Grice, the 'analytic' philosopher

Speranza

We are discussing some claims by L. P. Halpin in his "Analyticity and substantive inquiry". Re:


"if S is analytic in L, the L-speaker is forced to endorse it. If she rejects it, she is reinterpreting the language"
R. B. Jones notes:

"[This seems to overlook] various other possibilities, e.g. that the L-speaker intends to deceive, or that he is simply mistaken (as Fermat might have been but, we now have grounds to believe, was not)."

Perhaps we can play with variants like:

"If Utterer U thinks that an utterance U is analytically true (as he utters it), then U is forced to endorse it."

Etc.

I note that the Grice Collection, at Berkeley, contains notes on "Truth". This was later incorporated in "Logic and Conversation" (Further notes, special subsection on "Truth"). Note that Grice is careful that it's something like 'factually satisfactory' he wants to speak about, not 'true'.

Jones's points about mistake (and attempt to equivocate) are interesting.

I recently came across a nice study: On lying, or the art of equivocation -- the title went.

Surely, for Grice, aequivocatio is a good thing. And I agree: it just means 'same voice' (aequi- voc-). Grice discusses this in his 'third' book: Aspects of Reason, where he claims that "must" bears ony ONE sense (it's the 'same' or equal voice) in both alethic and practical syllogisms:

.p
.p --> q
-----
Therefore it must be the case that q.

!p
!p --> q!
----
Therefore, it must the case that q!

-- with the typical qualifications alla Grice that make that a sensible thing to hold!