Grice on metaphysical arguments

by JLS
for the GC

WE ARE CONSIDERING, with J, various alternates to Kant's jargon: possibility, experience?

This is Grice in "Reply to Richards", now repr. in Grice, 1991, The conception of value.

He starts on p. 93 of the original reprint,

"I must now turn to a more direct consideration
of the question of how metaphysical"

or ontological, if you must

"principles"

or principle, if you must -- why think there is more than one?

"are ultimately to be established. A prime candidate"

-- if you are Strawson --

"if forthcoming, namely a special metaphysical type
of argument, one that has been called by Kant and various
other philosophers since Kant"

-- 'notably my pupil, Sir Peter (as he then wasn't) Strawson'. Isn't there something patronising about 'pupil'. My mother uses 'pupil,' and I say, 'student'. Incidentally, Grice's mum was into pupils; she was a teacher. She had a house in the premises (if not the conclusion) of his lah-di-dah house on Main Street, Harborne. When Herbert Grice went bankrupt and Paul could not attend the proper 'prep', Mabel Grice accepted him in her class. Isn't that maternal affection, or what?

Grice goes on:

"a transcendental argument."

"Unfortunately, it is by no means clear to me precisely
what Kant, and still less, what some other philosophers,
regard as the essential character of such an argument."

---- Implicature: Strawson is vague.

Grice goes on:

"Some, I suspect,"

expect something nasty. No way to use "suspect" unless what follows is nasty --

"have thought of a transcendental argument in
favour of some thesis or category of items as being one
which claims that if we reject the thesis (or category)
in question, we shall have to give up something which
we very much want to keep"

but of course we Kant.

Grice goes on:

"And the practice of some philosophers, including Kant,
of hooking transcendental argument to the POSSIBILITY of
some very central notion, such as EXPERIENCE"

-- so J is right --

"or or knowledge, or (the existence of) language, perhaps
lends some colour to this approach".

He fails to specify which colour.

Grice goes on:

"My view (and my view of Kant) takes a different
tack."

Note the use of the singular "takes" after a conjunctive clause. Genius of style! -- I have seen people use brackets and fail,

"My view, and my view of Kant, TAKE a different tack."

By putting it in brackets Grice means, "who cares about my view of Kant?" But _I_ do.

Grice goes on:

"One thing which seems to be left out in
the treatments of transcendental argument just
mentioned is the idea that
Transcendental Argument involves the suggestion"

read: implicature.

"that something is being UNDERMINED by one who is
sceptical about the conclusion which such an
argument aims at establishing."

-- but fails?

D. Frederick likes to use "argument" even if the thing fails to do what an argument is supposed to do. I don't.

Grice goes on:

"Another thing which is left out is any
investigation of the notion of rationality, or
the notion of a rational being."

They compare: for what is undermined is reason in some realm: e.g. reason in the practical realm, for example.

Grice goes on to narrate three types of arguments which can be dubbed 'transcendental':

i. Descartes cogito.

ii. realism (versus nominalism -- or 'epistemological nominalism', strictly).

iii. "If such-and-such a target of the
sceptic were allowed to fall, then
something ELSE would have to fall which is"

---- I add this because this relates to Jones's book in progress on Rationality.

"a PRE-CONDITION of the
exercise of rationality"

--- and of course 'pre-condition' is the jargon. Have you ever seen a condition which is NOT a pre-condition? I have. On Thursdays. They resemble suppositions which are NOT pre-suppositions; only different.

Grice goes on:

"It might be argued, for example, that some
sceptical thesis"

like Hume's

"would undermine freedom, which in turn is a
precondition of any exercise of rationality
whatsoever" -- or perhaps determinism rather than Humeanism.

Bt what IS sceptical about 'determinism'?

Grice goes on:

Grice is interested in a STRONG version of his third reading of 'transcendental argument':

"The threat may be of a TOTAL breakdown of the
possibility of the exercise of rationality; and here
even the doughty sceptic"

NOT Hume.

"might quail, n pain of losing his
audience if he refuses to quail".

Or she. The worst sceptics tend to be female.

Grice goes on:

----- WHY GRICE CHANGED THE IDIOM:

"A very important feature of these varieties of
'transcendental' argument (though I would prefer to
abandon the term 'transcendental' and just call them
'metaphysical arguments') may be their
connection with practical argument."

----

Grice's caveat here is that: "the most that such
arguments could hope to show is that rationality
demands the ACCEPTANCE, not the TRUTH, of this or
that thesis"

as a matter of faith,

as when, to use Grice's example, one acceps 'the judice of one's country's cause' "as a demand imposed by patriotism" -- Not that he is buying that.

Here Grice has a further caveat about the 'alethic' or 'evidential' 'trappings' of what is, ultimately a 'practical argument'.

And the reference is again to Kant:

"Perhaps part of the Kantian notion of positive
freedom, a dignity which as rational beings we
enjoy, is the freedom not only to PLAY THE
METAPHYSICAL GAME, but, ... to fix its rules as well."

----

But is that cricket?