[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 13:21:08 -0800 (PST)
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
>
>
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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.
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