[lit-ideas] "Very Critically": The Implicatures
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 10:40:45 -0400 (EDT)
"Very Critically" (Ponzen): The Implicatures
Or how to Grice a Popper, and Popper a Grice.
In a message dated 3/21/2014 6:18:56 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes of
"Popper's "critical approach" to science seen in action"
quoting from
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/17/primordial-gravitational-wave
-discovery-physics-bicep
""The Bicep2 team have spent three years analysing the
signal in order to be certain. "This has been like looking
for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar," said co-leader
Clem Pryke of the University of Minnesota.
Nevertheless, the signal will have to be confirmed.
"I think a lot of people will be looking VERY CRITICALLY at this," says
Pontzen."
McEvoy comments:
>"VERY CRITICALLY
" being the operative words - not "very inductively".
For which support he provides the further quote:
>'"They have thought very carefully about how to remove the e
xperimental and other contaminating effects. They are a very experienced
team and this is the real deal but it doesn't mean that
they are necessarily right," said Daw.'
On the other hand, there is an analysis of 'critically' and its
implicatures. Or not.
The word is of course Hellenic. The adjective:
κριτικός
defined by Liddell/Scott as 'critical' (to very helpful there), but also
"able to discern".
So one can say that Heidegger is being critical when he distinguishes (but
others don't) between Dasein ("There-Being") and In-der-Welt-Sein ("In the
world being").
Liddell/Scott quote from Aristotle, APo . 99b35:
“δύναμις σύμφυτος κritikos”
And also from Posidipp. 1.4:
οὐκ ἔχει ῥῖνα κριτικὴν πρὸς τοὖψον
A third quote is from PhlD.Mus.p.8 K:
αἰσθήσεις κrikitos” Phld.Mus.p.8 K.
-- a sort of 'critical experience'.
τὸ κritikon, _sic_ in the neuter is defined by Liddell/Scott as "the
power of discerning", as used by Aristotle in "de An.432a16".
While they quote from Pl.Plt.260c, etc. the phrase:
"ἡ κριτική"
-- the feminine --
which they expand, in context, as being applied to sc.
"τέχνη"
critical technique, as it were.
A further quote is again from Aristotle, "Sens. 44b17": c. gen.,
ἡ γεῦσις τῶν σχημάτων κριτικωτάτη
Cf. Thphr.Sens.43, Ocell.2.7.
Of persons, is used in Aristotle. PA639a9:
[“τὸν ὅλως πεπαιδευμένον] περὶ πάντων ὡς εἰπεῖν κ. τινὰ
νομίζομεν εἶναι
which Liddell/Scott edit as applying
"esp. in language, grammarian, scholar, literary critic,"
as in Pl.Ax.366e, Phld.Po.5.24, Str.9.1.10, etc.
Then there's the application to Crates, Ath. 11.490e,
who distdinguished κritikos and γραμματικός, S.E.M.1.79.
Then there's
εἰ δύναταί τις εἶναι κ. καὶ γραμματικός,
the title of a work by Galen (Libr.Propr.17).
but on the other hand there's
“τῶν ὕστερον γραμματικῶν κληθέντων πρότερον δὲ κ
ritikon.
Further quotes are:
in D.Chr.53.1, cf. Apollod. ap. Clem.Al.Strom.1.16.79;
“οἱ κ. τῶν λόγων” Philostr.VS 2.1.14
πρὸς τοὺς κritikous.,
the title title of work by Chrysippus, Stoic.2.9
ἡ κrikite, opp. ἡ γραμματική, in Taurisc. ap. S.E.M.1.248.
Cf. Sch.DTp.3 H.
Finally, Liddell/Scott consider the 'adverb', "critically",
Adv. -
“kritiκῶς, ἔχειν τινός”
as used in Artem.4Praef.
Cf. Erot.Praef.p.7 N., Men.Rh. p.391 S.
There is another use, of or for judging,
ἀρχὴ κ.
the office of judges, opposite to
ἀρχὴ βουλευτική,
In Arist.Pol.1275b19.
Further quotes refer to the apparent identity of 'kritikos' with "
κρίσιμος, ἑβδομάς" Ph.1.45 (Sup.), cf. Plu.2.134f, Gal.9.93, al. Adv. -“κῶς”
Id.UP17.2, al.
In the modern languages, the story is longer:
critical (adj.)
1580s, "censorious," from critic + -al
1). Meaning "pertaining to criticism" is from 1741; medical sense is from
c.1600; meaning "of the nature of a crisis" is from 1640s.
That of "crucial" is from 1841, from the "decisive" sense in
Latin criticus. Related:
Criticality (1756; in the nuclear sense, 1950).
For the nuclear sense cfr. Bush.
Critically (1650s, "accurately;" 1815, "in a critical situation").
In nuclear science, critical mass is attested from 1940.
----
It's all from Latin criticus "a judge, literary critic," from Greek
"kritikos", "able to make judgments".
Ultimately, fom krinein "to separate, decide" (see "crisis").
A krisis, to a Greek, was "turning point in a disease" (used as such by
Hippocrates and Galen).
Literally, it is a "judgment, result of a trial, selection".
-- as in "Those spots mean measles" (Grice's example). "They meant measles
to the doctor, but nothing to me."
It's all from krinein
to separate, decide, judge".
It's ultimately from a proto-Indo-European root *"krei-"
"to sieve, discriminate, distinguish".
Cf. Greek krinesthai
"to explain;"
But also Old English hriddel "sieve" (as used domestically in Beowulf's
household).
Then there's the cognate Latin cribrum "sieve," but also crimen "judgment,
crime," cernere (past participle cretus) "to sift, separate".
There's Old Irish criathar and Old Welsh cruitr "sieve", which are cognate
with Middle Irish crich "border, boundary").
Transferred non-medical sense is 1620s in English.
A German term for "mid-life crisis" is Torschlusspanik, literally
"shut-door-panic," fear of being on the wrong side of a closing gate, triggers
a
different implicature.
Now to McEvoy's further commentary:
"Experience provides no infallible guarantee and the "critical approach"
is based
on examining for all possible errors to see whether they contaminate the
experimental set-up or otherwise vitiate the results as a valid test."
"Nothing like the inductive method, so beloved of university philosophy
departments when teaching the philosophy of science, plays any critical
role in the scientific debate."
But we can say that Grice, who enjoyed Kneale's book on Inductive Science,
critically deals with levels of induction. He notes that there is a nice
overlap between methodological and ontological considerations there.
So, there is a way in which a critical approach to induction (as per Mill's
Methods) does make sense -- never mind playing a role. My aunt says that
only actors play a role.
"What the science depends on is whether the relevant claims
withstand critical examination of the severest kind we can devise."
I love 'critical examination', in it being emphatic. As opposed to what
Geary calls Duns Scotus's uncritical examination of the neo-Plotinian
literature. ("He had a lot of manuscripts to his disposal, but ignored them
BLATANTLY.").
McEvoy goes on:
"There is a story to be told to explain why the resistance to Popper's
account of scientific method is concentrated in those trained in philosophy
rather than science. Scientists usually find Popper's account a
straightforward and accurate reflection of "what they do", hence the Nobel
Prize-winning
acolytes like Bondi, Eccles and Medawar (- provided of course they have not
be schooled or dogmatised by philosophers' inductive version of "what they
do")."
I would critically distinguish between Snow's Science I and Snow's Science
II -- Snow critically distinguished between the hard sciences and the
humanities. Similarly, the Germans speak of Geistwissenschaft, science of the
ghost, literally. Bondi, Eccles, and Medawar, while scientists, are not _all_
the scientists, and the claim that 'scientists adore Popper for he knows
what they are doing' seems simplistic. On top of that, I would critically
distinguish between 'scientia' and the love of it (as in 'philosophia',
defined by Cicero -- "The Greeks distinguish between _scientia_ and the love
of
_scientia_. We have no such word in Latin, so I propose to keep using the
Hellenism, 'philosophia'". McEvoy's remarks seem to implicate an opposition
between science and love, where there should be LOVE.
McEvoy goes on:
"A standard line of defence here from the inductive school is that, while
scientists admittedly do "what they do" (philosophers do not do it for them
or do it better), the scientist is ill-trained philosophically to
understand "what they do" in philosophical terms."
There is more than a grain of truth in this. The quotes from Liddell/Scott
distinguish (critically) between a critical approach (such as Popper) and a
'grammatical' approach (alla Grice and Witters) -- where 'grammar' of
course is to be understood as 'philosophical grammar'.
There is a lot of interesting literature produced by philosophers on
inductivism (cfr. the references to the confirmation entry in the Stanford I
quote in "Grice and the logic of confirmation". So I grant that a scientist who
is studying the phenomenon Ph-1 should hardly care to distinguish,
grammatically AND critically, what he is doing. Philosophers are what I call
meta-scientists, as they are meta-ethicists (on the whole) -- vide Hare,
"Ethics
and Meta-Ethics" and Nowell-Smith ("Philosophers do meta-ethics; we are
not here to moralise").
McEvoy goes on:
"This line of defence is rendered plausible because scientists are often
ill-trained philosophically [though remember Einstein had a Schilpp volume
"philosopher-scientist"]"
This proves that Schilpp was scientifically trained, rather than the
reverse implicature that McEvoy seems to be triggering. Keyword: Marilyn
Monroe.
McEvoy goes on:
"and when entering philosophical areas can overreach themselves [e.g.
Dawkin's "The God Delusion", which maintains "God" is a falsifiable and
falsified theory]"
I think this over-reach can just be disimplicated by replacing, "god" by
"there is god". Surely Dawkins, while NOT say it, did implicate that the
claim that "There is a god" is a falsified theory. Cfr. Nietzsche, "God is
dead" (in the colloquial German he used: "God has died"). I would grant that
Dawkins should have been careful with the plural, as Cole Porter:
why, the gods above me
who must be in the know
think so little of me
that they allow you to go.
Note that "God" does not scan in the Porter lyric.
---
McEvoy goes on:
"but it becomes highly implausible if we examine closely the character of
scientific debate itself - here we see the scientists need take no lessons
from philosophers as to "what they do""
Usually, lessons are taken on what we SHOULD do. ("I'm taking lessons on
etiquette") (There is a sense in which "He took lessons in Ancient Greek
history" makes a lot of _sense_, but usually, Ancient Greek professors expect
students to draw some 'ought' out of the 'is' -- cfr. "The 300".
McEvoy:
"and "what they do" does not involve any make-believe about induction [see
also Miller and Popper's important (1982) paper showing that there cannot
be a valid theory of induction]."
A point foreshadowed by Strawson in his chapter on the pseudo-problem of
induction in "Introduction to Logical Theory". Surely Miller and Popper
should distinguish (critically) or discern between 'a valid PHILOSOPHICAL
theory
of induction' and some other (allegedly never valid, or invalid) theory of
the same.
McEvoy concludes:
"But we should not think papers on "inductive logic" are entirely a waste
of time: for example, they provided Popper with a compelling argument for
the existence of an "external world", as he could not plausibly conceive that
such papers were a mere figment of his own "internal world" when having
the recurring experience of being forced to read them in his capacity as a
Professor of Logic and Scientific Method."
I think possibly 'force' is a hyperbole --. By the same token one could
argue that when Grice was appointed Full Professor of Philosophy at Berkeley
he was forced to read the secondary literature on the philosophy of
Confucius (in the original).
Cheers,
Speranza
On the other hand, there is an analysis of 'critically' and its
implicatures. Or not.
The word is of course Hellenic. The adjective:
κριτικός
defined by Liddell/Scott as 'critical' (to very helpful there), but also
"able to discern".
So one can say that Heidegger is being critical when he distinguishes (but
others don't) between Dasein ("There-Being") and In-der-Welt-Sein ("In the
world being").
Liddell/Scott quote from Aristotle, APo . 99b35:
“δύναμις σύμφυτος κritikos”
And also from Posidipp. 1.4:
οὐκ ἔχει ῥῖνα κριτικὴν πρὸς τοὖψον
A third quote is from PhlD.Mus.p.8 K:
αἰσθήσεις κrikitos” Phld.Mus.p.8 K.
-- a sort of 'critical experience'.
τὸ κritikon, _sic_ in the neuter is defined by Liddell/Scott as "the power
of discerning", as used by Aristotle in "de An.432a16".
While they quote from Pl.Plt.260c, etc. the phrase:
"ἡ κριτική"
-- the feminine --
which they expand, in context, as being applied to sc.
"τέχνη"
critical technique, as it were.
A further quote is again from Aristotle, "Sens. 44b17": c. gen.,
ἡ γεῦσις τῶν σχημάτων κριτικωτάτη
Cf. Thphr.Sens.43, Ocell.2.7.
Of persons, is used in Aristotle. PA639a9:
[“τὸν ὅλως πεπαιδευμένον] περὶ πάντων ὡς εἰπεῖν κ. τινὰ
νομίζομεν εἶναι
which Liddell/Scott edit as applying
"esp. in language, grammarian, scholar, literary critic,"
as in Pl.Ax.366e, Phld.Po.5.24, Str.9.1.10, etc.
Then there's the application to Crates, Ath. 11.490e,
who distdinguished κritikos and γραμματικός, S.E.M.1.79.
Then there's
εἰ δύναταί τις εἶναι κ. καὶ γραμματικός,
the title of a work by Galen (Libr.Propr.17).
but on the other hand there's
“τῶν ὕστερον γραμματικῶν κληθέντων πρότερον δὲ κ
ritikon.
Further quotes are:
in D.Chr.53.1, cf. Apollod. ap. Clem.Al.Strom.1.16.79;
“οἱ κ. τῶν λόγων” Philostr.VS 2.1.14
πρὸς τοὺς κritikous.,
the title title of work by Chrysippus, Stoic.2.9
ἡ κrikite, opp. ἡ γραμματική, in Taurisc. ap. S.E.M.1.248.
Cf. Sch.DTp.3 H.
Finally, Liddell/Scott consider the 'adverb', "critically",
Adv. -
“kritiκῶς, ἔχειν τινός”
as used in Artem.4Praef.
Cf. Erot.Praef.p.7 N., Men.Rh. p.391 S.
There is another use, of or for judging,
ἀρχὴ κ.
the office of judges, opposite to
ἀρχὴ βουλευτική,
In Arist.Pol.1275b19.
Further quotes refer to the apparent identity of 'kritikos' with "
κρίσιμος, ἑβδομάς" Ph.1.45 (Sup.), cf. Plu.2.134f, Gal.9.93, al. Adv. -
“κῶς” Id.UP17.2, al.
In the modern languages, the story is longer:
critical (adj.)
1580s, "censorious," from critic + -al (1). Meaning "pertaining to
criticism" is from 1741; medical sense is from c.1600; meaning "of the nature
of a
crisis" is from 1640s; that of "crucial" is from 1841, from the "decisive"
sense in Latin criticus. Related: Criticality (1756; in the nuclear sense,
1950); critically (1650s, "accurately;" 1815, "in a critical situation").
In nuclear science, critical mass is attested from 1940.
Latin criticus "a judge, literary critic," from Greek kritikos "able to
make judgments," from krinein "to separate, decide" (see crisis).
Greek krisis "turning point in a disease" (used as such by Hippocrates and
Galen), literally "judgment, result of a trial, selection," from krinein
"to separate, decide, judge," from PIE root *krei- "to sieve, discriminate,
distinguish" (cf. Greek krinesthai "to explain;" Old English hriddel
"sieve;" Latin cribrum "sieve," crimen "judgment, crime," cernere (past
participle
cretus) "to sift, separate;" Old Irish criathar, Old Welsh cruitr "sieve;"
Middle Irish crich "border, boundary"). Transferred non-medical sense is
1620s in English. A German term for "mid-life crisis" is Torschlusspanik,
literally "shut-door-panic," fear of being on the wrong side of a closing
gate.
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