Grice: simplex and complex

--- by J. L. Speranza, Esq.
------- for the Grice Club.


ANYONE FAMILIAR with Grice's erudite "Reply to Richards" is aware of his excellent manifesto vis-a-vis 'propositions' and 'propositional complexes'. ("A proposition is a family of propositional complexes"). Few have considered Grice's views on 'simplexes', though!

Grice is very technical in this section, as it deals with ontological correlates to 'subpropositional' or nonpropositional constituents of, er, propositional complexes ('a singleton of a singleton', and so on).

In general, as an empiricist and philosopher of perception (foremost), Grice was very concerned about the subpropositional (perceptual) nature of most of our representations. If, in his better known work, he focused on propositions, or propositional complexes, this is yet another proof of his philosophical subtleties that have escaped many!