Grice on analysis versus theory

--- by JLS
----- for the GC

---- AN IMPORTANT ASPECT of Grice's methodology one perceives in casual comments Grice makes here or there. When discussing Julie M. Jacks's "wrongs of Grice", for example, he goes into some trouble in emphasising what he sees as two different approaches: an 'analytic' approach that he, as a self-labelled "analytic philosopher" (of ordinary language, if we must) he felt particularly associated with. But then there's the 'theoretical' approach which he rather identified with scientists or other working on sometimes overlapping projects. There is, for example, his 'theory' of psychological concepts. Psychological concepts are, in his view -- alla Lewis -- 'theoretical' concepts. We don't yield them _via_ analysis, only. They lie beyond analysis, or before analysis. They are a matter of insight. And the connection with observational predicates is strictly to be accounted for. Analysis, on the other hand -- his paradigm for 'meaning' being the epitome -- resolves around the philosopher's need to account for a term ('means', 'reasons', etc.) in terms of those conditions which sufficiently and necessarily explicate that term in the philosopher's idiolect. While this is part (and parcel) of analytic philosophy it is sometimes underestimated elsewhere. The aims of philosophical analysis remain _within_ philosophy, and it doesn't really pay, or shouldn't really pay to export features of philosophical methodology to realms outside philosophy proper. Not in any case if we want to keep regarding Grice as prima facie a philosopher and an important one in the history of the discipline. Many times, thus, to compare his philosophical views with that of other PHILOSOPHERS working on this or that area is what helps with the best exegesis of his work or what that work is supposed to cover