Grice and Peacocke Talk About Themselves

--- or Their Selves, if you must

------ by JLS
---------- for the Grice Club.

Peackocke's "Truly Understood (Oxford, 2008)", I read from the author's webpage, " proposes a substantive theory of understanding , and applies it to some central issues in the philosophy of mind, including the nature of first-person thought, the general conception of many minds, the ability to think about one's own and others' conscious states, and the ability to think about intentional contents."

Which is back to when Mind was what it had to be. When Grice submitted (why? I never knew) his essay, "Personal Identity" to Mind, back in the day (1941 -- date of publication, I expect he had submitted early on. Who wants to submit if one has to submit oneself to destroy the Hun?) the thing was subtitled: "A review of psychology AND philosophy". Those WERE the days.

Consider "I".

Grice mentions three types of occurrences of "I".

It may just mean my body:

"I have green hair"

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It may mean just my mind:

"I was thinking of Santa Rosa."


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It may, most interestingly, refer to a combination:

"I was hit by a cricket bat".

"I fell from the stairs"

"I heard some awful noise"

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Personally I go with Grice that "I"-statements best belong in Group I -- the reference to the BODY is ESSENTIAL.

Consider Merlau Ponty:

(in French):

"You have beautiful eyes".

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Or Johnson's critique of:

"You've GOT beautiful eyes".

"I never GOT them."

----

"You have some nice eyes"
"I don't HAVE them. I AM my eyes".

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The implicature "I am my eyes" carry is certainly detachable or cancellable:

"Sure you are more than your eyes".

"I'm not meaning to suggest I am JUST my eyes, you idiot. But it's certainly FALSE to say that I 'have' good eyes, or nice, or whatever. I'm not a Cartesian."

"Truly Understood" proposes "a substantive theory of understanding , and applies it to some central issues in the philosophy of mind, including the nature of first-person thought,"

People overrate this. Second-person thought is conversationally more important. One of my friends Mary-Joan Johnson-Downey, who was educated at Crewe, recalls how her tutor will cross OUT EVERY occurrence of "I" in her proses. "I" is supposed to run unnoticed in prose. "You" (or thou) is a different animal.

The website goes on:

"the general conception of many minds, the ability to think about one's own and others' conscious states, and the ability to think about intentional contents."

THESE are the topics a philosopher has to engage in: untechnical, ordinary stuff with important consequences for real life. Yet they criticise him for his abstruse style!

(Pears is anti-Gricean and anti-Peacockian in this respect. The philosopher, who died last year -- was quite sceptical and too much influenced by Wittgenstein, and via him, by Freud, to allow a philosopher to speak transparently about his self. "There's always a dose of self-deception, even if I am self-deceiving when I think thus", he famously said (and then he died).