The Sixteen Strands in Grice's Oeuvre

-- by J. L. Speranza
------ for the Grice Club.


IN SOME JOINT PROJECT WITH Roger Bishop Jones, "CarnapGrice" pdf, we have a subsection, 3.2. entitled, "The sixteen strands in Grice's work". To the 8 strands identified by Grice, we supplement some further 8 (this gives 16, in total), to wit, as per below. Then in chapter 4, we have a summary of the 12 betes noires (or monsters, or daemons) towards the City of Eternal Truth. We identify each bete noire with one of the strands. Since the strands are 16, but the monsters are 12, either we repeat them, or as I prefer, we multiply the monsters ('The problem is, what number do you multiply '12' monsters to get '16' monsters? -- Answers on a postcard, please).

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The strands are:


Strand One.

"The first of these strands belongs to the philosophy of perception". I am sticking, with Jones, to the 'headlines'. Grice speaks here of 'main' strand (as opposed to non-main) and he uses 'theses' to qualify them. There are, he finds, two theses in this main strand for example. -- actually three theses: a. causal analysis, b. experientialism, and c. physicalism defined in terms of phenomenalim --which was very "prominent" at one time, but is unrepresented in his publications.

Strand Two

The analytic-synthetic distinction. Grice/Strawson, In defense of a dogma.

Strand Three

'Ordinary-language philosophy': the man in the street encounters Eddington's OTHER table and has to choose. The idiocies referred to by Malcolm and Moore on behalf of the philosopher.

Strand Four

"Meaning". What to make of it. Relativised meaning as basic.

Strand Five

"What U centrally means by x" --

Strand Six

The cooperative principle and rationality in discourse and elsewhere. This is "Grice for the masses" and Asa Kaher, a disciple of a disciple of Carnap, managed to reprint this whole strand in his book (expensive one) with Routledge: "Pragmatics: Critical Concepts: Implicature").

Strand Seven

Grice's feet (one of each) in the camp of the modernist and the neo-traditionalist. THIS IS MY FAVOURITE strand, especially, since, hell, my PhD dissertation claimed it's "the essential Grice".

Strand Eight

The post-modern move. How to get both feet OUT of the warring camps and get away with it.

Strand Nine

Value. This becomes his "Conception of Value" book.

Strand Ten

Reason. This becomes his "Aspects of Reason" book. As a matter of fact, we foresee a "Philosophical Papers" volume which should contain strands not here touched:

Strand Eleven

Actions and events. This is his "Pacific Philosophical Quarterly" essay for 1986. Touches on Reichenbach, von Wright, Davidson. It does not fit with the 8 strands he lists in WoW.

Strand Twelve

Intention. This would include his very influential (as England goes), "Intention and Uncertainty" which was his 1971 Annual Philosohical lecture as a member of the British Academy. This important essay -- published in the Proceedings but also distributed as a separatum, by the Clarendon Press, is not really covered in the 8 strands. It concerns the analysis of 'intention' in terms of 'willing' AND 'believing' and is labelled by Grice as 'neo-Prichardian'.

Strand Thirteen

Method in philosophical psychology. This fortunately got repr. as appendix I of Gr91. It is an extended treatment by Grice of "Ramsified naming" and "definition" as it applies to psychological predicates. It contains detailed thoughts and arguments against what he dubs, after a remark by Myro, the 'devil of scientism'.

Strand Fourteen

Details of calculus. This would be his "Vacuous Names", for the Quine volume, and where Grice provides a detailed account of a formal system (which he calls "System Q" in honour of Quine). It deals wit very technical logical material, as it pertains the specific topic of 'ontological commitment' vis a vis cancellation by negation (hence the 'vacuous' in the title) for both names AND his favoured topic, 'definite descriptions'.

Strand Fifteen

Longitudinal Essays. I.e. on the history of philosophy. Here Jones has espeicially expanded, elsewhere, on Grice on izzing and hazzing as per Grice's "Aristotle" paper (PPQ 1988, but written in the early 1970s).

Strand Sixteen

"Odds and Ends" -- Folder 16b in Cardbox 14, "The H. P. Grice Collection", The Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, Access Code: MSS 90/135c. Ask for "Odds and ends".