In a message dated 6/21/2015 9:52:31 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes:
"Yes, my good friend Heidegger loves the word "aletheia". Says it means
the "unconcealed" or some such."
Indeed, a female called (or named) "Letheia" would be the concealed or
veiled one.
"I like it because it makes me sound erudite. I once knew a lovely young
woman named Aletheia. She was very impressed that I knew what her name
meant. But she never did."
Dodgson also knew a female called Aletheia, or Alice, in the vernacular. He
thought her a wonder and imagined her in Wonderland.
Ritchie wrote a poem, whose last line can be construed as meaning Auden's
infamous disjunction in 1939:
"Hey
high digger,
breakfast first and then
a swim,
or we die.
In a message dated 6/22/2015 2:26:48 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
_donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxx.uk_ (mailto:donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx) considers to
what
extent Grice and Tarski on the alethic are wonderful.
Recall that Grice uses von Wright's "alethic", and symbolises it as
˫p
as in
i. The snow is white.
Grice contrasts the alethic with, to use another Hellenism, the
'practical', which he symbolises as
!p
as in
ii. Paint that igloo purple! -- (implicating: the whiteness of snow bores
more).
Grice is into a campaign proving Kantotle right: that reason is ONE, and
that there is no gap to bridge between the alethic and the practical, since,
as Grice develops Tarski's view, both can be seen as fitting a more general
concept of 'satisfactoriness', where the alethic comes out as the 'factual
satisfactoriness'.
Vide: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
McEvoy goes on:
"If Popper is right about these things, Tarski cleared up the problems of
speaking of "truth":- rehabilitating the correspondence theory into the
bargain."
Yes. It's a wonder he did it in Polish, too, in an essay which was then
translated to German and THEN to English. The wonderful thing is that Tarski's
theory "applies to any language that has a word for 'true'" -- He thought
all languages did -- but did he KNOW?
McEvoy continues:
"Tarski showed how we can, provided we observe an object and meta-language
distinction, always state the terms under which a proposition will be the
"truth" - it turns out, for example, that "The snow is white" will be "the
truth" if the snow is white.
In fact, I believe his accent was stronger, and pronounced 'if' as "iff".
Tarski thought this important. In English, 'f' is not ALWAYS pronounced /f/.
Five o'clock, for example, etymologically, five off clock.
McEvoy goes on:
"Tarski himself, and rightly, notes that his correspondence theory of truth
does not prove any further philosophical contentions, such as whether the
white snow is in an external world or is just a product of a human internal
world of experience."
While 'the white snow' is a charmer, I would point that the alethic
operator
˫
applies to full propositions, or radicals, as Grice also calls them. He
uses:
i. ˫√ snow is white.
Thus, the above symbolises
ii. Snow is white.
While
iii. !√snow be white, please
-- where the "please" is R. M. Hare's marker for a different neustic --
symbolises the 'practical' operation of expressing one's desire that (rather
than belief that) snow be white:
iv. Ah, for snow to be white.
(Eskimos use more than one word for 'white', which makes the Eskimo
translation of Tarski's essay a very entertaining thing to read).
(Note that both expressions share the same radical or _radix_, if you must
use the Latin -- the term Grice borrows from Witters -- even if Moore was
HIS man -- for Black, in interpreting Witters -- that's Max Black -- speaks
of 'radicals'. Black thinks, and rightly so, that Witters's analogy is with
a radical in chemistry -- since Witters was a scientist in terms of
educational background; but Grice prefers the algebraic symbolisation in terms
of
the root square).
McEvoy goes on:
"But Popper, again rightly, shows how Tarski's result can be allied with a
realism and a truth-seeking theory of knowledge. Afaik there is no valid
refutation of Tarki's theory - there is only often muddled criticism by
philosophers who do not understand it (because they are inadequate logicians)
and also dispute as to what further philosophical conclusions might be
derived from it or allied with it."
I think the implicature may be "to" Tennant, who wrote "The taming of the
true" and whose contents were shared in another post -- or to Geary's
friend, Heidegger, who has yet a different idea of truth (even if he fails to
quote from Tarski).
McEvoy concludes his clarifying, educational post:
"Tarski's theory stands as a most important result. Popper introduced it
into British philosophy in 1936, having run through the theory with Tarski
while they were both seated on a park bench in central Europe."
This is ripe for implicatural analysis. Grice has, as he plans a trip to
the riviera:
Grice: And where does Smith live?
Strawson: Somewhere in the South of France.
Grice says that, "under the circumstances, Strawson was as informative as
is required". Because Anglophones do use, unlike Francophones, "The South of
France" like THAT -- whereas a sailor from Marseille would find the
coordinate VERY VAGUE -- "You mean St. Tropez?"
Cfr. Letter from Popper to his wife,
v.
Love,
I met a Pole on a park bench in central Europe.
We talked about truth.
Truly yours,
Sir Karl.
ps. I'm telegraphing this, as you can see, NOT from a park bench in Central
Europe.
The odd thing is that Mrs. Popper (in her telegraph back) wanted to know
what PARK it was, not what country in Central Europe it was. The implicature
being that perhaps "I can guess what area of central Europe it is, if you
just name the park."
Popper telegraphed back that he did not think the park had "a special name"
adding
vi. "that I am aware of".
McEvoy notes:
"A measure of its importance is that Popper, although a believer in
"truth", avoided the term "truth" throughout his _Logik der Forschung_ so as
not
to stir the hornet's nest of problems that were thought to attend speaking
of "truth"."
Perhaps he should have used von Wright's "alethic", but the word hadn't
been coined yet, alas.
McEvoy:
"Tarski got rid of the hornet's nest by logical analysis, using an object
and metalanguage distinction. Tarski brought the notion of "truth" back down
to earth rather than rendering it a "wonder". But Tarski's own theory is a
wonder worth contemplating."
Yes, which is back to Aristotle, expanding on Theaetetus ("philosophy
begins in wonder", 1555d): "It was
their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophise and still
leads them" (Metaphysics, 982b12).
Still, Grice thinks implicature the eighth wonder, for it allows to
"transcend" Tarski. To use an example by Tarski:
vii. Plato went to bed and took off his trousers" is true iff Plato went to
bed and took off his trousers.
Tarski compares this with the 'more logical':
viii. Plato took off his trousers and went to bed" is true iff Plato took
off his trousers and went to bed.
Now, as Tarski notes,
ix. Plato went to bed and took off his trousers" is true iff Plato took off
his trousers and went to bed.
This is because "and" is commutative. Yet, while alethically speaking,
that's all alright. Contrariwise, even if it is so, it might not be; and if it
were not so, it would NOT be; but as it is, it is.
In other words "and" is commutative, yet there is an implicature to the
effect that if you say:
x. Plato went to bed and took off his trousers.
the implicature (since the utterer is supposed to be following the maxim,
'be orderly') is that Plato proceeded in that order. This is cancellable. To
rephrase an example by Chrysippus (since Aristotle could NOT care less
about 'and'):
xi. Plato took off his trousers and went to bed; I haven't got the
slightest intention to imply, though, that he proceeded in the order that I
report."
Cheers,
Speranza
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