Grice on "Izz" and "Hazz": the Kantotelian background

Speranza

There is an online discussion going on between D. O'Brien and R. B. Jones. I'm reporting those bits which concern Grice, for the record.

Jones refers to his

"point of entry into Aristotle."

"My interest was provoked by ... a version
of set of semi-formal principles formulated by [Alan Dodds] Code [former student of Grice at UC/Berkeley]
following his collaboration with Grice on some
Aristotelian studies. Grice was interested inter alia
in "the multiplicity of being", i.e. in whether the
verb "to be" has many different or one single "sense".

D. O'Brien:

"Recall that our own discussion stems from your enquiries
regarding several rather modern interpretations of the
Aristotelian categorical propositions (A,E,I,O types)
w.r.t. 20th c. controversies regarding "existential
import" and "non-empty predicates". Thus our discussion
hasn't been of "being qua being", but of that highly
qualified sense in which being might be affirmed or
denied in a proposition (as defined by Aristotle).
"Being qua being" is discussed in the Metaphysics, and
if I recall correctly, somewhere in those books
Aristotle argues that being has no single highest genus.
I'm quite rusty on the matter since it's been a long
time since I read the books, but for sure Aristotle
distinguishes between the beings of physical and
mathematical individuals, e.g. between a cat and a
number, and in rhetoric he distinguishes many other
kinds of being, metaphorical, representational,
hypothetical, etc."

Jones:

"I am aware of the distinction between the metaphysics and
the organon. However, part of the point at issue with [Alan Dodds] Code was in what
logical context the examination of Aristotle might best be
conducted.
He suggested that it was then common to work with a first
order logic but himself chose to work with some "semi-
formal" notations."

---- Indeed. Grice has a lot to say about First-Order Predicate Calculus With Identity. And indeed, Izz and Hazz diverge from it. There is a way in which they don't.

Ixy
Hxy

i.e. Izz and Hazz would be two-place predicates. And so the logic of Izz and Hazz can be seen as a variety of a first-order predicate calculus, with identity (vide Grice, "Reply to Richards" for his short commentary on First Order Predicate Calculus with Identity -- his locution).

Jones:

"I thought that it would be interesting to see whether the
metaphysics fitted well with Aristotelian logic, and so I
attempted to construct models of both.
I did the syllogism separately at first, and we had some
exchanges on this, and I did a model which encompassed both
the syllogism and certain aspects of the metaphysics,
including the difference between essential and accidental
predication.
I don't believe we discussed this."


Jones:

"In this connection Grice coined two words to
unambiguously express essential and accidental
predication, viz: "izz" and "hazz"."

D. O'Brien objects:

"This is a different question than whether being has a
single sense."

Jones aptly replies:

"It isn't a question at all, but it certainly is something
which any opinion on whether there are multiple sense of
being would need to take into account (to be taken seriously
by me!)."

To be considered later. This is best seen in terms of what Grice calls the Modified Occam's Razor ("Do not multiply senses [not just entities -- 'entia'] beyond necessity" -- entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.).

D. O'Brien:

"Socrates, for example, had a temporal,
ephemeral being contingent on his birth and death dates,
and this is so regardless of the fact that, when we say
that Socrates was human and so Socrates was a mammal,
according as the syllogism this last was predicated
essentially of Socrates in virtue of the definition of
his humanity. Likewise, if Socrates had a pug-nose,
this would be an accidental predication of one and the
same Socrates. Socrates, the subject of these
propositions, isn't being said to have this or that mode
or kind of existence, but is said to be a subject which
this or that quality or property etc. belongs to."

Jones, like me, agrees:

"Well, that is interesting, and it may well bear on the
question which Grice was interested in."

It does. Grice was also pretty obsessed with relative identity, which may bear on this. Consider the first opera ever, "Dafne": a girl, called Dafne, turned into a plant of laurel (In Greek, "laurel" is called "Dafne").

Here we have

a = a
a = b

Grice, following arguments by Geach, and in collaboration with Myro, came to the conclusion that,

Socrates is essentially human --.

If Socrates is changed into a plant of laurel (as he wasn't), the formerly essential predication ("Socrates IZZ human") no longer applies, since Socrates IZZ now a plant.

--- vide Myro, "Identity and Time", in PGRICE. Along with the Code essay (on Grice on izz and hazz) in the "Metaphysics" section of PGRICE.

Jones:

"I have not yet come to understanding of Grice on this, and
in particular I still do not understand what are the
criteria he applies in deciding whether a word has one or
many "senses"."

It's his "Modified Occam's Razor". He coined 'implicature' to save appearances. So we can now argue that, if this philosopher (his target: Owens, the Welsh Aristotelian scholar) had said that, for Aristotle, 'being' bears 'semantic multiplicity' ("The snares of ontology" is Owens's paper cited by Grice), there is a way to deal with that. We can explain the divergence in terms of 'implicature'. Or we can expand on the 'deep berths' of language, and play with the syntax: we would have not just

"S izz P"

as the logical form, but at least two varieties:

"S izz P"

and

"S hazz P".

In other words, Grice, alla Kantotle, brings 'hazz' to metaphysical notoriety.

Jones:

"Up and till now, I had not thought that he was asking about
kinds of existence, but rather about kinds of predication,
which is what izz and hazz are concerned with."

Grice briefly refers to a "Meinongian jungle" in "Vacuous Names", and in "Method in philosophical psychology" he speaks of "Ontological Marxism" (Entities, if they work, they exist"). So his deepest motivation was into kinds of existence.

D. O' Brien:

"I've read of no usage similar to a Grice's "izz" and
"hazz" in either the direct translations of Aristotle,
or the various commentaries that I've scanned through.
I understand the intent behind this coinage, but in
practice I don't see why anyone would require the added
complexity."

It would be good to comment on direct translations from the Greek. Recall that it was Grice's student, J. L. Ackrill, who started the tendency of discussing Aristotle in the local vernacular of Oxford (English) rather than the local vernacular of Athens. (Grice on "Oxonian Dialectic" and "Athenian Dialectic" in Studies in the Way of Words, "Retrospective Epilogue"). "A bad practice", Grice added.

Jones aptly challenges that:

"It does not add complexity.
These words correspond directly to a distinction expressed
by Aristotle which is not clearly made in ordinary language,
and it is just convenient when considering the differences
between accidental and essential predication to be able to
state a proposition in a way which makes it explicit and
unambiguous whether essential or accidental predication is
involved.
When the predicates are themselves variable names there is
no other way to know."

Which was a brilliant thing to say.

----

Jones:

"My formal treatment of the Aristotelian syllogism,
which we discussed on phil-logic, and in which
discussion you eventually persuaded me of the two
points recently mentioned in relation to predication
in Aristotle's philosophy, that affirmative
propositions carry existential import and that there
is no presumption of non-emptyness of the extension of
terms."
"My last combined formal treatment of the syllogism with
this distinction of types of predicate was done before
that happened and is therefore based on the opinion of
Robin Smith that Aristotle should be understood to
presume non- empty term extensions. However, even
without the present revelations (of which more in a
second) this treatment suggests that the theory of the
syllogism is in need of modification once Aristotle's
distinction between essential and accidental
predication (as given in the Metaphysics rather than
the Categories) is taken into account."

O'Brien:

"What "theory of the syllogism" are you talking about
here?"

Jones:

"The word "theory" here has a precise meaning in relation to
the tool ProofPower which I have been using in constructing
models of various aspects of Aristotle's syllogism and
metaphysics.
The result of my formal work is a set of "theories" each of
which consists of some definitions and some theorems derived
from them.
Listings of these theories may be found in appendix A of:
http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/pp/doc/t028.pdf
Nothing I have said should suggest to you that it is my
purpose to "correct" Aristotle, I am simply trying to
understand him (in small part) and his place in the history
of certain ideas."

O' Brien:

"Aristotle's? Do you seriously think Aristotle's
theory of categorical logic has to be modified, as based
on your reading of his distinction between
essential/accidental predications?"

Jones:

"No."

Jones:

"What Maritain tells us presents a further difficulty,
> > if it is intended to be a claim about Aristotle's
> > philosophy (though this seems doubtful given that
> > Maritain was a thomist rather than an Aristotelian,
> > and even then not a blind follower of Thomas but one
> > progressing along the direction he set out, and does
> > not appear to be making, or justifying claims about
> > Thomas or Aristotle, but rather stating his own views
> > on the matters treated by them)."

O'Brien:

"> I don't know on what you base these judgments of
> Maritain's work. I don't know what it could mean that
> "Maritain was a Thomist rather than an Aristotelian"."

Jones:

"Until you mentioned Maritain I had never even heard of him.
On reading your message I consulted the Stanford
Encyclopaedia where he is described along the lines which I
used above.
I then downloaded the PDF of the work which you mentioned,
and consulted just the page you referred to and perhaps a
little of the context.
In saying that Maritain was a Thomist rather than an
Aristotelian I am considering the possibility that the view
expressed by Maritain may not all be opinions which were
held by Aristotle.
It is certainly the case that the medieval logicians went
beyond what is explicit in Aristotle, they do so
notationally by devising the AEIO notation, they do so by
identifying more valid syllogisms.
Maritain is represented by SEP as an original philosopher,
not merely an Aristotelian scholar, and we must therefore in
reading what he says not assume that he is confining himself
to opinions which can be shown to have been held by
Aristotle."

O'Brien:

"> To say that he was a "Thomist" is really no more
> than to say that he wrote his texts specifically for use
> in seminaries of the Catholic church, where there's a
> Thomist tradition, but little more than that."

Jones:
"I would be very surprised if that was what the author of the
SEP article intended to say."

Jones:

"> > Maritain says that the existential import is associated
> > with affirmative propositions only if they are
> > accidental, not if they are essential."

O'Brien:

> Maritain doesn't say anything like that.

Jones:

"Indeed he does not.
Not, at least, in so many words.
What he does say is that an essential predication of the
form "Some A are B" may be true even if there is no A,
provided only that there is some possible A.
I don't know that either he or Aristotle uses the phrase
"existential import", but in my usage of that term affirming
the consistency of a predicate is not what is meant by
existential import.
So I think what he says is "something like" what I said."

Jones:
> > He does not seem to be offering any way in which we can
> > discover whether a proposition is essential or
> > accidental,

O'Brien:
> Maritain does explain the distinction.

Jones:
"I already understand the distinction.
The issue here is whether one can tell whether any
particular predication is accidental or essential.
This presumably one might do from a knowledge of the
meanings of the terms in the proposition, however, in the
syllogistic one works with variables, and from a
propositional scheme such as "B is predicated of all As"
once does not know whether essential or accidental
predication is involved."

Excellent!