The Grice Law

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

WE ARE CONSIDERING various laws and corollaries. Myro should perhaps be given credit for having introduced what he called "The Grice Law". I don't have the exact text to hand, but it goes alla:

"If something that Grice says strikes you as initially right, it is bound to be wrong ('at the end of the day') -- and by contraposition,"

the corollary:

"vice versa"

Myro says he feels reluctant enough to confess if anything that Grice said struck him as initially right.

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Myro is referring to this idea by Grice that

'identity' is relative:

Hespherus = Phosphorus. TODAY.

People often 'delete' "today", but it is necessary:

a = b (TODAY)

a = a (TIMELESSLY).

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This, for some reason, struck Myro as 'intially wrong' -- but moved him to modify Grice's system Q (into Myro's System G) to prove Grice right.

Matter of fact, anyone familiar with Aristotelian examples of pieces of wax turned into statues, or Hobbes's shripwreck wood turned into a hut (?) should not be so puzzled. And eventually Myro learned these sources (he had an Oxonian background which helped), which facilitated the way to synchronise Grice's theory with attempts by Geach and Wiggins. Grice is modest enough to call this the "Grice-Myro theory of identity" in "Reply to Richards".

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(But then perhaps Myro called his thing The Grice Rule, not the Grice Law).

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--- begin quoted text. Dale writes:

"Dale's Law of Philosopher-Regent Pairs". It goes like this:

For any pair of a philosopher and a regent he/she is closely associated with, the order in which the members of the pair die is strictly determined: before 180 C.E., the regent died first, then the philosopher; after 180 C.E., the philosopher died first, then the regent; and the further from 180 C.E. in either direction, the larger the gap between the death of the members.

Thus:

In 323 B.C.E., Alexander died. Then, in 322 B.C.E., Aristotle died.

In 44 B.C.E., Julius Caesar died. Then, in 43 B.C.E., Cicero.

In 180 C.E., Aurelius died: both a regent and a philosopher. (This is the crossover point.)

In 525 C.E., Boethius died. Then, in 526 C.E., Theodoric the Great died.

In 804 C.E., Alcuin died. In 814 C.E., Charlemagne died.

In 1650, Descartes died. In 1689, Queen Christina died.

As far as I know, nobody ever discovered this law before.