A distinguished-looking person called Paul Grice

Speranza

Jones writes in his post on Grice and extensionalism:

"Speranza has given us an expansion of the characterisation of "extensionalism" by Grice in "Reply to Richards". I can't say this has completely sorted out things for me but I did come away with some useful clues as to what Grice was getting at."

Good.

"Before discussing that, I recapitulate some context."

"I am a substitute Carnap discussing with Speranza pp Grice some topics on which they might have been difficult to reconcile."

"Grice's Betes Noires are a source of examples, and "minimalism" and "extensionalism" are acute examples, for Carnap is certainly minimalistic and extensionalist in some sense, and Grice seems adamantly opposed to some such doctrines."

I think that strictly, but I should have to double-check: Extensionalism is one of the beasts, while MINIMALISM is the general name that Grice prefers to use when seeing the beasts _as a set_, as it were.

Note that if "Extensionalism" is a beast, then Grice's pet is INTENSIONALISM. While to think of Grice as a MAXIMALIST is more of a bit of a stretch (or not).

Jones:

"I have already mentioned one general way in which Grice and Carnap might be talking past each other on this matter, by distinguishing between "dogmatic" and "pragmatic" minimalism."

"A key feature of minimalism for Grice seems to the the denial by the minimalist to others of the use of the kinds of entities which he has discarded."

"For example, a nominalist may deny the existence of abstract entities and hence refuse to accept any ideas or theories tainted by them."

"However, for Carnap, as evidenced by his "principle of tolerance" and also by his "Empiricism Semantics and Ontology", there is no tendency to proscription: he is a minimalist who lacks what seems in Grice to be the principal failing of minimalists."

"Turning more specifically to "extensionalism" we can ask, while acknowledging that Carnap is some kind of extensionalist, whether he is the kind of extensionalist which Grice has in mind, and whether any of the criticisms which Grice levels at extensionalism applies to the kind of extensionalist which Carnap exemplifies."

Excellent point, and consideration.

At this point, it may do to use subscripts, so we can say

minimalism_g
minimalism_c
extensionalism_g
extensionalism_c

where, of course, "g" and "c" stand for our heroes -- Grice and Carnap.

Jones goes on:

"For this purpose a clear definition of "extensionalism" would be nice, but we will have to settle for Grice's rather oblique characterisation and the further refinements we might infer from the detail of his critique. In response to my failing to grasp Grice's characterisation, Speranza points out (inter alia!) that "red" is a property (a universal) while "Paul Grice" is a proper name."

Yes, that is a good way of summing up my "inter alia!"!

----

"I think the story might run on, that universals have meanings and so there is something definite which they attribute but that names do not, they simply refer."

Exactly. Of course, I did some research on the SURNAME, "Grice". In Scots, it means 'pig'. So it _refers_ and connotes. However, oddly, Grice preferred to view himself as an Anglo-Norman. In which case, his "Grice" comes from a French word which means 'grey', a colour, and thus a property.

----

The same hold for "Paul", which of course means 'little' -- as in "St Paul". I'm less sure about Her-bert, but many Germanic names end in -bert, and I BET it is a very meaningful proper name for Grice to have (even if he avoided it -- his father was "Herbert Grice" simpliciter -- and H. P. Grice dropped the "H" in later years -- and would author stuff as just "Paul Grice".

---

More personally, of course, "Speranza" means Hope in Italian and Bishop (as in Roger Bishop Jones) means bishop in English.

Jones goes on:

"This leads us to a story about why this characterisation fails for Carnap, for Carnap does not consider names to be devoid of meaning, not at least in the formal languages with which he is principally concerned."

Good to learn.

Grice would say that names do have meaning -- even VACUOUS ones!

Jones:

"A typical Carnapian method of defining such a language would be to define the syntax of the sentences and then give L-rules and P-rules, in which L-rules determine which sentences are analytic and may be understood as defining the meaning of the language (and the constant names in it). (P-rules express some synthetic scientific theory)."

"Later the meanings of constants are given in "meanings postulates"".

"All this means is that a Carnapian might easily fail to understand Grice's characterisation because he does not think of PROPER NAMES as meaningless."

I think it is, incidentally, rather IMPROPER (in case you are a grammar teacher, and not a philosopher, as Jones is) to refer to names as being "proper".

I think the terminology of "proper name" is confusing -- for surely the antonym is an 'improper name' and we don't want that.

I think P. F. Strawson discussed "proper names" (as they are improperly named) elsewhere. "Congress", for example, becomes a proper name, when the 'the' gets dropped.

----

It's all pretty confusing and difficult.

Note that for the mediaevals, it was just "NOMEN" -- under which they catalogued adjectives too. NOMEN SUBSTANTIVUM and NOMEN ADJECTIVUM. So one has to be pretty careful. I was recently discussing a four-categorial grammatical framework that trades on this, and will see if I can trace the quote.

Jones goes on:


"This is not entirely an eccentricity of Carnap, for his two distinguished predecessors Frege and Russell approached logicism on the basis that anything derivable in a logical system from definitions given in that system is a logical truth."

"That certainly doesn't work for a notion of logical truth which corresponds with analyticity, unless the defined constants have a meaning given in their definitions."

"Of course, they didn't talk about analyticity, but they probably were thinking broadly along the lines of Hume's "relations between ideas" which is essentially the same idea, and Frege thought of logical formulae as if they were mathematical expressions which evaluate to truth values (which leads to Wittgenstein's characterisation of logical truths as tautologies, and thence to the semantics methods in Carnap's "Meaning and Necessity")."

"Further. what Grice seems to have in mind here is that an extensionalist will insist on universals such as "red" being understood as extensions."

INDEED.

It is as we would have the set of individuals -- a, b, c... -- which are RED, and then be able to define

RED = {a, b, c, ...}

---

Jones:

"Red is the set of red objects, so that what we might consider the essential notion of redness is lost, and the explanation of redness is denuded of most of its content."

Indeed. It is THAT type of EXTENSIONALISM_g that Grice is criticising.

In the case of Grice it is different because indeed

GRICE = {Grice}

or something like that.

---

Jones goes on:

"So the second point here is that Carnap is not that kind of extensionalist, at all."

Good. So we would say that

Carnap is not an extensionalist_g but an extensionalist_c. Or something.

Jones:

"Quine perhaps, the disagreement between Quine and Carnap on modal logic (which one might think forced on Quine by his stance on analyticity, given that for Carnap analyticity and necessity are interdefinable) points us in that direction."

"Quine objected to "intensions", but Carnap, though in some sense an extensionalist (to which I may come later), embraced them."

Excellent point. So, yes; I would think Grice may have Quine, rather than surely Carnap, in mind, when he is referring to extensionalists as being minimalists in spirit (if not letter).

----


Jones:

"From here I propose first to give an account of the kind of extensionalist which Carnap might have been, and then to consider whether any of Grice's criticisms hold good of that kind of extensionalist, and if not whether Grice might possibly be reconciled to that kind of extensionalism (and more broadly, to at least some of Carnap's other minimalisms), in a later post."

Excellent.

--- Meanwhile, I'll try to trace that post of this four-categorial scheme, that may apply.

Cheers, and thanks for your commentary.