Grice's Volkswagen

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

-- WE ARE CONSIDERING WITH KRAMER ('ex ante, ex post', comment, this blog), Grice:


---- Out in his frontyard:

GRICE: standing next to his immobilised Volkswagen:
-------- "I am out of petrol"

Grice's wife: "Typically".

----

Kramer comments:

"If anything, the situation in which B offers
free advice on finding a gas station is
the anomalous model."

Indeed. It never happened to me. I would be at a total loss. I think it should be illegal that cars run out of petrol like that. It's obscene. I guess I would walk, or take a taxi, and care less about the car. What I would NOT do is stand by it to expect a total stranger to LIE to me ("There is a garage round the corner"). In any case, with such a reply, I would not know what to do. Is B expecting that I WALK there? Shouldn't she rather be providing her cell phone and dial herself?

Kramer:

"the situation in which B offers
free advice on finding a gas station is
the anomalous model."

springing from the anomalous situation in which one's car runs out of petrol. Imagine if we were to universalise that Kantianly. "You are late again today". "Yes, my car run out of gas -- and this time there was NO garage round the corner, so I had to walked 2 MILES, and then, it was closed."

Kramer: in Grice's example,

"There, B is trying to offer substantive help to A, which
confuses the conversational issue entirely,"

-- exactly. Plus, it is UNphilosophical, and Grice KNOWS it. People have perhaps PAID to attend his William James lectures at Harvard, expecting big philosophical elucidations about things that matter -- personally I would have been VERY disappointed to enrol to the lectures and witness that William James was not mentioned ONCE --, and you get silly examples about 'obviously immobilised cars' instead. (Ah well).

Kramer:

"because the CP is about U helping A to understand U's thoughts, not U helping A to solve A's car problems."

Exactly. In fact, it's sillily more elaborate than that. For by 1975, Grice had turned a functionalist, a behaviourist with a big "F" (for 'function'). SO 'thought' loses meaning. We only have BEHAVIOUR. Grice notes that 'movement' is NOT behaviour. If you approach me, the Very Way you approach me counts as behaviour, which is friendly, unfriendly, etc. Movements per se do not display friendliness or lack thereof.

So, it's more like EXPLAINING U's BEHAVIOUR. He has displayed 'x' (an utterance). We assume ourselves to be the "A", the addressee. A rainbow cannot imply rain, because how can a rainbow (NOT God) intend me to be the 'intended' recipient of itself? Silly.

Grice KNEW his program was about 'hermeneutic'. He should HAVE used and loved that word, since, hey, it's Peri hermeneias by Aristotle that he would discuss. Although his heart went for the "Categoriae". (Same volume in Loeb Classical Library!). Yet, he would rather be seen dead than using such a heavy continental word of Husserlian overtones.

When Ogden/Richards published their "Meaning of Meaning" (back in 1923), it was all about Husserl, but Grice was Oxonianly contaminated!