Nowell-Smith's and Grice's "Common Mistake"

by JLS
for the GC

NOT THE ONES IN THEIR THEORIES, but the ones they say in others's!

--

Here some good quotes from Nowell-Smith, "Determinists and Libertarians" (1954) Mind. 63, 317-337

Like Grice, Nowell-Smith is into looking for 'a common mistake'. Grice used that phrase when dealing with informalists versus modernists in the treatment of symbolic logic (WoW, p. 24) and this is Nowell-Smith:

“In this article," Nowell-Smith writes, "I shall try to show first why the determinist objects and why, in the course of objecting, he seems to deny obvious truths, and then that the controversy rests, in part, on a mistaken assumption that is common to both parties.”

And later on,

"[T]he mechanical analogy merges into another well-known analogy, the political. 'My desiring nature' is thought of as another person, different from my 'self ' who attempts to tyrannize over me, to whom I may be a slave. “These analogies are not the inventions of philosophers. They are deeply embedded in our talk about choice and conduct and I shall try to show later why this is so. For the moment I want to show that, so long as the dispute is conducted in these terms the solution must be, not that either party is right, but that they make a common mistake [by Libertarians and Determinists alike] in treating the analogy too uncritically.”

Nowell-Smith represents the first phrase of "ordinary language philosophy". As we know, authors like Austin and Grice would use the occasional technical notion when they thought that 'ordinary language' failed to provide it. It is different with Nowell-Smith who even objects to the use of 'willing' -- even if Tolstoy used it.

"I [will] will him to [turn round]"

Anna Karenina, part v, ch 15, p. 21, cited by Nowell-Smith.

Referring to some words needed of a glossary in the dispute of freewill, he notes:

“From a common sense point of view these expressions are so strained and unnatural that anyone who used them would automatically count as philosophizing.”

The geniality of Nowell-Smith, that was perhaps already forgotten by the time Strawson published his "Freedom and resentment" and having everyone concerned about moral responsibility, is to note that it all amounts to choosing a pear and not a peach.

“No doubt there are many important differences between making an effort to do one's duty and choosing a peach.” But at the common sense level none of the phrases that we use to indicate a free choice ('open possibilities', 'alternative courses', 'could have chosen otherwise') apply to the one rather than to the other. In the last resort it is not the libertarian's belief in freedom in moral contexts, but his denial of freedom IN OTHER CONTEXTS that is paradoxical.”

And Nowell-Smith has MUCH to say about the free choice of a pear. Or is it not always 'free'? (cfr. Kant on arbitrium liberum proper and 'arbitrium brutum').

“At a common sense level it is obvious that all choice is between open possibilities. I cannot choose between a peach and a pear if the possibility of taking a peach is not open to me. And for FREE CHOICE, the possibilities must be genuinely open. For example, although it would be absurd to say that I didn't choose the pear, I hadn't a FREE choice IF I WAS I was threatened or intimidated or too shy or TOO POLITE to take the peach. In general, I haven't a FREE choice if one of the alternatives is too silly, too inexpedient or too immoral to be taken seriously. In such cases we might even say, 'I HAD to take the pear, because Jones so obviously wanted the peach' [And Nowell-Smith is one fo the few who can use “Jones” fairly -- the "Nowell-" was ornamental. His real surname was "Smith"] “I really had no choice. And here the tell-tale 'really ' shows that, of course, I DID have a choice.”

One is free to attend a concert on Tuesday. This example used by Grice 1971 relates to this earlier one by Nowell-Smith:

“As to 'Ought implies can', I shall remark only that when we concede, as we certainly do, that impossibility of performance precludes obligation, we generally have in mind such excuses as ‘I couldn't come because the police detained me [Cfr. Grice “I intend to attend that concert on Tuesday unless the police detains me”],
because of the floods, because my wife was suddenly taken ill, etc. We do not USUALLY allow a person's character, DESIRES or motives to EXCUSE him.”

Cfr. Sinnot-Armstrong, "Ought conversationally implicates can". Nous.

If Hare was concerned with the analysis of 'ought', and Hampshire of 'should', and Grice of 'must', Nowell-Smith's word is 'may' (rather than 'can', even, if Austin chose the latter, "Ifs and cans").

“When we talk of 'possibilities ' in connexion with natural phenomena, we always say something that could be expressed by the use of the modal word 'may’. We say "It may rain or it may not." To add, 'Both possibilities exist' is to add a rhetorical flourish. In the case of human choice we say 'I can (could) do this; but on the other hand I can (could) do that.' In many cases it would be absurd, at a common sense level, to doubt that this is so or that the speaker knows it to be so.”

If Nowell-Smith objects to something like a Prichardian 'willing' as too technical (and jargonistic) he also objects to grand monickers like "Personal identity" (title of Grice's 1941 essay in "Mind") or 'self'. As he notes, we don't say 'self' but 'himself', at most.

"[T]he phrase ' the self ' (as opposed to 'himself', 'myself ', etc.) is not a phrase of ordinary language. And if it is to be introduced, rules for its use must be specified. In particular we must be told what 'self-determined' means and what the criteria of identity ('the same self ') are.”

-- which is of course Grice's puzzle in assuming a Lockean memory-based criterion, rather than a more substantial one.

"Self" is not less enigmatic in constructions of 'self-' as in 'self-forming' or 'self-determined':

"We must be told," indeed, "what 'self-determined' means and what the criteria of identity ('the same self ') are. For example, does 'that was an act of Jones' self ' mean more than 'Jones did it'? It is difficult to see what more it could mean. Yet it must mean more, since those things which Jones does, other than the acts of Jones' self, are said by the libertarian to be determined. Suppose we try to construe 'self-determined' by analogy with other 'self- ' compounds, self-adjusting, self-governing, self-centred, etc.? This will not do. For in none of these cases is there any reference to any special part of the object concerned called the 'self''. For example, the self-centred man does not continually think and talk about his 'self ', but about himself, his actions, desires, motives, exploits, etc., as opposed to other people's. And if 'self-determined' is construed in this way, the theory differs not at all from determinism. For a ' self-determined action ' will be, not an action determined by 'the self', but an action determined by some motive or characteristic of the agent. And, in one form or another, that is just what the determinist asserts.”

Alas, he does not find talk of 'indeterminism' any solution to the problem! (cfr. Grice's reluctance to introduce talk of 'chance and causal indeterminism' in "Actions and Events"):

“It is an old criticism of libertarianism that it makes out voluntary and deliberate actions to be 'chance events', and libertarians are as anxious to deny this 'indeterminist' theory as they are to deny determinism. ... [T]e conception of actions which "issue from the self, and yet not from the self regarded as just the unity of its existing conative tendencies" [to quote from Campbell] cannot be sustained. It must turn out either to be the repudiated doctrine of indeterminism or to be a doctrine in which the 'self' is identified with the whole or a part of what the determinist calls the ' character'”.

--- which does not fare any better for Nowell-Smith.

It would be otiose to consider that, qua ordinary-language philosopher, Nowell-Smith (like later Austin, or Grice) were unconcerned with the "Longitudinal Unity" of this or that problem (e.g. freewill). Nowell-Smith is careful to revise Cambell's detailed arguments in the pages of Mind, and sometimes engages in secondary historical queries, as when he quotes from McDougall, as quoted by Campbell (his main disputant). Here is

"McDougall's description of what it is to make a moral effort.”

McDougall: “Some attempt must therefore be made to show that the effort of volition . . . involves no new principles of activity and energy, but only a more subtle and complex interplay of those impulses which actuate all animal behaviour.... The source of that influx of vital energy which seems to play the decisive role in volition.... The conations, the desires and aversions, arising within this self- regarding sentiment, are the motive forces which, adding themselves to the weaker ideal motive in the case of moral effort, enable it to win the mastery over some stronger, coarser desire of our primitive animal nature and to banish from consciousness the idea of the end of this desire."

Nowell-Smith goes on to apply the techniques of ordinary-language philosophy to these statements which he sees as rather grand:

"[I]f will-energy is just another force, the agent takes the line of least resistance after all, exactly as in McDougall's account, and we are back in the quagmire of determinism.”

In ways that predate problems of higher-level volitions we are familiar with from readings of Frankfurt or Grice, Nowell-Smith criticises McDougall's approach

"[I]f the question of a man's responsibility turns on the use that he makes of his stock of will-energy, it would seem necessary to ask whether he could, on a given occasion, have made more use of it than he did. And this will introduce an infinite regress into the analysis.”

--- which may well turn out to be 'vicious' (to use Grice's sobriquet in "Actions and Events" (1986)).

--- especially in discussing 'akrasia'!