[lit-ideas] Re: Popper and Peacocke on representation
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2014 16:44:53 -0700 (PDT)
Okay, we might say that lying, if successful, requires at least one person to
believe it, but if there is no way of accounting for jokes, fictions,
second/language teaching examples, examples on Lit/ideas etc., without
presupposing 'belief' in the proposition, this is basically ridiculous.
O.K.
On Thursday, April 3, 2014 11:29 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well, if Davidson really thought "that you cannot
have a 'sentence' ("The cat sat on the mat") without the BELIEF (or
opinion) to the effect that the cat sat on the mat." he must have been stark
mad. I am thinking that this is probably a misunderstanding.
O.K.
On Thursday, April 3, 2014 11:02 PM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
In "Re: Re-Establish Unmediated Touch With The Familiar Objects" P. Enns is
kind enough to provide the larger background. Since his point was
exegetical, this should NOT turn into Davidson contra Heidegger. Or
not. We can
always bring Popper in!
Davidson, as quoted by Enns, in providing an exegesis of Heidegger, seems
to be eschewing, if that's the word, 'representation': we should have
unmediated touch with things. I'm not sure we can do that.
And what's worse, I'm not sure C. A. B. (love a triple initial) Peacocke,
former Waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy at Oxford thinks he is
sure we can do that. His keyword is REPRESENTATION and CONTENT as
theory-laden, as it were.
It's all different with Popper.
Or not?
We are interpreting Heidegger in an analytic vein and P. Enns
interestingly uses a phrase by Davidson, extracted from "On the very idea of a
conceptual scheme".
Davidson writes:
"In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality,
something outside all schemes and science, we do not
relinquish the notion of
objective truth - quite the contrary."
This above is interesting. Since the first part of the claim seems to
IMPLICATE the negation of the second. Hence his need for defense.
I.e. in giving up uninterpreted reality we relinquish objective truth.
But Davidson feels the need to cancel that implicature.
He goes on:
"Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and reality, we get conceptual
relativity, and truth relative to a scheme."
"Without the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board. Of course
truth of sentences remains relative to language, but that is as objective as
can be."
"Truth of sentences relative to a language" would perhaps be what Davidson
has in mind. But he does distinguish between Language, and a language,
such as English (that he spoke) or German (that Heidegger
spoke).
It's in the final sentence of the paragraph that the phrase used and
mentioned by P. Enns occurs:
"In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the
world,"
-- which is fair enough,
"but re-establish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics
make our sentences and opinions true or false."
I can think of a cat and a mat. I think it was Wittgenstein, but also
Toulmin in his book on reasoning, that play with the sentence:
"The cat is on the mat".
Actually, this comes from a first-reader (or a book to teach children how
to read and write), and it more alliteratively goes:
The cat sat on the mat.
In Tarski's vein,
"The cat sat on the mat" is true iff the cat sat on the mat.
-- Davidson's claim to fame, or one of them, being to analyse this for
'natural' languages -- like English or German.
Note that Davidson is careful to MERGE, if that's the word, 'sentences'
and 'opinions', because he is a symmetricalist, and he thinks that you cannot
have a 'sentence' ("The cat sat on the mat") without the BELIEF (or
opinion) to the effect that the cat sat on the mat. (Grice is on the contrary
an
asymmetricalist, and thinks beliefs and opinions come first -- I'm not sure
about Heidegger).
Davidson's original background was not I think 'philosophical', or
'philosophical' in the Continental sense, hence his rather free (and
un-Kantian)
use of 'object' as in 'familiar object'. This may be due to the influence of
Quine (who wrote, "Word and Object" and got the reply by Grice in "Words
and objections").
Here, the 'objects' seem to be the cat and the mat.
In most empiricist
accounts, however, it's not the unmediated touch that
counts but the PERCEPTA or the sensibilia, as it were. The way the cat
impinges (if that's the word) on the percipient, and the way the mat does, and
the idea of 'sitting' (as in the cat 'sat'). It's in terms of these more
basic 'elements' that the opinion to the effect that the cat sat on the mat
gets 'experienced' by the perceiver, who can then go on and utter, 'The cat
sat on the mat', most likely with the intention to have an addressee come to
a similar belief or opinion and proceed accordingly -- 'all morning, so it
cannot have been her who ate the neighbour's fish' -- or something.
Davidson is possibly eschewing 'propositions'. Peacocke, following Grice,
eschews propositions also. He prefers to speak of 'propositional complexes';
in this case, a 'propositional complex' which is formed of
all the
percepts that constitute 'the cat', 'the mat', and her 'sitting' on it, in the
past of course, -- since it's the alliterative, 'the cat SAT on the mat', that
I chose as 'familiar' things (or objects) we are looking for an unmediated
touch with, and that would make some of our opinions (such as "I opine the
cat sat on the mat") and sentences (such as "The cat sat on the mat").
True.
Or not?
Cheers,
Speranza
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