"Of his own free will": The Implicature Case

--- by JLS
------ for the GC

Doyle has now unburied some excellent quote by Danto in the entry on the paradigm-case argument at the Information Philosopher.

Danto wrote in ways that connect with Grice rather closely. For we have

Urmson -- 1953. First use of 'argument of the paradigm case'. Revue Int. Phil.
Flew -- "Crime or disease" 1954. British Journal of Sociology
Flew -- repeats argument in 1955, "Philosophy and Language" Phil. Quart
Hardie, "My own free will"
Danto 1959 in the journal, "Ethics".

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It connects nicely with the 'manoeuvre' in WoW:I.

This is Danto.

The idea is to analyse the implicature of

"He married the girl he loved of his own free will".

Or:

Danto's example:

"He is free" i.e. "no longer engaged to that girl from Vassar".

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With Grice, Danto would say

"odd, but not yet false"

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This point is presumably ignored by Flew, or Hardie. And the way Danto makes it reminds me of arguments I have had with L. M. Tapper, when Tapper discovered Benson Mates for me (and Stanley Cavell).

Danto writes:

"The occasions on which we might use the expression in ordinary life are really rather special."

"A REPROACHFUL USE OF "you married of your own free will, you know."

---- "You only have yourself to blame".


"There is, of course, the reproachful use: Smith has botched his marriage and cries on our shoulder, so we say "Well, you married of your own free-will.""

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Why is this 'reproachful'. It cannot follow from Strawson's Platitude of Ignorance or Knowledge ("Identifying reference and truth-values"):

For we assume Smith knew that.

Danto:

"We would NOT say this were we sympathetic with Smith, or felt his problem deeply, or were being paid to listen to him, or blamed his wife."

----- for, who needs to be reminded?

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Danto:

"Mainly, HOWEVER, we use the expression only when someone else has said, or thought, that somebody was forced to do something against his will."

---- which is precisely, say, Grice's bone of contention against Strawson's 'ditto' analysis of "it's true" -- failing to grasp the implicature.

(WoW:III -- and one can imagine a way of establishing Danto's point exactly in the way Grice presents those fifteen examples or so in WoW:I.

Danto:

""He did it of his own free-will" then serves to deny such an assertion."

----- Danto's excursus. Philosophical usage, 'recherche' and hardly conversational.

"It is a characteristic (and perhaps a crucial) difference between ordinary and philosophical denials of free-will that willingness is not a component of the latter. The determinist is surely not arguing the patently false proposition that we always act unwillingly, contrary to our will."

---- the Doubt-or-Denial:

"But that, I think, is nearly always what we mean in ordinary life when we say that someone did not act of his own free-will."

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Grice manages to quote himself (for a change) in WoW:I re:

"That pillar box seems red" -- recall he called this, early enough in 1961, the D-or-D condition, doubt or denial. Luckily he didn't edit THAT bit from the "Causal theory" reprint in WoW.

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Danto:

"We mean he was forced to do it. Furthermore, we never say, apropos of nothing, that someone did something of his own free-will."

We don't want no unwanted stinkin' implicatures

---- (No such thing as an 'unwanted' implicature, incidentally!)

Danto:

"Indeed, were someone to tell me that Smith married and add that he did so of his own free-will, I should wonder what he was insisting upon."

Grice's case of "Methinks the lady doth protest too much" in WoW locus classicus "Logic and Conversation":

"And I would gather that there was more to the story than I had been aware of."


Danto's other example:

"Smith is free" (No longer engaged to that girl from Vassar")

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"Now if I am correct in all this, then, I think, even if determinism came to be universally accepted, it would leave this part of ordinary language quite unmodified. For people would still have inclinations, would still sometimes be forced to act against those inclinations, would very likely still seek extenuation, etc. Or they would sometimes be released from certain pressures, restrictions, and obligations. So we should still require the expressions we now employ, e.g., "He did it of his own free-will" or "He is free" (i.e., "no longer in conference," "no longer engaged to the girl from Vassar," "has broken the habit," "is out of jail").

--- and some!