[lit-ideas] Re: Griceian Nature Or Griceian Nurture?
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2014 14:11:08 -0500
In a message dated 11/7/2014 1:31:28 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Unless JLS meant "easily enough", he is perhaps making the point that
Grice came from an area of England where we cannot expect people to learn
English except of the type that is "easy enough". We might then expect people
from that area to adopt a philosophy that is "easy enough". This may well
help explain the philosophy of Grice and its appeal.
I should have to reconsider all that!
Re: Quinion's reference to Evans's indulging in some paradigm-shift
-- ""The Language Myth" is a wide-ranging polemical dismissal of the
received wisdom of many linguists.
It’s worth reading also as a classic case study of an orthodoxy
undergoing what Thomas Kuhn called a paradigm shift." --
McEvoy writes:
"As to Popper/Kuhn, this is a large-scale debate that suffers from the
fact that Kuhn's own various expressions of his position lend themselves to
distinct interpretations and even to distinct Kuhnian positions (including one
where Kuhn resiles from the view that the 'gestalt-switch' of a
paradigm-shift is a non-rational and even irrational kind of psychologistic
phenomenon - even though others might think this 'fideism' is in fact the
central
thesis of _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_). There is an
interpretation of both that puts them very far apart and interpretation that
makes
their differences almost marginal. Popper does agree that Kuhn is importantly
right about the development of so-called "normal science", or routine
puzzle-solving, and admits that he neglected "normal science" prior to Kuhn."
Interesting. In this case, I would think that Chomsky once thought of
paradigm-shifting when he published a book on "Cartesian linguistics". Since of
course, once the paradigm was totally empiricist (Whorf), since the idea of
a "Cartesian" linguist (who adhered to the "innateness hypothesis") was
just anatheme.
Interstingly, the paradigm-shift in this area of linguistics seems to have
been that of a pendulum rather than straight progress? (But I'm expressing
myself vaguely).
McEvoy continues:
"[B]ut Popper does not welcome this development but instead sees it as a
potential threat to proper science. Actually that is understatement: for
Popper "normal science" is almost antithetical to proper science - "normal
science" is an actual and potentially lethal threat to proper science."
For good measure, I would add 'real' science:
i. That's normal science.
ii. That's proper science.
iii. That's real science.
(and quote Austin on a real duck versus a decoy -- "Sense and
Sensibilia").
McEvoy:
"It will have become lethal when it has killed off proper science because
we mistake "normal science" - mere routine puzzle-solving - for proper
science of the sort exemplified by Einstein's theories. Or when we reject the
work of someone like Einstein as not being "scientific" because it is not
"normal science"".
On top of that, since we are dealing with 'central' philosophical issues
here (that I evoked in the idea of 'nature' vs. nurture -- cfr. the Greeks on
'thesis' versus 'physis') it may do well to bring in I. Lakatos who
thought (did he?) that paradigm-shift gets complicated by the fact that some
'kernel' ideas are beyond testability -- they lie within the protective 'belt'
-- In this way, it's not that we can shift from Locke to Descartes and back
to Locke _in philosophy_ "easy enough", if at all!
Cheers,
Speranza
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