[lit-ideas] Re: Logical Corpuscularism
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2015 06:51:39 +0000 (UTC)
McEvoy was mentioning the issue or criterion of downward causation. Let me
rephrase it (perhaps wrongly). If we assume at least two levels (call them the
lesser -- corpuscular -- and the bigger -- stuff made out of corpuscules), the
idea is that we have to allow, if following Popper that the bigger may cause
the lesser.>
No. The phrase "may cause the lesser" is a poor rephrase - it suggests the
bigger produces the lesser or some such. This is not the claim.
Take the 'downward causation' of consciousness on its brain, which Popper
defends in "The Self and Its Brain".
It is not the claim that consciousness "produces" the brain - unless we take
this in a way so loose it is unhelpful. It is not suggested that the existence
of the brain depends on consciousness. It is also admitted that consciousness
depends on there being a brain - a physical substrate for its activity. It is
also admitted that consciousness is a product of that physical substrate. What
is claimed, by way of "downward causation", is that consciousness is not
entirely brain-dependent and acquires some autonomy of 'action', and is able by
that autonomous 'action' to interact with its brain - and so exercise some form
of 'downward causation' on the physical brain substrate from which it emerges.
So it is claimed that some mental states exercise some causal affects on some
physical brain states - but it is not necessarily claimed that these causal
effects entirely "produce" the affected brain state (as other brain states may
play a causal role).
DL
On Monday, 7 September 2015, 12:33, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
McEvoy was mentioning the issue or criterion of downward causation. Let me
rephrase it (perhaps wrongly). If we assume at least two levels (call them the
lesser -- corpuscular -- and the bigger -- stuff made out of corpuscules), the
idea is that we have to allow, if following Popper that the bigger may cause
the lesser. Popper's three-worlds theory is indeed metaphysical. One may wonder
about the Vittoria di Samotracia (I like the Futurist expression). This may be
regarded as a W3 item: it (or she) has been reproduced countless times (almost)
in art books: a marble statue of a woman personifying victory. The French
worshipped and it's one of the few items in the Louvre that was not previously
in Rome! (As every Roman schoolboy knows the French took lots of statues to the
Louvre and while many were returned after the fall of Napoleon ("fall" is
metaphorical, Geary adds) many were not). At a W1 level it is a piece of
marble. piece-of-marble-1 = Vittoria di Samotracia This simple identity is one
of the examples used by the Grice-Myro theory of relative identity. Had the
sculptor (or statue-maker, since as usual, these are marble copies of bronze
originales, and bronze-workers don't 'sculpt') decided for another
personification we would have: piece-of-marble-1 = Apollo chasing Dafne
(statuary group). The idea of a lump of bronze turned into THIS-1 and into
THAT-2 is Grice-Myro's basis for their joint theory of relative identity (which
has affinities with claims by Wiggins and Geach). This is at the level W1,
then: a piece of matter: bronze, say -- and bronze is composed of corpuscules.
W3 remains which is the effects of that piece of bronze (as reproduced in art
books) that had the most famous futurist of all to say that he thought an
automobile (any automobile) MORE beautiful than the Vittoria di Samotracia.
Perhaps because Italy never OWNED Samotracia. It was some other colony's. If it
had been Greek-Greek, the statue would be in Greece, and not Paris
(Frank-land). What about down-ward causation? I will use another example, from
Grice. He famously starts his analysis of meaning by examining the use of
"mean" as applied to an utterer. i. By uttering "Any automobile is more
beautiful than a bronze Greek statue now in the Louvre" (with the typo that the
thing is in marble) MEANT that civilisation has progressed. This is "utterer's
meaning". For Grice, and for me, this is prior. It is prior, in that the
logical form is ii. By x, U means that p. where x does not need any structure.
"It can be a hand-waive", Grice says. BUT in his "Foundations of Language"
essay (edited by Staal), which is actually William James Lecture No. 6), and is
reprinted by Searle in "Philosophy of Language" (Oxford Readings in Philosophy)
and that irritated Chomsky (he dedicates 10 pages of his John Locke lectures to
attack Grice's reprint in the Searle collection and dub it wrongly
behaviourist), Grice proposes an order of priorities: A. UTTERER's meaningB.
EXPRESSION meaning------- under which: PHRASE
meaning--------------------------- word or lexeme meaning. So, it's after we
analyse what the futurist meant that we can proceed to analyse what "This piece
of bronze is less beautiful than any old automobile". Which would give us an
analysis of the utterance (and sentence and phrase), "This piece of bronze is
less beautiful than any old automobile". And from utterances like that we can
proceed to analyse, say, 'automobile'. Note that the Oxford Dictionary, when
defining 'automobile' has only ONE recourse: to quote full utterances where the
lexeme was used. Out of those utterances, the lexicologists propose a sort of
'average meaning' and come up with a definition. They need utterances where the
lexeme is USED in full utterances which have been vehicles by which some
utterer meant this or that. (Only occasionally, the OED merely quotes a
'dictionary' definition, and makes a note about it. Burchfield laughs at these
lexemes whose only evidence of existence is that they were once entries in
dictionaries!). So we have some compositional and anti-compositional tendencies
here. Grice is being corpuscularian in works where he deals with the logical
form of an utterance and how its entailments differ from its implicatures. But
he may be said to be anti-corpuscularian or anti-compositional in works such as
the "Foundations of Language" essay where he starts with what we may call the
'bigger' (the utterance meaning that p by uttering x) to the lesser (what x
means, and what a component of x means).
But there is no contradiction here, for Grice was compositional where he has to
be and anti-compositional where he similarly has to be. He is
anti-compositional and anti-corpuscularian when he realises that a language is
a system such that it allows for 'rules' of generation of an infinite set of
sentences and thus utterances ("This automobile is beautiful," "This automobile
is very beautiful as you'll agree", and so on). But he is corpuscularian and
anti-compositional in the PHILOSOPHICAL important sense that he realises that
the root of this phenomenon of 'meaning' is 'psychological' and so that
utterer's meaning (and secondarily and a fortiori expression meaning) reduces
to the desires and beliefs (the "M-intentions" as he calls them) that the
utterer displays by uttering x. This may relate to the other examples of
downward causation that McEvoy was referring to with regard to Physical
Corpuscularism, only that it shows that Logical Corpuscularism can account, no
problem, with DOWNWARD causation, however criterial for Popper.
Cheers, Speranza
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