Grice on dthis and dthat

Speranza

Jones writes in "Maggee", etc.

"I am always interested in critiques of one man's analytic philosophy in the terms of another's. And also in the dispossessed or marginalised, those who might possibly have become academic philosophers had not their philosophical inclinations been too far removed from the prevailing orthodoxy of their day or whose philosophy was conducted in some more liberal context sheltered from the critical gaze of the principle centers of analytic orthodoxy. In that category I count Gellner, Berlin, and Magee, possibly Murdoch and in all of these cases the orthodoxy of their youth was probably "linguistic philosophy". Why not Popper, Lakatos, ...? In these terms perhaps LSE is a haven for philosophical unorthodoxy. Well I don't feel that Popper and Lakatos were marginalised. Perhaps it's just an Oxford thing I am groping at, since Gellner, Berlin, Magee and Murdoch were all in some way dissenting Oxonians."

Too true.

--- Keyword: ALWAYS (or all-ways, as I prefer) Oxford.

Jones:

"It had not occurred to me that Dummett should be thought outside the fold of linguistic philosophy until Speranza's recent postings about his critical attitude towards Austin. I suppose to make sense of this we must distinguish between "linguistic philosophy" and "ordinary language philosophy", and say that Dummett may not have been an "ordinary language philosopher" but he was certainly a linguistic philosopher."

Too true. It is fun to see how his books are 'catalogued' by the British library, say, or the Library of (the American) congress. "Philosophy of Language". I would think the serious keyword here is:

'philosophy of Language' -- but this is tricky, since "Philosophy of X" is "ALL-ways" second-rate when it comes to philosophical methodology: "Metaphysics" is fine, but "he was a philosopher of language" cannot be complimenary -- ever.

Jones goes on:

"[Dummett] was a linguistic philosopher because he gave primacy to philosophy of language, and because he seems to have subscribed to a point of view which Magee singled out for especially thorough refutation in his "confessions of a philosopher".
If we take this view (which I will explain shortly) then we can see Grice's philosophy as moderating not only the extremes of Austinian ordinary language philosophy, but also the extreme of linguistic philosophy which Dummett inhabited."

Good. Will check this out!

Jones:

"The doctrine which Magee singled out for special obloquy is the argument for the primacy of linguistic philosophy on the grounds that thought is essentially linguistic."

Mmm. Echoes of Peacocke?

I treasure a little chapter, by Peacocke, somewhere, "Thought and Language" (or "Language and Thought" -- I never recall).

Jones:

"When we sit silently chewing the cud, the argument goes, our thinking is a stream of bits of language which we just happen to refrain from articulating.
Since all thought consists of propositions expressed or repressed, the philosophy of language has prime place, and a study of language is an essential part of any philosophical enterprise. This is a doctrine which Dummett does explicitly subscribe to, somewhere, perhaps in his "Is analytic philosophy systematic and should it be?"."

Echoes of that UNPUBLISHED lecture by Grice -- for years. The very last "William James" lecture on "Logic and Conversation" (WoW:vi). It's all about the alleged primacy of "mean" (meaning) -- Grice's prefered locution -- over thought, or vice versa.

---

Jones:

"Dummett also at least some of the time, and particularly in his attempt to provide a philosophical justification for intuitionistic logic. The analogous caricature of Austinian ordinary language philosophy would be that philosophy is just the study of ordinary language, and the advancement of our understanding of this instrument through a detailed analysis of its use. This nominally as a prelude to the resolution of extra-linguistic philosophical problems. This seems to be the line in Austin's "A Plea for Excuses", which is his most explicit metaphilosophical pronouncement. The Austin of "Sense and Sensibilia" is using observations about ordinary language in a critique of a philosophical argument concerning a problem which is not itself purely linguistic. But the Austin of "Doing things with words" seems to have moved on from criticising a philosophical position to practicing a new kind of philosophy consisting primarily or exclusively in the study of language through its non philosophical manifestations."

Indeed. There probably is more continuity in Austin's thought (I love that: 'the continuity of ...' -- e.g. "The continuity of Middle English philosophy from Beowulf") than his manuscripts suggest.

Recall that "How to do things with words" was never thought by Austin to be published. Urmson did that for him! And on top of that, Oxford engaged Marina Sbisa to finish the thing! ---- The "Sense and sensibilia" was, also, never meant for publication by Austin. Warnock did that for Austin, since Warnock's ego moved Warnock to have Austin's discussion of Warnock in the latter lectures (Austin focuses on Warnock's booklet on Berkeley).

I think there is a lot of continuity in Austin's oeuvre, as there is in Grice's oeuvre, but we have to consider, almost, year-by-year dating of publications and unpublications, and separate the 'public' Austin from the more personal philosophical Austin, and so on. I'm pleased I'm not an Austinian, or else this would be the Austin Club (or something).

Jones:

"My impression is that Grice doesn't himself fit in with either of these extremes.
His essay on philosophical method and ordinary language in WOW suggests: firstly, that philosophical analysis is a kind of conceptual analysis (which surprises me a little, I would not have thought that consistent with the whole of his philosophical output); secondly, the assertion of an "unswerving association" of philosophy with the study not just of language but of "ordinary language""

What a beautiful word.

--- begin quoted text:

swever, early 13c., "to depart, make off;" early 14c., "to turn aside, deviate from a straight course," probably from O.E. sweorfan "to rub, scour, file" (but sense development is difficult to trace), from P.Gmc. *swerbanan (cf O.N. sverfa "to scour, file," O.S. swebran "to wipe off"), from PIE base *swerbh-. Cognate words in other Germanic languages (cf. O.Fris. swerva "to creep," M.Du. swerven "to rove, stray") suggests the sense of "go off, turn aside" may have existed in O.E., though unrecorded. The noun is recorded from 1741.

---

Jones:

"But an association is not an identification, so there is some softening there. Grice associates the opposition to this point of view (thinking of Russell and Quine) with "scientism". This critique is probably even more applicable to Rudolf Carnap"

--- intersting. Grice will re-quote "Scientism" later in his "Method" -- by this time, it has become "The devil of Scientism" (big quote repeated elsewhere, etc.).

Jones:

"[This critique is probably even more applicable to Rudolf Carnap] who, because of his dedication to the formalisation of science and his conception of science as encompassing all systematic study of empirical or synthetic truth, does at least regard the study of ordinary language as empirical science (and the kind of philosophy which he practiced as a deductive/demonstrative science insofar as it establishes new truths rather than proposing new languages and methods)."

Interesting. There are various points here:

---- I would associate Carnap indeed with that grand movement, American in spirit, apparently, of the "Unified science".

--- the other point is sublter. When I was studying kewords, I made a distinction between

philosophical linguistics

and

linguistic philosophy.

Indeed, 'philosophical linguistics' seems oxymoronic, since, since Saussure, linguists have NOT been _too_ philosophical. By registering Carnap's attitude towards things such as 'pragmatics' as the empirical study of assertion and belief, say, in that little essay that we have discussed elsewhere with Jones, Carnap seems to be minimising linguistics, and linguistic philosophy (into the bargain) so! I don't mind about his minimising empirical linguistics (I guess) --. But then I would disagree that what Austin or Grice are doing is 'empirical' linguistics alla Naess. They are more into Kantotelian linguistics. For Austin (and more so for Grice) the study of language is important because it is a study of _categories_. And categories can come in ontological, cognitive, AND linguistic format.

---
SOME empirical linguists (notably Whorf) emphasised this. But others (notably Chomsky and his followers, such as some of the early Griceains) did not, and rather stuck with relative paradigms of a given language AS if they were universalia, without knowing (or something like that).

Jones:

"Sorry, I think I must have lost my thread. I am trying to get a better handle quite generally on the kinds of philosophical analysis which have been proposed or practiced and their relationships, which seems like an enterprise of unending complexity, since it is in the nature of philosophy not only that no two philosophers share a common philosophy, but probably also that no two share the same conception of what philosophy is or how it should be done. Making an illuminating story out of this (which is what I am trying to do) is a bit of a challenge, and I am interested especially in how my own limited conception of 20th Century philosophy looks wrong to others (particularly in how it exposes my extensive ignorance!)."

Not at all. It's very simple! You love to make things complicated, which I love!

-----

("It's very simple!" is an utterance of utter complexity).

It all starts with the first Witters. (When philosophers engage to discuss the history of 20th century philosophy -- they HAVE to mention Witters). His "Tractatus". This is ONE language. Then there's the second Witters: the USES of language.

Then there's the Unified Science Movement. Carnap noted one big complication of this: physicalism versus phenomenalism. Given the complexities of quantum physics, say, why bother to formalise, in first-order predicate calculus, what physicists are saying? They may not even know it (Echoes of Dummett: "metaphysics is an examination of the philosophy of physics").

Then comes Austin. It is best to understand Austin in terms of how philosophy (how BORINGLY) philosophy was conducted in Oxford before he came. Try to read any pre-Austinian philosopher! They are just impossible! -- Bradley, Prichard (realism), Cook Wilson. Big words! Big manifestos. Ryle softened this a bit, with his irreverencies. But Austin set the thing _on fire_. He thought: 'let us focus on how 'know' works -- perhaps it works 'performatively', as I might say'. And so on. His students were FASCINATED (except Dummett, -- and the female philosophers Murdoch and Anscombe).

Austin exerted a fascination NOT ONLY On his students (this is understandable) but on people like GRICE who was only TWO YEARS his junior!

--- The rest is history!

In the case of Grice, he starts to get serious when he tries to systematise on what he was doing.

Recall that in 1967, in "Logic and Conversation", he chose himself as an example of a linguistic philosopher. He lists like 16 philosophers, mostly obscure. One philosopher he cites is NOT obscure. He refers to his own,

"Causal theory of perception", 1961.

He starts to wonder what he meant by 'implication', as it applies to the phenomenalist verb, 'seems':

That red pillar box seems red to me.

Why not 'is'?

This 'doubt-or-denial' implication, is it part of the _sense_ of 'seem'? It's not!

----

Things sometime seem as they are!

---

So, Grice is bringing in a caveat: the analysis of use versus meaning or over meaning should take into consideration that conditions of use do not specify conditions of meaning necessarily (contra Witters I and Witters II).

---

By this time, he was finding 'enemies' in Strawson (who had said that 'and' and "&" have different _meanings_ -- in "Introduction to Logical Theory") or with much younger (and American) philosophers like Searle. I like to think of Grice's "Logic and Conversation" as a response to Searle, "Aberrations and modifications", in British Analytic Philosophy.

---

Grice has the answer. He thinks that we need a theory of lingo (or language) as a rational activity. This should explain things like the scale:

seem, is.

know, believe

3,2,1,...

etc.

We say 'seem' when we think 'is' would be too strong a thing to say. We say "There are four apples" in the basket, when we think that to say that there are 3 apples is too soft or weak a thing to say (when there are four -- surely if there are 4 apples, there are 3 apples).

---

He then needs to evoke the rule by which we play:

'be strong, unless you kant' -- in the things you say. The category of Quantity, as he later relabelled.

No other philosopher had considered these pragmatic categories, almost.

Nowell-Smith HAD, in his "Ethics", when he speaks of 'relevance' and 'sincerity', or Urmson in various papers, as Austin. Indeed Strawson himself had pointed to a principle of relevance, and a principle of ignorance (and of knowledge) explaining our use of 'definite descriptions'.

In this light, Grice comes out as bringing to the fore the rationale behind various uses of locutions of philosophical interest.

Philosophers had been loose in their wordings. Take L. J. Cohen, who was teaching at Oxford at the time. His "Diversity of Meaning" and later work suggests that we can very well 'multiply' senses, as we need them. Grice finds Rationalism a better practice. In the proceedings, he finds alliances with Aristotle and Kant (his Kantotle) which helps...

Philosophers who examine Grice only for his contribution to this or that (dthis or dthat, in Kaplan's parlance) but are unware or uninterested in the continuity of his thought are bound to ignore this or that, but that's life!

----

And so on!