Grice: The Convivial Unity

---- by JLS
------ for the GC

JONES WAS CONSIDERING various aspects of deconstructionism. I am not as optimistic as he is vis a vis detecting flaws in other people's arguments, etc. My pessimism may well derive from Grice. This is Strawson, in the online Brit. Academy memoir of his tutor:

"I suspect," Strawson writes, "sometimes, that
it was the strength of his own critical powers,
his sense of the vulnerability of
philosophical argument in general, that
partially accounted, at the time, for his
privately expressed views about the
ability of his own work to survive criticism. After
all, if there were ALWAYS [emphasis mine. JLS]
detectable flaws in others' reasoning,
why should there not be detectable, even
THOUGH BY HIM UNDETECTED [emphasis mine. JLS],
flaws in his own?"

(p. 517).

The issue is VERY central, and of course applies to everybody, not just Grice! In its most colourful form I owe it to Mike Geary, "One can never admit one is wrong" -- or, rather, "My views are always correct -- yours are never" -- or words to similar effect. Geary's point is multiculturalism. While we DO profess a political correctness lip-service respect for others' views, we know that OUR view is the correct.

Now, Strawson's point is perhaps subtler, but the point in the illocutionary force of 'asserting' remains the same:

"I assert that p". p must be true.

In Strawson's point about Grice, it's somewhat more complex, in that it is about "arguing", rather than asserting. So, it's not so much about asserting that p, but, rather, asserting q (conclusion) on the strenght of asserting p (premise).

Now, Grice's point is a general one.

There is a feature of philosophical argument that allows no Cartesian doubt! I say p; I say that p. I must be certain about p.

Yet one reads what other philosophers have written, and PART of the game -- if not the WHOLE of it, if you get a degree in philosophy, is what Jones calls 'gladiatorial' and Grice calls 'epoge' -- Jones contrasts this with 'conversational', and Grice with 'diagoge'.

But on the whole, Grice survived. I don't AGREE with Strawson's pessmistic outlook. For one, it is a SAD one. I rather like to think of Grice in terms of his convivial unity. He would often refer to the longitudinal unity of philosophy. And in a long life as his was -- 1913 to 1988 -- he surely had occasion to change his views. Yet, it would be simpistic to say, "Here he was wrong" -- or "Here I was wrong". Each point was a phase in a long development.

Chapman does make the same point. Grice was OBSESSED with his OWN views. What he had thought back in 1938, when he was still living in Harborne. What he had said in 1961 ("Causal theory of perception"). How what he then said in 1961 related to his views on meaning from 1948, and so on.

This is different from diffidence at thinking that one may be wrong as one utters that p, thinking that one isn't. Or not!