Grice on Aristotle

Roger Bishop Jones

Though I first began to consider the Grice/Code material on multiplicity of being in Aristotle back in 2009, I worked then primarily from the semi-formal assertions posted by Speranza, and later from the Code version which could be seen on Google books.  At that time I did not have access to either the paper by Grice on multiplicity of being or that paper of Code's (which I think is in PGRICE) and so my activity in the first instance was mainly a formal exercise in seeing whether the collection of propositions represented a coherent semi-formal model (of whatever).

Soon, I decided to try to analyse the matter in conjunction with Aristotle's syllogistic, since it seemed that if formal logical tools were to be brought to bear, then they should involve those of Aristotle, and in this enterprise for lack of access to the detail the project assumed a life of its own and began to be directed by my own interests (to which the difference between izz  and hazz did seem relevant).

My interest in  Aristotle is primarily twofold.
The first part is to understand what contribution Aristotle made towards the later establishment (not to speak of the even later disestablishment) of the analytic/synthetic distinction, and the two closely related distinctions between necessary and contingent, and between the a priori and the a posteriori (passing over the slip into latin).
Aristotle has much to say about all these, the question is how, close was he to the distinctions as they might now be appreciated (or deprecated).

Secondly, and of course closely related, to what extent can we find anything like semantics in Aristotle.

Quite recently I have begun occasionally to go to the British Library and this has improved my access to the literature generally and in particular enabled me to scan both the Grice and the Code papers (though it took me longer to find the Grice because some of his writings, or were they just speakings, were at conferences whose proceedings I never did find.
Still I don't spend a lot of time on this, and I didn't at first get on well with the Grice paper.

I am beginning now to get an idea of what he was about, and find that the distance between his motivations and mine is a lot smaller than I had imagined.


Firstly it is interesting to note that his conclusions connect his analysis with the analytic/synthetic distinction in the following way.
He argues that anyone who accepts his account of unity of meaning (in connection with multiplicity of being) is "not free" to combine it with rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction.
Secondly both his conclusions and his observations about larger issues show that he is very much concerned with meaning (perhaps not quite the same thing as semantics, but closely related) and metaphysics (about which my own brand of positivism is also curious).

So my interest in this work is reinforced as I now become acquainted belatedly with its sources, and it won't be abandoned any time soon (though it will continue to spend most of its time on a back burner).

RBJ