Grice on emotions

--- I was nicely, in a way, surprised, that Grice has an unpublication on "Emotions" deposited at the Berkeley library of Bancroft.

The complete title of the manuscript is... let me check...
Yes: It's Emotions and Incontinence.

"Incontinence" is his term for 'akrasia', or as Davidson would prefer, weakness of the will. I would think that 'incontinentia' is Gricean preferred idiom, although in present Italian, its implicature is rather rude -- it refers, specifically to the inability to 'use the toilet', as it were --. In usual performances of Verdi's "Aida", for example, horses are not used because they tend to be 'incontinent'. The philosophical use is a technicism.

So, what has this to do with 'emotion'.

Well, in a way, it is Plato's tripartite (odd) vision of the soul in Phaedrus 764.

There is the charioteer: Reason itself.
And there are TWO horses: one is conscupsicentia, epithumetikon. The other is thumetikon. Only the first is 'appetite' proper. The second is the 'loyal' horse that abides by reason.

Of course, Aristotle refuted Plato for good. But one has to see what aspect of Aristotle, or Kantotle, Grice is abiding by.

What role does 'emotion' play in Kant, for example? None. J. Baker did ask, "Do one's motives have to be PURE?". An impure motive may be an emotional motive. And Baker, who taught Kant with Grice at Berkeley, had to be ready for any criticism to the usual scorn poured on Kant by students -- Hegelians or not --. And they (Grice and Baker) possibly grew post-Kantians after those expositions.

Emotions are important. There is also 'concern', which Grice touches briefly in "Method".

If we are dealing with psychology here (psychological attitudes, even, though perhaps an emotion is not followed by that-clause!) Grice's important points include:

--- is "pain" an emotion? At least it's not a 'sense'! ("Some remarks about the senses" --. Oddly McKenzie argued for 'pain' as being a sort of sense. Think heat. (Sense of touch). Overheat, and you get burned: pain. So where's the limit?

--- back to concern. For Grice, the restriction of an attribution of a psychological attitude ("He feels pain") to a fellow creature to matters of explanation of behaviour are reductionist. We need to want to ascribe such an attitude for a CONCERN for the fellow creature, he adds.

Grice's theory is, no doubt, an 'ideal-observer' one: he places himself as God, 'plays God', constructs creatures that behave in this or that way. Why do we have 'emotions'. Do they fulfil an 'evolutionary' function? What is the rational control over our emotions. Is all emotion per se 'incontinent' unless contained by reason? Etc.