Vis À Vis Grice

JONES is ever-generous in his commentary to the Grice Club. Under "Stay Tuned" he typically closes his post with an open question:

"The point of separating semantics
from pragmatics (terminologically) is
that the terminology marks the distinction
between this objective propositional use
of language from the more diverse
(and sometimes even more important) ways
in which people may
play with words. So how
does this place me vis à vis Grice?"

I think it places you, simpliciter.

Grice would have loved you!

The fact that you hail from Stafforshire would have cherished his heart.

Now to the special comments:

"The point of separating semantics
from pragmatics (terminologically) is
that the terminology marks the
distinction
between this objective propositional use
of language from the more diverse
(and sometimes even more important) ways
in which people may
play with words."

Yes. That IS a good one.

We need that.

Grice once bought a book -- a Penguin book -- called Mackie, Inventing Right and Wrong. Since he had been (Grice had, Mackie was by then dead) appointed Paul Carus lecxturer, he decides to dedicate his first lecture to Mackie.

Mackie is all wrong.

Mackie confuses:

'objective' with 'subjective'

'absolute' with 'relative'

'categorical' with 'hypothetical'.

---

So to 'objective'.

Grice goes on record -- by the blurbers at the Clarendon Press, selling his "Conception of Value"

http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/Metaphysics/?view=usa&ci=9780199243877&view=usa

--- at the price of the hardcover it's not surprising it needs a blurb:

"Collected in this volume are the works of

Paul Grice, who not only presents a

fascinating metaphysical defense

of value but also provides a

metaphysical foundation for value. Value

judgments are viewed as objective; they

are part of the world we live in, but

are nonetheless constructed by us."



You will ask yourselves at this stage: who needs the Grice Club when we have the OUP blurbs? Don't answer yourself that question.

The blurb goes on:


"We inherit, or seem to inherit, the Aristotelian

world"


--- who IS the poet behind this?

---


"in which objects and creatures are characterized

by what they are supposed to do."



As when J. Huggins, in CHORA, was wondering what turtles were for.


"We are thereby

enabled to evaluate by reference to function and

finality. The most striking part of Grice's position,

however, is his contention that the legitimacy

of such evaluations rests ultimately on

an argument for absolute value. Challenging

yet engaging, Grice's ideas are sure to

draw a wide range of readers."


-- the wider range the better. With the stinking rich money that have collected at the Clarendon, they should be giving the book for free.


"Reviews
"These lectures sparkle with wit...challenging and delightful at the same time."-- Times Literary Supplement."

Who wrote that? Harman.

----

So, we see here the distinction between

the 'absolute' -- which, in the days of Grice's infancy, was a swearword in Oxford ("Absolutely!", said Bradley).

--

'the objective'

---

Jones:

"how
does this place me vis à vis Grice?"

i.e. vis a vis:

"The point of separating semantics
from pragmatics (terminologically) is
that the terminology marks the distinction
between this objective propositional use
of language from the more diverse
(and sometimes even more important) ways
in which people may
play with words."

---- Grice knew what he was talking about. But for all his love for absolute and objective value, when he published in 1988 his Way of Words (WoW for short) he kept all the references to the 'signalling idiolect' and the 'established' yet not conventional, and the Deutero-Esperanto, and the particular, individual 'utterer'.

For he was not ready to leave world-2 to go to what Popper, obscenely, calls the 'third world' of objectivity.

We cannot LEAVE subjectivity like that! Objectivity gets constructed FROM subjectivity.

Incidentally, CarnapGrice pfd reads of the 'sleepless night' by Carnap. Similarly, Grice had one. When he was thinking about abolute value, Warner recalls, 'he just couldn't sleep a wink'. Warner was there to testify. The next morning they breakfasted on french fries and bacon 'and some ordinary white wine from his cellar'. Ah well.