[hist-analytic] Positivism in 21th.-Century Analytic Philosophy

[jlsperanza at aol.com]

"if such a reduction were possible
how would we deal with the "inverse variation of intension and
extension"? Most, I guess, would ask: "What's the problem?""

Egstactly, and I´m sorry I attacked R. B. Jones´s post when it was 
unfinished! But I´m sorry I didn´t mean any wrong. And I´ll have a look 
at his pdf. document again.

But in any case, our thoughts on

        reductive, not reductionist
        reductionist, not reductive

may shed light on Jones´s use of this "adjective", ´reductive´. (Indeed 
in the phrase, ´reductive analysis´).

This distinction Grice thinks does hold water. A reductive analysis is 
one like his,

   Utterer means that p.
      (and thus, ulitmately,
         higher up, "p" means p)
              reduces to
                 Utterer intends that p.

where "p" is a dummy symbol as it were -- and stands not for 
proposition but, he says to annoy us, "propositional COMPLEX".

But there are many other levels at which the

    reductive, not reductionist

can be read (I do think that "reductionist, but not reductive", alla 
Church, is imcompatible -- reductionist eliminationists are into 
reductive analysis, or have to be, but the converse, as Grice notes, 
does not hold).

A lot of work in this area is being done by Anita Avramides examining, 
of all people

              DAVIDSON

for Davidson went on record, alas, as proposing a

         Symmetricalist

view, in which the psychological and the semantic are INTER-RELATED in 
ways that challenge any Gricean worth her name!

--- Now, Bayne refers to the "intension" vs. "extension" and Katz´s 
attempt to

   reduce

the "intensional" to the "extensional".

And, indeed, the link Jones´s was referring to in his earlier post to 
Grice´s abhorrence for a bete noire, was connected to this Bete Noire 
which he sees as an offspring of Reductionism: the bete noire of 
Extensionalism.

His argument against Extensionalism is pretty abstract in "Prejudices 
and Predilections", in "Reply to Richards" and may entertain you even 
if it does not have the bite to it that you would be expecting.

In any case, it remains to see why these issues pertain to Carnap, or 
to Positivism, as I hope they do! (Never mind 21th. century!)

Cheers,

JL