the speranza did not notice that iota
entails uniqueness
it may be in need of another session of the large funnel
On Thursday, September 21, 2017, Redacted sender jlsperanza for DMARC <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
McEvoy on a different thread notes:
““The cat is on the mat” is simpler in many ways than “e = mc2” but it has
less falsifiability.”
Mmm.
Let’s consider.
i. The cat sat on the mat.
I seem to prefer this version. Admittedly, it is more difficult (or less
‘simple’, or more ‘complex’) to formalise, since we need time indexes
(“sat” is the past tense of ‘sit’) – but it has a triple rhyme that
attracts me – and I think it’s the phrase that was used to teach to read
and write in elementary schools (Toulmin uses it in a philosophical
context).
“e = mc2” seems perfectly transparent to Einstein. But I’m not sure what
he’d do with (i). Let’s suppose we try to formalise it. We have two
occurrences of the last ‘formal device’ (in its vulgar counterpart, as
Grice prefers) of the iota operator, or definite descriptor (‘the’, (ix)).
The utterance refers to an event in the past, so we need temporal indexes
(t2 < t1). We have a phrase, ‘on the mat’. The cat did not just _sit_, but
she did it “on the mat”. Should we treat, qua philosophical logicians,
“sit-on-the-mat” as just ONE predicate, or should we ‘de-compose’ it? I
would de-compose it. The choices would be reflected in the formalization:
ii. S((ix)C, (ix)M) (t2<t1)
Here, “S” stands for a dyadic predicate “sit on”. “C” stands for ‘cat’,
and “M” for ‘mat’. “e = mc2” sounds transparent, but if we add that this is
Schroedinger’s cat, (ii) triggers all sorts of implicatures. It may be
argued that “Schroedinger’s cat” is a misnomer, since it’s actually more
than one cat, so we would need a formalisation of the plural “cats”
(“Schroedinger’s cats sat on the mat.”). This may be the entailment behind
McEvoy’s arguing that “The cat [sat] on the mat” has “less falsifiability”
than Einstein’s adage.
So we may argue that ‘The cat sat on the mat’ may not be _that_ simple
(McEvoy grants that “it _is_ [emphasis mine – Speranza] simpler in MANY
WAYS,” suggesting it may be NOT simpler in OTHER, perhaps fewer (seems to
be the implicature) ways, than Einstein’s adage.
McEvoy gives the illustration, ‘The cat [sat] on the mat,’ as a
counter-example to the precis of Popper’s as per the link given, equating
simplicity with falsifiability. The past tense ‘sat’ possibly complicates
things.
Surely if we are sticking with the present tense, ‘The cat sits on the
mat’ is VERIFIABLE by, well, looking at the cat sitting on the mat (‘The
cat sits on the mat’ has been VERIFIED). If the cat does NOT sit on the
mat, ‘The cat sits on the mat’ has been FALSIFIED. In the past tense, the
‘method of verification’ varies. Consider:
iii. A: The cat sat on the mat!
B: How can you be so sure?
A: There’s hair all over it!
The presence of hair on the mat is an ‘index,’ as Peirce would have it,
that has led the utterer of A to BELIEVE that the cat sat on the mat. It’s
not a totally reliable index, of course – and Schiffer would find plenty of
counter-examples to test A’s ‘certainty’. The occurrence of ‘… believes …’
invites an exploration into the _sense_ of “The cat sat on the mat,” as
uttered by A (Physicians don’t seem to bother WHO utters “e = mc2” but that
seems to be THEIR problem). For, for A to BELIEVE that the cat sat on the
mat, A has to have SENSED that the cat sat on the mat – by SENSING that
there is hair on the mat. And so on.
This exploration onto A’s beliefs seems to distinguish “The cat sat on the
mat” with “e = mc2,” where we assume that Einstein has established, as per
a ‘semantic postulate’ alla Carnap, how to define “e”, “m”, “c”, “2” and
“=”. “Cat” seems, by default, to refer to ‘Felis domesticus’ – a natural
kind. But we are not to assume that utterer A has a knowledge of DNA
material that makes a creature a member of the ‘Felis domesticus’ – a
phrase coined, incidentally, by Erxleben in 1777. “Mat” we may assume that
is an item that belongs to the ‘common ground’ between A and his
co-conversationalist B – it’s not a ‘rug,’ say. It is not a natural kind
but notably an ‘artificial’ kind – of sorts.
The fact that there is hair on the mat poses the ‘falsifiability’ question
as to whether the cat merely SAT there, or perhaps she ‘LAID’ on the mat.
Do cats ‘sit’? It may be argued that ‘sat’ was chosen by the writer of the
elementary ‘reader’ because it rhymes with ‘cat’ and ‘mat’. It may be
argued that you can only ‘sit’ on something like a chair. On a mat, you
rather lie. And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
REFERENCES
Grice, H. P. “Actions and Events,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.
