Salva Veritate

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

--- GEACH IS POSSIBLY RIGHT WHEN he thinks that philosophy really stopped during the Middle Ages. All that counts was really thought out by those scholastics. They even improved on the Greeks on a number of fronts. Thus, while the Greeks hardly spoke of 'alethikos' -- they didn't even have the word -- the mediaevals were into 'salva veritate' with a vengeance.

Of course this is the absolute-ablative construction, 'with truth saved'. (For the use of the locution in modern philosophy, see a modern if you find them -- they are mostly postmodern -- or PoMo, as Kramer prefers -- these days.

So, I said in my reply to Jones under his post, "Forms of judgement, propositional attitudes" that I'd write TWO posts: one on salva veritate, and one on Grice's enigmatic passage on p. 464 of WoW, but I shall proceed with the latter right now.

---

We are considering, to echo the title of the book by Dummett, "Truth and other enigmas", or "The Taming of the True", to echo the totally anti-Dummettian Devitt.

---

Grice, on a third hand, writes:

"Some of the most pressing questions which
arise concerning the concept of formality
will be found in a fourfold list."

----

"First and foremost ... is the demand for
a theoretically adequate specification of
conditions which will authorise the assignment
of truth conditions to suitably
selected expressions"

--- something very much like the expression of this or that proposition, in R. B. Jones's parlance.

Grice continues:

"Meanings are NOT natural growths, and need
to be conferred or instituted."

--- This would exclude indeed the cat from miaowing thereby 'meaning-that-he-is-hungry', as Jones aptly notes.

Grice continues:

"But the mere fact that they are needed
is [not enough] to show that they are
available."

At this point Grice seems to go onto the 'epistemic retreat' that Jones was speaking about. This is not to take originally from Jones's approach and account, just to note that -- hey, Grice is using the 'sceptic', too. For Grice writes:

"We might be left in the sceptic's
position of seeing clearly what is
needed, and yet being at the same
time totally unable to attain it."

----

Since Jones's 'work-in-progress' features the word 'rationality' in the title, here is Grice's next sentence then:

"We should not, of course CONFUSE [emphasis Grice's]
the suggestion that there is, strictly
speaking, no such thing as the exercise
of rationality with the suggestion that there
is no rationally acceptable theoretical
account of what the exercise of rationality
consists in."

--

At this point he re-focus the attention again on 'the alethic': the true:

Why conditions are 'truth-' or alethic conditions:

"What is being sought, and, one hopes,
legitimately fixed by FIAT would be a
SOLID guarantee that, in certain
conditions, in calling something
a so-and-so, one would NOT be
mis-calling it a so and so. The conditions
in question would of course have to
be conditions of truth."

--- (WoW, p. 364).

The actual passage that I THOUGHT, and still think, constitutes the gist of what I was thinking as a reply to Jones is actually later on in the Retrospective Epilogue. A very CENTRAL concern, in the middle of rather frivolous "reactions", by Grice, to the 'disputes' between Russell and Strawson.

Grice writes, on p. 374, then, and this is back to "salva veritate":

---

"What exerts [the most] influence upon me is
my inclination to regard


PROPOSITIONS"

-- [so I'm glad Jones opted for this. JLS]

"as constructed entities"

--- hence 'complexes'

---

"whose ESSENTIAL character

lies in their

TRUTH-VALUE."

-----

"Entities which have an

INDISPENSABLE role

to play in a

RATIONAL and scientific presentation

of the domain of logical inference"

--- what Jones now focus as 'nomologico-deductive' for the cogent reasons explained by Jones to the Grice club in "Forms of judgement, propositional attitudes".

Grice continues:

"From this point of view

A TRUTH-FUNCTIONAL"

-- and not just truth-conditional

"concept of complex propositions

offers, perhaps, for the rational

construction of at least part of

the realm of PROPOSITIONS."

The latter tag I've discussed with Jones elsehwere -- it relates to Carnap's choice, on request, of an intensional framework. In Grice's parlance:

"[And this] even thoughthe fact

that many complex propositions

seem PLAINLY to be non-truth-functional

ensures that many problems remain".

--- Recall that for Grice, problem-free philosophy is dead-philosophy, so don't take that sceptically. It is 'motivational', rather.

---

Now, Jones did mention the connectives -- and then there's also "not" which does not really connect --. But Jones also mentions "all", which some don't regard as truth-functional. In fact, most don't. But the problem is not unsolubable, and indeed 'all' correlates with 'and', and 'some' with 'or'.

---

It's slightly odd that Grice sees 'intensionalism' or something (perhaps he is thinking of counterfactual conditionals -- vide his "Indicative Conditionals" in WOW -- as appearing with COMPLEX propositions. But I would think that it may appear with simpler propositions in a number of guises:

"Socrates is essentially rational", for example. It does not look like a complex proposition. I.e. it does not seem to involve a quantifier, or a connective, or negation. It just means

NecFa.

where 'a' is an individual, F is a feature ('rational') and Nec Jones would read as 'analytic'.

---

Another example may be:

"You can't do that!"

--- read as "It is not permitted to you to do that", which again does not seem to be 'truth-conditional' in that it seems to involve some 'denotic' operator in the form of an obligation or a permission or a prohibition, etc. Hardly matters like "if it's raining I don't picnic", or "Either I picnic or I don't". (Or better, "either it rains or it doesn't" -- exporting intentions out of the picture). Etc.

In any case, 'salva veritate' some other day, I hope!