up with illocutionary verbs.

Then Strawson spoke in a clear and Oxonian and Gricean voice,
and re-vived the 'redundancy' theory of truth alla
Ramsey now couched in Gricean terms.
 
--- I know that Schrodinger's cat is vicious.
--- It is true that Schrodinger's cat is vicious.
--- Schrodinger's cat is vicious.
 
Are ALL equivalent.
 
If you don't know, you say, "I believe". Otherwise,
it's understood to mean you 'know'.
 
The corollary was discussed after the Bristol colloquium
with Austin.
 
Strawson wanted "Schrodinger's cat is vicious" to stand for
"I believe"; but Austin objected,
 
"Surely we expect an Oxford man to express his truth
and knowledge, besides his mere belief."
 
Grice was undecided in this respect, and when he
formulated the 'conversational maxim', it went:
 
-- Do not say what you believe to be false.
 
(which has 'belief' rather than 'knowledge'.)
 
Grice also mentioned Hamlet's stepmother,
 
"I know I don't love you. I know it's true. It's true
that I know I love you and I know it -- from the bottom
of my heart"
 
Grice says,
 
"Methinks the lady doth protest too much"
 
--- So, to preface (or parenthetise, to use Urmson's verb)
a claim "p" with ANY preface, even "I know..." is 
counterproductive to the directness of the claim and its
impact on the addressee.
 
Grice's other example is:
 
"She is cheating on him right now"
 
(out of the blue, at a philosophy conference, referring to
the wife of a philosopher who's nowhere to be seen).
 
Grice says that it's a bit out-of-the-blue, and a preface
to the effect, that the utterer _thinks_ she is deceiving
the philosopher, would felt as needed, IMPLICATES that 
no such preface _is_ necessary because, it's somebody
"every Etonian _should_ know".
 
The problem with Popper -- and McEvoy should recognise this -- 
is that he (Popper) dedicated his life to the defense
of KNOWLEDGE and TRUTH -- he was an emigree who was
not accepted by the English intelligentsia, and out of
rencour, he felt like he was going to teach the
English futilitarians a thing or two. This thing or two
being KNOWLEDGE and TRUTH. 
 
But the Futilitarians didn't want to listen.
 
Cheers,
 
JL

 



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