Grice contra the Anarchists!

by J. L. Speranza
for the Grice Club.

THE CONFRONTATIONAL TONE is ironic! It is meant to embrace Jones's willingness to explore how anarchic one can be!

It is the concern of Flew's tutee at St. John's, back in Oxford in 1946:

Can Humpty Dumpty MEAN that 'glory' means 'a nice knock-down argument', and that 'impenetrability' means 'let's change the subject'?

---

In "Philosophy and Language", which he published in the Philosophical Quarterly for 1956 and later reprinted as his 'Introduction' in his "Essays in conceptual analysis" (London, Macmillan, 1956, pp. 1-20), Flew writes:

"The sounds we use as words are all, intrinsically and prior to the emergence of any linguistic conventions about them, almost equally suitably to do any linguistic job whatever. Whereas a knife, say, could not be used, or even misused, as a tent,

"glory"

might [but then might have not. JLS] have been given the use we have in fact given to

"a nice knockdown argument"".

----

(p. 28 of the reprint in Shosky available online).

He goes on:

"The uses of words depend subtly on

the correct usages of words. Humpty Dumpty

can be accused of misusing 'glory', because

the accepted, standard, correct usage of

Lewis Carroll's language group"

-- Alice Hargreaves and her ilk!

---

"was radically different from

Humpty Dumpty's private usage."

--- Recall that Flew knew what he was talking about! After his sojourn at Grice's college, St. John's, he had moved up to Christ Church!

---

Flew goes on:

"It [i.e. Humpty Dumpty's usage]

was perverse, ill-mannered,

misleading, and endangered the

possibility of

linguistic communication,

thus wantonly and without explanation

to flout the linguistic conventions."

--- the received opinions of the Establishment, as I would prefer to say echoing Helm.

Flew goes on in a bracket -- Oxford shines in the Oxford brackets:

"(No doubt, like contemporary "prophets of

a new linguistic dispensation" [the ref. here is to PQ of 1953, p. 12], he regarded

such linguistic conventions as

"preposterous restrictions upon free speech" [ibid., p. 2])."

Isn't that bracket genial!? I can imagine the amusement in Flew's face, as he wrote it!

---

Where does he introduce "anarchic Humpty-Dumptyism"? Not further away. On that same page, Flew goes on:

"Furthermore, as academic philologists [Sir Alan Herbert] and people

maintaining and increasing the

efficiency"

--- this will please Kramer! This is his favourite word! --

"of the English language [] (and others) have

often urged, what is correct usage of any

language group depends ultimately on

actual usage".

Anarchists take note! (What is 'incorrect' usage idem!)

----

Flew goes on:

"It is because use depends

on correct usage while this in turn

depends on actual usage that

changes in actual usage

can enrich or impoverish

the conceptual equipment

provided by a language."

---

We are getting close to "anarchic Humpty-Dumptyism" -- and it has a Vienna connotation!

Flew goes on:

"If a NEW usage is established

by which a new USE is given

to a word,"

-- such as, God forbid it, 'glory' --

"a use not previously provided for,

then to that extent the language

concerned is enriched."

And here we reach the footnote which is key:

"The point is developed by F. Waismann"

--- the England-settled Vienna circler --

"in his 'Analytic-Synthetic'"

--- an essay that we may want to explore as we reach Carnap/Grice commonground. It is Analysis, 1950, vol. X, --

"and stressed

to a POINT at which

some"

-- NOT Grice! cfr. WoW: "I can say "I want a paper" meaning not a newspaper, or a term paper, but 'that it is raining', WoW:167 -- in his genial "Philosopher's Paradoxes" 1953, with which I TRUST Flew was familiar with! --

"might complain it

encouraged [why the past? JLS]

anarchic Humpty-Dumptyism".

What can be more genial than that!?


In my "Liberalism" paper I defend the liberals against the anarcho-Humpty-Dumptyists. For using arguments by yet another Christ Churchian (like Locke, Carroll, and Flew): D. F. Pears.

In "Belief and intention", Pears argues that if meaning involves 'intention' than mere 'willingness', surely there must be a probability p > .5 that it will be fulfilled. And Humpty Dumpty however denies that.

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'", Alice objects.

As Davidson notes, Humpty puts his foot in it when he concedes:

"Of course you DON'T, until I tell you".

He may have been ill-mannered with 'glory' but he surely softens with 'impenetrability' ("That's a good girl!", he nods to Alice when she politely reacts to his use of "Impenetrability", "And what, sir, do you mean by that, if I may?".

The epigraph in my Jabberwocky essay was perhaps not altogehter inappropriately taken from that commentary on the little ditty by Humpty Dumpty as provided runningly by Alice:

"In springtime when the grass is green,

I'll try to tell you what I mean."

"Thank you very much," said Alice.

[--- The ref. is to Speranza, in Jabberwocky, vol. 21].



















Flew further goes on to use a favourite with Carnap, Grice, Jones and me, 'calculus'. The good of a calculus, complete with its axioms and theorems, is that it has 'principles':

Thus Flew speaks of -- available in the Shosky reprint, online --

"Oxford philosophers who incline to all
[these] policies together

may be thought of as trying to preserve

a balance: between this 'formulizer's dream' that

non-formulized language really is, or ought to be replaced by,

a calculus;

and the Humpty Dumpty nightmare that

there is, at least in those parts of it which

most concern philosophers, no logic

or order at all."

He means language! He means "semantics"! Note that he uses the phrase that is too easily (and wrongly I agree with Jones) identified (wrongly misidentified makes it right) with 'anarchy'!

---