In the tradition of Kantotle

by JLS
--- for the GC

In the briliant "In the tradition of Kantotle", J. F. Bennett expands on Grice for the general readership of the Times Literary Supplement. He writes of Grice's being a philosophi philosphus is a "remarkable achievement"

"since Paul Grice's viva voce performance do not usually aim to entertain".

Nonsequitur! Grice always said that doing philosophy should be like doing music, and that doing philosophy should be FUN. He was a big proponent for "laughter IN philosophy". This, he noted, should be distinguished from laughter AT philosophy, but that's another preposition (proposition?).

"One of the causes" of Grice's being so admired within the philo frat,
Bennett writes is:

"sheer quality".

Must say I like this. But again, adding "sheer" to quality is a bad'un qua conversational implicature. Right? It means "mere"! But let that pass!

"Paul Grice is without peer as an example of how to do philosophy without
idiosyncrasy"!

-- Non sequitur! He has Gricean idiosyncrasy. Tks. "Without
idiosyncrasy" sounds such a non-committal!

Bennett writes, that while Quine and Strawson SHOULD NOT BE COPIED,

"Grice is the _only_ leader of whom it is true that the level of the dcisipline
would be raised if _most_ philosophers took him as a model of how to
think".

-- and become second-rate Griceans!? The tho't! Anyway, let _that_
pass, too.

Jon's criticism:

"the book" -- he is not just expanding on Grice: he is selling Grandy/Warner! --"seems to have been many years in the making, but we are not told what is old and what new; there is no preface".

My guess is that being a festschrift it was intended as Grice's becoming 70. Since he was born in 1913, that would be, wait a sec. -- in 1983, right.

So _that_ is probably the intended date of publication. They got it delayed, but
that's _another_ proposition.

Another of Bennett's criticism:

"work of Grice's that is distributed thru 3 publications is said by one contributor to have had "unfortunately its only printed statement in 1975"

and by another to be

"unfortunately unpublished".

This latter refers to P. F. Strawson's essay, "If and ->", but we should be grateful that Grandy & Warner, the editors, got Strawson to allow them to publish that old essay (dated 1968) which Platts notes had been doing the rounds in Oxford. It is about conditionals! And I've got a little anecdote about that.

I don't know what new discovery Bennett will be essaying about in
Boulder, but when D S M Edgington, sometime President of the
London-based Aristotelian Society, and Waynflete prof. at Oxford,was lecturing on "ifs", I raised from the audience and said,

"But that's Strawson's position alright!" and took her directly
to see - with our four eyes -- the essay in PGRICE by Strawson.

I don't know if Edgington was delighted to learn the news, but _I_ was!

Bennett, alas, does not seem to be having a sense of humour when he was
writing the review, when he notes:

"the name index contains rubbish, including the name of irrelevant royalty and of Grandy's dog".

--- And Grice's Method contains a reference to Grice's squarrel, Toby -- so?

The name of Grandy's dog -- he being one of the editors -- cannot _let_
be passed? But it's Grice his self as quotes royalty, and he was a Brit
subject so let _that_ pass! The reference (by Grice) is to

"Elizabeth (Queen Consort of George VI of Great Britain), p.52" and we find out that
p.52 is Grice writing about philosophy being the queen of sciences:

""queen", he writes "meaning not _sovereign queen_ like Victoria or Elizabeth II, but _queen consort_, like Alexandra or the Queen Mother"".

Either you delight in Grice's style or you don't! -- and that's a tautology! (And _relevant_).

Bennett also criticises in the name index, the entry for "Grice": "absurd: an unstructured list of 77 page references!"

Well, better than nought, I say!

On methodology. Bennett quotes Grice's description of Austin as a man who
had

"mastery in seeking out and sensivity in responding to, the finer
points of English linguistic usage".

Bennett adds:

"the memories of many of us can testify this".

Since Austin died in 1960, we know that Bennett, who was born in
Christ Church, New Zealand, was in Oxford BEFORE 1960. I believe he was born
in the 1930s. I still can't recall the college! Balliol? (I mean, I read it
somewhere).

"Just how philosophy relates to linguistic botanising is a hard question no
finer treatment of which I've seen than in Grice's discussion". Grice
analyses an episode when he was engaged with Austin in the difference of
the adverb "very" as opposed to "highly".

Highly intelligent vs. very intelligent.

Some collocations of "highly" were deemed absurd. Echoes of JL
and Daniel on "look" versus "see"...

Reflecting on Grice's method as one of _rational reconstruction_ a la
Kantotle, Bennett refers to Grice's "Method in Philosophical Psychology" --
which features Toby The Squarrell",

-- "an essay which gets a wealth of ideas about mentality out of the project of pretending to be God and considering how to go about construction rational being" -- and Bennett
writes: This essay

"SHOULD BE LEARNED BY HEART by all philosophers of mind".

I'd add -- and be understood. I've learned things by rote I later
wrote nought about.

Another alliteration! (Bennett's emphasis on rationality reminds me that an earlier book to his _Linguistic Behaviour_ was indeed _Rationality_!)

Bennett then discusses Grice's view on utterer's meaning.

"Clearly there is more to meaning that the tank is full than acting so as to get
someone to believe that the tank is full!"

At least he doesn't say that that is not even necessary!

"What Grice added was simple". This he calls "Grice's mechanism" in his Linguistic Behaviour, i.e. the idea that you fulfil the intention by means of its recognition by the addressee".

"You get to do something partly though the other realising that that is
what you are up to". Bennett defends Grice here:

"if we can fit meaning-constitute intentions into their BIOLOGICAL SPACE, so much the better".

Bennett then discusses Grice's account of _expression_ meaning (x means
that p as opposed to by uttering x, U means that p) in terms of "having a
certain procedure in one's repertoire". Bennett notes that he rather
favours a convention-based approach.

This reminds me of the work of David Lewis. Then, Bennett considers Grice's defense of "folk psychology" in "Method", and writes,

"Grice's argument strikes me here as vulnerable and the eliminative materialists will find plenty to say in reply. The ongoing discussion will be instructive". Another anecdote. I recall facing, as I have said in here before, Steven Stich with "Grice's Humane Reminder", as Grandy calls it -- to be replied, "Preposterous". Talk of argument in philosophy!

Bennett's discusses Strawson-type counterexamples requiring an infinite net
of intentions -- "Strawson overdoes the demand for openness, or so I have
argued". -- Referring to Linguistic Behaviour -- and adds,

"A. M. Kemmerling in his essay in this book -- 'Utterer's Meaning
Revisited' -- contends that i didn't push that point far enough".

In any case, Bennett, with Grice, thinks that postulating an anti-sneak intention
will do the trick:

"it is enough for the utterer NOT to have a sneaky intention at any level. He doesn't need an UNSNEAKY intention at EVERY level".

Bennett considers what we may call Grice's essentialism in his metaphysics. Is Grice propounding a nominal essence or a real essence? Bennett's discussion is
_not_ very illuminating, in view of what we've been discussing in this forum. Bennett writes: "Grice doesn't mean that someone values a substance S because its essence E is such and such -- in view of autonomous finality -- for doing such and such. Grice does not mean, either, that we CALL a substance S so-and-so because they DO SUCH AND SUCH" Cfr. current discussion on Water as a Natural Kind.

"No. Grice means, blankly that a substance S is _essentially_ for doing
such and such."

Clear, eh! No wonder Bennett notes that Grice's metaphysics

"glows with Gricean virtue: it is deep and bold, and the difficulties lit
with the same intensity as the solutions".

Bennett finds Grice's views on metaphysics not "liberal", but "libertine"!
and he doubts that the real metaphysics is as rich as Grice propounds!

Grice Unpublications Get Publications. Bennett writes that he

"aches for the approach of Grice's publications" and quotes that Grice speaks of "the one hopes not too distnat time when his 1979 Locke Lectures are published.
-- 2001 by OUP, ed. by R. Warner -- Aspects of Reason. Bennett adds,

"but what about the Carus Lectures?".

Well, since Bennett wrote the review, J. Baker did publish them for OUP too. _The Conception of Value_, 1991.

Bennett discusses Searle's contribution to the Festschrift -- when I met
Searle he wrote to me on this, "To Mr Hope in memory of Mr Grace" -- or
something -- and notes,

"Searle's use of _"understands" against Grice seems to me circular".

I tried to defend Bennett's view here elsewhere, but I was kept being that one _can_ use "understand".

Grice on "if". Bennett also comments on Strawson's If and -> which leads us to the
notion of conversational implicature. If anything else does! Since Bennett
will be lecturing on a new discovery about conditionals this week, I shall
go in some detail. Bennett writes:

"Strawson expounds and criticises a view of Grice's about the meaning of
"if". The short of it is this". Blast, I don't like the short of it! Do I!
Murphy likes the short of it -- he thinks Grice is wrong about "if". I
think that _in the long run_ Grice is rite, or even wright -- if not right.

"Someone who says

1. If she bet heads, she won"

speaks truly just so long as she either didn't bet heads or did win (or
both). The juicer part of the story is Grice's explanation of WHY SO MANY
CONDITIONALS that are true according to him STRIKE PEOPLE AS FALSE. Consider.

2. If James II didn't succeed Charles II, Oliver Cromwell did.

This bizarre conditional, according to Grice, is TRUE in what it actually
means, namely that

3. Either james II succeeded Charles II or Oliver Cromwell did.

"But our rules for good behaviour in conversation include something like
this: "if you can say more without using more words, do so". And _that_
condemns the behaviour of someone say says (2)."

Bennett finds this transparent, but I don't.

I have recently been discussing this with an American and he thought I was moralising when saying all that stuff of Grice and "rules for good behaviour". I may go in detail. I was saying that certain man, call him Mr Jones, thought he was an American. A defender of Mr Jones then criticises me and goes, "Wouldn't a strictly lexical definition have been sufficient to show that Mr Jones not only thinks he's
American, but is indeed American? After all, he signs his post from America!". The man was not realising I was playing Grice, i.e. saying that Jones not only believes he is an American, but he actually is one. Obviously, a case of ill-timing! The defender (or attacker) went on: "Is the point that
many other people who live on the continents of South America and North
America could at least technically refer to themselves as "Americans"? Do
people in Buenos Aires refer to themselves in that way at times, and resent
that others on those continents would as well? What "on earth" for? Is
there an implication that Mr. Geary, despite his geographical location,
fails to meet some standard for the designation "American" as the term may
be defined in some other than geographical way? What would that standard
be, Mr.
Speranza? How about a bibliographical citation for that? What exactly is
the point here? I rarely "speak up" but posts like the one to which this
note responds make me wonder. If I wanted animosity, sneers, and cheap
sniping, I'd spend this time in an AOL chat room! This "thinks he's
American" stuff, though...?"
I replied that I was only joking (teasing, etc) -- and I _knew_ that Mr
Jones would take up the implicature! For some reason, the attacker went
into "if" (all this is, unfortunately! available online -- somewhere in the
depths of cyberspace! -- the good thing is that Grice got quoted. The
things I do! Some Chair of the Grice Circle! Anyway, the defender went:
"Okay, I know Grice only from an old critique of Quine's "behaviorism." Was
I a victim of the "conversational implicature trick". A trick? Like rabbits
from hats or mind reading? Interesting. A search quickly popped this up:

<< Grice's explanation of conversational implicature begins with his
articulation of a Cooperative Principle, which calls on a speaker to

"make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which
it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which
you are engaged" (1989, p. 26).

The Cooperative Principle subsumes a number
of submaxims, such as "Make your contribution as informative as is required",
"Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence", "Be relevant", and
"Avoid obscurity".>>

"So I've fallen for a trick, and a typical one at that. Well. Thanks. If I
spoke out of turn, excuse me. "Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice --
shame on you." Since the man did not seem very convinced of the relevance
of all that, I obliged. And he went on now really introducing that hateful
particle "if". "If Jones was born in America, Jones is American. Jones was
born in America. Therefore, Jones is an American.

I know nothing of Jones apart from his signature, so can't speak to what he
"is" and hardly what he "thinks" in any important way, but this much seems
clear to me -- the syllogism set out above seems the minimal form (or maybe
least number of words and relations) for making any interesting truth
claims about the relation between "Jones" and "American." The notion that

4. If P, Q"

implies "P, therefore Q" seems problematic at best and frankly I've never
been sure that conditional statements can ever be true or false in the
strictest sense. That leads me to think in terms of
some minimal force connecting "P" and "Q." As Speranza is probably aware,
this takes me to the material conditionals that Grice seems to hold central
to his notion of "conversational implicature." Such a conditional can be
true _whatever the connection_ between "P" and "Q," or I'd suppose even if
no relation other than appearing "next" to each other exists. Therefore,

5. If Jones was born in America, Jones thinks he's American.

is as "solid" a claim as

6. If Jones was born in America, Cuba is an island near Haiti.

"There is a conversational implicature in the claim, but then there's an
implicature of anything AT ALL that might be truthfully stated, and given
the variety of truth-theories to choose from I suppose a large number of
falsehoods might be counted as candidates as well. To all that, I can only
reply -- So ... what?" -- So you see. Bennett is simplifying things when
he says that we all love Grice's _mind_boggling theory. My attacker goes
on: "I can see how this take me down that road that would allow me to
understand history as pure speculation and take up the writing of that
history by counterfactual conditionals. Fun, perhaps, but again -- So what?
Are material conditionals really accurate or even useful ways to understand
"conditionals" as used in ordinary language? It would seem that it's from
that point that Grice takes up his notion of "conversational implicature".
It would also seem, to me, that the Cooperative Principle is essential to
that project, and that that Principle could be as well summed up as, 7.
"Don't be a smart*ss and try to help when you can." "Frankly, I learned
this at the dinner table as a child and have never felt a philosophical
basis for such courtesy to be necessary. A psychosocial reading of such
custom might be interesting in an anthropological sort of way, though. Is
that what Grice is up to?" "AN" implicature is that "Jones ain't an
American" -- but another implicature is that "Grass is green." I guess I
just don't quite see the practical virtue of this observation, and I don't see that it helps us better understand the nature of conditionals other than to say

8. Be very, very careful with them when you want to speak seriously.

I also think that -- and I'm not being "tricky" here -- that there may be a
sort of idiomatic gap between Speranza, Jones, and me. I grant that
sometimes people say things like "HE thinks that it was ALIENS, fer
crissake," but I can as readily say (adjusting for tense) "In The
Principles of Psychology, James thinks that
'thought' should be more inclusive in reference and not be limited to
adding or subtracting 'in your head.'" I can say "Jane thinks that she
might go to Pensacola this weekend." In neither case is the use of "thinks
that" an ironic one. Perhaps we face each other across an "idiom gap"
deepened by my lack of knowledge concerning any relation you have with
Jones that would introduce elements of humour or irony in your comments to
him. I suppose that on my part that might be exacerbated by hearing so much
back and forth lately about "being American" and all too much that seems to
assume that any voice of caution or even concern -- for instance, as I
"read in" Jones's post concerning the Marshall Plan -- is somehow
"unAmerican." That bothers the hell out of me, and probably clouded my
reading. Or maybe I'm just a humourless, meaning-blind pedant. Nahh, that
can't be it. I live in Mississippi and teach philosophy. Gotta have a sense of
humour for that." -- It was a good thing that, since "if" is not my forte,
a third party - who's strongly into "if" he being a neo-Fregean -- jumped
in in my defense. I end this interlude with _their_ short exchagne
Briefly: Third Party:

"As for true conditionals, they seem to me
perfectly all right, although maybe I haven't worried about them
sufficiently or about what it is to be 'true or false in the strictest
sense.'

9. If Alice can do a standing high jump of four feet she can jump higher
than I can.

strikes me as true, no matter how high Alice can in fact jump." The
attacker added this note: "My use of "in the strictest sense" was not as
strict as it may seem. What I wanted to raise was the question of the sort
of phrase that ends the quote above -- "...no matter how high Alice can in
fact jump." That's obviously a bit fuzzy if we're trying to nail down the
phrase. Consider -- what's the difference between "If Alice can jump higher
than four feet..." and "If Alice can leap tall buildings in a single
bound..."? The difference is one found in poetry rather than logic, and I'd
as soon leave Heidegger out of this. They at least raise the point
concerning Gricean conversations -- that we need more about the nature of
the conversation if we are to go on. Even when we stipulate some other
connection between antecedent and consequent, saying that "P" and "Q" are
connected within the context of a legal code --

10. If you do the crime, you do the time.


-- or by the meaning of the terms themselves (


11. If it's a triangle, it's a closed, three-sided figure.


or by a causal relation (the ever-popular rain on the road), the nature of
that relation remains open to questions about how that connection is made
and/or maintained. Maybe not big questions in every case, and those
questions don't keep conditionals from being just fine for everyday use,
but "in the strictest sense" they are still questions about what it would
mean for such a claim to be true or false." So much for contemporary debate.


Bennett writes on:

"So, in normal circumstances, a civilised speaker
will say

"If James II didn't..."

only if he _doesn't know_ who succeeded Charles II, and THINKS there is some CHANCE that Cromwell did; and, by ASSERTING the conditional he is conversationally implying that there is SOME CHANCE that Cromwell succeeded Charles II. So his true conditional strikes us as bizarre BECAUSE WHAT IT CONVERSATIONALLY IMPLIES IS WILDLY
FALSE".

"Grice's theory of conversational implicature, of which this is a
fragment, is powerful and widely applauded. It is serviceable for more than
just defending the minimalist account of the meaning of "if"."

"I don't agree with Grice about "if", but not for Strawson's reason.
Strawson conjectures that "If P, Q" MEANS something like

12. There is a connection between P and Q (recall this is the Times
Literary Supplement!) which ensures that: it is not the case that P is true
and Q false.

"whereas Grice holds that it means only what comes after the colon. Now,
Strawson argues, whatever is the truth about "if", it seems obvious that
there could be a connective that meant what Strawson thinks "if" means,
whereas Grice's line of argument implies that there couldn't be". We
discussed this here with Larry under header "Conversational Implicature and
the Lexicon" -- or something! Larry and me (and I) are very sceptical about
semantic restrictions of this type. We thinks (sic) this is all very unboring! Bennett writes:

"So Grice's position is GUILTY OF OVERSKILL and must be wrong"

Hey, many a mechanic I know is guilty of overskill but he ain't no wrong! -- "In fact, Strawson is wrong about what Grice is committed to. Perhaps he has to say that we, with our actual forms of life, couldn't have a Strawsonian "if"; that if we tried to have one, all its SURPLUS MEANING would (so to speak) DRAIN OFF INTO MERE conversational implicature, leaving only

13. Not-P or Q.

as the _Conventional meaning_. But there could be a society wehre people
often gave DISJUNCTIVE INFORMATION -- something meaning "P is false or Q is
true" -- altho' they KNEW which disjunct was true". This is what actually
Elinor Ochs argues for in "The Universality of Conversational Implicature"
(in Kasher, Conversational Implicature, RKP).

She found a place: Madagascar.

On the other hand, another female anthropologist, Susan Ervin
Tripp says that Madagascar-type of behaviour is common in Colorado, too! --
Don't ax for references -- they're buried somewhere in the attic of the
Grice Circle...

Bennett goes on:

"It might be a society where this happened a lot in
games, intelligence tests, initiation rites, teasing, etc. Given a wide
enough prevalence of that kind of disjoining, there would be a room for a
connective whose conventional meaning is "It is not the case that P is true
and Q false AND THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE DELIBERATE WITHHOLDINGS OF
INFORMATION". That would be the Strawsonian "if". Trouble is, Grice loved
teasing, and as Larry Tapper and I discussed elsewhere, he often relied on
games. As we discussed examples like

14. If the prize ie either in the garden or in the attic, and in fact it is
in the attic, the gardener will be glad.

(L J Cohen, "Grice on if", 1971:66, cited by R Walker, Converstational
Implicature, in Blacburn, Meaning, 1976:150).

(I should note in passing that Lewis -- a Gricean at heart -- wrote a lot
about the Gricean view of conditionals in many of his books. And his
account is discussed in the standard bibliography on "if". E.g. Jackson,
Appiah, Mcgee, etc. -- I thank Edgington for getting me into all this).

Reminds me of Alice who said, "I only said if", and the Queen replies,
"Nonsense. You said a deal more than that!" (or words to that effect)).

Bennett concludes the review with a discussion of G. Myro's essay re
the "Grice-Myro theory of identity". E.g. Speranza = Speranza, but Speranza
in t1 is not equal Speranza in t2. This may have to do with Murphy's
example of Seth's babiness... Bennett discusses that he holds a silver coin
in his hand. I will adapt this for the current discussion of water. "If the
drink IS Water, it can't be true that H20 is OLD (as the hills) and that
this lumping of H20 here is new."

"Grice's line -- which impressed Myro" is that the silver is NOW
(identical with) the coin",

or the drink in the glass with H20. "But that
last month it was not".

"This introduces the notion of A's being B at one time and not at another. So the silver is old because it existed a million years ago. The silver is now the coin. But it doesn't follow that the _coin_ is old. For at the remote times when the silver existed the silver was _not_ the coin." "A long story", Bennett writes that Myro develops with full pith. Bennett concludes his review.

Bennett concludes:

"I am still thinking about Myro's Grice Rule for quickly evaluating
philosophical ideas put forward by Grice. The rule says that the idea will
be right if and only if it initially strikes you as incredible".

Etc.