[lit-ideas] Re: Vegetable Philosophy
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2013 12:59:07 -0800 (PST)
Most of us don't have a problem with whales being mammals, but there may be
some more disturbing truths that in a way we know, yet we cannot quite accept.
(Sorry if I sent this twice, the first time I died before I could finish the
sentence.) O.K.
On Wednesday, December 18, 2013 8:26 PM, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
wrote:
I would have thought that any cogent / justifiable attribution of "knowing-that"
would logically or conceptually (I'm not finicky here) involve an attribution of
"believing-that."
As in: "Suma knows that whales are mammals" logically presupposes that "Suma
believes that whales are mammals." To claim "I know that P" while denying "I
believe that P" is a speech act the udderrance of which requires at least 5
Hail Marys. (Yes, it's bovine all the way down.) But that's only if you ask
me.
"What is edible or not is a matter of falsifiability." So true. Even dating
back to the time of Lucy, it was always a matter of "Let Mikie try it."
Walter O
Quoting Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx:
> In a message dated 12/17/2013 5:07:12 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> "Who suggested trees are capable of "propositional knowledge"? Popper's
> suggestion is that trees and animals have knowledge, not that trees have
> propositional knowledge. A tree's knowledge is, in Popper's account, a World
> 1
> kind of dispositional knowledge, as it lacks any World 2. Some animals may
> have World 2 mental states, unconscious and conscious, and knowledge bound
> up with such
World 2 states - a World 2 kind of knowledge. In Popper's
> account only human's have World 3 knowledge. And only World 3 knowledge
> probably counts as what Walter terms "propositional knowledge", though World
> 3
> knowledge is wider than "propositional knowledge". Trees have no access to
> World 3, nor do animals. But while they may lack that kind of distinctively
>
> human knowledge bound up with World 3 that does mean they lack any knowledge
>
> whatsoever."
>
> Well put.
>
> I.e. although what a plant may be said to 'know' MAY be formulated
> propositionally -- cfr. the complications of photosynthesis:
>
> 2n CO2 + 2n DH2 + photons → 2(CH2O)n + 2n DO --
>
> this does not mean that a plant _believes_ -- never mind knows.
>
> For the record, "vegetable" comes from the Latin vegetabilis, which, as
> used by Virgil, merely meant, "animated". Similarly, Catullus uses "vegetare"
>
> to mean "enliven" -- so either the old Romans were confused or _we_ are.
>
> In Varro, De Lingua Latina, the word is derived from "vegetus", which he
> uses to translate Aristotle's "active" -- as in 'active intellect', but now
> with reference to the process of growing, as in a plant.
>
> The word "vegetable" was first recorded in English much later,
since
> Anglo-Saxon had many specific words but seemed to have lacked the general
> concept. "Vegetable" is first used only in the 15th century. It originally,
> as in
> Aristotle, applied to ANY plant.
>
> This is still the use of the ADJECTIVE "vegetable" in biological context
> -- and in the phrase, "vegetable philosophy".
>
> In 1767, however, the meaning (or use) of the term "vegetable" was
> specified, for some reason, to mean "plant cultivated for food, edible herb
> or
> root". It is now believed that a greengrocer first produced this change of
> 'use' or meaning -- or 'implicature' if you must.
>
> On the
other hand, the year 1955 noted the first use of the shortened,
> slang term "veggie". "Vegan", oddly, is earlier, as coined by Donald Watson
> in
> 1944 when he co-founded the London-based British Vegan Society ('vegan'
> initially meant "non-dairy vegetarian", but it later borrowed further
> implicatures).
>
> As an adjective, the word "vegetable" is used in scientific and
> philosophical contexts (as in Popperian epistemology) with a different and
> much
> broader meaning, namely of "related to plants" in general, edible or not. As
>
> Popper reminds us, 'what is edible or not is a matter of falsibiability' --
>
> cfr.
vegetable matter, vegetable kingdom, and vegetable origin.
>
> The meaning of "vegetable" as "plant grown for food" was not established
> until the 18th century, again by greengrocers.
>
> Unlike Popper, but with Nicolai Hartmann, Grice generalises on this --
> Read his section on 'cabbages' and his criticism of Philippa Foot's idea of
>
> the 'natural':
>
> It may seems that the distance placed between the ontological strata of a
> vegetable as a cabbage and an animal as a rabbit breaks up too much the
> continuity of phenomena.
>
> However, there is a close continuity of structural tiers within each
>
stratum.
>
> Indeed, is difficult to see why the ascending series should be interrupted
> at the strata boundaries.
>
> Our human inability -- in some of us -- to point out transitional
> structures is of little account.
>
> Also, in our knowledge of the chain of structures JUST WITHIN and BETWEEN
> the vegetable and animal kingdoms numerous connecting links seem to be
> missing (a rabbit does not evolve from a cabbage).
>
> But that these gaps are apparent do not invalidate the idea of a genetic
> sequence which here inevitably obtrudes itself.
>
> Or not, of course. For this (Popperian) objection
would be justified ONLY
> if the strata distances involved a disruption of the sequence of forms --
> with a 'cabbage' belonging to World 1, in his parlance, and a rabbit to
> World 2 -- again in his parlance.
>
> But something quite different is meant, and this is the sudden emergence of
> new categorial groups (e.g. rabbits) at certain levels -- and not just
> from a magician's hat.
>
> Distance is not to be understood as a gap, but qualitatively as the
> otherness of structure from a certain level upwards. Again, or not, of
> course.
>
> Speranza
>
>
>
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