Grice and Dummett on the berths of language

Speranza

Dummett,
The Seas of Language.

Table of Contents.

1. What is a Theory of Meaning?

----- Do we _need_ the word 'theory'? Grice thinks this is 'analysis', rather. Theory is for _psychological_ concepts for which we have no intuitions, but we only work with intuitions when it comes to 'mean'. We don't NEED a theory.

2. What do I Know When I Know a Language?

---- For Grice, 'know' is misused here. We do not need a 'subterranean', as Grice calls it, theory of our underlying capacity to speak or hold a rational conversation.
"know" is misused by people who have not read Warnock carefully enough ("Claims to know", in "Language and Morality").

3. What Does the Appeal to Use Do for the Theory of Meaning?

---- Dummett thought that Grice cared about 'use', but he didn't. Grice was willing to refute TWO slogans:

"meaning is use"

"meaning IS-NOT use" (WoW: prolegomena).

4. Language and Truth

5. Truth and Meaning

6. Language and Communication

7. The Source of the Concept of Truth

8. Mood, Force, and Convention

---- Grice was more careful (thanks to Moravcsik) about 'mode'. "Mood" is a misnomer. The actual word is "mode", as in 'declarative', 'indicative' mode. Grice realised that there is only one mode, the volitive mode, since the judicative mode reduces to the volitive mode ("Method in philosophical psychology").

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9. Frege and Husserl on Reference

10. Realism

11. Existence

12. Does Quantification Involve Identity?

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13. Could there be Unicorns?

14. Causal Loops

15. Common Sense and Physics

--- cfr. Grice on his displeasure with Eddington's Two Tables.

16. Testimony and Memory

17. What is Mathematics About?

18. Wittgenstein on Necessity: Some Reflections

18. Realism and Anti-Realism.