By J. L. Speranza, F. R. S. (failed) &c
of The Grice Club,
for The Carnap Corner.
It is a pleasure to be invited to correspond on pirot talk and others. Roger should note that it is pretty good, when one posts things to blogs to leave the first line of the post you are writing blank. Then add "By Roger Bishop Jones, of the Carnap Corner". In this way, when people (and pirots) read the blog "Carnap Corner", they see it as a magazine, or something, with contributions by different people (I am sorry that my blog, GriceClub, is not working too smooth on that front, seeing that contributions are mainly from yours truly). The bad-side of this is that comments, usually highly entertaining and informative, are otherwise buried at a 'click' distance that many pirots (I know) will not (click) -- and thus left unread.
So what we should aim at is good posts, or at least good titled post (or goodly titled posts) and threads of comments. Comments are not hierarchized, if that's the word. One after the other. That's good if it's just two people (or pirots) joining in, but if you get a third party, you may need to mark who you are addressing your comment to. (So far, I don't think I've had that problem in GriceClub at all!).
Anyway, the pirot-talk then. Pirot is a term used by Carnap as early as 1937, as tr. by Smeaton. The word has an early occurrence in the OED2, but we can ignore that, for the time being. Grice took it up and abused it!
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But he does so little with the Pirots in "Logical Syntax" (the word occurs twice and illustrates a very minor point).
ReplyDeleteDo the Pirots appear again later in Carnap, or do they only reach maturity in Grice and Speranza?
True.
ReplyDeleteI think they are pretty IMMATURE as used by Smeaton (she was some lah-di-dah lady, I should say: Carnap had _taste_ in looking for translators to his book).
If the thing is originally in German. I was wondering if what Smeaton found was:
Piroten karulizieren elatiklich.
---
Not a minor point at all!
Carnap is working with Barbara, no doubt:
(x)Px --> Kx
(ix)Px
--------------
(ix)Kx
---
In Smeaton's tr.
"Pirots karulize elatically"
"A is a pirot"
-- why should she chose "A" as the name of the pirot? My guess is this is Aristotelian. Aristotle's only symbols in his big Organon are A and B, but, I think, for propositions, rather than parts therein.
----
"Thus, A karulizes elatically"
-- Carnap is trusting that the
GRAMMATICAL form will be more than a pretty good guide to logical form.
For he is assuming, that we "know" that 'pirot' works as a noun, and a plural one in the major premise.
And that 'karulises' is a verb in the third person SINGULAR now in the conclusion.
Roger Bishop Jones having worked with izzing and hazzing, the minor premise ("A is a pirot") possibly equivocates. What he means is "A hazz pirot".
Etc.