PHIL 448/547, Pelletier

PHIL 448/547, Pelletier

Winter 2010

Prof: F.J. Pelletier

Assiniboia Hall 2-65

Phone 780-492-1208

This page will be the place where I post (links to) readings, assignments, due dates, and general announcements, so you should monitor this for class information. Most of my downloadable documents are pdf, so you need a pdf reader to read them. A reader is free and can be downloaded from here.

A syllabus for this course is here. Some ramblings about things to read and a possible order in which to do the reading is here. This is tentative, except for the fact that I want to start with Russell's "Logical Atomism” of 1924. It is in our Ayer anthology, and various other places, such as the Bertrand Russell Logic and Knowledge (ed. R. Marsh), which I put on reserve in the Rutherford Library. I will try to get a pdf of it for this class. Keeners and want-to-be-Russell-scholars could also read the very long Russell (1918) Lectures on Logical Atomism, which I’ve put on reserve in Rutherford Library in a volume that also includes the shorter “Logical Atomism”. The title of the volume is The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, by Bertrand Russell.

After reading the Logical Atomism original document, you may wish also to look at a nice article on Russell's Logical Atomism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that you might like to look at. As a comparison with Wittgenstein, here is an article on Wittgenstein's logical atomism from the same Encyclopedia. And here is an article by Bernard Linsky on the metaphysics of Russell's logical atomism. It was published in The Cambridge Companion to Russell (ed. N. Griffin, 2003).

A fun thing to read is this about Wittgenstein’s PhD oral. You might already know, but we’ll mention it in class, that Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was published in German in 1921 (and in English the year following), it wasn't until 1929 that it was used as the basis for a PhD from Cambridge. Frank Ramsey was the (official) supervisor, G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell were the examiners at the Viva (as the final oral exams were called). Here is a "recreation" of Wittgenstein's Viva - sort of on the "unfriendly" side.

For Monday Jan 25 and Feb 1: we will be studying the Logical Positivists (or Logical Empiricists, as they often preferred to be called). The reading schedule mentioned above but also available here says that we will start with some Schlick and some Carnap works. As it says on the reading schedule to read at least three of the six listed papers, two from one of Schlick/Carnap and one from the other. But you maybe could read all six.

We will be reading some further works of the positivists. The proposed schedule includes Neurath "Protocol Sentences" in the Ayer anthology, the Ayer Language, Truth and Logic introduction, some selections from the Friedman Reconsidering Logical Positivism, and the Hempel paper that summarizes the history of one of the positivistic doctrines. I find the two chapters of the Friedman book on Carnap's "The Logical Construction of the World" (the Aufbau, as it is called) [Chapters 5 and 6] to be the most interesting, and I commend them to you, if you own the Friedman anthology. (Chapter 5 is reasonably short; Chapter 6 is rather long.)

The Hempel paper is "The Empiricist Criterion of Meaning", in the Ayer anthology. This is a very important paper about the Positivistic theory of meaning, and everyone should read this. If you do not own the Ayer anthology, it is available in the Rutherford Reserve Room. Also, the Hempel paper is reprinted in many anthologies.

You may also be interested in reading some things I mentioned in class today (Jan. 25^th): The John Wisdom "Parable of the Invisible Gardner", which is supposed to illustrate a kind of "cognitive meaninglessness" that is not traceable to any individual word, is here (from Wikipedia). The Carl Hempel introduction to the "new" start-up of the journal Erkenntnis is here. (It contains a discussion of how the earlier version was set up.) As I mentioned in class, of the articles that were supposed to be published in the 1940 Erkenntnis, only one remained after bombing of the warehouse. It was by Heinrich Gomperz "Unified Science and Value". Here is that article as printed in the newly-restarted 1975 Erkenntnis. And here is Charles Morris on the "Encyclopedia of the Unified Sciences", which discusses Neurath's vision of the entire encyclopedia including the mysterious stuff about the pictorial index/thesauras. And here are scanned jpg's of the tables of contents of Vol. I and Vol. II of the finally-published Encyclopedia.

I mentioned that Rose Rand, the mathematician, was an attendee at the meetings of the Vienna Circle. Although she did not say much at the meetings (I gather), she kept notes about the various things that the other members of the Circle discussed and who believed what. Here is a jpg of a page of her notes. Although it is in German, you can see that she employed a colour scheme to code blue for "yes", red for "no", green for "meaningless", and a ? mark for "indeterminate/undecided". Each of the questions is asked about "before the Tractatus", "in the Tractatus", and "after the Tractatus", and each of the main members of the Circle have their answers coded in. I guess there is Schlick, Waisman, Carnap, Neurath, Hahn, and Kraft.

On Feb 1^st I will put on this website an assignment for you to do. It will be linked from here. It will consist of choosing a reading to summarize (or perhaps, summarize a portion of), or perhaps a question concerning the evaluation of something said by one of the philosophers. (There will be a choice for you.) You are to write a short (one or two page) summary/answer to your choice of question. They are due a week later by the beginning of class. . Here it is. I am also giving links about issues of style and plagiarism. [The "style" page is a bit of overkill for this short, two-page assignment for which you are mostly supposed to use your own thoughts. But you may find it important when it comes to your final paper.] I’ll put up more stuff about writing papers when it gets closer to the end of the term.

This assignment makes reference to a paper that is not in either of our anthologies. Here is a link to Carnap 1932. I also have a pdf of the original publication of Friedman Chapter 5 in our recommended Friedman book. If you don’t have the book, here is the original publication (which may be slightly different). This chapter of the book is referred to in one of the assignment questions.

I prefer electronic submissions, so I’d prefer it if you sent it to me by email sometime before the Feb. 8^th class. I can accept things done in Word (including docx), rtf, pdf, tex, dvi, ps, txt, and probably some others as well. One thing I cannot read is WordPerfect (wpd). So, if you use WordPerfect, please save/print it as rtf or pdf and send that to me.

The journal Topoi has started up a section called "untimely reviews". These are reviews of classic works in philosophy but written as if the work had just appeared. Here is the half-page description by the journal editors about their project. One of the first, if not the first, of these untimely reviews is of Rudolf Carnap The Logical Construction of the World (the "Aufbau"). Here is that untimely review, by Hannes Leitgeb. Also, here is an article that tries to explain the various interpretations of the Aufbau. It’s short and nice! I recommend it. (NEW—March 1^st)

Over the Reading Week, I’d like you to read some of the works that are known as the "unsystematic" portion of the "ordinary language philosophy" movement. This movement probably has Wittgenstein (of the 1930s-1940s) as its intellectual leader. I am looking around for suitable readings, but so far have only one: O.K. Bouwsma "Decartes’ Evil Genius".

I mentioned in class today (Feb 22) that there would be a lecture next week about Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951). This is surely one of the most well-known articles in Philosophy during the 20^th century, perhaps surpassed only by Russell’s “On Denoting”. Many scholars view this as the death-knoll of Logical Empiricism. Here is that article. As we will see later, this article also is seen as an attack on (certain aspects of) ordinary language philosophy. In this role it garnered a response from Paul Grice and Peter Strawson. Here is that response, although we won’t talk about it until later. (But you will have to keep the Quine article in mind until that time!)

I also mentioned the topic of a logically perfect language. Here is an unpublished version of a paper on the topic by Peter Hylton (Univ. Illinois, Chicago), which was presented at the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association just last week. Here is that paper. He asks that you not quote the paper without his permission, except within the confines of this course. (So, you can quote it in your final paper for the course; but you can’t then use that paper to present at a conference, unless you get his permission.)

I have not been able to find a companion piece to go with the Bouwsma “Evil Genius” article, so instead have found a few paragraphs of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations for you to look at. Apparently there is no easily-accessible electronic version of this work, but here are some relevant paragraphs. This was taken from a commentary, but I’ve erased the commentary--which maybe accounts for the funny formatting. It’s paragraphs 23-27 of the Investigations. Here is a short snippet from a Wikipedia page concerning Wittgenstein’s view of philosophy (“to shew philosophers the way out of the fly-bottle”). A [Victorian-era] fly-bottle is a device for capturing flies; it works pretty much like what we in Edmonton call wasp-traps (except we make them out of plastic 2-litre pop bottles and hang them from trees). Here is a photo of some Victorian fly-bottles.

The earliest of the so-called “unsystematic” ordinary language philosophers’ writings are difficult to locate, so we will read the following material (which illustrates the sort of concerns that this group tried to lay out):

Gilbert Ryle “Systematically Misleading Expressions” (in Rorty, and here)

John Wisdom “Philosophical Perplexity” (in Rorty, and here)

Norman Malcolm “Moore and Ordinary Language” (in Rorty, also in the Schilpp Philosophy of G.E. Moore volume)

Waismann “Analytic-Synthetic, Part IV” (here)

I’m sorry that I couldn’t find an electronic version of the Malcolm article. It is reprinted in various collections of “ordinary language philosophy”, such as Vere Chappell’s. Please try to get a copy and read it. It is the most important one of the bunch here (the Ryle one is also important).

For those interested in some personal and biographical information on Wittgenstein, an interesting place to look is Norman Malcolm’s Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. This very short book has a “factual” biography of Wittgenstein as a preface (by Georg-Henrik von Wright) and an appendix of all of Wittgenstein’s letters to Malcolm. And in between are the personal reminiscences of Malcolm about his meetings and interactions with Wittgenstein. Malcolm considered himself a close friend of Wittgenstein’s, but even so one can see the kind of person Wittgenstein must have been. Another place to look for a description of Wittgenstein’s teaching style is the memorial to Wittgenstein published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy in 1951. Here is that memorial. You will see that this memorial was published before the notes that became the Philosophical Investigations were published. (There are some serious and well-informed books about Wittgenstein and his life, should you wish to pursue that. For example, Ray Monk’s Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990).)

Assignment #2 is here. You will see that some of the questions concern works that are not in any of our books. One is the article by Waismann mentioned above (and the link that is there). Another is Waismann’s article on verifiability, which is here (it is a symposium with two others; Waismann’s article is in the middle, starting on p. 119). A third article mentioned in the assignment is Ryle’s 1953 “Ordinary Language”, which is here; and also a 1961 symposium between Ryle and J.N. Findlay, which is here.

You might also find it interesting to look at some “reflections” on ordinary language philosophy, including some information about the “tension” between the Cambridge (Wittgensteinian) ordinary language philosophy and the Oxford (Ryle/Austin and others) version. Here’s Morris Weitz reflecting in 1953 on a year’s sabbatical spent at Oxford. Here is John Wisdom talking about Wittgensteinian methodology in philosophy.

There will be a presentation about John Austin’s methodology. It will be about a portion of his “A Plea for Excuses” (download here) and some of his book “How to do Things With Words” (download beginning of Lecture 12 here).

Since final papers are going to be due in a month or so (they are due one week after the end of class, that is, they are due April 19^th…electronically), here are some things to consider about choosing paper topics and about writing. You are welcome—encouraged, even—to contact me to discuss topics. We can discuss via email or in person, as you wish.

The Ordinary Language Philosophy movement caused considerable turmoil in the analytic side of the philosophy world. Not only was there the friction between the two ordinary language camps, but there was a lot of heated exchange between the ordinary language types and others. Here is Bertrand Russell complaining about ordinary language philosophy. (He doesn’t make it clear whether he is against one or both of the two types.) In his witty way he objects to it because (1) it is insincere (2) it is capable of excusing ignorance of math, physics and neurology by those with only a classical education (3) it is advanced by some in a tone of unctuous rectitude, as if opposition to it were a sin against democracy (4) it makes philosophy trivial (5) it makes it almost inevitable the perpetuation among philosophers of the muddle-headedness they have taken over from common sense.

You might also like to see the attack by P.L. Heath (1952), which is here. You could note the list of four related articles at the very end, which all seem to be interestingly relevant to this topic. (They are linked to other jstor articles, which you can get for free via our library, if you are signed on from a campus computer or via the proxy server).

After we finish looking at the methodology of the systematic ordinary language philosophers by discussing/lecturing about Ryle and Austin, we will turn to some critiques of ordinary language philosophy. (I mean, some more serious ones than those put forward by Russell in the article linked to just above). These next are all in the anthology by Colin Lyas Philosophy and Linguistics, but since that is out of print, I’ve got a copy on reserve in Rutherford, and have a few of the articles electronically. In particular I want to start by looking at Benson Mates’ “On the Verification of Statements about Ordinary Language” and Stanley Cavell’s response “Must We Mean What We Say?”. Unfortunately, these are two articles that I do not have electronic versions of. They appeared together in the journal Inquiry in 1958, but Inquiry seems to be electronically available only since 1998 through our library. (Each article is available for $30 via Informaworld, if you feel wealthy). If anyone scans a copy, I’d be very grateful if s/he would send me the electronic version (pdf, preferably). The Cavell response is reprinted in various places, but I think it very much preferable if people would read the Mates article first, so as to see clearly what Cavell is responding to. I do have electronic versions of some of the further responses (which are also in the Lyas anthology), and will post them soon.

Here are some of the responses to Cavell (and then responses to them, and responses to those responses, etc). Fodor & Katz “The Availability of What We Say”, Henson “What We Say”, Hare “Philosophical Discoveries”, Vorsteg “Are Explication Statements Empirical?”, We will be having a presentation on some of this material, especially the Fodor/Katz and Henson, so try to read these.

The four areas in which “Analytic Philosophy” was attacked were:

The issue over verification of ordinary language assertions (the stuff mentioned above).
Grice on the semantics vs. pragmatics of meaning. As we have discussed and will again, this is related to the issue over verification (“how do you know you are verifying/contradicting the meaning as opposed to the way it is normally used in a conversation?”). The relevant Grice article is here, where the distinction between the “literal meaning” and “implicatures” is identified by means of “maxims of conversation”. (Although the date of publication is sort of late…1975…it was actually presented in the mid-1960s and received an enormous underground circulation.)
Quine, both the Two Dogmas (link above, but here it is again) and “Epistemology Naturalized”. (This latter article seems not to be available electronically; however, you might look at the Stanford Encyclopedia article on “Naturalized Epistemology” which gives Quine a central place). The denial of an analytic-synthetic distinction not only cuts one of the legs of Logical Positivism, but also removes the rationale for doing “conceptual analysis”, since a correct analysis would, according to ordinary language philosophy, yield analytic truths. Quine’s denial means that there is no real distinction between semantics and pragmatics (a claim that Quine explicitly makes). The naturalization of philosophy puts it on the same footing as any “science”, making it be responsible to empirical explication—thereby removing the methodology of Analysis.
Three books attacked ordinary language philosophy “on its own terms”, by trying to show that its fundamental linchpins were flawed. (E.g., attacking the Paradigm Case Argument, or the Argument from Polar Contrasts, and the like.) The two most effective were Ernest Gellner’s Words and Things (1957) and C.W.K. Mundle’s A Ctitique of Linguistic Philosophy (1970), which makes pretty much the same points as Gellner’s book but in a more “sober, scholarly manner.” Both these are in the Rutherford Reserve Room for this course. Or buy them on Amazon.ca. http://www.amazon.ca/Critique-Linguistic-Philosophy-C-W-K-Mundle/dp/0198243502/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269315331&sr=1-1 and also http://www.amazon.ca/Words-Things-Examination-Linguistic-Philosophy/dp/0415345480/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269315393&sr=1-1. The third book shares with the Gellner one a “popular press” feeling. It was written by Ved Mehta, a well-known author, and called Fly and the Fly-Bottle (1962). He was a student at Oxford, and wrote about the experiences he had with “English Intellectuals”. He is also blind. See http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B000IZENGO/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_all.

I said that I would add some “colour” from articles of the time. Here is a short review in the Economist (1959) of the Gellner book, and here is a short article written the following year called “The Hatreds of Philosophers”. To my surprise, the vitriolic reaction to the Gellner book continues. Here is a link to a 2001 or 2002 article by T.P. Uschanov, of which you ought to read at least the introduction. Gellner wrote at least four entries/letters in the Times Literary Supplement in 1968 under the title “The Entry of the Philosophers” during April & May of that year. But although our library says we have electronic access to those old TLS’s, they are wrong about their own system.

I also found a short article by Jack Smart about Ryle’s account of categories. It makes a very nice point that I will mention in class. Here’s the short article.