Holdcroft Cites Grice

MUST A GENIUS BE FROM OXFORD?

No. David Holdcroft is a genius, and his Oxonian connections are minimal.

Holdcroft allows us to consider some further complications regarding Grice's choice of the 'neustic', concerning R. M. Hare's distinctions as applied (mainly) to the logical form of a hypothetical imperative, viz. "(!)p ->
!q".

In his excellent _Words & deeds: problems in the theory of speech acts_, D
Holdcroft (Philosophy, Leeds) writes at some length on the
formal aspects of Hare's theory of moral language (even _vis-a-vis_ Grice)
that we are here concerned with. Holdcroft begins by noting a remark by
Katz/Postal (Katz/Postal, p.76) re: the structural similarity between the
indicative 'You go home' and the imperative

(1) Go home!


The issue interests me, for it has to do with "pronoun deletion", something
which too interested Hare from an early date, when he wrote in 'Imperative
Sentences': "we know that the sentence

(2) Come in!

is a command, because it lacks a personal pronoun, and this absence of a
pronoun is, in an Irish sense, a symbol for the imperative dictor." (Mind
1949, repr. in _Practical Inferences_, p. 9) - where 'Irish' is meant to
mean, we suppose, 'unexpected'? What strikes me in the Katz/Postal duet,
'You go home' and


(1) Go home!


is that I guess 'You go home' _can_ be interpreted _imperatively, i.e. as
an imperative with an _explicit_ grammatical subject:


(3) You go home!


but I guess only the context (and the intonation) can say if the utterer
meant it as a plain imperative (albeit with explicit subject) or an
emphatic indicative (with a different direction of fit).


Immediately after mentioning this example, Holdcroft turns to what we may
call _molecular_ utterances, involving more than one _phrastic_. Recall the
chemistry analogy: Hare speaks of 'sub-atomic' elements (phrastic, neustic,
tropic, clistic) constituting the "atoms" of meaning (utterances). These
"atoms", when combined, become 'molecules' (Strictly, only _conjunctions_
are molecules (recall Quine's formalism at this point, of symbolising "p
and q" by "pq").


IMPERATIVES WITH SUB-ORDINATED CLAUSES. There are various types:


(4) Get a man who knows that 7 + 5 = 13!


Here 'who knows that 7 + 5 = 13' is an indicative clause sub-ordinated to=
a
main imperative clause. If the main clause has a word-world direction of
fit, are we to suppose that there's a commitment here (via the factiveness
of "know") to '7 + 5 = 13' being _true_? I don't think so. (For we can
always cancel this by saying, "Get a man, if you find it, who knows that 7
+ 5 = 12").


One special sub-ordinating particle that interests me here is the _third_
connective ('and' being the first, and 'or' the second), viz: 'if'. How
does a main imperatival clause work with a clause which is sub-ordinated by
'if'? My insistence in this is to see if Hare's formalisms (with some
Gricean aid, as it were) may help me to understand Kant's idea that the key
to Ethics lies in the universalisability of one's maxims for behaviour.
I'll take a maxim to be a hypothetical imperative, and Kant's idea that in
universalisability, something odd happens to the hypothetical clause ('gets
omitted', in Grice's parlance, _Aspects of Reason_, p.87). Holdcroft quotes
from Hare:


"in [its] _ordinary_ use, "if" is best treated as part of the phrastic"
(_Language of Morals_ p.21), or, as Holdcroft puts it, "'if' joins a
phrastic to a phrastic". As this applies to the two formulae that
Baker/Hacker consider for this (my previous post):


(5) !(p -> q)
(6) p -> !q


Hare is suggesting the former one. Incidentally, re "!" -- which Grice uses
extensively -- it seems the first to use it qua imperatival modal sign is
Hofstadter & Mckinsey (1939:447).


The Isomorphism Thesis.
Recall Grice's and Hare's crusade (against e.g. Kenny and Williams) in what
with Holdcroft we may call the Isomorphism Thesis, i.e. the thesis that all
valid indicative inference has a valid imperative counterpart (the 'tropic'
being inferentially powerless).


An ambiguity regarding an answer in the imperative mood.
Holdcroft discusses at length the following example which deals with some
'ambiguity', noted too by Gric in 'Intention & Uncertainty' in the _future
indicative_ ("I shall", "you will") qua 'judicatival', vs. the _future
intentional_ ("I will", "you shall"), qua 'volitival'. Consider the
question, "Shall I pay him back?" The proper reply, Holdcroft says, can't
be 'Yes' (or 'No' for that matter). It has to be either (7) or its negation=
.


(7) Do!


This incidentally allows for the perfectly sane utterance, 'You _will_, but
you _shall_ not'. For, suppose the reply is 'You will'. The addressee may
reason as follows: I asked "Shall I keep the money?". U replied, "You
will". This obviously does not _answer_ my question. For he may be saying
that I _will_ keep the money _disregarding_ of A's _will_ that I don't. But
this means, I guess, that I must take he is implicating that I am _not_ to
pay him back". But this sounds counter-intuitive. As Grice puts it in
_Aspects of Reason_, in some questions the questioner is 'concerned to
settle a problem about what he is to _do_ (Grice's examples being 'Shall I
go on reading?', 'Shall I accept the invitation?'). Grice here specifically
uses the tropic combo (mentioned by Holdcroft) "?|-p" to represent
something like "Will I go?", whereas it's "?!p" which represents 'Shall I
go on reading?' or 'Shall I accept the invitation?'. Grice notes a
complication with x-questions, e.g. '_What_ shall I do?'. Grice writes:
"The specifier for 'What shall I do?' used as a request for advice is: The
questioner (U) to utter to the addressee (A) ?x!: U is to do x' if U wills
A to judge U to will that (Ex)(A should will that U judges (U is to do x)).
(Grice, _Aspects of Reason_, p.56).


Mixed Moda Utterances.
Another problem that interests Holdcroft concerns the scope of the phrastic
in the pair:


(8) You will catch a fish, but do not eat it!
(9) Catch a fish, but don't eat it!


How do we disambiguate between the pair if we, as Hare suggests, treat the
phrastic in both as being something like 'Your catching the fish, but your
not eating it' "and making use of only _one_ neustic?". We just can't. The
first utterance in the pair is obviously a conjunction of an indicative and
an imperative (two tropics); the latter is a conjunction of two tropics of
the same kind (imperative). Grice considers this too -- his examples being:
"You will find a filthy beast, but don't touch it!" and "Find a filthy
beast, but don't touch it!" (_Aspects of Reason_, p. 89)). Another examle
by Holdcroft is:


(10) Jones cheeked the policeman, and don't you do it!


Here Holdcroft quotes Dummett (1973:336) who claims this is "not very
interesting from a logical point of view". Dummett claims the utterance is
just truth-conditionally equivalent to an indicative clause ('He cheeked
the policeman') followed by the imperative


(11) Don't you do it!


Holdcroft thinks there are problems with this. Consider:


(12) He is said to be honest, but be on your guard!
(13) The coach arrives at midnight, but don't take it!


With "but" -- vis a vis all that Grice said about "but" carrying a
conventional implicature -- "it is not clear", Holdcroft says "that an
utterance of (12) would be tantamount to 'He is said to be honest' followed
by "Be on your guard!". Holdcroft's argument relies though on the notion of
an implicature, and so Dummett can always claim, and rightly so, that these
don't concern truth-conditions. Holdcroft writes that implicatures of the
two cases (i.e. the explicit conjunctive utterance vs. the merely
paratactic one where the imperative just _follows_ the indicative) are
quite different. In (12) the utterer means that you are to be on your guard
_despite_ that fact that he is said to be honest -- one can never be to
careful. But in the second case, where the two atomic utterances are merely
paratactically presented, the utterer means that "the fact that he is said
to be honest is a _reason_ for being on your guard." The _rationale_ for
this is, naturally, Gricean. Holdcroft writes: "This is so, it seems,
because it is natural to take the function of an indicative which is
followed by an imperative to be stating a _reason_ why the imperative
should be complied with." Holdcroft considers:


(14) It's cold. Shut the window!


where "there is no need to ask _why_ it should be shut." Similar reason
applies to Holdcroft's second example,


(15) The coach arrives at midnight, but don't take it!


"A natural context in which to utter this would be one in which the
addresse _does_ have a good reason to leave on the next coach, but
nevertheless the utterer think that the utterer should _not_ do so".


Further examples by Grice concerning 'mixed mode utterances' involving the
imperative concern the ambiguity they pose to 'and'.


(16) Touch the beast & be beaten!


"While idiomatic, this is _not_ a conjunction, nor a genuine invitation to
touch the beast". Similarly for the ambiguity they pose to 'or':


(17) Either Jones is taking a bath or leave the bathroom door open!


Grice says "is perhaps intelligible", but


(18) Leave the bathroom open, or Jones is taking the bath.


"seems considerably less so" (Grice, op. cit., p.89).


One further problem that Holdcroft considers vis a vis Hare here is the
Square or Opposition. Holdcroft writes (p.85) of Hare's suggestion
(1967:38) that 'You may do not-A' is truth-conditionally equivalent to


(19) Do _not_ do A!


However, Holdcroft sees the "not" ("~") as not _always_ applying to the
phrastic ("I don't command you to A" is tantamount to "I permit you not to
A"). In general, as with "The coach arrives at midnight, but don't take
it!", "it is obvious, as we have seen, that these utterances cannot be
analysed satisfactorily in such a way that it contains only _one_ phrastic
and _one_ tropic".


Holdcroft essays a reductio ad absurdum here. For consider the options. One
rephrase (into an utterance with only one tropic) of the problematic
utterance would be purely indicative: "(The coach's arriving at midnight, &
your not departing on it), yes.". Another would be purely imperative:


(20) (The coach's arriving at midnight & your not departing on it), please.


Tis is however not a paraphrase of the imperative above but at best of


(21) Ensure that the coach arrives at midnight & that you don't depart on i=
t!


(cfr. Grice, _Studies_, 'Presupposition & conversational implicature' for
the remarks of the 'presuppositions' of utterances like "Take these flowers
to your wife!" not usually understood as an injunction to get married). But
(21), unlike (27), is a conjunction of two imperatives.


Holdcroft considers a further problem. "Provided there _are_ conjunctions
of mixed mode, are there also conjunctions whose analysis requires more
than one neustic _of the same kind_?". Holdcroft considers:


(22) Since he did you a good turn, help him!
(23) I'm tired, so you go!


Holdcroft analyses the latter as "(My being tired, yes) so (Your going
home, please)". Other examples he considers are:


(24) Tell/remind John that it's raining!


where "a plausible case can be made out that it contains an indicative
clause", and the pair we've considered above: "You will catch a fish, but
do not eat it!" and "Catch a fish, but do not eat it!", which for Hare
would be analysed _both_ as "(Your catching a fish & your not eating it),
please." Hare's proposal looks problematic, but also does the proposal that
we disassociate the utterance into two sub-utterances, for one of the
utterances would contain a dangling pronoun ("it") -- thus modifying the
idea of a phrastic -- (Castaneda). Holdcroft however thinks there's a way
out for this inconvenience, if one accepts as a principle something like:
"two utterances count as 'separable' iff neither contains an expression the
meaning of which depends ineliminably on a cross-reference to the other".


Focus on the Hypothetical Imperative. In _The Conception of Value_ (2nd
lecture) Grice explored at some length _four_ alternative interpretations
of the hypohtetical imperative. the first is a Formal Interpreation: "A
blind logical nose might lead us (or be led) to the assumption of a link
between hypothetical imperatives and hypothetical statements
(propositions). Such a link no doubt exists, but the most obvious version
of it is plainly inadequate. At least one other philosopher besides myself
hs noticed that"


(25) If he molests the children, have him arrested!


"is unlike to express a hypothetical imperative; and that even if one
restricts oneself to caes in which the antecedent clause specifies a _will_
we find pairs of examples like":


(26) If you will to go to Chicago, travel by AA via Cleveland!
(27) If you will to go to Philadelphia, see a psychiatrist!


"where it is plain that one is, and the other is not, the expression of a
hypothetical imperative (I won't tell you which). A less easily eliminable
suggestion, yet one which would still interpret the notion of a
'hypothetical imperative' in terms of that particular logical form to which
the names 'hypothetical' and 'conditional' attach, would be the following.
Let us assume that it is established, or conceded, as legitimate to
formulate conditionals in which not only the consequents (_apodoses_) are
couched in some mode other than the indiative, as in conditional commands:


(28) If you see the whites of their eyes, shoot (fire)!


but also the antecedents (_protases_) or some part (clause) of them; in
which case all of the following might be admissible conditionals:


Judicatival Antecedent:
(19) If the cat is sick, take it to the vet.
Mixed (Judicatival-cum-Volitival Antecedent)
(20) If you are to take the cat to the vet & there's no cage available,
put it on Martha's lap!
Volitival Antecedent:
(21) If you are to take the cat to the vet, put it in a cage!


"If this suggestion seems rebarbative, think of these quaint conditionals
(when they are quaint) as conditionalised versions of _arguments_, such as:


Volitival-cum-Judicatival Premises:
(22) i. Take the cat to the vet!
ii. There isn't a cage.
________________________________
iii. Put the cat on Martha's lap!
Volitival Premise:
(23) i. Take the cat to the vet!
_________________________________
ii. Put it in a cage!


"and then maybe the discomfort will be reduced".


Grice considers a second Formal Interpretation: "Among conditionals with an
imperatival or volitival consequent some will have, then, 'mixed'
antecedents (partly judicative, partly volitival) and some will have purely
_judicatival_ antecedents (like 'If the cat is sick, take him to the vet!).
I might now give a provisional definition of the terms categorical and
hypothetical imperative. A hypothetical imperative is _either_ a
conditional the consequent of which is imperatival and the antecedent of
which is volitival or mixed (partly judicatival, partly volitival) _or_ it
is an _elliptical_ version of such an imperative. A categorical imperative
is an imperative which is either _not_ conditional in form or else, if it
is conditional, has a purely judicatival antecedent." Grice makes three
'quick comments' on this second interpretation:
(i) REAL IMPERATIVES: The structures which are being offered as a way
of interpreting hypothetical and categorical imperatives do not, as they
stand, offer any room for the appearance of practical modalities like
'ought' and 'should' which are so prominently visible in the standard
examples of those kinds of imperatives. Grice writes: "the imperatives
suggested by me are _really_ imperatives": they conclude "Do such-&-such!"
not 'You/one ought to do such and such'. "But maybe my suggestion could be
modified to meet the demand for the appearance or occurrence of 'ought'
(etc) if such occurrence is needed.
(ii) "It would remain to be decided how close the preferred reading of
my 'deviant' conditional imperatives would be to the accepted
interpretation of standard hypothetical imperatives. But even if there were
some divergence, that might be acceptable if the 'new' interpretation
turned out to embody a more preicse notion than the standard conception.
(iii) NEUSTICAL vs TROPICAL ANTECEDENTS. "There are, I think, serious
doubts of the admissibility of conditionals with _non-judicatival_
antecedents, which will be to my mind connected with the very difficult
question whether the Judicative and the Volitival Mode are co-ordinate or
whether the Judicatival Mode is in some crucial sense _prior_ to the
Volitival. I do not know the answer to this question."


A third formal interpretation "links the categorical-hypothetical
distinction to the absolute-relative value distinction. Hypothetical
imperatives would be _end-relative_ and might be analogous to
evidence-relative probabilities. Categorical imperatives would not be
end-relative.


Finally, a fourth Interpretation is not formal, but _material_: "This is
close to part of what Kant says on the topic." It is a distinction between
an imperative being _escapable_ (hypothetical), through the absence of a
particular _will_ and its not being escapable (categorical). If we
understand the idea of escabability sufficiently widely, the following
imperatives are all escapable, even though their logical form is not in
every case the same".


(24) Give up popcorn!
(25) To get slim, give up popcorn!
(26) If you will to get slim, give up popcorn!


"Suppose I have no will to get slim. One might say that the first
imperative is 'escaped', provided giving up popcorn has nothing else to
recommend it, by _falsifying_ 'You should give up popcorn'. The second and
the third imperatives would not, perhaps, involve _falsification_ but they
would, in the circumstances, be _inapplicable_ to me -- and
inapplicability, too, counts, as escape. Categorical imperatives however,
are in no way escapable".


The Dynamics of Imperatives in Discourse.
Grice then gives three examples which I've discussed in the thread on
_Aspects of Reason_, which concern _arguments_: This we may see as an
elucidation to grasp the logical form of an hypothetical imperative in its
dynamics in argumentation. Grice writes: "We should, I suggest, consider
not merely imperatives of each sort, together with the range of possible
characterisations, but also the possible forms of _argument_ into which
_particular_ hypothetical imperatives might enter". His examples being:


(27) i. Defend the Philosophy Department!
ii. If you are to defend the philosophy department,
learn to use bows and arrows!
______________________________________________________
iii. Learn to use bows and arrows!


Comments: Grice says he's "using the dichotomy of original-derived value.
Re i, it is not specified whether the will is original or derived. ii
specifies 'conducive to' (means), iii. would involve a 'derived' will,
provided ii. is _true_.


(28) i. Fight for your country!
ii. If you're to fight for your country, join up (one of the services)=
!
________________________________________
iii. Join up!


Comments: i and iii do not specify the _protasis_. If iii did, it would
repeat premise ii.


(29) i. Increase your holdings in oil shares!
ii. If you visit your father, he'll give you some oil shares.
______________________________________________________________
iii. Visit your father!


Comments: "this argument (purportedly) transmits value".


Let us explore these characterisations by Grice with the aid of Hare's
distinctions. Holdroft has Hare saying that, in a hypothetical imperative,
"the protasis contains a neustic/tropic" (_Language of Morals_, p.37).
Holdcroft makes a distinction between 'hypothetical imperative' and a term
used by Grice in his first interpretation of the hypothetical imperative,
that of 'conditional command' ('If you see the whites of their eyes,


shoot!)): Holdcroft writes: "A hypothetical imperative can be distinguished


from a _conditional_ imperative:

(30) If you want to make bread, use yeast!
(31) If you see anything suspicious, telephone the police!


"by the fact that _modus ponens_ is not valid for it." Holdcroft writes
(p.93). "I use 'conditional imperative' for an imperative which is
_grammatically_ conditional, and reserve 'conditional command' for a
command which is conditional on the satisfaction of the antecedent". Thus,
on Holdcroft's view, treating the major premiss of the following argument
as a hypothetical imperative, turns the argument invalid':


Major Premise as Hypothetical Imperative
(32) i. Major Premise:
If you will to make someone mad, give him drug D!
ii. Minor Premise:
You will to make Peter mad.
__________________________________________________
Give Peter drug D!


Holdcroft comments: "The hypothetical imperative tells one only what
_means_ to adopt to achieve a given _end_ in a way which does not
necessarily _endorse_ the adoption of that end, and hence of the means to
it. Thus someone might say,


(33) If you will to make someone mad, give him drug D!
But, of course, even if you will to do that,
you must _not_ try to do so.


On the other hand, Holdcroft says the following is "arguably valid" because
the major premise is a 'conditional' imperative and not a mere hypothetical
one:


(34) Major Premise as Conditional Imperative:
i. Major Premise:
I you will to make someone mad, give him drug D!
ii. Minor Premise:
Make Peter mad!
__________________________
iii. Give Peter drug D!


Holdcroft explains this in terms of the presence of the neustic in the
antecedent of the imperative working as the major premise: "The supposition
that the antecedent of a hypothetical imperative contains a neustic, as
Hare proposes, neatly explains why the argument with the major premise as a
hypothetical imperative is not valid, but the argument with the major
premise as a conditional imperative is, as well as helping to differentiate
a hypothetical imperative from a _conditional_ one. For, if the
_antecedent_ of the major premise in the hypothetical imperative is
volitival, the mere fact that you will to make Peter mad does not license
the inference of the imperative to give him the drug; but this _can_ be
inferred from the major premise of the hypothetical imperative _together
with an imperative -- the minor premise in the conditional imperative -- to
make Peter mad." In other words, whether "the subordinate clause contains a
neustic" thus does have have a consequence as to "the validity of
inferences" into which the complex sentence enters".


The Principle of Mode Constancy in Imperative and Indicative Inference
(Clarke). Holdcroft then tries to elucidate Hare's ideas on the logical
form of the hypothetical imperative proper.


Holdcroft writes: "Hare's suggestion is, admittedly, rather tentative. But


it might be argued, in the spirit of it, that a hypothetical imperative is
of the form

(35) i. !p -> !q
ii. |-p
______________
iii. !q


But this violates a principle of MODE CONSTANCY (see Clarke): a phrastic
must remain _in the same mode_ (within the scope of the same _tropic_)
throughout an argument. A conditional imperative does not violate the
principle of Modal Constancy, since it is of the form


(36) i. p -> !q
ii. !p
_______________
iii. !q


Holdcroft has a caveat here: "The question of the logical form of the
hypothetical imperative is too obscure to base much on arguments concerning
it". Holdcroft mentions an alternative to Hare's account of the validity of
an argument featuring a conditional imperative. This is to treat the major
premise of a conditional imperative, "as some have urged it should be" as
an _indicative_ tantamount to "In order to make someone mad, you have to
give him drug D". Then someone who _asserts_ the major premise of a
conditional imperative and _commands_ the second premise is in consistency
committed to commanding the conclusion". Holdcroft concludes that "if"
"does not always connect phrastic with phrastic but sometimes connects two
expressions consisting of a phrastic and a tropic" (p.87). Holdcroft
further considers:


(37) If you walk past the post office, post the letter!



Holdcroft writes: The antecedent of this imperative states, it seems, the


_CONDITION_ under which the imperative expressed becomes operative, and so
can _not_ be construed imperatively, since an imperative cannot itself
state a condition. Hence, the antecedent ought not be within the scope of
the imperative modal operator "!", and whatever we take to represent the
form of the utterance above we must not take "!(p -> q)"
to do so." One way out: "On certain interpretation of the Isomorphism
Thesis between Indicative and Imperative Inference the utterance has to be
construed as an imperative (in the generic sense) to make the indicative
conditional "If you will walk past the post office, you will post the
letter" _true_.

Leaving aside issues of the implicature of "if", Holdcroft writes: "That
the utterance can _not_ be so construed seems to be shown by the fact that
the imperative to make the associated indicative conditional true is
conformed with by one who does not walk past the post office. But it seems
strange at best to say that the utterance is conformed with in the same
circumstances." (I think this 'strangeness' is aptly explained away by Hare
in terms of Gricean implicature). Interestingly, Holdcroft quotes Dummett
(1958) as endorsing this idea that a conditional imperative be construed as
an imperative to make an indicative material conditional true (also Dummett
1973:339) (Dummett urges to divide conditional imperatives into those whose
antecedent is "within the power of the addressee" --- like the utterance in
question -- and those in which it is not). Consider:


(38) If you go out, wear your coat!


Holdcroft is not so much concerned with how to _escape_ this, as Grice was,
but how to _conform_ it. He writes: "A child may choose not to go out in
order to comply with the imperative". For an imperative whose antecedent is
_not_ "within the power of the addressee", e.g.


(39) If anyone tries to escape, shoot him!


it is, Holdcroft thinks, "indifferent whether we treat it as a conditional
imperative or not", so why bother. There's a small caveat by Holdcroft
here: If no one tries to escape, the imperative is _not violated_. He asks:
"might there not be an important practical difference bewteen saying that
an imperative has not been violated and that it has been complied with?"
(Holdcroft thinks Dummett ignores this distinction). Honestly, I don't
think there is much of a practical difference there (Am I an intuitionist?)=
.


Holdcroft writes: "Suppose that you are a frontier guard and the antecedent


of (65) has remained unfulfilled. Then, whether we say that you complied
with it, or simply did not _violate_ it will make a great deal of
difference if you appear before a war crimes tribunal". But then I don't
see why I would be in the war crimes tribunal in the first place...
Holdcroft here quotes from Dummett.

Holdcroft quotes Dummett: "The fact that in the case of an imperative
expressed by a conditional imperative in which the antecedent is not within
the agent's power, we should not say that the agent had obeyed just on the
ground that the antecedent is false, is no ground for construing an
imperative as expressing a conditional command: for there is no question of
fixing what shall constitute obedience independently of the determination
of what shall constitute disobedience" (Dummett 1973:343). Personally, I
think this complicates the issues.


Holdcroft cites Geach, who with Grice and Hare, defends imperative
inference against Kenny and B. A. O. Williams. Holdcroft writes: "What is
questioned by the sceptics about imperative inference is whether if each
one of a set of imperatives is used with the force of a command, one can
infer a _further_ imperative with that force from them". Cfr. Aristotle on
the practical syllogism. In some respects, Holdcroft is more conservative
than Hare. Holdcroft considers:


(40) i. If you stand by Jane, don't look at her!
ii. You stand by Jane
__________________________________________
iii. Don't look at her!


This is valid. However, the following, obtained by anti-logism, is _not_:


(41) i. If you stand by Jane, don't look at her!
ii. Look at her!
_____________________________________________
iii. You don't stand by Jane.


"Honestly, it seems more reasonable", Holdcroft says, to deny Hare's thesis
and maintain that Anti-logism is valid in imperative inference than it is
to hold onto Hare's thesis and deny that antilogism is valid in the case in
question."


The ordering of tropics and neustics.
Consider Holdcroft's example:


(42) i. Varnish every piece of furniture you make!
ii. You are going to make a table.
_______________________________________________
iii. Varnish it!


This is, Holdcroft writes, "_prima facie_ valid". The following, however,
switching the order of the neustics in the premisses is not:


(43) i. You are going to varnish every piece
of furniture that you make.
ii. Make a table!
___________________________________________
iii. Varnish it!


Conversational Implicature at the Rescue.
Problems with "or": Holdcroft then considers A. Ross's famous example


(44) i. Post the letter!
_______________________________
ii. Post the letter or burn it!


as 'invalid' (Ross 1944:38 -- endorsed by B. Williams). Holdcroft starts by
quoting H. Kamp: "To permit to do p or q is to permit to do p and to permit
to do q". (Similarly, to give permission to do something is to lift a
prohibition against doing it). "Admittedly, Williams does not need this so
I'm stating his claim more strongly than he does". Holdcrot reviews Hare's
way out (defense of the validity of the utterance above in terms of Gricean
implicature. Hare claims that whilst the premise's "permissive
presupposition" (to use the term introduced by Williams) is entailed by it,
the conclusion's is only _conversationally implicated_. Typically for an
Isomorphist, Hare says this is something shared by indicative inferences.
Holdcroft quotes Hare's passage in 'Some alleged differences between
imperatives and indicatives:


"If, being absent-minded, I ask my wife, 'what have I done with the
letter?' and she replies that I have
posted it or burnt it, she conversationally implicates that she is not in a
position to say which I have done [...] She also conversationally
implicates that I may not have post it, so long as I have burnt it."


Similarly, he maintains the future tense indicative, "You are going to post
the letter" has the conversational implicature "You may be not going to
post the letter so long as you are going to burn it". But this surely does
not validate "p, ergo p or q"". As Holdcroft notes, one _can_, similarly,
say: "Eclipse will win. He may not, of course, if it rains. And I _know_ it
will not rain".


Problems with "and": Holdcroft considers Hare's example in 'Imperative
Sentences':


(45) i. Put on your parachute & jump out!
____________________________________
ii. Jump out!


Holdcroft comments: "Someone who _only_ jumps out of an aeroplane does not
fulfil 'Put on your parachute & jump out!' He has done only what is
necessary, but not sufficient to fulfil it. Imperatives do not differ from
indicatives in this respect, except, Hare notes "that fulfilment takes the
place of belief (which is the form of acceptance apprpriate to statements"
(cfr. _Language of Morals_, p. 20). "Someone who is told
"Jones put on his parachute & jumped out" is entitled to believe that Jones
jumped out. But if he believes that this is _all_ Jones did he is in error"
(Holdcroft here refers to R. Edgley's treatment of this). Holdcroft
discussses Hare's test of cancellability in the case of the transport
officer who says:


(46) Go via Coldstream or Berwick!


-- analysed in first post of this thread. Holdcroft comments: "It seems the
transport officer's way of expressing himself is extremely _eccentric_. If
he's not sure if a storm may block one of the routes, what he should say is


(47) _Prepare_ to go via Coldstream or Berwick!


As for Hare's application of Grice's cancellability thesis here, to yield,
in the circumstances:


(48) Go either via Coldstream or Berwick! But you may not go via Coldstream
if you do not go via Berwick, & you may not go via Berwick if you do not go
via Coldstream.


Such qualifications seem to empty the imperative of all content and is thus
"reminiscent of Henry Ford's utterance that people can choose what colour
car they like provided it is black". But then I don't think Ford was being
illogical, was he.


Refs.
ARISTOTLE. Practical syllogism.
CLARKE D. Mode constancy in mixed inferences. _Analysis_ 30.
DUNCAN-JONES AE. Symposium on imperatives. See MITCHELL.
FOOT P. Morality as a system of a hypothetical imperatives. In _Moral
Philosophy_.
Discussed by Grice in _The Conception of Value_.
GEACH PT. Imperative inference. _Analysis_ 23
GREGOR MJ. _The categorical imperative_.
GRICE HP. The conception of value. Clarendon
Aspects of Reason. Clarendon
HARE RM. _The language of morals_. Clarendon.
Some alleged differences between imperatives & indicatives.
_Mind_ 76, repr. in _Practical Inferences_.
HOLDCROFT D. _Words & deeds_. Ch V: Hare's theses: phrastics & neustics.
KENNY AJP. Practical inferences. _Analysis_ 26
MAYO B. Symposium on imperatives. See MITCHELL.
MITCHELL B. Imperatives. Aristotelian Society 52.
PATON HJ. _The categorical imperative_
WILLIAMS BAO. Imperative inference. _Analysis_ 23
WILLIAMS T. The concept of the categorical imperative.