Infallibility and Grice's Non-Conformism

Oddly, infallibility is a Popperian concept. And the Pope is visiting England.

The Pope's burden of infallibility is a case to consider. In general, Catholics favour a big word -- ending in -ity, or 'ation'. Transubstantiation, e.g. Infallibility. For a nominalist like me, I distinguish between 'Infallibility' (e.g. Strawson, "Subject and Predicate in logic and grammar", for the study of sentences that have "Infallibility..." as a SUBJECT) and 'infallible', the adjective.
When it comes to 'infalllible', an adjective, we distinguish:

"The Pope is infallible" -- a sort of category mistake --

and

"WHAT THE POPE says is infallible."

Grice notes that what the Pope says is hardly 'infallible' at the level of
the implicature. From memory. Grice applies Tarski's theory to the Pope:

"What the Pope said was true".

Grice writes: "A theory of truth" -- and thus infallibility -- "has to provide, as Tarski noted, not only for occurrences of the adjective, 'true' in sentences in which what is being spoken of as 'true' is SPECIFIED, but also for occurrences in which no specification is given."

As an example:

"What the Pope said was true."

Or even,

"The Pope's statement was true."

According to Strawson, an otherwise intelligent philosopher,
"at least part of what the utterer of such a sentence -- "What the Pope
said was true" -- is doing is to assert whatever it
was that the Pope stated."

"But," in, say the Vatican circles -- full of bureacracy as they are --
"the utterer may NOT know what the Pope's statement
was". They would just go by an analytic claim ("meaning postulate"):


The pope is inefallible.
----
Ergo (by definition) What the Pope said was true.

----

Grice continues:

"One may think that the [Pope]'s statement
was true because, by definition, [Popes]
always speak the truth."

Now, there is a problem with this. For Grice:

"Assertion involves committing oneself, and I would not
think I should be properly [or the Vatican officer should be properly]
be regarded as having committed myself [or himself]
to the content of the Pope's statement merely in virtue
of having said that it was true."

Grice goes on:

"When, to [the Vatican's officer's] surprise, [he or she] learns
that the [Pope] actually said, "Monkeys can talk",
[the officer] says [but he won't], perhaps, "Well, I was wrong", not
"I withdraw that", or "I withdraw my commitment to
that". [He or she] never was committed to it."

---

Oddly, Grice was very specific about his religious upbringing. His father,
Herbert (Grice's first name was ALSO "Herbert" but he avoided it like the
plague -- "It reminds me of my father", he would say), was a non-conformist. A non-conformist (that p) means that the utterer denies (in symbols, ~p),
that p.
--- Herbert's wife (Grice's mother) was a High Anglican (She was an aristocrat -- nee Mabel Fenton). Mabel's sister -- also an Aristocrat -- they lived in Harborne, an affluent suburb in Birmingham -- was, however, a Catholic convert. The problem is that SHE (Matilda, Mabel's sister) moved to the Grice household.

"As a result, almost every night I would witness the interminable
discussions between Herbert (my father) and Matilda, to the occasional grunt from
Mom."

Grice suggests that if he became a philosopher it was because of his
(Grice's) father: "his non-conformism could bother people, but it stuck with me."
His implicature is that no philosopher can conform (with stuff).

----