Grice on enjoyment (propositional)

By JLS
for the GC

When discussing Bentham, keep clear in mind that he was translating 'eudaimonia': the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Some criterion! Where 'eudaimonia' INVOLVES 'pleasure' or enjoyment (vide Warner, "Freedom, enjoyment, and happiness" (1987 -- after Grice, "A is acting freely iff...")

So we need a consideration of

"hedone"

When Urmson lectured in the USA, he would talk of 'hedone' a lot, and 'pain'. A friend of mine, who attended, was amused that he never knew what Urmson was talking about. ("Lupe", Greek for pain, my friend thought was 'loopy').

---

So we have experimental rats. They follow 'cheese'. They _choose_ the path that leads to the cheese. A lion who has just eaten an antelope may choose the shady path to get a finer siesta, rather.

So I propose

H(p) --- "p" produces pleasure. "It pleases me that..." (that p) of course.

Oddly, this connects with Art. I was often irritated when philosophers working in 'aesthetics' mention 'art'. "Art" is NOT a philosophical notion: pleasure is! So, I was pleased when I read this C. U. P. book on analytic aesthetics. She was defining the 'artist' in terms of some sort of Griceian instrumentalism. "Artist A's intention is to increment the pleasure in the audience via the recognition that that is what he intends." (C. Lord, in British Journal of Aesthetics).

And so on.

When it comes to the complex cases of 'practical' reasoning in Grice 2001, we should bear in mind then.

----"Ergo, all things considered, I should do p."

Of course, "it pleases, me, rather that I can delay that, and have a beer instead." The reasoner still reasoned.

FALLACY!

"... reason..." is NOT a mentalistic concept. "No psychological notion without behavioural instantiables." he says, relying on Anscombe's Witters. So, it's by observing a rational man that we hypothesise as to what "... reasons ..." means. And we cannot have evidence unless the man does _act_ rationally. Or something.

Frede thinks that 'free will' originates with Late Stoicism. But Epictetus was impressed by Homer. And it is all about the 'thymos' in Homer. The thymos was located in the chest, and it moved people to eat, and stuff.

As Dodds notes, ("The Griceans and the Pre-rational", oops): "Early Greek (Homeric) man has no unified concept of what we call "soul" or "personality (a fact whose
implications Bruno Snell has lately called particular attention). It is well known that Homer appears to credit man with "psyche" (also used by Plato and Aristotle) only after death, or when he is in the act of fainting or dying or is threatened with death. The only recorded function of the "psyche" in relation to the living man is to leave him. Nor has Homer any other word for the living personality. The "thumos" may once have been a primitive "breath-soul" or "life-soul". But in Homer it is neither the soul nor (as in Plato) a "part of the soul." It maybe defined, roughly and generally, as the organ of feeling. But it enjoys an independence which the word "organ" does not suggest to us, influenced as we are by the later concepts of "organism" and "organic unity."

"A man's thumos tells him that he must now eat or drink or slay an enemy. The thumos advises him in the course of his action, it puts words into his mouth. He can converse with it, or with his "heart" or his "belly," almost as a man to man. Sometimes he scolds these detached entities."

-- especially when he is NOT hungry, I trust.