How noire was my bête

R. B. Jones, in a pdf. document he was kind enough to share with me, displays an interest in the betes noires, the nine of them, that pilgrim Grice finds on his way to the Holy of Hollies.

Grice writes, aged 70s, as he recalls his earlier self, in his 30s.

"As I thread my way unsteadily along the tortuous mountain path which is supposed to lead, in the long distance, to the City of Eternal Truth, I find myself beset by a multitude of demons and perilous places, bearing names like Extensionalism, Nominalism, Positivism, Naturalism, Mechanism, Phenomenalism, Reductionism, Physicalism, Materialism, Empiricism, Scepticism, and Functionalism."

Let's revise them and see if Grice is not painting them _less_ noire (or is it more noire) than they are otherwise and elsewhere painted (by who?).

I'll start de-demonising them by using lower-case. And unlike Bunyan in "Pilgrim's progress" I have them all do their little song and dance in alphabetical order of appearance:

empiricism. Nothing wrong with it. And it is the perfect pronoun for a bete noire, because ISMUS was neuter in Latin, unless it was masculine. Locke was one, Grice was one, Mill was one. Grice PLAYED with being a rationalist alla Kant, just to be irreverent. I rather am scared by RATIONALISM -- but don't spread the word!

extensionalism. Well. He does say that the way he quantifies into (WoW:5) is enough to give an extensionalist the trembles. But the fact that he was so self-conscious about logical form (e.g. his "Vacuous Names") and the fact that he never used triangles and squares to symbolise serious modalities like poss. and nec. makes you wonder.

functionalism. Ned Block, the big one, lists Grice's Method in philosophical psychology as the most functionalist a philosopher can BE. I think Grice is thinking of identity-thesis alla Smart that he need not go into. He was a multiple realisability functionalist of properties, not states. Etc. Schiffer has tried to elucidate this in pre-apostatic writings.

materialism. What's the mind? Never matter, or vice versa. This must have to do with Grice's ontological marxism: if they work, they exist. By 'they' he means things like 'mental predicates'. But I don't think he was into res cogitans itself. So if he wasn't a materialist he wasn't a DUALIST. And DUALISM does scare me. Also ANIMISM.

mechanism. This is the idea in "Method" that there's a mechanist explanation that leaves you cold when you want to say that you scratch your head because it itches. But the TOE is trying to reconcile these aspects. It may also have to do with computer modelling: heuristic, abduction, etc. are difficult to model mechanistically, but not impossible.

naturalism. He does say that mean-N is the basis for mean-NN, so I think, or am pretty sure he means here a scheme that leaves VALUE out of the picture. Especially concerned with the non-naturalistic basis of reason or rationality: if rationality is a faculty OVER our pre-rational, natural, dispositions, it cannot be "natural" herself. Etc.

nominalism. This must be a joke unless he is thinking of those ridiculous theories by Scheffler. Type/token Grice always used. He uses x to symbolise token, X to symbolise type. He may be objecting to an extensional treatment of 'classes'. Etc. He may be thinking of higher-order predicate-calculus where we can substantivise over properties, etc. alla Strawson, Subject and predicate in logic and grammar.

phenomenalism. This is the early early Grice and we know Carnap rejected this too. The opposite, Physicalism, actually scares me much more. I do love phenomenalism, even if inappropriate, as a good way of understanding the paintings of Picasso. He must be having in mind solipsism as a consequence of phenomenalism, and the paradoxes of Berkeley brought to reality by Dr. Johnson when kicking a stone.

positivism. I should leave to Jones to expand on this. The antonym, negativism, is much more of a scarer. I think he must be meaning what he elsewhere calls, disrespectfully, the 'rednecks of Vienna' -- as if the sun there were so strong! (I love Vienna).

physicalism. Well, if this is not the antonym of phenomenalism, he must be meaning something alla Smart, identity thesis. Neutralism, Monism, I'm surprised don't challenge him. The opposite, Spritualism, is more of a scarer, too.

reductionism. We see his problem with reductive AND reductionist analysis. So here it's eliminationism he objects. And he does it because, once a linguistic botaniser, allways (sic) a linguistic botaniser. What's the good of having learned English if Stich and Churchland and the rest of them are going to tell you that, roughly, is all _false_ (cf. Jones on Formal versus Natural Languages, though).

scepticism. This is loose Grice. He thinks Gettier etc are too rigid. We know more than we care to admit. A schoolboy knows that the battle of Trafalgar was in 1811, etc. So no need to be Phyrronian. I see Jones's pdf. has a section on my favourite philosopher of Antiquity: Phyrro, and so I'm ready to distinguish between good and bad sceptics. They were all good, honest people in fact. I think it's the French philosophers, Voltaire, etc. who gave scepticism a bad name.

--- So, which one is your favourite,

JL

who rents betes noires
for elongated weekends at his Swimming-Pool Library
Villa Speranza