neustic: sign of commitment; tropic: mood indicator; clistic: sign of
completeness. Hare, 'Some subatomic particles of logic', for a festschrift
for J. O. Urmson, _Mind_.
Or, Hare and Grice. The Pragmatics of R. M. Hare. As a Gricean, it's difficult for me to approach the pragmatics of R. M. Hare. For, first, that would mean I should have to _read_ Hare.
One thing that strikes me (or struck me) when I read two books by Grice
(_Studies in the Way of Words_ and _Aspects of Reason_) is that good ol'
Grice fails to _credit_ Hare. Implicature: they were not friends!
On the other hand, Grice does quote Hare as attending the 'Saturday morning
meetings', so they were friendly enough to share a meeting. I write more about this in the Appendix.
In 'Reply to Richards', Grice writes of what he calls the 'playgroup':
"Within the Play Group great diversity was visiable as one would expect of
an association containing people with the ability and independence of mind
of Austin, Strawson, Hampshire, Paul, Pears, Warnock, and Hare (to name a
few)" (p.50) Let me check if Hare is further indexed in the volume. No. Not as quoted by Grice.
Now, as for the absence of a credit to Hare in _Studies_ I'm referring to
this bit in Grice's 'Retrospective Epilogue':
"We shall perhaps be in line with those philosophers who, in one way or
another, have drawn a distinction between 'phrastics' and 'neustics,'
philosophers, that is to say, who in representing the structure of
discourse lay a special emphasis on (a) the content of items of discourse
whose merits or demerits will lie in such features as correspondence or
lack of correspondence with the world, and (b) the mode or manner in which
such items are advanced, for example declaratively or imperatively, or
(perhaps one might equally well say) firmly or tentatively.
Let me check if Hare is cited in _Studies_ at all (index). He's not. In _Aspects of Reason_, I'm referring, again, to Grice's talk of the
'phrastic'. He does not bother to mention the 'neustic' at this stage! He
writes. The word 'phrastic' is not indexed, and I think it's first
introduced on p.50:
Re:
(1) John should be recovering his health by now.
(2) John should join AA.
"An initial version of the idea I want to explore is that we represent the
sentences (1) and (2) as having the following structure: _first_, a common
'rationality' operator 'Acc', to be heard as "it is reasonable that", "it
is acceptable that", "it ought to be that", "it should be that", or in some
other similar way; _next_, one or other of two mood-operators, which in the
case of (1) are to be written as '|-' and in the case of (2) are to be
written as "!"; and finally a 'radical', to be represented by 'r' or some
other lower-case letter. The structure for (1) is 'Acc + |- + r, for (2=
Acc + ! + r, with each symbol falling within the scope of its predecessor.
I am thinking of a radical in pretty much the same kind of way as recent
writers who have used that term (or the term 'phrastic')."
Now, it is interesting (at least to me) that I was recently wondering about
this non-Harean commitment of Grice. Since it seems 'implicature' is going
to make its way into OED -- due to my telling L. R. Horn that the word was
missing in OED and _his_ telling one Senior Editor of the OED -- I felt
like telling the OED folks that 'phrastic' was missing too! Why? Well, I
know how people are about dictionaries. And once 'implicature' is in it,
people will start quoting the definition. So, I thought: given that a
phrastic looks like some puzzling 'banishable' element (in the words of M.
J. Murphy) I thought: "Wonder how the OED folks will define it!". Hoping
that, if they defined it _o-kay_ I could rely on that definition (should I
be teaching 'Hare').
I wrote to OED3 telling them about this -- and relying on a short abstract I
wrote about Hare's 'Sub-atomic particles of logic' for the University of
Buenos Aires -- one of my 'publications'! -- In that piece I criticised
Hare. I said: Physicians are terribly careful about positing quanta, and
here is Hare positing as much as four particles! (phrastic, neustic,
tropic, clistic)... In that abstract, I proposed a sort of Ockham Razor:
"do not modify sub-atomic particles without necessity". Sadly, Hare did not
listen...
Anyway, I was leaving thru Hare's _Practical Inferences_ (which I got hold
of when I noted that G. N. Leech quoted it in _Principles of Pragmatics_)
and noted that the term he used first was 'dictor'. I mentioned all this to
OED and they replied very politely. I quote below the letter for maybe some
of youguys have the correct citations, and can help!
From: OED research materials
Reply-To: OED research materials
Subject: Re: R. M. Hare on "phrastic", "neustic", "tropic", and "clistic"
To: j...@netverk.com.ar
Content-MD5: jD/MzoqS6w5SjdrWGkJEbA==
Dear Mr Speranza,
Thank you for your e-mails of 10 and 21 January. I am sorry
we have not been able to reply sooner to your earlier message.
As you say, the term 'boulomaic' has not yet been included in
the 'OED', and it is not yet under consideration. At present,
we have not collected enough evidence to enable us to begin
the research necessary for the addition of an entry. However
I have copied your information to our research files, and
hope to find enough further evidence to proceed.
The information about the words PHRASTIC, NEUSTIC, TROPIC, and
CLISTIC could prove very useful. At the moment, we have no
collection of evidence for these terms, but it is clear they
are important in the field. I note that there is an article
in the journal 'Mind' of April 1954, reviewing Hare's book,
which refers to some of these terms, and to DICTOR which you
also mention. There is no one editor who will be assigned to
work on any of the entries for any of these words that may be
drafted; comments such as yours are sent to a research file
to be available when an editor is assigned to investigate
a word. Initial etymological work will be done by this editor,
and it will then be checked and finalized by a specialist
etymologist. If you would like to send any comments you have
on the etymology of any of these words, this information would
be filed along with your initial submission, and would be much
appreciated by our editors.
We are most grateful to you for bringing all these words
to our attention.
Yours sincerely,
===
So we shall see what we shall see.
===
I propose below a working biblio of Hare. For those of us interested in
philosophy of langauge, I guess a few updates are in order re his specific
_linguistic_ thesis, though... A list by yours truly containing some
_secondary_ bibliography is to be found in the Philos-L archives.
===
A different approach to the Grice/Hare interface is not so much via
'phrastic', but via 'implicature'. In the discussion list led by R.
Carston, Relevance-L (of UCL, London) there was a query as to some
informativeness implicature. And we pretty much covered then the
contribution by Hare to this.
The query, by A. Hofer, went,
"In _Pragmatics_, GJM Gazdar proposes the use of 'or' presupposes a
quantified scale, namely:
Being the stronger connective, 'and' should be prefered when the utterer
assumes that both components are definitely true. The following seems
however a counterexample to that:
(1) You can take the bus OR you can take the train.
For one, the utterance seems like a straightforward lie if the utterer
assumes that the recipient can take ONLY ONE of the two means of transport.
So, if we assume sincerity on his/her part, and that s/he assumes BOTH
components are true, in the scalar-implicature view, the utterer should
therefore have used 'and', not 'or'!"
I replied using Hare on Grice in _Practical Inferences_!
I wrote that I had found a "related" discussion by Hare in his Practical
Inferences.
Hare quotes A Ross, 'Imperatives & Logic':
(2) You will post the letter.
______________________________
Ergo, you will post the letter or burn it.
This, Hare and Ross agree, "is valid in ordinary logic". But the
corresponding imperative inference:
(3) Post the letter.
______________________________
Ergo: post the letter or burn it.
Hare writes, "_appears_ to us to be 'paradoxical', because we are thinking
it _means_ that if we tell someone to post a letter, he might take this
inference and, so, think he would do what he was told if he obeyed the
conclusion by _burning_ the letter. The inference, is trivial, and
therefore would never be made"
Hare takes here, and explicitly so, a Gricean view. Hare writes:
"I shall argue that the relation between the command to post the letter or
burn it and the permission not to post is so long a one burns it is not one
of _entailment_. It is similiar rather to those discussed by Grice [...]
What Grice says is aplicable to imperative utterances".
Hare goes on: "If being absent minded, I ask my wife":
(4) What have I done with the letter?
and she replies:
(5) You have posted it or burnt it.
she, Hare says, "conversationally implicates that she is _not_ in a
position to say which I have done. This is because, if she _were_ in a
position to make the stronger statement (viz., that I have posted it), she
should have said so, it being obviously important _which_ I have done."
"She also conversationally implicates that I may _not_ have posted it, so
long as I have burnt it."
Hare is discussing here also the theories of B. A. O. Williams -- which, as
the obit from The Guardian I posted to Philos-L indicates -- is said to be
Hare's greatest student. (Both were -- at different times -- White's Prof
of Moral Philo, Oxford).
Hare writes: "If we put this example into the _future_ tense, we come closer to B
Williams's imperative case".
"From (6)"
(6) You are going to post the letter or burn it.
"we could, if we could think up a realistic content for such an utterance,
get the conversational implicature (7)."
(7) You may be going not to post the letter
so long as you are going to burn it.
"With orders, we cannot, for example, fulfil the command
(8) Put on your parachute and jump out.
"just juming out." The inference (3) -- from
(9) Post the letter
to
(10) Post the letter or burn it.
"strikes as paradoxical because:
(i) the CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE of the _second_ of these
propositions is so much at variance with the _first_ of them that the
inference could have no normal use,
(ii) it is not realised that to fulfil the conclusion of an imperative
inference is not necessariliy to fulfil the premisses".
Hare then goes on to give a rather complex example (involving 'contingency
planning) to prove how all this is CANCELLABLE -- a la Grice of 'Causal
Theory of Perception'. Needless to say, Grice's Lectures on Logic &
Conversation where he coined all this were far from being published, so
Hare deserves a lot of credit for 'unearthing' some private Oxonian theory
for a wider readership here. The account of 'cancellability' is due to
Grice in his symposium for the Aristotelian Society which _was_ then
published. In Supplementary Vol. 35 of the Proceedings.
Hare writes:
"Suppose that I'm a transport officer sending off a convoy from London to
Edinburgh. There are 5 reasonably convenient routes: they all follow the Gt
N. Rd as far as Scotch Corner, and then they go rspectively (read from W to
E) via Beattock, Harwick, Carter Bar, Coldstream & Berwick. Only the 2 (the
2 eastern ones) involve going thru Neswcastle. I don't know what the snow
conditions on the border are, but I know that the Berwick route is certain
to be alright, but is rather longer. I therefore say to the commander of
the convoy":
(11) Go via Coldrestrem or Berwick.
I'm not saying which at the moment
& I'm not authorising you yet to take the
Coldstream route.
Report to the Transport Officer at Newcastle
& he will give you a further message from me.
"When he gets to Newcastle, I've found out that the Coldstream route is
blocked and so I send the message":
(12) Don't go via Coldstream.
"He herefore infers from the two premisses that I have given him that he is
to go via Berwick". Cute, ednit?
On the whole, though, Hare was very paradoxical, for he does make use of
Grice's implicature, but -- and now it's Hare who does not quote Grice! --
but this time out of politeness -- Hare would not 'buy all that ridiculous
stuff we've been hearing lately of the connection between meaning and
intentions...".
Mind: even I, a committed Gricean schooler, forgive the great man (Hare)
for that.
References:
HARE RM 1949. Imperative sentences. Mind 58. Repr. 1971
1950. Practical reason. Thesis awarded the T. H. Green Prize.
Extract in 1971.
1951. Freedom of the will. PASS 25. Repr in 1972b.
Review of Toulmin. PQ 1.
1952. The language of morals. OUP. Preface quotes: JL Austin, AJ
Ayer, AE Duncan-Jones. G Ryle, JO Urmson. Sections include: imperatives &
logic. The imperative "mood". Page 109 and 118 on 'meaning'. 'That fellow
just going out onto the field is the best shmashmak player in our country',
'How d'you mean, the best player'. 'I mean he alwayws scores the largest
number of smashes'.
1954. Review of E. Hall, What is Value. Mind 63.
1955. Universalisability. PAS. Repr 1972.
Ethics & politics. Repr. 1972.
1956. Review of Nowell-Smith. Philosophy 31.
1957. Are discoveries about the use of words empirical. JP 54.
Geach: good & evil. Analysis 13. Repr. Foot and H. 1972.
1959. Broad's approach to moral philosophy. Repr. 1971c.
1960. Philosophical Discoveries. Repr. 1971c.
A school for philosophers. Repr. 1971c.
Ethics. Repr. in 1972b.
Rien n'a d'importance. Mind. Repr. in 1972.
1962. Review of Singer, Genersalisation in Ethics. PQ 12.
1963. Freedom & reason. OUP. Index: 'akrasia'. 'meaning', p.9: 'we
can mean something different from what our words mean. What
_we_ mean is what we intend to convey'. p.122, 125-9, 206: happiness.
Descriptivism. PBA. Annual Philosohical Lecture. Repr in
1972b. Repr. in Hudson, The Is-ought question. Macmillan.
1964. Pain & evil. PASS. Repr. 1972c and in Feinberg, Moral
Concepts. OUP.
A question about Plato's theory of ideas. In Bunge. Repr.
1971c.
Adolescents into adults. Repr. 1972.
1965. Plato & the mathematicians. Repr. Hare 1971c.
What is life? Repr. 1972.
Critical study of Wright. PQ
1966. Peace. Repr. 1972.
1967. Some alleged differences between imperatives and
indicatives. Mind 76. Repr. 1971.
The lawful government. Repr. 1972.
Review of Hampshire, F. I. JP
1968. The promising game. In P. Foot, Theories of ethics. OUP
Readings in Philosophy.
Review of Warnock, Cont. Mor. Phil. Mind 77.
1969. Practical inferences. Repr. 1971.
Community & communication. Repr. 1972.
Review of Ross. Mind.
===================================================
1970. Meaning & speech acts. PR 79. Repr. 1971a.
===================================================
Sections: neustics, tropics, & phrastics.
1971. Practical Inferences. Macmillan New Studies in Practical
Philosophy, ed. W. D. Hudson. cited by Leech. On informativeness: p. 112:
'There's an animal in the garden' +> a non-human mammal rather than an
insect or a boy). On p.96: the meaning of x _determines_ what an utterer
means".
Reply to Warnock. In 1971.
Austin's distinctions between locutionary & illocutionary
acts.
Austin's use of the word 'meaning' & its cognates. In 1971.
Bibliography of my published philosophical and related works.
Wanting: some pitfalls. In Ninkley. Repr Hare
Essays on philosophical method. Macmillan New Studies in
Practical Philosophy, ed W. D. Hudson. Includes: The practical relevance of
philosophy, The argument from received opinion.
1972. Essays on the moral concepts. Macmillan. New Studies in
Practical Philosophy, ed by W. D. Hudson. Includes: Wrongness and harm.
Applications of moral philosophy. Macmillan New Studies in
Practical Philosophy ed by W.D. Hudson. Includes Reasons of State, &
Function and Tradition in Architecture.
Rules of war & moral reasoning. Ph & Pub Aff. 1. Repr. in
COhen.
Nothing matters. Repr. in Applications.
1973. Principles. PAS
1974. Platonism in moral education: two varieties. Monist 58.
1976. Ethical theory & utilitarianism. in Lewis, Contemporary
British Philosophy. Allen and Unwin. Repr. Hare.
1977. Justice & inequality. Etyka. Repr. in Arthur/Shaw.
1978. Prediction & moral appraisal. Mid-West Studies 3.
. Dialogue with Bryan Magee on moral philosophy ("I am ...
Utilitarian", p.154).
1979. Utilitarianism & the vicarious affects. In Sosa.
1981. Moral thinking: its levels, method & point. OUP.
Includes: Moral conflicts, the Archangel & the Prole, Descriptivism & the
Error Theory. Another's Sorrow, Universalisation. Interpersonal comparison.
Loyalty & Evil desires. Rights & Justice. Fanaticism & Amoralism. Prudence,
morality & supererogation. Objectivity and rationality.
Review of Singer, The Expanding circle. New Repbulic.
1982. Plato. OUP Past Masters.
1983. Liberty & equality: how politics masquerades as philosophy.
1984. Supervenience. PASS 58. Repr.
Do agents have to be moralists? In Regis.
Utility & rights: comments on Lyons. Nomos. Repr. 1989.
Arguing about rights. Emory Law J. 33 Repr. 1989.
Liberty & equality: How politics masquerdaes as philosophy.
Social Philosophy and Policy 2. Repr. H. 1989.
Rights, utility & universalisation. In R Frey, Utility &
rights, repr. H 1989.
1985. Philosophy & practice: some issues about war & peace. In
Griffiths.
Repr. H. 1989.
1986. A reductio ad absurdum of descriptivism. In Shanker
In Demarco Fox.
Punishment & retributive justice. Philosophical Topics 14.
Repr 1989.
1987. An ambiguity in Warnock. Bioethics 1
In vitro fertilisation & the Warnock report. In
R Chadwick, The Ethics of Human design. Croom Helm.
Why moral language? In Metaphysics & Morality,
ed. P Pettit Blackwell. Appendix on Putnam. Critica 18.
1988. Replies to Critics. In Hare & Critics. Fotion.
1989. Essays in ethical theory. OUP. Includes: A reductio ad
absurdum of descriptivism. Ontology and ethics. The structure of ethics &
morals. Supervenience. Relevance. (Discussed in Relevance-L). Rawls's
theory of justice. Some confusions about subjectivity.
Some subatomic particles of logic. Mind.
Philosophy of language in ethics. In Dascal, Gruyter.
Essays on political morality.
1997. Sorting out ethics.
1999. Objective prescriptivism & other essays.
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