[lit-ideas] Re: Grice's Eighth Wonder
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2015 21:08:33 +0000 (UTC)
Tennant, "The taming of the true".>
Where do they get them from?
Dnl
On Monday, 22 June 2015, 21:08, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In a message dated 6/22/2015 2:26:48 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"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."
Indeed. That was in what Popper calls, in "Unended quest", that McEvoy
refers to, as an "unforgotten bench" in the Volksgarten (of all gardens) in
Vienna.
By "unforgotten" he means by Tarski. (Vide: "The Complete Correspondence of
Alfred Tarski"). There are many benches in the 'garten', and by calling
that particular bench 'unforgotten', Tarski means that he knew how to go and
sit again on the very same bench or give directions to that particular
bench. (Geary can provide a more specific description of which bench it is --
he calls it 'unforgettable', rather than 'unforgotten' -- which invites a
stronger implicature).
The meeting lasted some twenty minutes, and it was conducted in German.
Tarski was feeling especially elated because the German translation of his
"Truth" essay had been accepted for publication and he went with Sir (as he
then wasn't) K. R. Popper over it.
Grice never met Tarski at Vienna, but Grice granted Tarski's brilliancy in
his (Tarski's) requirement for a theory of truth that it be able to provide
an account for uses of 'true' (or 'verum', in Latin) where the
propositional content is not mentioned:
i. What the policeman said is true.
According to Ramsey's and Strawson's alethic theories -- Ramsey's theory
predated Tarski's -- at least part of what the utterer of the sentence,
i. What the policeman said was true.
is doing is to assert whatever it was that the policeman stated.
But the utterer may NOT KNOW what that statement was.
The utterer may think that the policeman's statement is TRUE because
policemen always speak the truth, or that THAT policeman always speaks the
truth, or that THAT policeman, in those circumstances, could not but have
spoken
the truth.
Now, ASSERTION involves committing oneself, and while it is possible to
commit oneself to a statement which one has NOT IDENTIFIED (or interpreted) --
I can commit myself to the contents of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the C.
of E., without knowing what they say --, it is not quite proper for me (or
Tarski) to say that I HHAVE COMMITTED MYSELF TO THE CONTENT OF THE
POLICEMAN'S STATEMENT, merely in virtue of having said that it was TRUE."
When, to my surprise, I learn that the policeman actually said was:
ii. Monkeys can talk.
the proper thing to say, as Tarski would agree, would be for me (or Tarski)
to utter:
iii. Well, I guess I was wrong.
But hardly:
iv. I withdraw that.
or:
v. I withdraw my commitment to that.
-- since I never was really quite committed to it.
Cheers,
Speranza
References:
Tennant, "The taming of the true".
Wright, Georg von. "Alethic modality".
Aristotle, on philosophical wonder
Plato, on wonder as the origin of philosophy.
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