[lit-ideas] Re: Grice and Geach on "A Bit of English Grammar"
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2014 14:12:59 +0000 (GMT)
>There is much more involved in telling apart a tree from a flower than
we tend to believe, much more involved in tying laces than we tend to
believe etc. There is much more involved in arriving at any 'belief'
than we tend to believe. Certainly much more than suggested by 'folk
psychology'.>
I should have added that JTB-theory is just the 'folk psychology' of knowledge
- but it is much worse than some other 'folk psychology' because it is not even
a crude approximation but more a highly misleading account of 'knowledge', as
'knowledge' in truth stands in no necessary relation to 'justification',
'truth' or 'belief'.
Dnl
On Monday, 6 January 2014, 13:30, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>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.>
Hmm. How good? There is a kind of sleight-of-hand in the comparison between
being courageous and knowing how to tie one's laces [which is what Walter means
by tying "one's shoes" I guess].
I can know how to tie to my laces but be unable to do so - say through physical
disability: so my ability to perform the task involves more than 'knowledge'
about tying laces. Likewise I can know what it is to have courage but be unable
to have courage: so my ability to have courage involves more than 'knowledge'
about having courage. Put this way there is a parallelism of sorts: knowledge
is necessary to tying laces but not a sufficient condition of being able to do
so, and this parallels that "one can't learn to be courageous...simply through
the acquisition of a form of knowledge." Note Walter's qualification "simply":
his claim does not deny that knowledge may be involved in 'having courage' but
simply denies such knowledge is adequate to provide one with courage. But, as
indicated, 'knowledge' as such is not adequate to provide one with the ability
to tie laces either.
Of course, it is not an exact parallelism in all respects - I might 'have
courage' without learning it or without having some 'courage-knowledge' on
which I base my courage: this may make 'having courage' different to tying
laces, where unless I have the right 'tying-laces-knowledge' I cannot tie them.
This difference may reflect the fact that tying laces is an ability to perform
an act whereas 'having courage' may simply be a state or attitude: a physically
helpless person facing death may 'have courage' even though they cannot tie
their laces or do anything.
If we really want to see whether there is any conceptual difference between
tying laces and having courage we need to be much more discriminating and not
work from one or two examples as if these exemplify the whole field. We may
need to allow for a possible distinction between examples of 'having courage'
where no 'courage-knowledge' is involved and examples of 'having courage' where
'courage-knowledge' is involved and may even be essential - and we may
distinguish even within these two kinds of examples. There may be such a thing
as untutored or instinctive or untaught 'courage' OTOneH, and OTOtherH there
may such a thing as 'courage' that is taught or learnt and which can only be
acquired by way of something like 'courage-knowledge'.
There is something perhaps to introduce here as a further thought, though it is
a thought that needs careful handling. When we use terms like 'knows' and
'believes' etc. we are often engaging in a kind of 'folk psychology' that is at
best a crude approximation to accurate description of what is involved: hence
the processes involved in 'knowing' how to tie laces may be in some respects
analogous to, and in other respects disanalogous to, the processes by which we
might 'know' how to identify a tree from a flower, not mistake our wife for a
hat etc. And there may even be distinct processes by which different
individuals come to 'know' or learn how to tie their laces: we should not
assume that because the action-outcome is similar in two cases that means the
process of learning was identical.
Beneath the world as described by 'folk psychology', the reality is much more
complex. A 'belief' may be arrived at via a myriad of processes and complex
interactions: in Popper's terms a myriad of World 1, World 2 and World 3
interactions. Two individuals with the same apparent belief - that, say, the
earth revolves around the sun - may have arrived at that belief by very
different sequences and combinations of processes (this is linked to the fact
that we do not generally investigate the truth of a claim like "The earth
revolves around the sun" by examining the genesis of such a belief or the
sequence and combination of processes that produced it: we examine its truth by
seeing how the claim itself stands up to criticism, including how it stands up
to critical tests or experiments).
There is something funny in the woodshed in all this talk of 'belief' etc when
it is used as basis for philosophising in the kind of mode where we take
examples like 'Jack believes Mozart was German' 'Jack knows how to tie his
laces' etc. We should take 'belief' as perhaps a useful shorthand, in the way
'folk psychology' may generally be a useful shorthand. But we should beware
talking 'belief' too seriously or too literally as a term: it is an everyday
shorthand denoting a kind of mental state or disposition, but the character of
that mental state or disposition may be only understood properly in terms of
complex W1, W2 and W3 interactions. We should beware thinking we can take
everyday statements that involve 'belief' ['Alf believes he is running late for
his meeting but he won't trip up running because he knows how to tie his laces
properly'] and use examination of these to to extrapolate some philosophical
truth or conceptual necessity.
There is much more involved in telling apart a tree from a flower than we tend
to believe, much more involved in tying laces than we tend to believe etc.
There is much more involved in arriving at any 'belief' than we tend to
believe. Certainly much more than suggested by 'folk psychology'.
Donal
On Monday, 6 January 2014, 11:13, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
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
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