[lit-ideas] Grice's Realm
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 23:41:09 -0400 (EDT)
Keywords: Bolzano, Meinong, Frege -- and Grice on "mean".
The Roads to Reality and the Realm of Meaning
Traditionally, philosophers contrast the realm of ideas or mental entities
with the realm of material objects .
Frege, interestingly, called mental entities the first realm (first
"Reich", strictly).
He called material objects the "second realm" (second "Reich").
Popper reversed the order, perhaps uninterestingly.
Based on Frege's distinction between sense and reference -- unavailable in
names like "Alice" -- "Must a name mean something?" Alice asked
Humpty-Dumpty), Frege claims, without a proof, that there is a "third realm"
(or
third "Reich", literally) of sense or thought .
This alleged "Third Realm" is different from the realm of ideas because any
idea needs a bearer (they are yours or mine), but the senses of words we
use in communication exist independently of us.
Grice denies this when he confronts meanings as ultimately derived from
psychological processes ("To mean", essentially, "to intend").
"Granted, a true proposition is true no matter whether anyone takes it to
be true or even entertains it.
It is accessible to all in common, but its contents are immutable and
immaterial."
--- thus spake Frege.
The third realm is also different from the realm of objective things we
talk about or the realm of reference, for many names may have sense but lack
reference.
Cfr. "Infinity", or as mathematicians prefer,
"∞"
and "א" (aleph).
--- "The meaning of "∞"" --
In a way, senses or thoughts (or contents of thinking) form a third realm
between us and objects, and this realm leads us from the inner world of
sense-impressions to the outer world of perceptible things.
“So the result seems to be: thoughts are neither things of the outer world
nor ideas."
"A third realm", Frege writes, "must be recognised --at least by me if not
my friends".
"What belongs to this corresponds with ideas, in that it cannot be
perceived by the senses, but with things, in that it needs no bearer to the
contents of whose consciousness to belong -- or something."
Frege's 'third realm' ('drittes Reich') and Popper's 'World 3' are "alike"
in so far as both contain thought contents, mathematical objects and other
abstracta.
Popper indeed traces the idea even further, and this, he writes, "means
that the part played by Heinrich Gomperz in the prehistory of the idea
whichFrege (in 1918) called ‘Das dritte Reich’ and which I now call ‘world 3’
is
very much more important than I realized when I published Objective
Knowledge (despite the
fact that Gomperz fell back in the end on a psychologistic theory; see my
Unended
Quest, note 89 and text)."
Now that Gomperz should be distinguished from Gumperz.
Grice's three realms (on occasion):
1. cricket
2. philosophy
3. music
At
http://www.thee-online.com/Documents/Popper-3Worlds.pdf
in his talk of "Three Worlds", Popper typically proceeds by 'enumeration'.
He does not care to specify, strictly and in generic tems, what the third
world amounts to, but sets out to enumerate some of its contents.
Popper:
"My main argument will be devoted to the defence of the
reality of what I propose to call ‘world 3’. By world 3 I mean the
world of the products of the human mind, such as languages;
tales and stories and religious myths; scientific conjectures or
theories, and mathematical constructions; songs and symphonies;
paintings and sculptures. But also aeroplanes and airports and
other feats of engineering."
Popper goes on to call 'friends' those who deny the existence of a third
realm or world.
"Many of my philosophical friends, especially those who are
materialists or physicalists, are strongly opposed to all this. They
say that my way of talking is seriously misleading."
Isn't the use of 'friend' rhetorically there?
In this respect, "Many of my friends" should be contrasted with the
perhaps even more otiose: "Many of my personal friends". Or not.
Incidentally, Frege's third realm has been compared to the three worlds
view advanced by Roger Penrose in The Road to Reality. (Cfr. Bob Hope/Bing
Crosby, "The road to Morocco").
Penrose (but not Hope or Crosby) points out an interaction between world 1
and world 3 - that world 1 obeys physical laws which are objects of world
3.
Incidentally, Popperian cosmology (but not Grice's, or Frege's) dovetails
neatly with Unification Church theology of Reverend Moon, which posits:
-- a material world - containing the earth, our physical bodies, and the
computer I'm typing this on
-- a spirit world - where your soul lives, even before you "enter the
afterlife
--"the "outer Sung Sang" (not the inner Sung Sang), or world of ideas (see
Unification Thought and the theory of the original mind -- or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
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