Grice Grices

by J. L. Speranza
-- for the Grice Club

J writes in commentary to "Pirotic entailment" re my:

(x)Hx --> Mx
Hs
---
Ms

to formalise Moore's rather rambling rambles on 'ent' (p ent q) in 1919 (in front of the Aristotelian Society, if you can believe that):

--- as BARBARA being the name ("Barbara's the name", Moore wrote).

As J notes, "Barbara" was NOT the name.

J writes:

"[C]ategorical syllogisms did not allow for the singular term, so the usual socrates example is not really BARBARA, but just Modus Ponens. It would probably be like this:
All men are animals.
All animals are mortal, [thus].
All men are mortal.
---"

Oddly, Grice was so fascinated by Quine's refusal to adopt Names in his System that Grice coined his System Q (so that Quine would vomit on it). Grice's example is:

At the Merseyside Geographical Society --

--- What are you doing here?
--- Why, I'm here to pay tribute to Marmaduke Bloggs, of course.
--- Marmaduke who?
--- Bloggs. The man who climbed Mt Everest on hands and knees.
--- But he doesn't exist!
--- What d'you mean?
--- I mean what I say: he was invented by journalists.
--- Are you saying he will not be attending the party.
--- Right. Someone isn't attending the party, and that's Marmaduke Bloggs.

--

Back to Moore:

"Barbara"

All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
---
Socrates is a mortal.

This becomes in System Q:

(x)Hx ) Mx
(x)Sx ) Hx
--
(x)Sx ) Mx

---- As the editor on the Moore paper writes, "Moore doesn't use the horseshoe; he uses ')'. A bland sort of a shoe for a horse, if you axes me" (or words).

The problem is with

Grice grices.

Consider Grice in WoW:iii. There is a section which he entitles:

"Grice's paradox" -- this is famous enough to merit a quote in wiki.

However, Grice to specifies who he means.

Suppose he means G. Russell Grice, the East Anglian philosopher.

---

In sum, "Grice" does not MEAN. Only x grices does.

The problem is ...

what meaning postulate can we propose for

(x)Gx ) ...

It seems that

(x)Sx ) Hx

(Socrates is homo, in Latin -- In Latin, homo means man, not homosexual) is strictly best symbolised using what Grice has as the iota operator

ix

There is an x -- no?

"the S"

But then, no. For we do say, "The president" (of the United States) but not "the Obama".

We CAN say, "The Obama who was elected President of the United States", as opposed, to, say, his brother.

---

So the point is about the 'descriptor', or as Grice prefers, the 'dossier'.

OBAMA has his dossier -- kept by the Pentagon, no doubt. It includes ALL that is true of Obama.

Similarly, for

"Grice"

--- this means "Herbert Paul Grice", 'born in Harborne, Staffordshire in 1913, March, 26" (I expect the only one fitting that description' -- granting that Harborne was part of WARWICKSHIRE then).

So one HAS to be careful.

What Moore meant 'escapes' me, though. Or not. Etc.