[lit-ideas] Re: Do ideas exist before being articulated?
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:44:45 EDT
I found it slightly offensive when McCreery fails to comment on my post --
which, admittedly, was pretty heavy, handling on authors like Ryle and others,
and dropping names like analytic behaviourism, functionalism, etc. He thought
it was my _onus_ to prove the relevance.
On top of it, he calls my reading as being once-in-a-time, and refers to
some process of cut and paste which escapes me. I read Grice as often as I can,
ditto Grice. They are (and a few others) my only mentors. And while I see that
McCreery is looking for a ready answer, "do ideas exist before being
articulated? () yes () no", I'm quoting here from the very last passage back in
1867, when dear old Grice closed his William James Lectures. This last lecture
was left unpublished till 1989 -- and the sad thing is that Grice died in 1988,
so never saw it in print. It's so confessional that I find touching:
"The solution to this seemingly knotty problem [as to whether exist before
being articulated] may perhaps liek in the idea that the psychological
attitudes which, in line with my theory of meaning, attend the word flows of
_thought_ do so as causes and effects of the word flows in question, but not
as
*natural* causes and effects and so _not_ as states that are manifested in
psychological episodes or thoughts WHICH ARE NUMERICALLY DISTINCT from word
flows
which set me off or arise from them; they are due or proper antecedents or
consequences of the word flows in question and as such are LEGITIMATELY DEEMED
to
be present in those roles; this is part of ONE'S AUTHORITY as a RATIONAL
THINKER to assign acceptable interpretations to one's own internal word flows."
--- This reminds me of Geary's claim that he knows what's going on _within_
his *own* head, hardly others'.
Grice continues:
"What they may be deemed to generate or arise from is ipso facto something
which they do generate or arise from. The interpretation, therefore, of one's
on VERBALLY FORMULATED THOUGHTS is part of the PRIVILEGE of a thinking being.
The association of our word flows and our psychological attitudes is fixed
by us an OUTFLOW from our HAVING LEARNED TO USE OUR LANGUAGE [like a parrot
may not, or like a second-language speaker may not] for definite purposes to
describe the world, so the attitudes which, when speaking SPONTANEOUSLY and
yet
nonarbitrarily, we assign as causes of effects of our word flows HAVE TO BE
ACCEPTED as properly occupying that position." (1967, ed. 1989, p. 143).
In 1991, Judith Baker, Grice's literary executor, published his 1975 "Method
in philosophical psychoogy" where Grice presents a more elaborate (and to my
view satisfying) scheme for the view of psychological attitudes as
_theoretical_ concepts, in the sense that 'psychology' is a theory -- in line
with a
classical Aristotelian view of thinking processes as "function" of a living
organism.
Cheers,
JL
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