Language Argument Research Articles

Rhetoric and Disguise: Political Language and Political Argument in Absalom and Achitophel

“There was never more need, never greater occasion for the exercise of Moderation, than now in our Age. It's much in the common talk, and in the wishes of all sorts of men, all seem to desire and court it; and yet I believe it was never less understood, less practised.”John Evans, Moderation Stated, 1682.The ironic fate of Absalom and Achitophel is to be fully appreciated as one of the great political poems of the language and only partially comprehended as political argument. Recent criticism of the poem is marked by a widening discrepancy between the ways in which it is understood as verbal and as political artifact. Metaphor and allusion have been carefully and often subtly charted, yet the poem's political rhetoric and its political argument are assumed to be simple coordinates. The tensions, indeed the contradictions, between explicit language and implicit argument are not only unexamined but largely unperceived. The conventional reading, which has become an almost fixed critical response, argues that the poem rises above partisan politics, that it derives from a political intelligence committed to a conservative ideology but indifferent to, indeed contemptuous of, the “party color'd mind.”Generalities about Dryden's temper, the poet as philosophical sceptic, as disinterested critic of extremes, together with the seemingly ingenuous and repeated claims of moderation and balance in the Preface have led a number of critics to understand the narrator's espoused moderation as Dryden's political stance—a judgment which Dryden's contemporaries certainly did not allow.

Foundations Without Certainty

There has been a revival of interest in Hegel of late among English-speaking philosophers. Although he is still regarded as maddeningly obscure, a number of important philosophers (including Quine, Sellars, Feyerabend and Rorty) have been attracted by a doctrine prominently associated with Hegel, the coherence theory of truth. In order to hold the coherence theory of truth, it is obvious that you must hold what might be called the coherence theory of truth-testing as well: for if this theory is wrong and we can test some statements (even if only in part) by, for example, introspection as well as in terms of coherence, truth must involve something more than just coherence. My arguments against the coherence theory of truth-testing, since it is implied by the coherence theory proper, are indirectly against the coherence theory as well. I also argue that unless some version of the Private Language Argument is successful, it is virtually impossible to defend the coherence theory of truth-testing (and hence the coherence theory proper) without denying the existence of experiences, thereby committing oneself to materialism.

A Neglected Avenue in Contemporary Religious Apologetics

‘Apologetics’ is hardly a word to be used without apology in the present dispensation. And to speak of anything like a neglected avenue or opportunity in religious apologetics might almost seem as if one were speaking of an opportunity in just such an enterprise as no self-respecting philosopher would nowadays wish even to be associated with. For all of their avoidance of the term, however, the thing designated by the term is something with which not a few philosophers of recent years have been not above dabbling in, albeit usually under other names and other labels. After all, religious language has now come to be recognized as not just a legitimate, but even a fashionable object of philosophic attention. And a concern with religious language has often brought with it a concern with religious attitudes, religious behaviour, religious argumentation — yes, even to the point of occasionally becoming a concern with the very religious realities themselves that religious language, religious attitudes, religious behaviour, and religious argument are presumably all about. True, religious realities in this sense are to today's garden of philosophy pretty much what the tree of knowledge once was to the garden of Eden. In fact, one even suspects that there could be a serpent about somewhere, for cases have been reported of an occasional philosopher Adam or philosopher Eve having yielded to temptation: a consideration of God-talk has been known to lead to cautious admissions that such talk might be cognitively meaningful; a consideration of God-experiences to the admission that such experiences under certain circumstances could be veridical; or, even more rarely, a consideration of proofs for God's existence to the gingerly admission that at least some of these proofs might just possibly be valid. Needless to say, though, such a yielding to temptation on the part of some few contemporary philosophers, while it may not have led to any manifest sewing together of fig-leaves, has certainly brought with it the danger, if not always the reality, of a supercilious expulsion from the glorious Eden of contemporary professional philosophy.

Reason, emotion, and love

Wittgenstein's private language argument is interpreted as an example of a kind of transcendental argument which, if valid, explains why a certain concept must possess certain features. Cognition and affect are shown to require each other by an application of Bennett's account of what beings capable of true cognition must be capable of, and the necessity of certain emotions to the existence of any rules in a community is argued in similar fashion. Hume's account of love and admiration being rejected, an account of love, intended to explain some of love's familiar features, is defended, and various proposed additions to the analysis are rejected. The idea of love is linked to those of value, agency, and the transcendental self by argument showing that each of these ideas requires all of the others. Finally, the idea of love is linked by a direct argument to that of the transcendental self.

A pascal compiler for PDP 11 minicomputers

AbstractIn this paper the development of a cross‐compiler running on the central computing facility is described. The compiler transforms PASCAL source code into object code for the PDP 11 family. The arguments for higher level languages on minicomputers and the choice made for PASCAL are discussed. It is shown that only a minor effort in terms of manpower is required if such a development is based on an existing compiler that is suited to the purpose of adaptation. Even without large amounts of optimization the code produced is both compact and efficient. Some attention is paid to requirements that should be fulfilled in portable compilers. The paper ends with a discussion of some strong points and weak points of the PDP 11 architecture.

El argumento del lenguaje privado (I)

Resumen

Verificationism, scepticism, and the private language argument

Verificationism, scepticism, and the private language argument

Emotion and Thought in Hume's Treatise

In this paper I examine Hume's theory of the emotions, as presented in his Treatise of Human Nature, paying particular attention to what he has to say about the relationships between emotion and thought. I begin by presenting, in some detail, Hume's views about the nature of the emotions, their causes, and their objects. I then consider the bearing of the private language argument on Hume's theory, and try to show that it is not sufficient to reveal the weaknesses in Hume's account of the connections between emotion and thought. Lastly, and most extensively, I attempt to show that Hume's account of these connections is in fact unacceptable, and I argue that his basic mistake is that of construing emotions as sensations. Along the way I sketch in the outlines of what I take to be a more adequate theory of emotion and thought.

Husserl’s Private Language

When I refer to HusserFs Private Language, I am not referring to opaque style of his philosophical writings, nor to fact that most of his work continues to be inaccessible to general public, nor to fact that his ideas are still too often possession of small protective groups of philosophers. What I am worried about is peculiar sorts of entities and states-of-affairs to which those opaque and sometimes inaccessible writings refer. In brief, they refer to phenomenaobjects of to the immediate data of experience, to pure consciousness, to the predicative sphere of receptive experience. However, just about time of Husserl's death, another philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, was beginning to raise questions about very intelligibility of talk of such Wittgenstein is now credited with repudiation of idea of a private language, one that refers to private objects. And since phenomenologists after Husserl have taken phenomenological return to subjectivity as their major triumph, I should like to consider whether Husserl's phenomena are private in any sense that would place them in jeopardy from Wittgenstein's so-called private language argument. In his early Logical Investigations7 Husserl describes his embryonic method as description of constitutive elements of the immediate data of experience, and thought-and-knowledge experiences. In his later Ideas I, phenomenological investigation commences with a number of reductions, purpose of which is to insure that objects of phenomenological description are objects of pure consciousness:

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Knowledge and Human Interests. By Juurgen Habermas. Aquinas on Metaphysics: a Historico‐doctrinal study of the Commentary on the Metaphysics. By James C. Doig. Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language: Some Aspects of its Development. By James Bogen. The Private Language Argument. Edited by O. R. Jones. Logico‐Linguistic Papers. By P. F. Strawson. Philosophical Problems in Logic, Some Recent Developments. Edited by Karel Lambert. Logic as Philosophy. Edited by Peter T. Manicas. Readings on Logic. Edited by Irving M. Copi and James A. Gould. Body and Mind. By Keith Campbell. Human Values and the Mind of Man. Edited by Ervin Laszlo and James B. Wilbur. Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions. By Jean‐Paul Sartre. Memory. By Don Locke. Insights and Illusions of Philosophy. By Jean Piaget, translated by Wolfe Mays. Personality and Science. Edited by I. T. Ramsey and Ruth Porter. Drugs, Mysticism and Make‐Believe. By R. C. Zaehner. The Psychology of Religious Mysticism. By James H. Leuba. Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century. By Steven E. Ozment. Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525‐1618. By Claus‐Peter Clasen. Popular Belief and Practice: Studies in Church History Vol. 8. Edited by G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker. The Faith of the People of God. By John Macquarrie. The Apostles’Creed in the Light of Today's Questions. By Wolfhart Pannenberg Faith: Its Nature And Meaning: Maynooth Summer School Papers 1970. Edited by Paul Surlis. The Christ. By Piet Schoonenberg. Translated by Della Couling. Trinität und Vernunft. Untersuchungen zur Möglichkeit einer rationalen Trinitätslehre bei Anselm, Abaelard, den Viktorinern, A. Günther und J. Frohschammer. By Walter Simonis. Semantics in Biblical Research. New Methods of Defining Hebrew Words for Salvation. By John F. A. Sawyer. List of Septuagint Words Sharing Common Elements. By Xavier Jacques, S. J. Bibliographie Biblique 1930‐1970. By Paul‐Émile Langevin, S. J. The Study of Judaism. Bibliographical Essays. By Richard Bavier and others. Contemporary Community: Sociological Illusion or Reality ? By Jacqueline Scherer. Memoirs. By W. A. Visser‘T Hooft.

Hume's Blue Patch and the Mind's Creativity

ed the rule governing the move from tone 1 to tone 2, tone 2 to tone 3, and have applied this rule to tone i to generate tonej without in fact having an idea of tone j in advance? (The fact that he cannot articulate this rule is irrelevant; this is often the case with regard to situations of how.) Conversely, failure to produce the tone would not necessarily indicate that the man in question does not have the idea of tone j-he may simply lack the degree of control over his vocal chords necessary to create that sound.32 Once more, Hume's example looks to be irrelevant on logical grounds-the subject may have the idea in question prior to the impression, but there is no way of either his or our knowing that he does. This objection is of course similar to the private language argument which is directed against contemporary Humean phenomenalistic empiricists.33 It thus appears that if the above argument is correct, Hume need not have supplied even this one contradictory example to his general principle, since the case in question cannot be tested and hence counts neither for nor against the principle. Colorado State University. 3'This argument was suggested to me by Linda M. Rollin. 32But see B. Croce, Aesthetic (New York, 1964) for an interesting alternative view. 33The argument is primarily due to Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.62 on Fri, 14 Jul 2017 17:38:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Locke's Criticism of Wittgenstein

In his book Myself and Others,l Don Locke seeks to show that Wittgenstein made an illegitimate use the Private Language Argument. He thinks that private language is, in philosophical contexts, one two things : either (i) it is language which only one person can understand , or (ii) it is a language in which terms refer to 'private objects ', items which only one person is and can be aware, e.g. bodily sensations (p. 72). Wittgenstein was right, Locke says, to argue that (i) is incoherent; but wrong in that he considered the impossibility (i) as proof the impossibility (ii): The conclusion the private language argument-that word like 'pain ' does not and cannot name, refer to, private object, which only the one person is aware of-is grossly implausible. (p. 93) Thus, in Locke's view, Wittgenstein thought that the denial private meaning entailed the denial private reference. Indeed, Locke even accuses Wittgenstein failure to distinguish meaning and reference (p. 99). P. T. Geach, on the contrary, has argued: What Wittgenstein wanted to deny was not the private reference psychological expressions-e.g. that stands for kind experience that may be quite 'private '-but the possibility giving them private sense-e.g. giving sense to the word pain by attending to one's own pain-experiences, performance that would be private and uncheckable.2 In this paper I shall maintain Geach's position by arguing that Locke has grossly misunderstood Wittgenstein's argument. It is certainly true that in some sense 'private object', Wittgenstein denies that there can be private object language, and that, in some sense 'private object' Locke asserts that there can be private object language. But Locke himself distinguishes two senses 'private object': it can either mean which only the one person can know of or something which only one person can (p. 102). Now, private object language, according to the first these senses, would be type (i) private language and hence, Locke agrees with Wittgenstein, incoherent. One might suppose, then, that Wittgenstein is denying the existence private object language in this sense, and not in the other. Locke thinks that this is part what he is doing and that it is this which enables him to say that 'only I can know that I am in pain' is either false or meaningless (Investigations ? 246). But Wittgenstein makes the mistake, apparently, thinking that this shows the incoherence private object language in the second sense. Locke puts it thus : The absurdity 'Only I know whether I feel pain' is supposed [viz. by Wittgenstein] to show that words like 'pain' cannot refer to private objects,

The rationalization of electrical units and its effect on the M.K.S. system

The general principle of the rationalization of electrical units was first stated by Heaviside in 1892, but for over forty years the matter has been under suspended judgment. In 1935 and 1938 the International Electrotechnical Commission considered the matter of rationalization but found itself so divided that it was unable to reach a decision about it. The paper seeks to restate Heaviside's arguments in modern terminology and language, in a form accessible to any professional electrical engineer, and to add certain new arguments in support of rationalization. The difference between rationalization of the M.K.S. system, as now proposed, and Heaviside's original method of rationalization, which involves a change in the size of the unit of current, is discussed. A number of examples of the effects of rationalization, and a table of rationalized units and constants, are provided. A list of references to Heaviside's published works concludes the paper.