The neurophysiologist's wife

by JLS
for the GC

Grice writes in the final section to his "Method in philosophical psychology".

"The very eminent and very dedicated neurophysiologist speaks to his wife. "My (for at least a little while longer) dear," he says, "I have long thought of myself as an acute and well-informed interpreter of your actions and behaviour. I think I have been able to identify nearly every thought that has made smile and nearly every desire that has moved you to act. My researches, however, have made such progress that I no longer need to understand you in this way. Instead I shall be in a position, with the aid of instruments which I shall attach to you, to assign to each bodily movement which you make in acting a specific antecedent condition in your cortex. No longer shall I need to concern myself with your thoughts and feelings. In the meantime, perhaps you would have dinner with me tonight. I trust you will not resist if I bring along this apparatus then to help me determine, as quickly as possible, the physiological idiosyncracies which obtain in your system." I have a feeling that the lady might refuse the proffered invitation".

The issue relates to 'virtus dormitiva', which Skinner held 'vacuous' when it came to 'psychological explanations'. The issue was taken up by Dennett, and by Grice as per above. Grice is extending the challenge: from soft 'behaviourist' reduction (that always seemed silly enough to Grice) to hard neurophysiological ones.