Grice the philosopher

On top of that, there are corrections to be made! I think Grice is sometimes and in places, referred to as a 'linguist'. In fact, elsewhere, and on record, I have quoted a source that has him as 'a British logician', as I recall. So there is a bit of polemic and attending snobberies involving affiliations. Chapman holds a PhD for Linguistics or English, and likes to 'minimise', as I read her, Grice's serious involvement with stuff associated with Chomsky.

Chomsky in fact is an 'in-between' as far as affiliations go. I'm NOT familiar with how things stood at M. I. T., but Deirdre Wilson, for example, who got her PhD under Chomsky at MIT has her dissertation deposited at the "Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics" -- as it should. Later, Chomsky became professor (at MIT) of "Philosophy and Linguistics" in that order.

I like to think and should be irreverent about this that Grice admired Chomsky (perhaps not as much as Austin had -- Austin was just SHOCKED!). I should like to think, I say, that Grice would NOT take too seriously some remarks by Chomksy as they DID NOT PERTAIN To the provision or deployment of the system -- a Grammar G for a language L, say, in terms of the transformational-generative rules. Chomsky would end up indeed becoming so ... Cartesian that motivated me to fill my first chapter of my PhD (Department of Philosophy) on the history of Griceanism focusing on LOCKE!

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As I say, Chapman, revising some notes that Grice kept in the Grice Collection, notes that Grice would play

* with 'componential analysis' of PHONETIC features! Recall Chomsky's earliest work on the phonology of Hebrew, I think. What makes a phoneme a phoneme? Grice was studying that -- He was absorbing the piece of info that a phoneme gets defined in a particular language (but not in another one) just in terms of those 'distinctive features' that pertain to articulatory phonetics.

* at least once he played with a 'tree' -- a syntactic structure alla Chomsky for, things like, "The dog chased the cat", say. Which makes you wonder...

---- PHILOSOPHY students are usually corrupted early enough. They have to pass logic courses, and this is all about Mates, mate. It's all about the System, the formation rules, the grammar, the interpretation. The 'translation' to ordinary English, and so on. But LINGUISTICS students are possibly just as familiar with _grammatical_ descriptions alla Chomsky.

Chomsky himself,-- which was HIS influence on these matters? I think I once knew about that! He is considering different models that had been proposed, in "Syntactic Structures", but finds them all inadequate. Why? The arguments do not pertain in "Logic" (as arguments from philosophers usually do) but from 'empirical' considerations about ... who knows. Issues of 'grammaticality'? Empirical evidence of well-formedness? And so on.

----- So, while Grice does pay lip-service to Chomsky, he (Grice) himself never really changed his more 'typically philosophical' attitude, by which he followed Russell in having grammar as, at most, a 'pretty good guide to logical form.'

Imagine if you were to tell a student of linguistics that all she should be concerned with should be 'grammar' "insofar as it remains a reliable pretty good guide to logical form". She SHOULD care less!

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Perhaps a point can be made to Dale's PhD disseration where he refers to a 'first-order language', I think -- ch. 4. Grice would use, technically, 'predicate calculus', as he does in "Reply to Richards".

Note that Grice's remarks on the predicate calculus are basic. As he explicitly mentions it there, it's 'first order predicate calculus with identity'. No account of modalities, for example, or openly intentionalist contexts.

While R. B. Jones was wondering about a particular case of mutual interest in issues of compositionality, I would focus on psychological attitudes.

These contexts are indeed 'in sensu composito', most of the times. They can't be given 'extensionalist' interpretations. YET, in that section in Ostertag's "Definite Descriptions", Grice ends his "Vacuous Names" with an account of 'psychological attitudes'. He wants indeed to explore the in sensu composito-in sensu diviso issue.

"John believes that Martha is prettier than Mary".

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or -- to use the example in "Vacuous Names"

--- John believes that Marmaduke Bloggs climbed the Mt. Everest on hands and knees.

--- John believes that someone who the journalists invented but never existed did things he never did.

--- and so on.

Grice would play with exportation here. But more importantly he provides a 'syntactic-scope' indicating device.

John believes that Twain wrote "Finn"
John believes that Clemens wrote "Finn".

Grice uses "B" (and "W" for want). The readings -- as per Osterga reader -- come out as

John believes-1 Twain wrote Finn.
John believes-2 Clemens wrote Finn.

Since we are now distinguishing scope, there's no need to multiply the modes of presentation, and we can do with

John believes-1 Twain wrote Finn.
John believes-2 Twain wrote Finn.

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If 'believes' is held to have been introduced "after" Twain, it's 'believe-2'. So, that's the in-sensu-diviso reading: There is Twain, and John believes he wrote Finn. In the reading where 'believes' is opaque, the _content_ of what is believed need not bear existential commitment on the part of the utterer of the utterance. It's not that there is Twain such that John believes he wrote Finn. Twain's existence is totally otiose when it comes to an opaque ascription of a belief by John to the effect that Twain (or Marmaduke Bloogs, for that matter) wrote "Finn".

Or something!

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As time went by, Grice ceased to be 'formal' (Notably after Putnam at Harvard, criticised him for so being). "Putnam, of all people", Grice writes. -- as making a covert reference to complications of H20 and XYZ and dogs and schdogs.

--- Plus, as he notes, he turned his interests to OTHER things. The one to blame here, but I love her, is Judith Baker, of Glendon. She studied under Grice. Chapman interviewed her for her book. Baker recalls how interested Grice was in her PhD disseration. There is a change here, and possibly Baker managed to engage Grice so. Back in Oxford, Grice was referred to as "Godot" in that waiting for his tutorials was usually hopeless (Richardson, obit of Grice, "St. John's college records".

--- With Judith Baker around, it wasn't the same. How can you go back to exportation of mixed quantificational phrases when Baker is asking you about the justification of absolute value? And of course, Grice had become a proper Kantotelian. It's OK to use formalisms when you DO 'philosophy of language', but surely ethics is somewhat 'less amenable to the type of treatment' that would satisfy a Quine or a Chomsky!

---- Ah, for the Emperor's new clothes!