[lit-ideas] Re: The Causal Theory of Perception
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 13:47:49 +0000 (GMT)
>You are right, it is entailment, not implicature, that Grice wants to assign
>to
seeing. A statement like: "John saw the cat on the porch" would then
have it as part of its meaning that the cat was on the porch.>
The substantive metaphysical issue surely cannot be dissolved or resolved or
solved so easily: viz. the issue of whether, when John has an experience of
'seeing a cat' in his 'internal world', there is anything in the 'external
world' that is (a) the "object" of this experience (b) a cause of this
experience.
We cannot surely conclude that, just because "John has an experience of 'seeing
a cat' in his 'internal world'", it follows by entailment that "there is
something in the 'external world' that is (a) the "object" of this experience
(b) a cause of this experience." Such an entailment cannot be predicated on the
mere fact that we may (somehow) mean "there is something in the 'external
world' that is (a) the "object" of this experience (b) a cause of this
experience" whenever we say "John has an experience of 'seeing a cat' (in his
'internal world')". The fact we may mean this does not mean that what we mean
is true.
That is, we cannot sidestep the substantive metaphysical question of whether it
is the case that "objects" play a causal role in their perception by treating
this as equivalent to a question of what we may generally mean when we say
"John sees a cat on the porch" (or the like). We may as well argue that if we
mean by "God exists" that God really does exist, then our saying "God exists"
entails that it is the case that God exists, and so conclude that it is in fact
the case that God exists. As an argument this is both feeble and confused,
switching from 'meaning' to 'truth' in an invalid way.
Dnl
Ldn
On Sunday, 2 February 2014, 19:07, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
You are right, it is entailment, not implicature, that Grice wants to assign to
seeing. A statement like: "John saw the cat on the porch" would then have it as
part of its meaning that the cat was on the porch. Admittedly, "John saw the
cat on the porch but it wasn't there" would be odd. But it is interesting to
note that "John didn't see the cat on the porch" does not necessarily entail
that the cat wasn't there,as we might expect. That is, the negation does not
seem to pertain to the entailed meaning. I wonder how Grice deals with this.
O.K.
On Sunday, February 2, 2014 12:36 PM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
In "How Pirots Carulise Elatically: Some Simple Ways", Grice writes:
"a pirot 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."
I propose to introduce
ψ
as a psychological predicate correlative to 'believing'. For what is the
good of a philosophy of perception if it won't help us with beliefs (and
plus, Grice does speak of 'perceptual beliefs' like the belief that the pillar
box seems red to him).
and
φ
as a predicate like 'red'.
In the above, then, it's
o is φ
the object (or 'obble') as perceived by the subject (or pirot) is 'red'
is the 'that'-clause that becomes the clause of perception (or
'potching'). Then, a specimen of a 'potching' or perceiving can grow into
'cotching'
(say, a belief) -- Interestingly, in "Causal Theory" Grice compares the
thesis he wants to defend with one that ALSO sees
knowledge as a type of belief
(He lists as a suspect thesis that which states that if you KNOW something
you don't believe it --
http://www.hist-analytic.com/GRICE.pdf
p. 140 -- the six propositions that he considers there, including "What is
known to me to be the case is not also believed by me to be the case", are
worth checking out. They can be fun! --.
It's with this idea of obbles being or seeming φ1, or φ2 or φn, according
to perceptual (potching) mode I, II, III, IV or V (the five 'senses' of
perception) that Grice intends to generalise the phenomenon of the alleged
'factivity' of "see" (as
in "I see that it is raining") into further and more
complicated philosophical phenomena. Or not (cfr. "I heard that it ;the sky
-- the cloud] was thundering" > therefore, it [the cloud] was thundering).
We are also considering if we can make use of Aristotle's quaternary view
of causation when we speak of the causal theory of perception
In a
message dated 2/1/2014 2:52:15 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
"For Aristotle, the perceiver receives the sensible form of the object,
thus presumably the formal cause of perception would be contained in the
object itself. (Although the potentiality to receive the form needs to be
present in the receiver.) Since I have at hand a paper by Mortimer Adler, "
Sense Cognition: Aristotle vs. Aquinas" I thought that I would quote a part
of
it. Adler says that the Aristotelians and the Thomists agree that: (a)
that, in the case of material composites, the form of that which is knowable
and can become actually known
(i.e., the form of the quod) must be received
in the knower, separated from or without its matter (i.e., the matter to
which it is united in
the quod); A distinction is further made between
'sensible forms' and 'intelligible forms'."
Mmm. I like that.
I like to use 'quod' like that. Indeed a hylemorphic compound, as I think
people call it: form-and-matter, or form-cum-matter.
"the form [eidos, forma] of that which is [PERCEIVABLE by the subject] and
which can actually BE PERCEIVED [the form of the quod] MUST BE RECEIVED by
the perceiving subject separated from its matter."
I suppose that in the causal theory of perception it is the MATTER that
matters, hence Grice's emphasis on objects being 'material'. But I suppose he
should grant some status to the formal cause, too.
And
we should explore why only the 'efficient' cause came to acquire
relevance in later philosophy.
It would also interesting to see how Aristotle (rather than Aquinas) saw
this and how
his analysis of perception was later received in Hellenistic
post-Aristotelian philosophy; after all, the idea of 'phantasmata' and allies
was the MAIN topic of what the Ancients called 'theoretical philosophy'
(aesthesis being perception) as opposed to the more boring ethical philosophy
about how to lead a happy life.
Back to Grice:
O. K. also notes:
"As I understand, Grice says that a statement like: "I saw a cat"
conventionally implies that there really was a cat,"
I would think that the technical notion to use here is that of ENTAILMENT.
Of course we are never sure what an entailment is, since it was a coinage
by Moore that Grice adored. But it can
be represented logically as in
cogito
-----
ergo sum
We can say that 'sum' is an entailment of 'cogito'; or that 'cogito'
ENTAILS 'sum'.
So, rather than
'conventional implicature', we have something pretty
stronger here:
John saw a cat
----
A cat exists.
It should be pointed out that perhaps we should follow Walter O. and
concentrate on cases of perceiving-that. That the cat is on the mat, for
example, or that the pillar box seems red.
John sees that the pillar box is red.
-----
Therefore, the pillar box is red.
So, I would think it's ENTAILMENT which is at issue. This is important
because Grice wants to contrast the 'implicature' with what the statement
proper (what he meant, rather than merely SAID). And entailments, oddly as it
may sound, are parts of what
is said. Note his example:
He has stopped beating off his wife.
This example Grice discusses in "Causal Theory", and it's a trick of an
example, as it should. It's also sexist and politically incorrect
but I
suppose Grice is trading on received cliches there. I would make a distinction
between the AFFIRMATIVE:
He has stopped beating his wife.
which ENTAILS that he has beaten his wife.
And the negative:
He has NOT stopped beating his wife; he never started.
In the case of the affirmative, we have entailment. In the case of the
negative, it's not.
"He hasn't stopped beating his wife" cannot ENTAIL that he has beaten his
wife. That's why Grice discusses this in 1961 as a stock example of a
presupposition. The trick is in the question,
"Have you stopped beating your wife?"
The joke goes that even if you say, "No!" simpliciter, you may be taken to
mean that you are still beating her. Whereas if you expand that to read:
"No, I have never stopped beating my wife; because I never actually
started beating
her, nor is my intention to EVER do so."
----
So 'see' would have as one of its entailments that the that-clause is
true. "See" is a factive verb, in the words of the Kiparskys, that Grice will
later come to quote.
"Conventional implicature" is used by Grice in a rather technical term for
things like
"She was poor but she was honest".
Conventional implicature, like conversational implicature, differs from
logical implication. Neither conventional nor conversational implicature deal
with the truth-conditions of the statements involved.
But an 'entailment' is more like the part of the 'sense' of the
statement,
even if not the complete sense. '
Frege, incidentally, held pretty similar views, and he has views on what
he calls, informally, the 'colour' (or as I prefer, the coloratura) of this
or that
remark, as opposed to its truth-condition or _sense_.
Omar goes on:
"... and if a speaker is using it differently, i.e. without this
implication, or without necessarily committing himself to it, then this is
disimplicature. We may choose to call it disimplicature or some other such term
but
nevertheless there are such 'loose' uses of "see" in every-day language."
Indeed. In fact, at one point in "Causal Theory" he does note that his
account may not be final for ALL uses of 'see', and that there are uses of
'see' which commit oneself to something STRONGER than the causal theory of
perception (or weaker, as the case may be).
---
In Latin,
these verbs are referred to as 'verba percipiendi', and we
should distinguish the five senses (qua perception)
I saw that the cat was black
---- Therefore, the cat was black
I
heard that the explosion was a mile away
-- Therefore, the explosion was a mile away
I smelled that the rose was sweet
--- Therefore the rose was sweet
I touched that the corpse was fresh
--- Therefore the corpse was frech
I tasted that there was alcohol in the beverage
-- Therefore there was alcohol in the beverage
And now for the passage in Causal Theory:
p. 145 on
http://www.hist-analytic.com/GRICE.pdf
"I have extracted from the first
clause of the initial
formulation
of the causal theory of perception
an outline of a causal analysis of perceiving
which is, I hope, at least not obviously
unacceptable. I have of course considered
the analysis only in relation to seeing; a
more careful discussion would have to
pay
attention to non-visual perception"
[This he attempts in "Some remarks about the [five] senses," reprinted in
Butler, "Analytic Philosophy" and in Ways of Words, and cited by Sibley,
"Perception"]
"and even within the field of
visual perception the suggested analysis
might be unsuitable for some uses
of 'see' which would require a stronger
condition than that proposed by the
theory."
DISIMPLICATED uses, such as
"Macbeth saw Banquo" (when he was not there to be seen)
or
"Hamelt saw his father in the ramparts of the castle of Elsinor" where he
merely saw the ghost of his
father
require rather a WEAKER condition, and it should be noted that while the
"Banquo" example occurs in Way of Words, the Elsinor example is only in the
Grice Papers, along with the coinage of 'disimplicature'. Grice felt that
talk of disimplicature may minimise his contribution to the theory of
implicature, and he might be right!
Cheers,
Speranza
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