"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."*
*This is too vague or ambiguous on the sense of 'intended' to be of any
use, besides it does not sound like a very natural thing for an 'ordinary
language philosopher' to say. We might say that Shakespeare intended it to
be presented that way on the stage, i.e. the adolescent male actors who
played Lear's daughters would need to do their best to pretend that they
are female. But I don't think Shakespeare intended us to believe that King
Lear *really* had three daughters, or that he intended the daughters to
*be* real. (Many of Shakespeare's plays are based on historical personages
or episodes but this one is not, it is based on a fairy-tale, which is why
I chose this example.)
O.K.
On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 4:50 PM, Redacted sender jlsperanza for DMARC <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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
