In his interesting post, entitled, "Why does anything exist?", L. Helm notes
that "in the 11-8-12 issue of the NYROB is a review of Why Does the World
Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt. The Reviewer, Freeman
Dyson, entitles his review "What Can you Really Know" Dyson writes, "The
philosophers are more interesting than the philosophy. Most of them are
eccentric characters who have risen to the top of their profession. They think
their deep thoughts in places of unusual beauty such as Paris and Oxford."
Indeed, hence my retitling this as:
i. Why did Grice exist?
It may be argued that Grice, being a 'thinker', requires a historical present:
ii. Why does Grice exist? (Cfr. Why does Beethoven exist?)
And Helm, by posing the question in more general terms (assuming Grice is
something -- vide his "Vacuous Names" where Grice considers
iii. Pegasus does not exist.
--),
iv. Why does anything exist?
Helm is implicating he is asking for an answer, along Leibnizian lines
(Leibniz's law and the principle of sufficient reason). Or not.
Dyson, who is not a philosopher, is right:
v. Philosophers are more interesting than Philosophy.
Recall that for Boethius, Philosophy was merely the hand-maiden, as I think
that's the English translation for 'ancilla', of "Theology" ("The Consolation
of Philosophy"). I.e. Philosophia is an abstract Latinate Hellenism, while a
philosopher like Herbert Paul Grice (or Popper, for that matter) is _flesh_.
Dyson writes that mostly all philosophers "are eccentric characters who
philosophise in places of unusual beauty like Oxford."
Indeed. Oxford has indeed unusual beauty -- hence her motto, 'the city of
dreaming spires.' When a few Oxonians were expelled and founded Cambridge, they
chose another nice place, but of course nothing beats Oxford -- there are no
dreaming spires in the rather flatter Cambridge -- also it's more far (or
'farrer', as Geary prefers) from civilization, i.e. London. London Uni is not a
place of unusual beauty -- Popper taught at London uni -- first because there
is no such thing as London Uni.
But then as Ryle said, there is no thing as Oxford uni -- 'gown' vs. town.
Grice thought his deep thoughts in a VERY SMALL ROOM up a pretty steep stais in
a 'college' (formerly a Cistercian monastery), St. John's. -- And while the
GARDENS ('backyard', as Grice called it) of St. John's are beautiful, Grice's
room itself ain't.
What makes Oxford a place of unusual beauty is the Isis and the Cherwell. St.
John's is not far from these 'waterways'. But this may lead us to discuss what
makes a waterway beautiful (for which vide Sibley's compilation of Aesthetic
Papers, Clarendon.
O. T. O. H., Grice came from "The Heart of England," also a place of unusual
beauty; his alma mater, Clifton, being near the Severn, is also a place of
unusual beauty. And I suppose that Grice started philosophising while in the
Heart of England (Harborne, if you must -- an affluent suburb of old Brum --
and unlike downtown Brum, a place of unusual beauty) and Clifton.
Helm goes on
"In discussing David Deutsch, "Holt visited Deutsch at his home in a village a
few miles from Oxford. The chapter describing the visit is entitled 'The Magus
of the Multiverse.'"
I suppose that while we may accept:
vi. The Multiverse exists.
Deutsch is blatantly violating one of Grice's conversational maxims:
vii. Be as informative as is required.
-- Who dare Dyson NOT mention what 'village' "a few miles from Oxford" he went
to? One has to do the research!
viii. Why does Headington exist?
Well, because, Hedena existed (Headington means "Hedena's dun").
Aside from Oxford city centre (according to Nancy Mitford, it is non-U to add
'city'), there are several suburbs and neighbourhoods within the borders
Oxford, including Headington. As such, Headington contrasts with suburbs and
neighbourhoods which lies OUTSIDE (or 'without', as Grice would prefer) the
city boundaries, such as Cumnor Hill.
Helm goes on:
"Deutsch is a professional physicist"
as opposed to a gentlemanly one?
"... who uses physics as a basis for philosophical speculation."
-- which is a no-no. Either you are a philosopher or you are a physicist. You
cannot have your cake and eat it too, or as Geary prefers, the proof of the
pudding is in the eating.
Dyson goes on:
"Unlike most philosophers Deutsch understands quantum mechanics and feels at
home in a quantum universe."
Then, if he understands such stuff, perhaps he is no philosopher." Grice
recalls that what struck him most of the first philosopher he respected, Cook
Wilson, was his confidence with his own ignorance:
ix. What we know we know.
Grice thought that profound; his friend Isaiah Berlin found it otiose, "and
tautologically stupid."
Dyson goes on:
"Deutsch likes the many-universe interpretation of quantum mechanics, invented
by Hugh Everett, of Princeton."
While
x. Princeton was invented.
I would rather say that Everett DISCOVERED that quantum mechanics could be
interpreted in terms of the multiverse. It's like when we say that Columbus
discovered, rather than 'invented', America.
Dyson goes on:
"Everett imagined the quantum universe as an infinite assemblage of ordinary
universes all existing simultaneously. He called the assemblage the
multiverse."
And then he left Princeton.
Note that when we say, "Everett, of Princeton", we are IMPLICATING that he
TAUGHT there, whereas he only STUDIED there (never LEARNED there -- "Only the
poor learn at Princeton"). (Everett was a mere student at Princeton -- i.e. the
important bit of Princeton -- not a 'professional' anything at Princeton).
"The script writers for The One must have read Everett."
"In this film, "The One", there is a Multiverse police force to keep
unauthorized people from traveling between the universes. Jason Statham and
Delroy Lindo are Multiverse policemen. An evil Kung Fu expert, Gabriel Yulaw
(played by Jet Li) is managing to travel from universe to universe killing
versions of himself as he goes, because as he does he gains strength.
Unfortunately for him all the others do as well. The last one to be killed is
Gabe Law, but he has been trained in a better form of Kung Fu and manages to
defeat Yulaw who is given a life sentence in the Hades Universe. In the film
there were only about 125 versions of Gabe (etc) Law, far short of the
"infinite assemblage" imagined by Deutsch."
I wonder why Everett chose the rather atrocious lexeme 'assemblage,' as applied
to that beautifully philosophical word, 'infinite'. Infinite translates Greek
'a-peiron' -- one of the first preocuppations of philosophers who thought deep
thoughts in places of unusual beauty like the Greek colonies -- later Roman
colonies.
"If one expects to find an answer to why the world exists in Holt's book, one
will be disappointed."
Witters may say (he did not respect Leibniz) that to look for an answer to that
would be to look an answer to a pseudo-problematic question (vide Rush Rhees,
"Unanswerable questions", in "Essays on Wittgenstein").
In Witters's parlance, you're bound to fail.
"The value of the essay is in Holt's "detective work" and in the cleverness of
the philosophers he interviews."
Oddly, in "How to become a Brit," George Mikes, not a Brit, says that, for an
Englishman, 'clever' means 'shrewd,' and should NOT be used. Englishmen are
proud of never being clever -- and in this they follow Cook Wilson, and
ultimately Socrates, "I only know I don't know diddly," in the Hellenic
vernacular.
"Wit" may be different. Wit -- as in "Wittgenstein" -- is cognate with the
'sophia' which makes a 'philo-SOPHER' one.
"The matter of why we Homo sapiens exist seems more interesting, perhaps
because I haven't gotten over Nicholas Wade's much maligned A Troublesome
Inheritance. Years ago there was a film entitled Quatermass and the Pit,
[where] rchaeologists discover beneath a British train station remnants
of the creatures that created man as servants to do their bidding.
Unfortunately for them they all died off, but by triggering some old devices,
most British wander around like zombies looking for their no-longer-existing
masters."
I love a film with zombies. My favourite must be "The Stepford Wives," which
really means "The Stamford Wives" -- wives in Stamford, Long Island Sound --
are seen parodically by Ira Levin as zombies of sorts -- (It was filmed with
Glenn Close as one of them). I'm not sure who Levin thinks is who makes the
Stamford wives sort of 'zombies' -- or robots.
"Equally depressing, if one is inclined to be depressed over this sort of
thinking is the 2012 movie Prometheus; the visual effects are impressive and
the acting is very good. Two archaeologists believe life was established on
earth by a previous civilization. An alien space ship is discovered, not
beneath London, but on an asteroid that takes a couple of years in hibernation
to get to. An old billionaire has financed the trip hoping to find the
"Engineers" who created homo sapiens"
or Genitor, as Grice would call the engineers -- he called his programme the
'genitorial programme".
"and get them to give him immortal (or at least much-extended) life. When they
do reactivate the one remaining Engineer he sets out to kill everyone. It
seems that the asteroid was set up to store weapons of mass destruction and
that the aliens (who have the same DNA as homo sapiens btw) planned to use to
exterminate all humans on earth. But before they can, they, much like the
ant-like creatures in "Quatermass and the Pit," are killed off by one of their
"weapons" the aliens that Sigorney Weaver once fought. After the Engineer
kills everyone but Dr. Shaw (played by Noomi Rapace) he in turn is killed by a
revived Sigorney Weaver alien. Dr Shaw takes the two parts of the ships robot
(played by Michael Fassbender) off to find another ship (there were several
left by the Engineers on the asteroid) and travel not back to earth but to the
planet the Engineers came from to ask them why they wanted them to cease to
exist?"
For Grice, it's ESSENCE, alla Leibniz, that gives a 'ratio essendi'. Grice of
course distinguishes between:
(A) ratio cognoscendi -- epistemic reason (e.g. Einstein's reason to believe
that E = mc2).
(B) the far more interesting 'ratio essendi'. The ratio essendi for Homo
sapiens is, old-fashionedly, Grice thinks, rationality. So if you take
rationality from Homo sapiens, you annihilate Homo sapiens, and Homo sapiens
ceases to exist.
Grice's point is general. Look for the essence of an apple. Or the essence of
Chanel No. 5. You take away what Chanel would call (after Hume) that 'je ne
sais quoi', and, poof, Chanel No. 5 ceases to exist.
Grice, like Duns Scotus, considered the essence of individuals. Grice was
'rational', qua Homo sapiens. But was there or is there an ESSENCE to Grice
being Grice? This is controversial, in terms of formalism. For "Grice" is a
_proper name_, not a description, or a common name, like 'man'. Quine solved
the problem by turning "Grice" into a verb: 'to grice". So, "Grice" becomes
anything that grices ("Pegasus pegasizes," as Quine less euphonically put it).
"And Dr Shaw is tough so if she doesn't like their answer she may do something
about them, surprisingly convincing coming from the five foot nothing and 88
pound Noomi Rapace. A sequel to Prometheus has been planned."
The unbound one!
Cheers,
Speranza
