Grice on the neustic

---- by JLS
-- for the GC

--- I WAS POINTED OUT (by L. M. Tapper) that 'neustic' is an aequivocal term: it can mean, 'sign of nod of assent (as used by Grice, WoW:RE and Hare) but it is also a kind of fish (neuston). The use in marine biology may conufuse a Griceian (or the use by Grice may confuse a marine biologist) so I think these notes below are doubly appropriate.

----

Liddell/Scott entry for 'neuo':

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999....
%3Aentry%3D%2370531

----

As "Jaro Hasek" wrote:

"In the sea the hyponeustic creatures swim just below the surface, while the epineustic creatures rise above."

---

Grice writes in his Valedictory Essay in WoW:


"We shall perhaps be in line with those philosophers
who, in one way or another, have drawn a distinction between
'phrastics' and 'neustics,' philosophers, that is to say, who
[...] lay a special emphasis on [a distinction between]


(a) [truth-conditions]


(b) the mode or manner in which such items
are advanced, e.g. declaratively or
imperatively, or (perhaps one might equally well
say) firmly or tentatively." (_Studies_, p.367)


I would think Hare would reply as follows, "Excuse moi, but already in 1970 I did point out that 'the manner in which items are advanced qua declaratively or imperatively' is the 'tropic', _not_ the neustic.".

Baker (and Hacker) jump in. They start with some problems with Hare's favoured paraphrasis: Consider:

(1) The door is closed.
(2) Close the door!
(3) Your serving first. Please. ... Your hitting a
good shot. Yes. ... My not being ready. Yes ...

The utterer "_might_ be understood, but his prowess at speaking English
would be under the gravest suspicion". Of course a Harean or a Gricean may reply as Grice does in _Aspects of Reason_: "Man". "Jane Austen, Lord Macaulay" (NOT MENTIONED IN THE INDEX) "My vocal mannerisms will result in the production of some pretty barbarous 'English sentences'; but we must remember that what I shall be trying to do, in uttering such sentences, will be to represent supposedly underlying
structure; if that is one's aim, one can hardly expect that one's
speech-forms will be such as to excite the approval of, let us say, Jane
Austen or Lord Macaulay. In any case, less horrendous, though (for my
purposes) less perspicuous, alternatives, will, I think, be available."
(p.73).

Baker/Hacker then consider:

(4) Tom Sawyer's being cleanly and neat's being less likely
than his being mud-caked and dressed in rags. Yes.

"Someoby who said (4) would have little chance of being understood at all.
The fact that [Hare's] method of paraphrase yields _no_ English _sentences_
seems to make it a non-starter as a way of paraphrasing sentences within
English" (p.96).

That's why Grice uses 'English sentences' in inverted comma's [sic. Sorry.
Could not resist using 'comma's as the plural of commas]. Baker/Hacker point out (p.72) to some 'ambiguity' in Hare's terminology:

"Hare calls the verbal noun 'your shutting the door in the immediate
future' the phrastic of the sentence [sic! [this "sic!" is in Baker/Hacker.
JLS]]

(5) Your shutting the door in the immediate future, please. (_Language of Morals_, pp 17f).

Baker/Hacker writes: "[This explanation] seems appropriate to an attempt to extend truth-conditional semantics to non-assertoric utterances ... it should be expressions _other_ than the sentences themselves which have truth-conditions in the case of non-declaratives". Hare explicitly denies this in my second post on this thread. In 'Sub-atomic particles' (_Mind_) he certainly says that a _phrastic_ does
_not_ have a truth-condition. Only _full_ sentences (indicative ones) have.

Baker and Hacker go on: "So far the terminology makes sense. But this ceases to be
so. Hare immediately speaks of the 'phrastic' (and neustic) as being _in_
the unparaphrased sentence

(6) Shut the door!

e.g. arguing that the word 'not' is part of the phrastic in the sentence

(7) Do not shut the door! (_Language of Morals_, p. 20f).

Back and Hacker here quotes from Stenius. The man wrote: "We must distinguish between two components in a sentence: the sentence-radical (i.e. the 'phrastic') ... and the _functional_ component (the 'neustic'...) (_Wittgenstein's Tractatus_, p.164)" Baker and Hacker comment "This is unintelligible". They mean both Hare's and Stenius's accounts:

Re: Hare: "No verbal noun ["Your shutting the door in the immediate
future"] occurs in "Do not shut the door!", and therefore the question of
whether 'not' is part of the phrastic in 'Do not shut the door!" does not
_arise_ -- according to _Hare's_ own explanation of 'phrastic'."
(Similarly, "it would be absurd to suppose that defective eyesight prevents
my finding a 'that'-clause in the _sentence_ "You live here now", and
consequently the generalisation that every sentence contains a sentence
radical is obviously false according to Stenius's explanation of
'sentence-radical'".

(Baker and Hacker point to work by Ross as a way out of this puzzle).

[Note that Grice uses both 'radical' and 'phrastic' indifferently. The
'radical' terminology, as Baker/Hacker point out, is introduced by Stenius
(after Wittgenstein) "to emphasise that this entity like a radical in
chemistry (e.g. the hydroxyl group) cannot occur on its own".

Grice goes on to use the symbol of 'square _root_' for this (_Aspects of
Reason_, p.59) obviously punning on two different usages of the same
'semantic field' as it were. Grice's example is "The pig goes to market"
inside a square-root symbol. The editor comments: "where S is a sentence, S
inside a square root symbol is the radical contained in, or underlying, S"
(p.59, note 12).

Baker and Hacker further quote Hare on p.81 as per Hare's claim that
"sentences have the same _sense_ if they are _about the same thing_"
(_Language of Morals_, p.22) ... Others prefer the explanation that they
must convey the same information (Katz, _Propositional Structure etc_,
p.11): on this view: 'Eat the cookies' and 'Someone will eat the cookies'
has as their shared _sense_ the information that somebody eats cookies in
the near future").

But I want to focus rather on a previous discussion by Baker/Hacker here,
on p.63f (Hare is said in the index to be quoted: "61-4, 72, 81"). Baker and Hacker write (p.61): "A parallel movement of thought [to Austin] leading in a different
direction is visible in the work of R. M. Hare in moral philosophy. The
primary role of such typical moral pronouncements as:

(8) A person ought to keep his word.

is to _prescribe_ -- not describe. ... Hare [accepted] in a modified form
the identification of moral judgments with commands which had been
suggested by some logical positivists." Surely Kant thought the same! After all the supreme moral thing is the categorical _imperative_ (an early version of Grice's Cooperative Principle, but less entertaining).

But surely what's interesting is the tenet of EMOTIVISM. i.e. the idea, by
Professor Stevenson, the most emotive of all philosphers, as Jaro Hasek
would agree in describing him, that 'Shut the door' is equivalent to

(9) Ough!

i.e. a mere outburst of emotion motivated by e.g. some cool draft. Baker and Hacker, who recognise the 'tropic', write: "Hare then urged taht there is a logic of imperative inference parallel to the logic of assertoric inference. The raw materials for this are wht he called 'neustics' and 'phrastics' (L of M, p.17ff). Imperative and indicative sentences may, he suggested, be _about the same thing_. 'Shut the door' and 'You are going to shut the door' are both alleged to be about your shutting the door shortly. The verbal noun ("your shutting the door in
the future") indicates what both are about. This expression Hare called the
'phrastic'. Hare transformed the command into 'Your shutting the door --
please' and the assertion into 'Your shutting the door -- yes'. The
expressions 'please' and 'yes' as used in these paraphrases, he called
'neustics'. I believe 'yes' is indeed an interjection. You can't say:

(10) Peter did rob the house yes.

I.e. "yes" cannot work _adverbially_. Although cfr.

(11) Yes, Peter rob the house.

Is "yes" a sentence adverbial there? I don't think so. It's a mere
variation on "Yeah" (antonym: "Nay").

As for "please", I did this in 'Re: Aspects of Reason' via the OED to find
out that 'please' is short for the conditional:

(12) If it please you.

Hardly the mark of Kant's puritanical imperative. Unfortunatly, Prof. Hare is not clear what we're to do with the 'please' when we attempt to apply his theory to Kant's.

Baker and Hacker go on: "The neustic marks the speech act performed by uttering the corresponding unanalysed sentence, in particular differentiating commands from assertions."

Of course in Hare's later terminology, it's the 'tropic' which does that.
Hence his remarks on the 'continuum' of the neustic in things like what we
may call 'hyperneustic' -- as in:

(13) I insist that she pay him back.

and the hyponeustic:

(14) I _suggest_ that she pay him back.

Here enters the time-honoured (Hume's) "is-ought" question. When analysing
the _dynamics_ of all this, as Baker/Hacker point out:

In imperative logic,

"AT LEAST ONE PREMISSE MUST HAVE IMPERATIVE FORCE IF THE CONCLUSION DOES."
(Baker/Hacker call this a 'principle') ('Descriptivism' by Hare is repr. in
_The Is/Ought Question_ reader). (A fascinating question).

Backer and Haker note that while Hare did not use, in _The Language of Morals_
"the apparatus of neustics and phrastics to construct a general theory of
meaning", he does so in later work (his Phil Rev essay in vol. 79 -- repr.
in _Practical Inferences_ -- Baker and Hacker are writing before Hare wrote
the article in _Mind_ on 'Some subatomic particles of logic' which
introduced, explicitly, the 'clistic'.

In this later work (the Phil Rev essay) Baker and Hacker write: "Hare moved
further in the direction of a general theory [of meaning] adding tropics to
his equipment of 'neustics' and 'phrastics', generalising to the claim that
_every utterance_ has a phrastic, neustic, and tropic. (Hare, Phil. Rev,
pp. 3 ff).

"A flood of theorising has sprung from the work of Hare. One branch of this
torrent of work focuses on a justification of practical reasoning".

"Emulating Frege", [these philosphers] introduce "!" (e.g. Grice). [I don't
think Hare did. JLS]. For Hare, "!" would be a sign of tropic. -- But he
was very careful in distinguishing three things in Frege's

(15) |- p

so he perhaps would not have sympathised with Grice's practice of using "!"
as the imperative correlate for the assertion sign. For surely "|-", as
meant by Frege, was a double sign (perhaps triple): the vertical stroke is
"judgement", the horizontal stroke is the clistic. No such 'composition' is
evident in "!". Whatever.

These philosophers, Baker/Hacker write, "produce such formulae as

(16) !(p v q)
_________
!p

The example by Ross (cited by Hare) is actually of the form:

(17) !p
________
!(p v q)

e.g.

(18) Post the letter!
________________
Post or burn it!

Surely valid, Hare would say, thanks to Grice. (see my first post on this
thread). (I noted incidentally, Hare refers to Grice's 'conversational
implicature' in yet _another_ passage:

On p. 22 of _Essays in Ethical Theory_ Hare writes: "Because of a Gricean 'conversational implicature' that we are sincere in
saying what we say, there is a non-logical inconsistency in saying

(19) p but I don't believe that p.

or

(20) Do A but I don't want you to do A.

'Some confusions about subjectivity' -- I'd add Hare has some pretty nice
confusions about implicature. Surely Grice (_Studies_, p.41) is explicit
that his account can't account for Moorian absurdities! Grice was very
Oxonian.

Baker's and Hacker's second formula in this context is:

(21) !p
|-(p -> q)
__________
!q

Baker and Hacker refer here to work by Kenny (Anal., p.72ff; _Will_ etc. p.70)
and Waismann (p.405) -- refs. below). And Stenius. Stenius thought that
there were _six_ modal operators ("This", Baker/Hacker write, "is a
grotesque misinterpretation of _Philosophical Investigations_". Well, as
long as it's not a grotesque interpretation of the _Tractatus_!).

The very passage I would like to focus is on p. 104 of Baker/Hacker:

"[These phrastic/neustic] theorists [are pretty allowed to use whatever
formalisms fancy them but the trouble is when they] regularly forget that
their symbols have no pattern of use apart from their explanations of how
to use these expressions. Hence they fall into ridiculous confusions.
Philosophers debate [...] whether a _conditional command_..." We are getting closer to where I want to go: Kant's categorical imperative.

"... should be written as

(22) p -> !q

rather than

(23) !(p -> q)

"[...] as if there were real principles laid up on High which governed the
possibilities of combining logical connectives with force-operators! This
is an exemplary illustration of the generalisation that philosophers are
often like children who first scribble some arbitrary lines on a piece of
paper and then ask the grown-ups, 'What is this?' (Wittgenstein, Big
Typescript, p.430)"

So the issue is that of hypothetical vs. categorical imperative. In
_symbols_! Between: (23) and (24)

(23) p -> !q
(24) !p

What did Kant write about this? From http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/c/catimper.htm
"Kant distinguishes two types of imperatives. [I hope he used "Imperatif"
or something reasonably resembling the Engish word 'imperative' JLS].
Imperatives are commands that prescribe an action:

(25) Clean the room!

An imperative is _hypothetical_ iff it depends on someone's preference for
a particular end:

(26) If you want to lose weight, eat less!

where the command to eat less hinges on the addressee's preference to lose
weight. There are two types of hypothetical imperatives.

A _problematic-hypothetical imperative_ involves a "rule of skill" based on
a "preference". E.g. that vary from person to person (such

(27) If you want to be a doctor, go to medical school!

On the other hand, an _assertoric-hypothetical imperative_ involves a "rule
of prudence" based on the "preference" to be happy:

(28) If you want to be happy, go skydiving!

A categorical imperative, by contrast, is an absolute command:

(29) Treat people with respect!

Or, I'd say, "Shut the door!" or must we understood here the condition,
"can't you see there's a bloody draft coming from outside?" which is not based on subjective considerations."

But isn't a categorical imperative understood to be based on the
_preference_ of the _utterer_, i.e. his _will_ that the door be shut, or,
in (29), that the addressee treat people with respect? Surely both Hare and
Grice -- Hare as early as 1949 was sure that there is a parallelism with
'assertions'. 'Imperatives' express desires. Hare is discussing very strong _emotive_ utterances, such as:

(30) Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son.

This, he contrasts with

(32) Come in.

Hare writes that it would be a stretch to say that (32) means:

(33) Would God you would come in.

Hare writes. "However, 'Come in' expresses emotion in _two_ senses". Here
I'm interested only in what Hare calls the 'weak' sense: "In the weak sense, 'Come in!' expresses a _wish_, not like David's utterance [(30)] but in the same sort of way as an indicative sentence expresses a _belief_ that something is the case."

This is a very important point which is at the base of Grice's theory, you
know. The online source goes on:

"Thus, the supreme principle of morality is a categorical imperative since
it is not conditional upon one’s preferences. Kant describes the sources of the above types of imperatives. His discussion uses [the analytic-synthetic and the
apriori-aposteriori distinctions]

ANALYTIC:
(34) All wives are women.

SYNTHETIC:
(35) Kant was a celibate (and there he is universalising things. Imagine if
if were to universalise his 'Be celibate!'. Surely it's immoral to be
celibate if it allows for no universalisability).

A PRIORI:
(36) 7 + 5 = 12

A POSTERIORI:
(37) Kant was a blond.

"Kant argues that problematic-hypothetical imperatives are analytic or true
by definition, such as,

(27) If you want to be a doctor, go to medical school!

Assertoric-hypothetical imperatives are less clear since the concept of happiness varies so greatly [even among Griceans. JLS] as in:

(28) If you want to be happy, go skydiving!

"However, Kant believes that (28) is analytic since if we fully understand
happiness, we will also know the means to happiness.

Finally, categorical imperatives are _synthetic_ and _a priori_, since

(29) Treat people with respect!

is not analytic ['satisfactory by definition. The online writer keeps
saying 'true' but 'true' has no place with "!"'s. JLS] and is not known by
means of the senses. Kant’s point is that the categorical imperative
involves a unique type of knowledge that is intuitive, yet informative. In
view of this background, Kant presents the single categorical imperative of
morality:

(38) Act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time
will that it should become a universal law!

Although there is only one categorical imperative, Kant argues that there
can be four formulations of this principle: [who was it who said that this looks suspicious. Surely one reason is just as good as a hundred of them? There's a nice dictum to this effect but can't remember it right now] The Formula of the Law of Nature:
(39) Act as if the maxim of your action were
to become through your will
a universal law of nature!

The Formula of the End Itself:
(40) Act in such a way that you always treat humanity,
whether in your own person or in the person of any other,
never simply as a means, but always at the same time
as an end!

The Formula of Autonomy:
(41) So act that your will can regard itself at the same time
as making universal law through its maxims!

The Formula of the Kingdom of Ends:
(42) So act as if you were through your maxims
a law-making member of a kingdom of ends."

At this point K. Wischin may let me know if he thinks Hare's quartette
simplifies things here (as I hear Kant is quite 'considered' in Germany).
(but so was Hare!).

"According to Kant, each of these four formulations will produce the same
conclusion regarding the morality of any particular action. Thus, each of
these formulae offers a step-by-step procedure for determining the morality
of any particular action. The formula of the law of nature tells us to take
a particular action, construe it as a general maxim, then see if it can be willed consistently as a law of nature. If it can be willed consistently, then the action is moral. If not, then it is immoral. To illustrate the categorical
imperative, Kant uses four examples that cover the range of morally
significant situations which arise. These examples include committing
suicide,

making false promises,

[cfr. Grice, 'Do not say what you believe to be false' -- and Hare's
discussion of this in terms of 'Unless it's a white lie' in _Language of
Morals_, p.53. Hare quotes from the OED, which has as the quotes: 1741 in Gentl. Mag. XI. 647

A certain Lady of the highest Quality makes a judicious Distinction between
a white Lie and a black Lie. A white Lie is That which is not intended to
injure any Body in his Fortune, Interest, or Reputation but only to gratify
a garrulous Disposition and the Itch of amusing People by telling Them
wonderful Stories.

1785 Paley Mor. Philos. (1818) I. 187

White lies always introduce others of a darker complexion.

1833 Marryat P. Simple xxxiv,

All lies disgrace a gentleman, white or black.

1857 C. Reade (title) White Lies.

"failing to develop one’s abilities, and refusing to be charitable. In each
case, the action is deemed immoral since a contradiction arises when trying
to will the maxim as a law of nature." [It's not clear to me how something which is _synthetic_ (never mind a priori) can yield a 'contradiction'! Have people not found this _before_! Cfr. Hare's notable endorsement, with Grice (whom he explicitly mentions) of the 'analytic-synthetic distinction' in _Moral Thinking_. He is more
cautious (he thinks, than Grice) in _Essays in Ethical theory_ when he
writes (to the effect that) "even if Grice is wrong about the
analytic-synthetic distinction, I don't care, for my account only requires
a notion of Logical Truth, which even Quine accepts." Hare, 'The structure
of ethics and morals', p.176. JLS]

"The formula of the end itself is more straight forward: a given action is
morally correct if when performing that action we do not use people as a
means to achieve some further benefit, but instead treat people as
something which is intrinsically valuable. Again, Kant illustrates this
principle with the above four examples, and in each case performing the
action would involve treating a person as a means, and not an end."

Re (27) being _analytic_, Grice discusses this at length, and he does it in
a way that makes use of "!". For (28) 'assertoric' cfr. both Grice's and
Hare's very different theories of happiness. Hare's being encapsulated in
the aria of Papageno he quotes in _Fredom and Reason_. The obvious
interpreation of Grice's concern with happiness seems to be: how much can
we make of this as being 'analytic'. I.e. Kant suggests that if we _knew_
what happiness is, counsels of prudence would come out as analytic, i.e. as
not _essentially_ different from _problematic_ hypothetical imperatives.

Grice was always about to explore the Cat. Imp. (his short for "Categorical
Imperative") -- e.g. in _Conception of Value_:

"Today's Special (2. Cats and Hypes) calls (even clamours) for
interpretation" (p. 49). Now these are the Paul Carus Lectures. The John
Locke Lectures preceded them, and it's there that he explores _hypothetical
imperatives_ of the problematic kind. My interest here is Grice's use of
the, shall we say, phrastic-tropic distinction (or something).

We are into seeing how ridiculous Baker/Hacker thought of our doubts in
formalising a conditional command (a hypothetical imperative): !(p -> q) or
"p -> !q"?

There is a vast Oxford-based biblio on 'conditional commands'. In
particular, I'm interested in Kant's claim that they are _analytic_ -- a
claim I share as an article of faith, until I read Grice and did not
understand him.

ARE WE ALL KANTIANS? Who's the greatest Oxonian Kantian of them all? Hare -- or Grice? For the record, among the 'unpublications' by (H.) Paul Grice, listed in
PGRICE (R. Grandy, Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions,
Categories, Ends) are:

(i) 1976. Freedom in Kant.
Revised later. Book length piece.
(ii) In progress: Kant's Ethics. Book length piece.

Grice found Kant (along with Aristotle) his favourite philosopher and on
many an occasion he would rely on who he called 'Kantotle' (Thus the title of JF Bennett's review of PGRICE for the Times Literary Supplement is titled, 'In the tradition of Kantotle').

Grice was especially enamoured with Kant's idea 'Who wills the end, wills
the means". Recall that _Aspects of Reason_ originated as The Immanuel Kant
Memorial Lectures at Stanford. Grice writes considers Kant's example in GRUNDLEGUNG (the only fully explicitly 'stated' technical imperative, Grice writes, to be found in Kant's writings):

(43) It is _necessary_, given that one is to bisect
a line on an unerring principle that I'm to
draw from its extremities 2 intersecting arcs.

Obviously some notion of hypothesis is understood here. This was one of
Grice's disagreements with Davidson. In 'Davidson on weakness on the will',
Grice writes (on p.30, note 2):

"[My] notation reverses the standard form utilised by Davidson [I think
'standard' means 'very distinguished'. Davidson was apparently concerned
with these issues since a very early late. Hare thus quotes a book by
Davidson on _Decision_. JLS], in that [I make] the representation of the
evidential base [he's talking of probability judgements here. JLS]
_precede_ rather than follow the representation of that to which
probability is ostensibly assigned". Grice says he makes this change "in
order to hint at, though not to affirm, the idea that probability AND ITS
PRACTICAL ANALOGUE might be treated as attributes of CONDITIONAL
PROPOSITIONS".

Grice writes: "Though Kant does not express himself very clearly [for a similar claim: i.e. an Oxonian complaining of Kant's obscurity -- see Hare's remarks in
the interview with B. Magee, in a previous post of mine. JLS] I am certain
that his claim is that this imperative [(43) above] is validated in virtue
of the fact that it is, ANALYTICALLY, a consequence of an INDICATIVE
statement which is TRUE, and, viz. the statement vouched for by geometry,
that:

(44) If one bisects a line on an unerring principle,
one does so _ONLY_ as a result of having
drawn from its extremities two intersecting arcs.

Grice's own example is so much Oxford that I feel like quoting it:

(45) To preserve a youthful complexion, one should
smear one's face with peanut butter before
retiring at night.

Grice distinguishes between "should" -- unqualified acceptability --,
"ought" -- ceteris paribus acceptability -- and "must" -- unyielding
subscription, as Hare would have it. Curiously, it's only "must" which has
an analogue ("may") which allows a Deontic Square of Opposition.

Grice smartly notes that the woman who will accept (45) should better 'buy'
it provided it's based on something _true_ (not just 'nicey'):

"There is some initial plausibility in the idea that the _practical_
acceptability statement in (43) is satisfactory

iff the following ALETHIC [indicative. JLS] acceptability statement is
acceptable:

(46) It should be, given that

i. it is the case that one smears one's skin
with peanut butter before retiring.
and
ii. it is the case that one has a relatively
insensitive skin,
it is the case that one preserves a youthful complexion.

(For an alternative view on how beauty gimmicks are actually sold, relying
on women not really being 'Kantian', see D. Potter's _Pennies from Heaven_.
Episode between Gemma Craven and Nigel Havers. London: Faber).

Grice reconstructs, on Kant's behalf, the argument to prove the
acceptability in the geometry example (44) as resting on the 'analyticity' of

(47) The agent who wills the end wills the means.

Grice writes: "It seems to be to be very meritorious on Kant's part, _first_ that he saw a need to justify hypohtetical imperatives of this [problematic] sort [what
elsewhere, Grice says, Kant refers to as 'technical imperatives' JLS] which
it is
ONLY TO EASY TO TAKE FOR GRANTED
and _second_ that he invoked the principle that (47)".

Grice proposes to remedy Kant's obscurity of style (and sloppy thinking and
incomplete premisses) in the Stanford lectures (Some Cheek -- Wischin will
say -- but those Stanford preppies were so enamoured with Grice's Oxonian
style that they did not care some gratuitious Kant bashing).

Grice's chain of reasoning is much better than Kant's (as anyone who is not
familiar with Kant will agree) and involves nice seven steps: Here they go.
Comments (easy ones) welcomed.

Step I:
It is a fundamental law of Human Psychology that, ceteris paribus, for any
rational creature -- call it R -, for any P and Q,
if R wills that P
&
R judges that if P, P is a result of Q,
R wills Q.

Step II. Placing this law within the scope of a "willing" operator:
R wills for any P & Q,
if R wills that P
&
R judges that if P, P is a result of Q,
R wills Q.

Step III. Turning "will" to "should" [this is done via 'will' = 'shall'.
And 'shall'
= 'should']
If rational, R will have to block unsatisfactory (literally)
attitudes:
R should (qua rational) judge
for any P & Q,
if it's satisfactory to will that P
&
it's satisfactory to judge that if P, P as a result of Q,
Ergo it's sastisfactory to will that Q.

Step IV. Expliciting mode specifications:
==HERE IS WHERE HARE'S THEORY IS (KIND OF) ILLUSTRATED:

A 'should' statement is transformed into an utterance in the imperative
mode (symbolised !p). Utterances in the indicative mode are symbolised by
Grice, a la Frege, as "|-p".

R should (qua rational) judge for any P & Q,
if it's satisfactory that !P
&
that if it |-P, |-P only as a result of Q,
it's satisfactory that !Q.

Step V. Via (p & q -> r) -> (p -> (q -> r)).
R should (qua rational) judge
for any P & Q,
if it's satisfactory that if |-P, |-P only because Q,
it's satisfactory that,
if let it be that P, let it be that Q.

Step VI.
R should (qua rational) judge
for any P & Q,
if P, P only because p _yields_
if let it be that P, let it be that Q.

Step VII.
For any P & Q if P, P only because Q _yields_
if let it be that P, let it be that Q.

I'm sure a few problems remain... In the thread on 'Aspects of Reson' we
were analysing Grice's sense of 'happiness' -- or how to render, in a
reading of this, Kant's counsels of prudence, perhaps again with the aid of
some distinction like the phrastic and the tropic, into _analytic_. And
there's yet Grice's specific treatment of the 'cat' vs. the 'hype' in
_Conception of Value_.

REFS.


BENNETT JF. In the tradition of Kantotle. Review of Grice's
Studies in the Way of Words. TLS.
GRICE HP. Studies in the Way of Words.
The conception of value. Clarendon.
Aspects of reason. Clarendon.
Freedom in Kant.
Kant's Ethics.
The weakness of the will. In
Vermazen/Hintikka. Essays on
Actions and events. Clarendon
HARE RM. The Language of Morals. Clarendon
Meaning and speech acts. (Phil Rev. vol. 69) repr in
_Practical Inferences_
Some subatomic particles of logic. Mind vol. 98,
repr. in _Universal prescriptions and other essays_.
Clarendon.
Some confusions about subjectivity. Repr. in
_Essays in Ethical Theory_.
Freedom and reason. Clarendon.
Moral thinking.
The structure of ethics and morals. In
_Essays in Ethical Theory_. Clarendon.
KANT I. Critique of Pure Reason
Metaphysics of Morals.
KENNY AJP. Practical inference. Analysis 26
Will, freedom and power. Blackwell.
WAISMANN F. Principles of linguistic philosophy. Macmillan