McEvoy:
“It is plain that we learn to read without learning any physics, and it is
plain that physics offers no theories that explain how we learn to read (except
to the extent we read by sight and optics explains the physical aspect of this;
but then we can also, and importantly, read by touch; the visual aspects of
reading are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for having any of the
understanding that is central to reading). For these reasons, reading cannot be
a merely W1 process.”
Still, if we read, we sense – as Descartes would put it. I’m using ‘sense’ as a
verb as per R. J. Schwartz’s compilation, “Perceiving, Sensing, and Knowing: A
Book of Readings from Twentieth-century Sources in the Philosophy of
Perception,” Volume 151 of Campus (Berkeley, Calif.) Volume 4 of Topics in
philosophy, University of California Press.
The sensing subject may not have a _theory_ of sensing. But I agree this may be
problematic for Popper since the epistemology he proposes for W3 is an
epistemology which he qualifies, in a phrase meant to be provocative as being
“without a knowing subject.”
Ordinary language has various ways of expressing this: “I sense THAT snow is
white,” for example. Now, if I’m reading Tarski’s Polish, “The snow is white,”
I assume that, as I have encountered ‘the,’ ‘snow,’ ‘is,’ and ‘white’ – in
their Polish equivalents, I mean – I shall be able to infer that Tarski
believes that snow is white, because presumably, he sensed that, too!
McEvoy:
“Is the content we read 'mental [or psychological] content' [i.e. the content
of this or that propositional attitude of an actual or possible subject of
psychological attitudes]? Here is a more complex issue. Clearly W3 content is
potentially 'mental content' where it is potentially graspable by W2, and that
indicates we might treat what Popper calls 'W3 content' as if it were just
'mental content'”
I’m glad McEvoy is using the adverb ‘potentially’. Only I would invert the
order: I would think that the alleged w3 is POTENTIALLY within w2, but that’s
potentially (if not actually) misleading or trivial (cfr. “What is actual is
potential”).
McEvoy: “Say out of deference to … Occam's Razor which might oppose W3 as
"unnecessary".” Alla, “Worlds should not be multiplied beyond necessity,” which
depends of course on our analysis of ‘necessity’.
McEvoy:
“One of the central arguments here is that W3 content may have a 'life of its
own' (even if it only comes alive when in the spotlight of W2 activity): when
Einstein arrived at "e = mc2", he did not do so by examining or accumulating
his sense-data or other sense experience, and he did not do so by having a
peculiar human psychology, he did so by manipulating different kinds of W3
content in order to solve certain problems.”
Others would say that since he was a physicist, he was manipulating sentences
about W1. It would be different if Einstein had been a philosopher, alla
Meinong, or a mathematician alla Hilbert?
McEvoy:
“When [Einstein] arrived at "e = mc2" that equation had many deep consequences
that were beyond his own present W2 understanding - some became apparent to
Einstein only when other physicists worked these consequences out. When those
other physicists worked on the equation, they worked directly on the equation
itself as W3 content - they did not need (and it would have been ludicrous for
them to request) that Einstein spell out what sense experiences he had that he
thought relevant to his equation or what peculiar human psychology underpinned
his workings. They took his equations in objective terms, as a form of
"objective W3 conjectural knowledge", and worked out consequences - including
whether there were testable consequences. These consequences followed from the
'content' in its W3 sense not from content in a W2 sense.”
The fact that these other physicists did not ask those questions to Einstein
may be that they took the answers for granted. Again, RUSSELL would have asked
those questions, and it would be up to Einstein to come up with an empiricist
(to Russell) satisfying answer!
McEvoy:
“The case of Roberts was to bring out something similar in a legal context.
Clearly the text of the judgments in Roberts is invariant in W1 terms, and we
can also say it is invariant in the W3.1 content expressed by that text. Yet
understanding that text, in W2 terms, is not 'invariant' - either between
individuals or even with a given individual. So, in my own case, I assimilated
Roberts by a gradual process that involved several readings - the W3 content of
Roberts was not changing but my W2 grasp of Roberts was. This indicates why it
is very problematic to consider 'the content of Roberts' as 'mental content',
especially as that content may give rise to valid discussion of its character
that was beyond the W2 horizons of the judges who produced that content.”
But they may be regarded as IMPLICATIONS? Similarly, if I read a poem by Plath,
I may come up with an ‘understanding’ of a poem that was never intended by
Plath. A strict follower of hermeneutics would grant that that ‘understanding’
would be a MIS-understanding (vide Sontag, “Against Interpretation.”)
McEvoy:
“As to the questions about fictional texts: clearly we can say that it is true
in the text that Lear had three daughters, Holmes lived at Baker Street etc.
but that it is not true that outside the text there was a 'real' Lear or a
'real' Holmes. This approach surely allows us to clear up most issues here, and
without getting in a knot on the concept of 'existence'.”
We can even say that Shakespeare INTENDED King Lear to have three daughters.
Theatre students are usually into ‘performance’ (performance studies). So it
may be that Shakespeare thought that having Lear having three sisters, rather
than three sons, made more a more ‘effective’ coup de théâtre.
Cheers,
Speranza
