Grice quoting from Reichenbach, "Logical form and logical equivalence"

As per Davidson's cursory treatment in the paper Grice discusses most: Davidson's "The logical form of action sentences".

The section in Grice's essay, p. 5, reads:

B. B1. Reichenbach ("Logical form and logical equivalence").

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The sentences is:

Admundsen flew to the North Pole.

Logical form?

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(*) (Ex)(x consists in the fact that Admundsen flew to the North Pole.

Yet,

(*) above "does not give the logical form" of the sentence above.

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Why? Because (*) is about an event, while the sentence in English is not. "So [(8) cannot give the logical form of (the English sentence)."

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What about:

"A flight by Amundsen to the North Pole took place"

This is about an event, "a sentence the logical form of which could be given" by the English sentence.

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The idea is to give the (Ex) sentence "the logical form of 'Admundsen flew to the North Pole'."

Grice comments:

"IF, as Reichenbach thought, there are in our language pairs of logically equivalent expressions one of which is about events, while the other is not, THAT DIFFERENCE might justly be held to be reason for

DENYING

that the even-mentioning expression

gives the logical form

of the other member of the pair."

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Grice proposes that, as an emendation of Reichenbach, and indeed, to reject Davidson's analysis.

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