On not seeing the smell of a rose

Grice on 'we see with our eyes' are analytic.

SEEING AND LOOKING


why can we not see the smell of a rose?
H.P.Grice
'Some remarks about the senses'.


Philosophers can spend hours analysing
things like "We see with our eyes". Ah
the seas of language!
S. A. Kripke,
Naming and Necessity.

The OED does note under "see" that one of the usages, it goes "= LOOK. See Look". But Grice did not see Look.

Consider Humpty Dumpty.

"I have a song to sing, but I won't sing it, I'm reciting it"

Alice replies "I see."

He goes, "If you can see if I'm singing or not you've got sharper eyes than
most."

What does Grice say about the visual sense in "Some remarks about the
senses"? Must confess that reading that essay by Grice was the driest thing
(one of the most) I did in my life, but I get it's me to blame, since the
essay is probably brilliant.

Some passages:

"I am indebted to Rogers Albritton for a number of extremely helpful criticisms and suggestions concerning this essay" (p.248 -- all page references to its reprint in
"Explorations in Semantics and Metaphysics" in Grice's Studies in the Way
of Words).

"Seeing might be characterised as PERCEIVING (or seeming to perceive)
things as having certain colours, shapes, and sizes".

This is Grice's first criterion for saying that

"he is x-ing"

constitutes a "sense" of perception.

"Seeing and smelling are to be distinguished by the special
introspectible character of the experiences of seeing and smelling; i.e.
disregarding the differences between the characteristics we learn about by
SIGHT and smell, we are entitled to say that SEEING is itself different in
character from smelling".

This is Grice's Criterion II.

"Sight is activated by light rays, hearing by sound waves, touching by
contact, and so on".

CRITERION III. The source.

"We see with our eyes -- as they are connected to the brain".

"Reference is made to the internal mechanisms associated with the different senses -- the character of the sense organ (the "eye" for sight) and their mode of
connection with the brain.

CRITERION IV. Grice says that this belongs in ethology, and that he should consider
how the sense of sight is realised in all different animals, but he writes

"a combination of ignorance of zoology diverts me"

to other things. He notes that "there is a danger that CRITERION ONE may incorporate some concealed version of CRITERION TWO":

"Seeing is the sort of EXPERIENCE that we have when we PERCEIVE a thing
as having a certain colour, shape, or size". Grice thinks he can get rid of
this danger by defining

"Jones sees that p" as

"Jones perceives that p"

-- plus some necessary and sufficient clause specifying the sense ("qua
perceiving things to have such and such features").

So far so good.

ONE DIFFICULTY:

WARM-LOOKING.

Here Grice faces a difficulty.

"Among the features that presumably figure in the list of TACTUAL qualities is what of "being warm".

"I see the sausage is warm".

But to say that Jones perceives a sausage as being warm DOES NOT ENTAIL
that he is FEELING (touching) the sausage, for a sausage can be SEEN as
warm, and a sausage can LOOK warm". Grice's way out of the danger is to
concot the phrase "Jones is DIRECTLY perceiving that p". Thus we can
say, ""Jones sees that the tie is blue" ENTAILS that Jones DIRECTLY
PERCEIVES that the tie is blue, while "Jones sees that the sausage is
warm" does NOT entail that he is directly perceiving that the sausage is
warm".

"We then might try to define "see" and its congeners (and primary
usages of "look" and its congeners) in terms of "direct perception"".

1. Jones sees M (Material Obect) =
Jones directly perceives that M is [some colour] and
that M has some spatial property.
2. M looks PHI to Jones = (primary usage):
M DIRECTLY SEEMS to Jones to have certain spatial
property and being [some colour], one of which is PHI.
3. M looks PHI to Jones = (secondary usage):
M directly seems to Jones to have certain spatial
property and being [some colour], one of which INDICATES
to Jones that M may be PHI.

Grice writes, briefly:

"This manoeuvre fails".

So far not so good.

Grice's difficulty is that SIZE (x is big) can be both SEEN and TOUCHED.

Thus Jones says,

"This half-crown [a coin] looks to me bigger than this penny, though they feel the same size".

Grice translates that according to his own definitions to yield:

"The half-crown and the penny directly seem to me to have certain spatial properties, including, in the case of the half-crown, that of being BIGGER than the penny. BUT. They also seem directly to me to have certain spatial properties which include that of being EQUAL in SIZE".

Grice restates his rigmarole (his word!) as follows:

1. The coins directly seem to Jones to have certain spatial properties.
2. The coins directly seem to have certain properties drawn from the
"tactual" list.
3. The half-crown directly seems BIGGER than the penny
4. The coins directly seem to be of the same size

The problem, Grice notes, is that this will not do as analysis of "look":

"there is nothing in 1-4 to tell us whether the coins LOOK different in
size, or alternatively that they LOOK the same size". At this point, Grice
concots an "ambiguity" theorist -- cfr. Daniel with his inner sight and
outer sight --.

Perphaps, Grice says, we should distinguish between VISUAL SIZE and TACTUAL SIZE.

A corollary would be that "spatial properties" are accessible only via sight. Grice, however, suspects this maneouvre. He is trying to analyse the difference between "looking", seeing, and feeling, and the introduction of "visual" vs. "tactual" sounds like circular.

In conversation with Oscar P. Wood (of Hereford College, Oxford), Grice
notes that he developped a different course.

This has to do with what Grice calls "the detection link".

On the basis of such ink between a property like "---is big" (which can be both visual and tactual) and "red" (which can only be visual), it might be decied that "big" (qua visually big) is being VISUALLY DETECTED.

But Grice is not happy with this.

For surely we can imagine Jones to whom two coins LOOK equal in size WHEN ONLY SEEN,
and FEEL equal in size when only FELT, but LOOK UNEQUAL and feel EQUAL when
BOTH seen AND felt."

He acknowledges that the case may be dubbed "fantastic", but "it seems just an EMPIRICAL MATTER whether or not the way things appear in onse sense is affect in this sort of way by the operation or inoperation of another sense".

Grice goes on:

"I now wish to see if some general account of the notion of a visual
property could be gives IF we make UNHAMPERED usage of verbs like "see" and
"look".

"First, I suggest that we take it to be a ncessary condition of a
property P being VISUAL that it should be linguistically correct to say of
someone (Jones) that the SEES that M is P, and also (with qualification)
that M LOOKS P to Jones".

Grice comes back to the example

The sausage is seen/looks) warm to me.

He writes:

"Warmth is a characteristic P which is NOT visually determinable, though. It is neither visually simple nor visually comple. It is merely "visually indicable"".

Grice then identifies what he calls "visually tightly complex" properties, E.g. "being lopsided".

"A man's face could perhaps be said to be made TO LOOK Lopsided by his LOOKING as if he had (and perhaps indeed his actually having) one ear set lower than the
other".

Grice goes on to consider the complex phrases: "friendly-looking", and
"tough-looking".

(He forgets "she's a looker" (-> very nice)).

A way to tell that these are NOT visually determinable -- in the technical way which
Grice calls "simple" -- is that the following questions are in order:

i. What is there about the way his face looks that makes it look friendly?

ii. What is there about the way he looks that makes him LOOK tough?

"Surely such questions are in order", Grice finds.

Grice notes however that "while one might be incined to say that tho' being TOUGH-LOOKING _is_ a visual characteristic, "being TOUGH" is not".

Here his conversation with Albritton comes in.

Grice thought that "one could not speak of Jones as "LOOKING TOUGH LOOKING". "But, as Albritton has pointed out to me, it does not seem linguistically improper to say of someone that (for example) as below":

He LOOKED TOUGH-LOOKING when he stood in the dim lightof the passage, but
as soon as he moved into the room it could be SEEN that really he LOOKED
quite gentle.

Grice adds,

"being TOUGH-LOOKING is visually determined".

"There is a logical absurdity in saying that two people are identical in repsect to all VISUAL characteristics, and yet that one person is TOUGH-LOOKING and the
other is not".

But there is some arbitrariness here, Grice notes:

"I and my friend may say that Jones is tough looking. However, someone else comes and says that Jones is not tough looking."

"It need not be the case that the last mentioned person is wrong OR DOES NOT KNOW THE LANGUAGE".

"The person may be impressed by some DISSIMILARLY between Jones and STANDARD tough
customers".

Grice concludes that "tough-looking" is a VISUALLY NEAR-determinable" property, "and loosely so in view of the nonexistence of logically sufficient conditions for its presence."

Regarding the INTROSPECTIVE criterion II, Grice notes that IF "seeing" _is_ an experience, it is a "diaphanous" one:

"if we are asked to pay close attention to our seeing as distinct from what is being seen we should not know how to proceed".

Here he gets closer to the question of the analyticity of "we see with our eyes".

One may speak of a seeing tongue (as Ted Crowell remarked to me), but Grice writes,

"It does NOT seem to be a contingent fact that we do not SEE the smells of things" (p.259).

Grice actually uses "tautological". He notes that on CRITERION ONE, the issue is simpler, "smelly" is not just one of the features listed in the list of visual properties,

"on this view it emerges AS TAUTOLOGICAL that smells cannot be seen".

He immediately then writes, "We seem to have reached an impasse".

So far not so good. "But not all is yet lost". Good. It's here that Grice introduces talk of "the eye" as "the organ of sight".

"Two coins may LOOK different in size but FEEL the same size:

By mechanism A (THE EYES and affection by light waves) Jones detects or seems to
detct a difference in size while by mechanism B (Jones's hands and
pressure) he detects or seems to detect equality of size".

"We can now define "visually big" as "big as detectably by/with the
eyes". It is here that Grice introduces his talk of the Martians, which is
fully explored in an essay by J. Coady, titled, "The Sense of the
Martians".

"We get on friendly with them, but find out that they have no word for our "see"". "They have TWO words, TONK AND PLONK". They say things
like

a. I tonk that the pillar box is red.
b. I plonk that the pillar box is red.

Where we would merely use "see" in both cases. We find that they have
something like "resemble our eyes", but four of them, i.e. two pair of
organs in their heads, one above the other, found be sensitive to light
waves".

We find out that they restrict TONKING to the upper eyes and
PLONKING to the lower eyes.

Grice's question is,

"Are tonking and plonking cases of SEEING or do they constitute a NEW
sense?"

For suppose we ask the Martian whether toking something to be blue is like PLONKING something to be blue. And they answer.

"Oh no, there's all the difference in the world!"

"Then I think we should conclude that iether tonking or plonking (or both)
are domething other than "seeing"".

Grice notes of the generality of "see" and "look".

We see/look a thing as red and ROUND. But red and round have nothing in common other than being visual properties.

Grice writes:

"In addition to the specific differences between visual experiences,
siganlisecd by the various property-words employed ("big", "red"), there is
a GENERIC resemblance signaled by the use of the words "see" and "look".
which differentiates VISUAL from NON-VISUAL sense-experience." Grice writes:

"This resemblance can be noticed and labelled, but perhaps not further described" (p.267)

This follows he says from "traditional theories of perception", but "for which at the moment I have neither time nor heart"!

Grice concludes,

"Why can we not see the smell of a rose?"

He replies:

"Well, in a way, we _can_. A rose might look fragrant".

"But perhaps the objector wants to explain why a rose cannot LOOK fragrant in the same way of "LOOK" in which it may look red".

Grice concludes:

"The answer here is presumably that had Nature provided a closer correlation between the senses of sight and smell thn in fact obtains, the word "fragrant" might have been used to denote a DOUBLY determinable property: in which case roses could have been said to LOOK fragrant in just the usage of "LOOK" in which they now look red. But of course the current usage of the word "fragrant" is adapted to the sitatuion
actually obtaining."

He goes on:

"If however, the objector is asking us to explain why, on our view, given that fragrance is _merely_ an olfactorily determinable property, it is not also at the same time a visually determinable property, then perhaps we may be excuses from replying".

I note in passing that Grice's essay -- which on this reading LOOKS like
rather fascinating (to me)! -- is cited by J. Bennett in his _Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes. OUP -- section "In defense of a distinction", p.97.