"I Shall Be Fighting Soon"

By JLS
for the GC

KEWORDS: Aristotle, Grice, future contingents, free will, modes -- and the world at large.


"You're too formal".

In his early "Personal identity" (published in "Mind" in 1941), Grice, who would become a Captain with the Royal Navy, gave an example of a statement involving personal identity:

"I shall be fighting soon"

--- which ended being true -- as involved he was in mid-Atlantic operations. The verb has, as we'll see, Aristotelian connotations. Grice contrasts that with:

"I was hit by a cricket ball yesterday".

The "I" in the second is best replaced by "My body", but the 'fighting soon' seems to involve more of a Lockean account of "I" in terms of at least one or two of different propositional, psychological attitudes.

When reading Chapman's "Grice" I came to understand Putnam. Apparently, Putnam told Grice (in the face).
"You are too formal".
Grice liked to say that he started to avoid formalisms because with J. Baker he was starting to consider new ethical issues (such as the notion of freedom in Kant) which were "less amenable to formalisation" but I'm never to sure.
Consider Chapman's points about Grice on attitude and mood operators. It may be argued that since the Greek language and the English language (say) have such varieties of modes, free will exists. For what would be the point of, say, the imperative mode ("Close the door!") in a deterministic world?
This is Grice -- as cited by Chapman: "Grice argues that structures expressing probability and desirability ... can both be replaced by more complex structures containing a common element. Grice proposes two types of operators, OpA and OpB. In combination, these replace Davidson's pf [prima facie] and pr [probability]. The operators grouped together as OpB represent moods close to ordinary indicatives and imperatives. They can be divided into two types: OpB1 and OpB2, corresponding to /- and ! respectively. A-type operators, on the other hand, represent some degree or measure of acceptability or justification. They can take scope over either of the B-type operators, yielding "OpA1 + OpB1 + p" or "OpA1 + /- + p' for an expression of "it is probable that p" and "OpA1 + OpB2 + a" or "OpA1 + ! + p" for an expression of 'it is desirable that a'. Generalising over [psychological] attitudes using the symbol 'psi' he proposes [further formulae]. There are further, more complex, attitudes, psi-3 and psi-4. These are reflexive. ... Grice notes that for each attitude there are two further subdivisions, depending on whether the attitude is focused on an attitude of x or of some other person. ... Grice suggests an operator Op1alpha, corresponding to each particular propositional attitude psi-3B."
This yields, for Grice, the 'modes', which can be:

1. Doxastic proper. Or "Judicative". A cases: indicative, B cases informative.
2. Boulomaic, or "Volitive". A cases: INTENTIONAL, B cases imperative.
3. Judicative interrogative. A cases reflective, B cases imperative
4. Erotetic or "Volitive interrogative". A cases reflective, B cases inquisitive.

I have not yet applied this to Aristotle. Alas, his example, "There will be a naval battle tomorrow" is a bit on the impersonal side to my taste. What about, "Tomorrow, the admiral will fight". I have not revised the Greek for this. But I assume the English counterpart is pretty complex. Consider 'fight', then.

1. Doxastic or Judicative. Self-cases: indicative. For surely if you say to youself, "I'm fighting" you are not INFORMING yourself that you are fighting. "Informative" is restricted by Grice to cases where the utterer informs some addressee.
2. Volitive. self-cases: intentional. "I intend to fight tomorrow", says the Admiral. Imperative, or other-case: the Admiral addresses his troops with, "Prepare to fight tomorrow". Or "Fight tomorrow with all your might!"
3. Judicative interrogative. Self-cases are reflective. Admiral to hisself, "Should I fight tomorrow?". Other-cases are dubbed "imperative yet interrogative" by Grice, "Should you fight tomorrow?"
Finally, 4. Interrogative but VOLITIVE. The self-cases are again reflective. "Will I fight tomorrow?". The B or other-cases are what Grice dubs "inquisitive". "Will you fight tomorrow?"
Grice revised all this (from his 1971, "Probability, Desirability, and Mood Operators" -- that he cites in his essay in Vermazen/Hinitkka, "Essays on Davidson's Actions and Events") for his Kant lectures for 1977 (repr. in Grice 2001, Aspects of reason). It should relate to issues of freewill, or something.