The claim is not analitic.people are inhuman all thetime
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From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 14 April 2015 18:42
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] People are human - PFA on Sterling
In a message dated 4/14/2015 10:27:46 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: "Confirmation of [Speranza]'s thesis that
"Conceptual analysis is essential to everything" today emerged from the
Professional Footballer's Association in England: their spokeperson proclaiming
that "People are human". This, [Speranza] maintains, is an analytic claim -
perhaps indeed one of the outstanding products of "conceptual analysis" in the
sporting field." "People are human - PFA on Sterling. Liverpool's Raheem
Sterling is only human and made a mistake, according to the PFA's deputy chief
executive Bobby Barnes. View on _www.bbc.co.uk_ (http://www.bbc.co.uk)
Preview by Yahoo."
While indeed,
i. People are human.
is tautologous,
ii. People are human beings.
is _otiose_.
In the PFA chief's idiolect, 'people' is 'vulgar'; 'human' is not.
Robert Barnes, deputy chief executive of the Professional Footballers'
Association, said:
i. The player made a mistake and people are human.
There is a further implicature that the PLAYER is human. With computer games
and people engaged in games with computers, the implicature can hardly be
DISIMPLICATED for once in a way.
Note that while a conjunction, the logical form of
i. The player made a mistake and people are human.
is not really
"p & q"
Rather, it is an abstract argument, of the form:
p
---
therefore, q
People are human
The player is people
People make mistakes.
---
Therefore, the player made a mistake.
Note that one of the premises
ii. People make mistakes.
is defeasible. Some do, some don't. This one player (being people and
human) did.
----
Robert Barnes provides a gloss to his own analysis:
"Nobody would condone the use of these types of substances, whether legal or
otherwise, as footballers are seen as role models. But many of us look back at
things we did in our teens or early twenties and wish we hadn't done them."
This is a Kripkean counter-factual. BARNES _knows_ (in Popper's sense, vide
"Objective Knowledge) that
iii. Hadn't Robert Barnes done the things he did back in his teens, he would
NOT be Robert Barnes TODAY.
This is proved by an analogy:
iv. Hadn't Socrates not drunk the hemlock, the history of Greek philosophy
would have followed a different course.
"I am sure this will be a minor blip on his path to a fantastic career."
The minor blip is the 'defeater' (or 'defeaser', as Hart prefers) in the
premise on which the validity of Barnes's argument depends:
ii. People (who are human) make mistakes.
The presuppositional dogma in Barnes's conclusion is theological in nature
(hence a dogma):
v. To err is human; to forgive is divine (as per Flanagan & Allen's song,
"Can't we meet again and let's be sweethearts").
There is a hyperbole associated with Barnes's argument:
Since
vi. Liverpool are not expected to open a formal disciplinary investigation into
the footage.
the attending theological implicature is that Liverpool is possibly divine.
And we say 'possibly' because some submit that Liverpool WILL look into it and
if the player wants guidance, the club will be able to provide it because they
have a good programme in place.
If Liverpool is not divine and won't forgive, Liverpool is people. This
however, does not seem to implicate that Liverpool is human.
Locke made the crucial distinction when titling his treatise: "I want to title
it, "An essay concerning HUMANE Understanding". He pronounced it "humane" and
as such it is deposited at the Bodleian.
Cambridge students, however, started to pronounce that as 'human', and the
mistake was more or less perpetuated.
Professor Harry Sumnall took a Popperian approach:
"Smoking and alcohol have a much bigger impact on sporting performance and are
issues which affect the whole of society. The numbers using legal highs such
as laughing gas and the harms associated with them are relatively small."
He means this in an 'evolutionary' sense, as a response to a 'problem-solving'
approach.
But surely the gist is, as McEvoy suggests, 'conceptual analysis', and
enthymematic at that (Barnes is merely implicating the 'Humans, i.e. people,
make mistakes, unlike God', at least according to the 39 articles.
Cheers,
Speranza
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