[lit-ideas] Re: Popper and Grice on the Metalanguage of Thought
- From: "Donal McEvoy" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "donalmcevoyuk" for DMARC)
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 07:56:27 +0000 (UTC)
McEvoy, who describes his self as "thoughtless as ever," implicating that he
is allowed to use hyperbole, notes:>
I think "thoughtless as ever" has stranger semantics: the "as ever" can be
appended to 'whatever' but the 'whatever' may change the sense - e.g. from
straighforward to ironical. If PG Wodehouse was falsely accused of being a Nazi
sympathiser and wrote an ironical reply in defence to which he signed off "Nazi
as ever" then we might have a sense where "Nazi as ever" implied "As ever not
at all a Nazi".
"Thoughtless as ever" is not quite the same, especially as I am not claiming my
thoughts were especially "thoughtful", but it traverses similar territory in
that I was not perhaps asserting my thoughts in the post were "thoughtless". To
take me to be making such an assertion would be an unsubtle or crass
misreading. In fact, my usage is probably best described as 'playful', and it
alludes back to posts that suggest my contributions are "thoughtless" in
several senses.
Remember in a sense "It is as true today as it was yesterday that '2 + 2 = 7'"
(notwithstanding it was false both days), and so (in a sense) "It is as true as
ever that '2 + 2 = 7'". To deny this can be sense of language is to engage in a
kind of stipulation that lacks independent backing and strips language of the
senses it actually has.
DL
From: Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, 20 March 2017, 21:27
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Popper and Grice on the Metalanguage of Thought
u piretoFrom: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
on behalf of dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2017 8:48:54 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Popper and Grice on the Metalanguage of Thought Of course,
I'm using the phrase 'metalanguage of thought' as per the question, on this
list, 'is there a metalanguage of thought?' -- or words to that effect. Not
because Popper or Papineau or Grice or Wollaston (I love quadruple
disjunctions) ever mentioned the issue.
This is basically a commentary on McEvoy.
McEvoy, who describes his self as "thoughtless as ever," implicating that he is
allowed to use hyperbole, notes:
"My brief contribution to the language/thought/meta-language issue is this: a
metalanguage may be the same natural language as the object language, and is
"meta-" in the sense that it is language used for discussing language. It is
'language about language'. Can there be thoughts about thoughts?"
Indeed, that seems to be a good formulation of the question. But not the only.
In "Meaning and Representation," (he plays on the "Meaning without
Representation," or "Signification without Representation," almost as a
political adage), Cummings notes that if Grice is incorrect, we have something
like a 'homuncular' theory of signification. Keyword: homunculus. The idea,
which was elaborated by Anita Avramides in her D.Phil Oxon, runs more or less
along the following lines:
"Language" may be tied to 'signification'. "Signification" seems to be
conceptually linked to the idea of 'expressing thoughts'. Now, if those
'thoughts' are, again, interpreted in terms of language OR signification, we
reach a circle that Cummings and Avramides seem to say is 'vicious'. For we
would be analyzing language in terms of thought, and thought in terms of
language.
Oddly, Ockham, whose claim to infame is "Do not multiply entities beyond
necessity," had no qualms about multiplying what he called 'sermo'. He thought
there were two types of 'sermones': the 'sermo' itself, or lingo, and the
'sermo mentalis.' P. T. Geach made fun of Ockham in his influential (in Leeds),
"Mental acts."
McEvoy goes on:
"We might think so."
i.e. that there can be thoughts about thoughts.
"Are these 'meta-thoughts'? In a sense, perhaps analogous to the
meta-/object-language distinction: we might say they are 'meta-thoughts' about
'object thoughts'. They are still thoughts though (or so we might think) - just
as the meta-language is still language and may even be the same natural
language as the object language."
Very true. It can be confusing though. Cfr.
i. It is raining.
ii. I believe that it is raining (which corresponds to a 'thought').
iii. I believe that I believe that it is raining (which corresponds to what
McEvoy calls a meta-thought, or to what I prefer to call a 'meta-psychological
attitude' -- Grice uses "psi-2").
iv. I believe that I believe that I believe that it is raining. This would
again be a meta-thought, but Grice is clever to use the numeral "psi-3" here.
If "A" is the agent, and Psi is the psychological attitude -- for it can be
doxastic like belief, but conative, like desire -- we have A Psi-3-s that p.
v. I believe that I believe that I believe that I belive that it is raining.
And so on.
I wonder what Witters would say about that (Papineau may wonder about what
POPPER might say about that). For here we have a Psi-4. And for Witters, no
thought-process is ascribed unless we have some 'manifest behaviour'.
Grice and Judith Baker were concerned with higher-degree CONATIVE attitudes in
an attempt to show how a conceptual analysis may be provided of the way moral
obligation cashes on interest or desire. Suppose Grice wants or desires to
smoke:
i. Ah, for a cigarette!
ii. I desire that I smoke.
iii. I desire that I desire that I smoke.
iv. I desire that I desire that I desire that I smoke.
and so on ad infinitum.
For Grice and Baker (Baker in "Must our motives be pure?", in PGRICE, ed.
Grandy/Warner) argue quite the contrary. If, for a content of a conative
attitude "p" we find that we do NOT have an opposing conative attitude, "p"
passes "conative" rational muster. With the case of smoking, it may be that
while Grice may desire to smoke, he does not desire to DESIRE to smoke. I.e.
that while
D1-p
holds
D2-p
does not.
Since Grice does not desire to desire to smoke, it may follow that he desires
to desire that he does not desire to smoke. Smoking, thus, does not pass
'rational muster.' A similar case may be conceived for 'lying' (Kant's
transcendental argument).
McEvoy goes on:
"Do we need to refer to 'thought about thoughts' as 'meta-thought'? Here we
might go back to the purpose or function of meta/object language distinction.
This was to bring logical clarity to an area where many suspected there were
paradoxes and other problems - 'language about language' becomes unparadoxical
and logically unproblematic provided we observe a meta/object language
distinction."
The alleged paradox may be involved with the use/mention distinction, which
Grice did not think was too paradoxical.
It may be argued that
iii. I believe that I believe that it is raining.
hardly compares to a metalinguistic usage. But I would argue it does. The
higher belief ("I BELIEVE that I believe that it is raining") is ABOUT the
lower belief ("I BELIEVE that it is raining"). By believing that you hold this
belief you are believing ABOUT this belief, and this 'aboutness' is what leads
to a comparison with the meta-language jargon.
McEvoy concludes his interesting post: "Is 'thought about thought' potentially
paradoxical in the same way as 'language about language'? If not, do we need a
meta- distinction? If so, do we need a meta- distinction? Having asked these
questions we come to another: even if 'thought about thought' requires a
'meta-thought/object thought' distinction how does this relate to whether the
meta-thought presupposes or involves a 'metalanguage'?"
Indeed: if Griceians are right, and language (or a variant thereof) is
UNDERSTOOD (or conceptually analysed) in terms of thought processes
(intentions, say), to presuppose that thinking INVOLVES a 'language' would be
viciously circular at worst.
McEvooy:
"Perhaps all these thoughts show we are much less thoughtful than [someone
else's]."
Or perhaps it isn't.
Another way to approach the issue is via Snow White and the seven dwarfs.
Suppose Snow says to Dwarf 1: "It is raining".
D1 tells D2 (the second dwarf): "Snow White believes that it is raining".
D2 challenges D1: "And do you agree? I'll ask D3 for a better judgement. So D2
goes to see D3 and tells him:
"D1 believes that Snow White believes that it is raining. Is there a proof of
this?"
In this case we can see that D2 is referring to D1's belief (which is a belief
about a belief held by Snow White).
And we can go on this progression up to Dwarf 7 referring to a thought by Dwarf
6, referring to a thought by ... down to Snow White. Is this, as McEvoy asks,
'meta-'?
The 'meta-' in metalanguage may be just 'language OF language'. So
'meta-thought' would be 'thought OF thought'.
When Grice played with Psi-1, Psi-2, etc. he was trying to provide a conceptual
analysis (almost alla Hintikka in "Knowledge and Belief") of Wittgensteinian
notions like incorrigibility and privileged access. So if
Agent A has attitude Psi-1 that p, he has attitude Psi-2 that he has attitude
Psi-1 that p. By default.
When it comes to conative attitudes, as we see, this provides for Grice a
foundation of morality in desire or interest (alla Pritchard). "Don't lie!" may
be related to a categorical imperative because if you desire NOT to lie, you
desire to desire NOT to lie, and so ad infinitum.
Since Popper deals with psychological attitudes in his W2, I don't know if he
cared for all this 'meta-' considerations. As I was suggesting above, a
neo-behaviourist (not that Popper was one) would reject "I believe that I
believe that I believe that it is raining" -- "meta-meta-thought" -- on the
basis of it being otiose, and no displaying too much of a manifestation in
behaviour. Or something.
As Hacker and Baker would say, VERY COMPLEX issues!
Cheers,
Speranza
Other related posts:
