[lit-ideas] Re: Facing the Music
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 16:52:14 +0000 (UTC)
>McEvoy goes on:
"and also knowledge of "dentistry" as a W3 institution (and so is knowledge
that is W3-dependent [unlike say his 'knowledge' of his tooth caries
through the pain it causes, which may not be W3 dependent])."
This is an excellent point in that the brother's knowledge of his tooth
caries (versus his love for Millie Roberts, say, aka 'the dentist') seems
surely NOT W3, and a Popperian attempt to replicate in W3 sensations or sense
data that best belong in W1 or W2 seems to incur in the malapropism against
"do not not multiply worlds beyond necessity").>
Again not so fast.
Take a dog with toothache. The dog has no access to W3 in Popper's conception.
The dog may experience pain as if the pain is emanating from the tooth with
caries. We humans may know this is an illusion: the pain is not located in the
tooth at all rather the pain is in the brain or is a product of the brain, and
the brain then 'locates' the pain as if it is in the body where the tooth is.
The dog's experience of toothache involves a complex interaction of W1 states
(including links between the W1 action of caries and the W1 of the central
nervous system) and W2 states (including the conscious state which 'locates'
the pain as if is emanating from the tooth).
A human can experience toothache in a way that involves just W1 and W2 in a way
similar to the dog.
But the dog will have no conscious understanding that its brain is 'locating'
the pain in the tooth (when the pain is actually located in the brain rather
than in the tooth), and the dog will have no grasp of the issue of caries or
its effect on its central nervous system (for "caries" and "CNS" here involve
W3 theoretical knowledge), nor will the dog grasp in W3 terms that there is a
potential solution to its plight in the form of a veterinary dentist:-
conversely, the human understanding of toothache, where it encompasses all
these things that a dog cannot grasp, may be a W3-dependent understanding.
So there is a merely W1/W2 sense in which a human might experience and know
that they are having a toothache, but there is also a W3-dependent sense of
experiencing and knowing that they are having a toothache which goes beyond
this.
We may also speculate as to the downward causation of W3-dependent experience
on experience in its W1/W2 form: for example, a person's experience of a
toothache may be altered by their W3-dependent knowledge, for example that the
pain is simply a figment of the CSN/brain or that dental treatment is available
to cure it - so we may for example speculate (and even subject to psychological
tests) that the experience of having a toothache may differ if we are in the
position to get immediate treatment from how we experience it when there is no
possibility of getting any treatment.
This kind of speculation and testing abandons the idea that 'experience' is
always one simple level of entity for the idea that experience is a complex
product of many interacting layers, including different layers that belong or
derive from W1, W2 or W3.
Dnl
On Friday, 23 January 2015, 11:17, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was fascinated once (as I now am) by an account (in Ridout, "English
Proverbs Explained") to the effect that all English proverbs are to be taken
literally: rolling stone gathers no moss, too many cooks spoil the broth, and
etc.
So I was taking seriously the adverb 'literally' as per E. F.'s post:
"you knew that. It goes on the say: J. Fenimore Cooper derived it from
the green-room, whence actors go
on the boards and literally 'face the music.'"
where my focus was on 'literally'.
So, following Davidson on "Metaphor", I was looking for a context:
i. He faced the music.
to be taken LITERALLY.
It seemed to me that the most literal sense I can think of is an
individual, say, Beethoven (only he was deaf) is 'facing', i.e. pointing his
face,
to some piece of music -- his Ninth, say.
This reminded me of McEvoy's distinction in 'music' between 'music' qua
W1, W2, and W3.
In a message dated 1/22/2015 5:28:02 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"Not so fast. For example, we may see or hear W3 content via physical W1
sense organs - the key for Popper is that where W1 sense experience gives us
access to W3 it does so only via W2. So we might consciously have to face
the music in whatever "literal" sense - in which case, the correct account
of this may involve the interaction of W1, W2 and W3 contents."
Granted.
Perhaps a most literal version would be:
ii. He faced the SOURCE of the music.
which then, following H. P. G. ("Be brief!"), becomes the familiar idiom
(literal), (i) to be used _metaphorically_, and thus involving some kind of
category mistake, or categorial falsity, as when 'he faced the music' is
uttered when no music was even _heard_ by him, facing or turning his back to
it.
The issue is more general, and while it applies to H. P. G., it may have a
more general interest. For we are dealing with an alleged distinction
between 'lit.' and 'fig.'. Suppose we consider the title to Hillary Clinton's
latest book,
"Hard choices".
I think I read in a book on Locke's semantic theory (Longman Linguistics
Library) that since 17th century-theories of metaphor, 'hard' (or any other
adjective with a lit. and a fig. 'sense' -- no such thing for HPG, merely
'uses'), it's the PHYSICAL 'sense' that is primary ('do not multiply senses
beyond necessity'). A surface is hard. A choice is _hard_ not in a literal
sense, but that does not mean that 'hard' has TWO senses. It has a literal
sense and a figurative extension (or metaphorical extension), and I thought
Popper's W1 idea (which I had thought he had first used for his issues with
the mind-body problem) would be apt to apply.
McEvoy says much interesting stuff in reply to Omar, which I also address.
McEvoy expands: "The distinction between the W1, W2 and W3 aspects are not
often observed in ordinary language because it is not usually necessary to
draw the distinctions - if I say "I heard my brother say yesterday that he
was going to the dentist" what I intend to convey by this need not be
encumbered by distinguishing the various W1, W2 or W3 aspects that underpin my
statement."
This may need some implicatural expansion:
i. I heard my brother say yesterday that he was going to the dentist.
Indeed, the report is about a w1 experience: the utterer is reporting that
his ears suffered some input to the effect that his brother had said, the
day before to the utterance, that he was going to the dentist.
i. can be simplified to
ii. My brother said yesterday that he was going to the dentist.
which, ceteris paribus, implicates the utterer into having _heard_ it --
hence 'hearsay'.
The w2 aspect is indeed the BELIEF by the utterer that he BELIEVES he
heard his brother say the day before that he was going to the dentist.
And some w3 element seems to be involved in the proposition, qua abstract
entity, of someone going to the dentist, timelessly put, as it were.
McEvoy is considering the 'circumstances' (to echo Omar's phrase) relating
the utterance of
i. I heard my brother say yesterday that he was going to the dentist.
Omar asks for 'circumstances' for distinguishing between the 'physical',
the 'psychological', and the 'abstract', rather than the reasons.
McEvoy writes of different circumstances, as per below, and there are
perhaps even more to consider.
The utterer's brother may have a romantic liasion (or affair -- the French
are good at this) with the dentist for reasons other than his caries.
And it may have become a 'code' in the utterer's brother to refer to the
utterer's brother's lover (who happens to be a dentist) as "the dentist", to
avoid the more impolite and impertinent
iii. I heard my brother say yesterday that he was going to see his lover.
McEvoy writes of
"the circumstance, for example, in which we were discussing whether the
institution of dentistry is merely a W1 entity or actually a W3 entity"
-- and in particular whehter Dr. Roberts (or Dr. Millie Roberts, doctor in
dentistry) is the utterer's brother's lover.
"or discussing whether my brother's _knowledge_ (that he can visit the
dentist to address his toothache) is only a physical brain state [W1] or
whether it involves conscious mental states [W2] (that are not reducible to or
identical with mere W1 physical brain states)"
McEvoy and I disagree on 'know': he allows for utterances (discussed
previously -- like "he knew she would try to kill him", even if this turns to
be
false, and that she never tried to kill him", or "Ptolemy knew the sun
rotated around the earth"). That's why I referred to 'belief' in the above.
Granted, we should distinguish between the brother's common knowledge that
he CAN visit the dentist (most people can) and that he WILL, which is a
harder (fig.) prediction to make.
The "consciousness" that McEvoy also used in his reply to my "Facing the
Music" applies then not just to the utterer's consciousness that he has
personal identity (cfr. Grice on the use of "I" in "I heard my brother say
something" -- Grice's example, "I heard a noise", where he is into the
analysis
of personal identity, "Personal identity", Mind, 1941 -- is "I" an
expression whose reference is physical ("I was hit by a cricket ball", "I fell
from
the stairs" -- equivalent to "My body fell from the stairs") or mental ("I
intend to join the army soon") or both ("I love Lucy").
McEvoy goes on:
"and also knowledge of "dentistry" as a W3 institution (and so is knowledge
that is W3-dependent [unlike say his 'knowledge' of his tooth caries
through the pain it causes, which may not be W3 dependent])."
This is an excellent point in that the brother's knowledge of his tooth
caries (versus his love for Millie Roberts, say, aka 'the dentist') seems
surely NOT W3, and a Popperian attempt to replicate in W3 sensations or sense
data that best belong in W1 or W2 seems to incur in the malapropism against
"do not not multiply worlds beyond necessity").
McEvoy generalises. The circumstances when the physical and the
psychological and the abstract arise,
"more generally, when we reflect on the possible different categorical
characters of things that may be simply lumped together in the same sentences
in ordinary language (because our ordinary use of language is unreflective
of many possible different categorical characters).
And then there's the implicatures, or conversational implicatures, which
best arise in conversation.
A: Where is Tom?
B: I heard my brother say yesterday that he was going to the dentist.
A: I didn't know Tom was your brother.
B: Yes, and I heard Tom say, yesterday, that he was going to the dentist.
A: And you believe that, and assume that is the reason for Tom's absence
when he is on jury duty?
B: He is not!
A: Ah well, I hope it's nothing serious. A caries?
B: Actually, he is having an affair with the dentist, Millie Roberts (you
must know her -- she presides the local annual cat show). And they can't
find a place to meet other than her office, if you believe that.
A: But did he say he was going to the dentist TODAY?
B: Well, his utterance was, yesterday, "I'm going to the dentist". Granted,
he didn't qualify his utterance temporally.
A: And don't you think it was a rush inference of yours to take that to
mean "tomorrow", that is, today?
B: Well, he said yesterday that he was going to the dentist, and I don't
know if he did see the dentist YESTERDAY itself, but since he is not here
TODAY (as my answer to this question of yours that initiated the conversation
implicated) I assume he is still _with the dentist_.
A: That is a 'intense' affair, if I may speak figuratively.
Cheers,
Speranza
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