Number 93 : July 1998 |
Dear Theo,
Thank you for Commensal 92 and for taking so much trouble with my little contribution (page 15).
I was glad you don’t intend to treat Christians as a protected species (page 16).
However, I have to point out that theologians use the word and the idea of ‘Grace’ in a special way. Furthermore, not from Handel but from J.S. Bach (his St. Matthew Passion) I call to mind the great cry : ‘Warum!’. I hope I’ve spelt this properly. Anyway, J.C. believed he was forsaken by God.
Reading the fascinating extract you published about the death of Socrates, I think this episode could be called inspiring, that is, full of grace, too.
I’ve lost my Californian tract, but you, a triple niner with American contacts, should be able to find someone who remembers it. It was called ‘The Shining Stranger’ and sent to me by Mensan Mrs. Winifred Babcock of Beverly Hills. The author of Tropic of Cancer, whose name I forget [Henry Miller ?; Ed], recommended it. I disagree with much of it.
But, from the gospels, we can read how and when J.C. didn’t behave like a prince, prelate or one triumphantly laurelled. A messiah has, or is expected to have, great power : J.C. was poor. Alternatively, a messiah is expected to be a liberator : J.C. told us to ‘render unto Caesar’ etc. etc. A messiah is expected to make generalisations, abstractions, big ideas : J.C. was concerned about particular incidents and particular things. A messiah is concerned only with good people : J.C. knew traitors and a tart. He also was very unorthodox, on two occasions, in a holy temple; once when he lost his temper, once when he was a child and a great nuisance to his parents.
Sorry about all this, but you did show an interest in this kind of idea.
When I wrote about ‘showing’ I had, in my mind, the ‘TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS’. This, if I may say so, has been of interest to extensive scholars, who will remember that Wittgenstein believed that a proposition shows its sense and that what can be shown cannot be said.
I think we are very lucky to have John Neary’s article ‘What use is a mosquito’ (page 17) in the same issue as John Stubbings’ ‘Art’ (page 9). How right you are, Theo, to say ‘a mosquito’s use is simply to be a mosquito’. Similarly, Art is for Art. Who disagrees ?
As for the kids in the garden (John Neary, page 18) how am I wrong when I maintain that the gentleman has a right to say he knows that his kids are in the garden until someone or something shows he is mistaken ? It seems to me that all I claim to know is like this. I think I know something until someone or something proves I am wrong. I could, we all could, say ‘I believe’ instead of ‘I know’ always, to make certain that I am, or we are, never wrong. But then, ‘I believe’ would simply mean what ‘I know’ means now. Perhaps an individual who has really swatted this subject up could give me some guidelines.
I do look forward to Commensal 93. But before that PhiSIGma will arrive. Wow.
Valerie Ransford
P.S. One day I’ll get over my techno-phobia and people like you won’t earn my undying gratitude for making a fair copy of my stuff.
Valerie : you lost me completely with some of your earlier remarks above - how do these (ie. on Grace & the T L-P quotation) connect to previous discussions ? I presume the remarks on "J.C." link in with him, allegedly, being an "anti-Messiah" - all standard pulpit stuff with which I agree, more or less. I think I’ll leave Mrs. Babcock alone if I may. I’m not a "Triple Niner", by the way - the TNS is a break-away group from ISPE, which I’m a member of, but on the same level so I see no good reason to join. I’ve tried the next one up (Prometheus) but I’m not quite up to it, I’m afraid!
I don’t know whether I’ve really swatted up the subject of epistemology, but I’ll have a bash - if only for others to have a bigger target to aim at. If we use "believe" instead of "know", then "know" is spare and "believe" has to do the work of two words. We need both, with one word suggesting a greater degree of assuredness than the other. There is a grey area between certainty and doubt where either word might do. My approach has been to assume that (virtually) no knowledge is certain, but that there is a difference between claiming to know and claiming to be certain - this seems to be the root of the current dispute; ie. I’m not certain my kids are in the garden, so (allegedly) I don’t know they are. But, as you point out, as I’m certain of precious little I could thereby claim to know next to nothing.
On a slight tangent, ... I’ve tried an infinite-valued logic - assigning a truth-value between 0 and 1 to any statement, rather than the usual bi-valued logic. In both schemes 0 implies falsehood (or certainty that X is false) and 1 implies truth (or certainty that X is true). Values in between imply degrees of assuredness - probabilities of truth - and the values would be assigned according to the odds one would be willing to bet on one’s being correct (assuming there were some infallible arbiter who knows the answers !). The motivation behind this was to try to determine the probability of a world-view. Let us suppose that a world view is composed of a set of irreducible propositions {pi} enumerated by the index set I & let each of these propositions have probability (truth value) P(pi). Then, the probability of the world view is (or is closely related to) the product, over I, of these probabilities, ie.PieI(P(pi)). Or so I contend ! Nice idea, and if it worked would help decide rationally between different world-views (eg. theistic & atheistic). It does give a good reason for accepting the principle of Occam’s razor, moreover, as the more probabilities we multiply together, the smaller the resultant product. Unfortunately, it is difficult to assign probabilities.
Interestingly (and please excuse this tangent on a tangent !) there’s an article by Rosanna Keefe of Jesus College Cambridge in this quarter’s Mind (Vol. 107, No. 427, July 1998) entitled Vagueness by Numbers. This article examines attempts to capture the concept of vagueness by assigning numerical values to vague predicates (such as "is tall" or "is red") where 1 is assigned to definitely tall people (say) and 0 to definitely short people, with those of middle height assigned intermediate values. The article, fairly in my view, disposes of such theories (which I believe are even flakier than my own !) on the grounds that the values cannot in practise be assigned.
Finally, I look forward to your days of techno-competence, if only so that it’ll reduce the risk of my garbling what you have to say !
Theo