Grice and Rorty: The Endless Conversation

by JLS
--- for the GC.

Grice is cited once on note 13 of Thomas Kent, "Externalism and the Production of Discourse" at

http://jac.gsu.edu/jac/12.1/Articles/5.htm

"The Principle of Charity should not be confused

with intentional concepts like Grices’s Cooperative Principle."

Who would?

Kent continues:

"The Cooperative Principle represents

an element of an intentional mental state; a

speaker intends to cooperate. The principle of Charity,

on the other hand, is the necessary precondition

for all social communicative interaction. It is

not an intentional feature of language or

a manifestation of a mental state."


Wrong wrong wrong wrong in terms of the "CP". Of course Grice the PC to be a precondition too. Actually, Grice knew more about Kant than Kent, if that is possible.

Kent goes on to quotes Rorty, _Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity_. What Kent
says about Rorty is illuminating:

"Rorty describes the relationship among the

mind, the mediating network,

and "Reality" this way:

We have a picture of the essential core of the self
on one side of a network of beliefs and desires and,
"Reality" on the other side. In this picture, the
network is the product of an interaction between the
two, alternately expressing the one and representing
the other.

Donald Davidson calls this "network of beliefs and desires" that mediates

between "the essential core of the self and reality" "a conceptual scheme".

He goes on to explain a conceptual scheme as a "ways of organizing

experience -- a system of categories that give form to the data of

sensation; a point of view from which individuals, cultures, or periods

survey the passing scene" (Inquiries 183).



Kent comments:

"The "emergence of a radically revised view of the
relation of mind and the world" predicted by Davidson is now upon us, and
it has come to be called "Externalism" in opposition to Internalist
Cartesian conceptions of mind and the world. "Externalism" defines itself
within a philosophical tradition marked off roughly by Nietzsche, Dewey,
Heidegger, the later Wittgenstein, Quine, Rorty, and especially Derrida and
Davidson".
"From this externalist position, we no longer need to talk about
"language" in terms of something that _mediates_ between subjective mental
states — thoughts, beliefs, intentions, or conceptual schemes — and a
reality "out there," and, as Rorty explains, we no longer must assume that
relations exist such as
"fitting the world" or
"being faithful to the true nature of the self"
in which language might stand to non-language. This assumption goes along
with the assumption that
our language is somehow a unity, a third thing which
stands in some determinate relation with two other
unities — the self and reality.... Both assumptions
enshrine the notion of language as medium.
"As Rorty has put it:
nothing counts as _justification_ unless by reference to
what we already accept [Pretty pathetic, but that's your Rorty, I guess. JLS]
and there is no way to get outside our beliefs and our
language so as to find some test other than coherence.


Now, when one is hoping that Kent will take a position, he just goes on to quote
from Davidson who says, "About this I am . in total agreement with Rorty.
(Coherence, 310)

Kent goes on to quote Kantian Grice:

"When we regard conversation, or communicative interaction as a public
act, as Grice does, we can go along with Rorty who tells us that we no
longer need to think of terms like private "meanings", language, belief,
desire, intention, and _truth_ as the name of a medium between self and
reality. These terms are simply "a flag which signals the desirability of
using a certain vocabulary when trying to cope with certain kinds of
organisms."

"To say that a given organism — or, for that matter, a given machine
— has "a mind" is just to say that, for some purposes, it will pay to think
of it as having beliefs and desires."


If this does not encapture the essentialist pragmatist tradition of
American philosophy as opposed to Grice's English/Oxonian one, I don't know _what_ does.

Kent writes:

"The kind of Externalism promoted by Rorty and Davidson
in his "Principle of Charity" draws attention to the way we employ our
vocabulary, and the way we employ our vocabulary cannot be separated from
the way we interpret the meanings, languages, beliefs, desires, intentions
(or the minds) of others. Iterpretation obviously holds centre stage in
this account of meaning and language.

It's here that Kent "goes note 13":

"The principle of charity should
not be confused with intentional concepts like Grices’s cooperative
principle. The cooperative principle represents an element of an
intentional mental state; a speaker intends to cooperate. The principle of
charity, on the other hand, is the necessary precondition for all social
communicative interaction. It is not an intentional feature of language or
a manifestation of a mental state".

Kent points out since he is discussing Davidson's contribution to the Grice festchrif, 'A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" (malaprop for "A nice arrangement of
epitaphs") -- which is also discussed by authors such as
M. A. E. Dummett and I. M. Hacking in the Lepore collection on Davidson.

Kent writes: "Along with other strong Externalists like Derrida,
Lyotard, and Rorty, Davidson insists that no framework — no "learnable
common core of consistent behavior, no shared grammar or rules, no portable
interpreting machine set to grind out the meaning of an arbitrary
utterance" — exists that will help us interpret the utterances of others
('A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs, 445).

"We are left with the awareness that, as Rorty explains,
If we ever succeed in communicating easily and happily,
it will be because your guesses about what I am going
to do next, including what noises I am going to make next,
and my own expectations about what I shall do or say
under certain circumstances, come more or less to coincide,
and because the converse is also true.

"Of course, externalists like Davidson and Rorty take the position that our
guesses are always good enough and that the "rough maxims and
methodological generalities" we employ to get things done in the world
constitute all we need to know about the production of discourse.
"With this move, we are now beginning to drop our efforts at reconciling
ourselves with a world "out there," for as Externalist Philosophers like
Nietzsche, Dewey, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Quine, Foucault, Lyotard, Rorty,
Derrida, and Davidson point out, we are always already reconciled."

References in the Kent essay include: DAVIDSON D. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon. === A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge. In Lepore. === A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs. In PGRICE (Essay 5, Section: Meaning) see GRANDY. Repr in Lepore. === The Myth of the Subjective. In Relativism: Interpretation & Confrontation, ed. M Krausz. Notre Dame UP. === Meaning, Truth, and Evidence. In Perspectives on Quine. Ed. R Barrett & R Gibson. Blackwell. === Afterthoughts. In Reading Rorty: Critical Responses to Philosophy= and
the Mirror of Nature (and Beyond). ed. A Malachowski. Blackwell.
LEPORE, E. Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of D
Davidson. Ed. Blackwell. GRANDY, R E & R O WARNER, PGRICE, Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends. Clarendon. GRICE H P. 'Logic and Conversation'. In Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard. RORTY R. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge University Press.