since i think that you insist on changing the title of every thread to
something mentioning Grice in order to increase google hits, no reply
On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 8:09 PM, Redacted sender jlsperanza for DMARC <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
McEvoy was bringing a neo-Wittgensteinian perspective to this issue
-- "Popper and Grice on the meta-language of thought" -- which is
interesting: it seems Witters always comes in handy when discussing Grice
and Popper, or Popper and Grice for that matter.
The point McEvoy was bringing up was that of the ways in which behaviour
can be thought as the recipient of psychological attitudes. The keyword is:
MANIFEST. And I would think that the proper syntax would be that the
psychological attitude (of belief, say) MANIFESTS in behaviour.
So we can wonder.
i. I believe that it is raining.
This seems plain enough and hardly meta-thought.
ii. I believe that I believe that it is raining.
What behaviour may count as allowing such a belief (a meta-belief) to
manifest? Well, (ii) contrasts with
iii. I believe that I merely BELIEVE that it is raining; but I would
hardly qualify myself (if we may use that phrase -- cfr. 'justify myself')
as KNOWING that it is raining. It can all be an hallucination.
What about a third meta-belief:
iv. I believe that I believe that I believe that it is raining.
Again. Here Popper may discuss with Grice. For Popper might argue that
indeed it is a case of 'objective knowledge' that it is raining, and so,
a Griceian would utter (iv) just to prove to Popper that, no, Popper is
wrong: it's NOT a case of 'knowledge': I believe, with some grounds,
that it is a BELIEF I have about me believing that it is raining. This
starts to sound slightly convoluted -- but, as Geary would say, "I've seen
convolutions compared to which, that is a straight line."
Popper talks of 'thought' in terms of W2. For a physicalist Griceian, (i)
and (ii) and (iv) are different BELIEFS and thus 'realised' in different
_physical_ scenarios. So, the interaction with the world of physicality --
Popper's W1 -- seems relevant. Also w3, because, of course, one can
consider the "I" in those utterances as being Kantian and transcendental in
nature, and thus, not as the subject of a mere psychological attitude,
but a piece of conceptual architecture that belongs in the realm of ideas
-- Popper's W3 --.
And stuff.
On the other hand, most likely there is NO metalanguage of thought, for
Grice OR Popper (Unless there is).
Cheers,
Speranza
