[lit-ideas] Duttoniana
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 11:17:29 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 11/26/2013 5:18:45 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx refers to a book review by Denis Dutton of Walter
Kaufmann,
"Discovering the Mind".
Dutton, T. Fjeld notes, "brings up themes that have by now come to serve as
well-known refrains of positions critical of the linguistic turn."
I'm never sure if 'the linguistic turn' is not an exaggeration. It looks
like another turn of the screw. It seems philosophy was always turning in
linguistic circles since Cratylus.
"Central to this reaction to the awakening of linguistic perceptibility in
-- particularly -- the social sciences, is the proposition that those who
engage questions of language suggest claims to "rigour and scientific
precision, but in fact the rigour is wholly spurious." Spurious is, it should
be
noted, a term used to describe seemingly (but not really) causal relations,
such as when it is claimed that as sun follows rain, sunshine must be
caused by rain. The ground on which Heidegger is to be (supposedly) defeated
is
from the outset marked as that of positivist-empiricist natural science."
On the other hand, 'consequence' is perhaps the key word in ALL
philosophical discourse.
Indeed, to use T. Fjeld's examples:
sun is not the consequence of rain.
In linguistic turn terms:
It rains today---
---- Therefore, the sun shines tomorrow.
---
To _DENY_ the 'consequence' relation indicates that we need another
concept, perhaps 'implicature'. Grice's example:
"He is an athlete"
---- Therefore, he is tall.
(Example Grice draws from Stevenson, "Ethics and Language").
We have to distinguish types of 'consequence' and the idea of a 'ceteris
paribus consequence' (or not). Popper would criticise the idea of a ceteris
paribus consequence as irrefutable and thus metaphysical or anti-scientific,
if not meaningless.
"In general, after rain, there is sun".
Or, in the well-known adage,
"There's a silver lining thru the dark clouds shining"
----
"It's always calm before the storm -- ceteris paribus".
---
T. Fjeld goes on:
"Dutton, drawing on Kaufmann, delights in semi-pornographic biographical
ditties, such as Heidegger's Catholic upbringing, which, in Dutton's world,
should serves to causally explain " that his philosophy ... has been taken
up so enthusiastically by so many Roman Catholic scholars."
---- It is a good thing that by the time Plato was philosophising there was
no thing as the "Catholic religion".
I am always fascinated by the reception of BOTH Aristotle and Plato by
Italian Renaissance philosophers (based around Florence) who would rather be
seen dead than seen supporting the Roman Pope.
----
Fjeld:
"The explanation suffers under extensive reductionism -- what, precisely is
the chain of events that leads from a writer's religiously informed upbri
nging to a specific audience of his texts some 60 years later? The natural
scientist should be baffled by the assumptions made on the reader.
Furthermore, going to the childhood of a writer to explain the meaning, and
even
more so the audience, of a writer's work is a technique we associate with
scholarship that predates the so-called New Critics."
In the case of H. P. Grice, _my_ man, I don't. I find a lot of Grice's
later philosophy already 'in germ', as it were, in his FATHER's philosophy,
also called Herbert. Herbert Grice senior was a non-conformist, and possibly
while Grice Junior's mother was pregnant (of Grice junior), Grice junior's
fetus would hear the non-conformist arguments (and their implicatures). The
very fact that Grice Junior was sent to Clifton (away from pappa and mamma)
and later to Corpus Christi (Oxford) surely "Shaped" His later Philosophy.
---- And the habits he acquired at Clifton, like a passion for cricket,
informed his whole life. His obituary read, "Grice, amateur cricketer and
professional philosopher" (The London Times).
Fjeld:
"In their view, this kind of scholarship would no longer be current,
classifying biographically informed literary studies under the rubric of
intentionally fallacious scholarship."
I follow York University scholars in aesthetics (Lamarque) in finding that
'fallacy' is fallaciously applied to the intentional theory created by
Beardsley.
----
Fjeld goes on:
"Kaufmann and Dutton are so busy in their collective patricide that, while
rejoicing in what they percieve as self-defeating criticism on Heidegger's
part (he is "himself ... flagrantly guilty of the Gerede and Geschreibe
(chatter and scribbling) of which he so sarcastically accuses others"), they
forget that "chatter" is one of the key criterions of scholarship. Whether
Kaufmann/Dutton's brand of literary analysis is adept or inept should be a
matter for readers to judge."
I like the distinction between ge-rede and ge-schreibe.
I am reminded of Russell who regretted (and indeed criticised) that Grice
would spend his life to a dedication of an analysis of 'the silly things
silly people say" in their silliest moments, I would add.
----
Note that Grice's term of art is the 'conversational' implicature, because
-- unlike Nowell-Smith, or Austin -- he found that it was in 'colloquial
chat' that we can isolate 'maxims' of discourse such as "let the
conversational flow flow easily", 'contribute with appropriate moves to the
conversational exchange' and so on -- which are 'operative' even in
'over-the-garden-fence' chit-chat, he would go on to say.
Fjeld goes on:
"Kaufmann -- and Dutton reproduces this -- then rehearses some familiar
postures with regards to Heidegger's texts. They are "exceptionally formulaic.
He himself seems to be mesmerized when he has found a complicated,
unusually forbidding, formula and subsequently treats it as if it had been
delivered by an oracle. Such imposing formulations are repeated over and
over,"
writes Kaufmann, and Dutton transcribes."
There's a mnemonic value to that. Oracles are like 'adages'. Grice's
favourite was his modified razor:
"Senses should not be multiplied beyond necessity",
which does sound as coming from Delphi.
Cfr. "Nihil est in intellectu quod prior non fuerit in sensu".
--- Most philosophy is made of adages, but then also most of -- to quote a
favourite songwriter of McEvoy -- Zimmerman-Bob Dylan -- or to quote one of
Geary -- Elvis Presley.
---
Someone should write a book on the IMPLICATURES of Bob Dylan's song titles
(or not).
Fjeld goes on:
"Is not the writer's position here, though, that of an over-bearing, and
yet perhaps not fully comprehending fan? From where would the naturalist find
evidence of the kind of self-aggrandisement suggested in the quote? Is the
type of self-love proposed by the writer something that is of Heidegger or
is the writer projecting some of his own emotions onto the emotionally
imposing father-figure?"
Good point. We should discuss
"Grice" and "Griceian" and similarly
"Heidegger" and "Heideggerian".
So we could truthfully say that Kaufmann (not the tenor) is a Heideggerian,
or is Heideggerian". There is multitude in Heidegger, as Whitman said ("I
contain multitudes"), so there are Heideggerians and neo-Heideggerians.
These should be distinguished from palaeo-Heideggerians, and
post-Heideggerians.
---
Fjeld:
"Finally, in their effort to defeat Heidegger on the grounds of a science
that cultivates clarity and singularity of meaning, they are willing
sacrifice the core of the literary-philosophical experience: it's ability to
render meanings that a multiple and complex, and that facilitates what
Heideggerian scholar Jacques Derrida referred to as the threshold of
indeterminacy.
Is it not only from such a standpoint that we can enter into the field of
philosophy proper?"
Well, this is disputable. Grice was fascinated by the motto by Lewis,
"Clarity is not enough".
This presupposes or implicates that someone once held that linguistic
clarity (a term Fjeld uses) IS enough. For Lewis, philosophy requires MORE than
clarity. I'm never sure.
But Geary is right that Heraclitus was referred to as 'obscure' and yet
Heraclitus remains as one of the most beloved figures in universal philosophy.
Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
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