Primacy of Substantials

Speranza

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In "Notes for categories with Strawson", The Grice Papers, Grice suggests that our use of language very often presupposes the existence of substantial objects.

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

Cfr. Strawson on 'individual' qua spatio-temporal continuant, and Strawson, "Subject and Predicate in logic and grammar" (Irvine lectures, with Grice).

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

Further, substances (like Grice) 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 and Strawson write,
in a note as if to provoke Hume.

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Grice will later suggest that the closes echoes of this joint work ("Notes for categories with Strawson", the Grice Papers) in published writing were in Strawson's "Individuals".

But there are also resonances of the joint project with Strawson in various aspects of Grice's own work.

Two points from the end of the manuscript fragment, one a non-linguistic parallel, and one a consequence of their position, indicate these.


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The non-linguistic 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.

Cfr.

"I found a sense datum."

"I was hurt by red".

"I drank mercy".

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Grice and Strawson suggest that it is not entirely fanciful to consider that the structure of language has developed to reflect the structure of these most basic interactions with the world.

As Palmer said it: one caveman to another: "Remember when all we had to care about was nouns and verbs?"

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The relevant consequence of Grice's and Strawson's position relates to a familar target for ordinary language philosophers: the theory of sense data, as practiced by verificationists like Berlin, and Ayer.

Grice's and Strawson's argument is in essence a PCA.

If substances are a primary focus of interest, and if this 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 al we can accurately discuss are the individual sensations we receive though our sense, then

"SUBSTANTIAL TERMINOLOGY
WOULD HAVE NO APPLICATION".

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And so on.