[lit-ideas] Re: "Must We Mean What We Say?"
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 17:44:15 -0500
I'm wondering if there are any science types out there who could make a
comparison between the way the three words (inference, opinion, observation)
are used in a philosophical context vs. a scientific context. That is, I
wonder if the area of science has a broadly understood "special" definition
of those terms?
Julie Krueger
On 10/24/07, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> McEvoy:
>
> "I then surveyed your next two points. I was about to pour scorn on the
> first
> when I observed this.
> >> "I bet it takes you a long time to get to your classes."
> >> This is what Austin called a 'performative' thus neither true nor
> false.
> Then I opined or inferred that you were of course joking all along.
> Ooops."
>
> That's an easy way out, ednit? So, go on and say it "And I found it a
> waste of my time to bother to reply in earnestness".
>
> But mind, "There's a silver lining behind every cloud", so perhaps, as
> Petronius says in "Satyricon", "behind a joke, there's a truth".
>
> Mind, the idea of a performative _having_ a truth-value was something that
> it took pains to G. J. Warnock to prove. For Austin, to claim that
>
> (3) I bet it takes you a long time to get to your classes.
>
> does report a mental state (on the part of the utterer) such that the bet
> would be _false_ if the utterer does not have this mental state was utter
> mentalistic Cartesian nonsense.
>
> Note that it is against all standard of Oxonian conversational politeness
> to reply to (3) with
>
> (3') No, you don't bet it.
>
> I mean, by what authority can an addressee _contest_ that the utterer is
> betting. This, for Austin, did not mean that a bet is always _true_, rather
> as he preferred, it was one of those utterances having a 'truth-value gap'.
>
> 'Truth-value gap' was a collocation first used by Quine when he was
> visiting Oxford -- back in the 1950s -- (Popper was not invited, I'm sorry
> to say), under the sponsorship of mainly Grice and Strawson.
>
> Strawson later took up on the idea of a truth-value gap for things like
> "Prove to me whether it's true or false that In October it's triphon-upping
> day on the Thames" (or prove to me that 'The king of France is bald' is
> false).
>
> Swan-Upping Day is my favourite festival, and I treasure Sir Stanley
> Spencer's depiction of it (now in the Tate).
>
> (3-a) At Swan Upping Day we up the swans.
>
> is true, while
>
> (3-b) At Triphon-Upping Day we up the triphons.
>
> _would_ be true in a universe containing triphons. This would mean that we
> would have to relativize truth-value to a possible-world semantics. While
>
> (3-c) At Circling-Squaring Day we square the circle.
>
> is impossible in any possible world (cfr. Bealer, and DellaRocca,
> "Essentialism and Essentialism").
>
> The subject of this thread I took from Stanley Cavell's book, which relies
> heavily on Austin -- and is indeed a pun on the Mad Hatter's syllogism that
> 'to say what you mean' is not the same thing a bit as 'to mean what you
> say'.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> J. L Speranza,
> Buenos Aires, Argentina
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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