T. Fjeld was reporting "[a] simple question -- from an ordinary kind of guy:”
The question runs:
“If this is so, can man, can man’s work in the future still be expected to
thrive in the fertile ground of a homeland and mount into the ether, into the
far reaches of the heavens and the spirit? Or will everything now fall into the
clutches of planning and calculation, of organization
and automation?”
And the source is explicitly given: “Heidegger, Discourse."
Grice calls Heidegger "the greatest living philosopher" in the first William
James lecture.
Note that Heidegger's utterance is of the form:
i. p ⊃ (q v r)
Of course, one would need to search for the antecedent to the above
conditional. Notably what Heidegger, in translation, refers to as “this is so.”
Provided the antecedent, or apodosis, to the conditional, Heidegger formulates
a disjunction. One should take the disjunction, _prima facie_, as inclusive.
Grice argues that the reading of ‘or’ as exclusive is merely implicatural – and
not part of the ‘sense’ of “or” (Do not multiply senses beyond necessity).
The language of the “Discourse” is hardly transparent but then neither is
Grice’s jargon! If the ‘or’ is inclusive, one should provide an analysis of
both disjuncts. Helm has expanded on this, and Fjeld seems to have summarised
“r” above as relating to Utilitarianism. So let that be!
Grice was obsessed with the logic of questions and answers. Heidegger uses two
“?”s. One for the first disjunct, and one for the second. The logical form
seems to be:
ii. p ⊃ q?
iii. p ⊃ r?
Grice would wonder what is the scope of “?”: should it include the “p”? It
would seem so. But this kind of questions are rare in conversation: “If you are
have a headache, would you like an aspirin?”. So it seems that Heidegger is
ASSUMING that _this is so_, and further wondering the scenarios for both
disjuncts being true (as it is the case if the disjunction is inclusive).
Popper reacted against the Circle of Vienna, so-called, and _they_ reacted
against Heidegger. The reason why Grice says Heidegger was in 1967 “the
greatest living philosopher” may well be Grice’s reaction to Freddie Ayer who
had brought the Viennese Circle philosophy to Oxford with the attack of this
philosophy to Heidegger’s ‘logical syntax’ (“Nothing noths.”).
Popper’s approach would be more dialytic. Consider Heidegger again:
“If this is so, can man, can man’s work in the future still be expected to
thrive in the fertile ground of a homeland and mount into the ether, into the
far reaches of the heavens and the spirit? Or will everything now fall into the
clutches of planning and calculation, of organization
and automation?”
Let’s skip the condition, “if this is so”: and stick with the questions now
turned into statements.
q. Man’s work can in the future still be expected to thrive in the fertile
ground of a homeland and mount into the ether, into the far reaches of the
heavens and the spirit.
r. Everything will now fall into the clutches of planning and calculation, of
organization and automation.
It is “r” which I take Fjeld to identify with utilitarianism – although perhaps
not in the way ‘utilitarian’ is used in Oxford to refer to the “English
utilitarians” (Grice was semi-offended once by being called an “English
futilitarian”).
Both ‘q’ and ‘r’ are in the future tense, and Popper may have a problem with
the falsifiability of these. Cfr. Aristotle on the naval battle. “q” is
_poetic_ in diction. The ‘still’ seems to implicate that at the time Heidegger
was giving his ‘speech’ (which is what ‘discourse’ stands for, I think), man’s
work _was_ expected to do so. For x to be expected to do something is different
from x actually _doing_ that something. So one has to be careful. Hope springs
eternal, they say, and I take Heidegger ‘expect’ (in the English translation of
his ‘Discourse’) to embody this feeling or sentiment of hope. Heidegger’s
inclusion, in “q” of ‘spirit’ – German “Geist” – is metaphysical, and Popper
might have something to say about this. Possibly Popper would regard the
expectation expressed by Heidegger in “q” as belonging to W3.
As for the utilitarian “r” (that Helm relates to bureaucracy), it is
interesting to note the upward direction in “q” and the downward direction in
“r” (expressed by Heidegger’s use of ‘fall’). The clutches Heidegger mentions
in “r” are four: planning, calculating, organising, and automatising. Yes,
that’s a verb! 1837, "to make into an automaton;" see automaton + -ize. The
usage to mean, "to make automatic" is attested by 1952. Related: Automatized;
automatizing. My guess is Heidegger merges “to make into an automaton” and “to
make automatic”. The thing is Greek enough. The ‘-matos’ of ‘automatos’ is best
rendered in English as "thinking, animated, willing," from a
Proto-Indo-European root *mn-to-, from root *men- (1) "to think,” cognate of
course with Grice’s “mean” and Cicero’s “mens.” The fact that Heidegger’s
discourse is supposed to be an analysis of ‘thinking’ makes an examination of
the etymology of ‘automatic’ particularly relevant. Or not, of course.
Cheers,
Speranza
