Grice's Uncertainties

by JLS
for the GC

We are considering, with R. O. Doyle, aspects of the early Hampshire/Hart, "Decision, intention, and certainty", Mind, 1958 -- which in being Stoutian, contrasts with Grice's neo-Prichardian Uncertainties (in "Intention and Uncertainty") even if Stout had influenced Grice in his earlier 1948 Meaning and 1949"Disposition and intention".

Hampshire and Hart relate this to the problem of free will -- and indeed Hart and Hampshire will collaborate with D. F. Pears in the lectures on "The freedom of the will".

They write:

"Doubt and certainty about an action are not in this respect essentially different from doubt and certainty about a statement."

"The one is as little, or as much, an act as the other."

"If there are two possible kinds of certainty about one's own future actions -- inductive certainty, and certainty based upon reasons, which is decision -- it is evidently possible that they may on occasion come into conflict with each other."

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The conflict originates the problem.

"This is one part of the problem of free-will."

"Suppose a man to have been offered an appointment."

"He is undecided, and expresses his state of indecision in the appropriate form.

'I am uncertain whether to do it or not'.

:In this state of indecision, and therefore of uncertainty, he asks himself the question-

'Shall I do it or shall I not?'

reviewing reasons for and against, with a view to ending the uncertainty, that is, to deciding."

"If he has confronted choices exactly like this one on many occasions in the past, and if he has always passed through a phase of indecision and then refused, he may acknowledge to himself that this is good evidence that he will in fact ultimately refuse the appointment on this occasion."

"He may confess to having a feeling or premonition that he will ultimately refuse, while saying that he has still not decided."

"But the evidence of his past behaviour, or of the behaviour of people like him, or even the evidence of a well tested psychological law, cannot by itself convince him that he will in fact refuse, if he still maintains that his refusal or acceptance is a matter for his own decision."

"If he is convinced by empirical evidence alone that he will certainly refuse, then he must have been convinced by this evidende that it is

NOT IN HIS POWER NOT to refuse, and that, in spite of appearances, the outcome will

NOT BE DETERMINED

by his decision."

"And there certainly are occasions when a man may in this way adopt a spectator's attitude to his own conduct, convinced by experience, or perhaps even by scientific knowledge, that the appearance of

free decision

is delusive and that, when it comes to the moment of action, he will certainly act in a certain way."

"If he admits that this is his conviction, it would be senseless for him to claim that he was making any decision in the matter."

"Nothing would count as a decision to do that which he is certain on other grounds that he will in any case do, and nothing would count as a decision to do that which he is certain that he will not do."

"A man may decide to try to achieve a result which he thinks, on the basis of evidence, that he will almost certainly fail to achieve."

"But then there must be some action or actions, which constitute the attempt, and which he is certain that he will perform, and certain not on empirical evidence."

"There may be mixed, confused situations in which a man drifts into a course of action,

fatalistically

certain, on the evidence of his own past, that this is the course of action that he will in fact follow, while at the same time not denying that his own conduct in this sphere could be changed by his own decisions."

"He half decides to continue as before, and half feels himself to be passive in the matter, his certainty about his future action being based on a mixture of the evidence of his past behaviour together with reasons for not making the effort to change. The psychology of human decision can be very complicated."

"But the fact that there are these mixed cases does not invalidate the general distinction between the certainty about one's own future action that is based upon evidence and induction, and the certainty that is based upon reasons."

"This kind of certainty, or knowledge, about our own future actions will help to illuminate the concept of intention also."