We are considering the philosophy of R. M. Smullyan, of Hudson (formerly of
Reed).
McEvoy notes:
"The Smullyan quotes [provided by Speranza in his first post entitled,
"Smullyaniana", as opposed to his second post entitled, "Re: Smullyianiana"] do
not amount to any significant criticism of Popper's ideas."
McEvoy on Smullyan and Witters on dying and death.
McEvoy:
"But let's start with Wittgenstein and "Death is not an event in life". We have
debated this before - clearly enough the process of dying may be an event
experienced in life, and if we mean by this "Death" then W[itters] is wrong.
The state of being dead arises after life ends and so if this is what we mean
by "Death" then W[itters] may be right, and even perhaps 'analytically' so."
Mmm. I like the touch, 'analytically so'. Consider:
i. Smullyan died.
ii. Smullyan is dead.
iii. Smullyan said, "Why should I be worried about dying? It's not going to
happen in my lifetime!"
There is a difference between (i) and (ii). Witters could NEVER have uttered
the Smullyan utterance -- because, well, analytically so, Witters was Witters
and Smullyan is Smullyan. Witters is generalising: if he means _his_ death, he
should say so. In German (the lingo Witters spoke), all nouns are written in
initial capitals, so I'm not surprised he uses "Death" (as in "Death and the
Maiden"). The fact that it's the beginning of his utterance confuses. What he
wrote (in McGuinness's translation) runs:
iv. Death is not an event in life.
Is this 'analytically so', as McEvoy suggests? The 'not' is ambiguous. Consider
v. Caesar is not a prime number.
I.e. Witters may be implicating that someone considers that Death is an event,
and he is rejecting this (Strawson's performative theory of 'not'). "Event in
life" contrasts with "event OF life". If Witters had meant, to quote from
McEvoy, "[t]he state of being dead]", he should have said it, or shown it. He
didn't (say it or show it). Therefore, we are in the dark, as it were. It is
true that there is an analytic ring to it. Consider predicate logic.
vi. Smullyan is dead.
Let's formalise this by creating a predicate "ALIVE", and symbolising Smullyan
by 's':
vii. As.
Once Smullyan is dead, we can negate (vii) and get:
viii. ~As.
But this seems to amount, to use Witters's wording, that 'being dead' is the
opposite of 'being alive'. But is it? One might just as well say that a future
person, say, a child someone plans to have is not yet 'alive', which does not
entail, surely, that this future person is 'dead'. So Witters should have been
more careful. Given that he was writing about something totally different in
his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus perhaps he should be forgiven.
McEvoy:
"But the TLP does not seek to show/say the truth of every analytic proposition,
and it is doubtful that W[itters] thinks his senseless propositions are
analytic in the usual sense. So why 'say' "Death is not an event in life"? My
suggestion is that this shows something true, for W[itters], and importantly
true: and it is a truth of a piece with the truth that the border and what lies
beyond the visual field are not part of the visual field, and that the border
and what lies beyond 'what can be said with sense' cannot themselves be said
with sense (though, according to the TLP, the border may be shown; as may its
basis in the logical isomorphism of language and reality). It is not manifest
to everyone what attitude to death is conveyed or shown by "Death is not an
event in life" - and this will obviously strike some as deep wisdom and others
as vacuous and unhelpful. Perhaps it does not show any sayable attitude to
death at all, but must be viewed in terms of the rest of the TLP as pointing
towards yet another truth that cannot be expressed in language with strict
[factual] sense."
Point taken. On the other hand, Smullyan:
iii. Why should I be worried about dying? It's not going to happen in my
lifetime!
is more complex. The first conjunct is a rhetorical question, with the
attending implicature being 'No' (cfr. Alfred Neuman, Why Worry?). The second
conjunct gives the reason for the 'No'. The explanation, unlike Witters's,
relies on ordinary language. Surely, we have a useful expression, "one's
lifetime". But it would be otiose to speak of Smullyan's "lifetime" and of
Smullyan's "deathtime". Given that ordinary language does NOT have a
corresponding colloquial turn of phrase for "deathtime" implies, for
ordinary-language philosophers as Smullyan is, that Aristotle's vitalism is
wrong.
McEvoy:
"As a sidebar: in English law there is a distinction between 'being dead' and
'not being alive', but this is less absurd than it seems as it applies not to
the state of death/not living but to types of resultant losses. It means that
there is a distinction between losses arising from not being alive (like lost
earnings) and losses arising from being dead (like funeral costs). The courts
aren't saying someone not alive may not be dead or vice versa."
Well, the son of Prince William, who might be king of Great Britain 'is not
alive' -- i.e. with "Alive" symbolised as "A" we have "Ax") but it would be
rude to say that this x is 'dead'. The logical form shows that
viii. ~As
is totally different from
ix. Ds.
-- where "D" means "Dead". The English have a phrase, "dead as the dodo". Given
that some species that are now thought of as extinct may cease to be so, the
phrase becomes something of an otiosity. This has a Griceian explanation. A
grice was a Scots big that was so vicious that the farmers managed to kill of
of them (all of the grices). But surely a scientist can make the grice alive
again. As in the grice is dead; long live the grice -- sort of thing. English
law perhaps should consider grices more seriously. (Some were seen on the
Northern border of England).
McEvoy then turns to Popper. McEvoy consider's Smullyan's utterance"
x. Of course the falsity of the fact that you believe that the pillar box is
blue IMPLIES that you don't believe it is blue; but this does not mean that you
believe it is NOT blue!
and comments:
"Okay, take X where X is "It is false that 'Smith believes the pillar box is
blue'". X is consistent with 'Smith believes the pillar box is not blue' and
also with 'Smith believes there is no pillar box, blue or not'. Now, if 'Smith
believes the pillar box is not blue,' obviously Smith believes it is not blue:
a question may be raised as to whether Smith can believe is it false that 'The
pillar box is blue', in the sense where Smith also believes there is a pillar
box, and yet not believe the pillar box is not blue? Logically he perhaps
should believe it, but perhaps Smith's beliefs defy logic? What Popper says is
that he does not 'believe in belief' or in 'epistemic logic' or in the JTB
version of knowledge, and this kind of problem is really far removed from what
is central to Popper's ideas and view of knowledge. [You may find such problems
clogging up philosophy journals but not scientific ones or even ones in a
non-scientific field like law]. Of course, Smith can believe there is no pillar
box, and do so without believing the pillar box is not blue (after all, it
doesn't exist): this also has sweet fanny adams to do with what is central to
Popper's ideas and view of knowledge. So (1) you will not find a very direct
reply to the kind of point made by Smullyan within Popper's work (2) Smullyan's
point is a sideshow to what is important given Popper's work (3) the sideshow
is likely a product of adherence to some form of JTB-'theory of knowledge'."
Point taken. A belief in a falsity is a complex thing. Some people call this
'Neg-Raising' -- as in:
xi. A: I saw a blue pillar box in Kidderminster.
B: I don't believe it!
cfr. if anti-Gettierians are right and B _is_ JTK:
xii. A: I saw a blue pillar box in Kidderminster.
B: I don't think so!
In this case
xiii. B doesn't think that A saw a blue pillar box in Kidderminster.
is, via implicature, equivalent (but in a defeasible way) to:
xiv. B thinks that A did not see a blue pillar box in Kidderminster.
I.e. Implicature, being a sort of understatement, is the right thing to deploy
here, since a formal rejection of A's claim would be rude -- even in
Kidderminster.
McEvoy then turns to a different utterance by Smullyan to weigh its Popperian
implicatures:
xvi. Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be
critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can be correctly
labelled 'wrong.'
McEvoy notes:
"Whether vague or precise, every statement has its negation - and either the
statement is true and the negation false or the statement is false and the
negation true. It may be that it is harder to decide the truth or falsity of
vague statements - but perhaps not always: but the negation of a vague
statement will itself generally be a vague statement ['Not all blondes are
dumb']. And, provided the vagueness is not such as to mean the statement lacks
'sense', either the vague statement or its vague negation will be true (but not
both). What we should not confuse is truth and falsity with proof and disproof
- yet these are frequently confused. It is right to say that statements that
lack a clear falsifiable character may be statements where it is hard to
disprove them because of this lack: but they will nevertheless be either true
or false, just as with more falsifiable statements. Smullyan may be read as
making a point very congenial to Popper's outlook - for Popper explains that
human W3-based knowledge grows through critical feedback, and therefore
falsifiable formulations are preferable to non-falsifiable because they better
lend themselves to critical feedback. In a like manner we prefer 'the precise'
formulation to 'the vague' because it lends itself better to criticism (though
Popper also argues we sometimes use a most imprecise and mistaken view of
'precision')."
Good point. I thought indeed that the Popperian keyword in Smullyan's utterance
was indeed 'critical'. So perhaps we may have an underlying anti-Popperian view
(the Popper of "Discovery") dressed in Popperian garb ('critical'). Or not, of
course.
Thanks for your considerations.
Cheers,
Speranza
D
Normal service resumed
Temporarily
Replace 'wrong' (in iii) and 'falsity' (in ii) with some Popperian version of
falsifiability and you see how un-Popperian Smullyan can be!
From: "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, 12 February 2017, 21:04
Subject: [lit-ideas] Smullyaniana
An old Reedian, as they call them (cfr. "old Wykehamist," or "old Cliftonian,"
as Grice was), R. M. Smullyan (a friend of Grice's, incidentally) takes
positions which may be called anti-McEvoyian, in that they (the positions, that
is) were anti-Witters, and anti-Popper.
Against Witters, Smullyan (whose favourite book, for Grice, was his
"First-order logic" -- that he relied on for his "Vacuous Names") expressed:
i. Why should I worry about death? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!
This is in obvious opposition to the much more obscure thoughts on death and
dying by Witters in the, of all treatises -- or 'tractatuses', as Geary does
not prefer -- "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus".
The utterances against Popper is more convoluted; there are at least two:
ii. Of course the falsity of the fact that you believe that the pillar box is
blue IMPLIES that you don't believe it is blue; but this does not mean that you
believe it is NOT blue!
iii. Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be
critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can be correctly
labelled 'wrong.'
Replace 'wrong' (in iii) and 'falsity' (in ii) with some Popperian version of
falsifiability and you see how un-Popperian Smullyan can be!
Cheers,
Speranza
