RT list: "fid to one another"

Ariskant: From Aristotle to Kant (via Grice) -- and back -- Or: Aristotle,
Kant, and Grice, on 'relative'. "Fid to one another" -- Grice on 'fid'.
Why should pirots _internalise_ 'relation'?

My last today, I hope. But I think it may merit a post to the relevance
list? Actually, I would have titled this "How Pirots Karulize Elatically:
Some Simpler Ways"

-- that is, Chapman notes, the title of a _transcription_ from a tape of a
talk by Grice. Chapman wonders about the 'karulise' -- it so well adapts
to evolutionary talk, as Lucy Weir Bingham McAndrew recently made me realise
--.

We know it's Carnap ("and Russell" Grice adds -- but I haven't been able
to trace the Russell), 1943. But he spelt it, 'karulize'.

Could this be yet another bit of British spelling? Chapman doesn't think
so. "In any case, this is a transcription from a talk, so how can we be so
sure Grice did not _say_ "karulize"?" (and the transcriber wrote 'carulize').

In any case, the word for the Category of Relation (as per Aristotle, and
Kant, "Table of Categories") is what Grice calls the 'fid':

You see,

There are pirots.

"A pirot", Grice writes,

"can be said to potch of some obble x"

and potch it

"as fang or feng;"

The pirot may be said

"also to cotch of x, or some obble o, as fang or feng;"

-- so far we seem to be dealing with Kant -- Quality, Quantity, Manner
(*)-- and ...

(* In Aristotle, Substance should NOT count as a category, but it _is_ --
as Grice notes, if sense-datum theorists are _wrong_ is because a flow of
impressions, unlike your regular 'thing' does not "nourish or threaten" you
-- most of our interactions in the world, Grice, notes are with
_substances_ -- we ingest, digest, and exgest them --, and vide Strawson on "Die
Grenzen der Sinnlichkeit", sp. his discussion of Tables of Categories).

Then Grice adds,

But then a pirot may also be said

"to cotch of one obble o and another obble o'

as being fid to one another."

-----

So what the pirot is he talking about?

He provides the 'code' (Chapman finds it funny that for all his talk in
"Meaning" (1948) on 'intentional', inferential meaning Grice amused himself
with "strict code-languages in his lectures":

Pirots inhabit a world of obbles.

[And their goal, designed by the Pirot-Maker is for continued operancy --
("each pirot strives for its survival, what to do to avoid becoming an
ex-pirot" -- cfr. 'ex-operant' in Grice's "Method")]

We have not yet the 'talking pirot' (Recall too that the 'pirot', some of
which should end up karulizing elatically -- the 'intelligent, rational
pirot' -- us in our better moments -- is parodied after Locke's "intelligent,
rational parOt") in a gaggle of pirots.

We so far have a pirot who, at most,

-- potch.

"To potch", Grice writes, "is something like to perceive"

--- In Method (and this may interest Kjoll) he goes to discuss the
internalisation of content, the pirot potching that p v q, for example.

But he can hope for more. A pirot can

-- cotch.

Where "to cotch", Grice notes, is

"something like to think."

"Feng and fang are possible descriptions, much like our adjectives."

And Grice was _obsessed_ (in the best philosophical sense of the word)
with this. In "Remarks about the senses" (in WoW) Grice's 'pirots' which are
like our pirots, only different (he was a free physicalist!). These pirots,
for example, are endowed with

O O i
o o ii

U

-- what a little philosophical spirit would describe as "an extra pair of
eyes".

"Surely," Grice says, if _this_ pirot tells us that there is, between

potching the obble as FENG i and ii

"the world of difference" -- then we would be somehow at a loss. (I
wouldn't -- but would like to know if we are 'evolutionarily' connected to those
pirots? -- philogeny? It seems the case that we would -- such a futile
design looks like a deviation from our intelligent design).

And, finally, as it touches on "Relation" (Kant, Aristotle) we get that
the pirot

can also, Grice just said,

"cotch of one obble o and another obble o' as being fid to one another."

where, he displays the code, "'fid' is a possible relation between obbles."

---- So the operancy of our cognition of relational properties is
supervenient on our adaptiveness to survive in a scenario
where objects do not just present to us, but present to us
as basically _in a *de re* relation with one another.

_That_ was Relation for Aristotle -- as cited by Chapman:

"Aristotle's original formulation of the [Table of Categories]
allows us that they can take the form of

'either substance [Modus, if you wish! to complete
the quartet], or quantity or qualification or

a relative

or where or when or being-in-a-position
or having or doing or being-affected'

[Loeb Classical Library for the Greek text -- and recall: he spoke with an
accent! He _coined_ 'category' too! (* the 'spoke with an accent' is
fanciful but reflects my polemic elsewhere with M. Chase as to whether there are
Northern features [Macedonian] or socio-lectal features ('koine' -- this
is surer) in Aristotle's not too intelligible Greek prose for those
used to Platonic smoothnesses].

The intricacies from the Relation (cotching two obbles as being fid to one
another) requires a few further rungs up the ladder (as Grice puts it) to
have properly talking -- or chatting as I prefer) pirots -- self
formulating a sort of 'talking manual' or 'imannuel' where not only obbles are
cotched as being fid to one another, but conversational moves in the
conversational 'game' as well to the shared 'converational goal' --

In fact, in the basic sense, it would be that a 'conversational move' --
i.e. some display of behaviour by a pirot -- is first 'cotched' as being fid
not so much to another move but to the 'goal' -- a sort of meta-cotching
-- that originated it.). It may also do to revise the THREE subdivisions of
the Category of Relation in Kant to explore its 'evolutionary' cash value
-- For Kant, Relation subsumes: Categorical proper, Disjunctive and
Hypothetical]

And, then, by hocus pocus (but not -- really) we get, 'be relevant'! (?).

Cheers,

J. L. Speranza
Bordighera.

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Received on Wed Jul 15 20:25:39 2009