[lit-ideas] Re: Philosophical points
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:38:57 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Wed, 19/3/08, Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Eric Dean wrote:
>
> "I think it's reasonable to conclude that among
> the normal meanings of
> "all men are mortal" are meanings that at least
> imply that for every
> human there will come a time when that human is dead."
Yes. When we speak of 'child mortality rates', for example, we speak of the
death-rate among children - not the percentage subject to Phil's 'normal human
frailty'. I would suggest that 'subject to death' is the primary meaning of
mortal.
Phil replies:-
> If the word 'mortal' is to tell us something
> interesting about any
> particular example within the set of 'all men',
> then the sentence "all
> men are mortal" cannot be formalized with the
> proposition "For all x,
> if x is a man then there exists a time t such that x dies
> at t".
Why this is so is left unclear. Is it because something so true of the whole
set cannot be "interesting about any particular example"? If so, why?
If we substitute "important" for "interesting", we might see the flaw in this
thinking. For something "important" may be said of a whole set that is also
"important" for any member of that set (although, ex hypothesis, not uniquely
so). Death is an important fact of life. Though there is little we can do about
it etc., and so there are senses in which it not important and we might decry
its importance to avoid morbidity, it nevertheless is "important" - our
attitude to the world might be very different in many cases if we had no sense
that the clock was running down. If it is important in this sense, it is surely
also of interest - it is "interesting" to reflect on the effect of our
mortality on our customs and attitudes, to say the least.
> There is of course the obviously problematic 'there
> exists', which
> should be a conversation stopper.
What really stops conversation imo is making this kind of blanket statement
without any further explanation or elucidation: in what way is 'there exists'
"obviously problematic" here? If emptiness or the non-existence of something
can 'exist', what is so odd about the existence of time and therefore of a
point in time at which a given person dies? The alternative would seem to be to
posit a death outside of time, something even tv 'tecs have yet to do.
>Beyond that, it is
> difficult to see
> how picking a highly idiosyncratic 'meaning' of a
> sentence (i.e. that
> mortality refers to a point in time),
This has been answered: mortality is not thereby 'reduced' to a point in time
because death happens at some point in time; and that death occurs at some
point in time (rather than outside time) is not 'idiosyncratic' but the
ordinary view. It is the denial that death happens at some point in time that
is 'idiosyncratic'.
>providing a highly
> idiosyncratic
> formalization (i.e. 'scientific')
Nor is it explained why Quine and Popper's "formalization" is so idiosyncratic.
It is just asserted, without even a whiff of an alternative formalization or
specific criticism (beyond the suggest that it involves a "conversation
stopper").
>of that
> 'meaning', gives one grounds
> for deciding whether that sentence is or is not scientific.
> Put
> differently, under such particular conditions, I can
> imagine ruling
> out any sentence as being a scientific hypothesis. After
> all, what
> sentence could not render peculiar 'meanings' that
> would render them
> unscientific?
Maybe none...but
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