un grandioso pippone di speranza al seguito
del buffoncello
coe brage de pele de gao
er testa da kasso insiste
On Tue, 19 Sep 2017 at 02:21 Redacted sender jlsperanza for DMARC <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
T. Fjeld was reporting "[a] simple question -- from an ordinary kind of--
guy:”
The question runs:
“If this is so, can man, can man’s work in the future still be expected to
thrive in the fertile ground of a homeland and mount into the ether, into
the far reaches of the heavens and the spirit? Or will everything now fall
into the clutches of planning and calculation, of organization
and automation?”
And the source is explicitly given: “Heidegger, Discourse."
Grice calls Heidegger "the greatest living philosopher" in the first
William James lecture.
Note that Heidegger's utterance is of the form:
i. p ⊃ (q v r)
Of course, one would need to search for the antecedent to the above
conditional. Notably what Heidegger, in translation, refers to as “this is
so.”
Provided the antecedent, or apodosis, to the conditional, Heidegger
formulates a disjunction. One should take the disjunction, _prima facie_,
as inclusive. Grice argues that the reading of ‘or’ as exclusive is merely
implicatural – and not part of the ‘sense’ of “or” (Do not multiply senses
beyond necessity).
The language of the “Discourse” is hardly transparent but then neither is
Grice’s jargon! If the ‘or’ is inclusive, one should provide an analysis of
both disjuncts. Helm has expanded on this, and Fjeld seems to have
summarised “r” above as relating to Utilitarianism. So let that be!
Grice was obsessed with the logic of questions and answers. Heidegger uses
two “?”s. One for the first disjunct, and one for the second. The logical
form seems to be:
ii. p ⊃ q?
iii. p ⊃ r?
Grice would wonder what is the scope of “?”: should it include the “p”? It
would seem so. But this kind of questions are rare in conversation: “If you
are have a headache, would you like an aspirin?”. So it seems that
Heidegger is ASSUMING that _this is so_, and further wondering the
scenarios for both disjuncts being true (as it is the case if the
disjunction is inclusive).
Popper reacted against the Circle of Vienna, so-called, and _they_ reacted
against Heidegger. The reason why Grice says Heidegger was in 1967 “the
greatest living philosopher” may well be Grice’s reaction to Freddie Ayer
who had brought the Viennese Circle philosophy to Oxford with the attack of
this philosophy to Heidegger’s ‘logical syntax’ (“Nothing noths.”).
Popper’s approach would be more dialytic. Consider Heidegger again:
“If this is so, can man, can man’s work in the future still be expected to
thrive in the fertile ground of a homeland and mount into the ether, into
the far reaches of the heavens and the spirit? Or will everything now fall
into the clutches of planning and calculation, of organization
and automation?”
Let’s skip the condition, “if this is so”: and stick with the questions
now turned into statements.
q. Man’s work can in the future still be expected to thrive in the fertile
ground of a homeland and mount into the ether, into the far reaches of the
heavens and the spirit.
r. Everything will now fall into the clutches of planning and calculation,
of organization and automation.
It is “r” which I take Fjeld to identify with utilitarianism – although
perhaps not in the way ‘utilitarian’ is used in Oxford to refer to the
“English utilitarians” (Grice was semi-offended once by being called an
“English futilitarian”).
Both ‘q’ and ‘r’ are in the future tense, and Popper may have a problem
with the falsifiability of these. Cfr. Aristotle on the naval battle. “q”
is _poetic_ in diction. The ‘still’ seems to implicate that at the time
Heidegger was giving his ‘speech’ (which is what ‘discourse’ stands for, I
think), man’s work _was_ expected to do so. For x to be expected to do
something is different from x actually _doing_ that something. So one has
to be careful. Hope springs eternal, they say, and I take Heidegger
‘expect’ (in the English translation of his ‘Discourse’) to embody this
feeling or sentiment of hope. Heidegger’s inclusion, in “q” of ‘spirit’ –
German “Geist” – is metaphysical, and Popper might have something to say
about this. Possibly Popper would regard the expectation expressed by
Heidegger in “q” as belonging to W3.
As for the utilitarian “r” (that Helm relates to bureaucracy), it is
interesting to note the upward direction in “q” and the downward direction
in “r” (expressed by Heidegger’s use of ‘fall’). The clutches Heidegger
mentions in “r” are four: planning, calculating, organising, and
automatising. Yes, that’s a verb! 1837, "to make into an automaton;" see
automaton
<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=automaton&allowed_in_frame=0> +
-ize <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-ize&allowed_in_frame=0>.
The usage to mean, "to make automatic" is attested by 1952. Related:
Automatized; automatizing. My guess is Heidegger merges “to make into an
automaton” and “to make automatic”. The thing is Greek enough. The ‘-matos’
of ‘automatos’ is best rendered in English as "thinking, animated,
willing," from a Proto-Indo-European root *mn-to-, from root **men-*
<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=*men-&allowed_in_frame=0> (1)
"to think,” cognate of course with Grice’s “mean” and Cicero’s “mens.” The
fact that Heidegger’s discourse is supposed to be an analysis of ‘thinking’
makes an examination of the etymology of ‘automatic’ particularly relevant.
Or not, of course.
Cheers,
Speranza
