[lit-ideas] Jurisprudence and Ordinary Language: Hart's and Grice's Heritage
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:04:03 -0500 (EST)
My last post today, I hope!
We are considering the sentence:
"She truly believed she had no real choice."
----
which McEvoy finds puzzling.
As if the Judge were to say,
""Truly" is an ordinary English word; so what is YOUR problem with it?"
---
In a message dated 2/21/2013 5:40:35 P.M. UTC-02,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
The issue in the Pryce case is to what extent can her belief be deemed
'genuine' when it is merely subjective such that - given her capability to see
that objectively that she could act otherwise than she did - it cannot be
considered a genuine belief (but merely a self-serving belief).
----
By non-genuine, I understand that to read "not-sincere". Cfr. "false".
Scenarios and variants:
She truly believed she had no real choice.
Truly, she believed she had no real choice.
She believed she had no really choice.
Self-servingly, she believed she had no real choice.
Sincerely, she believed she had no real choice.
She believed, sincerely, she had no real choice.
--- Note that 'real' is what Austin calls a trouser-word, so it can be
erased out. This gives:
She truly believed she had no choice.
Truly, she believed she had no choice.
---
There seems to be an implicature in the use of 'believe' (cfr. "think").
"She believed she had no choice -- but she did".
cfr.
"She KNEW she had no choice".
cfr. "She thought she knew she had no choice".
Cfr. Grice:
"There is yet another case of implicature. Though both the affirmation and
denial of statements about particularl people KNOWING THAT p carries with
it a commitment to P ("The Greeks didn't know the earth was flat"), you can
weaken the verb in such a way that this implicature is lost. "He knew that
p" and "he didn't know that p" both carry this implicature, but "He THOUGHT
he knew that p" does not. When I say, "he thought he knew that p", I am
not committing myself to its being the case that p, but there are some verbs
[not in the Pryce case] in which EVEN this weakened forms ALSO seem to
carry the implicature, particularly a verb like 'regret'. "He thought he
regretted his father's death, but it afterwards turned out that he didn't", as
far as it makes sense, would, I think, simply IMPLICATE the committal to his
father death. I am not sure about the last distinction, and I think perhaps
it does not matter very much." (WoW, p. 279).
But it does.
She thought she had no real choice.
She believed she had no real choice.
"The issue in the Pryce case is to what extent can her belief be deemed
'genuine' when it is merely subjective such that - given her capability to see
that objectively that she could act otherwise than she did - it cannot be
considered a genuine belief (but merely a self-serving belief)."
Another issue is Wisdom on "Other minds", because what is the behavioural
evidence for this, deemed by McEvoy, 'self-serving', belief, or thought.
Grice considers this in "Method in philosophical psychology": No thought
ascriptions without the behaviour such thought is meant to EXPLAIN.
She thought she had no choice.
She believed she had no choice.
McEvoy makes a distinction between the subjective-and-the-objective. Grice
in fact prefers objective and non-objective, with non-objective being the
trouser word (in spite of its negative garb).
It is true that she believed she had no choice.
Only the believe that she had no choice EXPLAINS her behaviour.
And so on.
Woodfield, "Because she thought so", would speak of RATIONALIZATION, as it
were.
We have her behaviour. We ascribe a belief that EXPLAINS it. The belief is
a rationalization of the behaviour. In some weak 'sense' of
'rationalization', as perhaps in this case.
Or something like that.
McEvoy:
"Those familiar with Kant's first Critique will know the trouble he had
resolving the subjective and objective aspects of things, and the voluminous
literature that has ensued, and so might understand why a judge might stay
clear of trying to sort this out for the jury."
Well, there are three or four scenarios:
She had no choice ---------- OTHER SCENARIO: she had a choice (or she had
SOME choice).
She believed she had no choice ------- vs. She believed she had some
choice.
We can symbolise 'she had no choice' by "p" and simplify the alternate
scenarios as cases of "~p".
She had no choice --- p
She believed that p.
ALTERNATE CONTRASTING SCENARIO
~p --
She believed that ~p.
----
"McEvoy:
"Those familiar with Kant's first Critique will know the trouble he had
resolving the subjective and objective aspects of things, and the voluminous
literature that has ensued, and so might understand why a judge might stay
clear of trying to sort this out for the jury."
So, even if we are dealing with the objective (is it "NOUMENAL" that McEvoy
is thinking?) realm (the state of affairs that she had no choice, or the
state of affairs that she had some choice), in order to understand (never
mind justify) her conduct or behaviour, the objective (noumenal) must be
turned into some subjective state that relates to the agent's beliefs at the
time of acting. This subjectivity seems essential.
She wrongly believed she had no choice, and she was in a condition to have
believed properly that she did have a choice.
is still perhaps a different scenario. Etc.
Cheers,
Speranza
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