Grice's Quasi-Contract

by J. L. Speranza
for the Grice Club.

KRAMER, in commentary to "Grice and Grice on contract and contract":

"Morality looks a bit like quasi-contract [link to wiki here] if anything, but that's because a quasi-contract is a fictional template created to make the remedy sensible."

Thanks for the link! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-contract)

from where the references are given:

pg. 224 of Business Law 11th Ed. by Clarkson, Mille, Jentz, Cross.
"Implied-in-law"
1979 Oklahoma Uniform Jury Instructions, Civil, Chapter 23, Article PART ONE, Section Instruction 23.10 - QUASI-CONTRACT (QUANTUM MERUIT OR QUANTUM VALEBANT),

For the record, this is Grice writing -- and speaking -- in 1967, as repr. in 1989:29 where he uses 'quasi-contract' (actually, 'quasi-contractual') TWICE:

I. FIRST use of 'quasi-contractual' by Grice (WoW:29):

"I am, however, enough of a rationalist"

to want to go beyond contracts and quasi-contracts.

"For a time, I was attracted
to the idea that observance of
the cooperative principle and the
maxims,"

---- how much time? He had invented the thing for the 1967 lectures! In the Oxford lectures he never used -- nor would have his students tolerated -- such grandiose terms! It was all 'helpfulness', 'candour', 'clarity', 'benevolence', and 'self-love' BACK THEN -- Someone SHOULD publish those lectures! Grice 1964, in the Grice Collection).

Grice goes on:

"in a talk exchange, could be
thought of as a quasi-contractual
matter."

-----

There are three features here:

i. the reference to the common aim.
ii. the dovetailing

These two above do not really point to the quasi-contract, directly, but iii does:

iii. "There is some sort of understanding (which
may be explicit but which is often tacit) that,
other things being equal [caeteris paribus], the
transaction should continue in appropriate style
[appropriately FINE style. JLS] unless both
parties agre agreeable [if they are] that it should
terminate. You do not just shove off or start
doing something else"

--- This is more like a telephone conversation, to me.

Grice then goes on to provide the SECOND occurrence of 'quasi-contractual'.

II. Second occurrence of 'quasi-contractual' on same page. Grice writes against the quasi-contractualism he once felt attracted by:

"[Yet], while SOME SUCH quasi-contractual
basis as this MAY apply to SOME cases,"

conversation is much looser than that!

---

"there are too many types of exchange -- like quarreling and letter writing -- that ['some such quasi-contractual basis as this'] failts to fit comfortably."

----

Imagine having to disassociate yourself with a model just because it does not cover fist-fighting and epistolaries! But that's Grice for you, at his Oxonian best!

Grice goes on:

"IN ANY CASE",

i.e. if the above seems moot and bland,

"one" -- i.e. Grice --

"feels that the talker who is irrelevant
or obscure has primarily let down not his
[addressee] but HIMSELF".

There is something heroic, so moralistic that it almost hurts! about this! Moralising, even. As in 'You don't have to moralise me'. But I get his draft if not drift.

I.e. this is back to Oxonian ethical theory where promise IS held to be the ultimate ethical worth.

He could have said,

"the talker who has LIED"

has "primarily let down not his addressee
but himself".

"Obscure to myself" seems obscure. But I get Grice's point. It is the fight for expression. As when Chomsky rights about politics. He has the idea, but he fails to express it!

----

I'm less sure about 'irrelevant' because I have read too much of Cortazar! Or not!