"pirots (which, as Russell and Carnap have told us,...)"

By J. L. Speranza

for the Carnap Corner


"My creatures I call pirots (which, as Russell and Carnap have told us are things which karulize elatically")
Grice, Method, 1975 repr. Gr91:140

And cfr. Ch06:122, who's relying on an unpublication (transcript from a tape) by Grice, which he wanted to entitle, "How pirots karulize elatically: some simpler ways".

In "Method" he actually refers (in this order) to "Russell and Carnap" -- but we haven't been able to find the earlier Russellian reference. It is possible that Carnap learned of the pirots via correspondence with Russell (vide Roger Bishop Jones/J. L. Speranza, "The Carnap-Grice Conversation", ch. ii -- Student Years and beyond).

The pirots acquired some fame after Grice re-hashed them in this 1970s lectures, then. He writes in 1975a:

----"My creatures I call pirots (which Russell and Carnap have told us are things which karulize elatically)"

In Grice they play a methodological role in what we may see as an ideal-observer theory. Note the poetic license Grice takes in considering the pirot is a 'thing'.

For, as Chapman notes, as directly per Carnap 1937 -- all that write (tr. Smeaton) writes is:

"For instance, given an appropriate RULE, it can be PROVED
that the word-series, 'Pirots karulize elatically' is
a sentence, provided only that 'Pirots' is known to be
a substantive (in the plural),"


-- Cfr. Alice's first reaction to her "Jabberwocky": "Well, it seems pretty obvious that something did something very nasty to someone". And cfr. 'All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe.')

-- but we are not told they are _things_ unless we consider properties, e.g. to be things, too--.

"Tempers boil Italianly"

Carnap goes on:

"'karulize' a verb (in the third person plural) and 'elatically' an adverb... The meaning of the words [i.e. the roots, PIROT, KARULISE and ELATICAL) are quite Inessential to the purpose, and need not be known".

As Chapman notes, the agenda of regimenting FL vs. NL is already there in the Intro to this book (Cfr. Carnap's two lectures in London):

"In the introduction to The Logical Syntax of Language", Chapman expands, "Carnap presents a typically LOGICAL POSITIVIST accont of the PHILOSOPHER's reason for taking language seriously."

Seriously? This seems like the antonymy of seriousness to me, but I see her point.

"A suitably rigorous language will provide the necessary tools for logical and SCIENTIFIC exposition. This language is to be a FORMAL SYSTEM, concerned with types and orders of symbols but paying no attention to MEANING."

Chapman goes on to quote directly from Carnap here:

Carnap writes:

"The unsystematic and logically IMPERFECT structure
of the natural word-languges" makes them unamenable
to such formal analysis, but in a

"well-constructed language" it is possible to formulate and undestand syntactic rules".

Roger Bishop Jones is right here, as Chapman agrees: "Carnap does no more with his invented language, proposing instead to stick to symbolic languages".

----

But yes, the pirot reaches maturity then with Grice. (And if Speranza may add so, he uses them pretty freely in his Speranza, The Feast of Reason, to provide a transcendental justification of survival mechanisms!)

Etc.

JL

Refs.
Carnap, The logical syntax of language, 1937.
Chapman, _Grice_. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006.
Grice, Method in philosophical psychology, 1975, Proc. APA, repr. 1991.
Speranza, JL. The feast of conversational reason, in M. J. Palacios.