Carnap and Grice on Aristotle on Metaphysics

Speranza

I once compiled a file for authors "cited by Grice", "that Grice cites". A big percentage of the file contained information such as "not cited by Grice", "does not cite Grice".

This may apply to our case in point.

Jones left a commentary to my "On first looking into Aristotle's metaphysics".

It reads:

"I've not come across any reference to Aristotle in Carnaps writings."

---- So, in my filing system, this comes out as:

AUTHORS CITED BY CARNAP -- alphabetic.
Aristole -- NOT cited by Carnap.

Of course, we can not expect Aristotle to cite Carnap, either.

Jones goes on:

"If you Google for "Aristotle Carnap", one of my long forgotten abortive starts comes up, a page I started when thinking of Grice and Carnap."

OK. So in the filing system this comes out as:

AUTHORS CITING CARNAP and ARISTOTLE:
Jones -- vide 'start'.

This can be fascinating. There is no connection between H. P. Grice and J. D. Salinger (I recently saw his documentary -- he wrote "Catcher in the Rye". But I soon can create one:

Salinger says that he writes for 'himself' (or 'his-self' -- he was an aristocrat). This is anti-Gricean on the surface of it. Or anti-Griceian as I prefer. For, for Grice, to mean is to communicate.

Yet, Grice of course can allow for the fact that a writer, such as Salinger, can write for 'his self' -- and MEAN it!

There you have: A Salinger-Grice connection.

AUTHORS CITING GRICE:
Salinger -- not really, but a connection can be made, vis-a-vis Grice's 7th William James Lecture, where he speaks of 'meaning' and 'thinking'.

Oddly, Salinger's genius lies in his ability to reconstruct implicature-full conversations, notably by my hero, Holden Caulfield (with friends, etc.).

Jones goes on:

That start, Jones writes, "was intended to be "a presentation of a conception of metaphysics written as if to explain to Carnap why some useful purpose might be served by looking at Aristotle's Metaphysics", but I wrote down an action plan and never actually completed (or even started) any of the actions.
http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/metap/xps007.html."

Well, but of course the connection is there, for as Jones was pointing out: there are various ways to regard this:

---- Aristotle's, Carnap's, and Grice's use of words such as 'real'. For Aristotle, the 'real' is the combination of 'matter and form'. A 'substance' is 'real', as it were. The first substance is the only real thing, actually, for Aristotle. Carnap dismisses the use of 'real' as nonsensical (or 'metaphysical'). And Grice is pretty tolerant when it comes to things that are real ('if it works, it exists' -- his Ontological Marxism goes).

---- Aristotle, Carnap, and Grice may allow for bigger questions ("out of the box" questions, as I call them) -- but Carnap is doubtful and thinks that bigger questions are nonsensical. So he would allow for an 'inner-question' about 'substance', and 'matter' and 'form'. For Aristotle, all questions are 'big', in that logic was not yet developed for a language-metalanguage discussion or for the idea of a calculus or system within questions can be meaningfully posed. Grice discusses the rationale, and architecture for building this or that 'system' in which 'inner' questions can be posited.

Or something like that.

----

If Carnap does not discuss Aristotle, perhaps the 'missing' like there is Heidegger. I.e. to examine in what respect Heidegger is thinking himself of improving on Aristotle's metaphysics and come up with why Carnap thought of Heidegger as a 'master of nonsense'.

The phrase 'master of nonsense' I find interesting -- and 'delightful', if I may say -- if only when I read it in connection with Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll (born C. L. Dodgson)!

----

Or something like that!

Thanks to R. B. Jones for the commentary.