And When Did You Last See Your Father?

--- by JLS
--- for the Grice Club

We are all sort of tired of R. M. Hare's counterexamples to Kantian universal prescriptivism and his defense of white lies against the helper to the murderer. So here is Yeames at his best.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Lastseefather.jpg

Oddly, I first learned about this via a short story in a juvenile collection.

From:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Frederick_Yeames

we read:

And When Did You Last See Your Father? "The oil-on-canvas picture, painted in 1878, depicts a scene in an imaginary Royalist household during the English Civil War."
"The Parliamentarians [Roundheads. JLS] have taken over the house and QUESTION the son about his Royalist [Cavalier. JLS] father."

INTERROGATOR: And when did you last see your father?
BLUE BOY: ...

"Yeames was inspired to paint the picture to show the

Kantian. JLS

"crises that could arise from the natural

frankness of young children."

Who are not yet mature enough to digest Aristotle's Ethica Nichomachea and
are still Kantian at heart.

"Here, IF the boy *tells the truth* he will endanger his father,

but

IF he lies he will

go against the ideal of honesty undoubtedly instilled in him by his
parents."

Horrible trilemma!

"The boy in the pictures is based on Thomas Gainsborough's painting The
Blue Boy. It was modelled by Yeames' nephew, James Lambe Yeames. Behind the boy, a sobbing little girl,

-- who is undoubtedly ARISTOTELIAN, i.e. teleological.

"probably the daughter, waits her turn to be questioned. The girl was
based on Yeames' niece, Mary Yeames. At the back of the hall the mother and elder daughter wait anxiously on the boy's reply."

The elder daughter, I surmise by her clothing, is Kantian; the mother is Aristotelian.

"The scene is neutral. While the innocence of the boy is emphasized by his blond hair, open expression and blue suit,"

-- oddly, Grice's hair was VERY blond!

"the questioners are also treated sympathically;"

--- because they's [sic] is Aristotelian. The only Kantian in the picture is the boy
-- and the Absent Father.

"the main interrogator has a friendly"

teleological

"expression and the sergeant with the little girl has his arm on her
shoulder as if comforting her. The painting is now held at the Walker Art
Gallery, Liverpool. Madame Tussauds in London has a life-size waxwork tableau of
the scene, faithfully reproduced from the painting."

-- but made, alas, merely of wax.

----

Grice:

"A dull but, no doubt at a certain level, adequate answer [to the fundamental question as to what the basis is for the assumption which we seem to make that talkers will in general, ceteris paribus and in the absence of indications to the contrary, proceed in the manner of "do not say what you believe to be false"] is that it is

JUST A WELL-RECOGNISED empirical
fact that people DO behave [thus]. They
[have] learned to do in childhood and
have NOT lost the HABIT of doing so."

He adds:

"Indeed, it would involve a GOOD deal
of effort to make a radical departure
from the habit. It is much easier,
for example, to tell the truth
than to invent lies."

---- In the story, in fact, the dialogue goes:

Questioner:
-- And when did you last see your father?

Blue Boy: Why, last night!

-----

----- In the story, the questioner for some reason tries to 'help' the child and goes on to interpret that as, "in dreams" -- "Surely the boy did last see his father last night in dreams!"

----

Grice goes on to propose TWO other levels:

--- rational/reasonable: means-end analysis, alla Kant, with protasis, 'if you want to be happy, ...'. This is elaborated in the last two Kant lectures at Stanford.

In "Method" (now repr. in 1991), he explores the "Immanuel", i.e. a manual of maxims which are universalisable along three criteria: applicational, formal, and conceptual.

--- So, who's a Kantian?

--- "The good thing about Aristotle is that he is a Kantian at heart"

---- Keywords: Kantotle, Ariskant -- cfr. Plathegel