----- Original Message -----
From: Donal McEvoy
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, August 08, 2015 10:56 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Meinongiana
Despite what Richard may think, "merely" is a very important qualifying word
- and not merely a merely "merely".
>Here the utterance:
i. I am merely clockwork mechanical.
seems to ENTAIL
ii. I am clockwork mechanical.>
Perhaps but perhaps largely irrelevant: the important point is that "I am in
part a clockwork mechanical" does not entail "I am merely a clockwork
mechanical". Just as "I am in part a person with a brain" does not mean "I am
merely a person with a brain" - for this latter kind of claim might imply "I am
not a person with limbs" "I am not a person with eyes" etc. Or take the claim
"My being a person is merely because I have a brain" and compare this to the
claim that "My having a brain is a necessary but not sufficient condition of my
being a person."
The importance of "merely", and related words, are that that help make clear
the range of a claim - whether, for example, it is a "be-all-and-end-all" type
claim, such as "the be all and end all" of 'being a person is having a brain',
or a much more limited kind of claim such as that 'having a brain' is one of
the necessary conditions of being a person.
I am extremely wary of people who sneer at the use of important qualifying
words like "merely", and note they are often hypocritical people who will jump
on you, when it suits them, if a qualifying word is omitted.
Aside of such people, such qualifying words are very important because they
are allow us to discriminate between very logically distinct claims, that might
otherwise get mashed together. [See above for examples.]
D
L
On Saturday, 8 August 2015, 0:37, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Science and Science
M. della Rocca once wrote an essay, "Essentialism and Essentialism". Geary
found it redundant, but the implicature isn't.
In a message dated 8/5/2015 1:31:16 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: I accept that there is an abiding problem
of
reconciling ourselves within a scientific conception of the world and it will
not
go away soon.
But then: there's science and there's science.
Consider Dilthey: he thought there were two sciences: sciences of nature
("Naturwissenschaft") and sciences of the spirit ("Geistwissenschaft"). So "a
scientific conception of the world" flouts a Griceian maxim, 'avoid
ambiguity of expression'.
McEvoy:
"[Science] may help alleviate pessimism to realise that, as science no
longer pictures W1 as a clockwork mechanism, we no longer need worry - at
least
on that account - about whether we are merely clockwork mechanicals."
I think R. Henninge has referred to the implicatures of 'merely' or
'utterly'. Here the utterance:
i. I am merely clockwork mechanical.
seems to ENTAIL
ii. I am clockwork mechanical.
(cfr. "It is merely a summer storm.")
Now, Dilthey would say that it is the NEGATION of (i) that holds:
iii. I am not clockwork mechanical.
(On the other hands, the Swiss, the inventors of the clock, ARE).
McEvoy concludes his post with a quote in quotes, but I will eliminate the
quotes and make the quote his quote:
McEvoy:
iv. Most people are never going to die.
I like that. McEvoy then goes to 'disimplicate':
iv. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be
born.
But is it correct to speak of 'people' here then? (Do not multiply entities
beyond necessity). Cfr. 'baby' and 'unwanted baby'. An unwanted baby is
people and is a baby. An unwanted implicature is not an implicature!
McEvoy next uses the 'potential' (or subjective) mode, rather than the
indicative:
v. The potential people who COULD have been here in my place but who will
in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia.
Implicature: whatever that number is.
He goes on to change from 'people' to 'ghost':
vi. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats,
scientists greater than Newton.
This is a figure of speech. Surely, Geary might regard as false an
utterance of the form:
vii. That ghost is a greater poet than Keats. I've read most of the ghost's
books -- and could lend you some, if you want, too.
viii. That ghost is a greater scientist than Newton: he actually proved
that what comes up (say, an apple) need NOT come down (to the ground).
McEvoy goes on:
"We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so
massively outnumbers the set of actual people."
The utterance sounds Meinongian. "Possible people" vs. "Actual people".
Meinong's claim to fame was in geometry though: he said that the set of
possible geometrical objects massively outnumbers the set of actual
geometrical
objects. His favourite was the square circle of Galileo -- "la quadratura
del circolo".
McEvoy conclusively concludes with a rhetorical question:
"How dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which
the vast majority have never stirred?"
where the vast majority is again, recall, 'potential', not 'actual'.
I believe the distinction is Aristotelian: the possible and the actual,
and wonder what Popper -- the actual Popper -- would have potentially think
about it!
Cheers,
Speranza
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