Or, Popper and Grice on Perception.
I would not think Popper would call himself a philosopher of perception (I
know Grice would), but I thought, as I comment on the three crucial
paragraphs by McEvoy on Popper under "Re: Grice's philosophy of perception" to
add
Popper in the subject line for good measure.
In a message dated 3/28/2016 2:30:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"Afaik, there is no extended treatment of the theoretic-observational
distinction within Popper's work"
We know we love "afaik". McEvoy thinks it refudiates, the expression,
Plato's view of knowledge as justified true belief, since it is usually used,
the expression, to invite some implicature or other ("As far as I know, the
earth is not flat, but I may be wrong." Cfr. Grice, "So far as I know (not
far, I fear), I am right on this."
McEvoy:
"Popper doesn't present any over-arching 'theory' of the distinction, even
though there must be some distinction."
I love the "must". Let's call this:
i. The observational/theoretical distinction.
McEvoy expands on the reasons for his "must":
"as 'observations'"
I think McEvoy is using the scare quotes to exclude what he views as a
rather 'narrow' merely empiricist view of 'observe'.
"can only check theories where they are (at least somewhat) independent of
the theory. Why no such overarching 'theory'? I think for two main reasons
(a) we don't know enough to present any such useful 'theory'"
Well, Socrates said:
ii. I only know I know nothing.
This did not preclude the author of the influential, "The story of
philosophy" to rank Socrates as the greatest philosopher of all time --
Socrates's
developed like fifteen philosophical theories: ignorance is immoral, the
soul is immortal, there are ideas, language is conventional, sophistry is
wrong, etc. -- So there may be a difference of use between a Popperian using
'know' and a Griceian using 'know'. Philosophers claim to KNOW things as far
as they can provide sufficiently good (or "pretty good") premises for the
conclusion that is supposed to be the thing known, theory if you want to
thus call it.
In the area of the [KEYWORD:] PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION, surely Prichard,
Price, Grice, and all the British empiricists before them, thought they KNEW.
The Oxford Vice-Chancelor thought they knew, too, and appointed them to
chairs like that of metaphysical philosophy. Their tutees thought they knew.
This seems like good evidence that some philosophers of perception KNOW
what they are doing. The title, "Philosophy of perception" is of course
old-fashioned today, but I use it because G. J. Warnock (Vice-Chancelor of
Oxford) used it when he edited his own "The Philosophy of Perception" in his
own-edited series "Oxford Readings in Philosophy", reprinting Grice's "The
Causal Theory of Perception". This compilation by Warnock is annotated and the
good thing is that he reprints White's answer to Grice -- it was a 1961
Aristotelian Symposium at Nottingham --, and comments on Grice's "ingenious"
contribution.
McEvoy:
"(b) the way we should apply an analysis of the distinction between
observation and theory depends on the specifics of the problem we are
addressing.
We don't need a general theory (to progress with our knowledge), and we
can't (presently) give a useful one anyway."
I was thinking about this, and since Popper was writing "Logik der
Forschung" back in the day and subtitling it something like "an examination
into
the theory of knowledge of 'modern natural science', we may need:
iii. The observed/observable distinction.
Because I was thinking that back in the day perhaps atom, sub-atomic
particle, electron, photon, quark, what have you, were thought as
'unobservable'. And thus postulated as 'theoretical terms', to be correlated
operational
with 'observational' protocol statements. Hence Schroedinger's cat and the
idea that OBSERVING the atom INFLUENCES the 'observatum'. It may be ideas
like this that Hanson had in mind (although he starts with some Gestalt
approach to perception simpliciter) when he went on to emphasise the
theory-ladenness of observation.
In those days, the logicians who were into providing some rationale for
what those developing 'natural science' (or "modern natural science" as Popper
has it), seemed to have been interested in things like dispositional
properties, like "Fragility" (to use the title of one of Sting's songs). These
properties were analysed in terms of counterfactual conditionals, and a
similar analysis was perhaps provided for statements about electrons, say.
Back
in Oxford, Isaiah Berlin was already considering related concepts (his
papers reprinted by Clarendon, "Concepts and Categories") and the idea that a
statement about a material object, including a microscopic one like an
atom, is reducible to a conditional involving 'phenomenalist' statements
merely
about 'observation'.
I think the KEYWORD to introduce here is OBSERVER. For the idea was that
the OBSERVER observing the 'observatum' influences what is observed. It was
this interference that logicians and philosophers brought to the forum to
tease or confuse those 'modern natural scientists' on whose output Popper
bases his essay.
McEvoy:
"The thing is: there is an immense amount we don't know from this
neo-Kantian pov,"
But:
iv. Do we know that we don't know this immense amount?
Kant speaks of aporias, because as Strawson notes in his "The bounds of
sense", his essay on Kant -- a compilation of Strawson's lectures at Oxford --
what we do not know is outside the bounds of sense. I think C. A. B.
Peacocke, who later became Waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy,
like
Strawson did, speaks of the LIMITS OF INTELLIGIBILITY. So I would think
that Kant, if not the neo-Kantian, was just NOT interested in what lied beyond
'the bounds of 'sense'", where 'sense' is used as Jane Austen uses it in
"Sense and Sensibility" and as John Austin uses it "Sense and Sensibilia".
McEvoy:
"and many of the fundamental questions (like how a W2 is produced by a W1
brain) are simply not understood in any fundamental sense."
-- "Understood" is of course different from 'known'. I think Vesey compiled
for the Royal Society of Philosophy a volume on "Understanding", a rather
Wittgensteinian notion. To 'understand' that p requires less strict
conditions than to 'know' that p. It is yet different to say that stuff -- say
how
W2 'reduces' to W1 -- is MISunderstood in some fundamental way.
But here is where philosophers become fun, because they spend essays
criticising how those on the other side of the debate are 'misunderstanding'
stuff.
McEvoy:
"By contrast, traditional empiricism at least gives us a straightforward
answer to how experience is arrived at. Nevertheless, the answers of
traditional empiricism are wrongheaded, and naive to the point of absurdity.
It
would be useful to start to clear this wrongheaded approach away. This
wrongheaded approach has proved endlessly attractive to generations of
philosophers, especially those inculcated in that tradition (it shows the
level of
inculcation that at Oxford, in my time anyway, study of Locke, Hume and
Berkeley was compulsory and sufficient to get a first class degree in PPE,
while
study of Kant was just an option - this is rather like making study of
Newton compulsory and adequate to get a first class degree in physics, while
study of Einstein's physics is just an option)."
Well -- Kant is not British, and Oxford is a BRITISH institution. It took
THREE OR FOUR English-speaking philosophers (and Grice was never sure who to
quote) just to TRANSLATE Kant into the vernacular! On the other hand,
Jonathan Bennett was doing excellent work on the British empiricists (and
noting that Locke is pre-Griceian: a word W stands for idea I and idea I
stands
for thing T, but only if the utterer INTENDS his idea I to stand for thing
T. Locke speaks of the 'undeniable right' of anyone to have his words stand
for any ideas he pleases, as long as this is recognised by his intended
addressee. In Grice's day, Mill's Logic was mandatory, as of course Locke --
Hume was perhaps thought to be slightly anti-English, and Berkeley was
thought as an exaggerated Lockeian.
The analogy McEvoy draws between Locke/Kant and Newton/Einstein is
interesting. But then remember that a PPE is not a Lit.Hum. Strawson was a PPE
--
and I'm never sure how you can be proficient in these three areas!
Economics, Politics and Philosophy. It would be like having a PCA, say,
Philsophy,
Culinary Arts, and Astrology. -- Lit. Hum., which Grice held, is more like a
"Classics" degree today, but not in the days when the first generation of
ordinary language philosophers took 'the big go'.
So, you must always forgive a PPE. Back to Newton/Einstein, "while study of
Kant was just an option."
Borges used to say that EVERYTHING should be an option. The syllabus
requirement of 'required readings' is NONSENSE, in that you cannot FORCE people
to study Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Newton, Einstein, or Kant! Oxford is a free
country!
McEvoy: "Newton compulsory and adequate".
I have no idea how physics is structured. But I suppose there's PHYSICS
and the HISTORY of physics. I know a few who have just specialised on NEWTON,
vis-à-vis, say, the "Copernican Revolution" -- and how Popper, Kuhn,
Feyerabend, Lakatos, and Hanson, deal with this. Recall
v. Oxford is no Cambridge.
and
vi. Cambridge is no Oxford.
Oxford excels in philosophy (and it's closer to London); Cambridge excels
in sciences like physics and engineering (Wittgenstein taught there for
years) (and it's closer to Norwich).
Einstein is a VERY COMPLICATED fellow, as is his theory. He kept changing
them. So I would use the keyword: QUANTUM MECHANICS. There's more to quantum
mechanics than Einstein. So the analogy may perhaps be: "It is possible in
Oxford to be called a philosopher while not knowing one German iota about
"Kants Kritik" -- the Germans don't use the possessive " ' " -- as is
possible in Cambridge to be called a physicist while knowing all you need to
know about the Copenhagen interpretation but dismissing disrespectfully all
that Einstein every displayed on the blackboard at Princeton."
McEvoy:
"Among those blindest to the hold of tradition are those most inculcated in
it."
I think McEvoy means 'brainwashed' (as some sceptics say that Apostles
were, as they were 'inculcated' by Jesus).
It all comes from Latin, "inculcare "to force upon; stamp in", from
"calcare", to tread, to press in, from "calx", heel -- elephants inculcate
where
angels fear, to echo Forster.
McEvoy:
"The tradition goes wider than philosophers and infects many thinkers in
disciplines like neuroscience and psychiatry."
Well, they are derivatives of psychology, right? Grice called his essay as
President of the American Philosophical Association (yes! He became an
American!) "Method in philosophical PSYCHOLOGY." For centuries, psychology,
along with cosmology, were branches of philosophy. Indeed, Kant's stuff may
well be viewed as derivative of Baumgarten's idea of 'psychologia
rationalis', as it was then called. So, it's no wonder that psychologists
would be
trained in the writings of, say, Locke, or Condillac --.
EXCURSUS ON THE STATUE OF CONDILLAC
By far the most important of Condillac's essays is the Traité des
sensations (and Oxford being Anglo-Norman, this should be understandable), in
which
Condillac treats psychology in his own characteristic way.
He questioned Locke's doctrine, as it was inculcated in Oxford, that the
senses give us intuitive knowledge of objects, that the eye, for example,
naturally judges shapes, sizes, positions, and distances.
Condillac believed it was necessary to study the five senses separately,
to distinguish precisely what ideas are owed to each sense, to observe how
the senses are trained, and how one sense aids another.
Grice takes up on this in "Some remarks about the senses" throwing Moyneux
for good measure ("I perceive, by the sense of vision, that this coin is
round; but by the sense of touch, that it is square").
Condillac believed that the conclusion has to be that all human faculty
and knowledge are transformed sensation only, to the exclusion of any other
principle, such as reflection.
Condillac goes on to imagine a statue (a thought-experiment -- Borges
includes it in his "Book of Imaginary Beings" -- organized inwardly like a man,
animated by a soul which has never received an idea, into which no
sense-impression has ever penetrated.
The statue unlocks its senses one by one, beginning with smell, as the
sense that contributes least to human knowledge.
At its first experience of smell, the consciousness of the statue is
entirely occupied by it; and this occupancy of consciousness is attention.
The statue's smell-experience will produce pleasure or pain; and pleasure
and pain will thenceforward be the master-principle which, determining all
the operations of its mind, will raise it by degrees to all the knowledge of
which it is capable.
The next stage is memory, which is the lingering impression of the smell
experience upon the attention: "memory is nothing more than a mode of
feeling."
From memory springs comparison: the statue experiences the smell, say, of a
rose, while remembering that of a carnation; and "comparison is nothing
more than giving one's attention to two things simultaneously." And "as soon
as the statue has comparison it has judgment." Comparisons and judgments
become habitual, are stored in the mind and formed into series, and thus
arises the powerful principle of the association of ideas.
From comparison of past and present experiences in respect of their
pleasure-giving quality arises desire; it is desire that determines the
operation
of our faculties, stimulates the memory and imagination, and gives rise to
the passions. The passions, also, are nothing but sensation transformed.
These indications will suffice to show the general course of the argument
in the first section of the Traité des sensations. He thoroughly developed
this idea through the subsequent chapters: "Of the Ideas of a Man limited
to the Sense of Smell," "Of a Man limited to the Sense of Hearing," "Of
Smell and Hearing combined," "Of Taste by itself, and of Taste combined with
Smell and Hearing," "Of a Man limited to the Sense of Sight."
In the second section of the treatise, Condillac invests his statue with
the sense of touch, which first informs it of the existence of external
objects. In a very careful and elaborate analysis, he distinguishes the various
elements in our tactile experiences-the touching of one's own body, the
touching of objects other than one's own body, the experience of movement, the
exploration of surfaces by the hands: he traces the growth of the statue's
perceptions of extension, distance and shape. The third section deals with
the combination of touch with the other senses. The fourth section deals
with the desires, activities and ideas of an isolated man who enjoys
possession of all the senses; and ends with observations on a "wild boy" who
was
found living among bears in the forests of Lithuania.
The conclusion of the whole work is that in the natural order of things,
everything has its source in sensation, and yet that this source is not
equally abundant in all men; men differ greatly in the degree of vividness with
which they feel. Finally, he says that man is nothing but what he has
acquired; all innate faculties and ideas are to be swept away. Modern theories
of evolution and heredity have differed from this.
--- END OF EXCURSUS ON CONDILLAC'S THOUGHT EXPERIMENT OF THE STATUE.
McEvoy: "for Popper, the Pavlovian idea of a stimulus 'arc' is just a
mistaken upshot of Lockean empiricism, yet this Pavlovian idea has many
versions
and they have been widespread at times [e.g. Watson's conditioning];"
Well, I think Pavlov qua behaviourist, avant la lettre, was reacting to the
type of Continental 'philosophical-oriented' intuitionist,
instrospectivist psychology (Wundt) and it's only nature he focused on dogs as
later
behaviourist will focus on rates in mazes, pigeons, and chimps.
McEvoy:
"even Darwin has not escaped the distorting effects of this tradition,"
Well, wasn't he following Herbert Spencer, an empiricist, if ever there was
one -- and one who loved tautologies, like 'the fittest survives --.
Granted, Darwin threw in Malthus for good measure. But surely, as the essay
"Darwin's Finches" shows, all Darwin cared for was 'observation'. He LOVED
observation. He defined himself as a 'naturalist'. And if the 'theoretical'
side of his output was thought of as controversial, that was more for
'religious' reasons.
--- EXCURSUS ON CREATIONISM:
Darwin read Wilberforce's review in the Quarterly. It used a 60-year-old
parody from the Anti-Jacobin of the prose of Darwin's grandfather Erasmus,
cleverly implicating old revolutionary sympathies.
It argued that if "transmutations were actually occurring" this would be
seen in rapidly reproducing invertebrates, and since it isn't, why think that
"the favourite varieties of turnips are tending to become men".
Darwin pencilled "rubbish!" in the margin, implicating that what he had
observed (and read and understood) was trash ("rubbish" is a Britishism).
To the statement about classification that "all creation is the transcript
in matter of ideas eternally existing in the mind of the Most High!!",
Darwin scribbled "mere words", implicating, "cui bono", 'where are the facts?'
At the same time, Darwin was willing to grant that Wilberforce's review was
clever: he wrote to Hooker that "it picks out with skill all the most
conjectural parts, and brings forward well all the difficulties. It quizzes me
quite splendidly by quoting the 'Anti-Jacobin' against my Grandfather."
Wilberforce also attacked Essays and Reviews in the Quarterly Review, and
in a letter to The Times, signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and 25
bishops, which threatened the theologians with the ecclesiastical courts.
Darwin quoted a proverb:
"A bench of bishops is the devil's flower garden"
and joined others including Lyell, though not Hooker and Huxley, in signing
a counter-letter supporting Essays and Reviews for trying to "establish
religious teachings on a firmer and broader foundation". Despite this
alignment of pro-evolution scientists and Unitarians with liberal churchmen,
two
of the authors were indicted for heresy and lost their jobs by 1862.
--- END OF EXCURSUS.
McEvoy: "and there are writers who mistakenly Lockeanise Darwin (a little
like Marxising Christianity or Christianising Marxism, in terms of its
wrongheadedness)"
Well, as I say, most accounts of the evolution theory in Darwin (how he
came to it -- it wasn't through reading the predecessors in the Graeco-Roman
classics!) was via the Beagle tripette, and his longer stay at Galapagos
("Darwin's Finches"). So, there's a lot of 'ideas' and 'sensations' (to use
Hume's refining of Locke's terminology). Possibly via induction -- as far as
the Darwin's finches are concerned -- he arrived at some sort of 'theory'
(or hypothesis) which fit the observational evidence nicely.
The later advances in archaeology and the study of fossils supported
Darwinism, and with the new methodology of genetics, and better study of
chromosome structure, led to neo-Darwinism, and the concept of mutation and
transmutation. But it all started when Darwin saw those finches ("one finch too
many") in the tiny islands off Ecuador.
Cheers,
Speranza
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