Carnap and Grice in the history of metaphysics

Speranza

Thanks to R. B. Jones for his input. To my "Commentary", he noted:


"I look forward to any further elaborations along the lines you mooted."

He also refers to some stuff on "the Pears Metaphysics volume, and were not favourably impressed."

I will try to retrace some of the material.

Jones goes on:

"It is indeed a difficulty in our present context if it is hard to disentangle the views of Grice from the others (and I have never managed to make much of Kant myself)."

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Indeed. As we know, the "Metaphysics" entry in the Pears volume is authored as "Grice/Strawson/Pears". This seems to have been typical with Grice. Recall his "In defense of a dogma" (co-authored Strawson), and "Davidson on weakness of the will" (co-authored with Judith Baker).

On top of that he would ENTANGLE views, as when he refers to Kantotle just to AVOID having to make a separation between the metaphysical views of Aristotle and Kant.

----

(I love the word 'disentangle' and 'entangle'. I notice that in the Latin Dictionary, there is an entry for 'implicatura' as used by Sidonius. It is translated as 'entanglement').

But I think it is worth having in mind Kant, Aristotle, Kantotle, Carnap and Grice -- in their place in the 'history of metaphysics'.

I would think that perhaps 'category' is the key word.

For Aristotle -- since Jones has recently been working on editions of his work -- 'category' is a piece of ontological vocabulary (To say that 'category' is an ontological category -- you can slogan that "Speranza's slogan").

Kant dismissed metaphysics, and 'category' becomes a piece of epistemological vocabulary. For Aristotle categories were ten; Kant reduces them to four.

Grice was enamoured with the number four: his categories of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner -- "conversational" categories he dubs them, genial him! -- are a mark of this.

---- Then came the neo-Kantians.

Then came the positivists. Carnap would dismiss, with Kant, all metaphysical talk, and deem is nonsensical.

This is the early, Viennese Carnap. The latter Carnap would assume a 'pragmatist' view -- while holding that 'external questions', whatever they are, remain senseless. (Also 'external answers', of course).

Then came Grice as a member of the Oxford group of Ordinary Language Philosophers. The first metaphysical steps in the group were given by Strawson.

His "Individuals", an 'essay in DESCRIPTIVE metaphysics", is an attempt to reconstruct metaphysics as per what English says about things like subject-predicate expressions. Strawson meditated on this at a much later stage twoo, notably a 1971 California Symposium at Irvine (with Grice) that transpired as Strawson's book, "Subject and predicate in logic and grammar".

Grice's metaphysical views remained 'ontological'. He, with Strawson, would be concerned with reflections on what 'categories' English commits us to; but he was adopting a pragmatist bend, realising that one has to be tolerant of, say, the ontological scheme of quantum physics, for example (not subject-predicate, but process, rather).

At a very later stage, Grice started to reflect on the 'architecture' of metaphysics as a discipline. And he finds that ontology (the study of categories) is only ONE part of it. The other he called 'eschatology' (borrowing the term from 'theological eschatology', the study of the beyond, as it were). Philosophical eschatology is that branch of metaphysics that looks OVER categories and comes with cross-categorial generalisations.

He applies 'eschatology' to the ordinary use of 'right' in WoW (Way of Words). Socrates would say that 'right' belongs in the moral realm. Thrasymachus would hold that 'right' belongs in the 'legal' realm.

This yields contradictory statements:

"That is right-m but not right-l".

Or

"That is right-l but not right-m"

where 'm' and 'l' are sub-indexes for 'legal' (alla positivism of Kelsen) and 'moral' (alla Macintyre, say).

Grice finds that analogy and metaphor can be used in eschatology to find something in common between 'right-l' and 'right-m'. Since we are encompassing a moral category (of right) with a legal category (of right) it's not ontology we are dealing with, but eschatology.

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In "Actions and Events" (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly), Grice finds himself trying to edit Davidson's essay on the logical form of action sentences ("He hit the ball with the bat"), and failing. He finds in need of EXPANDING on his views on ontology and metaphysics, and it is in this essay that he refers to the Vienna circle and its associates, like Reichenbach.

On top of that, he was teaching "Metaphysics" at the graduate level, and dealing with students writing and opining on these topics. There are tapes at the Bancroft Library which display his routine in dealing with his students in the metaphysics classes -- seriously taking into consideration their observations and trying to provide some elucidatory input (or not).

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Grice was for a while labelled a 'philosopher of language' and this possibly irritated him. When The Department of Philosophy at Berkeley would advertise its faculty in a catalogue, Grice would be listed as "Specialty: Philosophy of Language".

He felt, rather, that philosophy was unique, or univocal, and that to say:

"Grice was a philosopher of language"

is VERY misleading, with the usual implicature, "Grice was a BAD philosopher of language".

So, he found that a way to redeem his own reputation was to make it clear that he could excel in OTHER areas.

The first other area -- and actually his PET area -- was 'philosophy of perception' -- which he undertook in work co-authored with G. J. Warnock. The ontology of 'sense data' is a very hard question.

Then came 'philosophy of action' (the ontology of intentions and desires), which he co-authored with D. F. Pears.

Then ethics, which he co-authored with J. Baker.

For strict metaphysical matters, he relied on the logical expertise of G. Myro, and the Grice-Myro theory of relative (time-relative) identity is an output of this collaboration.

Therefore, when one speaks of Grice's metaphsyical standing one has to view it as his overall philosophical standing. Metaphysics is the first philosophy, which is to say, that in the first place, a philosopher is, first and foremost, a metaphysician.

Or not!