When Strawson published his thing to fame, "Intro to logical theory" -- it's never "an" intro with him -- he had it all wrong:
"There is a gross mistake in thinking
that the horseshoe is our 'if'"
Grice notes that Strawson notes this ("I owe a lot to Mr. H. P. Grice", Strawson writes), and in WoW:i.
Where Grice cares to quote direct from Strawson:
"each hypothetical statement
made by this use of 'if'
is acceptable (true, reasonable)
if the antecedent statement, if made or accepted,
would in the circumstances be a good ground
or reason for accepting the consequent
statement; and the making of the
hypothetical statement carries the
implication either of uncertainty about, or
of disbelief in, the fulfilment of both
antecedent and consequent."
Balloney, as they say in Ireland.
Grice was so infuriated that he dedicated the third week at Harvard to teach _them_ a lesson.
He later -- MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH later -- repr. this thing -- a year before he died, matter of fact -- with the misleading title, "Indicative Conditionals"
"Philo" would have done better.
Strawson never cared to get hold of this. Grice would NOT allow him. He had been biten once, twice shy. (the story of Lady Ann Martin-Strawson typing in a sneak Grice's Meaning, and changing a few scare quotes into the bargain was more than enough).
Yet he managed, with his usual panache to circulate (indeed, "it did make the rounds," Platts writes for Mind 1988) his "if and -->" where the --> is the horseshoe they wear on the net, when plain.
Edgington who lectured me on this, to no avail, was not even conscious that Strawson's old thing had been published in PGRICE, as it should (The man later had the cheek to have it published in his own "Identity and Essence" if you believe that, killing the point of a festschrift. At least Grice's caveat that he'd rather not see "In defense of a dogma" in the many compilations by Sir Peter was however retained, and still is by Strawson's literary executors, I hope).
----
But Oxonians need beware. When I was browsing new issues of J.P -- new to me is after Grice's Personal Identity in 1941 -- I was fascinated that Mrs. Thompson, Judith Jarvis that is, cared to unearth a thing her hubby at MIT had written circa 1963, entitled, "In defense of the material conditional".
I was so fascinated that I complied with the request of my mentor, a woman -- Margarita Costa -- to have my reprint of a reprint of my critical commentary on Thompson, qualifying Grice properly -- published in a vernacular parochial Bibliographical Bulletin. I always loved and admired Thompson, James Francis. And I'm sure Paul Grice did too -- Hey the two men co-wrote things on "philosophy of action" and co-spoke things too.
The "lecture iv" debate continued. Lewis rediscovered it and gossiped about it to F. Jackson who he had met down under. This initiated a south-of-the-equator thing (Appiah joined in) which brought some light to Grandy (Legacy of Grice).
As Lewis and Jackson note, the dichotomy of Grice/Strawson is best explained in Grice's fuzzy terms of the
conventionally vs non-conventionally
implicated.
For Grice AND Strawson, "Therefore" only CONVENTIONALLY means, "And this follows from this".
For Strawson, but NOT For Grice, "if" does the same with UN-ASSERTED clauses (Strawson does not care about 'if' in non-assertoric utterances, as Grice does).
p
---
Therefore q
-- 'if p, q'
Grice was unimpressed. Strawson granted, "True, Grice's theory IS more beautiful than mine, but mine is truer", refuting his own ditto-views on 'true' and its inability to grow superlative.
--
Grice tried to linguistic botanise, with a split.
"if p, then q"
MAY fit Strawson's analysis.
The drier, Philonian,
"if p, q"
surely don't. (sic).
"Ei" in Greek may be, after all the true Grecian key to this Gricean thing.
Etc.
-- for surely every Oxonian knows that the best way to misunderstand Grice (or Philo for that matter -- and this, alas, is NOT the Philo of I-loeb-Loeb) is to instill on your tutee the 'paradoxes' of 'material implication'!
Philo meant, 'formal', not 'material'. This is not to be confused with 'consequentia', as in 'thereof'.
Philo's texts are a delight to read -- in Greek. It's about the crows crowing in churches, or things.
Etc.
----
Grice tried to bring Wilson onto the bargain. Statement and Inference. After all, we have to look at the 'conversational' metier 'if' plays, not just the logical form
p --> q
and its invited CONVERSATIONAL implicature (I'm glad I was not sceptical enough to keep my treatment of 'if' as the third connective in the ch. ii of my PhD dissertation -- the only one featuring "Grice" ever presented at my vernacular uni).
---
The 'metier' to use Wilson's parlance is to do with the erotetic context:
If 'and' gets initialised in erotetic paradoxes ("And did those feet in ancient time...?") and 'or' is best used for 'contingency planning' (Grice's "My aunt is arriving either by ship or by plane"), 'if' works best as used by detectives like Colombo -- pigeon.
Who killed Cock Robin?
Well, Jenny Wren was at the sauna.
So it couldn't have been _HER_.
Could not? I would say that's an emphatic.
Cfr. Agatha Christie killing herself, almost while at the sauna ("Agatha" with Vanessa Redgrave).
Etc.
There are various problems with Grice's account -- e.g Cohen's problem cases, "If if if my mother is french, then then then no" etc. -- but then also with life, so what gives?
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