theoretical Application

[a_priori]

I put together this list more than a month ago, when perpetua54 advertised at academics_anon. Then I sat on it for awhile, until the early semester crazy faded and I now am just a bit more available to parry your challenges, quench your queries, and prostrate my intellect for your procrastinatory amusement. So have at it!

Comments

[zentiger]

So many things to talk about! Let's start with the Quine, since I just lectured on that last week.

First, a warm-up. Is this on your list just because it's generally important, or is there a more particular reason you've chosen it? Because, with the Grice and the Nagel up there, I'd think "Two Dogmas" or especially "Web of Belief" would fit more closely.

[a_priori]

I haven't read "Web of Belief" but probably ought to.

I picked this over "Two Dogmas" mainly for quasi-stylistic reasons. For one, I think the writing in "On What There Is" is just exemplary. More importantly, though, I enjoy how Quine sets up the dialectic and moves through some incredibly complex material really effectively for just a single piece. "Two Dogmas" is less clear in some crucial places.

Really, though, this article is just a placeholder for Quine's view as a whole - that's what I really appreciate. But I do think that "On What There Is" is the best statement of it (that I've read at any rate).

I should mention, though, that I don't specialize in metaphysics, epistemology, or the philosophy of language. So my appreciation is decidedly of the only-partly-informed variety!

[zentiger]

So, since you're not a metaphysician, an epistemologist, or a ... well, a languageizer, I suppose, why include Quine at all? This seems especially odd given the Grice on your list.

[a_priori]

Methodology. Holism is really useful, and the quantification-over-whatever stuff is a really powerful theoretical tool. In the areas where I do work (ethics and the philosophy of mind) it's really nice to have ways to handle what look like surface-language commitments to various entities (e.g. moral facts, irreducible mental states) which may not turn out to be such. I rarely explicitly use ideas from Quine, but I regularly find that the course of my thinking has been channeled by having read him.

Grice I use much more explicitly - I think many of our purported intuitions about test cases (in, among other domains, ethics and the philosophy of mind) are best explained by pragmatic facts of assertoric context. I believe this is compatible with recognizing that, when pragmatics aren't the full answer, a Quinean approach can help explain what we actually are doing in making theoretical claims.

[zentiger]

Grice I use much more explicitly - I think many of our purported intuitions about test cases (in, among other domains, ethics and the philosophy of mind) are best explained by pragmatic facts of assertoric context.

Can you give me a ferinstance here? And please, please tell me that the bit at the end doesn't mean you think Dennett's "strategy" works for getting rid of qualia.

[a_priori]

No, no, the Dennett thing is something else entirely, and not something I find especially impressive.

Oddly, the best example I can think of is from neither ethics nor phil mind, but from metaphysics. David Lewis, somewhat infamously, offers an analysis of causation as counterfactual dependence (or, in his last version, counterfactual influence). Speaking loosely, A causes B just in case B would not have happened (or would have happened in a different way) had A not happened (or happened in a different way).

Now, this seems to entail lots of crazy stuff. For instance, it entails that my birth causes my death; had I not been born, I could not die. Lewis responds to the objection by suggesting that these crazy entailments are indeed correct (my birth does cause my death!) - but it makes no pragmatic sense to ever assert them, and so that's why we feel queasy about them

[zentiger]

Are you familiar with Judea Pearl or Jim Woodward on Lewisian causation? Their developments should settle your qualms.

I will have more questions later, but now, it is time for whiskey.

[a_priori]

I can't say I've read either. My familiarity with Lewisian causation is restricted to a single Metaphysics grad seminar I took four years ago. Should I read them?

Have whiskey fun!

[a_priori]

Rereading this thread, my last comments looks almost like a nonsequitor. You explained why I might want, in theory, to read Pearl and Woodward, and then I asked if I should read them. Which looks really silly.

What I meant to ask was: "I don't really work in this area and probably never will. But is their work cool enough that I should read it anyway?"

[zentiger]

Well, I think it's cool enough to read anyway, but then, I may be biased. If you have to pick one, go for the Woodward, as it's an update of the Pearl with a more philosophical thrust.

Now then, on to more questions. How do you feel about the Grice in light of, for example, Lewis's "Scorekeeping"?

[a_priori]

I love the "Scorekeeping" paper. Really - I read it as an undergrad, and it was the first (and, except for Grice and maybe Austin, the only) work in the philosophy of language that has ever made me stop and rethink everything I'd assumed about how communication works. If I'd been more confident of my ability to defend calling it "theory", it might have been on this list instead of Grice. (Not that I think the Lewis is any less theoretical than the Grice - but it's more complex and much harder to explain if challenged.)

Unfortunately, I haven't read any of this in at least five years, and the detailed differences among the various linguistic pragmatists are fuzzy in my mind. I have this vague notion that Lewis is building upon - not necessarily contradicting - what Grice said, but I could be wrong.

[zentiger]

You are for the most part correct, but Lewis, in discussion though admittedly not in the paper, uses its mechanics to account for "cheating" in a language game, which is something Grice can't handle well at all.

[a_priori]

What is it to cheat? Like misleading someone?

[zentiger]

Exactly. Misleading, either by falsehood, or by breaking the Gricean "rules", is well-accounted for by Lewis but not Grice.

[a_priori]

I don't remember... does Grice assume that people are always motivated to be maximally cooperative in conversation? That is, does the mutual cooperativeness of speakers partly constitute cooperation for him?

It seems kind of crazy- unless he thinks that all bets are off once people start cooperating, so in that case there's no point in trying to capture those interactions systematically.

But the Lewisian approach then does look comparably better.

[zentiger]

Well, he doesn't assume that, but his framework only works if people are cooperative in this way. The maxims of concision and relevance are key here.