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Duality and Opposition in Heraclitus and Modern Philosophy of Language and Linguistics

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Duality and Opposition in Heraclitus and Modern Philosophy of Language and Linguistics Duality and Opposition in Heraclitus and Modern Philosophy of Language and Linguistics A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, at Trinity College Dublin by Keith Begley 2016 Declaration I declare that this thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other university and it is entirely my own work. I agree to deposit this thesis in the University’s open access institutional repository or allow the library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright Legislation and Trinity College Library conditions of use and acknowledgement. ___________________ Keith Begley Duality and Opposition in Heraclitus and Modern Philosophy of Language and Linguistics Keith BEGLEY Aim: To investigate the phenomenon of Duality, that is, opposition in its many forms. In particular, as it appears in Heraclitus’ philosophy and his reaction to his predecessors, in the form of the thesis, apparently Heraclitean, of the Unity of Opposites; also, how duality appears in modern philosophy of language and linguistics, in particular with reference to the philosophy of Jerrold J. Katz. Thesis: That opposition is a phenomenon that has a real basis, an adequate explanation of which requires a hypotactic metaphysics (Heraclitus) and a decompositional semantics (Katz). Part 1: Duality and Opposition in Heraclitus Chapter 1: Duality in Heraclitus and in Heraclitus studies: the Unity of Opposites thesis Aim: To analyse and assess some of the various contemporary positions and problems regarding the interpretation of Heraclitus’ Unity of Opposites thesis, focused, in part, around Roman Dilcher’s objection to the very supposition that Heraclitus holds such a thesis. Thesis: That two distinctions in particular are appropriate for classifying the various positions: the Analytic/Synthetic and the Immanent/Transcendent distinctions. That, against Dilcher, there is a thesis of the unity of opposites in Heraclitus. Chapter 2: Heraclitus’ Revolution against Naïve Metaphysics Aim: To discuss the interpretations of Alexander Mourelatos and Julius Moravcsik, and to describe, explicate, and extrapolate Heraclitus’ revolution against naïve metaphysics. Thesis: That understanding Heraclitus in terms of his reaction to the naïve metaphysics that, in his view, preceded him provides unique solutions to a number of difficult interpretative issues. That Heraclitus had a proto-notion of essence and was not an extreme flux theorist. Chapter 3: The Unity of Opposites, Markedness, and the Logos Aim: To respond to Dilcher’s rejection of the notion of the Unity of Opposites thesis in Heraclitus and to compare and draw conclusions from a comparison of the views of Mourelatos and Dilcher, regarding, in particular, Markedness and the Logos. Thesis: That Dilcher was incorrect to question the presence in Heraclitus of the Unity of Opposites thesis. That Markedness further reveals the hypotactic nature of Heraclitus’ metaphysics. That the logos is not the law and measure of all things, rather, it is that which the speaker is in communion with in order to have the capacity and competence to express the ‘what it is to be’ of the things and the reasons for the necessity of their interactions. Part 2: Duality and Opposition in Modern Philosophy of Language and Linguistics Chapter 4: Contemporary Scientific Research into Antonymy Aim: Analysis of linguistic research conducted into the semantics of antonymy in the latter part of the 20th century and early 21st century, including some work carried out in the field of psychology regarding the perception of opposition. Analysis and criticism of a particular example of the approach to defining the kinds of antonymy by way of meaning postulates. Thesis: That, through their investigations, the linguists and others come up against the problem of the status of antonymy. That antonymy (semantic opposition) should not be defined in terms of logical opposition. Chapter 5: Antonymy and the Semantic Theory of Katz Aim: To attend to the problems identified in the previous chapter, regarding the definition of antonymy in terms of logical opposition (meaning postulates), and to discuss the work of Katz on this issue. To explicate and extrapolate upon the treatment of antonymy in Katz’ semantic theory. To draw out the implicit parallel with certain aspects of Heraclitus’ philosophy. Thesis: That a decompositional semantics is required to define the notion of antonymy. That Katz’ semantic theory is capable of providing semantic definitions for the main kinds of antonymy. That there is a parallel between Heraclitus’ rejection of naïve metaphysics and Katz’ rejection of meaning postulates, and that both of their resultant views depend upon hypotactic or decompositional structure. Acknowledgements First, I wish to thank my family, Cecily, Dan, Hazel, and Zoë, for all their love and support over the years, and especially my partner, Annette, for her patience with this philosopher she unwittingly got involved with, and our daughter, Adeline, who had the good sense and timing to arrive after the first submission of this thesis and prior to the viva voce; she has already brought much joy to our lives. I wish to thank all my friends, too many to mention, who kept me sane and with my feet on the ground. I would like to thank all at the Trinity Plato Centre, and the Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin; I cannot imagine what my life would have been like if I had not been part of this community of scholars. I would also like to express my gratitude to those in the Metaphysical Society, Dublin University, for taking an interest in my work, and for the honour of electing me to be a Vice-President of our society. I wish to thank, in particular, the following people: Peter Larsen, for much help and encouragement; John Nugent, for helping to proofread this thesis; Pantazis Tselemanis, for his kind assistance during the final months of the project; Pauline Sabrier, for her help and kindness; André Laks, for some helpful discussion and debate; Roman Dilcher, for taking the time to discuss his work with me, and for his expression of confidence in me; Peter Simons, for steering me toward research into Antonymy; Alexander Mourelatos, for his generous help and encouragement; Dónall McGinley, for many long discussions involving things black and white, convex and concave, on top of tables and underneath glasses, full and empty, real and ideal. Last but not least, I wish to thank my supervisor, Vasilis Politis, for everything that I have learnt from him during the eleven years that I have been his student, for ‘beating me black and blue’, and for expertly decapitating the beast so that I didn’t have to suffer too much. Contents Résumé ............................................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................... 7 §1 Background and history of the project .................................................................................... 7 §2 Introduction to the thesis as a whole .................................................................................... 10 §3 Introduction to the individual chapters of the thesis ..................................................... 12 PART 1: Duality and Opposition in Heraclitus ................................................................................. 21 CHAPTER 1: Duality in Heraclitus and Heraclitus studies: the Unity of Opposites thesis ................................................................................................................................................................ 21 §1.1 A preliminary exposition of Dilcher’s three problems with the formula ‘unity of opposites’ ............................................................................................................................... 24 §1.2 A preliminary exposition of the two main distinctions employed in the literature on Heraclitus’ Unity of Opposites thesis .................................................... 26 §1.3 The Analytic/Synthetic distinction .................................................................................... 27 §1.4 The Immanent/Transcendent distinction ....................................................................... 30 §2 Criticism of the usage of the Analytic/Synthetic distinction ....................................... 31 §3 Criticism of the usage of the Immanent/Transcendent distinction .......................... 40 §4 The higher and lower orders of duality in the unity of opposites ............................. 46 §5 The use of the concept of ‘opposition’ and the formula ‘unity of opposites’ for interpreting the fragments of Heraclitus ....................................................................... 53 §6 The problem of ‘unity’ and ‘opposition’ ............................................................................... 60 CHAPTER 2: Heraclitus’ Revolution against Naïve Metaphysics .............................................. 68 §1.1 Mourelatos and the Naïve Metaphysics of Things (NMT) ......................................... 70 §1.2 Heraclitus’ ‘anti-realism’ about ‘opposites’ ..................................................................... 74 §2.1 Moravcsik and the three stages of ‘explanatory patterns’ ........................................ 79 §2.2 Moravcsik’s interpretation of Heraclitus’
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