[lit-ideas] Re: Grice and Geach on "A Bit of English Grammar"
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2014 19:40:41 -0800 (PST)
That was to be 'peace,' not 'piece.'
On Tuesday, January 7, 2014 12:18 AM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
If I express certain views or ideas in a (loosely phrased, and unaddressed
except once) reply to you, it surely does not logically entail that I am
ascribing the opposite views to you. There are various creative ways in which I
can treat humanity as not in itself an end, and constructing a straw man is
only of these. The only possible 'sleight of hand' would be the reference to
Orthodox Christmas, but if you were sitting here in my place listening to
pranks and occasional small arms fire in the spirit of piece in Christ, I think
you might understand.
Mir gospodnji, i pokušaću da odgovorim na ostale poente kasnije,
O.K.
On Monday, January 6, 2014 11:56 PM, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
wrote:
Just a few remarks:
1. S Rozhdyestvom Hristovom! (or not). (My new Volvo better be sitting under
the tree tomorrow.)
2. I agree with everything OK says below. Is there something in there to which
I'm supposed to object?
3. Well, almost everything OK says. On Socratic ignorance: Perhaps OK can tell
us where Plato has Socrates say what OK attributes to Socrates below? Last time
I checked, that's not what Socrates said he was ignorant about, acc to Plato. I
believe OK is correct in that it is procedural knowledge of a particular sort
that Socrates denies possessing. (Without wishing he possessed it,
interestingly.) But what OK gives us in quotations isn't it.
And, if I may, one final quibble, the knowledge Socrates denies possessing is
not philosophical knowledge ... or even practical wisdom, I don't think. OK will
clear this all up before New Years, I'm sure.
Already noseing the fragrance of piroshki with meat and with potato and rice
wafting from the kitchen. (Only 2 kinds of piroshki there. And yes, you can
have a box of piroshki. And yes, the accent is on the 3rd syllable. And no,
that is not a transcendental fact. And I never claimed stuff like that was.)
Soon to leave you all to your own devices, as my University's spirit of
altruism in conserving energy
during our rotating power outages is not without
end and will indeed come to an end Wednesday morning when it opens.
Valodsya Mihailovich ... and on and on ...
P.S. Does anyone know from where the expression "sleight of hand" hails? And
does it really connote (apologies to linguistic relativists for the "really"),
as I believe it does, some deceptive end underlying the performance of an
action? So that to claim that a person is engaged in s-o-h is to impugn the
epistemic and/or moral character of that person? Moreover, Your Honour, if I
may tax the patience of the court just a trifle longer, would not such an
accusation be a clear instance of ad hominem for which the duly promulgated
punishment is 4 continuous hours of viewing reruns of Gilligan's island on a
b&w tv set? Finally, Your Honour ... (Perry Mason is interrupted by Paul Drake
who draws Perry's attention to the b&w law set out in chapter 2 of Copi's book
*Logic* - "Informal Fallacies." Drake explains that this text is frequently
referred/appealed to by the likes of Learned Hand, Hans Kelsen, Lon Fuller and
Ronald Dworkin. Perry asks the name of the rock group these people are members
of.)
P.P.S. A query re a bit of philosophical propriety (yet again) before I join
the
others upstairs, who are already savouring mugs of salted herring and glasses
of
paprikash and smashing their depleted vodka bowls into our fireplace. (No, we
don't have a fireplace.)
If someone charges you with, attributes
to you, s-o-h in critiquing your views
and arguments, is that charge worthy of a response? Isn't it something like
denying accusations of having an affair with [insert relevant
person as per your cultural mores] where the very act of denial acknowledges the
respectability of and dignifies the critique?
I realize our listserv isn't quite the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club
but surely some minimal standards of philosophical propriety remain applicable
across slices of time and space? Lizzie Anscombe would be the first to agree;
and she's an Aristotelian!
Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:
> To develop this a little - it is Orthodox Christmas Eve here, and I am bored
> - 'knowing how' seems a fairly clear case of knowledge that is not
> conditioned by JTB criteria. With simple skills like riding a bike it may be
> that there is one 'correct' way of doing it, but even then it is not chiefly
> a matter of knowing what one needs to do, but of being able to do it. With
> more complex skills like tennis, there are various 'correct' ways of doing
> it, depending on what works for the player. While players and trainers can
> and sometimes do debate these matters, even then they usually point to
> utility criteria (what works) rather than to truth criteria (what is the
> case). The relevant test for tennis skills is practical play, and the
> relevant justification is provided by practical results (or not, as JL would
> say). Thus, we are more or less left with (practical) justification, and may
> dispense with truth and beliefs.
>
> I'll leave open the question of whether the philosophical knowledge is more a
> case of 'knowing how' or of 'knowing that.' If we agree with Socrates that:
> "I know that I don't know (that) anything.", it might well be a case of
> 'knowing how.'
>
> O.K.
>
>
>
> On Monday, January 6, 2014 9:02 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> W.O.: "Learning-how" and "teaching-how", on the other hand, would seem to
> beepistemically conditioned in that there is a right and wrong way to chop
> wood,
> right and wrong ways of making love, a right and wrong way perform a forehand
> smash or return a backhand slice in table tennis where
> all this "rightness" and "wrongness" is open to justification on various
> technical, prudential, moral and strategic criteria.
>
>
>
> On Monday, January 6, 2014 7:51 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> "I know to ski off the side" is sayable in Serbian, at least
informally.
> O.K.
>
>
>
> On Monday, January 6, 2014 7:13 PM, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> A very interesting post from Jl, at least that part I think I understood. A
> few
> replies:
>
>
> "Learning-that" and "teaching-that" are not epistemically
> conditioned
> locutions/uses; they are sensible/intelligible even if what is being taught
> or
> learnt is false or incorrect. I.e.: "I was taught that Sadam had WMDs"; "I
> learnt that Bucharest is the capital of Serbia." Even if P is
false, you were
> still taught and you still learnt that P. Anyone who has ever gone to high
> school or college, knows well that we learn an awful lot of crap in the
> classrooms.
>
> "Learning-how" and "teaching-how", on the other hand, would seem to be
> epistemically conditioned in that there is a right and wrong way to chop
> wood,
> right and wrong ways of making love, a right and wrong way perform a forehand
> smash or return a backhand slice in table tennis where
> all this "rightness" and "wrongness" is open to justification on various
> technical, prudential, moral and strategic criteria.
>
> "Learning-to-be/become" and "teaching-for" (as in teaching for dispositions
> of
> critical thinking, autonomy, democratic engagement, erotic sensibility) are
> also uses that seem to require epistemic correctness. "Learning to become
> brave," for example, involves participation in pedagogical strategies and
> techniques which really do foster a justified sense of "bravery" in
> differentiation from recklessness and cowardice. (Aristotle's NE, bk 3 & 8)
>
> While I can learn that the earth is the center of the universe, I cannot
> learn
> to be virtuous if the conception of virtue governing and guiding the learning
> outcomes is false/immoral/etc.. Similarly with "teaching for:" teaching for
> democratic
> deliberative competence must be differentiable from indoctrination.
>
> Not "or not."
>
> Walter O
>
>
>
>
> Quoting Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx:
>
> > 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
>
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest
on/off),
> visit
> www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
> O.K.: If learning how to play tennis is epistemically conditioned, it is not
> so conditioned on the criterion of truth. There is no 'true' way to play
> tennis, only more or less efficient ones. There is hardly a one 'correct' way
> to play tennis, too; different players have different techniques, strategies,
> and styles which work for them to varying extents.
>
> O.K.
------------------------------------------------------------------
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:
