Grice: A Libertarian?

--- By JLS
------ for the Grice Club.

FOR GRICE, THE EPITOME OF LIBERTARIANISM IS encapsulated in the expression, 'sugar-free'. Grice is merely saying that if I utter,

1. I have it sugar-free voluntarily.

There is an implicature of

2. +> & that's fishy.

i.e.

3. +> & this invites the question, "So what?".

One possible answer being, as Tapper has it,

4. Go jump in the lake!

I guess.

One problem may be under _what_ description we consider the _adverb-less_
utterance. I am reminded that adverbial inferences are _tricky_ per se. It
lead Davidson, inter aliis, to think that the basic ontological unit is the
_event_ rather than the fact. The tricky inference here is:

5. I have it sugar-free.
__________________


I have it sugar-free voluntarily.


which is certainly invalid. (More below). On the other hand, the following
inference, tho' valid, is hard to formalise:


6. I have it sugar-free voluntarily
______________________________


I have it sugar-free.


Grice deals with this in _Intention & Uncertainty_, OUP (a booklet --
actually, his British Academy lecture, also repr. in the Proceedings of the
BA). The idea is that


7. I have it sugar-free.


makes sense and that, of course, what also makes sense is


8. I have it sugar-free UNVOLUNTARILY.


Or:


9. It is the case that I have it sugar-free
and it is not the case that I have it sugar-free voluntarily.

Now, Austin being so much into _intentional_ acts, he probably thought of
"speaking" (and some such: e.g. the verbs he uses in "A plea for excuses":
murder, croquet, kick, eat, and sit, as opposed to yawn) as an intentional
verb. But obviously "speaking" under hypnosis, etc, count as _speaking_.
Austin is aware that the verb BASE is sometimes relevant. E.g. Grice
considers Austin's example

10. X murdered him voluntarily.

-- where some of the oddness relies on the verb "murder" rather than on the adverb. (Austin writes: perhaps "murder" is not a typical word. He calls it a "verb of omen").

Austin liked to "work the dictionary" as he put it, so may I consider the
citations from the O.E.D. under the adverb "voluntarily" (Echoes of Grice,
"I don't care what the dictionary says" notwithstanding). For one, we
should be surprised that the OED thought of _voluntarily_ as meriting a
separate entry.

The O.E.D. features a few interesting citations (for a change):

11. There may no man douten, that they ne ben governed voluntarily.
(Chaucer)

-- whatever that means, it is interesting that "voluntarily" features within a
clause containing "douten", which I take to meann "doubt", i.e. "question".
So the main clause introduces a question of fishiness, I suppose.


12. Wherefore she thought men would have
said that she consent to him voluntarily.
(Higden)

This is interesting too since it features the word "consent". Cf the phrase
"under consent age", "above consent age", and "consenting adult". To be
consenting adult means the ability to act voluntarily, I suppose. So
Hidgen's claim is more or less tautological. Lawyers would not otherwise
put so much focus on "content age" if it would be always _defeasible_ that,
even if X is _above consent age_, X consented something _unvoluntarily_?

13. To see the worship,
that God so long has eured him with
should so voluntarily be put in likelihood
of total Perdition. (Dk. Gloucester).

I guess this is rather fishy, too, since who would _desire_ to be put
_voluntarily_ in a state of total perdition? (Although we can't eliminate
masochists, I suppose).

15. King Richard voluntarily took upon him,
and promised to war upon Christ's enemies.
(Fabian).


I'm not sure what "take upon" means, but the implicature seems to be that
it was not the Chancelor or the Prime Minister, or the Queen, or nobody
(sic) who _made_ him promise to war, but rather that it came out as an act
of free will. But how would one go and verify that one is warring _under
duress_?

16. Duke Maurice of Saxony
served in this war voluntarily (Daus)

Same fishy context of _war_ here: wars are always questionable. Recall the
Tommies's word in the Great War (1914-1918) -- the slang "conchie", i.e.
_conscientious objector_. By definition, a conscientious objector objects
to war voluntarily.

17. If the other churches will voluntarily impart
anything to the supply of his necessities.
(Stubbs).

Unfortunately, the clause is left incomplete. I take it that the
implicature is that churches, in general, by default, ceteris paribus,
_don't_ impart things to the supply of _his_ necessities, whoever _he_ was.

18. To these marriages, albeit with a king,
she was rather haled perforce than voluntarily assenting
(Women Saints).

I'm not sure what "hale" means, but I get the fishy point, I guess, here
carried by fishy verbs like "assent" and the Latin expression "perforce"
whose antonym is probably "adplacitum" (and "voluntarily", as Austin notes,
rather than _involuntarily_.)

19. At last he voluntarily, and without any compulsion
but that of his Love, died upon a Cross.
(Bp. Patrick).

I guess this refers to Jesus Christ. It's all very fishy, since "without
any compulsion other than his love" is a very fishy expression: does Bp.
Patrick implicate that "love" is _not_ a compulsion?

20. The happy marriage is
where two Persons meet &
voluntarily make choice of each other (Steele).

This is all rather very fishy, too. I think P. H. Nowell-Smith (a
philosopher of the Austin group) would say that the word "choice"
truth-conditionally involves "voluntarily". So Steele's utterance's second
bit, "to make a choice voluntarily", looks as tautological and otiose. Or
as Grice and Searle would put it, _unremarkable_.

21. When men act voluntarily,
and do what they please,
then they do what appears most agreable to them.
(Edwards).

Another fishy tautology, if ever there was one. I mean: I don't know who
this Edwards was, but _obviously_, if X does what he pleases he does what
appears most aggreable to him. That's what "pleasing" means. Note the
qualification of "voluntarily" to the most general of action-verbs, viz.
"act". I guess Edwards is _implicating_ that acts can be _in-voluntarily_
made (else why qualify?). However, (some) action philosophers would oppose
such a claim.

22. I know you do not go voluntarily,
but I will give you a certificate
of my having obliged you to march.
(Pike).

-- which is just as well, the situation being so fishy. I mean: some
certificate! I guess I would not _like_ to accept that certificate! Imagine
an American soldier obliged to march into Kabul. Then the Colonel says,
"Shall I give you a certificate that you marched non-voluntarily?". "Go
jump in the lake, yessire!".

23. Milton either voluntarily offered a contribution,
or was invited to send one. (Masson).

Very fishy: first, because of the use of "or", which is a fishy particle
anyway; second, because there's this mis-use (euphemistic) of "invite"
which means, here, "oblige". If the man was only _invited_ to send a
contribution, he could _reject_ the invite. The idea is here is that X
acted _voluntarily_ regardless. I.e. even if he was invited to send a
contribution or he volunteered the contribution, he chose to do so
voluntarily. The utterer is just excluding the case of _duress_, then. See
R. Hall on "Excluders" cited by Murphy. In this case "voluntarily" relates
to the verb "volunteer" (as in "if I may volunteer some information, I
called you voluntarily").

24. Him who does no evil,
voluntarily I praise and love.(Jowett).

Rather fishy. Not so much because of _praise_ (which is fishy ceteris
paribus) but because of "love". Can I _choose_ to love someone? _Some_
love! (+> no thanks!).

Usages applied to animals.

25. Every night an assembly of dogs meet voluntarily
at an appointed hour, for the custody of the temple.
(Topsell).

26. They use to harden their ribs
by rubbing them voluntarily upon trees
(Topsell).

27. It does sometimes happen that the horse
voluntarily presses on, until he falls and dies.(Youatt).

-- interesting. Other usages:

28. The first of them is natural,
as when men do voluntarily sweat,
without force of medicine. (Bulwark).

Can you _sweat_ voluntarily? I guess so. If you _do_ some _other thing_ as
well. But this is not Bulwark's use, I suppose?

29. They plume themselves oftentimes, yea and the pendant
feathers of their thighs fall off voluntarily (Turbev).

I.e. the hawk makes them _fall_ ("voluntarily" applies to the agent X, not
to X's feather). I.e. a feather can't have a volition, right?

30. The Earth voluntarily and liberally yields her store
(Purchas).

I guess this is metaphorical anyway (and, therefore, rather fishy).

31. Man being left to the mutability of his own will
would voluntarily incline to evil. (Nesse).

Good point! The first non-fishy use I encounter, it seems. And Tapper says
that Griceans are bound to say that non-fishy uses hardly ever occur!

32. The hints and directions which I have given
as towards the procuring of invention
or playing voluntarily (Mace)

Can't say if this is fishy or non-fishy... This reminds me of the novel by
S Winchester, "The Surgeon of Crowthorne", on the Making of the OED.
Winchester writes that when OED editor Murray invited people in England and
Britain and the English-speaking world to send in definitions, one lady
said that she was willing & got to read lots of novels to help the man,
finally concluding that no usage of _any_ word was _fishy_ enough to merit
its inclusion in a dictionary (or words to that effect). (Actual passage
from Winchester (Penguin, p.136): "Many early readers turned out to be
dreadfully confused; they simply did not understand the scope of their
allotted task. For example, asked a couple of them, Did every single use of
the word _then_ within any one book require an illustrative quote? There
would be tens of thousands from any volume, before any of the substantive
words were even begun. And further, wailed one of the woman readers, what
if one had plowed thru all 750 pages of a volume, as she just had, and
fount not a single rare word to extract?").

I should also try a search with http://www.google.com, key words being
"Austin, Grice, voluntarily, fishy" and see what gets retrieved (Murphy,
Tapper and me, I guess). It is a pity that C. Travis's review of Grice's
_Studies_ (in Mind, vol. 100) concentrates on "know" rather than
"voluntarily", since he makes some critical remarks about the Austin vs.
Grice paradigms. Travis writes, inter alia (section I: Implicature, of the
Critical Notice): "Theses targeted by Grice inolve Austin's maxim, "No
modification without aberration", involving [sic] "voluntarily",
"deliberately", etc". ... "Grice insists that it is a fact that A
implicates that p ONLY where the fact is derivable deductively, by appeal
to his conversational maxims, from the fact that the utterer SIAD strictly
and literally, that such-and-such else. So that form of explanation is
available to Grice only where he can specify a suitatble candidate for what
which the utterer _said_ in those words, and what it would be for that to
be true. Part of the force of Wittgenstein and Austin's epistemology is
that _no viable such candidate is available_; the only non-arbitrary
candidates being things WE WOULD NEVER SAY, or want to, or take ourselves
to -- thing that actually WOULD be refuted by the mere existence of
sceptical doubts". (p.244).

In a previous post I made a reference to Graham, K., J. L. Austin, a
critique of ordinary language philosophy. Brighton, Sx: Harvester Press. I
see that Grice is quoted extensively. At one point Graham writes:

"My
interpretation of the 'natural economy of language' [Austin's phrase in 'A
plea for excuses' in the passage cited by Grice in 'Logic & Conversation']
derives from some unpublished suggestions by H. P. Grice" (p.272) --
referring to the then unpublished 'Logic & Conversation' lectures.

Incidentally, I see no ref. to "voluntarily" in R. Hall's "Excluders" in C.
Caton, Ordinary Language, which I think Murphy quoted. Not that I implicate
that "voluntarily" is _not_ an excluder.

As mentioned in previous post on Tapper's introduced thread, Grice refers
to Austin's "A plea for excuses". (Presidential Address to Aristotelian
Society, 1956), specially the section that will be the focus of Searle's
essay in Williams/Montefiore, "No modification without aberration". Austin
writes: "working the dictionary, it is interesting to find tht a high
percentage of the terms connected with excuses prove to be _adverbs_ -- a
type of word which has not enjoyed so large a share of the philosophical
limelight as the noun and the verb".

Note that Grice formalises Austin's thesis as "X did A M-ly". I wonder what
M is supposed to stand for, though. I suppose it's modifier. Grice does use
"fishy" in Studies, too. In 'Plea', Austin assumes that

33. X murdered him non voluntarily.

means the same as

34. X murdered him involuntarily.

(Plea, p.189). Austin writes that to say

35. He ate voluntarily.

is _not_ "permissible" (Austin's qualifier). Note that, as if wanting to
eat his cake and have it, as Grice puts it, Austin doesn't seem to mean
_ungrammatical. Grice, on the other hand, is showing what this
_unpermissibility_ derives from: conversational rationality, as it were. If
I sit in a chair normally, "it will not do" to say (Austin's qualifier
being here the informal "to do" meaning "to make sense"):

36. I sit voluntarily.
37. I sit involuntarily.

Other expressions used by Austin is "to make good sense" (p.190) which is a
special case of making sense, I suppose. Austin's own examples, as per
complementing the O.E.D. are:

"We may join the army or make a gift VOLUNTARILY and INVOLUNTARILY. We may
hiccouph or make a small gesture involuntarily". I can break a cup
voluntarily IF that is done as an act of self-impoverishment. And I can
perhaps break another involuntarily if I make an involuntary movement which
breaks it"

Austin adds:

"Here, PLAINLY, the two acts described each as _breaking a
cup_ are REALLY VERY DIFFERENT". Are they? I don't like the use of "really"
(the word that wears the trousers, as Grice and Austin sexistly put it).
But I would think that the two acts share a common description, though.
Austin adds the following which i don't find very clarifying or
informative: "the one act is similar to acts typical of the 'voluntary'
class, the other to acts typically of the 'involuntary' class" (p.191).

Unlike Grice and Cavell, who do, Austin did _not_ use _fishy_. He used,
instead, _fish_: "Despite their apparent connextion, 'voluntarily' and
'involuntarily' are fish from very different kettles" -- Incidentally, do
you keep fish in kettles?

Note that in the passage by Austin cited by Grice, Austin does use the
adverb "informatively". i.e. Austin seems concerned with issues of
informativness regarding claims like "X did A M-ly".

If the context makes
it obvious that M-ly is assumed by default, it is a breach of "be
informative" to add it. That's Graham's point I think: that Austin would
have been happy with a Gricean explanation of the phenomenon.

I.e. The Austin picture _allows_ for a Gricean explanation. Grice states Austin's thesis as: "The suggested general thesis being, roughly, that for MOST action-verbs the ADMISSIBILITY of a modifying expression rests on the ACTION DESCRIBED being a non-standard case of the kind of action which the verb designates or signifies". But Austin never used "non-standard", did he?

Fishy or non-fishy, Grice's point is that

38. I ate voluntarily.

is _misleading but true_ (p.9). Grice notes with Searle that some of those
misleading but true occurrences are the paradigm-cases, though. (cfr
Uschanov's essay about paradigm cases argument and why Oxford philosophers
thought of them as important, "The Strange Death of Ordinary Language
Philosophy", available online).

Grice says that Austin was "trying to eat his cake and have it", and he
says he agrees with Searle: "to apply modifying adverbs in standard
situations is to apply them when there is no real or supposed possibility
of their application being false, and so to apply them in circumstances
which ensure that what their application expresses is unremarkable" (p.14).