[lit-ideas] Popper and Grice on Cause
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 16:27:28 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 5/15/2013 12:51:04 P.M. UTC-02,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
I detect a confusion here: we do not experience in World 3. Human
"experience" exists only at a World 1 or World 2 level. But our World 1 and
World 2
levels of "experience" may be affected by World 3.
---
We may feel like playing with the phrase, "cause" (Yes, a word is a
phrase).
----
Grice considers:
"Charles II was beheaded."
What was the cause of the decapitation? And so on.
Grice is playing with the anti-Humean idea that "to cause" is "to will".
At a later stage, Grice took a neo-Hellenistic view, according to which,
'cause' (as per Greek "aitia") is a legal word. "A rebel without a cause" was
his favourite phrase.
---
The Popperian point may be more complex and it may involve a contradiction
in his scheme of things. For he wants to maintain certain irreducibilities
of -- say -- world 3 items. Yet he is (or seems -- as per McEvoy's
interpretation, which, in quite a few parts, I prefer to Popper's own views)
to be
willing to allow for causation of World 3 items onto World 1 processes
(never mind World 2 processes).
Yet it seems that only World-1 items CAN CAUSE other World-1 items. Unless
we DO assume (but unwillingly) that this causation proves the reducibility
of a world-1 item (in so far as it can become a causal agent).
Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
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