Grice's Uncertainties

by JLS
for the GC

WHEN READING Hampshire's and Hart's discussion of intention in connection with decision and intention one is of course reminded of Grice and his emphasis on UNcertainty. He may have gotten this from Prichard, as Hampshire and Hart possibly got their idea of certainty directly from Stout or via Grice's own unpublished piece, "Disposition and intention" (1949) which he was kind enough to circulate among his colleagues.

Now, in his essay on Descartes (1965), Grice considers two uses of 'certain'

x is certain that p.
it is certain that p.

I propose similar dicta for 'uncertain'. It seems Hampshire/Hart are just concerned with 'subjective certainty' (and thus subjective uncertainty). But I think the distinction is still worth making. This may refer to Grice's idea of being on the stage when discussing the philosophy of action.

There is a first-person perspective, where certainty (or for that matter, uncertainty) cannot but be 'subjective'. But there is a third-person perspective (when you ascribe freewill to others say, or when you regard yourself in a third person perspective -- illeism) that in a way connects with usages of 'uncertainty' in areas other than the philosophy and action and more akin to ontology (as when Grice speaks of causal indeterminism, or his 'numerical indeterminacy' in his Ontological Marxism in Grice 1975). But all these things should be elaborated.