Well, I never promised to be conscientious.
A curiosity about jurisprudence - possibly relevant to my large project, but a distraction (if anything) from my present 'deliverables' - is the way traditional philosophical categories turn up, but with different meanings and allegiances.
Hart, for instance, is a positivist, but not a realist. He orients himself towards Wittgenstein, but seems to be more influenced (maybe?) by the Vienna circle - particualrly Waismann.
Dworkin roots law in social and cultural norms, but is a realist because he believes there is a 'correct' answer to questions about what the law is.
Weinrib is a 'legal formalist' but his central theme is the 'immanent intelligibility' of the law - a distinctly Wittgensteinian (on some readings?) idea, and one I think a mathematical formalist might find puzzling.
So I'm still wandering in the woods and trying to sketch a map ...
I have a plan for my 'rules and principles' paper, but I need a clearer conclusion.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Today, I've been exploring a possible blind alley.
One theme I thought I would follow up during my research leave was whether a 'contractual' or 'promisory' account of meaning could be developed - specifically, an account which made meaningfullness of a statement depend upon a committment to the truth of some further statements (which weren't just trivially equivalent to the original).
The blind alley was the jurisprudence of contract law. It's an interesting blind alley, but it didn't help me much.
The inspiration for this approach is the self-conscious operational aspect of commercial language use. In a commercial exchange, what we do by what we say has a significant weight - often more significant than what we mean. In an academic exchange, meaning and truth (ideally) dominate. This doesn't render the commercial exchange degenerate - in fact the academic model is probably more alien to most language users, and is often much more operational than it pretends (how much has been written in pursuit of research funding rather than insight?).
One of the important things that we do in a commercial exchange is to contract - to obligate ourselves. It occurred to me what we contract to arrange is that certain things will be true in the future, and that it will be possible for all interested parties (under reasonable circumstances) to agree when this is the case. This can break down in a variety of ways, of course - both with respect to what we do, and with respect to whether the appropriate agreement can be reached.
In a meaningful exchange, of course, we commit ourselves to certain statements being true in the future - we commit ourselves to our present statements not being vacuous.
It's easiest to explain this by illustration: even simple empirical statements must commit us to more than their own bare contents. I might say "It's raining", for instance, but then try to deny that this commits me to, for instance, "You'll get wet if you go out without an umbrella" or "That should be good for the garden" etc. The more I deny, the more puzzling, and meaningless "It's raining" becomes. The contingency or disputability of these committments isn't important - but there need to be some further committments for the statement to mean anything.
Obviously, I can be accused here of confusing natural with non-natural meaning (Grice), but this is a debate I will defer. (Not indefinitely).
Anyhow, thinking about committment, I looked at contract ... and found debates about the nature of a legal promise. I need to look elsewhere.
One theme I thought I would follow up during my research leave was whether a 'contractual' or 'promisory' account of meaning could be developed - specifically, an account which made meaningfullness of a statement depend upon a committment to the truth of some further statements (which weren't just trivially equivalent to the original).
The blind alley was the jurisprudence of contract law. It's an interesting blind alley, but it didn't help me much.
The inspiration for this approach is the self-conscious operational aspect of commercial language use. In a commercial exchange, what we do by what we say has a significant weight - often more significant than what we mean. In an academic exchange, meaning and truth (ideally) dominate. This doesn't render the commercial exchange degenerate - in fact the academic model is probably more alien to most language users, and is often much more operational than it pretends (how much has been written in pursuit of research funding rather than insight?).
One of the important things that we do in a commercial exchange is to contract - to obligate ourselves. It occurred to me what we contract to arrange is that certain things will be true in the future, and that it will be possible for all interested parties (under reasonable circumstances) to agree when this is the case. This can break down in a variety of ways, of course - both with respect to what we do, and with respect to whether the appropriate agreement can be reached.
In a meaningful exchange, of course, we commit ourselves to certain statements being true in the future - we commit ourselves to our present statements not being vacuous.
It's easiest to explain this by illustration: even simple empirical statements must commit us to more than their own bare contents. I might say "It's raining", for instance, but then try to deny that this commits me to, for instance, "You'll get wet if you go out without an umbrella" or "That should be good for the garden" etc. The more I deny, the more puzzling, and meaningless "It's raining" becomes. The contingency or disputability of these committments isn't important - but there need to be some further committments for the statement to mean anything.
Obviously, I can be accused here of confusing natural with non-natural meaning (Grice), but this is a debate I will defer. (Not indefinitely).
Anyhow, thinking about committment, I looked at contract ... and found debates about the nature of a legal promise. I need to look elsewhere.
Starting with what we can say, rather than with what we can think, or experience, may seem perverse. It's certainly at odds with the whole tradition of rational empiricism from Hume to the present.
This tradition has, however, broadly failed to produce solutions to some fundamental problems - particularly those to do with the reliability of scientific theorising, and the relationship between language and 'the world'.
Also, and contrary to common conception, we cannot just 'say what we like'. At some point, playing fast and loose with the rules of the language game undermines it's playability. And it is not only the rules of logic which constrain us - we are also constrained by the capacities of our interlocutors and, in some way, by 'the way the world is'. Part of my position is that we cannot give a full account of these constraints, because to do so would be to articulate a complete theory of how our language works - effectively a theory of truth for it. A consequence of this is that there are constraints we can only explore experimentally - by trying out new ways of talking, to see if they work.
This tradition has, however, broadly failed to produce solutions to some fundamental problems - particularly those to do with the reliability of scientific theorising, and the relationship between language and 'the world'.
Also, and contrary to common conception, we cannot just 'say what we like'. At some point, playing fast and loose with the rules of the language game undermines it's playability. And it is not only the rules of logic which constrain us - we are also constrained by the capacities of our interlocutors and, in some way, by 'the way the world is'. Part of my position is that we cannot give a full account of these constraints, because to do so would be to articulate a complete theory of how our language works - effectively a theory of truth for it. A consequence of this is that there are constraints we can only explore experimentally - by trying out new ways of talking, to see if they work.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Here are some peculiar things, which are from the background to this project.
(1) Open question arguments:
Perhaps the best known is G. E. Moore's 'natualistic fallacy', which goes something like this:
If we try to define 'good' in some non-normative, or 'naturalistic' way - as, say, 'that which maximises utility' or ' that which pleases God', we have to deal with the 'open question' whether it is good to do things which match the definition. Is it good to maximise utility? Is it good to please God? The fact that these questions make sense mean that the proposed definition cannot be complete.
This barrier to defining good in non-normative way cannot be a demonstration that the concept of 'goodness' is somehow incoherent, or that it should be discarded. If we were to reach this conclusion, we would, after all, want to say that it was the right conclusion, and that therefore it was good to believe it.
The open question arguments seem to unite philosophy. As well as Moore's, there are three more - addressing themselves to truth, knowledge, and meaning.
We can always ask of a theory of truth (a theory which establishes general criteria for truth telling) whether it is true - and since it cannot be tested against its own criteria without circularity we must conclude that no general theory of truth can be constructed. But we would also want to say that this was true, so the category - however undefinable - is not redundant.
Similarly, we might ask how we reliably know any theory of reliable knowledge attribution, while being unable to dispense with the category of 'knowing'.
And we might ask what our theory of meaning (which can be used to work out what things mean) means, while being unable to dispose of 'meaning' (since, presumably, we'd want to say our questions about meaning meant something).
(2) An empirical certainty?
'We can talk' is as much a statement about the world (an empirical statement) as 'we can walk'. Yet it must be true in any language game - it must be true, in a sense, 'a priori'. This is an example of a necessary truth which is not 'analytically' true - i.e. is not a logical tautology, or a definition.
'We cannot talk' is not false because it is internally inconsistent (as an analytical falsehood would be), but because it is inconsistent with the conditions of its being a statement at all.
(1) Open question arguments:
Perhaps the best known is G. E. Moore's 'natualistic fallacy', which goes something like this:
If we try to define 'good' in some non-normative, or 'naturalistic' way - as, say, 'that which maximises utility' or ' that which pleases God', we have to deal with the 'open question' whether it is good to do things which match the definition. Is it good to maximise utility? Is it good to please God? The fact that these questions make sense mean that the proposed definition cannot be complete.
This barrier to defining good in non-normative way cannot be a demonstration that the concept of 'goodness' is somehow incoherent, or that it should be discarded. If we were to reach this conclusion, we would, after all, want to say that it was the right conclusion, and that therefore it was good to believe it.
The open question arguments seem to unite philosophy. As well as Moore's, there are three more - addressing themselves to truth, knowledge, and meaning.
We can always ask of a theory of truth (a theory which establishes general criteria for truth telling) whether it is true - and since it cannot be tested against its own criteria without circularity we must conclude that no general theory of truth can be constructed. But we would also want to say that this was true, so the category - however undefinable - is not redundant.
Similarly, we might ask how we reliably know any theory of reliable knowledge attribution, while being unable to dispense with the category of 'knowing'.
And we might ask what our theory of meaning (which can be used to work out what things mean) means, while being unable to dispose of 'meaning' (since, presumably, we'd want to say our questions about meaning meant something).
(2) An empirical certainty?
'We can talk' is as much a statement about the world (an empirical statement) as 'we can walk'. Yet it must be true in any language game - it must be true, in a sense, 'a priori'. This is an example of a necessary truth which is not 'analytically' true - i.e. is not a logical tautology, or a definition.
'We cannot talk' is not false because it is internally inconsistent (as an analytical falsehood would be), but because it is inconsistent with the conditions of its being a statement at all.
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