Grice Remembered

--- by JLS
------ for the GC

PERRY provices an excllent sketch and rationale for Grice's analysis of "Someone heard a noise" as:

"A past hearing of a noise is an

element in a total temporary state which

is a member of a series of total temporary

states such that every member of

the series would, given certain conditions,

contain as an element a memory

of some experience which is an element

in some previous member, or contains

as an element some experience a memory OF

WHICH would, given certain

conditions, occur as an element in some

subsequent member; there being no

subset of members which is indepent of the rest."


-- which Grice 'simplifies' as

"A past hearing of a noise is an element in a member of an interlocking series of memorative and memorable total temporary states".

This is plain Locke, as per the Essay concerning Human Undestanding, repr. online in J. B. Jones's site -- the relevant passage (Bk II. ch. 27) cited by Grice and repr. in the Perry collection.

Grice writes:

"The theory I endorse is mainly a modification of Locke's theory of personal identity, as when he writes, in the Essay,

"as far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had for it at first, and with the same consciousness as it
has of any present action, so far it is the same personal self"".

Etc.