[lit-ideas] The Senses of Martians
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 14:18:07 EDT
In a message dated 7/6/2009 10:58:12 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
pastone@xxxxxxxxx writes:
The parallax view is essential to human experience.
---
Even to blind people? Your normalism irritates me.
Anyway, this is Grice on x-ing and y-ing
This was before the Moon had been walked.
-----
Coady writes:
"I have a bone to pick with certain inhabitants of outer space who owe
their existence
to Professor H. P. Grice."
If we saw a Martian, Grice writes,
"we should be inclined to say" that they possess a new sense.
On learning Martian, we find out that we find no verb in Martian that
corresponds to our 'see'.
"Instead, we find two verbs which we decide to render as x-ing and y-ing,
and which function in such a way that the Martians speak of themselves as
x-ing and y-ing things to be of certain colours, sizes, and shapes."
"Further, they are similar to Earthmen in appearance, except that in their
heads they have, one above another, two pairs of ORGANS, "not perhaps
exactly like one another but each pair more or less like our eyes: each pair
of
organs is found to be sensitive to light waves""
It seems that x-ing is dependent upon the operations of the upper organs
and y-ing on that of the lower organs.
Grice poses the question:
Are x-ing and y-ing both cases of SEEING, or do one or both of them
constitute the exercise of a sense other than sight?"
Should we say that the Martians 'see with an extra set of eyes'?
"Would we not in fact want to ask whether x-ing something to be round was
like y-ing something to be round, or whether when something
x-ed BLUE to them
this was like or unlike its
y-ing blue to them?"
"If in answer to such questions as they said, 'Oh no, there's all the
difference in the world!', then I think," Grice writes, "we should be inclined
to say that either x-ing or y-ing (if not both) must be SOMETHING OTHER
than seeing; we might of course be quite unable to decide _which_ (if either)
was seeing."
"We do commonly attribute sight, touch, hearing, etc, to DUMB animals, and
here we not only make no use of human criteria, but there seems to be no
way in which we could."
"There is all the difference in the world between x-ing something to be
blue and y-ing it to be blue. Grice notes we should be VERY struck by this
remark, coming from the Martians."
cfr.
Lorus and Margery Milne, The senses of animals and men (London, 1963).
Grice cites from Molyneux. A difference between x-ing a thing as blue and
y-ing a thing as blue would be shown if Martians who acquired the use of
y-organs late in life had trouble detecting colour thorugh these organs when
the operation of the x-organs was inhibited."
Grice quotes from Aristotle, "De Sensu et Sensibili" 442b5-10, where
Aristotle mentions that roughness, smoothness, sharpness and bluntness, which
are perceived by a 'common' sense.
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Ref. "The sense of Martians", in "Some remarks about the senses",
in WoW
googlebooks, by Grice.
ps. Thanks to A. Palma for reminding me that John R. Searle was born
in Denver,
Colorado. I still need to know where Adriano Palma was born
(but I'll survive regardelss, for the time being).
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