A Man of Principle

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

--- I HAD STARTED TO REPLY TO HELM'S blog post on "Anarchy and Cooperation," and surprisingly, the system allowed me to post them under the relevant thread, with caveats. So I will try to expand on them as I write this. Motivated, also, by R. B. JONES's apt addendum.

---- I should have said that the idea of linking cooperation with anarchy was very local! On Saturday last, in our local daily (they only publish "Letters to the Editors" on the Saturday issue) there was this informal, colloquial letter -- not by me! -- by someone who was criticising, as is habitual, the government (or something) and there was a mention of 'anarchy' and 'cooperation'. The idea struck with me, and I was reminded of discussion with L. J. Kramer (THIS BLOG) on 'cooperation', the evolution of cooperation, etc. It seemed quite a stretch to associate 'anarchy' with cooperation as loosely as that. Now JONES supports the idea, when he rightly emphasises the 'virtue' of what he calls 'anarcho-capitalism' as praising voluntary cooperation, only.

---- HELM is interested in the history of ideas. This is a fascinating area, much revived, if not wholly instituted, in Oxford, by Russian-born fellow, Isaiah Berlin (whom Grice failed to meet in the pre-second world war days). Geschichte des Ideen, as the Germans call it. In particular, Helm was considering Sartre's views which Sartre himself describes as 'anarchist'. Helm throws Chomsky's 'anarcho-syndicalism' into the picture!

---- I was amused by Helm's references to a sort of 'gaga' Sartre -- as seen by Bouvoir, and I was reminded, which I mention in the commentary, of J. L. Borges (my mentor), who was also criticised of engaging in silly dialogue in his later years (cfr. also Flew's latter-day conversion to Christianism!). Borges would often refer to his own father, J. Borges Senior, and his sympathies for 'anarchy' alla Spencer.

At this point it is good to follow Jones's suggestion and avoiding the -ism in anarchism. After all, the keyword should be 'anarchy'. "The 'archy'" in 'anarchy", as Jones has it. It's desire to be free from compulsion. It's not surprising that one hears here the echoes of Berlin's fascinating studies into the two 'uses' (never senses!) of 'freedom' (free to-free from).

Why Borges Senior was into 'anarchy' alla Spencer was a feature of his times. It was the 'snob' thing to be. Borges Junior would retreat from a consideration of anarchy to more conservative views. For the Borges, it was indeed the desire to liberate oneself from the imposition of the state that counted. Borges Junior, who is buried in Geneva, would often refer to Switzerland, as "his kind of country" -- 'a country where nobody knows who the President is!'.

=== HOW THIS COMBINES WITH GRICE. While I manage to mention in my commentary Grice's totality of principles, I have titled this blog post, 'a man of principle' as a sort of reference to his philosophical development. His "Cooperative Principle" -- a joke really, since a principle is not cooperative; it is a principle of cooperation, really -- stems from earlier sketches into a theory of discourse as a rational activity. And archival material cited by Chapman in her biography of Grice (Palgrave, 2006) articules from Grice's excellent Oxford lectures under the same title of "Logic and Conversation", but delivered some 3 years earlier. (Indeed, this would predate the OED3 first cite of 'implicature' -- and I have contributed to this club the original quote, as cited by Chapman, where Grice uses 'implicature' like that). In this earlier lectures, Grice will speak of

'helpfulness'

rather than cooperation, and indeed, there is something grand and technical about cooperation that we just don't find in the more Anglo-Saxon, 'help'. In a way, it connects with Helm's notes on the ninth commandment. "Help", like 'cooperate', like "do not give false testimony", involves a 'reciprocality' of perspectives that is at the heart of the idea of (at least two) rational agents acting together.

While Grice is loose about 'helpfulness' in the 1964 Logic and Conversation, he does mention two principles -- which will become his one Cooperative Principle. These two principles combine with two further desiderata. The desideratum of clarity, the desideratum of candour, thus, add to what he calls the principle of self-love and the principle of benevolence!

Who would have thought that the apparently easy task of looking for what counts as a 'pragmatic implication' would be grounded in a philosophy guided by high political principles like that!

----

When I was revising A. G. N. Flew's commentary on Humpty Dumpty as a 'semantic anarchism', the idea of 'anarchy' struck me with a vengeance. Perhaps it was possible to build a trichotomy, as it were, regarding the very nature of 'meaning'. It is not surprsing that Carnap's Principle of Tolerance, for example, rings a political philosophical bell!

----

(By the bye, when I noticed that Jones had commented on Helm's post, I thought he would criticise my hasty reference to the Schlipp. Helm was arguing against getting the Sartre Schlipp and I had made an ironic silly reference to the series, which was never made serious, since at least the Carnap volume is an excellent thing!).

----

So, we have a few things to consider. To what extent the points of political philosophy engage us in issues of meaning, language, and communicataion. What ARE the prospects of 'anarchy' in this field? Just because Jones describes himself as an 'anarcho-capitalist' is enough for me to find plausibility in the idea! So perhaps we should get rid of the bad connotations -- if any -- of 'anarchy' and explore further.

I would NOT be surprised if it's all there in Aristotle. One would need to expand on the roots of 'anarchy' in things like Greek philosophical thought, I would think, or even Greek political practices.

In any case, thanks to R. B. Jones for pointing out to the mistake, indeed on my part, on simplifying the idea of a 'principle'.

When we speak principle, we mean it!

Grice has this excellent anecdote from the Minutes of the Play Group. A Greek student had approached Gardiner with a bribe. The tutee wanted to have a free Monday (he was staying overnight in London) and communicated thus to his tutor. Gardiner had approached Austin for advice. How do we deal with a student's bribe -- "in this pretty Balcanic trait", Grice adds -- 'Reply to Richards'. R. M. Hare (who was Austin's junior) volunteered his typical Hareanism. For Hare, the conversation would go:

STUDENT: I expect you won't be offended by
--- my bribing you into my being
--- absent for the Monday tutorial.

TUTOR: I don't take bribes on principle.


Austin found the answer 'stuffy'. For Austin, the tutor would be engaging in a contribution which is 'too informative' to be true, almost. "No, thanks", Austin thought, would just do!

----

In any case, it was typical of Hare to mention 'principles' at this stage. Or the phrase, "on principle", whatever it means! (Oddly, the anecdote is also told by Warnock who has Nowell-Smith in the place of Hare).

-----

Talk of principle, thanks to Grice, has overwhelmed pragmatics. Leech, for example, in his "Principles of Pragmatics", has managed to deprive the notion of any philosophical importance -- and there are worse examples! Leech -- being a linguist, -- you need to be a philosopher for this -- does not know what to do with 'principle'. He expands in the most naive exegesis of Grice's thought. "For Grice, a principle is a mere regularity in behaviour. The pragmaticist describes the principles operating in a society without needing to abide by them." Or something. He introduces SO MANY principles, that one is led to Occam, "Do not multiply principles beyond necessity." Think of Grice's causal reference to "be polite!". This is turned into a whole 'principle of politeness' or 'face-saving' (avoid harm in others, alla Robin Talmach, etc.).

But Grice's choice of "principle" in "cooperative principle" is not naive, or unfounded. It is Kantotle at his best. For the philosophy of a principle as an axiom is in the heart of Aristotle's metaphysics -- after all, isn't 'metaphysics' the science of 'first principles' -- prote arkhai --? How can there be MORE than ONE principle. If a principle is what comes first, how can, say, TWO things, come first? The idea of first principleS, thus in plural, is confusing!

----

Grice would speak of Kantotle, or, as I prefer, Ariskant (I am a chronological spirit). For indeed, Grice is clear enough in his 'echoing Kant' (WoW:30). He borrows from Kant the talk of 'principle' -- or the IDEA of principle -- and its attending maxims.

I always thought Grice was being very jocular on this, till I read his Kant Lecture (now Grice 2001), especially the last but one. In it, Grice goes to quote rather extensively and literally from Kant's Groundwork -- as tr. by Abbott -- we need a post on "Grice's Kant" at some point --. The whole economy and schematisms of the maxims and counsels of prudence and how they relate or fail to relate to the categorical imperative was all that engaged Grice's mind at this time. He was too much of an Aristotelian to let virtue ethics go out of the window like that! In the final Kant lecture, for example, he manages to combine maxims -- and counsels of prudence -- as springing from a general concern for 'happiness'. Deontology meets teleology.

That this was a strand in Grice's thought is clear from his summary in the Retrospective Epilogue which he wrote in 1987, and found publication posthumously. He is considering how various maxims all seem to spring from a general (if I may be redundant) principle, like the cooperative principle. Note the casualness of Grice's remarks. He was never wedded, like so many pragmaticists who cannot think outside the box, to this or that terminology. He knew that the best philosophy exceeds the jargon.

Grice writes:

"I am now in a position to provide a refurbished
summary of the treatment ... [of things] to which
I subscribed earlier"

--- While the explicit reference is to the mimeo of the 1967 lectures which WoW reprints, he must also be having in mind the handwritten 1964 notes he kept in his filing cabinet -- and now safely deposited in the Grice collection at Bancroft Library.

---

He adds:

"A list i spresented of conversational
maxims"

"or conversational imperatives"

he adds.

He was never blatant enough to use "!" in things like "avoid ambiguity!", but we know what he means. Especially after reading the detailed elaboration on types of imperatives in the Carus lectures -- now Grice 1991 --.

These maxims -- or 'imperatives' --

are such that they are connected centrally and essentially with our idea of rationality.

----

This is the first point of his summary. The second point is the one that leads to the 'man of principle' I am talking about:

"Somewhat like moral commandments,"

--- this is Grice's Hebraism, too! --

"these maxims are

prevented from being
just a disconnected
heap of ... obligations
by their dependence on

A SINGLE supreme ...
principle ..."

-- that of cooperativeness, -- versus perhaps he is having in mind the TWO principles of self-love versus benevolence he had sketched in the earlier 1964 lectures and that he evolved from by the grand plan of the 1967 lectures --. A pluralistic mind would not necessarily call this an 'evolution', but let that pass! .

In any case, one is reminded at this stage of Plathegel. This is a philosopher I coined to counterbalance with Grice's Ariskant. For Plathegel, the main feature of conversational rationality is her cunning! This is a TECHNICAL notion in Hegel's criticism of Kant's philosophy of law. For Hegel, and later for Elinor Ochs -- criticising Grice! -- one has to allow for the historicity of principles or the principle. In a way, it may be back to a footnote to Plato! Perhaps Aristotle talking of 'first principles', thus in plural, is a gesture to the polymorphic instantiation of a single moral 'reality' in the fabric of our ordinary lives. Or not!