Grice's Choice -- not Hobson's

--- We want to see if 'free will' is not, as some suggest (my Aunt Matilda) 'pleonastic' (when she uses for her own actions; it's never pleonastic when referring to OTHER people's intentions and dispositions).

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 K3
will 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. (D. F. 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 I once found 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).

Speranza
---- for the Club, etc.