Grice an intentionalist, not a behaviourist

by JLS
--- for the GC

In his "Method in philosophical pscyhology", repr. in Conception of Value (1991) Grice writes:

"Our first problem concerns the apparent circularity with which one is ilable to be faced if one attempts to provide an analysis of central psychological concepts by means of explicit definitions"

-- which would NOT be a problem for a holist like Quine, though.

Grice goes on:

"Suppose that, like some philosophers of the not so distant past, we are attracted by the idea of giving DISPOSITIONAL BEHAVIOURISTIC ANALYSES of such concepts, and that we make a start of the concept of belief. As a first short, we try the
following."

(B1) x believes that p just in case
x is DISPOSED TO ACT AS IF P were true.


Grice comments:

"In response to obvious queries about the meaning of the phrase, "act as if
p were true", we substitute, for B1."


(B2) x believes that p just in case
x is disposed, whenever x wants some end E
to act in ways which will realise E given that
p is true rather than in ways which will realise
E given that p is false.


Grice notes re (B2):

First,

"A further psychological concept, that of
_wanting_, has been introduced."

Second,

"To meet another obvious response, the concept of belief itself has to be re-introduced in the definiens. For the disposition associated with a belief that p surely should be specified NOT AS A DISPOSITION TO ACT IN WAYS WHICH WILL IN FACT REALISE E GIVEN THAT P IS TRUE, but rather as a disposition to act in which X BELIEVES WILL, GIVEN THAT P IS TRUE, realise E".

A way out of the difficulty:

Grice then proposes to take "want" as basic, but this leads to similar problems. As a consequence.

Grice's diagnosis:

"The situation then seems to be that if, along with the ENVISAGED BEHAVIOURISTIC LINES, we attempt to provide EXPLICIT definitions for such a pair of concepts as
those of belief and wanting, whichever member of the pair we start with we
are driven into the very small circle of introducing into the definiens the
very concept which is being defined and also into the slightly larger
circle of introducig into the defininens the other member of the pair."

However, Grice's own idea of analysing "expression meaning" (x means that p) in terms of dispositions (utterer U is disposed to utter x meaning thereby that p) as in the essay repr in Searle, _The Philosophy of Language_, has also been described as behaviouristic.

P. Suppes thus replies though in the P.G.R.I.C.E. festschrift (ed. Grandy, Philosophical Grounds of Rationality, p.116f). In the section: "Is Grice a behaviourist?" of 'The primacy of utterer's meaning' Suppes quotes from Chomsky:

"Chomsky [who should have known better. JLS] claims that Grice is a behaviourist
and that consequently his programme suffers all the defects that Chomsky
has alleged on numerous occasions are charcteristic of empiricist theories
about language (Reflections on language, p.73ff)". "It seems to me that
Chomsky is badly off the mark. Grice has used words like "practice", and
"habit" and even the more technical word "procedure" in their ORDINARY
SENSES as they are USED IN ORDINARY DISCUSSION. He has NOT made technical
concepts out of them as one might expect of some BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOLOGISTI.
There is snothing in any strong sense that is behaviourist about such talk
- it is just ordinary talk about behaviour. There is nothig exceptional in
talking about practice, customs or habits of language use. Grice certainly
does not intend that these notions, as he has used them, give anything like
a detailed account of the creative use of langague. What Chomsky has to say
is essencially a DIATRIBE AGAINST EMPIRICISM, secondarily against
behaviourism, and in the third place against GRICE. In terms of more
reasoned and dispassionate analyses of the matter, it seems to me that one
would ordinarily think of Grice ot as a bheaviourist but as an
intentionalist".

Hear, hear.