McEvoy was referring to TSAIB and it may do to do Eccles...
If we go by what Popper (never mind Grice) states about conceptual analysis in
"Unended Quest," it would seem that nothing contained in his co-authored essay,
"The self and its brain" is what Witters would call a tautology.
What about Eccles?
In his The Understanding of the Brain, Eccles summarises his 'philosophy.' He
holds a D.Phil Oxon -- unlike Grice, MA Lit.Hum. Oxon.
Eccles:
"I will at the beginning give an account of my PHILOSOPHICAL position on the
so-called 'brain-mind problem' so that you will be able to *relate* the
experimental evidence to this PHILOSOPHICAL position."
"I have [expanded] on this PHILOSOPHY in Facing Reality."
"I fully accept the PHILOSOPHICAL [via implicature, non-conceptually analyric]
achievements of Popper with his concept of three worlds."
"I was a dualist; now, I am a trialist!"
"Cartesian dualism has become unfashionable with many people."
Implicature: including philosophers like Ryle and Grice.
"[These people] embrace MONISM to escape the enigma of brain-mind interaction
with its perplexing problems."
"But Popper and I are interactionists, and what is more, trialist
interactionists!"
"The three worlds are easily defined."
But not analytically, if we trust Popper's credo in "Unended quest."
"World 1," Eccles summarises for us, "is the world of physical objects and
states. It comprises the whole cosmos of matter and energy, all of biology
including human brains, and all artifacts that man has made for coding
information, as for example, the paper and ink of books or the material base of
works of art. World 1 is the total world of the materialists. They recognise
nothing else. All else is fantasy."
"World 2 is the world of states of consciousness and subjective knowledge of
all kinds. The totality of our perceptions comes in this world. But there are
several levels. In agreement with Polten [if you've heard of him], I tend to
recognise three kinds of levels of World 2, but it may be more correct to think
of it as a spectrum."
"The first level (outer sense) would be the ordinary perceptions provided by
all our sense organs, hearing and touch and sight and smell and pain. All of
these perceptions are in World 2, of course: vision with light and colour;
sound with music and harmony; touch with all its qualities and vibration; the
range of odours and tastes, and so on."
"These qualities do not exist in World 1, where correspondingly there are but
electromagnetic waves, pressure waves in the atmosphere, material objects, and
chemical substances.
"In addition there is a level of inner sense, which is the world of more subtle
perceptions. It is the world of your emotions, of your feelings of joy and
sadness and fear and anger and so on. It includes all your memory, and all your
imaginings and planning into the future. In fact there is a whole range of
levels which could be described at length."
"All the subtle experiences of the human person are in this inner sensory
world. It is all private to you but you can reveal it in LINGUISTIC expression,
and by gestures of all levels of subtlety."
"Finally, at the core of World 2 there is the self or pure ego, which is the
basis of our unity as an experiencing being throughout our whole lifetime."
As Grice notes in his "Personal Identity," "pure ego" is a coinage by Broad.
Grice opposed a conceptual analysis of personal identity (or "I") in terms of
this alleged "pure ego."
Eccles:
"This World 2 is our primary reality."
"Our conscious experiences are the basis of our knowledge of World 1, which is
thus a world of secondary reality, a derivative world."
"Whenever I am doing a scientific experiment, for example, I have to plan it
cognitively, all in my thoughts, and then consciously carry out my plan of
action in the experiment. Finally I have to look at the results and evaluate
them in thought. For example, I have to see the traces of the oscilloscope and
their photographic records or hear the signals on the loudspeaker. The various
signals from the recording equipment have to be received by my sense organs,
transmitted to my brain, and so to my consciousness, then appropriately
measured and compared before I can begin to think about the significance of the
experimental results."
"We are all the time, in every action we do, incessantly playing backwards and
forwards between World 1 and World 2."
"And what is World 3?"
"World 3 is the whole world of culture. It is the world that was created by man
and that reciprocally made man. This is my message in which I follow Popper
unreservedly."
"The whole of language is here."
"All our means of communication, all our intellectual efforts coded in books,
coded in the artistic and technological treasures in the museums, coded in
every artefact left by man from primitive times—this is World 3 right up to the
present time."
"World 3 is the world of civilisation and culture. Education is the means
whereby each human being is brought into relation with World 3. In this manner
he becomes immersed in it throughout life, participating in the heritage of
mankind and so becoming fully human. World 3 is the world that uniquely relates
to man. It is the world which is completely unknown to animals. They are blind
to all of World 3. I say that without any reservations."
Despite these unreserved trialism, in his later essay, "How the self *controls*
its brain," Eccles returned to a simpler dualistic mechanism. But if there is
still something Popperian about this Oxonian author, he achieved this NOT via
conceptual analysis!
Cheers
Speranza
Sent from my iPhone
