[lit-ideas] Re: Grice and the Four-Category Ontology
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:17:34 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 4/20/2013 8:55:53 P.M. UTC-02,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
in what way may ordinary language tell us what type of ontology we need?
Well, I think the point is neatly made, by an Oxonian as Lowe is, in his
distinction, in phrases like "red apple" between "red" and "apple".
Lowe, who learned at Oxford and teaches at Durham (or Durhamshire, as I
prefer), writes:
"We should gravitate towards the FOURTH system of ontology identified
earlier, the system which acknowledges the following distinct ontological
categories as
being fundamental and indispensable:
1) the category of objects, or
individual substances
2) the category of tropes, or,
as I shall henceforth prefer to call them, modes.
Then there's the alleged univocal category of universals. Here Lowe hastens
to add:
"It is then but a short step to my own [and indeed Grice's] variant of
this system, which distinguishes between two fundamental categories of
"universal",
3) universals whose instances are objects and
4) univresals whose instances are modes.
-- hence the keyword: four-category ontology.
The linguistic justification provided by Lowe, as per the query by McEvoy,
echoes Grice in more than one respect (or mode):
"This distinction -- between universals whose instances are objects and
universals whose instances are modes-- is mirrored in language [or "ordinary
English", as Grice prefers ("I speak English, not Language") by
the distinction between general terms being either
i) sortal
or
ii) adjectival.
That is,
between such general terms as
'planet'
and
'flower'
on the one hand and such general terms as
'red'
and
'round'
on the other."
"The former denote kinds of object, while the latter denote properties of
objects.".
McEvoy:
"in what way may ordinary language tell us what type of ontology we need?"
Part of this may be online, but I'll see if I can quote. In "Reply to
Richards", Grice jokes on Russell's idea of a stone-age physics or metaphysics
as embodied in ordinary English.
"Me Tarzan, you Jane" -- that is not ordinary English. But the idea remains
there.
As in that cartoon showing two cavemen in Palmer, "Grammar". One tells the
other: remember the good old days when all we had to care was verbs and
nouns?
----
So, the point by English is that there is a stone-age PHYSICS reflected by
Ordinary English.
So we have
LINGUISTIC CATEGORIES
and
ONTOLOGICAL categories.
And it's via the refining of things like 'sortal' vs. 'adjectival' as
applied to LINGUISTIC categories that sheds light (metaphorically) on the types
of ONTOLOGICAL categories needed.
When Richard Grandy and Richard Warner (that Grice calls, collectively,
"Richards") thought of a sobriquet for their book, they came up with
PGRICE --- Philosophical
-------------------Grounds of
--------------------- Rationality
-------------------------Intentions
---------------------------Categories
------------------------------Ends.
For Grice, the idea of 'category' is basic. He joked on Kant's four
categories when discussing maxims of conversation (quantity, quality, mode,
relation), and so on.
I don't think it fits with Popper's scheme of the three worlds, because
here we are only dealing with Popper's FIRST world.
The second world corresponds to the psychological, and in terms of
first-world entities, it's like a mode (a mode of experience, "I'm feeling
happy",
"I'm thinking of vacationing in Sardinia", etc.) The ontology of the THIRD
world is not interesting for the pure metaphysician. Although it may do
with things like:
"I was reading Plato yesterday".
Where what he read was not ONE PARTICULAR specimen of a book by Plato, but
Plato's Republic.
Similarly, "I was litening to a "Pomp and Circumstance" by Elgar,
yesterday, as set with lyrics by Benson, Hope and Glory". We have the
particular
performances of "Hope and Glory", but we have like an item in the third world
of objectived knowledge, or something.
But again, the type of ontology Lowe and Grice are interested are is more
basic since it concerns categories in language that justify the positing of
a category of ontology.
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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