by J. L. Speranza
-- for the Grice Circle.
I WAS ONCE DOING A SEARCH WITH THE PHILOSOPHER'S INDEX, and armed with my notebook, I was copying all references to Grice. There was a lovely essay on Grice's theory of contract. I wrote down the reference. When I later found out the abstract of the essay, I found out it was G. Russell Grice. Ah well.
But Grice (the real Grice) does mention 'contractualism' in WoW:ii ("Logic and Conversation"). Basically, he dismisses a 'contractualist' approach to the cooperative principle, and rightly so!
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Kramer:
"But there are other types of harm that are recognizable by the law - defamation, for example, or repudiation of a contract."
I wonder if that was one of the reasons Grice rejects a contractualist approach to the cooperative principle. I should revise his words.
Locke, who was as liberal as Grice was, used 'pact' to mean the same thing. I know because I used to use 'compact' to mean things like 'compact disc'; but Locke uses 'pact' to mean 'contract', and 'compact' to mean 'pact'. Very confusing.
Repudiation of a contract -- a harm.
Yet, one CAN opt out of the cooperative principle. I think Grice gives the example: "My lips are sealed". (I.e. unwillingness to inform, say). Yet, that would hardly be a repudiation of a contract.
Yet -- why is it that contractualism is so popular in moral, and even GOOD, moral, theory? I wonder.
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Yet, one CAN opt out of the cooperative principle. I think Grice gives the example: "My lips are sealed". (I.e. unwillingness to inform, say). Yet, that would hardly be a repudiation of a contract.
ReplyDeleteWhich maxim does "My lips are sealed" violate? It is true, terse, informative (as to the utterer's intention not to inform further), relevant, etc. It is certainly uncooperative in the frame of reference of an interrogation, but not, it seems to me, in the frame of reference of the conversation it ends.
Grice is not saying, is he, that the CP entails an obligation to converse at all?
I don't know why contractualism should be popular is moral theory, and I'd need persuading that it does not merely infer the cause of things from their shape.
Morality imposes constraints on privilege. Contracts do likewise. Morality can be made to look like a contract because any strategy that looks like it honors an obligation can be made to look like adherence to a contract.
But the offer and acceptance that create the moral contract are wholly constructive. They did not really happen. But if we pretend they did, we can treat morality as if it were a contract. Or, as a friend of mine says, if we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs.
Morality looks a bit like quasi-contract if anything, but that's because a quasi-contract is a fictional template created to make the remedy sensible.
With Hobbes, I think morality is a strategy (the Golden Rule), and "moral obligation" is merely a contractual metaphor for that strategy's tactics and the social consequences of not adopting them. Metaphors are useful, but they are not explanations.
Thanks. I have posted posts on some of the issues. I loved your lattest two passages, on Hobbes and the 'fictional template'. I have posted as a post the references in the wiki entry on the Oklahoma quasi-contract that you issue, but I should elaborate on what remedy it is assumed that quasi-contract makes sensible!
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