E. S. O'Neill, of Somerville, and H. P. Grice, of St. John's -- on conversational trustworthiness

Speranza

How does Grice 'construct' 'trutsworthiness' in conversational exchanges?

We are referring here to H. P. Grice's Oxford "Conversation" Lectures, 1966 -- O'Neill was at Somerville at some point, and "Grice" was in the air!

Grice: Between Self-Love and Benevolence. Grice uses "self-love", charmingly qualified with capital letters and qualified as 'conversational': "Conversatinal Self-Love."

Less charmingly, there's "Conversational Benevolence", and this was advertised in these lectures advertised at Oxford, as being on "Logic and Conversation" that he gave, not at Harvard, but at Oxford in 1966 as "University Lecturer in Philosophy". 

The notes he kept and are now deposited in The H. P.  Grice Papers at the Bancroft Library in UC/Berkeley. A number of the lectures by Grice include discussion of the types of behaviour people in general exhibit, and therefore, the types of expectations" -- cfr. Bayne on owings -- "they might bring to a venture such as a conversation.

Grice suggests that people in general both exhibit themselves and EXPECT from others a certain degree of helpfulness -- alla Rosenschein, epistemic/boulemaic: if A cognizes that B wills p, then A wills p.
 
-- and this is from OTHERS -- 
-- reciprocal vs. reflexive, etc.
 
and this is usually on the understanding that such helpfulness does NOT get in the way of
particular goals and does not involve undue effort" --- cfr. Hobbes on, as Bayne stresses, self-love.
 
As an illustration, Grice gives: if two people, even complete strangers, are going through a gate, the expectation is that the FIRST ONE through will hold the gate open, or at least leave it open, for the second. 

The expectation is such that, to do OTHERWISE, without any particular reason, would be interpreted as RUDE. The type of helpfulness exhibited and expected in conversation is more specific because of a particular, although not a unique, feature of conversation.

After all, conversation is a COLLABORATIVE venture between the participants. There is a SHARED aim. Grice wonders. His words,
 
     Does
           "helpfulness  in something 
            WE ARE  DOING TOGETHER"
      equate to
              'cooperation'?
 
Grice seems to have decided that it does.

By the later Oxford lectures in the series, 'the principle of conversational helpfulness'
has been re-branded the expectation of 'cooperation'".
 
During the Oxford lectures, Grice develops his account of conversational trustworthiness and the precise nature of this cooperation. 

Conversation can be seen as governed by certain
 
        regularities
or 
         principles,
 
detailing expected behaviour. 

The Kantian term of art, 'maxim,' to describe these regularities appears relatively late in the Oxford lectures.
 
Grice's INITIAL choices of terms are 'objectives' and 'desiderata'." Grice is particularly fond of the latter.
 
Grice is interested in detailing the desirable forms of behaviour, for the purpose of achieving a joint goal of the conversation." Initially, Grice posits
 
       TWO
 
such desiderata. One desideratum of conversational candour, on the one hand, and one desideratum of conversational clarity, on the other. 

The desideratum of conversational candour contains Grice's general "principle" of
making the strongest possible statement -- already hinted at in his "Causal Theory of Perception" -- and, as a limiting factor on this standard of 'strength', the suggestion that conversationalists should try not to mislead.
 
cfr. our "We are brothers" -- but not mutual. "We are married to each other". "You _are_ a boor".
 
The desideratum of conversational clarity concerns the manner of expression, rather. His later reference to Modus as used by Kant as one of the four conversastional categories.
 
-- for any conversational contribution.

The desideratum of conversational clarity includes the
              IMPORTANT
expectations of relevance to understanding, and also insists that the main import of an utterance be, as the name of the desideratum goes, conversationally clear an explicit.
 
These two desiderata -- the desideratum of conversational candour and the desideratum of conversational clarity -- are constantly to be
 
      WEIGHED
 
against two
 
   FUNDAMENTAL and SOMETIMES COMPETING
 
demands, even Kantotelian in nature. 
 
Contributions to a conversation are aimed towards the agreed current purposes by 
 
            the PRINCIPLE of Conversational Benevolence.
 
The principle of CONVERSATIONAL SELF-LOVE, on the other hand, ensures the assumption on the part of both participants, that neither will go to unnecessary trouble in framing their contribution. This has been a topic of interest to no end. 
 
In my "Conversational Immanuel" I tried different ways of making sense -- it is very easy to do so -- of Grice's distinctions that go over the head of some linguists I know! 

Reasonable versus rational for example. A Rawlsian distinction of sorts, and it is interesting that, after his time at Oxford, Rawls goes back to Harvard to supervise O. S. O'Neill, formerly of Somerville. Her PhD is on trust!

Rational is too weak. Or is it the other way round?

We need 'reasonable'. So, what sort of reasonableness is that which results from this harmonious, we hope, clash of self-love and benevolence? Grice tried, wittily, to extend the purposes of conversation to involve

 
   MUTUALLY INFLUENCING EACH OTHER

-- a reciprocal (WoW, ii). And there's a mythical reconstruction of this in his "Meaning Revisited" which he contributed
to this symposium organised by N. Smith on Mutual
knowledge.
 
But issues remain, we hope. 

REFERENCES

Grice, H. P. Lectures on logic and conversation, Oxford, 1965.

-- The causal theory of perception.

-- The conversational category of Modus.

O'Neill, O. S. Conversational trust.