Grice and the anti-metaphysicians

Speranza

Thanks to R. B. Jones for his commentary to my "Carnap [senior first] and Grice in the history of metaphysics" --

a "challenge for the reconciliation of Carnap and Grice", as Jones writes, kindly.

He adds: "I will try to re-sketch the development of Carnap's anti-metaphysics (possibly at Carnap corner) and consider how much and what kind of moderation would be necessary to accommodate Grice's pervasive metaphysics (here)."

Good.

It seems the anti-metaphysical movement that Carnap (and later Ayer) brought to the type of philosophy Grice would be familiar with was broad-ranging.
I recall browsing an interesting book (out-dated, shall we say, today) by Barnes (of Durham University), entitled, "The philosophical predicament". I found some of the text online at

http://www.questia.com/read/55437899/the-philosophical-predicament

and find a whole chapter dedicated to "LOGICAL POSITIVISM AND METAPHYSICS"

It starts with the quote:

"No man who invents words arbitrarily can be sure that he uses
them conscientiously" -- W. HAZLITT, On People of Sense.

Barnes writes:

"The Logical Positivists or, as they sometimes prefer to style themselves, the Scientific Empiricists burn with a fiery zeal for clarity, the clarity of the pure intellect, unspotted with the heat and dust of the practical and emotional life."

"Where once in philosophy "all was conscience and tender heart ", now, with them, all is gleaming intellect and logical acumen."

"They hate opacity."

"For them, what cannot be said clearly had better not be said at all."

"It can reveal only subjective muddle and confusion."

"In order to exorcise obscurity, they proliferate in symbolic inventions and "write a language of their own which darkens knowledge".

There is a footnote here -- and while I should double-check if Barnes refers explicitly to Carnap, he does to Oxonian Ayer:

"This," Barnes writes in the footnote here, "is NOT [emphasis mine -- Speranza] true of Professor Ayer, the chief English representative of the school, who succeeds in being supremely lucid in the midst of great obstacles."

Barnes in writing in 1950, by the time Ayer had left Oxford to settle in London -- hence the title, 'professor'.

Barnes goes on:

"In their [i.e. the logical positivists] hands Occam's Razor has a new and sharper edge, and they apply it with lively and murderous intent, not only to the throat of metaphysics, but to all discourse that fails to conform to their exacting canons."

"They are the dogmatic theologians and heresiologists of the Orthodox Church of Natural Science."

Barnes is using a language that would come out of Grice under attack, too!

----

Winston H. F. Barnes -- an excellent philosopher to consider!

Barnes goes on:

"All clear language is scientific language."

"All scientific language can be referred to actual sense-data for its formulation, provided we understand the logic of the scientific language."

"The true rôle of philosophy is, as the handmaid of science (ancilla scientiæ), to reveal the logical syntax of language."

A reference to Carnap cannot be more direct!

"To do this is at the same time to show that metaphysics is meaningless, poetry is nonsense, and a great deal of history is pure invention [...]."

----- I would think that Barnes would affiliate, in Oxford, with figures like Collingwood, who had a VERY CLEAR idea of what metaphysics was -- the study of 'presuppositions' -- and Grice/Strawson/Pears do deal with Collingwood briefly in their overview essay "Metaphysics" in "The nature of metaphysics" (Macmillan, 1957).

I would be less sure whether Barnes would have anything to do with the younger types like Ryle or Grice.

Note that by the 1950s, Grice would not be regarded as a metaphysician in Oxford at all.

One interesting thing to consider, within the Oxford context, is review who held the chair of Metaphysical Philosophy along the years -- Waynflete Professor, to be more pretentious! :)

The type of anti-metaphysical doctrine brought by the positivists then received different responses, which were not unitary -- and it would be difficult to classify Barnes's.

The Oxonian reply was possibly pretty pluralistic too.

And so on.

(Note that the expression, 'anti-metaphysician', is possibly ill-formed! :)).

Cheers.