Whether or not it was intended as such, this article of Professor Ryle's has functioned in fact as a blow on the side of Melbourne in a battle between Melbourne and Sydney which has, I understand, been a feature of the Australian philosophical scene for many years, and which was certainly in evidence at the 1951 congress. Professor Anderson, it would seem, has always found someone to cross swords with in the southern University. In an earlier period the Victorian Sassenachs were predominantly ' idealists ' of one sort or another; but now there is a strong representation there of the current British tendency to regard the main task of philosophy as the unravelling of mental and verbal tangles generated by the endless complexity and changefulness of ordinary language. An admirable example of this technique was given at the congress by Dr W. D. Falk, in a paper on ' Prescriptive Speech '. It is often held by those who reduce philosophical to linguistic problems that statements about what we ought to do, as well as statements about what is ' good ', are just a subtly disguised manner of ordering people about. As far as ' ought ' is concerned, this is of course the Andersonian view too. It is not Dr Falk's view; but he attacks it, as he says, 'from within'. The greater part of his paper was something that could almost have come from a good novel -an extremely polished and painstaking account of the various ways in which the speech of one person leads to action in another. The main dividing-line, he argued, is not that between utterances in the indicative mood and utterances in the imperative, but that between utterances which merely draw a person's attention to some circumstance which would have moved him to action had he known of it independently (;'If you don't go now you'll miss the last bus ') and utterances which themselves bring into being a motive for action which was not previously present (' If you don't get out now I'll throw you out'). There are of course an infinite variety of intermediary cases, and cases of the one form masquerading as the other ; and Dr Falk discussed a number of these with great insight and humour. He then went on to consider cases in which we say 'You ought to do X', and came to the conclusion that these are more like the first sort of case than the second. In the Andersonian view these exhaustive and sometimes exhausting discussions of linguistic usages are a waste of philosophical time ; what little value they have is as a prelude to the exposure of 'bulldozing'. It also seems to be the Andersonian ' line ' that philosophers who are endlessly preoccupied with linguistic conventions, and with what people mean rather than with what is the case, are generally on the side of the conventions socially too, and have abandoned ethics for etiquette. I have concentrated on these ethical and semi-ethical issues because they are probably of most general interest, but the congress had its teeth into other things also. A paper, for example, by Professor J. J. C. Smart of Adelaide on Logical Paradoxes. These are tricky things, but it is worth while trying to outline one of them and Professor Smart's manner of dealing with it, as I am not very satisfied either with his solution or with any other that I have thought of or come across, and would be interested to see some philosophical amateur who reads Landfall chip into the discussion. (He couldn't easily do worse than the professionals have done with this subject.)--A.N. Prior "This Quarter" The Landfall March 1952, pp. 51-2
Causing and then knowing of my recurring fascination with the 'pioneer in intensional logic,' A.N. Prior (recall), the economist, David M. Levy, has repeatedly called my attention to A.N. Prior's writings in the New Zealand periodical, The Landfall, and decided to reduce my search costs by adding a link to the archived PdF copies. Among the gems to be found there are fascinating reviews of Popper's Open Society and C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man.(I intend to return to these.) The essay from which I quote above -- a kind of impression of a "single event" (p. 49) then bi-annual Australasian Association of Psychology and Philosophy in august 1951 -- is written just at the point of Prior's first publications as a formal logician.
What caught my attention is Prior's description of the transition, at the University of Melbourne, from an Idealist-centric department to a department oriented around ordinary language philosophy (exemplified by W. D. Falk, who is, in fact, himself a fascinating thinker). Both the earlier idealists and the then dominant ordinary language philosophers are opposed by Sydney's John Anderson. (Part of the joke is that Anderson was born a Scot.) Anderson's philosophy is characterized by his fondness for a flat ontology and embrace of a certain species of atheism (and rejection of ontological hierarchy).
In almost Swiftian fashion, Prior describes the Lilliputian "battle between Melbourne and Sydney which has, I understand, been a feature of the Australian philosophical scene for many years." The battle is a product of geography and, apparently, the force of Anderson's personality. Part of the comedy of Prior's report is that Prior recognizes that he is thought by others, including the eminent J. J. C. Smart, to belong to Anderson's school, but not by Anderson ("Professor Smart, who is of the Ryle-Melbourne faction, called me an Andersonian. Later on Professor Anderson did his best to put him right about that). Prior's thoughts on his club identity are left obscure.
At the start of his essay, Prior grants that there are no "subtle reasons why this event should loom larger in our thoughts than the election (N.Z.), the election (U.K.), the referendum (Australia), the sedition bill (N.Z.), the armistice negotiations (Korea) and the rest." But philosophical politics clearly can be as absorbing as the great politics of states and dominions. I return to that shortly.
I don't mean to suggest that the satire is devoid of seriousness (or that I can read all clues on the Trans-Tasman relations). The essay is structured along three contraries: as the quote (midway through the essay reveals), one of these is the contrast between philosophical "professionals" and "amateurs." The other is the contrast between 'pure' and impure/applied philosophers, that is "psychologists." These had been part of the same professional association, the Australasian Association of Psychology and Philosophy, but had recently split, with the pure philosophers. ["Australasian psychologists now have, I think, a periodical and presumably an association of their own, and the association now being considered has come to cater more exclusively for ' pure ' philosophers."]
Somewhat strikingly, it's the professionals -- presumably people like Smart and Prior himself, and especially John Anderson, employed at university -- come off looking faintly ridiculous, but not without fondness. The upshot Anderson's critique of ordinary language philosophy, in particular, is spelled out: "that philosophers who are endlessly preoccupied with linguistic conventions, and with what people mean rather than with what is the case, are generally on the side of the conventions socially too, and have abandoned ethics for etiquette." Whole uncharitable, it is not devoid of significance (and in some ways precedes Isaiah Berlin's line of attack). The third contrary is the contrast between philosophical "factions" (p. 53) and the impartial lover of truth.
And this leads me to a closing speculative observation on the opening line of the essay. ("I PROPOSE in all shamelessness to devote these pages to the consideration of a single event, and one, moreover, which did not take place in this quarter, but rather in the one before it-a congress of philosophers which met in Sydney last August.") My interest here is in the self-identification of shamelessness. Regular readers of Landfall, had already been informed by Prior, in his review of Lewis, that he is predisposed toward a form of sentimentalism in the vein of Adam Smith ("disinterestedness should...be made the defining characteristic of ethical sentiments, as it has in fact been made by the more circumspect subjectivists from Adam Smith onwards.") In fact, in the review of Popper, Prior also embraces Smith's philosophy. (Smith plays a central role in Prior's Logic and the Basis of Ethics.)
What's odd is is that shame is a very important sentiment in Smith's moral philosophy. But, at no point, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, does Smith embrace shamelessness. Smith suggests that a "real lover a truth" even feels shame at any unintentional falsehood conveyed in careless gossiping. But,while Gulliver is often ashamed, the more rational (would be philosopher-kings) Houyhnhnms reject shame. But perhaps, the shamelessness consists in recognizing that in so far as all events are located in time by means of tenses, even belated ones, from a certain logical point of view all events are on par. The high and the low collapse into a flat plane, which is, of course, the Swiftian move par excellence. And, to add for good measure, so Smart was not all wrong in discerning the drift of Prior's philosophical leanings.
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