[lit-ideas] Re: PCA
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:24:25 EDT
In a message dated 4/21/2009 12:29:08 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
_rpaul@xxxxxxxxx (mailto:rpaul@xxxxxxxx)
provides the excellent link
<_http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t98.e23
04_
(http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t98.e2304) >
from Blackburn's Oxford Dict. of Philosophy,
'paradigm case argument':
Some running comments:
>the argument that since a term, such as
>‘certain’ or ‘knowledge’ or ‘free will’, is taught partly with
reference
>to central
as opposed to 'borderline' or 'marginal'.
>cases, any sceptical philosophical position denying that it
>applies in those cases must involve an abuse
>of the term.
But I'd have here the caveat of 'to have a resultant procedure in one's
repertoire', introduced by Grice in William James Lectures 1967, and repr. in
Searle 1971 Philosophy of Language, Readings, Oxford -- thought to be
'behaviourist' to Chomsky's or Searle's taste. Which is not, it's
_intentionalist_.
Suppose 'certain'.
The sceptical may be having a resultant (as opposed to basic) procedure in
his repertoire such that
"It is certain that this is a hand" (x) means (GA)
i. exhibitive. That the utterer means that the addressee
will come to believe that there is nothing that can
_refute_ x
ii. Grice-way: That the utterer intends to achieve (i)
by the
addressee's recognition of (ii)
iii. no-sneaky-clause allowed. That (i) and (ii) is all
there is.
No further inference element can be underboard.
So, these types of procedures Grice calls 'idiosyncratic'. He poses them to
avoid the cliche that meaning is _conventional_, or social in nature. "I
may lie in the bathroom and design a Highway Code that nobody will use since
that is not my intention." Grice allows this man is uttering meaningful
things; for meaning is connected with what is _proper_ qua value, which is
subjective, and not with 'convention' per se.
I wrote an early paper on this. Under Ezequiel de Olaso, who was the Buenos
Aires authority on Scepticism. My conclusion then was that the Sceptic
would argue that something like that (GA) is what the DOGMATIC would say, but
he won't. Hence 'silence'.
But 'use' and 'abuse' seem only to complicate things. Plus, 'abuse' is
usually meant, idiosyncratically, to mean 'over-use'. I never witnessed someone
abusing something by underusing it. But 'ab-sence' is underpresence, not
over-presence.
-----
>In one famous
>example, we might point to the smiling bridegroom and say that his
>choice of his bride is a paradigm example of free choice;
Oddly, my tutor told me (Guillermo Ranea) that only chimps _smile_
properly. It's an atavic rely of display of aggression. So if the bridgegroom is
simling is more like the paradigm case that he is an ape, ultimately. I would
never smile at a wedding, _especially_ Geary's.
>hence any
>philosophies that reject the notion of free choice are surreptitiously
>changing the meaning of the notion, and are therefore out of court.
Well, yes, 'abuse' you'd say, but 'language reform', others say. That's
what philosophical analysis is all about. You work with a concept from the
garden, you do the linguistic botanising (compare the wild grass with other
types, expose the form to various tests of 'logical behaviour') and then when
you do the diagram you may _emphasise_ this or that, and it becomes a
lithograph of the real wild grass. It's the Science of Language Austin foresaw.
Don't get me wrong, I love Blackburn but he should never have left
Pembroke.
>The
>argument is widely rejected, on the grounds that even if a term is
>taught with reference to central cases, it may only be because of a
>cluster of false beliefs that those cases are singled out in the first
>place.
Cluster is 'vague'. Transcendentally, a more sophisticated version of the
PCA holds that at least one of the beliefs MUST be true, transcendentally
speaking (i.e. by means of a strong transcendental (metaphysical) argument
alla Kant). 'False' is too empirical a notion here because we are talking of
'constitution of content of possible experience' for a transcendental
non-empirical ego, who could care less if Blackburn screams, 'false!'. We are
talking of the conditions of possibility for the existence of a
non-contradictory concept.
>We may think of the bridegroom as free, but it may be that in so
>thinking we have a vision of his decision-making processes (not to
>mention those of his bride) that philosophical reflection discredits.
Well, for one, 'will' is the wrong 'resultant' procedure. We should analyse
'free' in more 'basic' procedures. Best to try in utterances of the form
"x is free"
-- 'will' will not come up to me as the first choice. Rather 'horse'. "That
horse is free; those 21 horses were not free -- otherwise they wouldn't
have been poisoned to dead".
"A horse is free" iff he can gallop here and there
he knows he can do that
he'll do that, provided there is no major
impediment.
Or consider
"feel free"
"Geary feels free to repair the Air-Conditioner" iff...
Should Geary's client, 'feel free' too?
---- Or consider,
"The best things in life are free"
moon? ok
stars? ok
sun
robins in spring ok
flowers ok
but "LOVE" (can come to everyone)?????? Ask Spitzer.
----
'will' is originally a verb:
"I will sugar"
Ceteris paribus, 'freely' is understood. "I will sugar freely with my
coffee".
The very idea of using 'will' is that 'free' is _presupposed_. It's more
like an implicature, but it's not. It's an entailment.
I would think that he the bridegroom's _will_ is not free, then he is not a
_willing_ bridegroom and that's that.
It's actually _illegal_.
(should the fact that no free will is in the proceedings -- e.g. _she_
is very -- 'stinky' he said -- rich, or rather, his aged father).
Peacocke:
>However, investigations of meaning are partly constrained by what we say
>about central cases, and there may be fields where some restricted form
>of the paradigm case argument is not entirely worthless.
------
Note that 'free will' is really a Gothic barbarism. It's liber arbitrium
in Augustine. Hardly an ordinary language expression. Used by Cicero. A
horse just does not have it. A horse is not free or rather he doesn't have
arbitrium which is liber. This is Buridan's ass. Etc.
Most important emotions in life are not free in any interesting sense of
'free'. The smiling bridegroom did not exercise his 'free will' when he fell
for the rich heir in Buckinghamshire.
It's back to Mirembe Nantongo, "can you decide to fall in love". "Yes,"
Geary said, "But you cannot decide _where_ you fall -- or how much it will
hurt -- most of the boring times."
Cheers,
JL Speranza
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