[lit-ideas] Re: The Causal Theory of Perception
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2014 05:45:02 -0800 (PST)
This reminds me of a passage from Beyond Good and Evil:
0. That the separate philosophical ideas are not
anything optional or autonomously evolving, but grow up
in connection and relationship with each other, that,
however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear in
the history of thought, they nevertheless belong just as
much to a system as the collective members of the fauna of
a Continent—is betrayed in the end by the circumstance:
how unfailingly the most diverse philosophers always fill in
again a definite fundamental scheme of POSSIBLE
philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always revolve
once more in the same orbit, however independent of
each other they may feel themselves with their critical or
systematic wills, something within them leads them,
something impels them in definite order the one after the
other—to wit, the innate methodology and relationship of
their ideas. Their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery
than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a
home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of
the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a
kind of atavism of the highest
order. The wonderful family resemblance of all Indian,
Greek, and German philosophizing is easily enough
explained. In fact, where there is affinity of language,
owing to the common philosophy of grammar—I mean
owing to the unconscious domination and guidance of
similar grammatical functions—it cannot but be that
everything is prepared at the outset for a similar
development and succession of philosophical systems, just
as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities
of world- interpretation.
On Monday, March 3, 2014 2:31 PM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
In a message dated 3/2/2014 12:11:20 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
An 'analytic' claim is one that is true merely by virtue of the stipulated
meaning of the terms in the claim.
As an 'analytic claim' must be true without reference to any 'facts'
beyond the meaning of its terms, the truth of an analytic claim cannot depend
of
any 'facts' that hold 'in reality', and so its truth cannot tell us
anything about what holds 'in reality'.
Whether a claim [e.g. "All atoms are particles"] is analytic or synthetic,
cannot be deduced from its logical form but depends on the methods used to
defend it.
It may do to relate this to two technical terms used by Witters in
Tractatus. I'm not sure what humourless prose he used in the vernacular
Teutonic,
but in the Ogden witty translation, they come out as, as I believe,
a contingency
and
a tautology.
Thus:
p v ~ p
is a tautology.
p & q
is a contigency.
I mention this because McEvoy's rephrase of the analytic-synthetic
distinction alludes to a phrase familiar to Wittgensteinians: tautologies, and
analytic claims, 'do not speak about the world'; synthetic truths (or
falsehoods, for that matter) do.
I'm not sure. It seems to me that to CLAIM that 'p or not-p' is ANALYTIC
(and while trusting it does not speak about the world) and while granting it
may be the invention of a philosopher (Aristotle, 'tertium non datur') IT
SEEMS TO me that while what it SAYS does not speak about the world what it,
not shows, but IMPLICATES, does.
It seems that philosophers (of a certain type that we may call 'analytic')
are into identifying these conceptual truths which do speak about the world
in a pretty deep sense. This is what Grice means when he says he is into
'categories', whether these be 'linguistic', or 'ontological', or
'psychological', or what have you.
It may do to revise that page on Way of Words where Grice holds a causal
theory of 'know':
A student knows the date of the battle of Waterloo (or that the battle of
Waterloo was fought in 1815)
iff
the battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815
the student thinks that the battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815
some causal clause connecting the student's thought and the fact that the
battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815.
McEvoy objects that such an analysis leaves out cases of 'false' knowledge
-- as a student who knows that the battle of Waterloo was fought in 1814.
It is by 'trial-and-error' in scare quotes that a student arrives at the
right conclusion as to what he knows and what he sees.
We should then consider McEvoy's claim that echoes the positivist claim
('the method of verification is...') to the effect that there is nothing in
the DICTUM of a saying (if that's not an otiosity, read it as 'nothing in the
LETTER of a saying that tells us or shows us or implicates that it is
analytic (or synthetic for that matter). Only the 'method'.
Spring follows Winter.
It may be held that by examining the proposition we should find out if it's
analytic or not. The fact that Geary and Speranza may disagree on that is
neither here nor there.
When Grice claims that his causal analysis of 'see' applies, he is
referring to his own idiolect (which happens to be mine, in some respects), not
ALL idiolects. Grice is ready to admit that in some idiolects, the clause that
states that what is known is true may be 'revoked' (although he has a
theory of disimplicature if you wish to stick to his analysis and explain away
the 'sloppy usages' in a different way concordant with his analysis).
Now, if you we have an analysis of 'see' that includes three clauses:
i. one about perception.
ii. one about the truth of what is being seen (or rather the existence of
what is being seen)
iii. one about the causal role of the object seen upon the perception
it is TRUE, as McEvoy notes, that things could have been otherwise, and
there doesn't seem to be anything 'necessary' about this being the case. But I
think Grice's analysis has to be seen as conditional, indeed
bi-conditional:
"I see that p" iff "1" and "2" and "3""
and it is THIS that is held to be analytic. And it is held to be analytic
in the sense that Aristotle's law of the excluded middle (tertium non datur,
if you mustn't) is analytic.
The idea is that philosophers are into grand things about the categorial
nature of the universe, and not about observing a fly in a bottle. Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
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