by JLS
--- for the GC
Grice thought his defense of analyticity, or, as he later qualifies it, his "pragmatic vindication"), was less than final, and I guess I agree. Grice also thought that the notion was pretty central to philosophy. In his
online essay on Ordinary Language Philosophy,
http://www.helsinki.fi/~tuschano/writings/strange/
Uschanov makes a historiographical point about the influence that Grice-type Oxford paradigm-case arguments have in present-day non-Oxford philosophy:
Uschanov writes:
"Most of today's philosophers who consider, say, Descartes's argument from illusion, Russell's on denoting" or Quine's two dogmas have little or no idea of the Oxford-style style critiques (Austin's Sense & Sensibilia, Strawson's On Referring" and Grice & Strawson's "In Defence of a Dogma". REPR. in Grice, STUDIES IN THE WAY OF WORDS. They briefly had to deal with half a century ago."
The more's the pity: consider what Grice says in retrospect about his (he hopes) "sophisticated" - as he calls it - version of the paradigm case
argument presented in that classic essay.
Grice writes:
"The attempt by Strawson and myself to defend the analytic/syntethic distinction by a (one hopes) sophisticaded form of PARADIGM CASE argument fails to meet, or even to lay eyes on, the characteristic rebuttal of such types of argument, namely that the
fact that a certain concept or distinction is frequently deployed by a popularion of speakers and thinkers offers NO GUARANTEE that the concept or distinction in question can survive rigorous theoretical scrutiny."
So far, it would seem as Grice is contradicting a tenet as the one he poses in his
essay on "Oxford Philosophy" - also in Studies - but he goes on:
"The mistake is to try to *support* for example the
analytic/synthetic distinction as something which
is *detectably present* in the use of English.
I.e. as if surface syntactic counte-rarguments to Quine's syntactic insights won't be enough. Instead, Grice suggests:
"It may be better to regard an analytic/synthetic
distinction not as a supposeldy detectable element
in English, but rather as a THEORETICAL DEVICE which
it might be desirable to incorporate into some
systematic treatment of English. (Trouble is) it
is by no means apparent what kind of theoretical
structure would prove to be the home of such a
distinction, shout it find a home!"
H. P. Grice, Reply to Richards, in
P. Grandy & R. Warner, PGRICE, Philosophical Grounds
of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends, p.55.
Well, one would say that the distinction has found a home in present-day
truth-conditional semantics.
No T-sentence which includes a reference to "iff" would make sense if the analytic/synthetic condition were illegitimate. Or so I think
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I evidently think the Grice/Strawson response much better than Grice did.
ReplyDeleteYou have to bear in mind how little needs to be established here, because of the very radical nature of the critique.
The main thrust of the Grice counter-argument is that Quine is applying to this concept standards which are without precedent for philosophical concepts.
Almost all of his arguments are attacks on his own variations on how others have sought formal definitions of analyticity, usually in relation to formal languages. Most philosophical concepts would be so hard to formalise that noone ever tries.
Its true, as Grice says, that the paradigm case argument does not prevent theoretical arguments from undermining a concept. But theoretical arguments must presuppose either the existence of the concept (and offer a reason for discarding it) or else some characteristic of the concept (very rarely) and show that no concept can have that characteristic (and hence that there is no such concept/distinction).
Only the latter course is open to Quine, and he cannot even adopt this course, for he offers no attribute which he might show to be unsatisfiable.
(and if he did, he would just have shown that the concept of analyticity lacked that attribute, and we would be free to say "so what" unless we had identified that as an essential characteristic).
RBJ
Excellent commentary, R. B.!
ReplyDeleteYes. And it is fascinating to see how Grice, as we have discussed elsewhere, goes on to qualify his objections to Quine's objections. From a paradigm-case argument to a transcendental justification, to a more pragmatist one...
I do agree that one has to give more credit to Grice/Strawson's early defense than the later Grice gave!
For the record, I've just added a rather detailed account of Grice's and Strawson's line of argument (under Grice's "Underdogma", this blog) which touches on or overlaps with your notes in your website regarding that particular tricky one, "Nothing can be green and red all over" -- which, as Chapman retrieves from archival material -- Grice saw as 'synthetic' a priori, rather.
In any case, Grice's cursory comment on the 'sense' rejection is one that may touch on his "Do not multiply senses beyond necessity", with having Quine as not even want to have a razor to cut Plato's beard. Or something.