[lit-ideas] Re: Patrick and the Snakes
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:42:22 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 3/19/2013 6:45:44 P.M. UTC-02, omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx
writes:
I reckon that Popper has scientific theories in mind rather than simple
factual claims, but still it's hard to separate these
I will re-read McEvoy's answer on the logic of falsification.
Perhaps what we may need here, as McEvoy introduces things like "(Ex)", or
strictly, "(∃x)", is symbolism.
Then we'll see there are like four candidates:
A scientific theory (as it stands today) which covers the facts.
The hagiographic theory -- Patrick banished the snakes, &c. -- which is
proved by the lack of existence of snakes in Ireland. Here we may represent
Patrick by "p" and "B" as a two-place predicate for "banish".
Note that
"There are no snakes in Ireland" may require the use of "~", for negation,
and "S" for "snake" and "I" for "in Ireland" (both one-place predicates).
The hagiographic theory needs to be interpreted, I claim, alla Grice.
His example of metaphor is
"You're the cream in my coffee" --> "You are my pride and joy"
"It would be ridiculous to take the statement literally," Grice suggests,
"since it would assume that a non-animate substance, as cream is, can hear a
compliment".
However, this is what happened with Patrick (or Saint Patrick if you
mustn't) and the snakes.
Grice says, "I coined 'implicature' to mean cases when we mean MORE than we
say." "Similarly, I now propose 'disimplicature' for its inverse: cases
when we mean LESS than we say".
I.e. entailment dropping.
(INTERLUDE about 'drop'. A commentary on St. Patrick mentioned lizards, and
the assumption that Patrick could not have misidentified a lizard as a
snake -- since there ARE lizards -- few -- in Ireland -- unlike snakes. A
snake, in evolutionary terms, is a 'lizard that dropped the leg idea". I liked
that.)
Back to entailment dropping.
It IS, however ridiculous, pretty PLAUSIBLE to interpret, "You are the
cream in my coffee" (or "You're the cream in my coffee", as I prefer)
LITERALLY.
This is what was the case with Patrick.
In his sermon, if he gave one, he may have uttered things like, "I'll
banish all snakes from Ireland". WHAT HE MEANT, via metaphor/metonymy or
metaphtonymy (if not plain synecdoche) was due, I claim, to the lack of a
verbal
expression, in Old Irish, for 'tatoo'.
For, what Patrick meant was:
"I will banish those wearning snake tatoos." He said "snakes", which he
MEANT metaphorically for "people wearing those snake tatoos" (druids, as it
happened).
Since he did banish them, it is only consequential that his utterance was
LATER (and notably by schoolchidren, who will SIMPLIFY things) taken
literally.
----
The scientific theories called upon to redeem St. Patrick are PRETTY
Complex, and if we are going to use Popper to clarify them, we may need to
bring
other issues.
A TIME sequence. As McEvoy noted:
"only if "St.Patrick killed the snakes" is taken as 'embedded' with or in
the context of other falsifiable theories, such as theories as to how snakes
leave a fossil record in given environments. This is obvious when we see
the supposed falsification might be thwarted by saying that Irish snakes
were of a sort, or lived in an environment of a sort, that they left no fossil
record."
Indeed, if we are talking pre-Ice Age Ireland, it may well have been the
case that there WERE snakes in Ireland.
From the source I mentioned in my previous post on this:
"[T]o be finicky, if snakes somehow ever existed on what is called Ireland
today, humans weren't around at the time. Snakes evolved a few million
years ago, from lizards (they dropped the idea of legs). At this time, Ireland
may have been part of continental Europe (it hasn't always been an island),
or it may have been underwater. Either way, it was much more recently
completely covered with ice. During the last Ice Age, Ireland was a frozen
wasteland (check out where Ireland is on the globe compared to North America
--
the same latitude as Hudson Bay). No humans lived there, and any snakes
who might have been around previously were frozen solid (snakes, remember,
are cold-blooded)."
The other points mentioned in this source may require further Popperian
reading. Or not.
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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