[lit-ideas] Re: The Worst Verses Ever Written
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 09:02:10 +0100 (BST)
--- On Mon, 6/6/11, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> In a message dated 6/6/2011 6:58:13 P.M., donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx
> writes:
> >>It may be argued that a poet is NOT aiming at
> _good_ poems.
> And indeed that they have easily enough achieved
> their aim.
>
> --- uh? The nonexistence of an aim on the part of a poet
> (to produce a good
> poem) does not seem to allow for a judgement on the same
> poet having thus
> achieved an aim of his?
My quip was not a thesis in philosophical logic. Nevertheless this depends on
whether we equate 'I am not aiming for a good poem' with 'I am aiming for a
poem that is not good' - arguably (as you suggest), we do not, because not to
aim for a good poem leaves open the possibility of not aiming at any standard
at all. However, the result will always be a good or bad poem, so irrespective
of the conscious aim of the writer a poem can always be judged to a standard.
Compare Robin Hood and a target for arrow-shooting practice: Robin shuts his
eyes and says 'I am not aiming to hit the target' and shoots but hits the
target. Has he failed by hitting the target? Or does not aiming to hit the
target mean simply that whether he hits the target or not is irrelevant to
whether he has failed or succeeded in his aim, as his is not an aim at all but
a lack of aim? If only Robin Hood had been about in Greek times, they would
have discussed this and we would be on our
way to an answer.
snip
> --- Grice's point is subtle. "He reasoned" means "He
> reasoned well". Surely
> we wouldn't call a fallacy a piece of reasoning. Reasoning
> means good
> reasoning. "The the king king went the went king to
> his castle" is not a
> sentence. "The king went to his castle" is. A
> sentence is a good sentence.
> Something which is not a good sentence is NOT a
> sentence.
Too subtle. "He reasoned" does not necessarily mean "He reasoned well". The
example of a "sentence" is different as a well-formed formula will necessarily
be well-formed.
Donal
London
> ----
>
>
>
>
> >"When it comes to evaluation +GOOD and -GOOD, the
> source has to be Ayer."
> There must be many more valuable sources, philosophically
> speaking. My
> giddy aunt, for example.
>
>
> uh? 'giddy' -- O.E. gidig, variant of gydig "insane, mad,
> stupid, possessed
> (by a spirit)," probably from P.Gmc. *gud-iga-, from
> *gudam "god" + *-ig
> "possessed." Meaning "having a confused, swimming
> sensation" is from 1560s.
> Meaning "elated" is from 1540s.
>
> ---- Incidentally, I fail to know who Ayer's _aunt_ was.
>
> ----- Oddly, Grice had a thing with his aunt, too, "prim"
> he called her.
> (She was a Catholic convert).
>
> ----
>
>
> >>"In "Language, truth and logic", he noted that:
> 'That is a good book'
> or 'That is a good poem' amounts to
> 'Read it!'"
> >This might well be taken as the refutation by
> 'reductio' of his theory.
>
> Not necessarily. But imperativism was a source for Hare's
> development of
> his metaethics. Ayer was into refining Stevenson's
> emotivism. Note that
> sociologists only have THIS concept of 'good': a
> pro-attitude, as they call it.
>
> >>"In symbols, !p"
> >Ah, logical symbolism - to philosophy what
> special effects are to cinema.
>
> Note that I was wondering about the phrastic, as Hare calls
> it. For Hare, !
> is a neustic, and p is a phrastic, or radical. It may be
> argued that
>
> "This is a good poem". Or, more elliptically, "This is
> good" has no
> phrastic.
>
> ------
>
> >>"Ayer went on to argue that such imperatives are
> for sure unverifiable.
> I am thus surprised that McEvoy who has elsewhere defended
> Popper, is
> looking for verification in an area where nobody (in the
> Oxford of 'enfant
> terrible' Ayer, as Grice called him) was."
> >McEvoy is just as surprised as JLS that he might
> be thought to be looking
> for any such verification - or even falsification -
> in the area of poetry:
> certainly verification or falsification by way of a
> 'test statement' is
> not the way poetry is evaluated. After all, the
> claims of a poet are not
> necessarily scientific or testable by observation.
>
> ----- I was referring to the evaluation (or
> meta-evaluation, if you must)
> of
>
> "This is good".
>
> --- i.e. not the idiocy that some poet may 'utter' (cfr.
> idioma, poema,
> 'id-' meaning 'individual' in Greek). But the idiocy of the
> lit.crit. as the
> Oxonians abbreviate it. The doctrine by Stevenson et al was
> popular enough
> in Cambridge, rather than Oxford, notably: with I. A.
> Richards (Principles
> of Practical Criticism). Richards, or Ogden/Richards
> fame, had argued that
> 'emotive' uses of language are beyond criticism.
>
> McEvoy:
>
> "They are not, pace Ayer, therefore nonsense either - and
> it turns out, as
> Popper argued, it is self-defeating nonsense to say so. I
> might mention
> that while once on another list there was much
> dispute about the relative
> merits of the Putnam, Lakatos and Popper discussions
> in _Schilpp_, even
> Popper's most trenchant critics seemed to accept that
> Popper's reply to Ayer's
> paper there was a devastating demolition of its
> argument. As Ayer might say -
> Read it! -- Donal -- Listening to 'Dear Landlord' in
> mono and thinking
> fondly of Popper's reply to Ayer -- London".
>
> There were, indeed, many points of contact between Ayer
> (the word means
> 'yesterday' in Spanish) and Popper (the word does not mean
> 'yesterday',
> though).
>
> Ayer is a Continental name*, like Popper. In "Part of my
> life", Ayer
> includes a postcard pretty view of Ayer, in Switzerland,
> where the Ayers came
> from. I would imagine that back in Ayer, the Ayers were NOT
> called Ayer.
>
> Speranza
>
>
> ---
>
> *Ayer, SwitzerlandFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> Ayer
> Country Switzerland
> Canton Valais
> District Sierre
> Coordinates 46°11′N 7°36′E / 46.183°N
> 7.6°E / 46.183; 7.6Coordinates:
> 46°11′N 7°36′E / 46.183°N 7.6°E /
> 46.183; 7.6
> Population 668 (December 2002)
> - Density 6 /km2 (15 /sq mi)
> Area 119.1 km2 (46.0 sq mi)
> Elevation 1,476 m (4,843 ft)
> Postal code 3961
> SFOS number 6231
> Localities Zinal
> Twin towns Montferrier-sur-Lez (France)
> Website _www.zinal.ch_ (http://www.zinal.ch)
> SFSO statistics
>
> Ayer is a village in the district of Sierre in the Swiss
> canton of Valais.
> An independent municipality before, it merged on 1 January
> 2009 with
> neighboring Chandolin, Grimentz, Saint Jean,
> Saint-Luc and Vissoie to form the
> municipality of Anniviers.
>
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