Grice on the 'existence of a universal' and Metaphysics 1003a7

Speranza

Jones was mentiong that Grice was mentioning in the "Aristotle on the multiplicity of being" paper that Grice reads a certain passage in Aristotle's Metaphysics -- 1002a7-- as asserting that (in Grice's words):

"the existence of a universal requires not just the
possibility but the actuality of an item which
instantiates that universal ..."

Jones comments:

"if this were the case, and if the
variables in the propositional forms were taken as varying
over universals, then we would be talking only of "non-
empty" terms, perhaps supporting the Robin Smith line [in the entry for Aristotle in SEP]."

I will elaborate from some notes in the Grice papers -- (c) Grice/Strawson.

The reference is

Grice, "Notes for Categories with Strawson", H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Grice and Strawson taught together, covering the topic of categories.

----

Grice's and Strawson's topic of categories dated, of course, back to Aristotle, and Kant.

Grice's and Strawson's is a type of DESCRIPTIVE METAPHYSICS, in that it involves the analysis of the ontology embodied in ordinary language.

Grice valued his joint work with Strawson very highly, and commented late in his life that he had always kept the manuscripts with him.

These manuscripts are accompanied by rough notes indicating something of their working method.

Grice and Strawson apply a distinctively Austinian approach to Aristotle's metaphysics, experimenting together to see which itemscan successfully combine with others, trying out combinations of

POSSIBLE SUBJECTS AND POSSIBLE PREDICATES.

Notes in Grice's hand record that

"healthy"

can be applied to, or predicated of:

--- person
--- place
--- occupation
--- institution

while

"medical"

can be applied to

--- lecture
--- man
--- treatise
--- problem
--- apparatus
--- prescription
--- advice.

Grice notes that the neutral term,

"employment"

can cover the importantly different terms 'use', 'sense', and 'meaning', and that here it is perhaps most appropriate to say that the

predicate

has a particular range of 'uses'.

---

The notions of 'sense', 'meaning' and 'use' need to be distinguished not just from each other, but betweeen discussions of sentences and of speakers.

---

'Need to distinguish all these from cases
where SPEAKER [or utterer] might mean so-and-so
or such-and-such but wouldn't
say that of the sentence', he notes.

----

"Jones is between Williams and Brown"

""Jones is between Williams and Brown" either SPATIAL ORDER or ORDER OF MERIT, but _doubtful_ this renders it an ambiguous sentence".

Cfr. later on 'French' and 'contextual ambiguity', in "Aristotle on the multiplicity of being".

depends on what you mean by 'between'.

---

The notes also explore the difference in grammatical distribution between
substantial and non-substantial nouns.

"Mercy"

can be both referred to and predicated, whereas

"Socrates"

can only be referred to.

In other words, it seems that although both substantials and non-substantials can occupy SUBJECT position, substantials must be seen as the PRIMARY OCCUPIERS of this slot because they cannot occur as predicates.

To demonstrate this point, Grice distinguishes between

ESTABLISHING EXISTENCE

by referring to, and by predicating expressions.

The distinction is established by means of comparison between two short dialogues. The following is perfectly acceptable; evidence is successfully offered for

THE EXISTENCE OF A UNIVERSAL [tota] by predicating it of a particular:

A: Bunbury is really disinterested.

B: (a) Disinterested persons do not exist.
---(b) Real disinterestedness does not exist.

A - (a) Yes, they do: Bunbury is really disinterested.
--- (b) Yes, it does: Bunbury is really disinterested.

----

In contrast, descriptive statements DO NOT guarantee THE EXISTENCE
OF THEIR SUBJECTS, but rather stand in 'a special relation'
to statements of existence. This special relation is, Grice and
Strawson note, elsewhere called 'presupposition'.

It seems at this stage at least, Grice was prepared to endorse Strawson's response to Russell. The following is 'not linguistically in order':

A: (a) Bunbury is really disinterested.
---(b) Bunbury is in the next room.

B: There is no such person as Bunbury.

A: (a) Yes, there is, he is really disinterested.
---(b) Yes, there is, he is really in the next room.

----

Producing a sentence in which something IS PREDICATED of a substantial subject is NOT enough guarantee the EXISTENCE of that subject.

Grice and Strawson note that the situation would be quite different if 'in the next room' were substituted into A's response.

Here, A's choice of predicate does more than just offer a description of Bunbury: it points to a way of verifying his existence.

Our use of language, then, very often presupposes the existence of substantial subjects.

Furthermore, substances are in a sense the basic, or primary objects of reference.

Grice and Strawson admit that they have no conclusive proof of this latter claim, but they offer their own intuitions in support, presumably drawn from their experiments with substantial and non-substantial subjects.

Further, substances are, in general, what we are most interested in talking about, asking about, issuing orders about; 'indeed the primacy of substance is deeply embedded in our language'.

----

Grice will indeed later suggest taht the closest echoes of this joint work were in Strawson's "Individuals", subtitled 'an essay in descriptive metaphysics', as opposed to revisionary.

But there are also resonances of the joint project in various aspects of Grice's own later work. Two points from the end of "Categories", one a non-linguistic parallel and one a consequence of their position indicate this.

The parallel comes from a consideration of the basic needs for survival and the attainment of satisfaction people experience as living creatures. Processes such as 'eating', 'drinking', 'being hurt by', 'using', 'finding', are entirely dependent on transactions with substances. Grice and Strawson suggest that it is not entirely fanciful to consider that the structure of language has developed to reflect the structure of those most basic interactions with the world.

The relevant consequence of their position relates to a familiar target for ordinary language philosophers: the theory of sense data. If substances are a primary focus of interest, and if the fact is reflected in the language, then this offers good evidence that the world must indeed be substantial in character. If the proponents of sense data were correct, if all we can accurately discuss are the individual sensations we receive through our sense, then 'substantial terminology would have no application'.

And so on.