Grice, Strawson -- and Peacocke on "metaphysical arguments"

--- by JLS, for the GC.

---- GRICE CAME TO DISLIKE the Kantian pompous, 'transcendental' argument, and would talk, simplistically, of 'metaphysical' argument, rather. But Strawon and Peacocke belong to the old school.

In "If and -->" Strawson (he reprinted this, unethically, in his own book, when it was a 'present' for the Grice festschrift) diagnoses the Gricean programme. It is suitably built on a 'transcendental argument'. If people would not tell the truth, conversation would NOT be possible. Grice objects: conversation would perhaps not be PROFITABLE. It's a WEAK transcendental backing for the 'appropriateness' (never the existence) of something as silly as a 'conversational move'.

Strawson concludes that 'if' conventionally implicates what he thought implicated back in 1952. He adds: "My theory is true, even if Grice's is more beautiful". That 'more beautiful' stroke a deep chord in me. For who really cares for 'true'? If I follow Grice is because I find his theories BEAUTIFUL. The jargon in Strawson's theory becomes VERY otiose when we see that its author even recognises its ugliness. (In this I follow Borges: "Are you really a Berkeleian?" he was usually asked by the stupid paparazzi. "I never judge a philosophical theory for its truth; only its aesthetical virtues").

Now, Peacocke took 'transcendental arguments' seriously when he approached them in the Waynflete Inaugural. In a way it's Myro with a vengeance. Myro and Grice and Peacocke all met in Berkeley when Peacocke was visiting. Myro had suggested to Grice that 'CONTENT' IS the way to go when we think 'belief' and 'proposition'. We just NEED 'proposition' to be the 'content' of our beliefs. "For surely you won't want your beliefs to be content-free?". When people say this or that film is 'free of adult content', I don't SEE what they can possibly mean. It usually means that it is a non-transcendental film. Or not.