[lit-ideas] Re: An Oxonian Cat
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2015 08:04:16 +0000 (UTC)
In a message dated 11/17/2015 3:39:21 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: "LSE rules stipulate their Professors must
reside
within 25 miles of LSE."
This reminds me of Oxford. A college rule stipulates that no dogs be
allowed. The new provost was the proud owner of a dog. This posed a
problem-solving scenario, and the college's governing body passed a resolution
deeming
the provost's dog to be a cat.>
No matter how utterly delightful the tale of the deemed cat and how many times
it bears retelling, in the case of the LSE rules no 'deeming' was used i.e. LSE
didn't deign to deem that should Popper live outside the residential radius
that place would be deemed as within it.
Courts also engage in deeming-exercises of a sort ["An agreement for a lease is
as good as a lease"] but it is interesting that they rarely, if ever,
approximate to the case of the deemed cat. The case of the deemed cat is a
wholesale evasion of the prohibition on dogs by taking a dog out of the
prohibition by deeming it a cat. Only in a system that may be highly
self-indulgent and lack the impetus to ensure it works in a way that is
accountable by normal standards, and where dons lack for better amusement,
might such a 'deeming-exercise' be thought clever and sustainable - really, the
honest policy would be to graft an exception into the rules for the dog of the
current provost.
But then the intellectual hoax that is "conceptual analysis" is thought clever
and sustainable only by an elaborate set of 'deeming-exercises'. Go figure.
In considering all this from a serious intellectual pov, we might start by
considering whether "conceptual analysis" plays any important role in the
advance of human knowledge. The best case to start with is science i.e. what
important role has "conceptual analysis" (of a sort that can't be gainsaid)
played in the advance of science? It was plain enough to Popper that the answer
was none - that, on the contrary, the antecedents of "conceptual analysis" had
often held back scientific advance by leading to definitional dogmas that held
back the reception of progressive ideas [for example, the notion of "species"
etc. in biology is derived from an Aristotelian approach that inhibited for
centuries the idea of the mutability of species that is central to the
Darwinian revolution in biological thought].
So some of us, while not blind to the amusing aspect of the deemed cat, are
also not blind to the way the story is symptomatic of a kind of thinking still
rife among the intellectual class and the less amusing fact that this kind of
thinking is a harmful hoax.
DL
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