The causal theory of intending are trivial junk. In walking one tries (wills? Intends?) to fall since the gravity center is without and not within the perimetral. These analysis so called are jokes for idiots, I am sure idiots with an oxford degree which is a shameful waste of human brain power From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Omar Kusturica Sent: 12 March 2015 22:37 To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Causal Theories alla Grice If Grice's theory of intentionality has trouble to account for pushing against the wall to build muscle, then there is a problem also with walking. Come to think to it, in walking we are pushing against the ground without actually intending to break it in. And in swimming we are pushing against the water without actually intending to move the ocean. But I am sure that we can safely exclude marginal occurences like this from our theory, the best of all possible theories. O.K. On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: The example of pushing against the wall is confused again. Pushing against a wall is a way to build muscles (isometric exercise) which has reasonable effects, although due to the availibility of gyms these days it is no longer very popular. One doesn't push against the wall in order to move the wall but with other reasonable enough goals in mind. I am beginning to have difficulty to understand what Grice or JL is saying, but I gues that I'll ascribe it to the fact that I had a couple of beers. O.K. On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 8:47 PM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx<mailto:Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> for DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote: My last post today! Grice was, like Hobbes (or "Lord Verulam", as slightly snobbish Grice preferred to call him), a causalist. It was only after Hume that 'causal' became a term of abuse among philosophers -- fortunately, among Cambridge philosophers, never Oxonian ones! In a message dated 3/12/2015 2:42:51 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> writes: Well, I suppose that A can still intend it even if he believes that the probability is lower, cannot he ? If A is in the middle of the sea and the only way for him to save his life is to reach the nearest island -i.e. to attain the state of affairs p - then he may understandably undertake the course of action of swimming toward the island even if he believes that the probability of reaching it is very low. ... Grice may 'prefer' this, but one wonders if he is not actually engaging in the fallacy of affirming the consequent. To say that 'fire causes smoke' is reasonable enough because in usual conditions fire is sufficient to cause smoke. To say that smoke 'means' fire is more suspect because smoke can have causes other than fire. Similarly, face spots can be caused by measles but they can also be caused by other diseases. That is why reasoning from effects to causes is much less reliable than the other way around. Based on the 'signs' here, there is a suspicion that Grice was not only not to be bothered with "the details for causal chains" but with examining causality at all. Grice's example in his "Lectures on Trying" at Brandeis was: i. One might try to push over a wall in order to build one's arm muscles. So I guess that in the swimming case, we would prefer to say 'try' rather than 'intend' -- or even 'will' -- "he willed to swim" (Grice calls himself a neo-Prichardian, because he thought (as he was) re-discovering Prichard for a new generation of philosophers). The causal analysis of intention does not seem to work with the case (i) of one TRYING to push over a wall (and perhaps knowing that one will fail, if this is, say, Hadrian's Wall, in Northumberland) -- Therefore, it's best NOT to ascribe an intention. Grice found that ordinary English makes a difference here: if the probability is > .5, we use "probably"; if it's < 0.5 we merely say "possibly". Of course 'probably' ENTAILS 'possibly' -- as Aristotle never realised ("The necessary is not possible" -- or perhaps he did -- vide Noel Burton-Roberts, "Implicature and Modality", and "Greek Grice: a study of proto-conversational rules in the history of logic"). Re: ii. x causes y. iii. Therefore, y means x. in "Meaning Revisited", Grice speaks indeed of 'consequence': y being the consequence of x, by which I hope he means 'causal consequence'. In this, he was naturally following Hobbes, who in his analysis of 'significatio' (in his Latin works) speaks of 'consequentia' as something common to both natural and artificial signs -- but Grice disliked Hobbes's terminology (Hobbes, "Computatio, Sive Logica"). As far as we use scare quotes with 'mean', as C. L. Stevenson does, we can always 'disimplicate' what we might otherwise mean. Grice (1948), "Meaning" -- put published 9 years later, when Strawson submitted it to The Philosophical Journal without Grice knowing this -- quotes direct from C. L. Stevenson (1944), then more or less 'fresh' from Yale U. P.: iv. A reduced temperature may, on occasion, but then on another occasion not, 'mean' that the patient (as we now may call her) is convalescent. But surely v. Temperature means this or that. is figurative. Temperature cannot mean, at most merely 'mean' -- and Stevenson was right in being scared and use scare quotes for 'mean'. Recall then that scare-quoted "mean" should always be best replaced by an ascription of some causation. Thus, it was very appropriate of G. H. R. Parkinson, when reprinting Grice's "Meaning" for the Oxford Readings in Philosophy to editorialise as a type of 'causal theory'. Cheers, Speranza ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html<http://www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html>