Heitere Beispiele #10

I want now to introduce another case — the case of a young officer in the cavalry who was killed in the charge of the Light Brigade. This officer was among the leaders of the charge and was shot quite early by a soldier named Ivan. Suppose that, had he not been shot by Ivan, he would have been killed within a few seconds by a bullet fired by Boris, who also had him within his sights. Our natural response to this case is to say that the officer’s death was a grave misfortune, depriving him of many years of life. Yet … should we not also conclude that in this case all the officer lost in being shot by Ivan was a few seconds of life, so that his death was hardly a misfortune at all?

[Jeff McMahan: Death and the Value of Life, in: Ethics 99:1 (1988), S. 32-61.]

Heitere Beispiele #9

Donald Davidson erklärt, wie man Raumfahrer tötet, noch bevor sie sterben:

Suppose I pour poison in the water tank of a space ship while it stands on earth. My purpose is to kill the space traveller, and I succeed: when he reaches Mars he takes a drink and dies. Two events are easy to distinguish: my pouring of the poison, and the death of the traveller. One precedes the other, and causes it. But where does the event of my killing the traveller come in? The most usual answer is that my killing the traveller is identical with my pouring the poison. In that case, the killing is over when the pouring is. We are driven to the conclusion that I have killed the traveller long before he dies.

(Donald Davidson 1969: The Individuation of Events, in: Ders. 2001: Essays on Actions and Events, S.163-180, hier S.177.)

Heitere Beispiele #8

The utterance of any sentence at all [...] can only be understood given a set of Background abilities that are not themselves part of the semantic content of the sentence. [...] Consider, for example, the utterance, “Cut the grass.” Notice that we understand the occurrence of the word “cut” quite differently from the way we understand the occurrence of “cut” in “Cut the cake” (or “Cut the cloth,” “Cut the skin,” and so on) even though the word “cut” appears univocally in both sentences. This point is illustrated if you consider that if I say to somebody, “Cut the cake,” and he runs a lawnmower over it, or if I say, “Cut the grass,” and he runs out and stabs it with a knife, we will, in each case, say that he did not do what he was literally told to do.

(Searle, John 1994: Literary Theory and Its Discontents, in: New Literary History, Vol. 25, No. 3, S.637-667, hier S.640)

Heitere Beispiele #7

Let me tell you two stories – or one story with two parts. Mrs. Mary Tricias studied such a sample book, made her selection, and ordered from her favorite textile shop enough material for her overstuffed chair and sofa – insisting that it be exactly like the sample. When the bundle came she opened it eagerly and was dismayed when several hundred 2′ x 3′ pieces with zigzag edges exactly like the sample fluttered to the floor. When she called the shop, protesting loudly, the proprietor replied, injured and weary, “But Mrs. Tricias, you said the material must be exactly like the sample. When it arrived from the factory yesterday, I kept my assistants here half the night cutting it up to match the sample.”
The incident was nearly forgotten some months later, when Mrs. Tricias, having sewed the pieces together and covered her furniture, decided to have a party. She went to the local bakery, selected a chocolate cupcake from those on display and ordered enough for fifty guests, to be delivered two weeks later. Just as the guests were beginning to arrive, a truck drove up with a single huge cake. The lady running the bake-shop was utterly discouraged by the complaint. “But Mrs. Tricias, you have no idea how much trouble we went to. My husband runs the textile shop and he warned me that your order would have to be in one piece.”
The moral of this story is not simply that you can’t win, but that a sample is a sample of some of its properties but not others.

(Nelson Goodman 1978: When is Art?, in: David Perkins, Barbara Leondar (Hgg.), The Arts and Cognition, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, S.63f.)

Heitere Beispiele #6

A thing is a chair only if sentient creatures take it as something to sit upon.

(James E. Bayley 1992: Indroduction, in: Ders. (Hg.), Aspects of Relativism. Moral, Cognitive and Literary, Lanham, S.9.)

Heitere Beispiele #5

Folter oder Bier? Richard Hare illustriert die Bedeutung des Wortes “willkürlich” (“arbitrary”):

One might as well say that my choice between being myself tortured and being given a glass of beer is arbitrary, because no reason can be given for it other than that torture is what it is, and glasses of beer what they are. Yet, in a sense, I choose libero arbitrio between beer and the thumb-screw.

(Richard Hare 1955: Universalisability, in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 55, S.304.)

Heitere Beispiele #4

Nelson Goodman erklärt, was passieren kann, wenn man zwar wahre, aber nicht richtige Überzeugungen hat:

Having been ordered to shoot anyone who moved, the guard shot all his prisoners, contending that they were all moving rapidly around the sun.

[aus: Elgin, Catherine Z./Goodman, Nelson 1988: Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences, Indianapolis, Cambridge, S.52.]

Heitere Beispiele #3

Gregory Currie erläutert, dass wir zwar fiktionale Erzählungen konsumieren, aber für gewöhnlich keine anderen fiktionalen Dinge:

Cooks do not relax by reading recipes for imaginary cakes made from non-existent ingredients, nor barristers by reading the hypothesized legal system of Neptune.

[aus: Gregory Currie (2012): Narratives & Narrators. A Philosophy of Stories. Oxford University Press, S.viii.]

Heitere Beispiele #2

Heute: Wolfgang Detel erläutert, was ein “natürliches Zeichen” ist.

“Bärenspuren im Schnee sind beispielsweise natürliche Zeichen dafür, dass Bären über den Schnee gelaufen sind, denn Bären, und nur Bären, produzieren Bärenspuren im Schnee.”

[aus: Detel, Wolfgang 2011: Geist und Verstehen. Historische Grundlagen einer modernen Hermeneutik. Frankfurt am Main (Vittorio Klostermann), S. 33.]

Heitere Beispiele #1

In der Philosophie sind aus irgendeinem Grund alberne bis absurde Beispiele beliebt, übrigens insbesondere in der analytischen Tradition. Woran das liegt, das weiß so genau keiner, ist ja aber auch egal. Oft haben diese Beispiele auch eine extrem lange Lebensdauer und man weiß nicht so recht, wer überhaupt der Erfinder des Beispiels war, auch wenn man in einer großen Zahl von Fällen mit guten Gründen auf Wittgenstein, Putnam, Quine oder am besten immer gleich auf Wittgenstein tippen kann.

Ich werde, wenn mir welche auffallen, mal die heiteren dieser Beispiele hier sammeln. Heute macht den Anfang Gregory Currie. Selbiger erklärt die Grenzen seines Kommunikationsbegriffs mit einem Satz heißer Ohren:

“If my ears turn red when it rains, and you see my ears turn red und infer that it’s raining, I have not communicated anything to you [...].”

[aus: G. Currie: The Nature of Fiction. Camebridge University Press 1990, S. 25]