[lit-ideas] Re: Popper and Peacocke on representation
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2014 19:26:43 -0400 (EDT)
Omar K. was wondering about a reference to Davidson:
"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. [...] 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."
A bit of context may be in order.
The reference to Davidson came from P. Enns, who was quoting Davidson as,
as it were, a way to illuminate the prose of Heidegger (specifically
Heidgger's writings on the nature of language -- the early and the later
Heidegger, in conjunction). Let us have that first-hand quote again.
Perhaps after that, we can immerse onto the question of the priority or
alleged priority (as per Davidson) of opinions over utterances that Omar K.
is, in my reading, addressing:
P. Enns had written:
"Alongside the importance of Heidegger's essay, 'The question concerning
technology', which discusses instrumental reason and the role of technique
[...,] I would also add Heidegger's work on language in *Being
and Time* as well as his later essays, such as 'The way to language'. In
these writings, Heidegger explores the ways in which language is
constitutive of understanding and the intelligibility of the world, not as
a tool or lens with which we encounter the world, as though language were
something through which we picture, represent or refer to the world, but
rather as being human. Whether it is in his discussion of how language is a
necessary condition for human life in the world, or the way in which
language precedes our understanding of the world, Heidegger tries to show us
that
language is much more than a means of communication. While the later
Heidegger does occasionally indulge in a mystification of language,
in both the early and later writings, his aim, to borrow a phrase from
Davidson, is to re-establish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose
antics make our sentences and opinions true or false."
To re-word:
To re-establish unmediated (i.e. _sans_ representation?)
touch with the familiar objects
(such as cats and mats)
whose antics (notably the cat) make our sentencs AND OPINIONS
[my emphasis -- Speranza] true [...]."
We now corroborate, thanks to P. Enns, that the quote comes from
Davidson's sort of famous 'conceptual scheme' essay.
In trying to elaborate on the Davidson quote, I ended up emphasising the
role of 'representation' (not a word Davidson uses admittedly).
And I thought of bringing in Peacocke (who's written extensively on this,
and, in my view, brilliantly).
And, I thought of ALSO bringing, 'into the bargain', as it were, Popper --
since McEvoy has a serious interest in this philosopher and it looked as if
Popper's Kantianism may contradict some of Davidson's points -- and _a
fortiori_, Heidegger: that there is such a thing as an unmediated touch with
stuff. (I hope my phrasing is clear!)
Omar notes:
"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. ... 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."
Yes.
It may be interesting to emphasise that Davidson is speaking of 'sentences
and opinions' in the quoted passage
-- where 'opinion' must stand for belief (or some such 'cognitive'
psychological attitude -- versus a conative one such as 'desire', which are
fulfilled or not, rather than true or false).
But this should perhaps trigger, if we are in the right philosophical
mood, a broader question.
It is easy enough, after all, alla Davidson, to ascribe truth to sentences
-- rather than to opinions.
This is the Tarski schema. Yet, in some conceptions of knowledge (notably
the one one and again contradicted by McEvoy) it is _beliefs_ that are
primarily true, not sentences -- Plato's Theaetetus, the earliest source
possibly, as cited by Gettier.
Davidson has gone on record as a symmetricalist: he cannot have an opinion
without a sentence and vice versa -- this is for him both an
epistemological AND an ontological point. (I was inspired into this
interpretation of
Davidson's philosophy by Anita Avramides DPhil dissertation at Oxford, advised
by Strawson).
On the other hand, for those philosophers who have explored the idea of
content (as Peacocke has -- as in his book, "Content", Blackwell, but also in
his inaugural lecture as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics at Oxford),
the role of representation becomes crucial.
In Peacocke's case, it is perceptual content that counts, which may brings
a dose of scepticism to Davidson's realist (if that's what it is, even
scientific-realist) idea that there is or should be or could be an unmediated
touch with familiar things and their antics -- I would NOT use 'object'
which presupposes a full epistemology alla Kant).
Alston (in his classic "Philosophy of Language") famously (or is it
infamously cites Grice (a favourite philosopher of mine) as an 'ideationist',
alla Locke. For Locke, indeed, there is 'mediate' signification, and
'immediate' signfiication. And this may relate to Davidson's use of
'unmediated' in
the quote provided by Enns.
Locke, Alston says, holds that words SIGNIFY, immediately, the IDEAS in the
mind of he or she who uses them -- but they signify, or aim at signifying,
mediately, the THINGS for which these ideas stand -- hence (I think) what
Popper, elsewhere, refers to as the new 'way of ideas' (which becomes,
eventually, the title of Grice's posthumous book).
Perhaps talk of representation as keyword here sounds pretentious. It
shouldn't, I hope!
Cheers,
Speranza
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