By JLS
for the GC
--- Some chronological remarks.
"Personal identity" (1941). In this early essay Grice propunds to enrol with Locke in a mnemic-based account of personal identity. Personal identity is perhaps a grand label, but what Grice has in mind is Aristotelian and Kantian variances of "I", "you", and "he". After all Aristole´s main contribution to the freewill debate was to consider, in ways that antedate Epicurus, that some actions are "up to us". "Eph´hemin" and "en hemin" are the words that Aritotle, rather majestically, uses. In the singular, this translates as "up to me" or "up to him". One should follow Kant in distinguishing a first-person from a third-person account to these matters. And what is "me" in the "up to me" expression. It seems then that both Aristotle and Kant are presupposing a theory of personal identity. In the case of Kant things get more complicated by his insistence that his thoughts pertain to the "transcendental ego". In Bratman's complex enrichment of Grice's 'pirotological' programme we see that a mnemic approach to personal identity is a precondition on free. The agent is free to will, and usually acts on condition that he will held similar desires in the future. A person is not a time slice, as it were.
"Meaning" (1948). The important point to consider here is to follow Chapman's insight that by 'rather abruptly' introducing 'intention' into the analysis of 'meaning' (and making a trademark of it) Grice is following his source of inspiration: G. F. Stout's analysis of intention as a belief-constrained volition in "Voluntary action" (Mind, 1896). Since Stout later developed his views in an account of free-will that Grice might have been aware of (1989, "A manual of psychology") the point relates here.
"Intention and disposition" (1949) Influence of Stout. From Chapman: "As a solution to the problems inherent in the notion of conventional behaviour, Grice intrroduces intention, doing so abruptly and without much elaboration. However, the concept would probably not have been much of a surprise to his original audience in 1948. Grice later commented that this interest in intention was inspired in part by G. F. Stout's "Voluntary action". Sout was a previous editor of "Mind" and his article was published there in 1896. In it he argues that if voluntary action is to be distinguished from involuntary action in terms of 'volition', it is necessary to offer a unique account of volition, distinguishing it from will or desire. He suggested that in the case of volition, but not of simple desire, there is necessarily 'a certain kind of judgement or belief', namely that 'so far as in us lies, we shall bring about the attainment of the desired end' (p. 356 ). Indeed, if there is any doubt about the outcome of the volition, expressed in a conditional statement, this must refer to circumstances outside our control.This explains the difference between willing something and merely wishing for it. However, there is another crucial distinction between voluntary and involuntary action. In the case of the former, the action takes place precisely because of the relevant belief; a voluntary action happens because we judge that we will do it. An involuntary action may be one we judge is going to take place, but only because other factors have already determined this." In his "Disposition and intention",. The first criterion, familiar from Stout's original paper, is that the speaker's freedom from doubt that the intended action will take place is not dependent on any empirical evidence." ("Hamphsire's and Hart's claism are similar to those of Stout. ... Stout is representative of an older style of Oxford philosophy, complete with sweeping generalisations and moralistic musings. In discussing the tendency of voluntary determination to endure over time and again obstacles, he comments that: 'If we are weak and vacillating, no one will depend on us; we shall be viewed with a kind of contempt. Mere vanity may go far to give fixity to the will' (p.359 ).
"G. E. Moore and philosopher's paradoxes" (1953). In this early essay he challenges the sceptic about things like freewill and causation (x willed y, x caused y).
I. PHILOSOPHER. There are no material things. MOORE. You are wrong. For here's one hand, and here's another. So there are at least TWO material things. II. PHILOSOPHER: Time is unreal. Moore. You are wrong. If you mean that no event can follow or precede another, you are wrong. For after lunch I went for a walk, and after that I took a bath, and after that I had tea. III. PHILOSOPHER. We do not know for certain the truth of any statement about material things. Moore. You are wrong. Both of us know for certain that there are several chairs in this room, and how absurd it would be to suggest that we do not know it, but only believe it, and that perhaps it is not the case! A FOURTH example can easily be given. IV. Philosopher: There is no free will. Moore. You are right, and the sad thing is that I cannot FORCE you to think otherwise, no? Grice considers in that paper the use of 'lucky' that some find irritating. Recall that Greek 'tykhe' has become fashionable again after writings by Williams on "Moral Luck".
"Causal theory of perception" (1961). Grice was enamoured with the idea of 'cause' and thus he found it puzzling to resort to chance and causal indeterminism when dealing with 'free'. Like Kant, he looked for a synthesis. In "Actions and Events" he discusses various fine points in action theory. His analysis of "Raise your right arm!" as uttered by a gym instructor. The audience will _monitor_ what's going on with this. This monitoring presupposes a belief in causal efficacy. The agent, or indeed the philosopher, need not be aware of complex neurophysiological connections involved here. It's a bit like 'perceiving'. In this respect, this quote from Grice's early "Causal theory of perception" helps us to see his view regarding these matters, on how neurophysiological talk may help, rather than inhibit, the philosopher who believes in freewill. "I suggest that the best procedure for the Causal Theorist is to indicate the mode of causal connection by examples; to say that, for an object to be perceived by X, it is sufficient that it should be causally involved in the generation of some sense-impression by X in the kind of way in which, for eample, when I look at my hand in a good light, my hand is cuasally responsible for its looking to me as ifthere were a hand before mr, or in which ... (and so on), WHATEVER THAT KIND OF WAY MAY BE; and to be enlightened on that question, one must have recorse to the specialist. I see nothing absurd in the idea that a nonspecialist concept [like 'perceive', or 'act'] should contain, so to speak, a blank space to be filled in by the specialist. ... We do not, of ocurse, ordinarily need the specialist's contribution; for we may be in a position to say that the same kind of mechanism is involved in a plurality of cases without being in a position to say what that mechanism is." (WoW: 240).
Lectures on trying (Brandeis, 1963). Meghan Griffiths has recently taken up some of the Oxonian dispute about Austin´s ifs and cans, as seen in early reflections by Nowell-Smith. Grice was concerned with providing an implicature-free analysis of "try". Consider his apt remarks in WoW:ii. Harman provides a counterexample. Smith tried to topple the wall (as he exercised his muscles) assuming he would never succeed in so doing.
"Logic and Conversation", 1967. Implicatures of "trying" in 1967. While Grice does not consider ´free will´ in the Prolegomena, one can reconstruct, along Danto´s lines, of ways to systematise Griceian thoughts on this. Grice provides a clever analysis of "trying" locutions already armed with the notion of "implicature" (that he lacked when lecturing at Brandeis). The Austin connection. While Doyle has appropriately used Searle's monicker in the title of a book -- we may do with some Grice/Searle interactions! Grice had a lot of respect for Searle (why wouldn't he?). In the "Prolegomena" to "Logic and Conversation" he quotes extensively from Searle, "No modification without aberration" (now in Grice, WoW, the lecture is 1967, but Grice postponed publication for 20 years -- the revised "Prolegomena" dated 1987, published 1988 (with Grice dead at 1988, the first posthumous book by a philosopher NOT published by an executor). Searle is into Austin. How could he NOT be? He had studied _under_ Austin. While Doyle aptly quotes from so many of Grice's and Austin's play group (Nowell-Smith, Hare, Strawson, Pears, and the rest of them) we need to bring in Austin into the 'scandal'. He possibly initiated. Consider Grice's example "a freely moving body". "The thing moved freely". (Grice uses 'object', but I prefer 'thing'). Why do we think that 'free' has a different 'usage' in _free_ fall, and free tickets (for the opera)? I dunno! For Austin, there is an aberration in the modification -- the beautiful nouns are (c) Austin, after "No representation without taxation" -- Austin was William James lecturer so he knew. The thing moved. To add, "The thing moved FREELY." may be to say more than you need to hear. I will have to check if Austin especially chose 'freely' -- but surely he played with things like, "He scratched his head INTENTIONALLY." So, we have a pretty good type of a scandal there. Now, if we read Grice's "Actions and Events" (this is Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 1986, vol. 67, pp. 1-35 (not posthumous for a change) we see Grice playing (perhaps as he reminisces A. G. N. Flew) with the idea of "freewill problem". Is _it_ a problem? Not for Aristotle, whom Doyle calls the first 'indeterminism' (Yet Grice does provocatively write, on p. 34, that "any attempt to remedy this situation [that has 'free will' as problematic] by resorting to the introduction of chance [Epicurus 'tukhe' -- not a notion in the full-blown determinism of Democritus] or causal indetermination will only infuriate the scientist without aiding the moral philosopher." Grice can be a hoot sometime. In the entry at the "Stanford Encyclopedia" online, Grandy/Warner make much of Grice's reference to the Devil of Scientism. In Grice 1975 Grice is NO incompatibilist. He suggests that there are different levels. There is biological emergence or supervenience, and, more to the topic of his interest, the theoretical introduction of things like 'will'. So, there may be 'fully deterministic' law of nature at one level, yet ceteris-paribus default generalisations in folk-psychology at another. These remarks Grice draws from his collaboration with George Myro, his colleague at Berkeley. But Grice 1986 somehow reconsiders the closing paragram in his "Prejudices and predilections, being the life and opinions of Paul Grice" (by Paul Grice of course). Chapman, in her book on Grice aptly closes the book with this quote: "If philosophy generated no new PROBLEMS it would be dead, because it would be FINISHED; and if it recurrently regenerated the same old problems it would still not be alive because it could never begin. So those who still look to philosophy for their bread-and-butter should pray that the supply of new problems never dries up" ---- Grice, 1986, in PGRICE, ed. Grandy/Warner, Philosophical grounds of rationality: intentions, categories, ends. I am never too comfy with that bit about 'bread-and-butter'. I know it's a British thing and that Alice (in Wonderland) loved it (bread-and-butter) -- but still. In any case, reconsider the use of the word 'problem'. As it relates to Searle's scandal (of free will) as stated by Doyle in the opening bit and title to his monumental "Free scandal" pdf. Now, compare it with the subtlety of Grice's wording in the closing section to "Action and Events". A problem can be SOLVED. But a problem can be "dissolved". While it is good to see A. G. N. Flew (the best proponent of the paradigm-case argument for 'free will') I rather, with Grice, concentrate on _Moore_ ("Some like Witters, but Moore's my man", he overheard Austin said, and took his word for it). Grice analyses some statements of ordinary-language (as propounded by Moore and Norman Malcolm) as they contradict some technical philosophical recherche views (e.g. Democritus). So there is a lot to be said about 'ordinary-language' as it pertains to good old Moore was saying back in the day. The point by Moore, Malcolm, and Grice (in one of THOSE days) is that the 'problem' may be 'dissolved' rather than 'solved'. This is Grice in the last paragraph of "Actions and Events", then: "So, attention to the idea of freedom may lead us to the need to RESOLVE or DISSOLVE the most important UNSOLVED
problem in philosophy." "Free will"? Well, yes, but in his Kantotelian rewrite.
Grice goes on: "namely how we be can at one and the same time members both of the phenomenal and the noumenal world." Do you find that cryptic? I don't! -- But Grice thinks I should. He goes on: "Or, to put the issue less cryptically."
"To settle the internal conflict between one part of our rational nature, the scientific part which calls (or seems to call [vide Grice, Intention and UNCERTAINTY, British Academy lecture]) for the universal reign of deterministic law, and that other part which insists that not merely moral responsibility but EVERY variety of rational belief demands exemption from just such a reign." Actually, the point -- made I think by Doyle and others -- is that moral responsibility demands some level of efficient causation. How responsible (morally) can I be towards "p" -- where "p" is the object of a goal of mine -- if I have no control over _stuff_? I think there is a bit of strawman's arguments here, and Grice may be making a rhetorical point. After all, for Aristotle (Grice sometimes referred to "Ariskant" as his favourite philosopher) things happen "kata sumbebekos", by accidence -- and he is not referring strictly to 'mental' "causation" or mental events (in Davidson's odd terminology). Kant, perhaps, was more of a deterministic beast (when it comes to the
'law of nature') -- but again, we should not forget that in at least ONE
formulation of the categorical imperative (vide J. Baker, "Counting the
categorical imperatives", in Kant Studien, 1988 -- Baker was Grice's PhD student)
it is all about making the categorical imperative as a matter of "law of
nature". So Kant held a sort of ambivalent attitude towards these things. I
propose to analyse that in my "You Kant Do It: noumenal difficulties of a
phenomenal world" -- to deliver sometime, someplace, or something. So, when Searle speaks of a 'scandal', we have to revise what we think about stuff. Grice often said that problems HAVE been solved. But sometimes it is a matter of 'introjecting into the shoes' of some old grand philosopher, who obviously used a different terminology. He referred to the "Latitudinal Unity" of Philosophy. In general, it is best to see Democritus as totally marginal (in the history of philosophy) and it may be worrying (as it seems to worry Doyle) that students of philosophy (those who never attended a Kant-seminar by Grice, that is) are indoctrinated into the worst types of devilish scientism. Grice has a good caveat here. He would often criticise neurobiologists, or other non-philosophical types, for venturing in the reign of philosophy. When justifying some research for the Faculty at the Univerisity of
Berkeley, he wrote: "It repeatedly astonishes me that people who would themselves
readily admit to being DEVOID OF TRAINING, experience, or knowledge in philosophy, and who have plainly been endowed by nature no special gifts of philosophical
intelligence should be so ready to instruct professional philosophers about the contents of the body of philosophical truth." (Miscelaneous notes, The Grice Papers, Bancroft Library, Berkeley). Mutatis mutandis, perhaps, for philosophers who have some superficial reading on this or that area of, say, astrophysics or neurobiology, and are so ready to postulate that we are, after all, mere automata! I enjoy the type of philosophical analysis that B. Doyle engages in, and engages us in. His exegesis of Bobzien of the many types (in Epicurus) of what we mean by 'free' as unattached to 'will' and other is fascinating. Again, I see some good overlap with this four-stage sequence. If 'free' has only ONE MEANING, why is it that the following is elucidatory to us, "A thing does not move freely." This is the first, fully Democritean, stage: "External, or 'transeunt' causation in inanimate objects, when an object is affected by processes in other objects." We need to postulate, philosophically, perhaps, this level which is freedom-free (did you see how people oversuse -free: 'alchol-free', 'sugar-free', context-free. Cfr. my "free"-free). There is a first stage (second in the sequence) where we speak of "Internal, or 'immanent' causation in INANIMATE objects" -- NOT the realm of Motu Animalium, as cited by Doyle, aptly -- "where a process in an object is the outcome of previous stages in the process, as in 'freely moving' body." It seems tempting to think of this use (adverbial) use of 'free' ("freely") as being the first occurrence of 'free' in our conceptual vocabulary. In this respect, 'free', which asks for an analogical theory of semantics, behaves differently from 'healthy'. Healthy applies first and foremost to
the substantial individual (the 'animal') and analogously to other items
('healthy urine', 'healthy food'). With 'free' it seems it is this use of
'free' in the realm of inanimate objects which has some chance of winning
the day when it comes to the ultimate analysis of the notion. Then we have a third stage, which connects with the argument that B. Doyle suggested he would give to J. Huggins, and which Doyle drew in part from Heisenberg's son about 'free' in ANIMATE stuff. An ivy 'decides' where to cast its branches; an eagle 'decides' a nice sunny (but not too sunny) spot to build a nest, and so on. Grice: "Internal causation in LIVING THINGS, in which changes are generated in a creature by internal features of the creature which are NOT earlier stages of the same change, but independent items, like beliefs, desires, and emotions, the functions (or finality [-- or 'goal, telos, purpose' in Doyle's terminology]) of which is, in general, to provide for the GOOD of the creature in question." Grice called these creatures 'pirots' (which we learn from Carnap and Russell are things which karulise elatically -- Pirotology's the word). The reference to 'desire' is basic, because Grice had qualms with the belief-desire psychology, as he found him and as he practiced, as being able to elucidate our notion of 'free'. "Desires" after all, are thought of as _given_. So, in this type of argumentation, we need to postulate a full semantic 'freedom' regarding our logic of desire. Consider what he says about
iterating attitudes like 'desire': "Moving on from operators to consider the psychological aspect of reasoning, Grice proposes two basic propositional attitudes: J-acceptance and V-acceptance, to be considered as more or less closely related to believing and wanting. Generalising over attitudes using the symbol 'psi' he proposes "X psi-1" for J-accepts and "X psi-2" for V-accepts. These are reflexive: atttitudes that x can take to J-accepting or V-accepting. psi-3 is concerned with an attitude of V-accepting TOWARDS either J-accepting (p) or J-accepting (-p)." (x wants to decide whether to believe p or not). "psi-4" is concerned with an attitude of V-accepting towards either x V-accepts (p) or x V-accepts (-p)." (x wants to decide whether to will p or not). (cited by Chapman from Grice, 1971, "Probability, desirability, and mood operators"). If this is not a formulation of the so-called free will problem I don't know what is! Yet, in "Actions and Events" he is cautious and consider that such an iteration may involve a 'vicious circle'. In "Do one's motives have to be pure?" Baker (in PGRICE, ed. Grany/Warner) considers the issue. If someone is _addicted_ to philanthropy (we know such ladies in New York), it is never good that a good action is done out of the wrong reasons. Baker thinks it is never good, but it is never bad, either. Baker relies on iteration of want-attitudes: the ideal arguer wants that p, and that he wants that he wants that p, and so on ad infinitum. But in "Actions and Events", Grice casts some doubts about these sort of iterative way to reach of extrinsically weighed rationality (the rationality of the end, rather than the means): "Seemingly, the higher-order ends [goals, purpose, telos -- in Doyle's parlance] involved in the defense [of a given end] would themselves stand in need of justification, and the regress thus started might well turn out to be vicious." But then Grice had a problem with 'vice'. He was irritated by the sentence: "Smith was caught in the grip of a vice". Do we mean a carpenter's tool -- what Americans spell 'vyse'? Similarly, he noted that "LOOSE LIVER" is similarly irritating: "loose liver" "may be used" "by a nurse in a hospital who complained about the number of patients with loose livers". But what about 'loose'. Do we mean, Grice wonders, "unfettered", or do we mean "unbridlged". "It seems to me," Grice argues at his moral-philosophical best (Grice 1967:WoW:1989:48), "that (in the absence of any further sense of either word [liver and loose that is], one might expect to be able to mean more or less the same by 'a loose life' and 'an unfettered life'; the fact that, as things are, 'loose life' is tied to dissipation, whereas 'unfettered life' seems quite general in meaning, suggests that perhaps 'leoose' [but not 'liver'] does, and 'unfettered' does not, have a derivative _sense_ in this area. As for 'unbridled life' (which one might perhaps have expected, prima facie, to mean much the same as 'unfettered life'), the phrase is slightly uncomfortable (because 'unbridled' seems to be tied to such words as 'passion', 'temper', 'lust' and so on.)" So he knew what he was talking, and I agree with Ronnie that it is fascinating to connect free-will problems with incontinence (or continence, for that matter) problems (vide Grice/Baker, "Davidson on weakness of the will?" -- against Davidson's denial of such a notion!). (Oddly, D. Wilson, best known for her work on 'relevance' ("On defining relevance", in Grandy/Warner, co-authored Sperber) authored a novel, "Slave of the passions", which seems to be all about what we mean by having a 'free will' which is not quite yet 'free' (for why do we use 'slave' in such idioms?) And so on. So, take Searle's idea of the 'scandal', as Bob Doyle precisely does, just jocularly! Plus cognateness of 'eleutheros' and 'liber'In a message dated 4/4/2011 3:00:13,bobdoyle@INFORMATIONPHILOSOPHER.COM writes: the word for free is eleútheros (ἐλεύθερος), and it always meant "freedom from" or "negative freedom" in Berlin's terms. It was used of things to say there was no cost or prohibitions against use - free as in "free beer," The online Liddell/Scott, Greek, has 'eleutheros' as being
"Cognate with Latin, "līber" -- fr. Italic "loufero" (cf. Osc. Luvfreis
'Liberi') -- Ultimately from the Indo-European root, "eleudhero""
I point this, because I'm fascinated by roots. And if "liber" and
"eleutheros" _are_ cognate. -- The online Short/Lewis Latin dictionary does not
seem to see this, and rather connects the Latin root to another word in
Greek "liber -- loebesum et loebertatem antiqui dicebant liberum et libertatem.
Ita Graeci λοιβὴν et λείβειν, Paul. ex Fest. p. 121 Müll.; cf. 2.
Liber), adj. Gr. root λιφ-, λίπτω, to desire; cf. Sanscr. lub-dhas,
desirous; Lat. libet, libido..." If they are cognate ('liber' and 'eleutheros') perhaps one should be careful as to what a word meant or always meant, etc. I loved B. Doyle's example of the 'free beer'. In checking uses of 'liber' in Latin, I was fascinated by this use of 'liber' in Ovid to refer to the waters in the sea. They are, as he aptly notes, 'more free' than the waters in a river. Here again we
seem to have this 'negative' "usage" (rather than 'sense' although I'm never
clear as to what I mean). Next would do to analyse the etymology of 'free', on which the present scandal is partly based! Seeing that I don't know much of the etymology of 'free' I am inclined to refer to Grice now as an 'eleutherian' (since 'libertarian' has post-Strawsonian implicatures which may not be desirable!) -- and refer to Grice's four stages for 'free' in "Actions and Events" as 'eleutheric', rather (?) Incidentally, it was googling for 'eleutheria' "tes vouleseos" (modern Greek) that led me to Chalmers's extensive bibliography on this), and cfr. this Russian author complaining that English 'free' fails to make a nice
Russian distinction between two words he would rather have as meaning
'eleutheric'. Enough to have Austin thinking that the monicker "Play Group" was "vulgar enough"! (Chapman: "Grice recalled how Austin described these
meetings, perhaps semi-seriously [I don't share Chapman's sense of humour. I
find all that she finds semi-serious to be semi-jocular], as a weekend break
from the regular work of 'philosophical hacks', enabling them to turn their
attention to less narrowly philosophical topics (Grice 1986a:51, Grice
1987a:181). Perhaps with this explanation in mind, Grice labelled the meetings
'The Play Group'. He seems to have been inordinately pleased with this
name, and employed it in both spoken and written accounts of Oxford philosophy
throughout his life. He used it at the time with some of his colleagues,
but never, it seems, with Austin himself. Austin was not the sort of man
with whom to share such a joke. (Grice 1986a: 49)." (not 'vulgar' enough?)
Oddly a few pages back and I'm indeed with Austin's use of 'free' (as in
'freely') which should make it to lists of free-will stuff. Chapman"
"[For Austin and for instance] excuses are only offered for actions performed FREELY." "A consideration of the ordinary use of "FREELY" to describe an action reveals that it does NOT introduce any particular property."
It's not the word that wears the trousers. And cfr. this essay cited
by Chalmers, on 'free' as a "negative" word -- semantic echoes of Berlin's
thesis. I think Hall would call this an 'excluder'. Chapman goes on: "but ["FREELY"] serves to negate some opposite, such as 'under duress'. It would be used only when there is some suggestion" --- as per implicature -- "that the opposite could or might apply. There would be something strange" ----- odd, but true -- as per Grice's theory of implicature, which I have elsewhere referred to as, "Grice Saves, But there is not such a thing as a free lunch") "about applying the term 'freely' to a NORMAL action performed in a normal manner." "He freely scratched his head." But a borderline case, "Grice frowned freely" is discussed by Green in his online, "Grice's frown". "Austin sums up this cliam in the slogan 'no modification without aberration'" Grice of course discusses Austin's cases in WoW:I Grice uses "M" to stand for "free" as in 'Freely': Grice writes: "Perhaps the most interesting and puzzling examples in this area are those provided by Austin, particularly as he proponed a general thesis in relation to them" -- which predates Grice's concerns with the quantity of information to be provided in clauses and stuff. Grice goes on. "The following quotations are extracts from the paragraph headed, 'No modification without aberration'.: "When it is sated that X did A, there is a temptation to suppose that givein some, indeed, perhaps ANY, expression
MODIFYING the verb we shall be entitled to insert either it or its opposite or
negation in our statement. That is, we shall be entitled to ask, typically, "Did X do A Mly or not Mly?" (e.g. Did X murder Y voluntarily or nonvoluntarily? -- [cfr. "of his own free will"]" "and to answer one or the other. Or as a minimum it is supposed that if X did A there must be at least one modifying expression that we could, justifiably and INFORMATIVELY, insert with the verb." "He smoked freely." Austin, as cited by Grice, goes on: ("Freely" being the adverb selected by Austin, "Plea for excuses" discussed by R. B. Jones, online). "In the great majority of cases of the great majority of verbs ('murder' is perhaps not one of the majority) such suppositions are quite unjustified." It's good that Grice doubts about 'murder' -- as Flew had: "A crime is a symptom of a disease" -- cfr. Nicolai Hartman's Socratic idea that no eleutheric can be ill -- the freewill is good free will -- some wishful thinking there?) Austin, as cited by Grice goes on: "The natural economy of language dictates that for the STANDARD case covered by any normal verb (e.g. 'eat', 'kick', or 'croquet') no modifying expression is required or even permissible." - where permissible is perhaps a bit too strong. Surely "He kicked freely", provided it's true (while odd) should be a permissible enough thing to say. Austin, as cited by Grice goes on: "Only if we do the action named in
SOME SPECIAL way or circumstances is a modiying expression called for, or even in order." -- Only that when dialoguing with the determinists, the most
unimaginable circumstances _are_ imagined (by them!) Austin, as cited by Grice, goes on: "It is bedtime, I am alone, I yawn; but I do not yawn involuntarily (or
voluntarily!) not yet deliberately. To ywan in any such particular way is
just not to just yawn."" Grice concludes: "The suggested general thesis is then, ... that for most action-verbs the admissibility of a modifying expression [such as 'freely'] rests on the action described being a nonstandard case of the kind of
action which the verb designates or signifies. Odd that Austin would use 'yawn', which is a bit like Grice's frown. Occam saw this. (And B. Doyle discuses 'semiosis' in his research on free will). For Occam, laughter signifies interior joy and a tear signifies interior pain -- much as a stone outside a pub may signify that wine is being sold. Now, a yawn then should 'signify' something -- to anyone who cares to witness it. It is this point that Green focuses on when bringing these issues of 'deliberateness' to ordinary behaviour (the example of the frown is Grice's himself, in his early "Meaning" 1948 -- "Though in general a deliberate frown may have the same effect (with respect to inducing a belief in my
displeasure) as a spontaneous frown, it can be expected to have the same effect only PROVIDED the audience takes it as intended to convey displeasure. That is,
if we take away the recognition of intention, leaving the other circumstances (including the recognition of the frown as deliberate), the belief-producing tendency of the frown must be regarded as being impaired or destroyed" (WoW:219).
Note that "A plea for excuses" is early enough (Aristotelian Society, 1956)
but not yet as early as Flew's "Crime or disease" (1954) -- a different
type of argument, though -- Nothing strictly or explicitly about 'free will'
in Austin's witty remarks (if ignoring 'disimplicature' and stuff) on
'freely'. I would like to add a point which may be useful. Austin refers to some
things as 'aberrations' (he could be hyperbolic in his talk). What I mean by a
Gricean (or Griceian as I prefer) aberration is not really an 'aberration'
then. But I submit -- First, doublechecking S. Blackburn (an authority mentioned by B. Doyle in the BBC radio programme he linked), entry on 'paradigm-case argument' in the Oxford Dict. of Philosophy. Blackburn adds a criterion: behavioural
evidence. As I recall from memory from his entry: A smiling bridegroom ----> the bridgegroom married on his own free will. ------- (I will check the reference at a later date). The idea that we can have, combining Grice, Flew, and Austin (and
Blackburn) would be: "Smith married". (informative enough). cfr. "Smith married on his own free will." "Aberration" for Austin. So, how are taking THAT as a case to 'teach' anything? Grice's solution: while it is 'aberrant' to say "Smith married on his own freewill" it is yet completely true. I have not studied a lot of reports of marriages and weddings, but it would seem that "on his own freewill" as applied to a particular verb -- say 'marry' -- only makes primary conversational 'sense' vis a vis precisely those 'forced' 'social pressures' that Flew is referring to -- and which are indicated when a bridegroom does not _smile_ during the ceremony. Or something like that. You should supply the missing premisses! Blackburn writes: "paradigm case argument." "The argument that since a term, such as ‘certain ’ or ‘knowledge’ or ‘free will’, is taught partly with reference to central cases, any sceptical philosophical position denying that it applies in
those cases must involve an abuse of the term." "In one famous example, we might point to the *smiling* [emphasis mine. Speranza] bridegroom and say that his choice of his bride is a paradigm example of free choice [and that, to echo Flew 1954/5, he 'married on his own free will' for how else would you teach that?]; hence any philosophies that reject the notion of free choice are surreptitiously changing the meaning of the notion, and are therefore out of court." "The argument is widely rejected, on the grounds that even if a term is taught with reference to central cases, it may only be because of a cluster of false beliefs that those cases are singled out in the first place." "We may think of the bridegroom as free, but it may be that in so thinking we have a vision of his decision-making processes (not to mention those of his bride) that philosophical reflection discredits." "However, investigations of meaning are partly constrained by what we say about central cases, and there may be fields where some restricted form of the paradigm case argument is not entirely worthless." but quite the contrary! As I have found Blackburn's ever so brilliant discussion of Griceianism in that monumental epic in the philosophy of language ("Spreading the word: groundings in the philosophy of language", Oxford, Clarendon). Blackburn, S. W. (formerly of Pembroke College, Oxford): "paradigm case argument" The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Simon Blackburn. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.
"Intention and uncertainty" (1971). An important landmark in Grice´s development on these ideas is his "Intention and uncertainty". Meant as a reply to Hart´s and Hampshire´s more conservative views on this, he proposes to consider things like, "I shall but I won´t", or "I will but I shan´t" -- he is considering also Pears´s previous British academy lecture on the predictability of one´s decisions. A dialogical illustration by Grice much discussed by Davidson et al. A: I intend to go to the opera on Tuesday. B: You will enjoy that. A: I may not be there.
B: I am afraid I don't understand. A: The police are going to ask me some awkward questions on Tuesday afternoon, and I may be in prison by Tuesday evening.
B: Then you should have said to begin with, "I intend to go to the opera if
I am not in prison", or, if you wished to be more reticent, something like
"I should probably be going", or "I hope to go", or "I aim to go", or "I
intend to go if I can".Grice who quotes Stout, prefers Prichard and defines himself as a neo-Prichardian. The fact that Grice's colleague, J. O. Urmson, was recently popularising Prichard's views on 'willing' helped. From the Stanford Encyclopedia:
"Often we do not know what activity is involved when one body causes a change in another. But when it comes to human actions, we do know. First, we know that we are looking for something mental, and second, we know that the word for that special kind of mental activity is ‘willing’. Very little can be said about this mental activity of willing, though we are all, of course, perfectly familiar with it. But we can ask about its proper object. What is it that we will? Two possible answers present themselves: we will actions, and we will changes. The first of these must be wrong because it generates an infinite regress. So the second must be right. An action is the willing of a change."
"Probability, Desirability, and Mood Operators" (1971-1973). Discussion of things like 'to decide to believe whether p".
"Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre" (1975). One way to consider the paradox of "he willed, but not freely" as pleonastic may do with this attempt (of which I first learned via Grandy, Journal of Philosophy, 1973 -- but now in Grice 1991:152) "X judges that p" iff "X wills as follows." "Given any situation in which (PROTASIS) 1. X wills some end E 2. There are *two* _non-empty_ classes, K1 and K2 of action-types, such that: the _performance_ (by X) of an action-type belonging to K1 will realise E just in case p IS TRUE, and the performance (by X) of an aciton-type belonging to of K2 will realise E just in case p is *false*. 3. (Closure clause): There is _no_ third non-empty class K3 of action-types such that the performance (by X) of an action type belonging to K3will realise E whether p is true or p is false, APODOSIS: in such situation, X is to will that X performs some action-type belonging to K1." Grice was William James lecturer for 1967, and this bit above comes from what was his "Dewey" lecture, and there's a bit of voluntarism involved of the type James and Dewey would have enjoyed. Grice is actually amusing himself with refuting Ryle who found all talk on 'the will' hopelessly illusionistic. Thus, Grice is defining himself as something OTHER than an analytic 'behaviourist'. He is defining himself as a 'functionalist' (alla D. K. Lewis). And he is noting that WHILE he is proposing this 'reduction' of 'judging' to 'willing' (_modulo_ p, as Grandy has it), he is not postulating the fixedness of voluntarism (as he casually suggests that a very similar 'symmetrical' definition of 'willing' in terms of 'judging' is just as possible!). In the current discussion on 'free', the point to note is the appearance of the disjunction 'or' -- with Grice postulating _options_ or alternatives (two, strictly -- and perhaps this is too much of a 'constraint' or 'bound' on liberty -- to echo Galen Strawson?) opened to the agent. Grice, in "Intention and uncertainty" will indeed go on with Prichard in defining 'intending' as a combo of 'willing' and 'judging' (you only intend what you will PROVIDED you are pretty sure what you will is 'within the realms of realisation' -- I can freely will that p, but I can only intend that p if p is NOT 'uncertain' -- Grice uses Heisenberg's trick of a nominal -- and Grice is just punning on Hart's and Hampshire's dogmatism regarding regarding intention and _certainty_. Willings then are _freeer_ (for 'free' is not a 'flat' notion -- vide "Aspects of reason") than judgings. Judgings involve a 'reasoned' (or willed) choice between alternatives (K1 and K2) with respect to some factivity. (Why would you believe that it is raining if it's sunny outside so that the action type of getting an umbrella becomes otiose?). And intendings are less free than judgings, in that we require a narrowing down to non uncertain outcomes (Pears followed Grice in his "Intention and Belief" in the volume to which Grice/Baker contributed with "Davidson on weakness on the will"). Oddly, Peacocke, who perhaps unlike Pears or Grice, was most influential in Oxford (as Waynflete prof. of metaphysical philosophy) learned all that from Grice at Berkeley in the early 1970s and spread it abroad (i.e. back in Oxford) -- even if few were attentive enough to over-quote him! Etc.Browsing the Oxford Dict. of Proverbs one finds two with Gricean echoes -- with appropriate caveats: "We soon believe what we desire", and "Wish is the father of the Thought". Again, we see Grice as confirming "how clever language is" (Unlike his dear friend Albritton who, when in a more deterministic (or is it 'undeterministic'?) vein, exclaimed, "yet it is not always the case that where there is a will there is a way" -- cited by B. Doyle, Information Philosopher).
"My purpose in this section is to give a little thought to the question 'What are the general principles exemplified, in creature-construction, in progressing from one type of pirot to a higher type? What KINDS of steps are being made? The kinds of step with which I shall deal here are those which culminate in a licence to include, within the specification of the content of the psychological state of certain pirots, a range of expressions which would be inappropriate with respect
to LOWER [emphasis mine. JLS] pirots; such expressions include connectives, quantifiers, temporal modifiers, mood indicators, modal operators, and (importantly) names of psychological states like "judge" and "will"." Or perhaps 'free' as applied (or attached now to 'will') rather than more generally as when a 'pirot' thinks that a body moves freely. "Expressions," Grice goes on, "availability of which leads to the structural enrichment of specifications of content."The connection with 'evolution' theory is made obvious by Chapman in her
book on _Grice_ (now on paperback). I notice that Chapman uses 'evolution'
and 'evolutionarily' I think twice and she quotes from a paper by Grice
where he writes: "read [Dawinks] The Selfish Gene" but then we have to be
careful. Mackie also read that book, "but only because it was given to me as a
Christmas present." Grice writes: "In general, these steps" -- rungs up the ladder, as he puts it -- elsewhere, cited by Chapman -- as they advance from the 'brutes' (word he used Chapman quotes) to 'the peak' that man is ("Method") --
"will be ones by which items or ideas which have, initially, a legitimate
place outside the scope of psychological instantiables (or, if you will,
the expressions for which occur LEGITIMATELY outside the scope of psychological verbs) come to have a legitimate place within the scope of such instantiables: steps by which (one might say) such items or ideas come to be
INTERNALIZED. I am disposed to regard as prototypical the sort of natural
disposition which Hume attributes to us, and which is very important to
him; name, the tendency of the mind 'to spread itself upon objects' to project into the world items which, properly (or primitively) considered, are really features of our states of mind. I shall set out in stages the application of aspects of the genitorial programme.” -------------- CONNECTION with 'free choices', 'decision making' in a probablistic environment. The stages have been 'advanced' by M. Bratman and others in a sort of sequential order -- with a very fine-tooth combing that Grice would have loved. (And this only for what I have elsewhere called pirot-3: with pirot-1 and pirot-2 being vegetals and animals respectively -- very simplistically. And one can wonder: how much of this was already being practiced in
continental philosophy by people like Nikolai Hartmann (a genius) and Max
Scheler? -- Topics as to the hierarchy of the universe in terms of stages which are
proper yet with communication (emergence in biology, e.g.).
----- The following HIERARCHIES adapted from Bratman and Smith. Bratman et
al consider a sequence. We start with a ZERO ORDER (Stage 0). We start with pirots equipped to satisfy unnested judging and willing (i.e. whose contents do _not_ involve judging or willing).
1ST ORDER Stage 1. "It would be advantageous to pirots if they could have judging and willing, which relate to their own judging or willing." Such pirots could be equipped to control or regulate their own judgings and willings. They will presumably be already constituted so as to conform to the law that CAETERIS PARIBUS if they will that p and judge that ~p, if they can, they make it the case that p [in their 'minds']. "To give them some control over their judgings and willings, we need only extend the application of this law to their judging and willing."
"We equip them so that caeteris paribus IF they will that they do not will that p and judge that they do will that p, (if they can) they make it the case that
they do NOT will that p "And we somehow ensure that sometimes they CAN do this."
Grice writes: "It may be that the installation of this kind of control
would go hand in had with the installation of the capacity for evaluation; but
I need not concern myself with this now." 2nd ORDER Creature 2's intentional efforts depend on the motivational strength of its considered desires at the time of action. So far we have been seeing the process by which conflicting considered
desires motivate action as a broadly CAUSAL process, a process that reveals
MOTIVATIONAL strength. But a creature -- call it CREATURE 3 -- might itself try to weigh considerations provided by such conflicting desires in DELIBERATION about the pros and cons of various alternatives. In the simplest case, such weighing treats each of the things desired as a prima facie justifying end.
In the face of conflict it weighs such desired ends,
where the weights correspond to the motivational strength
of the associated, considered desire.
The outcome of such DELIBERATION will match the
outcome of the CAUSAL motivational processes
envisioned in our description of Creature 2.
But since the weights it invokes in such deliberation
correspond to the motivational strength of the
relevant considered desires (though perhaps not to the motivational strength of the relevant considered desires), the resultant activities will match those of a corresponding Creature 2 (*all* of whose desires, we are assuming, are considered).
To be more realistic we might limit ourselves
to saying that Creature 2 has the capacity to make
the transition from unconsidered to considered desires
but does not always do this.
But it will keep the discussion more manageable
to simplify and to suppose that *all* its
desires are considered.
3RD ORDER Stage 3. We shall not want these pirots to depend, in each will act in ways that
reveal the motivational strength of considered desires at the time of action,
but for creature 3 it will also be true that in some (though not all)
cases it acts on the basis of how it weights the ends favoured by its
conflicting, considered desires.
It is time to note that Creature 3's considered desires will concern
matters that cannot be achieved simply by action at a single time.
It may, for example, want to nurture a vegetable garden, or build a house.
Such matters will require organized and coordinated action that extends
over time.
What it does now ill depend not only on what it now desires but also on
what it now expects it will do later given what it does now. It needs a way
of settling now what it will do later given what it does now.
The point is even clearer when we remind ourselves, what we have so far
ignored, that Creature 3 is not alone.
It is, we may assume, one of some number of such creatures; and in many
cases it needs to COORDINATE what it does with what others
do so as to achieve ends desired by all participants, itself included.
4TH ORDER
These costs are magnified for a creature whose various plans are
interwoven so that a change in one element can have significant ripple effects
that
will need to be considered.
So let us suppose that the general strategies Creature 4 has for
responding to new information about its circumstances are sensitive to these
kinds
of costs.
Promoting in the long run the satisfaction of its considered desires and
preferences.
Creature 4 is a somewhat sophisticated planning agent but it has a
problem.
It can expect that its desires and preferences may well change over time
and undermine its efforts at organizing and coordinating its activities
over time. Perhaps in many cases this is due to the kind of temporal discounting
emphasized by (among others) George Ainslie. So for example Creature 4 may have a plan to exercise every day but may tend to prefer a sequence of not exercising
on the present day but exercising all days in the future, to a uniform sequence the present day included. At the end of the day it returns to its earlier considered preference in favor of exercising on each and every day. Though Creature 4, unlike Creature 3, has the capacity to settle on prior plans or plaices concerning exercise, this capacity does not yet help in such a case.
A creature whose plans were stable in ways in part shaped by such a
no-regret principle would be more likely than Creature 4 to resist
temporary
temptations.
5TH ORDER So let us build such a principle into the stability of
the plans of creature 5 whose plans and policies
are not derived solely from facts about its limits of time,
attention, and the like.
It is also grounded in the central concerns of a planning
agent with its own future, concerns that lend special significance to
anticipated future REGRET.
So let us add to Creature 5 the capacity and disposition to arrive at such
hierarchies of higher-order desires concerning its "will".
6TH ORDER
This gives us a new creature, CREATURE 6. There is a problem with Creature
6, one that has been much discussed. It is not clear why a higher-order
desire--even a higher-order desire that a
certain desire be one's "will" -- is not simply one more desire in the
pool of desires [Berkeley God's will problem]
Why does it have the authority to constitute or ensure the agent's (that
is, the creature's) endorsement or rejection of a FIRST-ORDER desire?
Applied to creature 6 this is the question of whether, by virtue solely of
its hierarchies of desires, it really does succeed in taking its own stand
of endorsement or rejection of various FIRST-ORDER desires.
Since it was the ability to take its own stand that we are trying to
provide in the move to creature 6, we need some response to this challenge.
The basic point is that Creature 6 is not merely a time-slice agent.
It is, rather, and understands itself to be, a temporally persisting
planning agent,
one who begins, and continues, and completes temporally extended projects.
On a broadly Lockean view, its persistence over time consists in
relevant psychological continuities (for example, the persistence of
attitudes of belief and intention)
and connections (for example, memory of a past event, or the later
intentional execution
of an intention formed earlier).
Certain attitudes have as a primary role the constitution and support of
such Lockean continuities and connections.
In particular, policies that favor or reject various desires have
it as their role to constitute and support various continuities
both of ordinary desires and of the politicos themselves.
"For this reason such policies are not merely additional
wiggles in the psychic stew."
Instead, these policies have a claim to help determine
where the agent -- that is, the temporally persisting agent --
stands with respect to its desires. Or so it seems to me reasonable to
say.
7TH ORDER So the psychology of Creature 7 continues to have the hierarchical
structure of pro-attitudes introduced with creature 6. The difference is
that the higher-order pro-attitudes of Creature 6 were simply characterized as
desires in a broad, generic sense, and no appeal was made to the
distinctive
species of pro-attitude constituted by plan-like attitudes.
That is the sense in which, following Grice, the psychology of Creature 7
is an
"extension of"
the psychology of Creature 6.
Let us then give CREATURE 7 such higher-order pollicies with the capacity
to take a stand with respect to its desires by arriving at relevant
higher-order policies concerning the functioning of those desires over
time.
Creature 7 exhibits a merger of hierarchical and planning structures..
Appealing
to planning theory and ground in connection to the temporally extended
structure of agency--to be one's "will" in Frankfurt's technical sense.
Creature 7 has higher-order policies that favor or challenge motivational
roles of
its considered desires.
When Creature 7 engages in deliberative weighing of conflicting, desired
ends it seems that the assigned weights should
reflect the policies that determine where it stands with respect to
relevant
desires.
But the policies we have so far appealed to--policies concerning what
desires are to be one's will (in Frankfurt's technical sense of
"will")--do not quite address this concern.
The problem is that one can in certain
cases have policies concerning which desires are to motivate and yet these
not be policies that accord what those desires are for a corresponding
justifying role in deliberation.
8TH ORDER A solution is to give our creature--call it CREATURE 8--the capacity to
arrive at policies that express its commitment to be motivated by a desire by
way of its treatment of that desire as providing, in deliberation, a
justifying end for action.
Creature 8 has policies for treating (or not treating)
certain desires as providing justifying ends--as, in this way,
reason-providing--in motivationally effective deliberation.
Let us call such policies
self-governing policies--I will suppose that these policies are mutually
compatible and do not challenge each other.
In this way Creature 8 involves, as Grice would want, an
"extension"
of structures already present in Creature 7.
The grounds on which Creature
8 arrives at (and on occasion revises) such self-governing policies will
be
many and varied. We can see these policies as crystallizing complex
pressures and concerns, some of which are grounded in other policies or
desires.
These self-governing policies may be tentative and will normally NOT be
immune to change.
If we ask what creature 8 values in this case, the answer
seems to be: what it values is constituted in part by its higher-order
self-
governing policies.
In particular, it values exercise over nonexercise even
right now, and even given that it has a considered (though temporary)
preference to the contrary.
Unlike creatures 3-5, what Creature 8 now values is not simply a matter of
its present, considered desires and preferences.
NOW THIS MODEL OF CREATURE 8 SEEMS IN RELEVANT RESPECTS TO BE A (PARTIAL)
MODEL OF US.
So we arrive at the conjecture that one important kind of valuing of which
we are capable involves, in the cited ways, both our first-order desires
and our higher order self-governing policies.
In an important sub-class of
cases our valuing involves reflexive polices that are both first-order
policies of action and higher-order policies to treat the first-order
policy as
reason providing in motivationally effective deliberation.
This may seem
odd. Valuing seems normally to be a first-order attitude.
One values honesty, say.
The proposal is that an important kind of valuing involves higher-order
policies. Does this mean that, strictly speaking, what one values (in this
sense) is itself a desire--not honesty, say, but a desire for honesty?
No, it does not. What I value in the present case is honesty; but, on the theory,
my valuing honesty in art consists in certain higher-order self-governing
policies. An agent's reflective valuing involves a kind of higher-order
willing.
Aspects of Reason: The Kant lectures (1977). Grice takes up a discussion which can be traced back to Alf Ross ("Imperatives and logic", 1941) via Kenny, B. Williams, and Hare. The Ross paradox (so-called) being:
Post the letter! Therefore, post the letter or burn it!
A few have attempted to disqualify Hare's Griceian defence of the validity of the above in terms of conversational implicature, applying, instead, a free-choice permission, as it may or may not involve 'semantic' entailment. Chapman has
identified a few points on 'linguistic botanising' by Grice on 'free'. Chapman writes: "Grice's notes from the early 1980s show him applying the familiar
techniques of 'linguistic botanising' to the concept of freedom. He jotted down
phrases such as 'alcohol-free', 'free for lunch' and 'free-wheeling', and
listed many possible definitions, including 'liberal', 'acting without
restriction' and 'frank in conversation'" ---- (Grice, "Notes with Judith Baker",
The Grice Papers, Bancroft Library, UC/Berkeley).
Reply to Davidson on Intending, 1977. Feeling eleutheric today? Eleutheric Implicatures -- Rather than 'constraints'!
Aristotle on 'to per'hemin' Not really, but I found this in Chapman ("Grice", Palgrave, 2006) to be relevant. She is considering a tape (in the Grice collection) where Grice criticised Davidson's implicature-approach to 'intention' (!). The scenario includes things like the following.
The Dean intends to ruin the Department of Philosophy by appointing
Snodgrass Chairman.
and such. Grice introduces a simile. An appointment book, where two inks are used:
black ink for things which are not "to per'hemin" (up to us, cfr.
'par'hemas') as per Aristotle. We use red ink for things which are up to us.
Chapman: "In his reply to Davidson, in his earlier unpublished paper, Grice
considers the role of intentions in actual everyday cognition. 'First we are
creatures who do not, like the brutes, merely respond to the present; we are
equipped to set up, in the present, responses in the more remote future to
situations in the less remote future.' Grice pictures our view of the future
as an appointment book in which various entries are inscribed. We are aware
of a distinction between entries we have no control over (inscribed in
black) and those that are there by our control, or depend on us for their
realisation (inscribed in red). These latter entries are intentions. If we can
forsee an unpleasant consequence of such entries, we will try to avert it if
we can by deleting a red entry. The Dean derives the conclusion from the
existing entries, 'Early December Dean gets fired'. He is understandably
unhappy about this, but is in a position to do something about it if he can
find that one of the entries from which he drew the conclusion is in red. He
is able to delete it, for instance, 'Dean appoints Snodgrass' inscribed in
red in mid-November." (p. 135).
I will have to revise this, but when Grice analyses his squarrel
"Toby" (like a squarrel, but more simple in habits) he does introduce "want" in
terms of needing nuts, etc. The squarrel will eat nuts, and will want to
eat nuts. (Will eat nuts if he can). The point relates to a sort of
Wittgensteinian point Grice is assuming throughout his "Method in philosophical
psychology": no psychological predicate without the behaviour the predicate
needs to explain." So, in this progression of stages for 'free' -- from a
first stage which is 'free'-free to a stage where inanimate objects may be
said to display 'free' patterns, to 'animal' (more strictly 'psychological' --
psuche for the Greeks included plants) stages (Grice's squarrel) to
strictly 'human' (and beyond 'personal') 'free', we should be guided by the
complexity of the behaviour in need of explanation, never mind description. And so on. ----- Incidentally, I have found this site,
(http://yessenin-volpin.org/onthelogic.pdf)
which must have been written originally in Russian. It notes that 'free'
is ambiguous in English (but not in the Russian counterparts -- simpler said
that done. They have two WORDS for it!). The author thinks that avoiding
the vague and ambiguous 'free' for 'eleutheric' should do the trick -- if
you are magical enough! (I appreciate the attempt to disambiguate 'free' by sticking with the Greek, 'eleutheric'"). "By the term ‘freedom1’ (svoboda) [Since there are no English terms which convey the contrast of svobodny and vol’ny, subscripts will be used: ‘free1’ and ‘free2’] I mean the quality of acts of not being obstructed, i.e., impeded by obstacles; I call such act free1 (svobodny).
I call an activity free1 if in any of its situations every one of its acts
is free1, etc. I call an agent free1 if his activity is free1.
In this way the term ‘freedom1’ signifies a quality of both an action and
an agent. In this case, in particular, ‘obstacles’ are understood as eventual
obstacles. The organic possibility of an act or an activity is compatible with the
presence of an eventual obstacle which will not be realized. Therefore one may
have the possibility of performing unfree1 acts and carrying on an unfree1
activity. An activity encountering obstacles is not free1, but if these obstacles
are overcome, a wider activity, including overcoming these obstacles within
it, may be free1. A free1 act can be compelled. This often happens since a person compelling an act usually does not obstruct this act and may even eliminate obstacles. I call the quality of an act’s not being compelled its freedom (vol’nost) and the activity consisting only of free2 (vol’ny) acts free2,— in which case I ignore compulsions deriving from the requirements of the activity itself (i.e., describing its tactics). I call an agent free2 if his activity is free2 and if, in addition, he has not been compelled to choose it. I call this capacity in an agent his freedom2. A free2 act may be unfree2 , and the same is true of an activity or agent. Ordinary language uses these terms inconsistently, creating a powerful obstacle to their correct usage. "Therefore, a term is needed designating the combination of freedom1 and freedom2." "I will designate this combination by the Greek word eleutheria, and I will call acts, activities, and agents which are both free1 and free2 eleutheric." "Even this term is not felicitous in all respects. I call the absence of obstacles to the opposite act the independence of an act (understanding opposites as a pair of acts
[A, not-A]—not-not-A-acts can usually be identified with A; in the
contrary case the question becomes more complicated)." "I will call an act which possesses this property independent, an activity made up only of independent acts independent, and I will call the doer (agent) of an independent activity independent if the very choice of the activity is independent for him or if this activity is not selected by him and he did not have obstacles to prevent his selecting it." "Acts compelled by the rules of an activity (including rules of external activities) are not considered as obstacles here. Independence is certainly a narrower quality than freedom2 (i.e., an independent act must he free2, etc.)." "Sometimes it is convenient to consider ‘eleutheria’ as the combination of freedom1 and independence." "I prefer to call this eleutheria in the
narrower sense, keeping the previous meaning for eleutheria." "Morality can be established for the most varied purposes." "It may he as hostile to
the freedom1 and freedom2 of an activity as one could wish." And so on.
The Carus Lectures on the Conception of Value (1983). In a footnote to his 1982 Paul Carus lectures Grice amusingly refers to a landmark in "pinko" Oxford: Strawson, "Freedom and resentment" and why it appealed to generations of Oxford philosophers.
"Actions and events" (1986). Finally, in "Actions and Events" (1986) Grice propounds to tread some familiar ground to him, but which he thought was underestimated by analytic philosphers of action. Some quotes from "Actions and Events". Doyle concentrates on the final episodes of that essay where Grice provides the four-stages for 'free', and further reflections which were shared with this forum and elsewhere. Here are some quotes from the parts _leading_ to that conclusion, as I have just re-read the thing. The first sort of central quote seems to begin on p. 11, where he mentions Prichard. I do not have Davidson's essay to hand, but apparently he made a big case _against_ the notion (or locution), 'act of will'. So Grice may have an axe to grind (as they say?) since it is his contention, with
Prichard, that such acts _are_. So this is Grice: "Frustrated in these directions [as to what constitutes 'to act' -- Latin agere] we might think of turning to a longstanding tradition in Ethics from the Greeks onwards, of connecting the concept of action [praxis -- does Democritus or Epicurus use this root? -- cfr. pragma] with that of the Will; a tradition which reads its peak in Prichard, who not merely believed that action is distinguished by a special connection with the will, but
maintained that acting is to be _identified_ [italics Grice's] with willing."
The trouble for Davidson: Grice goes on: "It is clear from Davidson's comments on Chisholm, that, at least when his article was written, he would have none of such ideas, perhaps because the suggestions that actions are distinguished by a connection with the will may be expected to lead at once to the idea that particular actions are distinguished by their connetion with acts of will; and the position that there are such things as acts of will is not merely false but disreputable." A second good quote comes on p. 24. It refers to the Aristotelian 'aitia' --. Since, as in the quote from Hardie by Doyle from Hardie "My own free will", we want 'free will' to stand against causation, or something like that. We want talk of causation to be relevant when it comes to the discourse on free will. This is Grice: "Events do not seem to me to be the _prime_ bearers of causal properties; that I think belongs to enduring, non-episodic things such as substances [but cfr. quantum mechanics?] To assign a cause is primarily to hold something accountable or responsible for something, and the primary account-holders are substances, not events, which are (rather) relevant items which appear
in the accounts. I suspect that a great deal of the current myopia about
causes has arisen from a very un-Aristotelian inattention to the place of
Substance in the Conception of Cause" --- which perhaps with some further very odd un-Kantian inattentions should give 'un-Kantotelian in-attentions' the prize for the best of Griceian litotes. A third quote comes on p. 25, and is again then Grice trying to systematise the territory with some Latinate variants. We have the 'aitia', and the 'agere' (Latinate), from which we extract the 'agendum'. "When Davidson addresses the question of the nature of agency, he suggests that two ingredients are discernible; the first of these is the notion of _activity_; in action the agent is active, what comes about is something which is made by him to come about, of which he is the cause; the second ingredient is that of purpose [telos] or design or intention; what comes about comes about as he meant or intended it to come about. This seems to me to be substantially correct, though I am inclined to think that there is a somewhat more illuminating way of presenting it ... In the meantime, what these ingredients seem to me to indicate is an intimate connection between agency and the will." "I am, and what I do is, in paradigmatic cases, subject to my will. I impose my will on myself, and my actons are actings only insofar as they are the product of this imposition. This imposition may take variosu forms, and may relate to various aspects of or elements in the deliberation process. In many cases explicit exercise of the will is confined to the finding of
means to the fulfillment of some already selected end. Such cases are
relatively undramatic and arre also well-handled in the early chapters of Eth. Nic.
III. But sometimes what goes on is more dramatic, as when one needs to
SELECT AN END [emphasis mine. JLS] from one's established stock of ends, or
when the stock of ends itself has to be in some way altered, or (perhaps most
dramatically) when an agent is faced with the possibility of backsliding
and following the lure of inclination rather than the voice of reason or
principle." Here Grice starts a series of reflections which provide quotes for "Dialogues with myself". Grice writes: "Particularly in such ases as the last, what takes place in action (paradigmatically) is essentially part of a transaction between a person and a person." He goes on to consider Plato's tripartite division of the soul, and Aristotle. "As Aristotle distinguished" between this part of the soul, from this other 'executive' part, "one which is rational as having the capacity to give reasons and DETERMINE rational behaviour." But we do not want a divided self. We "counsel ourselves" and we "inpute responsibility to ourselves ... sometimes laudatorily, sometimes chidingly." "As when my Oxford tutor, called on the telephone by someone who was plainly a woman, said aloud, "Now keep your head, Meiggs"". These are self-addressed commands, and I wrote marginally: "Hobson's
choice?". Grice writes: "I lay down what is required of me, by requring it of myself; I am, so to speak, issuing edits to someone who in standard circumstances has no choice BUT TO OBEY" [emphasis mine]. In the earlier "Logic and Conversation" (Oxford 1966) lectures he indeed had managed to speak of benevolence and self-love, and those items reappear here, since alla Buber, he sees all this self-talk (which is by definition free of implicature or pleonasm!) as being modeled upon our ability with regard to "a background of situations in which I am in a position to direct OTHERS". (emphasis mine). "So self-love and self-concern would be indispensable foundations for self-directions; only the assumption of these elements will enable me to justify to myself the refusal to allow myself indulgences which, in my view, would be bad for me." ---- which is as genial as Grice can get -- and the best rewriting of Kantotle ever! Grice then goes on to quote Kant, direcetly using Abbott's tr. about the good will as a gem that shines. Grice seems to have loved that quote (Grunlegung, p. 11) and has a typical note to the effect that "no doubt mutatis mtandis something comparable could be said about the bad will" -- which may do with free-will concerns, since, after all, 'determinism' seems to be a back-formation from 'pre-determinism', which is the theologian's answer to the 'evil' introduced by acceptance of liberum arbitrium, etc. A good quote on 'agendum' comes on p. 30:"It will be agenda ["things to do"] which, in deliberation, we consider adopitng, and one or more which, when a decision [free choice] comes, we actually do adopt." On the next page p. 31 he provides an account for non-standard agenda, as it were: "Items which are action-surrogates no doubt owe their status to the fact that , or presumed fact, that should an agent encounter difficulties or complications a further reflection machinery [which presupposes free will] may e usually counted on to be called into operation; indeed [in a nod to Strawson] part of treating people as responsible persons consists in presuming this to be the case; and unless an agent is thought to be under special stress, or to be temporarily or permanently mentally infirm, a failure of this recall to occur tends to be treated as a case of unconscious bad
motivation." ---- by Socrates and Luther? On the same p. 31 he explores 'cause-to' vis a vis 'aitia', which as we see then becomes essential in discussion of 'free will', rather than a counterpart to it. "We need," says Grice, "to exercise care in the interpretation of the word 'cause'. We need to get away from the kind of employment of the word 'cause' which has become, these days, virtually _de rigueur_ in philosophy (viz., one exemplifying an event-relating, mechanistic, Hume-like conception) into a direction which might well have been congenial to Aristotle." "When someone has a preferential concern for some end [TELOS -- cfr. Aristotle on 'final cause'] which would be served by a given agendum, he has cause to perform, or realise, that agendum, and if the agendum is performed by him because he has [a] cause to perform it, then the action is something of which _he is the cause_, and is explained (though *non-predictively eplained*) by the fact that he had a cause to perform it." ---- my marginal note reads: Cfr. Pears -- on predictability of one's decisions. A very good quote, I find: "Hume-type causation is factive, having [a] cause to is non-factive, and being the cause of one's own action is factive, but factive in a special way which is *divorced from full predictability*" (emphasis mine). There are two references to 'automaton' on p. 32 and 33 which I should recheck with some etymological queries I may have. But Grice refers on p. 32 to "'automatic' bodily realisations' --- this may have to do with the problem (or charm?) of the two-stage model of free will with which Doyle initiated its reintroduction in Chora.Grice speaks of flexible and inflexible factivity."It is likely, I think that the items which we are here specially
concerned with, like actions and causes (to), though not inflexibly factive are
flexibly factive; actions with individual non-realisations are possible only
against a background of general realisation. If this were not so, the
'automatic' bodily realisations which typically supervene upon adopted agenda
might NOT BE FORTHCOMING, to the ruin of the concept of action."
---- as when I try to scratch my head (or your back) and circumstances
prevail me (from thus doing). The second instantiation concerns 'automatically' qua adverb, on p. 33, "[T]he sequene of movements involved in the realisations of vulgarly specified actions tend, on the vast majority of occasions ... to appear
'automatically' ... without attention to the geometric pattern of the movements
being made." ----- I think this should connect with Ancient controversy and general agreement that free will need not be involved in each 'act' of the 'will'.
On p. 33, and I may need an etymological search on this, Grice proposes a
fascinating analogy or figure: that of 'monitoring'. His scenario is a
gymnastic instructor who tells the squad, "Raise your right arm!" and then, oddily, asks them, "How many of you actually raised your right arm, and for how many of you was it simply the case that your arm went up?". This question strikes us as _unGriceian: "The oddity of this question indicates that raising the right arm involves no distinguishing observable or instrospetible element ... What, then, is speical about raising one's arm or about making any bodily movement? The answer is, I think, that the movement is caused by the agent in the sense that its occurrence is MONITORED by him; he is aware of what takes place and should something go wrong or should some difficulty arise, he is ready to intervene in order to correct the situation." In one of his earlier commentary to my posts -- one in which I compared
Grice's account of 'free will' (and neurophysiological jargon attending it)
with his account of the 'causal theory of perception', Doyle wrote, "You
lose me there", or words to that effect, but I think this connects with
WoW:240. In a way, this complication that Grice saw regarding 'perceive' Grice
may be overlooking regarding 'doing'. Back in 1961 he wrote (WoW:240):
"I suggest that the best procedure for the Causal Theorist is to indicate the mode of causal connection by examples; t say that, for an object to be perceived by X, it is sufficient that it should be causally involved in the generation
of some sense-impression of X in the kind of way in which, for example, when I look at my hand in a good light, my hand is causally responsible for it looking to me as if there were a hand before me, or in which ... (and so on), _whatever that kind of way may be_; and to be enlightened one that question, one must have recourse to the specialist." ---- or physical therapist, as it were, if the gymnastic instructor has uttered his instruction and, one's monitoring notwithstanding, the wretched right arm stays low. "should something go wrong or should some difficulty arise" -- indeed. But ceteris paribus we trust it won't -- and causation and free will remain 'friends'. It is only THEN, on that second bit of p. 33 that Grice goes on to provide the four-stages which involve (as per stage 2 that of a 'free moving'
body, as per stage 3 the idea of 'free' in biology, and as per stage 4 the, as
it were, full Kantian-Hegelian freedom of spirit) and the concluding
remarks on that noumenal-phenomenal monumental conflict with which Grice found
himself coming, in a way, to good terms. He considers various topics and concludes that essay with a four-stage development of the idea of "free" Stage I -- the realm of Democritus, really -- and before him Leucippus. These authors did wrest to give man some freedom, but ironically they were the main proponents, even unwillingly, of Determinism. This first stage then, for Grice, involves whatever the kosmos or universe would look like if it were "free"-free. Stage II. This is an interesting stage in that it involves "cosmological" versus psychological "free". Here Grice refers to the "freely moving body". Stage III. This is the stage that Kant had referred to as "arbitrium brutum". Grice is more serious than Kant here, since with Aristotle, he considers that "soul" can only be understood in a "series". So this is the level where "free" applies to things which do NOT count as the "rational" soul.
Stage IV. This is human freedom per se. It corresponds to Kant´s "liberum arbitrium" proper, and Aristotle´s idea that things are up to us. We have seen in "Causal theory of perception" and "Intention and Uncertainty" that causality plays a crucial role in much of Grice's thinking (cfr. his analysis of 'know' in WoW:iii). For Grice it seems essential that it's the BELIEVING that causes the willing, and so on. Grice concludes his "Actions and Events" then with a note on 'freedom'. He writes: "Finally, it is essential [that I should give] proper attention to the place occupied by ... freedom in any satisfactory account of action." (p. 33). Features such as "agency", as it involves "activity and purpose (or intention) are ... "best viewed as elements in a step-by-step development" of freedom. Grice distinguishes then four stages: A first stage, of "transeunt" causation: in inanimate objects. Hume's realm -- the atomists's realm. This is "external or 'transeunt' casuation," "when an object is affected by processes in other objects." A second stage of 'internal' or "immanent" causation: where a process in an object is "the outcome of previous stages in that process, as in a 'freely moving' body." A third stage: where "Internal causation of living beings" (Huggins will like that -- also Lucy): "in which changes are generated in a creature by internal features of the creature which are NOT earlier stages of the same change ... but independent
items, the function (or finality) of which is ... to provide for THE GOOD of the creature in question." Finally, a fourth stage: "a culminating stage at which the conception of a certain mode by a human .... of something as being for that creature's good is SUFFICIENT to *initiate* the doing of that thing." Grice expands on this interesting last stage: "At this stage, it is ... the case that the creature is LIBERATED ... from all factive causes." Grice's shopping list: "Attention to ... freedom calls for formidably difficult ... undertakings" including the search for a justification for the adoption (or abandonment) of an (ultimate) end. The point is to secure that freedom does not 'dissolve into compulsion or chance' (p. 34). Grice proposes four items for the shopping list. The motivation: POINT I: "full action calls for 'strong' freedom". POINT II: The desire-belief characterisation of action has to accomodate for the fact that we need freedom which is strong. "Strong freedom ensures that some actions are represented as directed to ends which are not merely mine, but which are also FREELY ADOPTED or pursued by me." Speranza's marginal note: "Not in "Raise your arm!"" POINT III: "Any attempt to remedy this situation by resorting to the introduction of (a) CHANCE or (b) causal INDETERMINATION will only infuriate the scientist" -- not the ones D. Frederick knows who are all Heisenbergians -- "without aiding the moral philosopher" -- or even the immoral one, as I prefer! POINT IV: "The precise nature of 'strong' freedom ..." turns out to consist, we hope, in 'the idea of action as the outcome of a certain kind of 'strong' valuation'. This strong valuation "would include the rational selection [as per rational decision theory --] of ultimate ENDS." What Grice elsewhere calls outweighed or extrinsically weighed rationality. It's the end that is rational, not the means towards the end. There is a different line, which Grice also pursues: "Action (full human action) calls for the presence ... of reasons ... which require that the actions for which they account shoud be the outcome of strong rational valuation." Both lines, Grice notes, "suggest that action requires both strong freedom and strong valuation." How to adapt the desire-belief psychology to reach these goals: "In the case of ultimate ends," Grice writes (p. 35), "justification should be thought of as lying (directly, at least) in some outcome not of their FULFILMENT but rather of their PRESENCE-AS-ENDS." A second point involves: "My having such and such an end, E1, or such and such a combination of ends, would be justified by showing that my having thi send, ... will exhibit some desirable feature (... that the combo will be harmonious -- [for how can one combine one's desire to smoke with one's desire to lead a healthy life?]". A third point: "the desire-belief psychology" is "back in business at a higher level". "The suggestions would involve an appeal, in the justification of ends, to HIGHER-ORDER ends which would be realised by having first-order ends, or lower-order ends of a certain sort. Such valuation of lower-order ends lie within reach of the desire-belief pscyhology." A caveat: "The higher-order ends involved in the defense would themselves stand in need of justification, and the regress ... might well turn out to be vicious". Talk of moral philosophers. Grice concludes: "So, attention to the idea of freedom" -- and Doyle's free-will scandal, "may lead us to the need to resolve OR DISSOLVE the most important unsolved problem of philosophy". "Namely: how we can be at the same time members" as Kant and Grouch Marx wanted us, "both of the phenomenal and the noumenal world". "Or, "to put the issue less cryptically, to settle the internal conflict between one part of our rational nature -- the SCIENTIFIC part which [pace Danny Frederick] calls or seems to call for the universal reign of deterministic law [cfr. D. Frederick's research with N. Cartwright] and the OTHER part which insists that not merely MORAL RESPONSIBILITY [Doyle's topic] but EVERY variety of rational belief demands exemption from just such a reign." On a funnier level, Albritton concluded his talk on free-will for the A. P. A. (presidential). "I will have to stop now. Thank you."
"Retrospective Epilogue": Grice on paradigm-case arguments. The sad thing is that 'rise' fares no much better. Russell criticised this by saying that English is wedded to a stone-age metaphysics. Grice corrected him. "Stone age physics, strictly". It may be some animism in talk of bridegrooms marrying for 'free' (will). Surely: while there may be no social pressures, there must be some sort of
pressure. I mean, is this what Flew is suggesting (or implicating). He
seems to be objecting to _social_ pressures. But what about pressures that come
from the man needing to marry the girl for pressures other than social?
What if he is following some atavic 'animal' instinct (to 'own' the girl, as
it were). I'm pleased that B. Doyle found of interest Flew's brilliant reference to Hume in "Philosophy and Language". Grice discussed 'cause' extensively in
WoW, reprinting earlier essays. It may be that 'cause' is often misused, too -- as "on his own free will". After all, as Hume noted, 'to cause' may well derive its meaning from 'to will' but it would be otiose, says Grice, to think that
Charles I's decapitation willed his own death. (* Grice: "Alternatively, the paradox-propounder might agree that an ordinary expression, of the kind which he is assailing (e.g. "Decapitation was the cause of Charles I's death" [or "He married the girl he loved of his own free will"] would be used to describe such a situation as that actually obtaining at Charles I's death (i.e. it would be used to describe an ACTUAL situation and not merely an _impossible_ situation); but then he might add that the user of such an expression ['cause', 'free will'] would not MERELY
be describing the situation but also committing himself to an ABSURD GLOSS
on the situation (e.g. that Charles's decapitation willed his death [since
'to cause' is to 'will' in animistic parlance]..." I think one example that Watkins challenged Flew was the point about 'witches' and 'miracles'. I am not too familiar with URMSON's own use (allegedly the first, simpliciter) of the argument. I know Grice/Stawson saw their use in "A defense of a dogma" as a
paradigm-case argument for 'analytic' (contra Quine) and that Grice saw Paul, "Is
there a problem about sense data" as PCA. Also Urmson. Grice: "In the Athenian dialectic, moreover, though both interpretations" ---- e.g. "That's up to me!" "are needed, the dominant one seems to be that in which what is being talked about is common opinions" ------- e..g that Democritean determinism is false, since some actions are 'up to us' "eph'hemin", par'hemas"). Grice goes on: "not commonly sed locutions or modes of speech. In the Oxonian Dialectic, on the other hand" --- usually the right, of course. "precisely the reverse situation seems to obtain. Though some philosophers, most notably G. E. Moore, have maintained that certain commonly held beliefs" ---- such as Galen Strawson's faith in the inexistence of free will -- just joking! "cannot but be correnct and though versions of such a thesis are discernible in certain Oxonian quarters, for example in Urmson's
treatment of Paradigm Case Arguments, no general characterisation
of the Method of "Linguistic Botanizing" carries with it any claim
about the truth-value of any of the specimens which might be
subjected to Linguistic Botanizing". Grice is suggesting that even if wrong, the belief, "He married the girl he loved on his own free will" should prove interesting enough. While Grice, knowing Russell (he said he didn't have a 'will' or could recongise it in him), would agree that the study of English would perhaps not be "a proper object for first-order devotion", "this fact would NOT prevent
something derivable or extractable from stone-age physics, perhaps some
very general characterisation of the nature of reality, from being a proper
target for serious research; for this extractable characterisation might the
the SAME as that which is extractable from, or that which underlies,
twentieth century physics." Cfr. Eddington on the 'free' electron, discussed by B. Doyle. Apply that alla paradigm-case argument with other uses of 'free'. How do you teach, "The electron is free"? --- Grice goes on: "Moreover, a metaphysic embedded in ordinary language [as when we say, "He married the girl he loved on his own free will"] (should there be such a thing) might not have to be derived from any belief about how the world goes wich such language reflects; it might, for example, be
derived somehow from the categorial structure of the language." Indeed, if this link to this Russian author who thinks 'eleutheric' should be preferred to 'free' in that 'free' fails to recognise a distinction made fairly evident (not to me) in the grammar of Russian. Grice goes on: "Furthermore, the discovery and presentation of such a metaphysic might turn out to be a properly _scientific_ enterprise, though not, of course, an enterprise in PHYSICAL science. A rationally organised and systematic study of reality might perhaps be such an enterprise; so might some highly general theory in formal semantics." (Reply to Richards, 1986, p. 53). Grice reminisced on this as he referred to the Austinian code of sacrosanctity of English, and stuff.
"Notes with Judy" (nondated). Grice's notes from the early 1980s show him applying *the familiar techniques of 'linguistic botanising'* to the concept of freedom. He jotted down phrases such as "alcohol-free", "free for lunch", "free-wheeling" and lists many possible definitions, including "liberal", "acting without restriction", and "frank in conversation".
Conclusion. "If philosophy generated no new problems it would be dead," Grice comments, and don´t we agree!
References
GRICE H. P. 1941. Personal Identity. Mind, repr. in Perry, Personal identity, 1975. Berkeley: University of California Press.
--- 1953. G. E. Moore's and Philosopher's Paradoxes. Repr. in WoW.
---. 1961. The Causal theory of perception, repr. in Warnock, Oxford readings in philsophy, repr. in an abridged format (sans section II) in WoW.
---. 1963. Lectures on trying. Brandeis University
---. 1966. Logic and Conversation. The Oxford lectures.
---. 1967. Logic and Conversation. The William James lectures, repr. in a revised form in WoW.
---. 1971. Intention and uncertainty. Proceedings of the British Academy
---. 1971-1973. Probability, desirability, and mood operators.
---. 1975. Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre. Proceedings American Philosophical Association, repr. in Grice 1991.
---. 1977. The Kant Lectures on Aspects of reason.
---. 1986. Actions and Events. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.
---. 1986. Reply to Richards, in Grandy/Warner, Philosophical grounds of rationality: intentions, categories, ends. Oxford: Clarendon.
---. 1987. Retrospective epilogue to WoW: 1989.
---. 1989. Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press.
---. 1991. The conception of value. Oxford: Clarendon
---. 2001. Aspects of reason. Oxford: Clarendon
---. With J. Baker. Davidson on weakness of the will. In Vermazen/Hintikka, 1985. Essays on Davidson's Actions and Events.
---. (nondated). Notes with Judy. ('alcohol-free', 'free for lunch', 'free wheeling'). The Grice Papers.
---. (nondated). Seminar on Freedom. The Grice Papers.
---. Freedom and morality in Kant´s foundations. The Grice papers.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
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