[lit-ideas] Re: Popper and Grice on the philosophy of perception
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 11:40:53 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 1/19/2014 10:13:57 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Popper's "New Ways of Words" is not an allusion to Grice's book [which
came some decades after Popper wrote afaik] but a phrase to echo the "New Way
of Ideas" brought in by Locke
Too true!
Of course we never know what LOCKE was thinking. There is a BEAUTIFUL
portrait of Locke with a wig, and another, also charming, with Locke without a
wig.
--- [end of interlude on the history of portraiture].
I think Locke uses:
way of words
way of ideas
way of things
in that order. The 'new' is possibly Locke's idea that his idea was 'new'.
But then, he spends PAGES (and pages) on Descartes's idea (misconceived as
it was) of INNATE idea. So it cannot have been THAT new of a way.
"Old way of words" -- granted -- carries a different implicature.
cfr.
good old way of words
bad new way of ideas
and so on.
In any case, thanks to D. McEvoy for his further thoughts. For the record,
I ended the post where I mention the Grice/White symposium (I believe the
link I provide contains only Grice's bit), with a reference to pirots
potching and cotching obbles and fidding and stuff. I don't mention 'fid', but
I
do now.
Grice writes in the prologue to his intended "Warnock/Grice retrospective"
on the philosophy of perception:
"the objects revealed by perception should surely
be constituents of that world'.
For the record, this is from
Grice, H. P. "Notes for Grice/Warnock retrospective", The Grice Papers,
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley.
Grice was returning, back in the Berkeley hills, to the philosophy of
perception, an area in which he had worked with his dear friend Sir (and
Vice-Chancelor at Oxford, as he then wasn't) Geoffrey J. Warnock and planning
a
"Grice/Warnock retrospective". The first topic that this 'retrospective'
covers is "the place of perception as a faculty or capacity in a sequence
of living things.'
So this nicely fits with McEvoy's example of the unicellular organism
'knowing' (as McEvoy prefers) that the sun is good for it.
Thinking about the issue of the philosophy of perception in relation to
his interest in creature-construction, Grice wonders "at what point, if any,
is further progress up the psychological ladder impossible unless
some rung has previously been assigned to creatures capable of perception?"
Grice goes on to dwell on the ADVANTAGES perception, Darwin-wise [and this
should amuse McEvoy, if not Queen Victoria -- "we are not amused"] in
terms of survival, the crucial factor for adding any capacity during
creature-construction, and assesses the possible support this might offer for
common
sense against
philosophers of sense data.
(Cfr. again, Paul, "Is there a problem about sense data?", that Grice
worshiped, and treasured).
If perception is to be seen as an advantage, providing "knowledge" [as a
species of true belief] to aid survival in a particular world, "the object
revealed by perception [the Noumenon, as Kant would have it? No; the
Phainomenon -- but Kant's terminology, as most of his self was, is somewhat
confused on this and that -- no disrespect meant, though] should be
constituents
of that world".
It might be possible to say that sense data [of apples or bananas, say]
do not themselves nourish or threaten, but constitute evidence of things
that do: apples and bananas.
If 'object' is perhaps too technical for Grice, he preferred to drop the
"j" and gemminate (if that's the word) the 'b'. The object in Grice
becomes an obble. Thus, Grice writes, elsewhere, in a charming "Lecture 1,
'Lectures on language and reality', The Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135,
Bancroft
Library, UC/Berkeley:
"A pirot [a nod to Locke, on 'parrot', 'intelligent, almost rational
parrot'] can be said to potch of some obble x
as fang or fent; also to cotch of x, or some obble o, as fang or feng; or
to cotch of one obble o and another obble o' as being fid to one
another."
Decoded: Pirots are much like ourselves -- Locke's pirot, parot -- cfr.
Carnap, "pirots karulise elatically" -. Pirots inhabit a world of obbles
very much like our own world.
Here we could have a play on 'thing', rather than 'object'; to potch is
something like to PERCEIVE or sense (as when Grice perceives or senses that
the pillar in front of him SEEMS red).
To cotch something like to think, or believe. I.e. we should distinguish:
Grice senses the pillar box seems red.
Grice thinks the pillar box seems red.
Grice BELIEVES that the pillar box seems red.
Notably, there is a distinction between:
Grice believes that the pillar box seems red.
and
Grice believes that the pillar box IS red.
Grice was fascinated by this type of psi-progression. I.e., the belief, on
Grice's part, that the pillar box SEEMS red may well be a good piece of
evidence for the generation of the belief, on Grice's part, that the pillar
box IS red.
You can progress up the ladder to:
Grice KNOWS the pillar box is red.
This would, in the words of "Further notes" at
http://aardvark.ucsd.edu/language/grice_further_notes.pdf
entail, from the standpoint of the utterer of these expressions, that
Grice BELIEVES the pillar box is red.
The pillar box is red
The pillar box being red CAUSED or is in some way connected to, via this or
that legitimate way [that the Gettier cases don't show] Grice's believing
that the pillar box is red.
Grice's actual words:
"some conditions placing restrictions on how [I] came to [believe that] p
(cf. causal theory)" (p. 53 in the above link).
Further decoding from the above passage:
Feng and fang are possible descriptions, much like our adjectives (as when
we say "red" in the pillar box is red -- cfr. Grice on what Martians SEE
in "Some remarks about the senses". Grice thinks Martians may well have FOUR
eyes. With the upper pair of eyes, Martians are x-ing things; with the
lower pair of eyes, Martians are distinctly y-ing things. Does 'x-ing' and
'y-ing' translate to 'see'. One wonders).
"Fid" is a possible relation between obbles. As when we say that the pillar
box seems red and just in front of us, where 'us' is conceived as
'obbles'.
And so on. Or not.
In any case, this excursus on Grice's philosophy of perception was merely
there to balance a more 'objectivist' approach as favoured by Popper. Or
not. Grice worked a lot on the 'absolute' or 'objective' "sense" of 'valuing',
and he may have ended up with a very neo-Kantian idea about the
objectivity of perception, by, even, a transcendental apperceptual ego. Or
not. Of
course. (Vide Geary on "apperceptual ego" *).
Cheers,
Speranza
---
ps. * From Geary's notes on "The apperception of stuff" -- section ii of
"The ego of apperception [expanded]": "Immanuel Kant distinguished
transcendental apperception from empirical apperception. The first is the
perception
of an object as involving the consciousness of the pure self as
subject--"the pure, original, unchangeable consciousness that is the necessary
condition of experience and the ultimate foundation of the unity of
experience."
The second is "the consciousness of the concrete actual self with its
changing states", the so-called "inner sense." (Otto F. Kraushaar in Runes).
Transcendental apperception is almost equivalent to self-consciousness; the
existence of the ego may be more or less prominent, but it is always
involved."
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