[lit-ideas] Linguistic Botany
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2015 08:12:21 -0400
My last post today!
Geary was philosophising about what Grice calls a 'thought-experiment'
(after Husserl). What would happen if we could hold a conversation with a
cockroach?
Geary: "The crucial, defining attribute, as i see it, differentiating
us-kind-of-creatures and all others is language. If roaches had language this
might just as likely have been roach-written."
(Geary drops the cock in cockroach, because he is a compositionalist and
assumes that to assert that a cockroach is a cockroach is to assert that it
is a cock AND a roach).
Linguistic botany is ...
A metaphor, no doubt, but one that J. L. Austin favoured, and Grice took
SERIOUSLY. The idea, which was not perhaps Popper's, is that the philosopher,
as he is engaged in conceptual analysis, has to start with 'the many' and
proceed to 'the wise', and 'the many' speak 'ordinary language'.
Thus, J. L. Austin advised we start with 'linguistic botanising'. In this
Austin and Grice and Hart (with his oblige-obligate distinction) are
following Epicurus in his letter to Herodotus.
The letter starts transparently enough:
"Greetings!", Epicurus writes.
'Ἐπίκουρος Ἡροδότῳ χαίρειν.
"Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τὰ ὑποτεταγμένα τοῖς φθόγγοις, ὦ
Ἡρόδοτε,
δεῖ εἰληφέναι, ὅπως ἂν τὰ δοξαζόμενα ἢ ζητούμενα ἢ
ἀπορούμενα
ἔχωμεν εἰς ταῦτα ἀναγαγόντες ἐπικρίνειν, καὶ μὴ
ἄκριτα πάντα
ἡμῖν ᾖ εἰς ἄπειρον ἀποδεικνύουσιν ἢ κενοὺς φθόγγους
ἔχωμεν.
ἀνάγκη γὰρ τὸ πρῶτον ἐννόημα καθ' ἕκαστον φθόγγον
βλέπεσθαι
καὶ μηθὲν ἀποδείξεως προσδεῖσθαι, εἴπερ ἕξομεν τὸ
ζητούμενον
ἢ ἀπορούμενον καὶ δοξαζόμενον ἐφ' ὃ ἀνάξομεν.
"In the first place, Herodotus, you must understand what it is that words
denote, in order that by reference to this we may be in a position to test
opinions, inquiries, or problems, so that our proofs may not run on untested
ad infinitum, nor the terms we use be empty of meaning."
"For the primary signification of every term employed must be clearly seen,
and ought to need no proving; this being necessary, if we are to have
something to which the point at issue or the problem or the opinion before us
can be referred."
Epicurus's parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, were both Athenian-born, and
his father a citizen, had emigrated to the Athenian settlement on the
Aegean island of Samos about ten years before Epicurus's birth in February 341
BC.As a boy, he studied philosophy for four years under the Platonist
teacher Pamphilus.
So we can see Epicurus as a member of the Athenian dialectic that Grice
contrasted to the Oxonian dialectic, and let us be reminded that when H. L. A.
Hart felt like sending a thank-you note to Morty White in Harvard, and
referring to the forthcoming William James lecturer at Harvard, Grice, Hart
described Grice as a 'marvellous dialectician, far better than anyone of us
here' -- and he was writing from Oxford!
Cheers,
Speranza
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