And I’ve thought to look in the Carnap-Quine Correspondence. It seems that the translation wasn’t entirely a happy experience for Carnap. The translation was organized by Ogden as editor of The International Library, went slowly, and Quine had suggested a very appropriate Harvard academic who was keen to do the job but Ogden would not make the change. And Carnap then writes ‘Ogden sent me Ch.I and II of [the translation]. I had to spend much work in revising and correcting them; I found a lot of mistakes, misunderstandings and unsuitable expressions.’ But perhaps the experience got better after that, as Carnap doesn’t return to make later complaints.

Reading the early pages of the book, I’ve been struck by how good the 1937 translation seems. Well, I can’t vouch for its accuracy — for I don’t have the German to check — but it’s very readable, and seems entirely sure-footed with the logical ideas (though that of course could be because of careful oversight by Carnap). The translation is by Amethe Smeaton, who is warmly thanked in the Preface to the English Edition. But who was she?

A Countess von Zeppelin, no less. (But no, not the Countess who later threatened to sue Led Zeppelin for illegal use of her family name.) Which makes me wonder: what led the Countess to becoming a translator, and why did she become involved in this project. What was her background that made her an apt choice for translating this book of all books?

She’d translated before, a history book by Paul Frischauer, Prince Eugene: A Man and a Hundred Years of History, first published in German in 1933, translated in 1934, and still in print. Later she translated Schlick’s Philosophy of Nature (1949), Walter Schubart’s Russia and Western Man (1950), Bruno Freytag’s Philosophical Problems of Mathematics (1951), and a book by Karl Kobald Springs of Immortal Sound (1950), on places in Austria associated with composers. She also co-translated Werner Heisenberg’s Nuclear Physics (1953). That’s a rather remarkable catalogue! And she wasn’t “just” a translator: she was competent enough to be asked to review a group of logic and philosophy of science books for Nature in 1938 (she writes the composite review in a way that indicates she was very much up with developments).

But that is all I’ve been able to discover. Amethe von Zeppelin (that seems the name she most used) was, at least for a period, seemingly very knowledgeable about the then contemporary developments in logic and the philosophy of science, and it seems she had very wide intellectual interests (if we can assume a Countess von Zeppelin could at least choose which translations she wanted to take on). I’d like to know more. But, as Mrs Logic Matters opined, it seems she is another woman whose history has been written in water. Or is there someone out there who can help fill in her picture a little?

In particular, there is a long series of notes, some hundreds of pages, from a philosophy of language course that I must have given in alternate years, back in Aberystwyth. The set is dated around 1980 and would have been bashed out on an old steam typewriter. Those were the days. Some of the notes now seem misguided, some seem oddly skew to what now seem the important issues (such are the changes in philosophical fashion). But some parts even after all this time seem to read quite well and might be useful to students: so I’ll link a few excerpts — either in their raw form or spruced up a bit — to the ‘For students’ page. Here, for example, is some very introductory material on Grice’s theory of meaning. Having read too many tripos examination answers recently claiming e.g. that Searle refutes Grice, these ground-clearing introductory explanations might still provide a useful antidote!

Even though they are admitting fewer people per hour than in previous blockbuster exhibitions (didn’t I read that was so?), it was still somewhat uncomfortably crowded. Which made it quite difficult to get up-close and personal with the fifty or so drawings in the show (and somehow the bustle doesn’t put you in quite the right mood for them either). The light has to be low for the drawings too. So, to be honest, I got more out of sitting quietly at home looking at them as reproduced in the stunningly well-produced exhibition catalogue, which we bought in advance of our visit, even if it was good to see the originals.

So what really made it worth jostling through the crowds were the paintings. In particular, there’s the (first time ever) chance to see the two versions of the The Virgin of the Rocks in the same room — and the earlier version is surely here much better displayed and lit than I remember it in the Louvre. Stunning. And then there’s the portrait of the young Cecilia Gallerani, The Lady with an Ermine. Somehow — although the image is reproduced on the posters which are now all over London and has suddenly become very familiar — seeing the painting itself was very affecting, and just by itself made the trip worthwhile.

Those of you out there who already have tickets booked (or are up for queuing for the restricted number of tickets available on the day) still have a wonderful treat in store. And for others, you really could do a lot worse than buying yourself the bargain catalogue for Christmas as a consolation.

But ok, that’s quite enough culture for now. Back to grumpy logic-chopping in my next posts …

I’ve not been privy to the debates about the hoped-for future shape of the faculty (and quite right too, I suppose — the retired should keep out of such things). But the faculty anyway has a good tendency to sit a bit loose to plans, and appoint the smartest people who apply. The advert certainly doesn’t rule out one of the posts being a logic-minded replacement, for which in any case there’s a particularly desperate teaching need. Great. For as we all know, logic matters.

As years go by, I seem to find more and more (quite untutored) pleasure in looking at pictures. A quiet philosophical voice sometimes wonders why: can any reader of this blog recommend something insightful to read on why we can find the old masters so affecting?

And already some of his advice seems pretty applicable to beginning philosophers too. That shouldn’t be too surprising: in both cases, what we are trying to teach isn’t a body of facts so much as an understanding of argumentative moves. In both cases, students need to learn how to see how to fillet out the key ideas (and tell what’s just joining-up-the-dots).

So I might be inspired to do what I have meant to do for a while and put together some how-to-get-started-thinking-philosophically and how-to-approach-your-work notes for new philosophers. It shouldn’t be made a mysterious business, whether it’s maths or philosophy. But meanwhile, read Gowers!

Consider the following “gradualist” view: As the human zygote/embryo/foetus slowly develops, its death slowly becomes a more serious matter. At the very beginning, its death is of little consequence; as time goes on, its death is a matter it becomes appropriate to be gradually more concerned about.

Now, this view seems to be the one that almost all of us in fact do take about the natural death of human zygotes/embryos/foetuses. After all, very few of us are worried by the fact that a very high proportion of conceptions quite spontaneously abort. We don’t campaign for medical research to reduce that rate (nor do opponents of abortion campaign for all women to take drugs to suppress natural early abortion). Compare: we do think it is a matter for moral concern that there are high levels of infant mortality in some countries, and campaign and give money to help reduce that rate.

Again, very few of us are scandalized if a woman who finds she is pregnant by mistake in a test one week after conception is then mightily pleased when she discovers that the pregnancy has naturally terminated some days later (and even has a drink with a girl friend to celebrate her lucky escape). Compare: we would find it morally very inappropriate, in almost all circumstances, for a woman in comfortable circumstances to celebrate the death of an unwanted young baby.

Similarly for accidental death. Suppose a woman finds she is a week or two pregnant, goes horse riding, falls badly at a jump, and as a result spontaneously aborts. That might be regrettable, but we wouldn’t think she’d done something terrible by going riding and running the risk. Compare: we would be morally disapproving of someone badly risking the life of new born by carrying it while going in for some potentially very dangerous activity.

So: our very widely shared attitudes to the natural or accidental death of the products of conception do suggest that we do in fact regard them as of relatively lowly moral status at the beginning of their lives, and of greater moral standing as time passes. We are all (or nearly all) gradualists in these cases.

It is then quite consistent with such a view to take a similar line about unnatural deaths. For example, it would be consistent to think that using the morning-after pill is of no moral significance, while bringing about the death of an eight month foetus is getting on for as serious as killing a neonate, with a gradual increase in the seriousness of the killing in between.

Some, at any rate, of those of us who are pro (early) choice are moved by this sort of gradualist view. The line of thought in sum is: the killing of an early foetus has a moral weight commensurate with the moral significance of the natural or accidental death of an early foetus. And on a very widely shared view, that’s not very much significance. So from this point of view, early abortion is of not very much significance either. But abortion gradually gets a more significant matter as time goes on.

You might disagree. But then it seems that you either need (a) an argument for departing from the very widely shared view about the moral significance of the natural or accidental miscarriage of the early products of conception. Or (b) you need to have an argument for the view that while the natural death of a zygote a few days old is of little significance, the unnatural death is of major significance. Neither line is easy to argue. To put it mildly.

We can agree however that killing a neonate is, in general, a very bad thing. So the remaining question is how to scale the cases in between. That’s something that serious and thoughtful and decent people can disagree about to some extent. But note it is a disagreement about matters of degree (even if any legal arrangements have to draw artificial sharp lines). All-or-nothing views, on either side of the debate, have nothing to recommend them.