Methodological Aspects of Grice´s "Vacuous Names"

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In "Vacuous Names", Grice´s methodology is other than his usual fare. He constructs a system -- and spends 1/4 of the essay on it. He then proposes to formalise utterances involving external negation which can still be read "internally":

"Marmaduke Bloggs will not be at the party tonight."

"Why?"

"Why, he doesn´t exist".


------ Grice is concerned with defending the Russellian account of definite descriptions, in purely syntactic terms.

There is a note in his alternate approach to this issues (in "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature", in WoW) where he notes that perhaps in the long run the best take on this is to restrict oneself to the treatment of such expressions as "referential" ones.

This means that, even with the System G in full play, the philosopher has yet to provide "pragmatic" justifications for the readings that have provided philosphers with "paradoxes". The identificatory vs. non-identificatory uses of "referential" expressions. How to deal with those? In what way the common knowledge base between users of definite descriptions becomes relevant. In the case of "Marmaduke Bloggs" being it a "vacuous name" rather than a "vacuous description", the issue is simpler. It´s when expanding the name to be attached with the dossier:

--- the man held by the Merseyside Geographical Society
------ to have climbed Mount Everest on hands and knees.

that we start to worry.

If HE was invented by the journalists, then somebody ISN´T going to be at the party organised by the Merseyside Geographical Society in is honour. Or not.