[lit-ideas] Grice and Geach on "A Bit of English Grammar"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2014 06:13:48 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 1/5/2014 4:53:19 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
wokshevs@xxxxxx writes:
While "knowledge" permits a propositional (k-that) and a
procedural (k-how) sense, there is no such thing as "knowing to." So one
can
learn how to tie one's shoes and learn that Wolfau is in Austria through
the
acquisition of one kind of knowledge or another. But one can't learn to be
courageous, just or kind simply through the acquisition of a form of
knowledge.
This is a good point.
However, it brought to mind the words of the late professor emeritus of
logic at Leeds, Peter Thomas Geach (he died December last year). On p. 47 of
"Reason and argument", which he published with Blackwell, he talks, alla
Grice, of 'bits of grammar'.
The logic professor (and Grice, too, is described as a "British logician"
by Bartlett) warns the philosophy student (or student simpliciter; his book
is meant as an intro to undergrads who WON'T proceed with logic in the
curriculum) to distinguish between
logical form
and
implicature or worse, what Geach calls
'bits of grammar'.
So the same may apply to W. O.'s point about there not being in English a
phrase to the effect that one knows TO.
Geach is discussing the copula:
"S is P"
Or "Every S is P" (he finds "All S is P" as being non-English).
And he writes (brilliantly, as was his wont):
"The word 'is' is a mere concession to English grammar and
plays no essential logical role (cf. Russian "John clever", "John
rascal" [*It is not surprising that Geach should quote from a
Slavonian language, since his mother was Polish]"
and later on the same page:
"Every F is G" will be interpreted as "Every(body) who
is luckier than Elsie, Elsie envies". The '-body' part
of 'everybody' expresses the choice of Universe; and
'who is' is just a bit of English grammar -- these words
could be left out in another language (say Latin)."
Loved it.
In another context, he goes on to discuss the subjunctive in Latin and adds
the note, to the effect that "this will mean nothing to the student who
doesn't speak the language". (Is Geach contradicting his self here; don't
think so). After all, HE did, as well as Grice, since both had made the right
choices during his student years at Oxford (at Balliol and Corpus
respetively) when following the Lit. Hum. course -- 'classics' today, rather
than
the Oxford later combo of PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics -- cfr.
"Philosophy, Culinary, and Demographics").
So, I would suggest that we examine the logical form.
W. O. makes a good point that
'to believe how to bake a cake'
makes little sense. This is what Walter calls the 'procedural' sense (I
prefer 'use') of 'belief'. But we could still express that the agent has a
WRONG procedure. He is not _certain_ about it, and it may lead to failure. So
there IS a way to express a 'procedural' way of something like the absent
'procedural 'use'' of 'believe'.
Grice discusses 'mean', 'mean-that', and 'mean-to' (as in "He meant to go
to London") ("Meaning"), and concludes that 'to mean to go to London" is
like the 'mean' in "Smoke means smoked salmon": what he calls a 'natural' use
of 'mean' (I may disagree).
"Know to" may be a similar 'natural 'use''. Walter O. is concerned with "He
learned to be brave", with 'factive' "learn". As in "He learned that the
earth was flat". Someone 'wrongly?' taught him that the earth was flat, and
he believed it. Some purists disqualify this use of 'learn' (I do): you can
only learn WELL; there's no such thing as 'mislearn': this is just a bit
of English grammar, to be merely implicated or disimplicated on occasion.
Seeing that 'learn to' (be brave, etc.) is correct grammar, it seems THIS
is the expression for a 'to' use of 'know' that W. O. is looking for. Or
not, of course. (Donal may agree with this, seeing that he allows, alla
Popper, for uses of 'know' that are hardly factive: 'Ptolemy knew that the sun
rotated around the earth', or "Newton knew things that were later falsified
by Eddington" -- vide Popper, "The source of [our] ignorance."
'To' uses of 'know' that are not factive ("He mislearned to be brave") are
then what Popper would call ignorance. At the beginning of this British
Academy lecture he grants of the oddness of speaking of the source for
something that is not there (ignorance) but he goes on with the title as, to
echo
Geach's initial quote, 'a concession to English grammar' -- or German in
this case, initially, one may think?
Cheers,
Speranza
Cheers,
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
