[lit-ideas] Re: What Every School Boy Knows
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 03:36:44 EDT
In a message dated 5/28/2010 8:36:34 A.M., john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Insofar as philosopher's "episteme" denotes certain, infallible knowledge
it is a chimera and the layman's use of knowledge is in truth the
philosophically correct one in that it does not suppose what we "know" may not
be
mistaken.
----
Grice takes a different view.
He notes that people are STUPID, on the whole. Consider 'circle'. Surely
if you ask a boy (or a girl) to 'draw a circle' he won't, or she wont'. And
if he does the thing will be so UNLIKE a perfect circle: -- it will be
thick, for one. The line will have a thickness that a circle should not have.
So, Grice, like Plato -- in Letter VIII, thinks of 'circle' as MEANING what
it does, ideally, or as Grice prefers, "supralunary".
By the same token, he also suggests, with 'know'.
People are stupid and WILL use 'know' as when a boy draws a totally ugly
disformed thing and calls it a 'circle'.
In both cases, we are dealing with sublunary 'circle' and 'knowledge'.
They are IMITATIONS of the ideal case, which is the limit.
For Plato, and Grice, what we KNOW is only the form and this is in the
formal sciences, of mathematics. In the rest, it's only BELIEF.
People -- usually the stoopid ones who'll overuse 'knowledge', are scared
about 'belief'. What's so wrong with saying that you 'believe'?
-------- McEvoy HAS to admit that, "I went to the house thinking that my
grandmother would be there. She wasn't. So, I thought I KNEW she was there.
But she wasn't". It would be odd to say that you KNEW that your granmother
was there but that she wasn't. Etc.
J. L. Speranza,
Bordighera
Other related posts:
